Phillip Winters; Business Owner, Musician, and all around Cool Dude

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEv4cVAstKM

What career do you think of when you hear this description?- "We take away people’s problems." There are many jobs that you probably thought of, but I bet plumber didn't come to mind right away. It didn't for Philp either, but he has worked hard to carve a distinguished business and comfortable living for his family out of doing just that.

Philip  Winters, owner of Unlimited Plumbing based in Loa, Utah; is a good friend of mine that I who the pleasure of working with. One of the things he often spoke to me about was books that helped him with self improvement and learn from other people's' mistakes and experiences, "You don't have enough time in your life to learn everything through the school of Hard Knocks". That is part of the purpose of this blog! Some of the titles he recommended were:

·     The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (By: Patrick Lencioni)

·     Leadership and Self-Deception (By: Arbinger institute and William Durifs)

·     The E-Myth (By: Michael E. Gerber)

·     Thou Shall Prosper (By: Rabbi Daniel Lapin)

·     Love Does (By: Bob Goff)

·     Jordan Petersen (Podcast)

·     Loral Langemeier (Leadership Public Speaker)

“You don’t know what you don’t know, and you don’t realize how much it is hurting you. - Even if you listen to a book and it takes five hours to listen to it, but you only gain this tidbit of five minutes, that can totally change your life, and it’s just priceless.”

If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself?

We hear that saying over and over throughout our lives, but how effective will we be if we really live by that? “It actually leads to a decreasing circle of influence, rather than an increasing circle of influence.” He referenced The E-Myth,by Michael E. Gerber. to explain that freeing yourself from this mindset, means that you have to be open to failure. Often times, the greatest growth comes from failure, and you have to be willing to put that kind of investment into the people working for you.

It is natural to have a “scarcity mentality.” You may see every failure as a loss in money, which it may be, but the return on investment will be much greater because of the skills that your employees are gaining and the faith that they see you have in them. It comes down to determining if waste or the development of you and your employees is more important to you.

Philip went on to explain that while looking back on the annual financial reports of his business he can clearly see when he learned to let go and allow failure and therein, growth. He can now see where he was finally able to let go. While still working incredibly hard, trusting his employees and accepting the fact that waste is a part of learning, his business has been able to grow to levels that had been unattainable before.

What has been one of the largest mountains that you have had to surpass?

For a business example, he told about a time in 2008, when they had contracted a very large job, in which they had invested a serious amount of money. The owner of the property they were working on, contracted cancer and passed away in the middle of of the project. At this time, they were owed roughly a year’s salary, bankruptcy was declared, and they were informed that they would not be able to collect on that work. Since they had already paid themselves wages during that time with business funds, they still owed their suppliers. They were left with a large amount of supplies for this specific project with no way to pay for them. They quickly regrouped and came up with a plan to recover in a year’s time, but it meant getting into more debt. The whole situation presented a difficult setback, and he found himself in what Loral Langemeier calls the Story Cycle. When he would arrive at job sites, he found himself telling this sad story to everyone there. The story cycle inhibits our growth because it forces us to keep returning to the feelings associated with this sad time we are constantly telling people about, rather than moving forward. Within a short period of time the family car’s engine died sending him deeper into the story cycle.  Shortly after that, the boiler in his home went out, leaving them in a two-year-old home, a recently exploded van engine, and a dead boiler to heat their house.

Despite all of these setbacks, Phillip recalls these times as a blessing to them because it pushed him out of the story cycle. Upon examining the damage done to the boiler, he came to the conclusion that with the right skills he could fix the boiler himself rather than spending $10,000 to purchase a new one.

He started taking welding classes at night. He was able to gain the skills necessary to completely rebuild and repair his boiler. Having all of this happen and being forced out of his comfort zone in learning how to handle a welder helped to push him out of the story cycle, and back into a better frame of mind and back into a healthier growth pattern.  

Since this time, he has been able to face new challenges and difficulties with deeper knowledge and understanding of what he needs to do to get through them as effectively as possible: to learn from them, then move forward and not get caught up in the story cycle.

Philip’s personal experience happened just after his wife and him had welcomed their fourth child into their family. He was holding his new child and examining a calendar on the wall with pictures of his other three kids. He realized that he didn’t remember the events with his children depicted in the photographs on the calendar. This deeply saddened him and taught him to not take his children’s youth lightly. Phillip then explained to me how much more care he has taken since then to make sure that he takes time to really enjoy being a father to his children and truly being there in the moment with his kids.

“We can’t change our past in the journey we are on; we can just accept it, submit to it, be okay with it, and just continue on going forward.” He included his interpretation of “Dare to Venture” from his perspective as a father. He cited a book that he recently read that is actually one that his son was assigned in school called Love Does,by Bob Goff. It talks about how when you are acting through love things don’t need to be perfect, you just act. You do not need to take a long-time planning and making sure that everything will run perfectly before you do something, you just go with what you have and do your best.  (For parents) “In this ‘Dare to Venture,’ dare to make your family experience exciting, and enjoyable, and fun, and make the memory last.”

What other takeaways do you want people to walk away with upon reading our interview with you?

Notice the unnoticed

“I am into music, and I have often said, ‘If I write a song, I think it is going to be entitled, Unnoticed.’”

How often do we think about what plumbers do to bring sanitary water to people, and how they are able to safely and cleanly get rid of sewage? The reason he brought this up is because he has the opportunity to work with a lot of fathers who are very skilled and very capable individuals who struggle to make ends meet in a career they’d rather not have. Many of the jobs these people do go largely unnoticed.

We are often given the impression in life that if we do not end up in a prestigious profession or life style, then we have failed. That cannot be any farther from the truth. “Just be grateful for those people who make a difference in your life even though you don’t even know totally how they make a difference in your life.”

“Notice your spouse and your children. This journey of life is a heart thing. You’ve got to figure out how to have your heart right. Otherwise, you’re just going to live this life in misery.”  

Be Brave, and Don’t Worry About Having Everything Perfect Before you Start

“If we don’t learn how to think for ourselves, the reality is, we will just be part of somebody else’s plan for us.”

“My greatest ministry has nothing to do with plumbing. My greatest ministry has to do with helping people. – I don’t mean that officially, it just seems like something I have observed in my life.”

You don’t have to know exactly what your “calling in life” is before you dive into it.

Phillip makes the analogy of figuring out what our life will be like to an archeology dig. We may have an idea of what it will be like when we begin, but along the way we will find “pieces” that will cause us to reevaluate what it will be like in the end. Often times what we end up with is totally different than what we might have imagined when we started, but it is always something to be proud of. Sometimes as we are uncovering those “pieces” we might not immediately understand how it all ties together, but as we keep on “digging” we begin to understand, and we appreciate the parts that did not make sense when they were initially uncovered.

Know When to Quit

While it is important to be persistent with your goals, it can also get to a point when it is time to quit. The trick is knowing when that time is. Often, we tell ourselves that it is time to quit before it really is.

Phillip mentioned how there have been difficult times throughout the course of his business when he could have thrown in the towel, but because he pushed through with an attitude of learning from the challenges he has been able to develop personally and professionally much more than if he had quit when it got tough. It is important to set a realistic (SMART goal model) goal for ourselves to achieve before we can quit.

Closing

It was a huge honor being able to talk with Phillip and get his perspective on life, business, and “Dare to Venture.” He is a personal hero of mine, and I hope that those who read this will have gained some tools that will help them in their lives.

Thank you for reading. All comments are super welcome; please enter your email to get notifications about new blog posts and things going on with Noyes geaR!

Dare to Venture!

-Velden