IDL59 Season 2: Giving Back: The Selfless Leader, with Steve Miller

Can leaders learn to welcome challenges? Do you have a moral and foundational anchor for your life and business? Why should leaders give more than they take from their employees?

Tyler met Steve a few years ago through the John Maxwell organization, and Steve struck him as being both mission-oriented and exceptionally altruistic. Steve serves on the board of John Maxwell’s non-profit organization, EQUIP, and it’s through Steve’s giving there that he’s become an examplar of compassionate and selfless leadership. Steve also works through his own company, Millwood Inc., to engage with and give back to the community that they are involved in, and the ripple effect of his work will be felt years from now.

Meet Steve Miller

Steve Miller is a founder and president of Millwood, Inc., and a public speaker who travels the world to train leaders in biblical leadership principles they can apply to their companies. He also serves as a board member to John Maxwell’s EQUIP.

At the age of 19, Steve opened Millwood Incorporated in Holmes County, Ohio. Today, Millwood has over 1,700 team members in 30 facilities throughout the United States.

Steve Miller has made it his mission to provide every team member the opportunity for personal, professional and spiritual growth. To accomplish this mission, Millwood has a staff of corporate trainers and chaplains to provide personal care and organize individual growth events, including marriage retreats and team development getaways.

Visit the Millwood Inc. website and connect with Steve on Facebook and LinkedIn.

IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS:

• Resilience (6:06)

• Have an anchor (18:10)

• Give more than you take from your employees (34:53)

Resilience

Resilience is created by working through challenges and difficulties, and not throwing in the towel too soon.

You can build up your resilience by understanding that challenges are opportunities in disguise, and by keeping a level head while overcoming obstacles.

Keep calm, look forward, have a growth mindset, and you will be better able to handle the inevitable difficulties in life.

Have an anchor

Have an anchor in your life that signifies what you stand for, what your principles are, and what the foundation is to your approach to life and business.

Your anchor will help you to keep to the promises that you have made both to yourself and your employees.

Basing your company on principles and foundations that are centered around community, empathy, and teamwork – and not centered around money – will encourage your employees to stay even when the money is low.

Give more than you take from your employees

People will always come and go through your company’s doors. The goal in a successful business that is people-focused is to send them on with more than they had when they first came to you.

Embolden your employees and teammates. Encourage their development and growth.

If you can create a company that is built on the positive, successful transformation of its employees, then you have a gold standard business.

Resources, books, and links mentioned in this episode:

Visit the Millwood Inc. website and connect with Steve on Facebook and LinkedIn

The Impact Driven Leader YouTube Channel

Join the Impact Driven Leader Community
Connect with Tyler on Instagram and LinkedIn

Email Tyler: tyler@tylerdickerhoof.com

About the Impact Driven Leader Podcast

The Impact Driven Leader Podcast, hosted by Tyler Dickerhoof, is for Xillennial leaders who have felt alone and ill-equipped to lead in today's world. Through inspiring interviews with authors from around the world, Tyler uncovers how unique leadership strengths can empower others to achieve so much more, with real impact.

Rate, review and subscribe here on Apple Podcasts or subscribe on Stitcher and Spotify.

Sometimes we make business so strategic and difficult when in fact it is just people’s relationships [to each other].

Steve Miller

Podcast Transcription

[TYLER DICKERHOOF] Welcome back to the Impact Driven Leader podcast. This is your host, Tyler Dickerhoof. So excited that you're listening in today. Again, my mission, for maybe this is the first time you've ever heard, or again, just to reemphasize, it is to help other leaders get healthy too. I had to become healthy. I had to be a healthier leader. I had to focus on my emotional health, my relational health, my physical health. That's a big part of being a leader. As well as my spiritual health. I think those are all important. Not one day, are you going to be healthy, but it's the constant evolution and working towards it. That's why I love to bring to you conversations with individuals like Steve Miller. Steve, I got to know a few years ago, as you're going to hear in a little part of the interview through the John Maxwell Organization. We got to spend time together. He's been a real, I would say spark in my life. John creates these communities of individuals like Steve that are very serving and altruistic, but yet it's balanced with, hey, we're here to meet a mission. And Steve is a part of that as a member of the board member of the John Maxwell Leadership Foundation, the. nonprofit Equip, and he spent a lot of time there and it's through his giving that it's been an example to me. In this interview we talk about that, the example that he has set for in his organizations. I know this just because you're listening in, it's a ripple effect. It's a ripple effect that I don't even think Steve is going to have an idea of the impact he has made. I'll give you context. Steve is the owner of Millwood Incorporated, and they are a pallet manufacturer. They also do a lot of other, they're launching into erosion control, other products like that. They do some dirty work in regards to it. It's not sexy work. It's not real high tech, but yet he's impacting every one of our lives. As it's been told that if you received or consuming a product right now, there's a great chance that the pallet it was delivered to the store was made by, manufactured, recycled by Millwood. They have that big of a national impact. But to me, the pallets, the products that they develop have nothing to the impact they're having in the communities they're involved in. Steve's going to share more about that. He's going to share about his leadership journey, his leadership experiences. So I'd love for you to be ready to take some notes. He really unpacks a lot of things. I have a lot of fun being around Steve. He's a guy that really brings out the best in others. I hope you hear and sense that as well. [TYLER] Just before we go there, I'd love for you to share this with somebody else. I'd love for them to hear about Steve and what he's doing in the world, because I think it's pretty impactful. That's why he's a guest of the Impact Driven Leader podcast and I'm glad to share Steve with you. Steve, welcome to the Impact Driven Leader podcast. Man, I'm excited to have this conversation, excited for our audience to hear from you. You are an amazingly colorful, exciting leader. I say that adjective there because your personality is one that one I love to be around. We always have great conversations when we're together. I am thankful to have had you in my life. I know that one thing's going to happen during this, the next 30, 45 minutes hour that we talk is I'm going to smile and laugh and I hope you do the same. [STEVE MILLER] Always. [TYLER] Always, all right. [STEVE] Appreciate that expectation, Tyler. [TYLER] Well, I mean, it, I set the bar low and then we can exceed it by so much, and we have fun, but for our audience listening in they've got a chance to check out your bio in the show notes. I'm going to real quick share how we got to know each other. So we got to know each other through Equip, John Maxwell's non-profit organization John Maxwell Leadership Foundation. We also got to spend a couple weeks together in Israel, pre-COVID. That's where we've had our great conversations. We also grew up in the same part of Ohio and there's that connection and I've always enjoyed again, our conversations and you taking your time to pour into me and humor me, I should say. One of the reasons I really wanted to talk to you is share, have you as a guest on the podcast. We've talked about this last fall, when we saw each other, is this idea of resilience. You have an amazing story of resilience, how you're where you're at now, the founder CEO of Millwood products that does, if there's a pallet, that is my viewpoint. Anyone that's listening to this, if you are consuming some type of product today, it was probably at one point on a truck, underneath and underneath that was a pallet that Millwood either recycled, built or had some impact in. That's how I view it. Am I right? [STEVE] That's what I tell people. I don't know if it's true or not, but I tell people. [TYLER] Yes, I mean, it sounds good. So that we had this idea, conversation, resilience, your history, and I've shared with our podcast guests the things that I've had overcome. Everyone listening in, especially as a leader of the last two years has had to endure and go through a lot. So as I told you before, I got one word that I want to talk about in this podcast and that's resilient. So I'd love for you to step in and give your perspective of it, resilience as Steve knows it here in 2022, but also the life experiences that got you to that point and what you've seen in the last 24 months or so. [STEVE] I love that word. I think, as we think about resilience, you can't have resilience without challenges when you think about that. And of course me personally, I don't like challenges, but I know one thing for sure that challenges is what makes, it creates who we are and when we try to avoid those challenges, because they're coming at us every day. So when we just accept that back, I mean, I know for years when I was younger, I used to think of man, if I just executed properly, I wouldn't face this problem or this challenge or the next challenge. I always felt like, well, if I'm facing too great of a challenge, I must have done something wrong. I must have taken the, I'm not equipped. I'm not ready for this. I'm ill prepared. I don't measure up. So we talk ourselves into making a challenge, even worse because we don't face it. And challenges, they put a steeliness in us. That doesn't mean that we're calloused. It's a steeliness that makes us hardened to the next challenge where we're not being tossed around by every day's events, that we can just show that steadiness, I think from a leadership standpoint. If we can have that position that our teams really need to be able to know which Steve Miller's going to show up every day and not be surprised that, oh my gosh something happened in the market today, something happened in the business. We lost our biggest customer or the market shifted and we're upside down and they should not know. I love what, Tony Dungy said this. He said he never wanted his family to know when he came home after a football game, the family should not know whether or not the team won or lost. I thought that was such a simple way that that's how we live our lives, that we're strengthened. We have that steeliness about us that life's impact should not affect my personality, my approach, my smile, my humor. That's what my take is on how I approach, I should approach every day. Am I successful at that? Not always, but most of the time, [TYLER] I mean, I think it's like this. If you have that intention, then even those days you fall short, you're still with that intention. You're able to keep that standard. It's, if you don't have that intention of, oh, I know these challenges are going to put me through a crucible of life, it's going to make me better. I view those challenges with that intention. Then those challenges you can, I guess you can work through with a better mindset. If you're like, oh, I just want to avoid challenges every way I can. If I have challenges like you made earlier, if I have a challenge, it means I did something wrong instead of looking at, hey, I have a challenge, then I'm on the right path. I think there's a mindset shift, especially in leadership that changes. I've heard from people that say, oh, I want to get out of business because I'm just, I'm so frustrated of dealing with challenges of working with people. I look at that as like, well, that's a, it's a twofold thing. It's like the challenges of working through people are making me a better person, but also how can I, in that experience make an impact on the other people so they're better too? [STEVE] Yes. I mean, it really is, we look at it as an athlete looks at the practice or the workout. It's a challenge. But they know it's taking them somewhere. I think that's a great approach how we do deal with our business challenges, people issues that I can shy away from it, just like an athlete would shy away from going a hundred percent in practice. I can shy away from, in my business in the same way, and I'm going to have the same result that the athlete's going to have. When he pulls back it's going to, their performance is going to show. I think I go back to some of that foundation as we talk about challenges of being resilient and you know some of the story and I'll just share with you again, because it takes me back there. What is the foundation for my approach to challenges? It's being a 13 year old kid and seeing one challenge after another hit our family. We had all kinds of things. I was the youngest of six. We had a small family business, saw mill and we were always growing up, working in the saw mill, no child labor laws. Those were all violated. After school, every day, we're in the mill, we're doing all that, running saws, all that stuff. But just had a series of challenges that hit the family. It started with my brother, my oldest brother was killed in a trucking accident, hauling logs for my dad. Three months prior to that my brother that was a year older than me, he was 14, he got his hand caught in a gang rip saw, was severed and they had to do surgery and bring it, fortunately they were able to save it. We had those events happen. There was two other deaths in immediate family. My aunt and my grandmother all passed within 90 days of each other and all these events were happening. I'm battling through those, watching how my parents endured that and then it was about a year later I come home from school and the family business is destroyed by a fire. Having those moments where now I'm like, oh my God, what is happening to our family? We no longer have a family business. That perception from the community that, oh, we were known as a small family business and we were business owners. I remember thinking, as a teenager thinking, man I wish we had a business. I always had that desire as a young entrepreneur to own my own business and to be functioning that way. But there was a big void that was left there, but after the mill was destroyed by a fire, there was something that happened that, again, I'm talking about steeliness, resilience. My dad got us together in, the family together in the kitchen and he said, we don't know why all these things are happening to us, but we do know this. We know that God is faithful and we're going to be okay. It was at that moment a stake was driven in the ground that says no matter what happens, we're going to be okay. I don't know how, and he said that, he said, "I don't know how, but we know that God's faithful. We're going to be okay." Didn't know what the journey would look like, but it was a long journey after that. But that gave us the hope of facing that challenge. Then of course when I got out of high school and scraped a few dollars together and started my business on my own cutting some lumber parts, making pallets, failing miserably. But that was the foundation that was built, was that if I'm going to survive, I better have a stake in the ground as it relates to my faith. Now I think there's a lot of Christian business leaders and they're also business leaders. Unfortunately they're usually separated. I believe that as a faith-based company, you're integrated. We advertise ourselves as a faith-based and therefore, we put that statement that says, this is what we stand for. Our four pillars are trust, servitude, discipleship, and integrity. Now, trust and integrity, those are common in the marketplace. Servitude and discipleship, that sounds a little churchy. But all that means is that we're serving each other before ourselves. Discipleship just simply means development, that everybody's going to have the opportunity to grow personally, professionally and spiritually. Okay, everybody gets that opportunity. Whether they choose to or not that doesn't matter. We have 28 facilities around the country and all walks of life are coming into our doors and the desire is through our chaplain program and other things that they have opportunity to grow in those three areas. Whether they choose to, or not that's up to them, but that's our mission. That's how we face our challenges every day. [TYLER] At what point did that, we've reflected on this and let me interject there. when my brother died, I was 14, that similar relationship that we have. But for me, it wasn't until I was maybe in my mid to later thirties, that I started to look back and really decipher what happened then and how it affected me through my early adulthood into business. When do you think from a leadership perspective that you started to reflect back on the stake that your dad put in the ground and how that really guided you in a way to be the leader that you've become, the impact leader that you've become to so many people? [STEVE] Yes, I think it was right away, knowing that I was going to, I say that I believe it was relatively immediate because it was such a dramatic point in my life that it left a mark. Challenges are going to leave a mark in your life. What you do with it is what was demonstrated to me, as I said about my dad, watching that, having that example, that he wasn't persuaded. He wasn't you know sinking back and saying, well it was a good run. I guess we're done. It was like, okay we'll take what's given to us here and we're going to move on and we'll figure it out as we go. [STEVE] That's really what happens through our lives. We put strategic plans in place all the time but until we execute, we don't know what it's going to look like. And it never looks like what we start with. But to answer your question about realizing that that stake was so necessary and I think that was early on. I speak from a face standpoint. I know your listeners are maybe not men and women of faith, or maybe they are. It's irrelevant. Truth is truth. Having a statement of, in my case, it's a statement of faith, but having that anchor that says, this is who I am, and I'm never changing. That was really built in me. That's something I grabbed onto and said, this is who I am. I'm a man of faith, and this is going to be a business that is faith-based and I'm going to let everybody know what I stand for. Okay. Work with anybody and everybody, hire anybody, everybody, doesn't matter. That doesn't change who I am and making that statement, I think was so critical early on. Now, I believe that in God's promises, I believe that his promise, so I'm a 19 year old kid that has not, I don't have a business education, obviously. I don't have experience in the marketplace. I just have this dream that I want to be a businessman. Then I began to search the scriptures and looking for those promises that said, that allowed me to stay in the marketplace. I believe that the one scripture is Luke 6:38, and it's says, given it shall be given, good measure, press down and running over, shall men bring onto you or heap onto you. I remember reading that, a 19 year old kid, and I had several scriptures like that I said, okay, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to create wealth. I'm going to be a giver. That's why I'm in business. So I'm going to create wealth and I'm going to be a giver. This particular scripture, Luke 6:38 gives me that permission to be successful and men are going to bring the good business deals to me. I would pray that over the business. I believed, so as I'm dreaming over this, I thought, man, I'm going to be a millionaire in what, in six months. I mean, the word of God is truth. It has to happen. I didn't realize that faith's not faith until it's tested. That brings us back to just like everything else in life the word of God requires resilience. People are going to try to steal it away from you and life is going to try to steal it from you. So I had to endure through that, but like we said, the beginning at the end, God is faithful. His word's going to be performed and His will's going to be done in your life. So that's how we started. [TYLER] How has it been tested? Everyone listening in obviously has experienced the last two years of COVID, has had challenges from a leadership perspective. I believe it's gone two ways, either, it's really celebrated the people that have this heart of servitude, because I think those people have shined in my opinion whereas the ones in business that have said, hey, I'm operating a business to get something for me. I think there's been a lot of challenges for those people. How has yourself, as a leader in your business wrestled with the challenges that come at you that you've had to deal with from a labor point of view for everything else? How has that built this muscle of resilience in you? [STEVE] Yes, fortunately those principles as I talk about our four pillars, they positioned us in preparation for this a marketplace when we seen shortages in every category and our number one being that we're labor intensive, low margin commodity business, our number one challenge is labor. So we've always had that as our primary focus. We've had to be very creative in how we staff our facilities, but it's a basic principle of caring for our people, that their function, the individual's function is secondary to the individual. So number one production is very important in our industry, in the business that we're in. Production's number one, but the individuals have to know that they are number one, production is number two. We learned that early on. So we started having as we grew and we now have 1700 team members that we care for, but just making sure that every individual gets that message, that what you're going through in life right now, supersedes what is required on the plant floor today. So you got a major issue that you're dealing with. It might be addiction, it might be marriage problems. It might be a teenager problem that people are dealing with at home. If we can, through our influence as business owners, if I can, in a very simple way, make your life a little bit easier and let you know that if nothing else, that we care, that somebody at work cares that you're dealing with a teenager with addiction or any of the other things that life brings at them. So I think we had that already set in place when the pandemic hit and we started to see this pullback. Now we were, as 90% of all businesses, they still went to work. Their teams still had to show up. They had to work in the workplace. Our guys did, but really having to amp that part up of showing that care, yes, we had to change our, our wage structure and how we compensate. We had to adjust with that just like everybody else did, of course. But even with those adjustments, most of industry still struggled drastically with 25% empty spots in their warehouses. We, on the other hand, were I think survived better than normal. We actually thrived in some areas and to the point where our customers who were struggling began to take notice that we were still delivering and pretty cool. We had one of our national customers at our global company, national customers, they came into our facility and began to ask questions of our leadership saying, how are you staying staffed? You know, we're down the street from you and we can't stay staffed. So we began to talk about how we treat our people and how we care for them. Not everybody's going to say, well, we have a staff of chaplains available, but making life coaches available for people. As a business owner, we don't have all the answers, but we do have resources. That doesn't mean we have cash to throw at everything. We have resources, I have influence that when I call in a community as a business leader, and I say, hey, I've got a team member that needs some help legally. Or I have a team member that needs some help with some marriage counseling. I have a team member that needs some help with addictions. I get immediate response because I'm a business owner. If we can, as business owners, leverage those resources, our team members, all of a sudden think that we're champions and they will become our champions. They're telling their family members, "Hey, I don't care where you're working. You need to work over here. Oh yes, and maybe you can go make a little bit more money down the street, but these people care about you." That's really the message. I think that wasn't new to us because we had to do that over the years. [TYLER] Did you have to do that because that was the catalyst that was going to help you get employees and retain those, or was it hinged to that stake that you drove in the ground, so that's why you had to do it? [STEVE] Yes, it's a great point. I think it is part of that hinge to the stake that says, this is who I am. We have a phrase throughout the company and everybody knows the phrase that this is the mission. The mission of Millwood is that people would see the love of Christ in all we do. Very churchy but even the non-believers, non-faith people, they know that's the mission. To each person that means something, a little different, but that's that stake. If we're going to really demonstrate that, then we're always going to take care of our people above and beyond. In the early years I wasn't able to pay a minimum wage. I could, it was like a default. I was like, well, I can't keep them here with money so I'm going to keep them here because I care for them and they know that I got their back when things go south. That was when I had five employees. So as we grew, that's how we got into the chaplain organization as we grew and we began to have more than one facility and then multiple facilities. I'm starting to think, what does the plant manager, what is his name even? I don't even know who's out there running my facility. So that's when we had to formalize and say, okay, here are the principles that we stand for because we're never leaving that. I don't care what happens in the market. We are never leaving those four guiding principles. Then just getting our teams to rally around that and let them all take ownership of those principles themselves, where they begin to walk it out and it becomes their principles. Not mine. [TYLER] I'd love for you, you talked a little bit about how, the story about the national account right down the road, who couldn't keep their facility staffed. You guys are delivering product, you're staffed and they start coming in asking questions. I'd love to hear a couple stories about people. You mentioned this. You've mentioned to me in the past, as you have a very labor intensive, dirty, if there was a micro, he wanted to do a job, he would come to a Millwood facility and do a dirty jobs at your facility. It is that. I get that. I understand that. It doesn't, but yet, you lay this, really it's a foundational picture image of, hey, we're working with people that are facing some of life's biggest challenges because of the work that we do. A lot of people don't want to do. So it's sometimes a lot of people that don't have a lot of other options. But I know through this, and I know through how you've operated, that you've become a major catalyst in who those people have transformed to be in life. I'd love to know just some of those, because, as you're thinking about that, I want to phrase this for the audience is we can have this stake that you mentioned, we can have this ideology, but yet it's only important from a leadership perspective. In my opinion, it's only important when we see actual transformation occurring, because that's what actually transforms your business, not Steve making a great deal and helping close that deal with the national account. It is, I have a guy who came to me that was addicted. This is the only job he could get and then all of a sudden, sometime later this is where he is at in life. I'd love to hear some of those. [STEVE] I love telling them because they're so inspirational. It really is. I think we do that, we try to capture those videos and those stories. Sometimes we make business so strategic and so difficult when in fact it is just people, relationships, and making money, making margin, landing accounts, all those things. Those really are a result of doing these other things. They can be your focus and we have goals and we certainly subscribe to them but when you need to staff your facility and you hear a story of an individual, we had, this happened in this past year where in one of our Eastern Pennsylvania plants, we had a guy telling his story and we just caught the stories that I came to work, I had an ankle bracelet on and I had made some mistakes in my past. Nobody was giving me a chance. Somebody else had told him, "Hey go try working at Millwood. They're a second chance company. He said, I came in and entry level position, he worked hard. Suddenly we gave him opportunities. He worked his way up and became a supervisor. He ended up being a team lead and just continued to work in the facility. He said, "When I came, I was staying at different people's houses, couch surfing. As a result, I got my own place and I felt really proud of myself. Then and he said, I just recently was able to purchase a home. He said, he got choked up a little bit and he said, my mom told me, because he was able to provide a and invite his mom to come live with him. She had seen him in his worst when he didn't have a home and couldn't take care of his family and certainly couldn't take care of her. He said, "My mom looked at me the other day and said, she's proud of me." As he got choked up and, of course, we're getting choked up listening to those stories where people are able to make a difference in their lives because we just give him opportunity and we demonstrate that. So, yes, pretty cool stories like that. [TYLER] How about someone who has, who maybe worked with you guys that went on to somewhere else and took a lot of the lessons they learned and went and applied that to a different place. [STEVE] Those are so cool. When we have those opportunities, like I told you, we're labor intensive. It's a low margin business. So we know we're going to have turnover. I remember in the early days, again five, six employees and I finally got a stable workforce and we're working and Dave Chanel comes to me and says, "Hey, man post office is hiring. I put my application in there and they got tons of benefits and I'm going to be able to almost triple my wage going to work for them." I remember thinking to myself like, well, that sucks. I can't offer them more money I can offer them a little more money. I can't offer them triple. I can't offer them benefits, like what they're offering. I remember just saying, man that's too bad, but I remember saying, I told him, I said, "Hey that I'm happy for you and your family. That's a good move for you and your family. I hope you succeed and do well. I'm happy for your family." I remember leaving that relationship, even though I missed a good team member walking out the door. I realized to myself that they're always going to be walking out the door and I needed to accept that. So my mission became that simple that I know that people are going to leave the organization. My mission is that everybody that comes into my organization when they leave, they leave better than when they came and that how they leave is how they enter. I want to bless them on their way out. I'm not going to try to anchor them into the facility where they could go out and get a better opportunity. If they can get a better opportunity, man, I'm all for it and I want you to take that. The reality is this, that turnover is never going to hurt me. It's never going to hurt the organization. The turnover --- [TYLER] People think it does. [STEVE] Yes. The turnover that hurts us is the turnover where, the no-call no-shows, the people that get angry and just leave the organization. We want to try to avoid that. We want to say, "Hey, if you want to leave, that's great. Let's talk about it. What don't you like here? What are you leaving for?" Because people should never run from something. They should only run to something. So we try to send that message to our teams. We're trying to get better at it that they come in with that mindset when they come into the organization that they, whenever it is their time is to leave make sure you're running to something and that you're not running from the difficulties of the current job, because it's tough, but we're going to navigate through that. So we've got a few of those, over the years a lot of examples where people will call back and say the things that I've seen observed while I was in your organization, I brought to my new company. My new boss is so impressed that I'm implementing some of those concept or just those values. That's really what it is. It's more not strategy. It's just bring your values to work because that's what makes life fun. That's what makes it exciting. That's what really brings us the rewards. [TYLER] So, as one of the things that we discussed again, back in October is, and this position, why this podcast exists is to really help emerging leaders, leaders that are younger or yes, younger gen X, older millennial that are now stepping into a lot of organizations. Your sons are a little bit younger, but yet there is this next level of leader that's coming in that is trying to bridge this gap between an older generation and younger generation. One of the things that's where we talked about is just man, we have to value resilience. So what are you doing as you're actively helping develop other leaders in your organization to really help them experience that and understand that it is an enduring process. It is a, you're going to have those challenges now, hoping those leaders realize, experience that and yet grow through that. [STEVE] One of the things that the training that we put to all of our team members, and I look at it, you know so many businesses put so much effort and time and effort on vision and strategy. At the end of the day, it really doesn't matter what we do. It's how we do it. I think the how is behavior based. Business coach, Tim Kite, I'll give him a little plug, Tim Kite has an organization called Focus Three. He's the culture guru for the Ohio State Buckeyes. Can't have a podcast without plugging the Ohio State Buckeyes. I owe, so sorry SCC, you're having your day this year. You'll see. Tim Kite put together very simplistic and I love it because it works for a football team. If it works for a football team that has 25% turnover every year, then it's going to work for my organization that has some number, I won't disclose it on the air of turnover, but that you're always driving the vision over strategy. One of the principles, or the theory behind it is that we've put so much effort in trying to build skill and higher talent. We hire for a function. We put all that effort in the place, but really we hire for talent, but we fire for behavior. We spend all of our time training and developing in the area of talent and skill but we spend very little time developing behavior. That's really been a hundred percent of our focus in training is behavior training. He breaks it down into a simple formula called ERO. E plus R equals O; event plus your response equals your outcome. Keep it in that order, very simple, very straightforward. So all of our training is based on how you respond to the business that comes at us today. What problems happen today? You can't control them. The event happens, how you respond is going to, is what's going to make all the difference. That's true in the work life today as we go into work, but it's also true in our life. A lot of cool stories, as we have developed this training throughout our organization, where guys are coming to work, and they're saying this is valuable. It's maybe better in the workplace, but more importantly it's helped me at home. So many times we see this division between the workplace and the home life. People call it work life balance. It really isn't about balance. It's about integration, integrating our work and our home life. It's an integrated life. You cannot have a firestorm at home and come to work and not have it affect you. So they are totally integrated. Once we accept that and say my home life is going through something, I'm dealing with it, and we're helping each other deal with it in the workplace as well. But just that principle, I guess not get too far off track, but it's that principle of developing our behaviors and those disciplines that go with that is the focus of all of our training and all of our development. It's very rewarding when you see that having impact, not only in the workplace, but also in the home. I think so many times we do our training and development as if it's only, it's for the workplace. If it doesn't work at home, it's not going to work in the workplace either. [TYLER] Yes. The thing that hits me there is the fact that, coming this idea of resilience, it's conditioning. So instead of using strategy to think, Hey, let's avoid those potential issues, there's part of that, your actions. But yet if you're conditioning that those things are going to happen when they happen, it's like, okay, we got to deal with it. I mean, to use the sports analogy, it's like you know as a quarterback, you're going to have an interception. If you don't have an interception, well, then you, weren't trying very hard. I mean, it just, it's something that's going to happen. It's, how do you respond from that? Obviously, knowing Tim's work and that's a lot of it's like things are going to happen on the field. How do you respond to that? That's going to determine your outcome. If you make a mistake, do you put your head down? Do you hang your head? Do you just like, "Oh, I can't do this." Or do you like, "All right, what do I do next time? How do I learn from it?" I think that's to me, what is so valuable because you learned the lessons as a 13 year old, 14 year old, and you had that figure in your life that helped you put the stake in the ground and make a positive decision forward. Not, everyone's been blessed with that. This is not an indictment on my dad. My dad didn't do that. He held us together the best he could. It was later in my life that I was challenged and forced and it's like, I needed to put a stake down on the ground and say, all right, let me evaluate what's happened. Let me figure out how do I evolve forward. It's the example of people like yourself and John and mentors that I've had that have continued to nurture that. It's like, I choose to endure. One, I like it. I don't mind it. It's growing up in agriculture. My word for the year is endure. As I tried to explain to my wife who did not grow up around cows is like, I don't enjoy working with cows every day. Not at all. But there's 150 days of the year maybe I do enjoy it, but I understand I have to deal with 215 that suck in order to experience the 150. As a leader, we have to deal with 215 days of challenges to see those 150 days of just excitement, where you get to see a situation where a guy who comes in and he doesn't have any other chances. And working with him and caring more about him and who he's becoming as a person means more than how many pallets that he fixed that day. Because if you continue to pour in him, he's going to make a positive influence and all of a sudden now, his mom's turning to him and saying, "I'm proud of you." Man, that impact, I want to be a part of that stuff. Those are the greatest rewards. I mean, to me, there's no number of comas that is more meaningful than that story. In my opinion, I don't know, maybe you're different, but that's me. [STEVE] Yes, very true. That resilience, that steeliness that comes from that. I like the word you used, that resilience is about conditioning. When we see the challenges, the challenges, that's really what it is. It's an opportunity for me to be condition and I'm going through conditioning and when we face those challenges and it's going to make me better for tomorrow. I know that, so you embrace it and you plow through until you get clarity of what the actual answer is or how you get overcome it. But that is, it is truly about those people's stories, about seeing that need that's in somebody's life. One of the themes that we have for our teams for this year is make a difference. Every day we have that opportunity to make a difference in somebody's life. When we make that our mantra to look for that opportunity to make a difference in somebody's life when they're coming into work and they've got some serious issue that they, some baggage, everybody's carrying some baggage and a lot of times you can't solve the issue, but when you send the message that, "Hey, man, I care as a coworker," when a coworker says that to another coworker, "I'm here for you. Nothing I can do to change it. Just want you to know I care. I know you're there. I see you. I hear you." Those simple messages mean so much, and that's when you get excited. That's way more than, "Hey, we beat 20% of last year's bottom line profit or top line, or whatever goal it is that you have set for yourself." [TYLER] You know, as you describe, it's how I view it is, it's empathy. It's practicing empathy. For me, it's putting my arm around someone and walking with them. As many listeners have heard me say, and I think that's what you're actively doing. That's what you're choosing to do through your pillars, through caring about, hey, I care about the production, but if I don't care about you as a person. Then the production is just, it doesn't matter. It's, that's not walking together. I may put my arm around you and say, why aren't you doing the job? But it's like, I'm not walking with you if I don't care, what's impacting your ability to take on the task. I think part of that as a leader though, and as we wrap up, it takes courage. It takes courage to put yourself in that spot to condition yourself, to build resilience. I think it takes courage to be in a situation to put your arm around somebody and care, because you're like, what am I stepping into that I don't know if I'm equipped to handle? But I believe in this, I believe it takes faith to step into it, to have that courage and know that even, you mentioned it, even if I can't, I'm willing to show you that I care. To me that courage is always worth it. [STEVE] Yes. So true. I mean it is that embracing that moment of when we see the challenge, it's that we have that split second decision to make. It happens every day. It literally happens every day where we have that split second moment of how we respond to an event and our people see it. When we can take that courage to embrace every challenge, every challenge that says, this is an opportunity, every challenge is that is just that opportunity, then all of a sudden, you find yourself having a smile on your face because you're like, I'm embracing it. I got a smile on face. I'm having fun. Everybody else follows that same model as they go through the workplace. But I just go back to, again, I think, that's my encouragement to young leaders that are maybe starting an event and you got a side hustle that you think is going to develop into something significant. It will. It can. It's the drive, have that anchor, have that stake in the ground and really define it. Who are you? Answer that question. Who am I, and who am I never going to, I'm never going to change from these values and these principles. I might change what I do, my products, whatever direction the business takes you, because that is something that we all know. And Tyler you know it, and I know it. Is that the path that we're taking, the journey that the strategy, we look out five years, 10 years, I'm going to be this. It's okay to dream, but we never end up where we think we're going to end up. [TYLER] No. [STEVE] That doesn't mean it's bad or good. It's just, it's going to be different. So don't get locked into the path that you think you have to be on. Because all of my journey has been, I started a path and I thought I'm going to be this. Well, no, as I pursued it, other avenues opened up. Had I never pursued the wrong path I would never found the right path. But anyhow, I guess the point is that I never moved, never moved from the stake determined. This is who I am. This is my anchor, and I'm never leaving that. I'm going to make that my number one presentation regarding what sales pitch I'm given. [TYLER] I love it. Steve, thank you for your time. I appreciate it. I appreciate the influence you've been in my life and sharing your viewpoint, your story, your experience of resilience with everyone else. I know it's going to have an impact, so thank you. [STEVE] No, thank you, Tyler. Glad to be here. [TYLER] I truly want to share this as we're back into it. You just finished up listening to that. My notes vary, depending on guests. Sometimes I have a lot of questions, but I just try to formalize those as notes in my head and have this conversation. Knowing Steve for several years now and knowing his stories, knowing what he's been through and as I alluded to in that conversation, the conversation we had back in October was about resilience. I ended up with a page and a half of notes after that, because that's all I had. That's all I wanted to talk about. I knew Steve, because it was so imperative on his heart that as a culture, we condition ourselves to be resilient. It's not for lack of challenges easy talked about, but it's recognizing those events. Give us an opportunity to respond and yields an outcome. Through that whole process of being courageous through those events, being courageous with our responses will lead to an outcome that's going to help us be better, that's going to move us forward, that's going to really meet their four pillars of discipleship, servitude, integrity, and trust. I appreciate so much Steve not shying away from sharing his values and his faith. I didn't ask that. I know. As you're listening in, you maybe are a person of faith. Maybe not. That's okay. As Steve has shared, that doesn't matter to me. I want you to know where I come from, I am a person of faith. You've heard that before. I have a lot of people in my world that share the same faith. I know people a lot of people that don't, and yet they have tremendous value. I'd much rather where I stand from because as a leader, I think that's really important. When we can understand where people stand, what they're hinged to, then we are not worried about where they're coming from because we get it. We understand it. I think what's so impactful about the conversation I had with Steve is just this absolute desire to say, Hey, I care more about you as a person than their performance. Now performance is important. Performance is a quality we're going to measure, but yet I'm asking you this, are there ways for you as a leader or in your family, as a leader or just a member, to be more caring, to show people that you care and just ask, "Hey, how are you doing? What are you walking through right now?" We're continually going through this great resignation. As I talk with people like Steve and others, I truly do see two different types of companies, companies that have had business models, such as Steve that are really recognized as, man, they're making a tremendous impact in our communities, not just their industry, and that those organizations that are too afraid about their bottom line, their performances, following the patterns of pre-pandemic and modeling that leadership example and yet not caring about people. I've heard the stories about organizations that they force people to come back to work. They force people to take vaccinations, whatever it may be. I look at that to say, hey, is that taking a chance like Steve said to just walk up to the person and say, "Hey, what's going on in your life? Help me understand?" If I could impart one thing on you that I've learned as a leader and as a leader, trying to get healthier every day, the more I care about others, the more I'm willing to put my arm around them and just say, "Hey, I care. You matter to me,' I've learned so much more in life. It's like a whole new world is open to me. Thank you for listening in today. I truly hope you leave a review, rate this podcast, subscribe wherever you listen to. I thank you for being here and a part of the community and have a great rest of your day.