Investing and sticking with it, overcoming challenges, and mentoring

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the developer podcast where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well, hello and welcome back. We are continuing our season where we are doing interviews and we are this time wrapping up an interview with Chip Nightingale. This is part three. We've already talked about building a team, developing a team and the costs related to that. In this final episode, this final part of it, we're going to talk about really investing and sticking with it, giving things time to properly evolve and become what we hope they can be. This is actually a very important lesson I think that we need to learn because we get a lot of us are doing side hustles and startups and things like that. It is amazing how often people bail too soon. They look at stuff and they say, oh, okay, this is where it's going to go and now I'm done where they should have spent a little more time, allow things to, I want to say, organically grow or whatever it is. Time is required to get things to fall into place and to get things in motion. That's what we're going to talk about this episode. As well, we're going to talk a little bit about what happens when you hit rock bottom. What is it that maybe would help you when you're in a really bad spot move forward instead of just giving up? What are some things, some lessons learned when you are at that turning point and you really need to turn? You need to get away from that rock bottom that you found yourself in. But Chip will do a better job talking about it. So I'm going to let us go right back into part three of our interview with Chip Nightingale. Yeah, you mentioned it's very easy, I think, for things that are routine to just become a rut, basically. It's like you end up as a rut, you sort of end up trapped in that place. I've always been a huge fan of retrospective type approaches to projects like that. You have this big thing. I think it's almost more important when it's a big victory where it's something like you said, wow, we knocked it out of the park. That was awesome. The high school sports thing was like, you just won a championship. To be able to, in that, say, okay, what can we do better? If you look at organizations that have that year in and year out, they knock it out of the park. They're always the top organization. They're always, however they're being measured, they're at the top. I think you'll almost always find that what they do is they don't allow that routine to set in. They always are asking questions and saying, how can we do it better? Because if you're not getting better, you're getting worse. If you're not growing, you're dying. And so it's building that into your culture and into your approach is to say, okay, we're going to do it. And maybe, for your example, maybe we have a couple of years in a row where we say, this is a problem we can't solve. But at some point, you say, okay, we have constantly brought this thing up as an issue for us or an obstacle. We need to figure out a way to deal with it. It's going to dog us forever, or we're going to find a way to address it in some form. Well, think about a business. You do a startup business. They say it takes you approximately about five years before you start seeing whether or not your business is going to be successful. So if there's a range of three to five years with a startup in knowing whether or not it's going to be successful, why is it that when a new idea comes that we don't give it time to be successful? It's probably not going to work the first year. Not the way we think it's going to, but it's going to be something that takes some time, which means we're going to have to take a risk that this is and just say, you know what? We're going to invest in this for three to five years because we believe in this. You probably will be successful, but there'll just have to be some adjustments that have to be made during those three to five years to get you to the place where it actually is going to be successful. I think most of us, we get to year two and go, oh my goodness, we're scrapping it. We're done. And then the new idea comes and two years later, boom, if it's not successful, boom, it's gone. We're done. And so we wonder why we're spinning. We're spinning because we don't give it enough time to actually develop into what it needs to be. And we just need to learn to be a little bit more patient. I think what I'm seeing is that because we haven't done a great job, we're doing a much better job in our organization now, but we had huge turnover. Every two years, these people are just turnover leaving. I think it's part of our society today anyways, but how do we get them to stay? Because we're not going to see success unless we get them to stay those three to five years. So when I came here, I made a commitment I would stay for five years. And the reason I did was because I know through experience that it's going to be, it's going to take me five years to determine whether or not I will be successful and whether I'm in the right spot. Now that's hard, but I tell you what, three years have gone by really, really fast already. And in the next two years, and I'm already seeing a shift that has begun to change within the place that I'm leading. I have more staff. I have staff that is more unified. We're growing. We grew 35% in just the last year. And that has nothing to do with me. It has everything to do with the fact that our team has come to a place where we're unified and we're working together and there's some longevity and excitement. And now I'm getting that much more excited about year five. But it may mean that at that time, I need to either move somewhere else within the organization so that I can develop the next five years or, you know, I don't know what that innovation looks like, but that's part of taking some risk. Yeah, and it's difficult looking at, you know, waiting for that three, four, five year point when you're in year one or year two, particularly when you're trying to change course, you know, you're in something that is, which is interesting because a lot of people will get into a job and they'll see where it can go. They'll have this vision because they go in there positive. I don't think anybody goes into a job like I'm going to hate this from the start. They have this vision. And then six months down the road, they're like, I just don't know where it's like you got to, you got to give it time. You know, it's that kind of thing where you can't, like I said, I don't think you can judge something that quickly because it takes time to especially change in course. You got to slow stuff down. You got to reverse the momentum. You got to go get momentum going the other way. So it's like you drive in a car. You're not going to be able to just like turn on a dime. You've got to, you know, or if you do, you're going to end up in a wreck. Yeah, exactly. I want to go back to sort of this. One of the things I alluded to at the start is part of your story is you were to bury it. You had like a sort of a turning point kind of thing as you and part of what you talk about is going from a sort of like a rock bottom. And even within that is saying, OK, I'm going to grow out of this. And so I think probably the easiest way to summarize a little bit is what what was it maybe that was like a lesson or a couple of lessons that you learned that turned you around when you when you got to what we call like your your bottom point where you said, OK, I've got to look at this. I'm going to because some people could just give up. So it's sort of like what what was it that caused you to turn around and maybe some lessons you learned that even maybe even today you can look back and say, I got a lot out of being at that point. Well, that no, that's a great question. I think that's probably something we all wrestle with a lot. For me, I lost everything in the housing market. I had a company. We were building about one hundred twenty five to one hundred fifty homes a year and had 15 guys working for me and we were growing. Our company was growing like crazy. But I during that period of time, even though our company was growing, I began to do other things, too. So we had bought into a franchise for a daycare franchise that my wife was going to run. And so there was a lot of things out there. Well, then I wish we should have been able to predict it. In fact, you is easier to predict at this time that the housing market is going to crash. It's very similar to what we saw in 2005. So these people, I believe it didn't happen and it's not going to happen again. It looks exactly the same. Just being frank, it's going to happen again. But we didn't see it. And I was too young to and and we were doing so much business that I didn't see it during that time. And but when it happened. It could have been very easy for me to just. Basically crawl under a hole and give up and. But I had gone through a divorce and a few years before that, before I started this company and I did go down that road, tried to commit suicide, thought my life was had no value, all those types of things. And when I came out of that, I began to realize that I had purpose. And it wasn't something someone told me, it was just something I began to realize that, hey, if I and just kind of give you a short story, I was driving and I had there was this tree that people committed suicide. If you drove fast enough, it there was this curve. There's a great big oak tree. And when I got to that oak tree, my car just stopped. It had no reason for stopping other than the fact that it God must just grabbed a hold of the car and just jerked it down and stopped. And I got out of that car and was like, OK, obviously. My life has value. Because for someone to do that, which makes no sense, I didn't push on the brake. I need to change the course of my life. Well, that changed the course of my life. And so I became driven. And even in the act of failing, I realized in that moment that I wasn't failing, I was learning. I needed to grow in this moment. I learned some things. Part of it was I was extended too far debt wise or financially that I couldn't I couldn't work through this this period when the market crash. And but right after that happened, I started getting even more business. I went from 15 guys to just two or three. I was making more money already. And then other opportunities came. And and and through that, I just began to make decisions based on, you know what? I learned this lesson. I'm not going to do this again. I learned this lesson. I won't do it this way again. But it didn't keep me from continually taking chances and risking things. I still take risk. I wrote a book. I'll be frank. It was a lot more money and effort for the return on the investment. It's going to take me years to return to to to get a return on an investment because nobody knows who I am. And I'm not John Maxwell, but his first book didn't just take off. It took years and years and years of taking a risk that this is if I continue down this path, that's going to work. And but because I've actually have experienced and seen it firsthand, and I think that I'm in a better place today that I can continue to move through it. So. And you mentioned that that you after that, you sort of turn around and you became driven. Now, is that something that you were? Is it something where you were you're not, as you mentioned yourself, sort of as a type A personality, was that something that came after the factory? Have you sort of always been that? And it was just maybe you found your focus, you know, you were driven, but just didn't have as much of a focus in your drive. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. My I was driven. I was an athlete. You know, I played the one baseball I played at Liberty University. I had a full right scholarship for that. I was driven, but I was driven in a different way. It was it was all about making money, fame, those types of things. And immediately that kind of stuff got taken away and I had an injury. And but my identity during that period of time was what I was going to do. And what changed was for me when I lost everything in my business was not what my identity was going to be, but how I could invest in people so that our identity had longevity. That's what changed. I was always type A. It was always, always pushed. I always worked hard. That was never an issue. But my my philosophy of life changed early on. Before that moment, it was all about me. And even even when I lost everything in my business, it was I'm going to prove to my ex-wife that she's wrong, that she left me for the wrong reason, but it was to get back at her. It was still about me. And so my heart had to change and it was it had to stop being about me. It had to be about how I could invest in others. And so I think really that was the turning point for me. Yeah, I don't know why it was. I'm reminded of a commercial that was several years ago now. That was a thing about that. Me versus the team is that there's a you know, there's a football. It's a guy comes on after a football game and he's like, you know, the post game interview and like, you know, what's you know, what how was the game? What was it like? And he's like, well, I was awesome. I played great. I was the best one out there. My team let me down. They were all horrible. I can't. They don't even belong in the same field as me. And it's interesting that, you know, you have your example there is that when you stop focusing on yourself, you actually ended up better. It's where this unit up in a happier place. And it now it's not relying on it wasn't relying on you for even your own success. Now you've got a team around you that is we're all growing. And so if I stumble, that's OK. Somebody else is there and they can they can help me through it. And now it's not just me having to bear that burden. Yeah, exactly right. You're exactly right. And and now the now the pressure is not about building a name for myself. It's about investing in other people. And now it's like, well, they it's if they want it, they'll come get it. If they don't, then they don't. You know, it's it is whereas if it's just about you, if you're not successful, what then what do you have to show for it? And for me, it's so exciting to know. I have two guys that I coached football 15 years ago. They're undefeated this year. They're going to playoffs. Most likely, they're going to win a state championship this year unless something really drastically goes bad. I never want to stay championship with them. But you know what the process of of of life together, I'm still a part of that. And I and I realize I'm still a part of that. And it's not even the same school that I coached at that time. It's a totally different school. But but man, I am so proud of those guys. I'm so excited for them. And they've done a lot of hard work. But man, they were hard workers then. They just learned how to to invest in people. And because of that, their their success is shining through. So with your focus being on on investing in other people, how do you how do you impart that to the to the people that you mentor? How do you sort of push that into the because obviously you have with these guys? These coaches have done well. How do you how do you make sure that that's part of what you're you're sharing and instilling in the next group that you're working with? I think it's just through the communication of how we are coaching. It's always reminding them that this is preparing them for what's next. And and I think that I do that with my kids all the time. Like, hey, you just went through this hard time. You know why? Because it's preparing you for what's next. And so what did we learn from that? You know, I think I think as parents, we have a huge opportunity to do that. As coaches, we have a huge opportunity to do that as employees and employers for our employees. We have a huge opportunity to do that. But when we miss those opportunities and don't do that, next thing you know, they they don't learn from it. And so so that's that's just a great way of mentoring people without them realizing you're mentoring them. Yeah, I think that's the one that it was once said that I think it was when they when he invented the light bulb, he said, you know, I I failed a thousand times. People say I failed a thousand times, but actually, I just learned how not to do it. A thousand ways not to do it. And it's that learning from is, you know, if if you make the mistake and you keep making a mistake, then it's not going to help you. But if you realize that, oh, OK, that's a way not to do it. You at least get to check that off the list and say, OK, I'm not going to take that. Exactly. Exactly. So that was sort of running into time. I want to thank you for for giving me your time for your for sharing with this. This is really as I sort of mentioned before we started, started into the actual show. This has been a great conversation, and it went not necessarily where I thought it was going to be, but it was in its way. It was it was even better. It's one of those. That's why I love this. This kind of an approach is because we just start talking. There's so many little things that we get from people, which really goes to that whole mentor mentee kind of thing. And I think it I do think it goes both ways to some extent, is that you have your experiences and you're working with somebody and sharing yours. But while they're talking about their experiences, I think everybody wins in that situation is we all grow in that by sharing these, you know, slightly different, even if they seem the same, slightly different approaches or different perspectives. And the next thing you know, you've got a whole bunch of other, you know, arrows in your quiver, basically, to say, wow, I didn't I didn't have to go through this, but I saw this person approached it. And this is a great idea. I'm going to take this and this is going to help me. This is some innovation that I'm going to win from. Yeah, absolutely. Mentoring is mentoring. People is actually being mentored. It's like you're being mentored. And I learned more from investing in people than I probably would have ever learned by just listening to someone. So I think we have to remember that that I am being mentored. It's it's through the people that I'm allowed to to come along and serve beside. And and and the things that I don't know that I can't learn through them. I have to be willing to go find it. Yeah, exactly. So since you know, if I can, if we can help you out a little bit, maybe get a couple of people that say, hey, I want to help this guy out. I want to buy his book. I want to get a hold of him. I want to hear more from Chip. What are some great ways for them to get a hold of you or to or to to learn more from you? I am on Facebook and Instagram. I do a podcast that's called Yes, You Can Lead Life and Leadership Lessons with Me. And and I it's just about 10 minutes or they're really small podcasts or only about 10 minutes long. Sometimes they go a little bit longer, but I just try to grab little bits and pieces of things that I'm learning. And and as I'm learning them, I share them with other people. And then I also did write a book called Ceasefire, Finding Peace When All You See Is Conflict and really talked about the things that I've experienced in life and how to work through conflict. I think one of the biggest issues we have in our world today is we don't know how to work through conflict. And really understanding where it comes from. So anyways, I wrote a book on that and and it's given me a lot of opportunities just through that book to encourage people and have some great conversations and already seeing how that's become a tool for me to mentor other people. Yeah, I think it's I don't think very many people would argue that there's plenty of conflict out there. And if we can find some ways to reduce that, that would maybe make all of us sleep a little easier at night. Yeah, absolutely. OK, well, I want to thank you again for your time. This has been great. This is exactly what I was hoping to get a lot of great nuggets. I'm hoping the people that were listening were taking notes because there were had pencil and paper available because I think there's plenty of noteworthy points there. And hopefully we'll talk again. I hope best of luck with everything you're doing. Continue to grow. And in year four and year five, you turn around and say, yep, this is exactly where I needed to be. And then you get to, you know, plan your next five five years ahead of you. Well, I appreciate the time, Rob, and I really enjoyed our conversation today. All right. Well, thanks a lot. I'll let you get back to it. Have a good day and have a good weekend as well. All right. Sounds good. Thank you. Thank you. Bye. And no shocker there. That wraps it up. We have completed our interview with Chip. We are going to come back next episode and we are going to start into another multi-part interview with our next guest. I'll wait till we get to that one to actually share that. So a little bit of a cliffhanger, I guess, is who's coming up next. And they are not going to be the last. We have got plenty of other interviews stacked up that we're going to be sharing with you. They are the same. We've got a lot of this stuff where there's a lot of little nuggets thrown out here, a lot of good notes to take and lessons to be learned, not necessarily even from mistakes others have made, but by sometimes the successes. And how they've managed to overcome and some of the habits and even, you know, I guess, the motivators and things like that, the mindset that we're finding with some of these people. It is continue to be a great time with for me. I love doing these interviews. I love learning from all of these different people. I hope you get at least some of the same. That being said, we will wrap this one up as always. If you have any questions or anything like that, shoot me an email at info develop an order dot com or you can always check out the site. You check out wherever you got this. You'll see in the show notes, show notes links to Chip, how to get a hold of him if you were having a hard time keeping notes while we went through that last little bit there. But we will let you get back to your day. So go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to building better developers to develop a new podcast. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon, anywhere that you can find podcasts. We are there. And remember, just a little bit of effort every day ends up adding into great momentum and great success. One more thing before you go. Develop a new podcast and site are a labor of love. We enjoy whatever we do, trying to help developers become better. But if you've gotten some value out of this and you'd like to help us, be great if you go out to developer.com slash donate and donate whatever feels good for you. If you get a lot of value, a lot. If you don't get a lot of value, you're going to lose a lot of money. So if you're going to lose a lot of money, you're going to lose a lot of money. If you get a lot of value, a lot. 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