Welcome everybody out to podcast number 1322. In this podcast, I'm going to talk about blinking, wow, blinking red lights. Stay with us.

This is the elevate construction podcast, delivering remarkable content for workers, leaders, and companies in construction, wanting to take their next step, get ready to step out of your comfort zone with Jason Schroeder as he encourages you to do better, live a remarkable life and expect more. Let's go. Welcome, everyone, I hope you're doing well.

Just to clarify the topic for today, Kevin gave me a really neat analogy about the control panel on a vehicle, and I wanted to share that with everybody here. It was so good. I am behind my computer, and I'm two podcasts away from being caught up, so I'm going to go ahead and read some feedback from our listeners.

Good morning, Jason, I hope this finds you well. I just wanted to tell you that I just watched a YouTube video from you that was a real gut check for me. All to say, I am a struggling assistant superintendent because I feel like I got in the door with very little qualifications.

I don't have much field experience and zero collegiate backing. What I do know, God put me in the position, and I am to do something great with it. I'd like to talk with you more about myself and how I can excel in this industry.

I plan to start reading more books and listening to your podcast in the morning, but I know for me, I'd benefit from a mentor, thanks and advance, absolutely. Super love mentor. I was on the community of practice, lean leaders call the other day, and we were talking about how a lot of people don't know that you can call and ask for things from influencers.

The other thing I want to say, if anybody thinks that I think I'm an expert, I'm not selling that kind of stuff. I do think I'm smart and I'm overly confident, so that's a problem, but I am just a guy that has learned lean things that I'm implementing over here. That's all I'm doing.

I am willing to share. I do not think I'm more important than anybody. I am nothing special.

I am just doing my best to share because that's my thing. Anytime somebody needs help or a mentor, let me know. I super love it.

I love contacting people. I do my best. I'm not always the best at it, but I do my best.

So there you go. A couple little things I wanted to make sure everybody was aware of is that congratulations to us. We just got to 40,000 subscribers on LinkedIn.

We're almost to, oh my gosh, I can't believe that. We're almost to 40,000 subscribers on the YouTube channel, actually. So we are at, if I go over here to the YouTube channel, we are at 39.6, oh my gosh.

So probably in a couple of days, I could do a 40 and 40 post, that would be super cool. You know what's funny? I was telling Kate the other day, I just pulled up the YouTube channel. You can see how much heavier I look from the first time I did videos.

On the YouTube channel, you can just see the progression of Jay Money going from his normal weight to heavier in the age of 40. Not losing the weight as fast. It's super funny.

I always go back to the old videos and I'm like, hmm, I was much thinner. Anyway, so we're at 40 and 40, jamming out. In case you don't know, so it's been like five, it took five years to get to 40,000 subscribers, probably paying, what would it be, probably at least 40 grand a year for LinkedIn help.

Oh my gosh, and not even counting all the countless hours. It is not easy. Part of me wonders if it's even worth it.

I mean, it's worth it to share information with people, but dang, that was hard. Anyway, so those are some things. By the way, I've been super sad this morning about the economy and the tariffs and everything, and every now and then I get like kind of in a negative attitude where I hope this is what you wanted, voters, you know, but I'm not going to do that.

I've switched that into like a positive mentality. Here's the deal. We are going to keep Lean Tech going strong.

We're going to have this first project at Lean Belt, like rock out and be amazing. And we are going to shove the economy right up everybody's backside. All the people that are trying to take it and do a class war and hurt small businesses.

And we're going to end up on the backside of this with data on what it's like to take care of people and still make money and not go bankrupt. I hope you get the reference there. And have a diverse workforce and a diverse leadership team.

And have 50% of the people in your organization be women and do it the right lean way. Like we, I am just committed. Now, could we go out of business? Could we fail? Sure.

Everybody fails. Not a big deal. Like we're going all hog kosher style.

We're going torpedo, like damn, the torpedoes. We are moving ahead. Like we balling is what Kate says.

Like we're going to get this done. And I hope at the other end of this economic disaster that we can literally just flip everybody off and be like, there you go. We got to do it.

We did it. We did it the right way. We did it with people and we did it without going bankrupt again.

I hope you get the reference anyway. So here's the deal. Um, we're going forward.

Super excited. Um, and I think that, uh, so already on the YouTube channel, recording videos from our journey, hoping to get feedback from them, but it's going great. I just couldn't be happier.

All right, let's get into the podcast topic at hand. Blinking red lights in the car. It's interesting because the next video I'm going to record today about, or on the YouTube channel is about macro phase shaping, macro plan shaping, macro level attack plans.

And, uh, I remember Kevin talking about this to our organization one time and he was like, not having a macro level attack plan where you can see strategically, uh, would be like driving a car and not having headlights. And also not having a dashboard, no blinking red lights on the dashboard, no fuel gauge indicators, no oil temperature gauges, no RPMs, um, you know, no battery gauge, like nothing telling you what's going on and where you're going. And, um, I thought that was such a neat analogy and I wanted to share that with you.

Right. So if you're driving a car and the analogy is actually pretty similar, right? If you're driving a car, um, the headlights are to see out ahead. The windshield is clear.

So you can actually have that field of view. Your gas pedal and your steering wheel are your controls and you can see how fast you're going at attack planning faster going. Okay.

Uh, you can see how much energy you're putting towards it with your RPMs and whether or not you're overburdened. You can see if you have power and gas, right? And you can see if there are any engine warnings, things that would break you down on the road. And it's easier to find these problems before they actually happen.

In fact, I'll tell you another quick little thing, which I'm not proud of. So I drive four trucks. I know I just lost half of the podcast listeners right there.

All you Chevy, uh, humans are mad at me right now, but I drive four trucks. I love four trucks. I've always had four trucks in the family.

Uh, there is probably no difference other than I was, I grew up with them with my family. You just, you know, stick with whatever you grew up with. But Ford is never good with the electrical systems.

Anybody that has, um, a four truck knows what I'm talking about. Like it's like playing musical light buttons, trying to get the lights off. Uh, it's hard to connect your phone with Bluetooth.

I mean, whoever the, everybody at Ford's jamming and then the, like the electrical engineers, like that, like they're all sniffing lead paint or something. Like they're, they're just all having a hard time over there at Ford. Um, and I'll tell you, and I am blaming this on Ford.

This is so like, this is not extreme ownership. Jocko willing time right now, like he would not be proud of what I'm saying. But like, uh, my son started to do the oil changes and he would reset the warning light and everything every time.

Uh, but the indicator didn't come on that it's ready for an oil change. And he checked it the other day on schedule. He's like, Oh my gosh, we're four courts low.

Right. And, uh, you're, you're like one court low of like, um, I don't, I'm not a mechanic like throwing a rod or like burning something up and I'm like, okay, that sounds like a lot of mechanic talk. I don't know, I don't understand that.

But he was like, like freaked out. He's like, we gotta be more careful with this stuff. So we were about to blow up the motor.

Not, not great. Um, and it's because we didn't have the red flashy light. You know, to actually know that I'm thinking about, I can't be dishonest on the podcast.

Reno may not have reset the computer, but anyway, um, but bottom line is we've got to be careful because on a project side, if we don't have the red blinking lights, uh, we don't have the tech plan, we don't know our roadblocks. We don't have our constraints identified. We don't, um, know where our problems are.

We don't see procurement problems. Then we're gonna burn out our motor. And that's actually an apt analogy because if we don't find those problems, then everybody's going to be crash landing the project and it's not going to work out for us.

We are going to hurt somebody. We are going to burn somebody out. So having the macro level tech plan, normal level tech plan, and the KPIs and the data is like the red flashing lights on your vehicle that allow you to make sure that you're not blowing up your motor.

We've got to have them. And if you don't have them, you're, you're driving flying or operating a train blind. I hope you've enjoyed this podcast.

On we go. Please join us next time in elevating the entire construction experience for workers, leaders, and companies coast to coast. If you're enjoying the show, please feel free to share with your construction colleagues and help us spread the word by rating, subscribing, and leaving a review on your preferred podcast listening platform.

We really appreciate it. We'll catch you next time on the elevate construction podcast.