Joey: Well, I'm excited. I'm here with Darin and Jillian Dillon, owners of Majestic Builders. Thank you so much for coming in.

Jillian: Thanks for having us.

Darin: Thanks for having us.

Joey: My pleasure. My pleasure. So I've known you guys for, oh golly, it's going on 2 years, and I kind of know a little bit. I don't think I know the full story. I know a little bit of how you guys started Majestic Builders, but if you want to give me some backstory. How did Majestic Builders come about?

Darin: Well, I mean it all started when I was a little kid. Legos and bikes. I grew up just loving Legos, riding bikes, and building both. And then, it's just a fascination of mine from a young age. As soon as I graduate high school, I'm going into construction. So I did that day one, literally on graduation. The next day, I'm running a skill saw, building houses. I love that stuff. So that progress years and years later, the opportunity came along to work with my father-in-law. Met this lovely lady when was that? Like 14 years ago? p>Jillian: Yeah. The fun thing is you worked for my dad before we even met.

Darin: That's right. Yeah. I started working for my future father-in-law before we were even dating. I built a relationship and have been working with him ever since. Then we became partners. We became business partners in 2012 and formed Majestic Builders at that point. So, this amazing family partnership has progressed so far. As of the winter of this year, earlier this year in January, we were able to retire our partner from the company.

Joey: Oh, very nice. I'm sure he's happy.

Darin: Oh man. He's fishing all the time. He is. You can't slow him down. He's an active guy, but it's fun. I mean, I saw him yesterday and came over to the shop, and we were chatting. I've had lunch with the guy every day for 14 years. It's kind of weird not to see him after that. But so it's fun to watch our company progress from us being employees essentially, or myself, and then going into partnership and then now full-on ownership, and the sky's the limit at this point. We're pretty excited about where we're going.

Joey: You guys started. You're not from Redding originally. Right?

Darin: I'm from Santa Rosa originally.

Joey: Santa Rosa.

Darin: Bay area.

Jillian: I'm kind of from all over.

Darin: Mostly Idaho.

Jillian: I would say mostly from Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Yeah.

Joey: Really. So, did you guys, did you meet in Idaho or Santa Rosa, or you guys meet halfway?

Darin: We actually met in Redding. We were in school together. Well, we actually met at the Bethel School of Ministry.

Joey: Awesome.

Darin: We came to Redding for Bethel, and we met there in school.

Jillian: I was.

Darin: Did a couple years of that. Really For personal development.

Jillian: Yeah.

Darin: Because it was something that we both grew up with a lot of church in our background. And so it was kind of the logical next step to jump in and learn more.

Joey: As an outsider. The Bethel School of Ministry. So, being an outsider, I think Bethel School of Ministry. The term comes up, and I'm thinking, oh, people are going to Theology School.

Darin: Right.

Jillian: Right.

Joey: But I'm meeting all these entrepreneurs.

Jillian: Yeah.

Darin: Yeah.

Joey: And business owners that are like, "Yeah, I went to Bethel School of Ministry, and I'm starting a business," And I'm like clearly I don't have. My idea of the school and what it is are two different things. So, it's not possible.

Darin: It's not just.

Joey: Yeah.

Darin: It's not just people going to Africa or starting a church or something like that. I traded it for myself as personal development.

Jillian: Yeah.

 

Darin: I'm learning about my own faith and just more about that. And also I learned business principles. Some of the biggest foundations we've built our business on, I learned in that school from a businessman who was teaching there.

Jillian: Yep.

Darin: The whole concept of the three pillars of business are low price, high quality of finish, and great customer service. And you can only ever have two of those at one time. I learned that when I was in school at Bethel, and it just rang true. And so we've built our business on quality and service. We've never worried about being the lowest price. We're going to do the best job we can and provide the best experience while doing it, and therefore, that costs a little bit more. But our clients love it. They appreciate that. And it's shoot. It's a lot more fun to do business that way. Like we're proud of it. At the end of the day. They love the experience. So it's a real win-win.

Joey: And you weed out. I know that it's not, this isn't like 100%, but lots of times, the people who are fighting for the lowest price they can tend to be those customers who will never be happy. Like truly will never be happy.

Jillian: Yeah.

Darin: Yeah.

Joey: And so you're kind of just weeding out and saying, "Hey look, I don't want to be the lowest price if that's."

Darin: Right.

Joey: If you're fighting, I want to be the best quality. I want to be the Ferrari of construction.

Darin: You bet.

Joey: Insert the low end of the automobile here. I won't put any automobiles down because somebody's like, great. I own one of those. So, you guys met at Bethel School of Ministry.

Darin: Yes. p>Jillian: Yeah.

Joey: Was it for you personally? Is that why you went for personal development?

Jillian: Yeah. So a lot of people, when they hear that that's where we went, they think, "oh, you want to be a pastor."

Joey: Exactly.

Jillian: No, that's not why we went at all. I have always been into music on some level and grew up in that. In the church. And so, being on the worship team that is Darin and I did that together as well on the Sunday worship team at Bethel. I was 17 when I moved, so I graduated high school that June and went straight into the school. So it was a good transition for me, just right out instead of, we did that instead of going to college. So we did that for two years. And so I met Darin at 17, and it's pretty crazy. We've been together since. Really? It was.

Jillian: There was some getting to know each other there, but yeah, so I went just for personal development and getting to know myself better. For me, it was a really sweet transition growing up. Not out of my parent's house at that point, but just growing up and learning who I am outside of exclusively being a student. What am I excited about? Why am I here on the planet? What's my purpose? Just have that moment to find out who I am.

Joey: That's funny because I grew up under. I think a lot of us did that. What do you want to be when you grow up you're asking 17, 18, 19. That's so the wrong question. It's so the wrong question, and then I think we're seeing a backlash of that where people chose something at 18, 19, 20. And it's committed them to this path, and they're like, I don't want to do this. Yeah. I thought for a while that the question was the wrong question. The questions, I don't even know, I'm not going to say I know what the right question is, but the questions that make more sense are like, what kind of life do you want? What kind of lifestyle do you want? Where do you want to live? Are you someone who wants to be surrounded, like I want to be in the city? The city's alive. When people talk about New York, the city's alive, I cringe. Yeah. Live with germs. Ugh.

Joey: I dream of being in Trinidad and redwood trees all around me. So, well then, don't pick a job that puts you in Manhattan marketing. So I like that. Did your parents have a connection with Bethel? Did you just pull it out of a website? How'd you go?

Jillian: So, crazy enough, we actually all, because the school isn't age-specific other than being, I think you have to be 16. But my parents and I, all went to the first year together. So it was pretty crazy. The three of us were there. We sold our home in Oregon. That's where I graduated high school. And we all went to our first year together. So it was a really interesting experience and bonding on the same level because we had the same language. It was pretty cool. They didn't go to the second year. Darin and I continued and did the second year, so we graduated the second year, got married that September and this will be 12 years together.

Joey: Congratulations.

Jillian: Thanks.

Joey: Congratulations. So you moved from Santa Rosa to Redding. And that's when you meet her father. And start working for her dad.

Darin: Yep. Correct.

Joey: Did you meet her dad through the Bethel School of Ministry? That was the connection. So Bethel brought you here.

Darin: Pretty much, yeah.

Joey: Did your family have, like hers, a connection with Bethel? Or how did you choose?

Darin: They do now. They followed us here. My sister and I attended school together; my older sister and then the rest of my family ended up coming up and they all live here now.

Joey: That's awesome. And I've met several of them. We'll get to.

Darin: You've met most of them.

Joey: You guys brought me into Personal Mastery. So I want to just talk about that later, but it feels like maybe Personal Mastery has similarities or there are certain concepts that you'd say are similar because you're using similar words to what they talk about.

Jillian: For sure. I would say that's my experience. Everyone goes through different reasons. Everyone goes to college for a little bit of a different reason. So, for me, that's what I went through just to discover myself more, and maybe it's also because I went to Personal Mastery and have really committed myself to personal development that I use that language. Other people might have just said, I want to be in ministry, and I want to do something different, and I want to be with a church that's on the cutting edge. So there are a lot of different reasons, but that was mine. It was just not so much to go into ministry. It's an easy transition for people if they love it and they want to stick around at Bethel, there are potential opportunities to work there. And I did for a couple of years.

Joey: Bethel music is huge. I mean, we're talking worldwide.

Jillian: Yeah. Right. And we were there right before that started to really take off. We're the old ones.

Joey: Old school.

Jillian: In that sense. Yeah. I think we were class eight, and it has to be like what, almost 20 now?

Darin: 20 plus. Yeah.

Jillian: Yeah.

Joey: Good. Yeah. They've grown. I don't know when I clearly wasn't aware of Bethel.

Darin: Oh really?

Joey: Until just in the last few years. And there are several businesses around here that have popped up. We're going to have Jake Horn today from Taste and See Ice Cream.

Darin: Oh, cool.

Joey: Soon. And his background is, he went to, I think, Bethel School of Ministry and I met him and there's been several like that. They're like, yeah, we came here for a school of ministry and now we opened up a business, and we're staying. Like I said, that was one of those things I was like I didn't get the connection, so I wasn't really paying attention to it. But it's definitely gotten big in the last few years. So you come up here, and you start working on construction with your soon-to-be father-in-law. And he's obviously a general contractor and where did you guys start off doing homes or remodels?

Darin: We were doing a lot of remodel work. Some new custom homes at that point. There were a lot of spec homes we were building.

Joey: What year was that.

Darin: Really from the ground up? It was in 2006.

Joey: Oh wow.

Darin: That we were doing, that.

Joey: The market was booming.

Darin: So it was blowing up.

Joey: Get ready.

Darin: I had a few.

Jillian: Things were about to change.

Darin: I had a few years of experience down in the Bay Area building spec homes before that, before moving up here. So, a lot of knowledge is just around the whole home building process from day one.

Joey: But you guys transitioned though because I know you guys do Alumawood. You guys just did an awesome project at our house.

Darin: Thank you very much.

Joey: Thank you very much. I was telling Brandon that we absolutely use the backyard now. Before, we just really didn't.

Darin: Really?

Joey: And now, well, I mean, what is it, 45 feet by 20 feet covered?

Darin: That's massive.

Joey: It's fully covered. Oh, it is massive. It would almost double the size of our house.

Darin: It's a huge living room, really.

Joey: Yeah, it is.

Darin: If you like the outdoors.

Joey: And it's a gateway to the swimming pool now versus there was broken cobble and rock and dirt and stuff like that. And now it's all nice. But anyway, so you were doing Spec Homes. But now, I know you do a few things, but Alumawood is one of the big ones. You guys.

Darin: Yeah, we've really specialized in that, kind of taken over that niche market here in town. Redding really needs a lot of shade.

Joey: It does.

Darin: A lot of people that move here. Like low-maintenance things, too. A lot of people are retiring here. Redding is an awesome place to live. That's why we stayed here. It was, moving here, I was assuming, well, I'd stay there for a little bit and then go somewhere else in the world. But I fell in love with this place. This place is amazing. Especially loving the outdoors. There's so much to do here. With that, the outdoors is amazing. When it's 95 degrees outside, it's dry. If you have shade and some moving air, it's amazing, so that's where it is. Jumping into the Alumawood patio cover building was such an easy niche for us to take over because everybody needs shade. And none of the houses around here are built with much shade. I shouldn't say none, but most of the houses don't have much built-in outdoor area.

Joey: It's not in Coeur d'alene. It's not like in Texas, where everybody has those huge covered porches. You know what I mean? One of the things I loved about when I'd go visit my family in San Antonio was that everywhere you go, they have those huge covered porches. The downside is that when it's that hot the breeze doesn't help.

Darin: The mugginess.

Joey: It's a blow dryer in your face.

Darin: Yeah.

Joey: But no, here it's different. It's, you get shade.

Darin: 90 to 100 degrees in the shade with a fan going is amazing. And we have so much fresh air especially this year with no fires.

Joey: I know. Don't knock on the table. It's a suburb. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Darin: But it's so nice outside and year-round, having a place to go, our winters here are so mild. We can hang out outside.

Joey: We don't have winter. We have fall, spring, and winter lasts about a week and a half.

Jillian: Yeah.

Joey: This last winter we had a winter. But that was unusual.

Darin: For like nine days?

Joey: Yeah.

Joey: Yeah. I grew up in Alaska, so that's why. We had the opposite saying in Alaska, we have all four seasons, winter, June, July, and August. So coming from now, I'm like, this is not winter. And coming from Coeur d'Alene.

Jillian: Yeah.

Darin: Yeah.

Joey: This is not winter.

Jillian: No it's not, it's so hot.

Joey: Maybe Santa Rosa coming from Santa Rosa might be winter, but not in Coeur d'Alene.

Darin: It may be five degrees different from Santa Rosa winter. But it was, just being outside all year round, having rain protection, being able to go out there and enjoy your backyard is huge. So that's where, with Alumawood, the biggest benefit is that it's low maintenance because we can build anything. We can take the existing roof line of your house and build it out. That costs a lot more. And then you got all those materials that have to be maintained like wood roofing, a lot of other materials you got. Here in Redding, you need to repaint your house every five years just to keep away the dry rot, because the sun bakes it so much.

Jillian: It's true.

Darin: So with Alumawood, they come with a lifetime paint or "Lifetime paint finish" on it with Teflon in the paint. So it sheds dirt. It's really easy to maintain because all you gotta do is rinse the thing off if it gets dirty never have to repaint. So that's why it's just a no-brainer product for Redding because our sun here, we must be closer to the sun or something. Because everything in your house just gets baked and destroyed in a few years.

Joey: People from Southern California, central California that aren't familiar with Redding, when they're like, Northern California, know they're thinking of Trinidad, they're thinking of Eureka. They're not thinking about Mount Shasta. They're not thinking like, no, it's like 110 degrees. Like what? So yeah, this place is pretty brutal. So why did you transition? Did you just see like, hey, this is selling really easy, or I have a feeling, or you did research, like how did you, was it reactive? Because you're doing spec homes? Is it just like, hey, the market turned on us?

Darin: Yeah.

Joey: Nobody wants a spec home.

Darin: Well there was, so the kind of chronology of that, the way that came into effect was, we were building homes doing all these cool brand new projects and then the market kind of went down as everybody knows. And during those six or seven years where we were kind of going down and bouncing back, we just did everything. We would, we did drywall patch, we did roofing, we did whatever would come our way.

Joey: By any means necessary.

Darin: Yep. We survived. We made it through, we were working continuously through the recession. We never, I think had one week during that whole six or seven-year period that I would call that timeline. And I'm sure somebody would classify it a little more specifically, but for us, it was a slower period of six or seven years doing just any remodels that would come our way. We were helping people flip houses that would buy it and do it themself. But they didn't have the construction skills to do it. So I painted houses, we did window replacements.

Joey: Oh great. I have some work for you.

Darin: Awesome.

Joey: Fantastic. I had no idea.

Darin: Well cool. I have nothing going on this weekend, so I'll be right there.

Joey: Fantastic, but you guys are partners in Majestic Builders, correct?

Darin: Correct.

Joey: So what you, are you running the show?

Jillian: Yes, it's all me.

Joey: It's all you.

Jillian: It's just me. No. So I came into it. So my dad's company before Majestic Builders was called Bezalel Builders which is a mouthful.

Joey: Just rolls off the tongue.

Jillian: Totally. I came in and I came in and helped him with books because he just didn't have any office support. And so I came in to help, which was great. It was just a win for us. And then we realized he just didn't want to do it himself because he was incorporated. And so we decided to join forces and became a partnership between the three of us. And so since then I've run the books and did well, did everything. Paperwork you could think of. And so since.

Joey: So you're the person who sent me the invoice?

Jillian: Well, I should say it this way. I do run all of our QuickBooks. I am the CFO in that sense and we've also specifically our estimators and project managers are also included in that. I just also happen to do all the legal stuff, the tax stuff, all of the employee things. So yeah, I take on that kind of support and it's, we're a great team.

Joey: Oh, absolutely. So you said that you went to Bethel School of Ministry and you were interested in personal development? Like are you still pursuing that?

Jillian: Absolutely.

Joey: Or, and how just.

Jillian: Something I shared on a Facebook Live a couple of weeks ago that was kind of fun. I didn't think about it in this sense, but I have been committed to personal development for years now. I started discovering books about how I could change my mindset I could increase my capacity or just even prove the way that I think about things. Since then, it has just been an addictive point of this is just a part of my everyday life. So for me, the way I take the stairs is I have an audiobook or podcast in my car playing 24/7. I'm in the car, it's 15 minutes to work. I just got in a chunk, same on the way home. I read paperbacks, but then I do so much audio because I love to multitask and it's just a place where I get to recentre before I hop to the next appointment or into work or whatever. Staying in that, that's just how I really keep myself sharp in the day-to-day.

Jillian: Just like we would physically exercise. I like to exercise my mind. So I journal, and I stay in reading the Bible in the mornings. That'll be fun, we'll have to talk about our morning routine but just how we stay connected. Then for me, it got to take on a whole other level when we realized that there were weekend retreats where you could do the same thing but with a ton of results in a really short amount of time. After Darin dragged me to the first one, then I started dragging him to all the others. It took me a minute to get out of my comfort zone because I'm an introvert and don't like things to be uncomfortable or not be in control on some level.

Darin: You know how much that resonated with me?

Jillian: Yeah, I understand. And we started taking some other classes, and that just exploded our growth, and that's what I call taking the elevator.

Joey: So when you say it exploded your growth, do you mean personally or do you mean business-wise? Or do you mean both?

Jillian: Yes, all of it.

Joey: All of the above?

Jillian: All of it.

Joey: Can you give examples?

Jillian: Of course. Everything in our business comes from how we benefit ourselves. So the business is an outlet of who we are and how we take care of ourselves. So if I don't take care of myself first, there is no business. For me, it was just a matter of realizing that I have so much to offer. I didn't realize how much I was selling myself short. I didn't realize that keeping myself inside locked away totally introverted in the thought that it would keep me safe was also slowly a decay pattern. I just wasn't sharpening myself and offering what I've got to those around me. And these classes have just helped me discover myself and kind of come out of that cocoon and realize that as a butterfly I have so much more to offer. I have something to contribute, I have something to give back to the world. And it's been a space where I get to really get excited about things. I used to dream about thinking, "Oh man, that's like 20 years down the road. Yeah, maybe. Sure. One day if someone thinks that of me or if someone says I'm worthy." And shrinking that timeline down to. In five months, I launched the thing that I actually feel like I'm on the planet to be here for. So from 20 years to five months, I would say that's a short amount of time.

Joey: That's a pretty good game.

Jillian: Yeah.

Joey: That's a pretty good game. Do you want to talk about that at all?

Jillian: Sure.

Joey: Do you want to go on? I want to hear it.

Jillian: The class that we went to is called Personal Mastery. And to fast forward to the very end, I ended up hiring a coach, which Oh my gosh, was probably one of the best choices I ever made. Just having that personal accountability and encouragement where I get to check in on myself, she's there to hold me accountable for the things that I said I want for myself. It's time for me. And in doing that, she just asked hard questions like, "Why do you want to be a coach and why are you not?" And we got to dig into that. I got to dig into that, do some homework around it, and realize that I've been disqualifying myself in my entire life. I don't have what it takes, someone doesn't want that from me.

Jillian: Why would someone want to work with me? Just that whole monologue and going, wow, this is so destructive. What if I flipped it? And what if I said, why not me? What do I have to offer? And take that grit on of, "Yeah, I do have something to offer and why not try? And if this isn't for me, I'll move on, I will try something else" In doing that, like I said, the first five months of her and I coaching together, I went from sure, maybe five, 10, 20 years from now I'll do that when I have enough qualification to having my first. I hired my first person, I should say my client hired me. I felt lucky so I was really excited. And they hired me five months in and I haven't stopped, coaching is absolutely the thing I'm here to do. I love watching people make their own revelations and their discoveries. It's just the thing that, oh, it's just wonderful. I absolutely love watching people discover their greatness for themselves. Getting to encourage them, getting to be that accountability person, and getting to call that out in them when they're struggling, it's just so exciting. My niche is the things that I get fired up about are business, communication, and then growth coaching. Those are the things that I just like, let's dig in, let's do this.

Joey: How do your clients find you or how do you find your clients? How's that connection made?

Jillian: Right now a lot of it. I'm going to own it, it's because I'm picky. I have a niche and so a lot of it is word of mouth right now. There's an interview process and they can find me online. My website is jdillon.co or jilliandillon.co. And then on Facebook as well, I'm there as well, and Instagram. So I'm on the socials, you can find me there. And if you're interested, there's a place there where we can basically submit an application as to why you want to work with me, what you feel like coaching is going to do for you, and what you want to see happen. And then we get to talk a bit and see if we're the right fit. And if not, I've got a whole bundle of resources on people that I can send your way, that might be a better fit depending on what your goals are.

Joey: It's funny with terms like personal development and coaching. I'm normal or I was and there was a stigma around that for me.

Jillian: Totally.

Joey: I know that I was like whatever. And then a few years ago I just started noticing a pattern between successful people. It's just like there are several patterns in people's demise in stories of demise, usually drugs, alcohol, and personal issues, you see patterns. Likewise, there are a bunch of patterns in success. And so it's like having, it's so funny because there's that stigma, yet we celebrate people like Muhammad Ali or Tom Brady, or Michael Jordan.

Darin: Yep.

Joey: And who did they have? They had coaches, they had strength coaches, business coaches. Personal coaches, team coaches.

Darin: Finance coaches.

Joey: Exactly. For some reason, we all glorify these people, and yet completely dismiss the entire infrastructure they have behind them that has helped propel them along with their own personal accountability, and personal responsibility. So I don't know why that stigma exists, and I don't understand because it shouldn't considering how much we glorify athletes.

Jillian: I wonder if it has to do anything. Just off the top of my head, I wonder if because in sports it's expected there isn't a different way to do it. Of course, every team has a coach. I wonder if it's just accepted because that's how we do things. Whereas in life, who are you to be entitled enough to hire? Who do you think you are? And it's like, oh. But if we realize and remember that we don't get where we are on our own, not without a lot of strife. I mean, you can, but how much fun are you having if you just do it yourself? But what happens if you have a team and a support system and someone to believe in you and someone to encourage you and say, "Hey, you're doing great. What if you shift this over here? It might. Maybe, maybe just maybe it's a little bit more fun or easy." Or, "Hey, I know you got a lot more in you. Why are you discounting yourself? Come on, play a bigger game. You got this. I know you do."

Jillian: How much more exciting is that? And so, yes, I fully believe I have multiple coaches in my life because I'm worth that. And so are the people around me. They are worth the greatness that I have to offer. So I take it pretty seriously and love the support, the connection, and how we get to network and grow together versus just growing solo. It's more fun to be in the garden than just one plant by itself struggling with all it's got.

Joey: I think about several years ago, I also heard, so the coaches they need you right, there's probably this connection and it might be because they're in this physical realm. And so everyone's thinking the emotional, mental realm over here in the physical realm over here and not thinking like they're all connected, really. And they feed off each other. If you're healthy, you're physically, your mind's better off versus. As we said, we see the clear demise path of drugs and alcohol. Right? So that's physical and yet it plays over here. A few years ago, we started hearing about high-performing athletes using sports psychologists or sports therapists. And you're like, "What?" And I remember hearing Tony Robbins talk about being called in when people were having meltdowns. Or people were like they were on the edge of something big like a major golf tournament or something like that. And their team going, "Hey, we'd like you to come talk to so-and-so because they're not in the right mindset."

Joey: And I started hearing that and started piecing it together. I hired a business coach a little over a year ago and saw a huge spike. So we went through this period where he was my coach for a little bit, and I'm like, "Okay, I think I've got it now." A few months went by and one of my buddies whom we walked in the morning, we do stuff, Eddie said, "You were different when you were with that coach." And I was like, "What?' And he was like, "You were at your highest, there was something about the reinforcement, the psychological reinforcement." And so I know that I still have a little stigma, even though like, wait a second, you got a success and you still have a stigma it's like, that program was put there a long time ago and it's been running a very long time.

Jillian: Yeah.

Joey: So you're not just going to get rid of it because you're like, "Oh, it's a bad program." It's going to take a little while to reprogram it or get a program that can go over it. And you guys have talked about something. We talked about how you have this philosophy of how your success goes with the success of the people around you. And how you'll have an impact on your community. Could you guys kind of go into that? Because I really like that a lot. So if you wouldn't mind.

Darin: We love Redding. We love business. We love working with people. That's really what we do on a day-to-day basis work with people. As majestic builders, we're physically building things for people. But the biggest part of that is working in relationship with our clients and our team. Impacting the community is a big part of what we do. Just one client at a time, one teammate at a time. One of the big things that we work hard on is making sure that we are leaving a positive impact everywhere that we go. Whether it's fixing something, repairing something at someone's house, building something new, or even just referring someone, say someone calls in and we don't provide the service they need. We're committed to win-win situations. So if they call in asking us for help, and it's not something we do we've made a point to ally ourselves with a bunch of other service people who do provide those services so we can, "Hey, you need a great plumber". "Cool, I got one, here's his phone number. I can't help you with that today, but I know someone who can. Here you go. Now you're equipped." You get to win. Yeah, sure, it's not what we do, I could just say, "No, we don't do that. Good luck. See you later." But, "Here you go. Here's a contribution for you."

Jillian: You love just being a resource.

Joey: Yeah.

Jillian: It's just like if you can call one phone number, why not? And so we do that in personal life, we do that in professional just, "Hey, we love networking with people. This is about win-win." And for us, rising tides lift all boats. And so we do that with our team too. If we're winning, they're going to win.

Joey: Did you guys play sports growing up?

Darin: A little bit.

Joey: Yeah. How's that? Because I liked what you said and I came to personal, you guys invited me to the personal mastery I went to, I loved it. But I think I'm new to this. So I think about that. Like, where's the competition line? Like, do you even, think competition doesn't really exist? You said, "You know what, I don't even think about competition."

Darin: No. It's fiercer than ever. And yet we have this belief that as we go through this, everybody gets to win. So as a business to stay in business we need to make a profit. It doesn't have to be massive, but it needs to be something. If the client needs something, our goal with our clients is to give them more value than they paid for. So we're promising them, "Here's what you're going to get, and then we do our best to go above and beyond that so they get more than what they bargain for. And our team, as they grow and progress in our company, need to be compensated accordingly and quality goes up. One of the most exciting things we're doing right now is working in our company, working with our team. As workers join our team we go through a whole process of, they actually do a lot of personal development. There are books that they get to read, construction workers, right?

Darin: Do they even read as a stigma? Yes, we do. So we have a whole training period that people go through to learn, there's a lot of trades that take years and years to learn as a general contractor so they're not going to have that overnight. And yet what we're looking for when we hire people is the character to be teachable, to actually jump in and say, "Yes, I'm going to do this, yes, I'm going to finish it." One of the core values of our company is we're going to finish what we start. We're going to show up early. We're going to do the best we possibly can every single time. When we're looking for people to join our team, we're always looking for people with grit, a fire in their belly like, "I want to be the best I can be, more than I have every skill on the planet. Look at me, I can do plumbing, electrical, drywall, roofing, framing." You name it. Well, that's great, but are you going to show up to work on time?

Jillian: Be a team player yeah.

Darin: Are you going to be a team player? Are you a lone wolf and you're going to go off and do your own thing when the going gets rough? That won't work with us, we're a team. I admire the military a lot, I didn't get to go myself due to some physical restraints, but one of my favorite inspirational things to do is read Navy SEAL books. I love the Navy SEALs. So in my mind, I'm like, "How can we build a band of brothers, a SEAL team as a company? So that's what we're constantly working on. It's how can we come together as a team?

Joey: Where did that come from? Where did that start? Was it the Bethel School Ministry, was it a book you read, was it, "No, this is my father and parents." Where did this come from?

Darin: No, I think just inspirations throughout life. I've always loved reading biographies and learning about successful people, plus I want to go places. I want to do things. As a person, I want to impact the world, I want to get out there and do everything I've dreamed of doing even from a young age. That's where I'm going. I want to do the big stuff. In music, when I was a kid we grew up doing a ton of music in our family and I joined a youth symphony that was scheduled to go to Carnegie Hall because that's where we wanted to go. I joined them we went to Carnegie Hall, played to a sold-out audience, and got standing ovations, amazing experiences like that. That's what I'm going for in life. I want to do that sort of stuff. I want to do the big things. In order to do that, I've gotta build character and build a structure of people around me that will support that. The fun in that is not just about doing it myself but bringing a team of people along and making an impact. Redding is amazing, I love making an impact here. It's not just about the whole world, it's like, "Hey, what if we can build a foundation in town to affect here, make positive change here?" And along those lines, a lot of people are focusing so much on all the negative things that are happening. And I believe what we focus on is what we create.

Jillian: Absolutely.

Joey: Is that the law of attraction? Or that's what you focus on?

Darin: It's probably like 17,000 books that are written about that.

Jillian: It's true.

Darin: I've read about 14 of them and that resonates with me. I believe that what we focus on is what we create. It's not like we're turning a blind eye to homelessness or turning a blind eye to anything bad that's happening or shootings or whatever, but I'm choosing to focus on, here's an amazing opportunity. Here are some things that are happening here that are going to grow our city. I don't know what the solution to the homeless problem is here, or the drug problem or any of that stuff, I'm not sure, but I sure would like to help find out. I sure would like to as we have a successful company and end up. The goal of having a successful company is to, of course, create some revenue. The goal of having that revenue can be a million things. For us, one of the big impacts we want to have is to help solve these problems. There are people out there with a passion for solving that problem. Well, that's not necessarily where the. I'm not necessarily going to jump in and do the nuts and bolts of solving that particular problem, but maybe down the road, I could help fund that. Maybe my contribution can be helping them out, and supporting people along the way as they're getting into their dreams.

Joey: Sounds like you're both into personal development. The Majestic Builders is just the vessel, it's incidental. It just happens to be the vessel that you guys chose.

Darin: Yeah.

Joey: And you're having an impact not only in your own lives but the people that work with you and as well as the customers. And people that don't know you might watch this and say like, oh, that sounds great. That sounds like exactly what you're supposed to say when you're on camera. But knowing you guys, I see you guys, I see your actions, your actions came, for me, I saw your actions before I heard your words. I saw you guys having an impact and doing things like that. And when we went to Personal Mastery, I noticed how many people there were like, oh, yeah, I work at Majestic Builders. I was like, whoa.

Joey: You know what I mean? It was real. I knew all you guys were going to win together. My thing was where the lines are of competition? And I'm still. Do you want to jump on that one?

Jillian: I totally do. So I would love to circle back on the win-win. For us, while competition can be a way to approach things, for us, it's more about the niche. And so we've gotten really super specific on our niche, which we've talked about is we don't, we aren't the lowest price. So we're going to go after these core values. And if that aligns with you and what you want on your project, perfect. We're a great fit. If not, there are other people out there that could absolutely meet your needs. So for us, that win-win is the fact that if we can niche ourselves out, then that creates other work for other people. We aren't trying to be the answer to everyone. We don't accept every job that comes our way because we're not the right fit. So for us, it's rather than like, we need to be better than everyone else. It's, we need to be the best we are at what we do so that we serve our lifers, our people, and our clients, the best we can. Because for me, it's 1000% not about that one and only sale.

Jillian: It's, are we going to be the right fit so that when we're done with your patio cover, you want to trust us to come back and prepare your bathroom and to give you a kitchen facelift and to then work in your mom's house? Like we're retaining clients because we are all about relationships. So it's not just about that one sale and move on. It's, you're not a number, you're a name, you're an address. We are. Our director of first impressions is in love with your particular kid. She's like, I know his face. And I'm so excited. Oh my gosh.

Joey: Are you not Rebecca?

Jillian: Yes.

Joey: Oh, okay. I was like, you mean me, literally.

Jillian: Yes. You. Like, we know people, we know families, and that's. Maybe that's what makes us different, but regardless, it's what makes us, us. And so for me the win-win comes in the fact that if we can own our niche, and I get to say that for me personally too, if I can own my niche, then I can host and I can have my dream clients, which makes. I have enough time for them because I'm not trying to rescue and save everyone and meet everyone's needs that are outside of what I'm really here for. So that's, at least that's my approach to how we tackle that because there are other patio cover companies in town. And if we're not the right fit, we're going to refer you to them. Why would we?

Joey: Really?

Jillian: Of course.

Darin: Can I jump in with that too? So one of the biggest inspirations for me as a person is networking with other contractors who do exactly the same things that we do, learning from them because we are of the mindset and I am of the mindset that there is plenty for everyone.

Jillian: Absolutely.

Darin: There's, I mean, I know, especially for the next few years here in town, there's been a lot of things that have boosted the amount of work from some natural disasters, fire, snow, hail.

Joey: Plus just growth. Redding is so poised for growth.

Jillian: Oh, absolutely.

Joey: People from Redding talk about moving to Idaho, but people from the Bay Area and Los Angeles and San Diego do not talk about moving to Idaho. They talk about moving to Northern California.

Jillian: Absolutely.

Darin: Correct.

Joey: So Redding is poised for major expansion.

Jillian: So much potential.

Darin: Companies are moving here. There's. This can be the next miniature Silicon Valley with everything that's going on with all of the.

Jillian: We have of have a startup culture here. It's crazy.

Darin: Yeah. There is a culture of startups in Redding and why aren't we talking about that?

Joey: And plugging other people that have come on and projects that I like is Adam McElvain is really pushing for the super high-speed internet downtown. I know that the average person is like, I don't even know what you're talking about. I have high speed. I watch YouTube at home. So I don't know what you're talking about. It's like, No, we're talking about next-level high speed where you attract companies. Attract companies that pay engineers, that make a very good wage that then spend their money in the economy.

Jillian: Incredible.

Joey: It's the spark, right? It's like why is the Silicon, why did the Silicon Valley just. It's the same concept. So anyway, sorry. So had to plug his project. I love that project.

Jillian: I love it. Oh, I love it. I love it.

Darin: That's awesome.

Joey: That and the solar project. Those are two of my big ones. Anyway, please, sir.

Darin: I can get on board with that.

Jillian: It's so great.

Darin: So with that comes a philosophy that we've developed of, there's plenty for everyone. I love networking with my close competitors because of that because there's so much work to be done here. Redding is rebuilding and then we're building for the future. So there's so much to be done and there are lots of people here to do it. And a handful of those are excellent. A handful of the companies in town, I'd like to say ours is as well. I think we're excellent. I think we're one of the top companies here. We're definitely working on it, and in the future, we aim to be in the top five construction companies in Redding. And not in production, but in quality, and in service, and.

Jillian: Well, we did get voted best in North State last year, so.

Darin: 2018, best of the North State.

Joey: Oh, and your reviews are off the chart. Fantastic.

Darin: Yeah. And thank you to all our clients for those reviews.

Jillian: Absolutely.

Darin: Because that's the next level of word of mouth that gets us growing. It gives us momentum in the community. So with that, I would love to meet with our competitors and ask what's a good referral for you? What, how can I support your business with clients that are almost a perfect fit for us? For instance, if we have, if we're scheduling some projects a little farther out than one client needs like they need something right away, and I've been talking with my friend who does the exact same thing that we do, and I know that their schedule is more open than ours, I can say, Hey, I trust this person to do your job. They'll serve you better. And think of us in the future if you need something else. Therefore. I mean, building rapport with our competition is a huge part of what we do.

Jillian: Why not have allies instead of enemies? Why not?

Darin: I'd love to, I'd love to meet with every one of our competitors and see how, like, see exactly what they want. Because each of us. Well, a lot of times construction companies dilute what we do. We do everything because we can. As a general contractor, we can build anything, but what's our favorite? And so as we focus more on our favorite thing to do and we have four or five of those, check out our website, we'll tell you all about it.

Darin: As we focus on those, then the overflow of things that are not in our favorite things to do, gets to go to other people who that's their favorite thing to do. So that's where the competition can be win-win. As sports teams, each contractor out there is their own sports team, right? And we're all fighting for. To win on the football field, essentially. Well, we're all in our own different football field and we can, I don't know how that analogy works, we'll work on that one. We'll come back next time with a better sports analogy for you.

Jillian: We don't do sports.

Joey: I have a question along those lines.

Darin: I'm way too addicted to watch sports, so we'll forget that one.

Jillian: We just watched Motorsports.

Darin: Yeah.

Joey: Oh, we'll have to come back to that one.

Darin: Oh, yeah.

Joey: Because I want to touch upon something here.

Darin: Okay.

Jillian: Sure.

Joey: Because this is turning away from an AllRedding episode and turning into a Darin coaching Joey.

Darin: Yes.

Joey: Opportunity here. Do you ever have a conflict where you're like, man, I wanted to work with that competitor?

Darin: Yeah.

Joey: And clearly they're not. They're red move. Like, say, Lavie, it looks like I won't. Once somebody lets you know, like, "Hey, I can't play in your sandbox." Do you just go, "Okay, don't invite Billy to play?"

Darin: That's a really good question. There's a lot of pieces to that. It'd be fun to unpack all those pieces in general.

Jillian: Take it back to the code of ethics.

Darin: Which part?

Jillian: Well, so part of what we've done as a company, we're having so much fun this year. Seriously, the infrastructure is lighting us up. We have written a code of ethics around not burning bridges.

Darin: Oh yeah.

Jillian: We have written a code of ethics for our team that when they get initiated into the team, not anything weird, but we read this together, of.

Darin: We have a swearing-in of a new employee with our code of ethics.

Jillian: These I am statements. And one of them talks about the fact that we uphold relationships and we don't burn bridges. So even though someone else may choose where it's not a win-win situation.

Darin: They may offend us or do something that is against us, or attack us or something like that.

Jillian: It doesn't work for me to not remain me because my core values are what I'm worth, my conscience, and who I am, and my core is worth keeping intact. So, if I respond in kind, that lowers my energy to where they are. And I have no idea. It's all in what I'm choosing to make that situation mean. They may have done it for a totally ethical purpose because they had a family emergency and they needed to do something else. And I took that and made it mean it was a personal attack on me and had nothing to do with me. But if I choose an emotional reaction outside of really coming together around that situation and relationship, I'm already at and against them versus, "Hey, what's going on? That was super weird and not totally in your character. What's up with that? Are we okay? What's going on?"

Darin: That goes along with our core value of giving people the benefit of the doubt.

Jillian: Absolutely.

Darin: We're going to, as a company and as a family, as a team, one of our core values is we're going to assume that someone's doing something with our best interest in mind. I know that's not realistic. A lot of people are out there to get us, for sure. But moving forward, that's how we're going to stay positive. That's how we're going to continue our forward momentum by giving people the benefit of the doubt. And then eventually, I mean, we're playing a long game here. We're not going to win every client. We're not going to be profitable on every job. Some, like, we just finished one job that had a. There was some miscommunication in it. And rather than burning that bridge with the customer and saying, "Well, too bad. That's not how we understood it."

Darin: We actually went in there, and we lost a little money on that job because we went and made it how they wanted it to be. Even though taking on the responsibility saying, we could have communicated better here and we could have done that better. And so because of that, yes, we'll lose a little bit of money on this job, but we're playing the long game here because then. Because we did that, now you trust us. Now, we've earned respect and trust. And in the future, maybe we'll get to do a room edition on their house, maybe because of that relationship, because we've proven ourselves trustworthy and care more about their finished product than just making a dollar on this job. We do need to make money to stay in business, and yet, we can. Five years from now that'll pay off. This is our bet.

Joey: Okay. So I'm going to ask some.

Jillian: Go for it.

Joey: Possibly tough questions. Okay. If an English Sparrow leaves Chicago. No.

Joey: Sorry. So what I'm thinking is, do you have to find yourself, and maybe this is what Jillian was speaking at the beginning about, like you, it's like the daily practice of keeping your mind in that space. Like, do you find yourself in those lows where you're like, "Oh, you're coming. Hold on, back it up?"

Jillian: Absolutely.

Darin: We're human. Come on, man.

Joey: Okay, good. Because you.

Jillian: Totally.

Joey: I was like.

Darin: There's a lot of.

Joey: I feel really bad about myself here Like, that's funny because I pretty much don't give anybody the benefit of the doubt. Like, "Oh, you cut me off on purpose." So I'm like, "No"

Darin: It's not that we're saints or anything. I mean, seriously, it's, we have the same red blood as everyone else out there, and it's a practice. Absolutely.

Jillian: So, in the fact that it's a practice, I have to share this because it's one of my favorite things because I. So, I love driving. I love driving my car. My car is one of my favorite places to be. It's, oh my gosh. I get out into the garage, and I'm like, "Oh, oh, it's so beautiful."

Jillian: I drive a Subaru WRX STI, so I love my car. I do not love when other people don't drive according to the rules of the road. Especially when they're going much, much, much too slow or take too long, in my opinion, it takes too long to make the right turn. And all this stuff.

Joey: Or, they're texting and.

Jillian: Oh gosh, oh.

Joey: Yeah.

Jillian: That's just the worst. But at this moment, so rather than getting really fired up about this and getting irritated, I realized it was changing my energy, just like my state of mind. And I was letting it become an issue. And I thought, man, this is kind of ridiculous.

Jillian: And so if I stay in that space and then walk into work irritated from this person that for whatever reason, they flipped me off as I just got on the freeway. Like, maybe they just hate my car. I didn't do it. This is weird. So as that happened, I could either take that offense and that totally negative energy and take that into the office, and therefore let that kind of leak out on my whole office and my team, not knowing why it happened or not even aware that I got irritated by that. Now I'm listening to music, and I'm driving to work. Now I'm, why am I going to, oh, why am I irritated? So instead, I have learned, for instance, when people drive too slow. That's my biggest thing. I obey the law, but they're, come on, drive the speed limit.

Jillian: So that's my irritation in that when people are driving too slow or going around corners slowly because they are in my car, which can do that at speed. I have. I've previously gotten irritated like, why are you, ugh. What is going on? And now, rather than shifting into that energy, I know this is hilarious, but it's what works for me. I just think of a wedding cake or a bowl of soup. I'm like, okay, in their car.

Joey: Okay.

Jillian: In their car.

Joey: Oh.

Jillian: What if they're driving with a wedding cake in the back of their car? Of course, they have to drive that slow. That makes total sense. And it totally takes me out of this like vengeful irritation and into compassion. So I suddenly became a book that we absolutely love. I came out of the box toward that person because I assumed, rather than assuming that it was about me at all, which it totally wasn't, I am assuming favor toward them. Like, oh, maybe they just have a grandma in the back with a bowl of soup on her lap. Yep. It's going to make sense that they went that slow and it totally takes me out of irritation and frustration and anger and into compassion and letting it not mean anything anymore.

Darin: In business. That's huge because then we can see from the other person's perspective.

Jillian: Yep.

Darin: And give them leagues better levels of service because of that.

Jillian: Because it probably wasn't about us in the first place.

Joey: Sounds like grace.

Jillian: Yeah.

Darin: In a nutshell. Yeah.

Joey: That's what it sounds like.

Darin: Yeah. And that's, what's fun is we're in a constant experiment of whether can this work in day-to-day life.

Jillian: Yeah.

Darin: And so far so good. So far, yes. And there's ups and downs. We're human. We feel everything that everybody else feels and see that when I make a disciplined choice to do something uncomfortable that is good in the long run, it pays off.

Joey: Well that sounds like responsibility.

Darin: I know that sucks.

Joey: We had Megan Dolly on here the other day and we were talking about the, I said, the rise of the nanny state, and how it was that people were not equating responsibility with freedom. And so, as they gave up their responsibility, they didn't realize that they were giving up their freedom. And I can't help but feel like it's just, they're not thinking like, I think there are some bad actors. Okay. But I think the vast majority, they're probably a little bit scared, intimidated, especially some of the young people. I think the way that we're communicating with social media, and can be a little bit intimidating. It's overwhelming, versus when I was growing up, I'm older than you guys, but when I was growing up, it wasn't what life was, I had no idea how slow life was like.

Darin: Yeah.

Jillian: Absolutely.

Joey: We didn't even have cell phones.

Darin: Yeah.

Joey: You had to wait by the phone. You have to say things like, you have to buy a map.

Jillian: Yes.

Joey: You had to tell somebody to be home between 3:00 and 4:00, and I'll call you now.

Jillian: And mean it.

Joey: And mean it. Yes. Exactly.

Darin: Yeah. Keep commitments.

Joey: And now I think there might be a lot of people in the attempt to feel safe. They're giving up these responsibilities, not realizing that you're giving up freedom. And so one of the things that I got from Personal Mastery was the power of responsibility. How empowering responsibility was. And, how.

Jillian: So good.

Joey: You look back on things and things that were, and I just went through this, so this is, I have a long way to go, but I'm going to definitely try to focus on the cake and soup.

Darin: Yeah.

Jillian: That's just what works for me.

Joey: But I love it.

Jillian: It's just what works for me.

Joey: I love the. I'm all about visuals.

Jillian: Yeah.

Joey: I'm all about, taking a memory as a piece of paper and crumbling it up in my head and throwing it in the trash and, watching it go.

Darin: Yeah.

Joey: So, you know what I mean? Or the switching of the movies in your head and stuff like that. But, the whole responsibility, when I started thinking back on times when I felt powerless and, that victim and all the terms that go with that. All the terms of like, hey, I had no control over that.

Darin: Right.

Joey: Are you ki

Darining me? I got the bat into that deal. Even if I did by saying that, it made me feel worse about the situation versus saying like, man, I had control of that. You know what? I should have done this. I should have never even went in there. Why did I even call that person? I knew what was going to happen.

Jillian: Yeah.

Joey: I knew that wasn't a good place to be. I'm more powerful than this. Nothing changed about what happened in the past, but my mindset changed and definitely it, I took more accountability for the future. Like, well, you know what, now I'm not going to go into that place now I'm not going to do those things. And I'm certainly, if I do 'em, I'm not going to pretend like I didn't have control over the situation.

Jillian: Come on.

Joey: And that's very, it just. It's subtle things, but you feel more powerful.

Jillian: Absolutely.

Darin: Yeah.

Joey: And so I've, I definitely, and I'm going to the advanced leadership, so I'm going to the next one.

Darin: That's awesome.

Jillian: So exciting. p>Joey: And I'm going with John Jones.

Darin: I'm excited to hear.

Joey: Yeah.

Darin: How you like it.

Joey: Yeah. I'm going to get to sit next to John.

Darin: Oh wait. John Jones.

Joey: Get to sit next to John Jones. Poor John. He has to sit next to me on the way there and way back.

Jillian: It's going to be great.

Joey: I'm looking forward to it.

Jillian: You guys are going to love it.

Darin: Yeah. That's going to be awesome.

Joey: I'm looking forward to it. Okay. So we have alluded to Personal Mastery reviews that term. And people probably don't know that we're actually talking about a course.

Darin: Yeah.

Jillian: Yeah.

Joey: Called. Can you guys talk about that and talk about how, because you guys were the. Not sponsors, what is the term?

Jillian: Well, in the company, they call it champion, but we.

Joey: Thank you.

Jillian: Basically brought it to Redding.

Darin: Yeah. One of the ways that we like to give back to our city is actually by helping develop the people of our city. If we can all as people of Re

Darining grow ourselves to the next level in character, in performance.

Darin: The people is what our city's made of. And so everything's going to improve. So one of the ways that we do that is we contribute, we actually hire a leadership training company to come to our town and spend a weekend with our people and friends, neighbors, and anybody who wants to come and attend a weekend-long seminar called Personal Mastery. It's like a workshop of experiential learning where we don't. Actually, we're not teachers in that we just invite them to come to town and do that. They're a company that doesn't advertise, and they call this course Personal Mastery, which really sums it up well. Because if you want to master yourself, if I want to master something in my life, a lot of times having an emotional connection by doing something in a seminar room, practicing they like to call it a dojo, as in you're learning karate or something like that. A place where you can practice outside of practice new things in a safe environment, such as being compassionate, such as expressing love such as giving sympathy, and something like that. A lot of communicating better.

Jillian: Learning how to listen.

Darin: Learning how to talk to people who communicate in different ways than I do.

Joey: Common vocabulary, I think.

Jillian: Totally.

Darin: Common vocabulary.

Joey: Brandon and I have discussions about this all the time, about how oftentimes people get lost in the meaning of the word. Like people. When you can sit back and watch two people debate and they're using the same word and you realize they have completely different definitions of the word. And so they're really struggling with the fact that one of 'em is saying A and they're saying B, but they're both hearing the same word. And it's so big for vocabulary and communication.

Darin: How often does that happen? When I'm talking with someone on my team and they're saying something and I'm hearing it completely differently and I'm assuming something that they're saying and we are completely looking at it from different angles, there's a communication breakdown. There are a lot of tools that we learn in that quick weekend workshop that bring us to a common language where we can actually see from the other person's perspective in a short amount of time. So that's huge. Also, there's a lot of focus around getting to your goals. What do you want in life? And if you could figure out a way to get there now, instead of waiting 20 years, are you interested in that?

Joey: That's such a powerful question.

Darin: I am.

Joey: I don't think people truly are.

Darin: Some people are scared of it.

Joey: I don't think people. I think it's one of those questions that you say it and someone maybe I'm people come with the Ferrari, a big house, lots of money. And it's like "That's the knee jerk". And there's a. Russell Brunson I went to he's somebody in the. He had software. I don't want to go down that path but one of the things he's talk about is you have to ask a question three times. And he got this from Tony Robbins before you get the true answer, like what? No, what do you want? And it's almost like a bible story where somebody asks a question three times.

Darin: Possibly.

Joey: But it's like you have to ask it. And I think a lot of people are like, they don't really ask themselves that. I don't think I did. I think we asked the first time to get the superficial answer, because we feel like, well, this is what society says: successful, I have to get a college degree. In what? Well, that's not the point. Like oh. But that is the point I think what you're educating yourself and it matters. No I need that, piece of paper. And so now we have a bunch of people with paper that are like, "This isn't what I wanted". It's like. Don't forget the debt that goes with it, and so I think back to that, like, what do you really want?

Darin: With that mindset? That's what intimidates a lot of people around even the concept of personal development because we get comfortable, we get focused, we get tunnel vision around our life, and a lot of times we get in a groove and we're, whether we know it or not, we're stuck in that groove. And we say we want something, but our actions don't show that we're going in that direction. That's where, to me, it's really powerful to even go and revisit something, either a book or like in this instance, a weekend conference to kind of rekindle the excitement and the structure of how I'm getting where I want to go and rebuild some of that and work on how am I getting there? Really take a weekend and just refocus, just really get clear on what I want, what I don't want and how are we going, what's the path?

Darin: That's the power of Personal Mastery, and I think, personal development in general. That, I mean, for a personal story along those lines. We actually went to our first Personal Mastery class together and just had an amazing experience. We, learned how to communicate with husband and wife. I think we were assuming we were at a level 10 marriage. Like we've done a lot of work to make sure that our marriage is awesome and we're committed to that. Like that's one of the most important things in our life. And we got to spend a weekend working on how we talk to each other, and we realized that oh man. Yeah. So we're at level 10. Awesome. But like now we saw a level 15 and so there's more. There's a lot more out there than we even know about as far as how we can love each other, how we can communicate with each other, how we can support each other.

Darin: How I can, as a more assertive, controlling person, step back and support my wife as she chases down her dream. And even take a back seat and fuel her fire as she heads toward her goal. And draft off of each other. I grew up cycling a lot and in road biking there it's all about drafting and catching. One person will lead, and then the other person will take a turn. And so that's kind of our philosophy for how we're going to get to our goals together.

Joey: Oh we found our sports analogy.

Darin: There we go.

Joey: We had to stay away from football, and move to cycling. Okay, I got it. I've never cycled, but I was picking up what you were putting down.

Darin: Well, I can have all kinds of analogies that you wouldn't understand, so we won't go there.

Jillian: Wheels and engines. Yeah.

Darin: I'm just kidding.

Jillian: We can do that all day.

Joey: You guys, I know that you guys had a very strong connection with Jeterbuilt.

Darin: Yes.

Joey: Construction.

Darin: We still do. So a few years back, actually about 2015, we joined forces with Jeterbuilt Construction. Scott and Lisa Jeter had been good friends of ours. We were, before we joined forces with them, we actually were referral partners. We worked hand in hand as general contractors side by side. A lot of things we did were the same, and then we complimented each other in a lot of things. So for instance, we would work for their company as a subcontractor doing structural things, they would work for us as a subcontractor doing electrical work, et cetera. So we found out by doing business together for a few years, that we work well together. We built rapport and trust, and then an opportunity came along where Scott and Lisa had a vision for what they wanted to do next.

Darin: And so we got the opportunity to come in and take over good, a couple of niche markets that they had been developing such as the Alumawood patio cover dealership, we came in, we actually joined forces, moved into the same office with them as they were continuing their electrical service, full-time. So it was, and we talked about coaching and the importance of having someone there to see our blind spots. I had the amazing opportunity to work hand in hand, office to office next door with Lisa Jeter for about three years, and some of the most amazing, support, and encouragement.

Jillian: Absolutely.

Darin: Blind spot monitoring, as a growing business owner, that we could ever have. I mean, to have that, wrapped in as part of the bundle of taking over in a niche market, I mean what a resource.

Jillian: It was an incredible support.

Darin: We couldn't have done it without them.

Jillian: Yeah.

Darin: And then in this, about a year ago, we ended up, absorbing the rest of Jeterbuilt Construction, electrical department into Majestic Builders. So taking on, the rest of the team essentially into our company.

Jillian: The team and the book of business.

Darin: Essentially the book of business. They're still active in the community and do some projects as well, but we took over their entire book of business and the clients, they had going at the time. And, it was just an exciting transition to be able to do that with an amazing, we call them business partners. And really it was more of a coaching partnership because.

Jillian: Business mentoring.

Darin: Yeah. Business mentoring, to, what a privilege to, as an amazing technician, I would call myself before we joined forces with Jeterbuilt Construction. I was an amazing technician, maybe even a decent manager, but to go from technician to manager to entrepreneur and CEO, with someone like Lisa to, have my back, show me the ropes, and show the importance of systems, man we wouldn't be where we are today, we were able to accelerate our growth.

Jillian: Absolutely.

Darin: Because of some dreams and goals that we had. We were able to take that on, jump in with them, and say, yeah, let's do it, this is, I want to grow. We want to go somewhere as a construction company, and now we have the opportunity to jump in with coaching and a team. Like what an amazing opportunity. So we jumped on that. We jumped in the deep end, went for it, and it's been an amazing ride with that, we can circle back around to what you were talking about with coaching, during that time, you can imagine going from, two guys, swinging hammers side by side, myself and my business partner, and then, Jillian doing all our books. Just the three of us running a business, having a good old time to overnight having seven or eight employees, just like that, and having a whole book of business to run, what an opportunity. Amazing. And you can imagine there was some stress with that, right?

Joey: Oh, absolutely.

Darin: Just a little bit.

Joey: A little bit, little bit.

Darin: I used to sleep really, really well, and this all used to be brown.

Jillian: Yeah. Darin's rocking the gray hair.

Darin: During that time period. There was amazing growth. There was an amazing thing. And there was also an amazing amount of stress that, got just as a responsible human. I took on, yay, here we go. So, through some personal coaching, I hired a coach during that time as well, just to help, keep perspective in my life and keep my work life balance as it were. There's not much balance to it, when you're actually, when you're chasing down a goal balance, it's more like equilibrium, the sand moves in the, hourglass one direction, and then you flip it the other way, as you're chasing something down hard. But hiring a coach really brought me from a stress level of on a scale of one to 10, I was probably at an 11 and sometimes just working my fingers to the bone staying up all night trying to figure things out and jumping into next level things that maybe I wasn't as a person emotionally or completely, educated for and taking it on.

Darin: It worked great. It worked amazing, and there was some stress. So working with a coach, I was able to bring that stress level down to a normal five, within a couple of months. I was doing the same amount of work, doing the same amount of hours at work, working with the same team, working, like all of the physical circumstances stayed the same, but by working with a personal development coach, we were able to, I was, they were able to see some blind spots that I had where I was taking on more internal responsibility for certain things that I, that weren't serving me. And so I was able to get rid of that.

Darin: Continue on, have the same performance of life, have the same, really, all the physical circumstances stayed the same, but my stress level was able to drop from an 11 to a five. I mean, I was at the point in a few times of, I'm sure we've all been there as entrepreneurs having, feeling like, oh man, I'm going to have a nervous breakdown or something like that, just with some stress.

Jillian: Panic attacks.

Darin: Yeah. Stuff like that. That would be.

Joey: I love the fact that you're able to talk about that, because I think, especially.

Darin: We're humans, man.

Joey: Yeah. But, you got to there's a lot of no. I'm a male, a macho, and stress came along, so I just ramped up to testosterone production.

Darin: That's right.

Joey: And you know what I mean, I tightened, Captain America tightened the strap on my arm and just went, and it's like, yeah, that's great for movies, Rocky.

Darin: What about humans? Yeah.

Joey: Yeah. It's like, no, it, was tough, man. It was really stressful. And I was like, what?

Darin: Yeah.

Joey: Up at night, not sleeping well going, what did I do?

Darin: Right.

Joey: Bad choice.

Darin: Yep.

Joey: And, so admitting that and being able to say, okay, how do you fix that? But that's, I mean, it's so funny how I think we have. We admire this in athletes we admire, especially, I think we all love a comeback story.

Darin: Yeah.

Joey: Right. I mean that's, the whole rocky story, which has only been made like, a thousand times.

Darin: Yeah.

Joey: Over and over where it's like you, the hero's journey, right? You got to take a knee and it's the darkest, and it's, wait a second, they're coming back. And yet when we hear it in personalize, it's like, we don't want to, it's funny how we emulate these athletes and we emulate and we love these stories, but then when you talk about personal, it's like, oh, you can't let people know that you were ever not in a great place.

Darin: It's a sign of weakness, right?

Joey: Yeah.

Darin: It's like I'm not a man if I show stress.

Joey: Yeah.

Darin: Well, guess what? Everybody I know has stress in their life. And so if we can learn how to deal with it, we can become high performance people. We can go where we're wanting to go and not burn out. Like, if I can figure out how to not burn out and keep my performance growing, like, to where I want to go, then I can do anything. But in order to do that, I've got to figure out how to manage my internal structure to get there.

Joey: How did you come to the Personal Mastery? Was it because you talked about you got a coach, but this is before Personal Mastery, right?

Darin: That's actually after.

Joey: Oh, okay. Like on my timeline month.

Darin: So Personal Mastery came first. And with that, some revelation of like, Hey, I actually want to do something with my life. I want to go places, I want to do things, and the clock is ticking. I'm not guaranteed 85 years of life with health up until 82, and we never know when our first day and our last, we never know when our last day is going to come along. And so, like, well, I want to start having results now. And so that's what gave us, the courage to jump in and actually grow our business and take an opportunity to join forces with amazing people and grow our team.

Jillian: So we started Personal Mastery in April of 2015. Then we went to, the second class they offer, which, and that was in June of 2015. And then we got the call, to meet with Lisa. Actually, the day that we drove home, that we finished advanced Leadership, we got the opportunity call.

Darin: Yeah.

Jillian: We laugh because had we not gone to advanced leadership, I could almost guarantee you there's no way we would've taken that meeting.

Darin: Yeah.

Jillian: Just out of fear of like, there's no way we could do this. But after we finished that class, which was a whole other set of opportunity and relationship and awareness.

Darin: Yeah.

Jillian: Like, let's meet, let's do this, let's try, let's, why not take an adventure risk? And then, let's see, then that August that we started to transition. We moved in, in August, and we bought the first part of the company in October. So 2015 was a big year.

Darin: Yeah. Personal growth and then business growth and really chasing down our goals and dreams.

Jillian: And we kept in personal development. Let's point that out because while this was amazing, the transition was so, I mean, it was pretty wild. Just to go from two extremes of the three of us to the whole company.

Darin: A simple two-man company up to, a legit construction team.

Jillian: Responsibility for more people than just us.

Darin: There's 10 livelihoods at stake here. There are 10 families that are working together to support themselves.

Jillian: Yeah.

Darin: Not just a couple of us.

Joey: The fact that that's how you see it. Versus just like, more money. There's just more money to make. There's just some more money to make.

Darin: There's an opportunity for that.

Joey: That's a completely different approach. Yeah. But you brought up the families first.

Jillian: Absolutely.

Joey: You brought up the people and the families first. And I think a lot of, in this post-Michael Douglas, wall Street era, it's more like quarterly profits. Profits. You know what I mean? And it's like the difference between, wait a second. I like what you said earlier about, like, well, a business has to make a profit.

Darin: Yeah.

Joey: In the long run, or else you shut the door.

Jillian: There's no business. Yeah.

Joey: There's a name for those businesses called closed.

Darin: Yeah.

Joey: But not making that like, no, that's the end all, money's the end all, profit's the end all. That's huge.

Darin: There's a lot more going on than just money in a business. And it's fun to be pulling up our own boots, taking care of business in this respect. And doing personal development simultaneously because it just goes hand in hand. As we build our internal character, we can handle more challenges. And business is all about overcoming challenges.

Jillian: Yep.

Darin: How are we going to deal with this situation? How are we going to treat this client who is working in a market that serves quality and service or that provides high levels of quality and service? We work with some picky people. And that's our target market. And so we serve them well. And that comes with a whole set of challenges. How are we going to treat these people?

Jillian: Best we can?

Darin: Five-star experience or even a six, where's a six-star experience? That's where having that internal character of personal development, continuously going, gives you the strength to make the hard calls, and make the win-win decisions. But yeah, it is about the people. There's, I mean, a city's about people. A business is about people. It's all about how we interact with each other and, how we support each other or fight each other. Part of this whole personal development thing, is figuring out why am I on this planet. A lot of people have a lot of reasons.

Darin: For me going through personal mastery and taking more classes and reading books and all that was great. And then during that process, I was able to really put pen on paper and figure out what my purpose on the planet is, which, for me is to love greatly and influence others to their fullest potential. And I get an opportunity to do that, to live in my purpose as a human being. That's for me, that's just Darin. That's where I'm taking my life. I get an opportunity to do that every single day with our team, with our clients, with my family, with just anybody I get to interact with. It's like, do I get a chance to live in my purpose today? Awesome. Well, I never would've discovered that had I not taken on the hard work of discovering, like actually doing the homework to figure it out, which is personal development.

Darin: Jump in, take a class, and do the hard work. I was really inspired by a quote from, Tim Kennedy, the famous MMA fighter. He said, "Anything you want is on the other side of hard work." So for me, I wanted to find out my purpose. So I did the hard work, found my purpose, and now I know it. Now I can run with it for the rest of my life. I'm not sure if little pieces of it will tweak as I go through life. Maybe so, but for now, it's held true for about five years. And I really think that's encouraging for all of us. I mean, we live in America. We can have anything we want if we do the hard work. If, I mean, what do you want to be? Do you want to be a millionaire? Well, there are about a thousand or a hundred thousand ways to do that in America.

Darin: I mean, we live here. This is amazing. If you really, truly want it, and you truly set your intention to have it, you can be a millionaire. Do you want to be a doctor? You can. You can be a doctor. I mean, if you'll figure it out, there's a way to do it. There are infinite ways to reach that goal. But like Tim said, it's on the other side of hard work. So we, if you're willing to do the work and jump in feet first and do it, you can have anything you want. So that's encouraging to me.

Joey: Stealing a line. If you have the right intentions, the framework will show itself.

Darin: Essentially. Yes.

Joey: There are a million ways to do all these things, but that's so hard. That's so hard. I don't know why that is so hard now. And when I think about like, I think sometimes we get caught up in the time we live right now, and we think that there are all these unique things about our time that it's totally different. But then you read some Greek philosophy, or you read something from the Old Testament, or you read something from another time, right? Even 1445, and something, and you realize like, wow, the struggles have been here forever.

Darin: Abraham Lincoln had the same thoughts that we have.

Joey: Yeah. And so it's like, these are, might just be the human condition, might just be why we're here. I don't know if you guys are familiar with it, but I started listening to a gentleman named Sadhguru. Have you ever heard of him? He is a Mystic Yogi.

Darin: Oh, nice.

Joey: Arguably the Mystic Yogi at Dejour. But, I was, he's got a lot of videos out there, and if you're like, oh, a Mystic Yogi. I would've, there was a time when I would've been like, Mystic Yogi.

Darin: There's value in everything.

Joey: Crazy. But I listened to him and he talks about this about like, yeah, this is, you're wonderful and all this stuff, and you're unique, but at the same time, we are all going through this experience. This is kind of just what it's for. Like, it's a big part of that. Like, don't think about yesterday. Don't think about tomorrow. Like right now, you're supposed to be here right now. Maybe you're supposed to feel pain right now. Don't lament, the past, and don't be anxious about the future and the pain that you feel right now. The reason you're feeling it is so that you can then be on the other side of it and you can, celebrate the joy that comes through it.

Darin: Yeah.

Joey: Like, you won't be able to celebrate if you have cake and ice cream every day, it just loses its flavor.

Darin: Yeah.

Joey: You know what I mean? You've got to go. And so it, when you hear someone like that and when you practice, oh yes, of course. But that's the, for me, that is the struggle of when I'm eating, the broccoli or whatever metaphor analogy. When the hard time is, when the stress is there, when the pain is there, going like, no, man, this, this is, you're supposed to be going through this right now to get to the other side, the hard work. You know what I mean?

Darin: Yeah.

Joey: Because I wouldn't, I think I have a really strong work ethic. So I'm going to take this conversation and make this all about me. I have a strong work ethic. I'm not afraid of work, but there are times I'm almost like man, no moss, I didn't want not want to answer the bell for the fifth round. Like, no moss, you're just like, so I need to work on those, as we were talking, there was a lot of stuff you were saying that I'm like, man, I want that.

Darin: Yeah.

Joey: I want that.

Darin: Let's do it, man. Let's go.

Joey: I'm like, I got some mental exercise. I gotta practice.

Darin: Yeah.

Joey: So, and he was talking and I felt like there were a couple of points that you wanted to, you didn't want to, didn't want to break his rhythm, but you had a couple of like, Hey, some bonus tips.

Jillian: I think just, I think the reason, so staying in personal development is everything. Because if I don't stay sharp, the blade will dull, and then I'm not effective. And what I can give is no longer effective. So part of the reason that, like, I love how it all flowed is because we chose something that was uncomfortable and unfamiliar.

Darin: Unfamiliar.

Jillian: So as far as personal development with business, we did both in the same year. 2015 was a pretty revelatory year for us.

Darin: Amazing year.

Jillian: Because as we bought into the business in August and October, that November, we went to the third class. So we did the crazy thing and left the brand new baby business.

Darin: For a week.

Jillian: For a week and went to the third class.

Joey: In stereo.

Jillian: Well, because it's crazy. It's hard. It's still hard for us to leave. We just, not that our team isn't capable, but it's hard for us to leave. We're still figuring that out, that it's, we have permission to do so.

Darin: The systems are in place, it can work without us.

Jillian: It's going to be okay. So we're still getting there. Four years later we're still getting there. So we definitely haven't arrived. But we stayed in the work. So that's when you got to find your purpose, which was in the third class. That's when a lot of this stuff came through. So we didn't just buy the business and then leave everything that helped us get there. We pressed and stayed and stayed consistent. And then we did the fourth class in January. Which took us through April. So without those, that combination, our success rate may have very well looked very, very different. And I just wanted to point that out because we didn't buy the business and then bolt on everything that got us there. We stayed in it, we kept going, we got excited. We reached out to friends and we asked for the support and you hired the coach.

Jillian: Like we did all of it in just seeing that in the chronological order of what happened is so, I think so important because it shows us how human we are and how important it was to do both together. It wasn't like, oh, we arrived and then we did this, and then that was super clean and we moved it onto the next thing and then we hit this milestone and nope, it's all together. It's super important. Just that we stay in it. This isn't done. I've never, if I ever say I've arrived, I need to go back to a class. Because I will never have arrived. And that's not being satisfied. It's not staying in stability because it doesn't exist. I'm either growing or dying. So I get to stay committed to growth.

Darin: I think it was what Plato said, I think it was Plato said, you're either in a state of growth or in a state of decay. I don't want to decay. Let's keep growing, let's keep going on this thing.

Joey: While you were talking about that? I was thinking about like if you, that's great that you worked out five years ago, but if you didn't work out this morning five years ago, doesn't carry over. There's these three gentlemen, I go to the gym in the morning and there are these three gentlemen in their 80s and they're lifting weights. I don't, they're two of 'em I know for a fact are former Marines. I can't remember if the third one's a former Marine, but I mean, 81, 84 years old. They're grabbing free weights. They're lifting. It's like, holy moly man. They're not just alive at 84, they're in the gym every morning at 84.

Darin: They're thriving because of it.

Joey: Yes. Absolutely. And so it's as soon as you stop, like you said, I think that's a fundamental thing is you're either in growth or you're in decay.

Darin: Yeah. There is no stability.

Joey: I think another way that someone might say that is that there's either positive or negative energy. There is no neutral. Neutral is an illusion.

Jillian: Correct.

Joey: Something is either good for you or it is bad for you. There is no like, oh in between. And so thinking along those lines, it's really easy. The things that you think are bad, you get rid of or something, but the things that are neutral, you're like, eh, it's like, no, put all of your energy into the things that are good for you and get rid of take outta your life the things that are not helping you grow.

Jillian: Or have so much positivity that it pushes out the things that no longer serve you. Because just because something was awesome and it served you before if you're growing that thing may no longer serve you. So some of these things are a bit relative as well, depending on where you're at. So for me, if I focus on the positivity and focus on the good things, the things that are moving me forward, it often will, the other things fall away because there's no room for time or energy for it anymore. So if I focus on that versus just the getting rid of, I dunno, for me, I've had more fun in that space.

Darin: There's always new levels to master. I mean, that's why like there's how many levels of black belt in karate? There's a lot of them. I don't know that much.

Joey: I'm going to have to ask Mr. Halsey because he's got almost all of 'em, but I'll ask him. Yeah.

Darin: But there's always, like, even once you achieve a black belt level of anything, there's always degrees of black belt. There are degrees of success.

Jillian: And other skills to do the exact same, like, to run through that same system.

Darin: And sometimes a certain maneuver that worked well two years ago doesn't work. Now that's, I mean that's the amazing thing with modern business is you have to be able to pivot. As things changed, I mean, as the economy changed many years ago when it crashed we had to be able to do, to pivot our business away from spec houses that weren't selling toward doing service work that people need during a failed economy. So we gotta be watching and paying attention and ready to pivot accordingly. In order to stay in business.

Jillian: And not out of stress, but out of staying relevant. And connected and in touch with what's going on that we, it's a choice versus just shifting out of fear and scarcity. So it's, Hey, we like this particular field of work. What could we do differently so that we could stay in it? Oh yeah. I'd be open to that versus, oh my gosh, we have to do this and this is or we're going to go under, it's just totally different frames of reference to do the same thing, but where are we going to position ourselves and our energy so that we can maintain this?

Joey: So if people are interested in personal mastery. Do they call Majestic Builders or do they go to jilliandillon.co? Did I get it right?

Jillian: I need to double check that.

Joey: You gotta double check that.

Jillian: I do. I do.

Joey: Okay.

Jillian: Let me check. I think it's jilliandillon.co, but I might own both. I just have to double-check.

Darin: Yeah, reach out to us on social handles.

Jillian: We'd be happy to do that. And at the same time, clemmer.com will take you there into their workshops. Personal mastery. They're honestly, it's an international company, so they host these all over the place. We try to bring them back every so often. It's quite the undertaking, and our community's worth it. So, we try to bring it back as often as possible. But we're probably looking at 2020 as the closest that another one could come to Redding.

Joey: That's right around the corner.

Jillian: True.

Darin: It's coming soon.

Joey: It's August. This is by the time we release this, probably going to be the end of August or the beginning of September.

Jillian: And if you can't wait and you gotta go now, check out the website because they're happening all over the country.

Joey: I was told yesterday that there's a 100, so today there's 136 days to Christmas. I was like, what? Oh no. Wow. That's fast. I have to get out and do some shopping. Well, thank you so much for coming on. I'm so grateful you guys came and shared and I look forward to having you guys on again.

Jillian: Awesome.

Darin: Thank you.

Joey: And so awesome. Thank you very much, guys.

Darin: What an honor. We appreciate it.

Joey: Our pleasure.