Small Town Kid, Big Life, Jim Tracy on Building Men of Character

Jim Tracy on Building Men of Character, Leadership and Legacy, Give A Heck Podcast with Dwight Heck

🎧 Listen and Watch Give A Heck Podcast

 

Jim Tracy grew up sixth of eight kids in rural South Dakota with no running water at the summer cabin and an outhouse out back. He became a CEO, a jet pilot, a Hall of Fame inductee, a bestselling author, and a grandfather to nearly 20. Not because he had advantages, but because the right people poured into him and he never forgot it.

 

🎙️ Give A Heck Podcast

Real conversations and solo episodes about purpose, financial stewardship, mindset, leadership, and intentional living. This episode is a masterclass in character, mentorship, and what it really means to build something that lasts.

 

🔍 Episode Overview

Jim Tracy did not come from money or connections. He came from a large family in northeast South Dakota where thirteen people waited at the dinner table until his father came home from work, where summers meant fishing and hunting gophers with a bow and arrow at a cabin with no running water, and where his most important education came not from a classroom but from a grandfather he would have done anything to impress.

 

In this conversation, Dwight Heck and Jim Tracy trace the full arc of a life built on character. Jim talks about the mentors who shaped him, each one representing a distinct virtue he later built a chapter around in his Amazon number one bestselling book Building Men: Character Lessons from Influencers. From loyalty learned through brothers, to encouragement from a neighbour who called after every football game like Howard Cosell on Monday Night Football, to unwavering integrity modeled by a surgeon grandfather who took chickens as payment during the Depression.

 

Jim also walks through the business journey. Starting Legacy Telecommunications in a garage with his son, burning through his entire 401k when they won their first bid and nearly lost everything learning it, growing the company to over 200 employees, creating Legacy Radio to stay connected with his people, and eventually merging and selling into private equity in 2019. Along the way he learned to fly jets at 62, got inducted into the Wireless History Foundation Hall of Fame, and became what he considers his most important title: the Grampion to nearly 20 grandkids.

 

Jim also introduces his Culture Revival Blueprint, explains what it means to be a Curator of Culture, and shares the most important thing he ever did as a CEO. Not a strategic plan. Not a revenue target. A handwritten birthday card to every single employee, every single month.

 

📚 What You Will Learn in This Episode

  • How growing up the sixth of eight kids in rural South Dakota built the foundation of Jim’s character
  • Why loyalty, encouragement, and unwavering integrity are not traits you are born with but ones that are poured into you
  • How Jim started Legacy Telecommunications in a garage with his son and burned through his 401k on the first bid
  • What the Culture Revival Blueprint is and why every business needs one
  • Why writing a personal birthday card to every employee was the most important thing Jim ever did as a CEO
  • What it took to learn to fly jets at 62 and why it matters for anyone who thinks it is too late
  • How tenacity is a superpower that only comes from muscle memory and how you can lose it
  • What building men of character actually requires and why the answer is simpler than most people think
  • Why the most meaningful return on any investment Jim has ever made is a hug from his five-year-old granddaughter Holly

 

📑 Chapter Summaries

0:00  Introduction

Dwight opens with a bio that captures the full scope of Jim Tracy’s life and sets the stage for a conversation about character, mentorship, and legacy.

1:21  The Recovering CEO

Jim reflects on the identity shift from leading 200 people to being home with no one to delegate to, and why he describes himself as a recovering CEO.

4:47  The Origin Story

Jim describes growing up the sixth of eight kids in rural northeast South Dakota, thirteen people around the dinner table, summers at a cabin with no running water, and a childhood that was by his own account idyllic.

8:34  The Grandfather

Jim’s grandfather, a surgeon who took chickens as payment during the Depression, was the single most formative influence of his life. Jim describes him with one word: unwavering. Never left, never right, just steady.

13:00  Rubbing Elbows

Jim explains how he earned extra time with his grandfather by being the first one to help unload the Jeep Wagoneer at the lake cabin. He invested in the relationship and it paid back in ways money never could.

15:03  The People Who Built the Book

Jim introduces the structure of Building Men, each chapter representing a person who invested in him and a character trait they embodied. Loyalty from brothers, encouragement from a neighbour, meekness from an uncle.

17:33  Dopamine Hits and the People Around You

A Tom Landry quote about the Super Bowl opens a discussion on why victories are moments and the people around you are the substance. The dopamine hit fades. The relationships last.

19:18  Learning to Fly at 47, Then Jets at 62

A seed planted at age eight germinated at 47 when Jim watched a small plane fly overhead with his father. He took his first lesson in May, took his dad flying in October, and eventually transitioned to jets at 62 with a decorated F-15 pilot as his instructor.

24:24  The Co-Pilot Metaphor

Dwight and Jim explore the idea that every great life has co-pilots making small course corrections along the way. You have an obligation to pass that on.

26:48  Retirement Is Overrated

Jim makes the case against the inward focus of traditional retirement. He would rather wear out than rust out. The goal is to keep your circle of influence growing, not shrinking.

31:55  The Duck Hunt at 89

Jim’s friend Bernie, 89 years old, and Jim’s young granddaughter both shot a duck on the same morning at the same place. An 80-year spread in age, identical joy. Age has nothing to do with whether there are still moments worth living for.

34:49  From the Garage to the Hall of Fame

Jim tells the full story of Legacy Telecommunications. His son climbing unsafe cell towers, the day they decided to do it themselves, burning through the entire 401k on the first bid, growing to 200 employees, and eventually merging and selling into private equity in 2019.

42:33  Tenacity Is a Superpower

Dwight asks Jim about tenacity. Jim agrees it is a superpower but adds the crucial caveat: it only comes from muscle memory. If you quit, quitting gets easy. Burn the boats.

50:18  The Curator of Culture and the Culture Revival Blueprint

A client called Jim the Curator of Culture. He explains what that means, how the Culture Revival Blueprint works, and why every business needs a blueprint of what it looked like the day they had their original dream.

59:52  Legacy Radio and the Birthday Cards

Jim created Legacy Radio to stay connected with his growing workforce and started writing a personal birthday card to every employee every month. Grown men hugged him. It was the most important thing he ever did as a CEO.

1:03:55  Leadership Does Not Live in the Ivory Tower

Jim reflects on a CEO of one of the largest tower owners in the world who parks in the employee lot and drives a truck. That is intentional culture building.

1:15:33  Building Men of Character

Dwight asks what a father or grandfather should do if they want to raise men of character but do not know where to start. Jim’s answer: just do the right thing. His son Ryan’s answer to a Fortune 500 boardroom captures it perfectly.

1:22:12  The Book: Building Men

Jim shares how Building Men became the number one new release on Amazon in the single parenting category, a result neither he nor God had necessarily planned but one that makes complete sense.

1:33:08  The Apprenticeship Model

Jim explains why character is always taught through positive influence, never negative. The apprenticeship model, where a bricklayer teaches a hotter by doing, is the oldest and most effective model of character formation there is.

1:38:41  Great Coaches Never Sit in the Cheap Seats

No great coach ever yelled from the stands. They were on the bench, in the game, making small corrections toward a common outcome.

1:39:09  What Does It Mean to Give a Heck

Dwight asks the signature closing question. Jim’s answer is immediate and unambiguous: a hug from his five-year-old granddaughter Holly in a pink tutu and a green T-shirt at breakfast this morning. No investment he has ever made comes close to that payout.

1:42:18  Small Town Kid, Don’t Give Up

Jim’s final message to anyone who came from small beginnings and has not yet given themselves permission to believe the big life is possible. Four failed businesses and a closet prayer at 28 years old changed everything.

 

🎯 Key Takeaway

Who you become is a direct reflection of who invested in you. Your job is to keep that going.

Jim Tracy built companies, sold them, flew jets, wrote books, and stood in the Hall of Fame. But when Dwight asked him what it all means, he did not talk about any of that. He talked about Holly in a pink tutu wrapping her arms around his waist at breakfast. Everything else is the vehicle. The people are the point. And the most powerful thing any leader, parent, or mentor can do is make sure the people coming after them know that.

 

💬 Continue the Conversation

🎙️ Stop Fixing Yourself, Derek Rydall and the Law of Emergence

Derek Rydall on the principle that what you are looking for is already inside you, and why a near-death experience taught him more about human potential than a decade of self-help programs.

🎙️ Why Leadership Burns Out High Performers, Sira Laurel Explains

On what traditional leadership models are doing wrong and why the most sensitive people in your organization are often the most valuable.

🎙️ Ken Kunken, Paralyzed at 20 and Built a 40-Year Legal Career

A conversation about identity, resilience, and what it means to rebuild everything after a single moment changes your life.

🎙️ Are You Drifting Through Life, Purpose and Direction

A solo episode from Dwight on the cost of living without intention and the first honest step toward changing it.

🎙️ Turning Grief Into Story, John DeDakis

On loss, recovery, and the act of turning the hardest experiences of your life into something that serves others.

 

🔑 Key Themes Discussed

  • Character formation and mentorship
  • Rural roots and the values they build
  • Building a legacy business from a garage
  • Tenacity as a superpower built through muscle memory
  • Culture building and the Culture Revival Blueprint
  • Leadership from the loading dock, not the ivory tower
  • Flying jets at 62 and why it is never too late
  • Building men of character through positive influence
  • Faith, family, and what it means to give a heck
  • The Grampion life and why grandchildren are the ultimate ROI

 

👤 About Jim Tracy

Jim Tracy grew up the sixth of eight kids in rural northeast South Dakota, in a home where thirteen people waited at the dinner table until his father returned from work and summers were spent hunting and fishing at a cabin with no running water or telephone. He was shaped early by a grandfather he idolised, a World War II father who expected you to finish what you started, and a string of mentors who invested in him when they had no obligation to do so.

 

He went on to become a former CEO, jet pilot, Wireless History Foundation Hall of Fame inductee, keynote speaker, podcaster, and bestselling author. He built Legacy Telecommunications from a garage with his son, grew it to over 200 employees across multiple locations, and sold it into private equity in 2019. Along the way he developed the Culture Revival Blueprint and became known as the Curator of Culture for his work helping organizations rebuild what they had when they first began.

 

His book Building Men: Character Lessons from Influencers became the number one new release on Amazon in the single parenting category. Each of its 20 chapters is built around a person who poured into Jim and the character trait they embodied. He hosts The Grampion Podcast and is perhaps most proud of his role as grandfather, the Grampion, to nearly 20 grandkids.

 

🌐 Connect with Jim Tracy

Connect with Jim Tracy (click below to access)

 

 

🤝 Connect with Dwight Heck

Connect with Dwight Heck (click below to access)

 

 

🎧 Listen and Watch This Episode

 

 

💭 Final Thoughts

Jim Tracy spent this entire conversation giving credit to other people. His grandfather. His father. His son. A neighbour who called after every football game. A principal who said just do the right thing until everyone was tired of hearing it and then kept saying it anyway.

 

That is the throughline of everything Jim has built. He did not do it alone and he never pretended otherwise. The Culture Revival Blueprint, the birthday cards, Legacy Radio, the book with twenty chapters each named after a person rather than a principle. It is all the same idea. Who invested in you? And what are you doing with that?

 

The answer Jim gave at the end of this conversation was not about any of the things on his resume. It was about Holly in a pink tutu at breakfast. If you build a life where that is the payout, you built a life worth living.

 

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Full Transcript of Episode:

 

Jim Tracy

[00:00:00] Dwight: What does it mean to build something real, not just a business or a brand, but a life with actual substance behind it? A life built on who taught you, who believed in you and what you choose to do With that, today’s guest started with nothing but a work ethic shaped by rural roots and a handful of right mentors, and he turned it into something extraordinary.

He is a former CEO bestselling author, jet Pilot, hall of Fame, inductee, keynote speaker, podcaster, and perhaps most importantly, the proud Grampian to 20, just about 20 who just found that out? Grandkids. His name is Jim Tracy, and he has built businesses, sold them, started them, and did it all without losing the one thing most people compromise.

First, their character. Welcome to Give a Heck, the show for people who want to live life on purpose and with intention. I am your host, Dwight Heck, and today we’re going to talk about growing up rule, what it takes to build men of character and why most successful people you will ever meet have learned to embrace uncertainty instead of running from it.

Jim, welcome to the show. It’s genuinely great to have you here to share some of your journey.

[00:01:21] Jim: Oh, Dwight, I’m so honoured to be here. Thank you, man. And, and, what a introduction to someone who really has embraced living life on purpose. I love your motto, man.

[00:01:34] Dwight: Yeah, thanks brother. we never talked about that before recording.

When I got in this industry, like my story blows people away, but this isn’t about me. But when I got in this industry, I was trying to find my place in this world when, ’cause I went from being an IT consultant. I own a computer company, electronics engineering background. I did a lot of consulting work and at the end of the day, I didn’t feel it was my purpose.

Well, I got into this industry, fish outta water, into financial planning, and I had to find my place in this world. And somebody was saying something to me one day about purpose and intent, and I wrote down in my notebook. I wanna help people live life on purpose, not by accident. And I was going, what? And my mission statement just came to flourish.

Over the next two years, I started using it more and more. And it’s the subtitle of my book too. Helping people live life on purpose, and not by accident. Too many of us are fish outta water.

[00:02:36] Jim: Yeah.

[00:02:36] Dwight: Right. And we just, it’s, tough, especially when you go from one industry to another. And in regards to your bio, I’ve started putting a lot more work into the bio over the last two years because really at the essence, when a person’s listening to the first few minutes of a podcast, it’s, it’s ride or die, right?

Yeah. They, you, you’ve got to, you gotta connect with them. And I find a good bio, and my listeners have told me too, makes a difference. So I probably put more effort into that than I do the questions.

[00:03:09] Jim: Well, it’s really cool because at, my age, you can’t give a summation of, gee, Jim was a CEO, because there’s a lot more than that.

And it’s the, it’s the grind and the effort that led to that. And then it’s, the bigger part of the story for me is like I, all of a sudden I turn around, I’m not a CEO and you got 200 people that work for it. You’re like pointing and saying, Hey, you do this and you do that. And then pretty soon you turn around and you say, Hey, somebody do that.

And there’s no one there. And your wife looks at you and says, would you take that garbage out? And I’m like, okay, it’s not your role anymore. And so for a while I felt like a recovering CEO

[00:03:52] Dwight: Yeah. It’s role change can be character building. We’ll just leave it at that. Yeah, for sure. For sure. It’s, it really can be even a role change, as we mentioned earlier, going from, being just a, an adult to being a parent.

It’s a major role change and people don’t realise the impact it has on their lives. Welcoming, another life and having it be, your focus. Hopefully it’s your focus. Sadly it’s not for many, but, hopefully they’re like you and I where family is first and foremost and really.

and an intent and a purpose that’ll always keep me driven, right? Because it’s not just about my family, it’s now the extended family of all my clients. Right?

[00:04:34] Jim: Yeah. Well, and if you can’t get motivated about your flesh and blood, then you should really kinda examine in your words, your purpose.

[00:04:47] Dwight: No, it’s true though, right? Yeah, absolutely. So we’ll get started. We’re gonna have, I am so excited to have our conversation.

One of the biggest things I like focusing on for me is always been a person’s origin story.

And people, ppo, that well just get to the meat and potatoes. I don’t care about that person’s origin or your origin. But how do you really connect with people unless you know their trials and tribulations? And I’m not saying people’s childhoods are all bad, some are great origin stories, some are a mix of rollercoaster origin.

Some of ’em are just totally devastating origin stories. Yeah. But they still allow me and the audience to understand what made you tick. And oh my gosh, you are David. You are able to face Goliath, right? Yeah. So could you do me a favour, brother, and tell me what it was like before the Hall of Fame, before the businesses, before the Jets, what was it like being a kid from rural Minnesota growing up and, and to where you are, a young adult?

[00:05:55] Jim: Yeah. I was actually born in the northeast corner of South Dakota, up against Minnesota and North Dakota. and, uh, I, I was the sixth of eight kids, and then my parents adopted two more. my, my dad had seven boys and one girl and a friend of his, passed away at a very young age. And they had lots of kids out at their place.

So just in order to provide insurance, they came and lived with us and were adopted into our family. And so, I tell the story a lot of times my grandma stayed with us too. And so there were 13 people around the dinner table. Wow. And we waited and we, nobody lifted. Nobody lifted a fork or even sat down at the table till my dad got home.

And so, uh, and so, uh, when he got home from work, but having that many siblings, one of the things I always talk about is that my lessons in loyalty came very early in life. ’cause you can, I can punch my brother in the nose, but if you touch him, now we got a war going on. and in many ways, my family dictated a lot about who you were gonna become.

But it was formulated around character traits, really character traits that are essential to developing, I would say, young people into people who, Do what they say they’re gonna do, and that’s a big thing in, our world. But, and, so it was a northeast corner of South Dakota, rural town, little town called Watertown.

It was a fantastic place to grow up. And then we spent, we spent our summertimes out at a lake. And I mean, a lot of people say, oh yeah, rich family with a Lake Conj. I’m like, well, no, this was a, this was a two bedroom and there was a biffy outback, there was no running water. And we, we had to empty the, uh, we had to empty the slot bucket from underneath the sink.

And and there was no telephone. and so it was just a fantastic, I mean, we would go fishing, we would hunt gophers and rabbits with bow and arrow. It was just an idyllic situation for me and my brothers. And, uh, I couldn’t imagine a better growing up. And at that, I get to layer on top of that.

My grandpa and I, were incredibly, close simply because I adored him. And so, yeah, and when you add to all that, to all the rest of the people who, who built me, it’s, it’s a pretty, it’s a pretty amazing story.

[00:08:34] Dwight: It, it’s, it does. Um, I, as you’ve noticed, I jo bullet points down in notes so that I can mm-hmm.

Stay focused on our conversation. But, sorry for the, I thought it was Minnesota. I’m, I don’t know where I got that from, but Northeast, South Dakota. Yeah. you have that six, eight kids and then two adopted. You just had a family that was very about support, about helping one another out, which is amazing.

You said your grandpa was the person you were the most connected to. Did he influence you in your decisions as a young adult moving forward? Did the, did not necessarily that he constantly mentored you, but did what he connected with you and you connected with him. Did it influence you in your life?

[00:09:21] Jim: It did.

And, and I would tell you that the way that it influenced me the most was I was afraid of disappointing him. And, so, uh, and so I was, so, so I hid a lot of times a bunch of what I was doing because I had a lot of evidence, especially as a teenager and a young adult, I had a lot of evidence of a mis bet youth.

And, and so I, I, thankfully I learned a lot of those lessons early in life. And, yeah. And when, uh, when I think about him and his characteristics, when I talk about him, I talk about a person whose character trait is, he’s unwavering. He’s like, I’m gonna do and I’m gonna choose the right thing. And it’s, and it, and, and it wasn’t, uh, and it wasn’t like this rigid thing.

It was just a fact that you knew that would happen. And he would not waver from that. Not left, not right. And he was a, he was a doctor. He was a surgeon, but he was in this little town and he came through the depression. He moved to that town and, and, uh, during the depression, he would take chickens instead of money.

And it was, uh, it was truly a barter economy back then too. And, I just idolised him. And so his influence on me is, difficult to even, ascertain because it was so big.

[00:10:48] Dwight: Sometimes we don’t have to put it into words. It’s a feeling too. Yeah. It’s just knowing that your grandpa is there for you can be, everybody says you have to hear it sometimes you just need to look and hear and feel it.

Yeah, right. Just by their actions and stuff too, so

[00:11:05] Jim: for sure.

[00:11:06] Dwight: That’s, awesome.

[00:11:07] Jim: And he had 40 grandchildren, so he had ample people that he could spend time in. He had a business that, uh, ended up, he had, hundreds of employees and he was the only entrepreneur that I ever knew. and then take that to the next step.

He would come up, the doctors would take Wednesday afternoons off, and then they had Saturday and Sunday they didn’t work. And so he would come up to his cabin, which was within range of ours. And I mean, I couldn’t wait for him to get there. I would run down just to help him unload his, he had a, he had the coolest Jeep Wagoner man.

And I would, I would love to just go, I, ’cause I got to rub shoulders with him. And so I would be the first one there, and I would haul his boxes and his groceries and his whatever. And, and, it was just my attempt. And I think, I got to spend with, extra time with him because I recognised that I felt the love from him and I wanted to spend time with him and to rub elbows with him.

So he was also, a fantastic outdoorsman and whether it be fishing or hunting or whatever. And, so I got, because I invested that time in him, I think he just really valued someone who would hustle for him. And, uh, and he paid it back by taking me with him when he went hunting and fishing and stuff like that.

[00:12:26] Dwight: so he always poured

[00:12:27] Jim: back into

[00:12:27] Dwight: you.

[00:12:28] Jim: Oh, always So big. Yeah. Yeah. And it wasn’t always with words. He wasn’t a guy of a lot of words. Most guys weren’t there, but, but it was a, it was like you said, a feeling when he looked at you, he could look at you when you knew whether you were doing something right or something wrong immediately.

And, uh, and, uh, he was just, uh, like I said, uh, the personality characteristic that I assigned to him is unwavering. He never really went left or right. He just was, was so steady.

[00:12:59] Dwight: Yeah. I, can relate to that. My grandpa’s been gone obviously a long time too. And, and, Being a parent of 18 kids and all the grandkids and stuff, he ended up going blind in his sixties.

Completely blind and oh my. So I couldn’t, the reason I bring this up is you talk about what we talked about visually seeing in the sight. I couldn’t see that anymore in his eyes, but my grandpa had the biggest smile and chuckle and his hands literally even as an adult. Now his hands were two times bigger than me, right?

Yeah. And he used to grab my hand and it was just, I could feel the love through touch and I could, and I could feel the love and the, and the fuzzies through his smile, right? Mm-hmm. But I won’t get into the details of him. We can talk about that another time. But I, I love how this relatability, my grandpa was pretty important to me too.

And I still remember that the day he passed away and, and, and the struggles he went through up the pass away, he still had a smile on his face laying in the hospital. He talked about his garden. He talked about little stories of him and I and Do you remember this, Dwight? Do you remember that? Yeah. Oh yes I do.

Grandpa. Where were all the other grandkids busy living their lives? To me, my grandpa was everything ’cause of my health challenges. He was always there for me. And I was the kid. Maybe God made it. So I had those health challenges. So I’d be the guy walking my grandpa around the block ’cause he was blind and we’d, go take him out to the garden and say, okay grandpa, this is in front of you now and here.

And let him feel stuff and That bond that we build with our grandparents, man that’s unshakeable even after he’s gone. That memory all is stuck forever. And I share it with as many people as I can.

[00:14:46] Jim: yeah.

[00:14:46] Dwight: Thank you for sharing that.

[00:14:48] Jim: That’s awesome, man.

[00:14:50] Dwight: Appreciate, appreciate that.

Appreciate. Yeah, I know. I appreciate you sharing about your 40 grandchildren though. Oh my gosh. I have a hard time wrapping around the fact that my grandparents on my dad’s side had, I think 63 was the last count I gave up.

[00:15:02] Jim: Wow. Yeah.

[00:15:03] Dwight: I can’t even, I don’t even know where some of my cousins live, or if they’re alive, to be honest with you.

Too big. They’ve moved all over the place. But it’s nice to hear that you had that connection. It just makes me feel really good. So when you look back at everything you built in your life, and you trace back to, who you are today, your grandpa was so important in that, is there foundational people along the way that weren’t family, that were imperative in, in your growing up to who you are today?

[00:15:34] Jim: Yeah. well, I don’t wanna hawk a book, but, um,

[00:15:38] Dwight: go ahead. Go.

[00:15:38] Jim: I have, go ahead. A 20, I have a 20 chapter book, and each chapter talks about a character trait, and that’s related to one, two, sometimes three people who gave time and energy, but especially time and influenced me. And so, if, as I look at the chapter with my brothers is about loyalty, like we spoke of just a minute ago.

and what I talk about is how their investment in me, it infused loyalty into me as a person. And so, and it goes that flying business, um, encouragement. there’s, uh, a teacher who’s incredibly influential in my life, my father-in-law, my early bosses. There’s just lots and lots of people who took this skillful of mush and tried to, and tried to add something to him. There’s a quote by Tom Landry, he was a coach of the Dallas Cowboys, and, uh, after they won the Super Bowl, one of the reporters came up to him and they said, Hey, coach, now that you’ve won the Super Bowl, what do you have to do?

Like, you don’t have anything to do anymore. And he’s like, oh, my job now is to get these men to do what they don’t want to do so they can be what they always wanted. And that adds wow. A new layer to our responsibility. and if you think about Super Bowl as that dopamine moment, you haven’t arrived.

there’s, another game right around the corner. There’s another race, there’s another book, there’s another speech, there’s another podcast. It doesn’t matter what it is. those victories are cool, but they only last like that long. It’s about the people that you’re around when you’re doing all that stuff.

If you look at all those, football’s a great example because if you talk to people who are, who are ball players, sure they’re going to tell you a little bit about the Super Bowl, but they’re actually gonna share about the people that they spent the time with. and that little dopamine hit 20 minutes of glory, uh, becomes less and less and less meaningful over time.

[00:18:00] Dwight: It’s like that in a lot of aspects of life, but sports is a good example. and even in yours, in my life, we talked about it, I believe it was before we started recording. When do we arrive now? Yeah. I never arrive until the day I take my last breath. I’m gonna be trying to elevate myself, because if I keep healthy mentally and emotionally and elevate myself, I’m always gonna serve better.

Yeah. I’m always gonna have those little dopamine hits that may be not winning a sporting cup. But it, it’s a dopamine hit of other things. Right. So i, I agree with you. it’s great to win the Super Bowl. It’s great to win. Like the, for me it’s hockey. I’m a hockey nut, so Stanley Cup, and it’s great to win all this stuff, but when you talk to these people, it’s the love and passion of the game.

[00:18:51] Jim: Yeah.

[00:18:52] Dwight: And that’s the same for us. Why won’t I quit? ’cause it’s the love and passion of the game. The game of helping others. Yeah. ’cause it is a game. It, it can be a game. Right? Yeah. It, it’s a serious, it can be a real serious game. It can be a real lighthearted game, but it’s still a game. Right. So don’t arrive people that are listening or watching.

Yeah. Just celebrate your, victories. Don’t wallow in it too long and move on. There’s so much more that you can do.

[00:19:18] Jim: Yeah. I talk about pilots in, in, uh, one of those chapters as well. And the reason I bring that up is that I got a seed planted in me, like when I was eight years old, and it didn’t germinate until I was 47 and I was standing with my dad and I was out in South Dakota.

I’d actually, I was actually living in Washington then, but we were out in South Dakota and small plane went overhead. And I remembered that seed and I said, dad, when’s the last time you were up in a small plane like that? And he’s like, oh, it’s been decades and decades. And it was me and your grandpa and, and our, and we were flying around.

We’d look at all the farms we worked at, we look at all the old hunting spots we were at, and we found all the cool places where we hung out. and, uh, I said. I said, uh, would you, like to do that? And he said, I’d give anything to do that again. And that was in April. And that planted a seed in me.

I, I went out and I took my first flight lesson on May 5th, and then I took him flying in October. Oh yeah. I went up to Fargo Jet Centre and I rented a plane and I went back down to his airport and said, come on dad, we’re gonna go flying. And I took my youngest son and, him on a flight. And that spawned, the, not only the germination of that seed, but the, I was then able to serve a whole bunch more people because now I’ve got this skill and, my grandsons are living, five hours away by car, but one hour away by plane.

Now I get to serve my wife, I get to serve the company. And, pretty soon, I’m flying missions for pilots for Christ and helping people who they’re really out of options as far as transportation, and they’re desperate. And when you get to come alongside them, that’s pretty cool. And, and then you’re flying for work a bit.

And then all of a sudden we moved to Boise, and, I was flying from our shop in Bozeman, Montana, back to Boise, and I’m over the river of No Return Wilderness area. And I looked down and I’m in a single engine plane, and I’m like, there’s really no place to land. So I went home and I talked to my wife and she said the, she said the phrase that every pilot longs to hear, honey, you need a twin engine.

And so at, at 62 years old, there’s a guy who’s coming alongside me and he’s teaching me how to fly jets. And it’s not an easy thing to learn. It’s an easy thing to do once you learn it, but it’s not an easy thing to learn because everything in a jet aircraft is completely different. Um, the sound, the noise, the speed, the, the, everything about it is different.

The communication. Uh, and but I found this old, and this guy flew f fifteens for 27 years, 22 years. And he f and he was typed in 7 37, 7 47, 7 67, and I don’t think a 7, 7, 7, but basically he flew every day, of his waking life. And then he was training pilots after that, after flying Delta.

then he is getting in a jet with a little old dude like me saying, Hey, do that. Don’t do that, and here’s why. And so he invested in me. So if I can do that at 62 and I can learn to do that at 62 and then become really effective at it, those are the people who inspired me. Those are the people who took time to like, like, uh, teach train, cajole Perfect.

And all the things that you need to do to be a pilot. it takes inspiration. The reason they do it is because they’ll invest in someone because they love flying too. well, it’s a

[00:23:23] Dwight: passion. It’s a passion. It’s, it’s a total passion. It’s a, it’s a driven passion that keeps your purpose going, right.

It’s just,

[00:23:30] Jim: yeah.

[00:23:32] Dwight: Uh, it’s awesome to hear and we will get into your book a little bit more coming up here. but yeah, it’s nice to know. All the people in your life that you’re willing to, how many people I’ve met in my life that don’t give credit to people? Right. They just, oh my. And, which is terrible.

You don’t have to put ’em up on a pedestal. Mm-hmm. But acknowledge those that helped you, that were based on piloting that were your co-pilot.

[00:24:01] Jim: Yeah.

[00:24:02] Dwight: Right. Like the little corrections and it’s course that a pilot has to do along with a co-pilot’s help if you’re in a 7 47 or something, because mm-hmm. If you don’t Correct, because of the curvature of the earth, you can’t, you’re not just flying straight people if you don’t understand flying.

So you have, you’ve been blessed with so many good copilots from your grandpa all the way, like

[00:24:24] Jim: No kidding. No kidding. And then you have an obligation, and one of your obligations is to always to help people. and so there’s a lot of people that I’ve said, Hey, come on with me. Let’s go flying. And you pass that passion along, and you do it because someone did it for you.

And you’re, I, I guess the not popular thing to say is pay it forward. But when I paid it forward, all of a sudden you get, new relationships out of it. I have two brothers, um, that became pilots after I did. And so I’d like to think that I was able to pour a little water on their seeds and, now, I mean, I loved flying for what it could do for me.

And they love flying because it’s a feeling of freedom and it’s like the coolest hobby ever. And, so we have, we approach it from different places, but, but I hope that at the end of the day, their life is better because I had a role somehow in it.

[00:25:29] Dwight: Oh, imagine you have, and I think about all the people you talk about, how we have affected people and how we’ve helped them grow.

And indirectly they keep our passions driven and alive as well. How many people though have you, Jim, with your amazing story, which we haven’t even, we’ve barely scratched the surface of. Are out there that you’ve helped it, you’ll never know. And some people can’t be satisfied with that. But I believe you are just like me.

I told you a story about a person that I helped with their business, right? Yeah. And they directly reflected and said it was because of me. I didn’t need to know that. It’s nice to know how many other people have I affected that are out there and I don’t look for the glory because God put me on this planet and my, I’m a God-fearing person and I was put on this planet to be healthy myself so I can serve others.

So I don’t necessarily need to know, but it sure is nice to know once in a while when we, we, when we make somebody smile. They have that joyfulness in their heart or, they did anything because of us is a true testament. It really wasn’t us. We’re just, in my opinion, I’m just a vessel.

Right?

[00:26:37] Jim: Yeah, exactly.

[00:26:38] Dwight: Like, just like raising my children, right. Their children of God, I’m just been chosen to be their parent to hopefully be their co-pilot. Right?

[00:26:47] Jim: Yeah, yeah. that also provides us with the encouragement to keep going, which is one of the reasons the older I get, the less I believe in retirement.

Um, and I say that because, We tend to think in society today that we, live this nu certain number of, or we work this certain number of years and then our life stops. So we can focus all of our energies on helping and adding joy to our own life. Like it’s no longer about my employees, it’s now no longer about my family.

Now it’s all about me and my fishing pole, or my golf course, or my, pick a hobby. I don’t care if it’s bowling or, travel it. if, unless you’re, if you’re doing it with a total inward focus, then it’s almost impossible to generate any help for those people who still remain in your circle of influence.

And, and that circle should be getting larger, not smaller. I, I, see friends that are retiring and, clutching their chest and falling over dead or they’re, making new opportunities for people. And that’s, I think that’s my role in life. I don’t want to judge ’em. I wanna, I, if you think you deserve your retirement and that’s what you wanna do, go for it.

But I love hunting ducks, but I don’t think I’d wanna hunt ducks 300 days a year. and, so I love, investing in people with the skills, talents, and abilities that God’s given me. And if I can do that, man, um, the rest of your

[00:28:39] Dwight: days,

[00:28:40] Jim: that’s the what a way to go out. I, um, we watched the movie night, the smile on your

[00:28:45] Dwight: face, brother.

[00:28:46] Jim: Yeah. I wanna rust, I don’t wanna rust out. I wanna wear out.

[00:28:53] Dwight: Love it. You were watching a movie. Sorry.

[00:28:55] Jim: Yeah, I was watching a movie and that line came from the movie. I wanna Oh, okay. I wanna wear out, not Rust out. Yeah.

[00:29:01] Dwight: Yeah. That it’s, so true though. Like, I look at, when we get to a point in our lives, we can breathe, breathe, belief in tethers, we can breathe into them.

The fact that they’re worthy, it doesn’t matter what age they’re, I’ve had people that I’ve sat down and get sent to me that are in their seventies, right? And literally they have that, oh, I’m just gonna sit back and watch the paint peel on the wall. What, why, what’s your life been like just having conversations, building into the origin?

Once I find a smile on their face, or I see some positive energy, oh, let’s talk more about that. and that’s what we’re put on this planet. Not necessarily for me to help ’em with their finances or coach them on all the, what they can do, what they can achieve. It’s, do you really appreciate what you’ve been given?

Are you grateful? Yeah. Do you have gratitude for your life? And you can, even in your seventies, people listening, watching, like, I, I, I’m shocked whenever I do look at my analytics, how many people from 65 to 80 listen to my show?

[00:30:09] Jim: Yeah.

[00:30:09] Dwight: What does that tell me? You still want to grow. Mm-hmm. You still wanna, you still want to ha you want to be enthralled by Jim’s story or other people’s, and you can relate to it.

You’re trying to grow, and I always tell, I don’t care how old you are, there’s always seeds of greatness in you that you haven’t watered. Maybe I or I can direct you to somebody that can help you water those seeds that can help you. Yeah. For, maybe you’ve never felt like you’ve ever done anything.

Maybe you have, let’s see. Oh, that’s pretty

[00:30:42] Jim: time to start. Even if you haven’t, it’s time to start. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. When’s the best day to plant a tree? Oh yeah, you’re right. It was 20 years ago or yesterday. Yeah. But hey, you can still plant one today.

[00:30:55] Dwight: Oh yeah. Yeah. I love, I love, I love it because I literally, Jim, feed off of the energy of others that I watched that epiphany, that light bulb moment.

I don’t care what their age are, and we’re just talking my first appointments aren’t about numbers or anything. It’s about, Hey, I want to get to know you. What’s your life monsters? What’s your life success is? And people look at me. What, what does that have to do with anything? you are where you are because of your choices and how much your learned behaviour, control that we need to figure that out so that we can, we can drop that.

You can get out of that comfort zone you’re living in. And I’m here to tell anybody listening, you’re comfort zone can be broken, right? Yeah. You just gotta be the willing, what do you want outta life? And find a good coach to help you get there. ’cause sometimes your friends and family, they can motivate you.

They can pat you on the back, but they might not be the person that needs to, be there in your corner.

[00:31:52] Jim: for sure.

[00:31:53] Dwight: Wiping your brow off as you sweat.

[00:31:55] Jim: Yeah. And it, and, and, and to your point, age is not relevant to that. Last year we went out and we got this berm that we do a little duck hunt on, and the, my, my granddaughter, it was her first duck hunt, so I don’t know if she was eight or nine or 10 or whatever.

but she’s on the low end of the age spectrum. And then my friend Bernie came with us as well, and Bernie came out. We got a chair set up for him and Bernie’s 89 and Bernie and my granddaughter both shot a duck that day. Who do you think was happier?

[00:32:32] Dwight: 89. The,

[00:32:33] Jim: the answer is yes. They both were.

[00:32:36] Dwight: Oh, they both were okay.

[00:32:38] Jim: They both had this incredible joy, one that she was able to go out and shoot a duck and watch my dog go get it for, and then Bernie was there and how thrilled was he to go out and whack a duck and have my dog go out and get that for him at 89. So there you’ve got a, a. 80 year spread between ages and they both get this incredible joy from being able to do the exact same thing on the exact same morning at the exact same place.

[00:33:14] Dwight: That’s awesome.

[00:33:15] Jim: Cool. Totally cool.

[00:33:17] Dwight: But somebody at 89, the reason I said 89 is sometimes they don’t realise that there’s still, moments in life that can make ’em go, ah, wow.

[00:33:28] Jim: Yeah, right.

[00:33:29] Dwight: Exactly. That aha moment. So that’s why I said 89 year olds, obviously young person on their first duck hunt. Your granddaughter’s gonna love that.

Um, I haven’t, I haven’t hunted since, because I live now in capital of Alberta, which is Edmonton. Mm-hmm. So Metro Metro we’re 1.5 million people. Yeah. I grew up in a small community of 10,000 people. My dad owned a farm equipment dealership. All, most of my relatives are farmers and hunters. Yeah. And fishermen.

That’s how I grew up. But I haven’t hunted in 30 years. Right. Yeah. Not that I, not that I, it just raising kids as a single dad. Yeah. Just, and then I for sure when I, now that they’re all growing up, I still relish in it. All my relatives give me stuff from Right. good fishing, I can still do myself, but yeah.

That’s, that’s an amazing story. We’re gonna pivot a little bit away from that and we’ll get back to your, your book in a few minutes. I just wanna talk to you from the Garage to the Hall of Fame and people, hall of fame can mean many different things, but so you, Jim, you built a, a legacy telecommunications company from ground up started in your garage.

Most people starting in a garage, just look at where Microsoft started. Look where Apple started. Look where a lot of different successful people have started in their garage. ’cause it’s free rent.

[00:34:49] Jim: Yeah, exactly. Exactly

[00:34:52] Dwight: right. You low

[00:34:53] Jim: overhead.

[00:34:54] Dwight: Yeah, exactly right. You could put some pictures up, whatever.

Right? Mm-hmm. Eventually scaling into a multi-generational family enterprise before ex exiting through a merger. You were, I wanted to upon a time inducted into wireless history, foundations, wireless hall of fame, which is, which I want to hear more about in a moment. Mm-hmm. But you started in your graduates, we mentioned.

Did you have an idea what you were walking into or was it just, let’s just do it, we’ll figure it out if we make a mistake course correct and move forward. What was that journey like?

[00:35:28] Jim: I think some people are, are I literally born to be entrepreneurs? And I believe that I’m one of those, And I was a really good employee, but, I, wasn’t very malleable, so, if I thought I was right, you were probably gonna have to arm wrestle me to get me to do or not do what I thought was the wrong thing. And anyway, my son, came home. I was doing, I, I did, international business as a young man in my late thirties.

I was, the director of international business for a large Washington, state company, a private company. And, and we manufactured engineered wood products and things like that. But, my son, because I was in the tower business as a young man doing electrical towers in Superior National Forest, really remote work, that was kind of enamoring for my son.

And so when he graduated from high school, he graduated at 16 and by the time he’s 17, he’s out climbing, climbing cell phone towers. And I went out to his job site, because I wanted to see it and I was interested. And the safety was not very good because they had young men that were full of testosterone that were, that were doing this work bulletproof.

And, oh man, 10 foot tall and bulletproof. And, but anyway, he came home and I would che him about safety. And then one night I finally said, Hey man, someone’s really gonna get hurt on that job. You gotta quit. And he looked at me, he said, if you’re so smart, let’s do it ourselves. You want me to be safe?

Let’s do it ourselves. And that’s the day that Legacy was born. So it was a bit out of fear that my son would get seriously hurt or even die on a job, site from a fall. And so we started with just two of us and no customers and no. I had experience doing towers. He had experience on the radio frequency side of, uh, cabling and things like that.

And it took us about six months to get our first, uh, bid out of that. And we got it, learned some very difficult lessons to cost me my full 401k, all my management incentive plan, everything I had. And so failure was, it was a burn, the boats failure’s not an option. And, we started that. And then pretty soon we added a couple of employees.

And, that w we started in 1999, incorporated in 2000. And by 2006 we launched our second location, in Eastern Washington. And then, just kept growing. And there’s a lot of things that allowed us to grow because it was such a fast moving business. it was difficult for the industry to build quickly enough.

And when you’re a builder of that, then, there’s a lot of available opportunities out there. But you have to have to have a target in mind. And our target, what I learned in the international business was you always build that business as though you had to sell it next week. And so we always did things that kind of went above and beyond what was required, especially because we were in a fast paced business with a lot of demand.

And so, but we always built for quality. And, um, a lot of people would use, say a safety was a cost. And I didn’t think safety was a cost. Safety’s one of the things we marketed. your company is not at risk using us because we’re safer than anybody else. And I had a lot of great mentors in the industry and around the industry who came alongside me.

And, and it was just a wonderful opportunity that, that, God gifted to us to get in at the right time. And then

[00:39:35] Dwight: with your boy yet, that’s,

[00:39:36] Jim: yeah,

[00:39:37] Dwight: that’s the thing that. Gets me right here. That’s fantastic that you were willing to commit all that and, commit your retirement stuff, your 4 0 1 Oh yeah.

It’s just good for you man, that I’m proud of you for willing to do, step it up for God, but step it up for your son, right? Yeah. To, to put yourself out there because that can, that can hurt relationships. I have my son, I’ve, he works in dangerous situations in the oil industry and the energy industry here.

And I constantly am, you’re a grown adult, but here I’m still gonna give you my opinion and, and that, that’s that tug pull. Good

[00:40:14] Jim: on you,

[00:40:15] Dwight: right. Situation. But good for you for starting that business and being willing to step out on faith. Once again, you’ve shown me like you’ve been willing since you were younger, and you just keep on being willing and being like an open sponge to learn and know you made, like you said, you made some mistakes.

[00:40:35] Jim: Oh yeah.

[00:40:35] Dwight: Whatever that adventure, that journey, that memory with your son is that’s there forever. Like, I can’t even imagine how it changed his life.

[00:40:43] Jim: He actually came to me and he came to me in, in, uh, 2015 and he said, Hey, I, it’s been my dream to be a rancher since I was a little teeny kid.

And wow, if I don’t start in that direction, I’m never gonna get there because I’ll be too old. So in 2015, or I’m sorry, yeah, 20. Yeah, about 2015. He said, I’m gonna work halftime, for, the business and I’m gonna work halftime and I’m gonna have this old cowboy teach me about horses. And so he would, he would, leave at four o’clock in the morning and he would go ride with this old cowboy, ride these rank horses for, six hours.

And then he would get done and he would go in, drive into the office in, in a branch that we had. and he would work for, he would work for six hours there too. So he was burning the candle at both ends. And, and then in 2018, 2017, he came to me and he said, dad, I’m like 17 years into a five, five-year commitment.

And that’s when we made the decision that we were gonna market the company and sell it. And, uh, and, because I didn’t wanna do it alone. I, I mean, and, and at that point it had grown big enough where I couldn’t even afford to buy out my kid. And, uh, and so we moved it into, a merge with another company out of Texas and one out of Colorado merged them together and then sold it again into private equity in Wow.

  1. And I worked for, for that organisation for quite a while and, uh, and then was able to exit. I still own little stock in it, but I’m, not involved in day to day or on their board or anything anymore. So I get to help other people grow their business.

[00:42:33] Dwight: Wow. Do you believe tenacity is a superpower?

Because I sure feel that from you, you projected it to your son, right? Mm-hmm. Working part-time. Halftime here. Halftime there. Yeah. I believe tenacity is a superpower. That’s a very underrated, yeah, that tenacity in the right way. Being tenacious. You wouldn’t have done what you wouldn’t be where you are if you weren’t tenacious.

And I think that’s stupid.

[00:43:01] Jim: I would agree with that, but I would say that, as a superpower, it only comes from muscle memory. if you quit,

[00:43:10] Dwight: agreed,

[00:43:11] Jim: quitting gets easy. If you, don’t allow yourself, and I, I use that burn the boats analogy. Most people don’t know where that comes from. But, a, smaller force was attacking England and they saw the white cliffs in Dover, and they were like, oh man, we could never get up there.

So they went around to the side, but, um, they went back up and, and, the general bought his troops to the edge of the white cliffs in Dover in England, and they were 20,000 facing 80,000. And he said, burn the boats. There’s no retreat there. There’s only one way for, and that’s forward. uh, that burned the boats moment is something that is, that is, I think it’s ingrained in me, but it’s ingrained in me over time.

And it really did start back with my grandpa and my dad. I talk about him as a commander a lot because he was a World War II guy. He was a, he’s a Oh wow. He was a salty guy. And a, and, uh, and, and. If you started something then by gum you were gonna finish it. And, and so that muscle memory I think is really an important part of character of, who you become.

And so, yeah, it’s a superpower, but you can lose it.

[00:44:32] Dwight: Oh.

[00:44:32] Jim: If you don’t

[00:44:32] Dwight: use it. Yeah. and, and that’s why I brought it up and asked you that question. I never thought about that tie. I know it’s there and I pre and, I present it and work it that way. Yeah. But really that, that is a great way to look at it, your muscle memory, because it is easy.

Right. Like I used to tell my kids, I used to, when they were really young, my oldest was getting bullied a lot. She was only in grade one. And again, remember I talked about Les Brown, how much I appreciate him Yeah. And listen to so many of his, for those people listening Yes. Cassette tapes before. Yeah.

Right. I actually had a record player growing up. I, we had eight track. Nice. Oh yeah. But anyway, regardless of that, I used to listen to less his tapes. And I learned little things. And my daughter, before she would get outta the vehicle, and I dropped her off at school ’cause we were having problems with the admin staff and she used to say, dad, I, I don’t want to go in.

Right. And I, I used to tell her, no matter how bad it is or how bad it gets, I’m gonna make it. Just tell yourself that. And it was stuff from Les that I learned. Right. Yeah. And I used to tell her, if, and she as an adult now she’s gonna be 40 right away. She said to me, she says, I, it always stuck in my mind.

You used to tell me, dad, if I’m gonna fall on my back so I can look up easier to get up and it’s easier to, move forward. And she used to, and I put her onto Les Brown. That’s so cool. As a young adult. Right. But yeah, it’s just those little things that we can say, whether you, you wanna call it a, an affirmation for them.

But she used to say, she got to a point where she’d get out and she’d look at me and she’d kind of give me a little smart grin and she’d say that to me. She used to say, no matter how bad it is or how bad it gets, dad, I’m gonna make it. Right. And it just, things like that.

[00:46:20] Jim: That’s so fantastic.

And one of the things that it reminds me of is that, I had an opportunity to meet Les, a year ago. and I looked around the audience that he spoke to, and I hear this story about your daughter through you being impacted. How many people, I don’t know. I don’t How old do you think Les is now?

[00:46:44] Dwight: He’s, well actually I do know, now I’m gonna have a brain fart. He’s in his, he’s mid eighties now, right?

[00:46:51] Jim: Yeah. He’s actively,

[00:46:53] Dwight: I just can’t remember the exactly age anymore.

[00:46:55] Jim: He’s out encouraging people from this stage impacting their lives and, then by, by just, osmosis, he’s impacting your daughter through you.

So look at the multiplication of encouragement that old man sends out. And he just ain’t stopping. He just, oh

[00:47:18] Dwight: my gosh.

[00:47:18] Jim: Like, he just keeps going.

[00:47:20] Dwight: I co he taught me stuff that I still utilise in my coaching business that I utilise with, with my clients in the finance side, with my kids and his laugh.

Oh, man, it just brings me a, a joy that I just, I can’t, I can’t even imagine. I still remember the first time I seen him, salt Lake City, 1993. We jumped on buses here and we, a bunch of us, we had a bus full and 20 some hours later, We took the bus, went down to the border, they switched drivers up. We drove, we got, went right to this event.

And I still remember him being up on stage and talking, and little Mimi Brown and, he talked about, uh, putting, you remember some of his stories, putting runway lights in the driveway and stuff like that. Like he’s, oh man, that guy’s touched me. And that ruling

[00:48:10] Jim: thunderous laugh.

[00:48:11] Dwight: Oh, you, you’re right though.

He has, he’s, he has got a legacy that, in my opinion, it’ll be around still five, six, even longer generations.

[00:48:21] Jim: Generations.

[00:48:22] Dwight: Right. And he’s got, and his son has helped, helped take him to continue to be able to, because he had some severe health and health issues that man, he was supposed to come to Edmonton here.

I, I had booked to go to a conference that he was gonna be at. I got, I paid VIP front row and he couldn’t make it ’cause of his back. And he did it over, over a video. Back then Zoom didn’t exist. This is 20 some years ago. Yeah. And I, there’s not a lot of people, Jim may, you may not agree. I believe you can, you can portray energy and compassion and mm-hmm.

And feel people through video. If you’re the right person. Yeah. I can still feel the energy I felt from that man. And he was thousands of kilometres away down the US sitting there. And you could see him in pain. But he had a commitment.

[00:49:14] Jim: Yeah.

[00:49:14] Dwight: Right. And he apologised. I don’t know how many times for not being able to be there.

Yeah. But it was just, it would’ve been more impactful, him standing right in front of me. Sure. If that’s what I had to tell myself, that’s the way I’m gonna get. But I, being open, be a vessel of, of, wanting to receive knowledge. But yeah, we won’t talk much more about Les. I, I, uh, he’s a hero of mine to

[00:49:38] Jim: be honest.

But what a commanding presence. What a commanding presence. Who takes your, he he takes your imagination on a ride every time you hear him speak. Oh yeah.

[00:49:48] Dwight: His, love and his voice and his genuine person coming across. He is a ultimate wordsmith. And I just respect him. And, I, got into people around the same time, like Zig Ziglar and, all these other people.

I even went back and listened to some of Nightingale stuff and, but less so, man, it is just sometimes people in life, we just connect and that person’s gonna be my ride or die for personal development. And I’ve got lots of people I like, but the rest of my life.

[00:50:18] Jim: Yeah, for sure.

[00:50:19] Dwight: Just blessed for sure.

But thank you for sharing. Thank you for sharing your, uh, take on Les and Tenacity, and I really appreciate that. So you’ve been called the Curator of Culture, right? I wanna know some more about that, but you also, because of that, I want you to explain what that means to you, but you legalise that to develop something called the Culture Revival Blueprint.

Blueprint. Pardon? Of me?

[00:50:43] Jim: Yeah.

[00:50:44] Dwight: Um, so I’m not gonna share what the, what I know about or what I’ve read, but can you tell me how did that come about? Creator of culture and then that revival blueprint?

[00:50:55] Jim: Yeah, I was working for a company. They wanted, they wanted to, have some, I originally went in as a speaker and I was supposed to like, cheer on the troops and get ’em going.

And, and I love doing that. I don’t wanna minimise that in any way. I think that if you can, stand in a group of people, especially who work together and you can join that team back, so they’re marching together and they’re looking at a single goal and they’re, and they’re moving as a unit, all of a sudden there’s an opportunity for you to help a company be better.

And that, from my perspective, that is first helping individuals so individuals can help each other so they can be a better company so they can take care of their families, so their wives and their, uh, spouses or whatever get to go to the grocery store and then they can do it again. And, and so I was done with this and I, I, I, there was a circle that I drew up on and I’m like, so if this guy who’s the janitor and he makes the production people look good, and he makes the production supervisor look good, and they make the production manager look good, and they make the vice president look good, and they make the CEO look good, then all of a sudden when there’s no work, the CEO gets to go beg the customer for more business.

And then the customer gives it to ’em because they know, they trust the janitor. And it begins to circle where everybody gets to go to the grocery store. And that’s what we’re about. We go to work for our families, not for ourselves, not for our kin. we go to work for people who depend on us every moment.

And so, anyway, I finished this up and they’re like, okay, we want you to be our consultants. And I’m like, I don’t, I’m like, I’m not really a consultant. And they’re like, well, you are now. And I said, okay. So let’s see how we can help. as a builder, first of all, I said like, why do you want me to do this?

And they said, you’re the curator of culture. And I’m like, curator. Those are like dead people in museums, aren’t they? And they’re like, no, a curator is Latin. It means to care for, and you’re the one who cares for our cultures. You’re now the curator of culture. And I’m like, okay, I’ll, yeah, that’s good.

I’ll like it. I’m gonna, I’m gonna own that one. I went back and I, they said, I want you to design a programme for our company that helps us make it look like what it looked like when we began, because we can’t get out of our own way right now. I’m like, okay, I can do that. And so I went back and I said, so how do you build, I’m a builder.

How do you build a building? How do you build a tower? How do you build a house? How do you build a commercial building? you start with an idea of what do you want to look like when it’s done? So let’s create a visual picture of this business, of what you wanted to look like the day you began it. And then let’s go back and let’s check out the foundation elements of that, and then let’s check out the wall framing and the windows and the drywall and the lighting and the, and so let’s create a blueprint of how to reestablish this firm to the picture of what it looked like when you had a dream, when, ’cause nobody, I, here’s one of the things, and I, sometimes I get in trouble for saying this, and it doesn’t bother me that I get in trouble for saying it because I want people to think, but nobody at any business that I’ve ever been at came to work and said, that’s Monday morning and I’m gonna show up.

And I just think, I just wanna do a crappy job today. I just wanna be, I wanna be miserable and I wanna make everybody miserable around me. So, so I’m gonna do a crappy job at work. Nobody ever did that. Even on the day they were gonna quit, they were gonna go, I think I’m just leaving. And that’s quiet quitting today.

That’s the great resignation. Nobody comes in and says, I’m gonna do a bad job. But our job as people who manage them, as people who are supposed to lead them is to inspire them and to give them confidence and to do that through meekness and encouragement and belief and confidence so that they can be the best version of themselves.

And then they add into that circle, which lets the guy who’s the janitor go to the grocery store.

[00:55:41] Dwight: Wow. That is,

[00:55:42] Jim: that, that’s what started the Business Revival Blueprint. And so impactful, every business, every business needs a blueprint of what they wanted it to look like when they began. Because if you have a dream, your dream is perfect.

There’s no flaws in it. But then just like flying a aeroplane, we add gravity and we add wind speed and we add turbulence and we add, a, a cranky passenger and all of a sudden, now the plane is flying you. Instead of you flying the plane, let’s focus on the destination and let’s make sure we make those little corrections.

We don’t have to make those giant swinging corrections later ’cause we’re too far off course.

[00:56:27] Dwight: Oh, how many businesses though, Jim, are off course? Like I do a lot of consulting work with businesses and, not necessarily to the same scale as you, but have, they’ve lost their way. They’ve, they’ve got nobody in the ownership.

If there’s partners or there’s a bunch of owners, even an individual, they’ve got nobody course correcting. Nobody is a copilot. And they literally lose their way and it becomes about money and growth and they forget about the people. yeah. Like you said, if the janitor has no value, it doesn’t feel value or the person that, that, that is running, working the mail room or does admin work, or the person that’s a, a manager and then you got all the people, everybody has to feel worth

[00:57:15] Jim: Yeah.

[00:57:15] Dwight: Whether or not their value is different than yours. The janitor has different value than that, than the CEO. They’re still a person, like you said, wanting to take care of their family. And if we focus on core values, like I always teach people, I focus on three main core values of faith, family, and work.

[00:57:33] Jim: Mm-hmm.

[00:57:34] Dwight: Right. And I apply that to everything I do. Yeah. And I filter it through that lens. And when I look at somebody, like you said, a janitor, and I think to myself. that person is stepping out on faith every single day, whether they’re religious or not religious, or whether they believe in God or not.

They’re focused on, wanting to survive. But is that a way that we want that life to be for that person, just survival? Or do we want them to have a place in this world to have purpose, to have intent and, reflection? Are you the person that walks into your business and, and somebody’s cleaning somebody, they’re doing something menial that you just think, oh, that support staff.

Mm-hmm. And you don’t acknowledge the little things they do for you every time you don’t acknowledge them, that can creep into their mindset. I’m not

[00:58:25] Jim: very happy, and I think that’s a great point because I, a lot of people would say, Hey, money creates that distance or, or success creates it.

And I, don’t necessarily think that’s the case. sometimes it could be, but I think more often than not. and I, speak from the perspective of someone who had a business that we grew and all of a sudden, I was able to work with my son to, to craft my own course corrections. I needed those course corrections, but it wasn’t because I wasn’t paying attention.

It’s because I was really busy trying to make everything good and right, and keep everything perfect and keep everything aligned and keep the customers happy, and keep the insurance guy happy and keep the banker happy. And, and all of a sudden, I, I was just torn in so many directions. So when people ask me the most important part of what I did as a CEO, I always have the same answer.

We got to, we got to a hundred employees and I met someone out on the loading dock because I always came in through the back door. I met them out on the loading dock, and I’m like, I don’t know this person. So I said, hi, how can I help you? And he smiled and he said, I work for you. I’m like, how is it that someone’s working in this building and I don’t know them?

[00:59:52] Dwight: Wow.

[00:59:52] Jim: So I did two things. Number one, I started what we called Legacy Radio, and we would get everyone in the company on a live call, what today they would refer to it as a conference call. And, and, uh, and so I would get everyone, and, we did it live, even though they told me not to do that. I’ll tell you why later that they told me not to do it live.

But, uh, we got everybody on a call and we, they got to ask me questions because I wanted to answer their questions so they could know how I thought, and they could know what my expectations were of our company and of their, of their work. And so they could ask questions about maybe the future. They were nervous about it.

And, and, uh, the technology was changing. And all of a sudden they could, they were free to ask the CEO questions. And all of a sudden I was like, oh, this is really doing good stuff. And the second part about that is, my most important job is I began to write a personal birthday card to every employee every month and send it to their, so every month I would get a stack of birthday cards and I had someone address ’em, but I hand wrote a birthday card.

And if I did not know that person, I would go, whether it be to hr, to their supervisor or to someone. And I would find out something about them where they were contributing to the overall mission of the company. And I would thank them for that and wish them a happy birthday. I had grown men come to me that I didn’t know very well, and they would throw their arms around me and hug me and say, I just wanna thank you.

I never had anybody send me a birthday card before. And it was an amazing metamorphosis. And by the time you get to a couple hundred birthday cards, it’s a big lift to get that done. But it was the most important thing I did as a CEO.

[01:01:47] Dwight: Yeah.

[01:01:48] Jim: And then that, uh, that radio show, legacy Radio turned into something really special and they, uh, I’ll tell you the, don’t go live.

So my Scott Mac, daddy g he’s, my kinda, my producer if you will, Mac, daddy, G he said, Jim, don’t do this live. I’m like, why not? He goes, people are gonna ask you questions that are gonna catch you off guard and you’re not gonna be able to answer. You won’t want to answer. And I’m like, I think I can handle it, man.

And uh, so the very first time we did it, I get this, the first question I get out of the box, it’s like, Mr. Tracy. And that that’s how you know you’re at an organisation that needs help, because I’m now Mr. Tracy, not Jim. And so this guy gets on the phone and he says, Mr. Tracy, I was just curious, how much money do you make?

I’m like, wow, that’s a really great question, but before I answer that question, I wonder how much money you make. And he is like, well, there’s a lot of people on the phone. I don’t want to answer that question. I’m like, cool, me neither next. And we just went on and

[01:02:53] Dwight: that’s awesome.

[01:02:54] Jim: And it was, but it’s a, that’s a natural conversation that you’d have with somebody in an elevator, in a parking lot, in a shop, in the, on a job site.

And so, yeah, none ya, let’s go on, let’s keep moving. And, and, so when we get, leadership that doesn’t take an elevator up to an ivory tower, but walks in the back door and gets a feel for how his people like what they’re doing. It happens on a shop floor, on a job site, in a warehouse, in a, in a office complex full of cubicles.

It doesn’t happen in an ivory tower. and when we separate ourselves from our employees, I just met a, I I, I met, I just met a guy. He’s the CEO of one of the, one of the largest tower owners in the world, not the US in the world. and, I’m like, dude. You drive a truck? He’s like, yeah, I drive a truck.

And I’m like, I’m like, you park out in the employee parking when you can have your own underground parking and your own elevator and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he goes, that ain’t me. Wow. That I admire. That’s building culture, that’s being with your people instead of isolating. That’s intentional.

That’s intentional culture building, and that’s really all the culture revival Blueprint is. It’s like build a plan of how you want your people to feel.

[01:04:33] Dwight: I love

[01:04:34] Jim: it. Especially when, when you started, so probably went on too long, but yeah.

[01:04:39] Dwight: Oh, no, no, that’s okay. The only thing I wanna mention so we can move on to the next, uh, segment I wanted to talk about, which is your book is, I like the legacy radio idea too though.

And what popped into my head and what I wrote down is it squashes rumour mills, right?

[01:04:54] Jim: Yeah.

[01:04:54] Dwight: It squashes the rumour mill because now you give people the opportunity to be bare and vulnerable to you and vice versa, right? Mm-hmm. Whether or not it’s, it’s a quirky little conversation about what you make versus what they make.

Uh, it gives, it, it takes people’s guard down. Yeah. I believe, right? it drops their shield and they become more vulnerable. I think you, your legacy radio probably got you employees that maybe were on the fence of staying, or maybe their production was lower and now they’re more committed working

[01:05:28] Jim: well, and then we found out that it worked well enough where the companies that we merged together now were 800 employees, and now we can’t really do live radio because we’ve got four time zones that we’re dealing with.

And so we started something called on radio, which the new company was on T and we started on radio. But rather than bringing in highfalutin guests, we did it on a video format and we did it in a podcast. And, so we did start launch this podcast called On Radio, and I was able to bring in, sometimes I would bring in a job foreman, someone.

I was a safety expert. I had the chairman of the FCC. Come on. I had A-C-A-A-A-A member of Congress, come on. And, but we were talking to our people about things that would affect them and their job. And so even in a podcast format it was dedicated to the employees. Now, it, we found out very quickly that other people wanted to listen in, and we had to get them access because our suppliers wanted, and then our, our, customers wanted in, and then all of a sudden our competitors wanted in and we’re like, well, what?

If this is a good thing, it’s a good thing to share. And then when I left that company, that’s when we started the Grampian podcast, because I just loved talking because I learned so much from people.

[01:06:56] Dwight: Oh, yeah. So I got two things. If you build it, they will come. That’s popped into my head. And the fact of the matter is, is.

Podcasting. Like I tell people all the time, how do you pick your guests? I said, well, I go through the emails. I only can do it a couple times a week. ’cause I get a hundred plus a day. I go through ’em and I, and I, it, it’s, I read it and I go on my internal compass and mm-hmm. I give it up to God and sometimes I don’t even have to give it up to God.

I know. Right away. Right. I just, I know right away because I am my podcast biggest fan and here’s why people laugh. Oh, that’s kind of conceited. No, I get to pick the guest. So I am the host of the podcast. You’re the guest lecture, Jim. Yeah. You’re the person that I want to learn from and my community believes in a lot of the same things as me.

Or they’re, maybe I’m farther in the journey than them. Yeah. But they want, they know that they can get through there because I’ve picked guests that are continually keeping me driven to move forward or make it so I don’t slide backwards. But just like your podcast going from doing that on podcast to doing grampian.

They come, they follow, if you build it, they will come. I look at what my numbers were when I first started by and I started during the pandemic, right? Yeah. I started my podcast 290. Oh, your episode 2 96, you’re gonna be right. Yeah. So 296 podcasts and I look about all the knowledge I’ve learned and all the free therapy I got.

I’m just being honest. That’s

[01:08:37] Jim: wonderful. Yeah.

[01:08:38] Dwight: Right. Just the free for sure. The free business therapy, the free six inches between my ears therapy, my spiritual therapy. Mm-hmm. I seem to attract people, especially on pod match and, and the emails. People have gotten to know my podcast. It’s become global and they literally reach out to me because of my connection to my faith.

But I also get a lot of people reaching out to me that are, that are atheist, agnostic. Mm-hmm. Spiritual because they know that I love everybody. Yeah. Everybody’s got the seed of greatness. Maybe they’ve watered it and their information is gonna make a change in somebody’s life. I’m always gonna be honest about my core values.

Faith, family work always gonna be that way. It’s been that way for 30 plus years. My destiny was. Put in place by God and I just gotta give it up. And what’s your will today? God, thank you for letting me open my eyes. And I have another day, right? Yeah. I’m thinking about you this morning and I’m having gratefulness thinking, man, I can’t wait to talk to Jim.

But that connection started people saying, how do you find people? Well, it’s an inner, it’s an inner compass. And I believe God brings that person to me because a lot of the guests I have, you’d be shocked. The more I am am attuned to my internal compass, the more the guest commonalities were cons.

There’s so much commonality between mm-hmm. My guests and myself. And it, it happens. And I, I’ll talk to people, interviewed somebody a few days ago and I’ve had her on twice now, and we were just talking about connection and about this and that. She says, well, why did you want me on a second time? Because I said, I felt like I was stuck.

I’d only heard enough, but not enough. Yeah. And I, and if I felt that way, you think I had any listeners that felt that way? She says, I never thought about that.

[01:10:28] Jim: Exactly. Exactly.

[01:10:29] Dwight: So I had her on a second time, a few weeks later and, that could happen with us because there’s so much more to discuss.

[01:10:36] Jim: Yeah. But too, too, you bring up such a wonderful point if you’re thinking that question, you’re not the only one. And a as um, just as people. curiosity is kind of, uh, it’s a bit of a lost art. And I’m not meaning the people aren’t curious, but taking the time. That’s why long form podcasts are so wonderful because you get to take the time to be curious, to say, oh, this might have been the question that I thought I was gonna ask, but actually I’m gonna go down to different rabbit trail and make it, and it’s just super fun.

[01:11:17] Dwight: It is fun.

[01:11:18] Jim: Yeah.

[01:11:19] Dwight: But how many people have, have you had people? I’m not sure how, I can’t, I’m sorry. ’cause I’ve had so much since I prepped for this podcast. Yeah. A couple days ago. I can’t remember how long your Grampian podcast has gone, but you’ve done the other radio stuff as well. How many people do you think.

Look forward to it every single week to to, to get, to get involved in that. And how many people have told you your podcast wouldn’t succeed? I’ve had people telling me that long form podcast, you need to be 20, 30 minutes people’s travel time from this to their work and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Your show will never grow.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I proved you wrong and me. right. I just, that’s all I tell people. Yeah. And I still get people saying, oh, your podcast can’t be that successful. Oh, okay. Well, five and a half years. It, it, it’s not too bad. I’ve helped a few people. It’s helped me more than anybody. Heck yeah.

And Right. And at the end of the day, some people like long form podcasts. You ever heard of a pause button? I said that to somebody just recently. What do you mean? if I, I have quite a few fans, or pardon me? I’m a fan of quite a few shows. I hit the pause button, I get back in the vehicle.

[01:12:32] Jim: Yeah.

[01:12:32] Dwight: I unpause it. I keep on driving. Do you ever listen to audio books? Yes. can you do that one sitting

[01:12:38] Jim: all in, one sitting? I doubt it.

[01:12:41] Dwight: So I said. Quit looking at the negative. Yeah. Look at the positive. Look at the excitement. When I, I, I go, geez, sometimes I’ve sat in the parking lot ’cause I’m early for an appointment and I’ll listen to a few more minutes and I’ll go, damn, I gotta pause it now.

And I can’t wait to get, I don’t lose focus of where I’m going.

[01:12:59] Jim: Yeah.

[01:12:59] Dwight: But when I get back, as I’m walking back to my vehicle, I’m going, damn, I get to listen to Jimmy.

[01:13:04] Jim: I, I, here we go. And that’s, that’s so true of hosts two because naturally, we wouldn’t be podcasts if we weren’t curious people.

And so I don’t wanna get back on that too much. I’m curious. But I can tell you that, sometimes you think when I started I was like, I think 30 minutes is the right number. And then I found this really super interesting guest and I looked up and we were hour in and I’m thinking automatically, oh, this is two episodes.

But what I, people didn’t come back for the second episode. And the second episode might even have been better. I mean, and then, I got this guy on who was an incredible guest, and I said, okay, we can go an hour and two hours in. I’m like, yeah, we think we better land this plane now. there’s no number.

That’s right. If it’s still feeling interesting and it’s stimulating your curiosity, just keep going. It is. Okay.

[01:14:00] Dwight: see that, that lady that I had on twice, Laurel Sierra, Laurel, just amazing, amazing, amazing woman. We were like an hour and 35 hour and 40 minutes in and she had to go. I knew her hard stop time.

Yeah. So I just quickly paused. I said, and I showed her and she says, I love it that you’re so prepared. Yeah. I says, what? We’ve barely cracked the surface. We’ve come back on again. Let’s wrap up this episode. I’m gonna ask you a few more questions and then let’s have you on again and a few weeks because I’ll feel robbed otherwise.

That’s what I said to her. I said, I’ll feel robbed otherwise, and if I feel robbed, there’s gonna be somebody else that’s going, geez, you talked about this in our initial bio, but we never got to that. Right. So

[01:14:45] Jim: I wish they wouldn’t have stopped. Yeah.

[01:14:47] Dwight: Oh. So, sometimes I’ll have, I think the longest individual podcast I’ve had is just under two hours.

And the person was willing to talk and I was willing to talk. And I put it out there. It was still a highly regarded episode. People liked it. Some of ’em, I got complaints from individuals. It’s too long. Whatever. Find your tribe. Find your whatever you wanna be involved in. Right. Exactly. I’m not looking to please, I’m not Will looking to please the complainers.

[01:15:15] Jim: Mm.

[01:15:16] Dwight: So let’s get into your book. I’m glad. Okay. I’m glad you have extra time today. Worries. For those listeners and viewers, me, I ask people what their hard stop time is and Jim said he didn’t, so he’s in trouble. No kidding. Yeah. I love

[01:15:31] Jim: it. We’re all good. We’re all good.

[01:15:33] Dwight: Jim, your book, building Man Character Lessons from Influencers is a collection of life lessons shaped by mentors, family, faith, and lived experience.

Each chapter you designed is rooted in distinct virtues, including loyalty, courage, perseverance, and meekness told through vivid personal stories that read less like how to guide more like a love letter to the people who shaped you, right? Mm-hmm. And you, we’ve talked a little bit, listeners, viewers, we’ve talked, Jim’s brought up a little bit and stuff, but I really wanna know what it was like for you.

Like, I’m gonna be a little bit vulnerable for me. Like when I wrote my own book, I found it very cathartic, right? Five and a half months. Wrote it during the pandemic, constantly setting stuff up to the editors, talking to the publisher, trying to figure this stuff all out. And I found it very cathartic because throughout writing it, either I, there’s moments where I was going, wow, I just thought about that.

And I’ve never acknowledged, I’ve never celebrated it, I’ve never patted myself in the back. And, and then there was times I was like, wow, man, I should have kicked myself harder in the butt. That time, that time I found it a rollercoaster ride. There was times when I was laughing, going, writing it and reading it again or sending it to the editor, and then there was times I was crying.

What was it like for you?

[01:16:53] Jim: Wow. for starters, people ask me, how long did it take you to write that book? and, the first one I said about 66 years.

[01:17:05] Dwight: That’s

[01:17:05] Jim: fair. And, the reason is, is when I, especially when I get off a stage, I, people would come to me and they would say, you told this story about this person who invested in you when they didn’t have the time, when they didn’t.

and I’m just a, a, a teller of tales and a spinner of yarns, and that’s, uh, that’s really my first love. And, and so I would get off the stage and they said, Hey, man, you should put that into a book. And so I, I, I, made a decision to start and, I didn’t know how to put it in order. And so I started by just numerical order, by my chronological age, if you will, or more so my chronological experiences.

And so chapter one starts with my grandpa, and it moves through childhood into young adulthood, into business, into success, and into the end the last few years. And, but I wrote about people and then I, the chapter titles were about people. And then I realised that all the things that person gave me were kind of unique.

And so, like when I talk about, um, there’s, uh, a chapter about my Uncle Earl, and he was a fantastic influence on me because this was a very powerful man, physically powerful, mentally tough, and, but the characteristic that I placed on him was meekness. And meekness is, is to me, strength under control.

And I go in about how he showed that to me during my childhood and what it meant to me. There’s another chapter. There was this fantastic guy, he worked for my grandpa. He was an administrator. He was a really important and a super busy guy at down. But I would play a football game and he would, I got home and I’ll never forget the very first time, this is the landline times, man.

There was no cell phones. It was a, so there was a telephone and it was either attached to the wall or it sat on the counter in the li on the coffee table in the living room. And it’s just after dinner. And somebody said, Jim, the phone’s for you. And like, I don’t give phone calls. I’m in the eighth grade.

But I went in and I picked up the phone and fellow by the name of Norm Nice was on there. And he replayed a certain aspect of that game for me. And he told me how it looked from his perspective and why he was proud of me and why I did such a good thing. And he, he made it sound like world wide, world of sports.

And the chapter that I talk about him is encouragement Now. He didn’t have to call and say that to me. But every time after a game, my dad did not go to my games. My dad had eight kids. He didn’t time to go to a game. But this fellow had a classmate with me, and he came to every game and he, and, he called me after every game.

Like it was a game where I, I, I, I caught a, a punt, but I was a lineman. I was, the only reason I caught a punt is because I was in the backfield and, uh, I got in the backfield. There was a mistake on somebody else’s part. And I end up with the ball and, and he sounded like he was, it sounded like he was, uh, Howard Cosell on Monday night Football.

Man. It was like, and I didn’t, know you could inspire someone or encourage someone in that deep of a, that deep of a passion and that, especially when you did, I mean, it was, it was like someone who was too good for me, that was telling me how good I was. It was incredible. So I wrote, and every chapter has a defining characteristic, about what they gave to me, because most of these people, they didn’t have the time.

They probably didn’t have the energy. They certainly didn’t have the need to invest in me. But yet they took the time and they spent the investment, not necessarily monetarily, but emotionally and physically to, let me know that I was important enough to them where they would, they would help me. And so, yeah, they into That’s what building matter is about.

They did. They did. They did. They did.

[01:21:55] Dwight: Yeah. And I love that though, because most people listening and watching our, our brain is very malleable at a certain age. Yeah. Seven, eight years of age. he hit that range. It’s kind of locked in. But to have somebody reach out to you and breathe into you. To me, God sent that person to you.

[01:22:16] Jim: Yeah.

[01:22:16] Dwight: Right. For surely. That’s, that’s the way I look at it.

[01:22:19] Jim: Rightly. Abso No, no, that’s absolute truth. That nothing happens by accident. Now. There’s no, there are no coincidences on this planet, so,

[01:22:26] Dwight: no,

[01:22:27] Jim: I don’t believe there are any way.

[01:22:29] Dwight: Well and we can, if you’re a prayer like I am, or anybody listening, watching you can pray about whatever, you might not get what you want.

So then you all, oh, not listening to me. I’m being ignored. I’m not cared for. Well, these, he knows a picture way bigger than you could possibly even understand.

[01:22:47] Jim: Yeah.

[01:22:48] Dwight: Right. So sometimes, you look back at Jesus’ time, I’m trying to think of the apostle that had the broken leg, and he didn’t heal him until the end.

Yeah. Why didn’t he do that? And I remember the apostle questioned, why, aren’t you, and then other people, apostle James

[01:23:06] Jim: the lesser

[01:23:07] Dwight: Yes. Like, why, why aren’t you healing them? Jesus? Like, why aren’t, isn’t he important enough? There’s a rhyme and reason for everything that God does. Yeah.

Right. You just gotta be willing to give it up to him and realise that just because you pray doesn’t mean you’re gonna get the Porsche on the drive, or that you’re gonna have a big bank account, or that you’re never gonna have trials and tribulations, trials and tribulations is like, here’s the marble.

What are we gonna get at the end? Right? Yeah. You, you gotta go through things. There’s gotta be some struggle. And yes, if you’ve never, if you’ve gotten everything in life and you tell me you’ve never been on the struggle bus, I have a hard time believing that. Right?

[01:23:46] Jim: Well, and we have to look at our lives and say, Hey, what’s our task?

What’s our task? And if you’re a follower of Jesus, your task is to bring glory to God. And if you do that, it might not look pretty, sometimes it might look ugly, and you might face rejection, and you might get a whole bunch of feedback that’s, not considered positive in many circles. But, uh, if you’ve done the task, then you’re gonna get an arm wrapped around you and he is gonna say, well done by good and faithful servant.

[01:24:17] Dwight: Yeah. I, one of my best friends, he passed away a few years ago, um, quite a bit older than me being a, he’d be, oh my goodness, mid seventies now. And if he hadn’t passed away from cancer. But he used to always say what you just said, always. And he, and if you called his phone and you’re like, at home or on his cell phone, you were gonna leave a message.

His outgoing message was always, he, he le left a spiritual message. Right. And he’d change it up Nice. And, and I used to look forward sometimes I’d wish he wouldn’t answer, so I could, hear his That’s, but we were such close friends. He was my fishing buddy. He was just, oh yeah. I just, we met, he, we met, oh, again, long story.

I won’t get into it, but the way I met him was God infused. Mm-hmm. Right. It was God sending me to help him. He was in lots of pain and we became good friends. And then I got into this industry. We became one of my first clients, him and his wife. And then through him passing away, I built so many good relationships because of him.

He was on the struggle bus off the struggle bus back, and right up to the day he passed away. But there was just something about his kindness that I could see past all his struggle and always just wanted to be that support mechanism. Yeah. God kept on sending me back.

[01:25:38] Jim: And when people have accountant like that, they draw you in.

And when they draw you in, they’re doing what they’re supposed to do. ’cause, we’re not supposed to look like we have a easy life. We’re supposed to look like Jesus loves us. Yeah.

[01:25:58] Dwight: Yeah, absolutely, man. like I said to you earlier, God brings me the guests that we can, we can commiserate, we can laugh, we can enjoy, we can share.

Goodness, Charles tribulations and wow. Thank you so much again. No worries. Appreciate you. I appreciate this whole thing because you reached out to me, then you went into LinkedIn for the people listening, watching you were tenacious. Just enough that I thought, wow, okay, I gotta take this serious.

So right away to your LinkedIn and put in a connection and started reading about you and just gladness, like excitement. And I, that’s what I love about being a podcaster. People say, well, do you do this to be Mo? I said, I’ve never monetized it. I’ve had people just recently actually, do you wanna do this?

We’d like to throw an A. No. Why? Because it didn’t do it for money. This is my passion project. I did it during the pandemic. When I felt helpless. I thought, how many other people are just like the questions that we talked about? How many other people are feeling helpless? How many other people are devaluing what they’ve done for society?

How they’ve gone through their, their struggles and, and now they’re supporting and helping uplift and helping people live with intent and purpose. How many out there? Mm-hmm. Showcasing them. And I’m not saying there weren’t shows out there already, but I wanted to create my own thing. And podcasting has been a blessing.

[01:27:24] Jim: There you go.

[01:27:25] Dwight: Keeps on driving me forward.

[01:27:27] Jim: Nice.

[01:27:28] Dwight: Keep on doing it. And I meet great people like you. So here’s a question for you, for a father or grandfather listening right now. And this is about men now who want to raise men of character. Again, nothing against women but men of character. But honestly, he’s not sure where to start.

What is the most real thing that you can tell them?

[01:27:48] Jim: Wow. so there was a guy, who taught me a lesson, taught my son a lesson. And, um, he was a principal at a, Christian school. And his students would walk in every day and he would greet every student and he would shake their hand and he would say his name was Dennis.

He would say, just do the right thing. And by the end of the year, by the end of the second year, by the end of the third year, they’re getting kind of sick of hearing, just do the right thing. I got it. Just do the right thing. my son and I are sitting in a Fortune 500 office, and on our side of the table, there’s two of us.

And on the other side of the table, there’s 10 people. And they’re all, gradient of management. And so, but there’s in particular, there’s some, there’s some young guns that are, like trying to make their place in this corporate environment and they’re gonna make, my partner, my son, look bad to make themselves look good.

And the conversation went something like this. Mr. Tracy, Ryan, Tracy, he said, I’d like to know how you mandate quality, what procedures you do to mandate quality on our job sites. And he was looking for an A STM specification or a this or that, and Ryan said, he said, we hire the right people.

And we asked them to do the right thing. And it kind of flustered the young band. And, he, uh, he came back. He came back and he said, what happens if they don’t know what the right thing is? And Ryan’s kinda struck. He said, well, then we tell them to do the best right thing.

And this kid did not learn his lesson. And so he doubled down again and he leaned forward and he said, well, what about when they don’t know the best right thing? And Ryan Smile said, well, we give them one of your phones and we ask them to call us and we’ll help them understand the best right thing. And my point is that the lesson isn’t deep and it’s not, it’s not got a lot of, uh, it there, there’s no question about what we should do.

The question is, is will you make the decision and given an opportunity to choose left or choose right? You should always try to choose the right thing. And sometimes you’re gonna gonna know, like, I, kids come to me all the time and they’re like, I’ve, should I do this or should I do that? Well, sometimes it just doesn’t matter.

Do what you want. But oftentimes you get to choose between the best thing, the best right thing for yourself, for your family, for your faith, for your walk, for your job. So let’s, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist. If you wanna become a man of character, then do the thing that a man of character would do.

And if you do that with just a modicum of discipline and a a bit of discernment, all of a sudden you’re gonna finding yourself doing a, I’m gonna take it back to muscle memory again. If you choose the right thing, it gets easier to choose the right thing. If you choose the wrong thing, knowing it’s the wrong thing, it gets easier to compromise.

And the more you compromise, the worse your life is gonna be. So let’s not compromise. Let’s just choose the right thing on a regular basis. I always see that. The bracelet, the, the old, what would Jesus do? I’m like, I think that’s cool, but what would Jesus want you to do? Because we don’t always get to choose like Jesus.

He had infinite knowledge and, uh, he had, and he lived his sin free life. We don’t get that. we have to actually endeavour to try and choose what Jesus would want us to do, and that’d be good enough for me. Man, if I did that every time, my life would be so much better.

[01:32:18] Dwight: Yeah.

Unfortunately, there was only one person that walked on this earth that was perfect, and it certainly isn’t us. We’ve got right till the day we take our la last breath. Yep. There’s always stuff we can learn. There’s always things we can reflect back on. Even things that I look back on in my life that I thought were true and correct.

I’ve looked back at stuff and gone,

Hmm,

I, I, I forgot this part. I didn’t necessarily learn the lesson. Maybe it was ’cause of my maturity level at that time, and now my maturity level’s different. I’ve learned more. I’ve scraped my knee more. Right. Yeah. And, now I can look back and go, that was good, but it could have been better.

So how can it change me today? Yeah. So people always say the past isn’t indicative of the future. It certainly can be, right?

[01:33:08] Jim: Yeah.

[01:33:08] Dwight: Certainly can be. We can,

[01:33:10] Jim: well, you brought up building men of character and, and I, and that’s why I wrote this book. I mean the title is Building Men. Yeah.

Character Lessons from Influencers Building Men. And, so I was really surprised when we got the first feedback from Amazon. They said, Hey, you’re the number one new release. I’m like, cool. And then I looked, guess what the category was? Single parenting. There’s a lot of moms out there. There’s a lot of dads out there who are going it alone, and they just want some help building those young men and forming those young minds.

And so I was stunned, because that’s not who I necessarily wrote the book for, but I think that perhaps God had other plans for this.

[01:33:57] Dwight: Oh, of course. Yeah. Like as a, as a, a single parent that raised four daughters and a son originally had joint custody, and eventually I got them permanently full custody.

It was a challenge. Right. So having a book, I could see why single parents would want to have a book to help define and grow young men. Yeah. Because men are, there’s such a learned stigma out there, uh, and learned behaviour from the generations of the centurions to the baby boomers, to the X Generation millennials.

The LICOs on that learned behaviour sometime along the way has to be changed. And we just, it, it really struggle to look at people and think to myself, this is what you’ve now taught. This generation, this generation is now teaching the next generation who’s gonna break that chain. Yeah. Do they have anybody that’s gonna say, Hey, this is what you need to do to grow a young man properly, or here’s Yeah.

How to, help women because of what they go through because of a male dominated society. Yeah. So I can see why that happened. God made that happen, right. For that to happen. And I, I, can’t even imagine how many people your book has made a difference in their lives. Right.

[01:35:20] Jim: if it’s one, it’s enough.

I I love the I agree. Apprenticeship.

[01:35:24] Dwight: I agree.

[01:35:24] Jim: I love the apprenticeship model in the picture because if you’re a bricklayer, you, get your apprentice, to haul heavy stuff for you, and you do it so that he can learn the difficulty of lifting heavy things and of holding bricks. And, so when he does that, all of a sudden his hands before he knows it are, more stronger and calloused so that he doesn’t drop on bricks on people below him.

[01:35:58] Dwight: Wow.

[01:35:59] Jim: And, and if, and then they say, oh, now you’re a hotter, now we’re gonna teach you how to carry a, moderate slump liquid on a flat board. And now we’re gonna teach you to do that, just to carry it so you can learn how not to drop that on the people that are carrying the bricks below you. And then we’re gonna actually teach you to use a hawk and troll, but we’re gonna teach you to Lewis do that on the lower levels.

So when it comes to the upper levels, you’re not wasteful. And so all these progressive learnings happen in an apprenticeship model. Well, when we teach someone not to steal, we don’t teach someone not to steal by showing them how to steal. We teach them not to steal because we show them what it takes to earn and then it all, those life lessons and all those characteristics are learned by positive influences, never by negative.

There’s enough negative influences out there. You don’t have to go looking for very far. So we have to work harder as positive influences.

[01:37:06] Dwight: Oh, absolutely. There’s, there’s such a small po percentage, sadly, of the population that are, positive critical thinkers, leaders that are willing to step out on faith and be vulnerable to coach and teach others.

Because through all coaching and teaching others, there’s always criticism. There’s always the

[01:37:26] Jim: Yeah.

[01:37:27] Dwight: The negative, there’s always the devil and evil gonna be around, right? Yeah. So we need to have that shield of faith, that shield of God to go out and make a difference and, and not let those little things slow us down.

Yeah. But appreciate the character building moments. Learn from ’em. Find the people that can help you through ’em if, if required or fall back on things that you’ve been learning yourself that maybe you forgot to get past it. But awareness is so important. Wouldn’t you agree? Um, yeah. So many people are just clueless and that’s why they get stuck and it’s easier to fall backwards and to move forward.

[01:38:06] Jim: I’ve noticed that no great coaches ever sat in the cheap seats. They were on the bench with the players. They weren’t in the game, but they were of the game. They were about the game. They were telling people do this. Don’t do that. Try this, try that. Let’s get it together so we can have this common outcome that’s good for all of us.

it doesn’t matter whether you play offence or you whether play defence. If you’re a basketball coach and you’re, you’re, on the sideline. You’re not up in the cheap seats telling people how stupid they are.

[01:38:41] Dwight: Yeah, that’s, that’s fair. we’re gonna get to the last part of the podcast. Thank you for such a great response.

Jim. You have built companies, raised a family, mentored grandkids, flowing jets, written books, and stood up for your industry in the Hall of Congress. When you step back from all of it and look at the whole picture, what has this life taught you about what it actually means to give a heck?

[01:39:09] Jim: Wow. That’s like, the biggest question that you could ask someone.

And the reason I think it is, is because you could look at all those important things that are, Certainly relevant to life. But I have to tell you, I have a granddaughter whose name is Holly and Holly’s, five years old. And this morning when I went upstairs for breakfast, we live in a multi-generational home.

And I, and I, as I walked up for breakfast, Holly had on a pink tutu and a green t-shirt and 10 runners, and she had a, her little blanket around her shoulders and she ran to me and she threw her arms around my waist and she hugged me and she said, grandpa, I love you.

[01:40:05] Dwight: The, oh,

[01:40:06] Jim: all of the investment that I have ever made in anything.

Could never have a payout, like a hug from Holly.

[01:40:15] Dwight: Wow. That, I’m thinking about my, I have a granddaughter that’s just in grade one now that just turned six a few months ago. And she does similar things to me. They don’t live in the same home as me, but they live about 20 minutes away. My daughter in, another community outside of Edmonton.

And I had a similar experience and it’s just wow. Profound because she literally ran up to me, grabbed me around the leg, and looked up at me and says, Papa, she calls me Papa. Papa, you are the best. I love you. And I was just like, and just like all of a sudden, I, I visualise a puddle of me on the ground, right.

[01:40:53] Jim: Heart melted.

[01:40:55] Dwight: Yeah. She’s got me wrapped around her pinky.

[01:40:58] Jim: Yeah.

[01:40:59] Dwight: And, it’s just, oh, I love my grandkids.

[01:41:01] Jim: But there’s nothing disingenuous in them when they do that. They’re just expressing in its simplest form, pure

[01:41:08] Dwight: joy.

[01:41:09] Jim: I love you. Yeah. And so if, I, I guess if I could get anybody to do whatever it takes so that when you’re my age, you get to feel that.

[01:41:20] Dwight: Yeah. It’s, it’s, oh, and I haven’t seen, I’ve, I haven’t seen my great-granddaughter in a couple years, Sabine. and I, they’re, ’cause my grandson and his significant other, and the baby live on Vancouver Island, which is on the Pacific coast for people that are listening and watching.

It’s just so precious, right? Yeah. and, and I just look at the fact of my grandson says to me, grandpa, he’s 22 now. He says, I’ve gone through so much trials and tribulations throughout my whole life. You’re the only one that didn’t give up on me.

[01:41:54] Jim: Yeah.

[01:41:54] Dwight: And

[01:41:55] Jim: there you go.

Yep. No quit. Don’t quit, man. Don’t

[01:42:00] Dwight: quit. Absolutely. Oh, I don’t plan on it, brother. so if there’s somebody listening right now who, who came from a small town or a small start and still is not given themselves permission to believe the big life is possible for them, what do you want them to hear?

[01:42:18] Jim: my, I’ve started my first business, uh, right outta college.

Uh, about a year and a half after I got outta college. I started my first business. I moved, uh, with my tail between my legs from Minneapolis to Denver, $24,000 in credit card debt, a failed business. My wife got left at home to sell the house and moved to Denver to a new job. And, I did that pretty well for seven years.

And it, and, I got a little disagreement with my boss and I went out on my own again. And two years later, that was a train wreck because the, the folks, the folks stopped buying houses in Denver during that. Period of time. That was 1993, I think. And, uh, yeah. and so there, I found myself, now I’ve gotta move to Seattle after another failed business.

And I, build up this company for somebody else. And then I, figure out that, I’m pretty good at this. And so then I start my own company. And so that was about the fourth time was a charm. Don’t give up on yourself and, uh, make sure that you’re doing the right thing at home before you worry about business.

Um, when I was 28 years old, I came to a realisation that I wasn’t in control of this life that somebody else should be. I wasn’t making very good decisions. And I fell on my knees in my closet and I said, God, if you’re real, I want to give you a chance because I’m not, doing a very good job of this on my own.

And, uh, I turned my life over to Christ. And, the turnaround was immediate. The change took years in terms of my circumstances. And it’s not about the circumstances, is what I found out. My only goal before I was 28 was, Hey man, I gotta make a hundred thousand dollars a year. And so every ounce of my energy was towards that.

And I, I didn’t get there. But when God realised that he could actually trust me with money, ’cause it was an idol anymore, I think he said, okay, Jim, I think you can handle this now. So he blessed me a bit and, don’t give up on yourself, but, first of all, if you don’t make Jesus Christ the Lord and saviour your life, I’m promising you, he can do a better job of managing it than you can.

[01:44:46] Dwight: Yeah. I, I love that. For those listening who are watching, if you’re not familiar with it, go look up the footprints in the sand. Go look up that I’ve got it placed in my house on numerous different plaques along with a serenity prayer as well. at the end of the day, what Jim’s saying is Right, don’t give up God’s with you.

You just have to accept it and embrace it. Welcome into your life. Right. And those that don’t want to, that’s, that’s fine. But if you’re feeling that even a little bit of a tinge, a little bit of a helplessness, it can help amazingly, like Jim’s saying, To change your life, is there still gonna be trials and tribulations?

Absolutely. Do you still have to go through the value despair to possibly get to that levels of success? Absolutely. But at the end of the day, the best person to talk to about it with it is talking to God. Right. For me, prayers, yeah. Having gratitude and gratefulness and then just getting up and, and doing the right things.

And when you don’t do the right things, acknowledging it. If it hurt others, acknowledge it. Apologise, move forward. Always admit that, you’re human, you make mistakes, but you’re gonna help more people than you’ll ever hurt if you continue to move forward in a, in a Christ based way, in my opinion.

Again, not trying to offend people, I just know what I’ve experienced in my lifetime.

[01:46:16] Jim: Yeah. And if you’re offended, you should probably ask yourself why? Because if, I’m right and Jesus is the way, the truth and the life and the only way to get to the Father to get to heaven, if I’m wrong, I still get a pretty good life.

But if I’m right, you should probably go find out why.

[01:46:36] Dwight: Yeah,

[01:46:36] Jim: exactly. What’s the risk? What’s the risk?

[01:46:39] Dwight: A hundred percent. And I’m looking for my tribe anyway. And I talk about God all the time. Those videos I talked to you about earlier before we hit record, those, uh, 837 daily live videos that I never missed a day, they all ended with God bless.

Peace out.

[01:46:58] Jim: God bless. Peace out. There you go.

[01:47:00] Dwight: And at the end of the day, whether people liked it or didn’t like it, and if I lose people because they talk about God on my podcast, oh, well teach their own. I’m looking for the willing, the committed. I’m looking for commonality. I’m looking for my tribe and I wanna be part of theirs.

[01:47:17] Jim: There you go.

[01:47:19] Dwight: All works good. So Jim, I wanna say thank you from the bottom of my heart for this conversation. You showed up with everything today, your stories, your honesty, your heart for the people behind you and the people coming after you. This is exactly the kind of conversation this show exists to have a small town kid who built something extraordinary and never forgot where he came from or who got him there.

That is a legacy worth talking about, right? So Jim, where is the best place for listeners to find your book, connect to your work and get in touch if they want to have want you to speak?

[01:47:54] Jim: Um, yeah, just, uh, the best place to find the book is Amazon or anywhere you buy books. But, if you wanna find me, it’s the jim tracy.com.

I don’t think that highly myself, it was the Jim Tracy ’cause there’s another one. So, uh, yeah, the Jim Tracy, THE jim tracy.com and you can find me there.

[01:48:15] Dwight: Right on. for those new to the Give a Heck podcast, go to give a heck.com. Go to the Top Hip podcast. You’ll go down and see very detailed show notes, which we’ll give you chapter summaries.

There’s a full transcript on there, as well as all of the Jim’s social media links, his website link. So don’t think that you have to rewind anything. Just go to give a heck.com, look for Jim’s smile and face, and look at the detailed show notes and you’ll be able to stay in touch. And I highly suggest you look at purchasing his book.

I’m interested in it myself and unfortunately with my busy career in life, I take forever to get through books. I find I can get through more books listening to them as opposed to reading them. here’s why when I read a book, ’cause I read so much during the day, contracts and different things for clients.

When I read a book, I start falling asleep.

So any final words before I close up the show?

[01:49:17] Jim: Oh, I just learned something from you, man. God bless. Peace out.

[01:49:22] Dwight: Nice. If you go and search some of my videos, I think I got about 500 and some of ’em on, on my one channel.

Not my Give a Heck channels for my podcast. Um, but I have another channel that, uh, people have reached out to me and said, oh, you weren’t kidding you got fi because sometimes I wouldn’t think about it. I put ’em out on social, but I wouldn’t think about loading them up on YouTube. But I got 500 and some of ’em up on there and you can go see it.

Nice people, right? It is what it is. I’m not ashamed, I’m not, am not worried about judgement . The only person that’s gonna judge me is not you or anybody else that’s in my, my sphere. Right?

[01:50:00] Jim: Right on.

[01:50:01] Dwight: So, thanks brother. So to everybody listening and watching today, thank you for giving your time for this show.

If this conversation added something to your days, please share it. Every time you share an episode, you put this message in front of someone who might need it, and that is exactly what we are here for. Make sure you’re subscribed on your favourite platform, and if you have a minute, leave a review.

It genuinely helps this show reach more people. You can also watch the Give a Heck Podcast on my YouTube channel at Give a Heck, if you’re watching, they’re right now, please subscribe. It helps get this message out to more people, and it’s exactly what we’re trying to do. Until next time, live life on purpose and not by accident.

And remember, it is never too late to give a heck.