May 2026 - Page 12 of 15 - Elevate Constructionist

Everyone has Agency! Feat. Katie Schroeder

Posted on May 9, 2026May 9, 2026 by Danny Jiménez⁩

Read 43 min

If You’re Unwilling to Learn Nobody Can Help You: The Truth About Agency and Cultural Fits

Katie is staring at Jason from the other end of the truck because he just started recording. Is she okay if he keeps going? Yeah, but he didn’t even tell her a topic this time. Okay, it’s about agency. And she has her agency to decide if she wants to keep doing this podcast.

They’re going to talk about agency. Now these two topics have been on Jason’s mind. These podcast topics get filtered. They’re not random. The one they just did before this one, talking about feedback, was a topic that Jason personally desperately needed, which is helping him on his lean journey and everything he’s learning.

This one tonight is specifically Jason getting some advice from Katie when it comes to him internalizing the failures of others and the concept that everyone has their agency. Jason tells this story quite frequently that Frenchie, Katie’s uncle, told where grandpa was watching a horse race and yelling at the jockey and just getting after him and railing on him and stupid, cuss word, cuss word. Frenchie was like “The horse has something to do with it too, right? It’s not just the jockey’s fault.” That story has always stuck with Jason.

Agency, it’s a key term. Maybe that’s too much of a churchy religious term, but Jason would like to talk about what it is because he read a quote the other day. He thinks this is from Zig Ziglar. The quote basically goes: if you are unwilling to learn, nobody can help you. But if you’re willing to study and put in the work kind of generally, then nobody can stop you. The topic has been on his mind and he wants to talk about it today.

The Ability to Act and Choose

Katie’s looked it up. She put it on the Google there. It’s just a thing or person that acts to produce a particular result. Just the ability to act. The ability to act and produce results. And choose. Here’s the reason that it has bearing. Jason’s a teacher. That’s it. He’s not a director. He’s not really even a business owner. He’s not anything. He’s a teacher. He creates content. He distills content down. It bothers him when people don’t respond.

He’ll tell you why. Because at the end of the day, one of their core values is that they’re results driven as a company. They have human beings. Human beings do all of the things that they do. It is their job at Elevate to get as many people as possible to actually respond to training and to want something better so that they will perform at higher levels so that the company, team, or organization, or family, or whatever, will achieve higher results.

Jason knows he’s not getting to a question. He’s just wanting to see if Katie has any insight. That happens to them at church. That happens to them in their family with their kids. That happens to them at work when they’re training a large group of people for superintendents or whatever. They have their agency. Jason’s got two questions for Katie. Number one: how do you affect the most change knowing that human beings have their agency? And what do we do with maybe the frustration when people don’t respond? What would be a productive way to respond in that direction?

When people fly to boot camps, they want training most of the time. Very rarely does somebody come when they don’t want it. If somebody signs up for a certification training, unless it was given to them for free, which is a really bad practice, most of the time they’re there because they want to. They’re ready to take the next step.

Are these people mostly coming from like their companies are paying for it? Their companies are paying for it but it comes at an expense. They know that it’s not an easy thing. The other side of this is when a company says “Okay, these aren’t people that are just hand-selected ready to go to these trainings, we want everybody in the organization to get better.”

The Scarcity Mindset That Keeps Toxic People on Your Team

Back in the day, but now we’re in an economy of scarcity. Somebody comes to a boot camp, they usually want to. They come to a certification training. They’re going to carve out two days. They’re not going to just do that because they were told. And pay money to go do it.

If a company says “I want everybody in the company to head in this direction,” we already know that from a numbers game, generally, and it’s not always this way, but a third of the people are bought in, a third of the people are big old question mark, and a third of the people are not bought in.

The best practice typically is to spend time with your most bought in people, not from an ignore everybody standpoint, but you give them the most attention, your questionable people will be bought in, and your dissenters will at least become questionable. Then there’s usually about 5%, 10%, maybe even 15% of the people that either self-select or have to be removed.

Now we’re in an economy of scarcity where the advice of “Let’s just cull the organization” doesn’t always work. In some situations we have people in positions that quite frankly will do an okay job but we have the company owners and leaders, they want to be remarkable. What do we do? Katie thinks this is a difficult situation where as a company owner, if you’re not willing to incentivize the growth, then you need to be able to be honest about that and scale back unfortunately.

Jason usually uses Paul Akers as an example for this. People will watch his videos and read his books, which Jason loves. That’s the first main book that he ever had. But they’ll say “Oh my gosh, everything just magically works.” But he literally had to toast half of his organization. Katie says Gary Vee is the same way. It was all like hugs and cuddles and then he had to fire some people that were not cultural fits. If you grow slower, so be it.

Let’s stay with that topic. When an organization thinks about what’s going on, half of Paul Akers’ employees, that’s in Jason’s mind 50 people, that means 25 of them left. What they have is a situation where, Jason works with some really top-notch people. They’re willing to do the right thing. The numbers aren’t the same in this instance.

When we’re talking about there are people in these organizations that either quit or get fired, we’re talking like 5 out of 60 or 5 out of 80. The numbers aren’t proportional. Paul Akers lost half of his employees when he did this cultural change. Now he’s in an environment where he has one of the most remarkable lean facilities in the world and people fly all over the world to see it.

Katie was just thinking “Oh, we have this economy of scarcity.” That’s a thought. “Oh, I have to put up with people that aren’t a cultural fit, people that are not good for our brand, people that are not good for our organization, people that are toxic, because I can’t get anyone else.”

And so now you’re willing to infiltrate your team with toxicity. You’re willing to do subpar work for your clients because you’re so scared that someone else is going to get the job or get the bid or get the project that you’re willing to put up with crappy output from workers when that’s your scarcity mindset.

You don’t need to be so “I gotta get the next job, the next job, the next job.” Why don’t you just focus on getting a team that’s highly successful, not worrying about the fact that you’re going to have to fire a couple of people that are not good cultural fits and trust the process that using best practices will be beneficial to you?

Katie’s worked with other companies before that don’t do the right thing. They let people stay on the team that really devalue others and really hurt the organizational health and the morale and the practice and everything. That never works out. She’s worked with companies where they’re like “This is who we are and you’re out.” And it works great. Katie thinks it’s important for anybody, especially if you’re a smaller business owner, don’t live in a scarcity mindset. You don’t have to put up with workers that are not going to fit culturally.

It’s one thing to say “Hey, this guy needs to be trained or this woman needs help and I can see that there’s the potential there.” And it’s quite another to just keep allowing someone to poison everyone. It’s really easy to see. Within a month or two you’re going to see that this person’s not a cultural fit and you need to let them go. Don’t live in scarcity and keep them around like “Oh, well, maybe nobody else will come around and then I’ll be short-staffed.” You’re already stressing, worrying, overthinking it, and overcompensating for them. Get rid of them.

That Dog Ain’t Going to Hunt: When Someone’s Just Not a Fit

Basically the situation that we’re dealing with is that if somebody, and this is what they say in Texas, that dog ain’t going to hunt. Sometimes, and up until now, up until this podcast, Brian was telling Jason that if somebody’s not getting it, it might be the way that we’re training. So they have to look at that. There are good pedagogical, good connecting ways to train where we use techniques that the person wants to connect with from a training perspective.

Jason’s point is if somebody knows what to do intellectually, they’ve had it demonstrated, they’ve been guided through the process, and now they’re in the enabling part and they’re still not doing it and grabbing it and finding a motivation to do it, the best industry advice is they’re not a fit. And that’s Katie’s advice as well.

Jason’s been in the space of “Okay, we’ve got 60% of the organization that will do what’s supposed to be done. We’re going to make a ton of progress but we have this dead space of inaction in 25% of the organization and they’re just not responding.”

His first thought is “What am I doing wrong?” So they keep going and they attempt and they do it differently and they roll in this direction. Then sometimes it just doesn’t stick. What Katie’s saying is it just is what it is. She doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with saying someone isn’t a fit.

The Blood Type Analogy: Non-Cultural Fits Cause Inflammation

The other thing is Jason thought of this the other day because he has to donate blood sometimes for medical reasons because his body produces too many red blood cells sometimes. He had to donate blood so he was thinking about blood types. How many blood types are there? Are there four? Are there more than that? There’s probably a lot. Six or seven.

There’s different types of blood. O is the universal one? O negative. So there’s A, B, AB, and O, and then there’s the negatives of those. Jason’s AB negative. If anybody wants to kidnap him and harvest his blood, that’s his blood type.

If Katie were going to receive a blood transfusion, she would have to have the right blood type or else she’d have an allergic reaction. Jason likes this analogy because the allergic reaction would cause inflammation and that inflammation would then cause your cells to have an inability to transfer oxygen. That inflammation would spread. It would cause restriction in your blood vessels and basically you would have a risk of dying and having a really severe reaction.

If you get stung by a bee and you need an EpiPen, why do you need an EpiPen? That’s like the inflammation that would close off your throat. The EpiPen is going to counteract that. When you think about this, when you have a non-cultural fit in an organization, it’s going to cause inflammation. It’s going to cause friction. It’s going to cause dissension. It’s going to cause a hurt for the normal blood cells, the normal employees.

It doesn’t mean that the other blood was bad. It’s just a different blood type. These people that we’re talking about, God love them. Their mother loves them. We love them. They might not be a fit for the organization. They’re just a different blood type. It doesn’t mean you throw the blood away. It means that they have to, you can administer that to a different patient. They can go to a different company. Katie agrees with that.

Recruit, Hire, Train: Never Stop Getting the Right Blood Type

So really when they get to a point, let’s say they have a company right now and let’s say they’re doing training and they’re getting pretty neat results with most of the people. Let’s say they have two or three, or let’s say maybe they even have 15, maybe there’s a ton of employees. They have 15 people that are not responding to their training and there’s a current workload and those employees are needed for their current workload. What do we do? Katie says that’s really tough where you’re dependent on them and their subpar behavior.

The one thing that Jason keeps saying, and he wants Katie to check him on this, see if he’s wrong, but he’s seen this work, so he’s not asking if it works, he’s asking is this morally or theoretically right: focus on your top end people that are doing the training, really beat them up and then continually hire. So recruit, hire and train and start filtering those cultural fits into your organization and never stop. Katie thinks that’s probably the best thing to do.

From an agency standpoint, meaning that people are agents into themselves and they make their own choices, Jason thinks that what they do in boot camps is they help wake people up and just find their passion. Katie doesn’t think that’s what they do. They provide training. Companies will provide benefits in secure environments but at the end of the day, what she heard him say is it’s really not just a job. It’s not the bare minimum requirements. It’s what the vision of the company is.

The last thing maybe advice Jason would give is that the company has to have a vision of what it wants to be because then the ownership, the leadership has to then communicate that or gets to communicate that and then people can either respond or they don’t respond.

Like Jason and Katie are married. If they weren’t heading in the same direction, it would be hard to stay married. They both believe that we’re heading for an eternal union with certain perks. They believe they’ll be with their family forever. They believe they’ll be with their kids. They believe that eventually it’ll all work out. So any of the trials and different difficulties that they have along the way, it’s worthwhile.

But if they weren’t, it would be a lot harder. So in a company it’s like the same thing. Jason thinks the first thing we have to find out and maybe this is something that we consider with hiring is are they headed in the same direction?

This company right here, we are headed for excellence. We are a lean company. We want really good production. We’re going to be safer than anybody else. We want to elevate everybody’s position. We will never stop growing. We will never stop improving. Then we need to find out are those employees on board or are they not?

Katie was confirming that Gary Vee talks about how there was a time when he had to cut some people out because they were not heading where he wanted to go. She was thinking about how Simon Sinek talks about how it’s one thing to have a vision for your company but each individual worker has their own vision too.

Somebody may feel like it’s all about the money and they don’t really care what the vision is. They’re willing to work if they’re compensated even if they hate the job or whatever. Some people may be looking for more of a camaraderie type family. Everybody has a different motivation.

So Katie thinks it does go back to in your hiring processes, it’s not just “Oh, well, you’re a warm body, fill the position.” That kind of thinking gets you into these positions where you’ve got people that are not good cultural fits.

It’s Just Data: Stop Internalizing Other People’s Failures

Really going back to the previous podcast, Jason’s really glad they talked about this because going back to the previous podcast, it’s just data. He doesn’t need to assign an emotional response to how somebody else responded. It’s just data. Is the training effective? Is the response being understood and received properly? And then is it just the way it is? It’s just data. If employees aren’t responding to training, if they don’t have the same vision, then we just take action from there.

Jason was hoping this podcast would turn out really nice. And he thinks it did. Gary Vee said himself, and he’s the most cussing, frank, get rid of people, in your face guy in the world, there was a time where he babied people when his organization was new. Then he got to a point where he’s like “Okay, we’ve grown up enough and this has to stop.” And then he made the cuts.

So we have a couple of options. We can scale more slowly from the start. We can chop off a limb. Or we can be super sweet and identify and get real clear on where everybody is and do it at the right time as we recruit, hire and train and find those cultural fits, basically get more of our own blood type.

Katie thinks the other thing too is with the scarcity mindset where “Oh, I am going to have to hire people,” are you as an employer setting boundaries or are you just like “Well, I’ll take anybody”? If you have those boundaries set and the expectation is clear, then even, Katie’s just thinking, if you have a guy on your team that’s a hard worker and he gets it done but he’s a complete a-hole, that’s not a cultural fit. You need to let him go. It’s not worth what it’s doing to the rest of the team.

You need to have clear boundaries. Jason would say you need to let him go if that’s something you value, is having a good culture. If they prioritize just production, if the company doesn’t care about their culture, they don’t have to fire them. Katie would just say to that company that’s not a very nice culture. Nobody wants to work with a complete a-hole.

Jason was just saying if you value your other employees, one shining star that’s a complete jerk, you shouldn’t be allowed to set the tone. Just to recap, how well the training is, is data. How well the benefits and the culture is, is data. And it’s also something that we can improve on. The processes in our company is data. How we’re bidding jobs, the structure of the systems is data.

If after the training, the systems, the processes, and the environment are shaped, and the culture is shaped, and human beings are choosing, because they’re not a culture fit with the same vision, to not respond, it’s just data. We can either chop off our limb. Scale more slowly. Or we can wait until it’s the right time. Either stay a little bit small, grow a little bit more slowly, or recruit, hire, and get the right people in.

But either way, it’s just data and reaction. Data, reaction, or data and choices and doing the right thing. And the right thing according to what we want our company to be. This has really cleared some things up for Jason. But he’d say what the current condition is, he thinks we internalize the failures of others and we really get frustrated about it. We kind of want our cake and eat it too.

Back to the point of the companies that make a difference in their own desires and the companies that don’t. If you want your cake and eat it too, you’re like “I want to keep all 80 employees but I want to be excellent.” That’s not really, if you’re going to throw a birthday party, you got to share the cake. If we want an excellent company, we’re going to have to make some hard decisions.

Katie thinks it’s not data, reaction. She thinks it’s data, action. Take that data and be empowered to now move forward the way you want to move forward. You don’t have to be reactive to employees that are subpar or not a good fit. It’s about action. It’s about the bold moving forward in an empowered space. If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow.

FAQ

Q: What does it mean that people have their agency?

Agency is just a thing or person that acts to produce a particular result. The ability to act and produce results. And choose. Human beings do all of the things that we do. It’s Elevate’s job to get as many people as possible to actually respond to training and to want something better so that they will perform at higher levels. But people have their agency. They make their own choices. If you’re unwilling to learn, nobody can help you. But if you’re willing to study and put in the work, then nobody can stop you.

Q: Why is the scarcity mindset keeping toxic people on your team?

You think “I have to put up with people that aren’t a cultural fit, people that are not good for our brand, and people that are toxic, because I can’t get anyone else.” So now you’re willing to infiltrate your team with toxicity. You’re willing to do subpar work for your clients because you’re so scared that someone else is going to get the job. That’s your scarcity mindset. Why don’t you just focus on getting a team that’s highly successful, not worrying about the fact that you’re going to have to fire a couple of people that are not good cultural fits and trust the process?

Q: How is a non-cultural fit like the wrong blood type?

If you receive a blood transfusion with the wrong blood type, you’d have an allergic reaction. The allergic reaction would cause inflammation and that inflammation would cause your cells to have an inability to transfer oxygen. That inflammation would spread, cause restriction in your blood vessels and you’d have a risk of dying. When you have a non-cultural fit in an organization, it’s going to cause inflammation, friction, dissension, hurt for the normal employees. It doesn’t mean the other blood was bad. It’s just a different blood type. They can go to a different company.

Q: What are the three options when people aren’t responding to training?

Gary Vee babied people when his organization was new, then he got to a point where he made the cuts. We have a couple of options: (1) Scale more slowly from the start, (2) Chop off a limb, or (3) Be super sweet and identify and get real clear on where everybody is and do it at the right time as we recruit, hire and train and find those cultural fits, basically get more of our own blood type. Focus on your top end people doing the training and continually hire. Recruit, hire and train and start filtering those cultural fits into your organization and never stop.

Q: Why is it data, action instead of data, reaction?

How well the training is, is data. How well the benefits and culture is, is data. The processes in our company is data. If after the training, systems, processes, environment and culture are shaped and human beings are choosing to not respond because they’re not a culture fit with the same vision, it’s just data. Take that data and be empowered to now move forward the way you want to move forward. You don’t have to be reactive to employees that are subpar or not a good fit. It’s about action. It’s about bold moving forward in an empowered space.

On we go.

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Discover Jason’s Expertise:

Meet Jason Schroeder, the driving force behind Elevate Construction IST. As the company’s owner and principal consultant, he’s dedicated to taking construction to new heights. With a wealth of industry experience, he’s crafted the Field Engineer Boot Camp and Superintendent Boot Camp – intensive training programs engineered to cultivate top-tier leaders capable of steering their teams towards success. Jason’s vision? To expand his training initiatives across the nation, empowering construction firms to soar to unprecedented levels of excellence.

On we go

How To Receive Feedback, Feat. Katie Schroeder

Posted on May 9, 2026May 9, 2026 by Danny Jiménez⁩

Read 40 min

Your Shirt Is Ugly: Why All Feedback Is Just Data and You Need to Calm Down

Jason’s got Katie Schroeder here with him. He’s asked her to help him with a topic tonight about feedback to kind of balance him out a little bit. In fact, they’re going to do two podcasts because he definitely wants to get a good balanced perspective on this. What’s been on Jason’s mind from a feedback standpoint, and he promises you this is researched, they’re not just winging it here, the thought that’s been on his mind about feedback is based around the kind of feedback that we receive in the industry right now. But this is kind of a broader topic.

Let him tell you what kind of prompted it, to be honest. And he’ll always be honest, but to be honest so that you know that he’s being vulnerable with you: every now and then Jason gets feedback that he just doesn’t like. And sometimes he gets feedback that he thinks is stupid. Sometimes he thinks that in the lean community, we ask for feedback and plus deltas and we get silly little comments that talk about “Oh, I wish the food was better” or “I wish this course was easier” or whatever. And it’s like “Well…” Or here’s a great one Jason got the other day: “The topic is so hard.” And it’s like “Well, what do I have to do with the topic? This is ridiculous.” So knowing that he’s super immature and emotional, he’s got Katie here to balance him out. They’re going to talk about the concept of feedback.

Feedback Is a Gift But Sometimes I Think It’s Stupid

From a feedback standpoint, let’s talk about the basis for it. Katie and Jason have learned in leadership trainings and other realms that feedback is a gift and that feedback from an improvement standpoint isn’t like a punishment or a negative thing. From a feedback standpoint, positive feedback is a jam. And even saying positive feedback is probably weighing into the whole positive and negative. So let Jason find a way to redefine this.

What would you call that, Katie? Would you say positive feedback or would you say like things that people appreciated or just call it feedback? Katie thinks that’s fine. What Jason wants people to get away from, if at all possible, not trying to be the word police, but if we say negative, “Give me the negative feedback,” unless somebody’s just being a jerk monkey, he doesn’t know that it’s negative. If it’s legitimately helpful to help somebody get better, he thinks it’s just feedback for improvement or if it’s just feedback.

Katie was going to say the idea that it has to be helpful is not a real thing. That’s just your thought about what was being said. For Jason, that “I didn’t really like the food” comment he was trying to reference earlier, he’s like “Okay, I’m going to dismiss that because that’s not helpful for me building this course or whatever.” But it is just feedback. It’s not negative or positive. It’s just someone else’s reaction.

This kind of just goes back to coaching. It’s really important for us to be in the proper frame of mind and not be worried about other people’s emotions and worried about other people’s thoughts about us. We take what we can. We take what’s beneficial. Even if it was negative, it could still be beneficial for us. We take that and we move forward. Jason says that’s proving how wise he is that he asked Katie to be on the podcast.

Brandon Montero’s Bright Lights Story: It’s All Just Data

Brandon Montero today was talking about how, and he used a really interesting story. He said “Okay, you come into a room and there’s bright lights and you see the bright lights and you trip and you fall on your face and everybody’s laughing.” Really, “I walked into a room” is data. “I saw bright lights” is data. “I fell” is data. “Everybody laughs” is data. “I start to get all butt hurt” is emotions.

Jason thinks what Katie’s attempting to say in a super sweet and loving and kind way is that it’s what story we tell ourselves or how we choose to feel about something is what we have control over. Everything else is just data. Let Jason go through a couple of these things. If he was on the podcast by himself, God forbid, he would have said “Hey, make it positive. It’s never negative. Give me only useful feedback. Ask the right questions so we don’t get stupid feedback.”

But what Katie’s saying is “Bro, don’t take criticism from people that you wouldn’t take advice from.” Morgan Freeman says this so it has to be true. Don’t take criticism from people that you wouldn’t take advice from. Katie’s emotional argument actually negates that argument too. Why would you invalidate people? That’s all you’re doing. You’re judging like “Okay, you’re not good enough for me to listen to. You have no value. You have no life experience that I could learn from.” You’re basically saying “You’re not qualified to speak to me.”

Which Katie doesn’t think is part of their mission statement where they’re trying to build people and accept people and help people and grow people to just literally invalidate someone. Fair point. So let’s get it down to the root cause of the issue. For somebody super mature and calm like Katie, not Jason, data, data, data, data, non-emotional, never becomes emotional. Jason thinks probably the thrust of the quote about don’t take criticism from people you wouldn’t take advice from, maybe that is dismissive. Maybe it’s just don’t get emotional about feedback period.

Katie thinks it’s all right to dismiss feedback and say “Okay, you criticized the caterer at this event that I’m holding.” But even then, maybe you can glean something from that or “I didn’t like that song.” There’s only so much you can do there. You have things curated for a reason, which is not always known to everyone else, so you might get feedback that criticizes something that you’ve worked on and curated or created even. Then you have to say “Yeah, no, I’m not going to validate that specific feedback.” It doesn’t mean the person isn’t valid. It just means that that’s not helpful in the direction that you’re going. You have to just be mature enough to not take it personally.

So basically don’t take it too emotional. Just process it, bring it in. We don’t have to get mad or sad about it. We’re leading with logic. We’re not leading with emotions. Which is quite rare. Katie’s not joking around. It is hard. She’s not saying it’s impossible but it is hard. Jason thinks what the quote was originally designed to do was to say “Okay, if you’re going to go home and get really bent out of shape about something, don’t take it too personally, especially if it’s from somebody that isn’t benefiting you in the circles that you care about.” But Katie’s message is period, end of story, let’s not put our self-worth into the hands of other people and their feedback.

Felipe Calls My Trolls and I Just Block Them

We’re not really talking about internet trolls that are just trolls for the sake of being trolls. We’re talking about people who are clients or colleagues or whatever. So these are not people that you just want to dismiss like “Oh, you’re not worth my time. You’re not worth the moment it takes to acknowledge or self-reflect for a minute.”

As they say, self awareness was not handed out equally to everyone. So it’s good to have even something that might seem like “Oh, I’m automatically going to dismiss that.” Just take a second. Maybe the food really was crappy. In lean circles, we do a plus delta. Jason quite frankly feels like that’s a very good practice. At the end we say what worked, what’s feedback for improvement. He thinks it works really well.

To dig deeper, he thinks a lot of times we get really shallow feedback. Shallow from the standpoint of he thinks that sometimes it’s just fishing for something. But using Katie’s model, really the feedback is helpful because we’re getting people into the practice. You can hopefully get a nugget here or there and you’ve got people that are practicing over and over, actually giving people feedback and speaking up. So really that’s helpful.

One thing Jason would say is he thinks we could ask better questions. Instead of saying “What’s the plus delta for the meeting?” we could say “Okay, the purpose of today’s meeting was specifically to make a very crucial decision for all the trade partners. Did this meeting solve that problem? Did it create that purpose? So what would be feedback in line with what the purpose of the meeting was?” If we ask a better question, maybe we’ll get better feedback.

Let Jason tell you another embarrassing moment. Felipe Engineer and Jason have this really interesting thing. People will troll Jason on LinkedIn and give him really negative comments and all of them are wrong. But honestly sometimes it’s pretty outrageous. Somebody will say something super negative and Jason will give them like five or six different chances to see it his way. Then if they don’t straighten up, he totally blocks them on LinkedIn.

People are going to say “That’s not cancel culture.” That’s Jason being super imaginary. But anyway, Felipe Engineer will call them and actually have a candid conversation for like an hour and a half. And Jason’s like “I don’t want to talk to you.” Katie says “He calls your trolls?” Jason says “Yeah.” Katie says “Oh my, he is.” So Felipe is the designated troll caller and he ends up actually making pretty good relationships with people sometimes and Jason’s like “I’m done.”

If Jason applied Katie’s method to that, basically she’s saying stop canceling people on LinkedIn. Kind of. If you actually give a call and talk to somebody and connect like Felipe does, don’t get emotional about it. You can glean what you can and hopefully get some common ground. In their mission of helping people, you can hopefully help somebody.

Your Shirt Is Ugly: Katie’s Method of Giving Feedback

Critical feedback that’s aimed to hurt somebody out of anger. Let’s apply Katie’s method to that. If somebody said something that was just really mean, like somebody went to a certification training or a boot camp or went to an event or whatever and they didn’t like a certain topic and somebody said the content was stupid or it was just really mean, what do we glean from that?

Katie thinks first of all, when you take a comment that is mean, that is not real. That’s just your thought about that particular thing. All that’s real is that this particular thing was said. That’s the real part. Then you internalize that based on your experiences and who you are and you decide that’s a really mean thing to say.

But maybe that person is someone like Katie that is like “Oh, by the way, your shirt’s ugly.” That’s not an insult. That’s her opinion. Which is what she says. Jason will walk out the bedroom and she’ll be like “You’re like, that is the ugliest. Or no, you’re not wearing that. That’s stupid.” Or Jason will text somebody something and she’s like “Oh my gosh, this is so stupid.”

Jason gets so mad. Is Katie being mean? So she thinks she is, but does she think she is? No, she’s not. She’s just not. She’s into it. Katie doesn’t think she’s being mean. She thinks she’s being helpful. She thinks it’s helpful to know how ugly your outfit is. Katie’s dad was such a hardass that she has a more blunt approach.

Jason says one time they went out in the shed to record a podcast one night and they started. He can’t even remember what the topic was but Katie was so mean. After comment number three Jason was like “Bruh, all right, we done.” And he literally deleted that. Katie says that’s the subject of this podcast. Which is that even though her method of giving feedback is like picking up a sword and poking people or lopping off limbs, Jason shouldn’t be emotional.

Honestly Jason’s starting to understand it better. Literally it’s just data. It all has a positive intent. Some people just talk differently. Very rarely is someone really trying to just be ugly with you. Or that’s the other thing: hurt people, wounded people hurt people. If someone’s wounded and now you’ve triggered something in them and then they want to give you that criticism because it’s somehow been triggering for them, in the end you can kind of be compassionate and say “Okay, I can see that this really bothered you or you’re really hurt by this behavior.”

Katie’s kind of thinking not so much in a boot camp or whatever setting but like at church or in your family or something. Some feedback that you receive comes from a place of hurt from them. So they have that desire to lash out and then it’s your job to not be acted upon. To say “Okay, I can see.” Or maybe there’s even nothing positive in it but you’re mature enough to say “This is not going to negatively affect me. I can see that this person is wounded.” You’re still not invalidating them and just saying “Hey, you’re worthless. You don’t matter to me because you didn’t give me feedback that I like.” But just from a compassionate space you’re operating.

Leadership and Self-Deception: Get Clarity and Do the Right Thing

To tie this to construction, which applies very much, there’s a book called Leadership and Self-Deception which Jason hopes everybody takes the opportunity to read, especially superintendents. Getting clarity is the key. For instance, the book gives an example where a couple is being woken up by the baby and the husband’s been working all day and mom hasn’t been getting a lot of sleep. He hears the baby, doesn’t get up. This has never happened to Jason. She gets up and she’s like “Why aren’t you getting up?” And he’s like “Well, why don’t you respect my work and I have to work all day?” She’s like “Well, you do not…” Anyway, they start fighting back and forth. Finally she goes and takes care of the baby. Both couples are angry with each other because they are telling themselves stories about the other.

What they say in the book is if you can get out of the emotional realm, if you can get out of the deception, that’s why it’s called Leadership and Self-Deception. The self-deception is the story that people are telling themselves, which is what Katie says all the time. So leadership is let’s get back to the point of clarity where we actually figure out what’s going on. Both people are tired. Both people are working hard. And all we have to do then is do the right thing.

We can use that same pattern with any kind of feedback. Let’s do the right thing. If it doesn’t apply, then you don’t apply it. If it’s legitimate, listen and apply it. Even if it’s hard, unpride yourself for a minute. Step back. If there’s something helpful, even if the person was wounded and said it in a mean way, use it to better yourself. Because at the end of the day, even if you were prideful, what’s going to hurt the other person more? You getting all angry and nasty and rolling around in mud or you becoming better while they stagnate? Whether you’re benevolent or evil, taking the feedback is the best course of action.

Katie was going to say there is some merit to maybe this person is not legitimately qualified to give you feedback or to give you helpful feedback because they maybe just don’t know enough about it. So then you again have to kind of step back and say maybe this person is looking for significance by having input where it’s just kind of over their head or they don’t really understand. Again, that’s all about how you are empowered to move forward rather than just decide “Oh, I’m pissed now.”

Jason realized while he gets upset it’s because feedback is in such a public forum for him. For a lot of people that are on LinkedIn and doing other things, if he takes a course like the superintendent boot camp, Felipe’s boot camp, Felipe’s boot camp has 100% success rate from a feedback standpoint. Superintendent boot camp was 95% raving fans but that 5% makes Jason nervous because that hurts his livelihood. If he would just take it for what it is and use it as a tool, he wouldn’t be as emotional about it. The other thing is he tells people what the feedback is anyway in the podcast so he doesn’t even know what he’s worried about anyway.

Your Value Is Not Determined by Feedback

Superintendents, project managers, people in construction, they’re around a lot of wounded people. It doesn’t mean those people are bad. It just means that they’re wounded. Superintendents will get backed into the corner by a foreman or a project manager or an owner. A trade partner will treat somebody wrong or the GC will be domineering and bossy and unfair. A lot of these things will happen.

Jason has found himself being pulled into the emotional side and then they start rolling in the mud. What Katie’s telling him to do and everybody on the phone call is if we can just calm down, get clarity, go back to what is really going on, maybe even get some insight and then just do the right thing. Doing the right thing might actually have consequences to it but don’t turn it into an emotional situation because then it becomes punishment. What advice would Katie give to anybody considering feedback? Just closing thoughts?

Katie thinks, she doesn’t know if this is a closing thought, it’s just a thought: your value is not determined by feedback. Your value is intrinsic and people will say hurtful things. They’ll say hurtful things when feedback should be a gift. Sometimes it wasn’t meant as a gift but either way, if you take it the right way, you might find use in it. Jason really appreciates Katie being on this podcast. He asks her to help him when he feels like he’s not qualified or mature enough to discuss a topic. That was obviously the case tonight. He really feels like he has a better jam.

His commitment tomorrow, the current condition is we get really emotional about things. His commitment tomorrow, his challenge for everybody is it’s all data. It’s only emotional when we turn it into emotion. Take the hurt, the criticism, the feedback for improvement, the topics, the irrelevant comments, all of the different categories and just turn it into feedback and filter in what’s useful, maybe not useful. Then you can use that to better you, your organization, your teams and everybody else and it doesn’t have to be painful and we can continue receiving it all and keep everybody in the practice of giving feedback.

The only thing Jason would say is that by labeling it either positive or negative, we’re probably, those labels, not that he’s the workplace police, but for him personally, he’s going to stop saying positive or negative because that’s assigning an emotion to it or an emotional tie. He’s just going to call it feedback. If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow.

FAQ

Q: Why is all feedback just data?

You come into a room, see bright lights, trip, fall on your face, everybody laughs. “I walked into a room” is data. “I saw bright lights” is data. “I fell” is data. “Everybody laughs” is data. “I start to get all butt hurt” is emotions. What story we tell ourselves or how we choose to feel about something is what we have control over. Everything else is just data. It’s not negative or positive, it’s just someone else’s reaction. Your value is not determined by feedback. Your value is intrinsic.

Q: What should I do when someone gives me mean feedback?

When you take a comment that is mean, that is not real. That’s just your thought about that particular thing. All that’s real is that this particular thing was said. Then you internalize that based on your experiences and you decide that’s a really mean thing to say. But maybe that person is just blunt. They don’t think they’re being mean, they think they’re being helpful. Or hurt people, wounded people hurt people. If someone’s wounded and triggered, they lash out. Be compassionate. You’re mature enough to say “This is not going to negatively affect me. I can see that this person is wounded.”

Q: How does Leadership and Self-Deception apply to feedback?

The book gives an example where a couple fights over who should get up for the baby. Both are angry because they’re telling themselves stories about the other. The self-deception is the story people are telling themselves. Leadership is getting back to clarity where we figure out what’s going on. Both people are tired, both are working hard. All we have to do is do the right thing. Use that same pattern with feedback. If it doesn’t apply, don’t apply it. If it’s legitimate, listen and apply it. Even if it’s hard, unpride yourself, step back. If there’s something helpful, even if the person was wounded and said it in a mean way, use it to better yourself.

Q: Should I dismiss feedback from people who aren’t qualified?

Don’t invalidate people. You’re judging like “You’re not good enough for me to listen to. You have no value.” You’re basically saying “You’re not qualified to speak to me.” Which isn’t part of a mission to build people and accept people and help people. There is some merit to maybe this person isn’t legitimately qualified because they don’t know enough about it. You have to step back and say maybe this person is looking for significance by having input where it’s over their head. That’s all about how you are empowered to move forward rather than just deciding “I’m pissed now.”

Q: How do I stop getting emotional about feedback?

It’s all data. It’s only emotional when we turn it into emotion. Take the hurt, the criticism, the feedback for improvement, the topics, the irrelevant comments, all of the different categories and just turn it into feedback and filter in what’s useful, maybe not useful. Then you can use that to better you, your organization, your teams and it doesn’t have to be painful. Stop labeling it positive or negative because that’s assigning an emotion to it. Just call it feedback. Lead with logic, not emotions. Calm down, get clarity, go back to what is really going on, get some insight, then do the right thing.

On we go.

If you want to learn more we have:

Discover Jason’s Expertise:

On we go

Whacky-Takty

Posted on May 9, 2026May 9, 2026 by Danny Jiménez⁩

Read 36 min

Wacky Takt: Why You’re Using Takt Systems to Push and How to Stop

This is going to be a fun little podcast, but it’s going to be really packed with good information, new information, probably stuff you haven’t heard before. The other thing we’re going to cover is Goodhart’s Law. Let’s get going.

Wacky Takt. This is something Jason kind of coined the term on in Germany. It was because they were thinking about the possible failure to implement Takt in the right way and they actually saw this in one location. Most of the time in their trip they saw really great world class examples of flow and pull. In one facility, which he won’t tell you where it came from, they saw an example of what they call Wacky Takt.

It’s kind of in line with if you’ve ever heard of Laffy Taffy or Wacky Taffy. There’s some really fun little candy that Jason used to eat when he was a kid that was kind of goofy and weird and just off the beaten path a little bit. It was a little bit whacked and kind of out there.

He’s seen and would fear in the future to see some wacky Takt plan implementation that’s just kind of out there. That’s what we’re going to talk about today because there are ways to get this wrong. Before we do that, Jason wants to insert a little section about Goodhart’s Law.

When a Measure Becomes a Target It Ceases to Be a Good Measure

Goodhart’s Law is an adage named after British economist Charles Goodhart who advanced the idea in a 1975 article on monetary policy in the United Kingdom: Problems of Monetary Management, the UK Experience. “Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes.”

In a paper published in 1997, anthropologist Marilyn Strathern generalized Goodhart’s Law beyond statistics and control to evaluation more broadly. The phrase commonly referred to as Goodhart’s Law comes from Strathern’s paper, not from any of Goodhart’s writings.

This is what it is: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” One way in which this can occur is individuals trying to anticipate the effect of a policy and then taking actions that alter its course and outcome.

Let’s stick with this one sentence: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Jason’s seen this before when we’re talking about production KPIs, measurements for safety and quality. This is really what he’s talking about embodied in this example.

First of all, let’s talk about what is a KPI. A KPI is a quantifiable measure used to evaluate the success of an organization, employee, etc., in meeting objectives for performance. A target is a measurement state or condition that indicates a predetermined goal has been reached.

What this law is essentially saying is that KPIs become useless when the KPIs also become targets. Let Jason talk about that just for a minute. If you have a production goal and you want to measure, this is a key performance indicator, and you make a goal out of that key performance indicator, maybe on a scale, on that KPI scale you say 10 of a certain something is your target. Well, it stops being an indicator once it becomes a target because once the target is reached then human beings will typically stop.

Jason likes the Japanese concept: perfection is the goal, perfect will have to do. Perfect is the only standard and are we getting better each day, better than the next? Because once we set a target then typically people will stop. It becomes a thermostat. If you set a thermostat to 76 degrees and the temperature gets higher, it will regulate back.

If you have a KPI and then you set a target along that KPI and you go past that KPI to really wild success, it will thermostat back to the target. Jason saw this one time where when you’re doing production tracking and the production target is reached, foreman, workers, superintendents, project teams will stop once the target is reached even though they could make more money. So it thermostats them to a certain level and below because there’s always variation.

Jason likes that concept in Goodhart’s Law: when a measure becomes a target it ceases to be a good measure. The bottom line is we always have to plan for variation and we have to keep going in a lean concept towards perfection, total participation. We have to keep going to where we understand that we’re better every day than we were the day before.

The Manufacturing Plant Where Everything Was Off Rhythm

What we’re really talking about today is Wacky Takt. Jason really likes the title there. It’s hard to say, it’s kind of funny. The conflict is we’re still using Takt systems to push and we have to stop this practice. Let Jason tell you a story. He was in a manufacturing facility and they were looking at the operations. There were areas of excess inventory and there was a lot of waste and people moving around. Things just seemed to be off rhythm.

What they found out was there were some bottlenecks. Jason’s talked to you about this before. There were some bottlenecks in the system and there weren’t pull systems. Meaning when one piece of equipment was completed, they weren’t automatically pulling or creating pull throughout the system. Each piece of equipment, each station, was still pushing material and inventory onto the next system because they were attempting to keep up with a Takt time. Jason wants to be really clear about something. That is not the way we do things.

Takt Systems Create Capacity and Buffers So You Can Pause

In Takt systems we finish on time for one purpose and one purpose alone. Jason wants to tell you what that is right now. It’s because Takt systems create capacity and they create buffers. And those buffers allow us to pause the system and pull the andon or the undon or whatever you want, however you want to pronounce it, and stop the system and absorb the variation. CPM systems do not allow that because they create a critical path, a string of activities where if any one of them are delayed it delays the whole system. Last Planner can create buffers in the system. Scrum creates capacity and buffers in the system. And Takt really creates buffers, meaning days that can absorb variation in the system.

When Jason does Takt trainings and he’s like “We need to stick to a Takt time,” people are like “Oh, so you’ve always finished? You’ve never had a variation?” He’s like “No, heck no, my systems or my projects are just as prone to variation as yours are. It’s just that my system with Takt is that I have created buffers within that system so that I can absorb that variation.” You cannot ever have a schedule. Jason wants owners, he wants superintendents, he wants company owners, he wants everybody, foremen, to hear him on this: the most idiotic thing that we could do in construction, the most idiotic stupid thing that we could do is to create schedules without buffers, to create schedules that can’t absorb variation.

Every single schedule should have buffers in the system to absorb variation. This is one of the things Jason’s been thinking about lately about Takt and the message behind Takt: it’s the only system that allows you to pause when you find a problem.

The Two Pillars: Just-In-Time and Automation With a Human Touch

Let Jason talk about that really quickly. He’s been reading The Toyota Production System: Beyond Large Scale Production by Taiichi Ohno. He talks about the two pillars of the Toyota production system. One of them is just-in-time that everything has flow and pull and the other one is automation. When you think about automation with a human touch, what that means is that you have a system, you have a systematic flow, but when there are defects, automatically you can stop the line. Humans can stop the line. The human touch can stop the line. This system will find the defects.

When it happens in a production line just like in Toyota or BMW or wherever, you can stop the line. You can pull the andon, you can pull a cord, push a button whatever and stop the entire line together. But what happens in construction is if we have a delay in one area, typically we just let that area get out of sequence and we keep pushing everybody else and then everybody gets out of rhythm. When you get out of rhythm you’ve entered a push situation. What we need to do is understand that the key to their success was that the entire system stopped.

First of all, they had flow. When they didn’t have flow they had pull. Pull meaning that one area only produced whatever items that they could produce when another system was ready for it or had need for it. It was a pull system. It wasn’t a push system. In a Takt system, if you keep that Takt time going regardless of whether or not one of your areas or one of your trades or whether one of your machines is keeping up with that pace or not, and if you keep pushing everybody according to that Takt time, then you are going to have push, excess inventory, all of the eight wastes, overburden, and unevenness. That’s going to throw your system out of production, out of line, out of efficiency and you won’t have flow efficiency.

Pause the Entire System and Eat Into a Buffer

What Jason’s saying is in summary, the best thing that you can do is have a schedule where if there’s a major problem, and not something small that they can recover from but a major problem, you can stop the entire Takt system and eat into one of those buffers and have everybody stay at the same pace, the same distance apart, and allow everybody on the project site to pause.

Most of the time people are going to say “Jason, you’re crazy. This is the dumbest idea I’ve ever had.” But when you have major impacts, that’s what you’re going to have to do. If you have a big problem with concrete, you’re going to have to pause the entire concrete system. If you have a major problem with interiors, you’re going to need to pause the entire interiors production system. If you have the same thing with anything, but if you let one area or one trade get disconnected then you’re going to overproduce before that scope or that trade or that area.

You’re going to create variation and workers waiting on work after that area or that scope or that trade and it’s going to create ripples of variation throughout the system. If you’re in a factory just like they observed in this factory, if you attempt to keep everybody on the Takt time even though there’s an interruption, you don’t pause the system, then you’ll have 10 machines overproducing, one trying to catch up, and all of the machines after it waiting with workers waiting on work.

But you could pause everybody and here’s the kicker: allow everybody in the system, everybody throughout that project, everybody in that manufacturing plant, everybody to basically prepare for their quality work the next time.

This is the key to Takt planning. When you pause the system, everybody doesn’t just sit around twirling their thumbs. They do these things:

Make sure that prior activities are completed
Make sure construction and design information is ready
Make sure materials and components are prepared
Make sure that workers are trained and ready to go
Make sure that equipment is maintained and ready to go
Make sure that the workspace is safe, ready, and clean
Make sure that any other approvals and permissions are given
Make sure that materials are queued up and stacked and ready to go
Make sure that they do training with their employees
Clean their stations

That is the genius of a Takt system: within our cycle times if we get done early we prepare the next task instead of moving it forward. If there’s an interruption in the system and we have to enter a buffer, we don’t keep pushing everybody and moving things forward. We pause and we prepare the next activity so it can hit right on the rhythm.

Flow, Pull, and When to Pause: The Rhythm of Takt

A Takt system just one more time has a rhythm and it has flow and it has pull. And when there’s major variation we pause the system. We pause the schedule and we allow for that interruption to be absorbed into a buffer and we keep everybody the same distance apart going the same speed, not overproducing. We allow everybody to get back onto rhythm.

We spend our time in that pause preparing for work again, doing those key things which are called the seven conditions for a sound activity: prior activities finishing as you go, quality at the source, any design information and preparations, materials and components stacked ready prepared for the work 100% ready to go, workers trained oriented extra training done, equipment maintained and ready to go, the workspace is clean safe and organized laid out, and any approvals and permissions are given. And that we are finishing as we go with limited work in process, quality at the source. We’re making sure 100% that we’re doing it and the right batch size is according to the right Takt time.

Wacky Takt is where you have a rhythm and even if there’s an interruption you keep pushing everybody through it, which causes overproduction, which causes waste, which causes unevenness, which causes overburden. It will interrupt and create variation in the system. But normal Takt planning is where you create an optimized schedule with buffers. And those buffers allow you to pause the system or stop the entire project of work or the entire phase of work and say “We all are going to pause for a minute, get this problem fixed. We’re going to eat into a buffer day. We’re all going to make sure that we’re staying on that same rhythm and we’re going to make sure that we have the capacity to absorb this variation together.” So that we don’t create a scenario of push.

The Electrician Example: Pause or Push?

Let Jason just give you one example. If you’re working in a phase and you have a two day delay in interiors and you want to keep everybody on Takt time and you have a three day Takt time and every three days that drum beats but you get one, let’s say light fixtures are missing and you have a real big problem. Do you then create a pause and eat into a three day buffer with one of your Takt times to let the electrician catch up? Give everybody else an additional three days for their deadlines. Allow them to spend their time preparing and get everybody back on sequence according to the beat.

Or will you just let that one area with that one trade with the electrician with their light fixtures basically slow down, keep everybody going at full speed with their deadlines and cause a ripple throughout the system which is hard to recover? When you’re in a manufacturing plant and you have a Takt time and you have one area that has slowed down for some reason, are you going to keep all the machines overproducing even though the whole system needs to pause? Flow is a superior system to pull. We first flow, then pull, and we never push. But if you are flowing with a Takt system and you have an interruption, if you don’t pause you will be pushing.

Remember: flow where you can, pull when you can’t, and stop pushing. You can get into a Wacky Takt kind of situation if you use Takt systems where you don’t pause and eat into your buffers when there’s a problem. At a minimum, Jason needs you to please consider this concept because it’s pretty powerful. Where are you on your projects or your manufacturing floor or in your company using a Takt system where you’re still pushing and where you haven’t created buffers? Where you don’t have buffers in the system and you’re actually using the Takt system like a push system and not a flow system?

Are you using it like a push system instead of a pull system? Are you stopping to fix problems as you go and stopping the entire system together so that all of the trades can stay the same distance apart and go the same speed?

Jason will leave you with this. Hopefully he’s explained it well enough. When people say “Jason, why have you always finished projects on time with Takt?” The answer is because he always has buffers and he always stops the system. And he always fixes things as they go and he always keeps the trades the same distance apart going the same speed. Because he has buffers and CPM does not. If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow.

FAQ

Q: What is Goodhart’s Law and why does it matter for construction KPIs?

Goodhart’s Law says “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” KPIs become useless when the KPIs also become targets. If you have a production goal, a key performance indicator, and you make a goal out of that KPI, it stops being an indicator once it becomes a target because once the target is reached human beings will typically stop. It becomes a thermostat. If you set a thermostat to 76 degrees and temperature gets higher it will regulate back. If you have a KPI and go past that KPI to wild success, it will thermostat back to the target. Plan for variation and keep going towards perfection.

Q: What is Wacky Takt?

Wacky Takt is where you have a rhythm and even if there’s an interruption you keep pushing everybody through it, which causes overproduction, waste, unevenness, and overburden. It will interrupt and create variation in the system. It’s using Takt systems to push instead of pause. You attempt to keep everybody on the Takt time even though there’s an interruption. You don’t pause the system. Then you’ll have machines overproducing, one trying to catch up, and all the machines after it waiting with workers waiting on work.

Q: What’s the genius of a Takt system when you pause?

When you pause the system, everybody doesn’t just sit around twirling their thumbs. They make sure prior activities are completed, construction and design information is ready, materials and components are prepared, workers are trained and ready to go, equipment is maintained and ready to go, workspace is safe ready and clean, any other approvals and permissions are given, materials are queued up and stacked and ready to go, they do training with their employees, they clean their stations. Within cycle times if you get done early you prepare the next task instead of moving it forward.

Q: Why are buffers the most important part of Takt planning?

The most idiotic thing we could do in construction is to create schedules without buffers, to create schedules that can’t absorb variation. Every single schedule should have buffers in the system to absorb variation. Takt systems create capacity and buffers. Those buffers allow us to pause the system and pull the andon and stop the system and absorb the variation. CPM systems do not allow that because they create a critical path where if any one activity is delayed it delays the whole system. Takt creates buffers meaning days that can absorb variation in the system.

Q: How do you stop the entire system when there’s a major problem?

If there’s a major problem, not something small they can recover from but a major problem, you can stop the entire Takt system and eat into one of those buffers and have everybody stay at the same pace, the same distance apart, and allow everybody on the project site to pause. Big problem with concrete? Pause the entire concrete system. Major problem with interiors? Pause the entire interiors production system. If you let one area or trade get disconnected then you overproduce before that scope and create variation and workers waiting on work after that area. Pause everybody, allow everybody to prepare for quality work the next time.

On we go.

If you want to learn more we have:

Discover Jason’s Expertise:

On we go

It’s Fall Y’all! How to Crush the Holidays, Feat, Katie Schroeder

Posted on May 9, 2026May 9, 2026 by Danny Jiménez⁩

Read 44 min

It’s Fall Y’all: Why Your Construction Trailer Needs Pumpkin Spice Right Now

Katie and Jason just went to the temple this morning. It’s Wednesday, like eight o’clock in the morning. They just got back and were having a good conversation and Katie’s like “What else?” So Jason literally just hit the record button and said “We’re doing a podcast.”

Where are they going right now? Katie says they’re going to Home Depot to pick up a Halloween skeleton demon guy that is in a boat and he is carrying people, dead people. It’s some kind of Greek mythology kind of guy. The kids are into Percy Jackson and stuff so she thinks it’s basically he’s shuttling the dead from where they need to go. Maybe like River Styx.

To give you a little bit of insight, if you’re anti holiday, Halloween, Thanksgiving, this podcast is not for you. You might want to sign off right now because they’re those people. Like when you see Facebook and LinkedIn and Instagram posts making fun of people when they’re heading to Walmart and Home Depot and other stores picking up holiday decorations and they’re like “It’s August people, it’s September people, it’s not October,” that’s them.

What Jason wanted to do this podcast about is the holidays because we’ve been so cooped up for so long for COVID-19. Holidays are such fun traditions and it creates something that we can look forward to. If you’re a part of a company, if you have a project site, if you own a business or if you have a family or even if you don’t and you’re just kind of empty nesters, you can make the holidays fun.

When Jason Hated Holidays and Now Calls Halloween First Christmas

Jason’s going to put Katie on the spot. What do the holidays mean to you like as a kid and now that you have a family? Katie says to be honest it can be a little stressful. They’re in a unique situation because they have a big family. So that load is a little heavy sometimes as far as the expectations of kids at Christmas. She’ll have a kid that will say kind of offhandedly “Oh, my favorite thing is stockings, opening all the little fun things that are in my stocking.” So then she feels super stressed to make sure stockings are on point. She definitely puts some stress on herself when she does stuff like that.

But holidays when she was little, she just remembers fun. She doesn’t remember obviously any of the stress or any of the chaos that was involved. She just remembers having fun. Now as a mom, she really tries hard to create that opportunity, create that space for fun. The funny thing is Jason, when they first got married, he hated all holidays. He was super Grinchy, Scrooge-y. He did not want to decorate. He’s still a little bit like that as far as if you’re like “Well, my birthday’s coming up,” his first thought is resentment that he has to do something. He doesn’t like the obligation.

But somewhere along the way, he adopted that. They call Halloween first Christmas and they call Thanksgiving second Christmas. Now when Katie says “we” she really actually just means him. He calls it that. He went to Germany and Sweden a few weeks ago. He wanted to decorate for Halloween before he left. He left August 30th. So he wanted to decorate for Halloween at the end of August. Katie put her foot down. She was like “We’re not doing that this year. We’re going to be more rational.” That’s why it’s the 22nd of September and they’re just going to start decorating for Halloween now.

He wants to leave Christmas up until he gets sad. So when Jason enters a state of depression and needs some quiet time and some counseling, that’s when it’s time to take down Christmas. Sometimes that’s earlier and sometimes that’s later but it’s always in January.

They always leave it up at least through Noel, which is January 6th. Sometimes he says he wants to leave it up through something in February that has to do with maybe Catholicism where you leave your nativity up. But they never make it that far. He always gets depressed looking around at these kind of tired Christmas decorations and he’s like “Okay, I’m done.”

January is a hard time for them when there’s no other holidays on the horizon. They’ve got little ones like Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day. Those are little but they’re not the big joyous holiday season. So he really tries to get his bang for his buck starting as soon as he can in the fall. You have to hit it early. That’s what all the Facebook haters don’t understand. Once New Year’s is over, the feeling of Christmas is gone and the magic is gone. It’s just sad.

So how can you get more Christmas? It’s just like we do it in construction. We do more preparation. We put it ahead of the actual activity. So absolutely, we’re starting now everybody. It’s fall y’all. It’s time for Halloween. It’s time for Thanksgiving. It’s time for Christmas. Jason literally works the entire year and exists and takes breath just so he can get to the holidays. This is his time. Winter is his time.

In Tony Robbins Business Mastery, there’s a saying that says “We are gladiators. This winter is my season.” It’s basically saying like in a recession or a depression, as a good business owner, this is my season, I can still thrive. But Jason’s taking that as also winter is his season because of the holidays.

Pumpkin Spice in the Research Laboratory Trailer

Why does Jason mention this on a podcast? It’s because you can have a lot of fun. He’s encouraging you, nay, he’s asking you to have some fun with this in your families with the holidays. Let him tell you a quick little story and then Katie’s going to tell you some ideas on how they celebrate at home.

At the research laboratory, when it would get around this time, Katie would start to get orders. In case you didn’t know, Katie’s the purchasing agent for everything. She kind of likes it and they get Amazon packages like six a day. Maybe that’s an exaggeration but they at least get 12 packages a week and two or three Walmart grocery orders to their front door. It might start being Target orders if Walmart doesn’t straighten up their act a little bit with the deliveries.

At the research laboratory, Jason was like “Okay, Katie, we’re ready for Halloween lights. We’re ready for decorations. We’re ready for the fall leaves. We’re ready for pumpkins. We’re ready for all this.” In the research laboratory trailer starting in September, Jason had pumpkin spice scents. Pumpkin spice candles. Probably not sure that’s very legal in a trailer but they still had it.

In fact, Katie was kind of funny. People would come in the trailer and they’d be like “What the hell is that smell? That’s god awful.” And Jason’s like “It’s pumpkin spice. I love it.” Anyway, he didn’t care. He just kept it plugged into the wall. In the conference rooms, in case you didn’t know, here’s your free education: Halloween is purple and orange. There’s black. There’s like black lights and stuff like that.

So they put orange and purple lights up at the top of the conference room lining all the way around the top. They had pumpkin spice scented candles. They had pumpkin spice wall flowers. They had leaf decorations. Katie bought Jason a bunch of little pumpkins that he could put around the office. They had Halloween decorations. They had food. They had pumpkin pies. Jason would bring stuff in. They would actually share some of these things with the workers as well.

It was like a full out blast. When it came to trick or treating, they had candy bowls. They had all kinds of stuff in the trailer. So it just felt like a good, happy place. Now back to Jason’s integrated project delivery podcast where he talks about open office spaces. If your trailer or your office space sucks with a lot of stupid offices where nobody feels connected, Halloween might be sad. You might put up lights and then people associate Halloween with siloed, negative, non-connected feelings. So you have to have a nice office for this. But it was a jam. It made the month of October amazing.

What The Nightmare Before Christmas Did For Halloween

What are some of the things Katie does at home? For Halloween, they decorate the front yard and the house a little bit or a lot, mostly a lot. This year they just finished at Home Depot and apparently they were decorating the backyard too with one of the coolest things ever: the Nightmare Before Christmas with Oogie Boogie. Lock, Shock and Barrel. What the Nightmare Before Christmas gave them was music and theme and traditions and food. Like the green worms or snake and spider stew. There’s all kinds of fun tradition stuff from the Nightmare Before Christmas. They have their kids watch that.

They also have these little favorite YouTube videos. They’re going to bless your life for Halloween. When it’s Halloween, and for Katie this starts on like maybe this weekend or possibly next weekend, they have movies that they only watch at Halloween time. Just like they only have Christmas movies or whatever. Then there’s like one or two Thanksgiving movies that they watch because there’s not a lot there. They wait all year.

They have all of the little Silly Symphonies that have to do with the Skeleton Dance and Mickey Mouse where he’s like the grim reapers kind of bossing him around. They have all of these little traditions where they’ll watch them like a little thing every night. The Shrek ones. Those are called Spooky Stories. It has Monsters vs. Aliens, Shrek. There’s really cute little videos. If you search on Netflix or YouTube Spooky Stories. Something else they do is they put the kids in the back of the truck and drive around and look at spooky Halloween decorations. Like you would at Christmas time. It’s a lot of fun.

Now in Arizona, right now it’s 87 degrees out and it’s 8:30 in the morning. So when Halloween hits them it’s a big deal. If you’ve ever been to Bavaria for Oktoberfest and seen how many people are in the streets minus the drunk people, it really is that busy. It is a big thing.

Jason knows some of you in colder climates don’t have the same kind of a feel because it’s freezing and you’re wearing jackets with all your costumes. But they drive around. The other thing is they play the Nightmare Before Christmas playlist. Emily always says “Play Oogie Boogie” and she’ll just sing that song with her cute little voice and their little kids love singing and hearing those songs. They just have a great time with it. So it’s a lot of fun. Jason thinks it’s something to look forward to. Katie, why do you think it makes the month fun?

Katie thinks it has that spirit of celebration. You can kind of extend that all month long and anytime you’re celebrating it automatically feels like a party. It brings family. It’s a purpose. It’s a reason to bring people together. Halloween just is a perfect example at work. Lights, fun stuff, candles, pumpkin pies. It’s just a reason to bring the team and the foreman and the workers together. It’s a reason to have some fun. It’s a reason to have a worker barbecue slash Halloween fall kind of a party.

And pumpkin carving. Katie forgot about that which actually used to be a nightmare. But now that the kids are older it’s a lot of fun. Jason’s pumpkins are always the best. It’s still kind of a nightmare. They have 11 kids. So that’s 11 pumpkins minimum. But the hard thing about Phoenix is that you can only carve your pumpkin like the day before because it’s so hot during the day that the pumpkin just wilts and dies. But if you live in a colder climate you can kind of stretch that longer. Katie remembers being able to carve your pumpkin quite a few days in advance. So what they’re saying is it’s a reason to bring people together.

Even Just a Trip to Spirit Halloween Is Fun

Pretend you’re one of the Schroeder kids and Halloween starts in October. Go ahead and get your decorations. Put it on the credit card if you have to. Jason didn’t say that. Just don’t do that. Even just a trip to Spirit Halloween. Like so fun. Ava, she’s a 15 year old, said she really wants to take Kevin, he’s like her baby. He’s three. But not her real baby. She’s their baby that she takes care of and has taken ownership of. Anyway she wants to take the three littles with the three oldest. They want to take them to Walmart because they figure Spirit is probably a little too intense for the little ones and just walk around and help them find their costumes and pick out candy and find some decorations.

Even just something little like that you turn it into an event like “Hey we’re going to go get costumes or we’re going to make costumes.” They’ve done in the past themed costumes for the whole family. Now those were like rare events because it’s hard to get 11 people. It wasn’t probably 11 people at the time. One year they did pirates. Everybody was a pirate. That was quite a few years ago. Another year they’ve done Star Wars. Last year all three of the big kids were newsies and they were super cute with some friends.

It’s a lot of fun. Even if you can’t go buy decorations yet, why not get a little strand of lights? Jason got a strand of lights and a pumpkin for his desk at work. It was super fun. It made it just a joyous little thing. Katie says go back to the Dollar Tree and you can have a cute little display that will honestly make you a little bit happy. And for all of us religious people out there, Halloween has nothing to do with Satan or the devil or anything negative. You can just let yourself enjoy it. Let the kids have fun. Do some trick or treating within whatever parameters you have for COVID-19 and whatever you’re doing keeping your kids safe.

But like whatever, we can just have fun with this. If we’re being prudish about holidays and like what we celebrate, then let’s get all uppity about Christmas being on the 25th, December 25th, which is a date that came originally from paganism and all of the pagan traditions that tie into these holidays. If we get real literal with this we can get real uppity and negative about things. But like forget about that. It’s just an American tradition. It’s a holiday. It’s nothing different than in Bavaria having Oktoberfest or Cinco de Mayo or the Day of the Dead or just fun places. What do they have in Rio? The big carnival? It’s just what we celebrate. So let’s have some fun with it.

Jason’s Challenge: Lights, Scents, and Worker Barbecues

Jason’s thoughts are why not challenge you. He’s going to give you a challenge. Why not throw up some lights? Why not throw up a pumpkin spice or pumpkin candle in the trailer? It doesn’t have to be pumpkin. Bath & Body Works has lots of scents that are fall. Why not get a bowl of candy like COVID-19 sanitized, individually wrapped? Why not get some pumpkins? Why not throw some leaves up on the wall? Why not bring a pumpkin pie one day? Like why not? It would be super fun. Or be like “Hey, next conference meeting that we have on the project site, we got pumpkin pies and treats and fun stuff like that. This is our Halloween candy team meeting in the conference room.”

Katie was going to say any time you add that little touch of whimsy it just lightens you. You don’t have to be so serious which is the thing. You guys work in a really stressful industry. So maybe just lighten it up a little. A little levity goes a long way. The other thing is right now Jason will challenge you to this. Why not right now even if your project is intense? The U.S. Military like he said before found out that if you give soldiers a 10 minute break every hour they can march 50% longer.

So if you’re in the heat of the battle, why not go ahead and do a worker barbecue fall Halloween love fest? Or like Pie Friday or something like that and give everybody a break and be like “It’s fall y’all, let’s go ahead and celebrate.” Get it done. It’s a lot of fun and decorate your home. Have some fun memories for the kids. And if you don’t have kids, why not? There was this old man on their street that used to run around the neighborhood. He didn’t have any animals in his own house so he got dog treats for everybody else.

On Halloween if you don’t have kids and you’re not taking them trick or treating, why not do a little trick or treating candy stand for somebody? Go to the nearest park or something. Make it fun. Create that environment on your neighborhood street.

At church, the previous church leaders didn’t like trunk or treat because it was all about candy or this or that or whatever. It’s like no man. This year they’re going to have a chili cook off. They’re going to have a hayride. They’re going to have trunk or treating. They’re going to have a little haunted house inside the church building. It’s going to be a jam and they’re going to have a lot of fun with it because the holidays should be a time to relax a little bit. Have fun with family. Do little things that are off script and anchor it with the music and the scents and the food and all the wonderful things. It’s just really a lot of fun. Katie, any advice or challenge to anybody?

What just made Katie think of is Friendsgiving, which they’ve never done. It’s not like Thanksgiving dinner but you do with your friends. There are so many communities out there. If you feel like you’re alone, find a community. Whether it’s some people from work that you’re friends with or church or whatever. Don’t be alone. Don’t use this time to be like “Well I’m sad.”

It just makes Katie sad to think that there’s somebody that maybe feels like there’s no reason to celebrate it because they’re alone. It would make you happy if you decorated a little and you’re worth the effort basically. Jason agrees. The other thing is he loves that Walmart starts in August. He loves that people start selling this stuff. He loves that holidays are commercialized. He loves that on Peanuts every year when Charlie Brown is like the commercialization of holidays and Christmas. Jason loves that.

He loves the grumpy people criticizing him on Facebook right about now. He loves the discussion, the thoughts, the music, the posts, the costumes. Heck one time at the research laboratory they did a Christmas post where they all dressed up in costumes and they had a lot of fun with it. Like why not? This is culture. This is fun. Jason just challenges you to have some fun with it.

He’s going to ask you a question: on a scale of 1 to 10, how prepared are you for Halloween? On a scale of 1 to 10, how well are you doing with the holidays? Then his next question is what are you going to do tomorrow to amp it up?

Katie says honestly if you’re taking your kids trick or treating, you just strongly consider at least some face paint or something so that you’re not just the dad in the back or the mom in the back that’s like “I guess I got to do this thing.” Get in on the fun a little bit. Decorate or get a costume. Have somebody paint your face. Be part of it. Be a part of the Elevate mission to elevate holidays because it helps people and families.

If you’re a podcast listener, here’s Jason’s minimum expectation: that you have some kind of scent somewhere, that you have candy or a pumpkin somewhere, that you have orange, purple or green lights somewhere in your trailer, and that you do a barbecue or something for the workers that’s fall-ish. And then they’re going to do another podcast as they near Christmas because that’s a whole other thing.

The other thing is they’re taking requests. If anybody wants to do for Thanksgiving what the Nightmare Before Christmas did for Halloween, they really need Thanksgiving music, themes, characters, movies, food. Well actually they already have the food. The only thing Thanksgiving really has is food. So they need somebody to commercialize that holiday as well. If anybody has any suggestions or ideas or has a playlist, Jason will share that playlist on the podcast, on their website, on their YouTube channels, and on LinkedIn because they need to elevate the holidays.

Why is this relevant? Because life is about living remarkable. And when if there is a heaven and when we get to heaven we’re going to be celebrating holidays people. We’re going to be having family gatherings. We’re going to be doing decorations. We’re going to be having barbecues with workers. These are the types of things that we would do in heaven. So let’s not do them later. Let’s live heaven on earth and do them now and have some fun. If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow.

FAQ

Q: Why should construction projects decorate for Halloween?

It’s a reason to bring the team and the foreman and the workers together. It’s a reason to have some fun. It’s a reason to have a worker barbecue slash Halloween fall kind of a party. Any time you add that little touch of whimsy it just lightens you. You don’t have to be so serious. You work in a really stressful industry so maybe just lighten it up a little. A little levity goes a long way. The U.S. Military found out that if you give soldiers a 10 minute break every hour they can march 50% longer. In the heat of the battle, do a worker barbecue fall Halloween love fest or Pie Friday.

Q: What did Jason put in the research laboratory trailer for Halloween?

Starting in September: pumpkin spice scents, pumpkin spice candles (probably not legal in a trailer but he kept it plugged into the wall anyway), orange and purple lights at the top of the conference room lining all the way around, pumpkin spice wall flowers, leaf decorations, little pumpkins around the office, Halloween decorations, food, pumpkin pies. They shared these things with the workers. It was a full out blast. They had candy bowls and all kinds of stuff. It just felt like a good happy place. It made the month of October amazing.

Q: What are the Schroeder family Halloween traditions?

Decorate front yard and house (mostly a lot). Watch Nightmare Before Christmas (gives them music, theme, traditions, food like snake and spider stew). Watch Halloween movies they only watch at Halloween time: Silly Symphonies with Skeleton Dance, Mickey Mouse with grim reaper, Spooky Stories with Monsters vs. Aliens and Shrek. Put kids in back of truck and drive around looking at spooky Halloween decorations like at Christmas time. Play Nightmare Before Christmas playlist. Pumpkin carving (11 pumpkins minimum for 11 kids). Trip to Spirit Halloween or Walmart to find costumes, pick out candy, find decorations. Sometimes themed costumes for whole family like pirates or Star Wars.

Q: What’s Jason’s minimum expectation for podcast listeners?

Have some kind of scent somewhere. Have candy or a pumpkin somewhere. Have orange, purple or green lights somewhere in your trailer. Do a barbecue or something for the workers that’s fall-ish. If you’re taking your kids trick or treating, strongly consider at least some face paint or something so you’re not just the dad or mom in the back like “I guess I got to do this thing.” Get in on the fun. Decorate, get a costume, have somebody paint your face. Be part of the Elevate mission to elevate holidays because it helps people and families.

Q: Why does Jason love commercialized holidays?

He loves that Walmart starts in August. He loves that people start selling this stuff. He loves that holidays are commercialized. He loves the discussion, the thoughts, the music, the posts, the costumes. This is culture, this is fun. If we’re being prudish about holidays and what we celebrate, then let’s get all uppity about Christmas being on December 25th which came from paganism. It’s just an American tradition, a holiday, nothing different than Bavaria having Oktoberfest or Cinco de Mayo or Day of the Dead. Let’s have fun with it.

On we go.

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Where is Elevate Going?

Posted on May 9, 2026May 9, 2026 by Danny Jiménez⁩

Read 28 min

The Treehouse Training Center and the Vision You’ve Never Heard

This is the second podcast in a quick little series about Elevate Construction and the journey. Jason hopes you enjoyed the last little podcast he did about where Elevate Construction has been. Now he’s going to talk about where they want to go. Let him first talk about some of the big goals and then work backwards and see if he can explain some of these things in good enough detail to where it sounds as remarkable as he has it in his mind.

We Will Build for St. Jude Children’s Hospital

First of all, Elevate will build a building for St. Jude Children’s Hospital. They will help them with consulting. Jason is going to, when he’s older and can’t work, sit and watch YouTube videos, if YouTube’s even around, of the little kids that that hospital is able to help in fighting cancer and these catastrophic diseases. And he’s just going to sit there and weep. That’s his thing. He’s always had a connection with St. Jude Children’s Hospital helping kids. That’s one of their big goals.

The Treehouse Training Center in the Woods

The other big, big goal, and Jason thinks that sometimes people don’t take him seriously on this, but he’s dead serious: they’re going to have a training facility in a wooded area that’s going to be called the Treehouse Training Center. They’ll call it whatever they want. They’ll come up with a more professional name.

But if you’ve ever seen these resorts like in Mexico and in the Polynesian Islands where they have these huts built of sticks and these wooden walkways and things that are indicative of these treehouse, fort, hut kind of beautiful resort type places in these really beautiful parts of the earth, think of that.

Another image Jason would like to give you: if you’ve ever seen the Lord of the Rings, the elven forest kingdoms. He’s remembering a scene with Lady Galadriel and she has this kingdom and everything’s up into the trees and there’s stairways up to the trees and the houses are in the trees and they have walkways back and forth. That’s what he’s imagining. The other thing would be Avatar, where everything’s up top in the treetops.

Jason wants a place where there’s a bit of an elevation change where you can drive up. He doesn’t think he’s talked about this on a podcast before. Where you drive up and there’s an elevation change and you go into the training facility and then his kids and him will live there in a separate house. But big enough to where all of their kids can come and there’s little rooms for their families, restrooms, a gathering area, and they’re able to come and help with the training facility.

The training facility you come in, it’s welcoming. There’s an area there to go to the kitchen. It’s really open and inviting. There’s maybe a waiting room. That’s where the buses pull up. That’s where there’s parking. You go into this training facility and Jason’s imagining something with really beautiful glass and it’s open and it’s inviting and it’s just really got this kind of community feel.

Then you go out and there’s the training facilities looking out to where you can see through the back glass out into the forested area. On the back porch where you’re able to reflect ahead of some of the really hard processes they do in training, there are these walkways, these wooden walkways that are 10, 20, 30, 40 feet up in the air that lead to other trees where there’s literally like a treehouse or a tree fort where there might be multiple bunks there in that house where people can bunk up and there’s a restroom there and the whole nine. That’s where people stay.

All of these walkways and these huts are lit. They’re lighted and at night you can see your way around and it’s just this beautiful, remarkable environment. Jason imagines it being in a place where it has all four seasons where there’s like actually a winter, actually a spring, actually a summer, and actually a fall. You have that different type of weather. But the scenery is so surreal that you’re able to elevate your mindset and really want better things.

He imagines a beautiful concrete and glass office where they have this Google type wonderful environment where there’s fun things and bean bags and really neat conference rooms and really neat walls with pictures and memory walls. There’s conference rooms and there’s video recording areas and it’s just this really happy, wonderful, beautiful place to work where somebody can go outside and look at the scenery, where they can go get a hot chocolate or coffee or what they call in Sweden a fika and go take a little break and just have a wonderful environment.

When they go into the training center, they’re working with people that are changing their lives and improving themselves and their set points are elevated. They would have like a small crew of people that really like working there and they’re always building new walkways. They’re always building new aspects to the training facility. They’re always helping.

There’s a gourmet chef. One of Jason’s buddies, Jake Smalley, he loves to cook and to entertain. Jason wants to have it to where they’re not getting rich off of this deal, but they have a training facility that’s actually serving a purpose in person. Say “Jake, hey, you ready to start cooking for the facility and also coming and doing some training and living your passion and your dreams and taking some people through their processes?” Him being able to cook some wonderful gourmet meals for the people that are there at the training camp. Now here’s the best part. This is what would be cool. When they don’t have trainings going on, you could Airbnb some of these things out to make a little bit of money to supplement the cost.

Bringing Foster Kids and Elevating Their Set Point

But whenever they have the opportunity, how cool would it be to bring foster youth or youth camps or underprivileged youth to this training facility and take them through these things and set them up for life and hook them up with opportunities for jobs in construction and to really leverage some of the networking and the training and the resources and the food that they have.

One of the things that Jason really likes, and he hasn’t proven this with psychology yet, but he’s always had this thought: if they could take underprivileged kids or even kids that are privileged but that just need to be awesome and serving out there in the world, take them and get them so used to those high standards and that good food and that high living and the feeling of almost being rich that they elevate their set point to where when they go back home, they have a disconnect between where they are and where they want to be. Hopefully that motivates them to live a better and more remarkable life.

Jason doesn’t know if that’s backed up by any kind of psychology, but he literally wants to addict the younger generations and especially the older foster care kids who’ve had a hard life to a higher way of living, to learning, to progress, to growth, to wealth, to mental wealth, to spiritual wealth, to friendship wealth, to all of those things. And to be able to use the resources to do those really cool things.

Now they’d have to have really good insurance, lots of adult supervision or else you can get in trouble with things like that. Because there’s always drama that happens with any situation where you involve kids in a camp. You have to have real good supervision. You’ve got to keep all kids away from any alone time with any one single adult. You’ve got to protect the innocent. There’s a lot that goes to that.

But Jason thinks if it was done in a short enough amount of time, he thinks it could be done legally with the right insurance, with the right adult supervision, two, three, four, five deep leadership at all times, nobody ever alone. He thinks it could be really good.

The Fastest, Most Addictive Training in Construction

Then the vision for that would be, how cool would it be for people in the industry to live in a beautiful place, to have the technology, the internet, the office space, the teams, to create the fastest, most useful, most addictive training in construction. Whether it’s online or in person or wherever, to where anybody, a worker, a foreman, or a project manager, or a VDC professional, or a surveyor, all of it was at their fingertips.

They can go to college if they want or they can take these courses as they’re ready and they get certifications and it almost guarantees them a job. That would be really remarkable. Jason has this vision in his mind that they can get this done and with the right people, with the right engagement, in the right environment, doing the right things, with the right synergy, with the right business deals and the right business structure, according to inspiration and the right vision for where they can head, they could literally transform the way training is done in this industry.

That’s another one of the main visions they have at Elevate Construction. Jason figured he would share that with you. One of the things that they want is for people to be able to, anytime they want to, attend a boot camp, attend a mastermind, get the help, have the templates and resources, expand their website. And then also to have any online content that they want access to in a remarkable way. Really engaging, pedagogical, online content at the tip of their fingers, always updated with the best practices.

The Vision: Lean Takt, Lean Survey, Lean Office, Lean Field

Jason has this vision where Elevate Construction would have other companies: Lean Takt, Lean Survey, Lean Office, Lean Field, Lean VDC, Lean Business. These companies will each have directors and they will grow those businesses to create training and YouTube channels and LinkedIn channels and free resources and masterminds and boot camps and all of that so that each of those can grow.

Then all of those directors will be advisory board members to Elevate Construction and expand their influence throughout the industry and choosing the best experts for each of those areas. Jason is looking forward, and he doesn’t know if it’s one year or five years or whatever, having the best website with the most resources where literally construction professionals can get on, it’s like a candy store and you see Elevate Construction graphics and free content and outlines and guides everywhere in the industry. You’re like “I saw your guide on this job. I saw your sign over there. I saw this over there.” That is where they’re headed.

Workers Respected, Leaders Trained, Families Preserved

Jason will just close out with this because he doesn’t want to needlessly take your time on a podcast, but workers are not respected. Leaders are not trained. And families are going uncared for. That is what Elevate will do. When Jason dies, they will have made a huge dent in the disrespect and the dysfunction of families in construction by providing training and knowledge and wisdom.

If you go back to the podcast Jason did just before this, he got a couple of things. He got his eyes opened. He got his expectations raised. He got morality and ethics. And he also got information from the best books in the industry. How can they get that distilled into an addictive, useful, and fast form for everybody in construction? Because ignorance is what’s holding us back. But it’s education and light and knowledge that will lead us to where workers are respected, leaders are trained, and families are preserved. That’s where they’re headed. If you have visions or thoughts or ideas of how they could do better or expand their vision or reach even higher or meet those goals, let them know.

Jason does want you to know that any time they do these podcasts or these trainings or these videos, they are thinking of you. They’re hoping that these are helpful for you. He doesn’t feel like it’s trite or insincere for him to say that they love you. They hope that you have everything good in life that you deserve and want or could have. They just wish you the best. He just wanted to take this time to do that and say this, and it’ll be interesting to see where they go and especially where they can go together. If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow.

FAQ

Q: What is the Treehouse Training Center?

A training facility in a wooded area with all four seasons. Beautiful glass and open inviting spaces. Wooden walkways 10, 20, 30, 40 feet up in the air leading to treehouses where people bunk up. Think Lord of the Rings elven forest kingdoms or Avatar treetops or Mexican resort huts. Lighted walkways at night. A Google-type office with bean bags, conference rooms, video recording areas, memory walls. A gourmet chef. A small crew always building new walkways and aspects. When not training, Airbnb it out. When possible, bring foster youth and underprivileged kids to elevate their set point.

Q: Why bring foster kids to a luxury training facility?

To addict the younger generations, especially older foster care kids who’ve had a hard life, to a higher way of living. Get them so used to high standards, good food, high living, the feeling of almost being rich that they elevate their set point. When they go back home, they have a disconnect between where they are and where they want to be. Hopefully that motivates them to live a better and more remarkable life. Set them up for life, hook them up with opportunities for jobs in construction, leverage networking, training, resources, and food.

Q: What’s the vision for online training content?

The fastest, most useful, most addictive training in construction. Anyone, a worker, foreman, project manager, VDC professional, surveyor, all of it at their fingertips. They can go to college if they want or take these courses as they’re ready and get certifications that almost guarantee them a job. Really engaging, pedagogical, online content at the tip of their fingers, always updated with the best practices. Transform the way training is done in this industry.

Q: What other companies will Elevate create?

Lean Takt, Lean Survey, Lean Office, Lean Field, Lean VDC, Lean Business. Each will have directors who will grow those businesses to create training, YouTube channels, LinkedIn channels, free resources, masterminds, boot camps. All those directors will be advisory board members to Elevate Construction, expanding influence throughout the industry and choosing the best experts for each area. The goal: best website with most resources where construction professionals see Elevate Construction graphics and free content and outlines and guides everywhere in the industry.

Q: What is Elevate Construction’s ultimate mission?

Workers are not respected. Leaders are not trained. Families are going uncared for. When Jason dies, they will have made a huge dent in the disrespect and the dysfunction of families in construction by providing training, knowledge, and wisdom. Ignorance is what’s holding us back. Education, light, and knowledge will lead us to where workers are respected, leaders are trained, and families are preserved. That’s the mission.

On we go.

If you want to learn more we have:

Discover Jason’s Expertise:

On we go

Where has Elevate Been?

Posted on May 9, 2026May 9, 2026 by Danny Jiménez⁩

Read 36 min

The Story You Don’t Know: How I Helped Destroy My Father-In-Law’s Company

Jason was flying back from Nashville, Tennessee to Phoenix thinking about what podcasts he could do, what he could record to really add some value. He was going through all of his lists and there’s so many different topics to talk about, but tonight he’s not feeling passionate about speaking about a specific topic. So he figured he’ll find a heart connection. Let’s talk about Elevate and business and things like that. Just to give you a little bit of context, Jason is really working to get out of flying so stinking much. And he doesn’t need anybody to feel sorry for him, he’s just telling you, he flies in so much and he’s not home very much and he’s going to fix that.

He found himself downloading, his wife Katie called him and she’s like “Why did you put on our family plan the Game Center or the arcade on an Apple phone?” Jason was like “Katie, my mind is so fried. I’ve gone through and made so many outlines and read so many things and prepared so many speeches. I’m just fried. I downloaded Angry Birds on my phone and I haven’t done that in a long time, but I’m just feeling myself exhausted.” Jason was thinking about that and the fact that he wasn’t feeling passionate about a specific topic and he was like “You know what, let’s talk about why. Why am I flying home on a plane on a Tuesday night when I should be home with family? What are we working for?”

He figured he would talk to you about where Elevate has been and how he started this business from a standpoint of how can he help other people. Hopefully the story is helpful. Maybe it’s helpful from just a business perspective. But then, where are they going? And why is all of this worth it? Even if it’s really impossibly hard. Even if it’s just hard but for a small moment. Let Jason take you through that little journey and kind of take you through the mindset he’s had in starting this business and why it’s important to him.

How I Helped Put My Father-In-Law Out of Business

Jason helped put his father-in-law’s company out of business. He thinks he’s told you this story before. But he was working for a large general contractor and he was documenting the things that he perceived his wife’s father’s company was doing wrong. The things that he perceived there. It may or may not have been true. In a prison, which is where they were working, every security electronics device, the critical ones, have a home run back to the security electronics room in the core of a prison from the wings, from the prison cells.

They were in charge of installing the conduit, the pathways for the security electronics. Whether the concrete was rushed or vibrators hit the conduit or the conduit glue wasn’t properly fastened or whatever went wrong, there were a lot of these conduits that went bad and got filled with concrete in the walls, which took massive chipping to fix it and to finish it. Jason blamed everything on them. So they got charged. They supplemented their work. It was really a nightmare.

Jason remembers he started to ask this man’s daughter out. And they eventually, he proposed to her and they ended up getting married. He remembers on the way back from California to Texas, as they’re closing the doors of the business and going back, not with their tail between their legs but in a really bad mood, Jason’s father-in-law came by to say congratulations for getting married at their reception. Jason remembers him showing up at the door, not very happy and excited. He just married his daughter.

Here’s the most, and this is before Jason found religion in his life, here’s one of the most dishonest persons he’s ever met in his entire life, marrying his daughter. Just kind of being sad, out of business, feeling like a failure and heading back home. Jason remembers the look on his face.

Then Jason moved to Texas as well, Austin, and got to help build the Whole Foods World Headquarters. After a couple of years of that, he was on the Round Rock facility for Texas State’s campus. He prayed about it and decided to go live where Katie grew up in Seymour, Texas. So he was there with her family. He ended up joining her church with them and working with his father-in-law. Jason was his clerk. He was the administrative arm of what he did at church. That was his calling. That was his responsibility.

Over the years, he warmed up to Jason, taught him about religious things, mentored him kind of like a second father. And they really got close. Jason thought to himself over those years, he really had the opportunity to reflect on how he treats people and how he treats subcontractors, which he now calls trade partners.

When somebody wonders why Jason does podcasts, that’s a defining moment in his life of why he takes care of trade partners so much. Because he was a part of putting a contractor out of business. He was a part of being dishonest and unethical. He was a part of not taking care of other people. He was a part of watching that happen and seeing the looks on their faces. So he vowed that he would never allow that to happen or do that to anybody ever again. To know Jason, you have to know that story and know that he takes care of trade partners.

The Books That Saved Me From Getting Fired

The second one is when Jason was in Texas building the Whole Foods World Headquarters, or at least being on the team, he almost got fired. He’s told you this story before. Bear with him. He was so bad at his job, made so many mistakes, offended so many people, was so stubborn that he was about to get fired. He got scriptures in his life from a religious standpoint. And then the other thing is the Field Engineering Methods Manual.

It was literally a matter of months from the time that he was about to get fired to then when Hensel Phelps started to pay him to travel throughout the country and pay for plane flights and hotels and cars and all the things to train other field ops roles. It was quite remarkable to him.

The other thing that you have to understand about Jason is that he really believes in education. Those books saved him. Those books saved him from a lot of pain. Those books started him on a lifelong love of learning and attempting to be better. To understand Jason, you have to understand that he believes in learning and training at the core of everything that he is and everything that he does.

Over the years, he’s always liked distilling and putting material into a more consumable format, understanding concepts, sharing concepts. He remembers when he was working with Hensel Phelps, he would spend weeks upon weeks creating video after video after video, watching himself and then correcting the speech and then saying ums and ahs and things like that and then having to rerecord the video and creating websites. He actually designed software and things like that. Over the years, being in the field, that’s always been in his blood.

My Flesh Was Weak, My Blood Ran Chill, But My Free Spirit Cried I Will

Katie once bought Jason a book called EntreLeadership by Dave Ramsey. He read that book and then another book. Unbeatable Mind by Mark Devine. He read that at a scout camp up in the woods when he had some free time and the kids were doing merit badges. He was thinking about the question: when you are deceased, what would you want to look back upon in your life and say was your legacy.

At that time, he realized he wanted to start a business and really scale good things throughout the industry. He didn’t know exactly what it was. A man named Kevin Rice, a really good friend of his over the years who’s really good at business and helps actually Elevate with business consulting and lean business, coached him on how to create the clarity of what he wanted to do over a number of years. It was about 10 years.

Jason knows sometimes he gets on these podcasts and he’s all bold and brave and like “Hey, go live your dream.” But it took him about 10 years to decide to do this. It got to the point where he really had to be willing to give everything up and let go of the fear. He’s going to read you some words to one of his favorite hymns. He thinks it’s really special. This is the point that he got to. It’s called A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief. It’s hymn 29 in their hymn books.

The verse that really struck him says: “In prison I saw him next condemned to meet a traitor’s doom at morn. The tide of lying tongues I stemmed and honored him mid shame and scorn. My friendship’s utmost zeal to try, he asked if I for him would die. The flesh was weak, my blood ran chill, but my free spirit cried, I will.”

The real important thing in this hymn for Jason was when it says “The flesh was weak, my blood ran chill, but my free spirit cried, I will.” That’s always been really impactful to him because literally that’s how it felt to him to start a business. He’s got 11 kids. He doesn’t have the money. The security freaks him out. He’s super scared. His flesh was weak, his blood ran chill. But his free spirit cried “If this is something that’s inspired that I’m supposed to do, I will.” He relates to that really well. That’s the feeling that he had. Maybe you’ve had that same feeling when making a hard decision or having to make a hard life decision or get married or quit a job or whatever the case may be. We all have those moments.

But for Jason, starting a business was like that. When he got to that point where he was willing to give everything up and get past the fact that there wasn’t any security and get past the fact that he was super scared and get past the fact that he had no idea how he was going to make it and get past all those things and say “You know what? My purpose is more important than the concern. And I’m just going to let it go.”

Then his flesh is weak and his blood is running chill and he’s freaked out. But his free spirit, the human, the person, the leader that he is will cry out and say “I will do this for other people.” That’s where we all have to get with whatever our mission is in life. Jason hears, and don’t get me wrong it took him 10 years so he’s no example to follow, but he hears a lot of people all the time say “I can’t do this” or “I could never do that” or “It’s too hard” or this or that or whatever. The answer is we just have to get to that point. We have to get to that leverage.

The Third Week of February: When the Money Started Coming

An interesting thing is once Jason had made that decision, the plan for how to execute the business really kind of came into view. He feels like it was inspiration. But literally the information, the feelings that he had was that he would start a podcast and that was something he knew he should have been doing for a couple of years. Start a podcast, start marketing and building and get the business and start researching about it.

Then the timeline kind of unfolded itself really nicely. In the first part of December, he would give notice. First of January, he would leave. And he knew, he believes again through divine sources, that the third week of February they would start making money. And then he wouldn’t have to worry after that. That they would always be able to make money.

Literally that’s what happened. He gave his notice the first part of December. January 1st he left normal employment. Then literally he looked back at the books and he should have saved whatever check or whatever would have put them over the top. But they started making money and getting above the line, what they call being in the black, the third week of February.

When he cashed out his retirement, which some people wouldn’t consider wise, but if you listen to Garrett Gunderson, he says it might be worth it when you consider the opportunity costs. He basically took all of their savings to start the business. It got to a point where they didn’t get super low. They still had $45,000 in the bank. But they stopped paying to start a business. They stopped that the third week of February.

It was really good that he had that focus of helping people and what the mission was, because sometimes you just have to hold on to things like that. When Jason does these podcasts, he thinks about you. He thinks about the workers. He thinks about your families. He thinks about how much good we can do together as we learn from each other. And it keeps all of us going.

The Brutal Truth About Year One

Fast forward a little bit. Hard times work. By the way, Jason’s never worked harder in his life than this year. So somebody’s thinking about starting a business, absolutely go do it. Just be prepared that for the first year you’re going to work so hard you won’t even know how you survive.

Just as he comes back off of a flight, and now he’s recording a podcast on the way, he paused to go to In-N-Out real quick to get something to eat. And then literally in 57 minutes, not to complain, but it’s eight o’clock and in 57 minutes he gets to go on to another international call, business call, to make sure they’re advancing efforts on their online learning platforms. It just never ends. The requirements to run a business and to stay with it and to do the right thing and to do a podcast and to show up and to fly places, it just never ends.

One of the hardest things for Jason has been keeping positive cash flow. They do a lot of work. They have great customers. They have people that pay them. They have raving fans. They’re doing a lot of great things. But man, when they told him when he was younger about cash flow, he should have paid a lot closer attention. Because cash flow is just a big deal.

He may have like outstanding invoices to the tune of, and this sounds like a lot of money but it’s not a lot of money, to the tune of like 60 or 70, $80,000 of accounts receivable. But payroll has got to go out every week. Expenses have to go out every week. All these things have to happen.

It takes about $100,000 to have at least $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 in the bank to stay out ahead. So it’s not like anybody’s getting rich, although paying for consultants and training sometimes seems a little bit expensive. That’s like a little peek under the curtain.

One of these days, if they create a software or do something, get an online learning series and sell it to like 5 million people, maybe that’s when they’ll get rich. But up until now, it’s pretty much just paying the bills. Jason thought that was pretty interesting.

But he can say that it’s really rewarding. The recent information he’s been given, at least from the universe, from God, intuition, whatever you want, is to pivot a lot of what they do onto online learning platforms that are really engaging. So that anytime he flies around or he’s with somebody one on one or they’re coaching or they’re doing in person events, it’s special. It’s focused. And there isn’t a lot of burnout with that.

His summary: it took him 10 years, had a lot of coaching up into that point, had to be willing to just give everything up and just let it all go to be literally like “Hey, if we get to the point where we can’t eat, I’ll move into my parents.” Scary stuff.

And then to just say that the timeline has unfolded in a beautiful way. He remembers when they hired Spencer in August, the end of July. They didn’t know how they were going to sustain him. That’s expensive to have somebody that high caliber on payroll. But it all worked out. He’s been able to add so much value to people and to the company of what they’re doing.

Jason just has to say that if there’s a purpose, when there’s a will there’s a way. If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow.

FAQ

Q: Why does Jason care so much about trade partners?

Because he was a part of putting a contractor out of business. He was working for a large general contractor documenting things he perceived his wife’s father’s company was doing wrong on a prison project. They got charged, work was supplemented, it was a nightmare. They closed the doors of the business. Jason remembers the look on his father-in-law’s face: sad, out of business, feeling like a failure. He was a part of being dishonest and unethical, not taking care of other people, watching that happen and seeing the looks on their faces. He vowed he would never allow that to happen or do that to anybody ever again.

Q: How long did it take Jason to start Elevate Construction?

It took him 10 years to decide to do it. Katie bought him EntreLeadership by Dave Ramsey and he read Unbeatable Mind by Mark Devine. He was thinking about his legacy. He realized he wanted to start a business and scale good things throughout the industry but didn’t know exactly what. Kevin Rice coached him on creating clarity over those 10 years. Sometimes Jason gets bold and brave saying “go live your dream” but it took him a decade. He had to get to the point where he was willing to give everything up and let go of the fear.

Q: What was the timeline from quitting to making money?

Once Jason made the decision, the plan came into view. He felt inspired to start a podcast, start marketing and building. The timeline unfolded: first part of December give notice, January 1st leave employment, third week of February start making money. That’s exactly what happened. He cashed out retirement, took all their savings to start the business. They still had $45,000 in the bank but stopped draining it the third week of February. He knew through divine sources they would always be able to make money after that point.

Q: How hard is the first year of starting a business?

Jason has never worked harder in his life than this year. If you’re thinking about starting a business, absolutely do it. Just be prepared that for the first year you’re going to work so hard you won’t even know how you survive. He comes back off a flight, records a podcast on the way, pauses for In-N-Out, then in 57 minutes at 8 PM gets on another international call for online learning platforms. It never ends. The requirements to run a business, stay with it, do the right thing, do podcasts, show up, fly places, it just never ends.

Q: What’s the reality of cash flow in year one?

When they told Jason about cash flow when he was younger, he should have paid closer attention. It’s a big deal. He has outstanding invoices of $60,000 to $80,000 accounts receivable. But payroll goes out every week, expenses go out every week. It takes about $100,000 to have $20,000 to $40,000 in the bank to stay ahead. It’s not like anybody’s getting rich. Paying for consultants and training seems expensive but it’s pretty much just paying the bills. One day if they create software or sell online learning to 5 million people, maybe that’s when they’ll get rich.

On we go.

If you want to learn more we have:

Discover Jason’s Expertise:

On we go

I’m Fine…

Posted on May 9, 2026May 9, 2026 by Danny Jiménez⁩

Read 27 min

Stop Saying I’m Fine: Why This Lie Is Killing Construction Workers

Have you ever heard somebody who says “I know, I know”? You told them to do something or you ask them politely to do something. “I know, I know, I know, I know, I know.” And then they don’t do it because they’re not freaking listening and they’re unteachable and they do it wrong. And they’re like “No, no, I know. No, you should have done this.” “I know, I know.”

If you hear somebody say “I know,” they don’t know. That is not fine. That is not good. If you are growing in construction and you’re being raised in construction right now and taught and nurtured and watered and mowed every day, do not say “I know.” Because you don’t know. Because “I know” means “I’m not listening.”

That’s Jason’s example. And you’re probably like “Yeah, Jason, I agree with that.” Let him add one more. “I’m fine.” BS. You’re fine? Bull’s sheet. You are not fine. Stop saying “I’m fine.” “How are you doing?” “I’m fine.” “What’s going on?” “I’m fine.” “I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine.” Lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie. Not true. You’re not fine.

If you hear people say “I know” or “I’m fine” they’re not telling the truth. That’s what we’re going to talk about today. We have to get an awareness of what’s really going on. Data. In lean systems we bring all problems to the surface. We’re transparent. We deal with problems and we fix problems.

If you are saying “I know” you’re not learning. If you’re saying “I’m fine” you’re not being transparent and bringing problems to the surface which means you’re not getting the help that you need and deserve. So you are not lean if you say “I know” and “I’m fine.” You’re not lean.

The Awareness of Mental and Emotional Health

Jason is excited about the awareness of mental and emotional health. Felipe Engineer and a group of people did a little webinar podcast cohort talking about mental health and emotional health. Jason thanks God and literally praises Jesus that these people are out there doing these wonderful things.

We’ve got people that Jason really enjoys throughout the industry talking about psychological safety. We have people talking about suicide. We’ve got people talking about just the effects of construction, the effects of the pandemic. Jason really appreciates those people out there that are doing it.

Caitlin is doing it with Iman. She’s talking about this quite a bit. Kaybrey is talking about this. Felipe is talking about this. Adam Hoots is talking about this. We’ve got Jennifer Lacey talking about this. Jason’s excited about all the awareness there.

When I’m Fine Means I’m Dying Inside

Let Jason tell you a little story. He was once working for a company, great company, and he had a really great project executive. Jason would get in these emotional fits where he’s really high and then he’s really low. Imagine his hand doing this curve where he’s high and he’s low and he’s high and he’s low. Anytime Jason would get low he would get dark and start telling himself stories and get really bad in the head. When people asked how he was doing he would say “I’m fine.” He wasn’t fine.

Jason was talking to this project executive and he actually left. He put in his resignation. The project executive was like “Jason, if you had told me that something wasn’t fine a couple months ago we could have gotten you what you needed and this wouldn’t have happened.” He put his arm up and he said, no he drew this on a whiteboard: “You’re either really high or you’re really low and what you have to do is find a way to speak out, speak up, and let somebody know that you’re really low so you can get help.”

Jason thought that was really neat. Ever since he told him that, he’s been focusing on leveling those out. The solution is to speak it out loud and tell somebody. Here’s the principle. How powerful would it be that when somebody asked how you’re doing they actually really cared enough to find out? Jason just thought that was really true. So when you’re asking somebody how they’re doing, keep pushing and asking. But if you’re being asked, tell the truth.

The System That Leads to Death or Hell

Here’s the system: “I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine. No one wants me. This is hopeless.” Then you die by suicide or you live in hell. That’s the system. Jason’s wife was complaining about the other day: “No, I’m fine. I’m fine. No, I’m really fine. No, I’m fine.” And then when you’re in your alone moments then you’re like “Nobody really wants me. Nobody really cares about me. This is hopeless. I can’t get out of that.”

And then you find somebody hanging in the backyard or they’ve blown their brains out or they’ve overdosed or they’ve jumped off a bridge somewhere because we didn’t get the help. They’ve died by suicide. Jason appreciates Kaybrey for telling him instead of saying “committed suicide” they died by suicide.

We have no idea what somebody’s going through. When they die by suicide, when they end their own life because of their suffering, if we were in that circumstance would we feel the same way? Would we get out of it? Would we pass the test? Jason doesn’t think we would. Die by suicide. These people whether they had something to do with it or not are victimized by a really bad circumstance. Or if they don’t die by suicide they live in hell.

If you’re like “Oh Jason, this sounds like social justice warrior stuff, dude calm down,” this is real stuff. Imagine right now that you go in and you find your little six year old girl or your 12 year old son hanging himself or shooting herself and that now your little baby is gone and dead. Would you say “Oh man, I judge you. You just committed suicide”? Or would you be like “Oh my gosh, what the hell just happened? I’m so devastated”?

When you get judgmental about this, think about would it be your own little girl? Jason cannot think about what he would experience if one of his kids died by suicide or if they didn’t and continue to live their life in hell. It would be absolutely devastating.

When Jason Was Clinically Depressed

Let Jason also say one thing. There was one time where for about two weeks Jason was clinically depressed. He was bad. As soon as he realized that he didn’t care if he lived, he didn’t care if he got up for work, he just had a chemical hormonal something was wrong with his body feeling. Some people will just retreat. Jason freaked out because he knows what normal feels like. He started jogging. He went to the doctor. He got help. He started talking to his wife.

Some people are vocal. Jason was trained to be vocal. If something’s wrong with him, he’ll tell you. Sometimes when something’s wrong with people they won’t tell you. Sometimes it’s to preserve them or to preserve other people and to attempt to be kind even though it’s misguided. Jason just wants you to know as soon as he felt clinically depressed he immediately went and got help and freaked out. What about the people that don’t?

You have to be able to say “I’m not fine.” Jason does want to say that people who do not allow you to help, there is a better way. People who are not telling the truth and aren’t coming forth with actually how they’re doing, there’s a better way. Letting people help you is a gift that you can give to other people. Letting people help you is a gift that you can give yourself. It’s okay to not be okay. Just be nice about it.

If you’re not okay, don’t go around killing and murdering people and being mean. Obviously be nice. But just be like “I’m not okay right now everybody. I need help.” There are sometimes where Jason comes in and he’s been at work and he’s like “Hey everybody, I’m struggling today. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m working on it right now. If I seem a little bit grumpy I apologize. I need your help. Please lift me up. I’m not okay today and I don’t know what’s wrong. I have to go do a couple things. I don’t have a minute to talk about it but as soon as I do I need help.”

Just say not okay but be nice about it and just know that it’s okay to not be okay. If you’re feeling sad, depressed, down, low, negative self-talk, if you’ve said anything in your mind like “Nobody wants me” or “This is hopeless” or you’re in a bad spot or you’re angry or you’re in any of these negative emotions meaning they’re not serving you well, you have to get help. You have to speak it out loud. You have to say something about it. Because the current condition is everyone is saying “I’m fine” and they’re not fine.

The 30 Day Challenge: Tell the Truth

Jason wants to challenge you. He told you this would be a short podcast. He’s almost done. He wants to challenge you to practice for the next seven days at a minimum but he would hope for at least a month. Every time somebody asks you if you’re okay, Jason wants you to practice intentionally telling them the truth.

Here are some examples:

“You know, I appreciate you asking. A little bit grumpy but I’m on the upward climb.”
“Hey man, I’m just feeling great and I don’t know why I’m feeling great. No, I’m doing good. Everything’s kind of good right now and I’m really good.”
“You know, I’ve been dealing with some stuff at home and I’m trying to rein it in at work but man I’m having a hard time. I’m not doing okay. I think I’m okay. Keep checking in with me because I’ll let you know if I’m not but I’m not okay.”
“Man, I’m freaking down. I don’t have time right now but as soon as I can talk I’d love to tell you what’s going on because I am not doing well. I need help.”

Any of these things are okay.

Jason doesn’t know what ignorant SOB somewhere back in our history said that we all had to say “I’m fine” but it’s the dumbest thing he’s ever heard. If you’re not fine, say you’re not fine. Probably most of the time we don’t tell the truth is because we live in fear and we have to get out of that place and understand that human beings were intended and designed for connection and that we need to get help.

So “I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine. No, I’m fine. I’m fine. No really, I’m fine. No one wants me. This is hopeless. Die by suicide or live in hell.” Or when we’re not fine we can tell somebody and get help from the wonderful people out there in this world.

Let Jason testify to you like he would testify before a court of law: there are so many great people on this earth. We’re just not organized and we’re just not talking to each other and we’re just not telling each other the truth. We have an opportunity to get the help. Everybody has hard times. So why not get it fixed and get the help and live a remarkable life? If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow.

FAQ

Q: Why is saying I’m fine when I’m not so dangerous?

Because here’s the system: “I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine. No one wants me. This is hopeless.” Then you die by suicide or you live in hell. When people ask how you’re doing and you say “I’m fine” when you’re not, then in your alone moments you’re like “Nobody really wants me. Nobody really cares about me. This is hopeless. I can’t get out.” Then you find somebody hanging in the backyard or they’ve blown their brains out or overdosed or jumped off a bridge. Or they don’t die by suicide and they live in hell. Either way, saying “I’m fine” when you’re not kills you or destroys you.

Q: What should I say instead of I’m fine?

Tell the truth. Examples: “I appreciate you asking. A little bit grumpy but I’m on the upward climb.” “I’ve been dealing with some stuff at home and I’m having a hard time. I’m not doing okay. Keep checking in with me.” “Man, I’m freaking down. I don’t have time right now but as soon as I can talk I’d love to tell you what’s going on because I’m not doing well. I need help.” “Hey everybody, I’m struggling today. If I seem grumpy I apologize. I need your help. I’m not okay today.”

Q: What if I don’t want to burden other people with my problems?

Letting people help you is a gift that you can give to other people. Letting people help you is a gift that you can give yourself. It’s okay to not be okay. Human beings were intended and designed for connection. We need to get help. There are so many great people on this earth. We’re just not organized and we’re just not talking to each other and we’re just not telling each other the truth. Everybody has hard times. Get it fixed, get the help, and live a remarkable life.

Q: What should I do if I’m clinically depressed?

Jason was clinically depressed for two weeks. As soon as he realized he didn’t care if he lived, didn’t care if he got up for work, had something chemically or hormonally wrong, he freaked out because he knows what normal feels like. He started jogging. He went to the doctor. He got help. He started talking to his wife. As soon as you feel clinically depressed, immediately go and get help. Don’t retreat. If you’re feeling sad, depressed, down, low, negative self-talk, if you’ve said “Nobody wants me” or “This is hopeless,” you have to get help. Speak it out loud. Say something about it.

Q: How do I help someone who keeps saying they’re fine but clearly isn’t?

When you’re asking somebody how they’re doing, keep pushing and asking. Don’t accept “I’m fine” as an answer. How powerful would it be that when somebody asked how you’re doing they actually really cared enough to find out? If you had told someone that something wasn’t fine a couple months ago, they could have gotten you what you needed. The solution is to speak it out loud and tell somebody. Keep asking. Keep caring. Don’t let people retreat into “I’m fine” when they’re dying inside.

On we go.

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Labor Productivity Principles

Posted on May 9, 2026May 9, 2026 by Danny Jiménez⁩

Read 37 min

Stop Slowing Down Your Labor Productivity: Why More Workers Makes You Slower

Jason is really excited about this podcast. He teaches this a lot and he’s been able to give the case studies and some of the graphs now to people he’s taught. He wants to give full credit to the Scrum course from Scrum Inc. The Scrum course that Felipe Engineer does for a lot of this information. This is where he first received this.

Jason really likes Scrum and the system because it anchors us back to true scheduling and builder techniques. If you haven’t done the Scrum course from Felipe Engineer, please go do so. Jason didn’t fully understand scheduling until he learned about Scrum.

The question is: are you slowing down your labor productivity? Because if you are, we need to stop and we need to help each other and learn from each other and get this fixed. Here’s some conflict. You are hurting your labor productivity and you need to stop.

The Dice Game That Proves Variation Kills Productivity

If you’ve ever played the simulation Parade of Trades, you know that there’s an opportunity to roll ones, twos, threes, fours, fives, and sixes on your die. When you play this game, you use a die. Whatever you get on your roll is your capacity, your manpower. You get to move, whether you’re playing Parade of Trades or the Elevate Construction or Lean Takt invention called Takt Towers. Whatever you roll is how much work you get to complete based on how much work is available.

There are different scenarios where you have different dice. One dice might say one, two, three, four, five, six. The other one might be three, three, three, four, four, four. The other one might be one, two, two, three, three, six. It might be one, one, two, five, six, six. Let’s take the most realistic one: one, two, three, four, five, six. When you roll that, sometimes you get sixes and sometimes you get ones. And the variability, the variation in that system makes teams go slower.

When you play the simulation, you go through the exercise and everybody’s able to reflect: oh my gosh, the dice where it was three, three, three, four, four, four, they finished at $17 million. And the one, two, three, four, five, six finished at like $26 million. The differences were the increase in labor. The one, two, three, four, five, six had 380 units of labor. The three, three, three, four, four, four had like 286 units of labor. So it was a lot less. And the inventory levels are similar.

What we are able to reflect on is that when we have more variation in the speed that everybody’s going, the more manpower and materials you have, which means the longer the project takes and the more it costs. So then you compare it to the overall cost. The three, three, three, four, four, four, like Jason said, that’s $17 million. The one, two, three, four, five, six, that’s like $24 million. And then the time: the three, three, three, four, four, four, you finished in 19 weeks. The one, two, three, four, five, six finished in 21 or 23 weeks. It was longer and it costs more money.

So then you think about this correlation and what it means to us. What it means is we have to get everybody working at the same speed at the same distance apart. Flow and the creation of flow, even if you’re going at a medium speed, will always finish the project faster and will always be the least cost because you have right sized inventory levels, material inventory levels, and you have right sized manpower.

Pushing vs. Building Capacity: Two Opposite Approaches

Jason loves that analogy. Secondly, when they went over to meet with Marco and Janusz with Tachting in Germany, they played these Takt simulations, the best one in the world in his opinion. When there was a lot of dependency and a lack of flow, there were certain behaviors that humans engaged in. When there was flow, there were certain behaviors they engaged in.

There’s a book called The Bottleneck Rules and Jason really enjoys that book. What it talks about is creating capacity versus pushing. If you think about a bottle, a hot sauce bottle like Tapatio, if you think about a bottle with a small bottleneck, there’s two things you can do. You can push harder behind the bottleneck, which will create more pressure and more dependency. Or you can increase the bottleneck. You can widen the actual bottleneck.

In construction, so many times we just start pushing through that bottleneck instead of creating capacity. Jason created two scenarios reflecting on this. A project engineer called him the other night and was asking advice. He said “Hey, the team that I’m working with, they have an hour long scheduling meeting where nine people meet every day. We’re nine weeks away from the end. All they do is talk about the schedule and update the CPM. And they’re all running frantic. How do I survive in this environment?”

Jason said “Okay, you as a project engineer, you’re probably supposed to be focusing on materials, punch list, quality installation. You focus on your role and doing your role really well. Don’t start running around, freaking out, acting busy like everybody else does when things like that happen. Create capacity.” That got Jason’s mind visualizing these two scenarios.

The first scenario, which is what the industry does, is pushing. This is where you roll ones and sixes. You do this by:

Throwing manpower at the problem or the project
Throwing money at the problem or the project
Throwing materials at the problem or the project
Making workers work too fast and too long
Working with unsafe and unclean conditions
Working with too much dependency
Working with not enough time
Having too large or too small batch sizes
Having an improper sequence and moving start dates up without preparation
Running around and looking frantic and busy just because you want to show your boss you care

This is what pushing looks like. Excess manpower slows you down. Excess money slows you down most of the time. Excess material slows you down. Making workers work too fast slows you down. Working with unsafe and unclean conditions slows you down. Working with too much dependency, meaning you’re not getting everybody working at the right distance apart at the same speed, that’ll slow you down. Having not enough time in the schedule will freak everybody out and have them start pushing so it will slow you down. Having too large or too small of batch sizes which creates dependency will slow you down. Having the improper sequence. This is what most people do to attempt to improve their project conditions and it just won’t do it.

Now on the build capacity side, rolling threes or threes and fours, this is what you would do:

Focus on removing roadblocks
Installing it right the first time
Aligning procurement so that procurement can be there on time
Keeping a consistent rhythm and beat
Keeping the project clean, safe, and organized
Improving team health and stability
Taking more time to prepare and make work ready

On the pushing side, we’re always just trying to move people forward without preparation. On the build capacity side, we’re keeping things on a rhythm and taking the time to prepare so we can build it right the first time. You can be on the build capacity side or you can be on the pushing side. Jason really likes this visual.

Why Agile Projects Have 42% Success vs. 26% for Traditional

The reason Jason opens with this is because throwing excess manpower and materials at a problem or a project rarely helps. And it’s the first thing that people do. In construction when somebody’s like “Oh, we got to focus on production, we got to go faster, we’ve got to recover this project,” it’s like because all they have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. They start throwing these additional resources at the problem and it just takes longer and slows things down.

Let’s talk about some data. This is from Jim Johnson from the Standish Group Chaos Report 2018. On average, Agile projects have a 42% success rate compared to only 26% for traditional projects from 2013 to 2017. When you look at the shakeup, the success rate for traditional projects is very low. We’re talking about 74% not successful. 21% are absolute failed projects. 53% are challenged and finished behind schedule and stretched the team.

When you start to involve true Scrum, when you start to involve true lean principles, pull, Takt time, then you’re increasing your percentages at a minimum by another 26%. If the whole industry right now just listened to the advice that the industry has, let alone advanced Takt planning, let alone advanced lean concepts, let alone the book This is Lean from Nicholas Modig, we could have a success rate of at least 42% and only have 50% projects have difficulty and only 8% projects fail.

You might not think that that additional roughly 25% is a big deal, but Jason does. Then you add in Takt time, you add Takt time planning, concepts like This is Lean, true Scrum, Last Planner done right, and your percentages are going to skyrocket through the roof.

Team Consistency Matters More Than Team Size

When we look at the impact of adding manpower versus just keeping level manpower levels and level material inventory levels, when we talk about the amount of tasks that are able to be complete basically on time, on a scale of zero to 80, five different scenarios show the amount of tasks that can be completed by different teams depending on the consistency of their manpower levels or their team composition varies greatly.

When less than 50% of the team is consistent, they only get 38 tasks done on average. When 50 to 70% of the team composition or manpower composition is consistent, they can get around 48 tasks done on average. When 70 to 85% of that team composition or manpower is consistent, then you’re somewhere around 58. 85 to 90% consistent, then you’re up to like 70 tasks. When it’s above or equal to 95%, then you’re at around 75 tasks on average that can be done. That’s going from 38 tasks to 75 tasks on average. You want more tasks completed in a time duration. What you need to do is keep your team composition or your manpower fairly consistent.

So that’s one principle: you don’t want organizational or socialized debt or crew debt, which is when you have to onboard someone, do additional training, get people accustomed to cultural norms, team norms, politics, gaining trust. When you create variation in team composition, you have to do all those things. You have to onboard, train, get people used to cultural norms, absorb them, make sure that trust is gained, go through the five behaviors of a team.

Brooks’s Law: Adding People Makes Projects Take Longer

There’s something else called Brooks’s Law, which says that when you take manpower levels above what’s needed, so you’re in the excess zone, then the return on investment diminishes and the project will slow down. That’s especially true at the end of the project and it costs more money. When you look at team sizes, you have to consider that as team sizes increase, then the costs increase as well.

For instance, when you look at the productivity or the return on investment, what you earn versus what you spend: If you have a team size of two, the time it takes to complete a task might be somewhere around 12 months, then your cost is going to be pretty low. Team size of four, you might get your project done in maybe 10 months and your cost is still fairly low. Team size of six, your time is actually somewhere around nine to eight months and your cost is fairly reasonable and your choice is productive from a time standpoint in comparison to your cost.

Now you go into a team size of 10 and it’s going to take like 17, 16, 17 months and your costs have doubled. You get into a team size of 17 and it’s going to take something like around the same time, 16, 17 months, and now your costs have quadrupled and now your costs have exceeded the amount of time or the return on investment for the time it took you to complete that task.

My point is: two, four, six, 10, 17. Two took 13 or 14 months. Four took 10, 11, 12. Six took nine or 10. Ten people on the team took 16 or 17. Seventeen people took 16 or 17.

But when you look at two, four, six, 10, and 17 on a team size, when you’re talking about costs: two is low, four is low, six is about the average. When you go from six to 10, you double your cost. When you go from 10 to 17, you double your cost again, which quadruples it from the original ideal team size, which is around four to six people. Brooks’s Law says that as you add people, excess people to a team, it will take more time and it will cost more. The source is from a study of 491 projects at www.qsm.com/process.

Context Switching and Communication Saturation

The other one is context switching. When you have more teams who are onboarding and doing training and absorbing and adapting to cultural norms, team norms, politics, and gaining trust in team behaviors, it might take that worker a week to get through that process. The context switching from going to what they were doing to this new team is astronomical.

It might take a human being to adapt into a new environment and cultural norm four to seven days. It might take a crew a half day or a day or a day and a half to reorient to a new task. And at a minimum it takes you 15 to 30 to 45 minutes to change your focus within context switching. Know that anytime you take a consistent team with a consistent focus out of their focus and flow, there’s context switching.

The other thing is the deteriorating team communication or what’s called communication saturation. If you have three people on a team, there’s three communication pathways. Four people on a team, there’s six communication pathways. Five people on the team, there’s 10 direct communication pathways. Six people on the team, there’s 15 direct communication pathways.

As you add more people to the team, you are actually increasing the complexity of communication and it slows you down and makes you lose productivity. The last one Jason wants to talk about is when you have multiple projects and you’re not able to focus. This is from Gerald M. Weinberg, 1992, Quality Software Management Systems Thinking.

When you have multiple simultaneous projects because you have larger crew sizes and more people on those crews, then your productivity diminishes. If you have one project, you might be at 100% efficiency or focus time. When you have two projects, you’re down to 80%, which means there’s 20% waste. Three projects, you’re down to 20% for each project, 60%, which means 40% is waste. Four projects, you’re at 10% capacity for all four at 40% with 60% waste. When you have five projects, you’re able to be 5% focused on each project, which means you’re down to 75% waste.

The bottom line here is for labor: when you add excess labor and materials, you slow down because you have to keep team size consistent to reduce crew and organizational debt, focus on one piece or one process flow, maintain a proper ratio of time to cost versus team size, reduce the complexity of communication among teams, focus and stay in a consistent flow and not lose the productivity that comes from simultaneous projects, avoid the need for overtime which after four to nine weeks can exponentially slow you down, and allow crews to be 100% productive.

One more time: keep crews consistent, make sure you have the right team size, reduce the complexity of communication, reduce organizational team or crew debt, increase your focus by keeping the right project focus, reduce overtime, and reduce the effects of Brooks’s Law which says that as you add manpower you will slow down your productivity in your project, especially at the latter part of the project.

Let’s build capacity and consistency and stop pushing and throwing manpower, throwing money at it, throwing materials at it, making workers work too fast, workers work on unsafe and unclean conditions with too much dependency, not enough time with too large or too small of batch sizes in an improper sequence. That’s the principle and what Jason’s asking everybody to do is to move over into the create capacity side and understand labor productivity in its truest form.

Jason’s not saying he knows everything. He’s just saying as he’s learning these things, he’s realizing that in the construction industry, there are things like Nicholas Modig talks about flow efficiency and resource efficiency. There are the labor productivity principles we learned from Scrum. There are the production laws we learned from manufacturing. Why didn’t we know these 20 years ago? Why didn’t somebody bring them up 25 years ago? Why didn’t somebody teach him 15 years ago? This is ridiculous.

These are true principles. Jason can testify that they’re true. Our current condition is we’re not using them. His challenge to you is let’s use them and let’s share them so that the next generation of construction workers and builders and leaders do not have to go through the same struggle that we had to go through where we’re like “Yeah, let’s increase production. Let’s do this. Let’s go faster” and just not knowing anyway, shape or form how to do it. If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow.

FAQ

Q: Why does adding more workers to a project make it slower?

Brooks’s Law says that as you add excess people to a team, it will take more time and cost more. Study of 491 projects shows: team size of six takes 9 months at reasonable cost. Team size of 10 takes 17 months and costs double. Team size of 17 takes 17 months and costs quadruple. When you add more people you increase communication complexity (6 people = 15 communication pathways), create crew debt from onboarding and training, cause context switching that takes 4 to 7 days to adapt, and lose focus across multiple simultaneous projects.

Q: What’s the difference between pushing and building capacity?

Pushing is throwing manpower, money, materials at the problem, making workers work too fast and too long, working unsafe and unclean, too much dependency, not enough time, wrong batch sizes, improper sequence, moving start dates up without preparation, running around looking frantic. Building capacity is focusing on removing roadblocks, installing right the first time, aligning procurement, keeping consistent rhythm and beat, keeping project clean safe organized, improving team health and stability, taking more time to prepare and make work ready. On pushing side you’re moving people forward without preparation. On build capacity side you’re keeping things on rhythm and taking time to prepare to build it right the first time.

Q: How does team consistency affect productivity?

When less than 50% of the team is consistent, they only get 38 tasks done on average. When 95% or more of the team is consistent, they get 75 tasks done on average. That’s going from 38 tasks to 75 tasks just by keeping team composition consistent. When you create variation in team composition you have to onboard, train, get people used to cultural norms, absorb them, gain trust, go through the five behaviors of a team. This organizational or crew debt slows you down dramatically.

Q: What does the dice game teach about variation and flow?

The dice that rolls one, two, three, four, five, six (high variation) finished at $26 million with 380 units of labor in 23 weeks. The dice that rolls three, three, three, four, four, four (low variation, consistent flow) finished at $17 million with 286 units of labor in 19 weeks. When you have more variation in the speed everybody’s going, the more manpower and materials you have, which means the longer the project takes and more it costs. Flow at medium speed always finishes faster and costs least because you have right sized inventory levels and right sized manpower.

Q: Why do Agile projects succeed more than traditional projects?

From 2013 to 2017, Agile projects had 42% success rate compared to only 26% for traditional projects. Traditional projects: 74% not successful, 21% absolute failures, 53% challenged and finished behind schedule. When you involve true Scrum, lean principles, pull, Takt time, you increase percentages minimum 26%. Add Takt planning, This is Lean concepts, true Scrum, Last Planner done right and percentages skyrocket. You could have 42% success, 50% with difficulty, only 8% failures instead of current state.

On we go.

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JUST IN TIME is NOT the Problem!!!

Posted on May 9, 2026May 9, 2026 by Danny Jiménez⁩

Read 35 min

Stop Blaming Just-In-Time: You’re the Problem and Here’s Why

Jason keeps hearing people over and over and over blaming just-in-time deliveries for a supply chain system and an economy of scarcity right now because of COVID-19 that’s actually gone into a spiral because of overproduction and because of batching and because of non-lean behaviors. He’s tired of hearing about it and he’s going to do a podcast right now.

But first, a Norwegian professional, a lean expert and owner on the owner side, sent him something he really appreciates. It’s called the Seven Conditions for a Sound Activity. All seven conditions must be fulfilled before starting in a new control area. This ensures the most efficient start of any activity. This is going in the lean Takt book called Takt Planning and Integrated Control.

Here are the seven conditions:

Prior activities are completely finished and have the required quality. The next activity entering an area first verifies the readiness together with site management and the activity exiting the area.
Construction design and information: drawings, foundations, BIM models, and other required information is available. It safeguards quality, health, and safety. Construction design is at the right level of development.
Materials and components are of the right quantity and amount at the right place at the right time. Workers have checked that materials and components fulfill requested descriptions.
Workers have the right knowledge and capacity. They have fully understood the tasks to be performed. Necessary changes have been considered in advance.
Equipment needed to perform the task is available. Equipment is appropriate, safe, and tested. Protection gear is available and cleaning equipment is easily available.
Workspace and safety: ensure workspace and area around are tidy and prepared. Safe job analysis or job hazard analysis or pretask plans have been huddled and implemented.
External conditions: approvals and permissions are given. This includes measures to counteract weather conditions.

Jason really loves this. They’re going to put this in the next version of their Takt book. If you have concepts that relate to Takt, flow, pull, lean that you feel like should be in the third revision of their Takt book, please send it their way. Those are the seven conditions of a sound activity. Jason figured he would put this in as a preface because it heads into the just-in-time deliveries portion of the podcast really nicely.

The Root Cause: You’re Freaking Out and Making It Worse

Jason is excited about the need for the industry to become truly lean. He kind of thinks that this whole supply chain crisis and our economy of scarcity is a good thing. If you think about it, Japan didn’t go through much different of a circumstance. It was probably worse than what we’re going through right now. The difference is how they responded versus how we’re responding.

They have a respect for people and for resources and they’ve created stability and flow. And we’re just freaking out. We’re like “Oh, COVID-19. Let’s all freak out and run screaming naked into the woods.” Jason is excited about the need for the industry to become truly lean because now we’re being forced to. Unless we make it worse.

Let’s get into the conflict. You are blaming just-in-time falsely. You are the problem. You need to stop. Let Jason tell you a quick story. Everywhere he goes now somebody’s like “Oh Jason, you’re teaching us about just-in-time deliveries or teaching us about flow, but man, this just-in-time thing is crap. I can’t get anything.” Let Jason call BS or bullshit on that. That’s not the problem.

The problem is we’re in a worldwide pandemic and people are at home and we’ve interrupted the flow of materials and supply throughout the world. Our supply chains have gone into chaos. Now by going home and realizing that socialist governments will simply pay people to not do anything and to be too reserved about being out and about and serving the world with their services, they’re staying home. Also people are quitting their jobs in droves. There are a lot of people that are still on unemployment and there are a lot of people that are still not working intentionally, even though they could.

That’s mostly the problem. We have a resource problem. We have a manpower problem. We have a worker shortage. Root caused in a pandemic, a disease, and social systems that are encouraging people to stay home. That’s the root cause. Now we are making it worse and Jason will tell you why.

What Just-In-Time Actually Means

First of all, let’s talk about what just-in-time is. Jason’s got the book open here. This is Lean by Nicolas Modig. The first principle in flow and flow efficiency is just-in-time and it’s about creating flow. Imagine a football match. Flow is when the team passes the ball from one end of the pitch to the other and finally kicks the ball into the opponent’s goal. The ball is moving all the time. All the players help to find the perfect path for the ball. The ball flows across the pitch and into the goal.

In principle, scoring a goal in football is the same as delivering exactly what the customer wants when the customer wants it and in the quantity that the customer wants. Customer service is about scoring a goal. Then you tie in the Jidoka principle. Jidoka is the other side of the same coin. It complements just-in-time. Jidoka is a somewhat abstract principle. But let Jason ask a question that will hopefully help you grasp it: what underlying conditions must exist in order for a football team to score a lot of goals?

First of all, you have to see the pitch, the ball, and the goal. See all players on the pitch. See the score. See how much playing time is left. Hear the whistle. Hear their team members and the crowd. Can every player see and hear and be aware of everything that is happening all the time based on this clear picture so that they can make decisions about how together they can score a goal? So really just-in-time is about flow.

Jason looked it up and there are a lot of different definitions of just-in-time, but the basics are Takt time, flow production, and pull systems in that order. So when people are bad-mouthing just-in-time, you’re bad-mouthing flow.

Just-In-Time Is Not “Order It When You Need It Right Now”

Let’s talk about just-in-time as it relates to just materials. As just-in-time relates to materials, it’s taking the required on job date according to your Takt time, the buffer that should be ahead of it. And this is what everybody forgets. The buffer is the amount of materials that you are storing ahead of the job or on the job within a certain time range so that workers are not waiting on materials but so that you don’t have too much materials on site to where you’re tripping over them and causing the eight wastes or the seven wastes.

Once you have that buffer, it’s the management and the checking in on the supply chain ahead of that buffer. There are certain points of release that you have to check on. Making sure that you as a project team are using your procurement tracking methods, your procurement log, to ensure the success of those points of release. And that you’re utilizing supermarkets, which means you’re able to bring in materials into supermarkets, a stage location outside of the work, where you’re able to pull from those supermarkets, pull from those inventory buffers at the right time at the right quantities to supply work.

Some people in the industry falsely think just-in-time is you order something and you deliver it to where it arrives on the job site just right when you need it. Hell no, that’s not what just-in-time means. Just-in-time means what’s the required on job date? What is the current buffer that the industry, the market, the supply chains necessitate? What are the supply chain points of release and are we using supermarkets?

Everybody right now that’s complaining about just-in-time deliveries, they’re not doing any of these things. They don’t have a Takt plan to know when the crap is required on the job. They haven’t planned and researched the proper buffers per the current market. They haven’t checked on the supply chain because only 5% of projects that Jason visits anywhere in the world have a procurement log with the right points of release that people are checking on weekly and daily. And hardly anybody’s using supermarkets.

Here’s Jason’s point. We have people complaining about the supply chain and they’re like “Oh my gosh, COVID. Oh my gosh, you can’t get materials. Oh my gosh.” And they don’t have a Takt plan and they don’t have a procurement log. What the hell? Most of this stuff is an unforced error versus a forced error. Most of this stuff is just our stupidity on projects versus an industry condition.

You’re Actually Blaming Batching and Overproduction

Now to make that even worse, why is everybody blaming just-in-time? It’s because they don’t understand it and they’re actually blaming just-in-time for overproduction and batching. When people go out and they’re like “I’m going to order everything right now and I’m going to put it on the job site and I’m going to store it,” that’s batching and that’s overproduction and you’re slowing down the entire production system throughout the world because you’re freaking out and you’re reacting.

Can we prevent this? Jason doesn’t know. Everybody’s in the point of freaking out right now. There are so many dishonest people out there. Maybe we couldn’t have avoided this. But even if we couldn’t have avoided this, Jason wants to tell you exactly why it’s happening.

Why is everybody blaming just-in-time? It’s because they don’t understand it. Actually it’s batching and it’s overproduction that is to blame for this spiral into chaos that we have right now in addition to the pandemic, this disease, our inability as national world governments to respond to this disease, social systems like socialism that are incentivizing people to stay home and receive a check for doing nothing, and workers that won’t come back to work and support an economy in a capitalistic sense where people are incentivized through survival and incentive to actually go out and do work and do their part. We’re being too overly cautious with a disease that is very serious that does kill people. However, we have to keep a world economy going or else more unintended consequences are going to happen.

You take all that and then you add people overproducing and batching. Now we have a worse system. You’re not actually blaming just-in-time. You’re blaming batching and you’re blaming economies of scale and you’re blaming overproduction. When you overproduce something, you now have the waste of excess inventories and motion and transportation. Now you have defects and now you have overprocessing and now you have waiting.

When you overproduce things you have a lot of the other wastes which slows down production, which then slows down these manufacturers’ ability to even produce stuff. Think about this: now you have every contractor in the world once they get a project ordering pipe and ordering curtain wall and ordering roofing and ordering insulation and ordering fasteners all right now without actually considering when they need it.

You have people getting in front of you in line that might not need this stuff for two years. But because they’re putting in batch orders, it’s slowing down the production of the facilities and the supply chains, which then creates excess inventory, which then creates motion, which then creates transportation, which then creates defects, which then creates overprocessing, which then creates waiting because we’re in a frantic, stupid, non-flow situation.

How to Fix It: Level Production Based on Actual Need

Let’s talk about how to fix it. If every vendor, every manufacturing plant, every supplier verified, had a way to magically verify exactly when it was needed everything, then they could level production. Not slow down, level production. And put the orders in the right sequence, in the right order based on need. They would be able to triage these things and actually work in a flow and probably be able to take care of our needs.

But because we have companies, and probably Amazon and Google and Apple and all these companies building these big warehouses ordering everything all the time are the biggest culprits, because we are ordering from batching according to economies of scale and not respecting our other networks and not respecting the supply chain and not respecting each other, then we’re being selfish and we’re causing the ripple in the system.

When you order everything all at once:

You’re batching
You’re relying on economies of scale which we don’t have anymore
You’re overproducing
You’re cutting in line ahead of other people that actually need it sooner than you do

And that is what is slowing everything down. Not just-in-time.

If we actually wanted to fix the supply chains, everyone in the world would get their project on a rhythm with a good schedule. They’d throw CPM out the door. They would create a Takt plan with a Takt time. They would all create procurement logs with the right material inventory buffers and they would submit honest and true orders according to what was actual possible for the production system. Everybody would be in the right spot in line working at the same rhythm at the right distance apart. That’s how you would fix this thing.

But in the absence of not being able to fix this thing, we’re just going to have to deal with the consequences of us just not knowing what just-in-time is. Everyone is in a mad rush and that is what is causing the problem.

Blame Yourself, Not Just-In-Time

Jason wants you to know, even though you might have to just go submit your batch order, even though to play this nasty dirty poker game you might have to go trick your suppliers and you might have to try and cut in line because that’s what you need to do to take care of your owner, Jason does want you to know that every time you do that, you are causing the problem.

So the next time that you’re like “Oh my gosh, we can’t get our materials. We can’t get our insulation. We can’t get our fasteners and man, it’s just because I keep submitting these batch orders ahead of when I actually need it because I’m lying to suppliers and disrespecting my competitors,” Jason at least wants you to blame it on the right person.

Even if we can’t get out of it, stop blaming it on just-in-time. Blame it on yourself because you are batching and you’re overproducing and you’re causing the problem. You’re being dishonest and you are essentially lying to people and you’re cutting in line.

Every time you submit that batch order, every time, and you might need to, every time you might need to, Jason’s just saying, he’s not saying don’t do it. If everyone else is playing dirty, you might have to play dirty too. But Jason wants you to sit there and giggle to yourself: “I am a part of the problem. I just submitted a batch order before when I needed it. And I’m encouraging and trying to leverage an economy of scale that doesn’t exist and overproducing and causing waste. And I’m slowing everybody down and cutting in line and disrespecting my competitors. I just did that.”

Giggle to yourself for a minute and then just walk away knowing that you’re the problem and say “I don’t care.” Everything’s fair in love and war, right? Just modify the sentence to say everything’s fair in love and war and construction.

That’s what Jason wants you to do. But under no circumstances, under no circumstances should you blame just-in-time. Just-in-time wasn’t the problem. If everybody had started to share the increased buffer durations with each other but still focus on just-in-time, we would be better off right now than we are.

Jason wants everybody to share this podcast. He wants this podcast to go famous. He wants people to be pissed off at him or he wants people that know what they’re doing to be happy with him and share the message that we have got to stop demonizing just-in-time.

Because we’ve got overproduction and batching over in the corner of this room giggling being like “I just blamed just-in-time. I just pushed my sister down the stairs and blamed it on the dog.” That’s what’s going on right now.

Stop blaming just-in-time. Get educated on what it actually is. When you blame just-in-time you’re blaming flow, you’re blaming Takt, and you’re blaming pull systems, which will actually make you go faster. You’re letting overproduction and you’re letting batching off the hook, which we can’t do if we ever want to get better.

Go do your dishonest ordering of materials, but at least when you do so blame yourself. If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow.

FAQ

Q: What does just-in-time actually mean in construction?

Just-in-time means what’s the required on job date according to your Takt time, the buffer that should be ahead of it (the amount of materials stored ahead of or on the job within a certain time range so workers aren’t waiting but you’re not tripping over excess), management and checking in on the supply chain ahead of that buffer with certain points of release, and utilizing supermarkets (stage locations outside of work where you pull from inventory buffers at the right time and quantities). It’s NOT ordering something to arrive on the job site just right when you need it.

Q: Why are supply chains actually broken right now?

Root cause: pandemic, disease, and social systems encouraging people to stay home. We interrupted the flow of materials and supply throughout the world. People are quitting in droves, still on unemployment, still not working intentionally even though they could. Then we made it worse by overproducing and batching. Every contractor ordering pipe, curtain wall, roofing, insulation, fasteners all right now without considering when they need it. People getting in front of you in line who don’t need stuff for two years but putting in batch orders, slowing down production of facilities and supply chains.

Q: What happens when you batch order and overproduce?

When you overproduce, you create waste of excess inventories, motion, transportation, defects, overprocessing, and waiting. When you overproduce things you have a lot of the other wastes which slows down production, which then slows down manufacturers’ ability to produce stuff. You’re cutting in line ahead of people who actually need it sooner. You’re slowing down the entire production system throughout the world because you’re freaking out and reacting. You’re being dishonest, lying to suppliers, disrespecting competitors.

Q: How would we actually fix supply chains?

Everyone in the world would get their project on a rhythm with a good schedule. Throw CPM out the door. Create a Takt plan with Takt time. All create procurement logs with the right material inventory buffers. Submit honest and true orders according to what was actual possible for the production system. Everybody would be in the right spot in line working at the same rhythm at the right distance apart. Vendors would level production and put orders in the right sequence based on actual need. They could triage and work in flow.

Q: What should I do if I have to batch order to survive?

You might have to play dirty if everyone else is playing dirty. That’s what you need to do to take care of your owner. But at least blame it on the right person. Stop blaming just-in-time. Blame yourself. Sit there and giggle: “I am a part of the problem. I just submitted a batch order. I’m leveraging an economy of scale that doesn’t exist and overproducing and causing waste and slowing everybody down and cutting in line and disrespecting my competitors.” Walk away knowing you’re the problem and say “I don’t care. Everything’s fair in love and war and construction.”

On we go.

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Healthy Sexual Relationships in Marriage, Feat, Katie Schroeder

Posted on May 9, 2026May 9, 2026 by Danny Jiménez⁩

Read 35 min

Building Families Through Intimacy: Why Construction Leaders Need to Talk About This

Elevate Construction exists to bless families. We protect workers and we’re bringing respect back to workers in construction, supporting and teaching leaders and for the leadership on project sites, for the ultimate purpose of creating stability and respectful environments that protect families.

Essentially, Elevate Construction’s divine purpose is to build families. So why would we talk about things like marriage and intimacy and pornography? Because it builds families. Jason was at a bookstore and he felt inspired from heaven to pick up this book about intimacy and marriage. They’re going to discuss some of these things and really key in on how we can be better at intimacy in marriage, because this really builds families.

Whether you’re religious or not religious or whatever, there are a lot of people that have false concepts, stigmas, aversions, embarrassments when talking about sex and sexual intimacy. People can either go way off the deep end or be overindulgent when they’re younger or completely avoid it their entire childhood.

Parents say no, no, no, no. Then all of a sudden somebody gets married and it’s like yes. And they’re like “Okay, I need a minute. I’m not mentally ready for this.” There’s just a lot of lack of education for people in this realm to prepare them for marriage or relationships. That’s why we’re going to talk about this because sexual frustrations plague many marriages. It’s a problem for at least 50% or more of couples and it’s the leading cause of divorce.

Why You Might Think Everything’s Fine When It’s Not

Katie says the book is actually really interesting because you might think “Well, it’s fine. We have sex all the time, so everything’s fine.” But it’s probably not as fine as you think it is. There’s probably a lot of issues underlying, hidden, or there could be. A lot of people end up in these sexless marriages. Katie thinks sometimes we do get a sex education in school. So nobody’s confused about the mechanics of sex. But the mechanics of intimacy are quite a bit different.

It’s kind of like in construction, everybody talks about increasing production, increasing production. What does that mean? Nobody knows what that means. When we talk about increasing happiness in marriage and improving intimacy, at least Jason will speak for the guys, they have no idea what that means for a woman. Everybody knows the mechanics of sex. Everybody knows about the details and how it all works. But it’s very infrequent that somebody knows exactly the differences between men and women when it comes to these things.

We need to fix this. The other thing is we probably need to get really good paradigms when we’re teaching our children about it. For instance, if you’re super religious and you’re like “No, no, no, no, no,” probably a better message is “Not yet, not yet, not yet, not yet. Go” when you’re married. When it’s “No, no, no, no, no,” there’s a story in the book that was quite sad where a couple just got married, they come back from the reception. His grandfather was like “Where’s your bride? What’s going on?” He was like “Well, we drove separately so nobody would think that something was going on.” He was like “You’re married. It doesn’t matter.”

If we’ve told people that sex is wrong, sex is wrong, sex is wrong, and then all of a sudden on somebody’s wedding night we’re like “Go, feel comfortable with this,” probably not going to happen. The other thing is, if we’re overindulgent or indulgent, or we’re having sex before marriage, is this an indulgent, selfish, fun thing or practicing for a future marriage? Or is it just the mechanics without the connection? Those are the two things we’re working on in the sense that we need couples to be holier and healthier. And we need to teach our children so that they have better marriages.

The Biggest Difference: When Foreplay Actually Starts

What are some of the differences between men and women when it comes to intimacy? Katie says the biggest difference is that for a woman, and it says this in the book, and it’s probably pretty accurate, foreplay starts basically after you just had sex. So all of the events now leading up to the next time you’re going to have sex count as foreplay.

It’s the husband’s or male partner’s behavior. It’s how he treats her, how he connects with her, how he listens to her, little acts of kindness, whatever her love languages. It’s all of these things that build to put her in a space that causes her to want to be intimate with him. For him, foreplay starts right before you’re fixing to get busy. And then after you’ve had sex, then a male is more prone to connect or be softer in his approach or listen or be emotionally available.

The cycle is completely off. They’re completely opposite. Women want to connect to have sex. Men have sex, then they want to connect. So you have to find a way to bridge that gap. That’s probably the biggest thing: understanding that it just starts way, way before for a woman, how she feels about you to get to a spot where she feels comfortable being vulnerable or being intimate.

If It Was Good Once, It Can Be Good Again

The honeymoon period. We’ve all had times in our marriages where this has worked. We’ve all had times in our marriages where we have really focused on the other person and it’s been a beautiful thing. Then maybe we get a little bit unfocused and things head in a bad direction. Katie’s point was: if it was good once, it can be good again. If one person has done it on the earth, you can do it. We’ve set an example. So there’s hope to come back to that.

Jason would say from a vulnerable standpoint, and this is not criticism for Katie, but probably the topic of intimacy has been Katie’s personal nightmare for 18 years. That’s accurate. Same for Jason because his cycle is like every two days and her cycle is like once every two weeks or every two weeks. It’s off. For Jason, because he’s a dirtbag, it’s caused contention. He’s been withdrawn, pouty, a number of things. Katie’s just had to kind of partner up with him and be super considerate. And sometimes that causes an aversion.

Why is it that somebody who is on a different, maybe slower cycle can develop an aversion? By the way, it’s a myth that it’s always the girl who wants it less. Sometimes it’s in a different direction. But why, Katie, can someone develop an aversion? “I think it just starts with that feeling like you’re obligated to have sex with somebody because you’re married to them and you don’t want them to go somewhere else. So you have all these reasons why you should have sex with them or you feel like you should have sex with them. And that you don’t want to and you resent that you have to and then that resentment can build and cause an aversion to where it’s physically repulsive to have sex with someone who you love.”

If you’re not in the mood, then it’s a bad mental state mixed with a physical action. Tony Robbins says if you want to change anything, think a happy thought and then clap or jump or do some kind of movement and it anchors it into your body. You associate, you program neurologically your mind by mixing emotions and actions. If you always have a negative emotion with the action of sex, then you’re going to neurologically program yourself into an aversion. The point is you can get back to that honeymoon phase.

The Honeymoon Phase: Working Through the Grief

Katie wants to talk about the honeymoon phase because that was really beneficial to her to understand. Biologically speaking, our minds kind of trick us into this very chemical love. That’s when you just want to do anything for your spouse or the person you’re dating. You kind of have blinders on. You don’t really see the whole picture.

Then after you’re married, it could be a couple of years where you start to be like “Who the hell am I married to? Who is this guy or girl or whatever?” You’re no longer being driven by that kind of chemical blindedness that you were before.

What can happen is like a grief process. You have to come to terms with the fact that you’re almost mourning this marriage that you thought you would have or this person that you thought you married because they’re not the same and you feel tricked or you feel trapped. You have to work through almost like the stages of grief for that honeymoon, for that marriage, what you thought your marriage was going to be like.

Katie remembers feeling like “Who is this guy? He was not like this when we dated or he was super nice because Jason has a hard time sometimes being super nice.” She felt like “This is not the person that I married” and she’s sure he felt the same way.

She wishes she’d learned a long time ago that that’s a process you can kind of work through and then come out on the other side more committed to the work that it takes now to build a marriage that is truly based on not just a chemical attraction or a chemical high, but that you are now more devoted to building this marriage.

A key component of that is building the intimacy. Sexual intimacy has to do with obviously the physical, but it’s also spiritually connected. So a spiritual intimacy and an emotional intimacy. And then you couple that with sexual intimacy. You have to have all three.

Katie would say Jason was not emotionally intimate ever. You’re emotionally intimate. Not really. Like you’re not emotionally there. So the resentment is really the thing. You don’t want to come into any kind of sexual situation where you have resentment. That’s super unhealthy.

You want to do any work that needs to be done so that you’re preventing that “she’s just doing her duty or he’s just doing his duty” situation. You don’t want that in a marriage. That’s the opposite of what you want. That’s the sort of thing that leads to parallel marriage, which is just that roommate situation where you’re doing all the logistical things, you’re checking all of the boxes except for the important stuff: the three intimacies which are crucial to happiness in marriage.

Love Languages: Serving, Not Auditing

When we read books like The Five Love Languages, that’s for you to serve your partner, not to audit your partner and expect something back. Katie always says it’s not her obligation to take care of her spouse’s needs, but if you read a book like The Five Love Languages, that’s so that if you choose to and you have the desire, and you should if you’re married, you have the opportunity to go find out what your spouse’s love languages are and take care of those needs. But never to audit and require it and make somebody feel obligated. That’s when aversions start to happen.

Katie feels like the love languages thing can be weaponized quite easily. You can weaponize that by saying “Well, my love language is physical touch. So if you loved me, you would touch me.” Or “Katie, your love language might be acts of service. So I can’t validate any of those acts of service you’re doing because that’s not my love language.”

For Katie, if Jason was thoughtful, he would have magically read her mind or left the keys hanging so she could take the girls to seminary in the truck. If he was trying to serve her, he would have just left the keys where he knew she would need them rather than seeing that he maybe tried to hug her and that was his way of showing affection.

Sometimes you can misinterpret too. A man maybe does have this physical thing and he wants to hug you when you’re having a hard day and you’re just like “Get off me. Why would I want to be hugged?” And he’s just trying to show you comfort.

It’s not good to say “I’m not going to accept any acts of love if they’re not in my love language.” You’re shutting yourself away from a lot of beautiful things in the world, not just from your spouse, but even your children or whatever. Use all of these tools in the name of connection, not “How can I get what I want?”

Skin Hunger and the Need for Touch

If there’s any disconnect in intimacy, if there’s any disconnect with any of the concepts they’ve talked about, we need to get help. We need to read good books. Reach out to Jason on LinkedIn or email at jasons@elevateconstructionisd.com or call 602-571-8987. He can hook you up with a couple of recommendations. Do the Google research, ask your spouse, get counseling, marriage counseling, because life really, you should have joy. It shouldn’t be a nightmare. It shouldn’t be super horrible. There are ways to figure this out. There’s hope. There’s light at the end of the tunnel.

One last thing. There’s something called skin starvation or skin hunger where human beings, whether they think they do or not, sometimes need touch. Jason was walking out of his shed the other day and he realized just for a minute that he just needs to touch Katie. If they just cuddled or held hands, there’s a lot of times where we solve the need to just touch somebody skin to skin with sex when it might be a handhold or a hug or a cuddle or being near somebody.

The other thing is with our children. Studies show that if our children don’t get hugged and hand-held by their parents in appropriate ways, then they might be suffering from skin starvation, be doing things that might be leading towards the more unnatural or unhealthy or be putting themselves into sexual situations where they otherwise wouldn’t just because their skin is hungry for touch, because that’s a normal human need.

Katie points out that during childhood, kids are picked up and cuddled and tickled and all of those things. Then we start to, maybe it’s American society, but we start to back off of that touch as they go through puberty. It’s like “Oh, your body’s different now. So I’ll give you respect or autonomy.” Then pretty soon nobody’s touching them and they just crave that.

The book said that French or Puerto Ricans at a cafe will touch each other on the arm or whatever. They have contact with each other like 120 times an hour, whereas Americans it’s something like 20 times an hour. We’re just not a touching society anymore.

We can do better. If Jason could encourage anything, it’s that he wishes he would have had this information 18 years ago because literally without any irreverence, it’s not Katie’s fault, the topic of intimacy has been one of the hardest things of anything he’s ever had to deal with. If there was anything that was going to tear apart his marriage, it would be this. This is definitely one of the tops for a lot of people and a lot of couples in addition to finances.

Katie thinks it’s unnecessary to live in a sexless marriage unless there was a medical reason. A guy might be on a two day cycle. A gal might be on a two week cycle or one month cycle. Usually the rule of thumb is about once every week is at least considered healthy, maybe more, maybe a little bit less. But if you’re in a relationship where you’re frustrated and it’s about once every month, every three months, every six months, then maybe there’s an opportunity there.

From Jason’s perspective, we want to build families and raise children in a way that they’re healthy and they can have beautiful, wonderful marriages and live in a happy manner. That’s the purpose of this podcast. If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow.

FAQ

Q: What’s the biggest difference between men and women when it comes to intimacy?

For a woman, foreplay starts basically after you just had sex. All of the events leading up to the next time count as foreplay: how he treats her, connects with her, listens to her, little acts of kindness, whatever her love languages. It’s all of these things that build to put her in a space that causes her to want to be intimate. For him, foreplay starts right before you’re about to have sex. After sex, a male is more prone to connect or be emotionally available. The cycle is completely opposite. Women want to connect to have sex. Men have sex, then they want to connect.

Q: How does someone develop an aversion to intimacy in marriage?

It starts with feeling obligated to have sex because you’re married and you don’t want them to go somewhere else. You have all these reasons why you should have sex with them and you feel like you should but you don’t want to and you resent that you have to. That resentment builds and causes an aversion to where it’s physically repulsive to have sex with someone you love. If you’re not in the mood and it’s a bad mental state mixed with a physical action, you neurologically program yourself into an aversion by mixing negative emotions with the action of sex.

Q: What happens after the honeymoon phase ends?

Biologically, our minds trick us into chemical love where you want to do anything for your spouse and have blinders on. After you’re married, maybe a couple years, you start to be like “Who the hell am I married to?” You’re no longer being driven by that chemical blindedness. What can happen is a grief process. You’re almost mourning this marriage you thought you’d have or this person you thought you married because they’re not the same. You feel tricked or trapped. You have to work through stages of grief for that marriage you thought you’d have, then come out more committed to the work it takes to build a marriage based on devotion, not just chemical attraction.

Q: How should I use The Five Love Languages in my marriage?

Use it to serve your partner, not to audit your partner and expect something back. It’s not your obligation to take care of your spouse’s needs, but if you choose to and have the desire, find out their love languages and take care of those needs. Never audit and require it and make somebody feel obligated. That’s when aversions start. Don’t weaponize it by saying “My love language is physical touch so if you loved me you’d touch me” or “I can’t validate your acts of service because that’s not my love language.” Use all these tools in the name of connection, not “How can I get what I want?”

Q: What is skin hunger and why does it matter?

Skin starvation or skin hunger is when human beings need touch. Sometimes we solve the need to touch somebody skin to skin with sex when it might just be a handhold, hug, cuddle, or being near somebody. Studies show if children don’t get hugged and hand-held by parents in appropriate ways, they might suffer from skin starvation and put themselves into sexual situations they otherwise wouldn’t because their skin is hungry for touch. During childhood kids are cuddled and tickled, then we back off as they go through puberty, then nobody’s touching them and they crave it. We’re not a touching society anymore and we can do better.

On we go.

If you want to learn more we have:

Discover Jason’s Expertise:

On we go

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