Greg Owens 27:11
and you’ve done the work, right. Like, you know, there’s people that that are sober for a long time, read the book, but don’t do don’t do the actual self reflection, and where you’re where your role in each decision is in that taking that responsibility. As we mentioned earlier,
Edward Johnson 27:28
I have done a fourth step I have. And it sounds like you might be familiar a little bit. So I have I have, I’ve done the fourth step, and I’ve done the ninth step. And I’ve made I’ve made apologies to the people that that I needed to make apologies to, and, and more importantly, I just want to walk through life. Not causing more harm. And I want to, to, you know, I want to be able to look myself in the mirror morning, and I know how incredibly cliche that is. But I was just talking my boss just a little while ago about karma and it will come back and it will bite you in the ass. And I have been bitten in the ass and I’m tired of getting bitten. Yes. So So. Yeah.
Greg Owens 28:18
Yeah, a lot, lot, lot. Quite a few family members that are went have gone through the program. And I’ve been around it a lot. And I think it’s a very resolutions to end up Read, read the blue book justice sort of get my own head wrapped around it to be more helpful. Absolutely. You know, it’s a very, I think it’s a brilliant path in so many ways. And what you also spoke to there, which really is sort of resonates me big time is, is how you’ve been mentoring basically. Yeah. To help them proceed in their life. Right. And, and sometimes you do that I find it’s, it’s it’s one of the most rewarding things ever, hugely. And you might not even get like them coming back and saying thank you for helping me. But you see the trajectory change in their life from some maybe some words or some direction, some, you know, some ideas, and then you see it and you’re like, Oh my God, that’s great. They’re not doing amazing to themselves anymore, or to others and they’re, they’re on a better path. Right? It’s, it’s, it’s
Edward Johnson 29:18
amazing. It’s unbelievable. I had one of my I had it. years ago, I had this janitor that worked for me. And he was a smart kid. He was a really smart kid. And he wanted to do more. And so I started sort of, excuse me, mentoring him to do to do some office, help help out, work with me, you know, help budget stuff. And he did a fantastic job, just a fantastic job. And it ended up being the thing that really made the difference with him as an employee because he just needed a little bit more of a challenge he needed. He needed Similar award in what he was doing, and he got it. And so I think it was just, I don’t know, like, three weeks ago, I got a call for and I always love it when this happens, I got a call to give him a reference. And he’s now he’s now a property manager. Down in the Monterey Bay Area. He has, uh, I talked to him afterwards, he has a, he has a reasonably big portfolio that he’s, he’s in charge of, and, and I just, I just, I just love that, you know, it’s like, it’s like I talked to Abel, and his life has gone on, because he’s worked so hard at it. And all that I was, was I just inserted just a little bit of a thing to say, Hey, why don’t you try this, and, you know, and it helped them out. Like, and again, this is not a career thing. This is a life thing. Like, like, that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s hugely rewarding, and the reward is really all it is. Because he’s done this thing. And, right. You know, that’s just, it’s worth gold. You know,
Greg Owens 31:03
it is so much I mean, it’s, it’s, you know, I’m constantly as a business owner, looking for potential in people, right? And, oh, happy when I give them like a little like, nugget and they, they act on it, even if it doesn’t work the way I thought it might, they just did some action steps towards it. Because then they’re learning and growing, they come back to me for more, and we chat some more. And, you know, it’s so great to see some of that happen out there. Right. Like in it is so wonderful. And like you said, you get like, you know, maybe it’s a year, two years, five years down the road, and they call up and they’re, they say, Hey, this is where I’m at in my life. I talked to you at this point in my life. And and here’s where I’m at now. And you’re like, Dad, I help. I was along that path with you. Right, but you did. Yeah. You said us? Yeah, they did. They did the actual work.
Edward Johnson 31:56
Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s, um, it’s, it definitely. It definitely has helped smooth over some of those rougher times in the past where I promise you there were days in my past, where I wasn’t thinking about these kinds of things. And, and I prefer this life much, much more. Yeah. No.
Greg Owens 32:17
And I think for a lot of people out there, you know, the struggles real right there. There’s unbelievable burdens. And, and when that happens, you tend to self be more selfish in a lot of ways, right? Yeah. And it’s, it becomes harder to do things to think of others and to help others when there’s when that you have that internal struggle going on. There are no limits to how to set the reasons these days why we can’t act selflessly. You know,
Edward Johnson 32:47
they’re, they’re everywhere, they’re around every corner. And I wish for all of us that walking out of what I hope is not gone would seeming to be the other side of this whole pandemic thing, that the that it has offered us the opportunity to take a moment and consider those paths. And those chin those, those choices a little bit more, you know, we’ve all been sitting around for a year and a half, you know, hopefully, it has given people a moment to consider what they can do for others a little bit more because, because on the output of this thing I, I want for us to to to have the least contemplated principles a little bit more because a we’ve had the time and be when we are just so consumed with self. We’re going to get back into more of this shit. You know, it’s just it’s not going to stop until until until we acknowledge one another. Yeah, others do it. You know? Mm hmm.
Greg Owens 33:58
Yeah, yeah. And I think there’s some cultures that do a better job of seeing the person. And not like the action versus too often it’s like trend in our culture, and a lot of ways, we just get into that transaction. And I’m guilty of this too. Sometimes I’m trying to move fast and, and trying to get transactions done. But I, every day, try to slow down and make sure that I see the person first, right? Absolutely.
Edward Johnson 34:26
Absolutely. Yes. I just had to sort of coincidentally extend the end of friendship, because it had it had gotten into the place where the nature of the friendship was too transactional. I like that word. The nature of the friendship it become too transactional for me. And there’s no there’s no person ability in that. That’s not that’s not that’s not the nature of how I want to I want to interact with friends. There’s I get too much of that in my like you like so. I get too much of that in my daily business life. I don’t I don’t want that in the future. The people that I, that I surround myself with,
Greg Owens 35:02
right, and I’m careful in that myself to that, I know that if I have reached out to a friend for a favour, you know, and then I’m going to reach out for another favour of like, wait, what’s going on here? Like? Yeah, the meet up as friends?
Edward Johnson 35:17
Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. This is a, this is a, this is a, this is not this is not a, this is not a business thing. This is a, this is a, this is a friendship, and we care about each other at the end of the day. So,
Greg Owens 35:30
yeah, such good stuff, such good stuff, I want to I want to this has been wonderful. I want to get into a little bit of your origin story path to your career here. And when you when you you know, you’d gotten into facilities, you were in that for 10 years. How did that get started? What was your path?
Edward Johnson 35:46
Yeah, so I was, um, I was, well, I guess, it’s easiest to say like this. I went to college in New Orleans, Louisiana. Now, probably, there is not a really great school for an alcoholic to go to college anywhere. But among the worst is a is Tulane University in New Orleans. So I did not meet with the success that I wanted to I went to school for architecture and, and managed to kind of mess that up. And before that I had been in Seattle for a bunch of years, I grew up on the East Coast, but I’ve been in Seattle for a long time. And I kind of went back to Seattle with my tail between my legs, having sort of messed up college because of because of my addictions. And I went into construction. And it was interesting, because I wanted to construction at the time, because I needed a job and I found a job and and I had always believed myself to be a little bit too. Not hard enough to really work construction. I had a really sort of asshole stepfather that just always sort of knew can’t do this stuff, when I found out was that not only could I do that stuff, I was actually very good at it. I’m very detail oriented, extremely detail oriented. And I found a real passion for construction and, and the craft of construction because I really believe that great tradesmen or craftsman. And I was like, wow, not only was it was it a catharsis for me that I could actually that I could actually do this work, but that I really loved. And then the recession happened. And boom, and I was you know, it was rainy days in Seattle for a long time and just scraping by. And then my daughter was born and my daughter’s mom moved to California. So I was going from I was driving from Seattle to California every other weekend to to see my kid. And that commute was killing me. So I i through a family connection. And this is goes back to you know what you were talking about? Initially, I just sort of ended up in facilities management through through a, through a family connection, I got hired to be a facilities manager because I had construction background, and they brought me in and and that’s kind of how I ended up in it and then found that, that I really loved it, you know, and I think it you know what I went. So before I was at 24. I was at Dropbox for a number of years, and I worked with this unbelievable facilities coordinator name was Vicki Vernon, and she had actually gone to school for facilities management, which I didn’t even know was like thing. And she’s like the hardest working facilities coordinator I’ve ever known in my life, like just unbelievable. And, um, and so, so I just sort of happened into it. And then I just sort of coincidentally met this person that had actually studied it and I was like, wow, that’s like a thing that people actually go to school for. I thought it was mostly just like old construction guys like me are getting old and grey. And but, uh, but it turns out turns out, there’s there’s a really robust, like you said, you said it’s like, is a $3 trillion industry at this point. $3 trillion industry is what I didn’t know that actually. But it’s a huge industry. And, and, you know, if the recruitment calls that I get day in and day out, or anything to be believed, you know, it’s it’s not a dying industry. It’s one that, you know, people are people I think need to get back to the office and a lot of people are, you know, people are sick of this shift. And, and, and, and they’re, you know, facilities managers are are, are being hired a lot. So, I say do it, you know, if you’re interested, you know,
Greg Owens 40:03
yeah, cuz we were talking off air right before this too. And you know, part of this podcast has been like shining that light on this this industry the the job opportunities within it the career opportunities within it. Yeah. And much so many people can really find their place to be happy with their career choice, right. And in some of these conversations are stumbling into it right like that, like you said, but it sounds like she, she she sort of knew from the get go, she went to school for it,
Edward Johnson 40:31
it’s amazing. I have, I have never met anybody more hard working in my entire life. Anyone who ever says, and I just, I work upon those rare instances here in San Francisco, where I meet someone, so follow minded to talk about to degrade women and their and their work abilities. I always mentioned to women, Vicky, who is like, just the damn hardest office style, you know, sort of white collar side of things. And I used to sew and one of my absolute best friends ever. In construction. Her name is Teresa. And she, she was a Kansas farm girl. And I used to work construction with her doing heavy, heavy construction. And she could outwork anybody. Anybody on the job site?
Greg Owens 41:23
I mean, so. So I’ve known a lot of them. And don’t tell me that they can’t work as just as hard as we can. Because I’ve watched them work much harder than we can. Absolutely, absolutely. And put in a good word. I’d love to get them on the podcast, because I also like to keep these conversations with women that are in that get into this industry. And it’s still very male dominated in so many aspects. But there’s so many women just crushing it within it right. And yeah,
Edward Johnson 41:55
no wonder, I wonder if because, I mean, I hate to sound a little sexist. But I do think that women tend to have a little bit more of that emotional quotient than men do. You know, still, and I wonder if some of the difference is that they bring that emotional intelligence, maybe a little bit more innately than we do. And a lot of them crushing it in the industry is that they already have that, you know, coming into, you know, into in into a market that needs that more and more. You know,
Greg Owens 42:29
I agree. I think they I think they’re just they have that intuition for that emotional intelligence there that they’re more tapped into more aware of, right. Yeah, I can really see and read faster, right. Sometimes I’m slow. Yeah. I just did. yesterday with the inspector. Right. It was Yeah, it took me five minutes to catch on. Yeah. going right. where somebody else with more that ability to switch gears faster, right? Yep, yep. Yep. Absolutely. And so good. And, yeah, you know, it’s amazing to me that this whole industry doesn’t have more, you know, there’s, you know, there’s definitely no rock stars in it in a lot of ways, right? Really can bring awareness to it to younger people, or people that want to transition their careers or, or that kind of thing. And I think there’s so much stigma, you mentioned it earlier about, you know, you that you have to actually come from the construction industry or something like, yeah, facilities manager, and that’s not the case at all. Right, and
Edward Johnson 43:35
what, what I think, just sort of what he wrote was just sort of springing to mind is that, you know, this is a place that the unions can really can really sort of, build, build the female presence of some. I don’t know, if you’re familiar with local 39. Here in, in the, in the bay, the building engineers union, which is, by far, I think, the best union I’ve ever I’ve ever impacted, but incredibly well trained, unbelievably intelligent, men and women. And, you know, there was actually a great woman on my engineering crew at Dropbox. And, and I knew a couple of, and so, you know, I would encourage young ladies who, you know, feel like they want to go into the trades, go to the unions, you know, the unions, I believe in unions for one thing, and just hope I’m not stepping on anyone’s political toes, but I believe in unions, I believe in, you know, workers right, to collectivise. And I think that they give the right training for tradespeople to really to really excel. And so you know, if you’re, if you’re out there and you’re wondering where to get started, going to the union’s you know, they will help you, you know, they really they, they, especially 39 but there’s a lot of them that will just really give you the training and also, I mean It would not be a facilities conversation, if we didn’t mention the word safety. And, you know, they will teach you how to be safe at what you’re doing as well, because there are pitfalls to safety. I mean, we could talk, we could have five podcasts just oh, there’s so many
Greg Owens 45:17
ways to die.
Edward Johnson 45:19
There. Yeah. Yeah. And, and then there’s the paperwork side of safety, too, which is just, I’ve done a lot of in my career, which is just, you know, it’s a big time. So stay safe. Go to the unions, they’ll keep you safe.
Greg Owens 45:34
Yeah. And yeah, I mean, you know, as a company, we’re non union. I have a tremendous amount of respect for the union community, they definitely have their place. They have unbelievably great training programmes. I’ve encouraged some of my employees after they’ve learned from me to move into it. It’s, it’s, there’s so much more benefits and that kind of thing. That that, yeah. So it’s done. I don’t mean to step on your toes. I apologise. Oh, no, not not at all. It’s that, you know, without without them, the workforce would be it would be run over. Absolutely. By the by sort of corporations, right, in a lot of ways, right? We, they’ve put a lot of these rules in the eight hour work day, right before all these different things, right? Yeah, sure. I mean, everything’s got its, you know, pluses and minuses, let’s say,
Edward Johnson 46:25
Yeah, absolutely. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I have experienced the minuses of believing
Greg Owens 46:30
now. In particular, the biggest minus for me is like the unbelievable levels of paperwork involved that start to come in, when you when you’re in that direction, and that kind of thing? Yep.
Edward Johnson 46:42
I’ve been, I’ve been both the person that is responsible for the paperwork, and the person requesting that paper work. So and, you know, I mean, to call a spade a spade, San Francisco’s got a couple of unions in particular that are they they have not, they have not met my fancy. There’s been there’s, I’ve seen some some stuff that I really didn’t like. And, and yet, you know, I think a good union, and supporting the union is almost like, in a way supporting a contractor, which is that like, for me, 39 has just, I’ve just been totally blown away with, with the with their people, and with the administration of vocal 39. And so when in doubt, I just always go with them, because they’re just, they’re just, I know, tell you what the thing about that I know how well they take care of their people. And that is what resonates with me the most.
Greg Owens 47:39
I’ve heard I’ve heard that. I’ve heard that before. Particularly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s, that’s, that’s so great. Then the training? high level, right. Yeah. And and like you said earlier, they’ll keep you safe. Right? There’s so many Yeah, you know, they’ll they’ll definitely get you up to speed on all of that. That’s wonderful. Any any other advice for somebody coming in? That’s new that’s thinking about this as a career choice? What would you How would you steer them? Anything else you would say? Yeah, I
Edward Johnson 48:06
would say, you know, all the more, especially if you’re here in the Bay in San Francisco, um, don’t discard the, the presence of just of technology these days. So like, when I was with Dropbox? I had I familiar with Slack, though. Yeah. Yeah. Was that we use it, you do. I had a slack bot built by this wonderful company up in Seattle called Roby. And they coolest little thing, man. So this slack bot, you could go on, and you could ask to change the lighting, or the H fac temperature temperature in your area, which was awesome. Because it cut down on the number of like, just standard old hot cold calls that you know, can you turn in temperature?
Greg Owens 49:02
Actually, something you created.
Edward Johnson 49:04
This was I did not create myself, I commissioned a company up in Seattle to build and but it was fine. When it was your idea, your
Greg Owens 49:13
your your sort of thing. That’s amazing. That is definitely a painful part of being a facilities managers everyday getting requests for like temperature changes.
Edward Johnson 49:25
I guess what I’m yeah. So I mean, to answer your question, though, you know, any advice don’t don’t ignore tech, like you’re going to get into this thing. And you’re going to need to know how to, you know, swing a hammer and answer an email. And that’s the extent you know, more and more we are seeing the presence of very innovative tech come into the Facilities Management world and, and so just just keep your eye on that edge of the industry because there’s a leading edge there. That really is Bringing automation in in incredibly awesome new ways. That’s just doing all kinds of stuff. And, and so if you are discounting facilities management because they’re like, Oh, that’s boring, I promise you, there’s a lot of stuff coming in the market. Now that really is quite, quite interesting. So stay tuned.
Greg Owens 50:21
Oh, there’s there’s a, we’ve talked to some of them on this podcast. And it’s been phenomenal. It’s really interesting, especially with, with, with the pandemic, COVID, COVID-19 and xactly new protocols and new ways of like monitoring a space and that kind of thing is unbelievable. Like, yep. And such a needed world right now. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. This is, this has been absolutely awesome conversation to have with you, Edward. It really was really nice to meet you. Yeah, thanks for taking the time out of your day, how would people get in touch with you. So I think is a good way,
Edward Johnson 51:02
LinkedIn is the best way Please, please feel free to hit me up on LinkedIn. For for anything, um, I am on the sort of more personal world, taking a little bit of time away from social media a little bit more like the like just the traditional patient, social media, But to answer your question, I’m only too happy to talk to people on LinkedIn, you know, I always game to talk to more people like this. And thank you, by the way for shedding some, you know, taking taking the time to shed some light on this industry that so much of us so many of us work in that, you know, that I you know, is a fantastic industry and and really needs the light shone on it. So, right. Yeah.
Greg Owens 51:48
I mean, I think awareness is such a big deal, right? Like, there’s only so many directions to go in life and, and one of the things I see about being a facilities manager and being a contractor and a lot of ways is is you get that autonomy to work, right? Like an end you become a generalist, you you start really knowing so many different aspects of how a building functions and all the trades that go into it. And you maybe you’re not, you’re not an expert in any one of them, but you need to sort of bridge that gap as we talked to earlier. Right.
Edward Johnson 52:19
And, and that is as true in the blue collar world as it is in the white collar world. You know, I just got really good at doing contracts and now a procurement manager and I’m, you know, dealing with the procurement side of things a lot because I, you know, fostered that talent for time, you know, yeah.
Greg Owens 52:35
Yeah. So Wonderful. Well, thanks again, Edward do absolutely time here. But it’s wonderful to have this conversation. Yeah. Really enjoyed it. paint dry podcast.
Outro 52:48
Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. Thanks for listening to the Watching Paint Dry podcast. We’ll see you again next time. And be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.