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Hello Technically Short fans!
In this episode, we delve into the depths of marriage, leadership, and personal growth
with our special guest, Chaz DuBois.
Sharing our experiences, we explore overcoming challenges, maintaining excellence, and fostering
strong family bonds.
From battling substance abuse to the transformative power of mentorship, we discover practical
tips for success.
Learn how to bring excellence to your marriage and navigate a successful career transition.
Tune in for insights on staying culturally aware, being flexible, and taking calculated
risks.
Join us on this journey of personal and professional growth.
Hey guys, I'm Shawn.
I'm Thomas.
And this is Technically Short.
Today's episode, we have a special guest that you're going to love.
Yeah, today we have Chaz DuBois.
Say hi.
Hi guys, thanks for having me.
Alright, so Chaz has been on, hasn't been on before obviously, but he was recommended
to us by like last but not least Mike Wallace and I don't know if you listened to that episode
when he mentioned you, but he said like he was the first person that popped in his mind.
He said he wasn't prompted because I didn't even send him the question beforehand.
So I just gave, I just asked, he was like, you were the first person to pop up.
He said like you're one of the most amazing guys in his life.
So if you haven't listened to it Chaz, you probably should listen to at least part two.
Sounds like a plan.
But yeah, and I didn't write him down this time.
But typically we like whenever we have a guest, you know, we always start with the intro and
give people a little bit more of an idea of who you are, who we see you to be.
We like to give some a little bit of exaltations.
Typically I have them written down.
So this will be right off the cuff.
But like, whenever I think Chaz, the first thing that's probably in my mind right now
is just a great dad.
Because I got to see you with Olivia and Charlie and like, and then you had your twins.
Like it was the same story that my parents had whenever they had my youngest sisters.
They thought they were getting one and they were like, we'll have four.
That's it.
And then, you know, there's two.
Turned your world upside down in the best possible way.
And you're going to hear like secondhand from somebody else that Emily said she would do
it again.
We literally just had this conversation this afternoon.
And people think we've never been one to care about what other people think necessarily.
Right?
Like there's definitely leaders in our lives that we do care about their opinion.
But like, plenty of people think that we're crazy for having four kids in the first place.
But the thought that, you know, we would totally do that again.
Not right now.
And maybe they're not even our own children.
But like maybe in the future we'll be called to care for somebody else's children.
If that were to happen tomorrow, our doors wide open.
Like without even thinking twice.
Are we going to try to have our own children again next year?
No.
But I also, we both mutually agree that I don't think our family's done yet.
Lovely.
That's awesome.
And oh yeah, that's good.
But the other thing that's probably in my head was being that you're extremely community
focused.
And on top of that, like it's serving in that community, but it's not just serving.
It's also being, it's also knowing that sometimes you also have to let yourself be served.
Yeah.
And that's something like in coming into like, because being in, being in the men's small
group and like knowing the time frame you do get there.
I'm seeing like, you might be like exhausted, but you're like, but there are days when you're
like, no, I needed to be here today.
Yeah.
100%.
Like, and I think you're one of the people that exemplifies that a lot.
And it's visible.
So that's definitely what pops in my mind.
Like I said, a great dad and a very community focused servant leader.
Thank you.
Yeah.
For my excellent ation, I can't never say the word, but if I had to describe Chaz, Chaz,
excellent father, godly man, but he has the heart of a servant.
Like he always has a heart for like, whoever's in need.
He's like, okay, I'm going to do whatever I got to do so that person can get wherever
God told me to, did they need to do or whatever they need, I'll provide.
Like God has always been such a big, like part of how I see Chaz because Chaz is a really
like humble guy.
Like coolest guy you'll ever meet.
He's down, he's just humble, but he has a heart where he would just pour out and it's
amazing.
So if I could describe Chaz, he'd be a godly warrior, awesome guy.
And I would say like action pack.
A lot of things that you don't know about Chaz, like he used to do, he rode when he
was like a kid.
I remember riding like dirt bikes or something with like some famous crowd or something.
I'll let him tell the story of his life, but I know a little piece of piece, but it's awesome.
I can just say Chaz is an awesome guy for real.
Thanks, Shawn.
No problem.
I love you, man.
And Thomas.
I love both of you guys.
Yeah, I love you, man.
And since we gave you a bit of an intro, who would you say Chaz Du Bois is?
I have to start with, I am a follower of Christ, first and foremost.
From the time that I committed to being a follower, my life has been flipped upside
down in all the best possible ways.
Next to that, I'm a loving husband.
My wife, Emily of 15 years, was the best thing that's ever happened to me.
And then a loving and devoted father.
I've got four kids, Charlie, Olivia, Elijah and Samuel.
My crowning achievements in life.
And it gets me choked up.
For the longest time, I didn't think I was ready to have kids.
And I didn't feel like I was responsible enough to have kids.
And it scared me to death.
And then we got pregnant with Charlie.
And I'm still figuring myself out at that point.
I was not the best version of myself.
And for that matter, I'm still not the best version of myself.
It's ever evolving and it's a process, right?
You're going to be the best person you can be.
But hands down, the best thing I've ever done in my life is having these kids and getting
a chance to change the world through them.
Besides that, besides the emotional part, let's see, I spent a large portion of my life
working in the cycling industry.
From being a 13 year old bike shop kid taking out the garbage to managing a multi-chain
bike shop to owning my own bicycle shop to taking a part time job in a warehouse just
so that we could provide a Christmas for Charlie that year.
That part time job, I loved it in the beginning because it was just so mindless.
I could go to work, move boxes, sometimes walk 40 miles in a day.
It sounds crazy, but if you work a 12 hour a day, you could easily walk 30 to 40 miles
throughout the course of the warehouse and then get a paycheck for it.
There's a lot of people who are really good at owning a business and loving the open endedness
of the income that can come from owning your own business.
I am not that person.
I yearn to be that person.
I would love to have unlimited income potential.
However, I also appreciate knowing that I have a paycheck coming on Friday or a paycheck
coming at the end of the month now.
I get paid monthly, so that was an adjustment, but knowing that I can count on X, Y, or Z
to be there.
Let's see, I've been with my current company now for eight years.
Just over eight years, I just had my eight year anniversary two weeks ago.
Like I said, I started as a part time seasonal person making a little over $10 an hour.
Somebody saw something in me, my work ethic, maybe my ability to follow direction.
I don't know.
It gave me a chance and I got the ultimate opportunity to change my life through this.
It went from a part time job just so we had a little bit of money to buy some toys for
a one year old to absolutely changing my life, my kids' lives, our future.
We're now able to help other people.
I now run a warehouse for this company.
Worked my way up through the ranks, spent a little bit of time working in Cleveland,
made some new family members in Cleveland through that process.
Got to come back to Pittsburgh and now I actually run a building similar to where I started.
It's just been incredible to be able to help other people change their lives the way that
somebody did for me eight years ago.
Wow.
To be honest, that's a lot of time for me.
I have the same kind of story with serving production and even being just a volunteer
lead on that team, I wouldn't have ever put myself in that position.
It was because we were talking about them earlier before recording, but Pastor Kells
saw something in me that I didn't see myself and Pastor Ed did the same thing.
Then Mike Dedominic did the same thing.
They all started seeing things in me that I didn't see myself.
They kept putting me in positions where eventually I was hired by the church for a time to build
community in the production team and even be able to go to our Philadelphia campus and
help with production there.
Whenever you're in that kind of community where people are seeing things in you that
you're not seeing yourself, like you said, the craziest things happen.
I am expecting more of that stuff to happen in my life and expecting more things like
that to happen in yours because there's always things we don't know about ourselves that
other people are going to notice.
I think it brings to my mind the concept of blind spots, but typically people think blind
spots are... Most of the time they're negative when people bring them up, but it's thought
maybe it's positive ones as well.
100%.
It's really cool when people point those positive ones out and they exalt you for those things
that you're just like, oh, this is my norm.
This is normal to me.
It's not that big of a deal.
They're like, no, that was great.
Think it's sometimes like a quirk.
Yeah, I'm good at whatever numbers or yeah, I'm good at reading some of these emotions.
Yeah.
No, that could be a skill.
That could absolutely be something that you could use to make the world a better place.
That's a really good point though.
I don't think that I've ever thought of blind spots in a positive way like that.
I think community is mission critical, especially as men of God.
We need other Godly men around us to build us up, to help us.
Sometimes it's like, maybe you say something off the cuff and you're like, whoa, dude,
hold on.
You got to be careful the words you speak.
You got to be careful the words you speak about yourself.
It's obvious you have to be careful the words you speak about the people around you, but
even more so you have to be careful about the words that you're speaking over your life,
over your friend's lives, over your children's lives, over your spouse's life.
Some of the men in my life have absolutely helped me personally in that way.
But that's like the traditional blind spot, right?
Like the negativity side.
I think the positive blind spot where it helps pull a natural talent of yours out is huge.
That's a really good point.
It rolled in my mind because I listened to a lot of John Maxwell stuff.
We talk about him a lot.
That's one of the things he mentioned is you're not going to see your own blind spots.
A lot of times it's pointing out the things that are holding you back in your leadership
in that respect.
That connection was just like blind or think you're missing something, which you are if
it's positive too.
We don't have to keep going down that hole.
You already touched on it about that you're an employee for one of the largest online
real tailors and that you moved up to ranks and it took a while for you to get to where
you're at now.
You're in the industry for eight years, right?
This is a, we haven't mentioned it yet, but this is the series on excellence called Perfectly
Imperfect and part something 12, 13, 14, 17.
From your own perspective, what role did or does excellence play in your current position?
Or even what role did excellence play to get to your position?
I think having a desire to have excellence.
The company that I work for has grown rapidly in the big picture.
I think they've been able to do so by allowing themselves to not be excellent.
What I mean by that is you can't change the world by being perfect because you're never
going to be perfect in the first place.
It's going to take a while to gain that excellence.
It's going to take a while to not be perfect in every way, but to allow others around you,
to allow yourself.
I'm really bad at beating myself up over things that I've done wrong, the missteps I've had.
Allowing yourself, giving yourself that grace to keep moving forward.
You're never going to move forward without some missteps, without some failures.
The key thing is for me, not failing the same way twice.
It's super corny and cliche, but failing forward.
People say you got to fail forward.
I have not failed forward in everything that I failed in, 100%.
We could have multiple episodes on that alone.
What's changed me as a leader over the last eight years is learning to not dwell on those
failures.
Cool, we failed.
Where did we fail?
Sometimes there's a post-mortem.
You got to figure out where these failures are depending on their size and scope.
Then just making sure that we don't misstep that way in the future.
To me, the first part in excellence for me is earning the trust of my team.
I am not a perfect person.
I am not a perfect leader, nor do I claim to have all the answers.
Having strong people around me, empowering them, taking feedback and learning to not
take it as personal.
I'm still not great at that.
I take a lot of things personal.
I know that that's an opportunity of mine and I'm still working on that part.
Take the feedback as it is and keep moving forward.
You got to keep moving forward.
That's how you strive for excellence.
That's maybe how you achieve excellence in certain parts of your life.
You're going to fail at some point, learning from those failures and doing everything you
can to not duplicate.
Keep moving forward past it.
Wow, that's so good.
Honestly, that brings me back to what you were talking about, learning how to fail.
That could actually be a whole episode just in itself.
The wise words of Andrew Tate, I have to actually give the guy credit for these words.
He actually said, God teaches us to either learn it the hard way or learn it the hardest
way is for the people who don't understand that when you make a mistake and not learn
from it, you end up learning the hardest way rather than just the hard way when you mess
up.
It was really like to think about failing forward.
We're all going to fail.
What are you going to do with that failure?
Some people let that failure build on them.
Other people use that failure to build.
Yeah.
John Maxwell says sometimes he has a book called, Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Learn.
The whole concept is not really calling failure, but seeing it as a learning opportunity.
That's the reality, right?
To strive for excellence is to learn that.
Nothing's a failure.
No one's a failure.
It's just what you learn from those missteps, from those failures.
Maybe we don't call them failures, but what you learn from the things that didn't turn
out the way they're supposed to be.
They're all learning experiences.
Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.
You're always learning.
You should always be learning.
There's something to be learned even in a win.
I think to that respect, you learn more when you fail.
When you miss... Right.
That's the goal.
That should be the goal.
I've set so many goals for myself that were super overzealous.
I didn't reach them 99% of the time.
At the time, I was disappointed in myself, but I can now look back and realize I actually
learned a ton of stuff to get to that quote unquote failure.
I heard somebody say just yesterday or whenever, but you get to take that stuff with you.
Everything you learn, you still have that.
You have a choice if you want to take it with you and how you take it with you.
Are you going to take it with you and use it as a club to beat yourself up with?
Are you going to take it with you as like, this is what I don't do in the future and
just keep moving past it?
I like that you even mentioned like excellence.
This was said last episode with Pat Williams, recorded last weekend.
He was like, yeah, excellence isn't perfection.
Sure.
He said, you can't... The community you work for, you can't change the world if it's trying
to be perfect through perfection because if you think you're perfect, you're not.
If you think you're perfect, you're probably one that furthest from it because there's
so much room for growth, so many things to learn.
Like you said, you're never done.
We kind of skipped over it before and we kind of touched on it a little bit, but to me,
Bar-Direct, to you, and it's meant to be vague, to you, what is excellence?
I looked that up.
The term, and this didn't help.
Webster's Degenerate didn't help.
What is excellence?
It's like the quality of being excellent.
Thanks, I got that one.
Excellence for me is being able to always be learning, to be able to, at least in my
job, to be able to earn the trust of my team.
Excellence to me is maybe not having the top performing building, right?
That would be cool.
I'd love to say that we're the top of the worldwide scorecard or whatever, but excellence
to me is having a good work culture.
In reality, it's something that I've been working against, not against, working to fix
for a long period of time.
Certain things that have made small gains with a small group may have created bigger
deficiencies with a larger group of people.
Over the last six months to a year, there's been a lot of learning on my end in that regard.
It's not clear cut.
It's not super simple on how to earn the trust of people, right?
There are, look, we're all people.
We all have something going on outside of work.
We all have something going on outside of this relationship, outside of that relationship.
In the way that you respond to a given circumstance may have nothing to do with the Shawn that
I know.
It may have a hundred percent to do with the Shawn at home, the Shawn with his parents,
the Shawn whatever, right?
I think it's really difficult because in a corporate setting, I can't outwardly profess
Jesus maybe in the way that I would like to, right?
But that does not mean that I can't act as such.
I can't love like Jesus, right?
It's strange to say loving people at work, it's work, right?
However, giving them grace for being imperfect people because I'm an imperfect person, plenty
of people give me grace and the chance to misstep, the chance to get in my emotions.
Sorry, I've kind of gone like way down a rabbit hole.
But excellence for me, I think is being able to have grace for each other and to be able
to earn each other's trust, to be able to work towards a common goal.
We may not again, completely independent of perfection, but the end game goal might be
getting closer to that, right?
I think that's good.
And do you think like all that plays into that gaining trust of your team?
So like it, and I read this down while you were talking, like in that, can you expand
a little bit more on like how you typically go about like this long process typically
of gaining that trust?
Yeah, I mean, I try to add a personal aspect to it, right?
Like I don't, I don't, if you walk into my office, you'll find some pictures of my family
because they're important to me.
They're the reason that I go to work every day, whether I want to be there or not, right?
But I try to find out, try to learn about what makes Thomas tick, who Thomas is, right?
Who Shawn is.
I've got leaders in my life today and leaders in my life in the past who could care less
who Chaz is outside of work, who Chaz, you know, it's, it's what you're doing for me
right now that's important.
And like that, not that, that lack of connection with Chaz the person changes for a lot of
people can change the way that they perform in the building, right?
The way that they, the way that they treat the building, the way that they treat their
coworkers.
Yeah.
I think I do genuinely, this has been part of my learning experience over the last eight
years.
I always thought I was not a people person.
And I, a great leader actually from church said that is 100% wrong.
You are 1000% a people person, but it's your people, people person.
Yeah.
And it's only because like it's, for me, there was a lot of anxiety in learning and meeting
new people and large groups of people.
And I've spent a lot of time trying to work through that.
I'm still not a big crowd person, but we're getting there.
But like I do genuinely love people.
I love talking to people.
You know, we've, we've, there's been opportunities to possibly have like a support role where
I'm no longer in the operation and I get to work from home and I don't know, like I think
I would struggle way more not having a daily interaction with people.
So getting to meet people, learning their names, right?
And I was so wrapped up in learning my job that I didn't necessarily spend that time
learning my people as much as I should have earlier on.
And I think all that did was set me back, right?
I'm coming in at that point as a figurehead and they don't have, you know, they don't
have any faith in me.
I'm their boss in that like direct leadership sort of way, not like the team leader that's
driving us all towards a common goal.
And I think that that was definitely a big misstep over the last year being so wrapped
up in the details and the, you know, instead of learning my team and spending more time
there.
But I think that's what's, for me is what helps us all kind of move forward, move towards
that top tier sort of performance, if that makes sense.
Yeah.
Honestly, I think that's why you've grown.
It just shows you where you've grown.
You know what I mean?
Like you as a leader before was like, oh, okay, I'm in charge.
But now it's like, hey, I'm in charge, but how can I get to know you personally?
So I can, that helps the team that helps you guys reach the goal.
Because if they know who Chaz is, they're going to of course want Chaz as a leader.
Because if you know Chaz, you know that how he is as a person is so on par to being Christlike,
you know what I mean?
So as on par to being my great father, so on par to being a wise, wise guy that, that
you would love to have him as your leader, but they didn't know that before, which is
understandable because you didn't get a chance to like get to know him.
You know what I mean?
On the back half of the very same sentence, right?
As a leader though, you still need to be able to steer the ship.
Right?
Like I think I also in the same tune, tried to give everybody else their own freedom to
kind of do what not freedom, but
Li Wei?
Yeah, their own Li Wei to be able to lead their way.
And it's when you can clearly see it's not the right way, or it's not the way that you
would lead a group.
As a leader, you should step in and like, I'm not saying come in as the boss and rule
with an iron fist, but it's like, hold on, that's not how we're doing things anymore.
Right?
And there was definitely some hesitancy on my behalf to do that early on.
And I think that when you give somebody a little bit too much freedom, when you don't
necessarily think that they're aligned with the way that you're going, is when things
can go sideways, or you can create division amongst the team.
Thanks.
Wow.
Yeah, you have your...
Yeah, I have a bunch of questions, I guess.
But I'll start off with the first one, right?
So Chaz, how do you bring excellence to your community?
How do I bring excellence to my community?
Man, I think it depends on what community.
Right?
My community, that's my house, that's my family.
Honesty, love, right?
We're not going to be perfect people for my children, right?
I've made lots of missteps, and I've covered them up and hidden them for years from my
parents, from my spouse, from whatever, right?
Yeah, sure, you might be able to stray away from it, right?
Excellence isn't about being perfect.
Excellence is being able that my son can come to me when he screwed up, and not...
His first intuition not being, oh gosh, how do I hide this from my parents?
Oh gosh, how can I get help from my parents to fix this?
Right?
I think that's excellence, a part of excellence in our household, right?
We can be honest with each other, that we can lean on each other when we need it, that
we can be honest about our feelings with each other.
Excellence in the men's community is to see a guy who is otherwise a, I don't even want
to say tough guy, but a guy who looks like he's got it all put together, fall apart and
be able to be real with other guys in that room that night, and get stuff off his chest
that he hasn't been able to get off his chest in 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years, right?
Again, we're not perfect, but seeing what happens when you can get a bunch of guys together
that can actually be real and help build up each other, and actually be able to offload
stuff, right?
The amount of weight that can be lifted off of somebody's shoulders by just being able
to be honest with guys who are otherwise not going to judge them, because Shawn can say
something that's much in the same way that I might say something, completely different
issues, different whatever, but just being able to get that off your chest with a group
of like-minded individuals, that's excellence.
That's something that men, especially in today's world, in such a broken world, do so much
to cover up their feelings, to cover up, especially in a social media society, right?
You're watching the highlight reel.
Our lives are messy, our lives are messed up.
We've done not great things.
To have a group of people that you can be like, hey look, I screwed up, right?
For me, that's part of the excellence that I found through our church.
By our church, I don't mean an entity, I mean the people, right?
The church saved my life, hands down.
Saved my marriage, hands down.
It's not the pastor, it's not a name, it's the men and women of the last eight years
of our lives.
Yeah, that's excellence.
That's probably the most excellent thing in my life, is those people in my life who showed
me what, I don't know, showed me a type of, I don't want to say that I needed no true
love before that, but showed me what unconditional love can be.
Man, that was so good.
There's a couple different questions that came out of that floating in my head.
You talked about your marriage and how the community, the church community that you got
surrounded with saved your marriage.
Would you be okay with diving into that a little bit?
Yeah, I think so.
Let's see, we've been married for 15 years, give or take, together almost 20.
High level, I've had some substance abuse issues in the past.
My wife is a saint, just put that out there.
She knows that it wasn't necessarily me, that's not the person I wanted to be, right?
It wasn't.
I said that from the beginning.
I didn't want to be hooked on anything.
I think there's two guys in particular from the church that really helped me by getting
me to come to a recovery meeting at the church and realizing at that point that I did not
need these things in my life.
That wasn't the first fix.
That wasn't the final fix.
That was the first fix, right?
It took a couple of tries to actually figure it out.
But I think that those guys, the women in her women's group, really taught us, the guys,
the two independent groups really taught us what a marriage is supposed to be, taught
us how to pray for each other, to go to spiritual war for each other.
When I couldn't, it sounds kind of cliche, but when I couldn't love myself, there were
people loving me that didn't really even know me at that point.
And they were loving my wife in a way that I couldn't at that point.
That's what saved our marriage.
That is so, that is deep.
Well, that brings me to one of the questions I was actually going to ask.
For the single guys who are looking for a beautiful wife that God's going to give them,
weird way I phrased it, I'm sorry people.
For the single people, how do you bring excellence to a marriage?
So like if you were just going to tell me or Thomas or Andrew or whoever, how would
you be able to tell us, be like, hey, this is how you're going to bring excellence to
your marriage?
Like you do date nights every week, whatever practicals and then you can expand on the
practicals if you don't want to.
Honesty first, foremost.
God, God first and foremost.
Honesty, that's the reality, right?
If you're both on your walk together, that's going to help.
I think that's mission critical for long term success.
Honesty second, making sure that you can be your whole self around that person because
you have to be, right?
If you want to be sustainable, I think it's super important.
And that's not something that I was able to do for a while, right?
I think, I mean the practicalities, like I've always told my wife I loved her from the beginning,
right?
I still don't know if she believes me, but the night that I met her, I knew I wanted
to marry her.
I can't explain that part, but that was really before we even had a true relationship with
Jesus back then.
She was just, we were like minded, right?
We both wanted families.
We had similarities enough, right?
We had enough in common.
I think, yeah, I mean, I don't know, Emily and I don't necessarily have like date nights
set up or anything like that, but I think couple time is definitely important.
Whatever that looks like for you guys.
Maybe it does mean weekly dinner, monthly dinner, whatever it is.
The willingness to pick up where the other one is slacking off or doesn't know how to,
right?
I don't, I love to cook.
Emily likes to cook.
It doesn't matter who makes dinner, right?
We're working together to a common goal.
We support the children.
We have a common household goal.
I think being able to be humble too is important with each other.
I think being humble in general is something like a lot, like I have problems.
Like being humble and also, because a lot of things you mentioned, like even as single
guys, those are all things that we should be practicing already.
A lot of those things, like as far as the qualities go, like, and then giving ourselves
grace.
Sure.
Giving ourselves grace for whenever, like we were talking about earlier when we miss
our own mark.
Yeah.
And then we miss the mark and like we're not striving, we realize we're not striving for
Christ as well as we should be in certain moments.
And like with, I know in relationships and friendships, like whenever you're, it's like
having grace for your friend or for these things that you can other whenever they mess
up and being humble enough to like, I think sometimes, for me, like it's like, I can have,
I think the past I've had anger issues.
Okay.
And like I had them growing up, like I couldn't put a futon together, like it was this futon
at home.
I kicked the hole in the wall.
And I was like, I would just get so, I would get extremely frustrated.
And like, and it took like understanding that that was a problem to be able to, and I'm
going down a rabbit hole and I get that, but like, it took me to realize that that was
a problem to then have grace for myself whenever that happened to be like, okay, that wasn't
okay.
That wasn't okay that it happened, but it is at the same time.
It's okay.
It's weird to get, it's not okay, but it's okay.
There's a level of accountability that's needed also.
Yeah.
100%.
And like, it's hard for me.
Like I speak from, I can't speak from a relationship standpoint because I've only, I've been in
two, only two short relationships in my, but the hope is one day.
But no, I think, man, this is the first time for the people that listen, we usually, we
set up a timer on the TV and I completely forgot.
So I was checking like what time it was.
I've been checking the clock.
I've been checking the time of the, how long the recording has been.
And I'm like, okay, we're, okay, we're, we're in time.
How long has it been?
But I think we have a time for a few more questions.
Maybe like one more, you're going to ask one more question and then we'll wrap up.
And if you want to ask another question at any point, you know what I mean?
We've got time.
But the, I don't want to derail what we're talking, but there's something I want you
to talk to the listeners real quick, like directly.
And to the people that they're wanting to enter into a new career or they're in, or
maybe they're even, or they're starting a new company and they want to move up the ranks.
Speaking from your own experience, like what encouragement or advice could you give them?
Be coachable.
Do your best to stay out of your feelings.
There will be plenty of times where it doesn't work out the way that you wanted it to.
You know, do what you can to earn the trust of those people around you.
And when I go back and say, hey, stay out of your feelings.
I've seen a lot of what otherwise seemed like great leaders kind of get super emotional
about something that I don't want to say is an important, it is, everything's important
to some degree, right?
But like they get super emotional about something.
And especially in the company that I work for, things move so fast that even when you
think something set in stone, it could change on a dime.
It could change by the end of the day, let alone next week, next month.
And you're at the end of next month before you turn around, right?
When you allow your emotions to get the best of you and you start to degrade some of that
trust that you've earned around you, that's way harder to earn back.
It's harder to earn back the second time, right?
But be coachable, right?
Be, learn and be curious.
Do what you can to, you don't have to know everything.
But wanting to learn and be curious about the company, about the skill, the trade, whatever
we're talking about, right?
And I still think being coachable is like one of the top ones.
I like be coachable, be flexible.
Be flexible.
Make risks, right?
Maybe calculated risks.
Maybe the ones that are just sitting on your heart, like, no, this is the way I got to
go.
Understand that it might not be, it may not be the one that you were, it may not be the
path you were supposed to take.
But that's okay too.
Again, there's something to be learned from it, right?
Yeah.
Well guys, I hope you took some notes.
Guys, thank you for listening to this episode.
So we got a couple more final questions, but I just want to say thank you for listening.
I thank, I always thank you guys for listening to the episode, especially towards the end
of it.
But guys, if you've heard this episode up to this point, you might want to give it a
re-listen.
And I think I said this last time too, but yeah, take some notes.
Take some notes and really think about if you're in that position of starting a new
career or wanting switch careers or whatever you want to do and you're wanting to move
up the ranks and that's your goal.
Really focus on being, like Chad was saying, focus on being coachable, being flexible and
taking those risks and dive more into what that looks like to you.
It's not going to be, the concepts will be the same, but the way they pertain to you
is going to be different.
So I want to thank you, Chad, for putting that chest to kind of go forward.
I thank you then before just the ending questions to wrap up the episode.
And when it comes to your own personal growth and excellence in general, what are some of
the top resources that you could or do recommend to people?
It can be books, podcasts, whatever.
Man, find yourself a mentor.
Maybe it's a spiritual mentor, maybe it's a group of spiritual mentors, right?
Like a men's group, a women's group, whatever.
But find yourself a mentor at work.
If that's a thing, right?
Like if you're starting a company, maybe it's not at your work.
Maybe it's somebody that's been successful, right?
But I think a mentor for me, having somebody that I can call an offload a rough day on,
a frustrating piece on, that's not my wife, that's not my boss, that's not maybe even
somebody on my direct team.
There was a wise man in one of my men's groups that once said, call me and scream at me because
you're not going to hurt my feelings before you get home, before that comes out on your
kids or on your wife, right?
And I've told since that day, and this is only a couple of years ago, and it's somebody
in our current group, right?
Not our current group, not the Tuesday group, but in our group at church.
I've told people at work that a lot because it's true.
Like I said, stay out of your feelings, right?
Sometimes you can't get out of those feelings until you get them off your chest, right?
Call and scream at me.
Even the people on my team, I'd rather them yell at me than that sort of emotion come
out to their direct reports, to their peers, to like, you're not going to hurt my feelings.
Like, please, by all means, and even if you do, I'm not going to, just let it go.
Like I'd much rather you offload it on me than it impacts something else, right?
Especially your family, especially your relationships.
You know, if that's your mentor, maybe it's not the mentor that you call to scream at,
but having that trusted resource, somebody that you can be real with no matter what level
of real we're talking about.
Having that type of person is, for me, is mission critical.
I'm not great at it.
I'm still not great.
There's not excellence in that part of my own life, and there's a couple of those people
in my life, but being able to offload that stuff before that sort of builds up emotion
impacts, maybe more important parts of your life or other parts of your life.
That's really good.
And like, I like asking these questions, you never really know what people are going to
say and, and the mentors are extremely important.
Absolutely.
I think we mentioned that, like with Mike, when we were talking with our episode with
Mike Wallace, we mentioned like, if you don't have a mentor, get a mentor, like seek them
out because sometimes they're not just going to show up most of the time.
More often than not, they're not going to find you.
And the ones that do may not be the right ones.
Yeah, that's very true.
Like, yeah, you want to search, look out, seek out the people who are further in life
in the direction of where you're looking to go.
Sure.
Yeah.
Also, it's good to have, I would say more than one.
At first, I used to think there was just one mentor or one mentor only.
That was my past bread, pastor bread is like only hub.
But then it was like, I can see where I can get some wisdom from Thomas and I can get
one wisdom from Chas and I could get some wisdom from Pat Williams and I could get some
wisdom from Keith in different areas of my life and Andrew and like, you know, there's
so many different people you can get wisdom from.
So it's like now that I expanding having more than one mentor, it is definitely working
in my life.
And I so I work in you guys's life as well.
Get more than one mentor.
I still have the best one though.
Pastor Brandon, love you man.
Oh, Chas, who would you like to see on the next episode of our podcast?
Right here, technically.
Man, there's you said you already had Pat.
Pat intrigues me.
I'd like to have a conversation with Pat.
There's you'd have to show me the list of people you've had before.
I can name them.
I memorize them.
There's a lot of people.
Yes, a list of people.
Keith.
Oh, we've been we've been trying to get him.
I'll be trying.
Keith, if you're listening, we're coming for you.
Dave Miller.
Oh, we had Dave.
Did you?
Yeah, there you go.
He was he was our first guest.
First guest.
He's our first guest.
Yeah.
Dave was a legend.
Dave was one of the two men that helped me with my sobriety early on.
Yeah, Dave.
He did.
He dives into his.
Yeah, he's better than that too.
It was great.
That was a great one.
Yeah, Dave Miller's are also one of my mentors.
Dave.
No, that's awesome.
If you ever have any more, feel free to let me know.
Yeah, 100 percent.
Guys, thank you for listening to this episode of Technically Short.
If you haven't already, give us a follow in the five stars review.
Whatever platform you're on and share on your socials message on social media and we'll
see you next time.
Love you guys.
See you.
Thanks, y'all.
Bye.