Conversations With Ananda — Ch. 32, Nayaswami Nakula

Nayaswamis Nakula and Nischala

When Nakula moved to Ananda Village in the early 1970s, he started a small dairy that he ran for many years. In the 1980s he moved to Washington, D.C., where he operated his own construction company. When he returned to the community he managed the Ananda Builders Guild, a construction company that was started in the mid-1970s as a way to provide Ananda families with an income. (Photo: 2001 – Nakula and Nischala)

Q: You’ve managed two construction companies. Is there such a thing as “God on the job” in the construction business?

Nakula: I think so. Even when I ran a business outside the Ananda community, I somewhat carried the Ananda way of thinking with me. Doing business in the community, there’s a very strong difference. In some respects, we’re less organized and efficient. We’re working to improve that, but the cooperation and spirit has always been there.

That came strongly to mind when we had a job in the San Francisco Bay Area, working on a multimillion‑dollar project where we were the responsible contractor. We had almost a hundred men working there in the last months and we got lots of comments about how different it felt. For example, a woman from the phone company came on the job. She was a young, attractive woman and there were eighty or ninety carpenter guys working all over, and she said it was the first time she’d been on a construction site where she felt safe. Not safe literally, but that people weren’t making catcalls and off‑color remarks.

Working with Ananda people is real life, and people are just being themselves. It’s not a fantasy world of perfection where everybody’s always pristine and happy all the time. People gripe and get mad, but the way it’s handled is different. We aren’t focusing on that part; we’re focusing on cooperation. The discord tends to dissipate fairly easily when it’s not the primary focus – wanting to get your way at any cost, and so on.

When I was running my own company in Washington, D.C. I had jobs where there was that kind of pressure, and I found I was always having to keep the harmony because there were people who’d come on the job and say, “Everybody get outta my way.” Real arrogant and obnoxious.

Even now, we’ll have sheetrockers who’ll come in and don’t want anyone in their way. But there’s a reason for that, because sheet rockers have to work fast. So we’ll talk about it, find out their needs, and set it up so it works for them. Afterward, they’ll usually make comments about how nice it is to work for us because they don’t have to be jerks to get us to let them do their job. They feel they can just say what they need and we’ll try to help them.

Q: Where does the different focus come from?

Nakula: I think it comes from within ourselves. We’ve figured out that life is a little bigger than “me and mine.” It comes from understanding that it’s the way things work best. Some aspects of our business are pure business – for example, estimating. But we do get jobs because of our reputation of being harmonious and honest. Our main advertising is by word of mouth.

We’ve been subcontractors on some big government‑funded jobs and several churches, but our biggest business is residential remodeling, where word of mouth really counts. It takes a pretty high level of trust for people to allow strangers to come into their home with sledgehammers and saws and smash it up and put it all back together and make it look the way you want it to. It’s very stressful for the owners.

Q: Like the book House which described the interactions between a building contractor, a home owner, and an architect. The homeowners were always tense about what the contractors were doing.

Nakula: We tend to bypass that. We manage to create a feeling of trust and harmony, and I believe it comes from working from a center in Spirit, from an intent to tune in, and not wanting to let stress and disharmony prevail. If tension comes up we’re willing to apologize or explain what happened and work to bring it back to where there’s harmony.

Q: Do you try to identify with the client’s needs?

Nakula: Yes, we try to understand their reality. When they sense that you understand their reality, they begin to feel that they can trust you. It’s important that the customer be happy, and that the crew be happy. It’s not satisfying to make a bunch of money if everyone is unhappy. You have to make money to stay in business, but that’s not enough. You need happiness to make it worthwhile to stay in business.

Q: Can you talk about the relationship with the employees?

Nakula: I think everybody’s basically happy. The recession caused some serious financial problems, but we weathered it and we’ve added new people. In our kind of business, the employees typically don’t have high job security, because they can be laid off after each project, but we try to pay back their loyalty by putting out the effort to find new projects quickly. And as a result of that, really, our permanent people have never been out of work for more than a few days. With the permanent employees, we never have to tell them, “There’s no work, stay home and we’ll call you.”

Q: Does the company feed into the community and the families? And does that come back to nourish the company?

Nakula: We have a family campout every year for which we pay all the costs. The campout has been taken over by the Ananda family ministry, but it started with the Builders’ Guild, because at one point most of the fathers in the community worked for the Guild.

That’s what I like about construction – it’s very diverse, and the diversity creates a sense of ministry, to the clients in the outside world, or to the employees, or with business and money and design. For example, we built a museum for relics of Paramhansa Yogananda, and that type of project naturally feeds into our spiritual life. So all the different ways it interconnects with the community and families and our spiritual lives make it interesting and appealing.

Q: Is the company efficient?

Nakula: For a while we had a big office with seven or eight people, and when the work slowed down we got caught unawares. I was doing all the bookkeeping, bidding, and coordinating – it was a big job, but that’s what it took to keep the overhead under control. We had big losses, and we had to borrow lots of money, and then we had a customer who to this day owes us $100,000. But we decided that we couldn’t go bankrupt because we owed people, so we would call and tell them what had happened, and with certain people we were able to arrange payments.

Q: Did you get help from the community?

Nakula: I did. Vidura [the Ananda general manager] would hire the Guild for any construction jobs that were needed in the community. We did some remodeling for the Village, and they probably could have found someone to do it a little cheaper, but they wanted to show their support for us. They were trying to do right, and they trusted our quality and fairness.

We genuinely try to look out for the customer as best we can. Whenever we were having cash flow problems Vasanta Weber [consultant to the Ananda businesses] would give me good advice. About once a month I would talk with him for a half‑hour about my financial statement. I like running my own business, and I don’t thrive on people telling me that I’m doing it all wrong, and Vasanta was very helpful without making me feel stupid.

I still talk with him, and that’s part of what I like about being located close to several other Ananda businesses. I’ll see Vasanta walking down the path and we’ll stop and talk, or I can talk to someone about the latest book from our Ananda publishing branch and how it’s selling. I like having the opportunity to network with other business people who are friends and give each other support. Your best thoughts in business often come from passing information along informally, rather than from meetings.

Q: I spoke with a man who hired the guild to build his house. He said it was an eye‑opener to see how well the crew worked together, and how carefully they listened to his questions and requests.

Nakula: It is different. It takes a while to understand the difference, because it isn’t spelled out – “Okay, here’s how we do business.” It’s a flow and a way of thinking. What happens with our businesses, I strongly believe, is that we connect on a soul level. The employers, employees, and clients are connecting at a soul level, and even though it’s invisible, it’s something you can feel.

 

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