We have over 3000 companies we work for. We have 220 three people. I can't name anybody who's less than the a player on the entire team. We're like the largest general contract in the world. You have to acknowledge as being a gen xers or a baby boomer that it may be better than what we did before. People issued are the biggest issues if you own a small business.
And I'm sure all your listeners will be shaking their head right now and be like people issues consumes most of my time, most of my resources. What's up, everybody? Welcome to Gathering the Kings podcast. I'm your host, Chaz Wolf. I'm a serial entrepreneur across franchising, construction, real estate, and online education. My mission is to transfer courage to you, our listeners, by sharing the real and raw stories of success. 7, 8, even 9 figure business owners.
Today, we are joined by Scott Arias, the CEO of Ace Consulting. Scott Story is nothing short and incredible, overcoming a devastating motorcycle accident and battling with prescription drug addiction to build a multi divisional 8 figure commercial construction consulting company. This is Scott's second time on the show. And, it's been about a year since he's been here, and I'm pumped to catch up with him.
We'll dive into how he's successfully navigated multi generational workforces, while continuing to drive success at Ace Consulting. In this episode specifically, you'll learn 3 things. The biggest differences across the generations Everyone thinks it's like even slots time frame wise, but it's not. It's by historical events. How these differences impact the hiring process.
That's where it really comes home to somebody who's an entrepreneur, like myself, or your your audience, is understanding that one is not better than the other. And Scott even gives the actual questions he uses in interviews to find a players. I wanna give you, an idea of some the interview questions that I ask people. If you wanna learn how to build a successful business while navigating the complexities of a multi generational workforce, you're in the right place. Stick around.
This is one episode you won't wanna miss. Enjoy the show. What's up, Scott? Welcome back to the King stage. How are you, man? Good, Chaz. How you been? Dude, we've been rocking and rolling. I know you were on the show, like, last April. Does that sound right? Something like that? It it doesn't seem that long, but as we get older, it seems to go by faster. Yeah. There was there was one little snippet in my mind that was, like, that felt a long time ago.
We've probably done, like, 300 episodes since then. Oh, wow. Yeah. And and just kinda catch everybody up who's listening. You're not just, you know, in the construction field. You you're touching all kinds of business owners in construction, but give us a little backdrop of your business and how you help them. We focus on construction for 2 of our four sectors. One of them being preconstruction. Also, we just changed the name to project controls because that more nearly represents.
That's project schedules, that kind of thing. And our staffing side is strictly site management staffing. So we don't do skilled trades or anything like that. We do, you know, site superintendents, SSHO, quality control managers. And then The other 2 sectors, one is training. And because I taught at a university for a decade, it it aligns up with that. So I do a lot. I mean, do project training, you know, anything that has a finite deadline.
And then the last sector is something that we added a few years ago and has gone through the roof. And that's security services. So we've done security services for top 10,000,000,000 corporations, all the way down to a small little rinky dinky projects throughout the United States and overseas too. We're working on one right now for a casino. You know? So we do security services for a lot of different sectors. And I brought my brother in.
My brother was one of the most senior officers in the security realm within the navy before he retired. And so since he's been retired, he's been he's been helping me out doing different things. Even though I'm his younger brother, he helps me. Yeah. That's awesome. To make it clear for the listener, you know, when you're saying security, site superintendents, you know, all that you're you're placing people into those roles on a on a temporary basis, or is it a permanent, type of placement?
Give us a little bit more detail there. The staffing sector is a project based model because that's what we do. You know? So we if you don't have a project to go to, they don't go anywhere.
So and the reason we did that is because it's difficult as a contractor to hire something that has a project, be hire a high quality person, not knowing if you're gonna have a project after if you're gonna hire, you know, someone of the caliber and the quality, you need to you need to entice them with having a future. And that's what we do. If, you know, we're like the largest general contracts in the world, we have, you know, over 3000 companies we work for. And so so that's it.
There are staff, but they serve as a management, kind of a a little bit different dynamic because they also, you know, from an ethical perspective, you can't look at quality and safety if you're ingrained within a company totally. You know? So so that that that's one end, but the security sector crosses all sectors. We do both administrative doing side assessments, going and looking at and and advising all the way to provide insight personnel.
So it's more it's more physical security, but we We do provide some IT IT security services also. Yeah. I mean, I think that you hit the nail in the head. That's kinda what I was hoping that you would get to there, but any anyone is in construction. Even, you know, like you said, the small rinky dink, you know, projects, it's, it it's about managing pieces and deadlines and making things concrete and being able to say what you or do what you said you were gonna do.
And so many folks in contracting residential, commercial, whatever fall victim to not being able to execute. And so I've always loved what you do, but I just wanted to make sure that they they knew who they were talking to. They're talking to the king of this. I mean, like you said, you're the largest of what you do.
And, you've got these super a players on your team that can come in on a project type basis and help your clients win a single project, and then they can go you know, onto the next client or whatever that that your client doesn't have to worry about keeping them on staff. Right? Yeah. I know, you know, we have 223 people. So I can't name anybody who's less than the a player on the entire team. We're very fortunate, but you also gotta put a lot of effort into hiring.
Because you get 8 players, you gotta know what an 8 player is. So, you know, and and and if you don't know, research it because it's actually it's a term, but it's actually it was coined in a book a long, long time ago. Yeah. What book? I've got you know, you asked me that, and then I don't have the answers to that. So right. We'll put it at the show notes. No worries. I have it. I have it I have it on my audible account. So that's just so That's about how it rolls for me.
I'm like, I heard that one. And then the 17,000,000 books I have in my Audible. That's how it rolls. Okay. 1, so so hiring a players is a is a certain obviously, you've gotta dialed in. Your clients don't have to think about that. They just hire you. That that's absolutely correct. And, you know, we handle all the all the administrative things, you know, people issues are the biggest issues if you own a small business.
And I'm sure all your listeners will be shaking their head right now and be like, people issues consumes most of my time, most of my resources, and we handle those type of things. And I have people on staff that do nothing but handle personal issues. Somebody has a death in the family. So this new generation want is they they don't want just to a commitment between 9 to 5 or in construction 7 to 7. It seems like sometimes, but but they wanna know that you care about it.
Yeah. So which is a little touchy feely, but I think it it's well it's it's been well received by my company of being a crucial function of leadership. Yeah. I mean, unless we we'll just dive right into it. I mean, the bigger topic here that you just referenced is in in a lot of businesses, but specifically construction. We are dealing with 3 generations.
We've got generation x generation millennials and then generation z. And, you know, really, it's x and and millennials make up about 75% of the workforce, maybe a little bit more, maybe close to 80. And you've got about a 10 or 15% on the on the Z. And so you've you've got very different people, expectations, what they consider work, what they consider hard work, what they consider consistency and reliability, what they're looking for in return like you kind of just mentioned.
And so let's just start from a high level. Why are we here? Why do we have 3 different generations all kinda all in the mix and and what should the listener do to, like, pay attention or to just become aware of this first. So I sent through a generational presentation recently, probably within the last month, and they discussed the different generations.
And one thing you didn't mention was the boomers, but the reason you probably didn't mention the boomers is the boomers are literally with one foot out the door at this point. So generations are really categorized by significant events that have occurred during a lifetime that that form their perspective and form their what they think is acceptable, what they don't think is acceptable. And you take, like, generation x. Okay?
The generation x is my generation, and Generation actual were more formed during the eighties. It was, you know, also known as the me generation. You know? So it was a lot about personal performance, that type of thing. They also, you know, didn't really care about, you know, what was happening at home. I remember one of my bosses once said, he goes, The difference between me and you is I take care of my business at home, and you don't.
So he didn't have any caring whatsoever, and that was the school of thought that I grew up on. Now Now, the millennial generation shortly occurred after, after the gen x, because gen x is the smallest generation by numbers. And then you got the millennials, which occurred right in the 80, early eighties perspective when they were born. And they were more formed, during, you know, events like 911, for example, And so they're a big believer.
Millennials are a big believer in, you know, doing it as a team coming together because that was the world that existed when they were form their formula years. You know? Yeah. And then you have the gen z years, which are more formed during the, you know, the great recession time kind of time frame. Everyone thinks it's like even slots tie, you know, time frame wise, but it's not spice by historical events, and they were they occurred during the great recession.
So, you know, the way they go about their their business has to do a lot with being a little more risk averse, you know, a little more, you know, thinking thinking about the future and wanna be involved into an organization that cares about them. So it's those generations, it's a there's just challenges with each of those.
And if you come from one generation to the other or even if you're on the borderline of one generation, like I am, you're going to understand some of those beliefs and philosophies. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot to it. Obviously, as you as you kinda laid it all out, we can we can all probably imagine the people that are on our teams or even just in our families. And it's like, oh, yeah. There's pretty distinct differences.
Know, it's funny I was in a in a workshop this past weekend given some information on sales and marketing and stuff like that. And we were talking about avatar and Like, the places where your avatar hangs out is where you wanna be marketing. And and this has a lot to do with what you're saying, even from, like, a non, like, employee team building perspective, but from a marketing perspective, you know, who who is my client?
Well, as a as a millennial gen x client base, you know, places like Facebook are going to be better than Snapchat or or whatever we can go into the marketing stuff, but I think that you're what you're saying, what I'm picking up, and I want the listener to make sure they're getting is that there's distinct differences between these generations.
And now what you're saying is, okay, we'll we've got them all working on the same job sites or in the same project, maybe in different capacities, but they're they're They're bringing something different to the table. They're also expecting something different. Talk about that a little bit. Well, you know, hey. And that's it.
That that's the key here, and that's where it really comes comes home to somebody who's an entrepreneur like myself, or your your audience is understanding that one is not better than the other, although we wanna think that way. You know? I I wanna think that way, to be honest with you, because I wanna say gen x is the best. But but but the truth is is that we were we were cultivated by the environment we grew up in. You know?
So that right there makes them And here's a here one of the big takeaways I that I got from the the entire, you know, to our presentation I sat through was is that Jen Xers care more about you know, individuals, millennials, and gen zs care more about the group winning. You know? And yours benefits and drawbacks to that. You know? I mean, one of one of the benefits are is they're really big into the whole Hey.
The company is my team or my sectors, my team, and I'll die for my team, not literally, but figuratively. You know? But on the other side, Gen Z's, Gen Z's are like, I'm gonna show my performance. It's not that I don't care about the team, but I'm gonna focus on my performance because as long as my performance is there, it does what it does need to do be for a team. You know? So it's just they're just different ways of of looking and seeing seeing things to the lens of the different generations.
Yeah. It's interesting. I'm thinking as you're kinda saying that in experience that I had working for a a pretty big marketer. We would all know his name, but inside of that environment, I'm running you know, a pretty big team and, you know, I'm I'm a I'm an executive. I park in a specific spot. I I've got access and privileges that that most people don't, and we're building this brand new thing. And the feeling that I had as a millennial was Wow.
It's kinda like everybody just has a number here. There's not really a whole lot of, like, team dynamic. There's not really a whole lot of care specifically. It was more being run by a a a boomer/genxer who is probably more considered about the individual, and and my millennial mind in that moment was like, if I'm building a team, but nobody cares about the team, I'm I'm struggling trying to connect these dots here. You know?
Yes. Yes. And it you know, that and that that's the thing is, and then they don't an interesting thing is is that none of them respect each other. All the different gener they all think that the the 3rd generation is the generation that that each everyone should should you know, fall into. The other one here is is that we I haven't even jumped into yet has to do with the way they view life. You know, or where they view their profession.
I mean, my generation and the generation before me, the baby boomers, they they believed we lived to work. You know, so they didn't care about working 70 hour work weeks. You know? And and that was the school I thought I came up through because, you know, I started out as a very young man working in various different capacities. And I that's what my boss has told me. So I adopted that, you know, that expectation. But today's generation, I think, honestly, has a right to a certain degree.
They don't live the work. They work to live. They're more focused on work life balance. If I said work life balance to my first boss, he would have slapped me in the face. You know? Yeah. And or punch me one way or the other, but the fact is that's just that's who we have now. And most of my staff, you know, falls into that millenia the millennial generation and and their that's what they want. They want they want a place where they can come work work hard every single day.
They don't mind checking emails out in the evenings, but they don't wanna work 70 hour work week. That's just the the reality. And, you know, it's tough because we're we're saying this about everybody and we're stereotyping here, but the reality is is that that there's a lot to be said for for those statements there. Yeah. I think if you just zoom out, right, like, 200 years ago, and there there was no work life balance. Right?
It was just survival probably is maybe a better term, especially 2000 years ago. Like, you just keep going back and back and back and their reality of life back then seems almost traumatic to us today. And so there's just a natural progression. Right? But How much in that, especially the the the work life balance? I I I like you. I'm like, ugh, I kinda cringe at the work life balance. I say work life obsession because I do want life and work, but I wanna be obsessed, on both.
But how much does the, you know, just psychological growth or just emotional intelligence and how that's grown, how has that played a role in maybe a millennial or gen z worker, right, because you said they're more in touch their feelings, which really just means I'm I'm more heightened or I'm more conscious of emotional intelligence. How's that played a role versus, you know, maybe an x or a boomer who's like, we weren't allowed to have feelings.
You just put your head down and take care of your business because that's what life was. That that's a tough way. It links I put in the generation. Well, it's about how they where their formative years were were cultivated by this you know, this of these type of events. And one of them, technology being a big one. I mean, the the reality is is I I didn't have a cell phone when I started working. I didn't have a cell phone till till, you know, my almost my mid level career. You know?
So that has changed everything. And then smartphones, the other one, I mean, you can't spurt off a fact anymore without somebody fact checking you. So it's so easy to do nowadays. And and the fact is, you know, you have the world of knowledge right here. You know? And that's crazy, you know, that that in your palm of your hand, you could literally look up anything that's ever been written about any topic you want.
And when I went through my dissertation process, it started in the 2013 ish time frame. It one of my major professors said, you know, everybody nowadays should get have to do 2, you know, dissertations. And I said, why? And he goes, because it's so easy to do the literature review, which is entire chat after 2 in the foundation of your research. And I thought about that, and he and he's right.
You know, there's it is so much easier rather than going to the library and opening a book now you can go into, you know, websites like Proquest and then do a keyword search and figure, you know, and get all the information that you need. There's still a lot of data, but it's much easier to search for it. So that's one. Technologies 1. The other piece of it is people don't give enough credence is is these gen z's, their formative years had to do with COVID too.
So personalities and things like that, And and I've noticed when I was teaching, I still teach part time as an adjunct from time to time just because I love doing it and is that maybe they weren't their entire years weren't formed by that, but they thrive with the environment like you know, you can't get one of my younger staff to pick up the phone to call somebody. They wanna text everybody.
It's just it's just an interesting dynamic, and you gotta figure out as an entrepreneur how to navigate your way through each of these different generational differences. And we just did this recently with our phone systems. We we switched over from a traditional phone system. Where you pick up the dial and talk to somebody, but that's antiquated. And so now now we have a web based web based one where you know, you do it through your computer.
If you do it through your phone, there's a separate app via your phone. And, you know, that's just, you know, I I I still have cable at my house. And most of my staff doesn't have cable. You know? They don't even know what's, you know, satellite TV is. They they they know Netflix. You know? I even Netflix nowadays is kind of a a distant term. They have many different other avenues.
I found out a little bit more about Spotify the other day, And when I was talking about Sirius, I can list a Sirius on my phone. You know? So it's and my son's like, well, Spotify is so much better. I was like, well, what Spotify to start there? Yeah. Well, how how have you seen this play into the workplace specifically even construction?
Because as you're saying these technology things, I'm I have young kids, like, 10 and below, and it's so crazy how my eight year old daughter will pick up my phone. They don't they don't have their own phone by any means, and I'm pretty I'm a stickler on not over indulging, but I also need them to learn technology because I know it's gonna be a huge part of what they do.
And so none of my children, my I think my ten year old, just the other day, learned how to type on on a phone, like, with her thumbs. Right? But everything, a 100% is pickup and talk to Siri, whether they're searching for something, whether they're texting something, whether, like, anything that they wanna do on the phone, it's all done through voice activation. And for me, as a millennial, like, I understand it's there.
I use it sometimes, but for whatever reason, I like to type out what I'm searching. It makes it feel more detailed and more precise and whatever, but they don't even know how to type. And so as they're learning the technology, they're just leaning into what they know. Right? So all of that is a backdrop. How are you seeing this technology gap between generations show up, you know, on a construction project? What's kinda like, you know, using a nail gun when you, used to use a hammer. You know?
The guys now just carry hammers that drive a nail that maybe the nail gun didn't put all the way in. You know? Right. So it's just doesn't mean that it's not it it it it's you have to acknowledge as being a gen xers. Or a baby boomer that it may be better than what we did before. However, there are certain things that are downfalls.
One of them being is when there's an issue, I tell my people pick up the phone and call the person, you know, rather than fighting it over email because you can get it lost in tone and, I mean, We've all had an email where we we thought we sent an email with the right, perspective and somebody takes offense to it, especially a gen zer or so.
Yeah. Well, because I mean, like, like, we talked about a few minutes ago, they're they're maybe more conscious of of feelings or how things are being perceived. And so rather than a an x or a a boomer just saying, well, whatever it is, what it is, because they are that way, gonna be more heightened, not necessarily to offense, but yes, could be just they're just aware of when I read this email, it made me feel this way. And whether that was intended or not, and so you're right.
Staying out of written communication for that reason is is huge. How do you think this, you know, I mean, we've we've talked technology and maybe a couple of other things, but you're you're huge on on a core values And I know that your company specifically is built on core values, but how do you see the generational pieces that we've just talked about and the gaps between them How do you talk about the same core value, which can maybe be even defined differently via different generations?
How how are you dealing with that? My 3 core values are do the right thing, be the goal standard, and practice extreme urgency. I'm gonna get slaughtered by all my staff because I'm sure I left a word out there or something. But the point is right. Right? We call it rug, right, thing, urgency, goal standard. Right? So what does urgency mean? You know? Urgency in my generation meant when I get back to my computer or or answer a phone call, but now urgency has revolve around 247. You know?
But then you got you also got the whole work life balance thing. So that also plays into it. The hardest one that I struggle with is not the gold standard or the urgency. It's do the right thing. And the reason, you know, my organization is Christian organization, not afraid to say it, just who we are. It's comes out of my faith originally, being the founder, and now the CEO, And so I've had to explain that much better.
And and the best way to get get some of those messages across is to continually communicate and communicate examples of what that means. So when we have them, every meeting that has 3 or more people in my company, we we the person in charge of the meeting, the facilitator of the meeting, that person's always supposed to ask Give me 3 exam give me 3 examples of our core values and and what are they?
And so with they go through do the right thing or just see gold standard, and then they go through it. They said, well, I've seen this person doing the right thing because they had a client call. It was all mad or all upset. And rather they get mad and upset, they they chose to help them, you know, or this person had a relative died. And us as a company, even though we didn't have an obligation, we pay for the funeral, or we sent them home. You know?
And to me, that's where and I it was brought to one of my my mid level staff, and he brought up a very good point. And that is, what does it mean? So the only way I could do is just have every time we bring it up, we bring an example to the table. And then that that way that way we have it. And I and I hate to say that doing the right thing is subjective, but it's tough.
Because you work into 3 different generations here and do the right thing maybe to help the group rather than help the individual. That's right. You know? So yeah. And to be able to have space to delineate those things, I think, is also important as well. That's what you're doing by creating the space and not only the examples, but having people be in the room to talk about it, I think that, you know, the different generations are we're gonna respond, you know, differently.
That is interesting, though, because you're right. Doing the right thing is not subjective, although it's completely subjective. And, you know, my my experience around how to treat someone else. It's funny we were doing a workshop. I don't know, a month or so ago, and and my COO of Gavin the Kings gave an example of how he grew up thinking the, you know, the golden rule was to do one to others as you would have done unto you.
And he's like, that's actually that that's really not the best rule, the platinum rule, which is written written in the book, about due unto others as they would have done to themselves. Because sometimes what what's good for Chaz isn't what's good for Scott or Mhmm. The boomer worker that I'm reporting to or that's reporting to me or the gen expert. Right? And so we've gotta think a little bit more outside of ourselves and kinda through the lens of the other person and or even greater team.
Would you agree with that? Mhmm. Oh, I absolutely agree with that. And you you think about, yeah, I think about construction right off hand because, you know, our field staff are more rough around the edges because I grew up as a field staff. I was a carpenter at Mason, and we're just we're more rough around the edges, you know, And I, you know, I tell everybody, I was I'm a sailor and a construction worker.
So I may have a couple things to say that You know, that that probably not acceptable when I'm in an environment with a whole bunch of accounts. You know? So understanding, we always talk about office talk or field talk, and that's how we delineate, hey. It's not okay to walk in the drop the f bomb. You know, it's just not not that's not appropriate to do. You know?
So treat you're talking about treating people the way that they wanna be treated is recognizing the way they wanna be treated and then changing your behavior to be able to match that. And it's not being in genuine. It's just changing you know, making yourself better, you know, and in a lot of different ways or or at the end of the day, one of the one of the Christian's value values that I always speak in my church speaks is it's love god, love people. Right?
It's so part of loving people is meeting with that part of love of god is is understanding that. You know? Yeah. And some people may call that touchy Philly. I call it the reality of the world that we live in as entrepreneurs. You know? Yeah. It could just like you said a few minutes ago, we can either embrace technology, we can embrace new psychology, or we can't. We can just throw up our hand and say, nope. I've always done it this way. It is what it is.
That's not better, we have seen time and time again that how those people, businesses, frameworks, mindsets just get swept away. Technology is coming. New psychology, more emotional intelligence is coming, or it's already here to your point. You know? Yeah. The it's interesting that you that you, you know, remind people. It's not even just really Christians, but people of of the 2 things that Jesus said there. The top all these rules, what's the most important?
It's like, well, love god, love others. And I say those same things to my kids on a regular basis. It's like, no. Look, literally everything falls out of this right here. Have reverence. The fact that you are not it Right? Like, you were created by something other than yourself. And then over here, there's other people. Let's see let's see them through the lens of maybe the person that created them as well. They're probably pretty special, and we should probably treat them as such. Absolutely.
A good good lessons for life, you know, kid child raising or business or whatever. You know? My I my father used to say, you can't do a good deal with a bad person, and there's a lot to be set there. You know? So not saying people are inherently bad. But the way they view is based on the way they were raised and the culture, they're part of. Hey, kings and queens. Chaz Wolf. I wanna talk to you about something that's super important to me. We put a lot of time and effort.
We, meaning myself and my team, into this podcast into the content that goes out every single day. And if you have been getting any sort of value or insight from this, we want it to be able to reach other business owners too. So we would love if you would like, comment, share, leave a review, post, share again, all of the things on social media, on all the different platforms, or even on the podcast mediums of Apple and Spotify.
We would love to be able to get our content in to more hands, more entrepreneurs so they can grow their business as quick as possible. Together, we are building a community of like minded entrepreneurs who are committed to growing their businesses to new heights. So let's do this. Let's help each other grow. Yeah. Just kinda going on that win there just for a few minutes here. I mean, obviously, you guys have a huge team. You're you have a hiring process.
I'm sure that's just an amazing format and framework, but how has that even changed? As you're now. I mean, you could go from today interviewing two people, and you have no idea which generation that they're gonna be, probably the responses and interactions in those interviews, are gonna be completely different. How did how that how that changed for you guys?
Well, you know, what I do well, first of all, as an entrepreneur, you know, I believe regards to your business, people are the most important piece. Even if you make widgets, it doesn't matter. People make widgets. So people are the most important piece of your company, also because they change and and and whatever. So the interview process is founded on the whole, you know, belief that we have our entire management team there.
So we do the first couple of interviews and know that it's a this is the person that we want as a player. And then we we assemble what we call our ones, which is the the 7 top executives in my company, and then they do the final interview. And that's important. Number 1 is because we want people to know that, hey. We really are we're saying it, but we believe it because I'm taking my, you know, 30 minutes an hour, and I'm I'm you know, you know, depending upon you.
The other thing is is the questions. And he and if and if it'd be okay, I I wanna give you, an idea of some of the interview questions that that I asked people. It's funny. And once again, keep it on my phone. So, So one of the things that I do was I ask, do you have any unfulfilled dreams? What kind of responses do you get? I've had people say, you know, I I thought when I was growing up, I was gonna be a nurse.
And then I ultimately decided that I this is this is what I was gonna do per profession, and it changed because of this. So you kinda get the life story, kinda pull it out of them. Other things are are something that's right in line with where they are. You can tell a lot of people by their fulfilled dreams being like, okay. I acknowledge the fact I'm not there yet. Or I'm working to get there, but this is what I wanna do.
I had one gentleman come in and he said, I wanna be a senior executive with this company. Well, there's a lot of drive there. And why what do you and there's a lot of other questions there. Why this company? So I also ask them what they know about our company, because that's critical. Do they do their homework? Because I want people who did their homework.
I don't want people who just are walking them into And the last one is the most important was I do speed questions, speed route questions, and I ask them questions like this. And they have to answer within, I tell them within 5 seconds. So these are these are a a list of them. A dog or cat blew, and I asked that because I'm a dog person. So I just I'll say everybody knows the difference. But Blue or red.
Somebody once said to me when I was my blue and red, or, like, like I said, are you talking about politics? I was like, no. Because I don't know which what color is what, to be honest with you. Maybe I need changes to to You might, yeah, green and green. Yellow. I saw there's nothing, but there's a green party too. So maybe not green, you know, but That's right.
But oceans are mountains, don or dusk, flower spring, winter or summer, cars or trucks, country, or wrap, chicken or egg, dog dad or mom, cold or hot, triggered or unoffendable. I love that one right there because if you're triggered working in construction, there's about ninety thousand people that are I probably a lot more than that that are going to trigger you. If I'm gonna be a therapist, okay. But if you're gonna work in construction, you have to be able to determine what is acceptable.
And then I asked a personal one about University of Kentucky University at Louisville. My daughter goes university at Louisville, but I'm a Kentucky fan. So I wanna know where they fall. They blew her red. You know? So in not a political sense, in a in a sports sense, you know? It's the triggered untriggered part. There's a there's a spot in the book of a psychosyvernetics that talks about basically what thick skin is and, how you've gotta be able to have skin.
I mean, our literal skin is what protects us. But it's and it keeps us away from certain things, certain pain, but it doesn't mean that it's not penetratable or doesn't experience pain. It just keeps us from certain things that allow us to kinda just have a little buoyancy, you know, like, hit me and then it and then it bounced off, and and I just keep going. It's okay. It's okay to have some of that thick skin, especially in construction. Well, and, you know, you go along that. Right?
My one of my first boss boss told me, he said, you need to build some calluses up. Just everybody knows what calluses are on your hands or whatever. Because, you know, I worked in the trades and, you know, you swing your hammer long enough, you're gonna do calluses on your hands. So and then you think about that, well, how do you get calluses? By doing it over and over and over again and getting that in deep understanding of what you're doing and how you're doing it.
And there's good and bads from that. You know, one of them being the bads I can think of right off hand is you loof lose perspective on people who don't understand what you do, what they understand. But on the other side of it, if you do things over and over again, you understand that and you understand it in detail, you know, you I I may have mentioned this. I may may not mention it, but I'm a I'm a left leg amputee.
I lost my lower left leg and a motorcycle crash and then further damage it in an Iraq oil platform. So that right there, my the guy who who does my prosthetics for me, he's an amputee too. And to think that he understands, that many other amputees or people who do pross I can never say prosthetists Yeah. That they don't understand is all the intricacies like when you sit down on a with a suction based prosthetic, it pull it feels like a pulling sensation at the bottom.
Well, you don't know that unless you've done if you wore one before. So and that goes with, like, business and how we conduct things. You know, it makes us understand that we may not have all the knowledge necessary and if you have a a gen, a young man or ladies that grew up in California or they grew up in the Midwest, different exposure completely. And so you have to be able to treat them, as you said, the way they would like to be treated.
Yeah. Different different exposure, different calluses. You know, that that that same chapter in psychosabronetics talks about that callous being a scar tissue. Something has happened to cause damage and that's our body's way of of helping us to have buoyancy. Keep going. Some resilience. It creates a scar tissue. So that way, when it happens again, it the actual damage doesn't happen again. And so you're right.
Scars or or callous speak to experience and speak to maybe just different perspectives that we have, you know, whether it be California versus Missouri, you know, and so I think all those things are good, especially when we're in, in an environment like we are, like we've been talking about this whole show, we're on hiring and hiring not only just new generations, but now a mixture of all the generations.
What would be kinda like your last as we kinda wrap up here you know, entrepreneurs listening right now, maybe they're in construction, maybe not, but they're they're like, yes. I understand. I've got I've got a couple different generations on my team right now. This has been challenging difficult. Which are main point takeaway for them of how they can go continue to not only hire well, but then curate this environment of multiple generations. How do we do that well? That's a great question.
And and I I'll go kinda back to, something I said previously. Because I think it's so vitally important is one is not better than the other.
And that's important because it gives you rather than, you know, totally dismissing somebody's feelings about something or giving credence to somebody's feelings when it, you know, when it's not necessarily justified or, you know, numerous different ways of of is understanding that that's somebody's perspective, and we need to, be respectful that while we're trying to get what we need to get out of that person.
I'm creating an ESOP or, you know, employee owned stock ownership program, and I want everybody to have skin in the game. And that plays in real well with the generation that I that I'm in right now with with most of my staff is is in.
So I would say more than anything as an entrepreneur is understanding identifying who what you have and how to move the organization forward understanding the differences because most people don't understand the generational differences, how they're defined, what they mean, You know, it's always every generation just says to the later generations, oh, they're terrible. When in reality, this is not terrible. It's just different. You know?
So Yeah. Yeah. And then that would I mean, obviously, that's ignorance to to say it's terrible. It's it's intelligence to say, this is interesting. It's a little bit different. I wonder how we can incorporate, you know, maybe the best of the best from both worlds or from all three or 4 of these worlds. You know, I think those are the teams that are gonna win. Right? How do we recognize it in a one?
How do we just become aware of the room and how the room is now different than it was 20 years ago? Okay. Great. How do we move forward in that? I love I love that direction. Scott, you obviously provide just an incredible service to construction companies all across the country. How can they find you if they're listening right now? And they're like, yes. They're is majorly beneficial. I need a project manager or any of the other sources that you've got access to where they can hire you.
How can they reach out to you? Best way to do is look up Ace Consulting dotnet, and we have all the contact information there and and or hit me up on LinkedIn. Scott Arias. Last name is spelled a r I a s. So I know it's not a common name, but nonetheless, it's it's my name. So but but you can you can always reach out to me on those 2 different platforms. I would love to tell you, you know, reach me out on Instagram, but I don't have an Instagram account. You know? So because I'm a gen expert.
You know? So, I mean, yeah, so I have a Facebook account, but I I normally don't look at it. You know? So That's funny. Yeah. I think that you know, LinkedIn is really probably the one platform that has done a great job of bringing all generations to the same place. I think Yes. There's a lot of business owners and and folks looking for jobs, but you're right. All the social platforms, they've we've we've all got our preferences based on most likely That's good.
Yes. Yes. Well, Scott, it's a a pleasure to have you back here today. I think this is such a a great topic not only is important for people to understand, so thanks for giving your expertise, but for those looking for services like what you offer. I think it's just incredible to have you, your business back in front of the the audience again here today because I work in and out a lot of construction folks.
And and what you do is just really, really important, and I think that people should take you up on going to your website and seeing how you can help them. So thanks for being here. We appreciate your expertise. Blessings to you, your family, your team, all the cool things that you're doing. Thanks for being here. Well, well, thank you, Jess. Thank you for listening to gathering the Kings today. I hope that you were able to pull out a few nuggets to go apply into your business right away.
More importantly, though, I hope that you're realizing that it takes more to be successful than just being by yourself doing it all on your own, carrying the weight all by yourself. What I have realized, not only in my own from multiple businesses in multiple different industries and now interviewing over 2 or 300 other very successful 7, 8, and 9 figure business owners is that it's tough to do it alone. And so gathering the Kings exists to bring together successful entrepreneurs.
In fact, we are putting together 1000 kings specifically who are grateful, but not done. We're intentionally assembling kings who fight tooth and nail for their business, family, and communities, and here's what we believe.
That in the pursuit of excellence in those areas, that it ignites within us the responsibility to govern power and forge a lasting leg So if that relates and resonates with you and you know that you need people around you, sharp, qualified other very successful business owners, I want you to go to gathering the king's dot com. I want you to take a look at what we're doing and see if it makes sense for you to be part of our pursuit. To 1000 kings. Talk soon.