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As you know, Ariat is the official Dirt Talk podcast sponsor and at this point we've talked plenty about their footwear, their workwear. But now it is winter and boy is it cold. It was 17 degrees this morning. I had to warm the truck up. But just because it's cold does not mean the work stops. So to get the job done, you need the best, warmest work wear possible. And Ariat has a long list of outerwear, amazing jackets, pants and other goods available now. You can shop at their website, ariat.com dirt talk that is ariat.com dirt talk welcome everybody to another Dirt Talk podcast, Monday edition. We are going to be. Not we, I am going to be answering some of your questions that we've had submitted. If you have questions that you would like discussed or answered on the podcast in the future, you can send them to us@dirk talkilldwit.com we would love to hear from you. And I will say I might not be the most energetic today because I just got back from abroad yesterday dealing with the 16 hour time difference. But we're doing our best. We've got podcasts, record and business to do and that is why I am here. So to get into it right away, first question, what is the best quality a young leader can have? And I don't know if they're to this one. I don't know if there's a single best quality. But if I were to pick one thing, the very first thing that comes to mind that's actually served me quite well is consistency. I don't think most people are not consistent. So if you can be consistent, if you can show up on time every day, every day, that is a big leg up over a lot of people. If you can apply a lot of effort every day, if you can grow a little bit every day, if you're consistent, you will win long term. I have been very consistent since college, in my reading, in my meeting people, in my speaking. This podcast, for example, we didn't start it and then stop it and then start it and then stop it. We've done it every week for years and years and years now. Social media, I've done it every day for seven plus years now. Anything I've done, it's all been down to consistency. The physical stuff I've done, running a hundred miles, doing an Ironman, qualifying for Boston Marathon, all it is is consistency. All it is is consistency. I didn't do anything dramatic to prepare for any one of those things other than just training every day, just doing Something a little bit every day. And I'm a. I'm a huge believer in consistency. So I don't think it's talked about enough in general because it's not sexy, it's often monotonous. But I will tell you, every successful person I've ever met will tell you that that is probably their secret to success, is them doing the same winning things over and over and over and over and over and over again to get to the level they are. So because I've seen that growing up around very successful people, knowing the people I know now, I have chosen to replicate it, um, like I said, for about 10 years now. And I have some results to share to, to show for it now, which is quite exciting. And because I have those results, I'm even more excited about being even more consistent. And I think the results will just compound over time, because that's the great thing about compounding. It adds up over time. It adds up, it adds up, it adds up. And it becomes not just a linear growth curve, but it becomes an exponential growth curve. And while it might not seem like you're making all that much progress in the beginning, you get to see it more and more on the back end, and it is just so, so, so exciting. So, as a young leader, I would say if someone were to come into this company. I just had a conversation with someone about this 30 minutes ago. Hey, just do the basics. Nonstop. That's all I want you to do. Just do the basics. Do the basics, but nonstop, every single day. Basics are done. Basics are done. Basics are done. If you can do that, you can go do anything. It's not as simple as that, but it really is in the grand scheme of things. So if you're a young individual, I would ask yourself, how can I be more consistent? What am I consistent with and what am I inconsistent with? And how can I be more consistent across the board? Because then the good thing about consistency, too, when working with other people is that it builds trust, because trust is consistent action over time. So if you act a certain way repeatedly over a prolonged period of time, now I know, hey, this person is going to deliver xyz and I can trust them, which is so valuable if you can be somebody that people trust. So that's why I believe in consistency. And I would really recommend you dig in on that because it can do you, oh, so much good. So much good. Next question. Do you have any tips on making connections in the construction industry? I'm really fortunate to know a lot of incredible people in the construction industry across the board. And I don't take it for granted. It's incredible just how many people I've been able to get to meet, develop friendships with, and see in person what they do day to day. It's really, really cool. But it didn't happen overnight. I would spend part of my summer every year growing up in somewhere called Red Lodge, Montana, small town, with my friend and his family. And they had a beautiful property, beautiful property, multiple cabins. And his father was a businessman, and his father would invite different people up every summer. And I never paid any attention to this until I went up there one summer to work. Because I talked about on the podcast before I borrowed money from him. I borrowed a few hundred dollars to finance my new saltwater aquarium at the time when I was entering my freshman year of high school. So borrowed money from him on the condition that I'd work it off in Montana. So I go up there for five, six weeks to work. And this was when I'm, you know, becoming older and trying to figure out who I am and what I want to do with my life. And there'd be different people in every week. I remember an architect coming in or a businessman coming in, or there was a heart surgeon that came in. And these different people would. They would just have these conversations, especially after dinner. After dinner was what was best. And I would sit there and listen because I had never, it was before podcasts or anything like that. I'd never heard conversations really at that high of a level for that long of a period of time, like three hours, about politics. I just thought it was absolutely fascinating. And I started to recognize the importance of meeting different people and getting to know different people, because that's what he did. So that's what I wanted to do too. And so when it came time to find a job in construction, I've told this story a million times over, but a construction project was coming, happening in my neighborhood. All the trucks said Pearson Construction Corporation on side. And I thought I could call, I could Google Pearson Construction Corporation. That's what I did. I could find their website, I could find their phone number, I could find their leadership page. Who ran the company. Okay, Rich Pearson. I could call the office and I could ask for Mr. Pearson. So that's what I did as a high schooler, not knowing anybody in construction, not having a single connection to Pearson Construction Corporation. I. They connected me with, with Rich. I explained I'm a high school student looking to learn about the construction industry. And he had me down. And that was the first time I'd ever met somebody in the construction industry. And he then took me out to the project a few weeks later, which I thought was absolutely spectacular. I still remember some of the things he explained to at the time. And, yeah, that's, that's how I got into construction. And it's not as easy as that, but again, it's. It's as easy as that. You. You call and you express curiosity. And I would leverage my position, which was a student, and people love investing in others and passing information down. So as a student, then once I got into college, I would go to the career fairs, and I was a freshman. The career fairs were for juniors and seniors, but I would just go anyway and would weasel my way in in different ways and then would go around and would talk to everybody there. I'd go to every table and meet every person at the table. What did you. What do you do? Why do you do it? Tell me about your company, so on and so forth. And then I started to meet a lot of people that way while I was in school. And then I took the cold calling and started to apply it in a bigger way. So, all right, what are the construction companies in my area? All right, Rummel. All right, Hayden. All right, Markham, whatever it is. And I started then to network with those companies. So who owned Rummel? All right, Rod Rummel. Cool. How am I going to get in touch with Rod Rummel? I don't know, but I find a way to get in touch with Rod Rummel and I go meet with him for an hour and talk to him about his business. I didn't want anything. I just wanted to understand who this guy was, how he got started, and ask for his advice. You know, I'm, Hey, I'm 19. Hey, I'm 18, 20, 21, trying to figure my life out. If you were me, what would you be thinking about? How would you go about this? Who would you go to work for? And I was able to get a ton of brilliant advice. And then I would always ask the guys I would. I would meet with. I would always, when I approached somebody, hey, I'd love to take you to lunch. So I'd always offer to take them to lunch. Most of them said yes, or I'll visit you at your office, if more convenient. Some of them also said yes to that. But then every time I went to lunch, because I was a kid, they would insist on paying. So there was not a single lunch I went to. And these were nice lunches, too, because I would take them to a nice restaurant that I had to pay, which was awesome. I got an hour of incredible advice and also got my really good lunch paid for. And then I would always ask them, hey, who else can I meet with? Who else do you know that would be good for me to meet? And usually they'd have one or two names. And then that was easier than cold calling because I could name drop. And there's no, I don't think there's anything wrong with name dropping if you're using it to give you yourself credibility in the, in the right applications. So then I could say, hey, yeah, I, I just had lunch with so and so and they said I should talk to you about my career. And, and then because I use that person's name, I have that credibility and I could get in the door a little bit easier. So that's how I began networking. That's how I got all the jobs I had in construction. I would talk to anybody and everybody because I didn't know if that relationship would ever serve me. But I knew I could at least learn something from everybody and I knew those relationships in the future could help me substantially. So it wasn't very hard for me to find some great gigs throughout college because I had those relationships, I had the relevant experience. Um, and I've basically just applied that model into now where I'm at as an individual. Reaching out to people and leveraging LinkedIn now too, has been the biggest tool I've, I've used while in business. I have been sharing on LinkedIn every day for, for years now, and I've carefully built a, a bunch of connections, a following on there of the people that I want to get in front of. So I've talked about this. Hey, if I, if I want to make connections with Kiewit, for example. All right, cool. What district of Kiewit? All right, I want to go work for the Northwest district. Cool. I'm going to go find, I'm going to go search Kiewit northwest district on LinkedIn and I'm going to go find all the senior leaders there and hit connect, connect, connect, connect, connect. Now, I don't know, 10, 20% might accept now some. I typically have a better hit rate, but if I were just a kid years ago when I was starting out, you know, maybe 10, 20%, even one out of 20 says, okay, cool, I'll accept your connection. Now that one key individual is seeing my shit every single day on LinkedIn, which is awesome because then whenever I talk to them, Future State, whenever I do Go approach Kiewit. Oh yeah, we've been seeing your stuff nonstop. We know who you are. Cool. You know who I am now. Let's take the time to get to know you. I've just accelerated that conversation dramatically because of how I've connected with that person. And to summarize here too, to finish this point off, someone asked, you know, we posted these videos with Rio Tinto featuring their Western Australia operations, the Pilbara, which is notoriously a difficult place to get into. And someone said, and people ask this all the time, how do you get into these places? It is all about relationships. It is all about the people you know. But it's not just who you know, it's what value you can provide to them. So it's not just about the thing that's. Oh, it's all about who you know. It's complete bullshit. That's, that's only half of the equation. You need to offer them something. So when I was a kid, I didn't necessarily have anything to offer a construction executive working at a quarter billion dollar a year company, but I did because I offered them my curiosity. I offered them a way for them to go pour into the next generation, which is value. That is value. Now, I don't ever go to these mining companies, say, just let me on. I go to these mining companies, say, hey, you want to attract more people to your business, you want to tell your story, I can help you do that. And here's how we're going to do that. I paint the picture on what value I can provide to them. I don't just say, hey, can I come out? They don't care about that. They want to know, hey, what is that? What does this do for me? And not everything is transactional, but it is in a sense. The people I know, the people around me, I want to support them and help them out as much as possible because maybe down the road they can help me out and that's how this works. But until then, I'm just going to help them as much as possible. I'm not going to expect anything, but if I provide them value, future state, I'll likely get value in return. So it's not about just who you know, it's about the value you provide these people. And that value can be as simple as you being curious, you being hungry to learn. Because people want to pour into especially that next generation. So that's my best answer for that one. Question three, what's the best way you found to learn? I don't think There is a best way to learn. I think there's a lot of different ways to learn, but I think developing a hunger to learn has been really important for me and like an appetite for it and then developing a system to help me learn and being consistent with it. Like I said, consistency, I think, has been one of the most important things that I've ever learned in my life. So instead of I want to read more, that doesn't do me any good. I want to read 10 books this year. I don't know, it's a little bit better, but still hard to conceptualize. I've always read 10 pages a day, for years now, and I've read more books than ever before, so I was always a reader. But until I developed a system for being consistent and learning consistently every day, just a little bit every day. Until that happened, I wasn't learning at the rate I am now. I wasn't compounding at the rate I am now. So I read 10 to 12 pages, seven days a week, 365 days a year. It's a non negotiable. Doesn't matter what book I'm reading. I have all different kinds of books, read all different kinds of different things and. But I'm learning nonetheless. And I love it. I love buying new books, reading new books. I really, really, really enjoy it because I'm able to learn new things that I can imply to my life and make myself better. So reading, I think, is huge. Writing has been equally huge. Learning how to communicate thoughts, learning how to digest my life, learning how to understand my emotions and my feelings. And hey, I'm. I'm anxious today. Cool. All right. I'm at least recognizing, man, I'm. I'm anxious today. I wouldn't have done that in the past. Oh, okay, check. And then now I can, I can write about it, and I can maybe then ask myself, what's making me anxious today? Or did I have a moment that made that anxiety? Did I wake up with that anxiety? Why do I think I have it? What's going on? And I'm able to then learn a little bit about myself by writing, which has been great. Podcasts has been remarkably valuable. So when I'm running, cycling, doing longer workouts, which happens a lot nowadays, I'm always listening to podcasts, which people think is kind of weird. I think it's. It's not weird, it's completely normal. Cause I can, you know, if you're running for two, three hours, you get tired of listening to music, or at least I do but if I can listen to a three hour interview, I think it's awesome. So I'm listening to podcasts in the car, running while I'm cooking. I love listening to podcasts, love listening to long form interviews of all different kinds. And I have learned a lot from those, from those interviews. So I've got reading, I've got writing, I've got listening. I do do some watching, but not as much video. Honestly, I'm so focused on our video that I don't do a lot. I do watch some tv, but when I do watch tv, I try to make it. I've done a lot of sports documentaries lately. Or like I watched a Blue Angels documentary and I'm watching it from the sake of leadership. How do they communicate with one another? How do they build a team? I'm trying to learn from it. Not just enjoy it, but I enjoy it. But I love like the Last Dance. I'm probably going to rewatch again for the third time. Just how did Michael Jordan think? Why did he think that way? How did he interact with his teammates? How did he work out? I don't know. Whatever it is, I'm trying to glean new things that I can implement in my life when I'm watching stuff. And then I'd be remiss if I didn't say talking to people like the previous point I just made. Having the conversations I do, podcasting with these people that I get to podcast with is awesome. I just get to be curious for an hour or two at a time and learn so much from each individual. It's just so much fun. And finally, not just conversations, but therapy has also been really helpful. I feel like everybody's trying to learn from an external standpoint and especially while they're young, like me, in their 20s, they're not doing enough work to understand them as an individual. And being in therapy for now like five years, consistently, consistently, key word there. There's a lot of themes in today's conversations. It's helped me really understand how I work and who I am and how I was wired and the good things I picked up as a kid, the bad things I picked up as a kid. And just better define me as an individual, as a man, and better define where I want to go and what kind of future I want, which is. Which is really big too. So personally, those are the things that I do to learn, trying to learn as much as possible. I love it. I've developed it into a habit and I do a little bit every day. I think that's that's the way you got to do it. At least that's the way I got to do it. 4. Any tips on overcoming self doubt? I'm trying to do my best to just speak from experience to answer these questions. I'm not naturally a confident person. I. I'm small so I'm 5, 6 for people that ask and you know, growing up you're in, in many ways disadvantaged and when you're small and I don't have like a loud personality or anything like that. So through grade school and high school I pretty and just naturally just pretty introverted and didn't have a great time. Especially in high school. I just. You couldn't pay me enough to go back to high school. Fuck high school. But in college was when I started to really understand who I was and start to build my confidence, which was really good for me. And how I did that was by doing hard things. So I started working out on a more consistent basis early in the morning, which I thought was great. I loved being up before everybody else. At college I was getting after it when people were still sleeping in. I didn't drink my first few years in college, which was remarkably unique. There weren't very many people not drinking at Arizona State as a freshman, sophomore, junior. But that helped build my confidence because I would go to these parties and I'd be the only one not drinking and I'd be saying no. And that was really good for me. I started reading more consistently. I loved reading. I'd go and I'd have breakfast by myself on Saturdays. I remember I loved just taking time, few hours every Saturday or Sunday morning and just reading about business or construction or whatever it was, the paper even to learn a little bit more. I started investing, which was quite fun. Don't do that much anymore. Started a business so that did away with that. But I learning about the market, learning about companies, reading different annual reports and how these companies work and where these companies are going, where the economy's going, what are the trends and how can I get onto one of those trends? One of the things that I discovered was all right, cool, if oil is going up, that's awesome. I could go invest in Exxon, which I might get a good return in. Or I could go find maybe a more mid level company that supports drilling. So that's when I fell into fracking and frac sand and invested in frac sand companies and made actually a boatload of money with frac sand. But that was because I learned and figured some things out, had Some conversations with people which I thought was great, that helped build my confidence. Working really helped to build my confidence. Understanding a little bit better how the world works, working hard for the first time in my life, using my hands to actually build things and do things in the physical world. Didn't grow up that way but really, really built my confidence then. And it's been from then on a constant evolution of just building my confidence and I'm still doing it every single day right now. I need all the help I can get and I need more and more confidence because the bigger the company gets, the further we go, the more I need as a, as a leader and it's a, it's a, it's a nonstop practice. But I feel like because I've been dedicated in different ways to building my confidence, I haven't had a lot of self doubt and I didn't really understand that until the past few years. But I've heard other really successful people talk about it and they, whenever they're talked, whenever they're asked about self doubt, a lot of them talk about confidence and building that confidence in you as an individual, in yourself and your ability to do hard things and carry out different things. And so I can't overstate the value of developing your confidence. No matter how confident you think you are. Everybody, everybody needs help developing their confidence. Everybody can, can use confidence in different ways. Maybe you're a great speaker, you're athletically gifted and you have a lot of confidence there. But there's probably an area of your life that you're not so confident in. It could be something as simple as man, I just don't like myself every time I look in the mirror and that sucks. And so it could be I need to lose some weight. That's going to probably dramatically alter your confidence more than anything else you could do to begin with. But it's hard and that's why it builds your confidence because you've got to do hard things, you've got to say no. You've got to do things other people aren't willing to do, which is tricky because you stand out. But then you become more and more sure of yourself and you don't ultimately have as much of that self doubt. That is how I've approached it. I'm sure there's a million other ways. But I, to overcome self doubt, have spent a lot of time building my sense of confidence and I've done that consistently. It all goes back to consistency. Number five, the last question. How can you start a business in such A capital intensive industry like construction, well, you can either go out and get money, which some people have done, or you can start from the bottom, which most of the people I know have done. So I know a lot of people, they have started with a pickup truck, started with a wheelbarrow, started with a dump truck, started with skid steer, backhoe, whatever it is, a few thousand dollars and working another job while they start a construction business and doing driveways on the weekends or whatever it is, or after work, or driving the truck at night. All kinds of crazy stories to then earn a little bit more money, to then invest in the company a little bit further and then to build a little bit more and more and more. These big companies with all the fucking equipment and all the nice pickup trucks and everything like that, they've probably been doing it for like, I don't know, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, 50 years. And yeah, if you do something for 50 years, Kiewit, for example, they started in the 1800s. If you do something for almost 150 years, yeah, you build up a nice balance sheet. Yeah, you create this company that someone could look at and wonder, how could I ever achieve that? But at the end of the day, or at the beginning of the day, all it was was Mr. Kiewit starting as a mason, you know, in his hometown and scaling it from there. And it's not that simple. But I've said this multiple times in this podcast, it's that simple because I've seen it done hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times over. That's what's so cool about the construction industry. It's one of the few industries where I think the American dream is still alive. I think someone within their lifetime, because I've seen it, can start with nothing or a pickup truck for a few thousand dollars and build a multi billion dollar company within a lifetime, within 30 years, within 40 years. Whatever it is. I've seen it, I've seen it done many times over. And it's remarkable because you can't do that in a lot of other worlds. Right now I can't really, I can't go into, you know, be a. I want to start a bank. Like, are you kidding me? Start a bank? What, Start a hospital? It doesn't work that way. Start an automotive manufacturer? I mean, maybe, but everything is so consolidated now. There's these gigantic mega corporations that then use their lobbying to design laws to keep others out, which is crazy, but somehow legal. Whereas in construction, it's so fragmented, no one player controls any Kind of significant market share, which opens the opportunity for anybody to come in and, and kick some ass. But it's not, you know, it's not, it's not just working your way up. It's also doing what everybody else isn't willing to do. And the people that I have in my mind that have done exactly this, built incredible things from nothing, have done what everybody else isn't willing to do. And there's a cost to that. So you have to ask yourself, you know, what do you want? How far do you want to go? If you want to be the next Kiewit, I say good for you. Go at it. It's possible. But I also question that, like, why do you want to be the next Kiewit? What's wrong with having a great living, you know, still working locally? Everybody's going home every night. You're going home every night to your family. You're, you're, you, you've, you have a, you're providing a good living for your people, for your family. You've got a, a boat, you've got nice things, you've got nice equipment. Because I think there's a lot to be said for that too. Building a great business that is 5 people, 10 people, 25 people, 50 people, a hundred people, uh, but no matter what scale you want to go to, it might be multi generations to get there, but it is possible in construction to go from nothing to something, even when it's so capital intensive. Because again, I've seen it done hundreds of times over. That's what I'll say there. It's not about the money. It's about the effort. It's about doing the right thing. It's about doing what other people aren't willing to do. It is about the money. You got to have your, you got to understand your business. You have to make a business that is profitable. But those things work themselves out. If you're doing the right thing, if you're working hard, if you're going well above and beyond. So I, if that's something, if you're somebody that wants to go start a construction company, don't let the big balance sheets of the big companies discourage you because they all started where you're starting. With a pickup truck, with a shovel, with a wheelbarrow, with a truck, with a tractor, whatever it is. That's where every company in the United States started at one point or another, which is really cool, really humbling and really exciting for, again, anybody that wants to get in it. It's not too late. There's more opportunity now than ever before. That is. That's what I have to say on that one. So that's five questions, as I said. Feel free to send us your questions. Dirt talkillwit.com we'd really love to hear from you. If you have somebody that I should interview, if you have a project I should cover, whatever it is, feedback hey asshole, stop saying this. I'm all for it. Just write us dirt talkillwit.com I will see it. Really appreciate if you would share the podcast. If you got something out of this, something was valuable, send it to somebody. That's huge for growing the show. And like always, we really appreciate you listening. So thank you for some of your time and we'll see you next time. Stay dirty.