Rachel | DYC Marketing Manager (00:01.825)
All right, here we go. We're trying something new today. I'm Rachel, DYC's Marketing and Events Manager. I'm here with Kevin Oakley.

Kevin Oakley (00:10.518)
Hey, what are we doing? This is different? What's different? Feels like we're in the same place.

Rachel | DYC Marketing Manager (00:11.585)
It's different. I have loved my, even in my short time with the UIC so far getting to benefit from the mentorship of Kevin. So we're opening the office doors for office hours and letting you in on some of our conversations. And I've got a really exciting topic today for you, Kevin. I hope you love it.

Kevin Oakley (00:33.144)
Yeah, and I have some inkling of the general topic, but I don't know what you're asking. What else do people need to know? It's open-ended conversation. The only thing I'd warn her is just to shut me up when I go too long, like make a signal, push a button, pull the hook.

Rachel | DYC Marketing Manager (00:50.369)
Sounds good.

So I started thinking when I came into this role and thought about this when I came into new home building as a marketer in my last role, just what are the stages of development for a marketer? So I want to hear from your perspective working with dozens and dozens of marketers over the years here and elsewhere. Do you have any sort of a schema in mind for what those stages of development look like as someone grows as a marketer?

Kevin Oakley (01:21.262)
Yes, and also I think we're going to have to bring everyone else along. They're going to have to learn a little bit more about you and kind of where you are on the stages. So I'm going to expect the unexpected, I guess, when we do open format. My general framework for this and really learning and developing in anything, and I don't know who to give ultimate credit to for this, but generally speaking, there's four stages of competence.

you're unconsciously incompetent, you don't know what you don't know. Then as you move through that phase, and for me that was like, I'll never forget, it was Thursday afternoon, I'd been with the builder for about four months and I thought I had a pretty good handle on like what the flow was. And I was really excited because I finally saw like the bottom of my inbox, which we don't.

I don't think most people have those now. It was a physical inbox and like the things on there were things people had dropped off that I needed to do. And I was like, man, this is awesome. I only have two things left in my inbox. I have all day tomorrow, nothing's on the calendar. And then someone just casually walked by and said, hey, Kevin, our award entries are due for the BIA by five o'clock on Friday. Where are we on that? And I said, excuse me, what are you talking about? Awards, what is that?

So I was unconsciously incompetent when it came to award entries for the BIA. And then shifting that to consciously incompetent. Now I know, oh my gosh, there's this thing I know I should know about called award entries, but I don't know how to do them. I don't know what's involved. I don't know where to get answers. There's just so many things I don't know, but I know I don't know them. And then you move into conscious competence where you can...

fill out, I guess I'll just keep going. You fill out the awards and you get them in, but man, it's hard. It feels like work, it takes effort. You're a second guessing yourself. It's kind of like when you're trying to do something for the first time and you've got the window open that gives you the steps, then you also have the window of the program you're trying to use and you're like toggling back and forth and how do I do this? And then ultimately, if you do that enough times, then you can become consciously or unconsciously competent where, and the Markov Proof algorithm is the.

Rachel | DYC Marketing Manager (03:26.325)
Yes.

Kevin Oakley (03:36.94)
best example of that for me now, where if someone fills that data out and I look at it for about 10 seconds, sometimes less, it's like the numbers are jumping off. I don't even really perceive, it's like speed reading. When you watch someone speed read, you're like, there's no way, remember there was a teacher I had, I think in fourth grade, sixth grade. She was like, I can speed read this page and she would just move her hand over the page and I was like,

I don't believe you. You did not do that. That seems like some form of magic. She's like, ask me a question about what I read. Gosh darn it, she did it. So when you're speed reading like that, you are not internalizing each word in the same way. There's some unconscious mechanism that has been trained consciously. And so those are the four general stages of any development, I think, when it comes to humans, at least. And I think you can...

put those together with marketers pretty well.

Rachel | DYC Marketing Manager (04:38.655)
Yeah, it's so funny you would say that because my first professional role ever was a reading teacher and one of the skills we taught was speed reading. And there's definitely a technique to it and it's super uncomfortable at first. You don't feel like you're picking up very much but then slowly over time you do pick up more and more and more until you can translate it to any type of material, nonfiction, fiction, dense textbooks, light reading like newspapers. So I think that's a really great analogy.

I think about that in several different categories. As you were saying that, was thinking about the really technical skills, which I'm going through right now with some of the processes I'm learning here. But then I was also thinking about strategy and thinking about analytics and just thinking about professional development. So tackling each of those categories is their own thing. What do you think it looks like to move from unconscious incompetence to conscious competence and strategizing as a marketer?

Kevin Oakley (05:34.766)
I think I understand the question enough to go at it, I'll just. We'll see if this kind of summary answers it and then we can go deeper. Which is the goal is to quickly identify or leverage someone else's unconscious competence or conscious competence in the team or online or wherever else to help you quickly identify what are the tasks that must be done.

There's no saying, well, those are the things that, in the olden days anyway, you would stay at work and work late, because it just has to get done. You have to identify, is this a have to get done thing? Is this a nice to have done thing? Is this a long-term project that I can take some time to become consciously competent in it? And the stuff that has to be done and is done at high frequency, meaning it's going to occur a lot.

You can't avoid them. You just have to, through sheer grit and determination, push through, and it's no different. I mean, again, I'm trying to learn guitar now. And this is the second time I've tried to learn guitar. The first time, it's like, dang, my fingers hurt. And I can't do this often enough in my current life to get past that phase quickly, without truly just making my fingers bleed.

And so I said, you know, I'm not gonna do guitar. hopefully you know enough about a job that you're trying to take, where you don't have that instance of like, dang, I stepped in stuff that I really don't have the time, will or grit to push through. Because if it's that case, you should be honest with yourself and your employer and adapt quickly. But if it's something you really wanna do, identify those things and do them.

over and over again, even when they're not required. Like if it was something that, just say over the course of a week, typically is gonna come up as a task to be done five times or more, I would probably make myself do them 15 times. And I'd redo it, and I would like an athlete time myself. I remember I used to, there were so many direct mail pieces that I needed to do for my first builder. All they did was newspaper ads and direct mail pieces. But I mean,

Kevin Oakley (07:58.636)
there were just so many that I said to myself, I've got to figure out and time myself. If I take longer than an hour to do a direct mail piece for a community, this is not gonna work. And so I do it, but I go, dang, that didn't, I didn't do that well enough. So when those high frequency must do tasks, there's no avoiding them. You just have to like get through the pain as quickly as possible because the goal and then to zoom out a little bit is,

Once it gets into your unconscious incompetence brain, then you have the capacity to take on more and do more because the friction is lower, the energy required from your brain and your body is lower. You're not second guessing yourself the same way through the whole process. And so what I view it as is just putting things on the shelf. My job is to become unconsciously competent at something.

or standardize the process enough or document the process that someone else can do it. But it's gotta be offloaded and put on the shelf and revisited from time to time to reconsider should or could this be done better. But it's not saying to yourself, I need to reinvent this every time.

Rachel | DYC Marketing Manager (09:05.216)
you

Rachel | DYC Marketing Manager (09:13.523)
Yeah, I think that's a really good analogy and this is where it helps so much to have some kind of physical discipline or craft in your background because if you've been a basketball player or a dancer or a potter or a painter, you know that your body takes time to build those new muscle memories. And I think for our brain, it's the same way as a marketer, but it can be hard to feel like you're in that place where you're pushing yourself to go way faster than you can actually go just because you want to be there already when it takes reps. I think

Kevin Oakley (09:42.786)
And that's the danger, not to get philosophical, but the danger is not in youth today and in almost everyone that I interact with today. Is there in such a race to get to the next step? But my old original mentor in the business for several years, Myers-Barnes, used to always say, new level, new devil. And if you skip too many levels, you don't just...

Rachel | DYC Marketing Manager (09:43.447)
yourself is great.

Kevin Oakley (10:09.19)
upon a devil like you meet Lucifer himself and my analogy of like there are too many things for you to overcome and you've like Icarus you've gotten too close to the Sun and that's not again good for you because then what you start to internalize unconsciously which is dangerous is I'm a failure and I can't like no almost every everyone could

it's a matter of were you willing to progress in the right way and become unconsciously incompetent in enough stuff that, I mean, I guess video games is another good analogy, right? Like most video games, at least when was a kid, like you can't just cut straight to the end boss. You got to go get the armor, get the weapons, level up, get the extra hearts, the magic fairy dust, all those things that you can finally be to that level. And the side philosophical thing there is,

AI is not helping things, because people think that because they know the words to say, they know what it means, or they know how to do it. And so it's easier to fool yourself and think, I'm as smart as anyone else, because I have this amazing LLM to ask questions to. But in most cases, at some point, you end up in a room full of people and they're going to ask you a question that you've never thought of before. And you're going to, like an addict, look, reaching for their cigarette pack.

You're gonna be like, where's my phone? I need to ask this thing a question. And then the game is up and everyone knows this is not a serious person who's an expert at their craft, but someone who's been doing the minimum viable dose to get through the day or the week.

Rachel | DYC Marketing Manager (11:36.341)
Yeah.

Rachel | DYC Marketing Manager (11:45.919)
Yeah, that's a great segue into the next category that my brain thought of when you first mentioned that, which is analytics. I think this can be a really hard one for many marketers who, like you and like me, come from a more creative background, got into marketing because of the creativity and not necessarily the numbers and the math. But when you think about moving from unconscious incompetence, again, to conscious competence in your analytical skill set,

Kevin Oakley (11:56.77)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel | DYC Marketing Manager (12:13.515)
What do you notice in terms of the development for marketers, the ones who really make it? What do they focus on?

Kevin Oakley (12:19.074)
Yeah, it's, they focus on always trying to answer a question. So again, these are numbers. And if you take a math class, the numbers are always part of a problem. No one's, you don't walk into calculus and they just sit you down and just write random things on the board and say, get to work. There is a problem to be solved. And without that framework,

People try, they feel like they have to memorize all the numbers or they have to, again, be able to do a bunch of math in their head or, I don't know, but they don't understand that everything only exists to serve a purpose. And the purpose of the data and the analytics is to inform, not decide, that's a big difference, but to inform different areas to research or be curious about. And,

people get sideways either on their lack of comfort of going beyond the numbers means they just stick with the number. And it's like, if we don't hit this benchmark, we've all failed. Like, did you meet your sales goal this month? Yes. How did we all fail? Well, we didn't hit that number. Okay. But we hit the goal, but we didn't hit the number. And then there's other people who just have aversion again, and kind of going back to my analogy of the guitar with the pain in the fingers.

They just keep saying over and over again, I just don't like that part of the business or the job. just am not a numbers person. I don't have dyslexia, but I can, I mean, I took honors pre-cal twice and I ended up with a C my second time around. And then I never took another math class again, but I have a comfort level, not with math generally. Any of my kids ask me for homework in algebra, like, I do not know when that train is arriving at the station. But in the context of,

of understanding what all those numbers mean in the market proof algorithm or in Google Analytics or in the CRM. The number isn't 25. I just don't think of it as a number. It's like those are all customers and they all have a desire to improve their lives by purchasing a home and they're researching, they're stuck in the research part. Like I go, you go past numbers, but yeah, those are, those are the common mistakes I see as people either over index in the numbers.

Kevin Oakley (14:44.302)
and don't understand their meaning. They have aversion, they just won't go through enough reps and make themselves do it enough to become, because they just say, I'm a creative person, or I, you know, that's just not my area of strength. The problem, the real problem is, it's unavoidable in today's world, I would say, unless your title just is creative director, is that all of the other senior leaders you interact with in the organization are expecting you to be able to speak their language. And if you can't,

you can't tell a story that's compelling with data, they're not gonna take you seriously. And they're also not gonna just let you email and text and record stuff. They're gonna expect you to in a meeting or present on what the analytics and the data is telling us.

Rachel | DYC Marketing Manager (15:34.177)
Nice. So I'm thinking about the marketer who has come out of that, you know, incompetence and they're unconsciously competent. Meaning, you by definition, they don't know that they're better than they think they are, that they're better than they used to be. Can you think of any signals that people could look for in their own work or in the product of their work or in the people around them that they're starting to hit that new level of competence?

Kevin Oakley (16:04.002)
Yeah, people will say things like, how did you do that that fast? how, even when people around you trust you enough to say things like, how did you come up with that? They're either challenging your ideas or they're truly just kind of stunned, like how did you get there? And that's when I go and visit builders all the time. I won't be there very long and I'll say something that doesn't seem super impressive to me. And they're like,

You've only been here for an hour. How do you know that? Like, I'm just picking it up. It's like, why did you smell a banana just now? I mean, cause there's a banana in the room and it's pretty obvious what it is. But if you've never seen a banana in your life or... So other people will start to notice it. Obviously the time factor, being able to jump in and jump out. Again, that's killer. If you're constantly task switching and you... Generally, that's not a great idea anyway.

but it's especially dangerous if you're not competent at doing it. And this is also, there's a book that I've read two years ago, I think, called From Strength to Strength. It was recommended to me by Ivy Zellman. She's a famous housing analyst. And it talks about fluid intelligence, which is the kind of way that your brain works when you're younger, and crystallized intelligence. And...

Like the crystallized intelligence is a way of saying the unconscious route has been like the grooves are deeper. And so being able to task switch and jump back in and not be like, I need to reorient myself to this. Now, this is where it's still layered though. It's always sadly more complicated because...

you might have, and this is why older people have a challenge continuing to adapt, even when they are great at adapting the rest of their lives, is like, okay, now AI comes along. Well, guess what? We're all unconsciously incompetent at AI when it first comes along in terms of its current form. And so now it's like, do I have as an older person the grit to push through that and make myself learn all the details and how it works and...

Kevin Oakley (18:24.398)
So unconscious and competence also, or unconscious competence also ends up creating a potential weak spot at the same time. there's this psychological experts, behavioral science experts, they call it the no free lunch theorem, which is that you could become unconsciously incompetent in all this great stuff, Kevin.

But by definition, you're also creating these mental shortcuts that makes it so easy for you, because it's generally true most of the time, that your bias is greater and it leads you to, at some point, not being able to adapt or being caught off guard. And that's why the Dunning-Kruger effect, I think is what it's called, where the curve of expertise that you feel as an individual in a subject,

Rachel | DYC Marketing Manager (19:12.577)
Okay.

Kevin Oakley (19:17.154)
The reason it comes back down at the end, this is just my own theory, is because when you are unconsciously competent to the point where you understand that everything has to be checked for bias and missing, but still being able to do that really fast. That's like peak expertise. And that's, again, the only example I keep coming back to that I think most people understand is I can identify what's wrong with the market-proof algorithm data.

Why is this community not selling very quickly? But then I don't just say that's it, see, like, you know, we don't turn that into a true, true black and white true or false test because now the application of what does that mean for this builder in this community with this culture or this product type, these margin goals, these everything I have to go, this is generally true, but is it true this time? This is generally true, but is it this time? This time, this time? And to be able to do that,

live in front of someone and not be like, I just need, I need 10 minutes. I'll be back. You like you, have to be able to, to do that all really rapidly. That's why it comes down at the end because it's even when you are unconsciously competent, it's not the true experts know it's not just like, this is the answer done.

Rachel | DYC Marketing Manager (20:37.269)
Yeah, that's a really good point. So my next set of questions is going to start with the younger, less experienced folks and then move up to the higher. But I actually want to reverse it based on what you just said, because I think that's really interesting. When you think about the marketers you've worked with over the years, starting at the top, those marketers who have worked their ways up to director of marketing, CMO.

What can growth look like at that stage? They may have mastered all of the skill sets, all of the technical pieces. They know what questions to ask about analytics. But thinking more holistically about what it means to be a leader, what does growth look like at that stage of a marketing career?

Kevin Oakley (21:18.882)
Yeah, again, that kind of goes back first to just saying you have to be really good at the tactical must-dos. And then as you become quicker at accomplishing those goals and more proficient, then it not just goes like the average person puts it on the shelf and goes, that's awesome. It means I can kind of scoot out the office at 430 or I get to take a longer lunch or.

You know, my weekends are now full of binge watching shows on Netflix versus watching a YouTube video about how I can get better at this skill. That's what the average person does. And that's, guess, everyone's choice to make. But the better person says, either, either, how do I leverage this skill set that I already have to help others around me? So we just, hey.

Like it was common for people in construction and people in architecture and costing and purchasing to knock on my door and go, Hey, Kevin, I had got this issue or problem or I think this could be better. It was, had nothing to do with advertising or marketing, you know, that most people would think of. Like, I just want to run this by you. Do you think this could be done better? And it was.

that I'm thinking about or saying out loud, it's like they weren't asking my opinion as a marketer, where they were asking my opinion as a problem solver. They realized that I had gotten really good at solving problems within the constraints of what kind of company we were and what we were allowed to do and the systems we had and everything else. So you either leveraged by helping other people and letting them know that you're excited and want to help them, or you just keep getting curious. So for me, in my role,

I mean, I did nothing but ads, ads, ads, ads, design work, websites, ads for the first probably five years of my career or so. But as I got proficient after year one even, my boss was like, hey, I'd ask him a question about like, how do we pick where we build homes anyway? And I was probably like a sarcastic idiot asking that because

Kevin Oakley (23:33.624)
We always seem to have them by railroad tracks and high tension power lines. And I was like, all right, do we have idiots picking our land locations? I hope I didn't say it like that. But he just said, well, you know what you should do? You should just sit in a land development meeting with this developer that's coming in tomorrow. And then he would look at me, cause I was 22 at time. goes, and if you say a word, you're fired. Like just sit and listen and shut up. Don't mess this up. is big boy, playing big boy games, millions of dollars on the line and just listen.

Rachel | DYC Marketing Manager (23:37.249)
you

Kevin Oakley (24:03.374)
But as the people around me realized my curiosity and that I had the bandwidth, my performance wasn't suffering in my job, then they would kind of just explain things to me and show me this is how we make interior selections on our inventory homes. and then it started compounding. This is real life example, but one day one of the starts coordinators

She's like, yeah, this is my board of all the different exterior trim colors that we can have from our supplier. know, the trim around the windows, around the door, roofline. And there was like nine colors of which purple and green and orange were options. And lady was probably 20 years older than me at the time. And she thought in her heart of hearts that she was doing a great thing by making sure that our homes had variety. Cause she's like, it'd be boring just to have

the same trim on every house. So I like to, you she was playing designer.

But then the layering part is like as a marketer, I'm like, oh, not only is this interesting how this happens, because the consequence then is I have to figure out how do I sell this home with orange siding and purple trim. So then trying to figure out how do I market to her and the rest of the division that all white trim would probably be okay. Like it's okay to take the W as the kids say, take the W, all white trim all the time is easier for you, because you just keep hitting the same thing every time.

Rachel | DYC Marketing Manager (25:18.39)
Yeah.

Kevin Oakley (25:38.348)
and the customers like it better. It's better for streetscape. It's easier to sell. And so just super, super curious around people.

Rachel | DYC Marketing Manager (25:47.679)
Yeah, gosh, I think about that all the time with the, again, the creative and like the clever part of creative marketing is if we get bored writing the same things over and over, so we switch it up for that reason that is doing such a disservice to that customer who doesn't need the clever copy. They need the clear copy that tells them what they know, right?

Kevin Oakley (26:05.166)
Yeah.

Rachel | DYC Marketing Manager (26:07.317)
All right. So going down the ladder a little bit then to that mid-career marketer, you know, I'm in the sandwich generation in my life, right? Everyone knows what that means. You're raising kids, you've got aging parents, but as a marketer, I think you can start to feel like you're in the sandwich generation where you've got directives from leadership and their vision. You've got direct reports who are looking to grow and they want to make their mark and they want to learn and you want to give them room to learn and grow and make their mistakes. How do you balance your own career and your own development when you have all of that on your plate and you're right in the middle?

Kevin Oakley (26:37.506)
Yeah, partly what I'm hearing you say when you ask that question is, how safe do you want to play it? So again, this answer would change based upon the type of company we're talking about. If you're going to work for a super regional builder or a national builder, you're just fine. There is a set playbook. You're going to be in that role for a couple of years and enough people are going to retire or get fired or transfer.

or you're just going to take that seat when it's finally available. And that's a whole different game to play. Not to say that you can't play the other way of the game, but that's a viable strategy. If you're working at a smaller company, then what you run the risk of is essentially like an actor being typecast. This is the person who's really good at this little thing that for now is pretty important. And so we've elevated them to this position, but...

We're not really sure what else to do with them. They don't have another place to go. You know, we're small. So this person who's the director is probably gonna be the director for 25 years. They're only eight years older than you. like, what am I? I feel stuck. And so you have to determine what you're gonna take a risk on. And I think again, the immature person generally would say,

I'm just gonna, my risk is I'm gonna walk in and say, I deserve to do more or I deserve to be paid more. Again, good luck and that works I'm sure for people. For me, I just said, my risk is that when we're in a meeting and the person in the top of the table says, who could take care of this for us?

Rachel | DYC Marketing Manager (28:06.9)
you

Kevin Oakley (28:24.268)
My hand went up and they'd be like, Kevin, that doesn't really have anything to do with marketing. I don't care. I'll help with sales training. So I got involved in sales training because the way this played out and my second builder was the owner said, we're going to bring in a sales trainer, but we've brought in sales trainers before and they come for a year or maybe two and everyone gets really excited that nothing sticks. So how this time are we going to make it stick?

the group talked about how we needed someone to kind of be the implementation person and help that trainer. And when that trainer leaves, kind of continue on. Okay, I'll do it. And at first everyone was, I think, I imagine the kind of like, huh, how many homes have you sold, Kevin? The answer at that point was none. But again, at that point I had developed enough street cred, I had helped enough individual people solve problems and they knew that I was process oriented.

enough that I had a better chance than any of the sales managers who also had raised their hand. We had three regional sales managers, because they were honest enough with themselves and the owner knew them enough. It's like, I know you're also willing, but you're willing because you think this is the next step in progression, not because you actually have the skillset that would lend itself to getting this task accomplished differently this time.

Rachel | DYC Marketing Manager (29:53.227)
Yeah.

Kevin Oakley (29:53.656)
So when I say risk, it can't just be raising your hand. A lot of times too, it's by sharing information with a price tag. Information or suggestions or opportunities without price tags to senior leadership is not taken seriously. If you say to someone, and the example I've shared a lot to this is, we had warranty issues and unhappy customers at one of my builders.

And I went to the owner and I said, hey, this is becoming a challenge. And he was like, yeah, yeah, well, it's getting better, getting better. And I went back and I thought, okay, how do I make this more real? Because he's disconnected enough from customers and what's happening on the front line that he's not feeling it. So next time I met with him, said, hey, every time we get a negative review on Google or wherever, I just need you to add $10,000 to my budget.

$10,000, what's that for? And he liked spending money, but he was still like $10,000. I go, that's how much money it's gonna take me in a digital age where consumer opinion and feedback kind of outshouts a lot of what I can control. I'm gonna have to spend that much money to undo that negative review. And he said, oh man. And the next meeting we had with the warranty manager, he's like, hey, anything in the house that's under $500, I don't care, just fix it.

Rachel | DYC Marketing Manager (31:14.593)
Yeah.

Kevin Oakley (31:23.662)
Now that might've been too extreme ultimately. I'm not saying that was the best answer, but he understood now the financial impact, which was really important to him, of getting a negative review. And it was a made up thing. I made up, by the way, there was no hard research. I just picked a number and I risked having that conversation.

Rachel | DYC Marketing Manager (31:34.101)
Yeah, I love that.

Rachel | DYC Marketing Manager (31:38.497)
Yeah.

Rachel | DYC Marketing Manager (31:43.841)
Yeah, I love that. a great move. All right. So starting then at the beginning, when you see a marketer,

Kevin Oakley (31:50.642)
You'll have to cut that one. I heard that one. That motorbike. All right, good. And I would say this will probably be the last one for time. I got to prep for my call right after. But we're at 32 minutes, so.

Rachel | DYC Marketing Manager (31:53.793)
heard that one. Motorcycle. Okay, so let's.

Rachel | DYC Marketing Manager (32:03.755)
So then starting at the beginning, that new marketer, whether they're new because they just got their degree in marketing, or they've been marketing for a few years but in a totally different industry, as they come into this industry, what observations do you have about what happens when you're new here? Do you have any guidance for younger or newer home building marketers?

Kevin Oakley (32:29.326)
For experienced folks coming over to the industry, it's to be willing to go back to conscious competence. I'm not asking you to become incompetent or admit incompetence. I mean, it wouldn't sometimes be a bad idea for people to go there, but at least bring your back from short-cutting. Like you have those deep grooves that this has worked before and in high ticket purchases that...

have months or years worth of a research timeline, the typical digital playbook in particular doesn't work very well. And so you have to find a way to be able to, like I said before, say this is generally true in my past. Is it true in this industry? And then how would I know? Because the other challenge is there's a lot of people saying stuff in the industry that's not quite right. I mean, it's.

kind of mostly right, but not quite right. And sometimes it's completely wrong. And so you have to figure out like, cannot, what voices can I trust? And if I'm giving too much away here, that's like what I've built my entire career, no longer being a builder is like, I'm just gonna tell you what I think you need to know. I'm not always gonna be right either, but I'm going to never try to mislead you or lead anyone in the wrong direction.

That's the challenge when you're coming in, because you're going to shortcut and have biases that need to be checked and reworked. And having the humility to do that is a big challenge for some people. For someone coming in brand new, I would say give all the feedback to yourself first, meaning a lot of times new people are like, they bring up the things that everyone brings up. Who is new?

Like every new hire we've ever had at any home builder, I can tell you like these are the three things. One of them, even had a game like collectively between the managers, like how many days is it gonna be before this person says each one of these things? There's a reason, like we know that that is a thing and we know why and you don't. And so you're trying to add value and take things off everyone's plate. You have been hired to solve a problem. Have a clear idea of what that problem is.

Kevin Oakley (34:49.866)
and tackle that before you give feedback. So give feedback to yourself, meaning you should write down and notice everything and keep that log, but don't be immature enough to just word vomit it out because you just noticed it. Keep it, because you have fresh eyes, but then wait for those months to pass and then go back and revisit it. And you'll be like, yeah, I forgot about that. But now is that still a thing I should be concerned about or ask about?

No, yeah, definitely is. I've been here long enough to know.

Rachel | DYC Marketing Manager (35:21.461)
Yeah, it's like if you were about to start your question with, why don't we just, you should probably just stop. Don't even say it. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you, Kevin. Any last words on developing your career as a marketer and home building?

Kevin Oakley (35:25.484)
Yes. Exactly. Exactly.

Kevin Oakley (35:35.854)
I will tell you that when I got in home building, my first hiring manager, his name was John Seranic, I wore a suit and tie to the job. he kind of chuckled and was like, Kevin, I was going to hire you as soon as I saw that because everyone else came to the job in blue jeans and like a collared shirt, but that you were like, and then he also would say things like, Kevin,

No one in, everyone in home building is the sticks and bricks people. So if you can read and write, like you're gonna just advance like crazy in this business. There's a lot of people who have come in the business that are very professional and like across the board, a lot of positions and people are doing fantastic work. But I would still say that generally speaking, in home building, outside of division presidents,

and kind of senior level people, there is a lack of what I would call the deadly serious person. I even wanna like take the word deadly out of it after I say it, but it's like, I'm going to become good at this versus this is just a job. And so if you commit to development, you will, and I was also thinking about it this way, Rachel, the saying used to be, if you read an hour a day in your chosen profession, that you'll double your income in year one.

from the time you start that. And that was true for me every time that I hit that, you had to do it every day. You can't just do 10 hours in one day and take nine days off, because it's the repetition part. But I was just thinking their day like, wow, in today's world, you don't even have to read a book. You've got audio books, you've got YouTube, you've got, like there were no blog posts about what I did. I mean, unless I went to the builder show, I didn't know.

Rachel | DYC Marketing Manager (37:09.985)
Mm.

Rachel | DYC Marketing Manager (37:21.013)
Yes.

Kevin Oakley (37:27.22)
anything about what was happening in the world when it came to marketing new homes at all. So now like you could pop some popcorn and go watch stuff on YouTube and listen to podcasts and it's just the, does that mean you have to sacrifice stuff? Yes, you do. But sacrifice now or sacrifice later. And if like you can level yourself up, it still kind of shocks me that more people don't.

Rachel | DYC Marketing Manager (37:55.147)
Yeah, awesome. Well, that's a wrap on our first office hours. Thanks, Kevin.

Kevin Oakley (37:58.67)
All right, that was fun.