Welcome everybody out to podcast number 1494. We've got Mark Story here with us and we're going to be talking about probably how we take care of ourselves at home and some advice. I can't say any age jokes here, but from somebody who's experienced, who has a lot of experience, we'll say it like that. 

So if you're interested in that, please 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 everybody. I hope you're doing well and staying safe out there. 

Mark, how are you doing, my brother? I'm doing great, sir. How are you? I'm so good. Where are you right now, if you don't mind me asking? I'm in Arlington in DC. 

Oh my, oh my. Well, I asked you beforehand, your week's going pretty good and you're out there with Eddie, right? Or is Eddie with you? Isn't he great? I just love that. Eddie and Emma are doing a awesome job. 

I love those guys. Yeah. And you take such good care of them. 

Well, I'm excited to follow your efforts here. I was asking Mark before we hopped on today about topics, or he was asking me, I can't remember. And he said, so Mark's doing the commercial construction services. 

No. Commercial construction services. Commercial construction services. 

Business is going super well. In fact, Mark's expanding. And the other one was, how do we spend more time at home in construction? And I want to start asking you, Mark, when you think about professionals, you, me, and professionals making a home, what does that mean to you? It doesn't have to be any specific format, your answer, but just like when you think about that, what does that mean to you? Well, you know, I think that changes probably as you go through your career, right? And this, this will, I'll be honest with you. 

This will be a tough one for me. I'm sure, you know, starting out in your career, you're, you know, chasing a title money, you know, opportunity takes money to raise a family and, you know, buy a home, but, you know, have nice things, have vacations. And that, but it changes a lot through your life, right? So I think, you know, we're going through, we're doing a lot of, we started this business to like, like help people to operate better in the field. 

But a lot of what our business is growing, going into is also coaching people. And so we like, what's your motivators, right? So when you're younger, and you can chime into here, like when you were first taken off in your career, it was probably money, opportunity, things of that nature. And it changes as you, as you get older, or your, your, your priorities change for whatever reason, right? You start having children.

Okay, hey, I need to, I want to see my kids grow up, right? And then, and for me, you know, my kids are grown, my son's getting married. For me, you know, I'm traveling a bunch, working a lot of hours, trying to figure out how to grow this business and bring on the right people. And I really want to spend as much time with my wife, you know, my Julie and I've been together for going on 34 years, right? And we have a great relationship. 

And, you know, we're not getting younger, right? So we will, you know, if my son getting married, probably have grandkids here shortly, right? So want to definitely see them. But one of the things in the coaching, I've got a half a dozen people that I'm coaching right now. And they're all in different stages of their lives, right? And they in careers, right? But they all have kids, right? And we're in a really tough project, kind of got out of the gate in the wrong way. 

And but everybody's working towards a common goal. And one of the things that I've been pushing all of those folks, like, what are they going to work? How are they going to delegate? How are they going to get out of other people's way? How are they going to support the team? What are the action items they're going to be working on to actually do that? And then, oh, by the way, you have a family. Yeah. 

And this project, we got about 1718 months. Yes, it's hard. It's a marathon. 

It's not a sprint working 90 hours a week. You know, from here to the end is not sustainable. Yeah. 

And the good thing about all these people are on one team, right? So we're talking about how do we share the load? I think, let's see, probably, there's been three, three babies born in the last five months, I think. Oh, and some more on the way. And there are some that are just not even a year old before I got there. 

So, you know, there's, those are important days, right? And so what I'm pushing, yes, how do we get home more? So Julie and I, we're not always successful. It's something that I've tried for the, we have tried for the last few years is to plan our personal time, whether that's vacation or like, I'm going to boot camp in February. Nothing's getting in the way, right? Of that. 

We're going to be there. And so trying to plan what I've asked these guys to plan with their significant other, their PTO for the year, and to lead by example, be sharing that at the staff meeting. These people also have people they're coaching now. 

How are they helping them to understand that and plan that? And really, I think it, you know, what we do is we focus on training people how to plan, right? Yeah. Yeah. So why don't we take it home? Why don't we do a better job at our personal stuff? Yeah. 

I love that. In fact, it's funny you mentioned that because, so let me just kick this off just a little bit is that I was at my parents' house for Thanksgiving and Shea Rowbottom, who does our, like helps me with LinkedIn to scale LinkedIn. And she's done a great job. 

It just, in the last couple of months, we've gotten 6,000 new followers that are just actively searching us out. So she's done a great job. And she said, Jason, go get as many pictures of like your past as possible. 

And we'll do one of those a week. And, and the reason that you know where I'm going with this already is that I'm like, what in the world? I had no idea I've been that many places with my kids. And like, I pictures in Tucson going up to the spillway and like 1000s of things, right? And, and I just, I'm not really like very sentimental that much. 

When my kids were outside riding motorcycles, and I was jamming through those pictures. And I was like, these moments are priceless. Like to your point, when you talk about your boy getting married and, and spending time with Julie, like 100%. 

And you probably have a similar story to me. Part of it was I've Kate forced me. Second part, we have a big family. 

So I it was like part of the program. But the other thing third is that like the first thing to like Paul acres, eight ways five s is our home life, right? Yeah, is what you're saying. The there were two things in my life and the tie into that I hope that the one was when I was at the bioscience research laboratory, we were we were out of the ground, it was stable. 

And Kate was like, Hey, I want to go on these trips. And I was like, it's just really busy time right now. And she was like, you always say that we'll just forget it. 

We'll just go without you. And I was like, Whoa. And so I woke up right away. 

Then it happened to me again with the business like you're talking about, like I was on I was on a plane almost every week for four years. And eventually Kate was like, I think it's time to start balancing this out. And another moment happened. 

And I was like, Yeah, but this and blah, blah, blah. And she was like, Oh, my gosh, Mark, I don't know if she's ever told you she said, You don't know how to plan. And I was like, me? Like, who are you talking to? And she's like, You're not organized. 

You don't know how to plan. And I was like, I was like, Oh, my gosh, my ego was like, Oh, oh, you heard me so bad. But she was talking about, I don't know how to plan first things first. 

And immediately, that was my like, second challenge. I'm like, okay, well, let's go. So it was like, trips, like you said, time blocking their vacations for the year. 

And then just being like, I'm home. I don't know what to I don't know. We'll figure it out some other way. 

And it always worked out. So I love the way you're framing that. So let me put you on the spot. 

Can you give me two of the top things that have worked for you when you're doing this? Like when you're like, I do I got I, I will take care of myself and my family. Two of your top habits. So the only way it works for me and those of you out there that know me, I am not a great tech person, but I'm very visual, extremely visual. 

So I have my calendar. I'll show you. Oh, that's awesome. 

You Hey, you're walking. You won't be able to walk right here. The audience won't be able to see this, but it's okay. 

Look at my calendar. You see all those colored dots? Yeah. So all those colored dots mean a place, right? So I can quickly rip through this calendar and say, okay, I'm going to read is DC green is Tampa blue is Boise.

Okay. Yellow bootcamp, right? So it's a plan. Yeah. 

It's a colored text. I don't have to think about it. I just know on that day, they expect me in Tampa and does that work? And I do that. 

So Julie and I are not, we're not baked for the year, but we are setting down every weekend when I get home and we're diligently working through the year and saying, these are the dates that we're planning to be in Michigan. We just had another niece. Our niece just had another baby last week. 

And so we're planning a trip to get home to see the little ones, right. And see some of our older family. We have a trip planned with Mallory.

Mallory graduates in May and we're graduates. She's got her four year degree and looking on looking to go on for her master's. And we've been planning a trip to South Korea. 

That's where both of my kids are from. And so we're planning that and just forcing that time. I'm also putting my, it's like doing your yearly plan with your spouse, right? I don't know if you and Kate do that, but it's like the finances, the goals for the year, the vacations for the year, and all just kind of like goes in the same thing. 

And I've got time set aside for my hunts. I'm setting aside time for Julie to travel with me. Just making it a frigging priority. 

And once it's on the calendar, yeah, you can move it. But if it's not on the calendar, guess what will happen? It's not going to happen, right? It will not frigging happen. I love that. 

And I also love that you put murdering innocent animals in the wilderness on your calendar as well. Like that's it. You got to have some you time, you know what I mean? Listen, all I've been getting is exercise for the last few years. 

I haven't killed a damn thing. But I spend time with my son. That's important.

No, that is so good. I joke around about hunting. I actually love the, my dad said, there's only three reasons to kill an animal. 

If you're going to eat it, if it's suffering or it's dangerous. So like you've got one out of three, it's all good. That deer or elk is going down. 

I mean, you know, no, Kate and I do planning, but not yearly. In fact, I just wrote on my to-do list next year, family planning. Cause I love it.

The other thing, it was so funny. Every business meeting, we, we do what we call unilation time. And that's where we just listen to the universe. 

If it's talking to us, you know, like a building we'll talk to you. Anyway, we, the message I got this morning, I still have it on my notes here. It said, or the universe was like, if you have to do a trip, just full kit or pre-kit that you've had two weeks at home, good connection with family, things are stable at home. 

You're caught up. And I swear to you this is, and go get a massage before you're gone. And you don't have, cause I'm always like, I got to do a trip. 

I hate life. But I realized that if I've been home for a big deal, right. And the, the key is like, like you're talking about that, that balance is possible. 

The other thing I like about your color coding is that you can see if it's red, red, red, red, red, red, you're going to overburden yourself and your family. But yeah, we're totally on the same page. I love that. 

Yeah. Yeah. And the thing of it is you think about how this relates to work, right? And a lot of, a lot of the stuff that the Elevate team and myself have been doing is streamlining meetings on a project, right? If you don't own the calendar, the calendar, I promise you will own your ass. 

I don't give a shit who you are. If you do not, excuse my time, it will own you. You will run around like the tail wagging the dog, right? So that's all this is you're just owning it in bigger chunks of time and further into the future. 

And, and you're in the thing of it is like, if you're thinking about whether I'm going to work from home in two months for a week, or if I'm going to go on a vacation in two or three months, it's a whole lot more calling, right? You're, you know, the plan out in the future. Yes. If you, if you, for some reason, something doubles up in the future, then you can make a decision to move that or to not move it. 

And you're, you're a lot calmer, right? So if you think about your week, we just did this with a couple of teams, like just, Hey, these times, this is when all the meetings are. You have two to three hours in the morning after you start your day, you know, with stretch and flex and roadblocks and things like that. And then you have this one hour every day that you, you can count on that. 

You're going to have a meeting and then you're going to have three hours after that. So maybe you have to have another planning meeting, or maybe you need to walk control zones or update your schedule or review, whatever that is. It's basically just more of a, in a, you know, in a weekly calendar, it's smaller batches of time more often, but this owning your calendar in the future to protect yourself, right. 

For your own health, mainly that's what that's about. And then you plant business work around it, right? So your foundation, if you want to think of it, you're planning your calendar for the year. That's your foundation. 

That's, that's, that's where you're, you're, you're, we used to call our, our, our annual fishing trips up to the UP, up to big bay getting healed, right? So if you're going to, that's what you, you just get away. There's no phones ringing. There's no nothing, right? You just, you just, you're just beating the water, fishing for trout, hanging with your buddies. 

You know, something about getting connected back to nature is pretty damn healthy, you know? So build your foundation, own your time, do it ahead of time and just stand by it. You know, your spouse, your significant other will appreciate you. And even yourself, if you're, if you're, you don't have a significant other and you plan some time and you get away and get healed and do whatever that is that makes you whole, it'll make you a better person.

I agree. That's phenomenal. And one quick, I couldn't have asked for a better commentary. 

Thank you so much, Mark. And I got the two. It's almost like, I remember when I was, when I was working at Conco Construction, I did a post just the other day when I was working the funny trail, actually. 

Yeah. I don't know what they're actually called, but anyway, you know what I'm saying? After you, after you got the finishing machine on the concrete. Anyway, the, when I work with Conco, everything that we had, whether it was reinforcing or anchor bolts, Dennis, my foreman was like, we're going to, we're going to, we'll never, we're never going to wet set it. 

We're going to have templates. It's going to be all ready to where we do what we're going to do. And when I started doing side jobs on my own, I was like, oh, I'll just wet set those bolts or those dowels or whatever. 

It never worked, never worked. So it's almost like the most important things are like setting templates and setting the reinforcing and the anchor bolts in the right location and then placing concrete. Cause when you try and do it in the reverse, it never works. 

It's always sloppy. It's always got to be ripped out. That's not exactly. 

Yeah, exactly. That's not the best analogy, but that's what came to me anyway. The bottom line. 

Oh no, the analogy is good. You think it's going to work, but then you go to wet set the dowels and you're like, this is not working. I don't even know if this is in the right spot. 

So yeah, you think it works, but it's not going to. So I love that. You got no string lines, no templates. 

You're pounding anchor bolts in cause the concrete got away from you. We've all been there. You know, so rough. 

Well, this has been great, Mark. So yeah, better, better than I ever could have imagined. I'm actually gonna, I mean in a completely normal way, you look amazing today and I'm not too bad. 

So I might turn this into a video as well. So I really liked some of those, those quotes. Oh, I found out the trick. 

So this is what I did, Mark, until I can get rid of my tummy. Um, I do an undershirt and then like a shacket. It's like a Jack, uh, it's a shirt jacket and I look like, where's my dad? Would you say suave and debonair? Like it looks, so you got that same look going on. 

You got the outer jacket with the, with the shirt on the inside. It's doing good. This is just my work uniform brother. 

Anyway, Mark, you're the best. I hope everybody's enjoyed this time with him and 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.