$50k?! What My Unexpected Home Renovation
Taught Me About Project Management

The 5 AM Miracle Podcast, hosted by Jeff Sanders

Episode #573: $50k?! What My Unexpected Home Renovation Taught Me About Project Management

Jeff Sanders
Wait, what happened?

And this is going to cost how much?

Who do I call to fix this?

How long will this take?

What is going on?

This is The 5 AM Miracle, episode number 573: $50k?! What My Unexpected Home Renovation Taught Me About Project Management.

Good morning and welcome to The 5 AM Miracle.

I am Jeff Sanders and this is the podcast dedicated to dominating your day before breakfast.

My goal is to help you bounce out of bed with enthusiasm, create powerful lifelong habits, and tackle your grandest goals with extraordinary energy.

I am a keynote speaker and corporate trainer, specialize in delivering high energy, interactive, and action-oriented presentations and workshops, focused on productivity, wellness, and personal and professional growth.

If you want to learn more, head over to jeffsanders.com slash speaking.

Now, in the episode this week, I'll break down a recent, expensive, and massive home renovation project that took my wife and I by surprise.

Also, how we responded to the unfolding chaos and honestly, why I'm very grateful that all of this mess took place no matter how much I did not want it to.

Let's dig in.

The episode this week is a bit different, but I've been saying that for a few weeks now.

So if you're enjoying this show or not and would like to send me your feedback, feel free to email me, jeffat jeffsanders.com.

You can also leave a rating or review in Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Your feedback is what makes this show better every week. and I want to provide new and interesting content as best I can.

And so the last few weeks have been a bit experimental.

I'm trying some new stuff to see how it works.

And honestly, I don't know if it works or not if I don't hear from you.

So definitely email me, leave a review.

Let me know what you think.

Now, the episode this week, it is a bit different in its content, but there's a very strong connection between what happened to my house and how I view productivity. productivity, project management, organization, management of other people, management of tasks and chaos and stress and emotion and finances and life in general.

Now, this podcast is about personal growth, professional growth, healthy habits, productivity, all these great topics.

But at the end of the day, it's about how you live your life at the highest and fullest ability that you can.

And one of the parts of life that I don't discuss enough on this show are the unexpected parts, the things that we don't see coming, the curveballs that show up.

And then we find ourselves in this bizarre new territory and have to wonder, what's going on, man?

What's happening?

And what do I do about it?

How do I navigate this new thing that I just am in over my head on?

Well, that happened to my wife and I.

Tessa and I found ourselves in this really unique scenario.

And I say unique, it is to us.

As I have found out, like most things in life, it's not unique to other people.

Lots of other people have had problems with their homes.

They've had leaks.

They've had chaos.

They've had to pay money.

They don't have all these things.

Long story short is I'm going to share with you the story behind what happened to my house and how that relates as directly as possible to your life, your goals, your projects, and your ability to respond to. to unexpected scenarios, especially ones that appear on the surface to be negative, to be destructive, to be crazy, but actually have that silver lining of opportunity and gratitude at the foundation for what took place.

So, yes, I'm going to share what my unexpected home renovation taught me about project management.

Let's start with where it all began.

Ten years ago, my wife and I bought this house we live in in Nashville, Tennessee, and our intention behind it was to buy a home that did not require a lot of work.

We really did not view ourselves at all as DIYers or maintenance people or the kinds of people who wanted to buy a fixer-upper.

Like, that was not what we wanted.

We wanted a home that was in good, possibly great shape that would give me the opportunity to own a home and have all the things that come with that, but honestly, I just didn't care that much.

At the time I was, you know, building my business and I wanted to spend time on it, as well as, you know, running and taking care of myself and growing a family.

I just didn't want to do home repair projects.

And so what ended up happening is kind of the obvious story of anyone who's ever bought into a house or a project where you have an inclination of, well, I want this to go this way.

And then life says, nah. you're going to get what you're going to get.

And so what happened was that when we bought the house originally, the inspector pointed out that there was a small drywall crack in our foyer.

You first walk in, up on the wall, there was a small crack.

But it wasn't a big deal.

And he basically said, like, this might be something.

It might be nothing.

Just get it fixed.

And then you can find out.

And so we ignored it.

My entire philosophy of home repair was I'm not going to touch it unless I have to.

And that was my kind of, you know, M.O. for years.

And then you fast forward five, six years later, and the kitchen tiles under our feet next to our sink began to crack.

Not all of them, just a few.

And so I repaired them.

I actually taught myself how to repair a kitchen tile, which I was very proud up at the time.

And this is during 2020, during the pandemic.

And I was like, you know what?

I've got some free time.

I will teach myself how to fix kitchen tile.

And so I did.

And it went really well, and it looked beautiful.

It was very rock solid for about two more years.

And then things began to crack again.

This is when our house began to give us those very clear hints that something isn't right.

That crack that I mentioned in the foyer had gotten bigger over time, but it was so subtle we didn't really see it.

It was just part of our house.

It was just the character, right?

The thing that's just true about it.

And so with these kind of more obvious, signs, specifically the kitchen tile cracking a second time that got my attention.

And reality began to set in.

You know those moments where there's just so many hints in a certain direction?

You get that sense, not just in the back of your mind, but now it's in your front, conscious mind.

Wait a minute.

Something is happening.

And so initially, when this took place, I still wanted to bury my head in the sand.

I still wanted to ignore it.

I still wanted to avoid taking any action.

And for a long time, we just walked on cracked tile.

And I bought some mats to cover them up.

Like, this was just like the most avoided behavior you could possibly imagine.

I was doing everything in my life to not have to deal with it.

I just wanted it to go away.

But that's not how this works, right?

Problem is like this, don't just disappear for fun.

Cracked tile doesn't repair itself.

And so at the end of the day, I just had to buy. bite the bullet and acknowledge what was true.

And actually, the way this story played out was that my father-in-law came for a visit and he hadn't been in our house for a while.

And so when he walks in and looks at, wait a minute, this crack is bigger.

This tile is not correct.

There are some problems here.

And he very clearly told me, Jeff, you need to take care of this.

And I heard him.

It was one of those moments of like, dang it someone else pointed it out.

Now it's real.

I can ignore it.

But when somebody else points it out to me, all of a sudden the problem has the teeth and the tangibility that means it's a thing I must address.

And so the way that I tend to address any new project is to use what I love, which is Google Docs and Google Drive that I have leveraged now for years for all of my major projects and organization.

And so like any new project, I made a new Google Doc and I outlined the entire process from start to finish as best I could. with what I understood to be the current problems.

And the intention behind this was to get some expert opinions because it was very obvious.

The work that was going to need to be done would be far beyond my abilities as a DIYer.

You know, I have some skills, and I like to do woodworking, and there are, I have some abilities.

But this was very clearly far beyond my pay grade.

And so this opened up a whole new can of worms to find contractors, to search out and get the best people that I could who could help me solve this problem for the least amount of money and the most amount of success and foundational security I was looking for.

And so this began a whole new world for me of finding people to do jobs that were, in my view, kind of non-traditional.

And by that I mean, like, in the past, I've hired plumbers and HVAC technicians and electricians and kind of your common people who will fix home issues. but never something as complicated or comprehensive as what handymen tend to do or contractors tend to do with lots of moving pieces and removing cabinets and tearing up floors and rebuilding things.

And so my goal was to find the most competent people I possibly could to do this work.

And I set out to get quotes from everybody I could possibly find until I could get someone I trusted.

I can't even begin to express how frustrated I was when this process began because finding competent, trustworthy people was so difficult.

And I've read the stories.

I've talked to my neighbors.

I know that the journey to find great contractors is a difficult one.

For whatever reason, that industry is filled with people who just aren't great.

And I hate saying that, but it's just, it was so clear to me that it was going to be. be hard to find people that I loved, that I trusted, that I could give my money to and believe they were going to not mess the job up or do part of the work and disappear on me, like all these horror stories you hear.

And so at the end of this process, I got 12 different quotes and ultimately was trying to find two contractors because I needed foundation work and a specialty company for that.

And I also needed the kind of above the floor kitchen rebuild that was going to have to happen to.

And the process was complicated.

I got a wide variety of prices and opinions, and I had to educate myself on what was needed most, and it was not the easiest thing to do, because this is not my area of expertise.

But I had to become the expert because it's my house and it's my money, and if I don't learn this, then I'm going to trust someone who I don't know to do work I don't understand.

And fingers crossed, I don't get screwed.

Right?

Like that, I didn't want to be in that boat.

And so the only way to avoid that was to become as much of an expert as I could to make a competent decision myself, to hire the right person.

And at the end of the day, that did happen.

I ended up hiring two phenomenal companies that did absolutely stellar work.

And it worked.

Like, the whole process did end up working.

But the journey to find those people, I just, I wish. there was a faster, easier, better way.

I know there's companies that have recommendations.

I leaned on those as well.

I asked my neighbors.

I got all the best advice.

And yet still, it was a challenge.

And in the world of productivity, of leadership, of management, of running large organizations, you know then the world of leadership when you're hiring people, when you're building teams, that finding great people is everything.

At the end of the day, the most productive companies and groups have the best people. that's it and when you don't have the best people you get a lower quality or you get all kinds of problems and this was just one of those i will search as long as i need to search to find the best people and i did Now let me outline the exact problems that were taking place in my house, so you have a sense of what this is.

Number one, we had a lot of excess moisture and standing water in our crawl space.

So our home does not have a basement.

It has a crawl space, which is normally. a very messy, dirty, unkempt place.

And by that, I mean, I've never seen a nice crawl space in my life.

And they're all just a big hot mess of wires and cables and mud and plastic.

And it's a big, messy place.

But ours just happen to have a ton of extra standing water because the slope of our property isn't great.

And so the water gets trapped.

And if you know homes, which I have learned a lot about recently, a lot of water in a lot of places it doesn't belong is not. nothing but a lot of problems that are going to happen.

So getting that managed was the top priority.

Related to that, we had foundation pillars, beams, and Joyce that were sagging, that were sinking, that were settling, and we are going to need some foundation to work.

We also had, of course, the drywall cracking in our foyer, our kitchen tiles broke, and then, of course, broke again.

That could be a fix as well.

We've also had a lot of problems with insects and ants, you know, get into our quite a bit, and I knew that the crawl space was a source of where they're coming from, and so again, the crawl space address was going to help with the pests as well.

I also have really bad allergies personally, and having higher air quality is a big deal for me.

Well, as it turns out, if your crawl space is terribly unkempt, you breathe that air, and it's poor air quality in your home, and I've learned a lot about that and know now how important it is.

There's also like a musty smell that comes from it that's pretty gross.

And so getting that fix is also a big deal.

In addition to all of these other problems, we discovered a leak under our sink, which was the original water damage that caused those kitchen tiles to crack, in addition to its direct connection to the settling from the pillars under the house.

So everything I'm discussing here is connected, even though they all sound like separate problems.

It's all one big, massive mess.

But the leak under our sink that we did not know about was a major, major deal in this.

And so as the process unfolded and we had all this work done, we actually discovered even more leaks and plumbing problems throughout the house, not just in this one key area, but all over.

And so this was one of those eye-opening experiences where when you dig into something, when you unearth the project, you know you're going to find more problems.

You just know it.

And we did, and it added to the total of all the other chaos going on.

But my perspective on productivity, on self-awareness, on being able to solve problems, is that awareness is the very first step.

We have to know what's real and what's not.

Otherwise, what are you going to do?

You're either lie to yourself about the process, ignore it, right?

Or try and solve what you think is true, but never really wanting to know the full truth.

And so my goal in this was for everybody that I hired, everyone that I worked with to tell to me straight.

What's going on for real?

I'll go look at it.

You go look at it.

Let's make sure we understand what this is.

And that was extremely helpful because it allowed me to address the most severe problems first.

And that allowed me to also prevent other problems down the road.

And it ended up being the best scenario.

But the obviousness was still true.

I had sticker shock.

The prices here were crazy.

I had no experience previously with big home renovations.

So every single time I talk to anyone and they said, well, here's the cost for this work.

The materials and the labor together is.

And I would just have these panic attacks of no, no, no, no, no.

Don't tell me it's that much.

But that's what this is.

That's how these projects tend to unfold, especially when you have the numerous multitude of issues that our whole. home has had over the years, despite the fact that we bought this house and it was actually in pretty decent shape, at least I thought.

But my very naive brain just said, hey, thumbs up, we're good.

We were not.

So at the end of the day, every quote that we got from every contractor was higher than I wanted to ever see.

We also had no insurance coverage for any of this.

Unfortunately, the way these problems unfolded, insurance would never cover them.

So this was on us to figure it out financially, logistically, emotionally, it was all on us to solve these problems, navigate these confusing new avenues, and figure it out.

Which is, I think, just to pause here on the story, whenever I tackle project management of any kind, especially new things that are outside of my zone of expertise, I'm going to take my time as best I can and be very detailed in outlining what I believe to be the next steps, and I take the process one step at a time.

And one theory that I've had or kind of philosophy I have about progress in general is that there are so many areas of life where we can't see the future steps.

But we can see the next one.

So if you were to complete step number three in a process, step four then reveals itself.

You know what it is then.

And then you finish step four and step five. reveals itself then.

But to start at the very beginning and understand all the steps required in advance is oftentimes not possible.

So my recommendation for you if you are tackling something new or difficult is don't try to think through everything at first.

You're going to want to, and I tend to like to do that.

But you're not going to know.

You won't know until you're there.

And being there is how you know, which is the argument to get in, to start, to get hands dirty and to just be involved in everything, beyond the field, in the game, because that's where the knowledge comes from to be able to ever get to whatever finish line you're trying to get to.

All right, back to the story.

So after I chose my two contractors, a foundation specialist company and a general contractor team, I then had to coordinate who would do what and when.

And as it turns out, scheduling was very challenging to coordinate these two different companies, and I found myself in a very kind of unexpected position of becoming the point person, the communication specialist to coordinate all these different people and when they would be doing what into who, into why, and to where, and it just, I was in charge of all of this in a way that I didn't quite expect, in part because I was hoping that, hey, I read a check and you just go do your thing, which did end up happening.

However, I had to be on call at all times for everyone, for everything.

And it was a much more involved process than I expected.

In part, I'm very glad that I was there to do so.

And as someone who works from home, this was my full-time life for a while.

The logistics, which I'll get to in just a second, of all of this work being done was being done while I'm trying to do my job, while I'm trying to take care of my wife, my two kids, just all the things, right?

Life was still happening despite all of this. which is another just joy of life, which is that when problems occur of any kind, the rest of the world keeps spinning.

Nobody else is having these problems, not really, but you are.

And when you're in that mess, it's all you think about.

And you forget sometimes that the rest of the world is still happening.

Everything else still needs to take place.

And so the juggling act that takes place between the current major chaos and everything else becomes a reality.

And these are smack-of-the-face moments sometimes.

Or you are really challenged?

Are your systems legit?

Can you do this?

Do you have the skills?

And as it turns out, I do, and I did, and it worked.

But I was being really pushed to my limit on numerous occasions to really say, like, okay, is Jeff Sanders actually this productive?

Is Jeff Sanders this pulled together?

Well, as it turns out, yes.

But here's where the story takes yet another radical left turn.

A few days before all the work was set to begin, my youngest daughter got a little bit sick, which she gets sick frequently.

She's three years old.

It's fine.

So I thought.

Two days later, I got the flu.

And the very next day, all of these contractors and men showed up at my house to do all of this work.

So I got the flu full on very, very badly. and within a couple of days of that, Tessa got the flu, and a few days later, our other daughter also got sick, though fortunately not as bad.

But throughout the entire process, the two and a half weeks, where all of these guys were in our house destroying everything to rebuild everything, throughout the entire process, our whole family had the flu.

And just, of all the things that could have happened during all of this chaos, this was just the icing on the cake.

It was like, it couldn't be hard enough.

It had to be a little bit more.

And so we found ourselves just hiding in our bedrooms and just dying all day.

This flu was rough.

It's probably the worst illness I've had in over a decade.

And it just knocked us down.

And so we just literally hid in our bedroom.

And fortunately, the way the guys are doing the work, they had these big plastic sheets that were kind of hiding them in their own little work bubble, which was fantastic because they stayed healthy.

We stayed separated, and that was what went down for days and days and days and eventually a couple of weeks.

It was a mess.

I hate that that happened, but that was just part of our experience.

So let's get to some more logistics here.

All this construction that took place was in the crawl space under our home, as well as in our kitchen, and some of which bled into our living room and definitely our garage to store a lot of appliances, they were all moved around.

And so throughout this two and a half week process, we had no access to our kitchen.

That's the stove, dishwasher, sink, many of the cabinets, and we had laundry for a bit, but then it was gone as well.

So imagine this, a family of very sick people who can't have access to the things that they need to live their lives and be healthy.

And all these people are at our house at the same time.

I just, oh, yeah, anyway, they moved. moved our refrigerator to our living room, which was very helpful, but all of our food was just in piles and in boxes all over the living room and our entire house.

So it was a disaster zone of messy stuff.

And typically, this was the plan going into it.

Tess and I had prepared to organize all that stuff, to have systems for it, to really say, you know what, it's fine that our kitchen's not available.

We'll just build some new systems and make it efficient.

Well, we got the flu, man, so we couldn't do any of those things.

And so by the time we finally got healthy enough to address those, we didn't care.

Like, it was just long gone.

And we knew a few days later we could just move back into the kitchen and move on.

But it was just, it was a mess on top of a mess, on top of a mess.

And I kind of viewed the whole process as camping.

Like it felt like one of those scenarios where you don't have the things that you prefer to have every day to feel your best, but you can figure it out.

You can survive.

One of the things that I have said for a long time about challenges of any type, whether you're going to change your diet, change your exercise routine, pursue a new career, whatever the thing happens to be, you can do anything difficult for 30 days or 60 or maybe even 90.

We can do hard things and we can survive them.

And it's only when really difficult things last for years that it actually really does kind of destroy us as people, but we're not there. in that position here, right?

We can do hard things for a short time and get through.

And having that mentality is extremely important when you're taking on something new and you have those moments of doubt.

Those moments where you wonder, do I have what it takes?

Can I figure this out?

Will this work out in the future?

You know, it's so easy in these scenarios when you have financial questions, when you have logistical questions, when your health is in jeopardy to basically play out worst-case scenarios in your brain and just assume all hell will break loose.

Everything will just fall apart.

But in reality, that's just so unlikely to take place.

We have skills.

We have resources.

We can pull this off.

Everything is figure outable.

That's just how life tends to work.

Is that no matter how difficult you think the challenge is, you can figure it out.

You will get through this.

This two shall pass.

And I had to lean on those life mantras quite a bit because I was being tested quite a bit in this process and lots of different directions.

But we did.

We figured it out.

We survived.

So now let's jump to kind of the fun. final component of this, which was the cleanup and our return to quote unquote normal life.

So once all of these guys left our house and the big work was done, we were then finally able to put everything back where it belonged and the process to put our stuff back in the kitchen, back in the cabinets to have access to laundry again and our sink and our stove and our dishwasher.

I really can't express how healing it was for us physically and emotionally.

And even Tessa pointed out that it felt as though we were supposed to experience this because the gratitude that we had for just seeing our countertops there again was a magical moment.

We had a stove to cook food.

We had a working sink to wash dishes.

We had laundry and the washer and dryer to clean our clothes.

We had privacy again without having all these guys in our eyes. house all day every day.

And it's one of those moments that makes you reflect and realize how much you actually have and how much I don't stop often enough to appreciate the life that I have, to walk on a floor that doesn't crumble beneath my feet.

Our kitchen tiles today are rock solid.

They are awesome.

I am so pleased with the work that was done.

But not just because the work was done well, but because I'm just so grateful to have a I can live in and take care of my family in and pursue my goals in and work for my job in my life is here.

And for me to not appreciate that would be a huge misstep.

And so to have the chance to be able to acknowledge those day-to-day things that are true about my life, it's a powerful reflective moment.

And I'm not asking for more of these problems in the future.

But once again, it's a great reminder to pause for a few seconds a day and just acknowledge what is fantastic about your life.

So now let's pivot to the final completed project and I'm going to go through some of the big stuff that took place.

There's a lot of detail, but the big things that happen.

The first is in the crawl space and the renovation that took place there and the fact that now today, my crawl space is one of the cleanest parts of my house.

What?

Yeah.

That thing that I said before was the dirty, nasty space I didn't want to go in full of bugs and mud and chaos.

It's now one of the best parts of my house, which is so, so bizarre.

But in a nutshell, here's what happened.

I had insulation and trash removed.

I had a lot of mold removed as well.

We had a new large support beam with three new jacks to hold it in place.

That was installed.

We had a trench that was dug around the crawl space for water to flow into.

Two new stump pumps with new French drains to pump the water away from the house, a new dehumidifier was put into place, and full encapsulation with thick plastic around the entire crawl space.

It looks awesome down there.

I love my crawl space.

It literally went from the dirtiest, nastiest place in my house to the cleanest room I could imagine.

It's amazing.

The transformation is night and day.

I now spend a lot of my free time in my crawl space.

Literally, that's not a joke.

I hang out there a lot.

I really like it.

So of all the things it took place, that is the best.

Okay.

On top of the crawl space, literally, is the kitchen renovation where we had two new joyce put in, new plywood to replace the rotted subfloor, new backerboard, new tile and grout.

Of course, they reinstalled our cabinets, reinstalled our countertops, which is actually a really big deal because those were going to break, and that would have added a lot of extra expense to the project.

And luckily, the countertops. did not break, and things were put back in place beautifully.

We then had drywall completed and repatched and painted, so a lot of those cracks are then gone, and we wound up with this very polished, completed home renovation, none of which we asked for, none of which we were looking forward to doing, none of which I wanted to tackle, but all of which I am so glad is now done.

It is one of those absolute just, you know what, if we're going to bite the bullet and do this, let's do it full out.

Let's comprehensively fix the whole thing.

And it has become just this epic adventure that I didn't plan to go on, but now that I did, I just, I have to imagine what else in my life is possible.

What else in my house is possible to go and pursue to see what else could take place.

Now, one thing that happened almost immediately as kind of a follow-up project to this was to fix additional issues in the house that I saw. right away that were then more obvious because of the work that was done.

So I fixed some water problems.

I improved our sump pump discharge.

The water comes out.

I called a plumber to repair five different leaks that were found during construction.

I'm not kidding you.

Five different pipes that had problems, which added a ton of extra money to this whole thing.

But it was absolutely necessary to fix.

And one of the weird things about the crawl space being redone is how easy it is to see everything down there now.

And so because of that, if there are more problems, it's more obvious where they are, which is metaphorically and literally amazing because when you shine the light on a problem, you can then see it.

And then you can actually address it and repair it.

That's literally what took place in our crawl space.

You walk in there now, or crawl in there now, turn on the lights, and you can see everything.

The crawl space used to be this dark cave, this dingy, nasty thing that was difficult to see.

But now with the literal lights turned on, whatever problems are down there, you can see them, you can fix them.

And of course, the metaphor here is obvious.

In your life, shine a light on your problems.

Go look at them.

Go see what is true.

Get the awareness that you need because it is only then.

You can actually move forward and solve what is true.

Lying to yourself and baring your head in the sand like I did for 10 years on this, it just adds up to these monumental oh my gosh moments that you don't want to have.

So I fixed these water problems, back to the story here, got the plumber to repair all these different leaks.

And then we had a lot more cleanup actually in the crawl space itself because I wanted to optimize it.

For the first time in my life, I wanted the crawl space to be the best that it could be because so much amazing progress took place, I wanted to polish it out.

So I rerouted some Ethernet cables, I removed some old H-back system stuff that I found, a lot of old wires.

I rerouted and hung a bunch of cables and cleaned the plastic.

I was cleaning things down there.

Cleaning.

So weird.

And it just turned into this very well-organized, beautiful place, even more so than it already was.

Then the final follow-up project is now one that is underway currently, which is painting the rest of my entire house.

One thing that is true about any project you take on is that once you do something to that point from before, you finish step three, you see step four, that's what's happening right now.

So we did all this work, all this money, all this time, all this energy.

But now of a sudden, the house looks so much better, I want it to be the best that it can be.

I want to take it to the next level, even higher than before.

So now we're painting the entire house for the first time in 10 years and fixing a lot of problems that previously I just ignored or didn't even know existed, and that process is so healing.

And I'm really enjoying it.

It's taking a lot of my time, and I'm really glad that it is because I'm now in a place where my house is a source of joy.

It's not a stressor.

It's not a big, hot mess.

It's a place I want to be and want to live and work and raise my family and entertain and whatever else I do here.

I want all those things to be possible. which is not going to be the case if I view my home as a dingy, dark cave that's falling to pieces, which is basically where it was.

Now, for the final section this week, I want to reflect on what this all means.

And there are three big takeaways that I had from this experience.

I touched on a bit of those already, but let me go into a little more detail on these.

The first big lesson is that I learned a lot about how homes are constructed and how much to work any home really needs to be at its best.

I am a much more aware homeowner.

I have plans to repair just about everything that I'm aware of now in the house, and I'm keeping my eyes open for any new problems that pop up.

Essentially, I went from someone who just kind of existed in this house to someone who really lives here, who really understands what is under my feet.

I mean, I literally now physically understand that Under my home office is a crawl space, and I know what's literally under the floor and what it looks like and how it's supposed to operate, at least to some degree.

I'm not an expert in everything yet.

And because of that, I feel like this level of understanding has reached a whole new place for me in a way that says, I am fully alive here.

I fully get it in a way I didn't before.

And I also, to a certain degree, know what I don't know, which means that I know there's a lot more to learn.

Let's go back to the top of the episode where I said that I did not want to be a DIY guy, that I did not want to fix up a house.

Well, that's not true anymore.

I actually really like it now because, and this is the big takeaway here, I have the knowledge and the skills to do so.

Anything that you are afraid of, anything where you say I don't want to go there, doesn't necessarily mean that's true.

It could literally just mean you lack experience, exposure, knowledge, and the skills to be involved in it.

But as soon as you have the skills and you have the exposure, you have some experience, and you're able to understand how to get from the start line to the finish line, what's not scary anymore.

It's not new or weird.

It's a part of your kind of echelon of abilities.

And now of a sudden it could be a source of joy.

So whatever it is you currently are saying no to, I would challenge you to rethink that.

What if you had more skills?

What if you were involved and had more exposure?

What other things could you be curious about and dig yourself into in a good way?

It allows you to have more abilities to do more with the time you have here on earth.

Lesson number two is that finding the right, trustworthy people is everything.

One of the key questions I asked myself throughout this process and one thing that I've carried with me for the last probably year or so is this question.

Can I trust you?

This is a question I use for sales.

It's what I use for myself of can others trust me?

But where's the partnership?

Where is the foundation?

Where's the communication?

The trust factor is the relationship.

And if I have it, if the trust is there, we can do anything. and it's not, I'm going to walk away.

Throughout most of the process of having these guys in my house doing this work, I let them do their job.

Yes, I answered questions and was there to really check on things.

And what was kind of funny there was that every night after they left, I would go inspect their work and look and see what they did and then ask more questions.

But for the most part, my intention was to let them do their thing.

I hired them for a reason, which is that I was going to trust. them and let them be the experts that they are.

And that was a really good choice because they are experts.

So they do this every day.

And they did a great job.

And there are very few issues.

And the ones that we had, we fixed very quickly.

And if I had hired someone I didn't trust, it would have been an absolute nightmare.

And I say that because a few of the quotes that I got were from people who I guarantee you that would have happened.

I saw the worst case scenario playing out before it actually did.

And when you have that kind of antenna up, when you have that gut feeling of something here's not right, listen to that voice, listen to that intuition because you're probably right.

And if you do hire the right person, you're going to love it.

And if you don't, watch out.

That's all going to say there.

All right.

Third and final lesson is that the literal foundation of any project is the most important.

You know, the foundation of your home keeps it upright and not falling apart.

The foundation of your health keeps you functioning and able to pursue your goals.

The basics, the fundamentals, the easy stuff is by far more important than any other fluffy cherry on top that tends to get the most attention.

So if you want the cherry, if you want the best stuff, the optimization, that only happens after the fact, after you've done the work of the fundamentals.

After you've woke it up early, drank your water, did your workout, had your 5 a.m. miracle, went to work, did your focus block of time, got yourself accomplished, really thrived at a high level.

But wait a minute, that's not a high level.

Those are the fundamentals.

Those are the easy parts.

Go to bed on time.

Wake up on time.

Drink some water.

Work out a little bit.

Focus.

These should be the easy things.

And yet these are the things people. don't do.

You know, I just said that there were some probably sketchy people I didn't hire.

Well, what made them sketchy?

Why did I not trust them?

They weren't doing the fundamentals.

They weren't doing the easy stuff.

That's what you have to do.

You can be trustworthy by just simply doing what others are not doing.

Make the phone call, send the email on time, hit the deadline, be a trustworthy person, show up.

That's it.

It really The bar is low.

The bar is low.

But then when you do it, like the experience I have and the guys who did show up and they did their work because they're experts, well, then they can do the easy stuff and the hard stuff.

They can do the things that get my attention and the things that impress me.

And all of a sudden, you've got an absolute A plus experience, but that is only possible if the foundation is laid and it is true and it is good.

So in your life, with whatever goals you're pursuing, whatever projects you have going on, whatever chaos is happening, I'm going to challenge you to do the easy stuff, to show up, to shine a light on the problems, and to be there every day in the game fighting for the basics, but those basics are going to get you farther than you could possibly imagine.

And for the action step this week.

Pay attention and take action now.

If you think you have found a problem, you did, and you need to do something about it today.

See a problem, solve a problem.

Do not wait until the problem gets worse and don't assume it will resolve itself because it won't.

So move now.

Embrace and accept reality, no matter how expensive or logistically challenging it may be, the answer you seek lies just past the fear you see in front of you.

Of course, subscribe to this podcast and your favorite podcast app or become a VIP member of the 5A.

Miracle Community by getting the premium ad-free version with exclusive bonus episodes at 5am MiraclePremium.com.

That's all I've got for you here on the 5am Miracle Podcast this week.

Until next time. you have the power to change your life, and all that fun begins bright and early.

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