WS1882 Building an Extraordinary Company Culture | Highlights Steve Nabity

In this highlight episode, we sit down with the extraordinary Steve Nabity, an entrepreneur whose journey through catastrophic loss and bold re-invention will leave you inspired. Steve transparently shares the harrowing account of his manufacturing company being reduced to ashes, a disaster compounded by underinsurance and a subsequent failed business venture in educational products.

However, destiny had a unique plan. A humble cookie cutter prototype on Steve's kitchen table sparked an idea that gave birth to Accucut, a company that eventually carved its way into 75% of elementary schools. And when Steve's enterprise accidentally attracted the quilting market—a niche he knew nothing about—he embraced the unexpected, leading to the establishment of Accuquilt.

Steve's story is a masterclass in adaptability, revealing how he pivoted during the COVID-19 pandemic from retail to direct-to-consumer sales, achieving massive success in uncertain times.

Throughout this episode, Steve's wisdom shines through as he discusses the invaluable roles of an advisory board, mentors, and the courage to "head west" and explore uncharted territories. You'll learn why Steve promotes empowering employees to take ownership and the culture of humility that has been central to his businesses.

So, if you're an entrepreneur facing your own set of challenges, or a real estate investor looking to diversify your assets and learn from the mindset of another industry's success story, this episode is for you. 

Hit subscribe, and let's delve into this empowering narrative that underscores the significance of not just staying in the game, but playing it with vision and effort. This is The Real Estate Syndication Show, where we're not just about property, but the people and principles that pave the path to success.


 Click the links to listen to the full episodes for more enriching content on prospering in real estate. Don’t wait, Steve's remarkable story awaits you—tune in now!


https://lifebridgecapital.com/2023/09/18/navigating-trials-in-life-and-business-steve-nabity/

https://lifebridgecapital.com/2023/09/19/cultivating-a-strong-culture-within-your-business-steve-nabit

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Transcript

Whitney Sewell [00:00:02]:

This is your daily real estate syndication show. I'm your host, Whitney Sewell. Today we've packed a number of shows together to give you some highlights. I know you're going to enjoy the show. Thank you for being with us today, Steve, I'm excited to interview you and hear more about your story. Just a few things you've shared before we started recording have definitely piqued my interest just learning from you and some of the amazing things that you have accomplished. And I want to dive into how you've done that right today and probably tomorrow as well. And so the listeners and I can learn from you.

Whitney Sewell [00:00:37]:

So, Steve, welcome to the show.

Steve Nabity [00:00:40]:

Whitney, it's a pleasure being on the show, and I look forward to having a great conversation. And as we talked earlier, being able.

Whitney Sewell [00:00:50]:

To talk about my journey heading west.

Whitney Sewell [00:00:53]:

Yeah, looking forward to it. And I think so often when we look back, we can call it history, but look back at people's journeys, there's numerous people, even hundreds of years ago, right? More we learn about them. We can learn so much from them. But even somebody like yourself, that was hundreds of years ago, but even more recently, right? You've done some amazing things. You've accomplished a lot, but you've been able to scale those hurdles, right, or those mountains or whatever it may be, those obstacles that's come in front of you. And it's unfortunate. Many people are not ready to do that. Or sometimes they quit, right, when things get difficult.

Whitney Sewell [00:01:32]:

But you did not. I'm looking forward to diving in. Let's go back a little bit. I want to hear more about this story because I think it's shaped you, right, in so many ways. And now you're able to help so many others with some of those same issues, right? Or maybe even before they face that mountain, you're helping them be prepared, right, for the mountain when it comes, because no doubt it's coming. So let's dive in, Steve, a little bit. Let's back up in your story, because I know it hasn't always been real estate for you, but, man, it sounds like you've learned a lot in business, and now I've been able to apply that in real estate.

Whitney Sewell [00:02:05]:

So I want to learn from you in that regard.

Steve Nabity [00:02:08]:

Whitney, the journey started years back, and it started with a phone call at four in the morning. And on the phone with that phone call, nothing good happens at four in the morning when you get a phone call. And it was my general manager on.

Whitney Sewell [00:02:28]:

The phone saying it got struck by.

Steve Nabity [00:02:32]:

Lightning and you're thinking, what got struck by lightning. Well, she told me at four in the morning that the manufacturing company that.

Whitney Sewell [00:02:43]:

I just bought got hit by lightning.

Steve Nabity [00:02:46]:

And 80% of it is burning to the ground. And it was 100,000 square foot facility. And Whitney, I had just moved my family back to Omaha from Kansas City three months earlier. I put all my money into this company. It employed 50 people. This was my launching platform. I had all my eggs in one basket. Everything I had was in this company.

Steve Nabity [00:03:12]:

And it was burning to the ground. Well, the warehouse, by the time it was all over and done with, the building, 80% of it burnt down. Come to find out, I was underinsured. These are things you don't do. You have one customer, one product, and one building. That is not a great formula for trying to diversify your risk. So after the business burnt down, we kind of figured out, could we come back in business? And so we came back. Instead of 50 employees, we came back with nine.

Whitney Sewell [00:03:51]:

And I told myself, never, ever again.

Steve Nabity [00:03:55]:

Am I going to have all my eggs in one basket. So after that, I was on a journey. How do I diversify this business? How do I make this thing happen? And my brother in law came to me and he said he went to this educational trade show and he saw this booth that had a letter cutting system, cutting out letters, shapes and numbers for elementary schools where you would way back then, if you're going to decorate a bulletin board, you would see these shapes cut out. Normally they cut them out with scissors. But this company had a machine and the booth was packed. And I'm a mechanical engineer by degree, and he was a marketing Guy, and he came back and said, steve, can you build this machine? Let's compete with these guys.

Whitney Sewell [00:04:41]:

No problem.

Steve Nabity [00:04:42]:

Six months later, I failed miserably. Absolutely miserably. And we met and decided we're going to give up our dream of having another business to compete with this company. And basically what the company was making was a sharp cookie cutter. You put a piece of paper on top, you press it down, and out comes a letter and a number. And teachers would put them on bulletin boards and they'd use them for class lessons. So my first business was electronic manufacturing, and now I'm talking about educational products. Ask me how they meet.

Steve Nabity [00:05:23]:

They don't. But I was diversifying. I had to figure out that if I lost one thing, I would still have another income stream. So we failed at this miserably. And about two weeks later, after we decided not to do the business, I'm.

Whitney Sewell [00:05:40]:

In the kitchen, and on the kitchen.

Steve Nabity [00:05:43]:

Table was the prototype cookie cutter sitting on the kitchen table, and it was a jacko lantern.

Whitney Sewell [00:05:49]:

And when I looked at it, it.

Steve Nabity [00:05:51]:

Reminded me of the failure. Like, how come you couldn't figure this thing out?

Whitney Sewell [00:05:56]:

And on the counter, my wife had.

Steve Nabity [00:06:00]:

Made cookies, and next to the cookies.

Whitney Sewell [00:06:03]:

Was a rolling pin. A rolling pin.

Steve Nabity [00:06:09]:

And I looked down at the table and saw the jack of lantern cookie.

Whitney Sewell [00:06:13]:

Cutter, and I looked over at the.

Steve Nabity [00:06:15]:

Rolling pin, and you do one of these? And I went, no, there's no way.

Whitney Sewell [00:06:22]:

So I took the rolling pin, I.

Steve Nabity [00:06:25]:

Picked it up, put a piece of paper on top, the cookie cutter, and.

Whitney Sewell [00:06:29]:

Rolled the rolling pin over the top. Here it is.

Steve Nabity [00:06:37]:

This is the rolling pin with marks in it, and it's been signed by the employees.

Whitney Sewell [00:06:43]:

This rolling pin, this idea came up out of. It just came up.

Steve Nabity [00:06:49]:

You never know where ideas are going to come from. You could be on a lawnmower, you could be on a horse. You could be heading western Nebraska. You never, never, ever know. So this rolling pin, I went down.

Whitney Sewell [00:07:02]:

The path of a machine that has a roller, and we started a company, and it was called accucut.

Steve Nabity [00:07:10]:

And now I had the electronic manufacturing.

Whitney Sewell [00:07:13]:

And now I had accucut.

Steve Nabity [00:07:15]:

We made shape and letter cutting systems for schools and daycares.

Whitney Sewell [00:07:19]:

And it's like, okay, we're starting to diversify.

Steve Nabity [00:07:23]:

We're starting to figure out what goes on.

Whitney Sewell [00:07:27]:

I'll tell you another story.

Steve Nabity [00:07:29]:

Over the years, accucut grew, and we were in 75% of the elementary schools.

Whitney Sewell [00:07:34]:

Wow.

Steve Nabity [00:07:36]:

And as we grew the team, as we started growing, one of the things that we learned and realized after the fire burning down and starting accucut with the business, electronic manufacturing, and it reminded me of an African parable, and you've probably heard it about the gazelle and the lion.

Whitney Sewell [00:07:59]:

Have you heard that? It sounds familiar. Okay. In Africa, it's an African parable. A gazelle wakes up in the morning.

Steve Nabity [00:08:12]:

And it knows that it has to.

Whitney Sewell [00:08:15]:

Outrun the fastest lion. A lion wakes up in the morning.

Steve Nabity [00:08:22]:

And it knows it has to outrun the slowest gazelle, because if the gazelle doesn't run faster than the fastest line, it's going to be killed. And if the lion doesn't get up and run faster than the slowest gazelle.

Whitney Sewell [00:08:35]:

It'S going to starve to death.

Steve Nabity [00:08:37]:

And the moral of the story, and this was kind of our mantra, when.

Whitney Sewell [00:08:40]:

The sun comes up, you got to run.

Steve Nabity [00:08:44]:

If we're the lion or the gazelle, you need to start running. And that was our mindset. You just have to start running.

Whitney Sewell [00:08:52]:

So the question is, where do you run? Where do you run?

Steve Nabity [00:08:56]:

As we grow in these businesses and the accucut was the education company, we.

Whitney Sewell [00:09:04]:

Started hearing about quilters, quilters wanting to cut fabric.

Steve Nabity [00:09:11]:

I'm not a quilter. I know nothing about quilting. And our marketing and sales team said, steve, you need to go to this.

Whitney Sewell [00:09:18]:

Quilt show because they're buying our product.

Steve Nabity [00:09:20]:

Not knowing why they're using it. We're just cutting out fabric. And, okay, now we're looking at how else can we diversify? And so I go to the quilt.

Whitney Sewell [00:09:31]:

Show and our booth is packed. People are buying our product left and right.

Steve Nabity [00:09:39]:

And the quilters were mad. Have you ever been to the largest.

Whitney Sewell [00:09:41]:

Quilt show in the world? Every year.

Steve Nabity [00:09:45]:

Every year. That's what everybody says. It's every year. It's in Houston, Texas, and it's called international quilt festival.

Whitney Sewell [00:09:53]:

It's four days of 60,000 quilters. Never heard of it.

Steve Nabity [00:10:00]:

And I'm telling you, I didn't go.

Whitney Sewell [00:10:01]:

To school to be a quilter.

Steve Nabity [00:10:04]:

But this is how life is. And we'll talk about that. But I go to the quilt show and quilters are in line to buy our product, not knowing why they were mad. They were getting upset with us. And so you know how you're at.

Whitney Sewell [00:10:21]:

The ice cream shop and you get.

Steve Nabity [00:10:24]:

Ticket number, not your number nine, and my person behind you is number ten. I then were taking pieces of paper. I'm the president there. I know nothing about quilting and they're all mad. So I ripped pieces of paper and put numbers on them and I start handing them out. Whitney, you're number nine in line to.

Whitney Sewell [00:10:43]:

Order our product because cutting fabric and.

Steve Nabity [00:10:47]:

Paper are totally two different things. So I'm in line there handing these things out. And one thing you know, this quilter.

Whitney Sewell [00:10:55]:

Starts walking up to me, we make eye connection.

Steve Nabity [00:11:00]:

I'm going, oh, no, I'm in trouble. If you know anything about quilters, they're passionate. Average age 62, they give you their opinion.

Whitney Sewell [00:11:08]:

That's what I love about it.

Steve Nabity [00:11:10]:

So she came up and asked me.

Whitney Sewell [00:11:11]:

A question about quilting. I knew nothing.

Steve Nabity [00:11:17]:

One of the things that phrase, you.

Whitney Sewell [00:11:19]:

Fake it until you make it. I faked it.

Steve Nabity [00:11:22]:

And she literally, this is no joke. She took her finger and pointed it right at me. And this is it. You're president of this company. You don't know anything about quilting. We're not a scrapbooker. You should be ashamed and embarrassed of.

Whitney Sewell [00:11:38]:

Yourself in front of everybody. My employees heard it.

Steve Nabity [00:11:45]:

My customers heard it. And the neat thing from that, I.

Whitney Sewell [00:11:49]:

Wanted to crawl in a hole. I was on the plane the next morning and thinking about, I'm never going.

Steve Nabity [00:11:56]:

To another quilt show.

Whitney Sewell [00:11:58]:

And then you start thinking about this.

Steve Nabity [00:12:01]:

This was in 2007 and eight.

Whitney Sewell [00:12:04]:

What a better time you got.

Steve Nabity [00:12:05]:

Quilters that are so passionate. Nobody's doing it in the marketplace. Let's figure it out. So we started accuquilt. And the point of that is that, Whitney, you never know where inspiration is going to come from. It may come from a rolling pin, it may come from a quilter. You never, never know.

Whitney Sewell [00:12:29]:

But you got to stay in the game. At the worst time, when you're so embarrassed by being chewed out, that song.

Steve Nabity [00:12:39]:

You get knocked down, you get up again. And that happens in life, whether it's in real estate.

Whitney Sewell [00:12:44]:

You're going to buy a property and it's not going to work out. It's going to be tough. Well, what do you do? You head west and figure the thing out.

Steve Nabity [00:12:55]:

And that's lifelong. My major triathlon coach, he said, there's only two things that you can control.

Whitney Sewell [00:13:06]:

And that's your attitude and your effort. And if you can control those two.

Steve Nabity [00:13:12]:

You can do amazing things. So now I've got two companies. I've got three companies now.

Whitney Sewell [00:13:18]:

And over the journey of that time frame, again, diversify your assets.

Steve Nabity [00:13:26]:

Don't put all your eggs in one basket. One of the phrase I've used, the.

Whitney Sewell [00:13:32]:

Word heading west in our companies, heading.

Steve Nabity [00:13:36]:

West kind of described our core values and what that is. But I'll just describe briefly what heading.

Whitney Sewell [00:13:44]:

West means, is that there's times in life that you think you want to.

Steve Nabity [00:13:52]:

Do something, but you don't have enough information. And so you'll gather more, gather more, gather more, gather more. And you can turn into the paralysis by analysis that everybody knows about. But heading west means I may only have 30% of the information.

Whitney Sewell [00:14:10]:

Start heading west and figure out what.

Steve Nabity [00:14:14]:

Information you need, and you will figure it out. But if you don't get moving, if.

Whitney Sewell [00:14:20]:

You don't move in, like we did.

Steve Nabity [00:14:23]:

With accuquilt for the quilting product in 2007 and eight in the financial crisis.

Whitney Sewell [00:14:29]:

We didn't know anything about quilting, and.

Steve Nabity [00:14:32]:

We figured it out, and that led us to multiple companies after that. That was the start of tech brands.

Whitney Sewell [00:14:42]:

The company we ended up selling, the private equity.

Whitney Sewell [00:14:45]:

I wanted to get to that part, at least, but I love that there's so many things there. You mentioned, and even.

Whitney Sewell [00:14:54]:

Going to this.

Whitney Sewell [00:14:55]:

Quilting show seems so random, right? Somebody said, go to a quilt show. Why would I go to a quilt show. Right. But it's interesting what happened there and even this lady coming up to you. And that could have been just that hit you hard right in front of everybody, in front of your team. But you just called it inspiration, right? You never know where inspiration is going to come from. Where I think a lot of times it's hard for us to see that as inspiration or in a good light or turn it to a positive. And it sounds like that's exactly what you did.

Steve Nabity [00:15:31]:

Well, again, remember when I got chewed.

Whitney Sewell [00:15:34]:

Out in front of everybody and I.

Steve Nabity [00:15:36]:

Wanted to crawl in a hole? I felt that for 24 hours.

Whitney Sewell [00:15:41]:

And then you're on a plane and.

Steve Nabity [00:15:43]:

If you step back a little bit in life, it could be anything, stuff that could happen right in front of.

Whitney Sewell [00:15:49]:

You and you think you're never going to get through it. Step back, take a breath.

Steve Nabity [00:15:59]:

I look at it as going up 60,000ft. Look up 60,000ft. And is there something there? Have you heard about the two kids.

Whitney Sewell [00:16:12]:

And the pony in the bedroom? No.

Steve Nabity [00:16:16]:

And this is another thing to look at. There's two kids, brother and a sister, and they're ten years old, and they go into their bedroom and there's a.

Whitney Sewell [00:16:26]:

Pile of horse manure.

Steve Nabity [00:16:30]:

The daughter goes, she sees the pile of horse manure and the daughter goes and runs out of the bedroom and goes to, mom, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy. There's a pile of horse manure in the bedroom.

Whitney Sewell [00:16:43]:

Her brother goes out and goes, mommy.

Steve Nabity [00:16:45]:

Mommy, there's a pile of horse manure in the bedroom. There's got to be a pony around.

Whitney Sewell [00:16:50]:

Here, so you may be stepping in.

Steve Nabity [00:16:54]:

It, you may be there. There may be a pony in this.

Whitney Sewell [00:16:59]:

And getting chewed out from a quilter. There was a pony. There was an absolute pony.

Steve Nabity [00:17:07]:

I'm going to tell you another story.

Whitney Sewell [00:17:08]:

About that quilting thing. And this is one of the things.

Steve Nabity [00:17:11]:

When you're going to be working with.

Whitney Sewell [00:17:13]:

Experts, you'll be working with experts in.

Steve Nabity [00:17:17]:

Your business life, whether in real estate, mentors and et cetera. When we started atuquilt, we then started coming up with other products. Since we didn't know anything about quilting, we hired experts. We did focus groups and research, interviewed quilters, did everything we could figure out.

Whitney Sewell [00:17:34]:

How to get a product.

Steve Nabity [00:17:36]:

After all the research in the focus group, this company, this brand, really smart brand company, came up to our company.

Whitney Sewell [00:17:42]:

After all the research and said, big report, don't do it.

Steve Nabity [00:17:48]:

Do not go in the quilting business. Stick with your other company. Nobody wants your product. It's going to cost too much.

Whitney Sewell [00:17:55]:

You're going to lose too much money. You know what we said at the end? Bs. We're doing it.

Whitney Sewell [00:18:04]:

You're going west.

Steve Nabity [00:18:05]:

We're heading west. We're going to do it. There's times in life, Whitney, where your gut tells you to do something.

Whitney Sewell [00:18:12]:

When everybody else says, you know, like.

Steve Nabity [00:18:15]:

Warren Buffett, not that thing, but when everybody's going in, you go out. When everybody's going out, you go in. And at that time, we really didn't know anything about what Warren Buffett was saying.

Whitney Sewell [00:18:26]:

But you're going to come in life personally, family, whatever business where you may.

Steve Nabity [00:18:34]:

Have to go and buck the system.

Whitney Sewell [00:18:36]:

And go against the grain, and everybody.

Steve Nabity [00:18:39]:

Is doing life, and it is not easy. And I appreciate you having that conversation with me. It doesn't happen that often, but you know how life is and how you get led to start talking. And I did. So thank you on that. You were talking about selling the business from the different companies we had.

Whitney Sewell [00:19:02]:

We were growing.

Steve Nabity [00:19:03]:

And my goal was always to sell the business. And we got to the point in 2019 that was decided to sell the business. And one of the things about yesterday talked about starting businesses. We had five businesses that were under a portfolio, under tech brands that were all started from scratch. We knew nothing about the business. So if we can do it, anybody can do it, in the sense you don't need to know everything about everything and everything to head west on the journey.

Whitney Sewell [00:19:39]:

And one of the things, when we.

Steve Nabity [00:19:42]:

Got to the point of selling the business in 2019, we hired an investment.

Whitney Sewell [00:19:48]:

Banker and we went through the process, got 17 offers.

Steve Nabity [00:19:55]:

And by that time, we got done, we selected somebody. And when we looked at the numbers and you think that I've been doing business for 35 years and everybody's dream is to sell the business. And you always have high expectations what the price should be. Well, the price came in lower than anybody thought, even what we thought and.

Whitney Sewell [00:20:19]:

What the investment banker thought.

Steve Nabity [00:20:21]:

And when it came in, the only way to describe it, if you're a baseball, if you know anything about baseball.

Whitney Sewell [00:20:29]:

It'S like a little bit more than a base hit. Well, I had this kind of conviction.

Steve Nabity [00:20:36]:

In my stomach that there's that phrase, pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered, and that means, hey, you got to burn the hands. Worth better than two in the bush. Just take the deal. Vestment bankers saying, do the deal, do the deal, do the well.

Whitney Sewell [00:20:49]:

About two weeks before closing, Covid hit.

Steve Nabity [00:20:53]:

Private equity firms said, let's delay it until the end of May. This was in March of 2020, and the private equity firm said, let's put it on hold. And we agreed because we didn't know.

Whitney Sewell [00:21:08]:

Anything about COVID and how it was going to affect.

Steve Nabity [00:21:11]:

But our business was direct to consumer and retail.

Whitney Sewell [00:21:15]:

And when our retail stores closed and.

Steve Nabity [00:21:17]:

Then the government was locking people in.

Whitney Sewell [00:21:20]:

The homes and our core business was quilting.

Steve Nabity [00:21:23]:

What do quilters do when they're in.

Whitney Sewell [00:21:25]:

Their home and locked in? Can't move.

Steve Nabity [00:21:28]:

They quilt like crazy.

Whitney Sewell [00:21:31]:

And our business overnight shifted.

Steve Nabity [00:21:36]:

And the only way to describe it.

Whitney Sewell [00:21:39]:

If you go in the Bible, Moses is at the Red Sea. And all of a sudden God parts the Red Sea for Moses and the.

Steve Nabity [00:21:49]:

People to go through right in front of our eyes, the Red Sea, the.

Whitney Sewell [00:21:54]:

Quilting Red Sea parted and our business just took off.

Steve Nabity [00:22:00]:

And we decided to take it off the market. And that decision was our team. Everybody in our company was going to get funds from the sale of the company. It's one of the things Lynette and I wanted to do, including 20 years ago. I'm going to add this little thing before we sold and still have the company. We have two manufacturing plants in the Nebraska state penitentiary. And part of our manufacturing we had had 100 people, 100 inmates working for us, getting going rate. But that's another story.

Steve Nabity [00:22:38]:

But we sat down with the team and the team said, no, we're not going to sell.

Whitney Sewell [00:22:42]:

We're going to let's run it again.

Steve Nabity [00:22:44]:

Because things are happening. And one of the things I did, Whitney, and this was tough for me. I knew I needed to get a CEO in and I had multiple ceos. I'm the owner of the company, but I had an advisory board and that's what I recommend. Anybody have an advisory board? You have mentors, but I had an advisory board of four to five people. I've had them for 20 years. Different people in and out to help guide the business and what we're doing. So I took one of my board members, Mary K.

Steve Nabity [00:23:18]:

O'Connor Wenty. She's from San Francisco and billion dollar businesses. She came in and I let her run the business.

Whitney Sewell [00:23:27]:

I had to back away my ego.

Steve Nabity [00:23:30]:

This is know I used to run it. I created it from scratch and et cetera. And she worked with me and said.

Whitney Sewell [00:23:36]:

Steve, I got the business.

Steve Nabity [00:23:39]:

You take strategy and vision, I'll take.

Whitney Sewell [00:23:41]:

Care of everything else.

Steve Nabity [00:23:42]:

Great team. I love her dearly. She was awesome. Anyway, 18 months later comes around and we decide to put it back on.

Whitney Sewell [00:23:50]:

The market and with a new investment.

Steve Nabity [00:23:54]:

Banker, Bridgepoint Investment banking out of Omaha. And they were absolutely awesome. Whitney, when you were talking about in our faith. In the first meeting, these guys were solid. Morals are the same. Our values matched our values. We aligned up.

Whitney Sewell [00:24:15]:

I needed a partner that understood me and our business to take it to market.

Steve Nabity [00:24:22]:

We ended up taking it to market again 18 months later. And I use the analogy then the first one, we got a base hit. The second time, we got the home.

Whitney Sewell [00:24:32]:

Run we were talking about because the.

Steve Nabity [00:24:34]:

Business value grew and everybody in the company got blessed, including the inmates in the pen. And what I learned from that in the process.

Whitney Sewell [00:24:47]:

Could you plan also, what about after.

Whitney Sewell [00:24:50]:

You'Ve hired, you've built this team, maybe give us a couple tips on creating and maintaining that kind of culture. What you said, right. Doing extraordinary things with a little info, embracing the change those things.

Whitney Sewell [00:25:04]:

Couple tips there.

Steve Nabity [00:25:05]:

The one thing is when we hired people, Whitney, is that we want people to come in that want to own.

Whitney Sewell [00:25:12]:

Their own business mentally.

Steve Nabity [00:25:14]:

And the key is to get out.

Whitney Sewell [00:25:17]:

Of the way to motivate them, be.

Steve Nabity [00:25:19]:

Encouraging, have tough conversations when things don't go right. But the people we hired and wanted to hire are somebody that wanted to make a difference. Give them the resources, give them the ownership. I don't mean so much in stock, and we had phantom stock and things.

Whitney Sewell [00:25:38]:

Like that, but people that want to take and run with it.

Steve Nabity [00:25:44]:

We did not want to be a company where we told you what to do because we're idiots. We don't know anything from that side of it. We're learning new things every day.

Whitney Sewell [00:25:55]:

But when you foster that environment and.

Steve Nabity [00:25:58]:

You embrace change and you win and celebrate and have fun, and if you look down the head west, one of our core values, and if you take.

Whitney Sewell [00:26:08]:

In the headwest type environment, d stands and this is no is, don't believe your own bs, meaning that you may.

Steve Nabity [00:26:25]:

Think an idea is so great and you're mostly attached to it and et cetera, and you're not listening to anybody, and it's great, great.

Whitney Sewell [00:26:34]:

That'S believing you.

Steve Nabity [00:26:35]:

That's that bias in your brain. And you must surround yourself with people that will call, we say, call your baby ugly. It was in our company. Is that if I have a dumb idea, if I have an idea that.

Whitney Sewell [00:26:49]:

I think is great, you better pick it apart. And I need to have enough humbleness to hear what they say and not get upset.

Steve Nabity [00:27:00]:

And we built that culture. You could be in the executive meeting.

Whitney Sewell [00:27:04]:

And there were no sacred cows, no anything.

Steve Nabity [00:27:08]:

And if you can have that team.

Whitney Sewell [00:27:10]:

That, as they say, in good, great.

Steve Nabity [00:27:12]:

Attack the squigglies fast and fix problems very, very fast.

Whitney Sewell [00:27:18]:

It's magical.

Steve Nabity [00:27:19]:

It's absolutely magical. It hasn't always been that way because things happen, but you've got to let them run. You've got to give them the encouragement.

Whitney Sewell [00:27:28]:

And you as a leader have to be that humble servant leader to let them tell you things that are wrong. Love it.

Whitney Sewell [00:27:40]:

We could just keep on. Steve, you've been an inspiration and very grateful to have met you, had you on the show again. How can the listeners get in touch.

Whitney Sewell [00:27:49]:

With you and learn more about you?

Steve Nabity [00:27:50]:

Whitney, it's been a blessing being on your show, and I thank you for that because the fun things about this, you never know where the conversations are going to go. You may have it all laid out.

Whitney Sewell [00:28:02]:

And that's how my life has been. I never knew a rolling pin would.

Steve Nabity [00:28:08]:

Do something or a quilter, but I thank you from that side. They can get a hold of me. Steve Nabity at Skylinepoint Capital my email address is Steve Nabity at Skylinepoint Capital.

Whitney Sewell [00:28:26]:

I'd love to talk to anybody.

Steve Nabity [00:28:27]:

If someone wants to reach out and has questions and if I can pay it forward and help one little bit.

Whitney Sewell [00:28:35]:

I would be a happy camper.

Whitney Sewell [00:28:40]:

Thank you for being with us again today. I hope that you have learned a lot from the show. Don't forget to like and subscribe. I hope you're telling your friends about