Episode 206 - It Feels Good to be Known with Meagan Jones
President and COO Meagan McCoy Jones grew up at McCoy’s. She has worked as receptionist, advertising intern, and even shadowed in various departments throughout the company, becoming acquainted with many aspects of her family’s business along the way. Today, she is the fourth generation to lead this family business. Megan joins us on the Faith Driven Entrepreneur Podcast to share with us the bigger story of McCoy’s and what drives her to build better relationships with her employees and customers.
All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Host and guests may maintain positions in the companies and securities discussed. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific advice for any individual or organization.
Episode Transcript
Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it.
Rusty Rueff: Welcome back, everyone, to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Today we're going to go deep into a business and then we're also going to learn a lot about its president and CEO. But first of all, the business McCoy's building supply, McCoy's building supply cuts against the grain in its industry. We couldn't help ourselves on that one. This full service lumber yard operation in five states works really hard to make the lives of those who build easier and more fulfilling by cultivating meaningful, long term relationships and loving customers as neighbors. It does this not just through excellent service, but by training employees to be and to see others as fully human and relational. President and CEO Meagan McCoy Jones. She grew up in McCoy's and has worked as a receptionist and advertising intern and has even shadowed in various departments throughout the company, becoming acquainted with many aspects of her family's business along the way. While in graduate school, Meagan began working part time and realized what was always interesting to her as a kid was indeed her true passion, the business and the people of McCoy's. Today, she is the fourth generation to lead this family business. Meagan joins us on the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast to share with us the bigger story of McCoy's and what drives her to build better relationships with her employees and her customers. Let's listen in.
Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. I'm here with Rusty. Where is Perdue hat? I don't know if this can make video or not, but where is Perdue? Morning, Rusty.
Rusty Rueff: Hey. As we're recording this, my boilermakers. They're on their upward trajectory. I'm not making any plans around the first weekend of April. Just in case. Just in case we could go to that Final Four.
Henry Kaestner: Well, our executive producer and executive director of Faith Driven is Justin Forman. He was there last year celebrating the Baylor Bears. But Alabama's got a team, too. But we're not going to talk too much about college sports because there are other things. I cut you off. I gave you gave Rusty a look at Purdue, and then I cut off Alabama. And we're not going to talk about my Tar Heels, but we are going to talk about the fact that a lot of really neat things are going to Missouri. We're celebrating now it's 500, 5000 downloads to the podcast, which is pretty cool.
Rusty Rueff: That is a really cool. And it's all over the world.
Henry Kaestner: It is. It is all over the world and it's all over the world because you, the listener, have gone ahead and said, even though these guys have no marketing budget, we're going to be your marketing budget. We're going to go ahead and we share this with other people. And so that's been an incredible encouragement when you hear that people are taking action on something like this and sharing it with others. People are coming back to us with good feedback and ideas for guests. All those things are awesome. And then we just heard something new, William, the other day about how somebody was using the podcast.
William Norvell: Yeah, I actually heard two things, funny enough, one personal and one involving other people. But yeah, I was having dinner with somebody last night and they said, Hey, I just had coffee with somebody. And they said that they heard one of your podcasts and got so excited about working for a faith driven leader that they called, emailed the podcast guest and mentioned the podcast. Right, and said, Hey, have a listen to you on here. Is there anyone we could chat? They end up chatting. They never get along, end up taking a job there. And he's got a new career that he is just so excited about working at this company, which is just an unintended consequence that only God could be weaving in this crazy world, right? That we don't even know what's going on. I would have never even guessed sunlight that could happen.
Henry Kaestner: Yes, that's super encouraging. You said you had a second story, too.
William Norvell: I do a similar crazy one. So we've mentioned a little bit if you listen to podcasting, I've started a new company with some few friends and we're big on no code development. And so we were looking for a faith driven, no code development job, which is a pretty small window these days. No code is still up and coming, but I texted a bunch of people in faith tech and in the FDE community actually on the Slack channel and said, Hey, does anyone know a faith driven no code developer? So we found this great shop, Adelaide Australia, that's led by these two winsome believers that had some amazing stories about how they built everything. And I started talking and introducing myself and she kind of stopped me, goes, Wait, you don't have a podcast, do you? I said, Kind of. She's like.
Henry Kaestner: Kind of?
William Norvell: Yeah. I was like, Yeah, I do. I didn't want to, like, sound like I was a big deal because I'm not, you know, and she's like, I totally listen to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast.
Henry Kaestner: From Australia,
William Norvell: From Australia From Sydney. So we totally connected on that and then built an amazing relationship. We hired them and they're going to be building most of our web application.
Henry Kaestner: That's super cool. Now, you mentioned something in there about a Slack channel. What did you mean by that?
William Norvell: Oh, yeah. So as Henry mentioned, I think a couple of times we have an eight week series that people have gone through. I think we've had close to 3000 people go through this.
Henry Kaestner: about 1550 going through. Just a January cohort has grown.
William Norvell: Right now.
Henry Kaestner: Like 40% each cohort over the other, because again, it's people like you listening to the podcast are going through that cohort and saying, you know, I could facilitate that. I could date to my church.
William Norvell: And so we've used Slack. So if you get in a group, you're a facilitator, we'll set up a Slack channel for your specific group, and then there's a general channel for everyone you have ever gone through a group before. And so, you know, thousands of faith driven entrepreneurs. And so I simply just posted a message today looking for a no go developer. There's anybody, no one that happens to be faith driven. And I got a couple of great leads from it, and it turned out to be the person that we hired to build our entire technology stack. And so it is just I mean, I can't be more thankful for and then there's another range called Faith Tech that has one as well that's a little different. And I posted there too and got some great leads there too. So both of them just some great opportunities to connect with Faith driven entrepreneurs around the world that are just looking to help people. And that's a big deal for my company. Like this is not a small thing, this is a big deal. We have someone we can trust that understands our heart behind our project that is also proven to be capable of their job. And gosh, that's hard to find. So I'm just so grateful for it.
Rusty Rueff: You know, it reminds me of speaking the other day. Somebody asked me what the definition of community was and I said, Well, you really don't have community until people start to help each other. You know, the idea of just, you know, we're all together doing stuff, but it's when we start to help each other. So that's really encouraging, William, because that says that, you know, this Faith Driven Entrepreneur community now helping each other and really developing.
Henry Kaestner: This is obviously a brilliant segway and I don't think a planned segway, although you never know with Rusty, but it's a brilliant segway into Meagan. I mean, because she's all about community, she's all about relationship building. I think that made you may find that you may have people that listen to this podcast and inquire to you and you might find some job applications from it. But we are really interested in you sharing about this incredible company has been around for a long time and the lessons you've learned. Thank you very much for joining us.
Meagan McCoy: Yeah, thanks for having me. It's really a treat to be with you all.
Henry Kaestner: So we're going to get into the community building. We're going to get into relationship building with your customers and your partners, vendors, employees and all of those. But what we like to do with every one of our guests, of course, is get a flyover. Like, who are you and what's your background? How'd you come to faith? Yeah. Help us to understand who Meagan is, please.
Meagan McCoy: Sure. Let me do that. Maybe specifically in the context of our families business. And that's, I think, what we're talking about mostly today. I was for sure a daddy's girl followed my dad from work. In fact, I begged him to go to work every teacher in-service day or summer day from about the time I was ten on. And so I followed him to work. But in his wisdom, he was an executive, so it didn't make a lot of sense to actually work with him. So he always situated me with a mentor, a team. We didn't call it that then, so I worked for other people in the company. I didn't obviously work for him, but that meant from a very, very early time. I grew up really from ten on nearly every summer and every free day working alongside people. So I fell in love with them. They were incredibly accepting to me. They were part of something bigger. We joked a lot, laughed a lot, and I learned a ton. So that's kind of the business I grew up in. The older I got, I got to do some work in our store is not just in our office. We're a retail chain of kind of a traditional lumber yard. If you've grown up with that in your community. And then as we've grown, that business gotten more complicated. But my parents came to faith about the time I was in middle school, maybe early middle school, and that was really interesting. They had a kind of crisis in their marriage, which they talk openly about. About the same time, they also were finding themselves in kind of learning who God was and God's grace for them. But that was kind of a funny thing. They started talking differently and using different lingo, and that was kind of an unusual thing for a middle school person. I think my faith journey, really, like everybody is, is punctuated with some really high highs and low lows. And our business at the same time was growing. Then when Home Depot and Lowe's and kind of big box retailers became very popular, our business model was not a successful. That happened about the time I was in high school, so the inevitability of the business continuing wasn't there.
And just quickly. Tell us what that business is.
Meagan McCoy: Yeah. So McCoy's building supply is a retail lumber yard chain. We operate 90 stores. Most of those are in Texas, but not exclusively. If you have a local lumber yard in your world you're familiar with kind of you drive in to the back and you get loaded up with your materials and then drive out. About a third of our business is to consumers and about two thirds is to businesses of various kinds. This could be regional and large homebuilders all the way to somebody adding a deck or a kitchen remodel, that kind of thing in their house. So those are our customers.
Rusty Rueff: And you've been around almost 100 years.
Meagan McCoy: Yeah, 95 years. How about that? Pretty cool, huh? My great grandfather was a roofer. That's how he got into business. He actually my great grandfather was first a day laborer in Houston, learned how to roof and then eventually decided he wanted to do that on its own. And so he got our family into business in 1927 in Galveston, which is, of course, on the Gulf Coast. And then my grandfather really expanded that business in kind of the do it yourself boom post World War Two.
Rusty Rueff: And you already got plans for the big 100 year celebration.
Meagan McCoy: No plans. I mean, I'll be thrilled to do it, actually. Kind of the big news around here, my dad, he is retiring in May this year after 50 years of service to our company, just extraordinary. And so that's kind of the big transition. Next is our team's been working really intentionally the last I mean almost ten years but very intentionally the last five to make that transition from one executive team to another. And yeah, we're all feel very excited for him and also. Appropriately thoughtful about what that looks like in its next season.
Rusty Rueff: Well, most of our listeners, 95 years from now, it seems like a long time, but they can get there, right?
Meagan McCoy: So, yeah, I actually think looking not far ahead and training ourselves to look generationally like that, probably one of the things that we as believers in business I wish we were doing more of. You know, there's just a lot more energy on growth to sell or flip than there is on build to hold for a long time. And I wish we did that differently.
Rusty Rueff: Well, to talk more about that, because I know the motivation for McCoy's hasn't been just to, you know, grow in scale. It's happened. But I know it wasn't the motivation. So maybe take us through what shaped the success of McCoy's.
Meagan McCoy: Well, I mean, a lot of things, obviously, you know, just being successful for a long time takes really basic things like having a good balance sheet, not getting over, levered. Having the right people in right places. And boy, this is just a lesson in life. If we're paying attention to humanity, you have got to be relevant to who your customer is. And there's no place for ego in business if your job is to serve other people. And so that's true for us. It's true for anybody in business. Hopefully it's true for any of us in humanity is. I got to keep pushing my ego aside and asking myself, What do customers need? How can I help them succeed? How can I help their business to succeed? And I think that combination of very hard work, we've never been shy about that. A strong balance sheet, which is really something that gets underappreciated. A strict adherence to how do you stay relevant to a customer. And then probably the last kind of thing in this last 25 years of our kind of season of the company has been a real intentionality around who we are as people, and holding consistent who we are as people is also the same thing as who we are as leaders. Those are not two different identities. And then how do you grow? Well, the only way you grow is starting with some kind of introspection. Why am I doing what I'm doing? Am I happy with that? If I'm not, then how do I undo that? And that takes some real deep work in the context of the people you're working with.
Rusty Rueff: Yeah, well, I'd like you to talk a little bit about that, about you, and maybe also give us a sense of you had other choices. You didn't have to stay in a family business, but you chose to do that. So talk to us about that choice. And then maybe what is it that's fulfilling you on this daily basis that's making you feel like you're, you know, working to your full potential?
Meagan McCoy: I don't know that I'm ever working to my full potential, but thank you for that. I really don't know how else to explain it except that this is, I think, where God placed me and this is the work He invited me to do. And I say that to say, from the time I was a really little girl, I loved the people of McCoy's. And then, thankfully, I think I have an aptitude for business. And so isn't that lovely? When God places you somewhere where you have both passion and aptitude, then you are invited to do the hard work it takes to make the most of that for the sake of him and others. And I don't even know how to explain it. You know, my dad and I both I think he would say similarly, he didn't really think about going into the business as much as he just was in it. And he and I, I think, are a rare pair of people who really have not genuinely wrestled with what is it that I'm supposed to do with my life? So I'm very grateful for that. But I think that's a blessing or luck. Yeah. Tell me the second part of your question.
Rusty Rueff: I think it's a blessing. Well, what sort of fulfills you? You would talk about that motivation. You know, what fulfills you as the leader now on a daily basis.
Meagan McCoy: If you zoom way out, right? Every human being has to do this. You zoom way out and go, Why am I here? And what is it for? Particularly in the context of our faith. Well, I'm here to love God. I'm here to love other people. There are like a gazillion ways to do that. So zoomed way out. This is where God sent me to love him and love other people. Happens to be at a lumber yard chain. Kind of curious. I'm like a very small blond woman, so I'm not exactly who you're expecting to meet in a lumber yard. But in that way, you know, all of you, wherever you are, wherever any of your listeners are, you get the opportunity to love people. And I think we overcomplicate that. I don't think has to be that complicated.
Henry Kaestner: So when you talk about the different ways to work on community building, a relationship building and zooming out and seeing all the different ways to be able to impact the community and those you serve. Give us some examples of things that maybe are a little bit unique. So maybe something as simple as, you know, Chick-Fil-A, they say it's my pleasure. Presumably some level of that with your customer interaction, but what are some things that you think now? Maybe these are some things that we've been able to do at McCoy that might be an inspiration, encouragement for other people to take action on in Minnesota, Washington or wherever.
Meagan McCoy: So let me start with this. I think what are your disciplines as a person has a lot to do with how you're going to move through the world and how successful you're going to be at whatever are your goals. And so if my goals are loving people, then I can't just feel that I better have some disciplines around that. So I'll give you an example. I'm of course, every morning we're open six days a week, we're closed on Sundays. We always have been, actually. So six days a week. Either my dad or I leave a voicemail for the company every morning. We're talking about sales and performance and company anniversaries and little motivational thing, whatever. We also have a system where our team sends an email every day of company anniversaries and birthdays and the whole company. So you have just ready made an opportunity to celebrate other people for their birthday and anniversary. Now, that sounds really simple, but it takes discipline to go. I'm going to get on the voicemail every morning and leave this message and encourage other people and thank them for what they've contributed. And, you know, we are a complex organization. We have about 3000 employees, a little over a billion in sales. This isn't small, it isn't uncomplicated, and it takes a whole bunch of people working together. And so what I've learned about myself is, first of all, the discipline of lifting others up is a part of my everyday will not happen by accident. It will have to require some sort of system for that. But the other thing is like the mornings I don't leave a voicemail, I suppose what I want to say is I think the process of doing it is as much for me as anybody. You know, all the science around gratitude is really compelling for the more you are grateful, written, spoken, grateful for things, the more you have an orientation to compassion and gratitude and understanding and empathy. And so again, like, don't overcomplicate that. What are your systems for that? So that would be the first one. I was in three stores yesterday in the Rio Grande Valley, which is South Texas, on the border. And on the heels of that trip, I'll write an email kind of summary of my trip to the other members of my team who are responsible for operations. Well, the point of that is to make sure they hear the awesome stuff I saw on that trip. Right. So, hey, here are the great people I interacted with. Here's a customer I met and their feedback. There's an opportunity there for us to learn from each other about what did you see that isn't working quite right or the asphalt failing in the store. We want to make sure we don't lose that. Those are all ways of caring for people. They're very specific to my business, those specific topics. But the discipline of are you always looking for ways to lift other people up? And then what I'll say often is if you thought it, you need to take action on it. And in my experience, most people really want to do that, but they don't have a good system to execute it.
Henry Kaestner: Okay. I want to tell you about system. Maybe William will take us there, but I do want to come back to something that you mentioned. Birthdays and anniversaries sound so easy. It also sounds like it makes sense to celebrate, especially if you've got multiple installations. Not everybody can go to those places and be able to say, this is what's going on and this has guys work in the business or this is what's going on in these different places. They can feel like they're part of something bigger. There's something really powerful about that. But what is unique is the anniversary thing, so to say, birthdays, anniversaries. So the birthday thing is not novel. I think it's great you do it, but it's not novel. The anniversaries thing, though, I think is novel. And I think just by celebrating that you're celebrating the individual, but you're now valuing marriage.
Meagan McCoy: Oh, yeah. So I should clarify, we celebrate company anniversaries.
William Norvell: I know my.
Meagan McCoy: Wedding anniversary date.
William Norvell: But maybe you have a new idea.
Henry Kaestner: For me, but maybe. Yeah, and you know what? Maybe it's not enough just to have an idea. You have to take action if you thought it.
Meagan McCoy: Yeah, yeah, sure. Totally. We actually have some of that. So like on my personal calendar, I have the wedding anniversary of everybody on my team and I'm for sure celebrating that. In fact, I left one of my good friends his wedding anniversary with yesterday. I was traveling with a group yesterday, so we left him a video message kind of on our flight out to South Texas yesterday. Yeah. So I love celebrating marriage. We spend a lot of energy talking about that. It's funny when God says, love your neighbor. This is not a novel concept, but your neighbor starts with whomever you live with. Right? So we're all working on that, too. But yeah, company anniversary, which is also a very big deal around here.
Rusty Rueff: Meagan You know, as a woman leader in the building supply industry, you've got to be unique, right? I mean, how many people have companies that this size in that industry that are led by a woman, you know, have you faced.
Meagan McCoy: And I have to correct you, actually, one of the other largest lumber dealers in the country is also run by a woman. So it's.
William Norvell: All that's.
Meagan McCoy: All I know. It seems like a surprise, but yeah, we sure that's awesome.
Rusty Rueff: So are there unique challenges that you run into? And also, you know, what can you share as a woman leader to our women listeners who are entrepreneurs that are looking to, you know, grow their own careers and maybe, you know, facing some challenges.
Meagan McCoy: In the lumber yard? I am at a disadvantage as a leader because culturally, the way you earned respect at McCoy's is you outworked everybody. And I weigh 100 pounds and I cannot physically outwork most of our crew. Right. So in that sense, as an early leader, inside the context of a store, I did have to innovate the ways I showed respect and understanding and compassion for our team that did not include trying to outwork them physically, because that just was a limitation. I think professionally, unfortunately, women are still they're underestimated. It's so weird. I can't believe we still do it. But I would always rather be underestimated than overestimated. So maybe you guys get the sucker into that stick because people expect you to have your act together. People are still surprised when I do. So in that way I think it's great. One of my strategies for that, which I would tell young people in business, male or female, regardless of your context, the younger you are, the less people expect from you. So the more being very, very prepared is an extraordinary advantage. So my anecdote to like a sales call with a builder who maybe wasn't expecting me is to be incredibly prepared and to have done all of the research on his company. What are we specifically asking for? What questions might he have that I can anticipate about products or services? I'm getting on a theme here, which is there's just not room for any kind of laziness or complacency in business. The market does not reward that, and when it does, it shouldn't and it won't for long. And so I think that's probably one of my big takeaways. If we were talking about faith and work or work in general would be, you know, if you aren't loving what you're doing, it will surely show and somebody else is and that will surely show. And don't be complacent. You know.
William Norvell: I think an entering does me well, I'm the systems guy. So I'm going to come back. I'm going to come back.
Meagan McCoy: Yeah.
William Norvell: I'm curious how you discern. So, you know, you said it humbly and moved past it kind of quickly. 3000 employees and a billion sales. This is a large organization with a 100 year history. I'm curious how you go about discerning what matters to relationship building at your company and where that's coming from. Is it so easy for me as a person who wants to build things? I'll listen to something someone else did and just go copy it, right? And sometimes that works and a lot of times it doesn't. Right. You realize like, well, that's their person, that's their unique circumstance, that's their unique, you know, company. And so I'm curious more on why does that matter to your organization and how did you discern that that was something worth doing every morning, whereas someone goes, Oh, okay, there's a tip. I'm going to take a tip, right? And I feel like tips are great sometimes, but oftentimes it's more discerning what works for your company and your people and what matters to those unique relationships. So I'm curious about that, how you think through this.
Meagan McCoy: Yeah. First, I don't get the credit for the morning voicemail idea. That was my dad's. He's the most disciplined, generous person I know. So we are all trying to learn from him. On the human relationship side. I actually I listened to your podcast. You did with Henry Cloud this wonderful. And he drew out something really important, which is that these closest relationships are a place of real success or failure for entrepreneurs. And I could not agree with that more. And so here's what that means in the context of McCoy's and what I think it means in the context of a lot of people's businesses. My senior team so our senior executives, we meet every Monday morning, it's virtually the first thing we do of the week. We meet one on one again, usually every week. And they have heard me say this dozens of times. If there is any unresolved conflict in our team of six, the only work of the day is to resolve that conflict because it is contagious in our organization and we owe all of our organization and ultimately our customers a lot of unity among our team. I have done what I think I've read in business books, which is I've hired smarter people than me. Everybody on that team is smarter than I am, thank goodness. But we are also deeply committed to being in relationships with each other, and not that we never have conflict, but resolving it quickly. Boy, if you don't do that early. And by extension, what I mean by that is if you don't have respect for somebody on your team, I don't know how you will ever reflect God's love in the workplace with that kind of tension. I don't know how people do it, and I'll take it one step further. I think the process is the product in business. So in relationship development or in business, how you got there is just as important as what you did. And it's easy to like shake your head and agree with that. How you got there is important is what you did. But for example, if you are selling a product or service that you don't actually believe is adding value to the world, you will always be in conflict with that feeling. If somebody in your team doesn't believe in not like your mission and purpose statements and the really pretty stuff that you put up on the wall, that's important. But if you are making choices as a business that are not above reproach, I don't know how you'll ever reflect God's love and work in the world. And that doesn't mean we're perfect. I mean, you know, we are failing to at different times. But on these fundamental moral issues, we hold ourselves to a very high standard, and we are unapologetic about that. It means that folks disqualify themselves from their job at McCoy's, even as high performers. But if you violated the Sacred Five rules, nothing will save you nothing. And so what it means is even that just sort of the comments about how do you create a great place for women in the workplace and encourage women leaders? The corollary to that is how do you men make sure that it's a safe place for women in the workplace? And that's on you, not on us. And it's on us together. But we better be unapologetic about those kinds of behaviors in the workplace, especially if we're doing it in the context of faith.
Can you tell the sacred five. Real quick.
Meagan McCoy: Yeah. So at McCoy's, you will 100% of the time lose your job if you lie, cheat, steal, don't keep your hands to yourself. So those are everything under the category of sexual harassment. And don't do drugs or abuse alcohol every single time. Lie, cheat, steal. Hands yourself. Don't do drugs. Abuse, alcohol. Every member of management gets the same talk from dad. And then ultimately I'm responsible for that talk been happening since my grandfather led the company. Every member of management gets the same sit down Dad's office. Here are the rules here. The standards and the expectations. We've lost more leaders to those things than I wish we had. But also you as an entrepreneur from the very first day, not from when you get to be successful, but from the very first day, have to decide, are you really willing to hold everybody to your standard? And I am disappointed and sad that we often in business fail to be doing that, especially, I think, as Christians.
Henry Kaestner: I want to say it's just slightly different. That's awesome. I think that that should be everybody's sacred five, and I think it's really helpful to have a framework. And I love the fact there's been part of the culture since your grandfather. You said in the past that you've been motivated to be the very best at what you to do to help shave off some of the risk for your customers. Can you talk about that a bit? That's kind of a novel concept. Was that mean?
Meagan McCoy: Well, most of our builder customers, business customers are entrepreneurs. You know, most of our business customers are not. Think about that. It's kind of wild. Most home builders are entrepreneurs. Most tradespeople are entrepreneurs. And so two thirds of our business is tied to that kind of customer, and they have tremendous risk in running their own business. They have all the hassles of anybody who's running their own business, like, how do you hire? How do you run payroll? How do you get the materials that you need? How do you handle working capital? How do you get a loan? How do you get investors and all that? What they shouldn't have to worry about, if we're at our best, is when I called McCoy's and I ask for product, it will arrive on time in good shape at the price that I agreed to. Now, that seems simple, but our business is very complicated. Lots of yours are. And when we're at our best, we can help reduce risk for a builder. Let me get even more creative than that. We have builders with whom we can extend construction financing because we've developed that program out internally. We, a number of years ago, made more robust our own in-house distribution of big and bulky products on our own fleet and equipment. Now, if you're a builder, what you need is security in the supply chain, especially now. Not that we're perfect at that. It's a very complicated time to be doing this. But our job is to try to help our customers remove as much risk in the places that we can so that we can help them succeed as much as they possibly can. It's very practical, though, you know, relational risk, too. Like I said, I do something I should be able to do it. But I think the expression of loving people is often very, very practical.
William Norvell: So speaking of practical, I want to dive into the supply chain issues. So this has been an unprecedented time. I'm curious, obviously practically just highly curious in how that has impacted your business and two. Were there opportunities to when some leave love people in ways that maybe other people didn't or other people didn't think of? You know, that maybe your faith in your long history there kind of said, you know, hey, this is something we're going to take a risk on for our customers. That just feels like something we're supposed to do, whether it works or not. I feel like that's so often sometimes, you know, God puts us things. And I found that sometimes you find peace on the other side of obedience and not on this side of obedience. It feels like this might have been a place you had to stare that in the face.
Meagan McCoy: Yeah, in some super practical ways. I'll give you one example. Do you know what a pocket door is? The door that. Slides into the wall.
William Norvell: Okay. I've seen Chip and Joanna do shows. Okay. Yeah, I know exactly.
Meagan McCoy: You know what a pocket door is well, a pocket door frame is a unique thing because it, of course lives inside that wall and then holds the slab that runs inside of that cathy. And we're having a hard time sourcing pocket door frames. And so we decided, you know what, I think we could build them. We have a door manufacturing facility. We hang doors and jams, essentially. And you know what? I think we can help our customers succeed and help us succeed by ensuring a supply chain of pocket doors, by building them ourselves. Well, I don't think we would have done that if it weren't for the supply chain thing. On the flip side of that, we have done a better job negotiating on our customer's behalf with really large suppliers. Here's what I mean by that. If you're a very large national homebuilder, you are in conversation with suppliers, manufacturers all the time because they represent such a huge piece of the business that a lot of our customers, the majority, vast majority by count of our customers in both count and sales are much, much smaller than that. Well, how do they have a shot at competing against the national builder in the market if they can't get what they need to build a home? Right. So it's our job to represent that voice of 10,000 accounts to the product manufacturer and say, look, I realize we are not the big public name you're used to seeing in your office, but we represent 10,000 customers who are counting on us, and so we are counting on you. So in that sense, we take an advocacy role. I feel strongly about independent business. We've touched on this and I know many of you work in the space of venture capital and innovative capital, and I think all of that is awesome. And I would say I wish more people own their company themselves for longer and figured out a way to do that for the long haul because and for homebuilders in particular, there's a lot of them doing that. And so I want to make sure a reason for their success or failure has nothing to do with our lumber yard. Right. If we're at our best, their success or failure has to do with other variables, but we want to be part of what helps them succeed.
Henry Kaestner: That was a great use, by the way, of an and rather than a but. Right.
Meagan McCoy: Well, thanks. And so intentional that yeah.
Henry Kaestner: We may have a background in investing and that may be part of what we do during our day jobs. And yet I really hope that this podcast inspires more people to be able to do just that, to be able to help you. And what a beautiful thing to be able to have the business for 95 years that is able to have a continuity in culture and be able to preserve its ability to persist independent of external stakeholders and just, you know, just finding the optimal growth rate. And I think that a lot of this is maybe an unnecessary segway, but I think that a lot of listeners, this podcast that might be aiming to grow faster need to really wrestle with this concept of an optimal growth rate. What's the right type of growth for us to be able to grow organically where we don't have to pay for our customers, we get them from referrals, we delight them, we get upsells because they just send more and more of their business to us and it happens slowly in a non contrived way. Can you speak to a little bit about what an optimal growth rate looks like for a company it's been around as long as yours.
Meagan McCoy: Thank you for the question. Let me say something for an answer. It it's been my observation that how fast you grow is not a critical thinking question people ask themselves. It's a question slash answer that the market puts upon them. Does it make sense? It happens in two ways. How fast should I grow is not a question people wrestle with. The answer is always I should just grow very, very fast or exponential. The exponential growth curve is unrealistic for most businesses, and it's pretty capital destructive once it gets bought three times and then folded into something else and all those jobs consolidate. So that's a whole another podcast. But if we had a capital productive, capital destructive paradigm towards business, our businesses would look really different. The second thing is when you.
Henry Kaestner: Just sign yourself up for another podcast, capital productive, capital destructive. There's a paradigm we're spending some time on.
Meagan McCoy: Yeah, I think it is worth spending time on. The corollary to that argument is, most of the time the return to capital is much higher than the return to labor. And we as Christians should be wrestling deeply with that. And so that happens in the backside of the blow it out sold it out now destructive capital because those multiples didn't make sense. They weren't reasonable multiples. Then when the market goes to try to get out of that strategy, they learned they weren't reasonable because the cash was silly in the market, which it is now. But then what happens is the penalty for that is never the capital. I mean, hardly ever. Everyone else is still driving the car. They were driving in the house that they are in. But the labor that got you there never got rewarded on the front end, but they surely took it out of their chin. And that's I mean, should I categorize that as really kind of a social injustice? We should be caring about that.
Henry Kaestner: Yeah, that's a great topic.
Meagan McCoy: Well, I hope you pick it up. I think it's an important one.
Henry Kaestner: We did a little bit better than we did a little bit. We're coming to the end. Yeah, well, he's going to ask the fatal question at the end about what are you hearing from God in his word and maybe come back to this. But I think that you're really on to something there that we actually do need to spend some time and flesh out, which is what is the role of capital in an entrepreneurial career? What can it bring you? What does it not? And then how do you think about it, not just in terms of growth rate and how many customers we serve, but how do we think about really in terms of what got us there? And when you just painted that picture of what happens to labor, the people who have given their lives to it and are making it happen and they're just messed up. Risk reward paradigm. Because a lot of people look at and say, okay, well, gosh, if the company goes, you know, we go public and we make $100 million. Yes, everybody has stock options or something like that. They'll keep their jobs. But that's not every situation and there's a lot there. We need to come back to that as a team.
Meagan McCoy: Yeah, one of my business mentors and I was traveling with him yesterday. He uses the phrase, you know, if you're the shepherd, you got to smell like the sheep, like if you aren't. So this would maybe be a good question for your listeners. Whatever business you're in, how often are you close to your customer or the user or the experiencer?
Meagan McCoy: Yeah If you aren't close to them, then it's easy to not be troubled by this return to labor question. Right, and we're not doing this perfectly, but I want to keep doing it better. And it also means you'll start caring more about things like daycare in your community or affordable health care or total health care, which is a thing we talk about a lot, not just what the pharmaceutical industry wants you to do, but also what really, genuinely makes you healthier as a person, as a spouse, as a parent, those become your burdens. Yeah, you smell like the sheep. I'm working on that, but I'm fresh off getting a day with him and it's pretty special.
William Norvell: I've got an idea for the follow up podcast. We're going to either bring someone on or we're going to put Rusty or Henry in the straw man venture capital seed and have a really fun discussion on this.
Meagan McCoy: And you know, I have to be careful. I'm not sure this is podcast material, but just for the sake of the three of you, I can be overly judgmental of the equity space too, and I have to be careful of that, because that's not fair either. Most of these things we're wrestling with right now are not absolute truths or all good or all bad.
Henry Kaestner: So here's what you do. What you're doing is you're introducing a new framework through which to look at things and for people to then examine and say, okay, so this transaction is fair to labor, it is not fair to labor. And what you think is fair to labor, somebody else might think is unfair to labor and vice versa. But what you've done here without being judgmental, is introduced a framework that somebody might come in and say yes, but that only part of it. We have to think about another framework as well. But I love frameworks and you just brought one in and it's really important.
Rusty Rueff: Well, and you left us with I mean, for me, I'm going to walk away with when the first in take it on the chin. Something's not right.
Meagan McCoy: That can't be right, right? Yeah that can't be right or doing it wrong.
William Norvell: There's something there. And you know, I mean, these are always fun discussions because I forgot who did it. Henry, you may remember, you know, even little stuff like the venture capital economics, the two and 20. I mean, it's a construct that was created 50 years ago that no one's bothered to talk about or change, and it was created for a completely different construct. And it's just kind of kept going. It's not saying it's good or bad, but it's worth discussion, right? Yeah. And I think that's like a fun discussion. And people are going to fall on both sides of that discussion no matter how many times you discuss it. But it's a fun conversation and one that I would say the conversation should be had more whether who gets one over to which side is somewhat irrelevant, but that people are discussing it and considering it. Like you said, most people don't even consider how fast they grow. That's something other people put on top of them. Like those are just things to sit with, right? Yeah. So I'd really enjoy having that conversation and asking the questions and not having to respond is what I love most about that conversation.
Meagan McCoy: I see how it is. Yeah, maybe I'm running the next.
William Norvell: I'm the content guy. I'm just setting up good content, right? Right. But unfortunately, as Henry mentioned, we do have to come to a close and that is that that's the best teaser we've ever left for podcast too. I'm just gonna throw that out there. So we're getting better at our jobs to what we love to do is close to God's word, and we love to close with how that may be influencing you today wherever you find yourself. It could be something you read this morning. It could be something you've been meditating on your life that popped back in your mind this morning. But we just love to bridge our listeners and our guests through the Word of God and just invite you to share maybe where he has you today and what he's reminding you of.
Meagan McCoy: So I spend a lot of time reading Hebrews. I'm not exactly sure why I'm not a biblical scholar at all. You all have had those on your podcast, so please don't represent me as one. But I really love Hebrews because it's very practical and encouraging to me. So let me tell you kind of two passages from Hebrews that have meant a lot to me for a long time. The first, I believe that people are lacking in encouragement and security in the world. You know, we're all lacking in a lot of things that you just can't overdo encouragement, security. And so I have probably rewritten this passage a number of times out of Hebrews ten. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess for who you promised is faithful, and let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Man, we we are at our best as leaders. I think we are spurring one another on toward love and good deeds. And then the chaser to that which I've spent a lot of time working on. Personally, though, I'm not there yet. This is out of Hebrews 12. Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy. Because without holiness, no one will see the Lord and I can run a little hot tempered. It's a thing I work on as I grow as a leader and I generate insecurity in my team when I lose my cool. I don't want to do that. And I also, as passionately as I can feel about something, it doesn't glorify God or productively solve the problem when I just lose my cool. So whether that's you as a person or whatever is the concept. And so I'm working hard and learning this, especially for my dad. When I feel like you have this, when you feel that anxiousness or anger or big emotion kind of rising up in you. I'm working on not saying anything when that's rising up in me. I'm working very hard on stopping to try to understand myself in that moment. And then what am I missing? Because I don't think anything good usually comes from my acting out on that feeling.
Henry Kaestner: But that's a great word. It's a great word. The practicality of Hebrews. And then just what you just said there, if you lose your cool, then you've promoted insecurity in your team and that's compromising the mission. It's not loving on people. Nothing good happens. So that's a great word. Meagan, thank you for your time. Thank you for your leadership.
Meagan McCoy: You're welcome.
Henry Kaestner: Awesome being with you.
Meagan McCoy: Likewise. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Have a wonderful afternoon.