Episode 297: Stop Accepting “That’s Just the Way It Is”

Darrin Peppard (00:01)

All right, my friends, welcome into episode 297 of the Leaning Into Leadership Podcast. What if the thing you're trying to grow isn't actually ready to grow? Because here's something we don't talk about nearly enough in leadership. When you scale an organization, you don't just scale the good things, you scale the problems too. If communication is broken, growth magnifies it.

If expectations are unclear, adding more people doesn't create clarity. If you've learned to tolerate something because that's just the way we've always done it, getting bigger or busier probably isn't going to make it disappear. My guest on the show today, Ron Newsbaum, said something during our conversation that I absolutely love. Stop scaling problems and start scaling solutions.

And while Ron comes at this conversation through entrepreneurship, construction, and building businesses, I kept finding myself thinking about schools and leadership teams. What is it that we have learned to tolerate? What problem are we continuing to work around instead of actually solving? And maybe, most importantly, what happens if we keep growing, adding, and moving forward without addressing it?

Ron and I get into all of that today, along with entrepreneurship, challenging the status quo, accountability, doing the hard things, and the trade-offs required to create the outcomes you really want. But first, today's episode of Leaning Into Leadership is brought to you by Hey Tutor. School leaders know that when students fall behind, simply asking teachers to work harder isn't a sustainable strategy.

Hay Tutor partners with school districts to provide high dosage tutoring in literacy and math, giving students targeted support while helping schools expand their capacity to meet individual learning needs. A Hay Tutor is an approved national student support accelerator tutoring provider, helping districts implement evidence based tutoring that supports students and complements the work already happening in the classrooms. If you're looking

For another way to accelerate student learning without simply adding more to your teacher's plates, take a look at Heytutor and what they can provide for your school. Go to Heytutor.com or hit the link in the show notes. That'll let them know you heard about them here on the Leaning Into Leadership podcast. All right, my friends, let's lean into leadership. Here is my conversation with Ron Newsbaum. I'll see you on the other side.

Darrin Peppard (00:00)

All right, my friends, welcome back into the show. Joining me in studio today, Ron Newsbaum. Ron, thank you so much for jumping in here into Leaning Into Leadership.

Ron Nussbaum (00:11)

Absolutely, man. It is great to be here and I'm super excited for our conversation today.

Darrin Peppard (00:17)

Yeah, thanks so much. Folks, I have to be completely transparent with you. So Ron and I connected, man, it's probably been like nine months ago, I think. We were on another podcast together. We said, hey, you know what? Let's be on each other's podcast. Said I was on Ron's Construction Champions podcast. I'm sure he'll talk about that here in a minute. And then we recorded for Leaning Into Leadership. And a few months ago, I realized not only had I not released the episode,

Apparently the episode had actually gotten deleted or something. So we're trying this all over again. I think again, you know, it's it's an opportunity, Ron, for you and I to have a conversation. Every time we talk, there there's just there's just some real cool things that happen. So but before we jump in, just just tell my listeners a little bit about you, about what you do, and then we're just gonna run from there.

Ron Nussbaum (01:05)

Absolutely. So I'm Ron Neersbaum. I am the co-founder of Ask a Shop Owner. I am the host, founder of Construction Champions. And I'm a United States Marine that spent 13, 15, what are we at? 2010, that was sit the last 16 years of my life in residential construction, in building businesses. I have bought and sold a couple businesses and continue to grow.

And my main priority is helping small businesses just continue to develop and take the knowledge that I have learned over decades of grinding it out and figure out how that becomes very accessible to people.

Darrin Peppard (01:48)

Yeah, I love that so much. And you know, we we were talking before we hit record that, you know, just that entrepreneurial spirit. And, you know, certainly there's there's leadership that is connected with that. I want to dig into that entrepreneurial spirit. I I know some of the other projects that that you have done that you didn't necessarily talk about. We may end up talking about them a little bit, but I'm curious and and before I go any further, thank you for your service to our country. Greatly appreciate you.

I'm curious about that entrepreneurial spirit. Like where did that begin for you? What was the the the spark that made you say, Hey, this is what I wanna do. I wanna I wanna start my own business. I wanna buy my buy a business. I wanna I wanna be that that entrepreneur.

Ron Nussbaum (02:30)

I I really think it comes down to the the desire for the freedom to chase, to to be able to go after things that you think are unaccomplished, bro. And I hate to use a cliche word of impact. Like I think people overuse that that word, but you gotta have something that is driving you beyond a monetary outcome because it's just not enough long term.

When you're when you're talking about what it actually takes to build businesses and scale businesses and deal with employees and create these outcomes, there has to be something that you're personally invested in. And for like the my my last company, BuilderComs, like my my personal mistake was I had spent all this time in the construction industry and communication was such a breakdown.

And I just didn't want it to be that way for the construction industry. I knew it could be better and you know the grind to have to go out and change the mindset around how something is done in the in an industry. You have to be willing to chase something. You have to be willing to look past the dollars and the the money and say, hey, this is eventually going to create a ripple that I don't know what it might come out of it.

But it's it's going to be bigger than anything I could possibly do if I didn't go chase it. And I'm raising, I have an eight-year-old son, my wife, like I'm chasing the this dream lifestyle of not necessarily just freedom, but ability to make decisions based on what we want and not what benefits somebody else necessarily.

Darrin Peppard (04:17)

I love that so so much. And and you know, that's you know, I've I've been on my entrepreneur journey now for just over five years. And I think you know, a lot of what you talked about there, you know, that that quality of life, that, you know, ability to go and and and do the things that you wanna do that's not dependent on somebody else, I think is is so powerful. But but I wanna come back to that that impact piece and you know, I

I agree with you to an extent that you know sometimes we use that word as it maybe a little bit of a cliche, but I I almost think of it more as challenging and changing the status quo. So you know, you talked about with BuilderComs, this this whole focus around, and I I I know with with BuilderComms it was around kind of software-based how do we ensure that all subcontractors and all that kind of stuff

are all on the same page and focused and doing the right work and and that type of thing. Communication's a huge piece in in all walks of life, in all walks of leadership. So let let's maybe go back to to that evolution and the thing that sparked you to say, okay, there's gotta be a better way. Because again, that's the entrepreneurial spirit, but it's also, to me, it's a great leadership piece. So talk a little bit more about like what was it that

lit the fire that that made you create builder comms.

Ron Nussbaum (05:42)

Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the things is to the word impact. I think I hang I've been in software now for five, six years. And I I think it's just overused in the software word because everybody speaks like, the impact when really I know, like, just be honest with me, like most people build software in order to scale it and sell it for hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars. Like

The impact's secondary to what they're actually trying to create. And what I have found is like you have to have that because the grind is so hard. Like you have to find something besides the pressure of money. So what sparked that? Complete chaos sparked it. Dealing with what I felt was a misrepresentation of who we were.

That we thought it was okay to suck at this because that was the industry standard. It was like communication, whatever, we thought we did a great job, but like our reviews would tell us different. And I just couldn't live with that. I I look at myself, I am a problem solver first and foremost, and I don't scale problems. We were going from 28, I think it was 28 or 29 to 2930 crews.

And like I was so tired of scaling this communication problem because every time I added a crew, I just compounded the problem. And I was like, we find this has to finally be fixed. I'm done with this problem. And I really dove into it. And one night it was lay I was laying in bed and it hit me. I got to I got up. I put together this haphazard PowerPoint presentation on what I thought this would look like, like how this would function. And it it was just

A very simple messaging platform built for projects and built for the construction industry. And I went down the road of building that and bringing it to market. And it but it was just this moment where I was like, I'm not going to deal with this anymore. There's no more. You just have to realize I think what people are at Chase scale all the time.

They don't realize they're actually just scaling problems. And they don't ever actually fix the problem. They put a band-aid over it until that band-aid comes off. And then maybe it needs a cast. And like the pri until we get to the point where you practically have to amputate something, we are willing to scale the problems. And I just don't function that way. And I love how earlier you talked about the status quo.

One of my core values as a human being is to challenge the status quo. I don't believe that means we need to change everything, but I think we should at least ask why. And we should challenge it. And if we come back of like, hey, this is the best way to do it, I don't think we need to disrupt it for no reason at all, but I think we need to challenge the thought process around what we are doing. And that's all I did on this.

Was I just challenged what we thought was acceptable. And like all goals to get to a hundred crews. Like, so I am going to 3X plus this problem. And every time I do it, it's going to compound and it's literally going to get worse. I have to solve it now before I burn the village. And I think as entrepreneurs, we need to look at that and say,

What problems are we scaling within our organizations that are going to come back to really be a problem down the road? And that's actually just scale solutions and not the problem and just pinpoint that thing. And that's what it was for me. It was just an aggravation of I am not going to do this another 70 times and deal with the outcome of it. I'm going to fix it right now.

Darrin Peppard (09:34)

I got such a big leadership piece right there because I think this is true in all industries. certainly, you know, most of my career spent in the education space, and we're really good at just tolerating what's just okay. And and and at times we will we will just simply fall into that, well, that's just the way it is, or that's just the way we've always done it. And I I like what you said there that

You know, at a point in time you just finally it goes from an aggravation to I can't tolerate this anymore. And if I continue to compound the issue, like in your case, the more you add crews, it's it's not just, you know, you go from ten crews to twenty crews and well, it just got double the size. No, it's probably more than a hundred times the size when when when you start to think about communication breakdowns and

I would imagine and and I'm I think I'm filling in a gap here so so you can you can you know correct me and and push in a different direction. But this probably was a solution for you in your space, but it ended up growing into a whole lot of other people saw this solution and said, I want in on that. Like how how can we do that? Because you you saw the problem for for you, but

Certainly it was a problem for a whole lot of other people.

Ron Nussbaum (10:58)

Well yeah, and that's where the the entrepreneur part comes in because it's like, why just fix this for me? Like this isn't like my golden egg. This isn't like I'm a very transparent person. Like, I don't need to corner the market on something. Like this th I looked at it as I this could be so beneficiary to an industry that I love. Like I

I credit saving my life. When I got out of the Marine Corps and I ended up on a job site, I found the Brotherhood, the camaraderie. Everything I was missing from the Marine Corps, I found in construction. And I looked at this as an opportunity to help an entire industry that I loved with a major problem that's costing them. It's estimated about 34 billion dollars a year is lost because of communication breakdowns on projects. So for me.

I was like, this is what I have to go do. Like it's not about doing this little thing and solving these little problems. Like I just solved a huge problem. Why am I going to hoard this? Why don't I open this up to where we can actually fix this once and for all?

Darrin Peppard (12:08)

Yeah, I think I think that's super, super powerful. And so let's let's now fast forward. You said in your introduction that you're you co-founder of Ask a Shop Owner. So I you know, people talk to me about this all the time. I'm gonna squirrel chase for just a second. You know, i with with what I do, yeah, not just the leadership coaching, really it's it's the speaking part. Like almost there's not a week that goes by that I don't have a conversation with somebody.

Who says, you know, hey, I want to do what you do. And invariably what I get to with them is not what do you talk about or any of those things, but what problem do you solve? Because to me, that's like what the entrepreneurial spirit is all about. It's all about what problem can I help you solve? People aren't gonna hire you just because, hey, Ron Newsbaum's a great guy. And he is, but they're not hiring Ron just because he's a great guy. They're hiring him because he can solve a specific problem.

And it's just the same with with me. I help. I help leaders stay out of the cycle of chaos, right? That's the problem they have. I solve it for them. So ask a shop owner. again, I told you I was gonna squirrel chase there, but ask a shop owner, like, let's talk about the problem that we're trying to solve there. I'm really curious.

Ron Nussbaum (13:21)

So Ask a Shop Owner gives small business owners on demand access to real-time operator experience. So when they're facing a problem, they can bring it to Ask a Shop Owner and leave with an actual plan. And the problem is, so me and my co-founder have been, you know, we dab, he he does a lot more than dabble is. I dabble in the construction.

Consulting and coach. I'm very strategic on who I work with, but he's made a 20-year career out of consulting and taking businesses from eight to nine figures. And we were trying to figure out like how does this become a more obtainable thing for everyday business? How does this not like it's so unattainable? There's so much information out there right now, but there's no direct

This is what you do, or the answers to the actual problems that are being solved. And we really dove into that. It's like, could we solve this? And you know, my software background, he has a software background. We started putting some things together. And we actually built a product. We didn't just like create a chat GPT wrapper, which is, you know, we love AI. I tell everybody you should keep your chat GPT. We're not built to do what Chat GPT does.

We'll be able to give you guidance in the real time 24-7 and then be able to put a plan together and go execute on that plan. And we have done that by building a closed loop AI. I use AI, it's a language model, it's its own deal, all own data sets, a decade worth of information from high-level operators and business owners on how to actually function and make decisions within your business.

and then we put it on a very direct loop on how it's going to respond. It's not like we're here to have a conversation with it. You're here to bring your problems and it's going to give you the solution with a checklist. And then you can move that over to the checklist and work through it. This isn't something that you sit on all day long. It is built for you to come to, get the plan, and then go execute. And that

Is what we're solving is we are solving the amount of information that's out there for entrepreneurs and big small business owners. And we're taking that and actually putting it into actionable items. So when you have a problem that is pressing right now, you don't have to wait for your next call or you gotta figure out how exactly to prompt something to get the direction we have created.

a product that you can just go to at any time and put your problem in and get a roadmap to the outcome that you desire. Now we can't do the work for you, but we can lay it out there for you. And that's what Ask a Shop Owner does.

Darrin Peppard (16:07)

I think that's such a cool cool way to approach that because it's not just solving one problem, it's giving the opportunity to solve a lot of different problems. And I would imagine, you know, when when people are bringing problems to ask a shop owner, I mean everybody's got their own unique problems, but probably having that that you know bit of AI interface in there along with all of that different level of experience probably

you know, it should be able to solve pretty much anybody's problem. So do do you find as you go along that that there are additional things that, hey, you know, we maybe we need to bring in bring in more knowledge around this, or maybe there's somebody else who's got some experience that could help us with this. Like how how does that continue to evolve?

Ron Nussbaum (16:51)

Yeah, so I mean we have almost 20,000 data sets within our AI that it pours from. If it doesn't know the answer to something, it doesn't make anything up. It's going to tell you, I do not have the knowledge to help you solve that at this time. And it's going to flag us and let us know that we have a knowledge gap. And then we will go and figure out how do we feel that? How is this a one-off or is this something that

we need to really dive into and figure out how do we fill the knowledge gap within. we have, you know, at this point in time, thought we didn't just go pour data either. Like this is all we didn't scrape the internet. This is all littler conversations that we have had with operators over the last 10 years. That is like how they function and how they build highly successful businesses. So

It it's it's very concise data that's not just scraped from everywhere. We didn't just make this up. And that's one of the things is we can have gaps in that and we will continue to fill those. I think what's amazing is around the questions being asked, is I was doing an interview for a magazine earlier today on this.

And one of the questions came up was, well, like what you advertise are very like, I get they they use the word like basic business problems. And it was like, can it go more in depth? And I said it can go as in depth as you possibly want it, but I think your thought process is wrong on that. Because for us, any question that a business owner is asking to ask a shop owner is the most pressing question they have.

To them, it's very complex. There is no basic business questions. There's just questions that you have the understanding past. And that doesn't mean you're not going to run into other ones. So it doesn't mean that when you need help with one thing that's basic and you need help with another and it's complex. I think every business problem and question we run into, it's complex in its own way.

Because that's what we're currently facing. Like this is the most pending thing we have, and we're looking for the information on that. And our goal is to not just deliver a few paragraphs on, you know, mumbo jumbo, make you feel good about where you're at in business. The goal with Ask a Shop Owner is it deliberates on what you're saying and it puts together a plan.

Or follow-up questions, if it don't completely understand where you're going, it's going to have a a follow follow-up questions to get you so it can put together a step-by-step plan that takes you like 10% of the way towards that goal. And then once you execute on that, you come back and let's continue on. So we're at we become a real accountability piece as well, to where it's following up. It's checking in via email, like where are we at on this?

Or you like you haven't been on your checklist, you haven't checked this stuff off. So we're trying to figure out how do we use technology to help move the ball for small business owners and also hold them accountable without anybody having to pick up the phone, without them having to go out and find somebody that's lived that to be able to give them the the the way to do it.

And then that accountability piece is the biggest because like we can give everybody all the knowledge in the word, but like if we're not staying top of mind with it, like people tend to not want to do the hard stuff. And most of the stuff, like you know, with builder comms and everything I do, it's not sexy, like it just isn't. It's the hard stuff. So, like, ask a shop owner is built around doing the hard things in your business, the stuff that

You don't just like you're not you get on Chat GBT to have these great conversations about everything that's happening with your business. You get on ask the shop owner when you're ready to get the answers to your questions and a strategy to go execute on that. And that right there is what we're built to do.

Darrin Peppard (21:07)

I think that's that's really great right there. You know, it's it it's that I think that's a huge leadership piece too. I mean it's it's not just you know, like you said, you know, hey, you know, let's let's tell you how great you're doing in your business or give you, you know, a little bit of information. Let's give you an actual plan, let's give you an actual checklist, and what I thought was the most important piece, it's almost like a digital coach right there, is I'm gonna be the accountability partner, you're gonna come back, we're gonna talk about the next step.

And I I think that is really, really super powerful. And it it it kind of generates a question that that I have for probably a lot of our listeners have at least some entrepreneurial spirit. And and and again, I get hit with it all the time with, you know, hey, I want to go do what you do, or you know, people people see they see Ron, they see Darren and they think, man, that the the lifestyle that they're able to have, the freedom that they have, I want to go and do that. So

From a leadership perspective, what would be something you would tell someone who's maybe very early in their entrepreneurial journey, or maybe they're thinking, Yeah, I've got an idea, or I think I'd like to go do this? Like what what is some advice that you would give someone to to chase, as you said earlier?

Ron Nussbaum (22:23)

I I think when we look at, you know, the grass is always greener on the other side. I think you have to realize that there's sacrifices, period, that have to be made. Like there's all there's trade-offs. People like me and you that have gone down this road, like we traded off a lot of stability, especially ear early on, to go chase this.

And that's a hard concept for people because I felt that chasing freedom was more important than having stability. And that's hard, especially when you have a family, to say, we're going to do this and it's not always going to be easy. And nowadays there's still trade-offs. Like you're I think people just think you jump in and you have it.

And you never really you're there's a

Darrin Peppard (23:15)

Yeah.

Ron Nussbaum (23:16)

constant you're trading things off for what you want to do and how you invest in your time and where you want to be at. And I would say you have to chase the trade-off that you want. And I think a lot of times in life, we just take the most comfortable trade-off when sometimes the one that really gets you to where you want to be is a trade-off you're not.

like necessarily excited about, but it's going to create the outcome that you really want. And that right there is entrepreneurship. Like doing the hard trade-offs to create the outcomes you want is what it is. And you have to be willing to take that first step, take that action and understand this is going to be highly uncomfortable. And however it starts off is probably not how it's going to finish. And

You can't you cannot be chasing stability with entrepreneurship at first. And that's

Darrin Peppard (24:14)

And

Ron Nussbaum (24:15)

just what it is. You you have to work towards that.

Darrin Peppard (24:19)

Yeah. And no truer words have ever been spoken right there. That is absolutely spot on. I love that so much. Man, our our time has just flown by and I had a feeling that was probably gonna be the case. we're we're at that point, Ron. I'm gonna ask you the same question, ask everybody here on the show. it's the Leaning Into Leadership Podcast. So Ron Newsbaum, how are you leaning into leadership right now?

Ron Nussbaum (24:41)

I am leaning into leadership by broadening my horizons on who all I can affect with my leadership. For a long time, I've been very narrow in the construction space and rolling out Ask a Shop Owner has forced me to once again be uncomfortable and step outside of that and understand that my leadership knowledge, my

My career trajectory is not limited to just construction and then software over the last six years. It has a holistic purpose to all business owners out there that are s that are looking for leadership. They're looking for advice. And that right now is how I'm chasing leadership is by making Ron Newsbaum more into

A leader of all then just the leader of who I select.

Darrin Peppard (25:36)

Outstanding stuff, man. I love that so much. So people are gonna want to you know check out construction champions, they're gonna want to follow you, that kind of stuff. How do how do people find Raw and Newspap?

Ron Nussbaum (25:48)

The easiest way to find me is on LinkedIn and from there you can get to everything I do or anything I touch.

Darrin Peppard (25:56)

There we go. We'll make sure that stuff is down in the show notes. Man, Ron, I'm so glad we had an opportunity to do this again. you said it before we hit the record button. That last conversation was clearly not the one that we were meant to share with the world. And this one was fantastic, man. Thanks so much for joining me here on Leaning Into Leadership.

Ron Nussbaum (26:13)

Awesome. Well, thank you for having me. I loved it.

All right, what an awesome conversation with Ron. I'm so glad he and I had the opportunity to circle back and have this conversation and share it with you here on the podcast. Make sure you get connected with Ron, check out his podcast and all the work that he is doing. It's linked down there for you in the show notes. And now it's time for a pep talk. Assume the best first. Someone is going to frustrate you. Maybe it's today. Maybe it already happened this week.

Someone misses a deadline. They forget something that you've talked about multiple times. They send an email that just hits you the wrong way. They walk past you in the hallway and they don't say hello. They make a decision that leaves you wondering, what in the world were they thinking? And almost immediately our brain starts writing the story. They don't care. They weren't listening. They don't respect me. They should know better.

The problem is we start responding to the story we created instead of the situation that actually happened. And leaders, we've got to be careful with that. Because the story you create in your head might be completely different from the story that person is actually living. Maybe there's something happening at home that you know nothing about. Maybe they misunderstood the expectation. Maybe they thought they had completed the task.

Maybe that email that you read with a certain tone was never written with that tone at all. You simply don't know yet. So assume the best first. And I want to be really clear about something. Assuming the best does not mean lowering expectations. It doesn't mean accepting poor performance. And it certainly doesn't mean avoiding accountability. It means getting curious before getting judgment.

Ask the question. Have the conversation. Find out what actually happened. There's a great connection here to my conversation with Ron today. We talked a lot about solving problems, but before you can solve a problem, you have to make sure you understand what the problem actually is. The same is true with people.

If you walk into a conversation having already decided what someone did, you probably aren't looking for the understanding anymore. You're looking for evidence that proves the story you had was right. That's not curiosity. And it's probably not going to lead to a very productive conversation. So this week, when someone frustrates you, and somebody probably will, catch yourself before you write that story. Get curious.

Ask the question. Listen to the answer. Assume the best first. You can always address the problem once you know what the problem really is. Hey, that's what I've got for you this week, folks. As always, thank you so much for joining me here on the Leaning Into Leadership podcast. Get out there and have a road to awesome week.