Transcript: Feedback, Growth, and Engagement: Dow Smith's Journey to Building a High-Performance Workplace // Dow Smith, Dow Smith Contracting

Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast

“Feedback, Growth, and Engagement: Dow Smith's Journey to Building a High-Performance Workplace"

November 13, 2023

Dow Smith

Intro: How do you build a workplace culture where your revenues quadruple in five years, your employees flourish, and you have a very low turnover in a highly competitive labor market? And how does your investment in leaders and staff result in individual and organizational thriving? Well, today on the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast, we'll hear from a visionary leader who has built an exceptional workplace with highly engaged employees who experience high levels of well-being. Listen in and be encouraged about how you can make a difference as you lead in your own sphere of influence.

Welcome: Welcome to the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast, your home for open, honest, and insightful conversations to help develop your leadership, your team, and build a flourishing workplace culture.

Al Lopus: Hello, I'm Al Lopus, the co-founder of the Best Christian Workplaces and author of the 2023 Christian Book Awards finalist Road to Flourishing: Eight Keys to Boost Employee Engagement and Well-Being. And I'm passionate about helping Christian leaders like you create engaged, flourishing workplaces.

I’m delighted to welcome Dow Smith to the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast today. Dow is the founder and visionary of Dow Smith Contracting, a design-build construction firm specializing in churches, healthcare, and commercial construction in Middle Tennessee.

Throughout our conversation, you'll hear Dow talk about a story of revenue and productivity growth, the importance of organizational values and how they've helped select and promote great people while building trust throughout their workplace, the importance of having a proven operating system for the business, the tremendous gift of 360 employee-engagement feedback and shaping leaders, and how the role of a chaplain turned into a director of well-being and how it positively impacted their organization.

I think you're going to love this interview with Dow Smith.

Also, hello to our new listeners. Thanks for joining us as we honor your investment of time by creating valuable episodes like this.

But, let me tell you a little bit more about Dow. Dow Smith is the founder and visionary of Dow Smith Contracting, a design-build firm that specializes in churches, healthcare, commercial construction, and other projects in Middle Tennessee. The company was founded in 1992. Dow grew up in Nashville and received a bachelor's degree in building science from Auburn University, and he can still be found at Auburn football games, tailgating and cheering his team on. And about ten years after starting Dow Smith Contracting, he heard the call to consider his life and business a marketplace ministry. And since that time, he's been intentional about serving Christ in the marketplace. He particularly finds great comfort and guidance from prayer.

So, here’s my heartfelt conversation with Dow Smith.

Dow, it’s great to have you on the podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Dow Smith: Thank you, Al. It's a real honor and a privilege to be part of this. It's a joy to be here. Thank you.

Al: Well, I’m really looking forward to our conversation.

And Dow, the first question I've got to ask you is, okay, so I don't know that I've ever met somebody with the name Dow. And of course, I look at the Dow Jones Industrial Average every day. So how is it that you have the name Dow? Can you explain that?

Dow: It's a question I get regular, and a lot of times I’m referred to or even called Dow Jones, sometimes even called Dow Chemical Company, describing bubbles. But the name came from a pastor named Lorenzo Dow, who must have had a great impact on my great grandparents. So they named their son—my grandfather—Edgar Dow Smith, he named his son Edgar Dow Smith Jr., and then my mom and dad gave me the name as a first name Dow. So that’s how it came about.

Al: Yeah. Wow. So your family has been influenced by the faith, by a pastor, for now, four generations. That's a great start. Wow. Okay.

Dow: Yeah, very much so. And should add, so, my great grandfather, he was a United Methodist pastor. And then, one of his children, Uncle Ray, is a United Methodist pastor. And so, yeah, it has had a very impact upon my upbringing.

Al: So let's talk a little bit about your company, Dow. You've seen growth—we look at things from an employee’s perspective—in the last five years or so that we've worked together. You've doubled in size of employees. So would you tell us a little bit about the company? I know you've got a lot of projects that you're working on and different phases that you're—you do sales, you do design, you do planning, you do construction, you work through completion. So tell us a little bit about your company.

Dow: Sure. Well, we are a design builder focused on commercial projects, commercial clients, and we're fortunate enough that right now I think every one of them is in Rutherford County, Tennessee, Middle Tennessee. And that is a joy, just the fact that all of our job sites are close. And the call we like to get is whether it be the business owner or the church or, many cases, doctors, and they don't know if they want to stay or move, if they want to renew their lease or buy a piece of property or build, whether they should renovate, that's when we like to get the call to just give them some options and rough cost of what it would take to do a project, help them determine if it's financially feasible for them, and then, from that journey with them, to design it and then build it and help them move into it. And so we like to take care of them through that whole process.

Al: And so I’ve mentioned that you've doubled your employees. How has that impacted—and, you know, you've got a flourishing workplace culture. How has that impacted your overall business, from a revenue standpoint?

Dow: Well, from a revenue standpoint, 2020, though, it was a pandemic year, I think that year we did 12 million in revenue, and this year we're going to do about 40 million in revenue. And never in my wildest day would I’ve thought we would have this much revenue, but we do, and we're thriving in it, to be honest with you, Al. I mean, it has its challenges. But we're crushing it on all levels, from client satisfaction to employee engagement, morale at the office. And Dewey Greene, my C12 chair, just the thought of us going beyond 12 million, I was a staunch opponent. No, we're not. But here we are. And I'm having more fun now than I ever had.

Al: Yeah. And I think one of the conversations, you know, for our listeners, we're going to talk about how your culture is even improving as you're growing at the rapid pace that you're growing and how you're doing a lot to make sure that your culture is a healthy culture.

So let's start off. You've transitioned from, you know, a founder and president into a visionary role. And I know that EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System, has helped kind of give you the specifications for that. And now you've also built a leadership team that includes a CEO and other senior leaders. So as you've grown, as you've described, you're building a leadership team, what are you looking for in those leaders? How do you identify leadership qualities that set people apart to help them become part of a flourishing workplace culture and a thriving business like yours?

Dow: Well, I guess one of the first things we look at and look for is our values. And we discovered in going through EOS, truly the word discovery is what it's about. They were already there. And for us, our values are passion, hustle, caring, and details. And we just, as this team and group that we've got around us, those that most exhibit those values is who has—they’re our servant leaders. That's probably the key component of how we discern who's the best servant leader at DSCC.

Al: Yeah. Wow. I love those: passion, hustle, caring, and details. And I can just see how in your business that really contributes. And how did you define those, Dow? What was the process that you went through?

Dow: It was the process—again, I hate this becoming an EOS infomercial, but it's had such a profound impact on us—it's just a process that they had. It kind of starts with, okay, who are our favorite employees? Or if we could think of a list of employees that we want to clone—and we came up with a list of three to five people—if we could clone these employees and have 100 of them, what is the main characteristics of those employees? And so as we listed those up, and then we just said, “Well, Joel is just awesome,” and the word detail came up. And we noticed, “Yeah. And so is Bardo. And so is that.” So we just looked at, what are the common characteristics that our most valuable team members had? And then from that we said, “Yeah, okay, those are our values.” And then, from that we realized how important they were. Those were things that, I mean, they were non-negotiables. It was like if there was a breach of that or they didn't have that, it was, like, there's not going to be an argument. There's either going to be a change or departure. Those are that important to us.

Al: Yeah. Wow. So when you’re interviewing new employees, when you’re probably promoting new employees, you’re really looking at those characteristics, those values that you've got to really help you with that selection process. Yeah.

Dow: Very much so. And Al, even if we look at, “Okay. Decisions we got to make. Okay. What's the right way?” And there’s, to be honest, sometimes there's conflict between caring and hustle. To be honest, you got to, “Okay. If we do this, we may not be caring. We're showing a lot of hustle.” But the point is we really hold those values up in all of our decisions that we make, and we discern if whatever we feel like we need going forward fits in those, it's not going to be a bad decision. In fact, usually it's a really good decision.

Al: Wow. And Dow, you've already mentioned a couple of things around this entrepreneurial operating system and how you've been using that. You know, that's something we use at Best Christian Workplaces. Well, it's had a, I think, a huge impact on us as well. So tell us a little bit about your decision to adopt this EOS, the Traction Entrepreneurial Operating System. In fact, I was just talking with somebody yesterday about that and how it's impacted us and could impact them. How has it helped your company? What are some of the things that is really helpful? And are there any cautionary messages for organizations who are thinking about taking this on?

Dow: Well, I'll start with the last part of any cautionary, and that would be if you're going to do it, go all in and do it. It’s from a book, Traction, written by Gino Wickman, and it's not meant, “Well, I'm going to use part of this or some of this. I like that.” You’ve got to do it all. You got to do every single step of it.

My other word of advice would be hire an outside implementer. You do have an option to implement it internally—and I know of one subcontractor has done it—and you just go a lot faster and get faster results if you get an outside implementer. If you are going to have an inside implementer, you've got to have somebody who can at least devote 10 to 20 hours of their time focused on EOS. And if you put the economics of, “Okay. I'm taking 10 to 20 hours,” and it's got to be a key person, if you put the economics of that and loss off production somewhere else. So I’ll just say that. So if you're going to do it, go all in and do it all. And I highly recommend, write the check, pull out the credit card, and get an outside implementer.

Al: Yeah. There you go. Okay. Fantastic.

And you have an inside integrator. So you kind of fit that visionary role, Dow, and then you've got an inside integrator?

Dow: We do. Joey wears the hat of integrator. The integrator, some like to refer to it as the one who makes sure whatever the visionary wants to do gets it done. And we play names or have way too many conversations about titles. But our integrator is Joey, and he does a phenomenal job at it. Joey actually does both, sits in the seat of the integrator as well as sales. He, at the moment is—well, actually we moved the sales tick to inside integrator. But he does both those functions, a key part of our team, the backbone.

Al: Wow. So, yeah, to our listeners, check it out. A number of our ministry partners and mission partners have worked with EOS.

So, you know, Dow, over the years, in addition to working with us with our Engagement Survey, you've used our Leadership 360 several times, and that's based on three overriding characteristics that support the development of the ideal Christian servant leader: character, competence, and chemistry. And so you've used the 360 on your senior team now for a few years, but this year you even went beyond your leadership team into your top 15 people. And that's a pretty significant investment for a leader to have all of your leaders, your managers, your supervisors participate in that kind of process. So why did you choose to invest in the Leadership 360 to get feedback for those of your people that are in key roles? And what are some of the benefits that you've experienced as a result of that?

Dow: Well, it's been an investment that has paid great dividends. And I'll start with when I first did it on myself, and I was frightened to do it. But there was a churning in me or—and I'm a continuous learner, and I guess to be more intentional about learning about myself, probably about five years ago, and I learned about, well, BCWI through C12, and I just took the courage pill and took it. And I got a lot of great feedback, and I have the personality, that I've learned in that, sometimes people will filter what they will say to me. Well, this gives them a venue where they can say anything and everything that they want, and they have the protection of being anonymous. And I'm able to receive that data. It's just data. It’s just, you know, data. And so it was very helpful for me.

I can't really say I was surprised. And there were a few things that did hurt my feelings. But, boy, there was also a lot of affirmation in that.

And then, in fact, Al, you got to do my first—well, I know you did my first debrief for the Employee Engagement Survey. But just getting that and how it was delivered to me with such love and care and wisdom and experience, it was like, man. And then I had three or four things, very manageable. “Hey, here's some things you need to do and work on.” And it was just an incredible tool.

And with that, I want to share that with my leadership team because there's a lot of things that I only see a certain part of what's happening. Our peers see things that others don't see. The direct report sees things that we don't see. And for them to be able to get that gift—and it's a true gift—it gave them some great understanding of what was happening. And it was 98% words of affirmation.

This year we took it to our superintendents as well, because our superintendents are such a key. What happens at the superintendent level is where the bullets are flying, and they got to deal with the client, and they got to deal with subcontractors. They got the most coming at them, who we got the most at stake of what's happening with the superintendents. So we took it to the superintendents as well, too. And that was very enlightening as well.

We even included our subcontractors. We had subcontractors who participated in it because our subcontractors are a key strategic relationship, and we wanted to know, I needed to know, how well do they do managing our subcontractors? And we got great data and discovered some gaps that I didn't realize were there. But I also learned a lot of affirmations, “Yeah. That matches what I saw,” and it's seen by other people. So it's been worth every bit of the time and dollars. I’ve been kind of worried about people taking survey fatigue, who I've been asking to take a lot of surveys, but it's been worth it, every bit of it, every minute and every dollar.

Al: I love your approach. First, you started with yourself, and you got to do that. I recommend, yeah, let's start at the top. And then, you went to your leadership team and this year to your superintendents. And again, I'm sure each of them had the same kind of experience you had, that you described. You took that courage pill. Yeah. We practice what we preach here at the Best Christian Workplaces. And I can tell you as the leader for many years, every time our Engagement Survey is going out, I'm kind of wondering, “Okay. So what's that going to be like? I've done the 360. Okay. So how is it really, you know, what kind of feedback am I really going to get?”

Dow: And Al, I’ll be honest, I was more scared the second time I did it than the first, for both 360 and Employee Engagement Survey, because I felt like some of them were going to say, “He's really not going to listen to this. This doesn't matter,” and so they just went through it and checked it. Well, when I gave them a chance again the second year, I think the message was, “Ooh, wow. He takes this seriously.” And I said, “I'm probably going to get more stuff this year.” And it did happen. It did. To be honest, the second year, especially on Employee Engagement Survey, we dropped a tick or two because I think people were more real with us. But I also think that second-year data was even better. Even though it was a lower score, it was just a better result for us.

Al: Your wisdom here is remarkable, and I congratulate you. Absolutely it’s the way you should do it. And, you know, we find oftentimes, as you say, the first time, people are a little cautious because it's like, “Is this really going to be useful? Is this, you know, something going to happen with this?” And when they see that there's action, and you come back and do it again, it's like, “Oh, okay. Well, now maybe we'll step a little further into it.”

Well, can I ask, Dow? When you said you learned something from it, and you said you want to become more self-aware and learn more about yourself in your leadership, and what did you learn those first couple of years with your own Leadership 360?

Dow: And still learning it, as looked at the last one, where I have the most room for growth is my conflict-resolution skills. I'm average at best at that. And unfortunately, I'm way too comfortable in conflict, but I'm not maybe that effective in conflict. And I've kind of learned maybe my approach in that is there's just room to grow in that. So that's probably been—especially this last year, I realized, “Okay. We got to get better at that.”

Al: Comfortable but not effective in conflict. Just that observation, I think, is helpful. So you'll let conflict kind of go on around you, and that doesn't bother you so much.

Dow: Well, if I sense there's any conflict going on, which to some degree maybe is an attribute—I just recently did, completed the Unique Ability thing, the Unique Ability 2.0 by Dan Sullivan. One of my unique abilities is I will fiercely protect those who I'm investing in, who I love or care for. So when I sense anybody or anything is not happening well, I'll move in and fiercely protect them. Well, sometimes that ferociousness is just a little bit too strong and maybe not even necessary. So I will tend to cut it off or put too much energy towards it, where it just doesn't require that much energy.

Al: Yeah. So you've gotten that , and here you are, you know, really reflecting on, “Okay. So how can I change to become more effective for the sake of the organization and those that I'm working with?” Yeah. Fantastic.

Well, Dow, you know, in addition to 360s, you've been working on with the Employee Engagement Survey now for several years and really with exceptional results. And your company scores are well above the peer averages in the marketplace. So again, congratulations. People are clearly confident in your ability and your company's ability to meet goals, to deliver a great product, to care for your employees. Those are just a couple of things that come out of the Survey. In fact, a competitor would have trouble prying people away from your company, based on what the Survey results say, that people are really committed to your organization. So what are some of the practical ways that you and your leadership team reinforce this culture? What's different in your day-to-day operations from other construction firms, design-and-build firms, as you say? And how do you sustain this level of engagement with your people over time?

Dow: Al, that's a question we are asking ourselves, and we're trying to articulate that. In fact, the phrase I've brought up, we use, I want to fireproof our culture. I’m so thankful for it, and I want to protect it, and I want to fireproof it. I'm trying to figure out practical steps. What is it we're really trying to protect? And in that, I discovered the metrics. The Employee Engagement Surveys give you the metrics of culture. I mean, if you want to measure culture, you're doing it. And so what are we doing different than others? I don't know. My adult life, I've only work for myself. I'm not employable by anybody else, so I had to be self-employed. So I don't know what it looks like in other contexts. I just don't. So I can't really answer, what are we doing different? I don't know. It's just how we do it.

I would say, which in repeat would be and I think a key part of this is we are consistent to our values. So I would offer to any organization, whatever your values are, if you know what they are and you're consistent, your team's going to know that. So there is a consistency, and they know what upsets people. They know what makes them happy. So no matter what organization, what your culture is, what your values are, if you know them and stick to them, that's going to help a lot.

I think one thing that makes us different than others, and I don't know, is we're authentic. And I've learned that when you're authentic, that builds trust. And that's really the key part of culture and all like that is trust. And how you build trust and how you maintain trust, that's kind of a deep subject. We have a high level of trust at DSC. And I think a key part of that is we're authentic. We know who we are. We have a good understanding of who we’re not. And we’re just comfortable in our own skin.

Al: I trust you’re enjoying our podcast today. We’ll be right back after an important word for leaders.

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Al: Welcome back to my conversation with Dow Smith.

Well, I know a lot of our listeners are listening and saying, “I wish I could say with a conviction you just said, we have a high level of trust in our organization.” And I'll just say, you know, yes, you want to appreciate and want to fireproof this culture. And I'll say one way to do that is to continue to discover each year exactly how healthy your culture is. You say you're consistent and authentic, and you are. And so that consistency, knowing your values, following your values, I mean, there's integrity. You're doing what you say you're going to do by being laser focused on those values and following them. And that builds trust. That's a key characteristic of any great organization.

So another distinctive you've got, Dow, is that you have a director of well-being, who sits on your leadership team, and she's a chaplain and a life coach. This is fascinating to me. Congratulations. And her focus is to help people on their career and life goals. Wow. So this is an unusual investment for the size of firm that you've got, and I think it's really worth talking about. So how did you decide to focus on this for your employees? And, you know, what are some of the benefits to your employees, your team? And what would you say to a listener who’s even skeptical of, like, “Well, a chaplain, a life coach?” You know, what would you say to our listeners? What's the advantages of this, from your perspective?

Dow: Well, there's nothing that excites me more and energizes me more than our well-being program of where it's been, where it's at, and where it's going, Al. It started with, we decided we want to have a chaplain. And I highly encourage any and all organizations to get a chaplain. And John Key was our first chaplain, and he did a fabulous, wonderful job of loving and caring for us. Well, John, retired. John got to the point where he needed to retire. And we realized this is a very important position, and we’ve got to continue it. And we hired Holley Potts. In a lot of ways, Holley’s a unicorn, and we're trying to determine, is she a unicorn? In fact, we're hearing a little bit. And what of this can be duplicated by other organizations? I don't know yet, but we're about to take a deep dive into that.

But Holley Potts, with her incredible gifts and anointing and wisdom, oh, it's just moved us up, and it has made us so much better in so many ways. And so she took the approach, “Okay. I'll be your chaplain. But instead of me being called chaplain, I wanted to be well-being director.” And I said, “Holley, that sounds—I like that even better,” because I want to be very inclusive on anybody, wherever they're at, from a theology standpoint, from a faith standpoint, and all like that. I want to be very inclusive. And I felt like that title very much can be a safe place, and I'm a safety zealot. So with her unique in so many ways, she very well can loop in your spiritual care with your spirit, mind, and body, and has taken those to a whole new level.

So we have 29 employees, and we just highly encourage all of our employees to get coaching sessions with her. And you can start with anything wherever you are. “I need help, how to make a to do list. I need help getting organized,” to “My marriage is about to fall apart. My child is having suicidal thoughts.” So if you're having that or whatever issue, go to her. And wherever you're at in your journey, she's available. And she's equipped enough where she can handle that, where we're once in crisis, she can do that. But we're not all in crisis all the time.

But one of the main points and what I wanted to say was, and it's not measurable, but it sure is so seen. Those of us who go see Holley on a regular basis, their productivity is sky high. And those that don’t go see Holley, their productivity is way low. And we may need to come up with the metrics, those who started seeing Holley, we've seen their productivity go sky high. So the amount of money we've paid her versus how our production’s gone up, oh, it doesn't take a financial genius. It's not measurable. I could maybe pull some stuff out of my P&L statement to justify it. Maybe the easiest way would simply be is we've had very minimal of employee turnover. And there have been many studies, how much does it cost you when you have employee turnover? And at the very least, she's saved us from a low employee turnover. And I will say that's a fraction of how she's helped us.

But here's the thing that just excites me. So we just had our quarterly pulse meeting, and our ten-year target—this is news to the world. I’ve shared it a little bit at my office—but our ten-year target is we want to have 1,000 members receiving well-being coaching. And how we're going to get 1,000 members and how we're going to get that many coaches and all like that, we'll figure that out in the next ten years. But that's how much this has changed and shaped our culture. And it's now a key part. It's now our ten-year target.

Al: And what do you mean, Dow, by 1,000 members? Is that employees, or what’s a member?

Dow: Well, a member is going to be somebody. And obviously, we looked at in being in marketplace ministry, we have impact on thousands of people, thousands and thousands of people. Part of the C12 curriculum is you really need to have a measurement or try look at how big of an influence that you have around you. And every organization touches thousands and thousands of people. And so how we'll get there is these organizations and these people that we work with—our employees; our employees’ family; our subcontractors’ family; our clients, their family; the clients that we work for—and so for this to happen, these people that we have influence over or work with or have impact, we want to share this with them as well. So that's where the thousand members are going to come from.

Al: And you're touching not only your employees, but your subcontractors, their families, your customers and clients, and even those that provide construction building materials. I know. I mean, yeah. So that's fantastic. What a great goal. And I love the well-being aspect. My book, Road to Flourishing, includes both engagement and well-being, and those go together. You’re even—you’re holding it up. Yeah. They go together. There's no question about it.

Well, this has just been a great conversation. Ten years, a thousand members receiving well-being coaching so that they can live a flourishing life, their best life.

Dow: They can live a flourishing life.

Al: Yeah.

Dow: Exactly.

Al: Yeah. Well.

And, Dow, you know, how do you look at the business’s mission, and how has that impacted your employees and those that they're in connection with?

Dow: Our mission, we found our true niche and all like that is to serve, and our mission statement is to serve Christ in the marketplace. But to be honest, we just want to serve. And whatever that looks like to whatever is appropriate, that's our unique, and just recognizing that and trying to operate and to be a servant.

Al: You know, Dow, clearly, you're a visionary. You know, that's a role that you're playing. And I know you're looking ahead to the next season of your organization. You’ve seen quadrupling in revenues. You've seen a doubling in the size of your workforce. You continue to have more and more projects coming in. What excites you about the future? What challenges, perhaps, do you even see as you look ahead?

Dow: I am very excited about our future, and I guess maybe the reason why is just our recent past and how that's been life giving and flourishing. As we're defining what we're good at, and maybe even more important, defining what we're not good at, we've had to make some changes even in philosophy, like in marketing and sales. Now, our number one marketing goal is to keep employees engaged, and our number two goal is to keep our existing clients, and our number third goal, and it's a distant third, is find new clients. And so as we discern that, we realize now that's got to go beyond marketing. That's just really got to go into how we allocate all of our resources, whereas even ten years ago, my thought was, “The client’s got to go first. And then, we got to take care of our employees.” That will not work in 2023 and 2024. It's just not. And that's been a big mind shift. And so right now, the amount of work and opportunities that we have before us, we're having to say, “Okay. What do we have the capacity to do?” And it's forcing us to go to clients to say, “Okay. Look. For us to meet your needs, this is when we can start. And if you can't wait, we understand.” It's a whole new position, but it's what we got to do. So it's nice in a sense. We're coming from an abundance. Now, we're at a place—because there's been more than once, twice, when I was broke, and I was just a few days from bankruptcy. And one time, I should have declared bankruptcy. I don’t want to go back to that day. And so it’s really nice to be able to be in a position of some financial strength and some abundance. Still got the scars, and I don't want to relearn some lessons.

Getting any bigger is not a comfortable thought for me. In fact, I put the brakes on it. But even yesterday we were coming up with some novel ways of maybe how we could take on more. We got to do something. We only have a certain amount of people, and getting a good superintendent, getting a good project manager, and getting a good tech takes a lot of work, and then keeping them. So we only have a certain amount of resources. And so we talked about, what are some ways we can take what we have and do more with it and still be practical and feasible?

I'm looking forward to figuring out if that can be done or not. That very much excites me. So the innovation of what it's going to take to stay relevant, that excites me. It very much excites me.

Al: Well, you're a builder, Dow.

Dow: We’re builders. We like that. Yeah. Yeah. And our now kind of focus is like that. I feel like now it's more of team building. I much prefer building teams over buildings, and I love doing them both. But there's a lot of similarities of building a team and maintaining a team as our building a building. That building a building’s a little bit easier. Materials and 2x4s don't talk back and don't really have a lot of needs.

Al: But yeah. So the goal of having and keeping engaged employees, because that's what's going to help you keep your current clients, and it's the extreme satisfaction of those current clients and commitment of those current clients that are going to provide your future and security in that regard, and growth. Yeah.

Dow: Al, if I don’t have engaged employees, it can't be done. It's a mission that cannot be accomplished if I don't have engaged employees.

Al: Well, Dow, this has just been a great conversation. I certainly appreciate everything that you said. And it just, I think our listeners are really kind of at the edge of their chair understanding of your approach here. It goes back to kind of the beginning of our conversation with values and how you started off with discovering what your values were around servant leadership, with passion, hustle, caring, and details, and how you really look to hire and grow your employees that express those values. And how you've got an operating system that, you know, values employees and has really been an investment with dividends. You've talked about 360s, not only for yourself, and I appreciated your transparencies there with 360s. Feedback is important for us to grow and to know how others are experiencing our leadership. Sometimes we don't like to always hear what we find out, but it's good for us. And I like to say feedback is the breakfast of champions. Sometimes it doesn't taste so good, but it's important.

Dow: It doesn’t, and it hurts the ego. And I know in my case, quite often my ego gets in the way. But as we mature and get wiser, our ego needs to get smaller and smaller. We can't kill our ego. We don't need to try to. It's always going to be there. But hopefully, it can be managed and decreased.

Al, I do want to say how the product that you have and how y'all deliver it is phenomenal. It has been a key part and will be a key part of keeping our employees engaged. And again, I’m going to say it again just for emphasis, we can’t do our mission of to serve, or it can't be done well, if our employees are not engaged. And you give us the metrics and the coaching to keep us there.

Al: And I know it’s been our pleasure. And I know Cary Humphries has worked with you most recently and just loves working with you. And it is. It's how it's delivered as well as the tools themselves, you know, because we do care and love for our mission partners.

Dow: You do. It's like great icing on a great cake, and it's good cake, and it's a really good icing, too.

Al: Well, I appreciate that, Dow.

This is really just been a great conversation. Let me ask you. Any bottom line, any other topic that you want to mention as we wrap this up?

Dow: Al, my heart’s warm and full, you know. I will say this as far as here's where I'm at right now that I feel like that is figuring out rewarding compensation. And your chapter—I just read your chapter six of rewarding compensation. And we do have our compensation philosophy. It's just, it's not written down yet. And I've kind of made my notes. And so a key part of our next journey, especially this season we're about to get into, portion of this year, we have this time to figure out bonus distribution. We have some profit we get to distribute. We need to determine what we need to pay everybody next year. And so we're very much in a season where, what is our philosophy on compensation? And your chapter six book is a good chapter.

Al: Well, I appreciate so much all you've got to say, and I want to thank you for your contributions today. And most of all, I appreciate your commitment to leading an exceptional company that has a servant-leadership culture, that meets the needs of your customers, employees. And I love the way you even express that you want to have engaged employees who experience well-being in their work. And as a result of that, you've seen industry low turnover in a hot market. You’re in a hot market there in Tennessee. You've experienced industry low turnover, and you've been able to see as a result really happy customers and revenue and profitability growth that many would be jealous to have. So my congratulations to you.

Dow: Thank you, Al.

Al: Thank you.

Thanks so much for listening to my conversation with Dow, and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

You can find ways to connect with him and links to everything we discussed in the show notes and transcript at workplaces.org/podcast.

And if you have any suggestions for me about our podcast or have any questions about a flourishing workplace culture, please email me at al@workplaces.org.

And leaders, if you want to improve your leadership, expand your organization's impact for good, and see greater faithfulness in our broader culture, help us achieve our goal to see flourishing Christian-led workplaces. To help, please share this podcast with another leader or launch a project in your own organization to discover and improve the health of your workplace culture. If you're interested in learning more, go to workplaces.org and request a sample report.

Outro: The Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast is sponsored by Best Christian Workplaces. If you need support building a flourishing workplace culture, please visit workplaces.org for more information.

We'll see you again next week for more valuable content to help you develop strong leaders and build a flourishing workplace culture.

Al: And next week, we're going to hear a very interesting transformational story from Linda Uveges, the CEO of The City Rescue Mission in Cleveland, Ohio.