Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes

The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk

Episode #625: Anthony Consigli - Digging Graves, Playing Football at Harvard, Learning From Failure, Taking Big Chances, & Growing a Business From $3 Million to $4 Billion

• Anthony's great-grandfather came from Italy and he was a stone mason. He had 6 sons. He gave each a trade. His grandfather had a business mind. Then WWII came. 4 brothers went and fought. His grandfather and blind uncle stayed back to run the business. He brought his son into it (Anthony’s dad) he was a heavy equipment operator. And did business leadership work after it.
• Hard Work: Born in 1967, 2nd oldest of 5 kids. Grew up in the 1970’s remembering his dad always working 2 jobs including Saturdays as a heavy equipment operator in construction with side jobs at night, his mom as a night nurse with his grandmother watching them during the day. Hard work and work ethic were drilled into them by their dad, grandfather, and uncles who all were in construction. All had stoic personalities. Anthony started working full-time in the Summer, Saturdays, and school vacations in the 7th grade when he was 12.
  • Cleaning the mortar off bricks from demolished buildings so that they could be reused, then digging and covering graves by hand at a bunch of local cemeteries.  Chopping wood and burning the rubber off electrical wire from demolished buildings so we could bring the copper to the scrap yard for cash. It was not your typical childhood but I can see now it gave me incredible life lessons at an early age that allowed me to flourish in business and be a strong leader.
• Anthony was a gravedigger -I was a big part of the business because it was a consistent revenue stream. Regardless of a recession, people were going to die. For that reason, his dad and grandfather never wanted to give it up. Anthony dug them by hand, year-round.
  • When I was in high school I was in charge of laying out the graves to be dug for the recently deceased. As the Catholic Church was not known for great record keeping the coordinates were often confused. I would cut the sod, save it and then start digging; 7.5’ long, 4 foot wide, about 5.5’deep. I had to take 22 wheelbarrows of dirt and wheel them up a plank onto a truck as that was the displacement from the coffin and concrete box. One night the phone rang at the house. My dad yelled at me to tell me I had buried the body in the wrong place. He may have had a few expletives in there. The next morning, I spent the day digging a new hole, moving the box to the new grave, and then filling in both graves while the family watched. I tried blaming the priest but this was a losing battle. Lessons like this taught us accountability. Own it. Do what you say you are going to do and clean up your own messes.
• Dump Truck Story - When I was 14  I was helping to demolish the interiors of an old convent and we were throwing all the old cinder blocks into a dump truck. My grandfather didn’t have anyone available to go dump the truck so he showed me the different lever and buttons; the clutch, the PTO, and gears, and told me where to go dump the truck. I knew a little about how to drive standard but had never driven a dump truck so he told me to leave it in first gear. I drove down the Main Street of the town with a long line of traffic behind me as I was going about 5 miles per hour. I got to the dump site, got the truck in position, enacted the PTO let my foot off the clutch, and got the dump body to start raising. I remember being so proud of myself. Like I had made it as a man. All of a sudden the truck jerked up violently and before I knew what happened the truck cab was in the air and the truck was upright vertically. I had forgotten to open the tailgate so the load had shifted and flipped the truck. There were no cell phones so I walked about a mile back to the site very embarrassed to call my grandfather. Construction has no shortage of occasions to be humbled as there are so many changing dynamics at hand all the time. But at the same time, being thrown into situations like this gave me this incredible tolerance for risk.  It was embarrassing but you could overcome that embarrassment.
• 1997 - Anthony became the CEO. $3m business at that time. Anthony pushed for bigger work. 25 people at the company then. 2024 - $3.4B 2,400 employees.
  • What happened? One big thing is a concept/book called Raving Fans by Ken Blanchard. Construction at the time was low bid, hard knuckles, people flipping the table, throw staplers. It wasn’t friendly. It started to get more professional over time. “Raving fans makes sense to me. Apply how you treat people in hospitality to construction. We work hard on client service skills. Being really professional. There is so much repeat business. That was harder than I expected it to be. Clients were rewarding us work over and over again. We were nice people to deal with. Raving fans stayed with us. We’ve done a lot of jobs at Harvard or hospital systems. We’ve earned that reputation. I came into the business during a bad recession. That bruised me. I had to tell people I couldn’t pay them. I worried about where money would come from.”
• The significance of their logo? The arch… The Arch is our logo and helps support these values. The arch is from the oldest surviving picture of our great grandfather who was a simple, hardworking, stone mason building this big stone arch. The arch denotes teamwork as you can’t do it alone. It symbolizes forward progress, quality, and craft. All stuff we want to be associated with.
• Take Big Chances – We got through the first recession knowing we needed to be larger to be able to withstand the ups and downs of the economic cycle. We started taking some chances on some larger jobs with more demanding clients which was extremely stressful as we had no idea what we were doing. It was new territory.  This is where all the humbling experiences as a kid like digging graves helped as it gave me the courage to take some risks.  Failure isn’t final and you can push through mistakes. 
• Football at Harvard - Learned more on the football field than in any classroom. Discipline to a process. All the players at Harvard are there for the love of the game.
  • I was admitted to Harvard with OK grades, but I could snap a football and block.  I was surprised at the time Harvard accepted me.  Looking back on it now, I should have been shocked as I was a meathead.   At the same time, I think my blue-collar work history in a small family business, my being an Eagle Scout, and generally smart kid all helped. Harvard changed me in good ways despite my best efforts not to let Harvard change me in bad ways.  I had this perception of blue-blood kids walking around with ascots and monocles or hippies protesting every earthly transgression on the planet.  But that is not what I found.  I made the best friends of my life; incredible diversity with kids from every socio-economic strata you could think of.  Our team had a kid who was in an LA street gang and a kid who worked summers second shift in a limestone mill outside of Pittsburgh yet at the same time had a kid who was fifth generation Harvard who was just a nice guy.  Really smart but normal kids.  As much as I didn’t want to change, I needed to change; be more open-minded, more curious, have better dressing and grooming habits, and manners. It meant being able to engage in meaningful conversation on heady topics; not Hulk Hogan and the WWF or how tough Chuck Norris was.  I would always say that I didn’t learn much in the classroom at Harvard but that’s not fair.  Liberal arts education is a bit under fire right now but it has served me well.  I learned more through exposure to different people, other students smarter than me who were in random conversations and late-night debates. I learned more on the football field as I learned more about resilience, how to lose, and how to prepare.  The liberal arts education gave me an appreciation for continued curiosity, learning, and study which may be a more important skill than any in a fast-changing world.  It was the well-roundedness I needed.
• Leadership in Construction - Leadership means different things to different people. It can be easy in some settings. In football, all the players wanted to play. For a job site in South Boston, you walk onto a job site, you have 300-400 that don’t want to be there, some don’t speak English, then we get a union group, or an architect has other ideas, then traffic, weather, and things you can’t control. It’s hard for a leader to keep everybody working in the same direction. That’s a huge leadership task. I was thinking about that. A construction superintendent at 6 am is thinking about all of this stuff.  What makes someone good at that job? Sense of urgency, align and motivate hundreds of people, great planners, organized. Had a former Marine Vietnam Seargent who was great. A gym teacher who’s awesome, he’s in NYC with a job several city blocks. High sense of urgency, detail-oriented, motivates and aligns people. We do personality testing, and we’ve got a lot of people who are lower A and just as successful as higher A personalities. Such team players. Can put a team together. We like people who have played sports.
• Hiking – About 12 years ago, Anthony, his brother, son, and a few guys went out to hike a 10,000-footer in Colorado.  They met their guide who was this little, old dude who looked like he smoked pot fairly regularly.  As they looked to get started, Anthony asked him for the trail map and he said he didn’t have one.  “How do you know how to get to the top?" He pointed to the top of the mountain and said “It's right up there, we just need to keep going up." But when they were at the top, Anthony realized it was just an analogy for their business. We just needed to keep taking one more step up.
• ESOP - Consigli implemented an ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan) to make the company entirely employee-owned, fostering a culture of accountability, shared responsibility, and pride among their teammates, where employees directly benefit from the company's success and feel a stronger sense of ownership in decision-making; essentially, it aimed to create a more engaged and motivated employee base by giving them a stake in the company's performance.

Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes

Notes:

• Serendipity isn’t found. It’s made. Make your own luck. The best leaders create serendipity for their teams. A success mindset precedes success.
  • From Jenny - In 2011, I was single and living in New York City. I spotted an attractive guy across the train from me. I wanted to talk to him, but I was too nervous. Then he got off the train. She met her future husband by chasing after him off a train in NYC. "I was letting life pass me by." She used some wild courage to approach him.
•  What sits between you and the thing you want is fear. Who are your dynamic dozen? The 12 people you need to meet.
• Monday mini-festo. In 15 minutes, write the 2 things you did last week that you're proud of. Write 2 things you're excited about for this upcoming week.
• Focus on doing the work that helps the company be better. Solve problems. Read the VP email. Know your stuff.
• Get to know your boss's boss. Do it the right way by talking with your boss.
• Jenny's career at Google - First 11 years in sales, Go To Market, Operations. Own your Career project. She got 2,000 people to come to her first training. Used all resources within the company to do it.
• Use "for example." Don't speak in generalities.
•  Role, Objective, Impact - ROI
• At work, say no to the small. Don’t reply all to the Happy Birthday emails. Don’t do the NAP work. NAP stands for “Not Actually Promotable” Work. Sign up for the projects that help make your company better.
• Carlye Kosiak is one of their best hires at Google. She had the courage to stand out. She was specific. Her resume indicated interest in “recipe tasting in pursuit of the perfect oatmeal raisin cookie." Personality popped off the page. She was weird, reckless, nosy, obsessed, brutal. Must be yourself. Don’t just be weird to play a role.
• Goal Setting framework - Rock, Chalk, Talk, Walk.
• Jenny's goal is to sell 15,000 books by the end of week 1 and hit the NY Times best seller list.
•  If you sell 12,000 copies in week 1, how will you feel? "You ask such great questions."
• Don't play it cool.  Play it hot. Don't decide to fit in. Stand out.
• Watermark your work. Put your name and picture on the deck. Let people know you made it.
• Lady Gaga – A group of students at NYU created a Facebook group called “Stefani Germanotta, you will never be famous." Have the courage to stand behind your work. Lady Gaga wanted to be a big star.
• Life and Career Advice - Performance reviews - Focus 75% of your time on your strengths. Say yes to 75% of the things asked of you. Start sentences with "YOU" instead of "I" - Focus on them. Build influence thru empathy.

Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes.

The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk

This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire 1 person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world have the hustle and grit to deliver. Go to www.InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader

Rob Kimbel is an owner of Kimbel Mechanical Systems, located in Fayetteville, AR. He joined KMS in 1993, and in 2001, at the age of 26, he became the CEO and grew what was then 3 local plumbers making a couple hundred thousand dollars a year into a national company with more than 750 employees and earning hundreds of millions in revenue per year. Rob is also a partner in multiple start-ups, real estate projects, and real estate funds that specialize in affordable housing across the United States. Rob is also a mentor and advisor to several local businesses and entrepreneurs in NW Arkansas. He has also served on the boards of Generations Bank, NWA Home Builders Association, and Beyond the Game, a non-profit organization serving the impoverished of the Dominican Republic.

Notes:

• Betty Joe Drive… Lived in the hood. $200/month. Rob regularly takes his children to see where they lived. "I want to remind the kids where we came from."
• They started as a 3-person plumbing company. Rob was working for his dad, making $12-$14 an hour.
  • Now, they do $260m in revenue and have 750 full-time employees.
• When Rob was 25 years old, his dad asked him to be the CEO. He initially said no.
• Strategic risk-taking as a cornerstone of growth: Rob navigates the industry challenge of balancing new work with workforce capacity by making bold hiring decisions—demonstrating a greater risk appetite than his father. "We are always hiring" reflects their proactive approach to scaling.
• Kimbel is good at growing people. They fail, and stick with them to grow. “Profits are the applause for growing our people.”
• How to be good? Show up, work hard, and finish the job. The bar is so low.
• The No Child Left Behind Act wasn’t great for the trades industry. They made it seem that every person needed to go to college. When every person shouldn’t do that. Some should go into the trades. There are high school grads who make $100K/year by their mid-20s at Kimbel.
• The Kimbel Purpose: Create opportunities to improve lives.
• Values - TEAM, Humility, Hunger, Grit, Integrity.
  • TEAM- We willingly sacrifice for the good of the team. Row together.
  • Humility - We never consider ourselves above anyone or anything. Take the back seat.
  • Hunger - We choose to continually raise the bar. Never complacent.
  • Integrity - We do the right thing, in all places, at all times. The how matters.
  • Grit - We persevere, no matter the situation. Remember the why.
• Thank you notes – Each executive member writes at least one thank you note per week. This works as a forcing function for them to look for people doing great work and living by their values.
• Touch points - Senior leaders (30 people) reach out to 2 people per week to check on them. That’s 3,000 touches per year.
• Free from all, servant to all. Tattoos on Rob's forearms. I have made myself a servant. Free from work, I don’t care what society thinks. But I have a responsibility to be a steward. To be a servant to all.
• Rob works out like a psycho. Super hard. Why?
  • Start with the end in mind. I want to hold Cheri on my shoulders when I'm 65.
  • I want to ski with my kids when I'm 80.
  • I like to compete. I want to win Spartan races. I like doing hard things.
  • It also creates clarity in my mind throughout the day. Karomy messages me that she knows I'm running the stairs when she gets emails from me with lots of ideas.
• Marriage insights: "It must be intentional. We have fun together. We are genuine friends. We still have to work through stuff."
• Parenting philosophy shaped by observing other wealthy families: "It's critical that kids do hard work. They shouldn't start in an office. They should be out with the chickens. Be in the mess. Start at the bottom. Start in the ditch."
• Family-business boundary maintenance: "We get together every other weekend for family game night. We try not to have much business talk."
• Sold 70% of the business last July. What was the feeling the moment the money was wired? It was surreal. Want to honor Dad with 25 years of GRIT.
• Excellence defined: "It's continual learning. Wanting to get better. Think, what can I do better?"
• Creating a truth-telling culture: "Have to be willing to hear it and create a space where the truth is spoken."
• Life and career wisdom: "A career is not linear just like a marriage isn't. Have patience and live in the suck. Don't quit. There will be seasons of suck. Keep going."

Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes

The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk

Notes:

• “I sensed something was terribly wrong when I dialed into the conference line at 8:00 a.m. and heard an unfamiliar voice. “Hi, Mel ody, I’m Janine. I’m with an external HR firm. Unfortunately, this call is to let you know that your employment has been terminated, effective immediately.”
• Managing up is not kissing up. Managing up is strategically navigating relationships with those who have more positional power than you, namely your boss. It’s a critical skill set for maneuvering through the complex web of power dynamics, conversations, and unspoken expectations that shape our daily work lives.
• The triple win – What is something you can do that is good for you, good for your boss, and good for the company? Focus on those issues and solving those problems, and good things will happen for you as you grow your career. Like Carly Fiorina. Run towards the fire. Solving those tough problems will help you, your boss, and your company
• Meeting with a CEO. Connect what you did with what matters. Adapt your communication to that.
• Have upward empathy. Put yourself in their shoes. What matters to them? Prior to the meeting, meet with their Chief of Staff. Anticipate objections and answer them before they are asked.
• Create a one-pager for your boss when they are doing your performance review. Highlight your wins. Remind them. Make it easy on them.
  • Do what Lee Rivas told me to do. Every week, send an email with bullet points for all the things you did to help your boss and the company.
  • For the one pagers - be proactive, start with wins, results and outcomes. it's not self-promoting; it's informing. Identify 1-3 key areas where you need their support. Help them become a trusted advisor or partner.
• Design your 1:1. Send them the topics to talk about so you can drive those discussions. Make their life easier. They have enough other things to worry about.
• Feedback can only happen after alignment, styles, ownership, boundaries... They go in order.
• Define your A B Cs
  • Assumptions, Behaviors, Change you want to see
• The advancement conversation - Be open, and share what you want to do and how you can get there. My Dustyn Kim example and how I messed it up.
• The Money conversation - You don't get a raise just because time has passed. It has to be tied to results. Don't talk about the past and what you've done. Talk about what you can do to earn the company more. Don't do the "I deserve this" thing. Bosses hate that.
• Managing up is not kissing up. Managing up is strategically navigating relationships with those who have more positional power than you, namely your boss. It’s a critical skill set for maneuvering through the complex web of power dynamics, conversations, and unspoken expectations that shape our daily work lives.
• Everything changes when you understand the art and science of influencing others while keeping your own emotions and insecurities in check.
•  “Managing up isn’t really about making your boss’s life easier. It’s about taking control of your own work experience.”
• 10 Key Conversations:
  • The Alignment Conversation How can I get in my boss’s head to understand their needs, motivations, and goals?
  • The Styles Conversation Will I earn more respect from my manager if I get to the point quickly, or should I try swapping stories and building rapport? 
  • The Ownership Conversation How can I solve the problems that make my job frustrating? How can I seize opportunities without stepping on toes?
  • The Boundaries Conversation How do I say no and push back with tact when my manager saddles me with yet another task?
  • The Feedback Conversation How can I respectfully and effectively give my manager feedback in order to improve processes and communication?
  • The Networking Conversation How can I build other allies in the workplace? How can I turn day-to-day interactions into opportunities that open doors?
  • The Visibility Conversation How can I effectively advocate for myself and show off my strengths?
  • The Advancement Conversation What do I need to do to get to the next level? 
  • The Money Conversation When is the right time to negotiate salary? How can I make sure I am getting the compensation I deserve? 

Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes

This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire 1 person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world have the hustle and grit to deliver.

www.InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader

Chris Beresford-Hill is the Worldwide Chief Creative Officer at BBDO. Previously he spent 2 years as North America President and CCO of Ogilvy, where he helped bring the agency and its clients a new level of relevance. He brought Workday to the Super Bowl, led the team that brought in the Verizon account, and one of the biggest Super Bowl campaigns ever, “Can't B Broken,” featuring Beyonce, and created the most celebrated Super Bowl campaign of 2024, the social & influencer lead "Michael CeraVe," for CeraVe. Chris and his teams have won every award for creativity and effectiveness many times over. He has been included in ADWEEK Best Creatives, the ADWEEK 100, and Business Insider’s Most Creative People in Advertising.

Notes:

• Cold Emails: Be specific in your praise and specific in your ask. The lame "Can I pick your brain" type emails get deleted and ignored because they aren't specific.
• You never need permission to take responsibility. Chris learned this from Ed Catmull’s book Creativity Inc.… And he’s embodied this his entire career. The people who build huge careers take ownership of their own and regularly solve problems and improve their clients' and colleagues' lives. Chris has done this since his early days as an intern.
  • At any level taking on responsibility yourself, unasked, makes you stand out.
• Competence combined with insane follow-through. For some clients, it takes 50 ideas to get to the one that will work. Creating a culture where the team can share all of their bad ideas safely to get to the one great one.
• The creative process:
  • Brain dump everything. Purge your brain of everything it has.
  • When you think you're done, you're not. There's more. You have to get it all out.
• "A lot of creative people aren't fully aware of the process or the structure, they just feel it (Rick Rubin).
• "When you can see it lift off the page, you feel a sense of mastery over it."
• Chris's first Super Bowl commercial -- Emerald Nuts. He won it because he was both funny and added the fact that the product provided energy. Most people only covered one part, Chris did both.
• Push your edges - Chris is like Lionel Messi. He's always walking around in the office, asking questions, looking for ideas, being curious. Then he sees an opportunity and goes for it 100%.
• Chris has a standing reservation every week at the same restaurant where he meets with a mentor, mentee, or peer to deepen the important relationships in his life. That would be a good idea for us all to do.
• Chris was pen-pals with Dave Matthews for 8 years. 
  • Chris saw that they recorded at Bearsville studios and wrote a letter to Dave there. He also said, "Show up with gifts." He gave Dave a Beatles Bootlegged album.
• A leader takes what comes and then turns it into an opportunity.
• The formula is Competence + Insane Follow-Through.
• How to build relationships: Meet with people in person. Get drunk with them. Do hard work with them. Go through something bad with them. Laugh with them.
• I got hired from my internship by cold calling Mark Cuban to get him to approve of using his name in an ad.
• The best ideas are often bad in their first moments, or massively wrong, and then someone flips it or unlocks it. You have to stay on things and play around.
• I made my first ad by going through a garbage can to learn how to write a script and sending a bunch of Budweiser scripts to my boss.
• The art of finding an idea on the edge of possible, and the value of going over your skis when on the cusp of greatness - having a stomach for it. I’ve told a lie to keep things moving on every great campaign I was part of.
• I learned the best lesson in leadership when we lost our biggest account (Accenture).  I put Danny Meyer's mentality into practice, and we took that moment to put the business and clients second and play for each other. Culture carried us.
• Culture is built by the stories we tell and the behaviors we highlight.