[00:00:00.120] - Chris Nordyke
All right, dude. We got a good one today. Yeah, that's good. I just jumped right in there, didn't I?
[00:00:06.000] - Brandon Reece
You're smart ass. You're such a smart-out.
[00:00:07.940] - Chris Nordyke
Listen, Claire Carreras. Oh, man. This is just one of those other examples where I feel like a little bit of a buffoon that I haven't... I didn't... We've bumped into Claire at a bunch of different events.
[00:00:20.440] - Brandon Reece
One Tom events, core.
[00:00:22.200] - Chris Nordyke
I feel a little bit embarrassed, honestly, that I didn't maybe take as many opportunities to lean into conversation or get to know Claire sooner because we've been bumping into a variety of things, RIA and yada yada. Definitely one of those examples where when you finally get to sit down with somebody and talk with them, you're like, Oh, shit, I wish.
[00:00:41.880] - Brandon Reece
Yeah. No, I literally had my mind blown at one point Because I was like, holy hell, I would have never put that together.
[00:00:49.060] - Chris Nordyke
Oh, it's just so cool. This conversation. I mean, guys, this is listeners, not guys. I'm really trying to stop saying guys because there's obviously ladies.
[00:00:59.500] - Brandon Reece
Yeah.
[00:01:00.000] - Chris Nordyke
It's the stuff that listened to us, but whatever. It's been a high priority. Hey, everybody. This is one of those true entrepreneur stories. Claire had a really interesting childhood that impacted her in certain ways and a certain family culture that ultimately led to music and stage performing and stand-up comedy, and then ultimately pivoted to operating businesses very successfully, which opened doors to owning It run- Fashion brands, streetwear, clothing brands, Canada.
[00:01:36.660] - Brandon Reece
It's amazing. Not only is the journey very interesting, but you can just... I mean, that woman has not had an easy run. I mean, I don't think serial entrepreneurship, there's a bunch of easy runs. I think sometimes you run into that rare minus person that just seems like everything they do ends up winning. But I mean, a very raw and real entrepreneurial journey me, and the amount of grit that woman must have in her carcass is unbelievable.
[00:02:05.380] - Chris Nordyke
Well, and the other thing, too, that I think people should listen for is, or they're just going to hear is, there's an incredible amount of leadership wisdom that comes out in this. You can tell just the way she thinks about things. There's a ton of time and grade just through all these different experiences that you can tell she's bringing to her leadership today, the way she thinks about things. It's pretty cool.
[00:02:28.520] - Brandon Reece
You know what I want now more than anything, though, after that, I'm like, oh, if I could get my hands on some footage of her and the bands back in the day, wouldn't that be something?
[00:02:38.840] - Chris Nordyke
Dude, I'm so curious.
[00:02:40.380] - Brandon Reece
To see that part of her world.
[00:02:42.360] - Chris Nordyke
I got to follow up there and find out if there's some old Instagram That's right. Accounts. That's right.
[00:02:47.000] - Brandon Reece
Yeah. Well, let's go. Let's dig in. She's a super fun interview and a rad guest, and I'm actually looking forward to taking that conversation on again.
[00:02:55.740] - Chris Nordyke
Just do it. Wow. How many of you have listened to the Head, Heart, and Boots podcast? I can't tell you that react, how much that means to us. Welcome back to the Head, Heart, and Boots podcast. I'm Chris.
[00:03:07.800] - Brandon Reece
And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead. This new camera angle makes my arms look smaller than yours.
[00:03:17.560] - Chris Nordyke
I'm noticing that and I really appreciate it. I thought you did that on purpose.
[00:03:20.600] - Brandon Reece
No, I don't. I didn't. And I am not happy with it. All right, Claire, man, I think we've been working to try to get you on the show for I don't know how many 1-Tom events that we've been talking about it. So we're excited to get this on record. So thanks for joining us today.
[00:03:37.420] - Claire Carreras
Yeah, man. Absolutely. Thanks for having me, guys. Like you said, we've been circling each other at numerous events and things over the years. And it's just nice to have a sit down, finally.
[00:03:46.520] - Brandon Reece
I meant to try to catch. You did a breakout, didn't you, at Core this year?
[00:03:51.340] - Claire Carreras
I did, yeah.
[00:03:52.380] - Brandon Reece
How did that end up going from your perspective?
[00:03:55.900] - Claire Carreras
It was great. I'm going to be honest, I didn't have super high hopes. It's the I've done any public speaking of that nature. I gave the breakout a crazy title that I thought was just going to offend everyone and nobody was going to respond to. I called my breakout session, Your Team Sucks and It's All Your Fault. I thought that would really turn people away. But it was well-attended both days and I had a blast with it. Hopefully, I think people got some nuggets out of it. It was fun. Ten out of 10. Would I'll definitely do it again.
[00:04:31.060] - Chris Nordyke
Nice. I think they call that click bait, Claire.
[00:04:33.940] - Brandon Reece
That was clear.
[00:04:34.560] - Chris Nordyke
It was well played, apparently. Give us your background. One of the things in some of our research was that you originally or earlier in your career were into fashion design and you were a musician. Certainly hit on that, please. But just give us the workup from who you were previously, maybe some past lives that led you to plumbing restoration, your present day stuff. Don't forget to talk about the fashion thing and musicians. I grew up as a musician and had some- Did you? Yeah, I had some ambitions that I ultimately set aside for restoration, but you know.
[00:05:15.420] - Claire Carreras
I did not know that, Chris. There you go. Hey, we're out here. Yeah. Well, yeah, jeez. I've lived a lot of lives, you guys. I've been up and down and all around. But the one thing that has always seemed to stay consistent is I just tend to find myself always within the operational side of things. I really love systems, processes, people, how that all works together. No matter what industry I was in, That's always where I found myself performing. I grew up... This is so hard to talk about because my family moved on average at least once a year, if not more. I didn't really grow up anywhere specifically. We were just constantly moving all across Canada. We went down to Europe. I lived in South America for a while, came back to Canada. I had a really turbulent youth. But the good thing that that brought me was, well, I'm bilingual, which has really served me, especially since moving now to Texas. But I got exposed to just a ton of different people and places and cultures and beliefs. I'm so grateful for that now because that has really single-handedly helped me become the person that I am today.
[00:06:34.720] - Claire Carreras
Having that exposure at such a young age just really showed me all these different sides of people and how to work with different people and always being the new girl in school and the new girl on the block opened me up to a lot of ridicule. It was a really tough childhood, but it also gave me this edge that I don't think I would have had otherwise. Coming out of high school, I was living in rural British Columbia, which is in Canada. I had big aspirations of breaking into the arts and entertainment. I moved to Vancouver, which was the bigger city in British Columbia, and I started acting. I was doing acting and stand-up comedy, and I worked in a comedy troupe. That was a ton of fun. Then that led me into the music world. I spent a decade and a half just performing in numbers of different musical and touring all around the world. Again, just meeting all kinds of people.
[00:07:34.820] - Chris Nordyke
Wait, we can't gloss over this. We got to stop because there's so many interesting little bits that you just dropped along the way. It's a lot. You moved almost every year. Were your parents spies? Were they drug traffickers? How did your military? What was the nature of that? If I can ask, if you're willing to share.
[00:07:56.300] - Claire Carreras
That's a really good question. I don't really know. I mean, When I was born, it was just me and my mother. My biological father really wasn't in the picture. Unfortunately, we had to flee away to start over, just the two of us. Then my stepfather came into the picture, and he was training to become a naval architect. Then we relocated so that he could get his degree or his master's or whatever faster. That brought us to Newfoundland, which is the other side of Canada. We were poor. I mean, we were I'm the oldest of seven now. There were just more and more kids, and we were always trying to find somewhere affordable to live and looking for jobs, looking for work. We just kept on having to be uprooted and moving all around and just looking for opportunities. At one point, my stepfather in his naval architect career was recruited to go build some very large boats or ships, I guess, and that took us all the way down to South America. We down there for a year and a half, almost two years, and then came back to Canada after that. We were just always just trying to find that opportunity to establish ourselves as a family and get ahead.
[00:09:12.880] - Claire Carreras
The pursuit of that led us many, many places.
[00:09:16.400] - Chris Nordyke
Wow. Where did music and performance and all of that come along?
[00:09:22.540] - Claire Carreras
My stepdad, in his spare time, when he wasn't on the computer and working, he really loved flamenco guitar. He had these beautiful guitars that he would keep locked away from me and he would play at night when he had time. I wasn't the hugest fan of classical guitar. I thought it was cool that he had guitars, but obviously, I'm not Spanish. He's actually from Barcelona, so it's a very cultural thing for them there. But I grew up around a lot of guitars. When we immigrated back to Canada after living in South America, that was my pre-teen era, and I discovered the radio and alternative music and guitars tuned down to D and stuff. It just blew my mind. It just absolutely blew my mind. I would steal his guitars when he was sleeping. I would sneak in and steal his guitars and try to play corn and stuff on them. Of course, he would freak out because that's not how those guitars are meant to be tampered with at all. But I loved it. I was obsessed with music. Music was just this whole new world that I felt like I could relate to all all of a sudden.
[00:10:31.060] - Claire Carreras
It gave me, I guess, a sense of a home base. Like, okay, here's people who are singing about something that I can relate to. Here's all these people listening to these songs that they can also relate to me. It gave me this sense of belonging that I had just never had before. I started playing guitar. My stepfather actually bought me an electric guitar for, I think it was my 14th birthday. I would just lock myself in my room with that thing and I'd be making my mixtapes. It just all went from there.
[00:11:00.000] - Chris Nordyke
Guitar and singing. I love that. Singing also? Yeah. Yeah, vocals? Yeah.
[00:11:04.660] - Brandon Reece
That's incredible. I love the alternative grunge era reference. I commonly make jokes because we're up here in the Northwest, right? We're all about to enter our chemically depressed state until like, March.
[00:11:18.980] - Claire Carreras
I know all about that.
[00:11:21.020] - Brandon Reece
That's the Seattle scene. That's where the ultimate music came from. Everybody was just clinically depressed, I think, for a period of time. For sure.
[00:11:28.980] - Claire Carreras
Yeah, I mean, be ECC is just on the other side of that little invisible divider. It gets cold and dark and rainy and it just goes on and on and on. You got nothing else to hold on to. There's zero sunlight or vitamin D. It's too cold to go see your friends.
[00:11:47.000] - Brandon Reece
I can just literally relate to every element of that, not bonding that community that got created, that you're no longer feeling like you're alone. There's these people that view the world similarly that I During that time, that was very different. It was a public recognition of a body of people that in many ways weren't adequately being recognized, at least from our perspective.
[00:12:12.320] - Claire Carreras
Totally. This is going to date me for sure. But this is pre-social media. This is before meetups and all this stuff, just the radio and CDs. Sam, the CD man, that's what we had. That's what we had to bond over. We had my walkman, and we'd be swapping mixtapes. It was a good time.
[00:12:38.040] - Brandon Reece
I love that. What happened? Where was that pendulum swing that brought you now into, I don't want to call it the professional world, but more this business-oriented, operational part of the world because you've just come off the back of being creative for it. It sounded like a very long period of time.
[00:12:56.870] - Chris Nordyke
Yeah, a musician, an actor becoming an operations person. Where did that come from?
[00:13:03.640] - Claire Carreras
Well, it really started for me once I started to dive into the fashion industry. While I was acting and modeling and doing all my stand-up and all that stuff, I got into the music part of the world, and then tour was the big thing. Everything was about tour and how we could go on tour and stay on tour as long as possible, which meant I had to get some a day job that would pay me as much as I could I could possibly earn for where my skills were and then still have the freedom to go and rehearse and then go to or with my bands. In pursuit of trying to find some a day job to support my passion, I found that I could make a lot more money if I put myself into a managerial position or some operations position, or if I worked my way up the ladder somewhere. Those were the skills that I realized I had that I could leverage and turn into money that could support my dreams. Everybody else at that time in my age, we're working at cafés or in a kitchen somewhere, and you're really not making a ton of money.
[00:14:11.930] - Claire Carreras
But if you can get in there and then show them that you have this other side that, again, is a lot more valuable to them, then you can get value from that. You can get more money from that. I realized I had a bit of an edge there, and that's how that started to develop. When I got into fashion, Again, it was a solution because, okay, now I get to be creative, I get to be myself, I get to have the luxury of time so that when I want to go on tour and I want to rehearse and all this stuff, I'm not tied to it because it's my own business now. But I also had this business savvy that I had gained that I could apply to the business, and it opened up a lot of doors for me there as well.
[00:14:54.360] - Brandon Reece
That's super interesting. Was there any third party or outside influence was helping shape that perspective, or was it really just lived experience one step at a time?
[00:15:05.400] - Claire Carreras
Jeez, I mean, I'm sure every adult in my life tried to tell me or pushed me in a direction or other, but I'm from the school of hard knocks. I wish I wasn't, but that's just how I was when I was younger. I very much just figured it out on my own. It came from that need. It's like, okay, I need to make as much money as possible so that I can go to or Europe. How am I I'm going to do that? I'm going to take a job that I otherwise would never consider. I got into all kinds of stuff. I was working at a SaaS company for a while. I was working in medical hair loss replacement. I was taking these crazy jobs, but with the goal of getting into more that management operations, let me help you run your business and make your business profitable and work so that you can reward me with more money so that I can get out of here and go do what I really want to do.
[00:15:58.620] - Brandon Reece
Yeah. The fashion piece, you were the entrepreneur during that phase, is that right? What was that? What was going on there?
[00:16:06.760] - Chris Nordyke
Did you build a brand or what?
[00:16:08.300] - Claire Carreras
My first fashion business, I actually I launched it with my mom. My mom and I, we started a fashion brand. It was like streetwear meets athletic wear for the young lady. I designed, manufactured, developed it. My mom helped me with the sales side of things. We just did our best to take over the world. Within a year, we had eight big commercial wholesale accounts all over British Columbia. We were locally manufacturing, which was a big thing at the time, using a lot of eco fabrics, bamboos, jerseys, things like that. Again, I just had an absolute blast with that. It taught me a lot. It really taught me a lot about things that I hadn't at that time experienced, like the logistics of production and how to plan things out, like the fashion cycle is a lot of the time, it's like a year in advance. Then getting out in front of promoting the brand because now you're also the face of this product. Then when my mom left the sales role, I took over that. Now I'm essentially touring all over Canada promoting my brand with my trunk show. I got a little suitcase with all my samples, and I'm going to stores and introducing the line.
[00:17:25.240] - Claire Carreras
Again, I just earned a tremendous amount of experience launching that business, and I learned a lot really, really fast. That was my first one. Then after that, I started a fashion consulting business where I did boutique manufacturing for other brands who wanted local manufacturing, but maybe they weren't at the size yet where they could get a big manufacturing company. They're doing skews of maybe 100 or less in any style. They needed a smaller manufacturing house. I became that manufacturing house, and I would develop the patterns and help them grow and go from there. I was servicing, I can't remember, maybe 10 or 12 different fashion brands and offering services to them. That was a lot of fun. Then after that, I took a little break from fashion. Ultimately, came back to it, I launched a vegan leather, bag and accessory brand, and that was a lot of fun. That was probably my best one.
[00:18:26.780] - Brandon Reece
This is so wild. For people listening, it's hard to create the context for this. From Chris and I's perspective, we meet people like you, Claire, at an event, at a franchise group, or whatever the case may be. You know this. We all create this story of who Claire is. Then to sit down in a show and hear so far in only a few minutes what the journey of your life has looked like. That's pretty incredible. Before you even hit one, Tom. I know. It's so much. It's unbelievable. So weird question. But in my mind, here you are, this creative. You've learned how to, over years, put yourself out on stage in public and being in front and for all intents and purposes, being rawly who you are in front of people. When you went out and now we're having to sell and put this brand in front of people, were you ready to go? You had already been putting yourself out in front of people. Was there any imposter syndrome? Was there fear to overcome? What did look like?
[00:19:31.360] - Claire Carreras
Oh, I mean, there's always imposter syndrome. I mean, for me personally, I mean, no matter how many times I've been up on a stage or been performing a song or doing a sketch or whatever, doing a scene, what have you. I mean, I always have that little voice in the back of my head just been like, you don't even know what you're doing, and they're all going to see it. And the negative self-taught that you have sometimes. That's one of the demons, I guess, that I still have to continually work on to not let those voices get me down. But at a certain point, when I'm up in front of a crowd and I'm doing my thing, it does all melt away, and I just can be myself. Yeah.
[00:20:13.400] - Brandon Reece
Getting the zone.
[00:20:14.980] - Claire Carreras
Yeah, I'm getting the zone.
[00:20:16.440] - Chris Nordyke
These fashion companies, how did they culminate? When you moved on, did you sell them to another brand? Did you just close down those businesses? Maybe what did you learn along the way as you exited those businesses?
[00:20:27.360] - Claire Carreras
I wish I had it prepared. I think two of them probably could have been sold, but I was just too young at the time and circumstances didn't line up. The first business I had, this was right around 2007, 2008, when, of course, everything just collapsed. What happened with that was all of my commercial accounts all of a sudden just didn't have any money, and they couldn't pay me on time. We'd have a net 60 or whatever. I would have gone into production, sown everything, delivered everything, and then after a certain period, they're supposed to then start making payments. They couldn't make those payments. My whole production cycle just stalled out because without that money coming back in, I can't now reinvest that into the next collection to manufacture that. Because, again, with fashion, we're six months to a year ahead of when it's actually going to be in the stores. That financial collapse really just threw the whole business under. It just crushed us. So just had to fold the whole thing down. With the consulting business, that was going great. I mean, I had more customers than I could service. Everything was awesome. But I was running the whole operation out of my home.
[00:21:46.700] - Claire Carreras
At that time, I was with my first husband, and unfortunately, that relationship fell apart and we separated. I had to leave, so I no longer had a space to operate out of. Oh, yeah. I basically had to just start over from scratch. At that point, I had not gone to business school. I had no formal, really, education. I had a lot of skill, and a lot of people knew who I was in the community, but I had nowhere to operate. I had no car, I had nothing. I just had to put my life back together from zero. That was really sad, but it's all good because, again, it put me on the path to where I am now. When I was ready to get back into fashion, I was able to launch bigger and better than I ever could have had I stayed in that situation. Then, unfortunately, COVID happened, and I was selling travel accessories.
[00:22:47.200] - Brandon Reece
Oh, my gosh.
[00:22:48.900] - Claire Carreras
Yeah. Really unfortunate timing for me. Who could have predicted? I struggled to stay alive through that, to try to recoup as much as I I could. But I had just invested a ton of money in my second collection with that brand, and we were manufacturing overseas. And COVID, the whole global trade just absolutely collapsed on itself. So all of my numbers and projections just went out the window. Everything that I had planned basically was just no longer valid. I had a ton of inventory that all of a sudden I couldn't move. Nobody was buying my product commercially because Because stores are shut down. My price point just went crazy on me because I'm having to ship things when containers are just not moving. The whole thing went sideways on me. At that point, I was also in the middle of immigrating to a brand new country, coming to America during a global pandemic, and everything just fell apart. And by the time we got to the other side of COVID, I was so financially ruined that all I could do was try to figure out, Okay, how do I get back on my feet? How do I undo basically two years of being in an incredible amount of debt and not having any income and being in a brand new country with no access to credit or a car or a license?
[00:24:20.590] - Claire Carreras
I wasn't legal to work here for a year and a half of that because the immigration office is shut down and they closed the border, so I couldn't even go back to Canada. It was a disaster, guys. It was an absolute disaster. Yeah, and we were ruined.
[00:24:36.320] - Brandon Reece
It's just cranked up about 10X. Wow. I've been really got some real-life battle scars that many entrepreneurs and business owners-I'm sure can relate to. Yeah. What a just an absolute pointer towards the grit that you've got on deck. That's unbelievable. How in the hell after that much challenge, we'll say, what is it that makes you still go after being a business owner? Why would you continue the entrepreneurial pursuit after that experience? What is it?
[00:25:09.340] - Claire Carreras
I mean, it's crazy, right? But it's exciting. I don't like, what else would I do? I mean, Yeah, that's a great question. Maybe I'm just insane. But I love it so much and it drives me. When I'm not aggressively in pursuit of something, I'm miserable. I'll go through these phases, especially after these epic failures of cataclysms of time and all of this stuff. I'll be like, Yeah, maybe I'll just go get a little job somewhere. Maybe I'll just be a receptionist or something and just take it easy and just make a little money and just chill. I could try to do that for maybe a month or two, and I would just hate it so intensely. It's just not who I am. I need I'm like a border collie. If I don't have a job to do every single day that is almost impossible to achieve, I'm just not happy and I'm chewing up the furniture and I'm a menace to society.
[00:26:13.900] - Brandon Reece
How long did it take you to figure that out? Because that level of self-awareness is pretty important, but many of us still don't have it. When did that start showing up?
[00:26:24.460] - Claire Carreras
I think if my mom was still here, she'd tell you that's always been me since day one. I was the kid, she would have to have stacks and stacks of sketchbooks and coloring pencils and Playdough. Every morning, she'd have to be, Okay, Claire, here's what we're going to do today. I need you to make me four vases out of this clay, and I need you to draw me four horses, and they need to be colored, and the outlines have to be perfect. Then I need you to write me two stories about dragons. She just gave me this crazy list of things to do, and I'd be like, All right, okay, perfect. Awesome. I'll get right to that. It would keep me busy because if she didn't do that, I would literally be out there just causing havoc and just an absolute menace. I was such a handful as a child. I wish so badly that my mom was still here so I could tell her, Thank you so much for putting up with me because what a handful. I'm the oldest of seven. She had all these other kids that she had to pay attention to.
[00:27:26.060] - Claire Carreras
I was just so needy in that. I I needed things to do. I needed a purpose, and it needed to be constant. Otherwise, I just would fall apart and take everybody with me.
[00:27:38.660] - Brandon Reece
Yeah, unbelievable. I'm going to shift us here because I want to give you a chance to start sharing with us some of these leadership lessons that you've been gaining, because we've seen some of it in real life. I've heard more about it in real life, and I know that there's a lot packed under all those life experiences that you just shared. So real quick, though, before we get into that, let's get current. So right now, you got a pink shirt on. Tell us where you put your bets in, and what you're doing. And then I've got a list of questions I want to tear into with you.
[00:28:14.040] - Claire Carreras
Absolutely. I am currently co-owner of One Tom Plumber of Austin. We have been open officially since July, so pretty new, pretty recent. But yeah, love in every minute of that. We have an awesome office that we built out. Got a great team of people. We've got five trucks on the road now, and we're just rocking and rolling out there. Home services. It seems like a huge jump because we just finished talking about all this arts and stuff that I was doing. But essentially after COVID, once I was finally legal to work in the United States of America, like I said, I was on this mission to crawl out of this hole of debt that we had found ourselves in. I just started blanketing the internet with resumes, which, of course, nobody was going to look at me because I had a two-year gap on my resume and all my references from another country. So not the most appealing candidate. And it just so happens that the first person who responded to one of my inquiries for employment was an individual who owned a restoration company. That's how I fell into restoration. That led me to a few other home service experiences and ultimately opened the door to One Tom, and here I am.
[00:29:31.260] - Brandon Reece
Now, One Tom, is it operating independent? Are you guys partnered with a restoration company? What's that arrangement look like?
[00:29:40.340] - Claire Carreras
Yeah, no, correct. One Tom Plumber, it's an emergency It's an emergency plumbing service. We really cater to the 24/7. We do commercial and residential. If you got a problem, we're here to solve it as quickly as possible. It pairs beautifully with a restoration company because it's that same urgency, especially when we're talking about mitigation. The first question we ask in mitigation is, has a plumber been on site? Because, of course, we can't begin to do any structural dry out if there's still an active leak. The two go really, really well hand in hand. I was working for a restoration company, and I had hit a point in that journey where I had really accomplished all the things that I had joined him to do. We'd hit all the goals that I'd set out to do. We'd built what we wanted to build. I'd scaled beyond what he had asked me to scale. I was getting that itch of like, Okay, well, I don't have anything to aggressively pursue anymore because we've arrived. That's when one Tom came across our desk and he said, Hey, why don't we partner on this? Why don't you stop being an employee?
[00:30:50.260] - Claire Carreras
Why don't we be partners? How about you run this business? Do what you did over here, do it over there, and I'll stay over here and run the restoration company. We'll just do this thing together. That's what we did.
[00:31:03.320] - Brandon Reece
That's epic. How long were you with the... Are you able to talk about the name of the restoration company?
[00:31:10.660] - Claire Carreras
Yeah, for sure. It's called Atex Restoration. It's an independently My own restoration company in Austin, Texas. I think they're going into the 15th year of operation. I was with them for... Oh, jeez. It feels like forever, but I think it was really only a year and a half, maybe two years, probably more like a year and a half. I actually came to him from a different home service company. I was operating a pool cleaning and repair company, fixed that all up, made it nice, was able to help him then sell it. Then he was like, Well, I have this restoration business over here. We basically just worked you out of a job. Why don't you come over here and do what you did for the pool company over here? He had these really grand ideas. He wanted scale. He wanted to get the restoration side of it really rocking and rolling. He wanted to fix up the mitigation division and make that a little more streamlined, a little more efficient. He wanted to add contents, and he just wanted to scale. He wanted to go big. With this whole thing. I said, All right, yeah, I can definitely help you do that.
[00:32:19.180] - Claire Carreras
I think I can do it. I think I can do it in a year or two. He was like, No, this is like a three or five year thing. I'm like, Yeah, we'll see. Sure enough, within a year and a half, I mean, I'd done everything that we had set out to do, and I was super proud of our achievements. But again, I just have this weird thing that if I don't have a challenge to aggressively pursue, I just get all antsy and the idle hands lead to lead to bad things. I think he saw that, and I think he was looking for some opportunity to keep working with me, but also satisfy what I needed out of life, because this is now what, 2023, I guess that would have been. We're talking three years of me insanely working to just get myself out of the hole that COVID left. I had started to turn everything around, and now I was like, okay, maybe I can slow down a little bit. Maybe I can think about what do I really want to do? Because you You also have to have this conversation with yourself of like, okay, I've been going like turbo speed, trying to hit this goal to get my life turned back around.
[00:33:39.020] - Claire Carreras
It looks like I'm almost there. I can see the horizon now. I can see the sunlight starting to get closer. What next? Do I go back into my passions? Do I start playing music again? Do I take a little sabbatical, maybe stop working so hard, maybe start enjoying this new country that I lived in that I have I haven't really had a chance to explore or have any fun because I've just been frantically trying to get back up off the ground. And ultimately, I was like, well, I know what happens when I do that. Every time I try to do that, I realize that I'm miserable and I'm bored. Then nobody around me can be happy because I'm not happy. You know what? Let's launch another business. That sounds perfect.
[00:34:22.460] - Chris Nordyke
You mean all this time you weren't hanging out at Barton Springs and on sixth Street, eating all the tacos and hanging out in all the bars clubs?
[00:34:30.840] - Claire Carreras
Man, I'll tell you, I have no friends. That's one thing I do wish now. I feel like now that I'm where I'm at now, I'm like, Okay, it's time, Claire. You could probably afford to go out a night here or there, socialize a little bit. It's such a departure from who I used to be. Not even five or six years ago, I was always out. I was low-key a socialite. Every bar knew who I was. I was on all the I was always going out seeing shows, rocking and rolling, and now I'm just a homebody. If I'm not working, I'm probably asleep. Those are the only two modes that I have. At some point, you have to think about your quality of life and what is the point? What is the point of all of this? I've gotten myself out of the hole. Now what? No, you got to smell the flowers every now and then. Otherwise, time just keeps going, and it just goes faster and faster every year.
[00:35:31.140] - Chris Nordyke
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[00:36:25.150] - Chris Nordyke
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[00:36:58.740] - Brandon Reece
Speaking of fast, okay, because you said this flippantly, and I've processed it a couple of times since you said it. When did you guys start your one, Tom?
[00:37:09.060] - Claire Carreras
July. Well, we opened in July.
[00:37:11.180] - Brandon Reece
July, 2025.
[00:37:13.160] - Claire Carreras
Correct, yeah, this year. I was at Atex, still in my operations role until April of this year. Then it was like one week I was at Atex, the next week I was at One Tom. Then I just hit that really, really hard and we got off the ground and open. Yes, been a roller coaster ride.
[00:37:34.880] - Brandon Reece
Yeah, it'll be up to five trucks already. I think a lot of single trade and entrepreneurs that are listening, they know what it was like when they launched their resto company and to get up to five trucks, there's a lot of pain that can come during that time frame. There's a lot of big shifts that have to take place mentally to hit that number.
[00:37:56.500] - Claire Carreras
I wouldn't recommend that for anybody, for everyone. It's certainly... There's a lot of ways to start a business. My partner and I, we very intentionally chose to not bootstrap it in the beginning. We had a very clear vision of where we wanted to get it to and how we wanted it to look and our territory. We very fortunately had access to the capital to be able to be like, All right, we're just going to do it. I'm so grateful that he has so much confidence in me and my skills and my ability to say, Yeah, I trust this person to do it and execute it and be successful. Because five trucks is a lot. We started with three, we added another one, and then we added another.
[00:38:38.880] - Brandon Reece
Wow. I mean, even launching right out of the gate with three. I mean, we've been on the ground with several, like I had a few of the one Tom franchisees owners, and it's a lift. I mean, any business is a lift, but there's definitely some things when you're in a 24/7 nature like we are on both sides of the fence, the one Tom and us on this industry, that's a a whole another level of grind associated with your business. It's one thing to put a 24/7 expectation on yourself as an entrepreneur because you want to learn and grind and build the business. But then when the client has a 24/7 expectation, too.
[00:39:12.700] - Claire Carreras
When they're calling and you're still the person answering the calls and you're like, Oh, boy. All right. No, it is legitimately three o'clock in the morning. Yeah, okay, we're doing this here.
[00:39:24.420] - Chris Nordyke
I just keep in my head, I'm trying to put together these two seemingly disparate things of creative, entrepreneur. You've done all the things. You put on your selling shoes with your fashion businesses. You perform on stage. You've done all of these things. I'm really trying, can you unpack for me? Can you share with us a little bit? When you said to the owner at Atex, Hey, I see your big vision, and I can help you build that. You go in, and in a year and a half-ish, you help them scale out to basically exactly what they wanted to do. Talk to me about where did that confidence come from? What's your mental framework for operational things? Becoming profitable, establishing clear lines of communication. What was your thinking when you stepped into that role? I know it wasn't your first rodeo, you had the pool business. But at that point, what did you learn about business and your own skill to say, Well, I know how to scale businesses or I have a clear vision of how to go about this. Like, unpack, what were some of those principles, decision making process, whatever that you had gained at that point?
[00:40:37.640] - Claire Carreras
I mean, it's not to take anything away from how difficult all of this stuff that I undertook was But in a lot of ways, it's all the same. I think about when I put the first band that I joined and we just had this idea of, yeah, we're going to play shows. We're going to do that. Okay, well, how are we going to do that? All right. We have the end goal. We have the end vision. Then you got to just scale it back. All right, how are we going to get there? What do those steps look like? Who do we have? Who do we need? How do we achieve this goal? It's the same with anything, whether you're launching a fashion business and you're like, All right, well, I want to have three collections in the next three years. Okay, great. What does that look like? What are the steps we need to take? Literally getting out a calendar and being like, All right, well, if I want this by then, then okay, step one, step two. You're break it down into pieces and then you look at, Okay, well, who do I need?
[00:41:34.480] - Claire Carreras
Who do I have? How am I going to get there? Because you're not going to do it by yourself, ever. That's the number one lesson that I'm glad I learned early on is you don't get there by yourself. It's the same with the pool company, it's the same with restoration. It's been the same with one time. When you're building this thing out, it's important that you have a very clear vision of what you wanted to look like at the end, keeping in mind that that's going to evolve and it's going to change as you go, but you do need to have something pretty definitive to work towards. Otherwise, we're leading people where, right? We have to have something to hold on to, whether it's our summer tour of Europe in 2018, or if it's, Hey, we're going to hit this revenue margin by this month, and you got to get everybody who's on that journey with you on board and invested in that same goal And then the work starts, right? Then we're like, Okay, we've got this roadmap. We know where we're going. We have an idea on how we're going to get there.
[00:42:38.600] - Claire Carreras
Here's the people I have. Here's the people I feel like we need to find to help us get there. And we just start moving. And along that road, things are going to change. Unexpected things are going to happen. Maybe the people you thought you were going to have change or the people you think you're going to find, you don't. And you have to adapt and just keep moving forward It's a lot of work.
[00:43:00.580] - Brandon Reece
One of the themes that I feel like has been super present in your career is, one, you've taken a lot of shots at startup. You've been in startup phase a lot of your professional career. Then on top of that, you lived inside the chaotic environment of disaster restoration. Now you're back in startup phase. There's this combination of things happening for most business owners and leaders in any given year. One, You're in some form of that, startup, launch, bootstrapping, whatever. But then there's this other thing that I think 2025 has reminded a lot of people of is that sometimes years are not fun. There's many disaster restoration companies this year. Ours are not insulated from that. We're experiencing similar things where it's not been fun. This has been a tough year. In that startup phase and the chaos of the industry, or if you're in a company that this year did not have the most exciting financial opportunity in the world, there is stress and anxiety and pressure inside the organization that look and feel very similar, regardless of those cases. What have you done? What is your perspective? Maybe some of the mindset that you lean into, what's the communication that you provide your people to keep them?
[00:44:24.500] - Brandon Reece
For instance, in those early stages, you don't have all the things in place yet. You've got dreams and aspirations, but it's wishing still. You're having to motivate people like, Trust me, it's going to be what I think it's going to be. Or you've got people that they feel the pressure of crisis, and you're having to still apply pressure for accountability and forward movement. But yet there's this sensitivity around your people because they feel this negative pressure from whatever that environment is creating. Just help me understand your perspective and what specifically have you done to create trust and continue the team rowing in the same direction with you in either one of those scenarios.
[00:45:06.820] - Claire Carreras
Oh, man, Brandon. I'm so glad you said that because that is absolutely the hardest part, especially from a startup perspective, because you're really out there selling a dream. You're selling something that you wish, you think, you hope, but you don't really know. You're pretty sure you can pull this off, but I don't know. Then the imposter syndrome stuff starts happening and you have to find a way to keep these people investing invested in this dream that you're selling and convince them that it's their dream as well, or at least keep reminding them of it while you're still trying to figure it all out. It's not a smooth ride. It's very bumpy, and that can be really a and uncomfortable for people, especially if you're joining a company and you've never been a part of a startup before. It's probably one of the most uncomfortable things you could put somebody through. You just really, really, really have to spend the time with your people to keep reiterating what the goal is, why it's the goal, how we're going to get there, how we're going to get there together, how we're all participating in this thing. And like, yeah, it is going to be funky.
[00:46:16.020] - Claire Carreras
And yeah, we're going to make some mistakes. And, hey, you know what? I don't have an answer for that yet because we haven't figured that out yet. When I get home today, I'm going to work until one o'clock in the morning to try to get to you that answer tomorrow. But right now, today, I don't have that answer. And just hoping and praying every day that everybody stays cool and continues to participate with you. But in that chaos, if you're able to present it in a way, You can really get people excited. I don't want to say we're inflating anything or like, Yeah, look over here. It's all going to be great. But it's that camaraderie. It's the same camaraderie camaraderie you have when you're on tour with five guys that you've known for six months, and you've only really known them in the capacity of, All right, we meet up every Thursday and Tuesday, and we jam for an hour, and then we go home, and we don't really know that much about each other. But in two weeks from now, we're going to jump on a plane and we're going to rent a vehicle and we're going to tour down the Coast for a month and a half and we're going to hope that we survive.
[00:47:28.200] - Claire Carreras
Then things start going I'm wrong. One of the venues forgot to promote you, or they didn't give us the right spot, or there was no money at the end of the show, and the truck breaks down, and you got no... All these really high stress things are happening, and you start to see everybody's flaws, and you start to see everybody's hope start to dwindle. It's really hard to get people motivated again because it's like, Hey, we got to get up on the stage, and we got to rock people's socks off, and we have to win this audience, and we have to sell merch. Otherwise, we're all going to die. It's that extreme. I guess having gone through that, I've learned what it takes to get people motivated and excited about a common goal. That's really the thing of it. It can't just be my dream. You know what I mean? It has to be our dream. If my goal needs to change a little bit to incorporate some of what they need to get out of this, then absolutely. Let's talk about it. What do you need to get out of this? What does your part of this dream look like?
[00:48:36.620] - Claire Carreras
Then I can explain, Okay, well, here's how we're going to achieve all of this together. These are the steps that we're going to have to take, and we're going to have to hold each other accountable, and we're going to have to show up every day ready to rock the show and win the crowd and sell some merch and make these people happy so that we can get to where we're trying to go. When we get there, we have gotten there together. We'll have had this amazing experience together that nobody else will have had. That's just so beautiful.
[00:49:08.340] - Brandon Reece
Okay. All right. I'm in my mind right now, I'm wrestling with a conversation that I think, literally, Wayne and I and Steve were a part of today with our own team, where we're doing a little bit of... Guys, this is important because... Because there's some stories in our head. We've started to develop a reasoning on our own of why we want this data to be accurate or why we want you in this CRM on this consistency and taking note of these specifics inside the database or whatever the case may be. Sometimes what happens is my ability to anticipate or understand the value of this action or this activity seems really obvious. I'll have meetings with the team and we'll talk about the idea or the concept, and then two weeks later, go by and I realize Man, there is a lot of friction still in getting buy-in. Something's off. Clearly, my understanding of the value of this activity or the use of this tool is not the same as my team member. You get into these meetings where you try to unpack that and find out where the gap is between your perspective and theirs.
[00:50:19.600] - Brandon Reece
You can just read it on their body language in these times of stress or startup or chaos where it's like, they almost lack the energy to get excited about what you're asking them to do. Some of that is individual, but sometimes it's just the grind of the job or grind of the state of the business. Have you found any type of conversation or any phrasing or any approach that's made it easier for you to help them dig out of that and get back on the surface of the quicksand, if you will, and be willing to continue to put the effort in that's good for them and the business?
[00:50:57.320] - Claire Carreras
Yeah, jeez, I wish I did have a magic phrase or a statement, but I really don't. To me, it just comes down to the person and people. I really spend a lot of time with my people, and I do my best to really get to know who they are inside of the role and outside of the role, and what motivates them, and what do they care about, and what do they want, because everybody is different in that capacity. Not everybody is going to get on board with the things that you think they're going to get on board on. Not everybody is motivated by money. Not everybody is motivated by achieving this crazy goal together. Some people are like, yeah, I just want to clock in and do my thing and go home. But I feel like the more time you spend with your people and the more you understand who they are and what does make them tick, then it's a lot easier to have those conversations and be able to present things in a way that they are going to understand and they're going to click with. Again, it goes back to you have this dream, but it's not just your dream.
[00:52:07.620] - Claire Carreras
It has to be everybody's dream. How can you show them that their dream exists within this world that you're creating? How can you help them also get there and get their comeuppings and their kicks out of it, right? Sometimes you're not going to win them all. A Startup is a very, very difficult place to be. It takes a certain type of person to be willing to go through that turmoil until you get there. But I found in knowing my people and understanding who they are and what they want out of life, I can usually find a way to highlight, Hey, this is how we get you what you want. Here's how that's going to also benefit all of us. Here's how we're all going to still be moving in the same direction that we all win in the at the end.
[00:53:00.440] - Brandon Reece
Yeah, I love that.
[00:53:01.480] - Chris Nordyke
Quick question along those same lines. What's your mental process for knowing when to coach up or coach out? What's your mental process for when do we need to just move on? Because this individual is not right for the team or right for this time in the business.
[00:53:21.220] - Claire Carreras
Yeah, and that's always the toughest one, too. But it's important not to ignore that. If you are getting some signs like, maybe this just isn't the right fit and there's no sense in trying to push a square into a round hole, so to speak. That's a tough one. I've been really fortunate to have had the different teams and the different people in my professional life that I have. I've always been able to talk to them about that and get them to be transparent and honest with me if they have any inkling that, Hey, maybe this isn't for me. I can help them weigh out those pros and cons of like, Hey, is this right for you? Is this what you want? If not, Hey, that's okay. It doesn't have to be a blow up. It doesn't have to be a problem. But let's just let's figure it out so that you're not unhappy. I'll do everything I can to help you move to wherever it is you need to be. I would love to try to coach everybody up. I'd love to at least give it a shot, but Again, it depends on the person, right?
[00:54:32.150] - Claire Carreras
If they're open to it, if they're willing to, or they might just already be like, You know what? I've already decided that this isn't for me. Then you got to pull the cord. But you don't get that unless your people feel comfortable talking to you and sharing those things with you. Sometimes, unfortunately, if they're not, then you're just seeing the signs and you just have to make some tough choices. I hope that answered your question. That's a tough one.
[00:55:01.420] - Chris Nordyke
Yeah, you're right.
[00:55:02.310] - Brandon Reece
One of the things that I run into, I feel like, is some difficulty in valuing—this is going to come across probably negative—but I can struggle with valuing the difference correctly between me, my life story, my background, what drives me, what motivates me. What I mean by that is working hours, things that will slow somebody else down from making progress versus me, things that maybe a downline employee gets high-centered on that I would just blow through. This gap between what has created my persona, my operational cadence and expectation on myself, versus my struggle sometimes with my downline team where how easy it is for them to get knocked off course, to get delayed, to receive enough pushback that it slows them down or puts them in a paralysis state, or It's easier for them to come up with a reason or an excuse. They don't have the ability to win or move forward. I'm sure you know exactly what I mean. I think what I wrestle with sometimes in my mind is remembering. My life story, my experiences, my relationships, a lot of that drives that orientation for me. Just because someone else hasn't had those same experiences to maybe create the same level of drive, especially if we're talking generational.
[00:56:30.530] - Brandon Reece
Sometimes there's just things that take place that just create a difference. I'm trying to use the term difference very intentionally right now because what I have a tendency to do is put a value statement on it. If you're more like me, you're good. If you're not, it's bad. I think where I'm going with this is from your perspective as a leader, I'm hearing a lot of the way that you talk and communicate and phrase how you interact with your people. I'm not necessarily hearing that judgment. It sounds like there's some more empathy, some more I don't know. I don't want to make the judgment or the assumptions. So question, how do you bridge that gap? How do you refrain from... Because you're a gritty mofo. You're life, dude. There's not very many people that would keep picking their self off the fucking ground and doing what you're doing. I would imagine it's hard for you in an environment with nine out of 10 people to really feel feel like you're facing a peer because of what you're capable of going through and what little they're capable of going through. Here is the question, how do you bridge that gap?
[00:57:38.600] - Brandon Reece
How do you have the patience for some of these team members or these individuals in your sphere of influence that are a long ways away from being able to grind the way that you grind and do what you're able to do? How do you do that?
[00:57:53.440] - Claire Carreras
I mean, you've really got to separate the fact. I really really, really do my best to not judge and base how I feel about other people, comparing them to myself, because I am very, very aware that I am a highly irregular person. I mean, I've just lived such an insane life, and I have been exposed to so many people and places and things and hardships and amazing adventures and all of this stuff. But I'm also very, very aware that that is not normal and that is not the usual. Most people I interact with are not going to have those same perspectives as I am. Ultimately, the bluntest thing I can say is all people are flawed. All people are flawed. We have to have some empathy for that and just consider that it's okay to be flawed. If I can understand in what ways you're flawed, we can work with that. You know what I mean? Because we're We're all like that. Think of the coolest lead singer that you could ever imagine. I guarantee you when they're not on the stage and they're in the tour van and they're five whiskies deep, they probably have some problems that nobody is aware of, and they're probably pretty difficult to deal with a lot of the time.
[00:59:19.700] - Claire Carreras
But that doesn't make them a bad person. It doesn't make them somebody that's not worth your time or effort. It doesn't make them any less of a performer, you know what I mean? But you do have handle them in a different way. I wouldn't be able to compare them to myself or to somebody else because that just wouldn't be fair. I guess I do have a lot of empathy for that because I've just been around so many different people from so many different walks of life. I feel like I'm a pretty open and accepting person, and I genuinely want to help, and I want to lift the people around me up. But I'm flawed as well. I'm a super impatient person. I want to go. I want to go. I want to get there. I want the things to get achieved, and I want to plow through life. I've had to learn that most people don't think that way, and it's abrasive to them if they're coming on too hard, given too much of that border collar energy. They don't want to see this dog staring at them and creeping. It freaks people out. You have to wind it back and try to play nicely at the dog park with everybody else.
[01:00:34.640] - Claire Carreras
You mentioned the generational thing. That's absolutely something to consider. Different people from different age groups have different perspectives on what work looks like, what work behavior looks like, the way that things are done. It's very different. To me, a good leader is somebody who takes all of that into consideration tries to find a way to identify the things that we all have in common and try to focus on that, but also acknowledging all the things that we have that are different. How can we learn from each other in that capacity so that we can still see how we're all helping each other go in the same direction?
[01:01:20.700] - Brandon Reece
I'm not going to use any names because they're too close to my own sphere, but I had an experience this week that was shocking. I I have a person in my life, two persons in my life that I trust, I respect a lot, I love them both to death, younger. They are definitely the younger generation. Both these individuals are in their 20s. Both of them I would put next to the average person in their sphere, and I would be like, Man, these two, they're top tier. I love them to death. They got the juice. They're going to do great things. Then I realized how easy it is, and I know if they to this, I'm going to get in trouble. But I realized one day because they were at home during the workday, both these individuals, and they're not remote workers. They had a real quick response to why they needed to take that day off and why they weren't at work. Both of them are wrestling with how do I continue to develop in my career, in advance in my ability to earn money, all the things. I realized there's a generational thing, and I can't put my finger on it.
[01:02:33.960] - Brandon Reece
Again, I'm trying not to place value on this. I'm just stating something I've witnessed, where it's just more acceptable to them to take a day for themselves in quotes.
[01:02:45.860] - Chris Nordyke
A mental health day.
[01:02:46.960] - Brandon Reece
Mental health day, whatever we tag it. Again, I'm not being tongue in cheek, but I just found myself in that moment going, look, there's a reality as an individual that you need to be in alignment what you want from life and what actions are going to be required in order for you to achieve that want. And behavior, like I was made aware of, is glaringly out of alignment with what it takes to go get the six-figure your earning to go be at the top of the the heap, to maybe go after an entrepreneurial endeavor. And I just found myself a little fabric-gasted by it. It caught me completely off guard, where all of a sudden I was like, holy shit. There's a reality you may not get to the target that you're aiming at because I'm not sure you've got the intestinal fortitude to make it happen based on how you're behaving right now. That being said, in your scenario, when we're thinking about this as professionals and business owners, how do we find that line? You did a great job of articulating for us how you develop a relationship and how you have empathy and it's important for you to connect to your people.
[01:04:00.900] - Brandon Reece
Where's that comment, though? When you're looking at one of your team members and they're behaving in such a way that your world experience says, there is no way in hell that's going to get you closer to the target that you're talking about hitting than not. What do you do in those moments, Claire? How do you step in and discuss that specifically with your person? Yeah, please.
[01:04:21.540] - Chris Nordyke
All of us are waiting with baited breath.
[01:04:23.200] - Brandon Reece
Yeah, I'm like, please. You got to step in.
[01:04:29.200] - Claire Carreras
Yeah. No. I love the younger generation. They have so much more awareness and sensitivity to positive mental health and mental wellness. There's just a lot more open about I mean, I'm from the generation where you just didn't talk about that stuff. If you were having a bad day, if you were depressed or worse, you just shut up about it and you just clocked in and did your thing and then go get yourself a fifth of vodka and deal with it on your own time thing. I'm so glad that that has changed. I think post-COVID, that conversation around mental health and mental wellness has really improved a lot. That's a good thing. That's a good thing for all of us. But at the same time, then you have a younger demographic that the moment they're not sure and they don't know and they're not sure how they're feeling and they're not sure where they're going or what they want, they take a lot of space to say, Well, I need to deal with this. I need to address this because I couldn't possibly come and clock in and put a face on because I'm dealing with something internally.
[01:05:42.520] - Claire Carreras
They don't have that same mask or they don't feel obligated to wear the mask because that's not what society demands of them anymore. Society now demands that you go home and figure it out and work on yourself and try to figure out what that piece of you that's giving you all of this to solve that so that you can come back to work and be the best version of yourself that you can be. I think that's important, and I think that's great. However, we haven't quite, I think, as a society, figured out how to adapt this new way of thinking into our professional lives and how to handle that as a boss or an employer or a mentor, what have you. How do we work with that? I recently had an experience very similar to that where one of our fellows had clearly had a very bad day, and it caught me really off guard because I hadn't anticipated that. I wasn't aware that they were going through these things that led to ultimately, like an explosion. Then they needed some time off, and they needed to just be alone. I was like, Oh, my goodness.
[01:06:53.180] - Claire Carreras
What has happened? I really beat myself up because I'm like, Well, how did we get so far? How did he get this aggravated, this upset that it turned into this explosion thing and then needed all this time off? I'm like, Oh, my gosh. Well, the first thing that I think about when this happens is like, Okay, well, how did I fail? Because nobody gets to that point by themselves. There were things that were happening that I clearly overlooked. There were conversations that maybe I could have had where I could have maybe been made aware of more of the struggles that they you are having or what have you. But ultimately, when something's not going well with your team, I personally, the first thing I always think is, Well, how did I fail? This is my fault. It's like my breakout speech, your team sucks and it's all your fault. I think a lot of the time it is. There's something I did or didn't do that has now caused this. I I gave them their space to deal with what they needed to. When they were ready to come back and they were ready to talk, I just invited them to say, Hey, what happened?
[01:08:10.970] - Claire Carreras
How did we get here? What were the things that put you over the edge? What can we do to be more aware so that we can be respectful of that and not put you through things that are going to cause you this much turmoil? Because nobody wants that. We want you here. We want you happy. How can I do a better job of preventing these things from compiling so that this doesn't happen to you again. I was made aware of things that I was clueless, and I felt pretty stupid that I hadn't seen that. But we're all human, we're all flawed, we're all learning. I think it spoke volumes for me to just care, to give them that space, to deal with what they needed to, but then follow up and just say, Hey, what happened? Again, I'm so fortunate to have people that are trusting enough to share things with me. I wouldn't be able to be a very effective leader if people didn't feel like they could share things with me. It's a two-way street, good and bad, right? We need to have the space. We need to have more conversations about mental health, especially in the workplace, especially in these high stress industries like emergency services.
[01:09:27.200] - Claire Carreras
It's one of the most stressful, thankless industries you could possibly be a part of with all these stakeholders. It's 24/7, and it just never ends. Oh, my God, somebody else's house burned down? Yeah, another Tuesday, right? We have to have more of these conversations. But the flip side of that is we have to have more solutions in place for how we deal with people when they get to that state of burnout. We need to look at what is happening before the burnout that we could maybe work on improving so that we don't get that far.
[01:10:03.120] - Brandon Reece
Yeah. I think there's something really important about the fact that your immediate response to that is, what can I take ownership of her? I think it speaks a lot to who you are and the caliber of your story. I want to be cognizant of your time, Claire, because you gave us a very specific stop point, and that is now.
[01:10:21.400] - Chris Nordyke
Oh, it's now. This has been so good. We're going to have to have you back is what's going to happen.
[01:10:25.940] - Brandon Reece
Yeah, I think so. I felt like we just rushed through the first part. Claire Super thank you. Super rad. Thank you guys. You were transparent.
[01:10:33.940] - Chris Nordyke
So fun to get to know you better.
[01:10:35.500] - Brandon Reece
It was awesome. I think we will have a part two to this at some point in 2026. But thanks so much, Claire, for your time. We really appreciate it.
[01:10:44.920] - Claire Carreras
That'd be awesome. Well, thank you guys for having me, man. It's been a blast to finally chat. Next time we run into each other at a conference, let's sit down for.
[01:10:52.370] - Chris Nordyke
We got plenty to talk about.
[01:10:54.540] - Brandon Reece
That's right. We'll be old school friends at that phase.
[01:10:58.420] - Claire Carreras
Right on.
[01:11:00.540] - Brandon Reece
All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart, and Boots.
[01:11:07.640] - Chris Nordyke
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