Often times, we don’t recognize our happiness in the moment but instead look back years later saying it was the happiest time of our lives.
Take joy in your current happiness, no matter how small.
What a sad thought of someone walking around happy and not even knowing it.
If you are looking for the perfect job, the perfect day, the perfect role, the perfect family, the perfect income, you will never find it… it doesn’t exist!
If you are always chasing your dream, you might not realize you are currently living it!
“So I conclude there is nothing better than to be happy and enjoy ourselves as long as we can.” – Ecclesiastes 3:12
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A bit more… The WORLD’S LARGEST shoe store is ON THE INTERNET… Shoes on-line? I mean crazy… I have to try them on, I have to see them, what about returns, what if I don’t like them… I mean that’s kind of crazy right? But Zappos.com does it and they do it amazingly well.
Zappos.. the world’s largest shoe store is 100% online and doing extremely well. (It’s where I buy all my shoes.) The owner of Zappos, wrote a book about how they did it…
The title… “Delivering Happiness”… I think that’s just awesome. I think it is something we try to do at Drexel every day too. Delivering Happiness. Or wow. wow. wow. as we say here at Drexel.
– Joel Fleischman. Joel is Head Coach of the solution providers for Drexel Building Supply. (drexelteam). You can follow him on twitter: @JoelmFleischman. Since 1985, our business success has come from building others UP.
If Duke or Wisconsin lose tonight, was their season still a success? I think 100% yes. They both have had great seasons and are the two teams left in a 68 tourney of champions chosen from 360 division 1 teams.
Do we celebrate success enough at Drexel? I say… there is no such thing as celebrating a success too much. And I am being 100% sincere when I state that. Showroom clean, Success! Smile on your face! Success! Make a mistake, realize your mistake, make the correction and move on, SUCCESS!
Life is not as black and white as a game. In a game… You score more points you win. Success! In life and business, it is not quite as clear.
Each time we take an order it’s a success: Somebody thinks we are good enough that they will spend there money to buy from us.
SUCCESS!
For instance Joe from Wrightstown and their team unloaded upwards of 20,000 sheets of OSB last week. All of it will be sold this Spring. Did we pop champagne? Sing Jump Around? Of course not. “It’s just our job.” Well not really… possibly the largest buy and unload of OSB this year in Wisconsin. I wouldn’t doubt that. I say, way to go Joe, purchasing, sales, and the ap-ar that made that transaction seamless! Success!
As we roll into Spring, CELEBRATE PEOPLE. Life at Drexel is good. And successful. Look around. Do you see successful team members or losers?
Don’t diminish encouraging each other one. It’s a great habit to get into. A hi-five, a pat on the back, a quick smile, a “wow nice work”. Just have fun with this career. Sales, this business, it’s a giant game we are playing. Have fun playing it.
Teams and organizations that focus on and celebrate success create more success. Success becomes ingrained in the culture and people naturally look for it, focus on it and expect it. That’s why certain football coaches and business leaders are always successful. They implement systems and principles that create a culture that celebrates and expects success and this drives behavior and habits that create successful outcomes.
Drexel does this as well as anyone. We have team member of the week. Beth sends out her “high margin” winners for the month… mid 30s and 40’s are common! And much, much more. We can even do more. REMEMBER each ORDER, EACH PHONE CALL, EACH CUSTOMER IN OUR STORES, AND even EACH TEAM MEMBER that ROCKS that chooses to show up here most days… THAT IS A SUCCESS.
Why would we ever complain? What good does it do?
Celebrate the small wins as much as the big wins. Celebrate successful projects and implementations.
Tomorrow will have enough worries. Leave those worries for tomorrow. Fear is vastly overrated. Fear is also grossly overestimated.
Celebrate and build from each success.
– Joel Fleischman. Joel is Head Coach of the solution providers for Drexel Building Supply. (drexelteam). You can follow him on twitter: @JoelmFleischman. Since 1985, our business success has come from building others UP.
Amazing how all the core values are used in this newsletter!
9 WAYS TO BE A GREAT TEAM MEMBER
BY JON GORDON VIA HIS WEEKLY NEWSLETTER (3/23/2015)
9 Ways to Be a Great Team Member
While watching the Oscars I noticed that almost every award winner said they couldn’t have done it without their team, family, and the support of others. The fact is no one achieves success alone. We all need a great team to accomplish great things. We are at our best when we are surrounded by those who want the best for us and when we are bringing out the best in others. In this spirit I want to share 9 ways to be a great team member.
1. Set the Example – Instead of worrying about the lack of performance, productivity and commitment of others you simply decide to set the example and show your team members what hard work, passion and commitment looks like. Focus on being your best every day. When you do this you’ll raise the standards and performance of everyone around you. 2. Use Your Strengths to Help the Team – The most powerful way you can contribute to your team is to use your gifts and talents to contribute to the team’s vision and goals. Without your effort, focus, talent and growth the team won’t accomplish its mission. This means you have an obligation to improve so you can improve your team. You are meant to develop your strengths to make a stronger team. Be selfish by developing you and unselfish by making sure your strengths serve the team. 3. Share Positive Contagious Energy – Research shows emotions are contagious and each day you are infecting your team with either positive energy or negative energy. You can be a germ or a big dose a Vitamin C. When you share positive energy you infectiously enhance the mood, morale and performance of your team. Remember, negativity is toxic. Energy Vampires sabotage teams and complaining is like vomiting. Afterwards you feel better but everyone around you feels sick. 4. Know and Live the Magic Ratio – High performing teams have more positive interactions than negative interactions. 3:1 is the ratio to remember. Teams that experience interactions at a ratio equal or greater than 3:1 are more productive and higher performing than those with a ratio of less than 3:1. Teams that have a ratio of 2:1, 1:1 or more negative interactions than positive interactions become stagnant and unproductive. This means you can be a great team member by being a 3 to 1’er. Create more positive interactions. Praise more. Encourage more. Appreciate more. Smile more. High-five more. Recognize more. Energize more. 5. Put the Team First – Great team players always put the team first. They work hard for the team. They develop themselves for the team. They serve the team. Their motto is whatever it takes to make the team better. They don’t take credit. They give credit to the team. To be a great team member your ego must be subservient to the mission and purpose of the team. It’s a challenge to keep our ego in check. It’s something most of us struggle with because we have our own goals and desires. But if we monitor our ego and put the team first we’ll make the team better and our servant approach will make us better. 6. Build Relationships – Relationships are the foundation upon which winning teams are built and great team members take the time to connect, communicate and care to build strong bonds and relationships with all their team members. You can be the smartest person in the room but if you don’t connect with others you will fail as a team member. (Tweet This) It’s important to take the time to get to know your team members. Listen to them. Eat with them. Learn about them. Know what inspires them and show them you care about them. 7. Trust and Be Trusted – You can’t have a strong team without strong relationships. And you can’t have strong relationships without trust. Great team members trust their teammates and most of all their team members trust them. Trust is earned through integrity, consistency, honesty, transparency, vulnerability and dependability. If you can’t be trusted you can’t be a great team member. Trust is everything. 8. Hold Them Accountable – Sometimes our team members fall short of the team’s expectations. Sometimes they make mistakes. Sometimes they need a little tough love. Great team members hold each other accountable. They push, challenge and stretch each other to be their best. Don’t be afraid to hold your team members accountable. But remember to be effective you must built trust and a relationship with your team members. If they know you care about them, they will allow you to challenge them and hold them accountable. Tough love works when love comes first. Love tough. 9. Be Humble – Great team members are humble. They are willing to learn, improve and get better. They are open to their team member’s feedback and suggestions and don’t let their ego get in the way of their growth or the team’s growth. I learned the power of being humble in my marriage. My wife had some criticism for me one day and instead of being defensive and prideful, I simply said, “Make me better. I’m open. Tell me how I can improve.” Saying this diffused the tension and the conversation was a game changer. If we’re not humble we won’t allow ourselves to be held accountable. We won’t grow. We won’t build strong relationships and we won’t put the team first. There’s tremendous power in humility that makes us and our team better.
In addition here are a few of my favorite sayings about being a great team member.
Your team doesn’t care if you are a superstar. They care if you are a super team member.
You have to work as hard to be a great teammate as you to do be a great player.
Many teams communicate but the great ones connect. Great teams form bonds of trust that strengthen relationships and the team.
HAVE FUN, is a core value of Drexel. Super easy right?
Yet, sometimes I see people stressed out from our “busyness”… heads down…eyes flaming…shoulders burdened…and pressure building. Or “whatever” has taken in. I don’t see how I make a difference at Drexel.
Here’s some advice:
HAVE FUN ANYWAYS.
Your boss or gulp, even Joe,l can be a little bi-polar, intimidating or even worse over-bearing. His “accountability” efforts and passion for making Drexel great have come across to you as crude or even worse. It’s like they don’t even appreciate you sometimes or understand you. Today maybe they need a little of their own advice.
HAVE FUN ANYWAYS.
Your customer has crazy demands and wants it not later but now. So do 10 other customers. Now. It is all coming in a little too fast.
HAVE FUN ANYWAYS.
Today the weather has got you. It’s rainy, snowing, icey, hot, cold, damp, windy, dusty. Heck it’s Wisconsin this could all be in the same day.
HAVE FUN ANYWAYS.
You didn’t hit your goals. Maybe you don’t even have any goals. You let yourself of someone around you down. You hit a road bump and failed.
HAVE FUN ANYWAYS.
Your teammate or vendor screwed up and made you look bad.
KICK THEIR ASS. … Umm… Have fun anyways.
*****
You want to be the best version of yourself don’t you?
Ultimately isn’t that why you are on this planet? To be the BEST VERSION of you!
Doesn’t the best version have fun?
*****
Most of the time you won’t be appreciated or recognized. That’s OK. Just keeping doing the work. Keep making a difference.
You will never regret it.
*****
Drexel is changing the building supply world by
HAVING FUN.
Seriously, what other of our competition has figured this out? What vendor? I can’t think of any!
This is our Iphone. This is our Miller Lite. Having fun is our game changer.
Simply we are telling the world–
“Have fun. Work with us!”
– Joel Fleischman. Joel is Head Coach of the solution providers for Drexel Building Supply. (drexelteam). You can follow him on twitter: @JoelmFleischman. Since 1985, our business success has come from building others UP.
The shadows of the past often loom large. You don’t just represent the present… you are a culmination of the past, and hope for the future. Your time is now, only because of the toils of past generations.
Life changes.
How often we don’t realize where we are is because of who brought us here.
But sometimes we can, and that perspective can be magical.
Nick Leist you see is the 8th generation of dispatchers at our mother ship in Campbellsport.
Nick and his family.
It is solely the most important position within our organization. He is in control of the one thing we can control. The one thing that adds true value to what we do. Deliveries made in full and on time at our largest and founding location.
This is not to minimize any other position. Billing, estimating, ordering, receiving, purchasing, design, service, installing, selling, and so much more is very critical as well. And of course no location is more important than the other.
But the core of Drexel is our delivering and scheduling services…and it all started on Main Street in Campbellsport.
Everything we do that is right can be made horribly wrong by a delivery or install team arriving at the wrong time with the wrong product. It takes a team of experts to make a load perfect, estimating, the right mix of product quality and price, certainly good service and good billing practices… but one person can make a huge mess out of all it.
Ultimately, it is in the scheduler’s/dispatcher’s hands to make us look good.
That is why the 8th generation of dispatchers is so closely fostered, trained and coached. That person has to be just the right mix of saint and sinner, therapist and enforcer, mathematician and mechanic. With a little magician throw in.
Here are the 8 that have had the reins of Team Blue in the last 30 years, all continue to work here except Dick who left this world much too young:
Albert Fleischman
Dick Dornacker
Scott Rosenthal
Joel Fleischman
Jay Enright
Eric Beck
Jake Junk
Nick Leist
Albert believed that we will NEVER say no to a delivery until every person in the company was on one or every truck was gone. In 30 years we HAVE NEVER had a load that didn’t make it out because we ran out of time.
NO LOADS HAVE EVER BEEN LEFT BEHIND UNTIL THE NEXT DAY.
Which of course has led to many stories, including…
Kris Ballard (at that time Kris was the secretary and cabinet designer) taking out a load of 4’x’8′ styrofoam that peeled off the back of the truck like a deck of cards as she drove….
Starting to pull a delivery at 4:30pm on Friday July 3rd…and arriving home just in time for the fireworks in town…
Receiving material purchased from a freight train that ran off the railroad tracks…
Making deliveries by boat, helicopter, and by hand… to prisons, schools, churchs and countless more…
16 hour work days…
I’m sure most of us has a story like this, something we just HAD to do to please the customer.
We’ve delivered to Florida, Nebraska, and dozens of other states…we have done online sales to Alaska. Our first delivery to Canada is starting next month.
And we will continue to do the un-doable….safely…on time…and complete…
When do you need it by?….and we will get it done by then. The only thing stopping us is mother nature, and even then we win most of those battles. We can and we will continue to BE the difference.
It’s simple really. We are a logistics company. Taking product from one truck on to the next. Barb and the flooring team install it too. At the core, that’s really all we do… we do make this small task, moving materials from one place to its last, fantastically hard!
History has taken us from no communication in any trucks, to a system where you called “base camp”, to beepers and pagers, to cell phones, and now to Drexel logistics.
Pictured in front of Drexel logistics: Rosie, Carl, Benson, and Pigeon in front of Drexel logistics. Drexel Logistics captures a picture of all materials delivered and the time driver arrived at site.
Our current dispatchers and schedulers are:
Andy Feld, Kiel & Sheboygan Falls
Andy Krause (in yellow), Berlin
Ryan Michalak, Brookfield
Barb Wolf, Scheduler flooring and window treatment installs, Brookfield
Brendan Biller, Wrightstown
Thank you dispatchers, both current and past, for being the glue that holds the puzzle together. And to all those that surround them… you are all part of what we do. It is the daily “doing” that makes what we do so incredibly awesome.
Being on time and in full takes an army of blue. Each of you make that delivery go perfectly, and currently we are doing it 92% of the time. We will continue to improve.
WE ARE ON A MISSION FROM GOD.
– Joel Fleischman. Joel is Head Coach of the solution providers for Drexel Building Supply. (drexelteam). You can follow him on twitter: @JoelmFleischman. Since 1985, our business success has come from building others UP.
When I was about eight or nine, my mom burnt some toast .
One night that stood out in my mind is when she had made dinner for us after a very long and rough day at work, She placed a plate of jam and extremely burned toast in front of my dad. Not slightly burnt but completely blackened toast.I was just waiting to see if anyone noticed the burnt toast and say anything. But Dad just ate his toast and asked me if I did my homework and how my day was. I don’t remember what I told him that night, but I do remember hearing my mom apologizing to dad for burning the toast. And I’ll never forget what he said:
“Sweetie, I love burned toast.”
Later that night, I went to tell my dad good night and ask him if he really liked his toast burned. He put his arm on my shoulder and said,
“Your momma put in a very long day at work today and she was very tired. And besides, A burnt toast never hurts anyone but you know what does? Harsh words!”
The he continued to say “You know, life is full of imperfect things and imperfect people I’m not the best at hardly anything, and I forget birthdays and anniversaries just like every other human. What I’ve learned over the years, is that learning to accept each others faults and choosing to celebrate each others differences, is one of the most important keys for creating a healthy, growing, and lasting relationship. Life is too short to wake up with regrets. Love the people who treat you right and have compassion for the ones who don’t.”
Enjoy Life Now. IT’S JUST BURNT TOAST.
— Author Unknown
p.s. For us here at Drexel… many of our products are really just dead trees. We just sell dead trees (hardwood floors, cabinets, millwork, doors, lumber..) Keep that in your mind. It’s just dead trees, God will make more. Perspective is powerful.
– Joel Fleischman. Joel is Head Coach of the solution providers for Drexel Building Supply. (drexelteam). You can follow him on twitter: @JoelmFleischman. Since 1985, our business success has come from building others UP.
We are not perfect, but there is one character trait that you should hold dearly… honoring your word.
Its very liberating knowing we have complete power in this area of committing to our word.
TRUST
If you want people to respect you, follow you, help you, buy from you, like you… you have to be committed to YOUR WORD. Do what you say, on time, and in full… or don’t say it at all.
Little things, even being 5 minutes late for a meeting… diminishes the trust people have in you. When you miss a deadline or forget to get back to that person that asked for your help… that trust is gone.
THE MOST IMPORTANT CURRENCY AT DREXEL IS THE AMOUNT OF YOUR TRUST.
If you struggle with this, I encourage you to start the day with one task you will promise to yourself to complete on time and in full that day.
First is committing to yourself and then your word to others.
I challenge you to pay closer attention to the things you say you will do and make every effort to follow through with them with a time to have it completed.
How you do anything, is how you do everything.
– Joel Fleischman. Joel is Head Coach of the solution providers for Drexel Building Supply. (drexelteam). You can follow him on twitter: @JoelmFleischman. Since 1985, our business success has come from building others UP.
The sign of a champion is how one responds to a bad day.
When you wake up tomorrow, it’s a new day and a new you.
Trust the process, and remember you are going to lose a ton on your way to success.
The key is… an absolute key to life… is to make sure you pull the lesson out of it.
– Joel Fleischman. Joel is Head Coach of the solution providers for Drexel Building Supply. (drexelteam). You can follow him on twitter: @JoelmFleischman. He has provided solutions for builders and their clients since 1996 and a whole bunch of other stuff that you probably don’t care about.
Last year has left us. But it certainly lingers on. Goals not met. Time not well spent. Pounds not shed. Relationships not fostered. 2014 might of been your best year ever, but I bet there are a few things you wish you would of done different.
Fred Fuller Shedd had a way with words as the editor of the Philadelphia Bulletin. When giving a graduating speech he asked the question, “How many of you have ever sawed wood?” A few hands went up. He then asked, “How many of you have sawed sawdust?” All hands went down.
“Of course you can’t saw sawdust!” he exclaimed. “It’s already sawed and you can’t saw it again. When you start worrying about things that are over and done with, you’re merely trying to saw sawdust.”
And soon your 2015 goals will come and go as well. So soon, we will start worrying about 2015; we might of started already.
All this worrying you do? Where is it going to get you? What goal is this achieving?
How do you stop worrying? Encourage others. If you are so busy encouraging others you won’t have time to worry.
And what if those worry monsters keep you awake at night? What if you wake up so tired from all the stress of your worries?
And if that fails…sing a little song.
– Joel Fleischman. Joel is Head Coach of the solution providers for Drexel Building Supply. (drexelteam). You can follow him on twitter: @JoelmFleischman. He has provided solutions for builders and their clients since 1996 and a whole bunch of other stuff that you probably don’t care about.
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