Leadership Insights with Jay Cope

0:02Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of the Epic Entrepreneurs podcast where we are all about helping business owners just like you achieve success. So we don't do fancy smancy. We don't do flashing lights. We don't do a lot of things that a lot of podcasts will do. These are just real stories about real people and their entrepreneurial and business experiences. We go into their wins, their challenges, and their learnings. So we hope you enjoy it. Hey there, welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs, brought to you by Action Coach Growth Partners. I'm your host, Bill Gilliland, and in this podcast, you'll find three things.

0:46You're going to hear real stories from real entrepreneurs that will help you along your entrepreneurial journey. You're also going to get business tips to help you scale up faster, and you're going to get actual coaching to help you get better real world results to be the best entrepreneur you can be. Hey, and if you like the podcast, remember to subscribe. And now, enjoy the show. Hey there, hope you're having a great week. This week, I'm welcoming back Jay Cope of Semper Fi Custom Remodeling. He's been on the show, but he was on one of the early episodes. It's probably been a few years and things have changed a bit.

1:27So welcome, Jay, and tell us a little bit about what's going on at Semper Fi Custom Remodeling these days. Yeah, thanks, Bill. Yeah, it has been a couple of years now. And wow, I think I think the first time we were on your podcast, we were in our little 600 square foot hole in the wall office. Yeah, that's right. We have the first office. So, yeah, things are going great. We're rapidly expanding. We, you know, we're licensed in South Carolina now. So we're starting to operate down in the Greenville, South Carolina area, which we're super excited about. We're also getting ready to put a massive addition onto our office because our team has, for the third time in our history, outgrown our space.

2:15So we just need more space to put butts in so the team can do the great work they've been doing. So, yeah, things are going really well. We've got a great team. They're all kind of cranking and jiving now, so it's really fun. It's a fun time. Yeah, so how many teams are we up to now? We're up to 24. 24. I'm guessing we had maybe six the last time we talked. Five or six. Yeah, five or six. And so going from six to 24, how have things changed? I mean, how is your role and Chris's role and what's had to change? Totally fair. Because when we had six staff members or team members, and I'm sure many of your clients would echo this, we were still very much in the weeds in the day-to-day activities, you know, running between job site to job site, making sure materials there, talking to clients, taking care of, you know, staffing issues, thinking about the back end, working late at night.

3:17And even at that time, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't terrible, but compared to now, it's kind of like the team, it's kind of like this. My philosophy is my job as an owner is to take care of the team, right? And this is something we talked about before, but the team takes care of the client. The client takes care of the company. The company takes care of both me and the team again. And we're really Chris and I really at that point where the staff is doing all the things, which is great because they can. Oh, by the way, do it way better than I did it. But, you know, my job is just to facilitate them.

3:53So I try to walk around as much as possible and just say, how can I help you today? you know and most of them say hey go pound sand I'm actually getting work done that's a great feeling it's a weird feeling when it first happens but it's a great feeling right oh totally totally yeah it's a it's a fun time and allows us to focus on you know kind of the Greenville expansion and thinking of this office edition and some of these long-term kind of plays that'll facilitate you know the staff of the future as well yeah no that's that's cool. And so how's your philosophy changed? Because you had to go from doing everything to getting other people to do it.

4:30So you had to actually become somebody different, really. So you've had to grow. I mean, what's that journey been like? So over the last year or so, I have done more reading than I have done in the past 10 years, probably. Constant reading and education have been huge because you always pick up on these nuggets, things that can help that I can take to the team. Right. So one of the things we started doing was, you know, at least with kind of my office and sales team, we'll meet every two weeks and not talk about specific sales, but we'll talk about working, you know, developing the sales team.

5:07And so educating myself allows me to take facts and information and life lessons from other people and teach it to the team that facilitates them doing so much more. So I think becoming a teacher or an educator for the team and being real intentional about that is probably the biggest way I've grown in the last several years and realizing that I'm not the best one to do the things, you know, to remodel a house or run a project or do, you know, the administrative functions or even make the sales. There's just people out there that are far better at it than me and really enjoy doing it. So what can I do to facilitate their success?

5:52Yeah, that's a really a great shift. And it's been fun to watch. I mean, it brings up the obvious question that we get a lot is, you know, how do you find great team members? That is always a tricky one. And one that we've either gotten, we're either really good or really lucky. And I'm not totally convinced which one. Probably both. It's probably both. The harder you work, the luckier you get, right? Oh, yeah, that's true. That is true. No, we've had, and yes, we've hired some people that were not great fits. But in general, we've hired some really great culture fits. And I think it starts with that.

6:30Like one of my jobs as the CEO is I'm the protector of the culture. So, you know, hiring for culture fit first and skills second has always kind of been our philosophy. and so we right out the gate kind of ask questions that really don't have anything to do with the skill but I'm really trying to figure out what kind of person you are and and so that's kind of where we found a lot of success because what happens is the team organically gets along as a general rule and you always have your onesies and twos but you know they get along and that's when they really start to kind of thrive and and jive and move and you know with harmony so that's been really helpful for us yeah any tips or questions or things that you ask to try to determine uh culture fit or is it more just you want to spend time with them and figure out or get the team to spend time with them and just figure out hey do these people fit or not how do you do it?

7:32Yeah, I mean, obviously you're asking about where they came from, how they got here, that kind of thing, but it's just like anything. You meet somebody out in public, a stranger, and you kind of know if they're, if they jive with you or not. The tricky part is the people that jived with me when we had six of us or with Chris are not necessarily the same people we need today. In other words, to kind of develop a well-rounded team, we need to find people that aren't necessarily like me and Chris. So the culture itself has evolved. And it's interesting because we were just talking as a team about how would we define our culture today.

8:10But it's still kind of based on the same tenets of like down to earth relationships, easy going, team mentality, things like that. So you just ask those kind of questions that lead to that and just see what they say and you generally get a gut instinct on it yeah yeah no i think it i think you i think it's both i think you ask a lot of questions you do your you do your work you do your research and then you then at some point you actually have to to test it out you actually have to see how they fit so i mean you can you can simulate that i mean it's sort of like you know inviting some other people to come you know to a party or something and seeing if they fit in with the crowd you hang around with, but you can't really tell until you actually do something.

8:57Well, you know, every time I bring up Semper Fi, everybody says, well, I'm guessing they were Marines, or are Marines. You still are a Marine. So, yeah, so some of this capability came from your Marine training, I'm guessing. Some of this, some of your leadership style, some of your management style came from that. Talk a little bit about the influence that the Marines have had on both you and Chris and the company. How'd you like to learn from the best? How'd you like to network with the best? How'd you like to be the best? Well, the key to being the best is to hang around with the best and to learn from the best.

9:43And we're going to make that possible for you this August in Asheville at the Asheville Business Summit. I want you to stay tuned. We're bringing in speakers from outside. We've got a lot of good events planned. It's going to be amazing. We've got more information coming. But if you'd like more info on how you can be involved, how you can attend, or how you can be a sponsor for this event, It's going to be over 350 entrepreneurs in one place right here in Western North Carolina in Asheville. For more Info or to be a sponsor, I want you to reach out directly to Beth Limmel. That's L-E-M-M-E-L at actioncoast.com.

10:24That's Beth Limmel at actioncoast.com. We look forward to seeing you there. It's going to be amazing. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. When Chris and I joined the Marine Corps, geez, 20 years ago now, um you know we learned obviously the the basic tennis of discipline and judgment and all this kind of stuff uh which is very important um organization is very important uh you know things of that nature but from a leadership perspective i can speak for myself more than chris but you know when i was on active duty i had i actually had the reverse experience i had some I had some bosses that were just terrible, to be honest with you.

11:06High stress, high function type people, very demanding, yelling at people, get in the office, that kind of thing. And I learned quickly that's not who I am and that's not who I want to be. So we've adopted the opposite of that. And of course, I saw some really great leaders and mentors in the Marine Corps as well. but but it's funny how you learn what not to be sometimes from folks more than what to be you know so we we really embrace that culture of like look let's work together and be collaborative in nature team oriented and things of that nature so you know so it's kind of been an interesting journey but but the team is I think working a lot better because it's you know in fact we just had a guy who, who, you know, he left us, he said, I want to go do something else.

12:00Uh, I'm not being satisfied or I'm not satisfied in this role right now. And so he went and worked for another company. He actually came back to us after six months and he said, it's the culture, you know, I just, I I've missed the culture. I want to be around the guys. And, and, you know, he came back from another organization that wasn't terrible by any means. But that just speaks to me that that's a proud moment for me that he would actually come back realizing what they're missing. And that's kind of been the whole crux of from a leadership perspective, what we want to create is a comfortable work environment where people can have fun, do good work, high quality work, but enjoy doing it at the same time.

12:43Yeah, that's awesome. That's a that's a great story. and whenever people are coming to you and say, how can I work here? Or, you know, in this case, the fellow left and then came back. That's a man that is that is what we're after. That is. And, you know, every culture is a little different. I also thought there was a nice learning there in it. There is a lot to be learned from who you don't want to be and who you don't want to become. You know, and my experience has been, you know, everybody's got strengths and everybody's got weaknesses. and you should learn from both. If they're not good at something and their style doesn't fit you, and the third thing I heard was be yourself.

13:27You have to be who you are. You can't be somebody you're not. If you're trying to be somebody you're not, truthfully, everybody's got a BS meter and they just know it, right? Yeah, they just know it. They just know it when you're not trying to say. Let's shift gears here. You, uh, Simper Fi has come on as a sponsor of the Asheville Business Summit in August, and it's going to be an amazing event. What, what prompted it? You know, what, tell us the story, how you got involved. Yeah. Yeah. So we actually got involved with, uh, with the Asheville Business Summit. Uh, basically we attended a seminar back in December with, uh, the man himself, Brad Sugars, and, uh, spent a week with him, you know, learned a lot about growth and expansion and franchise models, licensure, things of that nature.

14:16So it was really great for our growth plans. So when you, you know, offer the Asheville Business Summit, and we found out he's coming, it was kind of a no brainer, knowing his, you know, kind of leadership style. And I've heard him speak, you know, at least on four or five different occasions at this point. And he always has a way of making the complex simple uh and speaking to where you are in business and in life um and kind of bringing it down to the simple so that you can actually implement it um you know something as like i say we spent a week with him and something as complicated as massive growth and expansion and and you know developing in new cities and things of that nature which i know nothing about.

15:03I've never done that. And, you know, he made a believer out of me that it can be done and it's not as difficult as we all think. But, you know, he does that with anything. The last time I heard him speak was on leadership and just some of those things. It was super cool. So, yeah, I would definitely not miss an opportunity when he's coming to my hometown to listen and soak up what he's saying, because, you know, I told somebody the other day, we were talking about the business summit and it was like, look, if you want a whole trove of a million dollar ideas, you probably should be in the room in August because that man just spits them out, you know, at the cyclic rate.

15:40So that's, you know, it's kind of a no brainer. If you're, if you're in business, you need to be there. Yeah. He's one, one impressive and smart cat. He's, he can, he's, he's an impressive room. So yeah, that was, that was a, that was actually a fun week to be in a small group in a small room with a few other business owners to be working on growing your business for a full week, taking time out to do it. And this is an opportunity for people to actually get up and close and personal here with some pretty good kind. He's going to be talking about management and leadership for it. I think the title is actually management versus leadership, but we all know that you need both.

16:27Knowing what you know about Brad, what would you say, like, what should people be looking for? What you know about Brad? So, yeah, I mean, you should be looking for growth ideas for sure. Be ready to accept them. Come with your pen and paper or your cell phone or however you jot down information, because you're going to get these blinding flashes of the obvious where you're like, wow, that just makes so much sense. Why didn't I think of that before? You're going to get plenty of those. He's going to say things to bring back to your team, to bring into your business growth or development, or even just standardization and systemization.

17:05Knowing he's talking about management, I'm sure we'll get into that. So just come ready with an open mind, excited that you're going to leave the day with a lot of kind of big, wow moments. Yeah, it'll be impressive. And there's going to be a lot of opportunity for networking locally. And yeah, we're really looking to make this a very high-level event for Asheville, and so for the Asheville business community. And that's what it's for. It's for Asheville. And so it's exciting, exciting to have. So let me ask you, I'm going to switch gears again, but let me ask you, you know, what is what is one thing you wish somebody had told you either, you know, before you went into business or sometime in the middle that you wish you had known that that, you know, now?

18:05I would say, so when we first started business, I was always of the mindset, like, I'm going to make it happen no matter what. If I got to take on part-time work, just the float bills or that kind of stuff, I'm going to make it happen. That's just kind of how I've always been. Had I do it to do over again, I would hire smarter people that have done it before right out the gate. because there's a lot of lessons learned that we learned the hard way while it, you know, had we brought on a project manager that was currently doing project management work or something like that just to help us kind of develop those processes and systems, you know, that would have, I think that would have been a better way instead of just trying to figure it out all on our own, which we did for two years until, you know, we started working with you and action coach and that's when we realized like we're tired of doing it on our own um and we weren't really making any money well we weren't we were making no money it's kind of hard to sustain that long term um so that's yeah that's what i would have done is rely or leverage other people more in the beginning yeah i wish somebody told you go ahead and hire somebody right out of the bat obviously the fear there is how do we how do we pay for them what what are your thoughts on that?

19:25Well, so what I know now is that employees, good employees pay for themselves. It takes an investment up front, but if you can float a salary for a three month or four months training regimen, depending on the position, you know, they are going to start paying for themselves, you know, three, four times over at that point. So why wouldn't you, if you can, and people think they can't, but you can, I mean, a four, three or four month salary is not unobtainable for the vast majority of businesses. Yeah. I mean, if you had to pay somebody 60 ,000, well, that's 5 ,000 a month. It's not 60 ,000. So you're, you're going to know pretty fast whether they're going to work out or not.

20:09So you can, you can move quickly and you can, and set, you know, certain goals and trainings and all those things. But yeah, I think, you know, three or four months of it and most, most people can figure out how to do that. Um, yeah, that's, That's awesome. It really is a change in mindset. Yeah, I mean, I have a similar learning. I wish somebody told me that earlier because I have this saying, you can't do this stuff by yourself. I don't care what it is. You can't do anything in life by yourself. I mean, there's nothing that I can think of. Maybe somebody will pipe in and send us a comment and say that, well, you can do this.

20:46But I don't know anything that you can do by yourself as far as business. that you can do by yourself. Wayne, any last thoughts here about growing businesses, the Business Summit, anything in general? Yeah, no, I mean, we're in a very exciting time. And thank you to you and the years we've known and worked together. But we're super excited about the Business Summit. We're bringing a ton of our business friends and several of our staff, which would be great for them. So we're super excited to do that and see Brad. And we really think the more education that we can feed both ourself and our staff, again, leveraging other people, the better for our kind of growth and expansion plans, you know, going forward.

21:30So we're super excited about it. And we appreciate you inviting us to it and having us on the podcast and anything we can do. Let us know. Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, I think one of the things that I know about y 'all and your business is like, if you get an idea, y 'all will just do it. I mean, you'll try it. You'll take action. You'll, I mean, it may not be work out perfectly, but there's, you know, most things just don't fail straight up. Some of them do, but most of them you can adjust and make them better and make them better and make them better. Kind of like Microsoft software. They just keep making it better every time.

22:08Yeah. You know, I see a lot of business owners have the same problems we do, but I think what has gotten in their head is that change should be slow, methodical, painful. It's going to hurt. It's funny. I'll tell you a story. We hired, you know, a regional development director, a first kind of staff member down in Greenville, and we're doing onboarding. And we're talking about sales and our sales process. And it was funny because, you know, our sales coordinator came up and he's like, hey, this part of the system is not working. what do you think like it's it's kind of like this section is broken and I turned to Scott and I said watch how fast that we update systems around here and I sent a quick email to the right person and it was like got it updated the system in like three minutes we totally kind of updated our system and our standardization and it's like look if it's not working do something about it don't hope that it magically gets better or somebody else is going to change and fix it just do it and And we're fortunate because we have a culture of that.

23:12So all of our staff are totally on board for that. And I think all business owners should be interviewing people that want to change and evolve versus the people that just want it to be the same year over year over year because we really encourage innovation. But anyway, it was just kind of a funny moment because he had, you know, 30 years in the industry kind of looked at me and I could tell he was like, wow, that was fast. I haven't seen. Yeah, no. Well, no, I mean, things are changing rapidly in the world and in business. And, you know, it can be different a month from now than it was. I mean, I think if the one thing COVID taught us, things can change in a hurry.

23:54And yeah, but but it also taught us that resilience is is is it's not that hard. I mean, we were we were pretty resilient. I mean, when we had to, we did it. And so I think looking for looking for places to go ahead and change rather than. And I think there was a book written a few years ago, if it ain't broke, break it. You know, so I mean, I think it's a it's not always a good sentiment, particularly if the stuff is working and we're just and we're kick. But I do think if it ain't, you know, if it ain't broke, keep looking for ways to make it better. and, you know, to make it change. And if something doesn't work, then obviously we have to change it.

24:39So, yeah, it's all good. Well, hey, this has been fun. This has been good. A lot of good things, a lot of good learnings. So thanks for being here. Yeah, thank you for having me on. Always a pleasure and I appreciate it. Yeah. Hey, and until next time, all the best. Hey, thanks for listening to the Epic Entrepreneurs podcast. Here's three things that you can do. Number one, remember to subscribe to the podcast. It takes very little effort on your part. It's going to help you and your fellow entrepreneurs. Plus, you guys know how it works. The more subscribers we get, the more cool things we can offer to you.

25:16Second, to learn more about growing your business, just download my book, The Coach Approach. It's free for you at giftfrombill.com. That's giftfrombill.com. Hey, and if you'd like more info about growing your business and what we can do to help you grow your business, send me an email directly. Just send it to williamgilliland at actioncoach.com. That's my personal email that I read. No one else reads it first. It's not screened. It's my real email. Just send it to me. I can't wait to talk to you. Hey, and until then, all the best. hey thanks for listening to the epic entrepreneurs podcast here's three things that you can do number one remember to subscribe to the podcast it takes very little effort on your part it's going to help you and your fellow entrepreneurs plus you you guys know how it works the more subscribers we get, the more cool things we can offer to you.

26:20Second, to learn more about growing your business, just download my book, The Coach Approach. It's free for you at giftfrombill.com. That's giftfrombill.com. Hey, and if you'd like more info about growing your business and what we can do to help you grow your business, send me an email directly. Just send it to williamgilliland at actioncoach.com. That's my personal email that I read. No one else reads it first. It's not screened. It's my real email. Just send it to me. I can't wait to talk to you. Hey, and until then, all the best.