Ty Cobb Backer 0:00

Dylan, Mullins, the man, the myth, the legend. We have a kind of a belief system that either we're gonna push you up, we're gonna push you out. I don't want to be around five other people that aren't pushing themselves to feed. That isn't about fate, but giving value first. Compensation follows contribution always. This is true. It's the truth every week. This is our story. We share with you our journey. We share with you our scars. Please welcome your host, Ty Cobb Backer. What up, what up, what up, what up, everybody? Happy Wednesday, man. I hope everyone has been out enjoying the sun that at least we have been experiencing. Um, it's been nice. I needed some sun on the face, needed some sun on the skin. And today we have a good friend of mine. I met Dylan, I don't know, four or five years ago at a retreat, revolt retreat. And Dylan has been on the show, I think probably about two years ago was the last time you were on. And um Dylan, Dylan has become a good friend of mine. Uh unfortunately, we don't connect enough. At least that's how I feel. But uh every I love listening to him speak. Um, he is a an amazing speaker, uh, it's a lot of wisdom. I take everything that he says to heart, and and I deeply listen when when he speaks. But uh now he's doing a a podcast, which I haven't seen yet. He is the owner, founder, CEO of All American Roof Pros. And and here he is, my good friend Dylan. How how's it going, buddy?

Dylan Mullins 1:43

It's going, man. How am I supposed to follow that up? I don't know if I live up to all the hype that you just threw out, man, but I can say that with some serious confidence. Sorry, I'm not the best on camera on these podcast things, but um I can say with some serious confidence, man, that it's right back at you. Like I literally value you as a very close friend, and I agree with you. We don't connect as much as we should, but either way, man, you know, we're just out here doing the best that we can with what we got, you know. So excited to be on today. Yeah, it has been two years. I think the last time was when I swung through your office and we did an impromptu on a random Wednesday. So I'm excited to uh chat with the audience and see what we can provide with some uh some truth bombs today.

Ty Cobb Backer 2:23

That's right, man. I love it, I love it. And and you you randomly popped in last week too. I did. And and I'm guilty. You you seem to be always the one that that kind of comes over here and pops in. And unfortunately, I don't get out into your neck of the woods very often. Um, but I should, I should probably surprise you like you did me an hour away, like, hey man, you gonna be around? I'll be in. Oh shit. Anyhow, I was feeling under the weather, but I feel a lot better today.

Dylan Mullins 2:53

Good, man.

Ty Cobb Backer 2:53

So um, yeah, you know how it is. Sometimes the the rain, the and I think sometimes I suffer from like like seasonal I hate the word depression. But I think I kind of go through a funk sometimes. We had been experiencing like five days, if it wasn't fully raining, at least cloudy, dreary, misty, um, you know, recouping from the cold ass weather, which I know you're experiencing out there too. And I think after a while it just kind of seems to take a col a toll on my mindset. And I feel like when you popped in, but you did just so you know, you lifted my spirits after by the time you left, I felt amazing. And uh I was glad that you came and shared again. You always share something new and interesting with me, you know, like what you're doing with your company, what you're doing with your family, and you got you know, um a family now. You you have you know, um, a beautiful bride and a beautiful daughter, and you have another one on the way.

Dylan Mullins 3:52

Yeah, in June, uh we become a family of four. So obviously, you know, that's always the highlight, man. You know, is the family to me. And I know that's something you and I definitely connect with super deep. Um, yeah, that's been the journey for me right now is the fatherhood stage. Like I've been, you know, anybody that gets the opportunity to listen to our podcast, they'll hear that that's literally like all I talk about because I'm in the trenches right now. Like we are figuring it out with a 22-month-old. And so it's been a hot topic, but also too, you know, balancing that out with a business. I I get what you're saying about the seasonal thing. I go through it every single year. I remember when Tori and I first got together, it was probably the first time I actually identified it. And I think it's because of the business we're in is so seasonal based, and we need nice weather. And the first quarter always is gonna take a down dip. It's the markets that you and I are in, and I don't, I think it's that way around the country. Nobody wants to do anything after the holidays, anyways, right? Nobody's thinking about their roof, they're thinking about paying off their Christmas debt. So we see a downtick, and you start to, I think it's almost like this it's that thing in the back of your head that's always poking you. And it's like, hey man, you know, are you sure you still want to do it? I always say that it's it's God getting at me and going, Are you st you still want to do this? Like it's it's almost a test. There's a test every first quarter, and it's it's uh sometimes it's a kick in kick in the uh the the the middle section, if we will. Let's keep it a little PG today, but it's it's not fun. Business isn't fun. It it is, don't get me wrong, but it's hard. And anything worth doing is hard. That's that's the same way that how that relates back to fatherhood, right? As fa as a father, to be a good father is is hard. It's very hard. And if you put the business into the mix of manifesting harder, but I get exactly what you're saying because Tori was like, What's wrong with you? Why are you you know in the dumps every winter? And it's like, well, we're not making any money, we're not putting roofs on, sales are down, like you just come off this high of Q4 that's usually pretty strong, and now you're scrambling to try to put on roofs and praying that the snow doesn't come and we can get these things produced for these customers and clients that we've made promises to, you know. So I get exactly what you're saying, man. And it came a little later for me this year. I don't know if it's the same for you, and then you go with the the sickness and stuff, but um, it seemed to come like later in the quarter for me. It was like in the last month, I would say. That was when I was for sure, for sure.

Ty Cobb Backer 6:11

I think like I mentioned, it it's just started to take a toll, you know. I don't know if I was still on the high from Q4 and then all of a sudden just kind of kind of crashed. And it comes and goes. It's not every day, I'm sad. Yeah, um, but I guess I I think with no sun outside, like the we had, I think yesterday was close to 86 degrees here. I mean, amazing. Okay. Now, unfortunately, I had to spend most of the day inside, but when I did get to go outside, it was it was amazing. But you know, it we I I agree with you. Being in the industry that we're in, there's there's ebbs and flows, there's seasons, there's challenges, there's you know, good quarters, bad quarters. And I was on a call, we were on a call yesterday, and there was a gentleman, I think it was yesterday.

Dylan Mullins 6:57

Yeah, it was yeah.

Ty Cobb Backer 6:59

So yesterday he said, Man, every time this year, like he he prays for hail. And I thought to myself, thank goodness, you know, I do, but not to probably the extent where his whole business model revolves around, you know, hail coming. And I thought, man, geez Louise. I, you know, I and I get it because I have done that too. We we have, you know, uh a location down south now, and it's like one of those things where, you know, it's like, man, hopefully a storm comes this year, but um, we've also put some other irons in the fire too, where things can kind of help carry us through. But when it's super duper cold out, like it has been, I mean, we've experienced the coldest winter. I mean, it for as far back as I can remember for the longevity of how long it's it was cold, right? So I don't care if you're a new construction, if you're in storm, if you're in retail, nobody is doing nothing, nothing is moving, nothing is going. And of course, the snow did create you know the phone to ring with ice damming and things like that. But what are you gonna do?

Dylan Mullins 8:02

Exactly. And those guys that are sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. Those guys that are chasing storms, they're not they they're not equipped to handle an ice dam, right? And honestly, as roofers, a lot of times that's a misconception that people have about like we we can't control the ice damming, right? We can do things to prevent it, but we can't control it. And and I think it was 2020 was the last time we really had a good ice dam season, right? And that was like legitimately the last real winter we had. I mean, if we think about it, that we haven't had a real winter, so that's also what I think is playing into that, right? So we've been able to roof up through January into February most of the time, and that gets our books caught up so that everything's taken care of, and we can start with a fresh slate coming into you know the the end of Q1 and the beginning of Q2 when things start really rocking and rolling. And I almost wonder if that's why it came later this year on the you know, we'll call it the seasonal depression side, but I call it it's it's pretty much business depression, right? If we really think about it, it's it's our business that we're just like you know, you start you you don't want to panic because we've been doing this long enough. I know you've been doing it significantly longer than I have, but you get in the groove where it's just like it's something I gotta accept, right? And you start to curb it. Um I I kind of relate it to grief, right? Because grief comes in in in waves and it never really goes away. And you never get rid of that that voice in the back of your head. He's never gonna go away. You can squish him down as far as you think. You can think that it's gone, and you're still gonna have that that little thing called self-doubt punching you when it when it's convenient, right? And uh, I don't care how many freaking seminars you go to, how many guys you listen to, it doesn't matter. I've done it all, man. I read freaking, I've probably read over 200 business books at this point in my career. It's not gonna go away. It's gonna be there. You just gotta figure out how to not panic when it's there, and how do you, you know, facilitate the conversation properly with your team to make sure that you're doing the right things, you know, and learning from your losses. That's the biggest thing that we're telling our folks, you know, is is it doesn't matter that it's slow. We're gonna do these things because we know that they end up producing in the long term, you know. And another thing, you know, about that call yesterday, a lot of those guys, a lot of guys in our industry, they don't have W 2 sales reps like you and I do. So we're carrying a burden through the winter, which I take is a blessing, right? That we're able to give these guys something through the winter to get by. Um, so they're not having the control over their 1099 reps. And that's a real problem because if they're not prospecting in the winter, that Q1 slow now becomes creeping into Q2 slow. And they don't realize that. They're nobody's thinking that far ahead. You know what I mean? And that's something we realize once we switch from 1099 to W2 is now I've got these guys all winter. We can go out and prospect and build relationships. We're in the relationship business. That's what I tell my guys constantly. This is a relationship business. I don't care if it's client, if it's vendor, if it's our crews, it is a relationship. And we have to communicate in those relationships. Um, referral partners are a big piece of that relationship. That's the word of mouth everybody's going for, right? And if our guys aren't out beating feet and making you know smiles and building real relationships, whether that's in a BI chapter or whatever that is, uh that's the perfect season to do it. Because by the time roofing season rolls around, man, everyone's busy. Everyone is gonna be 60, 70 hours a week, don't feel like they're never at home, and it's just part of the game, but you can't squeeze in that relationship time, right? So you have to kind of find those fillers for your guys to still feel fulfilled. Because I think that's what we're lacking in that moment, is we feel lack of fulfillment. We're looking at PLs, we're looking at freaking sales rates, we're looking at all the the fun stuff, and that's what it really comes down to, in my opinion.

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Ty Cobb Backer 11:38

Yeah, no, so good. And and again, getting back to how I introduced you, this is a perfect example of why I love listening to you because you nailed every single aspect of you know, from dealing with it, learning how to deal with with that dip, that funk, okay, and and re you know, how how do you react? Are you responding? Are you reacting and and and not panicking, you know, and and that's something that I've had to do, you know, and that's me building my leadership ability, right? Do I panic? Am I showing my panic? Am I uh, you know, how am I responding to to questions from my team? And am I not handling that stress well enough? And I have handled it poorly over the years, and there's been times that I've had to learn from you know my mistakes and and and know that it this too shall pass. And and I say that a lot to myself, like this too shall pass. And but what am I doing today to move the needle? I'll I'll also that should be my second thought. And usually it is, but hopefully most of the time it's my first thought. Like, what am I doing today to move the needle? And like you were saying, like what what relationship do I need to galvanize? What relationship do I need to create? Who do I need to reach out to to move the needle today? And sometimes it's not even about like generating, you know, uh uh prospecting revenue, but it's what am I doing for myself today? Right. Did um I started doing these things where I do a two-minute reset throughout the course of the day. I'll I'll focus on my breathing for a minute to kind of help keep the the anxiety down. You know, am I am I eating right? Am I getting enough rest? Am I, you know, doing all of the things that we've, I know we both have been working on over the years since we've known each other at least. You know, what am I doing to help myself get through these gray times, right? Because I don't want to call them dark times, but these gray times that we we tend to experience isn't the time that I that I that I I back off. It's actually the times that I double down. I double down on my my regimens, I try to get more rest, I try to do more exercise, I try to play more sports, you know, I try to hang out with my family more often and make that time more intentional because I know in a month or two things are gonna pick up and I won't be able to have that intentional time, you know, with my family. And they know it, they know the drill. We've been doing this a long time together, and thank God for my family and and for for being my rock and my support and all that good stuff. But um I loved how you were talking about, you know, referrals and especially prospecting referrals and and and solidifying and galvanizing those relationships during those downtimes. Because even though those people may not have anything right at that particular moment, that that new prospect that you just mined, okay, they may not have anything, but when things do start to pick up, it's one more thing in your repertoire for next year when things slow down. Once you get in that that groove with this new prospect, right? And you they start trusting you because sometimes it takes time to build up trust. But once you get it, it's just one more thing in the fold for you to hopefully carry you through next year. And like you said, people don't think far enough out. And that's how I think. What plants I'm seeing is, you know, planting, what seeds I'm planting today, I get to show later. And that's what our job as the the founders and the CEOs and and the head figures of our companies, we have to think long term. We have to be not sure what that was. We have to think, we have to think, you know, five steps ahead of everybody. And and Patrick Bet David says it best. Again, I've read probably about 200 books, you know, professional business books myself, and um his book, uh Your Next Five Moves. Like, you know, a grandmaster chess player is already knows 12 moves ahead, 12 or 13 ahead, right? And and you're a master, I guess, if you are if you know your next five moves. Okay. So I try to, like, that book had really opened my eyes the first time that I wrote it or read it to think much further ahead. That is our job, is to think much further ahead. Like, what am I doing, not necessarily to move the needle today, but what am I doing today to move the needle for the future of us so we don't have so many ebbs and flows. And I usually go out and get so much work that we don't even know what the hell to do with it. However, so that creates a different kind of stress. But the stress that we feel sometimes the from the lack of work sucks compared to the stress of how the hell am I going to get all of this done today?

Speaker 1 16:32

Well, and

Dylan Mullins 16:33

I think the oftentimes is and this I remember this early from from early in my career, right? I was what wasn't worried in the wintertime about working on the business, right? And that's something that's the perfect opportunity if you're in a winter market, is work on the business in those slow times, right? I've been building systems and processes, we're going through a CRM change. Like I have tasked the team with more than they can handle. We actually, you said about the two-minute thing. It's funny, I do it unintentionally to myself. I I need to be more intentional about it because I've had my fair share of blow ups. I mean, I work at this place with my mom runs my office, my dad runs my production, my brother runs my sales team, and we're we're co-owners together. Like, I I there's plenty of blow ups that happen with family. And I'm blessed with a fantastic wife who jumped into this thing with me and went feet first, right? We're she'll go wherever I say to go, and I'll go wherever she says to go. We're it's 110, 100, 110 there. But we took the time that now that we know, hey, it's gonna be slow in January and February, when we're talking about projects in Q3 and Q4 that are gonna be time consuming, that are gonna take time away from clients, that are opportunities to get things done, to say, let's push that out to Q1. Like we didn't launch this. We actually ironically, the get the CRM change wasn't planned at all. We didn't want to. We were planning on staying and working and trying to dive through that. And then RoofCon, we had a great conversation with a uh their team down there, and we're like, you know what, we'll go in feet first to that. And we were blessed enough that we're I wouldn't say slow, but we're slow enough to have that opportunity to dive into that. You know, you and I had a conversation in your office the other day. That it's scary for business owners right now about the AI stuff, right? And we see it all over the Facebook pages, and you know, we both said there's not gonna be a time when our job is going away as a roof, right? We're still gonna have roofs to put on because there's AI cannot take that job. The manual labor jobs are 100% safe. But are there opportunities in your business to make your people more efficient? Right. And I was building an app that I was super excited about, and then this claw crap came out. And I'm like, all right, I'm gonna go down this rabbit hole. And it turns out my app really is null and void now because I can do it with some other AI tools, right? But that crap's evolving so fast. And that's that's that that you don't need to focus on that in the in the Q2, Q3, and Q4. It's a Q1 project, right? Let's get it done in Q1. You can pump it out in Q1. Um, you're not gonna have time in the evenings. Like you said, if you're gonna be intentional with your family, and if you're like the two of us, we value our marriage more than our business. Like my marriage comes first. If the marriage was going to go away because of the business, then I need to change something in the business. If my my job as a father was going to change or was going to go away because of the business, I need to change something in the business. And we find we find a way to balance that. And once again, having supportive wives at home helps. That's the significant piece of that. I've talked to so many young men over the years who are young in their marriage. Wife's not prepared for what it takes to run a business, because we're the only guys who are dumb enough to quit a nine to five to go work 80 hours a week and make minimum wage at best, right? And if your wife's not prepared for that, dude, like you are gonna, it's gonna not, it's not gonna be fun. You have to have alignment at home. If that alignment is not there, because it's like for instance, right now, I leave the house at between 6 30 and 7 30 every day, and I'm rolling into the driveway between 6 30 and 7 30 every day. I'm working 12 hours a week or 12 hours a day, even with you know, the slow season because I am focused on getting the ship right. You know, we're focused on trying to build as much back end as we can. We had a sorry, I got off on a trump leave there, but when you said about taking a deep breath, we had a um one of our marketing girls got a better opportunity. In that moment, I was a little bit irritated for a minute because it kind of caught me blindsided. We thought, you know, she was gonna be with us through the season and threw it on us towards the end of Q1, and you're like, okay, but it's an opportunity to pivot instead of just burning the ships or you know, it took a minute to figure that out because we had a two-week notice and we needed to try to get as much out of her brain as possible to then be able to change systems and processes. But what we found was it gave us an opportunity to audit that entire system. Can I dive in and go in and say, what is broken here? Do we need this position? Not that I don't want to, you know, put somebody in that seat on the bus if necessary, but do we need the seat? Can we do it with the people we already have? And we're able to do that. And once again, that's where I get into I'm I'm really geeking out on the AI stuff. I'm a super technical guy. I love being able, I hate double data entry. My team still uses freaking spreadsheets all over the place, right? So that's one of the main reasons we're switching CRMs because it wasn't built for us. But also, too, I hate the idea of people having monotonous tasks. What can we do to make their life more fun? I flat out told my team this is not to replace your job, it's to make your job easier. I'm cool with you only having the four hours of technical work a day. Let's go find an opportunity. I actually told them, you can go be my biz dev rep. Let's go build relationships. You're the ones answering the phone. So, you know, we can set aside two days a week for each of you to go out. We have two of them in the office here for each of you to go out and build intentional relationships. What's wrong with that? There's nothing, there's zero wrong with that, but you have to be able to pivot in business. If you like the people, you'll find a spot for them, is what I found over the years, right? But there's nothing that that you can't get through as a business owner. You were saying in there about having the gray areas. I one I one thing I constantly use is like you're you're not having a bad life, you're having a bad day. And if you take the road of them having a bad life, it's every day is gonna be bad. But you can have a bad moment, you know, you can have that customer that calls in that you find out that you completely botched the install and you're gonna have To reinstall that roof and you know you're going to make zero or negative dollars on the project, but instead of just being pissed off the rest of the time, you just say, hey man, it is what it is. I'm here to make things right because you're in the relationship business. I guarantee you, if you have that instance, we actually have that going on right now where it's potentially gonna be a reinstall. We we screwed it up. We took accountability, we screwed it up. If I have to do that reinstall, if he never gives me another referral or business, at least I know I can put my head on my pillow at night and that guy's taking care of the way that he should be, right? So and you're gonna go through that crap. Crap is going to happen. It all stinks. You just happen to be a business owner, and guess what? Your crap pile has happens to be a little bit bigger than everyone else's because you're catching not just from yourself, not just from your house, you're catching it from every single person that works for you. And as you expand as an organization, it's only going to get bigger. How do you mitigate that so that it's only, you know, it's manageable and eat the elephant one bite at a time?

Ty Cobb Backer 23:20

Yeah, no, good stuff, good stuff. You know, getting back to you know, your people, I've also noticed, you know, with it, you know, you said finding them a lot of times if they're good, they actually find themselves a position within your organization. And that's from my experience, I've watched Chris Baker create positions for himself that I didn't even know we needed.

Dylan Mullins 23:42

Yes.

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(Cont.) What Are You Building When Business Is Quiet

Ty Cobb Backer 23:43

You know, and it's been and that's how you grow because we we give them enough room to to expand and and and explore and and and create and and dive into other things like that. And Chris has Chris has been definitely one of the the big driving forces and innovators, you know, behind TC Backer construction. And and same with Vic. Like Vic Vic came in here, you know, doing estimates and takeoffs and stuff. And his his role has evolved into the complete opposite. He's he's over here now making sure we sound and look good. And he's like our A V audio technician guy, follows me around. He recorded me last night doing some training and stuff. And you know, if you can not be such a control freak, yeah, you know, and and let people use their own brain brains and think for themselves and come up and take their ideas into consideration, you know, because a lot of times when somebody brings something to me, we might go with the whole thing, or it might inspire me, you know, to to elaborate and change things a little bit. And sometimes I kind of got to scratch it. But as long as I know that they know that they feel comfortable enough to be able to do that and that that I'm approachable, like, hey, did you ever think about maybe trying to do something like this? Because that's the thing of I'm trying to surround myself with smarter people and different aspects of things that yes, I can do them, but I don't have the time to do it. And I prefer you to do it because you do it much quicker and you've done it a lot longer than I have. So why not let them do it because they're better at it? Okay. And being able to do that because a long time ago, we we had a we've always had a good culture, okay. And I'm I'm screaming from the rooftops go, go, go, grow, grow, grow. And I've mentioned this several times on this podcast. And the problem was me. I had three fingers pointing back at me, okay, as I'm trying to point the finger at everything and everyone else. Everybody was standing, literally standing or sitting outside my office door, waiting for me to come out the office door and tell them what to do. Every single, I don't want to say second, but what do I do next? What do I do next? What do I do next? Right. I had taught them not how to think, you know, for themselves, but what I had to do was actually teach them how to think, you know, on their own and and make decisions, do choices, what's the next thing, right? And allow them to make mistakes, allow them to make errors, okay? Because that's how I've learned over the years is through trial and error, right? So if I allow them, like what do you think? And that's probably the biggest thing that I ever picked up from Craig Grishel was um when somebody does come to me with a question about something is firing back at them, what do you think? That's good. And then you decide. And that empowers them. That just right there, you've just empowered your team member to go outside that door, and they're thinking to themselves, wow, he actually trusts me to go out here and F this up or figure it out. You and when you can start doing that, and for me, man, that took a long time. I bet eight years. It took, we've been in business this year 18 years, and I bet that took me my first eight years, and I still was holding like pulling back and being taking like I'd give it, but uh now I'm giving it back. Oh now, give it back, you know. But now, not saying that I still don't have my control freak moments, but that's when we really started to explode when when I was in power, allowing people to make decisions on their own.

Speaker 27:56

Well, and I think as a business owner, it's important to understand what every person is doing, but we should not be the ones that are telling them how to do it, right? I am constantly one thing I tell my team, we just had our team retreat through through two and a half weeks ago. And every meeting we have, it doesn't matter if once we're in a room as a team, I tell them this is not the Dylan and Brainerd show. This is not all about us. This is y'all's company that we just happen to be able to lead, that we had the guts enough to go out and start. You guys are the ones that make decisions for yourselves. You know, we're doing this uh CRM build. I have zero, zero idea. I've completely delegated hands-off, like I've had to answer some questions along the way about how we want processes done, but we've turned the keys over to one of our inside sales reps because she's the one working in it every day. Why would I design it in a way that we don't work, right? When you're you exactly what you said is is is right, but you I think there's a fine line too of delegating and leaving them with complete free will, right? Don't allow them, allow them to stay in their lane, have those meetings that are intentional. They don't have to be two-hour meetings. I I I loathe meetings, I hate being in this office right now. Like this makes my skin crawl. I don't know why. I'm a busybody, it's a hard task for me. But when you have a meeting, it can be five or 10 minutes. It's like, hey, what are you working on? What can I help with? What do you need decisions on so that way we can get it done? And stopping in and checking on that. One thing I always go back to is John Maxwell's principle of leadership of eight the 80 the 80-20 rule. If they're 80% of the way there, turn it over to them and they'll turn it into 100%, 110% better than you could ever do it, right? And you have to have that that ability to do that with some checks and balances in place because um we've had folks over the years that we've kind of just handed the keys over to a different aspect of the business and they didn't understand. We did not, and that's the other thing as a as a leader, right? I have to be the one that takes accountability. If I didn't teach them well enough, that's on me. That's not on them. It's not their fault that they didn't understand how that should be done. So don't don't chew their head off because you did you failed as a leader, and a lot of times we're just projecting our feelings, right? Like I think a lot of most of the time, even in those early years, we knew that we we fucked up. We knew it was a screw up on our part. But we didn't take the accountability internally to go, it's my fault. I should have done better. And you could be agitated about it, but projecting it to that person, it's not gonna, you're not gonna hurt them the way that you feel hurt inside. You know, it's it's uh it's something we teach our kids. If you're just mad at someone and you decide to go smack them in the face, a lot of times you're not gonna make them feel the same way that you feel. So having that same principle inside of your business, because these are kind of our kids, right? Like we're just kind of dad. We're we're we're the boss of the house, right? So it having those same principles in a fathership role because we lead our households, we lead our businesses, and just sitting down with them and going, hey man, we did screw up, we screwed up together, we're gonna figure out how to work back through this, and then taking a little bit of time to just go, all right, how do we unravel this? You know, that's kind of what we do when someone leaves and we're doing it too late, right? We're doing it too late in that moment. And um, whether they left for a better opportunity or not, we should still be auditing the processes and understanding exactly what they're doing and make sure they understand what you're trying to get out of them. And that's another thing that we've struggled with. Some of these positions are hard to have KPIs with. You know, sales is an easy one, right? How many numbers did you put on the board? How many doors did you knock? How did it but when you're talking about inside inside sales reps, what are their metrics? Their jobs change a little bit day to day, especially with a you know a smaller company or trying to be efficient. So are we tracking them properly? That's we just reset the standard on the business. I think we've got some pretty intuitive ways to do it because we have in-house production just like you do, um, to build them and hold them accountable to some KPIs because it's a department we've just kind of been lax on because you know it's a little bit more profitable than it is uh than to hire subs for us. So, how do we do that? And then how do we incentivize them and how do we track their KPIs and hold them accountable and all these other things that are important to a business, right? And and that that big thing of fatherhood, right? When you set a boundary for your kids and you say don't do this, and they do it, what's the ramifications? Or when you give them the ability to go out, you know, I know you've got uh Rocket who's old enough to drive now. I'm sure that you and Janna had a sit-down conversation with, hey man, you know, these are the rules for the the the vehicle. And what happens when it goes out of bounds? Do you do you have real ramifications? You know, are you the overly strict parent that everything comes crashing down the second they do something wrong? Or are you the guy that's just like, eh, it's fine, or are you the guy in the middle, which I think the guy in the middle plays the best in in the whole thing, right? Like, hey, we screwed up, let's figure it out together. You still have punishments, we still have to, there's still a reaction to our action. Um, but a lot of times as business owners, we fall into one of those two categories, right? We're either two lats and our leaders are doing the same thing. They're either two lacks or they're you know way too damn strict and nobody wants to work for them because that guy's an asshole, and I never want to go into his office and talk to him because he's just gonna explode on me because of you know, so we've got to find that middle ground, and that's that's the hard part as a business owner and a leader, especially as teams grow, as the landscape evolves. Like these are living, breathing organizations, they're changing constantly. How are you changing to change with the organization? You know, I'm I'm happy to say that we haven't got to the point where a conversation's had to be had is I'm the right person to lead because I've been able to grow as much as I can, right? But there's a lot of guys we've talked to throughout the industry that they've had to have that that hard target themselves. Am I too big or too small for this thing? You know? Yeah.

Ty Cobb Backer 33:36

So anyway, yeah, and that's that's a legit question to ask yourself. Like you got to keep growing, you got to stay out in front of the team, you know. But but I I love what you were talking about, and you know, and this doesn't, you know, figuring this thing out doesn't happen overnight. And I've been guilty of not giving good enough directions, you know, and in my office, you were in my office, there's a cemetery across the parking lot there. And one day I had like this thought of, you know, I'm guilty of telling someone, hey, go over to that cemetery, but not giving them real direction. As I'm sitting there watching this limb scrape across this tombstone, I really meant to say, go over to that cemetery over there, and there's a limb that's scraping across this tombstone. I need you to grab the chainsaw, grab a rake, and and go over there and do it. But this also goes back to hiring the right people. Okay. If I give them enough direction, okay, they'll go over to the cemetery, and when they're over there, they're cognitive enough and looking around, they're they'll see three other headstones that are being damaged. And I might get a quick text message. Hey, when I was over here, um, there was there was actually three other headstones that were getting destroyed. Do you want me to take care of them? Absolutely. Yeah. And then next thing you know, I'll come back, right? They they raked up all the leaves, they took it upon themselves. This is where you give them enough room. Okay. Next thing you know, they've trimmed up eight different trees, they've they've saved 12 other headstones, and that it just looks immaculate. Okay. But the other side of that is when I told them just to go over there, I would come back an hour later and be like, yo, dude, like what you didn't do anything. And they're like, Well, you didn't tell me. I'm thinking it was trivial.

unknown 35:27

Yeah.

Ty Cobb Backer 35:28

Like, what do you what do you mean you didn't see that the the tombstones were getting freaking damaged by that tree limb? Now, that's I kind of made that up, but I had an epiphany one day with my nephew was sitting in my office, and I was like, dude, I give poor directions sometimes.

Dylan Mullins 35:42

Yes.

Ty Cobb Backer 35:43

You know, but having surrounded yourself around the right people, you don't always, you just got to kind of sort of create the framework.

Dylan Mullins 35:50

Yes.

Ty Cobb Backer 35:50

Okay. And hand it to them, like, look, I'm not the best at this thing, and I chat GBT'd it the best I could, and you know, and and you know, but here I know you're really good at this, but this this is the framework. The one of the reasons why I brought this up for the long longest time, we we had we've always had core values, and I don't remember the original five core values that we had, okay, because we were we were talking about giving them enough rope and and and providing um, you know, you were talking about KPIs and and things like that. So I believe a business is built. Well, I have I have what I call the trifectas, and and one of a few trifectas, okay, is is a three-legged stool. Okay. And and the seat of the stool is is the base of your business. But what's holding that up is these three, this, this three-legged tripod, okay, and it's core values, SOPs and KPIs. Okay. And that's your guide rails. Okay. And starting with uh SOPs. That way, when you're training someone, you're like, here, here's a hard copy of what it is that you know, this is how we do it. But okay, follow the process till it fails. Just trust the process because a lot of times you'll give somebody something and they'll come in and be like, oh, why do you do it this way? Because just do it. Just do it till I know you know how to do it, then come and give me your feedback. Okay, I'm not saying we can't change the SOP, but for now, here's your guide reel. Go in, do it, do it the way, because now it's not hearsay. Because I used to do it hearsay. I used to train people by hearsay, and I come back an hour later and they didn't do it the way that I thought I told them to do it, and they say, Well, you didn't tell me to do it that way. But now they can't tell me that because I have a hard copy or digital copy of the SOP. Now, where the real true guidelines come in play is your core values. And if we before every meeting, and this is the true story, we have one individual read our mission statement, and we have before the meeting starts, I don't care how how big or how small, we have a lot of meetings here because I believe communication is key. Okay. So they'll read the mission statement, and then somebody gets to pick one core value and read it and what that means to them that day. And that's on the forefront of everybody's mind all the time. It never falls through the cracks. Okay. As long as they're staying within that. I don't care if you have a decision to make today and you can't get a hold of somebody, look at your core values. Am I staying within this? Am I gonna hurt anyone else? Am I meeting the company halfway? Have and like our core values is um upholding ethical practices, fulfilling our fidelity, leaving no one behind. Um achievement unites us, surpassing expectations. And number six is competitive greatness. Okay, and then I have them written out. I don't just have words on the wall anymore. I actually have a few paragraphs under each one and exactly what that means. And anytime a new hire comes on, the first thing, if if it's not myself, it's one of our leaders in that department, explains to them exactly what these core values mean. So here is the rules. These are our these are our six traditions, these are our guide rails. If you stay within these guide rails, you cannot fail. And if you find a loophole, let us know. Okay. And then you got your SOPs. Okay. And again, I'm okay with adjusting the SOPs because, like you said, there's AI now, there's smarter people that come into the organization, there's new technology that we're downloading, there's all these different things. So, yes, SOPs are not one and done's. That's something I learned the hard way, too. Okay, as we bring on new people, it's a constantly, it's it's it's not static. It is definitely fluid, they'll move. Okay. The other thing is is KPIs, and there are a lot of things you can't you can't set KPIs to, okay. And those things that you can't, but you always fall back to the core values.

Dylan Mullins 39:50

Yes.

Ty Cobb Backer 39:51

You know, you you know what I'm saying. So, anyhow, that was kind of my ramble as I was, you know, thinking when you were talking, because I know I know it's difficult. And none of these things, every single one of our core values have been built. I didn't just pull things out of the air. These things have been built as a team, as a company, as our culture grew. These are real living things that we've experienced, especially those of us that have been here a long time at the company. These are things that we've experienced over the years. So it wasn't like I just copied and pasted some shit from somebody's book or I heard it at a retreat. Maybe, maybe there was some things that I picked up at a retreat. Um, but I brought them back to the team and I was like, hey, what do you guys think of this? And they knew right where they were coming from. They knew because we experienced these things, good or bad. And we want to make sure that the A, they they never happen again, or this is what we expect of you. It's the standard. It's kind of like the standard, and the standard is like you should, you should um surpass, you know, the expectation. The standard is kind of like the mediocracy, yeah. Right? That you don't you're not just meeting the standard, you're exceeding the standard. And we try to keep it as realistic as we possibly can, but we also want to make it a little difficult too, because we need you to work for it. We want you to earn it, so then you can take pride in it.

Dylan Mullins 41:11

Yeah, and that's I'm actually gonna take, I'm stealing that because our five are happiness, ethical, accountability, respect, and team. They fell out to heart and it's all American heart. That's how we that's how we define it. And the team, same is same with you. We just used to have generic core values that were just I couldn't even tell you what they are, right? So I think you hiring and firing on those core values is so important to your culture because if the people know exactly what they're getting into based on those five, six, try to limit it within that. I mean, if you can get it down to three or four, that's even better, right? But creating definitions for those, that's something we haven't done, right? I think the words are somewhat self-explainable, but how do we use them inside the business? Like when I sit down with an interview person, I always ask them, What is the one that works for you in your personal life? I if you're not living these day in and day out, I don't care about anything else. Like if you and for me, the the one in an interview, and I've had a couple people over the years that like I struggle with ethical. I'm like, then you don't work like that's the one I can't I can't help you with. I think that's something that's intrinsically ingrained in us. If you're not an ethical individual, what are you doing working here, right? But the other thing you said is is the standard thing. And actually, I picked that up from Eric when he said that they have standards for the company. I think we've overlooked that over the years as owners. When we what's so p stand for standard operating procedure, standard uh like if why are you not setting standards inside your company? And then that's the minimum. That's what we're expecting of you. Everything past that is a that that's that's what we want. We want you to be past that. So setting those standards and those guardrails for your people in place as to what do we want from them, and it like you said, there's some that are hard to define, but getting them as dialed in as they can so they know what they're doing. You you the story about the uh the limb, and and yeah, I know it's just an analogy for the most part, but also I know your character, and I know you've probably sent guys over there to do that. If you're not giving them exactly like they don't need exactly to the T of what they should do every day, you don't need to block schedule them every single day.

Ty Cobb Backer 43:15

Or you have the wrong people if you have to.

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(Cont.) What Are You Building When Business Is Quiet

Dylan Mullins 43:18

Yes, you need people like granted, there are some roles that they they need that, like right. I don't I can't think of any off the top of my head. I get that, but inside of what we're doing as small business owners, they need to be able to independently think to a degree, they need to have a little bit of rope. Honestly, it makes work more fun, you know. It it makes it so that it's easier to recruit, it makes it so that dollars aren't as important to them. You know, I think in this post-COVID environment, I was just having a conversation about this last night at dinner. What has changed is people aren't as worried about money, they want stability and they want somewhere they feel like they're fulfilled, right? We were all locked down, us as roofers, not as much. But when everybody was locked down for that, that 12-month span, depending on where you lived, you know, plus or minus, everybody realized I just want fulfillment and I want stability because the world came crashing down. The post-COVID environment that we now hire and fire in is so much more important. Something that we kind of, I guess it's a brag to a degree, but you know, a good test to your culture is is when you hire and when you fire someone or they leave, or they're trying to come back. Almost every employee that has either been fired or left has asked for their job back. At that point, the door's shut. I'm not bringing you back. Why would I bring you back? The the world, the company's already changed. I don't you saw something better. We clearly weren't offering it. You're gonna leave at another point. Unfortunately, it's just something you have to take as a leader. I don't care what they were as a producer, we've done it and we've we've learned that that's a real tough lesson. That's a tough pill to swallow. I don't care if he was a two million dollar producer, he left for a reason or he got fired for a reason. Why are you bringing him back? It doesn't matter on the dollars, protect your culture. More than you protect your bottom line. That is the most valuable piece you have. Something that we went through a couple years ago. Actually, I think it might have been right after the well, it was April, Utah retreat. Um our entire sales team quit on that retreat. They quit or were fired. And for me, in that moment, I remember sitting in in Minneapolis Airport and I'm like freaking that was a moment where I was like, that wasn't a test from God, I felt like at that point. I'm like, He's telling me to just hang it up, man. Go freaking go do something else, right? What sold it though is when I got back, I had every single person that worked for me that believed in the mission still, and they said, Teach me how to climb roofs, teach me what I have to do, I'll take appointments, I'll do this. And it was when back in my sales for me to go out and say, We're gonna build it back better. It was my first opportunity as a business owner to go, there's clearly something broken in sales. Let's sit down and figure it out. And now we've got the strongest sales team we've ever had. The guys are doing what they're supposed to be doing, they're adhering to the core values. You know, part of that was we were switching from 1099 to W-2, which you and I had a bunch of conversations about because it was it's scary, right? You're making this change and you're trying to figure out how the numbers work, but it's stability for people, it's that post-COVID environment that good sales reps want, you know, at least the ones that we want. I'm not looking for somebody that's just going to try to sign deals. I'm looking for someone that's wanting to take care of our clients. And that was something for me that was a major eye-opener, man. Is we have the culture right, we just didn't have culture right in sales. And it was it was really cool, you know, post that post that um exodus, I guess we call it, to now look at where we are today. And to me, now and I remember saying this to myself on the plane out uh after we after I left Minneapolis, I said, This is just a a footnote in the book. This is just a small chapter. Now we get to keep writing. And I had to get out of my my own way at that point. I had to get out of my own feelings. And when I got back here, Brandon and I and Dad and the rest of the team, we all said, you know what, we're just gonna freaking do it. And that's what it took. But that's that's a good if you if your culture is screwed up enough, it will come to a head. That will happen to you. And if you're not positioned in a place where your culture is healthy in other departments, it will probably be the end of your business, at least as you know it, right? You will not be able to sell jobs, you will not be able to produce jobs. You that's another lesson I learned through that is that sales guys are not everything. Honestly, it's it's the it's the top of the iceberg, right? Everything deeper than that is what takes care of clients and gets jobs done. Those are the people that not saying the sales guys don't matter, they're the front facing, but everything below that is what makes a good business. Everything that you can't see under the water is what makes a good business. And if you just have a sales organization, you don't have a business, you're just a marketing company, right? You have to build all that infrastructure, at least that's my belief. There are plenty of guys who are successful, more successful than me, that are doing it in a different aspect. But I'm I'm a firm believer that you have to have the backbone, you have to make clients feel valued. Um, everything we do is for the client. We do something at our at our meetings, we just started at this retreat. I'm I'm going to have a chair, and that's our client's chair. If you're having a conversation that you shouldn't be having, act like that client sitting in the truck with you and ask yourself, are you doing the best thing for your client? Because at the end of the day, they're the ones paying your bills, they're the ones that are important in the conversation. If you're not doing things in that aspect, if you're not upholding company standards, if you're not, you know, for that matter, if if your boss wasn't that if your boss was sitting next to you, would you be having the same conversation? I don't need to be a big brother, I don't need to have every conversation, I don't need you to like me every day. You know, we need to have a relationship of some type, but I don't need to be your best friend. But are you doing things in the best interest of the client and the company? Because it's not just you that matters, it's the team aspect. And I think that's something crucial to have in your core values is it what does that team look like and how are you exemplifying that

Speaker 1 49:57

team?

Ty Cobb Backer 49:58

Yeah, for sure, for sure. No, it we I I've had uh definitely a couple a couple go-rounds over the years of of why you know, I didn't know why things were happening for me at the time, but usually when something is happening for me, I feel like it's it's the worst thing that that has ever happened to me. Which usually turn out to be the best things. And and getting back to your point on on the culture, we've we've I've I've had bad cultures. Um, we we have a great culture today, and I've I've got to see that in play, okay. On the other side of that, once you create that good culture, that good, strong, deep, deep, you know, foundational culture, we've had people leave, okay, um, or we've let go. And to watch the team rally around like it, like it sounds like your brother and your dad did, okay. Fortunately, you have your family there, you know, to watch our team rally around, okay, and get things done and fill in the blanks where this person was and and build on that every single time that somebody like that in that position has left. And it hasn't happened very often, but it has happened enough that I know it's happening for us. It's either given somebody else another opportunity to fill to fill their shoes, or we found, and a lot of times we found the deficiencies in that pair, that in that first, you know, and so many things become uncovered then, like once they're gone. It's like, wow, they weren't even doing this, they weren't even doing that. And you you realize how badly they were actually hurting your company and holding things back. Okay. But the the important thing is that watching everyone rally around and watching them grow, watching the team get through the adversity, and how much better and how much stronger you are as a company getting through that. Vic, did you get that text message I sent you? I sent Vic a text message getting back to um core values. I I want to see if we can't play this video real quick from Simon Sinek and where where my my head is when I'm you know looking at the core values and where I've gotten my ideas and thoughts from that it's you know, our core values are built on not that we're the greatest roofing company at the cheapest price. It is much more than that. It's it's much more about purpose and and roofing being just a vehicle to take us there to have impact on many, many, many, many people's lives, you know, not only in the organization, but in our community. And then hoping that we've empowered and and inspired and impacted our community so much that then they're able to play that forward for somebody else. But I I want to see if Vic can't pull this little snippet up here, real quick, um, of of Simon Sinek and truly what it's about. It's not about that we, you know, are the cheapest or fastest and least expensive roofing company in the neighborhood. It's it's deeper than that. And that's not that's not the message I want my team to have. That's not the culture I want to build that we're the quickest, we're the fastest, we're the cheapest. I want it to be with purpose. I want to give value. I want the perceived value to be more than what they're receiving in value than what they're actually paying.

Dylan Mullins 53:21

Well, it's it's like the uh some we use with sales guys a lot at the triangle, right? Cheap, fast, and good. You can only take two. But there's a I get exactly what you're saying because there's another component to that that is are they a good company, right? Is the is what they're doing, is their mission bigger than them, right? Right? Yeah, yeah. And that's kind of the fourth leg that we fall into where we get to wrap three of them in there. Yeah, we're gonna be fast and we're gonna be good, but we're also gonna make impact.

Ty Cobb Backer 53:48

Right, absolutely, and that's truly what it's about. How are you making out there, Ben?

Speaker 53:55

Um what's that? I might be able to download the uh the actual video.

Ty Cobb Backer 54:02

Okay, anyhow, but yeah, I mean, really at the end of the day, man, trial, air, ebbs, and flows, you know, family. I wanted to touch on that a little bit more. Yeah, absolutely. You know, um, before we get off here real quick. I mean, we don't have to, we're almost an hour into it, but so far our conversation has been on point. On on, I mean, it I think about these things almost every day, Dylan, whether it's downtime, whether we're, you know, full force ahead and and in in the midst of the of the season, um, you know, these are all things that I continuously try to work on and grow and be a better human being. And really at the end of the day, that's what our core values are about. I'm not asking you to do something that I don't do already myself or or I'm trying to do.

Speaker 2 54:50

Yeah.

Ty Cobb Backer 54:51

You know what I mean? So when you come here, I know for a fact that anybody who has ever come to TC Backer and they're still here, okay, they are a different human being than they were when they first walked to the door. And the same goes, yeah, and the same goes for those that may have left. And the only thing that I can do is what the toolbox that they're taking with them that I hope that they can impact just as many, maybe even more people with the toolbox that they take when they leave here. You know, and that's how I had to chalk it up when somebody leaves because it is sometimes detrimental or it feels that way in that moment where it's like, oh my god, they're leaving, or oh my god, they left. The chances are, and like we say in the the very beginning here, um, I think I was talking um with Erico in our in our intro here in the beginning. You know, we you're either gonna get pushed up or you're gonna get pushed out. That's usually what happens. I usually don't have to let people go, they end up just getting pushed out because they can't keep up, the pressure's too real or whatever, they're too lazy. And the other thing that I'm on this kick right now, I was like, I just can't stand to be around lazy people, lazy and bad attitudes, lazy and bad attitudes meet us halfway, then you got to go. I mean, yes, because we're all over here killing ourselves to make sure that you got food on your table, yeah.

Dylan Mullins 56:07

You're not reciprocating the you're not reciprocating that energy back to us, no, no, and that's that's a great point because like it's you're a product of the people five people you surround yourself with. So when I'm when I'm talking to people to kind of touch on the family, and I can go into yeah, uh as much of that as you want, but when I'm interviewing sales reps, especially, I'm like, look, you are going to be at work more than you're at home, but your home life has to be in check. If it's not, we're gonna have a bad time. We've all had reps that they had a jacked-up home life, weren't happy, you know, wife's mad because they're working, the spouse is mad because they're working, because I'm not excluding females from that, but they have to be there has to be a balance. You have to we we do a dinner interview because we want to make sure that the wife's on board for what you're about to take on. This is not we're not some multinational Fortune 500 company. We are a small business. It requires people to work outside of the bounds, right? It's not a nine to five. It's not, it doesn't matter. And that's the thing, man. Like when you take that identity on that I'm taking more ownership of the business than the people around me, they start to take ownership too because they see you pushing, they see you pushing or pulling, however you want to say it. Sometimes you just got to do that. And some people just cannot handle the heat. It's just the facts of life. It it sucks because you may have liked him as a person, but you got to take your emotions out of it to a degree. Hey man, you're just not cut out for it. I can't handle lazy. I cannot handle my my least favorite word that's ever or phrase that's ever been in the vocabulary is it's not my job. If you are a not my job person, you don't have a job here. That is my philosophy. I don't do that game because, like you said, it it doesn't matter who you are, the title is irrelevant. You still have to help the team. It is about the team, and the culture is so important to that. But if you don't have the good family life, I don't care what position you have, you're going to start coming to work and not having fun. It's not that this is all sunshine and rainbows, and we have a cake every day, but it's it can be a fun place to work if you allow it to be. I enjoy coming to work, I want everybody else to enjoy coming to work. I have no intention of exiting this business today because I like what I do. My feet hit the ground with purpose every day. My people, I don't need them to be at that level that we are as owners, but they need to understand that they they have ownership. My brother's in the other room, he's listening right now. He just said some of them do, and we're appreciative of that. And we love that. I want you to take ownership. I want you to be mad when a customer has a bad experience. Like that's a good thing. But also, you gotta, we also have to go, how can we fix it? I can't undo what's already done.

Ty Cobb Backer 58:44

No, I love that. So our our number two core value, fulfilling our fidelity, it says right in there that, you know, um, let me read it to you. So going above and beyond to accomplish tasks, we recognize our responsibility to each other as teammates, to our families and to our clients and to ourselves. Assisting others in times of struggle is at the heart of our commitment. We take pride in never to evade our responsibility by declaring that's not my job. We embrace the challenge as an opportunity for growth and progress rather than the reason to shy away from our goals.

Dylan Mullins 59:19

That's so good. I've got to, I'm I'm gonna sit down. That's a I'm putting that on my list this week. That that in and of itself, though, that having the grit and the because like we can't teach that, right? It's the intangibles that we're really looking for in interviews, yeah, right. I'm trying to weed out lazy. I'm trying to read re weed out the the lack of work ethic, I guess would be the other word for that in in our space. And I'm trying to weed out the the people that aren't determined. If you're not determined, I don't care where you are, if you're the janitor or you're the guy out at the top of the food chain, you have to have a level of determination because you're going to be around these people a lot, and it only takes one bad apple to sour the batch, right? Um, that kind of goes into the home life, right? If you're not balanced with the family, if my wife was just nagging on me every time I got home that I worked too much and I this and that, and you go back, you said the communication. I I believe that that is the failure of every relationship, work, personal, whatever. It's either miscommunication or lack thereof, right? Those are the two key pieces that I constantly am talking about. If you're not communicating, I tell Tori when I'm like, I know I'm gonna have a long week. Hey, well when we went through that season, I told her, hey, look, you're not gonna see me for the next three months. I have to go and make this work for my people. They're driving me. And I hope that I put the same amount of inspiration in them to want to go and work for this business, right? But you have to have that level of communication. My wife, uh, I love her to like she is my best friend. And I always, whenever I get the opportunity to be introduced, if you will, I always put on my little sheet. I'm a Christian first, then I'm a husband, then I'm a father, then I'm a leader. And it's super intentional with that, man, because at the end of the day, you and I both know because we've been at enough retreats, right? We've heard the talk, but I do firmly believe it. And I've been to enough funerals, unfortunately, or fortunately, I guess I should say. It's a real blessing that I get to go and hear people's stories. Nobody is up there saying, My dad worked, and I appreciate him for that. Nobody is up there saying my dad um made us a lot of money and he left us all this money. Nobody's on their deathbed for that matter saying, you know what, I wish it would have just worked a little bit more. Not a single, not a single soul that's passed on this earth, not a single one. It was worried about work. No, what are we doing in our business to exemplify that? But what are we doing as leaders to make sure we're leading by example with that? Is the more important question. Yeah. When I'm at home, I'm intentional. Yeah, I'm in home at 7:30. The baby's going to bed at 8 30. For that hour, we are rompus room right now. She loves to wrestle, she loves to go out and attack dad, and she's in that stage where she's doing everything we do, right? And it's amazing. This is down. I don't have this, this doesn't exist. Um I think it might have been. No, actually, I just read a book. Oh, I gotta think of it. But we heard we had a sermon at church, and uh the pastor said, If you if you put your phone down for an hour, is the world gonna go away? Well, you're asleep at night, is the world gonna go away? Right? And it's all about intentionality. So for me, that was a kind of a kick in the uh in the gaunas because I was like, Holy crap, I'm on my freaking phone. I'm on my wife about it all the time because we're all bad on it. Those things are addictive as hell, man. That's like cocaine in your pocket, you know. So when you're at home, Joseph Hughes said the best. He's the one I use all the time, man. Lock the phone in the truck for an hour. Nothing is gonna be true drastic that you can't handle it in an hour.

Ty Cobb Backer 1:02:43

Yeah. No doubt, no doubt, man. I try to I try before I even go into the house, I try to clean up my inbox and review it real quick, respond back to any text messages that I have to. And I'm not perfect about it, you know, but I try to at least be intentional in the first five minutes when I get there, like, you know, to take the room's temperature. Like, do I need to be present for the next hour, or do I got five minutes where I just need to say, hey, babe, how's it going? You know, acknowledge the fact that she's there because our kids are all grown now. We do have three grandchildren, and uh, we actually have two more on the way. And then I just a great-granduncle. So a great uncle. Um, so that's the first for me. But um, we got a lot of babies that are coming out and around, and I get to practice now. I get to be even better than I was with my own kids. You know what I mean? So, and that's how I look at it. It's like, okay, where did I fail so badly, you know, or defit where where were where were there deficiencies in my parenting, you know, that I can make up for with being a grandfather or or great uncle, you know, and and God has blessed me with that, with, with do-overs. He's been giving me, you know, opportunities to to redeem myself where I may have failed with my first child, you know, Jacob, um, which our relationship is is great right now. You know, and um, you know, McKenzie came to work for us. So she gets the grind, she gets it, you know, and of course she's got Skylar, our youngest grandchild right now, and that Jana, um, we're blessed enough that Jana can can stay home with her during the day so McKenzie can come here. Um, but we know that, you know, our our we designed our life that way because we want Skylar to be like us, you know, so she gets to spend most of the day, I think every other day, at least three or four days a week with Jana, um, you know, being honed on who we are, what we are, that having that that that efficacy and that that the morals and and you know the time and the patience. And she is a mirror image of both Jana and Mackenzie. I mean, she is just so grateful, you know, her attitude and she's so loving and caring, you know, and that's what we try today to instill in our children, you know, is be empathetic, be caring, be helpful, give, give, give, give, you know, and and she is she exemplifies that. I mean, she's an example to me on on such a great job that Mackenzie and Chris are doing with Skylar and and of course Jenna, you know, throughout the course of the day. But family is is is everything. They're they're my why, first and foremost, you know, and then secondly is business, is is my why is my people, you know. But first and foremost, it's it's my family. And if shit's screwed up at home, like you said earlier, I got to figure out usually it has something to do with work, is why it would be screwed up at home, or or vice versa, something's screwed up at home, and that's why my work life is is is messed up. But the thing that I've I've come to realize, okay, you know, those that are out there um, you know, trying to chase this work life balance thing, and especially as as as owners, okay, and this doesn't necessarily, you know, uh apply to you know um team members and and things like that, but it it does to a certain extent. It it's not it's not that it doesn't exist, okay. Work work life balance doesn't exist. What I what I have found over the years is when I'm at work, work, and when I'm at home, home. Yes, you know, and and if I'm at work for 80 hours a week and I only get to spend 12 hours at home, those 12 hours I better be at home. My feet better be there. You know, my mind better be there, my head better be there. If Jan and I are going away and I'm still this is something, this is a work in progress, okay? Because we'll take long weekends and it usually takes me about a day and a half, you know, to like decompress and remove and clean up emails and maybe take a call or two, but then it hits me and she doesn't give me shit, thank God. But it'll hit me like this this we're here because her. Yeah, so I can spend time with her, right? Because she's at home to keeping shit on lockdown there. I mean, bust her butt, she works harder than all of us because she's got to take care of me and everybody, yeah, right. Um, so we we can't ever take that for granted, which I do sometimes. Um, so when I do get to get a weekend with her, I need I need or even an evening, you know. Um, I I need to be there for her.

Dylan Mullins 1:07:00

Well, and something that you said that sparked for me is it's not there's no such thing as balance. We but what I think that we need to realize is is that we picked the path of business ownership. Our families did not, right? We you we were the ones that decided to go on this path. So you're going to sacrifice time. That's just the nature of the beast. And yes, you'll have seasons where you're able to spend more time at home, like we've already discussed.

Speaker 2 1:07:32

No.

Dylan Mullins 1:07:33

But when you're there, make it as quality as you can. Right? A quote I've heard recent I heard recently, and I don't I don't have the citation for it, but it stuck really well with me. Is we all die twice. Once when they put us on the ground and once when they stop talking about us. And yes, I'm hoping I make enough impact on the people that work here that they want to talk about me when I'm gone. Right. But it really falls into our kids, it falls into our grandkids, it falls into that quality, intentional time that we're spending with the people that we created that live here on earth with us. And if you're not intentional with that, like I don't know about you, but like I have people in my life that are no longer here that I'm doing my damnedest to keep their memory alive. One that comes to mind, and Brennan and I actually named we have a property management company called Axe 9 Ventures. That's the Axe 9 in the Bible is when Saul became Paul. Well, my grandfather's name was Apostle Paul. That's the first name Apostle, middle name Paul. Like I am being intentional about keeping because the lessons he taught me about being a man, about being a leader, about being a father, about being a husband, although he wasn't always perfect with it, were important to me. I want to keep that memory alive. I hope that's my prayer, is that I instill enough in my kids. You said about you seeing your kids, you know, getting that drive. You know, I don't know. I've had conversations, I don't know if I want the entrepreneurship for my kids, but I've I've said constantly if my daughter, if Laney comes to me and she's like, hey daddy, I want to be a burger, I want to work at McDonald's. Well, you better be the best damn burger flipper that ever existed.

Ty Cobb Backer 1:09:05

Yeah.

Dylan Mullins 1:09:05

Like I just want you to be happy and I want you to do your job well. That is what's important to me. If she decides to go down the entrepreneurship path, which there's a good chance because my wife caught the bug too, well, then we'll support her in that too. But it's the same, it's the same philosophy. It doesn't matter where what box she fits in, be good at it and do it well. Do it with pride. Take pride in what you do, find happiness, find fulfillment. Like if we can instill those in our kids, like uh, do you guys do affirmations with uh the grandkids at all?

Ty Cobb Backer 1:09:39

No, we haven't.

Dylan Mullins 1:09:41

So something that I'll I'll say that we've done with Laney, and I I talk about it all the time because it's it's so damn cute. I'll send you a video of it. We do affirmations with her almost every day, and they're simple, right? She she's smart as hell, but I can't get full sentences out of her. So there, I am strong, I am kind, I am beautiful. Uh, my wife's gonna kill me because I'm forgetting one. I'm smart, and then I love Jesus. We clap it. But the inflection in her voice, the power that we have in our words, and we think that, oh, she's 22 months old, she has no power in her words, she doesn't know what she's saying. When she says, I am beautiful, just the I am beautiful, like her voice, the inflection changes. You can hear her speaking into herself already at 18 months old that she knows she's beautiful. And if I instill those as a dad, if well, if we instill those as parents, because my wife has just as much in that as I do, she can't the world can't take her down. The world's a nasty place, but I can't change the world, but I can change my kid.

Ty Cobb Backer 1:10:48

Wow, right? Yeah, that was so good. That was good. No, I we don't do that, but we should definitely start doing that. That is great.

Dylan Mullins 1:10:56

Yeah, because we do them with our people, right? We're constantly telling our sales rep, hey, you're the goat, man.

Ty Cobb Backer 1:11:01

Yeah, I do it to myself, you know. I yeah, right. No, that's good.

Dylan Mullins 1:11:07

What do you want out of your kids? What do you want out of your team? Those are the positive affirmations. Our words have power, you know. Um, once again, I I run a lot of stuff back to the Bible because it's just who I am as a person, but how did the world how did God create the world? He he spoke it into existence. Yeah, how did we or what were we made of in the image of God? We have the power, and I don't care, you don't have to be a a person of faith to know that the manifestation is real, it is very real. It's you know, our buddy Hunter Balou said, I the money's in the I was always a millionaire, but the check just hadn't hit the bank or whatever. He did that, like it. We all have that innate power in us. If you take your kids and you say, Look, I want this. This is how I want you to view yourself. And when that kid says that, I am strong, I am kind, and they'll evolve, right? Kind of like core values as she gets older. We'll we'll uh you know, I am a strong-willed person, I am a leader, I am, but at 18 months, man, I'm cool with getting five little phrases out of her. And we did little, you know, I am strong, I am smart, I am kind, I am beautiful. Uh and that those little things she knows that she'll do them literally, and it's it can be done. But like I said, the inflection in her voice with the changes is amazing. And now she'll go, she'll go to the damn dogs and go, I am beautiful to the dog's face. And it's like, yeah, I guess it is. But no, man, that's that's something that I think I picked up. I might have been a stupid TikTok. I saw it, and I was like, that one little thing can help to just skew her in the right direction so that she knows if we're instilling these now, you know, if you do it because uh you have a four-year-old, I know, right? Just had a birthday, a four-year-old granddaughter. Yeah, is that what I saw? Yeah, little man, she can we can plant those. You talk about planting seeds, man. Plant those seeds now, yeah.

Ty Cobb Backer 1:13:00

You know, and and yeah, and she's a little sponge too. I mean, yeah, yeah. She she she is such a little sponge. No, it's good. That's so good. Wow. Well, that was definitely a great way to to top this this episode off, man. That was good stuff, and I always love catching up with you, man. And we always pick right up where we left off. That's what's cool about our relationship, Dylan. I appreciate you, I cherish you. You and Tori are just amazing people. And if you guys ever, ever, ever need anything, give us a shout, give me a holler, man, and and maybe I'll I'll trek my my butt on over to Ohio to see you guys.

Dylan Mullins 1:13:38

Yeah, man. We we talked about this in your office the other day, just being intentional with relationships, but also having strong enough clad relationship that exactly like you said, it can pick up where it left off. You know, that's what real friendship's about. It doesn't require things or even time at times. But the fact that, you know, you know you can rely on that person that if you picked up the phone and called, I think having people like that in your life, it helps this journey of entrepreneurship because we were talking about how small the world can be in our little neck of the woods, versus because it's it's a it's a it's lonely sometimes, right, for entrepreneurs. But having somebody to just spend an ear on and knowing that, hey, man, we're still buddies, so we can pick up the phone and talk to each other and we're friends and we value one another, and that's important. You know, I've learned so much from you, and I appreciate you so much, man. You and Janna are honestly some of Tori and I's favorite people on the on the planet. And we've we've learned so much from you guys, and I we appreciate and love y'all.

Ty Cobb Backer 1:14:34

Yeah, same here, man. Same here, man. Well, that concludes this episode, man. It's always great to catch up with you, Dylan. Don't forget, keep building brick by brick, day by day. Courage is contagious. So go spread some kind of courage that gets shit started. So till next week, you guys have a great week, and we will see you next week for episode 325 of Behind the Tool Belt.

Speaker 1:14:56

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