3 Business Lessons I Learned from Building Lego

I’ve always been fascinated by the art of building and how things worked. As a kid, I was constantly taking apart household items, much to my parents’ chagrin. To encourage my curiosity, and perhaps also to keep their house in one piece, my parents bought me a book that broke down the components of common household items and explained how to assemble them. I was immediately hooked. 

It was no surprise then when I found my calling in the construction industry—first at a cabinetry shop and building contractor, later in real estate development, and eventually founding Procore, a construction technology company. It was in the early days of building my career and the company that I also discovered the joy of building with Lego, and it’s a hobby that I still love to this day. 

But beyond simply enjoying the act of building, I’m also drawn to Lego’s mission—to “inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow”—because it’s a personal passion of mine and also largely how I approach business. As I was reflecting on this, it dawned on me that there’s actually quite a lot we can learn from Lego. In fact, many of the biggest lessons I’ve learned from building Lego over the years are the very same ones that have helped me throughout my career.

1. Every piece matters.

One of the first Lego sets I ever built was the Death Star, a 4,016-piece set of the Star Wars space station. Every Lego block, down to the 4,016th piece, was necessary to build the finished piece—each one serving a specific purpose and function.

The same is true for business. In Jim Collins’ book Good to Great, he talks about “getting the right people on the bus.” For leaders, this means hiring the right people for the right roles. When I founded Procore, I started with a passion for the built world and a vision for how I wanted to transform it. But I knew that in order to turn that idea into a successful company, I needed to surround myself with a talented team who shared my vision and could help create a strategy to achieve it. This required building diverse teams that could bring unique perspectives to the table, think innovatively, and ultimately drive the business forward.

Over the years, I’ve learned there are some key things to look for when building an effective team. But even before this process begins, I always start with knowing my strengths and weaknesses. This enables me to look beyond the fundamental skills needed for the job, and more importantly, focus on finding teammates who complement my weaknesses or who excel in areas that don’t energize me. I also have a bias toward candidates who have aptitude, drive, passion for life and/or work, and who are what Patrick Lencionni would describe as “hungry, humble, and smart.” Lastly, I always hire according to Procore’s values of openness, optimism, and ownership. 

2.  Slow down to speed up.

While it sounds counterintuitive, slowing down can be the best—and fastest—way to succeed. When I’m building a Lego set, it can be tempting to try to finish it as fast as possible. But I’ve found it’s usually when I’m rushing that I tend to make a mistake. That mistake can compound over time, and when I finally realize something has gone awry, I’ll have a lot of rework on my hands.

As the founder of a high-growth SaaS company, I know there’s a time and a place for moving fast and staying agile. But slowing down and being intentional often leads to better, more effective decision-making in the end. A great example of this was when we made the very difficult decision to revamp our financial product to make it enterprise-grade. This meant we had to tell our customers we would not be releasing new features while we updated the foundation of the product. Although this led to some difficult conversations in the beginning, these same customers later thanked us. They saw that prioritizing foundational work enabled us to deliver features with greater value in the end.

To be clear, the smaller the company, the faster a leader needs to make decisions—a concept that I like to call the “decision blast radius.” While it’s always important to be thoughtful in the decision-making process, at a small company, don’t hesitate to make decisions and learn fast, as the impact of a bad decision is generally smaller and more manageable. All of this changes as you scale the business. As the company grows, the “blast radius” grows with it, meaning the quality of the decision matters as much as the speed of the decision. 

If you want to take a deeper dive on better decision-making, I encourage you to check out The Great Mental Models by Shane Parrish and Rhiannon Beaubien—it’s a must-read in my opinion.

3. The journey is more important than the destination.

One of the most elaborate Lego sets I ever built was the Star Wars spaceship, the Millennium Falcon. It’s one of the biggest Lego sets ever made with a whopping 7,541 pieces and weighing around 30 pounds. When I finished the set, I stored it on top of our China cabinet in the kitchen. A few weeks later, I was taking it down when it slipped out of my hands and fell crashing to the floor, shattering into thousands of tiny pieces. My wife was devastated for me—all those countless hours painstakingly building it, and now seemingly for nothing. That’s when it occurred to me that what I love about Lego isn’t the final product, but rather the process of putting it all together.

Whether I’m building a Lego set or a business, I can usually guarantee one thing at the outset: the journey will almost always be longer and more challenging than I originally anticipated. But as with most valuable experiences in life, it’s about what we learned and how we grew in the process. The key is to make sure that all the valuable lessons aren’t lost along the way, which is why it’s important to take time after any project or experience to reflect on what went well and where there’s room for improvement. 

This doesn’t have to be a formal process where you keep a journal or meticulously document your learnings (although you may find this helpful). In fact, I’ve come to learn that many mature leaders accumulate important life lessons and mentally file them away as pattern recognition. In the end, the most important thing is to find an approach that works for you that allows you to reflect, learn, and grow along the way.

All of these lessons have been instrumental in helping me build Procore into the business it is today. But you don’t have to be an entrepreneur or a business owner for them to be applicable. Whether you’re building a business, a community, or a team, we can all take a page out of Lego’s book and “inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow.” Ultimately, building isn't just about today—it's about creating a lasting and meaningful impact for years to come.