The Huddle - Episode 154 - How Do You Give Back? Flooring Installers Supporting Their Communities

In this heart-filled episode of The Huddle, Paul, Daniel, and Jose talk about how flooring installers across the country are giving back—whether through mentorship, volunteering, donations, or simply showing up for those around them. From small acts of kindness to large-scale community impact, this conversation is a reminder that success isn’t just about business—it's also about lifting others as we climb.

👉 Tune in to hear real stories of generosity and purpose from the field—and get inspired to find your own way to give back.

💬 Got your own story of giving? Drop it in the comments—we’d love to hear it!

🎧 Coming Soon:

Open Mic with CFI: What’s Going On?

Streaming LIVE on July 1st, we’re joined by three CFI Advisory Board members for an unfiltered, audience-driven conversation about the current state and future of CFI. Bring your questions—this one’s for the entire industry. No time cap. No dodging. Just the real stuff.

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what is up guys welcome back to the huddle your weekly playbook helping you game forward progress in your career

simply put we're h here to help you win for all our new viewers welcome to the

team what's up fellas how's it going

well we are struggling to keep our heads above water literally we just keep getting more and

more rain down here in Kansas and floods and it's like we're trying we're trying

but it is not the good version of that it's really

Yeah no it's it is not a uh light rain

we're getting torrentials and we'll get two or three hours of it and it just floods everything and and the ground's

already so so um saturated saturated that like there's no place for it to go

so I was looking at the um the um

forecast earlier and it looks like we're going to get another round tonight with some severe thunderstorms and we had 101

mph winds clocked in our report that's just

tornado shy of a tornado dude tornado is 135 and we're clocking 101s

that's crazy yeah so we're doing pretty good otherwise it's just you know kind

of um hanging in there well today's topic is how to give back

this is uh kind of floating some ideas as as how we

as installers can support our communities um and there's a lot of different ways of doing that um but uh

you know when we're we're out there uh one of the best things you can do is just uh give to your fellow man or woman

and help a family out help uh help people out that way so I was going to

kick it off with just one of the best ways to help is installing someone who needs flooring um and not charging them

uh I've done that for a few foster families uh we were flirting my wife and

I with the idea of starting a foundation called Flooring for Fosters where we we

help foster families with I mean you know foster families unfortunately they

they get a when they get a lot of children i mean their floor in

particular take a beating uh we've uh installed carpet a couple of

times at one of them because it's just so heavy duty

um so that that's a simple way like put your skill to work and maybe do uh a

favor for someone in need there's a bunch of other uh ways of doing this um

goes down the right back on to training and doing some training so thought I'd

kick it off with you guys and and uh throw that first one out there um yeah

we we've done something similar yeah we've done something similar in the past to where um it was an organization and

that that helps you know families in need and it was I mean like two and a

half hours away from us and we went up there and and did it and he came back and he was like "Dude what do we even

charge for this?" I said "Nothing." like

you you you go into a house like that and it's like it's fine man just use

that money for something else that that they need well and the blessing you guys

give them I mean when you when we do this is putting our skills to work uh in

benefit of someone else and not our money uh the the blessing that those

people get is so great i mean cuz flooring's expensive and if uh you know

one of the um we we gave them the carpet it was leftover uh so it's not like we

had a bunch of cost in it but we had some some remnants installed it for free and they got a new carpet and they

thought you know they thought the world of it and um it's it's endured i think

they've had up to eight foster kids in that in that home before so yeah

that's that's certainly one way um what do you guys think about giving your

time to training uh I know uh give a shout out to Rin a lot of his efforts

with the CFI's chapter local chapters is just on his it's not he's a getting a

paycheck for it yeah compensation is is not there um

I think when the situation presents itself I don't think it's a hard decor

to you there i got a new big old box right here for a microphone so you guys

can hear me better is that better yeah yeah i think um when the situation

presents itself you don't really think about it it's kind of hard to plan for for those right

i guess we're some of those sentimental people where if you plan for it and it's expected it doesn't really mean as much

as it does when you just go out and do it and say "Have a good day." Um we've done that quite a bit actually

i I do that a lot i I like helping out my family i like helping people out i

probably a little too much sometimes but my my time is the most valuable thing I

can offer doesn't always have to be dollars and cents for my time

doesn't always have to be flooring either well and your skill I mean you got to think about your time plus your

skill is like triple time because you took time to earn to learn that skill

and then on top of that you are giving that time away now so uh you know

helping out in the community like I encourage everybody find something you believe in we've we've uh as a company

we've also helped um some of the children home children's homes around here um you know that that uh when they

needed new new carpet tile or what have you and a lot of these places take that on so that's one way um you know there's

there's obvious other ways there the the good old um soup kitchen and volunteering to to

uh you know serve people just um that those are all

easy to get involved with but I am kind of struck to the amount of people that don't get don't do that stuff and I know

how hard it is because I probably should do even more i mean I I really uh don't

do near as much as as uh I as I could because it's it's difficult to get the

time away but you know um it's worth it at the end of the day yeah it is

difficult to find that time and it it sucks when you're looking at it and you're like man I want to do more but

it's like where is that time going to come from and uh you know we've when it

when it gets slow we have the the guys um we pay them to go and volunteer with

Habitat for Humanity and stuff like that just to I mean they need something yeah that's a

good point what about uh you know there's there's other fun ways to get

involved with your community both of you guys do coaching and and that is a huge

help to the youth so tell tell us a bit about that and how you guys got involved with that

um I guess I'll start but uh

it's just a it's a leadership role that kind of gets bestowed upon you right like when I first started in sports um

as far as as an adult let me rewind this okay when I was when

I was a little kid when I was a little kid I had I had one person in my family

who like this is like really how it happened we would start at at my cousin's house and we would walk all the

way down to the park and on the way to the park we would pick kids up hey you want to go play ball you want to go play

ball you want to go play ball by the time we made it to the fields we had two full teams wow and that's and that's

really what we did and that's the good old days is what that is yeah basketball football baseball like whatever

sometimes it was just going to drive ride mopeds and crash and and almost die but we still did still did that um

but then you I moved into being an adult and and I I started coaching and managing uh my own team

i just thought I was having fun and next thing you know like people are coming up

to like hey how how's this what am I doing wrong what can I do better and then you start analyzing and and

that's what led me to a a very a lot of years in softball but now you fast

forward to right now because I'm retired from ball now I'm coaching my son for the first time i'm not the head coach

just an assistant right just the bench coach but um I still coach fall baseball and and this

travel team this year and somebody needs to teach the boys it's

not always a paid position my position is not i'm doing it because I love the sport and I love the kids so you know I

love my son and he's been asking me for years and um to be able to pass

something on it doesn't matter like we talk about it in the flooring industry but

to do your to do to do the children a favor and make them

either love the game or understand it from a different point of view is is well worth what I'm doing well and you

don't have to quite like be as talented as you are and this

the sport that you're all you got to do is show up sometimes I I uh I remember

when my son wrestled um I ended up coaching just because I

was one of the few people that would do it and yeah I knew just enough about wrestling to get myself in trouble i got

a lot better uh as time went on i wrestled a little bit in middle school but nothing major in high school or

college or anything like that so I was other coaches had had been uh you know

wrestling in college or whatever i just showed up got in the corner helped out

ran some drills you know um you don't have to like getting involved with your

children's sports is is a way if you're if you're kind of coaching and not just

dropping your kids off uh frankly kind of like I do now

but uh there's nothing wrong in the past um you know I was I was coaching and

running practices and helping with practices and such and there's nothing that is that is a form of giving back to

your community as well it just it doesn't always have to be something super hard like uh we led out with which

is you know giving away your skill for free and going and helping people so I did want to point out that Rand you know

he he stated that um their C his CF the chapter that I believe that he's um when

he says this that he is uh in his area has done seven building for America

homes along with other things you are always the winner when you're willing to give so I thought that was pretty pretty

spot-on building for America's bravest

so yeah Rand's number one there's a lot of opportunity there uh with our veterans and things like that

rand goes above and beyond i I will say the first time I met that guy um you

know I I didn't know who he was or what he did we were on a walk and we were walking together and talking and he had

just lost one of his vans to a fire and he was like you know people are sending

me tools and then I was like "Oh well that's pretty awesome." I didn't realize that

i didn't know who I was talking to everybody was willing willing to help

yeah and it was just like now I know and it was like dang you know what that's

He's done so much that like no one even batted tonight they just

What do you need i got it here you go yeah there's uh there's there's still um

there you know a lot of references here coming up in the chat about wounded

veterans so a lot of veterans opportunities there for uh you know building homes for the homeless veterans

uh or houseless or unhoused whatever they call call it still homeless as far

as I know but um the the opportunities

there you mentioned Habitat for Humanity all these things you're just putting your your hand skills to work for you

which is a great way to give back and I think super valuable Jorge says they do a couple homes a year

for wounded veterans so I mean there you go again right and then um over here one

of the radio stations does everything every year i don't even remember the name of it what do they call it over

here oh you talk about the uh breakin yeah they do a holiday breakin and you

know um fam a bunch of people nominate families in need and then they take them

out of their house to go where they

or something they take them they take them Christmas shopping and then they bring in and pretty much bring Christmas

to them and then can do some house improvements like real quick while they're out too actually we actually

helped um Wags a buddy of mine he had one of them homes and we went to go help

and do the flooring portion of it and I remember it was supposed to be a big surprise but because they had kids and

dogs and like the logistics was just not going to be a surprise so we just kind

of had to we got to do your floors guys we made it work nice

yeah there's a um there's a lot also a lot to be said I think about um about doing

um work with the local uh chapter of the uh

chamber sorry I was trying to think of the name it had slipped me for a second but the chamber that's another it's a

business community but it's not like you get paid to go give your time or talk or or whatever so you can get get involved

in your you guys do that a lot yeah I just he just did it today

yeah and you're right we we actually pay them and then we go there and volunteer and and and do all that yeah it's but

it's um it's one of the the give and take right like you do have a membership

um and you have your dues but you get so much more out of it um it's not about

making the dollars from there serious about making the connections and and helping the your local economy um that's

that's what that's about today got to meet a a congressman and and actually have a conversation with um it was

fairly intimate there's only about 20 people in the room and we talked about a couple political items and some things

that are uh underway with the government and hopefully uh it all works out

yeah i mean you can also serve on different committees and stuff through the through the chamber so there's

multiple different ways you can give you know as we were talking give back as an installer but getting involved the one

thing is you you know a lot of times I know how it is you'll get out there get installing and the last thing you want

to do is go donate some time that afternoon you know so uh finding the

time as Daniel mentioned earlier is more about like scheduling time in your in

your bulk of your day doing it after hours for me is really tough because I'm

I give my job everything I got and I try

to run this company and do my very very best and I give it everything I got every day by 6 or seven at night I am

toast baby so a lot of those things you want to try to just a little bit of uh

you know tweak in here try to get it within your workday and if you're a sub you have the ability to kind of you know

have that freedom to do so so scheduling uh scheduling yourself to do some some

of those uh activities during your normal workday can help with that uh

Jose Jorge says "I've also personally donated to friends that have family members that are going through struggles

especially two friends that were terminally cancer with a terminal uh cancer bed

um we donate all the supplies and labor anything uh helps i also want to give a

shout out to CFI one year one of my uh installers my helper actually

um one year his his son died very tragically very out of the blue and he

he was uh he was only like 19 or 20 years old young kid and uh the CFI guys like

pulled together money and I know that they give uh there there's a some some giving there and ended up you know

getting him a little over a thousand bucks i think it was like 1,200 bucks uh to help him in his time of need so um

even you know giving back is time or money sometimes it's time and money um

um Rollins says "Giving your time cost you nothing." I would probably disagree with that i look at things a little bit

different feel like there's um if I'm giving my

time during the day I could be earning if I'm giving my time in the evening I could be with my family um or uh putting

in some extra hours at the office uh there's there's a cost to your time and

um but I do understand what you're saying it doesn't cost you money out of your

pocket um so giving of your skill though is a huge I I think that's more powerful

than money uh in a lot of ways if you give somebody a thousand bucks to go get flooring or you give them you go install

that flooring for them uh they're it's going to go a lot further with you

installing the flooring for them than that thousand bucks because we're not cheap flooring flooring install and

flooring isn't cheap so somebody comes to me with a thousand bucks to get some floors installed you're not getting a

hell of a lot so you you can install you know whatever they have uh if you're

giving away your time so y

do some flooring for uh tornado affected areas i think that was they're going to have to go help you out pretty soon here

dude if tonight doesn't calm itself down around the Kansas plains we might need you over here Jose

so Jimmy says "Giving your time cost you the most but we rise by lifting others up." And I think that's where um a lot

of people look at CFI as in in like just looking at training

entities in general is you know someone commented a few weeks back you know that

all they're doing is looking for a money grab but that's not the case because a lot of us guys that are doing it have

spent more than we've actually made yeah 100% i I will u I will agree with

that and it's you know not only CFI but like Daniel the amount of time and articles

that Daniel has spent writing for magazines right like that's and same thing for me that that's on our own time

that's that's us trying to give getting paid as a author i've uh written handful

of articles for the publication myself and you're not it's not like they're paying us to do those it's on your own

time and so yeah I couldn't disagree more with that comment from a couple it was either last

week or the week before about it being a money grab i mean it's absolutely insane to me to to have

that thought process um it of course people care about uh

entities care about you being connected to them and being a member i mean that's

that's how all of us for we're members of something i'm a member of Fuse i'm a

member of certain organizations because and they make money off of me because of

what they do for me and the benefit um and plus the camaraderie and the the the

stuff and I think CFI has that same element and it's not um you know I think

it's irresponsible to say it's cash grab that's for sure not only your response completely incorrect and while we're on

the topic of CFI I know a lot of you guys have probably heard or or seen uh

through the publications that Ralph is no longer uh at CFI he was the uh you

know leading the organization um we are going to have an exclusive interview

with some of the board members of CFI at um on this podcast in two weeks so not

next Tuesday but the following Tuesday it's July 1st we're going to have three

uh of the executive team here on the podcast

live just like we are every week live Q&A so if you have questions about

what's going on you have about anything um that you want to get the answer

straight from the horse's mouth it'll be right there and um uh so yeah if you

have concerns or questions or or wondering what you know um uh you know

the the future uh holds for CFI how it's how things are are going currently uh if

you want to you know get in connect with CFI it's a great way to get to know uh a

little bit and uh you know come with your questions so that will be again on July 1st and I

would encourage you we're going to get started a little early on that day and uh we're also going to run until the

questions are done so got to got to come with the hard stuff and I put on there on the scrolling um text right there

that if you want to get your questions ahead of time to email us or if you want to stay anonymous right not not everyone

wants to people to know so just email us at uh forwardprogressthehutuddle.team

and we'll get your questions to who they need to go to yeah so we'll it'll be

somewhat like our normal uh podcast from the uh stance that we're going to still be there um we'll still be kind of

guiding the conversation as far as like keeping the the uh conversation going uh

we'll we'll have some of our own thoughts and and stuff that we'll um

we'll add in on that so I would encourage you to show up to that and I'd also state that CFI is one of the most

important organizations in our industry and so the health of CFI if you care

about that you should show up and ask some questions so right I don't think if you're not in it you don't realize that

a lot of the people that are in the organization are also part of other organizations like ASM stuff like that

and they're they're helping write the write the rule book on basically yeah

yeah so if you're if you're curious about it even uh I'm sure the uh executive team

would be happy to answer any questions if you're curious about what CFI offers

and can how it can help you uh you know elevate your career so um hopefully

we'll be able to get down into some of the details of of you know the future

and and how we uh all band together and move forward so

so as um as we're continuing to talk about giving back um we we've for my

experience and how I've given back um I've reached the limit of my uh uncliche

knowledge so I can tell you go to soup kitchens and donate your time and go to the homeless shelters and donate your

time and that's all important uh but going into the training I also want you

to think about how helping a young man get into this industry and which I've

done several times is a form of helping your community when you're patient with your your new guy your helper your green

guy whatever you want to call him your apprentice you're patient and you're thoughtful and you're teaching you have

a teaching mindset with them um full disclosure I was not always very good at

that i wanted to get stuff done i wanted to you know um but I'm telling you it's

better to not be that way like teaching them and looking as an investment in

them now I've read a lot of the Facebook posts and stuff about how terrible uh

experiences people have had with new new help and they just want to do it on their own because they can't rely on

people welcome to the world of business man i mean I don't know what to tell you like

you want to own if you don't want those headaches go work for somebody by the hour and quit complaining all the time

about it like you've got if you're not if you're not hiring someone else

anyways you're kind of just paying yourself by the hour to work for yourself anyways

yeah if you don't want the headaches and the the stress that comes along with that like I said I'm not trying to be

rude but go get an hourly job or you know uh go be an employee installer

somewhere because you don't have to worry about that so

um at the end of the day when you are um when you're your own company you've got

to you've got to um uh I'm sorry i'm sorry every time we do

these dudes got we we chat right when when we're on here and like I'm like

"Hey turn your gain down a little bit because I can hear myself." And then we we all I try to do it so Paul doesn't

look but he looks every time and he gets he's like a he's like that

dog right squirrel yeah oh there's words there's words i can't help but read them

and then Yeah fomo yeah i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm We're still trying to adjust my mic i got this new

shell and like there i don't know why it's getting louder like when he's talking it was good when we started yeah

well we're getting there my friends um

but anyway so when we're when we're you know t taking the time to mentor somebody we had a podcast about that a

few weeks ago i think that plays into giving back to your community and in a long run way i mean you're improving

someone else's life and like I said I know the the Facebook negative stuff but

again I say to you guys go get a job somewhere if you are going to complain about the hiring struggles that's part

of being a business owner and we all have them nobody has it easier than another person uh you got to build

systems and things around it and hire right and try to hire the best people

you can and we all have the same problem so um what has given me the most

satisfaction is being there for a person going through tough time in their life

be it just an ear to listen or a shoulder to crown that's where my costing you nothing comes from good

point Ran yep yeah so I always bring up Yeah i always

bring up Simon Synynic right and he has the a thing where he's like eight minutes all it takes is you listening or

talking to someone for eight minutes for them to start feeling better right so he came up with a thing where with him and

his friends it's like "Hey do you got eight minutes?" Because sometimes someone will text you and be like "What's going on?" or "What you doing

this weekend?" And that's them reaching out without wanting to say "Hey I need someone to talk to." So it's just saying

you know go to text someone and be like "Hey man you got eight minutes?" I gotta get my buddy to listen to this i got a

friend that lives up I around you guys up in Michigan that I talk to a lot and

uh when I say I talk to a lot I talk to uh not super frequently but when we talk

man it is going in so it's like if he could do an eight minute deal I'd be on

the phone more often i I think commitment i think there's those people though that you're like if you get a

phone call or something and you're like they want to talk you're like I gotta clear out my schedule if I'm going to answer this yeah I've got to have some

time he's a great man i love him love you buddy you know who if you're watching this

um so yeah you're right Ran i mean you can definitely help out without it

costing you uh cuz I don't know I don't know that we're clocking in when we're listening to somebody and and helping

them through a tough time and and um yeah so be there for one another we've

talked about the mentorship a lot of the stuff in that we cover in this podcast like it all intertwines you know what I

mean like the mentorship and and um what I just mentioned about how you can

you're actually helping your community and helping out other people when you're being a patient mentor to somebody and

teaching them the the ropes of the business but yeah we just talked about mentorship you know a few weeks ago and

I didn't even mention like my wife works for Fit Third and she's uh starting to

be a mentor here soon too because she's in a in a higher up leadership position over there now and I mean it it's the

corporate if corporate's doing it that means it it has to work somehow right everyone hates corporate but they do

have systems in place just like we say you know no one likes the union but they got

those systems in place for a reason that's what we got to do we don't call

it training anymore we call it mentorship changes mindset

yeah there's um there's a lot to be said for that not to I I um I think that's

more of what it is and a lot of the training entities take it to that level right you're not just learning the floor

install side uh a lot of times you're you're being taught the business side

the soft skills side about you know how to deal with customers successfully and

that kind of stuff so it all plays together and and I know this is a uh not

a flooring specific topic here for the huddle but not all of our topics are

we've done mental health issues in the past and I think we are going to have one coming up here in the near future

again um I mean it is men's mental health month right now so right now

yeah so there you go we should we should see if we can fit in

uh I don't know what our podcast schedule is from the topic side i know it's getting pretty pretty swamped in

again july 1 the live Q&A uh open mic with CFI so make sure you're there uh

July 1st so um but yeah like all of this

mental health uh I think it's great that they have a men's mental health month or

maybe we don't need a month I don't know but focusing on the the the struggles of

of a of a guy because there's been such a over the last decade it seems like

more guys have struggled with this than I can ever remember and uh I think a lot

of it has to do with self-worth and uh you know a lot of people not to like uh

you know kind of tie this all in on purpose but when you give something to someone else it does make you feel

better whether you're giving your time money effort whatever it is you you pour into other people and you'll see um and

that's that's a lot of uh a lot of that can help you a lot if you're

struggling yourself is by pouring into other unless you give something to your kids and they break it

then you're like I'm not getting you nothing else nothing anymore you're not even getting a Christmas present so my

nephew did he broke one of his Christmas presents one year i got him a little metal detector and I said "If you break

this all you're getting is books until you're an adult." And he said "All right." And then the next time I went

the very next time I went to his house I seen it in the tree

not only did he break it he retired it yeah so he did and I did get him books

the rest of the time and now he loves reading so you're welcome yeah community

service at its best right there and that's why um you guys think I was

say that's why giving back with like coaching and stuff like that has been beneficial for me because I do see the

kids where I will be that coach to be the a-hole

and be mean to the kids right because someone has to and then from the start

of the year to the end of the year it's like a completely different person that's you know telling me I'm not going to do no push-ups to coming up to me hey

coach how many push-ups you want me to do and now I see them today and they're like a completely different person so

just pushing them yeah i was going to ask the question how

do you guys think that giving back affects the giver like I touched on it

just a bit but giving back or like doing community or uh whether it's community

service or or helping how do how do you think that that feels for the person

giving how do you guys feel when you do that well so I'll just jump in real quick it's um

you don't really notice the like for me I don't notice when I'm giving I don't notice anything until

that person has the aha moment or they find some success when they find a little bit of success or a little bit of

happiness off of no matter what you're doing that's that's when you feel like

just made it just made their day just made I don't made their minute I don't care it just right that little bit of

success out of all that failure out of out of all the turmoil out of all whatever whatever it is whether it's

work coaching it don't matter or the thank you at the end right like

the one where they look at your soul and you're looking right back into theirs and they're just like thanks brother

thanks yeah that's how I look at my son's uh son's

coaches like in baseball right now and I talked to some of the parents the other day and it's like our kids wouldn't be

the people who they are right now if we didn't have the coaches we do yeah one of my son's coaches I ended up being

really really good friends with and you know you never know the friendships you're going to gain through that and I

get to give a shout out to another coach that really in and he's the one who I'd

be sitting in the stands he'd just come grab me and say "Hey come come come help me coach over here." And kind of got me

acclimated to it to where I felt good about it so I mean him helping me led to me helping other people and and uh yeah

it's it definitely waterfalls

yeah i think that's what it's supposed to do

yep all right well um you know you can't just

beat a topic to death uh sometimes you reach the end and I feel like um maybe

we've done that here is clearly identify that giving back as as you've been given

to and if you've done it yourself then you know what without any help then you know what that's like so you you can

help someone else from any any perspective whether you had a mentor that really helped you or you had

somebody give you a helping hand and you remember it and that's why you want to do it or you never had it that's another

good reason to do it so in either perspective uh you know consider how you

can give back to your local community one of the best at this as far as like installers I know is John Styer i mean

the guy just gives tirelessly i don't even think he works at all i think he just gives back 100% of the time that's

what it seems like he's kudos to that brother he's always doing something and I want to give him a shout out because I

know he does a lot i know a lot of the the guys uh in the or different different training organizations do that

um and and you know again it's it's a it's inspiring from John's when I see

John i mean he you know he's doing something when you get a voice a text to

voice message from him and you're like John's on the road somewhere going to

help somebody do some training or something so shout out to him um yeah

just give your time and and try to help out your community help out other installers and uh to do that the first

step is getting involved in whatever that is in your local community or get involved on a national level with some

of the training entities get involved with the huddle get involved with you know any of the your local organizations

i mean there's a plethora of things that you can get involved in and then one of the biggest things is just changing your

mindset on stuff too right because a lot of the guys are like like you said you've never done it so you have to have

someone pull you in and then it's changing that mindset just like you said earlier you know some guys don't want to

hire someone because they'll never be as good as them but then that's where doing

things like this you start looking at yourself as a coach even with the people that you're working with

yep and then when you look at at yourself as a coach instead of a boss that's when you're like "Okay you go do

this." And then you're you're not involved in it you you shouldn't be the one that's right there on their back

it's go do this all right you didn't do it right let's fix something here mhm

yeah we've all seen that meme where the boss is doing this in one picture and the next one he's like doing the thing

and like showing um I think that that's what we should uh you know remember and

strive to be so yeah Kevin says build my future which is another great way to

give back to your community uh and the flooring industry um

which is really a I think that's been going on for I don't know somebody

correct me but close to a decade uh it could be even longer for all I know but

um that would be a great way and you can find information out on that through um

through CFI you can get with any of those guys i know that AFT does some of that stuff as well uh start over there

some and and start off small just go to your local elementary school and get with the counselor you know or a high

school and do a career day and as you mentioned earlier Habitat for

Humanity that they're always doing something you can go just do a day worth of labor for them uh you get a day off

or job gets pushed go reach out to your local habitat and and

get to know them that way when you have that little dead time you can go give your time for uh for your community and

I think it's a great way to you know show support we all live here let's do a great job

doing it here's another idea i know you're trying to end it but um for those out there who struggled with addiction

you can volunteer at some of those places too and maybe you have a story to tell that can resonate with someone to

help them out of a situation um who knows right i just keep track of the people on

you know some of these groups that we know in the the installer community that have overcome addiction and they're very

proud of it and they you know it's not it's nothing to be ashamed of you should be proud of that man it's something that you were doing and you had the the power

to to stop that's huge amen yep for sure

yeah addiction is another great plague I think of our society as well as you know

our industry in particular has its struggles with it and so uh heart goes

out to everybody that struggles with that and and hope you can uh find help and those of you who have the ability to

help I hope you will with that we're done because it's gonna get emotional and we're all

well it's been a it's been a good podcast I I kind of anticipated it not being a super long one i mean you can

only talk about these different things but really it t what it takes is just get creative get involved in a local

manner you guys have done a great job with that we do that locally and then you can build up to national stuff and

uh we always encourage people to get to CFI convention and the FCICA stuff and

even surfaces and and the the shows out there because you'll get involved in the community if you want to yeah and a a

lot of what we do is focused on the youth and we love that right we just got our plaques today from um the local

little league to add to our wall but it when we were in the Memorial Day parade

there was a kid and he looked at the van and he started pointing "That's my team that's my team." You know that's that's

the kind of stuff that that you love yeah that's cool

all right fellas well thanks for thanks for your time today again don't forget July 1st we're going to have live open

mic CFI so be there be square i want to thank all the comments and everybody getting uh getting involved and um you

know sometimes it's it's a little bit more of a a humanity podcast here and

there and that's what today was is uh we're all human let's give back find ways to get involved yeah make sure you

give us a like subscribe all the good stuff and uh yeah make sure to give us a

follow on our social platforms and like uh Daniel just said like or subscribe on that YouTube channel and don't forget to

to go to Shag Tools and use the code HUD10 for uh 10% off

boom yes sir all right fellas till next week see you thank you see you