Burnout Put Me in the ICU: Never Let It Happen to You

It's burnout season in the roofing industry. You've been burning the candle at both ends, going to bed later, waking up earlier, and having those days where it is a struggle to get going. Maybe you're even working seven days a week. What I'm about to share with you is how to beat burnout, be happy and make life changing money. But listen, there's part of me that feels a bit like an imposter teaching this because I burned out not once, not twice, but actually three times in the business. But through each one of those, I looked back and had a lot of reflection like, how did I get here and what can I do to make sure I don't get here again? Now, at this point in my life, I feel really good, like I figured this stuff out. And I've been able to both observe thousands of roofing sales reps as well as coach thousands of roofing sales reps and share a lot of what I'm about to share with you. And it's helped them do this, it's helped them be burnout, it's helped them be pat, be happy. It's helped them make life changing money and for many of them, help other people do the same thing. So I'm so excited to get into this with you because I know what you're going through right now. I've been there. So share this video with someone in your team and let's rock and roll. Roofing sales is personal development in disguise and the reward for growth is life changing. I hope my content helps you create a richer life and bank account. Hey, welcome or welcome back. Adam Bensman here. And right before we jump in, I want to be crystal clear that this video applies equally to the person who's brand new in this business, to someone who's been in it for decades, starting with the new people. My estimate is about 66% of roofing sales reps will quit or get fire in the very first 12 months, often because they didn't know what they signed up for. But for those of us who are seasoned veterans, we start to question ourselves, we question the industry and we start fantasizing about that shiny new object. Oh, man, I want a new challenge, something new and exciting to do. Maybe it's starting a business or getting into a new career path and there's this like delusional concept about work life balance. And I got to give credit to Gary Keller from the book. The one thing he says, man, that's a fantasy life is a series of counterbalances and sometimes we are fully focused and work and then when we're there, we're neglecting our family and that's just the way it is. But then when we're with our family, we're neglecting work. But the problem is for many of us who have burned out or are burning out, we end up trying to do both at the same time where we are at home. But we're constantly thinking about work and the things we got to do and the people we got to call and the deals we got to close and this and the that. And then we carry our personal baggage to work. So that's part of what leads to burnout. And again, I shared with you before, three times I tried to leave this industry. I'm going to share all the details and in fact in this video and be sharing even more personal details that I haven't yet shared publicly. So the first time that I tried to leave was because of this. I was chasing money so bad, by the way, that I remember being in the gym. I was in Madison, Wisconsin. I had one of those like 24 hour gym memberships. And I remember physically being on the gym chasing my income goal, the next multi six figure mark that I hadn't hit yet. And I started to associate my worth with my net worth. And I'll remember the very first time I made six figures. I was like, I have made so like I am amongst the top earners in the world. And now I am like, you know, my ego is in the way. And I really thought like if I made this much money, I was worth more as a human. I mean, dude, not my proudest moment. It's so screwed up. And the second deadly mistake, which was in part with the first one, is that I felt that financial goals are most important for growth. Like my financial goals meant that everything else, I shouldn't say everything, went out the window. But I will definitely say that it was off balance. And leads me to the third deadly mistake. It was off balance, man. Chasing those goals, my relationships, I started to put on the back burner. Not because I didn't love people, but we know that our actions speak louder than our words. And my actions were, I gotta work and if I can work more, I can make more. And then that led me to creating a lot of stress and unhappiness which led me to drinking every single night. And it was not fun finding this picture to put in here. It's not my proudest moment, but I know that I'm not alone. The reason I'm sharing this by the way isn't this like I was a bad person, I'm a good person now? No, no, no. The reason I'm sharing this is because I know that there's many people who are watching this, maybe even you, who do drink every night or are falling down that path. Whether it's this or some other substances as that escapism of like, hey, you know, I'm dealing with all this stress so I'm just going to unwind by drugs or alcohol or whatever it is because it's much easier to do this. When I started drinking every night, guess what I didn't do? Go to the gym. You can go to the gym when you're drinking. I mean, I guess you could, but I didn't because it was much easier to justify unwinding by having drinks than it was to go drive to the gym when I was tired from working 12 or 14 or 16 hours. So I would just drink and I'd wake up. I don't know if you've ever experience this but like at 3am starting to sober up with this like miserable level of anxiety and feeling terrible and like swearing off alcohol. I'm not going to do it. And then just start again the next night. And that cycle just, just took its toll on me. And then fast forward, you know, some more time. At this point I am running. I was chief operating officer of a company in five states and six cities. I had an hour and 45 minute commute to our corporate office. By the way, I put the nail in my own coffin on that one because I opened an office right near my house that I purchased. I purchased and open the office there and then figure out how we could run a corporate office. Corporate office had to be an hour and 45 minutes away. So I'm doing this commute and I'm under a ton of stress. I'm drinking every night and man, I started getting this chest pain. It was bad, like really bad. And I'm on my hour and 45 minute commute. I'm like an hour away into the drive and I was, I was this close to pulling over and calling 911 for an ambulance because I was so scared. And I've got my cardiac health and my family history is anything but good, we'll put it that way. So I'm freaked out. I'm under 30 years old at this point and I being a stupid young man, I just push through and I got to the office and I ran into the office. I grabbed Wyatt, he was our general manager. Like why didn't you drive me to er? I am. Something's wrong with my chest. I got bad pain. So I get in the er, they check me and I'm in ICU overnight. And this is one of two outcomes. Outcome one, you're going to leave just fine. Or outcome two, we have to do an emergency surgery. Basically what happened is I had this like infection around my heart that was creating a lot of pressure. So either it would just go in time and reducing stress or it would not. And then they'd have to alleviate that pressure through, like cutting into me and all that jazz. Well, I was lucky. I didn't need anything. I did spend the night in the icu. But the nurse, I'll never forget it, she says, you know, what kind of stress are you under? Because this is often linked to stress. And I was like, honey, sit down and grab a notepad. Like, we got some stress to talk about here. So that, that led to this kind of breaking point. So my wife Sheena and I, by the way, not in our Sunday best, we were just all sweaty from finishing packing, but we had this, this moment. I left the industry at this point like that. It was, it wasn't long after that incident that I said, you know what my passion was sales. And then sales management. And then as I grew in those roles, I started to spend all my time instead of investing in developing my team, being what I joked or called like a professional firefighter, like I was just running around making all the bad situations go away. That's kind of what my role was. And, and, and with the commute and like hour and 45 minutes here, we had an office in Montana. I drove my truck out there and we got so busy, I literally had to buy another truck because I couldn't afford the drive time. So I was flying two weeks to Montana, two weeks here. I'd land, I'd drive down to our office in Indianapolis like we were all over the place. And at that point, my wife Sheena was also on a path to burnout. She got a promotion that she didn't really want. It was under a lot of pressure. And our pillow talk was like three in the morning, both wide awake, stressed as hell about our jobs. So we, within like a week, sold our house, everything we owned. We packed up into this fifth wheel RV that you see here. We got that diesel truck and we hit the road. We ended up living out of this RV we adopted. That was our first dog. We adopted on our honeymoon. We adopted our next dog, which wasn't pictured. We didn't have her yet. But we lived out of this with that and our two cats. And this is where the Roost strategist brand was born. Was living, living in this RV and traveling the country and working in a very different level. The YouTube channel didn't really exist yet. I was doing consulting one on one. And anyway, it was a blast. But through this, it led to the second time that I tried to leave this industry after I started the rooster out of this brand. And that was because of the crooks as the scumbags. Like, now you hear my mission is to stomp the scum out. It's. It largely was part of this. And by the way, in my very first interview, which I share this in my book, the Roofing Sales Survival Guide, my very first interview, a company taught me how to conduct insurance fraud. I did not sell for them, but I knew that the industry was full of scumbags and I experienced it firsthand. I'd done some consulting for a criminal. And sadly, since then, my sales training has fallen into the wrong hands. And sales training is powerful and it can be used for good or evil. And when it's used for evil, it breaks my heart. So it's one of the many reasons that my sales training is now exclusively available to members of the Roofing and Solar Reform Alliance. Because it's application only. We vet folks and if they violate our pledge and code of conduct, they're kicked out. And yes, I have kicked people out. Next thing is I refer to client. So again, as the roof strategist, I worked with clients in a consulting level, one on one in the very beginning. And one of the clients I had, I referred him a company that went out knocking doors and generating leads for you. So first round went great. Second round, he writes $5,000 check guy skips town, literally stole $5,000. Well, my neck was on the line. I totally said, go work with him. And that was my name. And the last one was not getting paid. This shouldn't be a secret, sadly for anybody. But I had done work for folks didn't get paid. I'd also referred people and they're like, hey, we have referral for fees and they never paid. And these are some names that are bigger names in the industry at that point at least. So anyway, that's why so often now when you hear me mention companies, it's like, dude, I don't really care what you do, just work with good people. Because I have just a lot of trust issues in the industry. We'll put it that Way. All right. So one of the deadly mistakes I had on the second time I quit was that thinking everyone was greedy. I mean, I meant it like I thought everybody. So I'm like, screw this, the industry's terrible. Every single person is terrible. Which I think we both know isn't the case. And the second mistake was I just felt grouped into the scumbag roofer reputation. I'm like, man, everyone's a scumbag. I don't trust anyone. I don't want to be associated with this industry. Like, I am done. And the third mistake was focusing on other people instead of myself, which again, partly just because thinking everyone's a scumbag. Like, I was so focused outwards on the industry and what I saw and what I thought other people were seeing that I just focused on them and not me. Now, at this point, I developed a tremendous amount of distrust. It led me to be just crazy skeptical. And I share more of this in my book. And some people say, hey, you're jaded. I mean, yeah, I can't argue that I probably am. But I also know that like it's okay to have skepticism in the industry because you just got to follow the money just like you do anything else. And not to get political insides don't really matter what matters, as my wife Sheena says, just, just follow the money and everything makes sense. There's equal amounts, by the way, of palm greasing in this business as in the roofing industry, as any other industry. Which is one of the reasons I'm so skeptical and one of the reasons that like you haven't seen a sponsor on my channel. I am not willing to be paid off or to pay to. To sell my audience's attention. Now, of course there are times where sponsors make sense. Like I have sponsors for the Roofing and Solar Reform alliance members event. Are annual, annual event to help make it happen. But they're hand selected. There's a few of them. So my point is like, I just want to help people out and I am skeptical. I think trust should be earned. I share other stories in my book about how many times they've been burned. But anyway, that's that. Now I want to share with you the third time I tried to leave. So at this point I again, I left the day to day. I started the Rooftops brand. I got burned. And then, and then this is what happened. Okay, I got burned, bored. Which many people I talked to who've been seasoned can really resonate with this. They get bored too. They feel like they've learned it all. As did I. I'm like, man, I learned it all. I figured out how to sell. I, I did. I, I accomplished the challenge and I proved to self myself what I could. And I found that the repetitive tasks were boring. And there's a gentleman who's inside rsra. We were running a session. He's been at this a while. He's like, man, like, do you have any ideas to like spruce up my pitch? It's, it's getting repetitive. And I'm like, dude, if it works, why would you change it? But the truth is just he was bored because he's been doing this over and over again. And another mistake I made is like, I wanted a new challenge. I'm like, well, I already solved this one. Let me go chase the next one. So that led me to forming this brand, Brain Hickey. And what I did is I said, hey, I love sales. I like dedicated my life to it. So I'm going to start this brand called Brain Hickey. And I'm just going to be a direct sales consultant and copywriter. Which basically meant that the. I was a hitman for hire and one of my. I can't say names on clients because of NDAs and such, but here's what I'll share. My very first client was one of OPRAH Winfrey's top 50 most influential women. I also worked on a coaching program launch for a very successful author and she narrated a movie. And I helped them with their coaching launches. A seven figure launch. We helped them grow it or when I say we, I did. I was a solopreneur in this respect. I also got to work with some really cool organizations, like one of the fastest growing financial technology companies out there. They've been featured in investment news and a whole bunch of other publications, but they develop marketing campaigns that are then licensed to financial advisors. And they hired me to design the marketing campaigns, write them. So I'm talking emails, ad copy, offers, everything, and then train a writing team. And so that's what I've done. By the way, they are a very big name in the financial tech space as we speak. And I also worked with attorneys, personal injury lawyer. And not only did I help them crafting their offers, but I trained their sales team. I physically audited calls, listened to them, ran trainings for the teams and I loved it. So during this time, this is when The Roof Strategist YouTube channel was actually born. Because if you rewind a little bit, when I started the Roof Strategist brand and I was Working one on one with companies. I filmed some videos because I got tired of working with owners that didn't execute, by the way. Sorry, owners. But I know. I'm an owner too. Like, you get busy. So I'd meet with them, be like, hey, you gotta do this with your team. And they wouldn't. So I said, okay, I gotta get you out of the way. I'm gonna film some videos, I'm gonna put them up on my website, and then you can share them with your team. But I didn't know anything about technology, so I just uploaded my videos to YouTube because I didn't know where else to put them. I made them unlisted so no one could see them publicly, and they were embedded on the back end of my website, and everyone had the exact same password because I didn't know my butt from my elbow from tech. And when I started this Brain Hickey brand, I just said, you know what? I'm gonna make my videos public. I hope they help somebody. So I flipped the switch on them to public. I was scared. I was embarrassed. At this point, the sales stuff was really aggressive and bro y. And I just thought people were gonna chew me up. But. But then you might be wondering, well, what brought me back? Guess what you did. This is an old screenshot of 32,000 subscribers when everything was the Roof strategist. And I've since made a pivot to Adam Benson, because I'm known as the roof strategist, but I'm also the founder of the Roofing and Solar Form Alliance. I'm also the author of this book, the creator of the roof strategist sales system. So. But anyway, my point is, like, these videos you guys found. And I started getting comments, and I'm like, dude, make more, make more. Make more. I turned to my wife, Sheena. I was like, why would I do that? She says, adam, because you're helping people. And I said, wow, all right, let's just see what happens. But I had no vision, no product, nothing. I just started making videos because they were helping people. And as I did, I'm like, I could help even more. I could take the material that I developed to help generate leads and get them to people. So that was my first product. And then soon enough, I was like, holy smokes, I have a business here. And I was like, well, people need to know the best way to use it. It's not just the thing. It's how to use the thing. Which led to my first program, and then it was how to. I closed the Deal. So then I started taking my systems and then creating what is now the roof strategist sales system. By way of, like, I had all this stuff in my head. I had used it all, and I just needed to get it down in a format that was deliverable to everybody. And anyway, so this whole thing was. Was this, like, weird, serendipitous accident. So thank you, by the way, for making this happen. And all of this started to get paired, by the way, with this new perspective, which, by the way, I didn't include this in my presentation here. But as soon as this started taking off, I fell back in love with this industry and I started to disregard and ignore these scumbags. I had a clear vision of what I needed to do. I knew who I wanted to help. I wanted to help the people who share the same values as me, the people that are in this business because they want to make a better life for themselves, to provide for their family, to prove to themselves what they're capable of, and in doing so, be a leader of themselves, of their organization, to take extreme ownership, to provide a transparent and educational sales experience, to provide amazing customer service, and to be a steward of the industry. And those are the people that I was dedicated to serving. And I started to tune out everybody else, which is one of the reasons I kind of marched to the beat of my own drum is. And you don't see me at all of the events and things. Like, there are some that I do, there's some that I've done. I peeled back a little bit. I just want to focus on my people and doing great work. So, anyway, thank you for that. Now, this new perspective that was founded was from these two books, the Courage to Be Disliked and Ikigai the Japanese Secret to a Long and Healthy Life. And in this, I had this, like, mindset shift. Speaking of your burnout is not trying to do what you're passionate about. Because so when you're like, oh, well, I want to leave roofing because I'm really passionate about this. Well, let me tell you a story. I failed at turning my passion into a business. And this was while I was still actively in the roofing business, by the way. I was COO of the company at this time. My passion was. Was handguns and concealed carry. So there's my certification. I was a NRA pistol instructor. I was a defensive combat pistol instructor at a local range. I worked alongside the chief of police at the county level, some special forces guys, and I really enjoyed running the leagues and training. Loved it and I thought that more people, more citizens, should be, again, as you can see in my tagline, armed and educated. So I poured in, as you can see, the burning money pile, $36,000. And launching this custom website and a blog in this, like, information library. And I started a YouTube channel, which, by the way, I deleted because I was teaching people, like, how to clear malfunctions and do handgun stuff. And just with all the stuff that's been happening in the world, I'm very pro concealed carry. And I'm also very not wanting to train creepy, strange psychopaths on the Internet. So anyway, I deleted that channel. But my point, I turned this into this business. I spent $36,000. I made $400 back. So I lost $36,000, roughly. We joke, I still have a sweatshirt. We call it the $36,000 sweatshirt. So then I had this light bulb moment that I could, instead of trying to do it, I was passionate about. I could choose to be passionate about what I do. And I'll be the first to tell you, I care this much about roofs. Even when I've been out speaking for Owens Corning at their events, I'm very public. I don't care about roofing. I am not passionate about roofing. But I am wildly passionate about the people I serve and the opportunities that this industry provides. So I choose to be very, very, very passionate about what I do. And you can see that, I think, pretty clearly now. In the book the Courage to Be Disliked, the authors Shiro Kashimi and Fumitake Koga shared this. These two lines that really resonate with me, that happiness is community feeling. Happiness is community feeling. They'll say that happiness is being of use. So I started thinking of this community feeling as being part of something and being of use is being of use, service to others. So what if you stop focusing on what other people are doing and focus on what you're doing and how you serve your customers? So what if. Imagine this. What if you committed to being of use to the highest use possible to every single person you served? I'm gonna say it again. What if you committed your life to being of use to the highest degree possible? So basically being of service and to the nth degree for everyone that you serve. So now I want to ask you a question because this is a fun thought exercise. Do you believe in your heart of hearts that you are the best person to earn the customer's business, do the roof, and take care of them at all costs? Yes or no? Now if you answer no, you either need to seriously reconsider your business or if you're selling for someone, you need to go find your roofing company to sell for. And if that's you, click the link in the description. Click Find a roofing sales job. I'll connect you with a member of rsr, right? They'll reach out if they're interested in hiring you. Okay, so if you truly believe that you're the best person in your heart of hearts to earn the customer's business through the roof and stand behind at all costs, then I challenge you because your moral and ethical responsibility to communicate that message to your customers. Which means that you need to become an absolute sales all star so you can earn the business and fulfill upon the mission that you believe to be true. So your deeper purpose. Let me share my deeper purpose. Because everyone's got a deeper, deeper purpose. I just want to share mine. My deeper purpose is to make people feel believed in, have a breakthrough and believe in themselves. That's right. Every video you watch, underneath it all, I want you to feel believed in. And I do believe in you. We may not have never met. We may never meet. Maybe we work together, maybe we were inside rsra, maybe you've met me in an event, maybe we even have a picture together. But it doesn't matter because I believe in you. And some of you are like, oh, that's cheesy. That's weird. No, it's not. Here's why. Because you are here, investing your time, your energy and your attention, which is the most valuable thing in the world next to your health. Because you believe in your ability to change your life for the better, to provide for yourself, your loved ones and your family. And even though they may not believe in you, even though your own spouse or significant other, your friends or your family, don't believe in the choices you've made, don't believe in the industry or second guess you. I believe in you because you're here. My goal is to have you have a breakthrough, whether it's through watching this video or listening to this podcast or watching others, that you have this light bulb moment of aha. And you can shift how you do things or how you approach life. And then through that positive experience, say, I believe in myself. I can do this. That's my deeper purpose. Now it comes like Josh, for example. Here's a picture with Josh. I met Josh at an Owens Corning event and he came up to me afterwards, we had a little get together at this baseball, baseball thingy. And he said, hey, I Just want to shake your hand. And he was sheepish. Like someone in his company kind of shuffled him in towards me. And Josh shared his story with me. And to this day, like, it's one of those memories that I look back on as fuel. Because Josh was living in his car, things were not good. And every night you go to sleep in the back seat. He'd started roofing sales. He's like on the brink of quitting, not making any money. Dougs, he's living in his car. He finds my YouTube channel. Channel. Starts watching videos every night. Fast forward a few months. He comes to shake my hand at this event to say thank you. Because he found both the inspiration, the motivation, the tools he needed to succeed. And that month he made more money than he ever had in his entire life. That's Josh's story. And it was all a combination of self improvement day over day over day. Because sales skills, we improve a little bit by little bit. They're the highest leverage skills in the entire world. And if you don't agree with me, I'm going to challenge you. Because I don't care if you have the greatest invention, the greatest product, or the greatest service. If you cannot sell it, it is dead in the water. And that is why I love sales. Because it's the only career in the world where you can change what you say and you can earn an extra 5 to $25,000 per month. Your job is to identify what I call the million dollar skill sets. So if you, through watching a YouTube video or a podcast or reading a book, come up with one idea to just refine your pitch a bit, little, little bit, and it lands you one more sale per week. Let's just say for conversation, that's a $2,000 commission. You have 50 weeks of the year. I know that there's 52, but say two weeks off, you made $100,000 from that one idea. You do that for 10 years, you just made a million bucks. So your job is to find million dollar ideas wherever you invest your energy to learn so you can invest in your education. So all you can do is be like, I'm just going to change what I say. An extra million dollars. Like, how cool is that? There's no other career path like it. Okay, so what I like to do is gamify growth, make it fun. Because after all, we're all competitive. So one of the ways I do that is I try to collect as many thank you notes as possible. Now, the reason I say thank you notes is people that are Chasing money. Homeowners feel that you've placed a bullseye on their back and they think that you just want their money. But I don't care about the money. What I care about is getting a thank you note. Like this gentleman. I'll never forget it. When we started going through the process together, he was a great dude. We had a lot of fun. But partway through, because of diabetes, he started going blind. So the first visit, totally functional. Second visit, he couldn't even see his wife. Literally had to hold his hand and point and, like, get him to sign the things that we needed to sign. But I got to serve him through this process, like, probably the most challenging time of his life. Life. Andy's going through this massive roof project. They had a ranch, so there's like multiple outbuildings. We were doing all of it, and I took great care of them. And at the end, not only did him and his wife say thank you, they sent me home with a huge basket of canned goods from there. By the way, if you're in the Midwest, you know what I mean? They're like dilly beans and canned mushrooms and jams and jellies. All that were homemade, all that were grown there. And for those who are in the know, like, when someone grows fruit food and then gives it to you, that is like the ultimate gift of love. And that moment right there is like, I need to collect thank you notes. Screw collecting paychecks. If I kick butt for my people, what I want at the end of the day is for them to love the process, be grateful for it, because I delivered above and beyond. So I want you to think about, how do you collect as many thank you notes as possible. Not checks, but thank you notes. Now, the next thing I want to talk about is this idea of working to be happy. I struggle with this. This is a temptation for me. Still to this day is like, as Brian Tracy says, the stuck on someday aisle. Okay, someday, I'll be happy. I'll be happy when I make enough money to retire. I'll be happy when I have enough money to have this passive income. I'll be happy when I get the raise, when I get the house, when I get the car. And instead of working to be happy, you have the power to choose to be happy, to be working. And you might notice recently, a shift in my content, my team content. I can't take full credit because it wouldn't happen without amazing people like Sheena and Lorena and John. Like, there's been a huge shift for me to be as Ryan Gandy. When I interviewed him recently, he says I'm blessed to be stressed. Now I don't know where he got that. I couldn't attribute it off the top of my head, but I love that quote where I have chosen to be happy to be working. I'm so excited that finally in my business I've assembled the people on the team to handle the day to day things so I can do what I love, which is making amazing content and supporting you and investing my time inside the Roofing and Solar Reform alliance, making the tools and sales tools and investing in the relationships and providing incredible coaching and guidance and support and answering questions. And maybe you did, maybe you didn't observe the very different energetic shift the longer form content. Anyway, so my point is I'm not special and you too have the power to choose choose to be happy to be working. As Ryan put it again, we're blessed to be stressed. Now I want to move into some really exciting things, some uplifting things which is this Carl Jung quote is like my my mantra of life. It's the privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are. The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are. Let that sit. That's powerful, isn't it? So I want to share a few stories of people who have become who they truly are. This one hey, this is a text wanted to thank you for the OC seminar yesterday. I'm an owner and have struggled with burnout, especially after having our first kid about a year ago. I lost a lot of my passion and drive for the roofing industry and just got stuck in a strictly money chasing mindset. Listening to you yesterday, I walked out feeling like I had that back and you reminded me why I got into this, why I do it and how money is the byproduct. Here's another one. God bless you Adam. I started in November, did 17 sales, December I did 8 and January did 28. I wouldn't be here without your help. Door knocking has made me human again. It helped me destroy anxiety and depression and giving me purpose. Thank you brother. Sending my love. Here's another one. I don't even know what to say to you because my gratitude is so high. I was ready to quit my job and assumed I was about to be fired. I started watching your videos. I've had the three best weeks I have ever had in this business and it just keeps getting better what you're doing. I'm not sure you really realize the amount of changes it has in people's lives. I just want to say thank you. And here's from Frank. I'm going to skip down to the center. He says I finally found my voice where I'm in command of the experience in practicing seeing fearless servant leadership at the same time. How amazing is that? Can you imagine feeling like you finally found your voice all through roofing sales? Here's another good one. Because of your training and the much better training and structure than by the way, it was this company name provided I went from being miserable in the door to door space to loving my job and even convincing my wife to get on board with me. And then he wins all these awards and his company sends him on a trip. All right, and then here's another one. This one I'm going to just read the top half. It's an email. It says first and foremost, thank you for changing my life. My story is eerily similar to yours. I fell into the business and started by watching one guy knock a door and get handed contracts to knock on my own. So he got the same training you and I did, right? Thrown in the trenches. So he says. I got my teeth kicked in and generally hated door knocking. I knew there had to be a better way and I searched for anything I could to improve. I can say I've looked at Almost almost every YouTube or program on roofing and door knocking and your material was the most genuine and honest approach that resonated with me. I went from making no money to selling 740 000. In the last three months of my first season, I sold 1.623 million. My second year, third year, I'll be opening my own roofing company and currently have 24 deals to be built this season. How awesome. Now I share these so stories to inspire you because one, you're not alone and you have the ability to become who you truly are by making the choice to be happy, to be working and choosing to be passionate about what you do. So now let's turn our attention to Scott Adams. His book Win Bigley says build your talent stack, which by the way is a great read. I highly recommend it. It broke down Trump's first win in the election back in a number of years ago and he breaks down the psychology of the persuade equation techniques he used. But in this, Scott Adams talks about your talent stack which is assembling all these different skill sets that when combined create a powerhouse salesperson. So for you, it's not just your sales skills and it's not just your technical knowledge and it's not just a combination, it's all these seemingly unconnected skills like sales, marketing, conflict resolution, technical knowledge, negotiation skills, timing management, all these different skill sets that combine to build your own talent stack that when it put together just creates a powerhouse salesforce. So here are seven ways to help you make roofing sales fulfilling, fun and wildly profitable again. All right, number one is daily learning. Now I want you to pay attention to what I put up here. Active learning, which means taking notes and practicing recall. Alright, so what I do is I listen to books or I read books and I take notes on my phone. I organize my folders based on the title of the book. And during reading I stop and I take notes. But then the next day when I come back, I start to recall. What did I learn? What were those notes? And then I study what I, what I read. And this allows me to be a student of life. And by the way, it's really fun, but I actually absorb everything because I think it's totally delusional when people say, oh, I'm just gonna, you know, put the books in my ear and drive around. Information and knowledge will just like infuse in my brain and I'm gonna be, be brilliant. No you're not. You have to actually be a student in practice recall. So anyway, that's a fun way to do it. If you want recommended reading lists, you can go inside my free training bundle. Get instant access to it@adamsfreestuff.com or you can scan the QR code here if you're in a position to do that. And inside you'll get access to my recommended reading list. The other thing that I'm going to give away, this is new by the way, is a digital copy of my book, the Roofing Sales Survival Guide. The reason that I'm giving this away now is I don't want money to be the issue. Now it's a digital copy. If you want your print one, you can grab it on Amazon. If you want to listen to it, you can do it on audible, I narrate it, get it on Kindle. But you'll see these, some of these reviews. You know, this woman writes in Stephanie that it saved her career and I hope it helps, maybe save yours too. Now next thing you can do is track KPIs and compete. So track what you can control and what you control is your actions, but not the results. So the results are the customer that decides to buy from you or not. You can't control that, but you can control how you show up to the Presentation, how you present, how you overcome objections, how you handle yourself in the home in times of conflict or confrontation. All right, so think of it like if you were on this epic road trip from New York to la, your goal was to dip your toe in the Pacific Ocean. You know, are you going to just like blindly drive those some 80 hours round trips. You can be like, I know, made it. Are you going to like stop and enjoy the journey and plot out all the crazy things and cool things and unique experiences along the way? Because it's a once in a lifetime journey. Yeah. I hope you don't just choose to bypass everything and then celebrate like you got to enjoy the day to day operation. The little mini wins. That's what makes it fun. Okay, now number three is sales practice. I joke, I say role play, place for the bedroom. Sales practice is what professionals do. And if we don't practice, we are truly gambling with our livelihood. So every time you go out and you run an appointment, you have this precious limited opportunity within front of someone who may or may not buy from you. And if you don't practice sales practice or role play, you are literally gambling with your livelihood. So if you screw up, you lost that hand and you've just forfeited all that money and you can go home and tell your wife, your husband or your kids or anyone else who relies on you that you screwed up. Which is why we practice like we look at the professional athletes. The late great Kobe Bryant, obviously, when he was alive, like he practiced another practice, a third practice when the rest of his team did too, and he practiced the fundamentals. So here are some teams that are using my program. It says right there, running some slap roleplay. If you're new, Slap is my canvassing formula. Say hi, break the ice, let them know why you're there, ask an open ended question, then p present to their answer. So the doing some role play here at the doors. Now number four is do daily challenges that scare you. If you're like afraid to go knock a door, well, go knock as many as you can. Get your team on board. I do this to this day. I love to challenge myself with things that scare me. All right, number five, choose to find meaning in every challenge. So if you have a customer that cancels, you can either be the victim and say, oh, they canceled, or. Or you can say, things happened to me, not for me. Why did they cancel? What can I learn from it? How can this loss of an opportunity help me make that much more money later? Because I'll tell you Most of my victories have come from looking at failures and then fixing them. And then once I fix them, I do more of that thing and it results in more and more growth. Number six is surround yourself with the right people, a community mentorship or mastermind. There are options out there if you want to join me in the trenches and folks like Daeshun Bryant and John Cenac and Cody Landles and Jim Lane, an amazing membership community which is really our magic sauce where people come together. Then you can learn more about the Roofing and Solar Reform alliance by either scanning that QR code or going to RSRA.org join there's a link in the description. Okay, number seven is another one that I do on the regular. So what is my team? It's called an after action report where we reflect on what went well, what we could do better and then turning what we could do better into a plan. And I have pictures up of my own journal. I made these on my flight. This was an event back in 22 from Little Rock, Arkansas and the next one was from Nashville speaking at events like what I did great, what I can do better. So I reflect on all my speaking experiences and like right afterwards and how you can apply this is by every day or every week reflecting back on what went well. Write it down what you could do better and then have a very clear plan to improve in the next week. Again, my team does this every Friday. We talked about this inside the RSRA Leadership Roundtable having our team do this. So here's your challenge. Should you choose to accept it, is to close the gap between who you are in this moment and your ideal self. Now to start that what you need to do is identify who you want to be. Here's just an excerpt. I have an Android phone. I'm waiting for the comments right now. You have an Android. What are you poor? What are you broke? Yeah, all of it. Right. So anyway I use little note thing on my galaxy. I take some notes. So here's just a snippet of some of the life transformation that I wanted to have. I'll even read to you. I wanted to be calm, emotionally regulated, which I'm going to be first. Tell you I was a very reactive person. It still comes up here and there. I'm working really hard to be calm, emotionally regulated, unfairly phased and optimistic. I want to be focused and clear about what's important. Which by the way has been something that's that's changed through rsra. This was written before RSRA was formed, by the way. When it became clear and focused on what's important. I want to be laid back and go with the flow. Flexible and adaptive, grateful and content. Loving everyone since we are all connected, grounded and confident. And I want to ask myself, how would my ideal self respond to this? Or what would my ideal self do? This is just one of the pages that I wrote. I just want to share with you that have gone through this exercise and your job is to be obsessed with your mission so you can again close the gap from where you are now to your ideal self and you can channel that no matter what you're doing. You, my friend, have the choice. I believe in you. I hope you have a breakthrough so you believe in yourself now. If you want even more, go to adamsfreestuff.com right now or scan this. There's a link in the description. We'll get you set up with all my training. Excuse me, not all my training, but all my free stuff. My sales training checklist, pay plan checklist, recruiting checklist, door knocking checklist, my one on one coaching agenda. I recommend a reading list. My book, all that and More is all waiting for you inside. It'll give you a great taste of what we do inside rsra. There's no catch. And listen, if you want to continue your journey of personal development, then I want you to watch this very next video because it's going to teach you what you need to know about staying motivated even when it's hard. I have a promise to make. This is how to never be unmotivated ever again. Jump into that one. Thanks for joining me and I'll see you in the next one.