Your Labor Shortage Is a Leadership Shortage w/ Nic Parish (DT 467)

Summary

Episode Overview

Title: Your Labor Shortage Is a Leadership Shortage w/ Nic Parish
Host: Aaron Witt (BuildWitt)
Guest: Nic Parish (Burns Dirt)
Date: August 6, 2026
Duration: ~2 hours

Theme:
This episode reunites host Aaron Witt with his longtime friend and recurring guest, Nic Parish of Burns Dirt, a Mississippi-based civil construction company recently acquired by Nic and his brother. Together, they dismantle the myth of a labor shortage in construction, arguing instead that the industry faces a leadership crisis—a "people problem," not just a skills gap. The conversation explores personal growth, the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, organizational leadership, the pitfalls and value of social media and technology, AI in the workplace, and the deep personal responsibilities leaders carry to create positive change.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Art of Public Speaking & Leadership Communication

• Learning Through Experience: Both Aaron and Nic discuss their journeys in public speaking, emphasizing repetition, feedback, and the importance of simplifying and stripping away unnecessary content.
  • Aaron: "When I practice it, I don't add more. I strip away... I simplify, simplify, and I simplify." (04:01)
• Practicing for Diverse Audiences: Nic describes how practicing his presentations with friends outside the industry helped refine his message to be more universally understandable.
• Storytelling as a Teaching Tool:
  • Aaron: "Stories are the most effective way to teach anything. ...it worked for Jesus Christ. If it worked for Jesus Christ, it's gonna work for you too." (06:10)
• Emotional Cadence: Delivering information with highs and lows, humor, and emotion keeps audiences engaged.
  • Aaron: "The more up and down I can do, whether that's through humor, whether that's through emotion, whether that's through the intensity of a story... There's just." (11:18)

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2. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in the Dirt World

• Industry’s Stuck at the Basics:
  • Aaron: "The industry is mostly still treading water at the very bottom. Basic needs from an employment standpoint, which I view is pay, benefits, consistent employment." (14:20)
• Beyond Skills: Providing Security and Belonging: Nic argues that many companies are still failing to address even the most fundamental employee needs, such as consistent pay and job security.
• The Ladder to Self-Actualization: Leaders’ responsibility is to help their people progress up the hierarchy—only then can skills and higher aspirations be realized.
• Society’s Blindness to Infrastructure’s Role: Aaron reflects on how civilization’s basic needs are "invisible" until disrupted, illustrating construction’s foundational impact.

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3. Systemic Issues: Leadership Gap, Not Labor Gap

• Root Cause Analysis:
  • Nic: "Construction's people problem isn't a skills gap, but a leadership gap. And why the contractors still blaming the next generation for being unprepared are ignoring the fact that they're the ones who raised them." (00:00)
• Training vs. Culture: General skills are risky for companies to invest in (employees can leave), while investing in culture, mentorship, and genuine care creates lasting loyalty.
• Breaking the Cycle: Instead of complaining about young workers’ shortcomings, leaders must recognize their role in shaping the current workforce and step up as "parent figures" to fill societal and skills gaps.

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4. Re-examining Social Media, Technology & AI

• Resisting Social Media Addiction:
  • Nic: "There's so many things that we just become a prisoner of that actually doesn't give us the value that we want out of life. That's why I got rid of social media. I was like, I'm just a prisoner of this thing." (25:05)
• Disciplined Use of Tech: Both share personal strategies for minimizing distractions—from physically removing social apps, bricking phones, reducing notifications, to analog alternatives like vinyl records.
• Custom Algorithms and AI Tools: Nic experiments with AI-curated daily “newsletters” to own his information diet, reflecting a desire for intentional technology.
• Effective AI in Work:
  • Aaron: "Use it to do the part of your job that sucks...so you can devote that energy to the stuff that creates more value, that involves creativity, that is uniquely human." (49:34)
  • Cautioned against letting AI or tech replace the essential friction and humanity at work; friction is what gives life meaning and builds resilience.

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5. Practical Leadership in Construction

• Branding and Visibility: Burns Dirt invests in wrapping every machine—their name is everywhere. Simple brand moves reinforce perception and pride, which pays off in recruitment and company culture.
  • Nic: "You don't have to go as extreme as we are. ...We're very extremist in wrapping everything, putting our name everywhere." (73:18)
  • Nic: "I maybe regret is have not been louder about it." (73:51)
• People as the True Moat: Rather than unique technical skills, it's treating people right that keeps talent—a lesson often missed by both small and big businesses.
• Family Business Complexity: Nic openly discusses the emotionally complex decade-long family buyout and the personal costs involved.
• Mission Statement as North Star:
  • Nic: "We want to build a company where people come to grow and stay for life, leaving behind work that speaks for itself." (95:17)

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6. The Role of Life Experience & Vulnerability in Leadership

• Owning Past Trauma: Both hosts share stories of family hardship and loss, specifically around fathers and generational relationships, and how this shapes leadership style.
• Leading by Example/Vulnerability:
  • Aaron: "The best thing I've done is unwind a lot of my traumas ... showing people, listen, yeah, went through this. Here's what I learned." (99:44)
• Humanizing the Workforce: Success for leaders comes not just from process, but from understanding, forgiveness, and intentional relationship-building.
  • Nic: "If you can remember that, that actually dehumanizes everybody...there's so much happiness to be found in life when you realize, like, oh, yeah, my parents did some dumb stuff." (108:40)

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7. The Long Game: Growth, Responsibility, and Incremental Improvement

• No Finish Line: Building a people-first company is a continuous process—measured not just in profit, but in how much better things are year-over-year and the positive community influences left behind.
  • Aaron: "If you just focus on getting better... Everything else works out." (119:48)
• Push the Market Forward: Companies like Burns Dirt show a better way through action, not consensus, forcing improvement via superior performance, not conferences or wishing.
• Pay It Forward: The responsibility is to improve lives—employees go home as better parents, citizens, and humans, whether they stay or leave.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Opening Reflection on Industry’s Real Problem

• Aaron: “Why the contractors, still blaming the next generation for being unprepared, are ignoring the fact that they're the ones who raised them.” (00:00)

On Storytelling’s Power

• Aaron: “If it worked for Jesus Christ, it's gonna work for you too.” (06:10)

Maslow’s in Context

• Aaron: “Without infrastructure, basic needs are not met... I've always had power. I've always had running water. I've always had a toilet. ...I've associated that with being automatic.” (17:02)

On the Myth of Skills Gap

• Nic: “We talk a lot about skills, skills training, but there are so many things we are failing at prior to that.” (65:28)

Leadership’s Influence

• Aaron: “You are either the biggest proponent or the biggest blocker in that equation. You’re the limiter. If you get better, that allows room for everybody else to get better. But if you stay the same, ... you’re only setting everybody else back.” (71:53)

Branding and Culture

• Nic: “I maybe regret is have not been louder about it. ...It's brand reinforcement.” (74:46, 75:59)

People First: The Real Competitive Advantage

• Nic: “Treating your people right is a specific skill. Training them up through the system of mentorship...That's what big business does really poorly.” (66:04)

On Self-Actualization & Growth Mindset

• Nic: “Our mission statement is: we want to build a company where people come to grow and stay for life.” (95:15)

Cycle of Personal Responsibility

• Aaron: “Your life, your future is your responsibility...No one else will.” (116:00)
• Nic: “If you're dealing with a problem with somebody, I think the first thing to go is, okay, I might be the only one acting like an adult here.” (112:19)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | Summary | |------------|----------------------------------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:00–07:10| Public speaking, storytelling | Nic and Aaron share approaches to crafting and delivering effective messages | | 14:20–22:12| Maslow’s hierarchy and industry basics | Application of Maslow’s theory to workforce needs and company growth | | 25:05–33:47| Social media and intentional tech use | Cutting social media, phone management tips, tech’s double edge, and analog hobbies | | 48:01–54:59| AI and the future of work | AI’s utility, where it fits in construction, potential risks, and keeping the human factor | | 62:43–69:29| Large vs. small business leadership | Why big business can’t treat people right, the private equity trap, and long-term thinking | | 71:02–76:04| Recruiting and branding | How visibility, culture, and reputation improve hiring and retention | | 86:02–87:35| Starting the people-first journey | Continuous improvement and the compounding of doing the right thing over the years | | 99:03–107:33| Family trauma & vulnerability | Personal stories of loss, the role of vulnerability in leadership and workplace culture | | 112:12–115:01| Humanizing conflicts & responsibility | Seeing others as humans not obstacles, teaching resilience and real-world lessons |

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Final Takeaways

• Leadership, not labor, is the core shortage. The construction world needs to invest in continually improving leaders—not just better workers—to build healthier organizations.
• Friction, challenge, and meaning go hand in hand. Life and business aren’t meant to be frictionless; hardship creates significance and depth.
• Be the change—or get out of the way. Companies that step up, treat people as individuals, and relentlessly improve will force competitors to evolve.
• Vulnerability is the lever for transformation. Honest, human leadership is an obligation, not an option.
• Growth is perpetual. There’s no finish line in building better people or companies; each year, more is revealed, and the pursuit continues.

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(For related episodes with Nic Parish, see earlier Dirt Talk podcast appearances for deeper background.)

Transcript

[Aaron]

This episode of the Dirt Talk podcast is with Nick Parish of Burns Dirt. Nick, alongside his brother, took over Burns Dirt, a civil construction company his grandfather and great uncle started with two dump trucks in 1977. He spent a decade quietly stepping into a leadership role he never formally asked for, only to find himself mid conversation trying to untangle a decade long family buyout while figuring out he was inside a company built by by the people who raised him. He reveals why construction's people problem isn't a skills gap, but a leadership gap. And why the contractors, still blaming the next generation for being unprepared, are ignoring the fact that they're the ones who raised them. Nick is a great friend of mine from Mississippi. This I think is his third appearance on the Dirt Talk podcast. Might be one of the top people on the podcast. So go back and listen to other episodes. It talks more, a little bit about his history. This was more so a catch up. He has officially bought the business with his brother now that has closed and they have trucking, they have civil construction and they have waste. It has been. It's a lot of fun seeing the business grow, seeing Nick grow. And we always have a blast catching up. You will love this episode. I loved it. So here it is. Nick Parish with Burns Dirt. Speaking of. So interesting because it's. You have to. You have to do it in front of people.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

To get the reps. Yeah. It's super. It's such an interesting art form because you have to do it in front of other people.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

And it's scary.

[Nick Parish]

Con Expo is my first time doing a long format. Yeah.

[Aaron]

How long was yours?

[Nick Parish]

50 minutes.

[Aaron]

50?

[Nick Parish]

Yeah. Which was good. I mean, that was enough. I've done presentations and stuff, you know, I mean.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Nick Parish]

And I've also like been the host of events. Right. Where I'm giving 10 or 15 minute sections throughout it, introducing speakers or introducing the program or like you were the

[Aaron]

host for the event.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And so I've done that before and you have to have some structure for that. But also you're kind of just, I gotta have facts about this guy and I'm gonna introduce him and I gotta say something funny and that's it. Sure. When you're in that long format, that's not important anymore. And one thing I learned through that was I started practicing with friends that were outside of the industry. That's right. Because the whole basis of it was how do we apply Bazlow's hierarchy of needs to building better businesses? Right. Let's just Break it down to something that's 100 years old, very simple. And so that's very approachable. Right. And so I did three different sessions with friends that either don't run businesses or do. Right. I had to kind of test groups, but then also all of them really didn't don't understand what I do for a living, let alone a construction business. And my thought process, right or wrong here was that if they don't understand it, then my educated audience is not going to get it either. That's good. And I found myself ripping it down, going back to ground zero after each one of those, going, okay, I made an assumption that somebody's gonna understand this.

[Aaron]

Sure.

[Nick Parish]

And they shouldn't. Because Maslow is kind of is universal in people. I mean, that's the whole point of it, right. Is it's this universal basis of people's needs and motivations. And if I can't catch somebody up on construction especially everyone has assumptions about the industry. So if I can't catch you up with your assumptions based on something that should be universal, then I haven't done a good job.

[Aaron]

Well, and I think a good message is very simple ultimately.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

And it's. And that's. I mean, when I practice it, I don't add more. I strip away.

[Nick Parish]

Oh, yeah.

[Aaron]

And I simplify, simplify, and I simplify and I simplify. And so the first version has the most stuff and then I just cut it down, cut it down, cut it down, cut it down, cut it down from there. Like, that's what I was doing this morning was just like, what can I remove? What can I remove? What can I remove?

[Nick Parish]

How do you figure that out? I'm new to this, so I don't. I mean, I don't.

[Aaron]

I mean, now I've probably spoken at least 50 times. And so I have enough reps now. I think that's been a big piece of. It is just like, what's a good formula that works? And so I like opening with a story to just get. We're gonna start opening with a video, actually. I have like a 60 second video to just in a way show people because, like, right away I want to give somebody. Why should they be listening to me? Because I'm on stage, I look like I'm somebody's kid. And so I need to give them something right away. And so within a 60 second video, it'll be at us on job sites all over the world. Like. And so people right away are like, the fuck's going on here? All right, this is interesting. If they don't know, they don't know who I am. And then I go into a story kind of to back that up about the diamond mine we went to, because it's just like, whoa, it's just so exotic and this and that to kind of, again, illustrate and create the sense of authority that I'm leaning into for the message. Like, listen, I'm not. I'm not here to tell you how to build. I just get to see more of the industry than just about anybody.

[Nick Parish]

Sure.

[Aaron]

And here's what I've heard, what I've learned about it. And then you kind of tee up, like, the big picture. And here's what we're going to talk about today. Here's what I'm going to leave you with. And then you tell them kind of the big picture. And I have, you know, here's the five simple things that you can do as a leader, and I have a story with each one of those five to illustrate those five. And at the end of the story, here's the point, here's why it's in your best interest. Here's the point. Kind of reiterating. And then once you're done with the stories, you reiterate, here's the five points. But don't think about all five.

[Nick Parish]

Just go do the recap. Yeah.

[Aaron]

And so it's. I'm gonna. I think. Here's what I'm gonna tell you. Tell you. Here's what I told you, and make it actionable. That's really important. And then stories, stories, stories, stories. Like, even this morning, it's like, man, there's kind of a story here. But I need to. I need to make it more emotional. I need to. I can provide more context here to make this more effective. But stories are the most effective way to teach anything. And so if you just get up and it's like, I'm just gonna. Let me tell you a story. People are like, all right, what's going on here? Let me hear a story. I mean, it worked for Jesus Christ. If it worked for Jesus Christ, it's gonna work for you, too.

[Nick Parish]

That's true.

[Aaron]

So that's what I've really started to appreciate, stories and how to tell a story, which is a skill in itself. People are like, wow, you're such a good storyteller. It's like, yeah, because I've practiced and I've practiced and I've practiced and I've practiced.

[Nick Parish]

That's where I need is the practice. I got done with the Con Expo session. And I walked out, and my brother was in the hall, and I was like, hey, how'd I do? He was like, it was good. You started yelling at people there at the end.

[Aaron]

I've been guilty of that.

[Nick Parish]

I've been so guilty of that.

[Aaron]

I was like.

[Nick Parish]

I got comfortable, though, I guess I was like, I get passionate. He's like, yeah, no, he's passionate.

[Aaron]

Which is really good, because most speakers aren't. And so you have to bring a sense of energy, but you don't want to be scolding at the same time. Like, you don't want to be talking at people, talking down to people. And that's what I've been afraid of sometimes. Even, like, Dirt World. Last year, I watched it back. I was like, fuck, did that come? That was a little. And I'm trying to be like, that's good. I want to bring. I want to just pour myself into it, bring energy. Because I've realized that's one thing I have that a lot of people don't, for whatever reason. But, like, take it just down one notch, like, dial it back just a little bit, I think is my goal for this year.

[Nick Parish]

I need consistency through it. I probably. Which, I mean, that morning, I walked. I had never done this before, and I walked into, like, check in. And I got there, and I found the room. The app said I was supposed to be speaking. And I walked in, I was like, there's no way this is the right room. This is way too big.

[Aaron]

How many people were there?

[Nick Parish]

I don't know. I never got a full headcount. 250 is probably my guess. That's a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it was standing room in the largest session room.

[Aaron]

Wow. The room makes a big difference, too.

[Nick Parish]

The room makes it well.

[Aaron]

And I.

[Nick Parish]

And in my head, I've been preparing for this first time. Like, okay, I'm gonna run through this. There's gonna be 40 or 50 people, you know, And. And I get there, and I walk in, and so I was like, something's wrong. So I go to the speakers lounge, and I go down and find the ladies that I know with, you know, Con Expo. And it's okay, Nick. And they're like, oh, hey.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Nick Parish]

They go, you're popular.

[Aaron]

Wow.

[Nick Parish]

And I was like, that's not what I want to hear, you know, while I'm drinking my espresso right now.

[Aaron]

Sure.

[Nick Parish]

After seeing that. And she's like, yeah, we had to move you to the big room yesterday because of the reservations.

[Aaron]

I was like, did you promote it.

[Nick Parish]

Okay. No, I mean, I made a couple posts on LinkedIn, but it was more of just like teeing up if you're interested. This is what I'm going to talk about. I'm talking about a hundred year old psychologist. So it's like, don't think you're coming in and I'm giving you anything revolutionary. I'm literally going to tell you about something that's very old.

[Aaron]

Century old logic.

[Nick Parish]

Century old logic. Right. And so like I got there, I'm ready, I know what I'm going to do. And people are just pouring in. And I think that that hit me at the beginning of it to where I was just like, this is not what I expected. Yeah. This is more than I mentally prepared for. And then by the halfway through it, people are taking notes, they're taking pictures of every slide. I could, I felt the engagement and that made me go, oh, okay.

[Aaron]

Well that's, that's a big thing too, is like again, it just depends upon the room. Like Dirt World, for example, it's all dressed up so you can't see the audience.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

And it's really hard to get gauge anything because you've got, and so on these big stages, you've got the lights right in your face, everything's dark, you just can't, you don't really know what the heck's going on. But then sometimes you're in a venue with like 43 people and you can see everybody's face because they're right there. And then sometimes it's like younger people, sometimes it's older people. Executive like. Right. It's just, oh, it's so dependent. And I think another lesson I've learned is the cadence is really important. And so I'm always trying to go like, the more up, down I can do, the better. I don't, I don't really want it to be a sustained cadence, if that makes sense. I don't want it to be a flat line. I want it to be more up down, up, down, up, down. To just keep people with you. And that's what we do with YouTube videos as well. It's like if you just deliver one block of something right, people tune out, man. You've got to like, you're giving them information and then you got, there's a joke and you can do that a bunch of different ways, but there's a joke they're not expecting. Oh, and then it brings you back and now you're engaged again and you can deliver more information. Yeah, I think it's speaking the same way. Like, the more. The more up and down I can do, whether that's through humor, whether that's through emotion, whether that's through, like, the intensity of a story, how I bring it about, how I raise my voice. There's just.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

It's an incredible art form.

[Nick Parish]

That, that's. That's cinema. Right. That's the build up and having, you know, having friction and having tension and then breaking the tension and then going back and having. Is this the peak of the movie? Is this is as crazy as it's going to get.

[Aaron]

Right.

[Nick Parish]

I mean, that's what that makes sense. I'm with.

[Aaron]

You know, and I'm like, I'm still do it. This is like babies speaking. Like, I'm still. I'm still at the very beginning of this. Yeah. But I'm far enough in where it's like, wow, I have some tools in my toolbox.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

And I can start to, like. I'm like, crafting something now instead of just getting through it. I think when you start, you're just trying to get through it and not be a complete idiot. Yeah.

[Nick Parish]

You know, Michael King, civil cfo, He. He was there and we're friends, and, and he was after the show, he's like, do you want some feedback? I was like, please. And he does a lot of it.

[Aaron]

Right.

[Nick Parish]

And we scheduled a call like the next week and we talked about it, and his. He did tell me. He's like, all right, I've got a couple points. He's like, but also, I want you to remember, you were just trying to get through that. But once you're. You're going to get over that hump.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Nick Parish]

You're going to get past that, just trying to get through it. And this is what you need to start thinking about after that point, you know, And I think having folks like that is very helpful.

[Aaron]

Right.

[Nick Parish]

Of somebody going and saying, hey, look, I've done this a bunch. You need to remember this next time. Right. Or that's not important. I know you think that's important, but this is really not important. You don't need anybody to say, imagine them all naked.

[Aaron]

Right.

[Nick Parish]

That's not the advice you're looking for. Right. Uh, I think that good feedback loop is helpful. It's.

[Aaron]

It's really helpful. Yeah. Yeah.

[Nick Parish]

I just need some reps on it now.

[Aaron]

That's all it is. I think that's all it is. It's just reps.

[Nick Parish]

I probably could give that talk for the rest of my life, too. And it Still. And it get better. And it get better.

[Aaron]

Well, and you're learning more and more about it. That's the thing, right? Yeah. I. I don't want my message to be the same every year at Dirt World. It kind of is, like, it's the same kind of thing, but I want to be learning so much through the year that I'm able to deliver it in a better, far more effective way every year. Like, I just want to get. I want everybody coming out of my talk at Dirt World at least being like, yeah, that was the best one yet, because I've learned more about the subject through lived experience. So then I can deliver the message a little bit better. But it's kind of the same message.

[Nick Parish]

Sure. Yeah.

[Aaron]

With Maslow's hierarchy of needs, I feel like the industry is mostly still treading water at the very bottom. Basic needs from an employment standpoint, which I view is pay, benefits, consistent employment. Would you agree those are the basic needs from a company perspective?

[Nick Parish]

Yes, I agree with that. And I think that that is very true that I think it's the one. The one thing I must say in a caveat, though, is I think it's dangerous to say, like, the wages that we pay is not enough to cover the basic needs as a. That's not what you're saying, but kind of, maybe.

[Aaron]

Yeah. I think that's a big part of it.

[Nick Parish]

I think it's a part of it. But I think that there's some people that are struggling beyond that in a more extreme manager, manage management, more extreme level, that just struggling to pay people physically is still an issue. Sure. And so there's lots of contracts, so it's hard to jump into. Well, are we even paying people living wage that's, you know, physiological, but that's almost starting to get into that security level.

[Aaron]

Right.

[Nick Parish]

Whereas I still think that there's lots of people, that they're struggling to actually provide a secure environment and consistently pay people. Now, if you're not paying people every Thursday or whatever it is, you don't have employees for very long. But in our market today, I think there's tons of just people just hire new people. They don't last for long, and they hire another person. And so if you're not consistently paying people, that may be an extremist thought, but I still think that that's an issue. And so I'm even maybe a little more doom and gloom that it's. We're still trying to figure out how to pay people consistently, but I think that there are some Companies that are past that, that are getting into that next level of making people feel actual security, that, hey, this is the work that's coming. Here's how you're going to move up. Here's how our bonus program works. Here's a 401k. And starting to build that safety blanket that you. Because in Maslow's, if you forget about construction for a second, like, the basic part of it is just food and shelter. Right. Am I. Is an animal going to eat me?

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Nick Parish]

No. Okay. Okay. I have a weapon or whatever. Do I have food to feed myself? Yes. Not my family.

[Aaron]

Right.

[Nick Parish]

I have to feed myself before I can take care of the others around me. And you have to get through. I still think some of that's not getting taken care of.

[Aaron]

Yeah, yeah. In a literal sense. I use Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs a lot to just reiterate the importance of the dirt world. It's like, without infrastructure, basic needs are not met. And we don't think about that in our society because our basic needs have always been met. My whole life, I've always had power. I've always had running water. I've always had a toilet. I've always had a roof over my head. I've always had roads. I've never had to think about it before. And so I have then associated that with being automatic. But even now, I have. I feel like travel's given me more and more appreciation for what I have and the infrastructure around me.

[Nick Parish]

See how people live around the world.

[Aaron]

Yeah, dude. I go. I walk out of the grocery store with two bags full of stuff. Vegetables and fruits and all good food. Because I. I eat well. Good food.

[Nick Parish]

Exotic foods, I might add.

[Aaron]

Well, it's just. It's amazing that I can just go into a grocery store and get all of this good stu from all over the world. And then I think it really hit me when I went to Australia for the first time. So I could not be on more of the opposite side of the planet than Australia. From Nashville, Tennessee. It's quite literally almost the exact opposite part of the world. And I go into the supermarket and I buy the exact same stuff, and I cook the exact same thing that I would have at home. And I just. The whole time I'm like, I cannot believe this. The exact same thing. Although much better, because food outside of America's way better, far better than what we have. Our stores are garbage, unfortunately. It bums me out every time I go into a foreign grocery store, but it's just. It's Amazing. But we've, we've always had that. And so most of society lives in this world that is like. That's just the constant state of affairs. But for. We've only had that for maybe a century. Maybe a century before that it was thousands and thousands and thousands, tens of thousands of years of just trying to figure out where we're going to go get calories.

[Nick Parish]

That's right. The vast majority of time. That's what we've been doing. Which is crazy. Yeah.

[Aaron]

So it's, it's. You have to fulfill like in the way for people listening the hierarchy works is. It's a hierarchy. You have to fulfill the bottom tier before you can then move up to the second tier and then the third tier and then the fourth tier. And ultimately you want to self actual

[Nick Parish]

actualize, which is happiness.

[Aaron]

Yeah. Becoming. Becoming all that you can be. One of my favorite quotes of all time is a Maslow quote. What a man can be, he must be. Like a poet must write, a painter must paint. Like what you can be, you must be to become, to self actualize.

[Nick Parish]

I think that some of his later writings where he starts talking about how there's like self actualization. Is this me self? Like I realize what I am and what I can be.

[Aaron]

Yes.

[Nick Parish]

But then there's. He argues later that he kind of changes it from the Maslow's hierarchy of needs to hierarchy of motivations and argues that there's actually another level which is what you're talking about, of being all that one can be, not just being fulfilled.

[Aaron]

Yes, right. Yes.

[Nick Parish]

Of being past fulfillment, which is bizarre of a thought process to a lot of. I mean to me. Well it is.

[Aaron]

I mean you can, but you can very quickly merge that with religion in a way that is like everybody has a path. Everybody is here for a specific reason. And it's your job to find out what that reason is. You may go your whole life though not finding it right. And a lot of people, I would say a majority of people in today's world don't find it.

[Nick Parish]

Unfortunately people get to. I like to the hierarchy as a, as a visual of a pyramid, which is what he uses. But I like that because if you don't have the bottom foundation fixed and you start trying to go and plug in and fill in the higher levels, what happens? It falls apart. It's an inverted pyramid at that point. If you don't, if you're not feeding yourself, but then you're also trying to get love and appreciation from your friends. Yes. Well, that's not Going to end well for you, which I think is interesting. You bring up religion. Like if you look at religion or social media, sometimes that happens with people, especially social media is the easiest one because I don't want to be seen as a person that picks on religion in here. But people can take a swing.

[Aaron]

Choose your organized religion.

[Nick Parish]

But with social media, let's give that as an example. There's so many people that go and don't get the lower levels fixed and then go and try to get one more than what social media should even potentially give. But they start trying to get love and belonging, relationships, then self fulfillment out of it. And that rarely works out well.

[Aaron]

And that's where like this is in my talk. You shall love your neighbors as yourself. You have to love yourself. You need love within you to give to others. It doesn't work the other way around. So you want a world class relationship and I should not be. I'm not the relationship guy. But. But.

[Nick Parish]

Or thought that was your next book coming up.

[Aaron]

You want a world class business, but you're super, super overweight. It's like those things, they just don't necessarily work. You've gotta have that solid foundation. That's why I'm so deliberate about my body, my mind, alcohol consumption, all of that. Because it's like that's the foundation for everything else. If that's out of whack, I'm cooked. I am cooked. So I need to have those things locked down to then go do anything else. Yeah, and I think that's what a lot of people are missing. They're like, well, I need a, I need a self care day. It's like, no, you need to go out and have a fucking walk, dude. Like you need to get outside and go see the sun and you know, get your 10,000 steps in. Start there. Yeah, you're gonna feel a lot better. I promise you. You're not gonna feel worse. I haven't seen it. I haven't seen anybody that's like, well, I got healthier and I regret it.

[Nick Parish]

I'm depressed.

[Aaron]

Yeah, I'm super bummed out about it. I haven't seen it happen.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah, well, and so many people need to just let me strip away the unnecessary. Right. I get rid of social media several years ago and have been happier and don't. And don't do.

[Aaron]

Do you not do any such.

[Nick Parish]

No. And my LinkedIn post, I write post and they get somebody put some. I don't, I don't even touch it anymore.

[Aaron]

Wow. Really? LinkedIn's kind of a pile of shit.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah. But garbage. Definitely don't have Instagram, Facebook, any of that stuff. I mean I'm not really. I'm not, I'm not contributing anything and I'm not withdrawing anything and which is a weird. Now that probably a couple of years removed from this. It's really weird because like even like product consumption is different.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Nick Parish]

I don't know about a new gadget that came out. Sure. You know, I came out and there's these new, like I have to go in, I have to put forth effort to go and find new things.

[Aaron]

Right.

[Nick Parish]

But anyways, I think that lots of people. The easiest way to improve all of that stuff, especially when you talk about the hierarchy, is start stripping away the cheap version of everything. Right. Get rid of the cheap exercise, you know, whatever. Get rid of the. The cheap love and belonging or social fulfillment. Social media. Right. And what's the guy we were talking about this morning of Brian Johnson. Okay, so I was scrolling through his website and one of the things he was going down through his protocol, the top five things he's talking about sleep and exercise. At the bottom, you and I were talking about this. Like he's trying to just be studied and he's saying, don't live like me. This is kind of crazy. I'm just learning from this. But he had this statement at the bottom of that, that little section and it said, you know, I'm trying to remove all of the things that are unnecessary because addiction is a prisoner. There's a prison. And that kind of came to my mind in this conversation because it's like there's so many things that we just become a prisoner of that actually doesn't give us the value.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Nick Parish]

That we want out of life. That's why I got rid of social media. I was like, I'm just a prisoner of this thing. I don't actually need this. I have great friends. I have a wonderful marriage, I have an incredible relationship with my kid. I have a incredible relationship with my co workers. Like all of these people. What do I need this thing for?

[Aaron]

No, it's a, it's certainly a knife's edge. At least that I'm on with social media.

[Nick Parish]

I'm cutting down your platform. I'm trying to convince all your people to get off.

[Aaron]

I don't, I'm not on it a lot. I try to stay off it as much as I can. I try to, you know, I do my posting, I do that. I love creating and putting it out there, but I try, I try to Limit my consumption because I know it's not good for me. But every once in a while I'll get down. Even on LinkedIn, I'll be like, what was it this morning? Some guy talking about, man, he was trying to make a. Oh. He was like, bitcoin mining is best for the grid. And I'm. And here's why. And I'm just like, I need to get off this online.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah, this is.

[Aaron]

I'll see something like that. I'm like, yeah, I. All right, we need to pack it up here. Get off right now. Because this is insane. But it's. I think if you use it as a tool, at least in my world, it has.

[Nick Parish]

Oh, sure.

[Aaron]

To my life.

[Nick Parish]

Sure.

[Aaron]

A million percent. Yeah, a million.

[Nick Parish]

I'm a big soccer guy.

[Aaron]

Unreal.

[Nick Parish]

The World cup is going on right now. I. I get on Reddit and look at the match threads, right. I want to see what people's opinions are.

[Aaron]

Reddit, dude.

[Nick Parish]

Reddit, deep dark world.

[Aaron]

It is a dark place. Yeah, you can find anything on Reddit. Some really good information on Reddit, but there is a darkness, and almost every thread descends into darkness at a certain amount, at a certain point in time.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

No matter how helpful people are or how constructive people are, it will some. It will go off the rails at a certain point in time. And then people are just talking about each other's moms or something like that.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Especially within sports. And that's where recently I've had to have some exercise some self control here that if I get so far down the comments and I start going, okay, what am I. That was unhinged. I can't read. That's. I've got. That's time to get off.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Nick Parish]

Right. That's time to move on with my life. Yeah.

[Aaron]

Reddit, Reddit, there's some good information on there.

[Nick Parish]

There is, yeah. Yeah, I like that. You can, can. You can curate what you see, Right. Whereas, like, if you get on like, you know, LinkedIn, Instagram, X, any of these, there's so much stuff is getting pushed in drag rhythm that.

[Aaron]

Well, that, that, I mean, you used to be able to curate it, right. But now they're just shoving you so much shit in front of your face like, yeah, dude, I saw. I'm reading right now. This. We're in very different worlds right now. I'm reading a book on social media. Third time, Gary Vee's crushing it. Yeah, really great book about the power of social media, brand, et cetera. And then later in the book, he has different chapters based on the different platforms. And the first one was Snapchat. And he's explaining all the benefits of Snapchat. And I'm like, I was on Snapchat in like, high school.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

And then I just got out of it. But he's explaining all the benefits and I'm like, I kind of. I see it, I like it. Maybe I should get on Snapchat and just poke around. And so I make a Snapchat account. And I'm like, all right, this is cool. I'm going to start playing around with it. Get used to it. 1. It's very complicated now.

[Nick Parish]

Oh, is it?

[Aaron]

Dude, there's so many different screens within it. I feel like a boomer. I'm like, what's going on here? And what are these filters and this and that? And what's this page? What's that page? But you go to like, it has now an explore page that's just like right in front of you. It's just. And it's just all women. All women. So I signed up. It's a brand new Snapchat. I signed up for it and I haven't even posted anything. And it's just feeding me complete trash.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

The trashiest of trash. I'm like, I don't want anything to do with this page whatsoever, but it's just shoving it right in front of my face.

[Nick Parish]

That's what people go to. That. That's the app for, is that.

[Aaron]

I don't know. I don't know. And that was one thing I was like, I don't know if I really want to be on here. If this is what they're trying to shove in front of everybody. By default, brand new account. Here you go. Just a bunch of. Just a pile of steaming shit. Nothing about how the world is becoming better. Here's your pile of shit.

[Nick Parish]

This weekend, I worked on building myself a custom newsletter that comes every day that goes. I. I had this thought. I was like, I don't know how I came about this thought, but I realized that the lack of social media, that's why people consume new information, new products, new reading, like new music, whatever media. Oh, yeah, whatever it is. That. That's the. That is the main avenue. And I recently realized that. And I thought to myself, like, has my personal spending gone down? I don't know. I just. You think of something and you go spend it on something else. Right? Is my time consuming? Books change? No, but I'm not up on what's the new book or the new music or whatever it is. And I recently realized I was like, there's probably a way around this. And so this weekend I sat down and probably spent an hour and a half and I had Claude go through and build this questionnaire, looked and saw what the science was for outbuilding algorithms. I said, I want to build an algorithm for myself, by myself, but in a closed loop. I don't want. I want to try to remove outside interference, but I want to build my personal taste. But I also want to build a upvote down, vote, save, skip feature where I can fix this over time. And I want you to feed me half a dozen things every day. It needs to be under 30 minutes of consumption, nothing more. No endless scroll. And so I need, you know, maybe a cool camping gear or whatever that maybe I might be interested in, or a new album. I see. Or a podcast or what country we're at war with. Yeah, yeah, I could feed that. I have not. I've chosen not to putting in global events in it, but I'm trying it out and so I've worked on it this morning a little bit. So I'm very interested in that. Because if I can build my own, that's one of the powerful ways of AI.

[Aaron]

Right?

[Nick Parish]

If I can build my own custom tool that allows me to discover new information. Right. And I can learn and I can manipulate that over time, but I am in control of it.

[Aaron]

Sure.

[Nick Parish]

Can that actually be powerful? I don't know.

[Aaron]

Sure. Yeah. I mean, I try to do that with my social channels to a degree.

[Nick Parish]

Truly not in control. They still have to send you ads and they still have.

[Aaron]

Yeah, yeah. It's still. It's still garbage. But I like, on Instagram, it's probably my most curated and I follow a lot of people, but most of them I've muted at this point. I don't actually see most people's content. It's just because it's just noise. I just, I can't. I can't afford to. And then I delete it. It gives you suggested posts and in your feed and I get rid of that. And you can get rid of that, but you have to get rid of it every 30 days or else it starts feeding you and then. And it, dude, it sucks you right in. You start to, well, what's this?

[Nick Parish]

And you start engineering for consumption.

[Aaron]

Right. Like, yeah, yeah. But yeah, it's more so about building a sense of discipline when you do go in to. Then go in, do what you need to do and then get out, not get sucked in.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

But I'm not perfect.

[Nick Parish]

I didn't delete any accounts. I deleted all the apps and provided friction. And so now I can like if someone says something, oh, did you see this person posted on Instagram? If I really think that's genuinely interested, now I have to go to the app store, download it, resign in, go through the two step verification, and then I get there and I see the thing and then I see the rest of its garbage. Delete that.

[Aaron]

Yeah, the brick is really good for that as well.

[Nick Parish]

I've seen those, I've just never researched. But all. But it works well.

[Aaron]

Yeah, it's just stupid simple. Like before you leave to the office, you just brick your phone and it turns off the apps that you don't want access to. And then it's like you put it on your fridge at home. So then you go wherever you are, you can't unbrick yourself until you go back to the physical thing on your fridge.

[Nick Parish]

Oh, I didn't realize that works.

[Aaron]

So it creates a great amount of friction by just. You just turn the apps off and you can't turn them back on without going to the physical location that your brick is.

[Nick Parish]

Gotcha.

[Aaron]

So that's how I've managed it as well.

[Nick Parish]

That's cool.

[Aaron]

I'll get to the office, I'll do my social media, then I'll break my phone and then it just gives me access to what I need for work, but I can't. And then, and then every time I go to Instagram, it says you're bricked and I feel like an idiot. My God, why was I going Instagram right now?

[Nick Parish]

Was it important?

[Aaron]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Nick Parish]

I ran the second phone thing for a little while too. I did a trial probably of like three or four months.

[Aaron]

I have that right now as well.

[Nick Parish]

And my. I found that it actually caused more problems because I had two numbers. And so like I have two core groups of friends that there is the group chat, constantly churning of whatever's going on in each other's day. Well, I had two phones in there and I was creating the green bubbles.

[Aaron]

Oh.

[Nick Parish]

And I almost, I mean I almost got murdered. They're like, Nick, it's got to go. Like you have to have self control. I don't know, you got to figure out the focus times thing on your phone.

[Aaron]

Sure.

[Nick Parish]

Mine was. I mean as a business owner, you get this, right? Like you're always dreaming and solving problems and thinking about it. My biggest problem after getting unplugged from social media was then how do I cut off when I Go home. My wife told me one day, she's like, you're here, but you're not here. And one. That's a really tough statement for anyone to say to you. Right? Yeah, you're here, Aaron, but I don't feel like you're actually here. You're not listening, you're not contributing. And my wife told me that at dinner with her and my daughter. And we're really good about sitting down for dinner every night and having conversation, but if this thing doesn't have a brick that I can brick. And so many times I get done with dinner and I go, okay, I'm gonna pick my phone up and put this thing on my to do or shoot this email real quick. And, like, it'll just be real quick. Right. Well, I was like, okay, well, I'll get the second phone. And I just won't put any of that on there. Right. It'll have text message. It was like my travel phone. Like, if I went on vacation, I left that other one at home. And this one had Lyft and Google Maps and Spotify, and that was it.

[Aaron]

Yeah, call your mom.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah, that was it. And not being able to turn this thing off, turn your head for those on audio, I guess, is like pointing my cranium here. But, you know, I mean, to be able to turn your brain off is an entirely different deal. I haven't figured that out. And I don't. Yeah, the second phone didn't work because all my friends hated it. But so I've just. I've tried to, like, you know, go throw the thing in a drawer when I get home. But I mean, like, actually I went back to this crazy I. When I was in high school. I corrected, I collected vinyl records. Musician. I really liked vinyl. It was the hipster thing to do in Phoenix at the time. Yeah, maybe all over the place, but

[Aaron]

it's even more hipster now.

[Nick Parish]

Well, I've gotten back into it because I realized when I started trying to put my phone away, well, I would come home and, like, I may want to research something. Right. Or turn on the TV or listen to music. But listening to music was the most common thing that I wanted to do that I needed my device for. And I was like, oh, oh, I fixed that analog. So now I'm analog. So now just come home, put my phone down, put a record on, and I spin records all the time.

[Aaron]

I think that's a big thing is. Yeah, just putting your phone away. Yeah, I try. After a certain hour at night, I just. I'm Done. Dude. Cannot be looking at this anymore. But I just, I don't. I don't. I have. I haven't had to go through that exercise much in my life because I

[Nick Parish]

don't have the self control.

[Aaron]

No. I'm just. I can be wildly unbalanced.

[Nick Parish]

Oh, yeah.

[Aaron]

Yeah. I can. I can afford to be just full send right now. And I am. And people are like, you need to chill. I'm like, yeah, right, Good. Good one. Not. I'm going to go even harder, dude, because I know this. The train I'm on right now, like, I've got to get off it at some point. Maybe I don't know what life has in store for me, but yeah, it's. It's. I think the only time I've been really diligent about it when I'm. When I'm in Phoenix with my mom, because it's like, just leave your phone. Just leave it. Just leave it. I. So I try not to take it. Or if I go to dinner with somebody, I try to leave my phones. So it's like times like that where I want to be present. I just. I have to leave stuff. I can't bring it with me.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

But my mom, like that has, Has. Has made me more present than anything else, realizing, like, wait a minute. This. I've. I've already spent well over 99 of the time I will spend with my mother. With my mother, sure.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

Beyond 99's already gone this point, which is a crazy thing to think about in it by itself.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

And so then I'm like. And I don't know how long this thing goes for. And she's. She's healthy. She's. Right. Yeah, she's.

[Nick Parish]

I get it. I get it. You know, but it's a stats game at this point.

[Aaron]

Yeah, but. But it is like this thing and, and frankly, like quote unquote, losing my dad four and a half years ago, then it makes the other parent, like there's a lot more value. I hate that that's how it works. But, yeah, you start to realize this thing can just go in any which way at any time. So I don't want to take advantage of it. And every moment I have, let's just be present. Let's just be all in.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah. I got rid of the smartwatch for the same reason. I just killed it.

[Aaron]

And it's like how people do the smartwatch thing when you're sitting there with somebody and you see their watch just going off all day. How do you do anything how do you have brain space for any thought whatsoever when every. And I don't. I don't have notifications on my phone at least either. So if you text me, if I get a slack email, I have no notifications on. The only thing that goes through is a phone call. But even notifications on your phone, it's like, how do you have notifications on. Isn't that crazy distracting? It's crazy distracting. Or when I'm reading, it's like, I know I'm just so attached to it because if my phone is on the desk when I'm reading, I'm thinking about my phone, even if it's flipped over. So I have to. My phones have to be out of visual range when I read to read effectively. Right.

[Nick Parish]

You'll grab it. You'll reach for it and grab it.

[Aaron]

Or I'll just be thinking about it. So I have to go hide my phones every time I read, which is every day.

[Nick Parish]

It's crazy. If you're. If you're not in 2026, if you are not combating this, you're getting further entrenched because like, I got a Rivian last year driving a dirt contractor with electric pickup.

[Aaron]

Yeah, that's blasphemy.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah, I know. I love it though. But my phone is my key.

[Aaron]

Ah, yeah. I was with somebody the other day in their electric car. He's like, oh, I didn't lock the car. And he goes to his. He pulls out his phone. I'm like, what the are you doing? I'm like, oh, it's on your phone.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah. You have to pay extra money to

[Aaron]

have a key fob.

[Nick Parish]

Have these little like debit card looking things.

[Aaron]

That's your.

[Nick Parish]

That actually unlocks it. That there is a. They give you two little. They look like hotel keys. Like they're flimsy little hotel key things. And that's your key to get in and start it. Or you can buy a $300 key fob. Crazy. Either that or you just use this app which does auto unlock and lock and it's.

[Aaron]

How's the Rivian been? It's been great.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah. I. I definitely get laughed and pointed at pretty often.

[Aaron]

Right.

[Nick Parish]

And we're wrapped. It's wrapped.

[Aaron]

Right.

[Nick Parish]

It's got the topo lines and everything over just like anything burns dirt. But I have, I've actually personally become very accustomed to it. I got the smallest battery. Like the smallest range is like 265 miles or something like that. And I wanted to see, just kind of for fun, but also like Looking at the math like it says pencils to save money.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Nick Parish]

This was pre conflict we've got going on. This was middle of last year.

[Aaron]

Sure.

[Nick Parish]

And it was time for a new pickup. And my controller, Josh and I were talking about it and I was like, one of us said, what about an electric pickup? And maybe he said, are you against an electric vehicle? Would you have like a Sierra 1500 Sierra Half Ton standard? Standard construction contractor, contractor special. The contractor special? Yeah. And I said, no, I don't guess so. Like, I don't know. I don't have any beef with electrical vehicle, you know, electric vehicles. And we ran the math and it's like this actually could potentially save 20, 25% cost per mile. Especially looking at your driving habits. Like, we looked at the data and we looked at all this stuff and we came up with a hypothesis that It'd save about 25% cost per mile.

[Aaron]

Because you guys operate in a pretty somewhat tight area.

[Nick Parish]

Hour and a half.

[Aaron]

Yeah. You're not going crazy.

[Nick Parish]

Even if I go to Birmingham, which is two hours away, I mean, there's chargers everywhere.

[Aaron]

Stop at the Carl's Jr.

[Nick Parish]

The Love Truck. I've learned that Buc EE's Loves Truck Stop and Pilot. Those three have wicked fast chargers. And by the time you go plug in, go inside, use the bathroom, grab a snack, come back, check your email, it's charged and I'm gone for another 200 miles, which gets me to most places in the south. I can stop for one charge. I can get to the beach, one charge, get to Atlanta, one charge. I can get to Nashville in one charge. Um, and. But other than that, I charge at home. I plug in, when I get home the next morning, I have a full charge. I can drive for a week, 10 days without ever having to plug back up at home. And I can do all of my normal work. I can drive to job sites. I mean, it's heavy, but I mean it's. I mean, it's very roomy. You have tons of storage.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Nick Parish]

I haven't got any bites on people inside the organization to jump on board. I'm just going to start trialing it. Hey, swap me pickups for a week. You got to drive this thing. I'm going to charge it up and I want you to see how. Actually this thing has a ton of tech. It's super nice. You got tons of storage. Because I think that most people that are going to drive locally, it saves money and they're quiet and easy to drive. I mean, I don't. I Don't know. I think I'm a big fan of it.

[Aaron]

Are you, Are you a sales rep for, For.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll collect my jacket. Yeah, they got on. Ach.

[Aaron]

Yeah. How much are they, how much are they sliding under the table? No, I, I, I, I've fallen into this trap. I've realized anything that there's teams on. If you're either team this or team that. It's a trap.

[Nick Parish]

It's a trap.

[Aaron]

Yeah, it's a trap. And so I think a lot of people have fallen into this trap that is I'm either all in on green on battery, battery electric vehicles, or I'm not at all. And I think that's a trap that's. Or I'm all in on. Let's just keep burning as much coal and natural gas as possible. Or we, we need all solar panels and wind turbines.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

And there's no opportunity for, like, well, what if, I don't know, we could do both? Like, what if we could. There was something in the middle that was actually the best solution to this. And there's a lot of variables here. And for this person, it makes sense, and it's the best option here. For this person, it doesn't make sense for xyz. Like, couldn't there be something in the middle?

[Nick Parish]

I actually have, like, the most. I'm the paradox. Right. I run a company that burns hundreds of thousands of gallons of diesel fuel every year.

[Aaron]

The original green energy, Right? Yeah.

[Nick Parish]

And then drive an electric pickup. I also have, like an old 80s project car that I drive on the weekend that's pure, absolute analog. It runs half the time that I go to crank it up.

[Aaron]

You need one of those if you have an electric vehicle so the government can't shut it off. That's right.

[Nick Parish]

But I get to go drive my golf cart all week, and then on the weekends I can go and burn dead dinosaurs if that's what I want to do.

[Aaron]

Right.

[Nick Parish]

I've got both ends of the spectrum.

[Aaron]

No, I think, like, if it, if it, if it works and it makes sense, by all means, I'm not here to tell people to not do something. I could not have less interest in an electric vehicle. I just, I don't, I don't think they're comfortable. They make me car sick because of the electric motors and the acceleration and the braking.

[Nick Parish]

It just, it is weird. Yeah.

[Aaron]

It physically makes me ill, which just drives me nuts.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

I'm just not a fan of them.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah, No, I get it.

[Aaron]

But I also see, like, it does make sense in a lot of applications.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah. And I don't mind the things that you just complained about. I don't. They. Those don't affect me.

[Aaron]

Right.

[Nick Parish]

And so I'm a totally different camp of. Yeah.

[Aaron]

I mean, I drive a 6.7 diesel right now, but we're actually going to sell that. I'm getting a Grenadier pretty soon. Within the next few weeks, they should call me. I'm really excited about.

[Nick Parish]

It is sweet.

[Aaron]

Yeah. And it's not. It's just a small gas engine. It's very reasonable. But it's an suv, so it's very American still.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

Yeah. Love that.

[Nick Parish]

I do wish I had the SUV version. My truck. That is the only complaint is I still have to pick up them. Like, I don't need a bed. I need to take people.

[Aaron]

Because it is a. I mean, it's. It's not a big pickup.

[Nick Parish]

It is the size.

[Aaron]

Very heavy, but it's not a big.

[Nick Parish]

It is the size of a Chevy Colorado.

[Aaron]

Yes. Yes. Yeah. Or Tacoma.

[Nick Parish]

Or Tacoma.

[Aaron]

Ish.

[Nick Parish]

Yes. That's exactly the size of it.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Nick Parish]

Which at first you're like, this is not a pickup.

[Aaron]

Sure. But. Yeah. And it's fine for you. But. Yeah. If you want to bring four people with you.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah. So, I mean, a little snow. The SUV is where I. I think that's the right. The right call. I mean, I put up on a job site with an SUV people. But you have an electric suv.

[Aaron]

Yeah. You really look like a knob. Really. Yeah. But the. I mean, I just. I just spent a few weeks in Europe and the. The electric stuff is way beyond. I'm just. Big picture. I'm just a believer in hybrid. I think hybrid. It just maths better. It's better technology.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

It's actually far more efficient grand scheme. And I. I think the battery thing has its place, but it was way overblown, way overly subsidized.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

Way overly pushed on the population. And I actually think because it was so pushed, that's why people have rebelled against it.

[Nick Parish]

I think that's fair.

[Aaron]

Yeah. It's a fair statement. I think the more you push, the more people are like, nah, you can go fuck yourself.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

And I think. I think they actually did themselves a huge disservice by trying to push it as much as they did.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah. Instead of letting it win an economic war. Right.

[Aaron]

Same with AI Right now there is.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

There's growing resentment and rebellion for AI that I don't think these executives fully appreciate. And maybe their plan is to Just force it down everybody's throat. Make it better and better so that they don't have to deal with human beings anymore. So maybe that's the play. Maybe that's the play.

[Nick Parish]

That's a play.

[Aaron]

We don't have to worry about the growing resentment.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

Because we're just going to railroad everybody with it. Like, what could go wrong? And so maybe that is their play. But go home. I don't know, man. If you're, if you're one of these tone deaf executives sitting around saying, we need our organization to talk, you know, you need to be using AI and this and that. Like, we've been doing that as an organization. I'm actually a believer in some of. I mean, the tools are unbelievable.

[Nick Parish]

Right.

[Aaron]

But I'm saying, like, use it to do the part of your job that sucks. Or is monotonous.

[Nick Parish]

Yes.

[Aaron]

Or is cumbersome. Yeah. So that you can then devote that energy to the stuff that creates more value. The stuff that, that involves creativity, that involves thought, that is uniquely human. Like the stuff that can be automated and is repetitive. Let's get rid of it. Because who wants to do that shit? Who wants to just punch a bunch of numbers into a spreadsheet and then add up the numbers and the numbers don't add up? Where's, where's the problem? Like, if you can just automate it, dude. Get rid of it so that you can spend your time elsewhere.

[Nick Parish]

I don't know the, I don't know if it's an EOS thing, but there's like the, the delegation deal where it's like you build a grid of the things that you do in life and the things you're good at and the things that you're not good at and the things you like doing the things.

[Aaron]

Yes.

[Nick Parish]

I've, I've told people that's where this is, where that's useful is do that chart, you know, measure what you do for a week and then all the things that you don't like doing and you're not good at doing. See if, if I can help you there. Yeah. Because nine times out of ten it probably can. Yeah. If you. It's just a process. I just don't like doing it. I'm fine at it, I guess. You know, but I just don't want doing this piece of paperwork every week. Takes three hours of my week and it's boring. Yep. That's where you have to put it.

[Aaron]

That's. Yeah.

[Nick Parish]

And that, that's first primarily primary. Like, that's the. To me that's the.

[Aaron]

It's an entry point to start. Yeah. I think it's a great place to start. And so I'm, I'm. I'm like the way I see it is I'm human first with it. Like let's apply it to eliminate the inhuman stuff within our organization so that we can almost be more human. Whereas I think most organizations are inhuman with it. Let's use it to eliminate humans.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

And I also think it's a scapegoat right now for over hiring. I think companies way over hired post Covid. Way over hired these big tech companies.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

It was just a bonanza. Bonanza. And they're paying for it now.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

By. But. But citing while we have AI and this and that. It is making people more efficient. But I actually think it's. They're correcting for the over hiring that they.

[Nick Parish]

They did. It's funny, I see more notebooks in meetings now than I did. Especially because we have like all these robots that are every. Every meeting it's like, oh, let's let in all the robots into our teams meeting. You know, and I do. I. That's maybe a good thing. Right. I mean that a benefit of this that I'm seeing is that people are seeing all of this. And then my to do list is sitting to me in an email in 15 minutes after the meeting. Right. Because AI was listening to the meeting, made a transcript, gave me my action items, sent them to me. I can sit here with a notebook and look at you in this meeting.

[Aaron]

Yes.

[Nick Parish]

Right. And if I need to draw something or make a little note, I can, I can make it. But we've eliminated the whole like laptops in a meeting.

[Aaron]

Yeah, but that. And there's different. I think there's different applications for it as well. Like, I think recording like we've recorded a lot of our sales meetings, which is actually given us a lot of data. Understand what we need to do better. Yeah, but I have a notebook. Everywhere I go, everywhere. I don't have a notebook right now because I'm talking to you. I don't, I don't need it. But everywhere I go, I have a notebook. And I make a point of that to our people. I'm like, they're just kind of sitting there nodding like you're writing it down because you're not good enough to remember it. No one really is like, you've got to write it down, man. But I don't need to record the whole meeting to know what I need to write down. I Don't need or I don't need. And oftentimes it just gives me more junk. I'm like, I don't need this. All this bullshit. I know what I need to do. Here it is. I'm just going to go do it right. Like, I think you. And we're like, we were talking in the kitchen this morning. I think you have to have that discernment of where to apply it and where not to apply it. Like, I think I'm almost. I'm a little slow to the party. I'm a little late to the party. I'm like, I'm still learning my ABCs when it comes to Claude. I'm using it for like the most basic shit possible. But I'm glad I've been slow in a way. Like, I think a little bit of apprehension is good. I think if you just go in and drink the Kool Aid. I don't know, I just, I don't.

[Nick Parish]

Handles every process in your life.

[Aaron]

Yeah. Something to me feels off about that. I'm like, I don't know why, but something about that's just off. It's just wrong. And I, I think you have to use it as a tool if you're trying to replace things like the creative process with it now I think you're just setting yourself back as a human, as a leader, as a creative. Like, you're. I think you're starting to play in really, really dangerous, dangerous territory.

[Nick Parish]

I think people need to take a second and go understand product design. If you're going to be using cloud and you're going to be building any kind of process or tool, going and understanding either systems design or just product design as a whole is a useful place to stop and say, okay, I need to look at this. Because in good product and system design, there's points of friction that are necessary. Yeah, we need to have friction at some point and because if you don't, if you just make a frictionless system that just breezes its way through this, all these things. I was talking about how I built a thing this morning that goes and pulls my receipts.

[Aaron]

Right.

[Nick Parish]

Because I'm terrible about just some things don't have receipts with them or like the gas machine didn't print the receipt out or whatever, that may be good. But also, did I not just give up the self control of actually pulling my phone out and taking a picture at the end of the meal and uploading my receipt?

[Aaron]

Well, and this goes to like, what is life without friction? And see, this is where. Yeah, I think A lot of people, it is a bad place to be. You're trying to automate everything. You're trying to make everything easy. And it's like, that is not the way, man. That is not the way to doing anything significant in life. Yeah, like the easy way. No, no, no, no, no, no. That's the way to absolute despair, I would say.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

And so that's where. I mean, even like, I think it was like Alex Hormozi the other day, he's like, you know, here's a way to get a bunch of hours back in your life. Automate your chores and automate your cooking.

[Nick Parish]

Just order food.

[Aaron]

And I'm like, so one. I do have a housekeeper once a month. Great, great money spent. That is like something I'll have the rest of my life. I'm a believer. If you can afford it, just have someone take care of your house. I'm telling you, it's not like the math, the money on it. It just doesn't make sense to do it yourself.

[Nick Parish]

I gave it cut my grass a couple years ago, so I get.

[Aaron]

But unless you really enjoy it. Unless you really enjoy it and get a lot of benefit from it, but just. Just use someone for it. But then I went on the other side of the thing. I was like, I love cooking. I love the friction of cooking because it makes me really diligent with what I am consuming and I need to know what I'm consuming. If I'm ordering out, I really ensure. Maybe you could do it in a super clean way, but it's really, really hard to.

[Nick Parish]

To.

[Aaron]

And. And then there's no connection to what you're consuming and the fuel you're putting into your body, and it just. It just eliminates something very important to your health. I feel like if you're just automating your food, and maybe that's flawed logic,

[Nick Parish]

but I think it's true. Yeah, I think it's true.

[Aaron]

I love cooking when I'm at home because I know exactly what I'm consuming on a daily basis because I'm cooking every meal now. Do I prep some of the stuff to automate it a little bit? Of course I do. Like this morning I had eggs. I bake it yesterday, and I baked four servings of it. So I'm good Monday through Thursday. So I'm not doing it every day because I have to be efficient with time. Yeah, but I don't want to order. I don't want to order breakfast. I want to know exactly what I'm consuming and the Only way to do that is if I cook it in my kitchen.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah, but at least you plan that out. You prepped it, you cook the thing, you know what's in it and arguably is going to taste way better. But I mean there. And there are some just like fuel staples that automating, it's okay, right? If it's your eggs for breakfast.

[Aaron]

Yes.

[Nick Parish]

Every day, right?

[Aaron]

Yes.

[Nick Parish]

You still planned it.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Nick Parish]

You automated it for a few days, but you still have to do it on Thursday, you have to figure out what to do Friday.

[Aaron]

Automating stuff though, man, it's is. There's a lot of value to it. But then you're, you're removing. I feel like what makes life, life. There has to be friction. There has to be hard stuff. And I think now because life is so fucking easy, you don't have to think about where calories come from. You don't really have to think about a roof over your head or a toilet or anything. Like most everybody has that. You have to then go create that friction.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

Through exercise, through doing hardship.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah. Collecting vinyl.

[Aaron]

That's collecting.

[Nick Parish]

I go, I keep thinking about how great this hobby, like to re. Pick this hobby up is because like for new piece of music comes out, I have to decide do I want to spend the money on this? It's not free, it's not $10 a month. Right. Actually have to research, I have to go find. I've actually added this whole level of joy with. I think everybody can build a hobby like this. I'm not saying everybody should go start collecting vinyl and listening to vinyl, but it stops and you have to get up and you have to flip it or you have to go pick out a different record. And like now my kid, she loves Steely Dan. She's getting into Steely Dan because we go and pick out the record to play together. Right. Or she go, hey dad, can I pick up the next record?

[Aaron]

But if I, if I just looked at it on paper, I'd be like, it's the stupidest thing ever. It's very ineffective cost wise. I can song immediately right now on my phone in better quality. Why would I ever do that?

[Nick Parish]

Anywhere and anywhere, anywhere at any time?

[Aaron]

Yeah. I don't need a machine to do it. Like it's, it's. There's almost no barrier to entry to music anymore. But I guarantee you that you are enjoying the music far more than I am on my phone.

[Nick Parish]

I have two other friends that do the same thing and we have something that we get to enjoy together.

[Aaron]

Now, yeah.

[Nick Parish]

Instead of us getting together and talking about whatever bs, you know, thing happened in the news or whatever it is, like, we trade records, we buy each other records. Like, we get together and I've got a friend that they have a. Him and his wife have some daughters of the same age as my daughter, live on the backside of our block. We go eat each other's house every, like, Tuesday or Wednesday. We alternate back and forth. And we have a tradition that when you're at my house, you pick out records, you go through my collection, and you, you play the music tonight. So when I go to his house, I get to go through his collection and I pick what I want to listen to at his house. That's cool. And like, that's a cool like one. It's a relationship builder. So now I have a greater connection with this human also. We learn things because I'll put something on. But hey, did you know something? You know, this was like post heroin addiction for Eric Clapton. Look how much worse it is than the, you know, those other stuff, whatever it is like, whatever dumb fact. And then inevitably, every few weeks he's like, hey, man, I got you this record. I know you like this guy and I saw it in the store. I got it for you.

[Aaron]

Like, but that's the human experience.

[Nick Parish]

It is, right.

[Aaron]

Uniquely human thing that, like, on paper, it doesn't really make sense, but it, it. That's what gives the whole thing texture, color, depth. And I, I was just having this conversation with somebody this weekend. I think going back to business and, and Maslow's hierarchy of needs, a lot of the stuff that you should do as a business for your people, it doesn't, especially in the short term, doesn't necessarily pencil. You can't really put it on a spreadsheet. And even long term, if you know it's the right thing to do, a lot of it, you still can't put on a spreadsheet. And so I think that's why big business doesn't do it. Big business is fucking miserable in the US you couldn't pay me enough to go to work for these big companies anymore. I'm just. I'm not into it anymore. I used to think that they were the absolute, absolute top the, the creme de la creme. But I don't, I don't. I don't put them on a pedestal at all anymore because they're miserable. Their people are miserable. And it's because they're locked into this, this model that is more this quarter, more next quarter. More Q3, more. Q4, more Q1 of next year. More, more, more, more, more. And don't get too much more, just a little bit more. But if you're less than more, going to have some big problems and you might be fired. Like it's such a racket. The whole thing is a racket. Racket, racket, racket, racket, racket. But because they have to do more, more, more, more, more, more, more, they can't really afford to do stuff that's in their best long term interest. It's just that's not really the model. And then you get into the private equity model. Now it's even worse.

[Nick Parish]

Sure.

[Aaron]

Because now it's, let's, let's just tighten the screws on this thing for five years as much as possible. And every penny we can squeeze out of this thing, we are every single one of them. And then we're out. Who gives a shit what happens after that? We made our money. Let's go do more. Let's make more money for people that already have tons of money because they need more, more, more, more money. We're winning. Look how much money we have. Love this. And it's just a model that does not prioritize people because it can't really prioritize people.

[Nick Parish]

Sure.

[Aaron]

Which is, it's really interesting. Whereas good business, you have to constantly push against those corrosive forces that I think that balance needs to be there. Like you, the business has to be solvent to pay people. Like if you're not profitable, you don't have money to invest and the thing is not safe. So for safety, the business does have to work. And we've, we've been around that.

[Nick Parish]

Sure.

[Aaron]

Merry go round for years.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

But that can't drive everything. If you're making all your decisions based on the business. The business, the business. The spreadsheets. Spreadsheets. Spreadsheets. You can't do what's in the best interest of your people.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

It can't. It just doesn't work.

[Nick Parish]

It's, it's crazy. Every time that I go back to Maslow, I see this one theme exist across every bit of conversation going on, industry right now. And I've for years been up on like, you know, John Mackey's Conscious Capitalism. Yeah. And gosh, the book is escaping me right now. But everybody matters. Yeah. Bob Chapman. Right. Like both of those guys, especially Bob really talks about if you take care of people, the business takes care of itself. Right. And if you go back to Maslow's, if we can Ever get Let's pay people. Well, if you want to start working on the next levels, start figuring out what do people need. Like Maslow's is a very. Just cut and dry. It's like reading the plans and specs on how to, how to, you know, have great people within your business. And I think if contractors would sit down, we're, we do have some very black and white thoughts as creatures. Look at Maslow's. What do people need? And what you actually will find is that we talk a lot about skills, skills training, but there are so many things that we are failing at prior to that. And there's even like an economic argument about this that you could make when you talk about big businesses and little businesses. Let me think of the guy's name. There's an economist won the Nobel Peace prize in the 90s. Gary Becker. You heard of Gary Becker? Okay. Gary Becker wrote this book in the 60s called Human Capital. And one of his big theories that he talked about was that. And I don't get off in the weeds in economic theory, but he talks about the difference between general skills and specific skills. And businesses are de. Incentivized to teach general skills and put money into general skills. Because if I teach you how to run a bulldozer, well, you can just leave and go to a competitor a. For a dollar more an hour. And I just put, I just invested money.

[Aaron]

Sure.

[Nick Parish]

Now, Becker talks about like the person receiving the training should carry the burden of the training because they're the one that captures the value. And there's a whole really neat. I mean, he actually like an economist. Yeah, well. And in this book in the 60s, he lays out exactly our industry's problem 60 years ago. Like it has nothing to. I mean it's black and white right there. Hey, we could have looked at it and said, hey, in the 60s, does construction have a problem? We said, oh yeah, we've got a problem coming. But he also talks about this thing called specific skills, which is only skills that work in your business, your software suite or the way that you build something. I think contractors immediately go to, well, I've got to find a niche. Right. And that niche is this thing that I only I can build and I have the tools and only my people have the knowledge. And now nobody can take my people. That's BS Treating your people right is a specific skill. Yeah. Training them up through the system of mentorship. Right. Or just having one on ones with your, your direct reports, having connection time. That's a specific skill. And if you Just do that. That's what big business does really poorly.

[Aaron]

But I think. And that is the moat around your business. And that's what differentiates any great construction business right now. Yeah, that I've seen. But you can't put it on a spreadsheet. And I can't, I can't put numbers to it. And so. And I think that's what construction struggles with is one. They're stuck in an economic model that doesn't really allow for it.

[Nick Parish]

That's true.

[Aaron]

Low margins. It's hyper competitive. Everybody's out to kill you. I've just. It's feast or famine and I've got to gorge myself. I'm a fucking squirrel. It's summer. There's a lot of nuts around here. I've got to get as many of these nuts as possible in my little hideout. All my little stashes before winter comes. Especially the ones that were through the recession, 2008, 2009. Like there's some major scar tissue there.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

So hyper competitive. The margins on the work itself, just not very good. Very low margin on average in the construction industry, which just doesn't leave me very much left over.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

And then it's, it's, it's, it's an industry with very rational people that like to measure shit. How many yards of dirt are you moving a day? How many gallons of diesel are we burning? How many hours are on that machine? How much is that machine? How many of those machines do you have? Like, it's all numbers. What's your backlog? You know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's. Everybody likes numbers. We like to measure stuff.

[Nick Parish]

And that's having more yellow iron too. Right. And more hard to have more yellow iron and spend more time with your. Your people.

[Aaron]

Sure.

[Nick Parish]

Oh, you can't do both. Yeah, but how many times you said you'll do both?

[Aaron]

But I feel good about buying more yellow iron because I can, I can see it. It's in my yard.

[Nick Parish]

It's got my name on it.

[Aaron]

It has my name on it. It can't just drive off and go to my competitor, you know, I can't. It can't just leave me. And it's on my balance sheet. So it's safe. Yeah, it's safe. I like this. And so I understand why everybody is where they are.

[Nick Parish]

Sure.

[Aaron]

And I'm not. I am no longer blaming the industry for where we are. What we've done in the past has got us here. And there's a lot of Great things we've done. However, we all know this is not the way forward. We all know it. I've spoken enough. No one has piped up and said, you're fucking wrong, dude. Everybody knows it.

[Nick Parish]

Everybody had one crazy.

[Aaron]

Everybody's sweating a little bit right now. Everybody's a little nervous. Everybody's a little bitter. Everybody. We're not stoked. We're not stoked. Why are we not stoked? We just spent more money on construction. In all of human history in the past five years. We've never spent more on construction in the history of America over the past five years. So why aren't we all stoked about it? It's because we know what we're doing is not working. We know that. And so now that we know that the toothpaste is out of the tube, it doesn't go back into the tube. And so we can either accept responsibility and become better ourselves, first as leaders, which then makes those around us better, or we can remain bitter assholes and blame everybody else. But those are the fucking people that I can now blame because it's like. And not even blame them, but just not have time for them anymore. Like, listen, if you're not going to take responsibility, we all. We all now know it. We all now see it. If you're not going to take responsibility just, then just get the out of the way. Because we've got to get on with the program. Like, we've got to get on with it now. And. And I love that you've been here for 40 years, but either help make it better, leave it better than you found it, or. Or leave. Because this middle ground of just like, kind of stomping around, throwing our hands up, being little poopy pants about it. What is it done?

[Nick Parish]

Everyone's standing around like cold water, and everyone's looking at each other going, you jump first, dude.

[Aaron]

I mean, I started in this industry at 18. I'm 31. It's the same conversation. The same conversation 13 years later. And it's like, okay, guys, come on. But now we have a few contractors that have said, let's take responsibility.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

And the gap between them and everybody else, they're now not struggling for people, really, that gap starting to become wider and wider and wider. And there's enough of them in that group. It's not many, but there's enough of them in that group to be like, wait a minute, there's a different way here. There's a better way. What are they doing? And ultimately, they're doing a Lot of great things. And you could sit here and talk about it all day, but it starts with Nick.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Aaron]

You are either the biggest proponent or the biggest blocker in that equation. And you're the limiter. If you get better, that allows room for everybody else to get better. But if you stay the same, you don't stay the same. You're only getting worse. You're only setting everybody else back. And so that's where, like, last year's message was about teams. It's not about teams. It's about individual leaders. That's the game. And every one of these great construction companies, we could sit here and list them all. I could. Yep. It's because of this guy. It's because of this guy. It's because of this guy. And it's not because of them. But that's where it started.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

Without that piece. No other pieces of the puzzle.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I feel like people say, like, I can't find people. I hear that conversation all the time. There maybe was a time where we couldn't. And I have to get real pointed about this, is that you don't get applications.

[Aaron]

Sure.

[Nick Parish]

Is that. Well, that's because you hide yourself.

[Aaron]

Oh. People don't just walk into your office and ask for a job anymore.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah. Well, your front yard looks like a junkyard because you got pipe and old busted machines and no sign out front. So nobody's going to go to the junkyard and ask for a job.

[Aaron]

Right.

[Nick Parish]

You don't have to go as extreme as we are.

[Aaron]

Right.

[Nick Parish]

I mean, we are very extremist in wrapping everything, putting our name everywhere. If you pull up in Starville, you. It's just the same. You don't have to do that.

[Aaron]

It's extremist.

[Nick Parish]

You don't think it's extremist?

[Aaron]

Spent a few weeks in Europe. That's every company.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah, that's true. It's true.

[Aaron]

That's every. Every single company.

[Nick Parish]

It blows a lot on people. More people don't do it. I mean, we're five years removed from wrapping and painting our machines.

[Aaron]

It really blows my mind, too.

[Nick Parish]

It's free.

[Aaron]

Have you. Have you really regretted it? Not when you're just like, oh, what have we done?

[Nick Parish]

You know? The only thing that I maybe regret is have not been louder about it. I've made some comments about, like, hey, like, I had this idea probably a year or two ago. I said, you know what we should do? I was behind an Amazon truck on the highway one day, you know, like, Amazon semi Trucks. And behind. It's like, hey, there's a whole lot more, a whole truckload more of, you know, Amazon prime thing.

[Aaron]

Punch whoever came up with that. But I know exactly what you're talking about.

[Nick Parish]

But I saw it, and I was like, why are we not doing that? How annoying. How. That's so stupid. But guess what? I just spent 15 minutes thinking about Amazon.

[Aaron]

Sure.

[Nick Parish]

I was like. And so I came up with, like, these slogans one afternoon of all the stuff we'd put all over the back of our dump trucks, on the side of our dump trucks. They all got shot down because people were like, hey. We're like, it's probably not. There was a whole bunch of logical, very logical reasons not to put them on the dump trucks. But I think that's been.

[Aaron]

My only regret is, like, they just stay back 200ft. Then you've got somebody try to get up closer.

[Nick Parish]

That was the whole argument. We literally want them to stay away from it. Nick, you not get closer and read what funny, witty thing you said.

[Aaron]

That's. Have you seen Reno 911? That's like, the whole opening. Opening joke is like, they're. They're in a police chase, and. And there's like a hundred of these. They're in a police chase, and they're trying to read the vanity plate. They're like, the. The plate is. And they start to read out. They're like, oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What does this mean? What is it? What do you think it means? And they're like. And then. Then they're, like, talking it through. They're sounding. Oh, it's.

[Nick Parish]

This is.

[Aaron]

And as soon as they get it, they slow down, then they crash into the car. Yeah. So stupid.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah, that was. That was. The advisement was that we probably don't need to do that, Nick. We'll figure out. Come up with other ways. Okay, all right, we'll come with other ways. But. But, like, I mean, we get tons and tons of resumes. Tons. And as a matter of fact, now years removed. It's crazy because the people that get hired on, I always ask people like, well, how'd you find out about us? Oh, my buddy says, a great place to work. They never say, oh, I saw your trucks everywhere and thought this would be a great place. I think it's brand reinforcement.

[Aaron]

Sure, sure.

[Nick Parish]

Right. Because as soon as someone says, oh, yeah, I work at Burns. We love working at Burns. How's it then they see the trucks every day.

[Aaron]

Once you started to take care of everything, though, what Was couldn't you measure like equipment damage or has everything been taken care of better?

[Nick Parish]

Yeah, we simultaneously got rid of a bunch of junk in our fleet.

[Aaron]

Anyways, we have CVA's too, right?

[Nick Parish]

We have CVAs. We also, I think I try not to throw stones at. I live in a glass house, so I don't throw many stones. But I disagree with the like, bonus depreciation section 179 that small business units use, small business owners use. I think it's a small business tax. But if you in improper use of it. There's so many people that go buy a brand new pickup every year because it's like, oh, well, my, my accountant said I need to go buy a new pickup. And that's not how asset management works.

[Aaron]

Yes.

[Nick Parish]

And we, we're in. Next year will be 50 years in business for us. Okay. And so we went from my grandfather and his brother with two guys with two dump trucks in 1977 to we've got, you know, hundreds. We have 50 dump trucks in the fleet today. Right. And hundreds of yellow iron along the way. You end up buying iron instead of paying taxes. There was no linear, like progression. And we realized we owned way too much. So actually just providing our guys with nicer stuff, not junk painting it and then allowing people especially. I think small businesses can do this. Not big businesses really struggle with this. But hey, this guy's been with us for 10 years. He runs the same D5 dozer every day. Have him come in. Hey, here's the spec sheet. Here's all the options you can get. You can get anything you want on it. Do you want the seat heaters? I'll buy seat heaters.

[Aaron]

I don't know. It's such a. Yeah.

[Nick Parish]

That helped out the most is like, hey, I'm going to buy you this. And then guess what? I'm going to take your picture in front of it like you just bought your first home or whatever.

[Aaron]

Right? But that's where so, so the, the, the, the depreciation thing is or the, the tax thing is I've always found weird because it's like, all right, cool, you, you avoided taxes this year, but

[Nick Parish]

now the can down the road, you,

[Aaron]

you kick the can down the road, the government, they get their fucking money, they're going to get it.

[Nick Parish]

And you bought a depreciating asset and

[Aaron]

you brought a depreciating asset, and now you don't have that capital to go reinvest in the business. And otherwise now it's tied up in an asset that you probably don't need. And so like I get a little bit of it. But Randy talks about it all the time.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

It's like you just end up with a bunch of shit that's underutilized that all your money is tied up in that when like you should have probably paid a little bit in taxes to then have that capital to then go reinvest in different ways within your business.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

To then create a bigger return. Like you're penny wise but pound foolish. You're over here trying to save a little bit of money from for like ego or. A lot of times it's like ego. It's like I got the. I got the government because it's trick. Like I got him. They're like, they created the whole trick, man. And. And I don't think anybody wins.

[Nick Parish]

It blows my mind as an industry of road builders, how we hate paying taxes, but we get paid off of taxes anyways. We. That's that.

[Aaron]

Yeah. Nick, don't go there, don't go there, don't go there. But this is where it's so interesting. Like even the. I love Switzerland, but the more time I spend in the Netherlands I'm like, maybe this is, I think some of the best in the world construction. I'm between Switzerland and Netherlands. Maybe Norway, Sweden as well.

[Nick Parish]

Oh, cool.

[Aaron]

But. But the Netherlands is remarkable. It's the only place I've seen where all the operators, they keep their boots on the outside of the machine. Mm. And dude, the machines are spotless inside and out. I remember we went to look at a. It was a Cat 330 Longreach. It was a battery machine. So we had to get up on the machine. You know, you climb up on the side and you get up on top there to then look at. They had replaced the engine with. With batteries obviously and an electric motor. And we wanted to look at it. And you could tell the operator was like. Because we had to get up on the machine with our boots on, which

[Nick Parish]

then got a little mop in there.

[Aaron]

Now mud on. On the machine, on the outside of the machine. But that's outside. But that's how serious they are about it. And when I was out there last, the project manager, he was like, yeah, these guys, they're. They're. They're at work an hour early, oftentimes an hour late. Sometimes on the weekends. They're cleaning their machines. They're wiping the excess grease off. Like they're really serious about them. And we allow them to spec the machine as they want to spec it. We Keep the operators with the machines. And they are, they are. That is their machine. And they treat it like their machine. And these are some of the most proud operators I've ever been around. These are some of the finest construction companies in the world. And then you put it on social media and a bunch of people shit all over it. And it's all the Americans telling you why it's so stupid. And I'm just sitting there, I'm like, well, okay, maybe, but it works for a whole country that. That has exported their ability to build stuff worldwide. Because the Dutch have engineered their entire country to not flood, which is bonkers. Bonkers. What they've actually done. They've gotten so good at engineering that they've created a very large percentage of their country. And then they've taken that know how that they've developed over hundreds of years and they've exported it around the world. So that any large port, airport, anything marine related, has either a Dutch or Belgian contractor probably doing it worldwide. That's their thing.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

And so it's like, why are we so quick to just criticize this? Like, there's more to the story than. Well, it just wouldn't work here. Well, I don't know. I don't know if it would, man. I'm not here to tell you what's going to work and what's not. I'm just here to say I've seen it now enough and I've seen everybody in a country doing it to know that, like, maybe there's something here worth looking into. There's a principle here that I think might apply. I don't know.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

And we're just so quick to like, defend, though. Oh, I would never work here.

[Nick Parish]

And what works in Mississippi may not work in Maine.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Nick Parish]

I can tell you, like, I, I don't compete with other contractors for people. That's a whole fallacy that I think contractors think. I compete with the steel mill. I compete.

[Aaron]

Amazon with.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah. With. I mean, the truck manufacturer. There's a drone manufacturer in town. And that's who we compete with. Yeah, we're. I mean, it's not a contractor to contractor thing. This is. And there's. That still exists in our industry. And we have to, we have to fix. I think that's one of the major things we have to fix is that contractors have to stop thinking that it's. Oh, it's. It's Aaron's construction company versus Nick's construction company.

[Aaron]

Right. It's like, I think. But I think we fix that by Companies like yours just lapping everybody else when it comes to people and just forcing the market into changing. I don't think there's another way to do it. I don't think the industry is going to come around and be like, you know what, let's all join hands. No, let's all, let's all join hands. We're in this together. You got to force everybody to do it. I think you force through economics. Either it's either pain or pleasure. It's not happening for pleasure. You've got to make it painful. I think you make it painful by you guys doing a lot better with people, which then in a way solves your recruiting challenge that everybody else is facing. That makes your business more profitable, becomes a self fulfilling prophecy which then allows you to do more for people, which then allows you to have better people around and around you go, which then allows you to do the same work but for less money. Not because you're under bidding, but because you're more efficient and effective. You're doing the work for less money, but making more money than the next guy. And now, now you're starting through economics to force the marketplace's hand.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah, no, you're right.

[Aaron]

And call me naive, but I think there's enough burns dirts out there now to actually start to really put pressure on the marketplace. And I actually think that's what's happening already, which is why these bigger contractors are starting to feel it more and more and more.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah. And that's why they're sweating the crazy thing. I mean, I feel like we've been in this trying to do better and level up for five or six years, seven years now. And every year that passes I realize holy crap was so ignorant. I used to think that we were doing the right thing and we weren't even more close. And it's just like learning anything, right, that you learn something and then one day you wake up and you look back and you go, I knew nothing at that time.

[Aaron]

Well, it's a Dunning Kruger effect too. Yeah, yeah, but that, that's where I just think you have to start. You just have to get onto the path. And then the further you go, the more is revealed to you. I think that's how the world works. I don't think you come up with the whole grand plan. You just got to go start like you doing the triathlon. I mean, you could have done it better maybe by doing all this shit, but you kind of just had to get in the fucking water. You kind of just had to do it to then. Oh, okay. I can kind of see what's going on here. And now the next one's going to be better because now you see more. There's more information available to you. Learned experience. Okay, cool. I'll do the next one better. I think it's kind of the same thing, but again, you. You are the chokehold. You. I don't see another way around it. And so you have to get on the path first.

[Nick Parish]

You do, and you have to. And you have to stay on it. And you have to. Everyone, you have to constantly be trying to churn forward. Macaulay, you've met Macaulay before, our chief people officer. Like, one. Everybody thought I was, you know, insane for one, hiring a woman to come in and, like, train people. And I was like, well, that was never the point. She wasn't training people, she was helping facilitate. But she was a workforce. She was a people mind.

[Aaron]

Right.

[Nick Parish]

And she's been with us over four years now. And her and I were having a conversation two weeks ago. She's like, we had no idea what we were doing four years ago. Like, what are we going to think in four years about what we're doing today? And now we think we're like, we've got it figured out now. Sure. You know, today, all of a sudden, I feel like, okay, if we run this system and we do this and we have these touch points with these people and we do that, like, here's how we can. Like, and maybe we're ignorant in this, but I was having a conversation with Herb Sargent probably maybe a year ago. I was like, how did you design your people systems? He's like, my what? And he's like, people systems. Like, you had great people and you build all this and you obviously had, like, some kind of system that you ran people with. He's like, we never codified culture.

[Aaron]

Sure.

[Nick Parish]

And I was like, the more I dug. Yes, they kind of did. Right. And now we feel like we're on top of the game. Like, oh, we've got it. I now I've figured out how I've codified Maslow's hierarchy of needs when I know that in two years, it's just going to be all over. But my whole point with this whole rant here is that you have to start today.

[Aaron]

Yeah. And like, Sergeant, I think they went ESOP in 2013.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

If memory corrects me or serves right, it's 2026. So they've been on that journey for 13 years. And it wasn't like they were doing. They weren't doing it before that as well. Like that's all. And so everybody's seeing the end result today. But it started or hoopa or cwmat. Like they've been doing it a long time.

[Nick Parish]

It takes so long. It, you're good.

[Aaron]

It does, but it doesn't. Like in the grand scheme, it's only a few years.

[Nick Parish]

You get early rewards.

[Aaron]

So like, like your company. Yeah. But you're, you've only been doing it like seriously for maybe five years.

[Nick Parish]

Maybe. Yeah.

[Aaron]

Okay, five years. You've been around since the 70s. So in the grand scheme of things, on a percentage basis, it's not that long. Yeah, it's really not. In just a few years, like to, to. In just a few years, you're going to be making more money. You're going to be enjoying things a little bit more. Your people are going to be better off.

[Nick Parish]

All that's already true.

[Aaron]

Why. Why not make that trade?

[Nick Parish]

That is all already true. Yeah. Life is so much better. The business is so much better. Yeah.

[Aaron]

I mean, but that's going for an hour and it's, it's. There's no finish line. You'll be adjusting every year. Every year. Every year we can get better and better and better and better. But my point is, most construction companies have been stuck in the same economic model for decades. Nothing has really changed. Nothing. And like the greatest advancement in the construction industry, civil construction, is, is gps. Still. It's crazy. Like that's kind of the thing and it gave you a little bit of an edge early on, but now everybody uses it so on and so forth. Like, but, but everybody's kind of been stuck in the same model. There hasn't really been a new way of doing things until now. I actually think like being people first, field first, that offers you a new model to, to break free of the fucking rat race of the, the merry go round that everybody. The hamster wheel that everybody's been on for decades. For decades. For decades. Like that's your way out.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

And that's the industry's way out.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah. No, I think you're right. And, and you ever go back to like the skills training thing, I'm not trying to like change the topic, but changes go to go. To go to skills training. It's the same thing that you have to fulfill all these other things before we can even make better bulldozer operators. And you have to start on all these things we're talking about before because every. I think everybody thinks the core problem is nobody knows how to run a bulldozer. Yeah, that's. It's not what we're saying. No, that's. That's. That's not it. We have to fix all these other things. Guess what? They'll get better.

[Aaron]

Well, you have a generation that's all bent out of shape right now because the up and coming generation doesn't have these core basics. But it's like, one, you raised these people. They're the product of previous generations. You're the previous generation. So who's at, who's at fault here? I don't know. Maybe the previous generation. Maybe look in the mirror. Two, they didn't. Okay, cool. They didn't get taught the basics. They didn't learn it at home, they didn't learn it at school, they didn't learn it from previous employers. So why don't you teach them? Why don't you make them better human beings? And why don't you. And sure, they don't trust you because they've just been screwed by every other employer. Of course they're not going to trust you. You have to go first. You have to rebuild that relationship. You have to mend that fence. But if you do that, it creates this loyalty that you cannot buy, that you cannot recreate any other way. And so that's where, yeah, I think everybody goes to skills.

[Nick Parish]

But it's like, there's so much before that, though.

[Aaron]

It's like. Yeah, I mean, it's as simple as. Do people know how to, like, shake someone's hand and introduce themselves? Like, that's where we're at. That's. That's where we're at. And a lot of people don't. Yeah, well, we need to start there. Like, it sounds stupid, but that's the kind of stuff we need to be teaching people. We need to be teaching them how to save money. We need to be teaching them how to be healthy. We need to be teaching them how to speak to not just the people at work, but, like their spouse, for example, and solve conflict. You know, it's just like life basics that these people are lacking because society has failed them. But it's not the government that's going to save the day. It's not the education system that's going to save the day. No, it's not. It's. It's. I think it's small business.

[Nick Parish]

Small business. If you're. I always.

[Aaron]

It's not big business.

[Nick Parish]

I always joke about this, like, small business. We are parents. We're picking up where the parents left off. Wherever that was. Yeah. Wherever that was. Sometimes that was a long time ago. Sometimes that was. They just didn't carry them very far. And sometimes they did. Right. And we're in the middle of recording. Not even. I mean, it's recording. We're doing some live in person that. We're doing some podcast of personal finance. I'm recording a podcast next week. The title of it is how to make a Million Dollars.

[Aaron]

Nice.

[Nick Parish]

And it's all about your 401k contribution and why. Here's the. Here's the formula. How much you should be contributing.

[Aaron]

You kind of need a million in your 401k to even just live. Yeah. Seriously.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

Like a million in a 401k upon retirement. My retirement age.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

It probably won't be enough.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

Because I'm not gonna have Social Security.

[Nick Parish]

Right. But I mean, if we look at our. In our enrollment in 401k, we are. It was something. Last time I looked at it, we were. If the industry average was like 60%, we were at 40%. We were a third less than industry participation. And I think we have great people. I think we have smart people. We've been on this journey for five years, and I feel like we're. We realized, like, look up our guys are. They don't even. They're complaining about their paycheck because everyone does. But we also haven't educated them on how to utilize it the best.

[Aaron]

Well, that's just a tool, and the

[Nick Parish]

money's just a tool.

[Aaron]

I mean, Mississippi is not known for its education. Not.

[Nick Parish]

But our reading levels are coming up. We're getting.

[Aaron]

Yeah, yeah, we're getting better. But I don't even say that jokingly. It is behind in some ways.

[Nick Parish]

Totally. Yeah.

[Aaron]

You can. As an employer, you can kick and scream about that, or you can say, well, it's my opportunity and my responsibility to get these people to where they should be. Society has let them down, and it's my responsibility. I like Bob. Going back to Bob Chapman, too. He explains everybody as somebody's child. Like, everybody is somebody's child. Like, care for them in that way. Care for them with that lens. And I think that's why Barry Wehmiller has actually been able to do what they've done is because they've always been privately held. But like, John Mackey sold Whole Foods to the evil empire, you know, and then it.

[Nick Parish]

Then what is it today?

[Aaron]

What is it today?

[Nick Parish]

There's no.

[Aaron]

I go in everybody's skip, you know, tap dancing to work at Whole Foods.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

No, I like Whole Foods. But I don't have. And it's not, it's not anything against the people there. It's just like I don't feel warm and fuzzy. Yeah. By the people at Whole Foods, you know, like, like it was back in the day. What got, what got it there.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah. Our tenure, our tenure statement or like our mission statement or whatever. At Burns, we've been really trying to refine. We didn't have one five years ago

[Aaron]

and we're working on ours as we speak.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah. And I think it always is kind of like in a work in progress. But our current one today is we want to build a company where people come to grow and stay for life, leaving behind work that speaks for itself. Which I want to get rid of the whole leaving behind work that speaks for itself. I talk about, we were talking about earlier about getting rid of stuff in messaging, but I wanted to. We're. I'm really pushing for this build a company where people come to grow and stay for life. And there's two parts of that. Like building a company is like this is just intro to what this statement means. But come to grow, which means they want to be there. Like there's a desire to be at the organization. And then number two is they come for growth, they come for development. Whether it's personal, whether it's self actualization or if it's, hey, I want to make a little bit more money, whatever it is. And then stay for life is the second part which is not a. I want you to have a contract and stay and spend the rest of your career. Yeah, I do. I mean, I think if we're doing a good job and there's a good symbiotic relationship here, then you will be committed to this thing. But I, what I really mean by that is that it's life giving and that you feel inspired and you invest in others and you give back and you teach the next, the next generation and you teach your co worker and you're plugged in with each other and maybe you talk about your vinyl collection or whatever it is that you have human connection. But coming to grow and stay for life. That's what we're trying to figure out.

[Aaron]

Well, and even if they leave, they take the life principles with them.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

And help further those principles within the community. I think that's an important part of business too. I think retaining a workforce is insane to think you can do it. And I don't think it's actually good for the, the, the business to just retain everybody.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah. It's impossible.

[Aaron]

Yeah, I don't think, I don't think it's good. I don't think it's healthy. There has to be some degree of turnover. Some degree is, is healthy.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

But even if those people leave them like they're better off as a result, and then they're carrying that with them into the marketplace, into the community, which then hopefully furthers it even more with people outside of your business.

[Nick Parish]

I think one of our core values is build for more. And that's exactly what it is. Is that like, I don't want you to just like. Yeah, we, I think that you're very right. Like you always say this whole, like we do a very important part of society. We build roads and we, you know, install sewer pipes so people can have cleanliness in their homes. But also if you run a small business or you're a leader, you have a, to me, you have a responsibility to help make sure there's better fathers in your neighborhood.

[Aaron]

Right.

[Nick Parish]

Like we always, we have a part of our like marketing budget every year is I will, I will sponsor any baseball, basketball, lacrosse. I don't care what it is. If you're involved.

[Aaron]

Sure.

[Nick Parish]

If you'll coach that team, I'll put whatever money in that team.

[Aaron]

Well, and if you think about the Foreman, that Foreman is probably it could be the most influential person within the people's that crew's life.

[Nick Parish]

That's dad. That is dad. I don't, I don't care what anybody says. That's. That's dad.

[Aaron]

And that, that could be a positive influence. It could be a non existent influence and a very limited influence or it could be a negative influence.

[Nick Parish]

Sure, totally. Yeah.

[Aaron]

But I would say that's the most influential person within those people's lives.

[Nick Parish]

Do you want to be a father that's known for his addictions or for his wisdom abuse? Yeah, his abuse. Yeah. Or how much he made you feel loved. Like we talk about those with our leaders all the time. Is that like those young men look up to you just like your kids did and just like you looked up to your father.

[Aaron]

But this, this goes back to my point that is, it starts with leaders because if I was abused, odds are I will pass that abuse on because I don't know any better. That's just the default that I was built within. Those are my factory settings.

[Nick Parish]

Sure. Yeah.

[Aaron]

And so if you don't care for yourself, if you don't unwire that, it just goes to everybody else around you. And so that's where it still starts with leadership. Like, you've got to handle your shit. We have to be mentally healthier as an industry. But that means you as a leader, have to be mentally healthy.

[Nick Parish]

And that's hard.

[Aaron]

It's so hard. It's way harder. But, but, but that is. It's amazing. Like, the. One of the best things I've done is unwind a lot of my traumas, so to speak, over my lifetime to help me understand how I'm wired and how I react to things and. And to use some of this stuff as an example for others. The one thing, like, I feel like I've been able to impact a lot of people to take care of themselves mentally, not by saying, you guys need to take care of yourselves mentally. We have a suicide problem in the construction industry. It's. Listen, I'm fucked up. Here's how I'm fucked up. Here's how I've dealt with it. Here's how I've compartmentalized it. Here's how I've worked through it. Here's what I think about it today. And even me talking about it, like, I'll talk about my dad not talking to me in a talk. Ironic. Love it. To get to that point, I've had to process it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Nick Parish]

I had to have some sort of peace with it. Right.

[Aaron]

Like I. Every time my mom's like. Like, you know, I worry about you. I'm like, I know that's a mother's job. Job, but like, if I'm talking about it, you don't need to worry about it because that means that's advancement.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

Yeah. That's leveled up. That's if it's. Yeah. If it's. If there's light shining upon it. The stuff in the darkness that you have to worry about, that I'm not talking about, you know, but talking about that stuff has been one of. It hasn't been one. It's been the most influential thing I've done when it comes to helping other people with their minds is by just being an example. By just saying, listen. Yeah. Went through this. Here's what I learned. Here's the lessons I've learned. It sucks, but it was actually a great thing. And this is why. And just showing people. Wow.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

Then they start to think, what about me? You know? And again, it's teaching through a story.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

You're not telling somebody, nick, go to therapy. Yeah. You know how effective telling someone to go to therapy is generally doesn't work. Yeah, it doesn't work.

[Nick Parish]

You know, but like, I. I think Also, as a leader, like, it takes practice to get to where you're willing to be vulnerable and tell stories and stuff, Right? And certainly anybody that knows me knows that Nick is not bashful about, hey, look, let me open my trench coat and show you all of my demons that has taken place, you know, but maybe that helps me in leadership. But I mean, I recently. So me and my brother bought the family out of our business. Right. And you know, small family businesses are a complicated web to unweave. We're kind of in the last bit of our last transaction that took place kind of over a decade, and it's a whole nother deal. But the emotional part, though here is that one day my grandfather and I were having a conversation. It was a real emotional conversation about the business and why me and my brother want to do the things that we do.

[Aaron]

And

[Nick Parish]

at some point in the conversation, he said, well, like, I'm not your dad, I'm your grandfather. And I don't remember how we got there in that conversation, but I remember pausing and it hit me. My dad passed away 10 years ago this year. Passed away from cancer.

[Aaron]

How old were you?

[Nick Parish]

23 at the time. And he had battled non Hodgkin's lymphoma for like two years and had just gone through divorce. Like, my parents had gotten a divorce. That was real brutal, as you know. Not all. Yeah, it was a real brutal one.

[Aaron]

Yeah. It wasn't one of those real really nice, great divorce. One of the bad ones.

[Nick Parish]

One of the bad divorces. Yeah. Two and a half years of that. Like six months later, dad finds out he's got stage four lymphoma and then goes through two years of that. And so it's a brutal. Pretty four or five years. When I was in that 18 to 23.

[Aaron]

Sure.

[Nick Parish]

That's the same time that I went to work at Burns. I've been working at Burns for about four maybe. I mean, yes. Maybe three or four years. Yeah, maybe three years. When my dad got sick and died. And I. What did I do? Just like many young men, I latched on to business and just hit it harder.

[Aaron]

Right.

[Nick Parish]

I remember I got the call. My dad passed away at like 8:15 on a Wednesday night. I was the first one at the office. The next morning, my grandfather came in. He's like, what are you doing? I said, what else am I supposed to do? I'm supposed to sit home.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Nick Parish]

Pout and pout. He's like, no, I guess you're right. It was not the right answer. He should have said, no, you need to go take the day off. We probably do need to pout a little bit, think about things. But anyways, 10 years removed from that, trying to do this, probably one of the largest things I'll do in my life and untangle this whole family tree and work through this and. And realized that for the last 10 years, I'd replaced my grandfather as my father. And so, like, all of the. If you think about, like, the standard father and son relationship, right? Like, I just want my grandfather to be proud of me.

[Aaron]

Sure.

[Nick Parish]

I want to spend time with him. I want to do this. Like, all of the things that I needed out of a father. But I had a father that was absent for half of my life at this point, and I had replaced him, but that was not who he was. He raised two daughters, my mother and my aunt, and he didn't know how to be a father to sons. And he did it for 50 years before they came along. And then all of a sudden, he's got this one son that comes along, wants to grow the business, and subconsciously replaces you as his father. And now our relationship's weird all of a sudden. And we're both very aware of it. We've talked about this, and we're like, okay, well, here's the facts. Here's how we got here. And I'm like, okay, well, he's not my father. He's my grandfather. This is a different relationship. And he is going, okay, I have a grandson that's dealing with this. So we have to, like, consciously not talk about work now and not talk about business, because we knew that that was the thing that allowed it. I say all that to say, like, that happens on the job site. That's not an exceptional story. No, there's nothing special about what I just said. There's no. Woe is Nick. There's no, oh, great, it's Nick. He figured it out. But, like, that is the normal human experience. And that happens on the job site every day. Happens in the boardroom, happens right here. And I don't know, it's like, let's go back to Maslow's. Like, it's just. Let's figure out what people's needs are and try to meet each other's needs and try to make sure I'm getting my needs met. And it all simplifies a lot of it.

[Aaron]

Yeah, the dad stuff's tricky, man.

[Nick Parish]

It is.

[Aaron]

And the mom stuff and the mom stuff. I've really. Like me and my mom. It was not. It was a really solid childhood. And then my parents got divorced when I was, like, 11 or 12, and that's when the wheels fell off. And I think that's where a lot of problems happened within those, like, later developmental years, which has been weird to. To work through because of the events

[Nick Parish]

that happened there or the themes that developed.

[Aaron]

Yeah, no, because it was the. It was the events. So, like, it was not great with my mom for a while. Yeah. In those in between years, like, as a teenager, which is a weird time to go through it in some ways, but also a better time to go through it in other ways because you can remember a little bit more, I feel like. Oh, yeah, it happens when you're, like, a kid.

[Nick Parish]

Once you're conquer. You have this weapon.

[Aaron]

Yeah. Sometimes. Sometimes with a kid, like, some stuff happens to you, and you don't. Like, your mind deletes it, and then it can still. But. But still there. It's still in the underlying code base, you know, but you don't even know it's there. But, yeah, as an adult, working through all that stuff has been. It's been great. That's. That's. That's the point I try to make is, like, working through this stuff. Yeah. It's not fun. It's not easy, but now it doesn't. It doesn't. It's not the master over you.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

It's not the master anymore. Once you can get rid of the chains, it's, like, cool. It doesn't get rid of it. But now I can use this for something. Now I can. I can put this to use in a way, not as this sob story, oh, poor me, poor me. Everybody. Everybody has bad shit that happens to them.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

You can. You can work with it rather than work against it.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

Knowingly or unknowingly, most people are working against it. Unknowingly, I would say, but it's there.

[Nick Parish]

I was talking about this, like, the exact same thing with a friend probably a month ago, and he made this statement. He's like, we're all human. And every time I think I hear a story about, you know, someone else is just dark stuff that happened. Right. Everybody has that.

[Aaron]

Right.

[Nick Parish]

And if you can remember that, that actually dehumanizes everybody. If you can remember yesterday, we were driving through Knoxville, and my wife's driving. She doesn't let me drive, which is fine, because I can get them a little tappy tappy in the passenger seat, but I'm doing a little tappy tappy, and I'm talking to her and doing tappy tappy. And she gasps loud. And this VW bug is coming on the off ramp. Head on with us. And we're probably 50ft from the on ramp. She watches F1 herself. She's put her best Charles Leclerc on and goes off. It's pouring down rain. She's on wore out tires. So she pulls off and she calms down and she's crying and she listens. Like she's sitting there and the person drives by and she's like, like angry. And like many people, first thing, she's like really drunk. Like, what? How do you. And I said, well, they're probably distracted on their phone. And she's like, you're right, you're right. That's probably it. And then. But we had a conversation about we're all humans. Yeah, we're all humans. I could have very easily be the one to make that mistake tomorrow.

[Aaron]

Yeah, right.

[Nick Parish]

And like, I think that there's so much happiness to be found in life when you realize, like, oh, yeah, my parents did some dumb stuff. My dad did a lot of dumb stuff to cause, you know, like that divorce and that. Both of them said a lot of mean things, you know, and they did a lot of dumb stuff. Yeah, my dad did a lot of dumb stuff by not going to the doctor for five and a half years when he felt sick. You know, that was real stupid. Yeah.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Nick Parish]

And dang, you know what means I gotta go to the doctor. I'm human.

[Aaron]

And well, you know, you have that realiz. I had that realization through all this that, like, I remember it started to get a lot better with my mom when I just had the realization that was like, wait a minute, she did her best.

[Nick Parish]

She's just trying to figure it out, dude.

[Aaron]

She was doing her best. And sure. That doesn't excuse. What? Like that doesn't excuse bad. Yeah, it's not an excuse.

[Nick Parish]

Not an excuse.

[Aaron]

No. Everybody's an adult and they need to handle themselves as a fucking adult and take responsibility. But they, like, you don't know what hap. Especially with your parents. Like, you don't know how they were fucked up as kids. You have no idea. You have no context. Like, almost none. None. None. Especially me. Like, I didn't. I didn't really know my grandparents. Like, my last grandparent died when I was six, so.

[Nick Parish]

Oh, yeah, you have no clue then.

[Aaron]

Not, not even. Not even the context of grandparents to help me figure out my parents. And as you start to learn some of this stuff, you're like, oh, boy. Like, yeah, they Got it too. And they were just. They've always just been doing their best. And. And once you can approach it with, like, a. A degree of grace, I think it makes it a lot easier to get through and to understand and then to develop a better relationship after that. Especially if they're doing their part, too.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

Like, if they really are getting on a different path to support that, I think. Yeah, it's up to them.

[Nick Parish]

Tons of people. I mean, most people don't have this realization that we're talking about. Right. To realize. Humanize each other too. And so if you're dealing with a problem with somebody, I think the first thing to go is, okay, I might be the only one acting like an adult here. Well, you know, I'm reading a book

[Aaron]

about that right now. It's the Anatomy of Peace. It's like you either when you have a conflict with somebody, you either view them as a human or you view them as a problem, as an obstacle. And when. When they're an obstacle. Now, you're the one that's. Right now there's no way to invite other possibilities. There's no place for common ground, and so there's no place for a solution. They're just an obstacle that you've got to run over. Whereas if they're a human, well, they have their perspective. They have their feelings. Clearly, they don't see my perspective. They think that they're right. And they don't just think that they're right to screw me over. Like, my wife's not trying to intentionally screw me and my family, you know? And yet you go to that place, like, what. What's her deal, man? Like, I. I'm just, you know, I'm working so hard. I'm trying to put a roof over the. The, you know, the family. And, man, I, like, she has no idea what I was dealing with at work today. This and that. And you just so quickly go to this. Such a negative, dark place.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

But if you humanize everything, it starts to allow for this sense of peace and resolution. That's just not possible otherwise.

[Nick Parish]

It's funny talking about my dad. My dad gave me a piece of advice when I was in high school. I don't remember what I was. I was fighting with a friend or some kind of, you know, BS situation. And I said something wasn't fair. And my dad was like, yeah, it's not. It's not fair. And I was like. And then I made some other dumb teenage comment, and he goes, let me give you a piece of advice. And if you'll listen to this, it's going to save you a lot of heartache in life. It took me too long to figure this out. He said nobody cares about you. Yeah. He said, me and your mom care about you. But if you think somebody's out to get you, guess what? Nobody's out to get you. They don't care. The world doesn't care. They don't think about you.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Nick Parish]

Your friends and your family, the only ones that maybe think about you, you think about you. And the rest of the world does not care.

[Aaron]

But this, I think this is maybe an extreme. But this is, I think a big root problem with the workforce today is that they were lied to. And in most ways, they were taught the world is fair. And that's what the education system teaches you.

[Nick Parish]

It's complete.

[Aaron]

It's complete. And that's why I think a lot of kids that do well in school, they, they. They have a really hard time as a result.

[Nick Parish]

A Scantron, Aaron, I have a really

[Aaron]

hard time as a result because they have not built the resilience necessary to deal with the world. That just. That is not fair. And that does not give a. About you. And that's what I counsel, like, younger people getting into the workforce. I'm just like, hear me out. And I'm saying this in a very positive, caring way. These employers are going to feed you all this bullshit about how important you are. They don't fucking care about you. And you are a number. You are nothing more than a number. Now, that's not to say take advantage, do your best. They're going to do their best. But if you're doing your best and you're doing your best and you're doing your best and they're not reciprocating, go somewhere else.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah. Go somewhere that they are giving their best.

[Aaron]

Yeah. Yeah. Your life, your future is your responsibility. It's not. You're not going to find a mentor that's going to make it all work for you. It's not your boss, it's not your spouse, it's not your parent. Nobody, nobody cares about you like you care about you. If you don't prioritize, you, no one else will. And so quit looking around for everybody else to give you the solution and figure it out yourself. And the sooner you do that, man, now everything starts to make sense.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

Once you just take responsibility. But a lot of people, they've never heard that. They've never been taught that, that world in which they've, they've lived in that's kind of fake. Hasn't really made them come to terms with that. But then you get into the real world. It's a jungle, man. Yeah, it really is a jungle.

[Nick Parish]

Log on to Facebook and it just reconfirms that you're more important than you are.

[Aaron]

Yes, yes, yes. But, yeah, it's. It's especially, you know, it's summer, and you see all the companies talking about, oh, our interns are the best. We love our interns this and that. And I'm like, I was an intern

[Nick Parish]

at some of these companies, dude.

[Aaron]

I was. I was. I was a pile of shit. Like, at best. At best. And I'm glad I was like, it taught me a lot. But all of that talk, man, it's all nonsense. And then all these kids, too. Like, if you're a safety intern, I feel bad. Don't be a safety intern. Go get out to the field, see how the world really works. You can go work safety later. Get your ass out into the field and make it happen.

[Nick Parish]

The ditch.

[Aaron]

Yeah. Dude, that is the foundation for everything else. If you skip that. If you skip that, you are in a world of hurt for your career. And the best time to do it is when you've got nothing. When you're 18 years old, when you're 19 years old, when you're 20 years

[Nick Parish]

old, when you got the energy, the back, dude.

[Aaron]

If you skip to go. Yeah, you get rid of that. You know, you've dealt with a lot of these people that have never had a shovel in their hand. You know who they are.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

They just don't have that sense of humility. They're not grounded.

[Nick Parish]

Well, there's no context, too.

[Aaron]

There's no context.

[Nick Parish]

If you hadn't done all those. You can't ever be the leader.

[Aaron]

No.

[Nick Parish]

You don't have the context for it.

[Aaron]

And you don't even need that much.

[Nick Parish]

You don't.

[Aaron]

No. You've only. You'll need to shovel tracks a few times.

[Nick Parish]

That's AI's problem. It doesn't have the context. Right. We were talking about. It's not replacing anybody. It doesn't have the context. It doesn't know what's. It doesn't know what's going on. As a matter of fact, it'll drive you in the ditch if you let it drive. It's the same thing. And in real life. Right. You got to have the context.

[Aaron]

Well, we didn't get to the Epstein files, but we can do that next week. That'll be for the next one.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah, we'll get to it now.

[Aaron]

I'm. I'm really excited about what you guys have going.

[Nick Parish]

Thanks.

[Aaron]

Appreciate what you're doing.

[Nick Parish]

Hope we're doing it right.

[Aaron]

I think you are. Yeah. I really think you are. I think you're a great example for especially the up and coming guys. Like, no offense to the herb sergeants out there, but he's a different generation. Whereas. And. And I say that jokingly, but. And he knows that. Whereas you're the. Like, you're. You're the. You're the present, if not the up and cominging generation, but you're calling the shots. You're building something better to different. And that now you have enough years, you have enough of a data set to suggest that, like, yeah, this is better and we're gonna keep doing this.

[Nick Parish]

Yeah. There's no going back by any means. And I think all I think I can hope for is that we figure out how to do it again better next year. Right. Just like, we're better than we were last year.

[Aaron]

That's it.

[Nick Parish]

And we're better this week than we were last week. Let's just keep. Randy told me that years ago. He's like, if you just focus on getting better, whatever it is, you know, be more efficient in this, do this thing better, just focus on getting better. Everything else works out like.

[Aaron]

And so, yeah, instead of fixating on the competition, fixate on you. You're the competition. That's where, like, Dirt World's a great example. We're not looking at other events. I just want to kick the. Out of 2025 Dirt World this year. That's it. That's the standard. That's it. Our YouTube videos. I want this week's video to be better than last week's.

[Nick Parish]

That's it. Yeah.

[Aaron]

If we do that and you rinse and repeat that every week. Every month. Every year. Whoa. Really cool stuff happens.

[Nick Parish]

Really cool stuff happens.

[Aaron]

Well, Nick, thanks for stopping by.

[Nick Parish]

Thanks for having me.

[Aaron]

Sure.