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17Twenty
17Twenty
E180 || Richard Cavnar || The Beginning of a New Adventure
Join us this week as we celebrate the illustrious career and retirement of Richard Cavnar, a stalwart in the construction industry. Richard shares his excitement about his new chapter with humor and heart, revealing plans to finally get that coveted Costco card and indulge in hobbies like cooking and bourbon collecting.
We journey through Richard's family history and faith, uncovering the rich tapestry of experiences that shaped him. Among other things, we talk about into his grandmother’s immigration story from Spain, the challenges his Japanese-Spanish family faced during World War II, and the profound impact of his devout Catholic mother. These personal anecdotes highlight the foundations of Richard's impressive career in construction, beginning with his initial ventures into carpentry.
As Richard transitions into retirement, he reflects on the legacy he hopes to leave, underscoring the enduring values of calmness, kindness, and faith. From evolving dress codes to the significance of empathy and genuine connection in the workplace, this episode offers a thoughtful exploration of a fulfilling career and a meaningful life transition.
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I hope that they're saying that I taught them to be calm. I didn't talk about that, but that's one of the things about me. That people say about me is I'm just really calm in the midst of the storm and I don't necessarily feel that way, but being able to bring that calmness, bring that steadiness to the room.
Speaker 2:Every single individual has a story to tell, and they're great stories that need to be heard.
Speaker 3:I want every listener to know they have the ability to change the world. Welcome to the 1720 podcast. What's up, mount Movers? Welcome back to the 1720 podcast. This week we have an absolute treat for y'all. Typically, we are talking through the middle of people's careers or looking back in middle management or whatever the case may be, but this week we have somebody that is literally retiring tomorrow as our guest of honor this week, richard Kavnar is joining us from Spring Valley. Richard, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1:It's my pleasure, I'm excited to do this and, yes, tomorrow is my last day of my career, of my construction career, but it's the start of my retirement career.
Speaker 2:Well, the zillion dollar question you've gotten a thousand times. What are you going to do?
Speaker 1:What are you going to do, richard? I have claimed the Napoleon Dynamite quote of whatever I feel like I want to do, gosh.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, quit asking me that. It's kind of like when you walk, if you like, break a bone, you have a cast and you know for like the next three to six months. You got to explain the story.
Speaker 2:How'd you do it?
Speaker 3:And you just keep tightening it up, and tighten it up to one sentence, and now you have that down to one sentence. Whatever, I want Freedom.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have a long list of things. I won't necessarily go through all of them, but the last one on it is probably my favorite is I am definitely going to go get a Costco card.
Speaker 2:Dream big, we're going to dream big, we're going to buy big. Okay, so I saw ready for InstaDitch. The internet likes to show me crazy things, you know. So, like you know, whatever algorithm I'm on, I heard a kid call it the algo the other day. The algo likes to show me stuff. Anyway, the other day the algo wanted me to see the guy at Costco who had bought a hot dog have you seen this? And then bought a piece of slice of pizza and made a hot dog pizza and was eating a Costco hot dog pizza. Oh my gosh, and it was all over the internet the other day. So maybe, maybe you can try a Costco hot dog pizza.
Speaker 1:Maybe We'll see.
Speaker 2:We'll see We'll see.
Speaker 3:It's like three bucks. They're known for that. How cheap the pizza and the dogs are, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh my, we have our bucket list. We have a bucket list that we've been keeping for 25 years, or at least 25 years. I didn't bring it in here with me. It's a little piece of paper. It's the same piece of paper we started with. It's completely full of stuff and things that we've done, we've scratched out, and every year on our anniversary we go through the bucket list and we say, well, we did this. This year we scratch it off. Oh, let's add. Oh, now we don't want to do that. And so it's really cool, this little card, both sides full of writing and there's still things left to be done. So that's kind of number one on the list of what am I going to do is trying to check off some more of the bucket list.
Speaker 2:Sounds awesome.
Speaker 1:And then after that, everything is related more to hobbies and interests and all that and somewhere in there you know health and interests and bourbon collecting and cooking. One of our deals with my wife and I is that the day I retire I take over all cooking duties in the house. She's been doing it our whole married, our whole married life, and now I get to take over.
Speaker 2:Like is that daunting, are you like that'll be fun. I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 1:No, I love to cook, okay, Okay, I love to cook, I just don't do a lot of it. Um, and she, I just don't do a lot of it, and she's, you know, god bless her. She's been doing it all this time, for the most part, but I do love to cook. So I'm looking forward to that part. I'm looking forward to all of it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I'm looking forward to this episode really. I mean, former guest, good friend, steve Bruiser, messaged us privately and know you well and have seen you in action at work, seen you of action and Bible study, even Texo events and just know that you're a standup guy full of wisdom. But he wanted to celebrate you because he thinks dearly of you and we've only had this chance one other time in our podcast history to look back at an entire body of work. And you know, with age and experience comes wisdom and I know our listeners are going to learn a lot from looking back on the good, the not so good, everything in between, and we'll just dive in.
Speaker 1:I hope I have something to deliver.
Speaker 2:Well, if not, we'll just do like we did with Eric Austin and just delete it all and start over.
Speaker 1:And I'm good with that too. There's no pressure.
Speaker 3:Tomorrow's your last day. You're like, and I'm good with that too. No, there's no pressure, tomorrow's your last day, like whatever whatever, what are you going to do?
Speaker 1:Fire me Exactly.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you could have a heck of a next 24 hours, richard Right.
Speaker 2:There's a Kev was shocked because I think this is also a podcast first, but I read the prep sheet before we got started. And there's a couple I didn't actually circle, but a couple of things that you wrote in there that I circled, that Like I really am just like holding the reins because I'm wanting to start in the middle of the story. But I think it gets a little conjumbulated I made that word up If we start in the middle, so take it from the top, tell us who Richard is man.
Speaker 1:So Richard is a follower of Jesus, cleverly disguised as Kay's husband of 46 years. Cleverly disguised as Kay's husband of 46 years Cleverly disguised. I like that Youngest of six children to Bobby Joe Kavanagh and Margaret Louise Nishimuta, uncle to 27 nieces and nephews, musician and music fanatic, artist and art enthusiast. Bourbon explorer, aspiring chef, a family genealogist, car a carpenter by trade, construction cost estimator by profession, vice president of pre-construction for Spring Valley Construction Company for 24 plus years and a 47-year member of the construction industry.
Speaker 3:This episode is sponsored by Dos Equis. He's the most interesting man in the world. There you go, whoa. Now that was a lineup. I wish I'd have written that down.
Speaker 2:Okay, where do we jump into that? Are you from here?
Speaker 1:Let's start, let's just I'm going to draw you back Like let's man.
Speaker 3:I want to jump in the middle. So bad, I know I got. Well, I wrote down music fanatic. We'll get to that. I'm being patient.
Speaker 2:Okay, what type of music do you like? I'm not patient.
Speaker 1:Almost everything, pretty much everything.
Speaker 2:Okay, what do you play?
Speaker 1:I play guitar, I play piano. I used to play electric bass in a 18-piece big band yes, locally, electric bass in a 18-piece big band, locally, for I don't know, 10 years or so. I call it a semi-professional band because everyone had their own careers, but everyone was a musician and wanted to keep doing something, and so I did that when you say big band, do you mean large band or do you mean a band that played like big band music? Big band, music, jazz.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, horns and stuff like this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, brass trombone, saxophones, trumpets yeah, 18-piece band. That's interesting and we would play big banquets, big balls, you know charity balls. There were not many people at that time that really would go out and hire an 18-piece band, so it tended to be big events, yeah, and it was a lot of fun and really enjoyable and we only played maybe one date a month, so we were really doing it just because we enjoyed. We loved doing it, but it helped buy some music and that sort of thing.
Speaker 3:So we're going to catch you in your garage with an electric guitar and a half stack bothering the neighborhood.
Speaker 1:Acoustic guitar Okay, yeah, acoustic.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 3:They're off the hook. You put them on like Pantera with that little bit, yeah, just with the bit.
Speaker 2:I'm thinking more Clapton.
Speaker 1:There you go.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Clapton, jt. Yeah, there you go. That's more the style.
Speaker 3:I can get done with that. I've been I've been taking singing lessons for six months now, and I didn't mention singing too. Yeah I knew it y'all gonna based on the bible study voice. I knew listening to you tell a story.
Speaker 2:I was like this guy could sing yeah kevin also wants you to read llama llama red pajama, so we can get that recorded for no no, oh yeah, that's right. Read a child, read a Bedtime stories. Bedtime stories, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I did not mention, I guess I might say an audio book artist wannabe.
Speaker 3:Like a narrator.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've never done it, but one of the things that my wife and I do, especially when we are in a sports desert, like we were before the Olympics started, is we'll pick a book and I will read it, but I'll read it out loud, and we've gone through multiple books, everything. You know, right now we're reading Eric Larson's the Demon of Unrest, which has to do with the beginning of the American Civil War, but we've read the Count of Monte Cristo.
Speaker 2:Oh well, I'm listening to that right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how super is that? Yeah, yeah, fantastic. Sorry, I got really excited about that. Have you ever read it?
Speaker 2:It is a fantastic listen.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So I think I know you're on. I do what I want Napoleon Dynamite vibes right now, but I really think you should narrate a book. I think that's a that's an awesome idea that you could use this studio For sure.
Speaker 1:Maybe I'll take you up on it. We'll see yeah.
Speaker 2:All right when did you grow up, Richard, I don't even. I got so many questions. I got so many questions. I got so many questions.
Speaker 3:We're way off.
Speaker 1:So I got my start in life in 1958 in Fort Belvoir, virginia, just outside Washington DC. My dad was stationed at the Pentagon. He was a colonel in the Air Force and he was stationed at the Pentagon between 1956 and 1960. I'm the youngest of six children, as I said, and um. So I came along then in the midst of his uh, his time at the Pentagon, but we weren't there for very long and then moved to Littleton Colorado, uh, from 60 to 64. Uh dad was um the Air Force contracting officer to Martin Marietta plant there that was overseeing the? Um, the construction and design, construction and deployment of the country, of the intercontinental ballistic missile, nuclear missiles, and putting them in the ground and in silos, underground silos. In 1964, he retired from the Air Force after a 22-year career and that's when we moved to Dallas and I've never left Dallas. I've grown up in Dallas, was educated here and have spent my 47 years in construction here.
Speaker 2:And that was what year it's on here, but 64?.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we moved here in 64. I was six years old and we'd been in Littleton had you know my brother and sister at all older than me? Their recollection was, you know, we'd go up into the mountains every weekend, we'd, during the winter we'd go sledding and ice skating, all that sort of thing. And in August of 1964, we got in the station wagon and we drove to Dallas, texas, passing those steel and concrete picnic tables in the panhandle, thinking you can't have a picnic there.
Speaker 1:And we got to Dallas and we opened the door and the blast of heat hit us and I do remember everything smelled like asphalt, everything smelled like hot asphalt. And my brother and sisters tell the story that they got out of the car and says we can't live here, we're going to die here. Yeah, and you know we don't want to live here, but nevertheless we stayed. And and uh that all my brothers and sisters eventually moved away and are in different parts of the country now, but um, but the youngest stayed where he got planted.
Speaker 2:You may have already said, and I've immediately forgot but what brought you out of Dallas?
Speaker 1:So well. When dad was in the Air Force, one of the places he was stationed was at Carswell Air Force Base and that was from like the late 40s up until 1956. And part of that time he came across crossed paths with a guy by the name of DH Bird.
Speaker 2:Great name.
Speaker 1:Harold Bird, b-y-r-d, um, and anyway, when he got out of the air force he went to work for. Well, they called him Colonel Bird because he was a colonel in the civil air patrol, I think it was, or something like that, but he had this, really an honorary title of Colonel, so I grew up calling him Colonel Bird, referring to his Colonel Bird. And um, anyway, he came to work for Bird Bird had made a fortune in oil. He was a wildcatter in the East Texas oil field. He made a fortune there. He married into the Carruth family, which is one of the founding families of Dallas, and he had all these different businesses. He was not really a very good businessman. He would just had a lot of money and dad went to work for him and doing a variety of things, part of which was closing down some of the businesses that actually were just losing money and he didn't need them. Exposure to construction actually was for whatever reason.
Speaker 1:They decided to develop and build a 50,000 head of cattle feedlot up near Blue Ridge, up north of McKinney, and so one of the things I remember as a as a young boy was, on Saturdays, getting in the car with dad and we would drive up there while it was under construction and later while it was in operation, and um, and that was, you know, I got to ride a bulldozer bulldozer for the first time.
Speaker 3:Heck yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, I think I don't think they'd allow that anymore with with safety, but I was sitting on a on a sitting on like this um wire spool, you know big wooden wire spool that the guy had thrown up on top of the bulldozer. So I was sitting there holding on for dear life while he was, you know, going back and forth. But that was my first recollection of, you know, of construction being exposed to construction.
Speaker 3:So I'm very curious about your dad, yeah, working in the Pentagon, and then you have all this experience working in and closing down businesses. Yeah, was there any sort of like wisdom transfer or storytelling, or do you like? I guess we got to separate these two. Yeah, military career, did you? Did you have any idea what he was doing, or at the time?
Speaker 1:I was too young. I learned a lot, you know, as I got older, and both from him as well as from my oldest brother who would you know, who still tells stories when we get together about him. But he was a pilot, you know. He flew in cars. When he was at Carswell, he was flying. He was the commander of the B-36 Peacemaker, which was our country's first delivery system for thermonuclear bombs, and dad's actual target, had it ever come to that, was the Kremlin in Moscow, wow. And so it's interesting to have heard him tell the story of here. He was this Catholic man raising a very Catholic family. I say very Catholic because they were very Catholic.
Speaker 2:Because I said it, because that's what I meant exactly. So I said it.
Speaker 1:And at the same time he was responsible, if he were so ordered, to drop a nuclear bomb on the Kremlin in Moscow, and so I would hear those stories. The other things that he did that were, though, that were part of Byrd's operation. Was Byrd owned a company, or owned part of a company called Continental Mechanical, which actually had some had roots here, but they also worked in other parts of the country, and it's interesting that, even in my career, I would occasionally come across people that had worked at Continental Mechanical or related to somebody that worked at Continental Mechanical. They were. They were a big mechanical contractor, think like TD Mechanical, or something like that.
Speaker 1:And so. But I didn't necessarily get a lot of mechanical contractor think like TD mechanical or something like that and so, but I didn't necessarily get a lot of stories out of dad about the management of those companies. But I would go down with him to his office occasionally, you know, and see, just be there and see a drafting table or or or you know, just see things, and I guess that kind of gets in your blood somehow. And he was always. He always kind of viewed himself as a woodworker. That's what he'd done as a, you know, before he went to the air force at 18 years old and he always had these dreams of being a woodworker.
Speaker 1:He loved looking through catalogs of tools, of power tools, of table saws and all that sort of thing and always had these dreams of I'm going to buy these, I'm going to buy these, I'm going to do this. He never did, unfortunately, because instead he went from this business career to finding God, to finding Jesus, or Jesus finding him in 1970, and went off on a completely different tangent of working we would say today, working in ministry. But he was a layman within the Catholic Church, within a movement that was going through the Catholic Church in the late 60s and into the 70s called the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, and so he, my oldest brother, other members of my family were leaders within that movement and dad went on to do amazing things with television and rate and radio and going all over the world and you know, to spread the gospel hard right turn.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's one of the things I had circled in the in the prep sheet. I don't know why I jumped off the page of me, but I guess there's something everybody finds Jesus, or Jesus finds you at your own time and your own pace, but like that sort of jumped off the page at me as being he's a grown man. Yeah, when that moment happened and yeah, 1970.
Speaker 1:So he would have been uh 46 years old.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and he'd he'd been having a very successful career. Old, yeah, yeah, and he'd been having a very successful career. We kind of skipped it over, but in the late 60s he's working for DH Bird and dad had an event. He had a. We thought it was a heart attack. I think today you'd call it a nervous breakdown or a severe panic attack.
Speaker 1:I remember all I remember at that time, 11 years old, was seeing him on a gurney getting wheeled out of the house, and anyway. That led, though, to him going to work for a guy by the name of Troy Post, which he was doing like development of resorts in Mexico and different things. Not that I ever got to visit any of that, but he only did that for a few years in the 1970s, like I said, he had a conversion experience, gave his life to the Lord. I did the same in 1971, and everybody in the family had a similar story. Everybody in the family had have have a similar story, and we we kind of got involved in this, in this renewal that was happening in the Catholic church. At the time. I went on to school and and a career in construction.
Speaker 2:But the family, and my father you know continued on in ministry.
Speaker 1:Before we like take that and twist the pivot point of that, like tell us about mom. So my mom is first generation American. Her father was an immigrant from Japan, came over in 1906 by himself no other family came over totally by himself. Actually made the trip twice because the first time the ship got over and got turned back because of sickness on the ship. So he went back to Japan and then came over a second time. So he went back to Japan and then came over a second time. Anyway, he gets off.
Speaker 1:And my grandmother, my mom's mom, immigrated from Spain. She was brought over by a wealthy couple in Omaha, nebraska and so she came over completely by herself. She was 16, 17 years old at the time. Anyway, they both ended up working for a, this couple, this wealthy couple, in Omaha, nebraska. They ended up getting married in 1916 and ended up raising eight kids on farming in Oklahoma and C? Uh and Cushing, oklahoma, okmagi, oklahoma, and? Uh, that's where my mom came along.
Speaker 1:So mom is had a lot of more Japanese characteristics to her and um, so she was very quiet, uh, very gentle. So she was very quiet, very gentle. She loved God. Growing up she went to mass every day, catholic mass every day. So I was going to Christ the King Elementary School, which is down in Preston Center, still there, and she would take me to school. She would go to Mass every day, so five days a week. That was part of her devotion. But she loved God. She was very patient, very kind, had a lot of grace and tolerance. If you can imagine in Oklahoma in you know, around World War II, here's this Japanese-Spanish family in the farmland of Okmulgee, oklahoma, and you know, fortunately they did not get interred like a lot of the Japanese Americans did on the West Coast the start of World War II.
Speaker 1:This country took all those Japanese and put them in concentration camps and held them through the course of the war, them through the course of the war. So you know my grandparents, my mom and her brothers and sisters. That didn't happen to them, but my grandfather carried around a letter from the sheriff the entire course of the war vouching for his loyalty to the country. And my grandfather actually did become an American citizen at one point. My grandmother just always had the green card. We still have the green card she had.
Speaker 1:But so mom grew up in that period of time where she was being subjected to a lot of prejudice and she always just thought people were being dumb. You know when that would happen. When people would express their bigotry She'd say, why are they being so dumb? And anyway she. But she passed that kind of tolerance and patience on to me for sure, and to, I think, to all of my brothers and sisters. But she was, oh my gosh, she really loved the Lord. She really loved the Lord and she was one of these people who, when she prayed and she would tell people when you pray, expect an answer. She kept a journal.
Speaker 1:She kept a journal for years everything she prayed for and when prayer got answered she'd write the answer. And I don't know what became of those journals my sister probably has those. But yeah, she was like when you pray, expect an answer. And so you know that faith and all that is what came to me. But along with that was also a love of her, love of music and art and books, you know, also came to me. That's where I got it. And art and books, you know, also came to me. That's where I got it. I remember growing up and she would, on Saturday afternoons she would be in the kitchen and she would be playing the radio and Texaco at that time maybe they still do, but Texaco sponsored radio broadcasts of the New York Metropolitan Opera. So it's afternoon I was hearing opera, and if I wasn't hearing opera she was playing um, classical piano music on on the stereo or or that sort of thing. So all this is kind of getting ingrained in me.
Speaker 3:And so who? I saw on the prep sheet that at some point, your first taste of construction other than sites with your dad was converting your garage to a music room. Was that for you or was that for her, or both it?
Speaker 1:was really. It was. My brother and I did this and it was part. You know we were, so we were in this. I mentioned this Catholic Heritage Mac renewal, so part of that there was a there. There is still a group here, but at that time my brother and I this is where my musical ability started we were leading what we then called music ministry. Today people would call it worship team, but we were part of that and we would have rehearsals at our house every Saturday night, which was a lot of teenagers and 20-somethings. It was youth ministry before people called it youth ministry.
Speaker 3:Yeah, before the ripped jeans and the Jordans.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and so there'd be 30 people at our house and we would have music practice, but then also afterwards we were playing cards and playing games. It was youth ministry. But in amongst that we needed a music room. So we talked dad into letting us convert the garage into a quote-unquote music room with a piano and whatever, and that's kind of where we would hang out a lot. But that was my first construction project because you know, we built a wall, we finished it out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and then you had a garage pan Kind of.
Speaker 2:He's still trying to force Pantera on him. Yeah, right.
Speaker 3:Just getting the visual of Richard's hair down mid-back, you know.
Speaker 2:That's not the visual I was getting.
Speaker 1:No it was more like really bushy yeah.
Speaker 3:With the perm going.
Speaker 1:No, no, I didn't need the perm.
Speaker 2:It was just, I had a lot of hair back then.
Speaker 1:I don't have so much hair anymore.
Speaker 2:Well, this would have been just. I'm thinking like the 50s, 60s, where are?
Speaker 1:we. This is in the 70s 70s okay. Yeah, so between about 1971 and up to 1970, for me up to about 1976, when I graduated from high school. Okay, up to about 1976 when I graduated from high school, okay, and I went to Catholic grade school Christ the King. St Rita's was eighth grade, and then I went to Jesuit prep, college prep and, along with two of my older brothers, went there as well.
Speaker 2:Was it always right over there off of N1?.
Speaker 1:That's actually the second location. The very first location used to be down on Inwood Not Inwood but Oaklawn. Oh okay, long, long time ago. But they moved to that location in the early 60s and have continued to just expand that campus. I go by there and I don't recognize it anymore because they just keep adding on to it.
Speaker 2:I drove by there this weekend and I think Hill and Wilkinson's building something over there, I think, maybe redoing the entrance or something I don't know, yeah, they have expanded that facility multiple times.
Speaker 1:It's exciting to see my graduating class was 141 people. I think I don't know what the enrollment over there is now, but uh, yeah. So I went to Jesuit, um, so that takes, you know, 1976. And then, um, I applied to numerous colleges and ended up, uh, deciding to go to Notre Dame University of Notre Dame. I decided to go to Notre Dame University of Notre Dame and, interestingly, I went there with the idea, thinking that I wanted to study nuclear physics. I had some great teachers in high school. One of them was a physics teacher named Jim Gerton and I got fascinated with nuclear fusion and nuclear physics. I thought that's what I wanted to do, and so I I had applied multiple schools, like I said, and ended up deciding to go to notre dame. My oldest brother, jim, actually graduated from notre dame back in 1967, I think it is, so that probably had some influence as well.
Speaker 2:But is there a through line from the nuke, from the physics and nuclear fusion, to like what? Your dad is doing, or is that just happenstance?
Speaker 1:I think it's happenstance, but maybe there was something because dad did. I don't remember dad necessarily talking about that whole nuclear missile thing yeah that much probably couldn't maybe not maybe not, it's really true.
Speaker 1:I mean, think about it yeah, but um, I just I really got interested in it and thought that's what I would do. So I go to Notre Dame and I'm studying, you know, in my first year I'm studying physics and calculus and all these different things, and but something wasn't necessarily resonating with me real well and I went and saw a professor up there named Paul DeSales, who I knew kind of outside I knew him even before going to Notre Dame or knew of him and talked to him about it. And he kind of, you know, after talking to him I think he helped me see that maybe that wasn't my calling and I thought, well, maybe I would study English and maybe I would study music. I mean, that's a flip, right. And so I thought, well, that's what I'll do. And then, about the same time, towards the end of that first year, there was an adult student, leader of a student group.
Speaker 1:I was involved in a religious group on campus of students and there was a guy that was kind of that leader, if you will. I don't know of that group, he wasn't a student, he was an adult, but anyway he, as I recall it, he tried to strong-arm me into kind of conforming into some things that they wanted to do the following year and it really irritated me. I didn't feel like that was what I was supposed to do. It really put a bad taste in my mouth. I came home that summer and I get a letter saying hey, we're going to reduce your financial aid. We've reevaluated, you don't need as much, we're going to reduce that. And then, a few weeks after that, we get a letter saying we're going to raise the tuition and raise the room of board and I'm already kind of like I don't want to do this and I ended up dropping out of Notre Dame.
Speaker 1:What was the reaction to that? You know, it's really interesting, kevin. I remember talking to my mom about it. I do not have any recognition of talking to my father about it and um, which you know in retrospect is, is really surprising because he, you know, he took a lot of pride in his kids and and I don't necessarily remember him really pushing um, you know, college or or career on me, I think, because I was already a really high performing student and so they wouldn't. Maybe there wasn't a need Hands off, yeah and um, but there was coaches, okay, so what are you going to do? And I said I think I'd like to try to be a carpenter.
Speaker 1:So, you know, in getting ready for this podcast, it's it has really made me think about the fact that I had this privileged life, that I decided to turn my back on in some respects and go do something else and do things like I'm going to go do it my way in some way. Isn't that weird? Because I did. We didn't talk about it, but when we moved to Dallas and he went to work for Bird, we moved into this North Dallas mansion that you just won't believe. It's still standing there and it's still hard to believe. I look at it. I felt, you know, in retrospect it was kind of like we were the Beverly Hillbillies. We moved in this mansion that had a pool. It was an English Tudor mansion, had a pool. There's a lake behind it. Uh, at one point Don Meredith lived in the house across the lake from us. Uh, and you know, talk about privilege, you know, and that's now. That's now in the heart of Preston Hollow.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:And um, and then dad had his episode. We ended up moving out of that into another house, also in North Dallas, you know, which was no shabby place, and going to you know Jesuit, which today is a really elite school. At that time it was, you know it was a really great school. Yeah, it always has been. But I had this really privileged um, upbringing, really privileged opportunity going to Notre Dame and I come home and I drop out and say I'm going to be a carpenter and people, some friends would say well, you know, I know you're following Jesus, but aren't you kind of taking this a little far?
Speaker 2:Yeah, right. So, you're not him dude. Yeah, cool the jets, bro, get back to school.
Speaker 1:So this is in 1977. So at the same time, paralleling all this in the 70s, I had also met Kay Kay Hanson, who would eventually become my wife in 1978. So in 77, I drop out of school. I get a job as a carpenter through somebody that the family knows, a guy by the name of Richard Smarzak. God rest his soul. I went to work for Jim Williams Jr Fine Homes to Seoul. I went to work for Jim Williams Jr Fine Homes and Jim Williams Jr Fine Homes was developing, among other things, an entire neighborhood on the old William Carruth homestead property just south of North Park.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's called Carruth Homeplace. It's there at Southwestern Boulevard in Bodecker Mm-hmm, bodecker, yeah, and I was framing. I was learning how to frame houses, learning how to build cabinets, run trim. I was, you know, and I did that for seven years. I worked with a group of brothers with the last name of Edwards, gene Edwards, clinton Edwards, floyd Edwards, c, cd edwards one of their sons, mike edwards, and they were these old school craftsmen and, um, they didn't, you know, it's like there's, we don't use nail guns at first, anyway, eventually they start to. But you know it was, it was old old world's craftsmanship that I got to learn from some of the very best.
Speaker 3:And Sorry you were. You were on both sides of the fence of carpentry too Usually. You got your framers, yeah, and you got the fine carpentry. You were doing both.
Speaker 1:So Jim Williams had a I mean his, his company. He had in-house architects so he was designing the houses. He had in-house architects so he was designing the houses. He had in-house construction. At least the carpenters, framers, finished carpentry, cabinet building. At one point he had in-house real estate sales so he was selling them. You know he was trying to do a lot of stuff. All in-house Turnkey. Yeah, yeah, it was really cool, it was really cool to be part of. All in-house Turnkey. Yeah, yeah, it was really cool, it was really cool to be part of.
Speaker 1:Anyway, I worked there for seven years, eventually got to where I was like an assistant superintendent overseeing some of this. Well, one of those Edwards brothers, gene Edwards, had a son named Troy Edwards and Gene came to me and said, hey, my son is looking for an estimator. You know, would you be interested in talking to him? I didn't know anything about estimating, but Gene and I would go around houses and we'd be like measuring the rooms and doing this sort of thing to come up with material lists, you know, to order, trim and whatever. And lo and behold, I didn't even realize at the time, but Gene was illiterate, he couldn't read, and but he trusted me apparently, um, because he would take me and I'd make all the notes, I'd write everything down and and I didn't learn until I mean he covered it really well. I didn't learn until several years later that Gene couldn't read. And I learned about it when he did learn to read late in life, and then you couldn't stop him. He was reading everything.
Speaker 1:But anyway, so Gene had this, had something named Troy. Troy had been a salesman for Daniel Steele, which is a rebar fabricator Still Still is, and I'm going to come back to that. But I went to see Troy and so Troy ended up hiring me to be a drywall estimator and he and a guy named Dan Rogers were my first teachers in estimating. And so I learned commercial drywall, metal, stud framing and sheet rocking and learned how to estimate that and sell it and manage it. And this was in 1983 that I went to work for him. Well, in the midst of that, commercially, the name of the company was Commercial Acoustics and Interiors. Troy closed the business some years ago, but in the midst of that one of our main clients was a company called Spring Valley Construction, and this is in the mid-80s and Spring Valley at that time was building high-rises and doing a lot of office type of construction and when I went to work for Commercial Acoustics we were building a six-story over Walnut Hill Lane across from Presbyterian Hospital, anyway. So I got to know some of the people at Spring Valley. Some of them are still there today and at the time I you know there was something about this company that I really liked, and I didn't know what it was at the time, I just knew I really liked these people, I liked working for them. They treated us fairly and I thought to myself even then, if I ever get a chance to work for them, I'm going to take that chance. So 83 to 86 or so I'm working for commercial acoustics, doing work for Spring Valley. Danny Copeland, who's one of the owners of the company he was an estimator. Mike Gray, who at the time was an early project manager, for whom I think I did the drywall on his very first project as a project manager that's cool. And then actually our general superintendent, steve Page, was the superintendent on that six-story called Walnut Green across from Presbyterian Hospital, although I did not get to meet Steve Page at that time, but nevertheless. So he's still at the company. So all the you know. So some of these people are still there.
Speaker 1:Um, so then I go off and I, I leave, uh, spring Valley, not, I'm sorry, I leave commercial acoustics and, um, uh, I tried a couple other things. I tried working for myself for a little while. Um, I, um, I actually was an estimator, for I had a little group of small little drywall companies that couldn't afford an estimator, so I was their part-time estimator. I tried that for a while and eventually got hired by, went to work for a company called National Construction Services where I ended up being their estimator, started out as their drywall estimator and then migrated into actually being the estimator for what they were doing, which was work all over. We were doing work all over the southern United States, doing work like shopping mall finish out work Kind of call it mall rats today, but nonetheless it's terrible.
Speaker 1:But I was doing, doing a lot of that. So I was, you know, we get it, we'd get plans and we'd have to go pay a visit to a brand new mall that's getting built in Tupelo, mississippi, or or wherever it is, and I would work on that and did that for a few years until Fred Renzell, who was the owner of the company, decided to close the company and that's when I met Charlie Myers, and Charlie had my con and I'm not sure he hadn't been in business for very long, but he and his dad, dick Myers, and I went to work for them as their estimator, as their, I think. At the time I was the only estimator, but we actually had brought a book of work with us because we had some projects from National Construction Services. We actually brought work with it and there were several of us that went. There was John Rozelle and was one of them, and there was like three or four of us that went, some superintendents as well, because we brought work with us and so it helped, helped, you know, help pay the bill.
Speaker 1:Um, and I went to work for charlie and ended up staying there for six years and the company grew. It didn't grow nearly as much as what he's grown now, yeah, because he's doing really, really well now now. But, um, his dad, dick Myers, um, I still think is probably the best cold call guy I'd ever I've ever met. He was one of these guys, not unlike my dad, who just never met a stranger, you know, and just had that ability, um, to find something in common and be able to talk to him and and he was just amazing, really cool guy and um, anyway, towards the end of I guess it was 96, 97, I called up Mike Gray, who was then one of the owners of Spring Valley, and asked him if he was looking for anybody.
Speaker 1:You know that I was interested, you know, in making a move and he had me come over and pretty much hired me on the spot nearly, and that was at Spring Valley. That was at Spring Valley. Yeah, I interviewed with Greg Wilkinson at that time. I interviewed over at CD Henderson. Those were the three companies that I thought I think I'd like to go work for. One of these Called your shot and anyway. But in the back of my mind was still what I said earlier about back in the mid-'80s of if I ever get a chance to work for Spring Valley, I'm going to take it. Back in the mid eighties of, if I ever get a chance to work at Spring Valley, I'm going to take it. And um, anyway. So Mike hired me and that started the run and I went to work as an estimator and eventually um got made a vice president in 2005, 2006, somewhere in there.
Speaker 3:And, uh, it's been a really, really, really good run. Yep, 40 plus years, um, and it's crazy to you know, like you just summed up, like you just summed up that career journey in about 10 minutes, right, like of of, of the stops along the way, um, but man, that's, that's a lifetime, you know, to think through and and to talk through Um, and I'm always curious when, when we have somebody on here that's as tendered as you like, what your thoughts and perspective were on the landscape then versus now. So you know, what did it look like? We're like one thing you mentioned was just the craftsmanship like of that of that home builder, and I think that might've been. It's a, it's an art that's starting to go away with commoditizing things. Um, but like I don't want to put words in your mouth, yeah, like, what have you noticed in the construction landscape? Like the big shifts in the 40 plus years you've been in there?
Speaker 1:The biggest thing in my mind is the technology Cause when I came when I started in the business. You know construction technology consisted of a measuring tape and you know a level and you know everything's pencil and paper. And even when I worked you know when I went to work for commercial acoustics I remember when we got our first fax machine and we weren't really sure what to do with it and we stuck it in a back room we stuck it in the back room where Ronnie Edwards, troy's brother he was kind of our purchaser and you know, took care of getting things out to the job sites.
Speaker 1:We stuck it back there because we thought he would be the one that'd use it the most. Of course it eventually made its way up into the front of the office because, you know, we started using it a lot. But I remember getting the first fax machine when I was working at the carpenter. I actually was going to school at nights occasionally out at Eastfield Junior College because Kay and I were living not far from there. College because Kay and I were living not far from there and I was taking courses in. I took some courses in basic computer language and was working on one of the very first IBM PCs. It was the IBM 8086 with two floppy drives And- Lightning fast Floppy drives for you guys listening.
Speaker 1:And they weren't even three and a half.
Speaker 2:They weren't the little ones, they were the big five and a half inch, talking about your big boys, talking about the yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And, uh, you know anyway. So I got kind of exposed to that. I thought this is really cool. And of course, my math, the math in my background from school, and everything was all coming, you know, coming up and and all that and I um, so I kind of got exposed to some computers there. This is really interesting. So I'm working at commercial acoustics and we ended up they they had just recently, uh, gotten a computer this would have been an 83, 84, and we're running, we're running a a this would have been in 83, 84, and we're running a program called CSSI which, believe it or not, spring Valley was also an adopter of CSSI and is still running it as their ERP. And so at Spring Valley we can be slow to change sometimes, but that's okay, and not that we're still running the 1983 version of CSSI.
Speaker 2:You might have upgraded it once or twice. We might have upgraded it, we might have upgraded it but nevertheless.
Speaker 1:So I got involved in that. But it's the technology that has occurred, the technology hurricane that has hit our industry over the past 40 years. That to me, is probably the biggest shift that's occurred, and it's increased productivity. But then I think there's some things that came along with it that we're still having to navigate to be successful.
Speaker 3:Sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 1:You know, one of the big ones is when I first started, you know, we did everything. We rolled plans and we even when I went to work for Spring Valley, we were still rolling plans. We were faxing out bid invitations, you know, and we were rolling plans and we were having to call people Before the fax machine. We were faxing out bid invitations, you know, and we were rolling plans and we were having to call people Before the fax machine we would get. Even with the fax machine, we would get on the phone and have to call everybody, say come pick up. You know, I got this job. You want to bid? You know, come pick up plans. And so you're distributing these paper drawings. Nobody does that anymore.
Speaker 2:And- and spending, I mean dollar bills change because of the time Huge dollars. Huge amounts of money. Yeah, printing them out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. When we first started shifting to more of an electronic distribution, we went from paper drawings to paper drawings and a CD that we would burn in with the spec book, and then we went from that to burning the drawings onto the CD as well. Then we developed our own in our website. We developed our own planned distribution system for distributing the electronic documents and started to migrate away from paper altogether. But there were still a lot of subcontractors and vendors that they didn't have that capability. They still needed paper. So you were still spending a lot of money. I'll never forget Jim Archer come to my office because he was always pounding the table saying stop printing drawings. You know, make these guys use electronic documents. And I'll never forget him coming off and says do you know how much money we spent last year on paper drawings? I said no, sir, I don't. He said $250,000.
Speaker 3:Yes, sir, that's a big number.
Speaker 1:Of course, as an estimator, I'm like do you want to get the work, or don't you?
Speaker 3:Yeah right.
Speaker 1:Do you want me to get the bids or don't you? Because Do you want me to get the bids or don't you? Because if you want me to get the bids, I've got to help the subcontractors. I've got to get them the information, because estimating is all about information and and distribute. You know, our business is all about information and communicating. Quite right, but anyway, so we were, we'd spent a lot of time on the phones and calling people and that sort of thing. We'd spent a lot of time on the phones and calling people and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1:Then, with the advent of email, you know, the phone calling starts to tail off and you start losing and people aren't coming to the office as much they would. You know, subs would come to the office and sit in our plan room and take stuff off, and there was a lot more face-to-face interaction as an estimator and that has gotten by and large lost to a great degree. So it's more challenging, at least in pre-construction. It's more challenging to maintain those relationships and establish those strong relationships with your subcontractors and vendors. And what's interesting is now your subcontractors are inundated with bid invitations every day. I mean, I'm sure you see it, kevin. Oh, big time, because GCs are using the services now, like Building Connected and SmartBid and all, but if they're not being thoughtful about it, they're just blasting out their ITBs to every subcontractor in their public database. You know hundreds, if not thousands, of them on every job and you, as a subcontractor, are getting inundated with this information.
Speaker 3:It's hard to pick which ones. We have set criteria like a list. Does it meet? Is it funded? Is it this? Is it this? Is it this?
Speaker 1:Sure, you do, yeah, and you have to.
Speaker 3:You have to it's tough.
Speaker 1:And it's interesting because now we've come full circle and me as a GC, I have to get back on the phone and really be calling again and saying, hey, did you get my invitation? Or at least emailing, but making that person-to-person touch to do business with one another, and so, even so, kind of some of the old things are new again in that respect. But even so, gosh, we don't have nearly the number of people that come to the office anymore.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I never thought. There's a couple of things in there that hit my ear, Like I've never thought of that before, but the idea that the building of the relationships was taking place in that mechanism of like well, there's Jimmy's in the plan room, go say hi to him.
Speaker 1:Hey man, how's it?
Speaker 2:going. You sit down, where are you working on. Oh, don't forget this thing over here, make sure you. Now it's just like email send, email send. Hope you got it Off, you go, and then people trying to build relationships started doing it sort of outside of the ecosphere, right, like okay, we're just going to send emails back and forth, but you want to go get drinks, or we're going to send emails back and forth, you want to go do this other thing, and trying to find those touch points, but they feel they're more, a little more manufactured. Yeah, but those like I just I never thought of it like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but the business the our business, I think, like every most businesses, is so much about relationships and about building those relationships and then relying on them when there's a problem and all. And I think that technology, for all the good things that it brought us, has made some of those things more difficult to do and you have to be more thoughtful about it. And so when I have had young estimators come to work for us and you're teaching them, one of the things that I've always tried to do is encourage them. Look, you've you know to talk to these people. Don't just rely upon email, don't just rely on text. Try to talk to people, try to go to lunch with them, try to you know, build relationship with them, because it pays you back so many times over in the future.
Speaker 2:I can remember I think it was Melanie saying one time at a Texo, at a YCC meeting, something about how in the? I can't really remember what she said, but I'll paraphrase it. But just like in the day of likes and thumbs up, ycc and Texo is still building relationships the old-fashioned way. It's probably not exactly what she said, but the gist of it is being like no, at least the Texo and the construction industry as's just let's just go sit down and talk.
Speaker 1:That's the biggest thing you can do, because it's people lose what the tone of. People don't understand what the tone of of what somebody's saying in an email, because you can't hear the tone of the voice. All you can do is read the words, and way too many misunderstandings that happen in the midst of all that.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, somebody that's just answering a matter of fact thinks an unpinned grenade just came over. Yeah, there's a whole strategy meeting about that email and you're like, no, I was just saying that's the way it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, but he said that he just said that's the way it is. He just said that's the way it is. That's right what?
Speaker 3:Nobody added that spice to it. No, I think technology is an interesting thing to reflect on. You had evolution of major things Like what's this phone slash printer thing, fax, what does that do? Like you know like. And then computer and email and all that. Those are major. I look at like processes and like if you've got a pretty good process and you're executing it consistently for a grip of time, you're going to have some success with it. But like if you're constantly flipping that process because you're chasing what's better and better and better and maybe what's evolving, it's really hard to have your feet under you. And I feel like we're doing that a lot with technology. Like you got this takeoff software, this one, then this one, then this one. So every year, instead of continuing to learn the craft and get better at it, we're relearning a new technology that might do it slightly better.
Speaker 3:That's a slippery slope for folks to really learn the industry.
Speaker 1:It is and we get you know. Unfortunately, we get inundated now with information and it overwhelms us and we it's. The challenge now is to curate through all that information on what's important and what's not, and one of the guys the other day actually had mentioned something that I'd kind of forgotten about, but I hadn't, which was the Eisenhower matrix. If you're familiar with, if you can imagine or draw a, a four squares, you know a square divided into four, um, and if you put um important on one side of, you know on the uh, y axis, if you will, as most important to me at the top, least important at the bottom and urgent across the X axis of and on, you know, on the left-hand side, is most urgent to least urgent. And then you prioritize your, your goals, prioritize the things you've got to do, as where does it fall in that Is it?
Speaker 1:Is it most urgent and most important or is it, you know, least important but still very urgent? Where is, in that help to prioritize what you've got to do and as well as help prioritize information? We get overwhelmed with information and, uh, and you know, lose sight of the forest because we're buried in looking at the leaves and the roots and all that sort of thing and um, and you can't, and you can't see what's most important anymore. So you know a lot of good things, a lot of great things with the technology, but just the need to manage it and help your people manage it, help them keep focused on what's important and what's not.
Speaker 2:I'm having this like technology wave thought where it's like well, a fax machine, for example, Wonder what a fax machine is. We should get a fax machine. We got a fax machine. I wish we'd get a fax. I wish we'd stop getting faxes Like that curve. And it's the same with like email, what's email? I should get email. I wish I'd get an email. I wish I'd stop getting email yeah and then it's with apps. Like boy, I wish we had an app for that.
Speaker 2:Oh there's an app for that right yeah, so maybe we come over the top of that at some point, like just chill with all the apps, just good enough yeah, um, now, now there's a thousand apps.
Speaker 1:Yes, we get it it's.
Speaker 2:It's the best business model ever. Cogs are zero. I get it, but like it's not chill.
Speaker 1:You know the other thing I've seen in this. Besides, the technology is just an evolution of the culture, if you will. And what I mean by culture is when I went to work for Spring Valley. This is going to sound petty, maybe, but when I first worked for Spring Valley, from Memorial Day to Labor Day, we were expected to wear a tie.
Speaker 1:That's not petty, that's how it was Collar shirt and a tie and dress slacks and dress shoes, you know, no athletic shoes, no blue jeans, except on Fridays when you could, it was more casual, but Labor Day and Memorial Day it was a tie, and then during the summer it was the business casual, but still no jeans. It was, you know, dress slacks and a golf shirt or whatever, and um, and that had been that way for a long time and somewhere in the early aughts, uh, we relaxed it and said, okay, no more tie, but that's as far as we've ever gotten, it's still. It's still. You're not supposed to be wearing blue jeans, you know, or athletic shoes, you know, in the midst of the week and it's still casual Fridays, but so you know little things like that.
Speaker 1:I also have seen a whole lot more evolution towards negotiated work as opposed to hard bid work. We did more hard bid work in earlier in my career and now it seems like it's evolved more towards negotiated work, although we still do hard bid stuff. Um, at least this is in the sectors that Spring Valley works in, which is all private commercial development and multifamily development, that Spring Valley works in, which is all private commercial development and multifamily development, and then I think that there's been a shift in accountability for people, in the sense of and I'm speaking as an estimator here there seems like a less people seem to be less accountable for what they're putting out there. I can't tell you the number of times that we get bids and you go to make a do a contract.
Speaker 1:Oh, I made a mistake, I'm not going to. You know, go get somebody else. There was a time when you were being held, you held your feet to the fire if you submitted a bid, whether as a GC or as a subcontractor to a GC, and your feet were being held to the fire to honor that bid. There seems to be a relaxation of that to some degree, and maybe it's certain sectors of work, maybe that's not everywhere, but it's something that I've observed and I think, um, you know, maybe we were giving people more grace, maybe that's the way I should look at it.
Speaker 2:But uh, there's um now well, and I sorry I interrupted you. I think there's um man this is probably a jaded lawyer view on it but um, okay, so I got somebody who missed something and I held their feet to the fire and they honored their bid and that job was terrible and we fought with them the whole time and it ended up screwed up at the end and so sure I could hold their feet to the fire. But I'd rather just if they missed it and I just rather let them go to the next one, because I don't want to bludgeon myself through that job. And I mean I've been practicing law for 20 years. I was involved in some of these 20-year-ago cases where it's like, no, we're going to pop them for it. They walked it. We're popping them. I got there, promised we were going to stop, but I don't even see those cases anymore. You guys generally I say you guys generally You're just walking away from it.
Speaker 1:We figure a way to work it out somehow. There's not, it's not nearly as black and white as it once was and it's probably, I think, overall it's a good thing, but it's definitely been a change in my perspective.
Speaker 2:Well, it does go to the accountability issue, because we were talking about it in that little tiny context and I'm not going to be like, oh, young people are all terrible. I'm not that guy.
Speaker 1:But there's definitely like a generational accountability change around. It Seems to be. I have to tell you that I think the current generation entering our business. I could never be more excited than what I see in the generation entering our business. We've been, we've.
Speaker 1:Some years ago we started hiring a lot more graduates out of A&M and Texas Tech and Louisiana Tech, and some of these, and almost every one of them, has just been an outstanding young man or young woman and I just and I even look at, you know, within my family circle of the 20-somethings and almost, you know, virtually all of them are. They are smart, they are savvy, they're tech savvy, they are BS savvy, they are, they're looking for balance in their lives, they're not afraid to have conversations. I, I'm just blown away by this generation and you know I, you know I, you hear, you hear people, you see people talk about snowflakes and all that sort of thing. I was like I don't know who he is. You're hanging around, because everyone that I'm hanging, I'm crossing paths with, blows me away and I can never be more excited or positive about where our industry is going and where our society is going with this generation of young men and women.
Speaker 3:Man, that's got to feel good for the week that you're sitting in right, this torch is being passed to some capable hands. Absolutely, Absolutely. From a dressing standpoint, how you dress the attire for construction. I mean, I moved here 14 years ago, so 2010. And one of the first before I moved here, I went to a meeting and in Chicago that was still suit, tie, dress, shirt, tie, like that's standard uniform, unless you're going to the field and then you can wear jeans and boots and all that.
Speaker 3:But I came to a meeting out here in Texas and I had the meeting with the guy and I won't say name or company, but at the end of it he said and if you come here with a tie next time I'm going to hang you from it. That's how he ended the meeting. So I called my boss in Chicago. I'm like hey man, there are not about ties in Texas. Like we got to ditch these things. Uh, that's cool. So it's not that long ago, man. No.
Speaker 2:I got a funny. Nobody wants to hear it. I'll cut it up. Let's tie it off with this idea. Um, at the firm I was working at, we were we're kind of business casual like slacks, you know it was professional pre-covid.
Speaker 2:You were this I'm talking about like oh four, oh five okay, yeah, um, you normally would wear a coat but like hang it up, and if you had your tie on, normally it was just be a professional, right, no dress code. Well, we were having picture day one one day, so everybody was like nine, nine up right like ties on tight knots, looking clean, lots of people with their coats on around the office because they're trying to get in with the photographer, in the little conference room and we just happened to be interviewing, or a client happened to be interviewing the firm that day, and I won't say his name, um, but it was a, a contractor who was full, button down, right, like it was, um, you know, that's sort of like very still, as, even though things were starting to change, very still, still, very buttoned down. He came through the office, yada, yada, yada. He hired the firm and, uh, we asked him like what was it?
Speaker 2:You know you interviewed a lot of different firms. What was it? What was the thing? Like what tipped the scale in our favor? And he said, man, you guys are professionals because of the way you dress is is why?
Speaker 2:just why I went with you and uh, unfortunately our dress code changed overnight. It was like boom oh full suit always and I was like, oh my gosh, so we all had to go out like buy suits and everything and that backfired that backfired and then slowly it eroded and and then kovid just like massacred a law firm. Jessica, like now it's, do you have on pants? Yes, come to work. Then like it's do you have on pants, yes, come to work. Then Like it's completely, completely laid back now.
Speaker 1:One of the things speaking, we'll talk about Dresco a little bit more. I didn't. I didn't talk about during my chronology of my career that I left Spring Valley kind of midway in 2010 or 2011. And I went to work for Hill Wilkinson for a few years and you know, we were just starting to come out of the big recession and Spring Valley had shrunk way back. We went from 125 people to like 30 or 35 people. It was brutal to like 30 or 35 people. It was brutal.
Speaker 1:And in the midst of that, I just needed, I needed a change and I went to work for Doug Talley hired me over at Hill and Wilkinson when he was there and went over there and one of the things that was refreshing to me about over there was how, um, down to earth, they are Not that we're pretentious at Spring Valley, because we're not, but it was like dress for what you got to do today. You know, if you're meeting with a client, then dress appropriately. It was just. It was just the it's, and I think it's still this way. It was just and I think it's still this way. It's trusting your people to represent you well and trusting your people to do the right thing. Empowering your people to do the right thing and to make decisions and do their job well, and then rewarding them and recognizing them, you know, when they do it well. And that's one of the things I really took away from Hill and Wilkinson that, look, we're builders, we're not bankers, we're not lawyers. Nothing against lawyers, no everything against lawyers.
Speaker 1:But we're builders, you know, and this is who we are and we're, you know. There's a humility about that and recognition of who we are and being realistic about that.
Speaker 2:It's a good common sense approach to all of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and that was one of the things I took from Helen Wilkinson was just that ability to empower people and trust people and advance them when they do well, and as well as holding them accountable, though, because without accountability, you know, it all starts to fall apart, because if you're making mistakes, if you're failing and you're not being held accountable, then you're just going to continue to fail more, and whatever led to the failure is getting ingrained in you. Because you're not being held accountable, you're not being corrected. There's wisdom right there, yeah, but but and so there's that. You know other things, though, about our business. You know we talk about technology, flow of information, but not only being humble about what you're doing, but the opposite side is a way of saying don't be arrogant. I'll never forget One of the things I've learned a lot at Spring Valley was about risk management, and what we do is a lot about managing our risk, and I remember some point in time I think maybe it was when I was making the change to go to Hill Wilkinson I interviewed with another company and I made a comment about risk management, about understanding risk management and what that meant from an estimating standpoint as well as running the business and the guy I was interviewing with says, well, we're not scared of anything.
Speaker 1:I'm like that's not. There was this arrogance about him that, well, we're not scared of anything. I'm like it's not. It was, there was this, there was this arrogance about, about him that, well, we're not scared of anything. You know, if we, if we want to do that, we're just going to go ahead and do it. I'm like that's not. It's not what I'm talking about. Yeah, you know, risk management is recognizing, recognizing risk and mitigating it in some way. Sometimes that's with dollars, sometimes it's with not using that subcontractor, sometimes it's in not working for that client or with that consultant, or having difficult conversations about whatever the concerns are about putting into the contract for protection, of doing subcontractor bonds, of doing joint checks. I mean, there's all sorts of ways to manage risk and there's all sorts of risks to be managed too.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. It's a large matrix of complicatedness Absolutely.
Speaker 1:But don't be arrogant and just and be blind as a result. Don't be blinded by your arrogance.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm and just and be blind as a result. Don't be blinded by your arrogance. Yeah, we're not afraid of anything, is? I don't want to say so strongly, but it's fairly ignorant because, like there's a lot of stuff to be afraid of, you just need to know what it is and know how to manage it and I knew I didn't want to work for that person.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Cause they got a closet full of fears behind them. Yeah Right, exactly Most typically I was going to get in trouble.
Speaker 1:I was going to get in trouble if I did.
Speaker 3:So long stint at Spring Valley, longer stint in the career of construction, and you evolve as a person, you evolve as a leader. You start leading people and you're in this position of leadership through tomorrow and through tomorrow. What are? I always love asking this question because there's a variety of answers to it. But what are the character traits that you feel got you to the place where you're at and will get others to the next rung of the ladder or the next position or wherever God's steps are taken?
Speaker 1:So, as an estimator, I'm an introvert and I'm afflicted with OCD. I'm obsessive, compulsive and generally good estimators are similar. They're somewhat introverted because they don't mind working in an office eight, ten hours a day, over and over and over again, and they tend to be a little bit OCD. They got to have everything right, things need to be formatted, just so you know everything's got to line up. You know it's. But also being, you know, really analytical. I'm highly analytical. Good estimators are highly analytical, highly analytical. Good estimators are highly analytical. But more than that, just having a passion for the construction business, for what you want to do.
Speaker 1:Years ago had a young lady came to work for us as an administrative assistant. She was newly graduated from SMU. Everybody's kind of like, why does she want to come work as an administrative assistant? You know, but anyway, that's what she. It may have been her first job, I don't recall, but she came to work for us. Smart young lady, um, you know, did really well. She didn't stay very long. She came and and said, hey, I'm going to, I'm going to leave this, maybe after a year. And she said I realized that you guys really have a passion for what you do. You know, you, you like, live, eat and breathe construction. She said, no, I, I don't have that. And um, and so I I commended her number one for recognizing that and just encourage her to go find what, what, what she did want to do.
Speaker 1:There you go, and uh, which was? She was going to go work for a new up and coming hedge fund. I mean talking about a shift, but you know you gotta have a passion for what you do, whether it's in construction, whatever you do, because otherwise getting up in the morning just is that much more difficult.
Speaker 2:Let me jump in there, because it's I want to say, unique, but maybe special is the right word to be at a company that is passionate about what you do and I think the pursuit of that's definitely like on the board In my. In my line of work I've dealt with lots of YouTube but, like, I've seen lots of different companies and they're not all passionate about it. Yeah, and they handle their business differently and they value things differently and they don't always, you know, um, I won't belabor that point, but when you find it, when you find what you're passionate about, when you find a company that's equally yoked around, that's a real special intersection of yin and yang there.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, it is. Yeah, and you know that's what I found for. However, it got implanted in me. I've always had an interest in how things are put together, how buildings are built and materials and all that sort of thing. They've found something that they love doing, that they're passionate about, that, they get up and they're curious, that's. The other thing is, you've got to be curious as an estimator. You've got to be curious If you come across something it's like well, I don't know what that is and you just ignore it.
Speaker 2:That's not good. No danger, will Robinson.
Speaker 1:So ask a question, or or get on the internet and look it up, you know, google it and figure out what it is, yeah, but you gotta have some curiosity. Um, I tell I the other thing, I tell young estimators, um, and I think this is not just estimators, but that's kind of my. My thing is you have to have an attitude of I think this is not just estimated, but that's kind of my thing is you have to have an attitude of I own this. I tell people, you've got to own it. As an estimator, if you're putting together the numbers on how much this project is going to cost, if this was your money, if this was your money, you would want to know what every single thing costs and you want to have as much certainty as you can. You know, and you don't want to put a whole bunch of plug numbers in. Well, I didn't know what that was, so I stuck $5,000 in there for it. Right, it's like no, you got to own it. Have the attitude of of of owning what you do and treating it like it's yours.
Speaker 1:And that's one of the things that at Spring Valley, we really push is, you know, having that fiscal responsibility not only for ourselves, but especially for our client. You know that you're watching out for your client. You're watching out for their money, you're watching out for the decisions they make. You know we're supposed to be the construction experts. You know the guy that we're building a tech building over in Louisville construction is not his thing. You know whatever technical, whatever tech thing he's in, that's his thing. So he's hired us to be experts. So be experts, you know. But you can't be experts if you don't own what you're doing.
Speaker 2:Well, one of the things I think I've learned about owning what you're doing is not just like oh well, I did the thing, like I it like. I think there's another layer to owning what you're doing is not that I did the thing, but I understood why I did the thing, or how the thing got done, or whatever. Like the, the, the lawyer analog is like this what you brought me is terrible and they'll say well, but it's.
Speaker 1:I used a form. It's wrong, Like you've used the wrong form.
Speaker 2:Why did you use this one? Why did you pick it? Where'd you get it? How did you assess it? Where did you all that sort of like Right? You can't just well, I put the numbers in the spreadsheet. Right, that's not good enough, man Like you have to own it at that next level too, of just understanding all how it all buckles together and why we do it like this and how these work together.
Speaker 1:I mean I learned estimating by imitation, by copycatting. When I first went to work for commercial acoustics, dan showed me a filing cabinet that was full of estimates all these different projects that we had bid, I guess and I spent the first several days just taking one after the other and reading through them and, if we still had the plans, looking at the plans, trying to figure out. He was letting me try to figure out how they all associated. But then when I started estimating and when I teach estimating, you know you can I give them examples of hey, we're doing a site work job, you know we're pricing a site work job of dirt work and utilities and paving whatever. And I give the estimator several examples of similar work so that they can emulate that. See what's important? But it's you know. Start to learn by copycatting, by imitating.
Speaker 1:But you have to get beyond just filling in the blanks and checking the boxes. You have to start thinking about the things that aren't shown, about the logistical side of it, the things that aren't shown about the temporary things that need to be the logistical side of it, the things that aren't shown about the temporary things that need to be the temporary barricades, the temporary fencing, the temporary whatever you know, all those logistical things. I mean. You know, tower cranes are not shown on drawings. You know, those are the things you have to start thinking through, and you don't do that by just checking boxes and filling in blanks, but you start thinking through. And you don't do that by just checking boxes and filling in blanks, but you start that way, yeah, and then, with guidance, you start to learn, you start to absorb and and and and develop into an estimator. But again, I come back to you really got to own what you do, though, otherwise you're just going to be filling in blanks and checking boxes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's kind of like Google Maps to this day, like I won't plug it in if I don't have to, and sometimes it bites me where I should have taken a better route because of an accident at some point getting here today but, like, if I'm just following what it's telling me the next turn, I'm not going to learn my surroundings and learn how to actually get there. So I'm going to have to use that map forever. But if.
Speaker 3:I, if I push it to the side, maybe fail a little bit, take some wrong turns but end up at the destination the next time. I'm at more confidence to get there. That's like our learning journey in any, any of our professions. But you do got to fill in the blanks at first. You know how many meetings I went to at the beginning of my career Like pressure cooker. I left. I'm like I have no idea what just happened and they're on the PM on this thing.
Speaker 1:This doesn't even make sense.
Speaker 3:I'm so glad they didn't ask me any like second onion layer deep questions, and that's part of what we got to fix about the industry, though, because we need far more training than might come up.
Speaker 1:We do. We do, although, like I said, we're getting a lot of really good young men and women out of the universities, but they still come to us with understanding certain things. And one of the things I really hope that every person coming in this industry is able to do is spend some time in the field, see how things go together, totally, you know, and not just be sitting behind a desk, you know, clicking and pointing and everything and take off software or whatever, but be able to get out there and see how things really go to go together and and spend some time on a job site. Let them they're used to there.
Speaker 1:There was a time, and I think a lot of companies still do this. But you rotate your people through estimating. You rotate people through project management, figure out where they settle out and what they resonate with. Not everybody has the temperament or the skill set to be an estimator, has the temperament or the skill set to be a project manager and and or to be the safety manager or to be the risk manager or to be the accountant. I mean everybody has to kind of figure out where, where their place is and what they, what they fit in, where they can have a passion for what they're doing.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:So one one thing that we know is the journey's not done alone, and you had a bunch of people along the way that either taught you what not to do or taught you what to do, but we'll focus on the who taught you what to do and guided you a little bit in the journey, but like some mentors that come to mind.
Speaker 1:So I mentioned the Edwards brothers, who taught me about the value of high craftsmanship and the value of hard work and just being there every day and driving nails and cut and trim and whatever that led me to Troy Edwards, and Dan Rogers at Commercial Acoustics, who taught me about estimating and introduced me to Spring Valley Construction. I mentioned National Construction Services and a guy by the name of John Rizel. One of my personal issues is a lot of anxiety over, you know, especially when there's an issue to be dealt with and running over in my head over and over and over, what are all the permutations of how this is going to work out and what are they going to say? What am I going to say, you know, and worrying myself to death over it. And John would always back out and say, richard, what are you afraid of? They can't take your birthday away from you. And I'm like, okay, thanks, john. But it's true, put things into reality. Nothing is ever as bad as you think it's going to be. Nothing is ever as good as you think it's going to be. So just ease off and try to have some perspective.
Speaker 1:Um, um, you know, I got to one of the things that attracted one of the things, one of the stories I remember about Spring Valley that attracted me was my one of my first interactions with Mike Gray.
Speaker 1:Uh, he was a young project manager, like I said, I think it was his first job and I went over to the office and I'd been there a lot, but it's the first time I'd met Mike and he took the time. He just sat down. You know, he had his desk in his office and he had two side chairs with a little, you know, side table between them and I sat down. He said I have to see you. I sat down with him. He sat in the other one. He didn't sit behind his desk in a place of power, you know, he sat in a place of equality and you know it's a little bitty thing, but it's stuck in my head now for 40 years and it was Mike had. Mike has I shouldn't say had. He's still there or he's still out there. Um, you know, mike has a ability to make you feel seen.
Speaker 2:Mm.
Speaker 1:And you know I'm, I'm this young estimator, um, coming to Spring Valley Construction. We're. You know we're small fish, you know they're, they're big Spring Valley. That's the way I saw it, you know, and he had make, he I think Mike's probably still that way, you know, cause that's that's just who he is. He makes you feel seen and uh, and that was. You know the value of relationships again. You know of treating you the way you want to be treated.
Speaker 2:We say it a lot. I think you say it a lot actually, kevin but the like, the power of those like little moments.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because I don't even. I don't know if Mike remembers that or not, but it stuck with you for 40 years.
Speaker 1:It did yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's a heck of a powerful moment of just like. I'm just going to sit on this side of the table, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just, I mean, how simple a thing. But obviously it made an impression on me that I still think of that to this day. Yeah, you know other people, jim Ryan, may he rest in peace. Jim was the company's CFO when I got there. He passed away in 2006, I think Just an awesome guy from Boston had this Boston accent, loved hockey. Uh, he would go up and down the hall singing at the top of his lungs Um just, was this, um, a you know, father figure to a lot of people? Uh, that he that worked with him. He just had this calm voice of reason and a dignity about him and also the ability to make you realize that, hey, everything's going to be okay and it's not as bad as you think it's going to be. Again, nothing as bad as you think it's going to be. But at the same time, was a mentor, not so much in my work but just in life itself. Yeah, you know, just a funny, amazing guy. He's the guy that started the Bible study.
Speaker 2:Okay, right, here we go.
Speaker 1:Bible study, and that was I mean. When I came to work there in 97, bible study was already going on and it wasn't even really Bible study, it was. He had this daily calendar thing that had the word of the day in the scripture, and that was what we did. We would what's the word of the day, what's the scripture, and for an hour we would just sit there and share life, and sometimes it had absolutely nothing to do with the scripture or the word of the day.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it was about we'd get off on a tangent, talking about movies or talking about whatever it was sports, whatever it was but it was sharing something beyond just work. It was sharing a little bit of life with each other and the joys as well as the sorrows of if you lost somebody. When I lost my dad, Jim was. Everybody there at the company was amazing, it was amazing. But he, you know, he's somebody that I think of, Jim Archer, who's now retired, the CEO of the company, still part owner of the company With the company 50 years of the 51 years and, oh my gosh, you know, he taught me the value of asking questions and then ask some more questions, and then ask some more questions and then ask some more kinds of questions. The man had an uncanny ability to be able to drill down by asking questions and figure out what the weak spots were and then going deep into the weak spots, you know, and making you better, making the project better, Solve, you know figure out what the problem was that nobody wants to talk about.
Speaker 2:And I only know Mr Archer tangentially, but I would assume in a way that's not hurtful, offensive, degrading, like that's the magic to it, cause lots of people can drill, yeah, and you leave and you're like I'm gonna stab that guy in the back room if I get a chance you know, but it's not, that's not what you're saying.
Speaker 1:No, no, and you, yeah. At the time it was like I don't want to go talk to him, you know, but oh my gosh, he, he elevated everybody around him.
Speaker 1:Everybody around him. You know you, you just were better because of him. Um, he taught, he taught me to dig further into the details. That kind of asked me the question. But digging into the details, um, he, and something that I tried to teach people is, when you got a problem, try to come at it from different angles and see if you arrive at the same answer every time. If it's a math problem, if you're trying to figure out the math on something, add it up this way now, add it up that way, now add it up another way. You're coming up with the same figures. You know solving things from different angles. Always check, double check, triple check. You know trust, but verify, he was.
Speaker 1:He is like the biggest proponent of the value of relationships, and not necessarily just construction relationships, bank relationships, attorney relationships. You know real estate relationships, uh, you know real estate relationships, um, all of those kinds of stakeholders and tangential um uh positions to our business, and he helped so many a number of companies get started, you know, and some of our most loyal subcontractors are the ones that he helped get started. He taught me about building the trust of your client, you know. He taught me about don't avoid difficult conversations, you know, facing them head on Again, you know what are they going to do. You can't take your birthday away from you. If you will, you know. And that if you let the problems fester they're just going to get worse, you know. But face them head on, but have solutions. Don't just throw up what the problem is, but come up with some solutions to propose to solve the problem. Makes it a whole lot better, if you can.
Speaker 1:He taught me about just being prepared and being over-prepared. You know, from an estimator standpoint, knowing the project backwards, forwards, sideways, every you know. And because then your client trusts you and the stakeholders trust you and the subcontractors trust you because you know, you know what you're talking about. You know, jim, it's interesting. One of the things I'd never had come across when I went to work for Spring Valley was answering questions in a positive tone rather than a negative one. What do I mean by that? So if you're doing clarifications, this goes down like doing clarifications on a proposal. Instead of saying you know we don't have this, we would say we do have this, and it was like yeah but I need to tell them that we don't have such and such.
Speaker 1:And it was like yeah, but I need to tell them that we don't have such and such. We'll do it in such a way that you're stating it positively, that you're not saying I can't. I don't saying I do and I can. You know, yeah, reminds me of the get to versus have to.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I get to do this versus have to do this.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But then you know, and above all, you know, follow through on your commitments. When you make a commitment, follow through with it. Be good, you know your word is your bond and and honor your word. Do what you say you're going to do, be honest, be you know, be trustful. Um, you know our, our core values are service, value, character and commitment. Value, character and commitment. And you know we're there to serve our clients, we're there to provide value for what we do. The biggest thing is character. We hire people that we try to hire people of good character, because that solves a lot of things. And then you know, we honor our commitment and sometimes that's not easy to do.
Speaker 3:And the listeners can't see this, but I mean, you got a ton of notes. You didn't have to look down for that part. That's ingrained in you, yeah, which means those values are more than words on a wall.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then the other person I'd mention that's been a mentor for 20 years now is a guy by the name of James Talafuse. I don't know if you know him.
Speaker 2:Don't yeah.
Speaker 1:James. I call him my life coach. He's kind of semi-retired I don't know if you can ever figure out from him just exactly what it is. He's a former NCAA Division. I basketball referee back in the, I guess the 80s or 90s, I'm not sure somewhere back in there full of all kinds of stories. But back in the aughts several of us went through some of his personal development classes and I did. It was like an eight-week class deal on personal development about learning how to set goals, how to set SMART goals, you know, and how to achieve your goals, and just giving us some tools for doing all that sort of thing. But you know, I took that one session from him but for 20 years, probably every six months he still calls me or I call him, you know, and joke with one another, talk with one another. You know he's checking on me, see how I'm doing and you know needling me in some way or another. That's unreal and just an amazing guy you think he does that with everyone.
Speaker 1:I don't know. I don't know if he does or not, but I know he does it with a few of the people in our company that went through his class. Wow, so yeah, he's. Hats off to that hustle, yeah.
Speaker 2:I was just sort of.
Speaker 3:That's so hard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was just sort of that's so hard. Yeah, I was just like I do a pretty good job of catching up with folks and pinging in, checking in and stuff, but the compounding effect of that over 20 years is. It's a lot of people to check in on, yeah. So, yeah, hats off to the hustle of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, amazing guy. Yeah, I mentioned the folks at Hill and Wilkinson. I was only there for not even quite three years, but he, they uh taught me about empower. You know, really, what I saw was their ability to empower people and trust their people, um, and having their backs and elevating them, you know uh and uh, I was really.
Speaker 1:It really struck me, you know how they were, how they had an eye for taking, uh, younger people and putting them in areas of responsibility. I was like, wow, you know, cause it and being successful at it, that that really impressed me and I think that's the way that they still operate and yet still be humble, and those sorts of things. And then, who else the other person I would mention is not related to construction at all, but was related to a church that Kay and I went to for a number of years. I have a friend named Aaron Binsko. Aaron's still at Bentree Bible Fellowship up in Carrollton on the edge of Plano, and he's an artist, photographer, phenomenal.
Speaker 1:I was part of an art group for a number of years and designed sets for stage. I designed sets, helped build sets for certain big holidays, whether it was Christmas or Easter or whatever. We would do certain things on stage, or if there was a preaching series, we would design and build and whatever that would help to back up that preaching series. And Aaron is, I think, taught me. He would say I taught him, but he taught me. You know that about being an artist, about working on a team of people, because he was taking all these people from wide variety of backgrounds. They were all participating in this fine arts group and figuring out how to do amazing things to support our series, our Christmas deal or Easter deal or whatever it was. But he's, you know, I, I view him as a mentor and he views me as a mentor, so Pretty good symbiotic relationship.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so you're about to get, so we're recording this on Tuesday. You have a. You have a big day tomorrow, yeah. So you're about to get, so we're recording this on Tuesday. You have a. You have a big day tomorrow, yeah. And and then you know, it's going to make you, you know, kind of cringe a little bit, probably, because getting the spotlight a little bit, but it also bring you great joy, yeah, and you get. You get other people to say the things you just said about your mentors. Yeah, and so going into this.
Speaker 1:There was one person I left out.
Speaker 3:Oh, hit it.
Speaker 1:If it doesn't make me cry, which is Steve Bruiser, which you mentioned because he did this podcast a while back. Back, and steve, uh, he was there when I went to work for spring valley. Um, in 2009 or 2008 2009 he left spring valley, went to chicago to, uh, be closer to his dad, who was in ill health at the time, and, and while he was gone, I left spring valley, went to Hill and Wilkinson. Then he came back to Spring Valley in 2013 and grabbed me and six months later I was back at Spring Valley. But he's just a dear friend and he and his wife and me and Kay have traveled together, had a lot of fine dining experiences together, um, and I probably, uh, I'll probably miss him more than anybody.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I'm I know the feelings mutual for sure.
Speaker 1:But at the same time it's like you're not dying, richard.
Speaker 3:No, this isn't an eulogy.
Speaker 1:Bruiser's still there. Yeah, you know. Yeah, and that's what I have to keep reminding myself is like this is just a paradigm change. This is just a change of where you're going to be every morning.
Speaker 3:It's a chapter in the book. Yeah, book's not done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it it speaking of tomorrow? It just feels so final.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, and it is it is a final.
Speaker 1:It is the final page of of this part of the book.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 2:It has, man. There's a lot of emotion that goes into it and I can't even imagine but you've, we've all had those like you graduated from high school and it was not the same feeling, but it was like this is over, yeah and call.
Speaker 2:It is this and that and this is over and that space is over and kids left home and that was over. It's just it's. It is. It is part of life, but it is not final. And yeah, the uh, I don't know. I can only see it through the lens of my father-in-law, who's retired. He still sees all his buddies from Exxon, like they keep up. They don't go to work together at the same time anymore, but they still keep up because they're friends, you know, and it's different, but I think it'd still be good.
Speaker 1:Well, and you know, I'm still expected and hope to hope to be seen on at taco Tuesday with with a bunch of the guys that go to lunch at the little taco place I you know, as I mentioned, they're still after me about showing up on Friday mornings to be their uh facilitator, slash narrator and um, so we'll see Uh. But at the same time, I also feel like I need to give them some space, totally, you know, and and to give Kay and I some space too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a win-win.
Speaker 1:So, but uh, certainly don't expect to just walk away and never go back. That'd be terrible.
Speaker 3:Um, Give me some time to reframe this question. Yeah Uh, with with your legacy, specifically in the career and how it shapes people's lives. But let's say, somebody's in that seat 20 years from now and you're on their list of folks that have impacted their life. What are you hoping they're saying?
Speaker 2:Ooh, that's a good way to come at that. I like that. Cal Hmm. Well, cal Hmm.
Speaker 1:Well, I hope that they're saying that what I taught them was to all the things I've talked about about being you know what it takes to, about being a good estimator. I hope that they're saying that I taught them to be calm. I didn't talk about that, but that's one of the things about me that people say about me is I, I'm just really calm in the midst of the storm and I don't I don't necessarily feel that way, but being able to to bring that calmness, bring that steadiness, um, uh, to the room and uh, but more than anything, you know, uh, I hope that it's that I loved God, that I love God with all my heart and that I love my neighbor and that I was kind.
Speaker 1:So a wise guy, a wise man, not a wise guy, a wise man, not a wise guy, a wise man.
Speaker 2:It's a wise guy.
Speaker 1:Who was a counselor to K and I, named Frank Wickern, Wise, wise guy, Wise, wise man. He told me when I was going through some some difficult times of not dealing with pressure real well and just being really overwhelmed. You know, he said you spend the first half of your life becoming somebody and you spend the second half of your life becoming nobody half of your life becoming nobody. When he first told me that, and when I tell people that I'm like, well, I don't want to be a nobody. Who wants to be a nobody? It's not about that. It's not Put a positive spin on it. It's about elevating those around you. It's about making them better. Um, it's about you know, and in that, um, you know, you're becoming a nobody. Does that make sense? Oh yeah, that makes perfect sense.
Speaker 2:That makes perfect sense. It makes perfect sense, I, I, I'll tell a story, as Kev says sometimes what is it I? Does that make sense? Oh yeah, it makes perfect sense. It makes perfect sense. It makes perfect sense. I'll tell a story, as Kev says sometimes what is it? I tell a story just to tell a story. But I was talking to somebody at the firm the other day about, I mean, I'm at the mid, I'm at the half, I'm just past halftime, right, and I was telling somebody the other day that, like what the next 20 years looks like is me trying to get to a spot to where, when I retire, people say who? Because I've let go of it, I've taught everybody everything I know. It's a different way of saying what you're saying is you spend the first half being somebody and the second half becoming nobody Becoming somebody, second half becoming nobody because you've elevated everybody around you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's beautiful, like it really is man.
Speaker 3:It really is, and you're walking that. So I know you're about to get blitzed with praise tomorrow and it's going to be awesome and it's going to be emotional, oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:This is this was you know. I don't know if it's a good precursor yeah.
Speaker 3:It wasn't even supposed to be this week, but here we are. Yeah, this is like the appetizer for the big dinner tomorrow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you got me right on the verge, didn't? You Got me on the verge of going over the cliff or going up the mountain, or wherever it is I'm headed, yeah.
Speaker 3:Buckle up for tomorrow. You deserve every second of it because I know it's going to be an amazing experience and worthwhile praise. From the time I've gotten to know you, you're an amazing person. We need more of you in the industry, and I know I mean the people coming into this industry, the fact that you're so energized about them. That matters, because they're not getting that from everybody in your age group.
Speaker 1:They're not One of the things I'm looking forward to is there's a young man who's finishing up his education at A&M, I think. He graduates in December. He interned with us last summer and he's coming to the little celebration they're throwing for me tomorrow afternoon, coming to the little celebration they're throwing for me tomorrow afternoon and, you know, I'm hoping he has an interest in coming to work for us. I'm hoping that he will because I think he'd be an awesome addition. You know, and I hope that you know in some way that I can leave them with. You know, another young person you know to another young person uh, you know to to start filling back, filling the ranks.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and then invoice bruiser recruiting fee from a third party company.
Speaker 2:Ooh, good idea. Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 3:He said he's going to get a text from him when he hears that part. Kev, come on, man Worth it.
Speaker 2:Yep, okay, man, I'm so excited for you for, like, this next season, but, like as crazy as tomorrow is going to be, I'm so excited for you about tomorrow. It's going to be great, it's going to be sad, it's going to be happy, it's going to be sad, it's going to be weird, it's going to be all of it.
Speaker 2:There's going to be cake, yeah that's a bonus, especially for the past week it has already been all of it, but tomorrow it really, you know, all comes to a conclusion. Well, normally pull the reins on this. Normally we end with like a closing nugget or something. But I don't even feel like we'd try it, unless you've got a zillion words on pages over there. I don't have my glasses on, so I can't even see them. Words on pages over there. I don't have my glasses on, so I can't even see them. But, um man, we've done. I just feel like we do a disservice to the magnanimous nature of what we just did by trying to put a pin on it unless you've got a pin to put on it um, you know and it I don't know if this is a good pin or not.
Speaker 1:you may you end up editing this out, I don't know.
Speaker 2:No, we don't edit, I'm just kidding, okay, well.
Speaker 1:I know that in past episodes you ask people for book recommendations.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:So I've got four. Actually One's just for fun. Somebody that I love to read is a guy named Martin Walker, who this is fiction, but he's written a number of novels in what we call the Bruno series, because the main character is Bruno, and it takes place in France, a small little fictional village in France in the countryside, and they're murder mysteries, but they also have a lot to do with food, you know, and we started out at one of the things I mentioned about myself, about myself as being an aspiring chef, and so he talks a lot of, there's a lot of discussion about French wines and food and and and all sorts of lovely things like that.
Speaker 1:So that's my fictional recommendation. Okay, daniel James Brown wrote a book a few years ago called Facing excuse me, facing the Mountain, about the Japanese Americans in World War II, which you know is a personal thing to me, but is an awesome book talking about specifically four different people and their experience during World War II. And these were all real people, this is not fiction. But some of these were Japanese Americans and some of their families were interred in camps and yet they were still serving their country in the military, serving in the 442nd, which was the Japanese American division that fought in Italy a lot and up into Europe. Two of my uncles, of my mom's brothers, both served in the 442nd as well.
Speaker 1:Book about endurance and resistance and tolerance and patriotism and overcoming adversity and commitment and family and standing on principles, anyway. So there's that one. John Pavlovitz third book John Pavlovitz wrote a book called If God is Love, don't Be a Jerk, and I can't say I've read the whole book. I just love the title and I love the subtitle is, which is Thou Shalt Not Be Horrible. So recommend that book. And then the third, fourth one is one of my favorite books, by an author named Donald Miller, who wrote a variety of books, but my favorite is one called Blue.
Speaker 1:Like Jazz, I've heard of that, yeah, and it's his story of his faith journey and his oh kind of how he came through faith, came to faith, came through doubt and learning from others that weren't even believers but were some of the kindest people that he came across and that things are not always what they seem and that we don't need to be as rigid as we sometimes are. And I love the way that he writes, but I love the message that he delivers as well. So those are my four book recommendations.
Speaker 3:And beyond that. I would just tell people, be kind, I can argue with that pin.
Speaker 2:No, that's great. It's been so fun just getting to know you for a couple hours. I know I said it earlier, but I'll say it again I'm so genuinely excited for you. Well, I appreciate it. I appreciate the chance to do this. Yeah, thanks for hanging out, man. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Well, I appreciate it, I appreciate the chance to do this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for hanging out, man, thank you, thank you, richard. Thank you, richard.