Teamwork Makes the Dream Work
A1DesignBuild is a designer and builder of homes in Bellingham and Whatcom County, Washington. We specialize in everything from home remodels to complete high-performance home builds, and our over 70 years of providing excellent service to the community assures that your home project gets done right - each and every time.
The parallels between life and sports has long been documented: how vision, discipline, and teamwork are good metaphors for success across the board.
At A1DesignBuild, perhaps the most enthusiastic purveyor of sports is Justus Peterson, who also handles estimating and contracts at the co-op. In this quick interview, he discusses the importance of being a coach and how this translates into good business.
Justus: I'm very active in coaching. I coach my kids' youth sports pretty much year round. My middle child, my son, plays year round sports and my youngest daughter is involved in a couple of different sports, so I really work hard to make their experience a positive one, as well as for the other young people on the team. What happens with many coaches is that they focus on performance over experience. But we have an obligation to young people to make sure that we're meeting them where they are, and we're allowing them to experience camaraderie and sportsmanship and learning to develop their self-confidence. It's really just trying to make sure that the kids have the best experience possible.
How do I prepare my kids for a loss? I prefer the term ‘wins and lessons’ more than ‘wins and losses’. I don't think you ever really lose at anything you're trying hard at, so you prepare them for the unexpected end result. I try really hard to make sure I understand how each young person operates and I try to speak to them the way they listen. They can come away from a loss feeling every bit as good as they have from a win. It's a matter of presentation, accolade, encouragement, support, and an understanding that you are there for them regardless of the outcome. That’s good coaching.
If you are the one winning, that’s fantastic. It means you’re doing well and learning the sport. But that’s where sportsmanship comes in, because if you’re winning, there's someone across the table from you that is feeling differently than you are. If you really appreciate that, you're going to remember the struggles even in the moments of triumph, and then you're going to be gracious to your opponent. There are times that any coach, any athlete is just so full of the winning energy that you lose sight of that a little bit. That's the coach's job at the end, to come back and remind these players that you may have performed really well. But the most important thing is the effect you have on other folks around you and what you take away. If all you take away is a bigger ego and narcissism, it's going to affect you negatively in the long run. If you take away compassion and empathy and are gracious, you're going to succeed far more.
The lessons we teach on the field really affect the way we behave off the field. If I ask a young athlete to behave in a certain manner and then I go and behave in the opposite way, my lessons aren’t going to stick. Consistency is important for young people. Structure is important for young people, so be positive, be energetic, be respectful, be responsive, communicate well, and then hold them accountable for their behaviors. Make sure that if they deviate from the plan, there is some sort of conversation that gets them back on track. You have to have extreme ownership of what you do, and that’s a great life lesson.
That all starts with communication and teamwork. If you are going to be a valuable asset in the work world or the sports world, you have to be all in for your teammates, your coworkers. You have to be all in for their success.
Helping Each Other Up
Good Home Construction Starts with Extreme Ownership
Here at A1DesignBuild, we have a team approach to the construction industry that's different from a lot of other companies because we really have that extreme ownership, that belief, that buy-in, and the desire to watch other people succeed. I don't ever want to see a designer struggle because they haven't had support from the construction side and vice versa. Same on the sports side whether you're playing football or baseball or whatever - if your defense is not supporting your offense, you're not going to be as successful. We have to work together on both sides of the ball or in every aspect of the industry to make sure that we're the best team possible.
Probably my favorite coach of all time is a local high school baseball coach, Gary Hatch, and anybody in this community is going to understand who that is and what that means. He was clear in expectation, in communication. He was clear in the delivery of a standard. Something that I take into my professional life now is things that I watched him do as a young athlete, how he presented information to me, how he expected me to respond to those instructions, how prepared he was, how willing he was to work with you to make you better. That was incredible for me, because I was never the biggest or tallest on my sports team. He had a huge influence.
“Hard work beats talent when talent won’t work hard.”
But the most important coach I've ever had in my life is my father. My dad and I are close, and he helped guide me through every phase of life. So that was real coaching on every level. I grew up having sports posters in my bedroom and of who? Of course, every Seahawk known to man and multiple others from other teams too. But at the same time, I had a Martin Luther King poster and an Albert Einstein poster, and that was something my dad instilled in me. He wanted to make sure that not only did I have a grasp of the sports world, but also that there's more out there than just sports.
He really pushed that. When I was young, he would record all of my sporting events. He videotaped everything. I have VHS tapes for days. So he came to me one day and I was sitting at the dining room table doing my homework, and he set up the video camera and he wanted me to know that he was as interested in filming my education as he was my sports life. And not to put pressure in the wrong area or to put importance in the wrong area. So I think my love of sports and working with people, everything like that comes from my dad. He's my hero, no question. So anybody that knows me around a sports field, they also know my dad. He's the most influential human in my life.
He told me a quote that I always tell the kids I coach: It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog. That was one that always stuck with me. Hard work beats talent when talent won't work hard. Something to always remember.
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