Instead of looking at it from the perspective of like what you didn't do, you should pay tribute and be grateful and take into account everything that you did do, because very few people in their lives will put the time, the effort into preparing, into training, into diet, into regimen that you have to put to get to this elite level. Yeah, it's a bummer that you missed out. It's a bummer that you didn't make it for but that's part of life. You have to understand that this does not
take away from what you did. Welcome back to another midweek, modern craftsman. I want to start this off by saying I am not a basketball fan. I never have been. I probably never will be. I do not mean to insult anyone by saying that. I just this is the the conversation today is shaped around this post game exchange between LSU Women's Basketball Coach Kim Mulkey and a reporter, and it stopped me in my tracks. I'm not sure how I came across it, and I don't know anything about her
background. She seems to be a fairly polarizing figure, but it was more so just about the exchange and the perspective, and not really about sports. It's about criticism, again, the perspective and what it really means to put yourself out there. So whether you're building a business, leading a team, or just trying to grow as a person, this one hits deep. So check out the blog post. You can get it on modern craftsman.co. Yeah, let
me know what you think this one was fun for me. Again, not a huge basketball fan, but this one definitely grabbed my attention. I also want to apologize, there was no midweek last week, so my wife was traveling for work in Vietnam. Two weeks ago. I had the girls, and Selby ended up getting the flu, and then I ended up getting the flu, and then till he ended up getting the flu. And so by the time Rachel got back, I was down for the count. I was supposed to travel to JLC on
Thursday morning. I had to bump that till Thursday night, hung out with Nick, went to the show, saw Doug on Friday, but I felt like crap last week, like I couldn't get out of bed if I got out of bed. My wife was finding me sleeping in random areas of the house that I shouldn't be sleeping. So it was a long couple weeks with her being away and then me being fully out for
the count. So yeah, I I couldn't do anything on Tuesday, I recorded our main podcast, which was the priority for me, but that was basically me trying to survive for two hours and then going right back to sleep. So I apologize for that. I didn't I didn't have any warning to anyone that I wasn't going to be able to record. So I hope, I hope that didn't screw your week up. I'm sure you guys all survived. So I got sick, or we
all got sick while Rachel's away. And then there was a race I had signed up for on Sunday, and I was like, I've been sick all week. You know, starting Tuesday, like I got I have to be on my on the way out, and I knew that we had the flu because I tested the girls, and so I was like, whatever I can race. And day of the race, I was like, I really shouldn't be racing. I didn't feel good, but I decided to do it anyway. And it was a very tough Enduro. It's a sandy Lane Enduro. I ended up second
in my class, 20th overall. But I'm actually just not happy with that. I went into it being sick and I wanted to ride with a couple buddies. Figured it'd be fun. Didn't want to let them down with the time keeping aspect. And I had some really, really great points in the race. Like I started the day off. I think my my time in the first test was maybe eighth overall, and then I dropped my bike in the first test. Not anything
bad, just in a little bit of deep sand. And I'm not sure if I went into the race with my front end being tweaked, or I tweaked it at that point, but my bike was deflecting. And I was like, it just seemed I was coming into corners and it was compressing way too fast. It was pretty beat up. And I was riding pretty hard in that first test, so I was like, I just need to stiffen it some. And then we checked into the the next test, and I was like, Oh no, it's not a compression issue or a stiffness
issue. My front end is tweaked. So I was like, let me get through this test, and then there'll be a reset. I can fix it. Problem was the resets really just got you back on time. They didn't give you any extra time. So. I had to race three more sections before the gas stop in the lunch break with a bent front end. So in those tests, I was anywhere from like 20 something to 30 something overall. And I just I couldn't recover from that. I did fix my forks at lunch break. I found a
step that somebody had. I loosened up my whole front end, got it back aligned and just hand tightened everything. Didn't have a torque wrench, and obviously was on limited time, ate a quick lunch, got back into racing and the next three tests, like the whole afternoon, I did really well. My numbers, my times, were all good. I think I ended the day in the last test
with like a 12th overall time. So the first test, and then the last four, I ended up doing really well on even considering I had the flu, but I just couldn't recover from those middle three tests when my front end was tweaked. I think I I lost around eight minutes, which in a door I just I couldn't recover from so pretty bummed about that, because I I I didn't think I was going to be able to handle it being sick. But it wasn't even the sickness that got me. It was the bike issues.
But I guess shit happens still frustrating. So I got done racing, and I felt absolutely dead, physically, very long, grueling race, just tough, super tight, very technical, just physically demanding. And my body was all wound up Sunday night, so it took me a while to fall asleep, but then I definitely should not have raced. I just I wore my body down so much that again, Monday through Thursday, I was really just not alive. It was bad. I I've never slept so much in my
life. I've never felt so run down. So words of advice to anyone, especially at 39 years old, if your body's telling you you're tired and your body's telling you you're sick, you probably don't need to push it anymore, especially for a race that means nothing. You're not a professional. You don't have anything to prove to anyone. But that's just kind of how I am in life, in business, I went out, I tried to do my best. Didn't necessarily work out. I mean, I still did well, but just bombed.
I'm always bummed when I don't reach my my full potential. So we had JLC last week. Super great to see everyone. I apologize. I was there Friday. We were there Friday. That was it. Rachel traveling for work, me traveling a bunch this year, and then being sick. I was supposed to get in a little early and have some extra time, but I just couldn't do it with being sick. So Nick and I and Doug were there Friday, 8am until six, and then I had to catch a flight home, and it was
just very chaotic. We didn't have much time in between a bunch of obligations and speaking engagements and podcasts that we were doing. So it wound up being a very busy, very good, very productive day. But if I if you came to say hi, and we were running from one booth to another, I apologize, we just didn't have much time, and we were only there one day because of family and work and everything else. So I didn't mean to be short with anyone. I appreciate everyone who came and
said hi. I just, we didn't have any time, and obviously coming back from seeing being sick, I was, I was still a bit run down, but on the business, because I know this is what you guys are here for. You don't care about my racing and how I'm whining about being sick. This, this exchange with this lady. Let me see her name, KIM MULKEY, I believe so. Again, I'm not a basketball fan. Never have been. Never will be. Don't know anything about college basketball. Don't know anything
about women's basketball. I know Caitlin, Caitlin Clark, that's about it. But from my little bit of of research and just looking at comments from this video, people love her or people hate her, she seems to be a huge personality, which typically that winds up creating a pretty polarizing audience, as far as your fan base goes. But to the best of my knowledge, LSU is a decent team. They've made it into the Elite Eight the last two years in a
row and got eliminated before making it to the final four. So she was sitting down in the post game interview, and this, this interviewer, whose name was Jaden Smith, I believe, said, Coach, this is the second straight year that you get eliminated in the Elite Eight. And without him finishing her question, she not really into the microphone, but she says that Terry. Terrible, isn't it? Is that terrible, or is that good? And he says, terrible. And she said, is it, how many Final
Fours Have you played in? And he said, None. And so she said, so it's probably pretty good, huh? And for me, again, I don't know who she is, but I just kind of loved the way that she responded to that, and I know that the interviewer was just doing his job, but at the end of the day, it just got me thinking about life and business and putting yourself out there and how
you're perceived and how people react to that. And in a situation where there's these women playing basketball and this coach coaching a team who have made it to the best, the top eight teams in Division One NCAA basketball, like you are the best of the best at that point, and you have somebody, and she led him into this, a little bit with the terrible But the baiting him into his response some, but at the same time, like, that's what a lot of people are thinking, and they're
bummed with losing. And they made it this far, but they couldn't get further, and it's two years in a row. And instead of looking at it from the perspective of like, what you didn't do, you should, you should really pay tribute and be grateful and take into account everything that you did do, because very few people in their lives will put the time, the effort into preparing, into training, into diet, into just the regimen that you have to put to get to this elite level. And
yeah, it's a bummer that you missed out. It's a bummer that you didn't make it for but that's part of life, and you have to, you have to understand that you are still like this does not take away from what you did. And I've had a lot of experiences like that in my life where I dwell on the negative aspect or the negative connotation of what happened, and forget to focus on what's really important, and even just, you know, saying losses define you and yeah, this is going to
make you better. And I still think that you're using that as motivation, when some of your motivation should just be like, Yeah, we put in a lot of work to get here and appreciating how far that you've come in life and business, whether you know, whether it's a personal accomplishment, whether it's on the court, on the arena floor, whatever it may be, yeah, learn from it, but also appreciate how far you've come and really that you are at that Elite level, regardless of the outcome of one
game or a tournament. So, yeah, her her response, obviously, it was layered. It was witty, it was sharp. I liked it. I thought it was funny. It was a bit sarcastic, and I just like the way that she approached it. But I think that it just, it shows that a lot of times where we're far too quick to judge others from the sidelines. And there's these complex journeys that we're all going through in life, and we're we're really reducing them to these one dimensional metrics, like you win or you
lose, and there's so much more to it than that. And again, this could be life, this could be business. This could be athletics, whatever, whatever season of your life it's in. I think that it's important that we, we don't reduce these, these really complex journeys, into these one dimensional metrics that are basically win or lose. There's so much more to it. You can't, you cannot define something as a failure or a success based on the outcome when there's so many more layers
to it than that. So again, this exchange, it got me thinking, How often do we do this in our own lives and in our business? How often do we do this to others. How often are we critiquing somebody else's results without understanding the process, what they what they gave up, what they sacrificed to get there and again, how often are we doing this internally to ourselves? Because the reality is, you're putting yourself out there. Everyone who's putting yourself out there, it's not
easy. Like there's some people who are putting themselves out there for ego, but there's other people who are who are putting them themselves out there to better themselves. And again, whether that is a life journey, a business journey, an athletic journey, but when you put yourself out there, you have to understand the consequences of that. There may be good that comes from that, but you're also opening yourself up to judgment,
and you're not going to win all the time. There's going to be times in your life and in your business that you fall short, and you have to understand that there's going to be people there who are quick to tell you how you should have done it, what they would have. Done differently, how, how things that you could have done that would have changed the outcome. And I think a lot of us end up not putting ourselves out there, because the fear of the response, the fear of, hey, I
have to hold myself accountable. I have to step up to the plate, and that's very scary, but I I'm here to tell you that you should step outside of your comfort zone. You should put yourself out there. You should hold yourself accountable to the information that you put out there. And that doesn't mean that everything's going to be a success. That doesn't mean that you're going to win every competition, you're going to land every project, that every job is going to be a success.
But I think when you hold yourself to a standard, and you put it out there, and you become accountable to that, I think that it's it's a really powerful tool, and growing as a person and growing as a business, and I think that with with social media and the online nature of of life today, that we are often idolizing the outcomes and ignoring the effort. And I know that this is something if you guys follow college wrestling at
all and know who kale Sanderson is. He's the head coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions, and he tries to teach his athletes not to focus on winning or losing, right? When you go out for a match and you are anxious, when you are nervous, you should focus on all the preparation that you put into place, right? It's not about the winning or losing. You can't really do anything about this at this point, and even if you lose,
there's not much that can be done in that moment. You have to understand that you had done everything that you could, and that you're preparing yourself to go into this battle, to go into this experience. And I think that that's relatable with business as well, right? If you prepare yourself for a project,
right? You're bidding a project. You're looking to land a project, you're looking to develop a relationship with the new architect, and you're nervous about how that meeting's gonna go, how they're going to assess your bid or your proposal. You have to understand that you put all the work into it at that point, like, your entire life has been a journey to get to that point, your business has been a journey and
experience to get to that point. And there's going to be lessons that you learn from this, good or bad, whether you land the job or you don't land the job, and they're going to help better your process. And you're going to be able to learn from that. You're going to be able to grow from that. But you just have to understand that like you've put the work in at this point. And it's not necessarily about the result. When you're when you're
completely focused on the result. Everything that you're preparing for is very short sighted, and it's it's too specific. Rather than preparing for battle, preparing to be the best contractor you can be preparing to be the best athlete. You can be the best father, the best husband,
whatever it is. When you're less concerned about hey, I want to win this job because it's a really cool job, and you're just focused more so on preparing to be the best contractor with the best system, the best teams, the best numbers, I think that the outcome will almost present itself. It's going to manifest itself rather than just focusing and tailoring your approach to
one specific project or one specific job. And I think that when you do that, you're going to position yourself not only to be in the calm conversation of who's best, what's best, who, who should we choose, what business is at the elite level, but you're going to position yourself to be the top dog there. And I think that even if you don't, even if you're not selected, even if a client goes with another contractor, that you put yourself in the mix, and that all that preparation was
not for nothing. And you learn from that, and you grow from that, and you build from that. And at the end of the day in this exchange, again, wasn't necessarily about sport to me, as much as just big picture. And I think that there were a lot of parallels with what she was saying and how her, her her team was probably feeling. But you know, in business, you build, you launch, you pitch, you scale. And sometimes that doesn't go the way that you intended, the way that you plan,
the way that you saw it in your head. Maybe that deal falls through, maybe a project winds up being a flop. Maybe you don't hit the margins that you need to, and it's super easy for us to say. Well, that project was a failure, right? We failed because we're we're focusing on these, these distilled metrics, where we need to understand the big picture. Being in the conversation, being in the arena, means that we've, we've already accomplished something. We've done something really
courageous. We've done something that most people won't do. Most people won't own a construction business in the world. Most people won't bid on the project that you're bidding on. The fact that you're doing this is already very unique. It's proven that you've put a lot of work and a lot of effort into this, and you face challenges and uncertainty head on, and at the end of the day, this separates you from 99.9% of the people in
the world. And as the head coach from Mulkey, from LSU Mulkey, suggested when she asked the reporter like, how many Final Fours Have you been in? And he said, None. She said, Well, it's probably pretty good then, huh? Like these women, this team, is doing something that such a small percentage of people have done all of the preparation from the time they were probably 345, years old until they're 22 years old at this point. Their loss at
this point in this tournament does not end there, right? All of that work is not a culmination of everything. To just say you failed like you're out of the tournament you failed. You can take all of those lessons with you. You can you can take all of those wins, those losses, the experience, the friendships that you've you've created, and you can learn from them. But it it shouldn't just be about the wins
or the losses. It needs to be more so big picture. You have to have the perspective and the understanding that you are at an elite level. You are doing something that very few people in the world, in their lives, will ever do. You're doing something that challenges you, that scares you, that pushes you outside of your comfort zone that most people are just not going to do in life, because it's hard, because it creates
anxiety, because there's risk involved. And you have to understand that, yeah, maybe this didn't go according to plan, but at the end of the day, you are growing. You are bettering yourself. You're bettering people around you, and you are, you are really putting yourself in a position that not many people in life are willing to do and I think that you you shouldn't sell yourself short, and you shouldn't lose sight of
that. So make sure that you understand that. Make sure that you surround yourself with people who continue to encourage you to do the hard things to step outside of your comfort zone, to take those calculated risks, because there's going to be a lot more people in this world that are waiting for you to fail, that are waiting for you to fall down or trip or Hiccup and say, well, you should have done this, or I told you
so. So you need to make sure that you surround yourself with a network of positive individuals who that when we fail, when we trip, when we slip, because we all will, they're willing to say, hey, consider big picture. This is just, you know, one small experience, one small hiccup in the grand scheme of life and business, and this is going to better you. It's not about the result at this point. It's about
the big picture. It's about preparing yourself for the next challenge, for the next project, to make yourself a better human, a better business owner, better father, mother, whatever that
may be. So whether you're a builder, a subcontractor, an athlete, a husband, a wife, whatever it may be, someone who's just, you know, working through a tough season in life, you have to understand that the loudest critics, again, like this, this reporter and asking this question, are the ones who often have the least to show for it, and the people who are doing the real, meaningful work rarely have the time to tear others down. They're focused on what they're doing. They're focused
on how to be better. It's like Nick's email that he sent out yesterday about there's two ways to be the biggest building. You can either build your team, build your systems, build your network, to actually raise the biggest building up brick by brick, to stand above everyone else, or you can tear all the other tall buildings down around you so that you're the last one remaining. And I think that it's really important to build your own building brick by brick and raise up above the other people
around. You around your competition, and at the end of the day, that's just going to make everyone stronger. And I think when we focus on that, rather than trying to make everyone else around us a weaker, that the world's going to be a better place. Business is going to be a better place. Your life is. You're going to have a lot more content meant in your life than just the negative aspect of trying to tear everyone around because of your insecurities. So keep showing
up, keep doing the work. The journey is what matters, and sometimes that's more important than the victory, more important than the failure, obviously. So I, if you haven't seen this clip, hop on YouTube online again. I'm not sure quite I'm not quite sure how I came upon it. And there's probably people listening to this who are like, how do you not know who this lady is? And again, she she really led him into this. And I don't think that that was necessarily his intent with the
question, but I liked her response. I liked how straightforward she is, how nonchalant she was with it that basically everyone's going to say like, Hey, you continue to fail. You continue to knock on the door success, and then be turned away because you aren't making it to the Final Four,
because you're not winning a national championship. And at the end of the day, all, all, most of the people who are saying that have have not done what they've done right, there's only going to be one team that's going to walk away and be crowned a national champion this year, and every other team, every other little girl who dreamt of playing d1 college
basketball. There's a very small amount of women who are going to make it to be the national champions in 2025 and just putting yourself in that community, putting yourself in that arena, sometimes with proper perspective can be just as powerful. Yeah, you don't have the the trophy, but I would, I would assure you that most of the women in that bracket have worked the same amount, have worked just as hard
to try and reach their goals. And because one person's holding a trophy and another isn't doesn't mean that one person's efforts are worth more or one person's efforts are worth less. So again, a lot of parallels with business here, a lot of parallels with life. I saw this video and I was like, damn, I got to figure out how to how to write a blog post, record a
podcast on this. Because just really important the perspective there and to understand that putting yourself out there is a huge challenge and a huge accomplishment, and I want to encourage all of you to continue to do that. So I hope you enjoyed today's podcast. Short and sweet, what else is going on? Check out the website, download the blog posts, sign up for the email newsletter. Nick and I have some exciting news coming up here shortly. It's been a busy few months, a
chaotic year. We have a ton going on. We're looking to record a lot more in person in studio. So I have some trips coming up to Boston. As always, if you have any questions concerns, you can email us Hello at modern craftsman.co, or Tyler at TRG, home concepts.com, I had a couple of emails after being out last week and basically on the live of people asking me if I'm still doing consulting calls. And yes, I do still do
consulting calls. I don't have a sign up link online. The best way to do that, if you're interested is to shoot me an email to Tyler at TRG, home concepts.com, and I can explain what that looks like from a price point, but I'm basically scheduling them one off. I'm doing one or two per week. I have some regular customers that eat up some of those weeks, so I'm usually not trying to schedule myself more than a few
weeks out, just because my schedule is always changing. So I'm trying to work around everyone's schedule, and we're just doing that online on a one off basis. So if you're interested in what that looks like, basically, it's an hour long call, hop on. Discuss what your challenges are, my perspective on it, my experience, what I think you can do to change. And
then I follow up with a summary of our discussion. And then some homework for you, some action items that you can put into place to help get moving in the direction that you need to so if you are interested in that, shoot me an email. Tyler at TRG, home concepts.com and as always, I appreciate everyone hanging around listening. I apologize for last week, I'm back in business, though, right? Right guys, have a good week. You