Enjoy the Ride: How Home Improvement Leaders Can Turn Crisis into Confidence, Purpose, and Long-Term Impact

Mindset coach and former contractor Shawn Feurer joins CEO Greg Cummings to reveal how rewiring your thinking can transform adversity into sustainable leadership, growth, and impact in home improvement

The home improvement industry is no stranger to disruption. From economic shifts and interest rate swings to storms, supply challenges, and leadership turnover, contractors and home improvement executives live in a world where uncertainty is part of the job. Yet some leaders seem to move through chaos with clarity, calm, and even a sense of gratitude.

Through its PowerChat series, Power100 CEO Greg Cummings continues to explore what separates those leaders from the rest—and how owners, executives, and teams can learn to “enjoy the ride” even when it feels like everything is on the line.

Power100 is the only unbiased third-party platform that recognizes and elevates the top leaders and most impactful companies in the home improvement industry. Through its PowerChat conversations, industry rankings, and leadership insights, Power100 gives contractors and executives a place to learn from real stories—stories that include not just wins and growth, but also the hard seasons that shape who leaders become.

In a recent PowerChat, Cummings sat down with mindset coach and former contractor Shawn Feurer to unpack a question that’s on the minds of many homeowners, contractors, and leaders today:

How do you keep leading, serving, and making good decisions when life and business feel like they’re falling apart?

How to Stay Grounded When Everything Changes

The PowerChat opened with a candid discussion about adversity—lost homes, failing businesses, flooded houses, and the kind of personal loss that stops leaders in their tracks. Instead of offering clichés, Shawn and Greg focused on something every homeowner and business owner can relate to: the moment you realize you’ve done everything “right” and still find yourself facing something you never planned for.

Shawn described it this way:

“I took the program, go to college, get a degree, buy a house, marry a pretty girl, have a beautiful family, take vacations, build a life—and I did all that to the best of my ability. And then it was gone.”

From losing his homes and walking away from his family’s 40-year-old home improvement business to experiencing divorce and the deaths of both parents and his younger brother, Shawn’s story reflects the emotional and financial pressure many contractors and homeowners quietly carry. For a season, he was living in a friend’s basement, paying a small amount of rent, surrounded by his belongings in garbage bags, and feeling like everything he had built had crumbled.

On the other side of the conversation, Greg shared his own story of loss—watching his one-story home on a small Florida barrier island take on four feet of water during a hurricane while he and his wife were on a business trip overseas.

“We lost everything,” he recalled. “But instead of feeling crushed, I felt free and dangerous, like the slate had been wiped clean. We had our kids, our faith, and our future.”

For both men, the turning point wasn’t the event itself—it was how they decided to see it.

Shawn explained:

“The question is, did it happen to you or for you? Most people stay stuck in ‘why is this happening to me?’ and never realize they’re being pushed into alignment with a bigger purpose.”

Why ‘Enjoy the Ride’ Is a Leadership Strategy, Not a Slogan

One of the core themes of the conversation—and a phrase Shawn returns to often—is “Enjoy the Ride.” At first glance, it sounds like something you’d put on a poster. In practice, it became a mindset he had to learn in one of the hardest seasons of his life.

Living in his parents’ basement while his mother battled early-onset Alzheimer’s, Shawn was balancing financial stress, uncertainty about his future, and the emotional weight of watching a parent rapidly lose her memory.

“I remember sitting there thinking, ‘This sucks. I’m broke, my kids don’t want to come over here, I lost all my homes, and my mom is upstairs arguing with my dad because she doesn’t remember who he is,’” Shawn shared.

Then something shifted.

“I made a decision that sitting there as a victim didn’t feel good. So I chose a different thought. I said, ‘Thank you, God, that I’m here. If I was still in my old life, I couldn’t be here for my mom.’ When you change the way you look at a situation, you change the situation.”

That decision is at the heart of “Enjoy the Ride.” It’s not about pretending everything is fine or ignoring pain. Instead, it’s about:

• Fully acknowledging what hurts.
• Giving yourself permission to feel it.
• Then choosing a higher perspective that asks, “How could this be happening for me, my family, my team, or my customers?”

As Shawn put it during the PowerChat:

“It’s not good, it’s not bad, it just is. That’s the victor mentality. The storm, the recession, the payroll issue, the flooded home—none of that defines you. How you respond does.”

Greg connected this directly to leadership in home improvement:

“The best leaders operate the best in chaos. They’re level-headed. They can think without emotion and still care deeply about their people and homeowners. But you can’t get there without intentionally working on your mindset.”

From Flooded Houses to Rebuilt Futures: What Homeowners and Contractors Can Learn

A powerful aspect of the PowerChat was how both men connected personal adversity back to what homeowners and contractors experience every day. Homeowners often call a contractor at some of the most stressful moments of their lives—after a storm, when a roof fails, when siding is damaged, or when they realize their biggest investment needs a major update.

Shawn grew up in that environment. His stepdad started as a siding installer, and together they built a business that installed siding, windows, roofing, and other exterior upgrades for homeowners over several decades. Later in life, after losing his own properties during the recession, he became a customer himself—hiring his clients to remodel the exterior of his home.

“It’s incredible to experience what you’ve sold for 20 years,” he said. “New windows, new roof, new doors, new siding. My friend didn’t recognize my house and parked in the wrong driveway. The house was quieter, more efficient, and the appraisal jumped. It reminded me how much impact this industry has on families.”

For homeowners, the conversation offered reassurance:

• Your contractor may understand your stress more than you realize.
• Many leaders in this industry have walked through their own storms—financial, emotional, and literal.
• The best leaders are working intentionally on their mindset so they can show up steady, present, and calm when you need them most.

At the same time, the PowerChat issued a challenge to contractors and owners who feel stuck, flat, or quietly burned out.

Shawn noted that in today’s home improvement market there’s a growing divide:

“We’re seeing more and more companies at the top and more and more companies at the bottom. Same economy, same products, different mindset. If you’re on the downside, you don’t just have a marketing or sales problem—you probably have a mindset problem.”

For owners, sales leaders, and administrators, that mindset gap can show up as:

• Chronic stress even when revenue is strong.
• A sense of numbness or detachment from the work.
• Constantly feeling like you’re “pushing” instead of being pulled by a clear purpose.
• Tension at home, with kids or spouses feeling the overflow of business pressure.

Shawn’s message: it doesn’t have to stay that way.

The Inner Blueprint: Why Leaders Need Mindset Masterminds as Much as They Need Systems

Beyond tactics and tools, Shawn now spends his time helping home improvement leaders rebuild from the inside out. Through his consulting and masterminds at Shawn Feurer Consulting, he works with owners, couples, sales reps, administrators, and leadership teams to reprogram the subconscious patterns that quietly run their thoughts, emotions, and decisions.

“About ninety-five percent of our thoughts are subconscious,” Shawn explained earlier in the broader conversation with Greg. “Most leaders are trying to build abundance with five percent of their mind while ninety-five percent is still stuck in scarcity or survival.”

His Inner Blueprint work focuses on:

• Daily rituals that retrain the subconscious mind using affirmations, gratitude, and clear goals.
• Practical tools to calm the nervous system so leaders can think clearly, even in chaos.
• Reframing adversity so it becomes fuel for alignment, not a reason to quit.

Shawn sees home improvement as the perfect place for this kind of work:

“Most of us in this industry didn’t grow up with silver spoons. We grew up in scarcity, broken homes, trauma, abuse. That made us hard workers, but it also built walls. My job is to help you take down the walls, lead from your heart, and still run a powerful, profitable company.”

Today he leads multiple masterminds and groups for:

• Male and female owners.
• Couples who are both involved in the business.
• In-home sales professionals across the U.S., Canada, and the U.K.
• Operations and administrative leaders, with a strong emphasis on empowering women in the industry.

“I won’t work with your leaders if I’m not working with you,” he said. “It has to start at the top. When the owner shifts, the whole company shifts.”

Greg closed the PowerChat by reinforcing that message to the broader Power100 audience:

“If you’re somebody who feels like you’ve hit a ceiling, or you know you can do more, and you don’t have someone helping you with your mindset, I highly recommend you give Shawn a call. That work doesn’t just change your bottom line—it changes your life.”