Learnings and Missteps
The Learnings and Missteps Podcast is about unconventional roads to success and the life lessons learned along the way.
You will find a library of interviews packed with actionable take aways that you can apply as you progress on your career path.
Through these interviews you will learn about the buttons you can push to be a better leader, launch a business, and build your influence.
Find yourself in their stories and know that your path is still ahead of you.
Learnings and Missteps
Herb Sargent on The Legacy of Investing in People
Join us for a profound exploration of faith, vulnerability, and the transformative power of investing in people. In this engaging episode, we sit down with Herb, a visionary CEO in the construction industry, who shares his journey from humble beginnings to leading a successful business with a legacy spanning nearly a century. Herb digs deep into his family's history, sharing invaluable lessons learned from the journals of his grandfather and father, both of whom laid the groundwork for a meaningful company culture rooted in community and trust.
Throughout this heartfelt conversation, we examine the importance of empowering individuals and fostering a culture that celebrates growth. Herb recounts personal experiences battling self-doubt and the inspiration he found in the community that ultimately redirected his life. His candid reflections on mental health, particularly the challenges he faced, shed light on why creating spaces for vulnerability is essential in today's work environment.
We also delve into Herb's proactive workforce development initiatives, illustrating how teaching employees invaluable life skills can lead to holistic success. This episode invites listeners to rethink their approach to leadership, emphasizing that true success relies not just on profits but also on the dignity and well-being of those who contribute.
As we wrap up, Herb leaves us with a powerful message about the significance of faith and the promise of leading with love and compassion. Whether you're in a leadership position or just beginning your career, there's something here for everyone to ponder on their journey to making a positive impact. Tune in, get inspired, and discover the lasting change that comes from investing in people. Don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share this transformative experience with others!
Connect with Herb at:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/herb-sargent-29a791152/
Make yourself a priority and get more done: https://www.depthbuilder.com/do-the-damn-thing
Download a PDF copy of Becoming the Promise You are Intended to Be
https://www.depthbuilder.com/books
There were no highways, there were no roads, literally just horse and wagon trails.
Speaker 2:Because my life is so damn amazing, herb, and it would not be this amazing had it not been for the people that decided to invest in me.
Speaker 1:People that worked with me. They bet on a three-legged horse and I was like, why would you bet on a three-legged horse? But they did. I spent the better part of a half century running away from God and when my life got upended, natasha, our CFO, was the one that said to me you need community, like you had to come to church.
Speaker 2:What is going on L&M family If you can't tell. I'm like jumping for joy and I was kind of nervous and all riled up about today's interview because this is the second time I got to spend some time with him. He's been very generous and he's a baller like he's an OG. I send out a questionnaire of like, how do you want me to introduce you? And evidence of him being an OG was just Herb, and I love that because he's been there and he doesn't need to do need all the showers of praise, but I'm going to do it anyway.
Speaker 2:So Mr Herb has 45 years in the construction industry. He's impacted hundreds and hundreds of careers, which is one of the things that really caught my attention about the way he operates his business and his forward thinking or at least maybe legacy mindset of what he's doing in the construction business. And even though he's back where he started, he is the ceo of sargent. He's got tons of experience. I know we're going to get some beautiful, beautiful nuggets about what that is and if you're new here, this is the learnings and missteps podcast, where you get to see how real people just like you are sharing their gifts and talents to leave this world better than they found it. I'm Jesse, your selfish servant, and you're about to get to know Mr Herb. Mr Herb, how are you doing, sir?
Speaker 1:Hey, jesse, so glad to talk to you again. I'm really disappointed. I saw you posted somewhere that you took somebody out with those famous tacos you promised me, but we couldn't make it work that day I was hoping to get back to San Antonio for those tacos, but I did appreciate you taking time to meet with me on a Sunday afternoon. Yeah, that was awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's one of those things missed opportunities that I'm going to have to check off the list because we ended up connecting on a Sunday and that taco place Eddie's Taco House they're closed on Sundays thing on a Sunday, and that taco place Eddie's Taco House, they're closed on Sundays. So somehow or some way we're going to make it happen. But you were ultra generous with your time. We hung out, had dinner, you shared some insights not some like lots of insights and you know, for me as a, we'll say, a budding entrepreneur, having that time with you really, I'll just say, boosted my confidence and solidified the ground underneath my feet to say, ok, I'm not doing this entirely wrong, especially with somebody of your stature. To gift me with that much time and that much insight was amazing.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't know about my stature, but I will say this I felt like it was my privilege to spend the time with you and hear your story, because it's a compelling story too. There's a lot of really great stories in this business. You know that are ground up stories, right.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, yes. So, speaking of stories in the business, everybody wants to know how easy is it to write the 100th year anniversary book?
Speaker 1:You know I'll be honest with you. It's been easier than I thought it was going to be.
Speaker 2:Really Good.
Speaker 1:I have these fits and starts where I pile a layer on it every day for four weeks and then not touch it for a month and then work on it again.
Speaker 1:So I just started on it again today I'm so fortunate that my grandfather kept a journal, my dad kept a journal, so I had those assets to fall back on and those kind of carry me in overlap to the time when I started in the business. So you know, and of course my knowledge of the business, my firsthand knowledge, is much denser than his. What I'm finding is, the further in time I get the closest to now we get, the denser and denser the information becomes. I've got to figure out the right balance because I want't I want to be careful that I don't give the early history the short sheet. You know, I want to make sure everything gets represented right. But frankly, some of the more recent history in the company has been, at least to today's people, some of the most important. So I've got all the background information that I really need to write it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So what's it like? Like going through your grandfather and your father's journals. What is that experience like? I just have no concept. Like that seems pretty, it feels like it would be intense.
Speaker 1:It can be. Yeah, my granddad, my grandmother, was very ill Shortly after they had kids. She had some mental illnesses as well as some physical illnesses and it shows up in his journal and while he had health that came in every day and actually really helped. He took her everywhere he went. If he drove to Florida he'd load her in the car and drive to Florida. They usually drove even as wide all that much. So reading some parts of that, you know his life and how difficult life must have been for him with five children, and his wife was really I'm going to say this about Wright with respect to her but he couldn't depend on her being there because of her illness. It was pretty severe and the fact that he built this business starting at a time when really there were no highways, there were no roads to speak of, I mean literally just horse and wagon trails.
Speaker 1:And he built this business in that period with five kids and that situation. It really tells a story about a guy that was not only really ingenious in his own way, really humble guy, super humble guy, but just a guy that never got overexcited. He was so level and in fact I was reading earlier today one of the New England instructions in the story and the writer was kind of saying, like we're trying to picture Herb on a job site where he's, you know, demeaning and swearing at all the men, like apparently they had witnessed elsewhere, and like we can't picture this with this guy. So a lot of this stuff is really great and he was such a great mentor to me. Uh, he passed away around. I think I was 43, so I knew him a good long time of my life, uh, and we spent a lot of time together so yeah, you've got a collection of journals that your grandfather wrote, a collection of journals that your father wrote.
Speaker 2:Was that kind of a practice like hey, let's document our thoughts so that we can pass it on to the next generation, or was it just something that kind of worked out that way?
Speaker 1:I think it just worked out that way. I don't think either one of them thought, you know, like in 1943, when my grandfather started his journals been in business 17 years but still a very small business I don't think he thought anybody was going to be referring back and writing the 100th anniversary book and that this would be handy to them. At the time I don't really know what his thought process was. I don't really know what his thought process was and there were some periods across the decades where you know, he'd miss nine months of a year and he'd pick it up again and say sorry, I missed the last nine months or something like that. Yeah, yeah, they were mostly factual things. Like my grandfathers were really only four or five lines. So they're just like here's what happened.
Speaker 1:Today my dad has gotten into more detail, but still factual stuff. It wasn't neither one of them were like how they're feeling or not, like journaling in a therapeutic sense. It was more journaling in just kind of a record-keeping sense. But my dad's are much more detailed, much his could take up half a page, but he frankly I was going to say he had a little going on, but I guess technically he did, but he had different technologies to help him, like the telephone, the computer, the automobile, the airplane, that my grandfather did not have early on.
Speaker 2:Wow, and so being able to take that snapshot, or a snapshot of back then, what are some consistent things that transferred to now, with or without the technology? There's got to be some like human dynamic stuff that they're like yep, it was the same then as it is now. That's such a great question and when? I can't remember if I've told you this, but before you get to know we're going to do the L&M family member, shout out. This one goes out to Miss Claudia.
Speaker 2:Miss Claudia says I had a wonderful opportunity yesterday to join a group of industry rock stars in their pursuit of continuous improvement. Jesse's time management workshop is just what I needed to get 2025 started with the right mindset. Claudia, thank you for taking the time to leave that message, because it just made me happy, because I don't want to waste people's time and I'm glad that you had a good time and folks you already know hit me up, leave a comment, leave a review, so that I can take the opportunity to shout you out in the future and so that you boost my ego just a little bit, not too much, just a little bit. I just love to know who's out there listening and getting value from these conversations.
Speaker 1:My dad and my uncle sold the business in 1998. And then I bought it back in 2005. And when we were combining my company with that company, we had a two-day retreat and one of the questions was okay, like, the tools we have today to work with don't even resemble what they had back then. Like it was small cable shovels and two-yard dump trucks. And now we're dealing with, you know, sometimes 50, 100, 50, 200 ton excavators, 60-yard load trucks. We have GPS now. Back then it was tape measures and the hand level in great states.
Speaker 1:What we were building back then was roads and airports primarily. There were no landfills being built. Back then there was barely any commercial work being done of any scale, so it was almost all infrastructure type work. Compared to now, we build landfills, airports, highways, commercial data centers right, I mean stuff like this and we've even drained it. So the tools we had then and now are totally different. What we've built then and now are totally different.
Speaker 1:And so we realized that and we said okay, what has been the same for all these years? What has been the same? And basically what we came up with is we need to invest in people. That's one of the same things, because Herb was a very staunch investor in people. We have to do the right thing, regardless if anybody's watching or not. We've got to do the right thing. We've got to always hone our craft. We've got to get better every day at what we do, and these are our values. We've got to win in the field, and winning in the field means everybody. This part of the project wins, regardless of where you are. If you're the owner, you feel like we're going to show up with a spirit of execution that says we're going to win this for you. And those are the four things that we wrote down, that we codified as our core values.
Speaker 2:Nice. The one thing that really comes across is invest in people, and I say it really comes across because I'm totally biased in that direction, right, I know that. Great, and because my life is so damn amazing, herb. And it would not be this amazing had it not been for the people that decided to invest in me, and there were periods of time when it was a bad investment and they did it anyway.
Speaker 1:I say, mike, you know people that work with me. They bet on a three-legged horse. And you know I was like why would you bet on a three-legged horse? But they did. And so when you recognize that wait a minute, I'm a three-legged horse, I better run my ass off. I mean that investment in you propels you to do things more and better and you want to respect that investment that they're putting in you and not let them down.
Speaker 2:That's to me a big yes, yes, no, that's exactly right.
Speaker 2:I'm like, okay, they see something, I'm gonna try like hell, just so they don't they ain't wasting their time.
Speaker 2:And it turned into something. Yeah, now, philosophically, I think most people would say, yeah, that's a great idea. But when it comes to operating a business, I mean you're saying it's one of your four core values, but you're not just saying it, because you have a whole workforce development program that can not just go to this class, but you help build careers and lives, like that is part of the system within your organization. That's a different thing than saying we believe in people, we're going to invest in them, and so, in terms of developing that thing because we know where it came from and I applaud you not just for listing that Maybe you have the time horizon to say what was true then, that is true now, which is brilliant, and maybe a lot of organizations don't have that, but there's still a level of commitment and sacrifice and courage that a leader has to make to actually invest dollars that help develop, nurture and groom people. Was that just an easy press of a button? What was that like for you?
Speaker 1:So, to be fair about our values, you know there have been periods in time where we have not been very good at them, or there have been, there has been a year when all our jobs didn't necessarily live up to those values, right? So, just to be fair about us, there was a period where we did not invest in people that much, and I will tell you that I've said this and posted this online my biggest mistake of my career is going through the Great Recession and not being at an altitude. We were flying low, not being at an altitude that allowed us to see 20 years ahead, and instead of investing in people during that period because we didn't have the financial capacity to do that like we wanted to we were, frankly, just trying to keep the plane in the air for the next mile frankly, just trying to keep the plane in the air for the next mile and so we did not invest much from late, let's say, 2010 to 2014. And it became clear to me that, you know, if we were going to be an organization that was durable, that was going to be sustainable, we need people, and in 2010, 10% of our people were under 25 years old and 34% were under 40. So 66% were over 40.
Speaker 1:And in 2015, I think it was, I sat down with one of our regional managers, kevin Gord, a real good friend of mine. He and I started laboring together in 1983. And I said to Kevin I need to do something different, we need to bring some people in and I need you to be our guy, our workforce advancement guy that goes to the high school and brings people in and we're going to try to do 15, 20 people a year and bring in immediate high school grads and and try to try to build our workforce back up. And and he said I don't think that's going to help us next year. And I said Canada, it's not next, it's not for next year, it's for 2025. It's for this year that we're in now. And so now our under 25 component this is field work only is 25% versus 10% in 2012. It's at 25% now and our under 40 component went from 36% almost 56%. So we're in that range. So that's in a growing workforce number, right? It's not like we just said well, let's let all the old guys you know die off or hit with all the old guys. That's a growing component of the growing workforce.
Speaker 1:And I created Kevin and Pete Parizeau in our office, and my team, eric Ritchie and Tasha Gardner, for believing in that investment. When those investments started to gel in people, that's when we started really to take off as a company again from 2018, 19, 20, 21 to now. And we've really just started taking off as a company and I've shown our corporate altitude from 2005 to 2025 at the Build-A-Lit Area in our old summit and, you know, showed our people getting smaller and smaller and smaller through the recession and then we kind of came out of the recession. It shot up a little bit, but then we outgrew our people and so I said, all right, now's the time we got to invest and as we grow, those people and they become players that were, you know, in the AAA I use a lot of sports analogies AAA baseball players we had them playing at the big league level for a while, but now they're playing at the big league level because we've really focused a lot of attention on them came in from high school and put them through this academy.
Speaker 1:We had Two people in specific I can think of that are both senior forward for us. They'll be superintendents before long and you know these guys, they came out of high school Just needed a job. Right and our guys Pete and Karen, they'll bring them in and they start. They're teaching them how to cook chicken. They teach them how to go get groceries you know how to get lunch and breakfast on 50 bucks a week and they literally make the budget out. They take them to the grocery store, they buy the food, they come back.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:And they put together lunches. They teach them how to check into the hotel and not track dirt all over the place, how to be respectful, check into the hotel, how to set up a checking account, making sure that public health accounts are set up, and it's so much more than just what we can get out of them. It's really the way we see it. There's the professional piece that most companies are interested in, there's the relational piece, the financial piece, the physical piece and then the mental piece. You know we wanted to have margins of safety across all five of those, if we can.
Speaker 1:My goodness You've probably heard stories over and over and over, and you may have heard it yourself. I know I have. The biggest stress I had in a marriage was financial early on. Yeah Right, and it's okay if we can figure out the financial piece and make that go away as a hill we've got to shed blood on, you know, between our families. If we can make that in a way we can focus on the other things that really matter, like our relationship, our children, our families, our friends, that sort of stuff. That's the way.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So two things huge, one division, right. Like the foresight to play the super, super long game Cause I love that Like this ain't going to help us next year yeah, you're right, this is for 10, 15 years down the road and like just the courage that that takes real courage to to make that decision, cause I'm sure there were more than one, at least more than one person saying what the hell are we doing here? This isn't solving our problem right now. Second, you don't just have a workforce development program, you have a program that develops the whole person.
Speaker 2:Based on what you told me, because, man, you know, when I hit traveling jobs you may have never heard this story before from anybody, but the first time I got hit for some traveling work, they gave me the per diem before I went to like so that I could pay for my hotel and all this stuff. And guess what it lasted me? One night it was gone. I went and had a blast and I was eating bologna and ramen for 10 days because I just had. No, it was party money. It was like I had no right force, right, like I was thinking about right now I got a few hundred extra bucks. I'm gonna have to sleep in the truck now and I'm gonna eat bologna and this is what it's gonna be. It's easy because I've been in in this position where I said, well, it's not my fault, they don't know how to manage their money, and so for you guys to take ownership of that and say let's teach them how to be successful with this bucket of resources that they have is tremendous.
Speaker 1:I've seen it too many times. I had one of our one of our employees been with us over 50 years, came to me probably four years ago. One of our employees has been with us over 50 years. He came to me probably four years ago. He said if you gave me $150,000, I could retire. The guy is close to 70. I said you've had a 401k for decades. He said my son's wife had cancer and I drained all my money. Yeah, and so that story is repeated over and over and over stories like it, and so we're trying to teach people through the risk or health savings account, put money away for health through the risk or health savings account. Put money away for health Because if you don't need it now in your 20s, 30s and 40s, you're going to need it when you turn 60s and 70s and this is almost just like another retirement account.
Speaker 2:They can put money in every year, rematch the money.
Speaker 1:Wow, Just another retirement account that they can have another $200,000 to $200,000 in that account. So if they're going to need it someday, right, you and I are going to need it someday for healthcare. And so we're trying to hit them on every and I think, almost to the point where they become tone deaf to it in a way.
Speaker 1:but we try to hit them with all these things at once. We try to okay, now, what about this? And Karen and Pete and Kendall and Tim, our workforce advancement guys, when they go out on the field they talk to these young guys about this stuff and if they don't have it set up, they go okay, let's go in the office, we'll call the NATO office, we'll get this set up. And they take the time to do it. I mean it's just such an important thing because, man, I've said this my whole career If somebody comes and works in this business for 20, 30, 40 years, I mean they're taking a lot out of their body. You know that.
Speaker 1:They ought to be able to retire with a surplus of dignity. I mean they ought to be like this guy that came to me and he knew he wasn't going to get $150,000, but that's not very dignified for him. I feel bad for him. Now we'll do what we can to help him through retirement, work him where we can, but I'd rather have. It's like the same thing of managing hazards versus managing injuries. When we're managing hazards, we're investing attention. When we're monitoring injuries, we're paying attention.
Speaker 2:Yes, oh, my God, I love that distinction.
Speaker 1:It's a huge difference and when we're paying attention to injuries, our attention is off the management piece. We're over here and that's when you know. That's when we cream inside the head or something. We end up taking all our management time and putting it in injury. So the same thing with finance. It's the same thing with all these other things. If we can learn I think I heard it put we need to stop pulling people out of the river and go up river and figure out why they're falling in.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes. Well, it's getting in front of it again and so it's proactive approach to OK. What can we do preemptively to create the conditions we want? If we don't do that, we're going to be in a reactive state. That is not beneficial for anybody in the long term.
Speaker 1:We're paying it but there's no return on. It's like paying taxes. It's like Tony bills that money's gone, there's no return back on it. Right, but if you don't, so it's investment versus paying.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Now for for the folks out there that are listening to this and saying, yeah, sure, that's easy for you to say now how many people do the sergeant employ right now?
Speaker 1:Right now we're around 525.
Speaker 2:now, right now we're around 525, baby 525, and when you, when y'all made the shift to say, okay, we're going to invest in our people that you started developing, because I'm sure the, the workforce development program has evolved over time, every year it changes.
Speaker 1:I mean literally karen and pete take a look at every single year and we survey the people that go through it, every piece of our training. They survey what went right, what went wrong and we make adjustments. Those guys, it will not settle. But I interrupted you.
Speaker 2:No, no, it's beautiful. That's actually a phenomenal point. So the question you're 500 now. You started this a while back. How many people did you have back then?
Speaker 1:We were about 325.
Speaker 2:Okay, so 60-ish percent of where you're at now, and so we're not talking. I mean, we're talking like serious dollars. We're talking people dedicated to manage and develop this program, deliver the training, the follow through, the feedback loop, the whole thing. This is a segment of your business. Would that be a misstatement?
Speaker 1:It's becoming a bigger part of our business. The first year that we did that academy in 2016, I think we had 15 kids who came through it and they cost us $11,000 apiece to put through a six-week course. So it was almost $200 for that. Now we changed it pretty dramatically. Now it's a two-week start and then they go in the field and then they come back for two weeks in the winter, yeah, and so we, instead of just turning them loose, now we have the same set of weeks that we work with, but they get to go out and learn what they don't learn, learn what they don't know, and come back and talk about how they put it into practice and how we can continue to build on that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:It has become a piece of investment for us. The investment people, those guys, when we started this, we had, you know, superintendent forum meeting every year for three or four days, and now we have training at every level multiple times in the wintertime. It just, those guys never stop. They really never stop.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you said winter time a couple of times. Why winter time?
Speaker 1:Oh, we're in Maine, so in Maine quite often we can't work. Some projects you can work, but quite often we can't. Virginia and North Carolina not quite as bad, but it can be a little iffy on work, so we tend to focus that, historically, we need to make hail and the sun shines, which is primarily mid-April to mid-November.
Speaker 2:Got it. I want to point that out right, because I've said it and I've heard it said a bunch of times we just don't have time, but we do. There is time in our seasons and the way the business is operating. Having the whole winter it's a different thing, but I think the principle that anybody can take from this conversation and apply to their business is when there's a downturn, we'll say slower season. What you're doing is you're capitalizing and leveraging that time to further develop your people. Yeah, we are capitalizing and leveraging that time to further develop your people. Yeah, we are.
Speaker 1:I was, though, because I get a lot of comments well, you're a big company, you can afford to do this stuff. I just want to highlight that this is more a posture of intention and wanting to help people, and it is an expensive. In other words, it doesn't have to be expensive, it has to be intentional. So what I mean by that is, if you're a company with five or 10 people, if your heart is coming from the right place, that I'm going to bring people in and I'm going to help them grow, then you will find a way to do it. If your posture is that you'll do it without even knowing and I think that's the way a lot I think probably some of your mentors I know my mentors they didn't say I'm going to mark out an hour on the calendar and call it to her. That was just the way they were right.
Speaker 1:Yes, so if you can motivate your heart to go to that, go to that place. Like the Grinch retires in that posture, I want to grow people. I'm here for people. It doesn't. All it has to be is intentional and not expected.
Speaker 2:I love it and you're 100 percent right. I've had some leaders and I got to admit like I've been ultra, ultra fortunate in the volume of amazing leaders that I've come across that have, for whatever reason, decided to pour into me or maybe, like you're saying, they probably did it for everybody and I just think I was special Right, but it's just the way they rolled, it's just their mindset, the way they operated. They invest in people. And I think now I heard somebody say I was listening to a podcast this morning this money thing. Right, people just want money. You got to give them more money. People are asking for ridiculous amounts in salary and it's no, no, no, no, no. Every job, everything that's out there, there is a dollar amount that somebody's going to get paid. It's not like the differentiator is what else? As an employer, are you offering a value that is exceeding the minimum, which is money that everybody else is giving, and that conversation went into the key or that. Whoever that per the guru secret that was talking is like my promise to people. The thing that I'm offering that value, that per the guru secret that was talking, is like my promise to people, the thing that I'm offering that value point that I'm offering recruits is that I'm going to develop their career. I'm going to support them in reaching the objectives and goals that they have in mind.
Speaker 2:And then the question the interviewer asked so does it have to be in line with the business? And she said no, it's like it would be great if their. Does it have to be in line with the business? And she said no, it's like it would be great if their biggest goals were to be the VP of everything or whatever. But some of them just want to start a new business. Some of them just want to learn another language. Some of them want to start something with their kids. I'm going to help them with that. What do you think about that, herb?
Speaker 1:To me, like our academy that we have. So we put about over 10 years, about 150, 200 people through it. Our retention is about 40%. It's not as high as I'm supposed to say, but you're getting 18-year-olds that don't know really what they want to do, right. So there's that. But at the same time Kevin expressed me concern. You know, geez, we're only got 40 percent and I said that's fine with me, the other 60 percent are going out there.
Speaker 1:At least they know how to attack life. At least they're aware of retirement and planning around retirement. At least we talk to them about relationships a little bit. At least they know that they can. There's such a thing as a food budget that they can make. They understand that there's a day they're going to lose a transmission or a rear end in their truck and they don't want that to become a crisis immediately. They just want to be a problem that they manage. So again, if they have some margin of safety in their life, then that's one law.
Speaker 1:I've got, I say, a young guy who's probably in his mid-40s now, I guess, and he owns a business a couple hours north of us in a small town. He's started his business from scratch and it was a great employee for us. We had really good you you know high hopes for him and the day he gave his notice it was kind of like man, that's too bad, we're going to lose him. But when I heard his plans, you know, I said this is going to be good for him. It's going to be good for his community because he's going to go in there and he's going to employ some people and if there's a project to be built right, somebody's going to build it. So it's not like in the construction world we go create important you know a job that somebody was going to do, no matter what.
Speaker 1:But what we do it with and the way we do it and the way we treat our people and the way they come out of that job is really the important thing to us. And so this guy, josh, that I'm talking about him going to start this little company in Holton Maine is going to be better for the community than somebody else doing it. And so I'm going to do the community things and the employee things that Josh is doing and he's making a huge difference in that whole town up there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 1:I don't know what he wants to do for his future. I mean, he just wants to stay in that town and be a really outstanding member of RECUNER, and he already is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's beautiful Right. If he already is, yeah, and that's beautiful right. I mean that's. You know, I remember having the conflict of I was real critical of people because they didn't want more right. Because I was in charge of the training, the workforce development program for a little bit and I would see potential and talent in people and I would kind of force them down a path, whether they liked it or not. I just decided this is what you're going to do and I'm going to make you do it.
Speaker 2:And a lot of folks, a lot of the guys, are like I don't want to be a foreman, I don't want to be a superintendent, and I would get super irritated Like why not, don't you want more for yourself? Until my buddy, fernando, he pulled me to this. He's like Jesse, here's my deal, I'm involved. He was involved in his motorcycle club. They had a little nonprofit where they did every year, seasonally, four times a year they had a different. They had a bike fair, if you will like, where they would get donations and get a bunch of bikes and assemble the bikes for Christmas and hand them out to the kids in this low-income part of San Antonio and they would do a fan drive during the summer so they could get box fans and distribute them in the community, where they didn't have air conditioning. It's super, super, damn hot and they need some kind of circulation.
Speaker 2:He said, jesse, if I take on this foreman role, I'm not going to be able to spend my time doing these things. And this is more important to me. And I swear when he says like, oh my God, I never considered that there is other ways. There are other ways to contribute to our community beyond just advancing up the organizational chart and that's meaningful. And so I had to. I had to calibrate my, my, my ambition a little bit. After that one, I had to eat a little bit of humble pie and you know I can say for myself personally.
Speaker 1:I told my son this you know my son is not in this business. My son's a musician and I respect that a lot of what he does.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I remember one time we're driving down the road and I used maybe 14, he's 30 now and I said what do you want to do when you grow up? And he said, oh, I don't know. You know you're the third generation of the business and I think it's a time out, time out. You do you, I'm working my luck. Now fast forward 10 years and went through a particularly rough time personally and went through a particularly rough time personally. And I'm talking to him and I said you know this thing about climbing the ladder, that in itself is almost addictive, right?
Speaker 1:And I get that next run, get that next run, and then what you find out is, when you get on that next run, your footing of the ladder is in quicksand. You're not any fucking higher, you're just another run on the ladder. Yeah, you might be higher in the company, but you're lower in life.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:So be careful. What you want and I'm not saying I mean I sure am happy people want and aspire to be management, because our company would be dead without Eric and Tasha and Justin and all these people that are moving up into roles that are going to drive us ahead for the next 20 years, 30 years, but it shouldn't be at the cost of someone's soul.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:It ought to be. All those steps on the ladder ought to contribute to a better human.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:With more dignity, more spirit, not less dignity and less spirit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's a tricky path, right, Because I love that Going up the ladder. I was not going up the ladder, the ladder just kept sinking because my life, my whole life experience was out of whack. It was a disaster because it wasn't for me, until I realized wait a minute, what if I did things that bring me fulfillment? What if I shared the things that I've been blessed with in service to others? And then when I started doing that, it was like, oh my goodness, I mean heck. It put me in front of you Now.
Speaker 2:You mentioned, mentioned maintaining one soul and unfairly, I get to brag I got to get a glimpse or a preview of what your speech was going to be at the BuildWit conference here in San Antonio that you had, as an individual, that I think I don't know maybe hundreds of thousands of men in construction not just men, but I feel like men have that experience because of the expectations and dynamics that are out there around what it is to be a man in construction. And so I'm wondering are you, how do you feel about shining a little bit of light of what you shared at that conference?
Speaker 1:Well, it's out there now. So I think what you're referring to is a project I was on. I was about 23 years old and we were installing sewer in this town really deep, big sewer, like 48 inch concrete pipe, 25 feet deep in the ground. Really really tough situation. I mean, anybody that's listening or watching this knows it works in underground utilities. If you've got pipes that kind of cross each other or skew, it's a nightmare. And we had a water line, an old cast-iron water line that just kind of wandered off in the waterline and we'd break it every day and you know it. Just it was a nightmare. It was cold in the middle of winter. Somebody might say why didn't you write camper water? Because that would have frozen on top of the first night.
Speaker 1:So we were fighting this waterline all the way through and we had to have this job done on the Friday before Christmas. And so we're going along, and this is 1986, so we didn't have all the weather apps we got now, right, we didn't have all this stuff. We didn't have cell phones, we didn't have computers or email or internet or anything. So we're going at it and we get up. We didn't have computers or email or internet or any of that. So we're going at it and we get up in the morning on this Friday and it's snowing like a bastard, I mean a blizzard. And so we know, you know the crew's looking at me and I'm like come on, we've got to get out there and get to work. I'm going with you. So we all go out, we start digging this hole. You get this manhole set, the last manhole, get the pipe in and we need to pour concrete cradle around the manhole and the pipe. But it's a blizzard and there's no way the suppliers are going to sell, you know right.
Speaker 1:So I finally got a hold of one guy. He was like two hours away. They sent the truck and the inspector said you can't use it because that load's hot. It's been in the truck too long. So now it's four in the afternoon and this time of year in Maine it gets dark at four o'clock. It's four in the afternoon, it's dark, it's still snowing like crazy and I had to make the decision to back call the hole so we could open the street out for Christmas and all of that. And we're all in there and we're beating down, we're beating pops, we're back in the office trailer, we're chipping the ice off our clothes and it accumulated. We're soaked to the bone. I look over and the phone. We had a message machine on the phone and it was flashing. I just checked the messaging. It said call me.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I think it said if it's after work you don't call my house. So I said, all right. So I just told everybody you got to take off. Like no cell phones, I could only make the call from the trailer or wait two hours until I got home. So I got everybody out of the trailer and I made the phone call and what I heard was did you get it done? I said no, you know, a fucking five-year-old could read the contract and know this has to be done. We put you on that job because we thought we could trust you. And those two things, those two phrases, one was an assault on my intellect and the other was an assault on my person. They thought they could trust me. And I drove home and all the way home I was writing my suicide note, my brain, because I said to myself at 23 years old if it's this way, I don't want it. The other thing I shared at the conference, at the Dirt Road conferences my childhood was very challenging.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I don't think you know. I say this in no worse than millions of other kids, right? But I say this in no worse than millions of other kids, right? But I say this only because I think people go all those guys. The CEO of a big construction company probably never had a brain in his life. That's not true. But suicide was something that was on my mind as a kid. That's where I could go. That was like a rest area for me.
Speaker 2:Got you Thinking about it.
Speaker 1:I could say you know what, I'm just going to pull over here and think about not being here tomorrow and not ever seeing the ship that I'm seeing, and I never got to the point where I was like starting to plan things out, but it was always a place that I could go and it was almost, I don't know, like I said, it was like a rescue on the highway, and so that's where I went that evening. And I remember I got home my girlfriend. I just kind of walked right past her into the shower because I was freezing my pants off and I heard the shower and I just started bawling Wow. And I walked out and she said are you okay? She noticed my eyes were red and I said yeah, I just got salt in my eyes. Let's go get a beer. Right, that's what we do.
Speaker 1:Yep, it's time for the industry to be different. I guess that's why I told that story. When I got up there to tell that story, I didn't know what I was going to say. Yeah, I didn't know how far I was going to go in telling that story. I just decided you know what? There's no sense of leaving anything on the table now.
Speaker 1:So I told that what I just said. And I'm not I don't really want to be running around the country telling that story, right, and it's not like I'm sure you know, I'm looking for speaking gigs to tell that stuff, but because my kids don't even know that, right, my brother and sister don't even know that story, but it's, it's a real thing. So and it's time those of us in the industry that have faced the real thing and want something different for the new people coming into the industry stood up and talked about it and I was greatly inspired by a guy named Dr Vince Hefele who got up and told a similar story and he was before me and my whole point in that sharing we can do a lot better in our industry. We can read with love.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:We have a chance in this industry to make such a difference for people and in people and the idea that we have to be combative with our people is is asinine and I've never been that way. I've been with people in our company that have been that way. I've personally never been that way. I there's been periods in my career where I probably haven't had the empathy that I should have. But we just gotta love people. We gotta love people.
Speaker 2:We got to love people.
Speaker 1:That's what we're called to do. I mean, there are people out there that do bad things right Somebody recently in our cycle. It's not a bad person, it's a person that's in doing bad things. So, in other words, if that person, if we were able to slab off those behaviors, that's a good person. We're trying to lead people our amount of people in a way that they understand that you don't just have one future. There's an infinite number of futures out there for you and some of them you damn know how to run away from. I mean, you shared with me that you should have run away from some of your futures, and I shared with you that I should have run away from some of my futures, and I think we kind of embrace the wrong future. And what we're just trying to teach our young people is, when you get to this point, this node, this future node you're going to be faced with some decisions. And let's think about decisions and at least make people aware that there are different options.
Speaker 2:Yes, because.
Speaker 1:I think for me, coming out, it was okay, work's over, let's go grab a six-pack of beer. Nobody's going to eat dinner until we all drink a six-pack each.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:I didn't know there was another option. I mean, obviously I did, but from a I'm going to get along with everybody camaraderie standpoint, I'm going to be one of the guys. Standpoint there wasn't another option for me, right, I was going to be one of the guys. Standpoint it wasn't another option for me, right. Frankly, pretty suggestible at that age. A lot of yeah, there are right. So we got to find a way to to be suggestible toward things that we create a better future and greater margins of safety in all those five areas of their lives yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So in terms of showing people that there are options and we get to pick what future we're going down, you sharing that story, which, again, thank you. This is the second time I get to hear it, which I know, or maybe I assume that you're not the only human being that has had that experience in our industry. And then you said it at the Dirt World Summit. Did anybody connect with the story? What was the response in terms of what you shared and how the audience responded?
Speaker 1:So I mean everybody clapped when I was down and that was kind of it, but I did have a few people come over and thank me for sharing that. No, I mean I didn't. I didn't talk to a lot of people. I was approached by a software salesman who wanted me to to give him feedback on his product and that took 15 minutes and literally I'm like dude, you're not reading the room, I just poured my fucking heart out of you. You're one of the there was brutal and I kept saying to him he can talk to you, he can know I want your opinion and I just said I can't help you.
Speaker 1:But there were some other people that you know that came over and you know, heartfelt thank you for sharing and and, I think, a lot of people, even people I work with, you know like we had, I think, 10 people here. You never heard that.
Speaker 2:Wow, wow that was new to them.
Speaker 1:So nobody in my life. I think you might have been the first one that I told that stuff. That was right before man. So nobody in my life knew that stuff. I mean, they may have known that the phone call happened, but not that I was going home writing my suicide note.
Speaker 2:Right, right, well, again I get to brag, but I'm ultra, ultra grateful that you shared that with me before and now again. And what I want the L&M family members out there to learn or take away is you're not alone. And by sharing it and what I love is you're sharing it to help people say we got to do better. You're sharing it to help people say we got to do better and that Dirt World Summit is ballers, right, like decision makers, influencers, big players in the industry.
Speaker 2:You shared super intimate, vulnerable stuff and said we can do better. And I guarantee you there were people in the room that like, yep, they know they've been there and it gives what I, what I think is the most impressive, and thing that I'm like oh man, I wish I could just read everybody's minds and see how, how many of these futures shifted direction a degree or two because of what you said. But it gives people permission to say I have pain and I don't have to keep propagating that, I don't have to keep spreading it. I can do better because you are.
Speaker 1:Let's break that chain that's bound us. You know like my dad had a chain. My grandpa, whatever, my mom had a chain, let's break that chain. And my dad? I couldn't talk to him about anything, anything. I could not talk to him and I don't know.
Speaker 1:He never talked to me about his childhood, you know, with his mom being so low, you know, emotionally and mentally, he never talked to me about his childhood. They just wouldn't talk. And I just think it's unfortunate you never talk to me about a childhood that just wouldn't draw, and I just think it's unfortunate that people feel like there's not an outlet. Now, the other side of that is, I think when we do see someone that's acting differently, when we just check with them and say, okay, what if you're acting differently? Is there something you want to talk to? We can get you in touch with resources, and I think what they don't need is our advice.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Yes, I don't think anybody needs my advice because I suck at it. I wouldn't have had all the problems I've had in my life if I didn't suck at it. And I mean overall. I've got a friend that says, herb, you've got the worst luck of anybody I know on the earth. You've also got the best luck of anybody I know on the earth and, lucky for you, you're good luck outright with bad luck.
Speaker 1:So I just think it's important to have, for us to model the vulnerability so that people feel comfortable, because it's that vulnerability piece I mean, it's not just when we have major problems like we need it, when we have a team that wants to be created. We need the people to step out, be willing to step out and go. Okay, I'm inching out on the plank here. I'm going to say something and hopefully nobody saws it off behind me, and I have a great example of when we were in strategic planning three or four years ago. One of our guys came up with an idea and I have spent like hundreds of hours in a pickup truck with this guy, so I know him well.
Speaker 1:We as we do in this business, you know, and each other all the time. And the good thing is, you know, I'm just as open to that as he is and we uh, so we work on each other that way. But he came up with this idea. That wasn't a terrible idea, but I didn't like it, sure, and I said that's the stupidest idea you've ever come up with. And so we took a break and we're walking over and Tasha, our CFO, comes over. She says can I talk to you for a second? I said sure. She said, you know, when you just told Doug that that was the stupidest idea you ever came up with, what you did is you told everybody else in that room. You better not say a word.
Speaker 2:Ooh.
Speaker 1:Ouch, and you talk about somebody. I mean, if there's one that I can trust Tasha for and one of them is C-Blindspot yeah, just a wonderful human being, a great friend, a great boy, a great CFO, and when we sat that down I just said, okay, I'm going to form this out right now. You guys need because everybody didn't know that Doug and I had this. You guys need to know that Doug and I got this thing going and we can kind of over-eversize things. And so what I want you to know is you can say stuff and you're not going to be driven back. So you need that. At the job site level, if a laborer has a safety concern, you need him or her to be able to step up and say I saw this and feel 100% comfortable doing that.
Speaker 2:That's the way we get better.
Speaker 1:So that vulnerability thing is something we need to model and we need to cultivate with everybody we work with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%.
Speaker 2:When I was 30 yeah you know, I think there's a few things, because it's easy to think. Vulnerability means spilling my guts in front of everybody and crying and getting messy about my emotions like, maybe, but that let's. It's simple. Simple Get comfortable with saying I don't know and I need help. That's vulnerability.
Speaker 2:And if you're in a leadership position or responsible for guiding a group of people, the way you respond to problems is going to either shut it down Just like the example you gave, not exactly in alignment with this but the way I respond to a problem is going to signal to my team whether it's safe or not to surface problems. When I bite people's heads off, guess what they're going to do. They're going to hide problems. If I receive them and say, oh, what should we do about this? They're going to bring more problems to us. In your example, you have this common relationship with somebody where you can have this kind of dialogue and it's just the way you interact. Now the person that there was two in my head there were two big, giant actions in vulnerability. One was your CFO going out on getting out on that plank, like you said, to say, hey, you know what you just did Because there was risk for that. And then you saying, oh, all right, let me go back and reset the room which is profound.
Speaker 1:The only way you do is fall on your sword Right. We had a superintendent that that had some safety issues. We had a superintendent that had some safety issues and I heard through the grapevine that there was actually they were actually running a pool when somebody was going to be seriously injured on his job.
Speaker 1:Oh God, yeah, yeah, so I went to him and I said I want you to know what's going on.
Speaker 1:I want you to know what he said about you, because I don't think this is you, but the you talk to us makes people feel like they can't bring things up, and the only way you can do this, the only way you can do this, is go out there and fall on your own soil and say I understand that this has been said about me. I'm hurt by it, but I'm sure it's not just being made up Like this, isn't just some just being made up, and that also begins to. And he did that and the crew respected him for it. But he also changed his behavior, right, he changed the way he addressed people. He changed his behavior and suddenly now this guy's one of our leaders in terms of safety, in terms of people respecting his safety prowess. And the other thing about that vulnerability thing is initiative is really tied closely to it. So if you take the initiative on, let's just say, jesse, you're supposed to mow my lawn once a week, but you notice that it's tall five days in. That's what happens in May, right?
Speaker 2:So you go.
Speaker 1:Hey, you know everybody came over to mow your lawn five days in. But you know, I hope you don't mind and I go. What the hell are you thinking? You mow my lawn once every seven days and don't bother me again about what are you going to do.
Speaker 1:You're going to mow my lawn in seven days, but also if you see something wrong, you're probably going to keep shut about it because you don't want to get right 100% so there's vulnerability in initiative and when you start to slam off that vulnerability, when you start to punish people for it and kind of take initiative, it's then okay, we're going to stay in safe zone, we're going to stay 15 feet 15% behind that margin of safety and we're not going to give 15 feet 15% behind.
Speaker 2:You know that, that margin of safety.
Speaker 1:And we're not going to give anything more than what you just paid me for.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yep, I love that there is vulnerability in initiative, because there is, oh my goodness, oh, all right, mr Herb. So you've had. I got the final question coming up. It's an easy one, all right, you. You've had tremendous impact in the industry, in people's lives and careers in your community. You're writing the 100th year anniversary book, which I think like that. That's probably one of those experiences that there's a very, very small number of people that even had to wrestle with that idea, and so, because of the years of experience and growth that you've had, I think this question is going to be a piece of cake, but super, super meaningful for everybody out there listening. So here's the question what is the promise you are intended to be, mr Herb?
Speaker 1:What is the promise I am intended to be?
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:That's a twist of question, so I guess the way I'm reading that, I'm going to rephrase the question what is God intended? I would say what God intends me to be is someone that hopefully leads other people to understand that he's the place you need to go. He's the one they need to know, that you can reach out to him and he listens, and that's. I'll put it this way.
Speaker 1:I spent the better part of a half century running away from God and when my life got upended, you know, 12, 13 years ago, tasha, our CFO, was the one that said to me you need community, like you had to come to church. And I went to church with her and I told you earlier that suicide was just that off-ramp for me. It was a rest area for me. I don't know how many times I would have gotten off that rest area without starting to plan it, without starting to go further with it. But she invited me to church and, just so happened, her daughter, who was 14 or 15 at the time, played guitar and she got up and did a solo and it was like everybody else in that church moved aside and she was singing directly to me oh, wow.
Speaker 1:And that's the day that. I mean, I always believed in God, but I always ran away from God, and that's the way I. That's the day I believe God is telling me it's time for you to come back. I've never had a suicidal thought since. It's never crossed my mind. Wow, I believe God supplanted all that stuff.
Speaker 2:Set the stage and say come on home, herb.
Speaker 1:So if you ask me what I'm, you know I don't remember the question exactly, but I think I'm intended to help people see what can be if you have faith.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, amazing, amazing. I know I am not shocked that you would have such a deep and meaningful response to the question. Did you have fun?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I appreciate it Seriously. It is a privilege, and you mentioned that not many people get to write a 100th anniversary book and it made me feel like damn, I haven't been grateful enough for that privilege. Yeah, I mean, and that's such a privilege. But it's also a privilege to talk to you again and be here with you and I'm kind of looking forward to those real tacos when I get back to San.