April 29, 2025 • 35 mins
In a special episode brought to you by Chase for Business, Dr. Laurie joins Ben Walter—CEO of Chase for Business and host of The Unshakeables podcast—to talk about resilience. Dr. Laurie and Ben explore the story of Benjamin Haugh, founder of All Nation Restoration in Austin, Texas.
Benjamin had a difficult start in life, and at a young age found himself stranded in Austin with no money or job. Despite massive adversity, he went on to become a pillar of the Austin community. Through his emergency restoration company, Benjamin is helping people rebuild and recover when disaster strikes—an experience that can teach us so much about being resilient.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin Hey, Doctor Lorie Santos here with a special bonus
episode and something a little different. I was recently invited
on a podcast called The Unshakables to talk not about
happiness but resilience. The Unshakables podcast is created by Chase
for Business. It focuses on small business owners who face
(00:36):
crisis points and show the heart, humility, and hustle needed
to propel their companies forward. I joined Ben Walter, CEO
of Chase for Business and host of The Unshakables, to
explore the story of Benjamin Howe, who runs All Nation
Restoration in Austin, Texas. Benjamin's story is pretty incredible. He
not only bounced back from some serious business problems, he
also started life facing some truly tough situations. Benjamin was
(01:00):
born into a deeply repressive community, one in which he
felt unloved and unappreciated. Benjamin hated how he was treated,
and he rebelled against his family, which landed him in
trouble with the law, and that turned out to be
a blessing. Then, what I really loved in your story,
especially during the hardest times, is you told this tale
of how there was one person who really thought you
(01:21):
were smart, and you'd never been called smart before. I
just want you to reflect on that a little bit
about how that really changed your perception of yourself. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Sure, it came at a super impactful moment and from
somebody with a lot of authority.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Right.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
So, like when I ended up in the juvenile system,
I was actually in front of a judge. And it
was interesting because my dad was a bit of a
tyrant and he was really the one that consistently had
made me feel really insignificant, really stupid. But when I
was in that courtroom, my dad was in submission to
that judge. He could do nothing, he could say nothing,
And that was really cool for me just to watch
(01:57):
him have to sit down and be quiet and listen
to a judge. And so when that judge turned around
and said, hey, what's happened to Ben is not fair,
what's happened here is not right, and we've done italuation,
we've taken the time to actually get into his brain right.
And I think up to that point, I thought I
was not intelligent and that I was maybe dangerous or
(02:18):
something was wrong with me psychologically in some way, Like
those were the thoughts I had about myself my psychological
evaluation took twelve and a half hours. Of course, for me,
it was trying to prove that I was smart, right,
I was trying to prove that I could answer the
questions and solve the puzzles and all of those things.
And when the judge heard that that's what the judge said,
he like, it was like, what's happened to Benjamin is
(02:41):
complete travesty. And so to have that judge that didn't
know me to actually stand up for me and say, no, no, you.
We're not looking at a hard and criminal that's made
a decision to be a bad person. We're looking at
a kid And because in my mind I wasn't a
kid man, it changed my life.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
If that's what's your appetite, then here's a chance to
listen to all of Benjamin's incredible story of resilience on
the Unshakables.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Welcome to the Unshakables from Chase for Business and Ruby
Studio from iHeartMedia. I'm Ben Walter, CEO of Chase for Business.
On the Unshakables, we're sharing the daring moments of small
business owners facing their crisis points and telling the stories
of how they got through it. Today, we have a
story of overcoming overwhelming adversity and a guest who somehow
(03:32):
stayed optimistic through it all. His mindset is fascinating. I
wanted an expert's opinion to really dig into this, so
I brought in a special co pilot for today's episode.
She's a psychologist, the host of the hit podcast The
Happiness Lab, and also the professor of Psychology and the
Good Life, which is the most popular class in Yale's history.
(03:53):
I'm thrilled to welcome to the Unshakables today, doctor Laurie Santos. Laurie,
thank you for joining us today.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Thanks so much for having me on the show.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Today's episode centers on themes of grit, resilience, and optimism
in the face of obstacles, and Laurie is the perfect
person to help us explore that.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
I think there's two big inputs you want to build
up if you want to become more resilient in business
and in life. I think the first one is your mindset.
The second thing, though, is I think you want to
build up social support.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Both of which play a critical role in Benjamin's story.
So let's get to it. On today's episode, All Nation
restoration from Austin, Texas. Today, we're doing something a little
bit different, which is to start with Benjamin How's upbringing.
This is a business show, so we usually focus on business,
but in this case, Benjamin's childhood is in many ways
(04:44):
the foundation of his business.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
I was born into basically a conservative group. It's not
a nominational Christian, super strict religious group. They would say,
if you're to asked, and they would talk about the
education system and being homeschooled. The three fact is those organizations,
in my opinion, they operate by controlling the narrative, and
so the real goal is no educ I didn't buy
(05:11):
really the narrative, and I saw too many conflicts of
sort of interest in the belief system. Leaving was very
difficult for anybody. It takes a lot of bravery to leave,
or it takes a method of sabotage. They had the
systems to deal with the typical rebellion, and I took
it definitely a step further where it was radical rebellion.
(05:32):
It was I don't care one bit if I'm dead
or alive. I'm going to make your life hell no
matter what. When they realized it couldn't take me anywhere.
They couldn't do anything. I was out of control. Is
when they said, yeah, we got to ship him off.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
One night, Benjamin was out with his friends when they
got pulled over. He tried to run, He was caught, detained,
and taken to juvenile detention. Benjamin was fifteen at the time.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
When I went too JUVI. You know, I probably would
stayed there for a couple of days, Max, but I
wouldn't go home.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
He wouldn't leave. His dad didn't want him to come home.
It was a stalemate.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
We were in this stand off, which resulted in like
a three month juvenile stay for me, which was not fun.
Through that process of going to juvenile attention and stuff,
I started to see people that actually really cared, just
like the general public. And there was a judge involved
in my case in the juvenile court, and he just
really puts a neck out on the line and had
(06:29):
my back. And the Judge's like, no, I'm not going
to take him and put him in a prison where
he learns to be a criminal. Right, he's smart. And
it was the first time in my life somebody ever
called me smart. He said, I'm goss send you this
boys home. He's not going to be fun. It's gonna
be hard. He said, you make a year commitment, you
go there, and when you're out, I'll file the paperwork
to emancipate you.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
How old are you at this point?
Speaker 2 (06:49):
I turned sixteen in the boys program in Houston.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
The program had a deal where once the boys matriculated,
they would buy them a one way bus ticket to
anywhere in Texas.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
I had told him I want to go to Brian
College station, and they looked it up and they're like, yeah,
there's a bus that leaves here at like six in
the evening headed to Brian. And I was like, no,
because I'll get off the bus and it'll be dark,
right and I don't know anybody there.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
But there was a bus leaving for Austin forty five
minutes later. Benjamin got on.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
I didn't have a plan. I don't know if there's
any way humanly possible to describe really the feeling and
the fear and the excitement, the mix of adrenaline and emotion.
But I haven't felt it since. We'll put it that way.
I've had plenty of things happen in my life since
have been very scary or very exciting, but nothing that
really hits that point. I tried to calm down that
(07:38):
it was starting to get towards the evening, I realized
that I needed some form of transportation, and I found
a bicycle that was not being intended to at the moment,
and I took it because I needed it. And then
I started realizing that I really needed is somebody I knew.
I had to have connection, because if you don't know
anybody right, you're kind of completely screwed.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
What happened next is a story for another day, but
here's the gist. Benjamin needed to find someone, anyone to
throw him a lifeline. Remember this is a six year
old kid with no money and no family, so he
biked around looking for anyone he knew, and finding no one,
he rode twenty two miles to round Rock, Texas, mainly
on the Highway access road. Unsurprisingly, the police pulled him
(08:21):
over for biking on the highway and escorted him to
a local hotel, where a young woman working reception took
pity on him. She let him crash in an empty
room for the night. We're going to pick our story
back up the next morning, Benjamin was out of the
room bright and early, and there were only a few
other folks in the hotel parking lot, including one guy
named Sean.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
A guy probably in his fifties or so. He was
sitting on the tailgate of his pickup truck. I finally
got the courage to go up to him and I said, hey,
quick questions, are chivity work I can do? He said, well,
what do you know how to do? And I said,
whatever you tell me to do. I need to work.
And he'said, well, I got a couple errands, I got
a run first thing in the morning here and I'll
think about it and stuff. So he drove away about
(09:02):
thirty minutes, maybe an hour later, he showed back up.
He had a house in Round Rock. I went to
the house and helped him out. I cleaned his shed
and changed a tire on a vehicle and just the typical.
And he's like, I need to know who you are
and what's going on.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
And so he told him the whole story.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Now you gotta been I told him the whole story.
It's funny because I told him the whole story. He
listened and he said, okay, I'll tell you what. Don't
ever tell anybody that story again. He's like, well, I
don't want to make you feel weird or wherever, but you're
welcome to stay with me. He had a four voye
and was married and stuff, and.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
He invited you into his home.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Yeah, he did, and I accepted it.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
I want to pause a second here. This moment is extraordinary. Again.
This is a sixteen year old kid with a bike
and no education approaching a business owner just looking for
a lifeline. The courage it takes to do that is staggering,
and Sean was kind enough to hear him out and
give him the bridge he needed to start this new life.
This stuff doesn't just happen every day, but I've seen
(10:02):
time and time again that small business owners show up
for their communities, especially in time of need. If anything,
I hope this inspires all of us to look around
our own communities and take a chance on someone who
may desperately need it. So you moved in with him,
you went to work for him. Yes, so tell me
about the business. What was his business?
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Water? Fire, mold and crimes and cleanup. Those were the
main pieces of what he did.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
And you learn all about how to restore physical property. Right.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Yeah, there's always this big question mark with education for me, like,
how am I going to be successful without the tools
of education, not being able to read and write, and like,
how am I going to be a benefit to this company?
And how am I going to be a benefit to
this guy's taking his chance on me and so coming
into his world and seeing that you could replace a
lot of the standard education with your willingness to learn
(10:52):
and your willingness to work.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
You got it on the job education.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Absolutely, Yeah, it was basically an apprenticeship. I got to
see the good, the bad, the ugly. I got to
see it in real time. He was a real support
to me, and he taught me that industry inside and out.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
Shawn's restoration company was called a Best sounds like a
Yellow Pages play.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Yeah, it was one hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
I'm old enough to remember that.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Okay, Yeah, that's exactly what it was. And when you
could easily search stuff online on your phone, the Yellow
Pages overnight dried up and blew away.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Soon A Best went by the way of the Yellow Pages,
and Benjamin found himself once again out in the world
without a real plan. But this time he had connections,
employment history, a little bit of cash saved up, and
skills he could leverage. He went out looking for a job.
He got lots of interviews, but every time he went
in he was asked to fill out a job application.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
I can't felt the paperwork, but I'm really good at
my job, Like, I will work really hard, I'll be
on time. And a guy looked at me and he's like, man,
if you can't fill out the paperwork, how are you
going to do your job?
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Benjamin was stuck. Then Chris, an old coworker from a
best reached out.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
He's like, hey, can I come work for you? And
I just literally start laughing. I don't know if it
was because I thought it was funnier because I was
on a complete panic myself, but I just cracked it laughing.
I think I was eighteen. And Chris is like, well, look, man,
if there's anybody that I think can do this, it's you.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
So you decided to start the company or is that
too much of a stretch.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
I would love this to be more of a hero story,
but really it was a lot of fear. I truly
did not believe I had what it took to run
a company.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
You just needed income, so you gotta go.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Yeah, And that was pretty much it.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Benjamin called Chris back. He still wasn't sure, but Chris was.
Chris was so sure that he offered to work for free.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
I mean that was the offer. He's like, you can't
pass that up then, and I was like, yeah, you're right.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Benjamin quickly realized that starting a business takes capital, a
lot of capital, and he had much less money coming
in than he had before.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
One of the lessons for me was if I was
going to start a company, I need to lower my expenses,
like big time.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
How do you do that?
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Well, one my girlfriend didn't like the reduction in income.
That problem resolved itself. She left.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
That took care of it.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Yeah, okay, she left. And I realized that the idea
of faking it until you make it it wasn't gonna
work for me. Went on a mission to sell basically
everything that I had. I bought a camper and I
moved it too RV Park in East Austin, and Chris
moved in with me. So we lived in this little camper.
We split the rent in the camper, and we worked
(13:23):
our butts off.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Doctor Santos, what did you think of Benjamin's story?
Speaker 1 (13:31):
I mean, what an incredible human and what an incredible story. Right.
It's amazing because it violates the intuitions that I think
we usually have about what makes for a successful business person.
A successful business person you get to NBA, or they
go to some fancy school, or they're the kind of
person that has had a straight path to where they're going. Now,
Benjamin's story really reminds us that, hey, there's so many
(13:52):
different paths to being a successful business person, and you
don't necessarily have to worry if you're kind of missing
one of the things you think you need. Right you
might not have that fancy college degree, you might not
have that fancy experience, you might not necessarily even believe
that you're able to do what you're doing. One of
the things I found so compelling about Benjamin's story is
that at one point, when he's handed the keys to
(14:13):
this new business, he says, I definitely don't think I'm
going to be successful, Like, there's no way I'm going
to run this business as well as the person before me.
And you know, look at the amazing things he's done.
And so I think it really reminds us that a
lot of the ideas we have about successful business people
who can be a good leader. Some of those ideas
are really mistaken, and we might really need to visit
(14:34):
thinking about them differently.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Yeah, it's clear from Benjamin's story that starting and running
a business, whether you come from a background like his
or not, if you list all our stories, takes a
certain level of resilience. How do you develop resilience as
an asset, as a tool in your life. What are
the inputs that help people build that muscle.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
I think the first one is your mindset. He had
a mindset that things were going to work out. It
wasn't so much like a blindly hopeful but he just
had faith in his own abilities to push through things
when things were tough. And this is really a mindset
of optimism, something that's really important for resilience. You realize, hey,
it's not that tough stuff's not going to up. I'm
not blindly hopeful that no problems will ever come up.
(15:12):
I just if problems come up, I have faith in
my ability to push through. And I think that was
really inherent in benjamin story. But I think it's something
that all resilient business leaders need to build in because
we can't blindly think that no problems are going to
come up. They're going to come up, right. This is
what we hear on your show a lot. Right, the
problems come up. But I think we need to have
a mindset where we just have some faith in our
(15:33):
ability to get through it. It turns out that that belief,
believing that you can do it, is kind of half
the battle for getting through things. And so I think
that's resilience ingredient number one, the right mindset of resilience.
The second thing, though, is I think you want to
build up social support. You want to have people that
you can ask for help, You want to have businesses
that can help you out when things get really tricky.
(15:54):
I think you want to build a set of social
supports around you that can really take care of you
when times get tough. And I see this in benjment
story a little bit too right. He really made good
use of the opportunities he had socially, of the people
who did believe in him. He kind of locked on
to that and really use those individuals to fuel his success.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Yeah. I really want to hear what you think about
the rest of Benjamin's story. Let's listen. At this point,
Benjamin and Chris are living in the RV. They had
lots of small residential projects and slowly built up their
name and their reputation. Finally, they got a big break,
a contract with a research and development lab in Austin.
Not only did it help them financially, but it also
(16:33):
gave Benjamin the nudge he needed.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
That's why I kind of realized that there was a
good chance we could line up more of those and
actually start to build a business.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
So once you really got it going, then there's a
point at which you really started to invest. Right. You
started to buy equipment, You started to buy everything you needed,
and then you bought some vans. Tell me about that.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
I started investing in the company from day one, buying
restoration equipment, fans do you use, and the things we
needed in box trucks and used vehicles.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Their transportation inventory reached a critical moment in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
We realized that our fleet was just aging out. It
was just one disaster of the.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
Other, one broken belt away from whatever.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Yeah, and turbos and being late to customers houses all stuff.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
This was Benjamin's chance to get his beloved eighty to
ninety thousand dollars vans.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
I was going to kind of rip the bandaid off
and replace the fleet with these vehicles. I told the
sales guys, we want to replace our entire fleet of vans.
It's about fifteen vans we're looking at. He's like, we're
not going to get those allocated to us.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
If you remember anything about the car shortages during twenty twenty,
then you know what Benjamin was facing. Unlike many Americans,
the shortage actually worked out in his favor.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
I didn't want to do it all at once. Let's
put that in one at a time. When they come in,
we'll trade it out for one of the vehicles that's
in rough shape with the company. So he calls me
about a month later, he's like, hey, good news. I
was able to get all of those vans allocated and
I started the order on all of them. And that
was a panic moment for me because that was well
(18:01):
over a million dollars.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
You didn't have a million in cash to just have
on it.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
No, I did it okay, So it was a total panic.
I got with my anchor. We started looking at everything
financials and he helped me recast my financials and he
kept coming back and be like, I don't know how
we're going to make this happen. But we're going to
make it happen. And I was like, okay, So sure enough,
those vans are rolling in, just one after the other
every day. I was getting stretched to pretty much the limit.
(18:27):
And then COVID had a huge impact on all businesses.
We were no different. And so like from when the
order went in to when the vans became available, all
at one time, the company was also not doing fantastic.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Somehow, Benjamin got all his vans. The van panic was
almost over. Almost just after he got the final van
wrapped in road ready, he got a call from the
guy next door to his business property.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
He's in a complete panic. He can't give it all,
get a straight word out, ben Oh my god. And
I was like, no, dude, what's going on. He's like,
all of your vans are floating away in the creek
and it wasn't even raining. And I was like, stop
joking with me. It wasn't storming, and it hadn't even
bend raining. The ground wasn't saturated. And I was like,
you have to be kidding me.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
What happened? Was it raining upstream?
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Like?
Speaker 3 (19:14):
What happened? Here's what happened? Benjamin and the All Nation
Restoration facilities were near Walnut Creek in Austin. Surrounding the
creek is a large natural area with miles of biking
and walking trails. It also has a large floodplane. All
Nation Restoration was in that floodplane, and today was Benjamin's
unlucky day.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
So it took all these vans off the creek, and
it took them down the creek, some of them miles
and just obliterated them. And then it's also just embarrassing,
super embarrassing, like the restoration company that usually helps people
with floods loses all their vans in the creek.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
Right, Did you think the business was going to survive
at that point.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
No, I was pretty sure it wasn't. We bought in
the middle of COVID, so prices were elevated from all dealerships,
so we're paying over what the vehicle was worth. On
top of that, we didn't put gap insurance on stuff
when we bought them. We were in such a hurry
just to get this to happen. And then because of
the costs increase on my insurance premium, which I really
didn't fully take into consideration when I bought all these vans. Yeah,
(20:15):
I didn't really think about it. I had opted for
a high deductible ten thousand dollars per vehicle because in
my mind there was no way that I would lose
all of my vehicles.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
So how did you resolve this? What'd you do? Well?
Speaker 2 (20:27):
It's interesting because I think things resolved themselves if you
stick in there, if you persevere through them. We went
through the normal things, getting all of the equipment that
was in those vans out and back up onto the
dry land, and then working with a towing agency to
get all of the vehicles out of the creek, which
was a huge effort, filing claims on all of it,
and then try to negotiate with our insurance company on
(20:48):
all the vehicles. We went to rental companies and re
rented vehicles, and there's a company in town that does
our lettering. They felt bad for us. They put temp
lettering on all of our rented vehicles and then offered
to take them off clean up when we were able
to return them.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
Wow. I love when I hear stories like that, like
small businesses supporting other small businesses.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Yeah, it was super. Austin Seinco. Has been really good dusts,
but then came the interesting thing, and I thought to myself,
you don't deal with something like this for no reason.
There has to be something that we can learn from
this and some way we can grow in a positive
direction through this. And so although I still believe that
the Mercedes Sprinter van is the best for restoration, there
(21:26):
is also negatives. And then some of the negatives are
that they're high roof, which is good to work in,
but they're not good for overhead damage. We had a
lot of overhead damage claims that were coming in. Then
just the weight of the vehicles on the road and
the impact on the environment.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
Burned a lot of guess and yep, tires, more.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Tires, tires for all of it, and then the insurance
costing everything else. So I went back to the drawing
board and I said, we're going to go way smaller
on vehicles, and we're going to buy cash. So we're
going to rent and then we're gonna start knocking out
those rental vans, getting the returned back to the rental
company by replacing as fast as we can, replacing these
vans with cash vehicles.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
At that time, Benjamin was also spending a ton of
money on marketing the company, trying to drum up business
and replace what he lost during COVID.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
I ended up moving my marketing dollars out of promoting
the company digitally, and instead I bought a dumpster company
and I logoed out the twenty five dumpsters with full graphics.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
So they became a marketing vehicle for you because the
dumster sits outside and everybody drives by it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
So I was like, I can basically purchase this company
out right with my budget.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
And it'll make money and do marketing at the same time.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
That's right, And then it allowed us to buy smaller vehicles.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
The good Ninja move.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Well, I look back and I was like, I need
to pat myself on the back. I figured out, you know,
and then I bought all these little transit vans and
I used the insurance company to get out of the
debt with the van as best as possible. And then
the debt that was remaining, we went to the banks
and we were like, look, this is the situation, here's
the pictures. Can we consolidate? So we actually came back
from this whole thing a lot stronger. So at first
(22:56):
I was like, man, nobody's going to believe how stupid
I am parking all my vans at a floodplant. And
then once we solved all these problems, I started thinking, Oh, man,
I hope nobody thinks this is insurance fraud. Like I
intentionally dumped my fleet to switch gears to do something better.
So I feel like really blessed that it actually happened,
which is really weird because I think we came back
(23:17):
so much better and on a different trajectory, a much
more sustainable trajectory, a much easier trajectory to grow.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Laurie, we talk a lot about mindset on the show,
but I gotta say Benjamin's mindset is next level. Even
when he's panicking or he's in a really tough spot,
he's able to keep showing up. It would be so
much easier to quit, but he doesn't. Can you give
us a little insight into what it takes to have
a mindset where you can keep going.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
You'd be surprised how becoming a little bit more other
oriented and purpose driven can give you the resilience to
push through when times are tough for yourself. That's providing
a foundation, that's boosting your happiness. That's boosting your sense
of self worth. That can kind of help you out
when things get tough. So I think becoming other oriented
in an odd way is a way of sort of
selfishly protecting yourself. That said, I think you also need
(24:07):
strategies when the tough times come up to help yourself,
and a big one is really mindfully noticing how things
are going, mindfully noticing like, oh, I'm feeling really overwhelmed
right now, I'm feeling really stressed out, I'm feeling a
little lonely, like I haven't had a chance to see
my family in a long time. I often tell my
students that negative emotions are like the dashboard light on
your car. You know, if your tire light goes on
(24:29):
or your engine light. You have to notice that and
pay attention to it, not necessarily immediately, but at some
point you've got to rectify the situation and fix things.
I think our own negative emotions and mindfully noticing those
negative emotions work like that. If you want to be
a resilient business leader, you have to take time to
notice when you're feeling a little overwhelmed, You're feeling a
little stressed, you're feeling a little down. Maybe feeling a
(24:52):
little angry, you're anxious, Right, These are all emotions that
push us towards some behavior that we can use to
resolve things and feel better. That sort of mindset research
shows can really be good for getting through tough times,
but also making sure you're motivating yourself in a healthy way.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
I mean, those are really forms of emotional preparedness. I
spend a lot of time with clients and guests on
the show talking about financial preparedness, risk preparedness, thinking through
what could happen. What I hear you saying is you
have to do the same for your own mental health
and emotions exactly.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
And I think that sadly, this is something that we
don't teach people very well. I mean, I think Benjamin's
School of Hard Knocks has really taught him to develop
that emotional preparedness. I think just as we have lots
of courses on financial literacy, we actually need equivalent business
courses on emotional regulation literacy. Right, How do I regulate
my emotions, notice them and tackle them in tough times?
Speaker 3 (25:42):
Yeah? And I think that's become a lot less taboo,
is the good news?
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Right?
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Mental health in general has become less taboo. But it's
also the hard one because I can't put it on
a spreadsheet like a lot of the things that I do.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Yeah, but it is going to be the kind of
thing that business leaders take into account because I think
more and more you recognize that mental fitness and by
that the ability to regulate your emotions, having a resilient
mindset and so on. Mental fitness winds up mattering for
your business performance. We want teams that can regulate their emotions.
We want teams that have a positive mindset that are
going to keep pushing and persevering when times get tough.
(26:14):
And so I think more and more we're going to
be seeing businesses paying attention to all these so called
squishy psychological topics. More.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
It's squishy when it's everyone else's, but it doesn't feel
squishy when it's yours.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Right, Definitely, definitely does.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
The research suggest that there are any conditions or tools
or anything else that can help us when we go
through tough times experience growth as opposed to trauma.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Yeah, Well, one tool really is the right kind of mindset,
And I think Benjamin exemplifies this really well. He seems
to have this really lovely ability to look for a
silver lining in the midst of all these things, to
be grateful in the face of really bad times. Research
has shown that having a grateful mindset noticing the blessings
can be one path to having a mindset that can
(26:56):
help you through bad times. And that's important because our
natural instinct is to focus on the negative, to notice
only the bad stuff. When we train our mind to
focus on the blessings, that means that even in the
midst of terrible things, we can notice stuff that we
can be grateful for, and that can give us a
kind of motivation to sort of push through. So I
think that's one thing. He really has, this mindset of
noticing the blessings. Even though he went through such a
(27:17):
terrible childhood, he was able to make great use of
the social support that he did have, from the judge
who gave him a little bit of a benefit of
the doubt, to the hotel owner who helped him out
a little bit, to business owners who gave him a chance. Right,
I just want a job, I just want to jump in.
I'll do anything. He was able to make good use
of these moments of social support. And one of the
things we do know is that if you're going through
(27:38):
a tough time, whether that's in your personal life or
in a business, having that social support, noticing that it's there,
asking for help, These kinds of things can matter a
lot too.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
I mean that's even correlated with the longer life, right,
having healthy social connections exactly.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
And there's study after study really showing that if you
look at longevity, people who have and maintain their healthy
social connections wind up living longer and living longer more healthfily.
So you don't just like live for a long time,
but you avoid things like heart attacks and so on.
Social support winds up helping us out a lot, and
it's a great stress buffer, right, And I think we
see this a little bit in Benjamin story as well.
(28:14):
Times that would normally hit us really hard didn't hit
Benjamin as hard. I think because he was relying on
his team, he was relying on the social support that
he'd grown to love. And I think that that's a
lesson for a lot of us too, Right. It's not
just having these social supports, it's really maintaining them, putting
time in and being willing to go to them when
times are tough.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
Thank you for those insights, Lori now, we've heard about
All Nations past and present, but I wanted to ask
Benjamin about the future. We've been talking a lot about
succession planning on the show recently, so much so that
we dedicated a bonus segment to it. So please go
take a listen. You can find it in the show's feed.
In twenty years, what's your wish for All.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Nation As the company grows and expands, I want its
focus to remain on helping people that are less fortunate.
I think a lot of times companies start selling out
to shareholders and people that are really interested in that profit,
which I understand that path, but as we grow as
a company, I want to give back to those type
of kids out of those programs or young people that
are struggling with addiction. And I would like to do
(29:12):
it in more than one city. We're doing it in Austin,
but if we can grow into multiple cities and give
people an opportunity for employment. I think for me, the
biggest struggle wasn't changing my life in the boy's home.
It was what to do once I got out, and
I think that path to a career that can support
yourself is a key piece. I think that's missing in
so many places.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
And my final question, I ask every guest on the show,
if you had one piece of advice for a business
owner or aspiring entrepreneur, what would that one piece of
advice be.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Don't give up, do not give up. Persevere. All the
time I see people that have the answers, they have
the solutions to grow, they have it. They just run
into a problem. They run into a moment in their
life when it's impossible and they throw in the towel.
And if they persevere through that, a lot of times
they come out so much stronger.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Thank you very much, Benjamin how It's been a pleasure
having you on The un Chackables. Thank you for sharing
your story.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Thank you, Ben.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
Laurie. The thought that kept going through my head is
that I think we have this one dimensional definition of education.
But I'm sitting across from this guy who's incredibly articulate.
I was lucky enough to meet his wife and daughter.
He has this great family, and so I think, you know,
we have this one dimensional education means I graduated from
this and I can do X and Y, And he
(30:30):
just kept making me think, do I have that definition wrong?
In my head? Is that too limited.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
He really shows the power of the school of hard
knocks for lack of a better term. Right, he's learned
a lot from running his business, but he's also learned
a lot from the kind of failures and the difficulties
that have come up. And I think this is something
that we get wrong about success. We think success is
about figuring something out the first time right, getting it
right all the time. We forget that our biggest teachers
(30:55):
can be the awful times, the traumas when things don't
go well, when all your vehicles are flooded, and like
you have to figure out how to get the right
insurance and what your business does after that. And that
means that sometimes as business leaders, we avoid those risks
right possibilities that might seem risky. We don't go for
that because we're worried about the failure. But what we
forget is that if we mess up, we might not
(31:16):
necessarily mess up, but if we mess up, that mess
up might be our biggest teacher. It might be the
thing that allows our business to grow in ways that
we couldn't have expected. And so Benjamin's story can really
remind us avoiding risks completely or worrying that if you
hit a hard time or something comes up, you won't
be able to handle it. That's just not what research
really shows. What research shows is that trauma can sometimes
(31:37):
make us grow. And that's trauma in life, as we've
seen with Benjamin with his upbringing and so on. But
it's also kind of trauma in the context of business
when things go just as bad as you could possibly imagine.
Sometimes that comes with some good too.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
Laurie, can you talk to us a little bit about
more modern psychological frames for advantage disadvantage, how we approach others.
A lot of people in society would judge because he
can't read and write. Now, that's not his fault. He
grew up in an environment where that wasn't taught to him.
And if I'm honest with myself, I was on some
level surprised that he has been able to be as
(32:13):
successful as he has been when he can't fill out
a form. And I sort of feel bad about feeling
that way, but I'm being honest about it. How does
stigma and other things play into societal expectations around these
types of things.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Yeah, well, I think they play in a lot in
two ways that are really important. First, these kind of
cultural notions of like, well, who's educated, who belongs here right?
Who can fit into business world? Who has the skills
to do it? I think those expectations affect the opportunities
that we give to the people that come our way
as business leaders. You know, if someone can't fill out
a form, you might not give them the benefit of
the doubt to become one of your team members. But
(32:49):
just like Benjamin, it might be an amazing individual. And
so I think it reminds us that we need to
give folks grace that the normal stereotypes we have about
the kind of person who belongs in our organization might
be wrong, and that we might want to rethink some
of those But I think Benjamin's story also shows a
second way in which some of these beliefs can really
affect productivity, which is the beliefs that an individual has
(33:10):
about themselves. If you're a disadvantaged, if you have something
that is stigmatizing, like the fact that you can't read,
or the lack of formal education or something like that,
that can affect the extent to which you yourself believe in yourself.
I was really taken by Benjamin's story of kind of
what switched where the judge was like, a smart guy
like you, you should have had these opportunities X, Y,
(33:32):
and Z. He was really changed by the fact that
there was somebody else out there that believed in him.
And I think this is something that we neglect as
business leaders. Right, A quick one off compliment about you
did such a great job, or you're actually really good
at this, or you're a really hard worker. Those quick
kind of one offs can actually change a person's beliefs
about themselves. It can make someone more resilient over time.
(33:54):
And I think it just reminds us as leaders that
like sometimes we think those kind of compliments in our head,
but we don't often share them. And I think that's
especially true for individuals from disadvantage backgrounds who might have
a stereotype against them that causes them to have a
threatened belief about them. Just these small kind of things,
especially to individuals in disadvantage groups, can mean the world
(34:15):
of difference, Like literally can change someone's life.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
Yeah, we spend a lot of time at the bank
thinking about how to serve all different types of people
and it's pretty resource intensive. You can imagine we have
language barriers. Obviously, we do have people who can't read
and write, and we have to be able to serve
them as well. We have people with physical disabilities, and
that's not a small investment. I'm incredibly proud that we're
able to do it, but it takes work and you
have to do it intentionally.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
I mean, I think what the research really shows is
that work is probably paying off. Allowing individuals to get
through the door. Kind of democratizing access to these opportunities
really changes the face of what's possible in business.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
Doctor Lori Santos, thank you so much for being on
the show that this was really insightful and I appreciate
the time you've spent with us.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
Thanks so much for having me. I hope you enjoyed
that deep dive into resilience building. Benjamin How's story offers
such valuable insights on how to meet like many ops
and come through them stronger, healthier, and happier. The Unshakables
podcast is full of such wisdom, so check out more
episodes from Ben Walter and the folks at Chase for
(35:19):
Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your shows.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
Real Customer Compensated
Pushkin Hey, Doctor Lorie Santos here with a special bonus
episode and something a little different. I was recently invited
on a podcast called The Unshakables to talk not about
happiness but resilience. The Unshakables podcast is created by Chase
for Business. It focuses on small business owners who face
(00:36):
crisis points and show the heart, humility, and hustle needed
to propel their companies forward. I joined Ben Walter, CEO
of Chase for Business and host of The Unshakables, to
explore the story of Benjamin Howe, who runs All Nation
Restoration in Austin, Texas. Benjamin's story is pretty incredible. He
not only bounced back from some serious business problems, he
also started life facing some truly tough situations. Benjamin was
(01:00):
born into a deeply repressive community, one in which he
felt unloved and unappreciated. Benjamin hated how he was treated,
and he rebelled against his family, which landed him in
trouble with the law, and that turned out to be
a blessing. Then, what I really loved in your story,
especially during the hardest times, is you told this tale
of how there was one person who really thought you
(01:21):
were smart, and you'd never been called smart before. I
just want you to reflect on that a little bit
about how that really changed your perception of yourself. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Sure, it came at a super impactful moment and from
somebody with a lot of authority.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Right.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
So, like when I ended up in the juvenile system,
I was actually in front of a judge. And it
was interesting because my dad was a bit of a
tyrant and he was really the one that consistently had
made me feel really insignificant, really stupid. But when I
was in that courtroom, my dad was in submission to
that judge. He could do nothing, he could say nothing,
And that was really cool for me just to watch
(01:57):
him have to sit down and be quiet and listen
to a judge. And so when that judge turned around
and said, hey, what's happened to Ben is not fair,
what's happened here is not right, and we've done italuation,
we've taken the time to actually get into his brain right.
And I think up to that point, I thought I
was not intelligent and that I was maybe dangerous or
(02:18):
something was wrong with me psychologically in some way, Like
those were the thoughts I had about myself my psychological
evaluation took twelve and a half hours. Of course, for me,
it was trying to prove that I was smart, right,
I was trying to prove that I could answer the
questions and solve the puzzles and all of those things.
And when the judge heard that that's what the judge said,
he like, it was like, what's happened to Benjamin is
(02:41):
complete travesty. And so to have that judge that didn't
know me to actually stand up for me and say, no, no, you.
We're not looking at a hard and criminal that's made
a decision to be a bad person. We're looking at
a kid And because in my mind I wasn't a
kid man, it changed my life.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
If that's what's your appetite, then here's a chance to
listen to all of Benjamin's incredible story of resilience on
the Unshakables.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Welcome to the Unshakables from Chase for Business and Ruby
Studio from iHeartMedia. I'm Ben Walter, CEO of Chase for Business.
On the Unshakables, we're sharing the daring moments of small
business owners facing their crisis points and telling the stories
of how they got through it. Today, we have a
story of overcoming overwhelming adversity and a guest who somehow
(03:32):
stayed optimistic through it all. His mindset is fascinating. I
wanted an expert's opinion to really dig into this, so
I brought in a special co pilot for today's episode.
She's a psychologist, the host of the hit podcast The
Happiness Lab, and also the professor of Psychology and the
Good Life, which is the most popular class in Yale's history.
(03:53):
I'm thrilled to welcome to the Unshakables today, doctor Laurie Santos. Laurie,
thank you for joining us today.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Thanks so much for having me on the show.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Today's episode centers on themes of grit, resilience, and optimism
in the face of obstacles, and Laurie is the perfect
person to help us explore that.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
I think there's two big inputs you want to build
up if you want to become more resilient in business
and in life. I think the first one is your mindset.
The second thing, though, is I think you want to
build up social support.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Both of which play a critical role in Benjamin's story.
So let's get to it. On today's episode, All Nation
restoration from Austin, Texas. Today, we're doing something a little
bit different, which is to start with Benjamin How's upbringing.
This is a business show, so we usually focus on business,
but in this case, Benjamin's childhood is in many ways
(04:44):
the foundation of his business.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
I was born into basically a conservative group. It's not
a nominational Christian, super strict religious group. They would say,
if you're to asked, and they would talk about the
education system and being homeschooled. The three fact is those organizations,
in my opinion, they operate by controlling the narrative, and
so the real goal is no educ I didn't buy
(05:11):
really the narrative, and I saw too many conflicts of
sort of interest in the belief system. Leaving was very
difficult for anybody. It takes a lot of bravery to leave,
or it takes a method of sabotage. They had the
systems to deal with the typical rebellion, and I took
it definitely a step further where it was radical rebellion.
(05:32):
It was I don't care one bit if I'm dead
or alive. I'm going to make your life hell no
matter what. When they realized it couldn't take me anywhere.
They couldn't do anything. I was out of control. Is
when they said, yeah, we got to ship him off.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
One night, Benjamin was out with his friends when they
got pulled over. He tried to run, He was caught, detained,
and taken to juvenile detention. Benjamin was fifteen at the time.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
When I went too JUVI. You know, I probably would
stayed there for a couple of days, Max, but I
wouldn't go home.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
He wouldn't leave. His dad didn't want him to come home.
It was a stalemate.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
We were in this stand off, which resulted in like
a three month juvenile stay for me, which was not fun.
Through that process of going to juvenile attention and stuff,
I started to see people that actually really cared, just
like the general public. And there was a judge involved
in my case in the juvenile court, and he just
really puts a neck out on the line and had
(06:29):
my back. And the Judge's like, no, I'm not going
to take him and put him in a prison where
he learns to be a criminal. Right, he's smart. And
it was the first time in my life somebody ever
called me smart. He said, I'm goss send you this
boys home. He's not going to be fun. It's gonna
be hard. He said, you make a year commitment, you
go there, and when you're out, I'll file the paperwork
to emancipate you.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
How old are you at this point?
Speaker 2 (06:49):
I turned sixteen in the boys program in Houston.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
The program had a deal where once the boys matriculated,
they would buy them a one way bus ticket to
anywhere in Texas.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
I had told him I want to go to Brian
College station, and they looked it up and they're like, yeah,
there's a bus that leaves here at like six in
the evening headed to Brian. And I was like, no,
because I'll get off the bus and it'll be dark,
right and I don't know anybody there.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
But there was a bus leaving for Austin forty five
minutes later. Benjamin got on.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
I didn't have a plan. I don't know if there's
any way humanly possible to describe really the feeling and
the fear and the excitement, the mix of adrenaline and emotion.
But I haven't felt it since. We'll put it that way.
I've had plenty of things happen in my life since
have been very scary or very exciting, but nothing that
really hits that point. I tried to calm down that
(07:38):
it was starting to get towards the evening, I realized
that I needed some form of transportation, and I found
a bicycle that was not being intended to at the moment,
and I took it because I needed it. And then
I started realizing that I really needed is somebody I knew.
I had to have connection, because if you don't know
anybody right, you're kind of completely screwed.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
What happened next is a story for another day, but
here's the gist. Benjamin needed to find someone, anyone to
throw him a lifeline. Remember this is a six year
old kid with no money and no family, so he
biked around looking for anyone he knew, and finding no one,
he rode twenty two miles to round Rock, Texas, mainly
on the Highway access road. Unsurprisingly, the police pulled him
(08:21):
over for biking on the highway and escorted him to
a local hotel, where a young woman working reception took
pity on him. She let him crash in an empty
room for the night. We're going to pick our story
back up the next morning, Benjamin was out of the
room bright and early, and there were only a few
other folks in the hotel parking lot, including one guy
named Sean.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
A guy probably in his fifties or so. He was
sitting on the tailgate of his pickup truck. I finally
got the courage to go up to him and I said, hey,
quick questions, are chivity work I can do? He said, well,
what do you know how to do? And I said,
whatever you tell me to do. I need to work.
And he'said, well, I got a couple errands, I got
a run first thing in the morning here and I'll
think about it and stuff. So he drove away about
(09:02):
thirty minutes, maybe an hour later, he showed back up.
He had a house in Round Rock. I went to
the house and helped him out. I cleaned his shed
and changed a tire on a vehicle and just the typical.
And he's like, I need to know who you are
and what's going on.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
And so he told him the whole story.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Now you gotta been I told him the whole story.
It's funny because I told him the whole story. He
listened and he said, okay, I'll tell you what. Don't
ever tell anybody that story again. He's like, well, I
don't want to make you feel weird or wherever, but you're
welcome to stay with me. He had a four voye
and was married and stuff, and.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
He invited you into his home.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Yeah, he did, and I accepted it.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
I want to pause a second here. This moment is extraordinary. Again.
This is a sixteen year old kid with a bike
and no education approaching a business owner just looking for
a lifeline. The courage it takes to do that is staggering,
and Sean was kind enough to hear him out and
give him the bridge he needed to start this new life.
This stuff doesn't just happen every day, but I've seen
(10:02):
time and time again that small business owners show up
for their communities, especially in time of need. If anything,
I hope this inspires all of us to look around
our own communities and take a chance on someone who
may desperately need it. So you moved in with him,
you went to work for him. Yes, so tell me
about the business. What was his business?
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Water? Fire, mold and crimes and cleanup. Those were the
main pieces of what he did.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
And you learn all about how to restore physical property. Right.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Yeah, there's always this big question mark with education for me, like,
how am I going to be successful without the tools
of education, not being able to read and write, and like,
how am I going to be a benefit to this company?
And how am I going to be a benefit to
this guy's taking his chance on me and so coming
into his world and seeing that you could replace a
lot of the standard education with your willingness to learn
(10:52):
and your willingness to work.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
You got it on the job education.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Absolutely, Yeah, it was basically an apprenticeship. I got to
see the good, the bad, the ugly. I got to
see it in real time. He was a real support
to me, and he taught me that industry inside and out.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
Shawn's restoration company was called a Best sounds like a
Yellow Pages play.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Yeah, it was one hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
I'm old enough to remember that.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Okay, Yeah, that's exactly what it was. And when you
could easily search stuff online on your phone, the Yellow
Pages overnight dried up and blew away.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Soon A Best went by the way of the Yellow Pages,
and Benjamin found himself once again out in the world
without a real plan. But this time he had connections,
employment history, a little bit of cash saved up, and
skills he could leverage. He went out looking for a job.
He got lots of interviews, but every time he went
in he was asked to fill out a job application.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
I can't felt the paperwork, but I'm really good at
my job, Like, I will work really hard, I'll be
on time. And a guy looked at me and he's like, man,
if you can't fill out the paperwork, how are you
going to do your job?
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Benjamin was stuck. Then Chris, an old coworker from a
best reached out.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
He's like, hey, can I come work for you? And
I just literally start laughing. I don't know if it
was because I thought it was funnier because I was
on a complete panic myself, but I just cracked it laughing.
I think I was eighteen. And Chris is like, well, look, man,
if there's anybody that I think can do this, it's you.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
So you decided to start the company or is that
too much of a stretch.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
I would love this to be more of a hero story,
but really it was a lot of fear. I truly
did not believe I had what it took to run
a company.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
You just needed income, so you gotta go.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Yeah, And that was pretty much it.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Benjamin called Chris back. He still wasn't sure, but Chris was.
Chris was so sure that he offered to work for free.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
I mean that was the offer. He's like, you can't
pass that up then, and I was like, yeah, you're right.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Benjamin quickly realized that starting a business takes capital, a
lot of capital, and he had much less money coming
in than he had before.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
One of the lessons for me was if I was
going to start a company, I need to lower my expenses,
like big time.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
How do you do that?
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Well, one my girlfriend didn't like the reduction in income.
That problem resolved itself. She left.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
That took care of it.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Yeah, okay, she left. And I realized that the idea
of faking it until you make it it wasn't gonna
work for me. Went on a mission to sell basically
everything that I had. I bought a camper and I
moved it too RV Park in East Austin, and Chris
moved in with me. So we lived in this little camper.
We split the rent in the camper, and we worked
(13:23):
our butts off.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Doctor Santos, what did you think of Benjamin's story?
Speaker 1 (13:31):
I mean, what an incredible human and what an incredible story. Right.
It's amazing because it violates the intuitions that I think
we usually have about what makes for a successful business person.
A successful business person you get to NBA, or they
go to some fancy school, or they're the kind of
person that has had a straight path to where they're going. Now,
Benjamin's story really reminds us that, hey, there's so many
(13:52):
different paths to being a successful business person, and you
don't necessarily have to worry if you're kind of missing
one of the things you think you need. Right you
might not have that fancy college degree, you might not
have that fancy experience, you might not necessarily even believe
that you're able to do what you're doing. One of
the things I found so compelling about Benjamin's story is
that at one point, when he's handed the keys to
(14:13):
this new business, he says, I definitely don't think I'm
going to be successful, Like, there's no way I'm going
to run this business as well as the person before me.
And you know, look at the amazing things he's done.
And so I think it really reminds us that a
lot of the ideas we have about successful business people
who can be a good leader. Some of those ideas
are really mistaken, and we might really need to visit
(14:34):
thinking about them differently.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Yeah, it's clear from Benjamin's story that starting and running
a business, whether you come from a background like his
or not, if you list all our stories, takes a
certain level of resilience. How do you develop resilience as
an asset, as a tool in your life. What are
the inputs that help people build that muscle.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
I think the first one is your mindset. He had
a mindset that things were going to work out. It
wasn't so much like a blindly hopeful but he just
had faith in his own abilities to push through things
when things were tough. And this is really a mindset
of optimism, something that's really important for resilience. You realize, hey,
it's not that tough stuff's not going to up. I'm
not blindly hopeful that no problems will ever come up.
(15:12):
I just if problems come up, I have faith in
my ability to push through. And I think that was
really inherent in benjamin story. But I think it's something
that all resilient business leaders need to build in because
we can't blindly think that no problems are going to
come up. They're going to come up, right. This is
what we hear on your show a lot. Right, the
problems come up. But I think we need to have
a mindset where we just have some faith in our
(15:33):
ability to get through it. It turns out that that belief,
believing that you can do it, is kind of half
the battle for getting through things. And so I think
that's resilience ingredient number one, the right mindset of resilience.
The second thing, though, is I think you want to
build up social support. You want to have people that
you can ask for help, You want to have businesses
that can help you out when things get really tricky.
(15:54):
I think you want to build a set of social
supports around you that can really take care of you
when times get tough. And I see this in benjment
story a little bit too right. He really made good
use of the opportunities he had socially, of the people
who did believe in him. He kind of locked on
to that and really use those individuals to fuel his success.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Yeah. I really want to hear what you think about
the rest of Benjamin's story. Let's listen. At this point,
Benjamin and Chris are living in the RV. They had
lots of small residential projects and slowly built up their
name and their reputation. Finally, they got a big break,
a contract with a research and development lab in Austin.
Not only did it help them financially, but it also
(16:33):
gave Benjamin the nudge he needed.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
That's why I kind of realized that there was a
good chance we could line up more of those and
actually start to build a business.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
So once you really got it going, then there's a
point at which you really started to invest. Right. You
started to buy equipment, You started to buy everything you needed,
and then you bought some vans. Tell me about that.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
I started investing in the company from day one, buying
restoration equipment, fans do you use, and the things we
needed in box trucks and used vehicles.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Their transportation inventory reached a critical moment in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
We realized that our fleet was just aging out. It
was just one disaster of the.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
Other, one broken belt away from whatever.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Yeah, and turbos and being late to customers houses all stuff.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
This was Benjamin's chance to get his beloved eighty to
ninety thousand dollars vans.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
I was going to kind of rip the bandaid off
and replace the fleet with these vehicles. I told the
sales guys, we want to replace our entire fleet of vans.
It's about fifteen vans we're looking at. He's like, we're
not going to get those allocated to us.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
If you remember anything about the car shortages during twenty twenty,
then you know what Benjamin was facing. Unlike many Americans,
the shortage actually worked out in his favor.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
I didn't want to do it all at once. Let's
put that in one at a time. When they come in,
we'll trade it out for one of the vehicles that's
in rough shape with the company. So he calls me
about a month later, he's like, hey, good news. I
was able to get all of those vans allocated and
I started the order on all of them. And that
was a panic moment for me because that was well
(18:01):
over a million dollars.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
You didn't have a million in cash to just have
on it.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
No, I did it okay, So it was a total panic.
I got with my anchor. We started looking at everything
financials and he helped me recast my financials and he
kept coming back and be like, I don't know how
we're going to make this happen. But we're going to
make it happen. And I was like, okay, So sure enough,
those vans are rolling in, just one after the other
every day. I was getting stretched to pretty much the limit.
(18:27):
And then COVID had a huge impact on all businesses.
We were no different. And so like from when the
order went in to when the vans became available, all
at one time, the company was also not doing fantastic.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Somehow, Benjamin got all his vans. The van panic was
almost over. Almost just after he got the final van
wrapped in road ready, he got a call from the
guy next door to his business property.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
He's in a complete panic. He can't give it all,
get a straight word out, ben Oh my god. And
I was like, no, dude, what's going on. He's like,
all of your vans are floating away in the creek
and it wasn't even raining. And I was like, stop
joking with me. It wasn't storming, and it hadn't even
bend raining. The ground wasn't saturated. And I was like,
you have to be kidding me.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
What happened? Was it raining upstream?
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Like?
Speaker 3 (19:14):
What happened? Here's what happened? Benjamin and the All Nation
Restoration facilities were near Walnut Creek in Austin. Surrounding the
creek is a large natural area with miles of biking
and walking trails. It also has a large floodplane. All
Nation Restoration was in that floodplane, and today was Benjamin's
unlucky day.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
So it took all these vans off the creek, and
it took them down the creek, some of them miles
and just obliterated them. And then it's also just embarrassing,
super embarrassing, like the restoration company that usually helps people
with floods loses all their vans in the creek.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
Right, Did you think the business was going to survive
at that point.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
No, I was pretty sure it wasn't. We bought in
the middle of COVID, so prices were elevated from all dealerships,
so we're paying over what the vehicle was worth. On
top of that, we didn't put gap insurance on stuff
when we bought them. We were in such a hurry
just to get this to happen. And then because of
the costs increase on my insurance premium, which I really
didn't fully take into consideration when I bought all these vans. Yeah,
(20:15):
I didn't really think about it. I had opted for
a high deductible ten thousand dollars per vehicle because in
my mind there was no way that I would lose
all of my vehicles.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
So how did you resolve this? What'd you do? Well?
Speaker 2 (20:27):
It's interesting because I think things resolved themselves if you
stick in there, if you persevere through them. We went
through the normal things, getting all of the equipment that
was in those vans out and back up onto the
dry land, and then working with a towing agency to
get all of the vehicles out of the creek, which
was a huge effort, filing claims on all of it,
and then try to negotiate with our insurance company on
(20:48):
all the vehicles. We went to rental companies and re
rented vehicles, and there's a company in town that does
our lettering. They felt bad for us. They put temp
lettering on all of our rented vehicles and then offered
to take them off clean up when we were able
to return them.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
Wow. I love when I hear stories like that, like
small businesses supporting other small businesses.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Yeah, it was super. Austin Seinco. Has been really good dusts,
but then came the interesting thing, and I thought to myself,
you don't deal with something like this for no reason.
There has to be something that we can learn from
this and some way we can grow in a positive
direction through this. And so although I still believe that
the Mercedes Sprinter van is the best for restoration, there
(21:26):
is also negatives. And then some of the negatives are
that they're high roof, which is good to work in,
but they're not good for overhead damage. We had a
lot of overhead damage claims that were coming in. Then
just the weight of the vehicles on the road and
the impact on the environment.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
Burned a lot of guess and yep, tires, more.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Tires, tires for all of it, and then the insurance
costing everything else. So I went back to the drawing
board and I said, we're going to go way smaller
on vehicles, and we're going to buy cash. So we're
going to rent and then we're gonna start knocking out
those rental vans, getting the returned back to the rental
company by replacing as fast as we can, replacing these
vans with cash vehicles.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
At that time, Benjamin was also spending a ton of
money on marketing the company, trying to drum up business
and replace what he lost during COVID.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
I ended up moving my marketing dollars out of promoting
the company digitally, and instead I bought a dumpster company
and I logoed out the twenty five dumpsters with full graphics.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
So they became a marketing vehicle for you because the
dumster sits outside and everybody drives by it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
So I was like, I can basically purchase this company
out right with my budget.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
And it'll make money and do marketing at the same time.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
That's right, And then it allowed us to buy smaller vehicles.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
The good Ninja move.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Well, I look back and I was like, I need
to pat myself on the back. I figured out, you know,
and then I bought all these little transit vans and
I used the insurance company to get out of the
debt with the van as best as possible. And then
the debt that was remaining, we went to the banks
and we were like, look, this is the situation, here's
the pictures. Can we consolidate? So we actually came back
from this whole thing a lot stronger. So at first
(22:56):
I was like, man, nobody's going to believe how stupid
I am parking all my vans at a floodplant. And
then once we solved all these problems, I started thinking, Oh, man,
I hope nobody thinks this is insurance fraud. Like I
intentionally dumped my fleet to switch gears to do something better.
So I feel like really blessed that it actually happened,
which is really weird because I think we came back
(23:17):
so much better and on a different trajectory, a much
more sustainable trajectory, a much easier trajectory to grow.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Laurie, we talk a lot about mindset on the show,
but I gotta say Benjamin's mindset is next level. Even
when he's panicking or he's in a really tough spot,
he's able to keep showing up. It would be so
much easier to quit, but he doesn't. Can you give
us a little insight into what it takes to have
a mindset where you can keep going.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
You'd be surprised how becoming a little bit more other
oriented and purpose driven can give you the resilience to
push through when times are tough for yourself. That's providing
a foundation, that's boosting your happiness. That's boosting your sense
of self worth. That can kind of help you out
when things get tough. So I think becoming other oriented
in an odd way is a way of sort of
selfishly protecting yourself. That said, I think you also need
(24:07):
strategies when the tough times come up to help yourself,
and a big one is really mindfully noticing how things
are going, mindfully noticing like, oh, I'm feeling really overwhelmed
right now, I'm feeling really stressed out, I'm feeling a
little lonely, like I haven't had a chance to see
my family in a long time. I often tell my
students that negative emotions are like the dashboard light on
your car. You know, if your tire light goes on
(24:29):
or your engine light. You have to notice that and
pay attention to it, not necessarily immediately, but at some
point you've got to rectify the situation and fix things.
I think our own negative emotions and mindfully noticing those
negative emotions work like that. If you want to be
a resilient business leader, you have to take time to
notice when you're feeling a little overwhelmed, You're feeling a
little stressed, you're feeling a little down. Maybe feeling a
(24:52):
little angry, you're anxious, Right, These are all emotions that
push us towards some behavior that we can use to
resolve things and feel better. That sort of mindset research
shows can really be good for getting through tough times,
but also making sure you're motivating yourself in a healthy way.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
I mean, those are really forms of emotional preparedness. I
spend a lot of time with clients and guests on
the show talking about financial preparedness, risk preparedness, thinking through
what could happen. What I hear you saying is you
have to do the same for your own mental health
and emotions exactly.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
And I think that sadly, this is something that we
don't teach people very well. I mean, I think Benjamin's
School of Hard Knocks has really taught him to develop
that emotional preparedness. I think just as we have lots
of courses on financial literacy, we actually need equivalent business
courses on emotional regulation literacy. Right, How do I regulate
my emotions, notice them and tackle them in tough times?
Speaker 3 (25:42):
Yeah? And I think that's become a lot less taboo,
is the good news?
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Right?
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Mental health in general has become less taboo. But it's
also the hard one because I can't put it on
a spreadsheet like a lot of the things that I do.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Yeah, but it is going to be the kind of
thing that business leaders take into account because I think
more and more you recognize that mental fitness and by
that the ability to regulate your emotions, having a resilient
mindset and so on. Mental fitness winds up mattering for
your business performance. We want teams that can regulate their emotions.
We want teams that have a positive mindset that are
going to keep pushing and persevering when times get tough.
(26:14):
And so I think more and more we're going to
be seeing businesses paying attention to all these so called
squishy psychological topics. More.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
It's squishy when it's everyone else's, but it doesn't feel
squishy when it's yours.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Right, Definitely, definitely does.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
The research suggest that there are any conditions or tools
or anything else that can help us when we go
through tough times experience growth as opposed to trauma.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Yeah, Well, one tool really is the right kind of mindset,
And I think Benjamin exemplifies this really well. He seems
to have this really lovely ability to look for a
silver lining in the midst of all these things, to
be grateful in the face of really bad times. Research
has shown that having a grateful mindset noticing the blessings
can be one path to having a mindset that can
(26:56):
help you through bad times. And that's important because our
natural instinct is to focus on the negative, to notice
only the bad stuff. When we train our mind to
focus on the blessings, that means that even in the
midst of terrible things, we can notice stuff that we
can be grateful for, and that can give us a
kind of motivation to sort of push through. So I
think that's one thing. He really has, this mindset of
noticing the blessings. Even though he went through such a
(27:17):
terrible childhood, he was able to make great use of
the social support that he did have, from the judge
who gave him a little bit of a benefit of
the doubt, to the hotel owner who helped him out
a little bit, to business owners who gave him a chance. Right,
I just want a job, I just want to jump in.
I'll do anything. He was able to make good use
of these moments of social support. And one of the
things we do know is that if you're going through
(27:38):
a tough time, whether that's in your personal life or
in a business, having that social support, noticing that it's there,
asking for help, These kinds of things can matter a
lot too.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
I mean that's even correlated with the longer life, right,
having healthy social connections exactly.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
And there's study after study really showing that if you
look at longevity, people who have and maintain their healthy
social connections wind up living longer and living longer more healthfily.
So you don't just like live for a long time,
but you avoid things like heart attacks and so on.
Social support winds up helping us out a lot, and
it's a great stress buffer, right, And I think we
see this a little bit in Benjamin story as well.
(28:14):
Times that would normally hit us really hard didn't hit
Benjamin as hard. I think because he was relying on
his team, he was relying on the social support that
he'd grown to love. And I think that that's a
lesson for a lot of us too, Right. It's not
just having these social supports, it's really maintaining them, putting
time in and being willing to go to them when
times are tough.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
Thank you for those insights, Lori now, we've heard about
All Nations past and present, but I wanted to ask
Benjamin about the future. We've been talking a lot about
succession planning on the show recently, so much so that
we dedicated a bonus segment to it. So please go
take a listen. You can find it in the show's feed.
In twenty years, what's your wish for All.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Nation As the company grows and expands, I want its
focus to remain on helping people that are less fortunate.
I think a lot of times companies start selling out
to shareholders and people that are really interested in that profit,
which I understand that path, but as we grow as
a company, I want to give back to those type
of kids out of those programs or young people that
are struggling with addiction. And I would like to do
(29:12):
it in more than one city. We're doing it in Austin,
but if we can grow into multiple cities and give
people an opportunity for employment. I think for me, the
biggest struggle wasn't changing my life in the boy's home.
It was what to do once I got out, and
I think that path to a career that can support
yourself is a key piece. I think that's missing in
so many places.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
And my final question, I ask every guest on the show,
if you had one piece of advice for a business
owner or aspiring entrepreneur, what would that one piece of
advice be.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Don't give up, do not give up. Persevere. All the
time I see people that have the answers, they have
the solutions to grow, they have it. They just run
into a problem. They run into a moment in their
life when it's impossible and they throw in the towel.
And if they persevere through that, a lot of times
they come out so much stronger.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Thank you very much, Benjamin how It's been a pleasure
having you on The un Chackables. Thank you for sharing
your story.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Thank you, Ben.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
Laurie. The thought that kept going through my head is
that I think we have this one dimensional definition of education.
But I'm sitting across from this guy who's incredibly articulate.
I was lucky enough to meet his wife and daughter.
He has this great family, and so I think, you know,
we have this one dimensional education means I graduated from
this and I can do X and Y, And he
(30:30):
just kept making me think, do I have that definition wrong?
In my head? Is that too limited.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
He really shows the power of the school of hard
knocks for lack of a better term. Right, he's learned
a lot from running his business, but he's also learned
a lot from the kind of failures and the difficulties
that have come up. And I think this is something
that we get wrong about success. We think success is
about figuring something out the first time right, getting it
right all the time. We forget that our biggest teachers
(30:55):
can be the awful times, the traumas when things don't
go well, when all your vehicles are flooded, and like
you have to figure out how to get the right
insurance and what your business does after that. And that
means that sometimes as business leaders, we avoid those risks
right possibilities that might seem risky. We don't go for
that because we're worried about the failure. But what we
forget is that if we mess up, we might not
(31:16):
necessarily mess up, but if we mess up, that mess
up might be our biggest teacher. It might be the
thing that allows our business to grow in ways that
we couldn't have expected. And so Benjamin's story can really
remind us avoiding risks completely or worrying that if you
hit a hard time or something comes up, you won't
be able to handle it. That's just not what research
really shows. What research shows is that trauma can sometimes
(31:37):
make us grow. And that's trauma in life, as we've
seen with Benjamin with his upbringing and so on. But
it's also kind of trauma in the context of business
when things go just as bad as you could possibly imagine.
Sometimes that comes with some good too.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
Laurie, can you talk to us a little bit about
more modern psychological frames for advantage disadvantage, how we approach others.
A lot of people in society would judge because he
can't read and write. Now, that's not his fault. He
grew up in an environment where that wasn't taught to him.
And if I'm honest with myself, I was on some
level surprised that he has been able to be as
(32:13):
successful as he has been when he can't fill out
a form. And I sort of feel bad about feeling
that way, but I'm being honest about it. How does
stigma and other things play into societal expectations around these
types of things.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Yeah, well, I think they play in a lot in
two ways that are really important. First, these kind of
cultural notions of like, well, who's educated, who belongs here right?
Who can fit into business world? Who has the skills
to do it? I think those expectations affect the opportunities
that we give to the people that come our way
as business leaders. You know, if someone can't fill out
a form, you might not give them the benefit of
the doubt to become one of your team members. But
(32:49):
just like Benjamin, it might be an amazing individual. And
so I think it reminds us that we need to
give folks grace that the normal stereotypes we have about
the kind of person who belongs in our organization might
be wrong, and that we might want to rethink some
of those But I think Benjamin's story also shows a
second way in which some of these beliefs can really
affect productivity, which is the beliefs that an individual has
(33:10):
about themselves. If you're a disadvantaged, if you have something
that is stigmatizing, like the fact that you can't read,
or the lack of formal education or something like that,
that can affect the extent to which you yourself believe in yourself.
I was really taken by Benjamin's story of kind of
what switched where the judge was like, a smart guy
like you, you should have had these opportunities X, Y,
(33:32):
and Z. He was really changed by the fact that
there was somebody else out there that believed in him.
And I think this is something that we neglect as
business leaders. Right, A quick one off compliment about you
did such a great job, or you're actually really good
at this, or you're a really hard worker. Those quick
kind of one offs can actually change a person's beliefs
about themselves. It can make someone more resilient over time.
(33:54):
And I think it just reminds us as leaders that
like sometimes we think those kind of compliments in our head,
but we don't often share them. And I think that's
especially true for individuals from disadvantage backgrounds who might have
a stereotype against them that causes them to have a
threatened belief about them. Just these small kind of things,
especially to individuals in disadvantage groups, can mean the world
(34:15):
of difference, Like literally can change someone's life.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
Yeah, we spend a lot of time at the bank
thinking about how to serve all different types of people
and it's pretty resource intensive. You can imagine we have
language barriers. Obviously, we do have people who can't read
and write, and we have to be able to serve
them as well. We have people with physical disabilities, and
that's not a small investment. I'm incredibly proud that we're
able to do it, but it takes work and you
have to do it intentionally.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
I mean, I think what the research really shows is
that work is probably paying off. Allowing individuals to get
through the door. Kind of democratizing access to these opportunities
really changes the face of what's possible in business.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
Doctor Lori Santos, thank you so much for being on
the show that this was really insightful and I appreciate
the time you've spent with us.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
Thanks so much for having me. I hope you enjoyed
that deep dive into resilience building. Benjamin How's story offers
such valuable insights on how to meet like many ops
and come through them stronger, healthier, and happier. The Unshakables
podcast is full of such wisdom, so check out more
episodes from Ben Walter and the folks at Chase for
(35:19):
Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your shows.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
Real Customer Compensated
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com