When uncertainty hits whether it's weather, natural disasters, or the unexpected how you respond reveals your leadership. We talk about what separates leaders who have plans from leaders who are making it up as they go.

The difference between chaos and calm isn't luck. It's preparation. It's knowing what matters when everything else is falling apart. It's writing down who does what, what gets protected, and what the actual priorities are. Most leaders skip this step until it's too late.

There's also a shift happening in what employees expect from their leaders when crisis hits. The old mindset was sacrifice everything for the business. The new mindset is having a plan that doesn't require that choice. Both matter and good leaders figure out how to do both.

The real question isn't whether something will go wrong. It's whether you'll be ready when it does. And readiness starts with thinking it through now, before the pressure is on.

The real question isn't whether something will go wrong. It's whether you'll be ready when it does. And readiness starts with thinking it through now, before the pressure is on.

Highlights:

• Uncertainty reveals leadership prepare now or lead from chaos.
• Writing down your priorities and roles before crisis hits changes everything.
• Employees expect plans that don't force them to choose between family and work.
• The difference between panic and clarity is preparation.

If you haven't already make sure to subscribe to Blue Collar BS. We would also appreciate if you could give us a 5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ rating on Apple Podcasts this helps more people find our show!

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Brad Herda (: 00:01

Hey everyone, welcome back to this brand new episode of the Blue Collar BS podcast. I am your cohost Brad along with the other award winning cohost. That would be your cue. Thank you for hitting your mark today. Welcome back.

Doyle (: 00:12

Steve.

Doyle (: 00:16

Yay. Thank you for hitting your mark.

Brad Herda (: 00:20

Yeah, okay, whatever. I just appreciate you showing up.

Doyle (: 00:23

You

Well, good, because that's what we're getting today. All of it. We're getting all of it. Yeah.

Brad Herda (: 00:29

That's what we're getting. We're getting all of you. All of you. So now that we're here, this episode, roughly June, mid-June, we're past the 200 episode gala. Woohoo, yay! We're coming up, you know, summer season. Things are chugging along. But...

Doyle (: 00:55

Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 00:58

we kind of set the tone before the show and unexpectedly I'm like, Hey, you know what? Today's topic is going to be on about uncertainty.

Doyle (: 01:08

Mm. Okay.

Brad Herda (: 01:10

and the uncertainty in business and life and all the things, all the shit that's out of our control, all the things that are out of our control, right? So, and I think each generation has a very unique perspective on how, what can or cannot be controlled or different along the way, right? And the reason I say that is I'm sitting here or recording here in April and we just had storms roll through and tornado a mile and a half away.

Doyle (: 01:14

And all the things. Wow. This is really broad.

Doyle (: 01:27

Mmm.

Doyle (: 01:36

Yes, we did.

Brad Herda (: 01:38

seven inches of rain, water all over the place. I'm blessed that we only had water and no power for 18 hours. I don't have a hole in the middle of my roof. I don't have trees in my house. I don't have any of those things that many other people have happened with that, all that uncertainty. but I had a network of, of friends and clients and folks that were like, Hey,

Doyle (: 01:43

Mm-hmm.

Doyle (: 01:51

Mm-hmm.

Doyle (: 01:57

Right.

Brad Herda (: 02:06

What do you need? What can we help you with? What's going on? Right. So and I don't know that every generation has built up that opportunity to deal with things from uncertainty. And when and when I knew my power was out and I needed to go get the I knew my cell pump was not going to run and my battery backup wasn't going to be lasting very long to send the text out for, hey, anybody have a generator that I could borrow?

Doyle (: 02:09

Mm-hmm.

Doyle (: 02:16

No, no they haven't.

Doyle (: 02:26

right?

Brad Herda (: 02:35

to send that text out was like painful as fuck.

Doyle (: 02:39

Yeah, why is that? Why was it painful as

Brad Herda (: 02:41

because that's not what I do. Yes. So we're going to take the old person perspective of that viewpoint, right?

Doyle (: 02:47

you don't ask for help. Is that what you're? Yeah.

I know. I mean, that's just so boomer of you.

Brad Herda (: 02:58

Um, yeah. Right. Just being able to, to, to send that out and go forward. And then my buddy's like, Hey, my wife's place of work. They've got one. Here you go. Comes on over. He's over in 20 minutes and the client reaches out. Hey, I know you're, I know what's going on here. So, uh, let me see if we got a generator sitting there. Billy will get to the office, blah, blah, blah. He brought one over. So I had two generators here within an hour of sending out information.

Doyle (: 03:21

Wow, that's fantastic.

Brad Herda (: 03:25

But it was it was it was getting through now. Why didn't do that four hours earlier? To save. Thousands of gallons of water from going down my drain in my basement. Right, my own hurdle and roadblock, but that uncertainty that showed up like, OK, those things were within my control to be able to do to be able to go out and ask for support, ask for help.

Doyle (: 03:32

Mm-hmm.

Doyle (: 03:40

Right.

Doyle (: 03:50

Mm-hmm. Right.

Brad Herda (: 03:55

go to the store, potentially to go buy one, do whatever, you know, have, have things within control, but instead to Nope. I'm just going to use the resources that have available to me. Like I'm on fucking lost or on naked and afraid. We're just using whatever's there.

Doyle (: 03:55

Mm-hmm.

Doyle (: 04:02

Okay.

Doyle (: 04:09

Mm-hmm. Right? So looking at this from a business perspective, essentially what we're really getting at is what's your game plan for when crap happens? It really comes down to what's your business continuity plan for when

Brad Herda (: 04:33

Those are big words. Business continuity plan. Now you're bringing back your engineering days.

Doyle (: 04:34

They are, continually.

Doyle (: 04:40

Well, you know, those those are words that work for some, but it's I mean, what for some, but it really comes down to what's what's just what's what is the plan of attack for when things happen? Power shuts down. Your Internet goes out. Right. Your your main your main server goes out. AWS goes out, right, shuts down everything.

shuts down tens, thousands, millions of people for your period of time. Business still operates. World still turns. World still, well, world still turns. The world still turns. But businesses, most people freak out because they don't know what the thing is they need to do when they don't have access to that information.

Brad Herda (: 05:18

Does it? A world still turns.

Doyle (: 05:38

But see, you knew what to do. You just had to, one, calm ourselves down to go, okay, I need power. Who can help me?

and you get your generator.

All right. I've got it worked out like if I lose power, I still may or may not have Internet. If I don't have Internet. OK. What am I doing? I could I could.

Brad Herda (: 06:07

Half the time, half the time, even when you have internet, you don't have internet.

Doyle (: 06:10

Well, there is that, but I that's beside the point. As but the reality is is OK, where am I going? Where is where is an alternative location I can go if I really need Internet access?

Brad Herda (: 06:15

as you're glitching right now.

Brad Herda (: 06:30

or hotspot your phone.

Doyle (: 06:33

Well, I had to do something else for my phone because my phone doesn't always work in my location. So I actually had to buy an extender, an LTE extender. And now I don't have any issues with getting reception.

Brad Herda (: 06:46

so you won't drop a call when you move from the garage to the house?

Doyle (: 06:50

Correct. Might drop a call if I move from my car to the garage, but that's besides the point. But the thing is, is all of these things. So if I lose power, my LTE extender goes out, cell phone becomes inoperable almost, right? Don't have, don't have internet. What do you do? Right. As a business owner, what are the plans to continue the operation going?

Brad Herda (: 06:56

That's a different topic.

Doyle (: 07:18

Not just sit there and go, crap, I don't know what to do. I don't have anything. Guess I'm just going to turn, you know, go through and do the maintenance around here that I should do. Then I haven't been that have been putting off. Could do that.

Brad Herda (: 07:32

Right.

Doyle (: 07:34

Right? Or if there's something business critical, what are those things?

Brad Herda (: 07:35

Yeah.

Brad Herda (: 07:38

So all the things, all the things that you did from a business perspective with COVID, right? So when COVID hit right after COVID, here's our emergency response. Here's all of our plans. Here's all our things, all of our stuff, right? People spent hours upon hours upon hours figuring those things out. If somebody can't be here, if all this happens. But they didn't talk about the infrastructure.

Doyle (: 07:45

Mm-hmm.

Doyle (: 07:51

Brett.

Mm-hmm.

Doyle (: 08:06

Correct.

Brad Herda (: 08:08

They didn't talk about flood. didn't talk about power. They didn't talk about other things. What's your stance on expectation of different employees? have one client where heavy rain heavy rains. They have a warehouse supervisor.

Doyle (: 08:13

Mm-hmm.

Doyle (: 08:22

Mm-hmm.

Doyle (: 08:27

Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 08:29

And then they have a retiree who isn't retired, but is still there working pretty much full time.

mid 70s ish I would say. The other working supervisor that's actually the W two employees probably 40s ish right late millennial young Gen X. Okay, it's heavy rain. Yep, I can I know I closed everything when I left I did all the things. Well, how come you didn't come check on the building during this heavy rain?

Doyle (: 08:45

Mm-hmm.

Doyle (: 08:54

Mm-hmm.

Doyle (: 09:09

Why would I?

Brad Herda (: 09:11

Well, that was, that was kind of the point of, but now there's this contentious battle between these two individuals as to, well, how can we even come check on the building?

Doyle (: 09:19

Mm-hmm.

Doyle (: 09:24

But why would I still don't know why I would? Why do I need to do that? What is me checking on the building going to do? It's still there.

Brad Herda (: 09:31

make sure it.

I'm making sure that we can do what we making while is it still there is our customers products still in good shape are we we need to move things around do we need to protect protect anything what's all happening right so the expectations

Doyle (: 09:50

Mmm.

Brad Herda (: 09:52

of what happens in situations like this or in those things are depending on your job role and what's going on and what is the expectation to have happen? Are you expected to leave your family and go take care of the business? Are you expected to say, take care of your family first, because that's what's more important. And we'll deal with what we need to deal with. What is the expectation? And that is a big time generational shift.

Doyle (: 10:09

Mm-hmm.

Doyle (: 10:13

Mm hmm. Right.

Brad Herda (: 10:23

for that for sure because the shift to family first versus the business is my identity.

Doyle (: 10:33

Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 10:35

right? The maintenance guy that the maintenance guy for the manufacturing firm that I drove through. I got in my truck and I drove through that three feet of water. It was no big deal. Are you fucking idiot? you an idiot? I mean, what are you doing driving through three feet of water in your truck? You know, go around, find a detour, do something. Well, I made it through wasn't a big deal. Great.

Doyle (: 10:47

Mm-hmm.

Doyle (: 10:58

Yeah, mean, let's so in northern Michigan, we have a lot of flooding going on right now. Dam's breaking. Dam's are over capacity, right? And so let's.

Brad Herda (: 11:10

That's what happens with 300 inches of snow.

Doyle (: 11:12

Yeah, right. But looking at in the downriver, if you will, let's just say you've got companies that are lining the river. And usually they're smaller businesses, usually. And it could be an HVAC. You could have a plumber. You could have an electrical company. It doesn't matter. Let's just, you know, one of those. And to your point, right?

Brad Herda (: 11:27

Mm-hmm.

Doyle (: 11:41

Flooding, they got the evacuation notice. need to evacuate, potential to evacuate. What's the plan to keep the business moving forward if you can't go to your office or your warehouse location?

Brad Herda (: 12:02

Well, and theoretically, the COVID plan probably took care of that piece of it from can't go to the office.

Doyle (: 12:07

potentially if people, if people did anything with it.

Brad Herda (: 12:15

It's in a binder.

Doyle (: 12:16

Well, but in COVID, you could go back to your office in a flood situation where you can't get to your office, right? Because these, let's.

Brad Herda (: 12:24

Well, no, technically you couldn't technically in some places you couldn't go to your office because if you left your house you were right there was essentially we were under house arrest in some areas of the country.

Doyle (: 12:30

Doyle (12:35.212)

Well, but those were considered essential. Trades got considered essential after a period. But they could go to their business location, get their stuff out of their warehouse, go do the thing. In a situation that you can't control because of mother nature, what do you do? You could file insurance claims and do all of that and wait and do nothing.

But your employee, you and your employees, where are you getting your paychecks from? Where's the money coming into the business?

Brad Herda (: 13:08

Well, that's, that's who there's a whole nother. There's a whole nother unexpected piece of policy and procedure of

Doyle (: 13:13

Right?

Doyle (: 13:20

Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 13:22

Another client, had this situation earlier in the spring when we had our 24 inches of snow and we had the big blizzard in March.

Doyle (: 13:29

Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 13:34

Okay, business is open. You kind of said, you know, two thirds of the staff showed up. The other staff members like, Hey, do I need to come in? Well, you know, that's up to you decide if you can make it or not. Do I pay them or not pay them because they made the decision not to show up.

Doyle (: 13:54

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

You know? But again, it comes down to what is your what is the plan? To keep moving forward. When things things that you can't control happen because in eventually they will.

So how do you keep that? How would you recommend keeping that top of mind?

Doyle (: 14:31

to our audience.

Brad Herda (: 14:37

There's so many different factors that are involved based on your job role, your company, your different things, your, I think it's a matter of when you have a situation that that occurs and it's chaos that you are business owner brave enough.

Doyle (: 14:41

Okay.

Brad Herda (: 14:59

to recognize whether or not it was a shit show or whether it was a good situate. Most likely it didn't work out well for half the staff somewhere along the line or wherever and there's tension or discomfort or your number one customer's pissed off because they don't care that their stuff was supposed to be on a plane or out the door or their big thing.

Doyle (: 15:04

Mm-hmm.

Doyle (: 15:09

Correct.

Doyle (: 15:18

Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 15:22

They're not going to care. I think that has changed a little bit in our society when things are happening and the understanding of stuff because we've sensationalized mother nature so much that there's so much awareness of it and recognition of, you know, flights are being canceled. Well, flights are being canceled. That means FedEx isn't leaving and the FedEx can't move around. Why? You know what's. Yep, your Amazon package might be delayed two days.

Doyle (: 15:29

Mm-hmm.

Doyle (: 15:36

Mm-hmm.

Doyle (: 15:46

Yep.

Doyle (: 15:51

Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 15:53

Well, you could have gotten your con going to the store and got the same thing. Had it in 20 minutes, but you opted to go and try to order it. Now you're pissed off that it didn't show up my doorstep.

Doyle (: 15:57

Correct, good.

Doyle (: 16:03

You

Brad Herda (: 16:06

I could have went to the store two miles away to go get it, but I opted not to. And I'm angry because somebody didn't deliver it to me versus me going to go get it. Okay, that I don't understand. But that's me. I'm the old guy, right? I think the I think the plan is I think it's just setting up the expectation after you go through a situation say, Okay, let's put this down in writing, what has to happen? You know, COVID I think took if you

Doyle (: 16:09

Yep

Mm-hmm.

Doyle (: 16:19

Mm-hmm.

Doyle (: 16:30

Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 16:33

If you follow your COVID plans and you put them together, you've taken care of your technology resource activity. You've identified this is what we need to do. We need to contact our IT provider. We need to get the VPNs. We need to do this. We should have laptops and I can log in from my phone, whatever that is. You should have, that piece should have already been taken care of from a COVID viewpoint. If it wasn't, shame on you because there were thousands of people telling you to make sure that that was to happen.

Doyle (: 16:38

Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 17:01

and you decided not to, that's bad on you.

Doyle (: 17:05

Absolutely.

Brad Herda (: 17:09

From the rest of it though, who shows up, who's expected to show up, who's in charge of the building, who's not in charge of the building, who's the backup when, you know, so-and-so's on vacation, those types of things. That I think is a great team exercise to kind of go through by various departments, various roles, because there might be some equipment that is super vital to the organization that you need to protect at all costs.

Doyle (: 17:23

Okay.

Doyle (: 17:32

Yep.

Brad Herda (: 17:38

You need to sandbag the hell out of it or make sure that there's enough tarp over it. So if the roof decides to leak or whatever, at least you've taken whatever you've controlled, the things that you can control to take the precautions to do so.

Doyle (: 17:41

Mm-hmm.

Doyle (: 17:50

Correct.

Brad Herda (: 17:52

If your roof gets blown off, there's nothing you're going to do to do that and you have no control over that.

Doyle (: 17:57

Yep. Mm hmm. The other the other thing this what we're talking about helps with is. Hey. You know, John, he's got 25 years of experience and he just he decided to quit.

And guess what? He's not coming back.

Brad Herda (: 18:21

Were you reading my posts today?

Doyle (: 18:23

Maybe I was, maybe I wasn't. But the end of the day, right, it.

Brad Herda (: 18:29

No, no, I'm serious. I'm serious because I just posted that today. Did you read or not?

Doyle (: 18:35

I'm well aware of what you did. I am aware of what you did. You can take it whatever you want. I am aware of what you posted.

Brad Herda (: 18:40

Was that a yes?

No, this is a yes or a no question. Are you turning? Are you? No need for you to be difficult. Can I treat the witnesses hostile, Your Honor?

Doyle (: 18:49

I know what the question is. I like to be difficult with the answer. Yeah, sure. You can try. You could try. But in reality, it also helps set you up for really also understanding

Brad Herda (: 19:04

Your honor, these two youths over here...

Brad Herda (: 19:10

What's a youth?

Doyle (: 19:19

Who who is in a critical role? For your organization, not just equipment, not just procedures and stuff like that, but also who is in those critical roles? And you should also start thinking about. What are we doing with those critical role? How are we helping to protect ourselves? In situate, if if situations were to a rat to to pop up. How are we going to not allow that situation?

to control us in a negative way.

Brad Herda (: 19:55

It's a decision, obviously, right? You get to decide how you're going to.

Doyle (: 19:58

Well, correct. You do get to decide it is a decision you do get to decide, but. It's less of a emotional decision when you already have plans in place.

Brad Herda (: 20:10

true, true, try and take away the emotion out of all of that. Right. And, you know, so if, so if, if you have an organization where, you know, your docs get flooded on a regular basis and you don't feel like dealing with them, but it takes four hours to sandbag them or to put whatever those little

Doyle (: 20:15

Mm hmm.

Doyle (: 20:23

Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 20:32

Diversion walls or whatever you're put around them to to make that happen and somebody's got to come in and do that on the weekend Okay, do you bonus them out for that weekend? Do you do something? Do you how do you rotate that around? Do you put it as part of your on-call process? What do you do to make sure that it's not? Well, like it's supposed to rain today, honey I can't go to the company I can't go to our family reunion picnic two hours away because it might rain and I got to take care of the docks Are you serious?

Doyle (: 20:34

Yep.

Doyle (: 20:46

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Doyle (: 21:02

Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 21:03

Now, I'm confident that happens around the country on a regular basis. There's guys that are willing to say, I don't want to go to the family picnic. I'd rather be in case it rains, right? But you shouldn't have to put yourself in position to have your employees make that decision between family or the organization. is this is 2026, not 1964.

Doyle (: 21:11

Well,

Doyle (: 21:17

Right.

Doyle (: 21:21

Mm-hmm.

Doyle (: 21:25

Correct.

Brad Herda (: 21:29

Right. And that is not acceptable. I don't care what generation you're part of that. That is becoming less and less and less of a acceptable pattern than than ever before across all generations.

Doyle (: 21:35

Mm-hmm.

Doyle (: 21:40

Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 21:43

so.

Doyle (: 21:43

Exactly.

Brad Herda (: 21:46

So what would be your suggestion to help minimize the opportunity for chaos and stress and emotion?

Doyle (: 21:56

I mean, I'm more. I'm I feel like I'm a little more pragmatic. I actually want to have. I feel I am I do. I actually want a written list. I actually want it written out. Yeah, it can be electronic, but I actually want to print it out. As well. Where people can actually see this is our this is our response plan. Whether it's a.

Brad Herda (: 22:03

You feel or you are.

Doyle (: 22:26

you know, critical, a critical piece of equipment, a critical employee, a critical like a

Doyle (: 22:34

act of something higher power impacting your business. Like whatever that is, people need to know what to do. And if you don't have it clearly listed out, you're going off memory, you're making it up on the fly. You have to get over that emotional trigger first.

to start thinking rationally, okay, this is what I need to do. This is who I need to call. I got to find this number. I got to find this number. I got to do all of that. If you already have it listed out, spend the time to list it out well in advance because then at

Brad Herda (: 23:08

She make a nice would you make a nice if then then diagram flow diagram? What would you end up?

Doyle (: 23:12

I'm not making a damn Venn diagram. I'll tell you how I... I will tell you how I feel about... Well, I'll tell you how I feel about Venns.

Brad Herda (: 23:16

You are the engineer.

Brad Herda (: 23:23

Nice little 8B corrective action for all of this.

Doyle (: 23:26

I mean, you could just, just a five Y that's all you need. And then, and then, I mean, the only reason you're doing eight D's is cause you didn't do the shit you said you were supposed to do. So the end of the day. No, you did it pretty. Yeah.

Brad Herda (: 23:36

we did it. We did it. We did exactly, but it went out the door. There's the problem. The only thing we didn't do is we didn't stop it from going out the door.

Doyle (: 23:45

Right. anyways. Yeah, no, it's just when you spend time to write this stuff down, you start thinking about all these other things as well that could happen. And it's really good to get that out. Get that all out now while you can. And versus going in reactive mode like, yeah, I wish we would have done this. And then usually when we're in reactive mode, I wish we would have.

Brad Herda (: 23:48

with that grass.

Doyle (: 24:13

And guess what? The next thing comes up and we didn't do it because I wish I would have. Versus, no, I get to take the responsibility to do it now, so I don't have to worry about

Brad Herda (: 24:25

I've got two generators because I took action. got two generators in my garage right now for when the storms hit again tonight that if something were to fail, I have them here. And after these storms are gone tonight, then I can actually return them. cause I don't cause I don't know if they temp powered. I don't know if they temp powered the situation or not, or if they, if they permanently fixed it with all the damage, all the things, you know, I just don't know, you know, so, you know, we were out. So this is the, this is the irony, right?

Doyle (: 24:38

I was supposed to ring. What?

Doyle (: 24:45

Hmm

Right.

Brad Herda (: 24:53

our subdivision, our area, our neighborhood was out for essentially 10 hours, 13, 12, 10 hours from six 30 to like 5 a.m.

Doyle (: 25:05

Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 25:11

However, our house didn't have power. So I reported back to our to our to we energies. Hey, no power, no power, no power. And I'm like, the only one that's got I look at the map, look at the stuff. There's only one it's only me. I'm like, huh. So I email my electrician, I say, Hey, how do I know if this is a me problem or them problem? Tell me a simple way to figure it out. He sends me back a note saying, Hey, go out, look at your meter. If you have if the LEDs are on.

Doyle (: 25:11

Mm hmm. Yeah.

Doyle (: 25:23

Yeah

Doyle (: 25:32

Right?

Brad Herda (: 25:40

You're getting power to the meter and then it could be something else and something different So I took a video of the meter sent it to him as it was flashing through all its stuff He goes there's this air code you have here that I'm not familiar with so you need to call we energies So I call we and I saw I call we energy this first time and early in the morning like seven seven o'clock hour 21 minute wait hold time like I can't I'm just like

Doyle (: 25:57

Yeah.

Doyle (: 26:05

yeah, perfect.

Brad Herda (: 26:08

I got other things to do. can't sit on the phone for an hour, 20 minutes, because I got to use my phone for some things and make this all.

Doyle (: 26:13

Yeah, I hear.

Brad Herda (: 26:15

Go do my stuff call back in this time instead of going through the power out report power outage. I use the verbal connection of, reconnect power, reconnect power, not power outage, but reconnect.

Doyle (: 26:32

Okay.

Brad Herda (: 26:36

I got to a human being. She took care of it. She's like, hey, yeah, because I want to just talk through the air code. Is it something I can do? Can they remote? Can they remote reset my meter? What could they do along the way? Because it's all RF, all remote meter stuff. Like, so she's like, hang on, let me talk to somebody. She goes talk, somebody comes back. Hey, now I got to figure out how to write the service ticket comes back.

Doyle (: 26:38

Yeah.

Doyle (: 26:47

Yeah.

Doyle (: 26:52

Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 27:01

and a half hours later we energy shows up on my doorstep as I'm getting ready to go to Manara I'm getting ready to back out of my driveway go get a bunch of stuff expecting power to be gone for another day and a half I'm go get ice I'm gonna go get stuff I'm gonna go get all these things and it's like they show up

says go turn off your breaker. Okay, cool. pulls off the meter does her thing checks all the connections puts the new meter on says go turn your pot go turn your switch back on we should have power. Turn it back on everything's up like you're a magic elf your magic. She was there she was here. She was here for five minutes. That was the other part was a lady that lady service tech. She grew up in Illinois.

Doyle (: 27:43

Wow.

Brad Herda (: 27:50

Dad had a weld shop. She grew up welding, doing different things, got into electric, wanted to do something and has been at WeEnergies for 10 years as a service tech, doing all different things and like, huh, cool. Well, thank you. You're magic today and I appreciate you for being here. She's like, I would have been here sooner and I know more. I'm like, it's all good. You're here way sooner than I expected.

Doyle (: 28:00

Nice.

Doyle (: 28:07

Mm-hmm.

Doyle (: 28:11

Well, that's That's good work.

Brad Herda (: 28:15

So, so preparing for that is the, the, ideally the it's to prepare for it. So after I get done with this, I'm going to go get my second sump pump. So I have a new sump pump in the back. So just in case from a background perspective and da da da da and all the fun things. Cause I'm not doing this. Cause we've probably pumped a hundred, probably 160,000 gallons of water over the last three days.

Doyle (: 28:21

Right.

Doyle (: 28:26

yeah.

Yeah?

Doyle (: 28:40

Yep. Mm hmm. Yep. That's why I actually have two extra sub pumps. Brand new, sitting in the box, cast iron, sitting in my garage waiting. So I don't have to run to the store to go get it.

Brad Herda (: 28:56

This was the replacement from a while ago.

Doyle (: 28:59

Hmm. Yep. Only because.

Brad Herda (: 29:01

The inventory was consumed. I did not replace the inventory, but we did get the battery back up, which was great until the battery runs out. But my wife was like, well, how does that? It's like four hours of source time. Usually we're not, right? It's four hours. If we're out for longer than that, you're not gonna get that. So then we gotta find an alternate source.

Doyle (: 29:05

Right. see. Wow. There he died. Yeah, exactly. Yep.

Doyle (: 29:26

Mm-hmm.

Doyle (: 29:30

Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 29:31

We'll see what happens. Yep, at least I didn't need the heat and furnace. So that was good. I didn't have to worry about that and freezing to death and the dog and that type of stuff.

Doyle (: 29:33

Fun times.

Doyle (: 29:41

Mm. Yep, been there.

Brad Herda (: 29:45

So that's good. So. All righty, sir. You have a wonderful rest of your afternoon. Thank you so much for discussing a little bit uncertainty and it happens every day. It's a matter of how you decide how you decide to deal with uncertainty will either create great leadership opportunities or throw your organization in the chaos. You get to decide.

Doyle (: 29:47

Mm-hmm. All right.

Doyle (: 29:53

Mm-hmm, you too as well.

Doyle (: 30:09

Mm-hmm. It's a choice. You decide.

Brad Herda (: 30:13

So all right, till next time, sir, we will see you soon.

Doyle (: 30:16

Alright, later. Later.