120. Elite Mentoring Results With Andy Skarda

And we also realized that with the people that got to that level, they'd moved from I'm surviving into, I can actually run this business and it can support me. And they were starting to see I could prosper.

Welcome to Professional Builder Secrets, the podcast for building company owners wanting to grow safely and securely. I'm your host, Will Blunt, and today I'm joined by Andy Scarter, APB's head coach. Andy, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Will. It's very nice to be here. I think this is my first one of the year. So from me, happy New Year to you and to all of our viewer listeners, thanks, Andy.

Happy New Year to you as well. Very excited to talk to you about today's topic because it's a reflection back on 2023 and our elite mentoring clients.

Yes.

So it is a bit inward focus, but why do you think it's an important topic to cover?

Well, I think every builder anywhere in the world wants to improve and progress. And, you know, we're a data driven organization. We teach all of our members to be data driven and, you know, accurate data, good quality data on which to base their decisions. And we need to practice what we preach. So it's a really good thing for, from any business perspective to go back and reflect, measure, compare and make sure that you're on track, you know, from our side in this particular case, it also happens to be proof of concept, but just as a fundamental business principle to literally be looking, where were we a year ago? Where are we now? Have we progressed in real terms? I have the advantage of knowing some of the other subject matter we are going to cover in podcasts in later episodes and there's going to be some wonderful discussion around the vanity numbers that, you know, look like you've progressed, but you actually haven't. So really, when we talk about looking at the results for the elite guys, we really comparing year on year performance objectively, there's no emotion in this. This is just, that's what it was, that's what it is now. Is that better? Yes or no? And as we get deeper into it, we'll let the listeners decide for themselves whether it's better or not.

Sounds good, Andy, but before we get into that, can we take a step back and just give the viewers and listeners out there a bit of an idea of what elite mentoring is?

Sure. So we realized probably about four years ago that as builders were progressing from our membership stage into business coaching, we have what we call the professional builder levels, which is a, if you like, a 10 waypoint list of, of what we have seen over the years all over the world, any building company that is growing and becoming more professional and profitable. These are, if you like, the stepping stones that have been applicable to everybody. And we use that as a framework, both in membership and in business coaching to measure progress to, to sequence what's important for our members. And we noticed that a lot of people went quite quickly from starting the program to level four and then at level four, slowed down significantly. And we saw that Progress from level 4 to level 10 was just taking too long. And part of that is because, whereas levels 1, 2, 3 and 4 are pretty linear, they kind of follow each other in a logical progression. When you get to level five and upwards, they start happening simultaneously and they're almost, they're semi disconnected. So you've got a lot of plates spinning at one time. And what we realized was a coaching cadence of once a month wasn't giving all of the things enough attention with a once a month sort of scenario. So we really looked at what could we do to increase the frequency of interaction. And we also realized that with the people that got to that level, they'd moved from I'm surviving into, I can actually run this business and it can support me. And they were starting to see I could prosper. Three years ago, I was just trying to get to next month. Now I'm feeling like I've, I've kind of, I've got some runs on the board here. I. This could turn into something really good. And really those, those kind of those next five levels, five, six levels are the thing that turns somebody from managing a business to owning a business and owning a business that's profitable, easy to run, et cetera, et cetera. So really what Elite was, was designed to do was to help builders conceptualize what the end game is. Why am I doing this? What, what, what is my end goal for myself and my family? And what we found with most builders we spoke to was when we said, why do you run a building company? I want to make money. Well, that's not an answer. Okay, money is a tool. What do you want to use that tool for? And when we got them to start thinking about. And of course, everybody wants to cover the normal things. I want to be mortgage free, I want to have a handful of investment properties. I want to be able to give my kids a good education. I want great quality of life. I want to live somewhere that's comfortable. Those things all really happen at the business coaching level. But then what? And of course Then we got into what we always call the bhag, the big hairy, audacious gold territory. And that really meant that we couldn't keep the focus just on business. We literally had to go, your business is a vehicle to deliver the life that you want for yourself and the people you care about. That means we've got to look at your whole life. So we introduced the important things in life as a primary focus of the elite program. So, for example, in the elite program, we start with the building company owner's health, because in virtually every case, if something were to happen to them physically, everything stops. So all of a sudden we're in conversations about their weight and their body fat percentage and the regularity of their exercise and do they have hobbies and interests and what are they going to do when they retire at 50? Because a lot of them, their identity is wrapped up in their business. They are what they do. And the net result of that is, well, if you're going to be doing less over here, what are you going to replace that with? And for some of them, that's golf. For others, it's motor racing. For others, it's fly fishing or watching rugby. It's, it's, it varies. But the point is we've got to know what that looks like in order to be able to take them there. And then we cascade through the important relationships in their life. What's, what's the, what effect is the business having on your relationship with your significant other? What relationship is that? What effect is the business having on your relationship with your children? You know, a lot of building company owners end up needing, they think, to invest the most time when their families are young. And then they don't ever get to see their kids. And by the time they've made all the money, their kids are strangers, which is, which is sad and unnecessary. And then the truth is, as we start to dig, we start to find that extended family relationships suffer when a builder is just head down, bum up working and obviously friendships, you know, people that we grew up with that, oh, we should talk to them, but I'm just so busy. That doesn't happen. And even if we're not consciously aware of it, that starts to have an effect on our mental health. And all of these things not being resolved take us to burnout and beyond. And I know we've done a couple of recent podcast episodes on just how big a mental health problem we have in the building industry. So it's really elite mentoring, all of that, and obviously we are looking at that all in the context of the business and what the business is delivering in real terms. And of course, you know that we always measure the business output initially in financial terms, but that is really just an indicator of other things. So it's bringing all of that together in one package that is more holistic. And as I said, if we were going to summarize the difference between business coaching and elite. Business coaching takes you to the place of managing your business. Elite takes you to the place of being a CEO and owning your business, not necessarily even working in it, if you choose not to.

It sounds like you're flipping the script a little bit. The business is really a, the result of the business is a vehicle to achieve personal aspirations.

Absolutely. I mean, otherwise, why do it? You know, Warren Buffett says things like, don't start a business unless you intend to sell it. And I think we've had this discussion before. A lot of builders end up owning a business by mistake. They never intended to be a business person. They want to be a builder. They wanted to build beautiful homes. But of course, in the, in, in all of our lives, when we train to be technicians, nobody teaches us the, the stuff around it that makes it work, you know, so, and obviously to some degree, that's why the APB exists is to, is to fill in those gaps that are not there.

How do you work with our elite mentoring clients then to help them track and measure those results?

Well, similar to our business coaching clients, we make sure that every single elite client has what we call a KPI workbook, a key performance indicator workbook, which the APB we, I mean, we've, we created it about a decade ago and then we've been finessing it every year since. And really what that is, is it's a, it's a collection of tools and worksheets that we have found are common to builders all over the world in terms of making their business run more efficiently and tracking. You know, Peter Drucker says that if you can measure it, you can manage it. So a lot of what we doing is actually using these things to measure how we going. And of course we, we always start with a plan. You know, if you, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. So the elite mentoring clients get an even deeper planning exercise than our business coaching clients because now we're going into their lives as a whole. So we do that in fact, separately to their coaching sessions. We schedule a three hour deep dive into their lives at the beginning of every year. And then we review that entire strategic plan which Includes all of their personal health goals and relational goals every quarter outside of their coaching. So essentially their coaching is running every week. That's making sure that the business is doing what it should be. And then on top of that, we add the planning and the review of. Is this vehicle starting to look like what it should so that it can deliver the outcomes that are important to you?

Is that personal strategic plan incorporated into the KBI KPI workbook?

Yeah. So what we do is we, we, we capture the requirements of that personal plan in the business strategic plan. So, and I mean, let's, let's, let's make it simple. It doesn't matter what you want out of retirement. Whatever it is you want has a price tag. So if we're going to break this down to its fundamental level, let's go back to where we started this conversation where when a builder says, I want to make more money, what we really trying to do is to say, what is the price tag of your dream? Now let's make your business produce that for you so that you can buy your dream. There's another way of looking at it, but of course we're saying you have to be alive to enjoy that. So you need to be healthy. And you don't want to get to that point where you've got this magnificent plan and you're all alone because the business destroyed your marriage or destroyed your relationship with your kids or your parents or. I mean, who wants that?

Well, the health goes beyond the physical, right? That's the mental side of it.

Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a, it's a very, it's. We always say business coaching is not for everybody. Elite is not for everybody either. Elite is for an even smaller group. It's why we call it elite because it's, it's people that have really made that mental shift from I can make ends meet to I can prosper. That, that's kind of the, the mental shift.

Before we get into some of the actual results that happened in 2023 for our elite clients, can you just go into about what the outputs of this KPI workbook are? What are the numbers that we're looking at?

So we summarize them in what we call the Targets tab. And the rationale behind the Targets tab is quite simply, this budgeting is a theoretical exercise. As soon as you take that to the next level and make it a target, it has to be achievable. It can be a stretch target, but it has to be achievable. Can't be Theoretical must be practically possible. And it must take into account all of the physical parameters that apply in that business at the time. How many people, how much money in the bank, how much availability of different skill sets, economic factors, inflation, interest rates. All of that has to come into play. And then we have to know what we focused on. And it kind of comes out of our evolutionary biological background. And the way that I always explain it to people is if you think back to the days when we lived in a cave as a tribe and we spoke Ooga Booga language, and we would send one of the teenagers up onto the top of the mountain with a conch shell, and when he saw the woolly mammoth walking through the valley, he would blow the conch shell. And then that was the signal for all of us in the tribe to do what was necessary to capture and kill the woolly mammoth so that we could eat for the next six months. Now that sounds like a simple example, but for that to happen, effectively, the chief of the Ooga Booga tribe had to say to everybody, okay, I want you, Wagga Wagga, to take four people and I want you to run ahead of the woolly mammoth and dig a hole so the woolly mammoth will fall in the hole. And then I want you guys to grab spears and run past the hole to the far side that when he falls in the hole, you can stab it. And you guys, I want you on this side of the hole shooting arrows into him to make him weak so he falls in the hole and I want you guys to chase him from the back so he goes in the hole. So now what happens is when the conch shell gets blown, those four team leaders jump up and they all know exactly what they've got to do, and they've trained their guys to do what they do. And this thing runs like a well oiled machine. What's just happened is the entire tribe has become focused on a single outcome. And all of the resources of that tribe are now gathered to deliver that outcome. That's what's happening with the targets tab is take the strategic plan and we say, okay, how much money are we spending on marketing to deliver, how many emails to deliver, how many face to face conversations which will result in how many concepts, how many prelims, how many contracts? Then how are we going to build those? What people do we need in order to be able to build that much building so that we can invoice that much money and out of that process, what gross profit will we make? And then can we fund our business out of that gross profit in such a way that we end up with a net profit and we can then reinvest that net profit or use it to buy our dream. And essentially, that's what the Targets tab is doing. It takes the concept of the strategic plan and converts it into the functional disciplines of the business and then breaks that down into quarters. So in every quarter, we know what we need to achieve this quarter in order to get to the goal by the end of the year. And within each of those, we obviously, again, take practical realities into account. The first quarter of every builder's year and the last quarter of every builder's year are short quarters because of shutdown. The second quarter is usually affected by Easter and in Australia, Anzac Day. So we, we, we literally adjust the numbers so that they are achievable and they're a motivation. And they're designed to bring the resources, the team, the money, the skill in the business to bear on the one thing that's important. And then, of course, we tie that back to construction slot planning week by week, Gantt charts of what should be built when tracking revenue, making sure it's accurate. We, all of those practical things then come in underneath in order to deliver that we've got. I mean, we could be here for three weeks if I went through the whole KPI workbook, but we have supporting worksheets around that Targets tab that, for example, measure things on a weekly basis, on a daily basis, in some cases on a monthly basis, depending on what those things are. Some things are looking three years into the future, some things are looking two weeks into the future. So it just depends on what it is. But it's really, if you like, it's a toolbox that helps the builder to run the business professionally and gives him, if you like, a quick dashboard of is this looking right or wrong? And if it's wrong, it'll show him where it's gone wrong so that he can go and fix it.

Yeah, that's really powerful. The whole time you were talking, I was just wondering how they were going to store the woolly mammoth for six.

Months, because they live in the cave, which is cold. And remember, it's the Ice Age, it's a wooden mammoth, so they just stick it at the back of the cave.

Okay, I need a few more freezes, I think.

True, very true.

Okay, now for the fun stuff. Based on that dashboard, the KPI workbook, and all the results and numbers that you've been tracking for elite clients in 2023, what are some of the business results they have experienced.

Well, I mean, it's a very interesting scenario. If I summarize, and obviously what we've done here is we've looked at people that were in Elite for the year before, so 2022, and then we've measured where they've ended up at 2023 as a comparison to 2022. So let's go, for example, with the big one that everybody wants to know. Revenue increased. We can get into how much if you like at some point. But let's just run through them. Revenue, better, fixed expenses. We would like to see them going down, but in fact they've increased. So the implication of that is, well, oh, that means that we'll be making less profit. Well, not really, because if the revenue increased at a greater rate than the fixed expenses, then we're okay. Most importantly, what happened with gross profit? Did it go up or down? Because that's what's going to fund the fixed expenses. It went up. So so far we've got revenue improved, fixed expenses went up, gross profit went up. Which is interesting because what that tends to say is what these elite clients have been able to do is to spend more money to make more money. Okay. Which is the key. It's not just spend more money, it's spend more money in a structured fashion so that it delivers more than what we had before. So we're still on a good track. Everything's tracking positively. If we convert that gross profit into a gross margin, did it go up? Yes, it did. Because if the money went up, so did the margin. Well, then we get to the big one. Because Andy, you said earlier on that we building this vehicle to deliver the dream, and really we can only deliver the dream out of the net profit. Did that go up? Yep, that went up as well. So basically all of the fundamental metrics that we would look at year on year for all of the people in the Elite program, year on year improved every single one of them. And as I say, the, the interesting one if you like, not that I'm surprised because obviously I see them happen across the period. But the interesting one was as soon as I saw that fixed expenses had gone up, I immediately went to look at that. What happened with gross margin. And both gross profit and gross margin have gone up. Now, some of the numbers are quite amazing actually. Very, very gratifying. And probably the way to look at these is to reverse them. So if you look just at net margin, which of course is that, you know, if you like, that's the, the reason to be in business. In the context that we're talking about, the clients in the elite mentoring program increased their net margin by an additional 3.05% year on year. Now, what you've got to understand is we are aiming towards businesses whose minimum threshold is $10 million a year in revenue. So basically, what that's saying is that 3.05% is $305,000 extra year on year. All right? And the implication of that is if you're doing more than 10 million, obviously it's going to be more than just the 305. But really what it's saying is that is disposable money that you can determine what you want to do with. It's not committed to anything within the business. You've covered all the costs of the business, and you've now got a bucket on a $10 million company with an extra. And that's. That's really the important word in this discussion. It's not. It's got $305,000 in it. It's got $305,001 more had last year. There was money in the bucket last year. Now you need a bigger bucket because the bucket you had last year isn't going to hold the water that you got this year. That's, that's the picture.

A big bucket to hold 300 grand.

There you go. And it's a. You need a. You need a $305,000 bigger bucket per 10 million that you're doing. Now, keep in mind that we've got some clients in the elite program. We're doing significantly more than 10 million. You know, so it, it turns into, if you look at that implication, if you just run that down into the future, that, that's a, That's a very significant outcome. And what is it? Above all else, what it gives our elite mentoring clients is choice. You can employ a whole bunch of people to help you. You can reward your people that have worked hard to create that. You can put in new software, you can buy new vehicles, you can spend more money on advertising. All of a sudden, you know, kind of, you've got. You got all kinds of options that you, you didn't have before. So that's, that's probably the one that everybody's. I wonder what happened with that. If we look at, if we look at gross profit margin, that's up by about 5.1%, 2023 over 2022. And there is probably where you see the direct impact of the fixed expense increase. So the reason that the 5.12 didn't translate all the way to the bottom line was because these clients spent money on the running of the business, which would include their marketing and for example, growing and training their team. But that's what's generated the additional profit in terms of monetary terms and margin. So you know, there we go. The, the other thing that's quite interesting is the actual revenue growth year on year was very, very close to inflation. So in real terms they've achieved all of these increases without their revenue really growing. And what that says is they've become significantly more efficient. Those businesses are running better now than what they were. So obviously a certain part of that 16% odd increase in fixed expenses is inflation driven. So it's not real growth in the size of the business. It's just fuel costs more, you know, materials cost more, rent costs more, blah blah, blah. But what this is really saying is if you consider that revenue grew approximately in line with inflation, then to deliver those results at the end of the day means they're doing the same amount of work but producing significantly more out of that amount of work.

What then? What are some of the levers they were pulling in 2023 to get these results?

A lot of systemization, we focus a lot on finding what works and then codifying it. Documenting what works and then rinse and repeat. I mean it's a simple concept if you kind of just throw out the sentence. But there's a lot of hard work that goes into proving the concept first and then once we've proved it, then documenting it in a way that everybody in the team can understand it and then execute it. And then again what happens here is the, the. There's a lot of management of that process to make sure that things are done properly. You know there's that, that beautiful quote that says you encourage what you tolerate. So KPI's critically important. Is every part of the business functioning and at the level that it needs to to deliver the outcome that we are after is, is the, is the Wagga Wagga team running fast enough to get ahead of the wy woolly mammoth or not? If they too old and fat we need to put them on the back and put the skinny speedy ones on the front. It's, it's measure. Why didn't we get the mammoth? Ah, because we couldn't get. You know what I mean? It's in amongst the jokes. I'm, I'm hoping that the, the nugget is staying interesting.

I had another question. I totally blanked on it with the woolly Mammoth.

The woolly mammoth blew you out the water. I'll try and behave.

Actually, no, it was about systems going back to. So what's an example of a system that you've seen one of our elite clients implement that has had the biggest impact on their business?

Oh, there's a number. I mean, it's actually hard to find. One that I would single out above all others. Being able to consistently measure and predict work being completed and revenue being earned huge. The one probably the one that's. That, that every. A lot of people will be familiar with is we teach what we call the sales blueprint for builders, which is a multifunctional discipline to move a client from inquiry to contract as quickly and professionally as possible. By definition, what its fundamental purpose is, to make sure that we've always got more work than we can do. So we're back to that C word again. Choice. We don't want to do any job that comes across our desk. We want to cherry pick the jobs that we enjoy doing. We like the people and they'll make us the most money. That's nirvana for a builder. Okay. There's nothing worse than having to go to a site where, you know that the client is a pain in the backside. You know, I always talk about the fact that a lot of building contracts last longer than a Kardashian marriage. So, you know what I mean? It's not. You don't have to be nice to somebody just for fun. Five minutes for them to buy Coke and leave. We're not running a, you know, a transactional. We sometimes spend six to nine months or longer with these people. And if you happen to be a renovator or a remodeler, you're in the home where they live for six or nine months, you better make sure that you can get on with each other, otherwise that becomes tiring very quickly for both parties, you know, and who, who wants to live in that sort of world? So if you, if you tied me down to pick one. Having a sales process that is professional. A lot of our builders, particularly elite builders, it's where they get a lot of compliments. This is a fantastic process. I've never felt like I've been cared for as well as this. I've never understood how this works as well as this. It was seamless from beginning to end. I knew exactly what was going to happen throughout my build. You know, those kind of comments, you know, really most people, if you talk to them about their previous building experiences, there's some horror stories out there.

Yeah, there's lots of horror stories out there. I see it on the Facebook comments.

Yeah, exactly. And people come into, I want to build, but man, I, I don't want to go through what I went through the last time.

Yeah.

And you know, for people to come out the other side and go, man, this was such a pleasure. And of course, what does that do for the builder? Not only is it satisfying, but they tell all their friends and guess what? Their friends live in the same neighborhood, have the same kind of job, same kind of income, same kind of desires. Now we're talking avatar, we're talking, we're talking gold chip client, referring gold chip prospects. Nirvana.

So that's the business results. All the business results have seen a positive shift in the right direction. What has that meant for our elite clients is personal life.

Oh, I mean, this is where it really gets interesting. As I mentioned, I wasn't joking earlier when I said I have some clients where quarterly we measure their body fat percentage. And obviously, obviously we have a wide variety of clients in the program because of that, they have a variety of interests. So we've got a particular client, for example, who loves getting involved in these competitive team physical races. Spartan. And those kind of things. One, he's got to have the time to train. Two, it's important that his training is making him an integral part of the team, not somebody that's holding the team back in, in that sort of environment. So in, in those kind of things, high performance fitness becomes a thing. And literally at the beginning of the year, we set a body fat percentage and a V2 max rate for the year and then we followed it up every quarter. And I, I'm not going to pretend that he achieved it because he knew I was going to check him every quarter. But it becomes part of the conversation in every coaching session. How have your workouts been this week? How are we looking time wise? What's the body mass index looking like? What's the body fat percentage looking like? We don't spend two hours on that in a week, we'll spend five, two minutes on it. But he knows it's going to come up, so he's ready with the answer. And. Or he'll say, I didn't get there. Ah, okay. Why not? What's changed? What system isn't working that you should have been able to get to the gym three times this week? You didn't. Let's. And that's a beautiful example of what seems like an unconnected outcome actually is waving a flag saying, no, we should have been able to get to the gym. Why didn't we? What else have we got? I learned, for example, that I don't know whether it's good or bad, but there's a restaurant in Brisbane called the Boom Boom Room.

Yeah.

And one of our, one of our elite clients wives specifically wanted to go to the Boom Boom Room for dinner. And we made that a goal. And it wasn't just a dinner. It was a dinner without mobile phones. Like, remember old days? Real dinner. Like we're going to talk to, we're going to look at each other and talk to each other and actually build this relationship so that in 15 years time when our kids have all left, we don't look at each other and say, sorry, who are you again? We, we actually have a relationship and, and we reaffirm the fact that we're important to each other, you know, so.

Why is the Boom Boom Room so special?

No idea. But, but, but this particular client, and he doesn't, I'm sure he doesn't mind me sharing the Boom Boom Room. It's become a bit of a joke with us because we talk about. So are we going back to the Boom Boom Room? And the answer is no, we're not. Tick. We've done that. We've been there. You know, we have a client who every Tuesday and Thursday picks up his kids from school and does something with them. He's just not available on a Tuesday afternoon and a Thursday afternoon. We have clients who, unfortunately, because they got to us too late on a variety of reasons, have split parenting responsibilities with an ex spouse. Instead of them having to phone and make an excuse that they can't get there to pick up the kids on that day, they're actually early. And that's improved their relationship with their kids and with their ex spouse because things are now happening the way they should be happening. We had people decide they wanted to retire and sail around the world. They've bought a yacht.

So that's the stage one, right?

There you go. Now, now they're going to learn to sail the Yach yacht. And over the next.

I don't even know how to sail.

No, no.

Geez. That's a journey. Get the yacht before you know how.

Absolutely. But their point was we want to commit to this so that we can. They've set the date that they're going to walk away from the business. You know, so it's, it's, it's translating into those kind of real life scenarios. We, we have a client who built a beautiful head office if you like, managed to incorporate his wife's business into part of the building that he bought in his personal capacity that is now an investment property that the business pays to rent from himself and his wife. So they just became property developers. So it's, it's. I mean the variety of things that, that are happening across this group of people is, is quite amazing. I mean, obviously it's sounding like these are all fun things. They're not all fun. We've had some people go through some real life challenges and not quite tragedies, but tragic circumstances. And had they not been part of the elite mentoring program, they could very easily have ended up losing or damaging the business because it would be very easy to get distracted, take the eyes off the ball, forget what's important on a day to day basis. And that accountability and that focus obviously has helped in, in that scenario. So yeah, I mean, a variety of different, different outcomes.

Yeah. What I'm hearing is everyone's got their own goals and aspirations and things they want out of life and, but the, I guess the staple within all of that is the, the business results is driving the ability to do those things as well.

Exactly. And, and the strange part is, you know, people running very, very successful businesses. A number of people have said to me, nobody ever asked me why he, they never stopped to think about why. They, they just worked every day and made more money and.

Well, maybe that definition of success has.

Changed then to, to a large extent. Yeah. And you see it again, it's belief, it's mindset for a lot of builders who out there battling. They, they buy yacht. Are you crazy? What do you mean by yachts? I just want to, I just want to earn enough money to pay my mortgage this year. Yeah, you know, it's. But the point is as the APB systems get introduced and the one thing I've got to say here is, you know, we kind of, we're talking about the apb. Every results I'm giving you is as a result of incredibly hard work by the builder and his team. Yes, we've guided and helped and focused and if you like supported, but they've done the work. I don't anybody get the impression that we're saying we did this, we didn't do this, they did this with our help, I guess is the best way to put it. So let's make sure that the kudos goes to where the kudos needs to be.

Good way to wrap it up there, I think. Andy. So what do you anticipate to see from our elite clients in 2024, given the success of 2023, even though it was a relatively challenging year for the building industry.

Yeah, look, I'm really excited about this year, Will. We've seen a significant growth in the number of people in the program. And obviously part of that is because it's delivering results, which is natural. So that's really more opportunity to see more outcomes of the same, you know, so that really, for me is where I see it going, is we. We haven't changed the focus. We haven't changed, you know, the basic orthopraxy, the way we doing things, the fundamental mentality around it is exactly the same. So I'm. I guess the answer is more. More of the same is what I'm. I'm wanting to see.

Very good.

I mean, here's the other thing that we can just maybe throw in as a little sweetener. Until this year, the elite program has only worked with me. What's really fantastic is starting in January, the new members that came on board are all working with other coaches. So we've actually expanded the network of elite coaches, which gives us a far bigger capacity to help more people. So that's exciting just on its own.

Very exciting. Well, if anyone is out there, they want to learn more about elite mentoring, they can check out our pay the page on our website.

On our fantastic new website, which is.

All thanks to you. Brand new spanking new website.

Beautiful.

They can also check out a previous podcast about elite mentoring with you, me, Russ and Scott Guy, which we did a little while back. But what would you recommend to a builder out there who's interested by this, this concept and wanting to get into it?

Look, I mean, what we didn't talk about was the fact that you can't buy your way in. Like, it's not. It's not a program that's available to just anybody. You've got to have been a member of the business coaching program, and you've got to achieve certain results in that before we can even invite you into elite. Because if we did it earlier, it would waste your time and money. So what have you got to do if you're not yet a member of the apb, Become one. And then get yourself into business coaching as quickly as you can and then work with your coach to be ready. We do two intakes into Elite every year. January's just passed. We've got one coming up in June again this year. Use this year to get yourself ready for that. Join us in June.

Very good. Sounds like a good pathway. To all the great success that our clients have been seeing. Andy so thanks so much for sharing those insights from with our audience. I've really enjoyed the chat and especially the metaphor of the woolly mammoth. I'm going to remember that for a while.

Good. Thank you for having me.

Awesome. Also, a big thank you to our listeners wherever you are in the world. If you like the show today, please subscribe to Professional Builder Secrets on your platform of choice. And if you're feeling generous, leave us a review. But until next time, have a great day.