Monday Motivation: Help in an Unexpected Way

Good morning, Cadre family. We are back. We're back. Hope everybody had a great weekend. Good morning. My name is Luke Wendtland. It's good to see everybody. I can't wait till the names start popping in. It's one of my favorite things about my week is always to connect on Cadre on Monday morning, first thing, it gives me fuel, it gives me energy, it gives me life, it gives me all the things. So I'll just give it a second here. Good morning. Good morning, everybody. Hope everybody had a wonderful, dynamic, fun, energetic, relaxing, whatever things that you need.

Weekend. Oh, my gosh, it's so good to see everybody pop in. This is beautiful. Had an eventful weekend, which was fantastic. First thing was. Oh, my gosh. Good morning to you two. Jules. Good morning, Robert. Good morning, everybody. First thing was, my wife and I did so much stuff this weekend. I mean, we just. We did so much stuff. We worked on our yard, we got our. The mulch set up. We did all those things. So we each had 30 some thousand steps, literally just working around the yard on Saturday and Sunday.

On Saturday, Cadre was at a mental health fair and our own Animea was there, which was super cool. I loved it. And then on Saturday, I was at the Purpose, Pastries and Passion event with our very own Gene Nichols here from Cadre. That was really fun. There was a group of, I don't know, maybe 40 individuals, I suppose, total that were there talking about purpose, passion, love, all of it was. Which was exactly kind of what I needed to hear. You know, why you do what you do, why you select, how do you find your passion?

How do you find your purpose? So it's really just an awesome weekend, to say the least. Good. Good morning. Christine, you're amazing. Yes. So this is back of White Bear Lake. So there's my favorite coffee shop right ahead. And then you can see this kind of beautifulness to kind of like start your week off right and get going. But I just have to tell you guys this story, which I just. I think there's just this moment of time you always have to remember. Like, help can come in unexpected ways. So when I was starting this company called Northstar Behavioral Health, there is a.

We. We bought an older building from the late 1880s, and we transformed this 10,000 square foot building into a residential treatment center. And that is a lot of work. I learned far too much stuff about construction that I care to even admit. From the fire suppression system to the hood systems, to how thick your cardboard needs. Not cardboard, drywall, sheetrock. Needs to be in between two fire ratings to fire rated doors to walkways and the size of the walkways that need to be, et cetera. And honest to goodness, it was, was, you know, you had to basically get a PhD over the development of this property.

And when I was starting this, there's an individual, we were starting our first call it week on the job and an individual, his name is Virgil, he was from the St. Paul, City of St. Paul. And he came as an inspector and he shut down the work. He came in and he shut it down. He said, you guys don't have this, you don't have this. This is, this, this is an issue, this is a problem. And, and so he shut down the crew that was doing the work for us. And you know, naturally I called Virgil, I'm like, virgil, what's going on?

And he stopped. He's like, they don't know what they're doing on this, this, this and this. You need to start here. This is how the process goes, blah, blah, blah. So he kind of took me through this whole entire process and I just told him, I said, you know, I just gotta tell you, Virgil, I am so sorry. I had no clue. This was it. I'm first time in this. This is what we're doing, this is what we're building. So I told him, you know, we're building a residential treatment program helping serve those with opioid use disorder, et cetera, and just went deep into the purpose of the work, et cetera, why it's going to matter, how it's going to come to fruition, what it's going to look like, how many individuals we're going to serve, rolling out the responsibilities of the jobs, all of it.

So I shared all that information with him. He said, okay, okay, sounds good, I appreciate it, thank you for that information. So we keep going forward, right? It's like month one, month two. This is a six month build, right? So you have this six month build of this residential property, big construction deal, a lot of time, effort and energy money that went into it. And boy, oh boy, did we have to learn the hard way. But so we're just wrapping up and we're getting to the point of, you know, your permits are completed and finalized, you have your final inspections, you have all this stuff, right?

Virgil comes for the final inspection and I'll never forget it. He is like a brother from another mother and he comes and does the inspection, final check. And he said, I wanted to let you know I was very, very hard on you because I've also had a past, and my past was with substance abuse, specifically cocaine, etc. I wanted to make sure that you never had to deal with any inspector going forward. So I wanted to ensure that this property was perfect for years to come. So talk about a little guardian angel above you.

So he made sure that this property was so rock solid. And, oh, by the way, I just want to tell you, come over on Saturday with a truck and you can take as much stuff. My wife and I are moving, and we are going to be moving from house one to house two. So if we have leather couches, we have all these different things. You can take all of it, and they're all yours. We want to give back and help support your endeavor. So here's the guy that was insanely hard on me, incredibly hard on me with this, and I had no idea why.

He's like, you know, we're shutting the project down and this is what we're going to do. And you have no idea what's going on with their fire suppression system. And the ratings in between. Between the floors are not up to snuff. We need to do A, B, C and D. This is what it's going to be. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile, this guy was looking out for me. He was looking out for me to ensure that if anything ever happened in that property, we would be so rock solid and there would never be an issue.

So be careful when you think somebody might be coming, quote, unquote, a little bit hard, when the reality is they could be looking out for you. You. So I thank my lucky stars that I had Virgil as our inspector for the city of St. Paul with that first property. And I will never forget it. He put me through an absolute the ringer. But it was a process and a journey that I'll never forget and exactly. Jules just wrote tough love, and tough love can be good. And this was a good, good version of tough love.

But it was crazy to see, like, towards the end where he was coming out and he was coming out of his shell and he was starting to share and he was starting to share more and more and more about his own personal journey. So interesting concept that you just never know who's out there looking out for you when you think it might be like, why is this guy picking on me? Or why is this gal picking on me? Or why is my boss at work holding me to an incredibly high standard of expectations because they believe in something, probably in you, or the purpose of the mission of the business, or you name it.

So sometimes it's bigger than you and it's bigger than the feelings of you. In this particular case, Virgil had a past. Virgil had a history. And he wanted to ensure that our organization would never be in buy ins or positions like some of the other companies that may have been in our past. So with that, sometimes you just got to take a step back and go, is this person actually trying to help me? Hmm, interesting. Let me think about that. With that, I say, have a wonderful week. Lift somebody up.

What I try to do every single Monday here at Cadre is to share my truth, my true stories that have happened to me in my life that I hope individuals can resonate with or find maybe some inspiration or some motivation, especially as we enter this beautiful mental health awareness month. We are on the 5th. And I also want to say to my parents, happy anniversary. Happy anniversary to my mom and dad. They've been married for, gosh, probably d*** near 50 years now. I should know that. But I don't. But I should.

But I will find out today when I call my mom and dad. But everybody, have a wonderful day. Lift somebody up, take care of one another and remember, you never know who's trying to help you. Bye. Bye. And there is this beautiful, beautiful lake today.