Patrick Cummings: Episode 948

Transcript

[0:00:35] BB: Today on Author Hour, I’m sitting down with author Patrick Cummings to discuss his new book, The Family Business Balancing Act. Here’s a brief description of the book: If you're an entrepreneur with a family, the pull between professional prestige and a happy home life can be overwhelming. It’s a balancing act, seemingly impossible to perfect, one forcing you to constantly re-evaluate priorities/what is truly important. How do I create a happy fulfilling life; what is real success? You can be a good family man and a profitable business man. You can live a life with no regrets, stress or self-doubt. But, you need to know how. The Family Business Balancing Act is a book where husband, father, entrepreneur, and business coach, Patrick Cummings provides an inspiring guide that will help entrepreneurs gain perspective, and take steps towards achieving harmony in their lives. He takes you though his own journey, showing how he got it wrong and the changes that he made to get it right. You’ll learn how to recognize imbalance, evaluate personal and professional goals, and establish simple habits that improve important connections and ensure quality time with those you love. Each day is an opportunity for healthy change. Here’s my conversation with Patrick Cummings. Welcome into Author Hour. I’m your host Benji Block. Today, I am thrilled to be joined by Patrick Cummings, who has just come out with a new book, titled, The Family Business Balancing Act: An Entrepreneur’s Guide to being a Family Man. Patrick, welcome to the show.

[0:02:14] Patrick Cummings: Thanks so much for having me.

[0:02:14] BB: Oaky, let’s start here, because I love this topic, the family business balancing act. Tell me about where this passion for this book came from, and the origin story, if you will.

[0:02:26] Patrick Cummings: Yeah. It dates all the way back to when I was a little boy. My dad was a basketball coach, athletic director and, if anybody knows Bobby Night, Bobby Night was my dad’s role model. But sports and my dad’s job was his entire life. My mom and dad divorced when I was about five, and then my brother moved away to be with my dad when I was nine. So, my interaction with my dad was very limited as a kid. Raised by a mom, a great mom, but he didn’t have really, a father figure in my life that much. And in the book, I talk about that. But, as I developed or built my own business, I realized that I was doing some of the same things my dad did: Spending too much time and work became the number one priority. That’s just not the way I wanted to live my life. I see people every day in my line of work, in the entrepreneurial business, which people just spend all of their energy every day working on their business, and they forget about their family or they let their family kind of lag. To me, I just feel like we have it wrong. I feel like the awards outweigh what it means to be a good husband and a good father or a good spouse. And, yeah, that just led me to write the book. I lost my dad two and a half years ago and that’s kind of when I started thinking about all this.

[0:03:57] BB: Interesting. For those that are new to you, as far as your entrepreneurial journey, give us an insight there as well, Patrick. What have you spent your time building that has led you to this sort of crossroads? Where you’re going: “Okay, I really care about my family” and then also, obviously, you’ve spent time building business as well.

[0:04:17] Patrick Cummings: Yeah. When I got out of college, and my wife graduated from medical school, I went to work for a large chemical manufacturing company. They’re based in Switzerland; headquarters in the US was in Greensborough. I felt like I was a corporate pawn. And, what I mean by that is, they would literally call me on a Sunday and say: “We’re changing your territory, we’re moving you on Tuesday and we’ll move your family later.” That’s the way it was. And you did whatever you had to do to make the numbers that the company gave you, and they would always raise my forecast. So I’d make my forecast and, the next year, they would make it almost unattainable, so that you couldn’t get your bonuses. I’ve been doing this for, oh boy, it was almost 10 years. And I realized one day, on my son’s 4th birthday, I realized that one entire year of his life I was looking through the windshield, traveling for the corporate job. I just didn’t want to do that anymore. I missed his first Christmas program at school because I was required to be at a certain meeting. I started to reflect on the fact that I was gone Monday through Friday every week. My kids were growing up and I wasn’t part of their life. It was really bothersome to me. This was back in late 1990s and my daughter had just been born and was healthy. I was talking to my broker, who was with Edward Jones at the time, and asked him what it was like to be in a broker in the business, and talked about building a business that you’re responsible for your time, you’re responsible for your income. I decided that it was time for me to make a career change, and that was in the end of 1999, early 2000, when the stock market had just been phenomenal. I started in the investment business. Building a business from scratch and knocking on doors, and didn’t have an office, and people jokingly referred to me as ‘the walking stock broker’ for a long time, because I was knocking on doors and opening investment accounts. That’s how I started the business. Then I changed from that firm to the firm I’m with now and I’ve built a business over the last 18 years, and I have a phenomenal team behind me, and a family, still.

[0:06:35] BB: It’s one thing to learn the balancing act between family and business. It’s another thing to go: “Okay, I want to share what I’ve learned in a book.” So, tell me a little bit of— you said, as your father passed, then that was like/that spring boarded the sense of going: “I want to share some of my story.” Who were you writing this for as you’re working on this project, Patrick? Is it you a few years ago or is it—who was in your mind as you were working on this?

[0:07:05] Patrick Cummings: Yeah, great question. One of the first people that comes to mind is my business partner, Kyle. Kyle is in his early 30s; he has two little boys; has another baby on the way; and I began mentoring him, seven, eight years ago. I saw the mistakes that I made, and I see the mistakes that a lot of other people make when they’re trying to build their own business. They’re not paying attention to family as much as they should be. Along that same lines, I was asked to be a coach and a mentor to a lot of the new reps with our firm. I consistently see these young folks coming in, starting a family, getting married, and their home life begins to unravel a little bit. There are people in our organization that talk about how many hours they work. They want to be the first to the office, last to leave, and people are given all these awards for production. But, the one thing that bothered me was, there’s no award for staying married or raising great kids. So, in my trainings, I would just started talking to all the young people, because I felt I could influence them. And then, my team. My team is very important to me, obviously, because I have this philosophy that came from strategic coach, consulting firm I work with, about building a self-managing company. Well, what does that mean? It means, when I’m gone doing what I need to be doing, they’re taking care of the business. Well, I wanted to relay that to them as well and, if they needed to take time to be with their family, to be at a soccer game or to be a mom that’s always there, a dad that’s there, I wanted them to live the same life I was trying to live. So, that was my audience really early on. And, as I’ve been working on the book and talking to some people about it, started thinking about people who were in management. Who are trying to run a business. Who—me, back in that corporate job—how was I supposed to maintain my family and be a dad, when the job was just requiring me to be gone all the time? So, you know, just started putting down ideas that: When you are there, you’re present. And, I think the up and coming entrepreneur with a family is very, very critical for reading the book.

[0:09:24] BB: That’s exactly right. I love this phrase that you use, living on default and I’ll read what that means. This is what you say. You say: “You keep doing things because that’s what you do, you don’t look for deeper reasons or motivations. Living on default can lead to problems when things are all going well. But, it raises particular problems if you’re struggling to find balance between your commitments to your family and to your company.” And, you’ve just highlighted how you’ve seen this a bit, over and over again. Talk about that problem of living on default, and how you’ve seen that so often play out.

[0:10:03] Patrick Cummings: Yeah. So, as an entrepreneur, no one’s giving you a paycheck. And default to me was, I jokingly say: “Just put the plow down and just keep going.” My mom was a school teacher, and she would say: “How come you don’t take vacation?” “Well, if you take vacation, you don’t get paid.” So, the default for me was, I just got to work, because I think I’m providing for my family. It was easier to do that than it was to say: “Okay, I only have so many energy units per day. I’m going to reserve some of those for my family when I get home.” The default is (I call it generational sin) we do what our fathers did even if you don’t want to do it. And that default is: “Well, I’ll just work harder. I’ll just work harder and I’m doing all of this for my family.” And that’s what often times people are saying is: “I want my family to have a better life.” That default almost cost me my marriage, and that would have been the same default as my parents.” So, learning that doing the same thing every day, but expecting a different result, is default. And we can’t live life by default. And, in the book, I talk about: If tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life, what do you want it to look like? And, you can’t default to the way you did a week ago. You have to, then, work towards: “What do I want it to be moving forward?” Because it’s easy, you know? We’re creatures of habit. Let’s just fall into that same habit. How many times have people gone to a conference, get these great ideas, they leave the conference, they go back to work, and because they’re at a conference they miss a few days, and now their email is full, and we just default right back into what we were doing before.

[0:11:56] BB: I find, we’re so often in that rut as well. Because—and you highlight this as well in the book—but, this idea of living from a ‘why’. We struggle to do that. What’s actually motivating us? In this situation of balancing family and work, work was going to win 99% of the time by default, because that’s where there’s numbers that we’re trying to drive, and that’s where we’ve set up. Not necessarily a ‘why’, but we know the ‘what’ of what we have to do. And, if you don’t have a ‘why’, the ‘what’ just keeps driving, right? Like, let’s just have all these things that are on our task list or to do list. So, to take a step back, I feel like this book is an invitation, right? To take a step back and reevaluate: “What’s the ‘why’ that’s driving all my actions and my ambitions?” Take me on that journey a little bit. Because, there’s going to be those that are going: “Okay, well, I need to establish better ‘why’s’.” What has that journey looked like for you, Patrick, to get the ‘why’ right?

[0:12:54] Patrick Cummings: Simon Sinek wrote a book.

[0:12:56] BB: Start with Why, one of my favorite books.

[0:12:58] Patrick Cummings: Start with Why, yeah. Unfortunately, I didn’t read that book until later. And, when I first started building my business, knocking on doors literally six days a week for three years, I did that. It was one of the most difficult things for me to do because I’m somewhat—well, they call me an ambivert. I can be an introvert and an extrovert, but I’m more of an introvert than I am an extrovert, I think. But, I was out knocking on these doors and I was like: “Why am I doing this?” I would get up in the morning, and every day I was sick in the bathroom before I would go knock in doors because I was so nervous about it. I developed a goals book. That first started out where I had pictures of my family, pictures of each child, and then pictures that I wanted to do for me in the future. But, what I had to do first is, I’m doing this for my family. So, I would knock on five doors and, not just knock on five doors, I had to talk to five people for that first picture. Then, the next picture was a picture of my daughter and I would speak to five people for her, and five people for my son, and then I had goals of things that I wanted to do if I accomplished certain things. So, that ‘why’ to me: “Why was I knocking on doors or why was I trying to make a sales call?” The deep ‘why’ to me, was my family. I did want it to be different. I would look at that book and I’d flip the page, and if I couldn’t go knock on doors long enough to talk to five people for my daughter, what am I doing? That was the deep, deep ‘why’ for me. I have mentored some young kids coming out of college lately. The thing that concerns me is they don’t have a ‘why’. A lot of them just don’t have it. Well, maybe the ‘why’ is: “I’m not going to get a job working at the mill” or maybe it’s, “I am not going to be on an assembly line” or maybe “I’m the first one that’s going to go out on their own in my whole family.” That’s a ‘why’, and ‘why’ can change overtime, right? You accomplish certain things. My kids are grown now and my ‘why’ now is: “I want to speak.” I want to get out and speak to groups. I want to fly an airplane and take my wife with me and be able to go on some trips. But really identifying the ‘why’ versus the ‘what’. There is a young guy in our office and I asked him why he does this: “Well, I want to help people.” That’s ‘what’ you’re doing, and he can’t understand. Now he is beginning to understand the ‘why’, why you do what you do. The end result is yes, you are helping people, but that’s not your ‘why’. My mom is a school teacher. Why was she a school teacher? Because she loved reaching those children and teaching those kids. That was a huge ‘why’ for her because we all know teachers are grossly underpaid, and dealing with parents is tough, right? So, you have to have that ‘why’.

[0:15:53] BB: It’s interesting because you actually highlight this in the introduction, where you say that your dad wanted to be a good family man but didn’t have the time, energy or ability to actually focus on his family. I think about it in the sense of— sometimes we can have this internal driving force that’s like: “Okay, well, I have to provide. I have to provide.” And then, what it does is it takes us away from attending—maybe one of the things for you was breakfast with your kids, right? I want to have breakfast with my kids. And I loved that example that you provide in the book of how you actually had to go ahead and be like: “Nope, this time matters so much that I am going to set it aside.” And it is not going to be this—I am just constantly in the mode of: “I have to provide for my family but I also want to be with my family.” Can you tell us that story, that example?

[0:16:43] Patrick Cummings: Yeah. My wife is a veterinarian. She would leave early in the morning, often times to go to the vet clinic, and she’d help get the kids ready. Then I would take them to school and, instead of taking them and dropping them off at the bus, I wanted to drive them to school and have a conversation with them and hopefully have a great day. My choice was that I got up and that I made my kids breakfast every day. My supervisor at the time, the guy who ran the agency, the general area, would call me at six in the morning/6:30 in the morning: “How come you’re not at your office? You’re not making sales calls. The stock market is open!” And, I finally one day just put my foot down with him and said: “Look, I got into this business so I could make my own decision. I am going to make my kids breakfast every single and I am going to take them to school and if you didn’t like it let me go.” Tell me I couldn’t have my business with their firm. That was something to me that my kids—they all love it if I make them Mickey Mouse waffles. And I have a Mickey Mouse waffle iron and I would make, yeah, I would make blue ones for my son and pink ones for my daughter, or different things, and they still love it today. My daughter is 22 and my son is 26, but it was a huge impact. Then, when I drove them to school, I wasn’t on the phone. How many times do you see somebody taking their kids to school and they’re on the phone? I just take my kids to school and we are having conversations. I am going to be on the phone all day, so, to me, that time was just something that I didn’t have. I didn’t have it with my mom, unfortunately, because she would leave early to go to school to prep, and I certainly didn’t have it with my dad.

[0:18:21] BB: See, that’s where I think there—clearly being an entrepreneur—there is certain things that if you go to default, they can become disadvantages, because you can always be thinking about work. But there is an advantage there, that is, if it’s done right—and this is what you’re advocating for in the book—if you clearly know your ‘why’, then you also can address some of your shadow side. You can create and cultivate the type of life that you want for you and your family. That is a great example of how you went about doing that, and just saying: “You know, this is time that I really value and I want to create these moments and these memories with my family.” I want to bring it into the organization conversation. Because, if you want to get there as a business, you have to create a culture of what you call an ‘organizational independence’, right? People have to know what you value, and then you reinforce those values. And it is not just something you are living from, but now your whole team is really living into this as well. So, what does that look like, to start shaping the organization in that way?

[0:19:17] Patrick Cummings: Yeah, you treat others the way you want to be treated.

[0:19:19] BB: Yeah. I mean, the age old wisdom there.

[0:19:23] Patrick Cummings: Age old wisdom, but how many times do we not follow it? I have the greatest team of people. When I was back in 2015, I had one employee. Natalie and her husband are awesome, and she would show up to work way before I would, she’s just a workaholic. I try and get her to stop doing that and take time with her grandchildren and take time to go do stuff with her husband, and she’s needing a day off. I would say: “Well, you’re not going to take this day off and schedule it as vacation time. You just need a break.” Then, as her granddaughters grew and got very involved in cheer and dance and different things, I would just say: “Okay, let’s set down on the calendar and look at when are you needing to be gone.” And I never had to worry about work getting done. If she was gone for two days during the week, she was in on a Saturday morning working until noon, to make sure she got everything done that needed to be done before the next week. So, having the expectation, number one, that we’re all going to work hard. But, at the same time, if I am asking for the flexibility and the freedom: “Here is your jobs, I want you to have the flexibility and freedom as well.” And I think during the pandemic, it really kind of solidified all of that. Because everybody was working remote and I had to trust what everybody was doing. I see other people that are running businesses but don’t trust their employees. I trust my employees too much. When I say that is, three of my employees have my credit card, two of my employees have my checking account numbers, one of them knows my finances very intimately from work and how much money goes home. Showing them how much you value their ability to do that—and this comes on the heels of last Friday. I was having a conversation with one of my employees, that a very tragic thing happened on Thursday with one of her teammates from hockey. 12 years old, little boy, he took his own life. And my assistant was just a mess. And she should have been a mess because her daughter was deeply affected. And I just said: “You need to take the day off. I know that it’s a long weekend, you need to take the day off. You need to go be with your family. You need to go get some counseling, whatever you need to do.” For her to tell me that no one in her work life has ever treated her, number one, with the respect, but the grace that I have tried to develop with my team. Now, that doesn’t mean that if somebody is making mistakes all the time that it is just a free lunch. We expect performance and we expect to do things right. But, at the same time, when family call comes (I had another employee home today because his mom was visiting and she came down with COVID and is taking care of his elderly mother), it’s life. We have to let people go through life .The job is not the only thing there. I really try and exude that to my team.

[0:22:17] BB: As we begin to wrap up here, I want to just talk about how we can make the most of our time? And, for you and entrepreneurs that you work with, what are some of those practical things that you’ve built into your schedule that you’ve seen great benefits from? I know we highlighted the breakfast thing earlier, but are there some specific things you’d go: “Man, this is something I’d advocate for to really use your time well.”

[0:22:40] Patrick Cummings: I think number one is, make a list of the rocks you got to move first. I didn’t put that part in the book. What I mean by the ‘rocks’ is, we all can get busy playing in the sand. And think: If you write down at the beginning of the work week or the beginning of the day or the end of the workweek, what are the five or what are the eight things or the three things that have to get accomplished that day or next week? Prioritize, you got to prioritize so that you’re productive. So many people will tell, in our work, that: “Oh, I work eight or ten hours.” And I just say: “Really? Did you or were you looking at Facebook? Were you looking at social media? Were you watching the news or were you doing things that were productive?" I think we just have to all be honest with ourselves. I’m at work and the next three hours are for production, that’s what I’m doing. I put a sign on my door that says “under construction”. When my door is shut and that under construction sign is on the door, no one knocks on the door and no one comes in (because I get interrupted all the time). So, set your work environment up for success, okay? You tell your whole team that, no bad news in the morning. If there’s bad news that’s coming in or something that’s happened, I don’t want to know about it until 2:00 or later because that will ruin my day. The other part about it is, is today at practice day or is it game day? Think about sports, when somebody comes to work is it a practice day, is it a prep day, how are you dressed? Are you dressed for game day? My business partner was a collegiate baseball player and often times, he comes in in college clothes, and I say to him: “Today is a game day or is today a workout day? Because you look like it’s a workout day.” I’m not saying you got to wear a three-piece suit and dressed to the nines, but are you dressed for a successful outlook? Do you feel good about how you look? So, you set up your day. You set the things you have to do, you dress appropriately for the day, because, whether you believe it or not, how you dress will impact your energy level. It will impact how you see yourself, and then execute it. “Here’s what I need to do.” I still pull out that little goal book and here’s a picture of my kids. I said I needed to get five things done, so one of them for each of these pictures, and just get through it and make sure that that’s done. So that at the end of the day, you had a successful day. The other thing I’m going to tell you is, your family is still important. My wife is very important to me, so Thursdays is on the calendar. She and I are going to lunch and it is on her calendar, it’s on my calendar. When I do that, I don’t take my phone. It drives me crazy to see families together and everybody is staring at their phone at the restaurant. And we’re all guilty of it. I intentionally leave my phone in the car when my wife and I go to lunch and I give her my full attention. The reason I do that is, if you went to lunch with a big client, are you going to pull out your phone?

[0:25:42] BB: Not if you want the business.

[0:25:43] Patrick Cummings: Yeah. If your watch rings?! I mean, anymore we’re so connected that sitting in meetings and people are looking at their iWatch saying: “Oh you know, somebody is texting me or calling me.” Are you giving the attention to your family just like you would give attention to that potential client that’s going to make your year? Are you giving the same level of attention to them? Those things, if you do those things and you lay it out right, you’re going to have success. You can’t not, if you are doing those things. And they can go walk down the hall right now to another representative’s office, who spends the vast majority of the day looking at Facebook and social media, that is not working. That’s just time away from your family. So, I think prioritizing, setting the things that have to happen, make sure you get those rocks moved, play in the sand later.

[0:26:35] BB: Well, I know this book goes into much greater detail around everything that we have discussed today. I am excited for people to pick it up and to read it. Final question here for you, when someone completes the family business balancing act and they have read the thing and they are putting it down, what do you hope the main takeaway is? The feeling they walk away from this book is, Patrick?

[0:26:57] Patrick Cummings: Progress, not perfection. What I mean by that is, like I said earlier, tomorrow is the first day of the rest of our life and none of us are going to get this perfect. I make mistakes all the time, just ask my wife. I made a mistake this weekend. Taking steps forward in making progress and not expecting yourself to be perfect. So many people judge themselves, compared to somebody else or whatever the award is. Just make progress. If you’ve screwed up, like the book talks about, tell your family you screwed up. Tell them you are trying to get better. I think admitting it and moving forward, we can’t live in the past, we can only change tomorrow.

[0:27:36] BB: For sure. Well, Patrick, thank you for spending some time with us on Author Hour. I know there’s going to be those that are going to be interested in continuing to follow you and your work. What’s the best way for people to find you and reach out?

[0:27:48] Patrick Cummings: Yeah, so if somebody wants to email me, it’s PNP Strategies (and PNP stands for progress not perfection), pnpstrategies@outlook.com or they can look at the website, reach out to me through the website, pnpstrategies.com. So PNP, progress not perfection, pnpstrategies.com.

[0:28:09] BB: Well again, the book is called, The Family Business Balancing Act: An Entrepreneur’s Guide to being a Family Man. Patrick Cummings, thank you so much for spending some time with us here on Author Hour and congratulations on the book.

[0:28:22] Patrick Cummings: Hey, thank you so much. I really enjoyed it.

[0:28:25] BB: Thanks for joining us for this episode of Author Hour. You can find, The Family Business Balancing Act: An Entrepreneur’s Guide to being a Family Man, on Amazon. There’s a transcript of this episode as well as all of our previous episodes available at authorhour.co. For more Author Hour, follow the podcast on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for joining us, we’ll see you next time. Same place, different author.