Be A Builder In Everything You Do

An interview with business owner, and author, Doug Reitz.

Doug Reitz, owner of Mark Wilson Construction, understands being a builder means far more than just putting up a school, or hospital. It involves being a leader in every way in every part of your life. He has taken his successes and failures to create a blueprint for building success.

In his new book, Build, he shares the concept of Listen, Plan, Build as the guide for everything you do. This episode will share Doug's stories and why it is so important for Entrepreneurs to develop a Build philosophy.

Learn more from Doug, and register to get your copy of the book which comes out in September. Visit dougreitz.blog

[00:00:00.000] - Alice

The Books in the Biz, a podcast that looks at both the financial and operational sides of success. Please welcome our hosts, Dan Paulson and Richard Veltre. Dan is the CEO of Envision Development International, and he works with leaders to increase sales and profits through great cultures with solid operations. Rich is CEO of the Veltre Group and a financial strategist working with companies to manage their money more effectively. Now on to the podcast.

[00:00:32.840] - Dan Paulson

Hello, and welcome back to Books in the Biz. Another exciting episode. Rich, how are you doing?

[00:00:38.870] - Rich Veltre

I am doing well, Dan. How are you?

[00:00:41.370] - Dan Paulson

I am doing good. And we have, I think, our first official I'm here for author as a guest. Hi, Doug Reitz. How are you? Or Doug Reitz, actually, right?

[00:00:51.370] - Doug Reitz

Yes, it is.

[00:00:52.140] - Dan Paulson

Okay. Doug, we actually have a relationship here. We go back several years. You actually even did a little work with me for a while. But you have written a book, and you and I being in the construction world, and Rich dabbling in that a little bit. Yeah, why don't you start by telling us a little bit about what you got going on?

[00:01:14.880] - Doug Reitz

Well, so two years ago, we had a retreat for our company, and we decided to find our why, and what was our purpose. And if you want to hear a little bit about the company, probably Yeah, go ahead. So as we met a few years ago and did a podcast, we were right coming out of COVID, and we weren't really sure what was going to happen, but I was in the middle of purchasing the company at the time. And that purchase is complete. It was complete last August, and it was a great process to go through. So as we got into the coming years, we were projected to have a lot of work. Everything was just booming and booming. But as you're probably seeing in the industry right now, there's a lot of stuff that's pushing off, whether it's agencies not getting them through their process or designers having a struggle getting through it. So our volume has dipped a little bit. But as things have dipped, we decided to start working on culture. And as a part of working on that culture, I was listening to podcast, and I was to our strategist and everybody else, they said, Doug, you need to start writing.

[00:02:32.190] - Doug Reitz

Start writing your ideas down, and it's going to help you with clarity about your culture. So going back to the retreat, we spent about three days going through why we wanted to do what we wanted to do. And it was a real struggle getting down to what we believed and what was going to be our main purpose for the company. So much so, we even had during the great resignation, why did people leave the company, and why did will come to the company. So since we last spoke, we have doubled our volume, and we have almost doubled our staff from what it used to be when we talked last. It's been a great ride, and I can't stress enough now that I've figured out how to write a book for the first time, for any of the CEOs and the leaders that are out there, start writing things down. The clarity comes so much quicker, because you actually You just can't ramble and talk about it. You have to be specific about what you really believe. And that was really the genesis of the book, just trying to figure out what I wanted for a culture for the company.

[00:03:40.710] - Doug Reitz

And that came out for us to be a builder in everything you do every day. And being a builder in everything you do every day is not just about construction. It's about building consensus, building faith, building trust, those types of things, because that's what really makes company culture what it is. So that was the genesis of the book.

[00:04:07.450] - Dan Paulson

Wow. Rich, you got a question?

[00:04:09.590] - Doug Reitz

Sorry. I guess that's it. That's a wrap.

[00:04:13.300] - Dan Paulson

So for us on the video, Rich was like,.

[00:04:16.680] - Rich Veltre

I was ready, and then I walked. I was like playing baseball, and I took back the pitch. Yeah, I'm a little surprised, but I guess I'm not, right? I mean, And my first reaction to thinking about the fact that you wrote the book is, wow, I don't know that I would sit down and write a book. But I guess it really does make sense. I mean, you think about processes, you think about the planning stage, you think about everything that goes into not actually the work that you do, but all of the background behind it. I would have to think that there's a lot of, I don't want to call it repetition, but it's a lot of what every company would do, except every company does it different. So that's where I guess you come up with the ideas, right? That's where you come up with, this is what the chapters are about.

[00:05:09.710] - Doug Reitz

Yeah. What I thought the book was going to be when I first started, and for anybody who's tried to write a book, it did not end up anywhere close to what I thought it was going to be. I thought it was going to be little snippets of philosophies and things that can help people, leadership, that type of thing. And And once I started, I ended up getting a book coach. Cathy Fayak is amazing book coach, if anybody's going to write a book. She really helped guide me through, because I'm just a general contractor. I had never thought in my wild one of those dreams I'd ever write a book, and it ended up being so much fun. The stories that we pulled out and how much the stories that we have in the book relate to construction and life at the same time, from hiking Half Dome to a contractor going out of business, trying to build a stadium. So there's a lot of failures in the book. I had to really reflect on a lot of my failures and the things I didn't do right as I was growing up in the industry. I was way too driven, and I ran over people, and I was not being a builder by any means.

[00:06:23.950] - Doug Reitz

And my mentor, second dad, Tim Marsh, he really guided me in my younger years, and he kept giving me chances and kept giving me chances. And that's truly what a builder does, what a mentor does. He took the positives that I was doing, and he said, Stop doing those negatives, because it's really impacting what you got. So there's our vice president right now, Kolbindowski. He told me one day that, Doug, your strength is that you're really, really driven. You'll drive through anything, get anything done, whatever it takes. But your weakness is all also you're driven, and sometimes you run over people, and you just go too quick. So the process of being a builder, and the listen, plan, build process that's in the book, slows me down. It really helped me a lot, because I like to go so fast and so hard, that when you have to go through the listen, plan, build process, you have to listen first. You can't just take action all the time. So it helped me more than anything else. But it also helps people that maybe get paralysis by analysis, and they just sit, and listen, and think, and listen, and think, and they never take action.

[00:07:42.420] - Doug Reitz

So it takes both of those extremes, and it gives you a process to go through when you're under pressure, when you have a challenge, that will walk you through at a nice measured pace. So that's what came out of the book. And now, everything we do with the company, it's all about listening, planning, and building. It's all about being a builder. When there's a problem, you have to step back and say, what do I need to build? What's the gap that is stopping us from getting to our goal? So we can take this wherever you want from there, and But that's the premise of the book. And by the way, the name of the book, Build a blueprint, build, a blueprint for constructing success and leadership in life. And the book's coming out in September. I'm going through the last layout right now. So I'm really excited to get to talk to you guys about what's in it.

[00:08:34.490] - Dan Paulson

No, that's awesome. Yeah, that listen, plan, build, I think that is very important. I mean, we talk about it in different ways, or I talk about it in different ways. But it's often a mistake that most leaders don't follow. They'll do planning, but they won't always listen. Planning just becomes a checkbox. Or like you said, they'll listen and they'll sit there and noodle on it and be afraid to make any decisions at all, so they never move forward to the next steps, or they skip step one and two and they just jump into the building phase. I find that most often, especially when it comes to business owners. So I think that's where this book is going to be valuable, because I can preach time and time again, but I am not a contractor. I typically come in as a coaching consultant. So the companies and people that understand the value of that, they will hire you. But there's a lot of guys out there that I think are just stuck in their own heads, believe their own ways, and then trudge through and just trample over people like you said.

[00:09:41.270] - Doug Reitz

Absolutely. Well, and Dan, what you and Rich do, you do the same thing as Listen, Plan, Build. When you come in and you're a coach, you're asking questions to get them to think about what's going on. And again, I can't say enough about the things you do as a strategist to help those companies, because we're We're in our own mind. I'm going down the road, I'm building, I got work coming, I got to think about volume, and I'm just dealing with day to day problems. You come in and make us take a step back and think about a bigger picture. We can't go down the rabbit hole. We're back at that 60,000 foot view. And that's what being... You guys are builders, too. You're helping to build strategy for a company, and you're opening eyes and making that company a lot stronger because it has a bigger vision. And that is so important, especially in this world. We're in social media. We're thinking about our own things. A lot of people are thinking about themselves. And you come in and open that wide open, which is awesome.

[00:10:43.480] - Dan Paulson

Well, thank you. I appreciate. You're welcome.

[00:10:47.340] - Doug Reitz

And the reason I say that is because I was one of the guys that was down that rabbit hole. I wasn't looking at things as things shifted two or three years ago, whether it was COVID, or whether it was the market. Everything should just be status quo, and nothing nowadays is status quo. No. So talking to a strategist like yourself, it really will open things up to the possibilities that are out there for businesses.

[00:11:10.490] - Dan Paulson

Yeah, and we're sitting here talking about this in an election year. So any future podcast listeners, this is 2024. And of course, we've had some exciting news happen this past weekend that definitely throws a lot of people into a tizy. We look at political years, and instead of the listen, plan, build, we just get stop. Stop everything you're doing. Let's wait to see what happens. And I posted something last week, where I said, what are you waiting for? Whatever happens is going to happen. Whatever comes out of that is what we've got to deal with. So if you're waiting to see what's going to come out of it, what good is it going to do you? You should be sitting back, preparing, and starting to take action now, so So that way, whatever turns up, you're ready to go. Otherwise, you're putting yourself 3, 6, 12 months behind once you do figure out what the outcome is going to be.

[00:12:13.390] - Doug Reitz

You're exactly right. And I got to tell you, just a month ago, we sat and had our mid-year, and we use the listen, plan, build process. So if I can explain it, really, it fits exactly what we're trying to do, because you said you could stop, and just gather information, and just sit there. And that's not what the process is about. So I'll tell you the outcome of what happened in our mid-year through that process. So listening is not just about hearing, it's about gathering information. It could be from emails, it could be from walking a job to see what's actually happening, or it could be taking in the news and hearing that President Biden is not going to run, and all of a sudden, things are into a tither in the Democratic Party. So as we sat there last June, one of the big things that was on our list on the listening mode, gathering information, was what's going to happen with the election? What will happen with the economy when the election happens? We don't know, but we do know that we'll know in November. We had three jobs that we were bidding over the next month that we knew may or may not go, depending on how it goes with the market and the budget.

[00:13:30.160] - Doug Reitz

We also said, hey, in California, there's going to be a $10 billion state school bond. If that goes and actually gets on the ballot, we know, hey, there's going to be some dollars to backfill what the local school districts have been spending. So we had this list, and there were 10 other things that we talked about, and we put dates right next to them. So we had a list. We gathered the information. When will we know if the school bond is going to be on the ballot? We're going to know that July first. Great. 7:1. All the way down, we put dates of when we will know about certain things. So we had listened, and then we put a plan together. We couldn't take action yet Because we didn't know if the three jobs were going to go. We didn't know if the state bond was on. Now we do. The state bond is on the ballot as of 7-1. That's a good thing. It doesn't mean it's going to pass in November, but at least we know has the potential. We know that two of the three jobs are going, and we're going to find out about the third next week.

[00:14:39.420] - Doug Reitz

So by having that list, we had a lot of stress and anxiety of, Hey, what's going to happen? But by breaking it down, we were able to put a plan together of what we were going to do if it goes or if it doesn't go. So when we come to August first, we can easily pivot one direction or the other and take action or build. So that's the listen, plan, build process. But it's write it down. You write listen, plan, build on a board, and you gather the information, put a plan together, then you take action when you can. And it really gave us some comfort knowing that, okay, cash flow is going out. Our job is going to be starting, this is the decision we're going to make, and then we take action.

[00:15:25.390] - Rich Veltre

So has that led to, so the listen plan build section here, when you seem to mention that then you took it to the point of writing it down and having a plan.

[00:15:36.220] - Doug Reitz

Does that lead to tools?

[00:15:37.720] - Rich Veltre

Does it lead to something else, checklists or anything else that you can use so that someone else can pick up your process? Or really, is it still in the theoretic phase? Or are you able to actually translate it now to, Here's how we're going to do this? So you mentioned going to the mid-year, and you had lists. So does that translate then to, even though it's not a mid-year, we can still see what else is going on? How do you communicate that?

[00:16:07.900] - Doug Reitz

Absolutely. We'll actually use it. We had a problem with one of our clients who couldn't make some decisions on finishes. Our project manager, Eddie. Eddie is actually in the book. He's one of the best guys we got at the company. I tell you, he's learning so much and growing so fast. He has really taken this process on. So we actually created a sheet for the company. And the rule is now, if you're going to bring a problem to us, go through the listen plan build process And let me know your recommendations. So it gives them something to do. And then coming out the other side, if then, if this happens, then I'll do this. If this happens, then I'll do that. But we've gathered all this information. So the problem with the finishes is just a wall finish and wall type. And the owner didn't know if they wanted a texture wall or a level five finish. Okay, so what's the right thing to do? Well, we can do a sample of level five. We can do a sample of texture. We can put the lights up so they can see what it's really going to look like.

[00:17:18.010] - Doug Reitz

All those things, gathered information. And then we put a plan together of how we were going to do that. The build part was to go and say, Hey, owner, you've got these two choices. Take action so we don't delay the project. But there are four mindsets that need to go with that listen, plan, build process. One is solve the problem. And most of the time, the problem that you think is the problem isn't really the root cause of what's going on. Second is focus on what you can do. A lot of times you'll get with people and they'll go, well, we can't do this, we can't do that. And I just don't know what to do. There's just nothing we can do No, there's always one more thing you can do, but you have to think about what you can do. That's part of that mindset. Next one is always be curious. If you don't have information, I don't know if you've read Chris Voss's book, Never Split the Difference. He's a really good process of drawing information out. And that's not what I'm doing in this book. There are people out there that know how to draw information in question.

[00:18:24.810] - Doug Reitz

But being curious, truly curious about what's going on with somebody, and that includes It means empathy and everything else, to gather that information. As human beings, we are very caught up in our own experiences, and those experiences shaped the decisions we want to make. For this listen, plan, build process, you have to take your experiences and just put them away, put them to the side, and really listen to people. You may learn something, and the whole Chris Voss statement is the black swan. What's the black swan in the in the conversation? What is it that you don't know, but it's a reality? And the last one is always improve your situation. Going back to what you said before, I'm not just going to sit there. Incrementally, you don't have to take the big leap. Incrementally, you can take steps towards your goal and analyze as you go. And for me, that's the best way to go. I just don't want to leap into a new market. I'm going to test the market a little bit and see how it goes. How did we Do we understand how this works? And then you go ahead and jump in.

[00:19:36.320] - Doug Reitz

Patrick Lincioni called it bullets, then cannonballs. Get your aim and just shoot it in there, and then you can start lovin' big things and doing big things in your business. Those four mindsets, I think being curious is probably the most important because that's what gets you the information. And you do it without ego, and you learn a lot. So that's how the process works.

[00:20:02.640] - Dan Paulson

Yeah, that's the key point there, doing it without ego. I think ego gets in a way a lot of business owners and decision makers. And I know from my perspective, that's usually what I struggle with the most, is they're willing or unable to see all the other stuff that's going on around them and admit that they're either impacting that, have control over that, or directly influencing it. So any time you can get them to step away, and this seems like a good process to neutralize some of that ego if they're willing to do it.

[00:20:37.340] - Doug Reitz

So one of the things, and you guys have all used Google Maps to go along with what you were saying. We try to make... Well, everything that we get now is instantaneous. And one of the stories in the book is about how my dad taught me to read a map when I was 13 because we were going to go fishing. And most people out there now, what's a map? You don't fold it out on a table anymore and have to worry about it. You put in where you are and where you want to go. That's it. The calculations that Google makes of all the traffic and all the construction zones and the accidents and the routes that you can do, it comes up with three or four routes, and you get to pick it within two seconds. But what it does, it actually does the listen, plan, build process. It gathers all the information it can. It puts some routes together. Together, and then it allows you to pick and take action and drive that route. So the first part of this listen, plan, build process with bookends is know where you are and know where you want to be.

[00:21:44.970] - Doug Reitz

And I'll give you an example. We had about eight weeks of rain at the beginning of the year this year, and it completely shut down all of our projects. We got to a point we were ahead on the job. We had all this concrete out for this school, where kids Kids were out of class, and it was over Christmas break, and we were going to put it all back. Well, guess what happened? Started raining. All the places for the walkway that had been graded filled up with water, and we couldn't pour concrete. Just about the time we got it pumped out, got it dried out, it rained again. So I went out to the job site, and our team was really, really nervous. Kids were coming back. They had to be able to get into the classrooms. So I asked the superintendent, I said, what's the problem? He goes, it's raining. I said, Okay, that is a problem, but what's the real problem? And he thought about it and thought about it. He goes, Well, the kids can't get back to class. I said, Right, that's the real problem. You got to get kids in class.

[00:22:43.440] - Doug Reitz

So we went through the list of plan build process and said, Okay, what do we know? Kids are coming back on this date. We have four days left. We have to pump. We have a weekend. It's not supposed to rain this weekend. Well, let's put a plan together. Can we get the concrete guys to work over the weekend? Can we get it pumped out? All of those things. But our superintendent was looking at the wrong problem. He went, it's raining and there's nothing I can do. Just got vapor locked. There were so many things going on. You just need to step back a little bit and know where you are, know where you want to be, and then come up with that solution. He wasn't being curious. He wasn't talking about what he could do. He was talking about what he couldn't do. And as a leader of a company or a project manager, whatever, and even as a strategist, you're able to pull those guys that are down the rabbit hole out of that rabbit hole and say, okay, here's some options for you, just by using the process. So worked out, got the concrete poured, Kids went back into class, and it was all good.

[00:23:49.180] - Dan Paulson

That's a perfect example of how we get stuck in our own heads. And it's also we always hear about in the business versus on the business. When you're in the business, you can't see those things because you're too busy dealing with what's right in front of your face versus being able to step back and look at the broader picture of what's going on. So, yeah, wonderful story there.

[00:24:12.720] - Doug Reitz

And I would never be in the business. I'm always looking back. I never have a problem seeing the big picture.

[00:24:21.110] - Dan Paulson

Well, I would say it's probably 50/50 or better that a lot of these people that started in the industry, they were the plumber bought a truck, and now they have a fleet of trucks. And they're always in the business. A lot of them didn't approach it from a leadership standpoint or that they were going to create something big. They just want to create something that didn't involve them working for somebody else. At least that's what I see in the entrepreneur world, is we get stuck doing what we were doing. Then we started making money at, and then we started hiring people. And now we have other people who should be doing the job, but we're still the plumber. We're still working on the pipes, or we're still the contractor that's putting up the studs or the electrician that's wiring the building. So this can be a very helpful guide to hopefully get people to look beyond that piece of the business or that piece of what they're doing and really get to understand your job's bigger now as a leader. You can't be in there swinging the hammer because every time you're swinging the hammer, you're not thinking about the other people or what they should be doing if something goes in the project or where that next project is going to come from.

[00:25:32.950] - Doug Reitz

You asked me a question a couple of years back about what percentage of time I'm spending on certain things. Sure. And That was one of the best questions, because it really made me step back and think, where am I spending my time? Oh, I'm doing preconstruction. I put an estimate together. Well, I'm out looking at jobs and making sure they're going well. And you asked, Well, what should you be doing as the President? And I came back with a statement of, well, you just don't understand. There's all these things that are going on, and I have to have my hands in all these things. And I had hired great people, but I couldn't move from the project manager mindset to the president mindset and owner mindset, because I thought, I love doing that stuff, and I love being in the mix, but I didn't know what I should be doing. And that That question helped me a lot to step back and go, okay, you're right. Percentage of time, I should be looking at pipeline. I should be looking at culture. I should be looking at the vision of the company and making sure all those things are happening, not the specific tasks.

[00:26:46.100] - Doug Reitz

So that really helped me a lot. But I also realized, going back to being a builder, I needed to build the next generation of the company. If I was constantly doing those things, they weren't going to learn how to do the and the budgets and walking the job. So the last couple of years, we've been working with our management team. I'm trying to build confidence in them that they can go out and here are the questions that you have to ask. Here are the basic, if you're doing these things, the job is going to be going well. So we build scorecards for our jobs. Nothing detailed is this, yes or no. And if you got a no, you dig into it. If you got a yes, you're good, you move on. So that one question of what percentage spawned a whole lot of other things that really made me step back and see what I should be working on. So being a builder and everything you do every day, I had to build the people that were coming up through the ranks so they could take over. Otherwise, I'm never going to be able to step back even further because I'm going to be the one doing the work for the rest of my life.

[00:27:56.130] - Doug Reitz

So it was really good advice. I appreciate that.

[00:27:58.080] - Dan Paulson

Well, thank you. I I'll be sending you the bill in the mail. How's that? No problem. Well, I do see a lot of other business owners that also... I mean, that's, again, a perfect analogy of where most business owners get, is they think they need to have their hands in everything, and they don't seem to understand that, well, you hired talent, you hired people. They want to stand on their own two feet. They want your support, yes, but they don't want you directing everything that they're doing, because as you probably know, that leads to turnover, because if they don't feel like they're valued and they don't feel like you're listening, they're going to go work somewhere else where they think they can get that. And I see this time and time again when people complain about, well, I have high turnover. I can't seem to keep my good people. Well, what is it you're doing to develop those people into replacing you? Well, they can't replace me. Oh, yeah, they can and they should. If you're successful, you should have somebody who could step into your shoes in a moment's notice and be able to take over the operation, at least Keep it running and keep it functioning.

[00:29:01.760] - Dan Paulson

Now, it might not be perfect, but they should be able to do that because you never know when you're not going to be available to handle that problem, deal with that issue, or even just do some of the basics as far as running the business.

[00:29:14.470] - Doug Reitz

Yeah So one of the things that I had to come to grips with is that they were going to fail. The team is going to fail. So I had to give them opportunities that when they did fail, it wasn't going to take out the company, but it was manageable, and they learned from it, and they can apply that knowledge later on. And that was a really fine line for me and hard for me to do. It's getting easier as I'm doing it more to allow those things and have set up stop gaps for future to let them get through the process, maybe go back and figure it out and fix it. But having that failure and being okay with failure, that's another thing we talk about in the book, Failure is not a bad thing at all. It gives you a place to learn and start over, and start smarter because you failed. Most of the things that are in the book are about my failures, and being able to talk about them now and realize, yeah, I screwed up back then. You take it, you learn from it, and you do better the next time.

[00:30:25.420] - Doug Reitz

Even help me now, because I'll still get scared as a business owner. Well, what if we If we don't get that project, or what if it doesn't work out? It's all going to work out. It may not be just like we want it, it may not be perfect, but we're going to learn something from it. And we're going through right now an owner, a client that is filing for Chapter 11. I've never been through that in my life. But we've got the right people around us that are going through the process. We're not jumping to conclusions, and it looks like everything's going to turn out But it sure was scary right in the beginning. And I was afraid of failing and losing a ton of money. But working through the process, it gave me a lot more confidence of how we want to deal with it.

[00:31:13.530] - Dan Paulson

Yeah, that's one of the things I appreciate about the book, because if you read other self-help leadership books, they never talk about the problems. They never talk about the failures. They never make the book real to what most people experience. Nobody's perfect You don't learn from your successes. You learn from your screw-ups. And to actually be transparent enough and courageous enough to share some of that is impressive, because that, to me, is where people can put themselves in your shoes and say, well, I've experienced something like that, or maybe they've experienced that directly. But you can start seeing it from the world of, oh, it's not just me going through this. There are other people that have dealt with these issues And that I can learn from this, and I can grow from this, and I can see what somebody else did to get out of their own way and get to where they wanted to be. So I think that's a great tool within this book itself, even though it's not listed as a tool. You can really reflect on the stories here and see how others have gone through it, and then in turn, go through it yourself, and hopefully have a better outcome.

[00:32:26.650] - Doug Reitz

So one of the stories in the book that literally was the lowest point in my life, I was on the project executive of the largest educational complex in California, and still is today. And it had to be done. It was 130 million 535,000 square feet. We were doing it CM multiple prime. There were 60 bid packages, and had to be done in 30 months. Never been done before, but we were going to do it. And I was driving so hard that finally the inspectors said, I want him off the job. I called my boss and said, I want him off the job. Well, here I am thinking, I'm doing everything I'm supposed to. I'm driving this home. The inspecter is the guy that's the problem, he's the one that's stopping us right now. I just want to keep moving. And the arrogance and the ego, and the drive that I had, I got called into the office, and Tim said, he wants you removed. I went, What do you mean he wants me And Tim said, Doug, you're driving too hard. I said, I'm charging the hill just like you told me to, Tim. He says, well, look behind you.

[00:33:37.800] - Doug Reitz

What do you mean look behind you? There's not really a hill. It's a hypothetical hill. And you go, Doug, your team is standing there. Nobody's following you. You're driving too hard. They're sitting there going, Have fun, Doug. They've given up. And that hit me like a ton of bricks because three of the people I'm still working with today, and they're at Mark Wilson, they saw me at my lowest point. I just crumbled. At the time, my wife, because I was doing the same thing when I was home, I wasn't actually home. My wife goes, I want a divorce. So all of this happened within a three-month period, and life came crashing down. Being driven is great. Driving too hard, I tore my teams apart, tore my family apart. And it really made me take a step back and look at priorities in life. I can still drive hard, but I had to find the balance, and I had not done that. So everything worked out. I'm not divorced. And I didn't get removed from the project, but it was one of the biggest things, turning points in my life about how I was going to do things.

[00:34:44.850] - Doug Reitz

And I had to repair a lot of relationships. It took a long time to get the trust back, to build trust and faith that I was not just this raving lunatic that was trying to get the project done at all costs. And that's And one of the stories in the book that for me, having Tim being a builder and recognizing what I was doing correct, but telling me the kind truth of the things that I wasn't doing right. There's stories like that throughout. And if I was going to give any advice to people, it's okay. If you've gone too far, done some stupid things, There is time to fix it. You can build, you can rebuild your trust in people by just taking a different path. And it's hard. It takes a long time, but stick with it because it actually works. And that's one of the key stories about being a builder that hit home for me. There were people that took time to still believe in me and allow me to rebuild my reputation. And that's really special. And those are some of the people I'm still working with today.

[00:36:00.550] - Dan Paulson

That's great.

[00:36:00.870] - Rich Veltre

I can see that's probably where you learned the listen part, right? Where you told that story. Somebody said, look behind you, and you weren't listening. What are you talking about, right? That's, I think, what I see the most, is that that's the reaction you get when you tell somebody, Here's where I see the problem, and they, oh, no, you can't be right. Absolutely not, because they're not listening. So it's very interesting to hear you say that story, because it does translate to just about everybody that I speak with.

[00:36:32.150] - Doug Reitz

Everybody's done it. There is no doubt. The really bad thing is people were telling me. My wife was telling me. Tim was telling me. My team was telling me. I'm like, You guys just don't understand. I knew it all, and I didn't. Rich, one of the things I know on the financial side, if I was going to give some advice to anybody, I understood budgets and costs coming from the field because that's the way I grew up. I did not understand, because you're a CPA, right? You understand all of the actual black and white numbers in the accounting side, I never learned that taking over a business. And for anybody who's going from field to the office to maybe run their own company, I didn't realize how how important it was to understand the financials, understand the whips, understand the accounting side of it, cash flow, all of it. So advice, if you're going to take on your own company, find somebody like Rich and Dan to be able to take that on for you and give you that advice, and train you how to do the accounting side of things. Because without money, without cash, it doesn't matter if you're going to be able to build.

[00:38:00.280] - Doug Reitz

You're paying all that labor out, and all of a sudden, you're not billing it, and it's not coming back in, and you're not projecting it right, it can get out of control really, really fast. I've been lucky enough to have some good people that have been some great coaches for me as well. But that was something I never knew about.

[00:38:16.240] - Rich Veltre

Yeah, especially, like you said, I know from your background, I know you've done some M&A type work, mergers and acquisitions, Dan. Don't shoot me for all the acronyms. I quote myself again.

[00:38:29.590] - Dan Paulson

He's my acronym guy. So he's always throwing out the acronyms. I'm like, just so you know, I might know what it means, but I can't guarantee everyone else does. So I catch myself all the time.

[00:38:41.220] - Rich Veltre

But if you're doing mergers and acquisitions type work, especially, Communication is great. So you can shake hands and get to know people, et cetera. But the numbers don't lie. And they also translate. So somebody else who's looking at your business, they look at your numbers. So if your numbers aren't good, they'll know it. They'll know right away it doesn't fit for us. And then you'll be wondering, well, why? Because they're not necessarily going to tell you. So in your case, 100 % this was what was going through my mind as you were speaking before. Just the numbers don't lie. You do need to know the numbers, and you need to be able to speak the numbers. And if you can't, you have to have somebody there who can. So many times I've wound up in meetings that even the CEO afterwards said, thank God you were here, because they said, I can't speak the numbers. They can speak to the business better than anybody else, but they can't speak to the numbers. So you always have to be able to have someone who can speak to the numbers.

[00:39:44.670] - Doug Reitz

So I'll give you an example. As Mark and I were doing the purchase for the company, it got really contentious towards the end. And there were two factors to that. One, I didn't understand the numbers, and I didn't understand what he was doing and taking out. He wasn't doing anything illegal. He wasn't doing anything underhanded. I just didn't understand distributions and how different things would come in and out of the company, and what it meant for taxes and everything else. So that was one side of it. I didn't understand that. I needed somebody on earlier to take a look at the books and see what was actually happening. It caught me by surprise, even though he wasn't doing anything underhanded, I didn't realize it. So as I was negotiating, I didn't realize the way I should have been negotiating, just because I didn't understand the numbers. The second side of it is, it's a founder's passion, attitude. This is their last... This was their baby. And even though maybe the business is not worth financially as much as it should, it is in his heart. And that is a really hard thing to span. So we were trying to build bridges to span those gaps.

[00:41:10.960] - Doug Reitz

And I had never built a bridge like that. It got very It got very emotional. It got very contentious. It all worked out at the end. It was fine. But going through that, bridging that gap was really difficult. To have somebody financially on your side and to understand what it means to the person who's founded that company and selling it. Don't get attorneys involved. They're just going to start. That's just bad.

[00:41:41.830] - Dan Paulson

How do you think attorneys make money off of conflict? Off of conflict. So they want to create more conflict because then they make more money.

[00:41:50.240] - Doug Reitz

And we went with the attorneys a little bit. It didn't get bad. But finally, I just sat down with Mark and said, Hey, we can't go with this attorney thing. Let's just work it out. Everybody's got in their ears about what they should be doing. And if you're going to purchase a company or do anything like that, realize the emotional side and the financial side, and learn it really, really well. And get some advice. That's right.

[00:42:18.570] - Dan Paulson

So- Those are all great points here, and I think as we wrap up with this. So the book is not out yet, at least at the time of this recording. So if you're listening to this in July or early August, we're not there yet. When is the book coming out?

[00:42:34.160] - Doug Reitz

It's supposed to be end of August, middle of September, somewhere in that range to do the launch.

[00:42:39.150] - Dan Paulson

Okay. Will there be a website for people to go to, or how should they get a hold of you to get a copy of the book if they want one?

[00:42:47.090] - Doug Reitz

You can go to dougreitz.blog. So just my name. Blog, and it'll take you there. It'll have the information on the book. It's going to be on Amazon and Kindle. And I I can't say enough about the process and going through. I'm just going to go back to what we started with to be able to close this out. Start writing. As a leader, start writing things. And the biggest thing that came out of me writing this down is I realized everyone is a builder. So I'll leave you with this. If as contractors, we build buildings, and then we leave, and we're like, we're on to the next building. If we build a school, educators get to build knowledge in students. If we build a hospital, doctors get to build health for the community. We build a church, pastors get to build faith for the community. Everybody that's using that building is a builder, too. So my advice to everybody that's out there listening, realize that you're a builder. You're touching lives of people that you may never know, But you have built something in them, whether it's confidence, or faith, or trust, or maybe even a relationship that you didn't know about and made them feel better that day, whether you're building a building and affecting a huge community or just one on one.

[00:44:14.600] - Doug Reitz

Think of yourself as a builder, and it's going to make you feel better during the day. And you're knowing that you've had an impact on other people's lives.

[00:44:24.080] - Dan Paulson

Excellent advice. Rich, he We gave a great plug for you, so you should probably put your information in there, too. If you don't understand your finances, who should they talk to?

[00:44:37.910] - Rich Veltre

They should definitely send me an email at rveltre@veltregroup.com.

[00:44:41.600] - Dan Paulson

And if you need help asking better questions or listening better, then you can always get a hold of me at danpaulsonletsgo.com. There's a form there to fill out. By all means, check in, and we would love to help you out in any way you can. Doug, thank you so much for coming on, especially giving us an early view of the book. I hope it's a great It's success. I like the process you put together. It's simple. It's easy to follow. You got good stories in there. So I think it's going to be a runway hit.

[00:45:10.450] - Doug Reitz

I appreciate it, Dan. I really do. And thank you, Rich, for having me on.

[00:45:14.410] - Dan Paulson

All right, guys, we will see you next go around. And Doug, we should probably follow up sometime after the book is launched and maybe talk about how it's going.

[00:45:23.080] - Doug Reitz

I will definitely. Thank you.

[00:45:24.790] - Dan Paulson

All right, guys. Take care, and we will talk to you soon.

[00:45:27.450] - Doug Reitz

Bye.

[00:45:28.470] - Dan Paulson

Bye.