104: How this Roofer from Canada Successfully Sold his Business (via Eric Gilbert-Williams)

I found a lot of people that are getting started in similar businesses or similar industries. They haven't really thought about the big picture. They haven't done that long term vision work. They haven't done a proper marketing plan or figured out their office structure. So they might have a great day one and all of a sudden the phone starts ringing and they don't know what to do. When there's no option, there's no option. And there's that old saying that necessity dictates. Sometimes it's a lot easier for an event to go sour than it is for it to go well. And if you're going to do an event, do it well or don't do it at all well. So I dropped out of high school in grade 10, never went back. And some news here is I've just sold, so I'm out of the company. Does that conflict with what you're doing?

No, that's perfect. I like that because I've only had one other entrepreneur that happened to. That's why I like talking to people in different stages. Right. Because now you have a different perspective. Right. Right now. And I think that'd be perfect. I'm actually really looking forward to this.

Okay, well, thanks for inviting me here. Austin. My name is Eric Gilbert Williams. I'm currently residing in Calgary, Alberta. And I think you're. Where are you from again? Texas.

I'm in Jacksonville, Florida. You're thinking Austin, Texas?

Jacksonville. Okay.

Yeah. Opposite sides of the world coming.

Yeah. Well, I was just driving down through there earlier last week and so I trying to figure out my bearings there. Anyways, I just exited my company when we first started talking. I was still involved but I'm now exited from a exterior residential construction company. We did a little bit of commercial, but more on the residential side. So like townhouses would be really what our focus was. Built that company up for about a dozen years and earlier this year it just seemed like the right time to make an exit. You know, there was a lot of ups and downs. There was some skimming on the face of bankruptcies a couple times. There's a lot of risk and challenge and the team was stable. Our economy's kind of stabilized, financials were stable and I had a buyer. It was the right time to let go and move on to new ventures. That's a little about what I've been up to the last dozen years here other than a bunch of little side ventures I have at the same time.

And how old are you?

I'm 33 years old right now. And hopefully next year I'll be younger, but I don't think it'll happen.

Yeah, it's a mathematical thing. I think you might be a year older. I think Right. When we talked on the pre interview, it was like six months before this. And I think maybe you had just sold or was just about to sell. Just tell us a little bit more in depth about the company that you did grow and then why you ended up selling, and then we can go ahead and reel it back to the beginning of it.

Sure. So I moved to Calgary, Alberta back in 2006. Back then in Canada, it was considered boom time. And we have these oil sands up north. I'd say they're on fire, but that's such a bad expression when we're talking about oil. I won't say that, but it was a very hot market back then. Ontario was not. So there was a lot of hype and energy and momentum happening out west, the Wild west, we would call it. Just packed up my stuff and moved on out and got into residential construction, mostly in the roofing side, asphalt shingle roofing back then. And I would just be on the roof myself. And as time went on, as I worked with the clients that I had at the time, which was just a very, very small base, it was mostly just one client. There seemed to be really clearly an opportunity to grow that. And over the next few years, instead of working with just one client, I went more to the general public and built up the traditional stuff, the your website and got your cards and some print marketing and started knocking on doors just like most other entrepreneurs end up doing. You just hit the streets, right? Well, that year it was very successful. That year I did a lot more work than I had ever prior. And instead of hiring a couple people the next year we doubled again. Prior to doing that, we were doing about 150,000 in sales. When I started knocking on doors and going to the general public, we did about a little over 500 grand. And then next year was a little over a million, then it was over 2, then it was over 3, then it was over 5, and then we ended up climaxing around 6 and hovering there for basically until the time that I ended up letting it go.

Yeah, we all like climaxing. But before we jump to that point, just so we understand, on a basic level, were you just working on roofs in 2006? Because let's just make sure everyone's on the same page here first.

Sure, yeah. In 2006, I swung my own hammer and put those shingles in place and made sure they didn't come off okay.

And even before that, did you go to college or start doing this right from high school?

Well, so I dropped out of high school in grade 10. Never went back. And getting out of high school, I had a roofing job part time. But I never really saw it as something I wanted to do for my life. Well, my first real venture, I got into direct sales. It was actually a multilevel marketing company out of Windsor, Ontario. Apparently I'm a terrible network marketer. It's just not in my blood for that. But there was a direct sales aspect where the program needed to be promoted directly to local businesses. So I put on my crappy clothes and ripped jeans and started knocking on the doors of business owners. Back when I was, I think it was 18 at the time. Got a lot of no's. I didn't sell much. It was very difficult. But after a few months I started to figure it out and got a system and figured out how to say the right things and do the right things and how to help people in a way that it's a win win and they buy my product and they get a good result at the same time. So I figure out just how to do proper professional sales, not the sleazy, you know, sell anything, iced eskimos type thing. And so I did that for about a year and a half. The company at the founders level, as happens with multiple marketing companies sometimes, it basically fell. So I built up a pretty good reputation for myself directly with business owners. And it was very challenging to see the head office fall apart like that.

And what were you selling to these businesses back then?

That was a loyalty card company. So if you think Air Miles, but for small business now, over the last dozen years, the loyalty card business has boomed. I mean, who doesn't have a dozen cards in your wallet? It's taken up too much space. But over 12 years ago, 15 years ago, that really wasn't the case yet. This was a loyalty card company that was designed to appeal to the small business and be more accessible without having to pay the fees of an air miles program. And the idea was that once there was a large enough base, it would convert over to a credit card. And that's how they would compete with Visa. So the network marketing side was to distribute as many millions of cards as possible. The direct sales aspect was to sign up as many businesses to honor the card as possible. It was a very new program and there's a lot of obstacles to get over when selling it. But I figured it out and then the team fell apart from the head office level. What do you do?

Right, right. What age are you up to at this point? Just so we keep it chronological.

19, maybe 20. Right around probably end of my 19.

Okay, 19, 20. You're. At this point, you're getting used to sales and just having to deal with a lot of rejection, I would imagine, right?

Oh, yeah. It just became a game. On average, I would sell roughly 10%. If I talked to 10 people, I saw one. So it became a race and a game. Every time someone would say no, I would call up my upline and we would celebrate, say, all right, I got another no, because that means there's only eight more to go until we get a yes. And we would just count down and make a game of it. And sure enough, on average, I'd end up with 1 out of 10. Sometimes it would be 5 out of 10. But then the scary part of that is that sometimes then you go 30 people without a single sale, but on average it was about 1 in 10.

And this had nothing to do with the whole roofing company, where you're just building up to where you're learning, being able to work through these no's, and that's what you get a lot in business. You're saying the company fell apart and then at what age did you start the roofing company?

So there was still a span of a couple years there. I started the roofing company when I was 23.

Yeah. So let's talk about those years in between. So I wanted to make sure we got to that. And then we'll start at the beginning of the roofing company.

Sure, yeah. One of the things that I liked the most about that loyalty card company was the motivation and the team environment, so the feel of a family. I really felt like I was a part of something. And I would go to the training events or conference calls. I'd read all the books they told me about, listen to all the audios, download them, play them in the car. I really enjoyed the personal development aspects. So when the company started to flounder and ultimately close up, I didn't want to stop that. I knew that I didn't go to school and I'd have a disadvantage. So I continued those events and those trainings. So basically I went to any personal development workshop seminar, you name it, that I could find in the Toronto area. Back then, I was from Kitchener, so it's about an hour away. I'd drive back and forth to Toronto over and over and over. And I went to so many events and just I grew so much. I had this big file cabinet that I would fill up with all the notes that I took and the papers they handed out. And one day when I was at an event, I met a few ladies who said they wanted to run their own event and they wanted to know if I'd help. They knew that I was at all these events and I had collected thousands of business cards from people because the sales guy, it's what I collect cards, but I didn't have anything to sell, so I just collected them and made friends. So these ladies running this event asked me if I could help promote it. I said, sure, why not? I love events. This is great. Instead of promoting it, sending out emails, doing phone calls, and nonstop, I started promoting and putting my reputation on the line, building up the excitement and momentum for this event that they were organizing. Well, a few months later, the lady said, oh, you know, it's just too hard. We just don't think we have the time. And they backed out. The event was off. Well, I just finished going through a terrible experience of having my reputation injured by higher level people deciding to make decisions I don't agree on as it's true this, I'm not willing to just walk away from this. So I took over the events and did it myself. And over the next six months I put together a pretty cool event. We had a really powerful keynote speaker, Franco Dave. He founded the second cup and if you ever have a chance to look up his story, man, that's an inspirational one for sure. So put together a room, a group of volunteers, sold booths, sold trade like a trade show style. So sold a bunch of booths and sponsorships, a lot of tickets, brought the speaker in, figured it all out at the room. Dynamics, coordination, got some food, brought in some live entertainment, did a fantastic event. It was great. I made a little bit of money and I had so much fun that I decided to do it again. So did it again another 12 times and put up, sold memberships for the events and people could come and buy a pass that would give them access to multiple events. And it was fantastic. I did two years of that, which I consider my university, so to say, just hanging out with these people all day, all night. This is my first time that I worked 100 hour work weeks and I was very proud of it at the time. I would never do that again, I don't think. But back then it was exciting.

And if we wanted to put on an event, say one of our listeners, do you have any tip or two on a good way to do it or what to stay away from because I've never had to put one on and that sounds like a major headache. But even if it's on a smaller scale, what's the right way to do one and the wrong way?

Well, everyone's got their own perspective and for me it's total commitment to the cause. There's no room for other activities or social life at the same time as we're putting on an important event. If it's just a little event that has very little bearing to your business or your personal life, then just put whatever effort you want. Just be clear that if you want a kick ass event that's going to change the dynamic of the people you know, you're going to need to dedicate yourself more than you realize. And you're only going to see that in hindsight. There's always more that you could do. There's always another ticket you could sell or a little detail you can organize. It's nonstop. Some friends of mine just organized a really big event here in Calgary and watch them go through that process. And it's tough to not jump and help when I see there's something that needs help. But to do an event is a complete, full dedication of the mind, body, soul. It's not something you just do half assed and throw it on. It's a lot easier for an event to go sour than it is for it to go well. And if you're going to do an event, do it well or don't do it at all.

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Well, after a couple years of the events, one of the cool things about events is that you're kind of selling the invisible. The tickets have a value that I say they have a value of, but until someone buys it, it's just theoretical. Learn how to barter a little bit and barter. Trade show booth to get some business coaching for examp or to get some marketing or I'd give away 10 tickets to an event in exchange for 10 tickets to a different event. And it's a whole network and community of people that work with these events. It's not just make a website and sell some tickets. I traded for business coaching and I'm really glad that I did that. One of the downsides of not going to business school is I had no idea at the time anyways. I had no idea how to properly check bookkeeping and accounting records. And the first thing that my business coach taught me was what a burn rate was. And a part of me, I'm really glad that he did teach me that and the other part of me is not so glad. It was terrible. My burn rate was horrible back then. The events were doing fantastic. I had this great following. There's a membership program. There was people that were showing up over and over and over and over. It was great except for the financials and that's something I kind of skipped. I just got excited. So my business coach taught me how terrible my books were looking and we calculated how much time there was before I had to shut the whole thing down and really be in some trouble. And it wasn't looking good. So he suggested that I did a little bit of roofing on the side and figure out how I'm going to make this business work. I started doing some roofing on the side and I knew people and started doing my own contracts. And hey, you know, at the end of the day I ended up making a lot more money in roofing than I did in events. And frankly, it was a lot less work physically. It was very demanding, but I liked that kind of work. So that was the first time I did some roofing contracts on my own was after my business coach told me how shitty my books looked and I got excited and west was doing so well at the time. I thought, you know what? There's something real here. I slowly wrapped up the event company and finished all my promises and fulfilled all my obligations on it completely. I don't believe there's a single person that left upset and moved out west to see what the roofing life might be like.

And where was out west?

Calgary, Alberta.

Okay. And yeah. Where were you putting on the events before? Were this all in the same city or were you traveling around?

The events were mostly in Mississauga at the time.

Where's Mississauga? I'm looking at Calgary on a map, so I got an idea where that is. But if people are thinking about Canada, we're talking about the middle, the right, left.

So I was from Kitchener and I would drive back and forth to Toronto a lot for the events I went to. Mississauga is just a few minutes outside of Toronto. It's still part of the GTA, the Greater Toronto Area. It's about 45 minutes away from Kitchener and maybe depending on traffic, either five minutes or five hours away from Toronto.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, Toronto, I guess. I'm looking. If you were to drive, it says like 35 hours. So it's almost on the opposite side to Canada, right?

Oh, it is, for sure.

Yeah. It's quite a distance. So you decided to go ahead and get into. And we're talking about. This is 2006, when we're starting the roofing company.

Yes.

Okay. Before we expand more into that. I don't know if we touched on it really quick. Obviously. Said you sold your roofing company now recently. Can you give us an idea of how many employees or how big your company was when you sold it? And then we'll come back to 2006 when you started it.

Yeah, when I sold it earlier this year. There's a mixture of employees and contractors. So we were sitting at just under 20 employees on regular payroll. And then we had another 20 or so contractors, maybe 30 in peak season, hovering right around that mark.

What was the revenue at at the end when you ended up selling it?

Right. Between five and six million dollars, I.

Guess over these 12 years. That's what you built it up to. I just wanted to make sure we knew what you built it up to. But why don't we go ahead and start about how you got your company started? What do you end up doing? Obviously, we know you got all the event space, but did you start setting up an LLC or what was your first steps in starting a company?

Well, coming out of the accounting challenges that I had just had in the event company, I told myself that I would never start another company without having a really strong bookkeeping system in place first. So the very first thing for me was figuring out how my accounting structure is going to look and who's going to be in charge of it. I have a personality type where I get excited about something, I go promote it and I just jump in. I just have fun. I have fun talking about things, selling things, making people happy and building momentum on a value before doing that. This time I went and researched and found a good accountant and a good bookkeeper and set up a system where it wasn't like an overhead structure. Overhead is such a killer. But they would come in and basically just pay them in 15 minute increments. It was a shared bookkeeping service and that allowed me to have a professional office that I could use for my mail. They had that as well. And then I had the part time receptionist again paying on 15 minute increments over there. And then they had the in house bookkeeper. So again, 15 minute increments. So really it was an all in one solution. And it's a great spot for a lot of entrepreneurs to look at. You can look at like a Regis center or there's a hundred spinoffs like a Regis that are in almost every major city center. And so I ended up settling on that as the office structure then was right into figuring out what the company's going to be called and what the brand's going to be and what the visuals are going to look like and communicate. So it was accounting first, marketing second. And then it was really, oh, the next step would be pretty much the organizational structure. I'm a big Michael Gerber fan Mastery series and so going through his book and his exercises to figure out what does the organization look like in 10 years? Where are we going with this, what are we trying to accomplish and what markets are we trying to dominate? And really designing that organizational structure that will exist 10 years later, but doing it on day one. And that really helps to clarify what exactly am I doing right now and does it actually feed into the long term goal or am I sort of blindly running around trying to build some random company without a vision? So I spent some time clarifying what that long term vision looks like. So once I had the office structure figured out and the accounting wrapped up with a proper marketing plan and some long term visioning, that was time to just go and make it happen. And that was knocking on doors and seeing who wanted to Get a roof done.

And I think it was important that you're talking about not having much hard cost upfront or having more of a flexible cost structure and having everything set that you had learned from putting on the shows that you were putting on. But when I'm thinking about your building the company, it didn't sound like you had too much money saved up because that's why you picked up the side gig. Right. How much money did you having saved up when you moved all the way to Calgary?

Oh, there wasn't any. There was no savings there. By the time I moved to Calgary, I had a credit card that had about $4,000 left on it. I had a line of credit for about 10 grand that was completely maxed. I had an overdraft on one of my accounts that was another, I can't remember, several thousand or something and that was completely maxed. There was another credit card or I can remember what it was right now, but there was another line of about 3,000 that was also maxed. So the 4,000 that was left on the credit card, I would use that to shift the payments back and forth between the other lines so that I could make minimum payments and not default. It was a very tight situation. And I did a cash advance on 2,000 of that 4,000 in order to buy a little rusty old van that barely made it across the country.

But it did.

And that's how I bought my first van and my first roofing nail gun. And that's the circumstance that it was where I drove that 35 hours across the country and landed up in Calgary in November of 2006 in the middle of a severe severe blizzard. It was minus 35 degrees, almost minus 40 degrees with, and we're talking Celsius, by the way, with the wind chill and just blizzard conditions, ice everywhere, you know, cars all stacked up on the side of the road. And somehow I ended up there at that time with my rusty old van and my $2,000 left in the credit card to do roofing, of all things. There was some planning missing there, some things I didn't think about, but ended up there anyways. And there's no turning back. Just bought some extra clothes and then bought more extra clothes and started roofing.

So can you even roof during the winter?

Well, I did, yeah.

I mean, I had no clue. It doesn't sound like you could, I think you're saying. But yeah, that's what I was going to ask because it seems like you needed to, especially based on your financial.

Situation when there's no option. There's no option. And there's that old saying that necessity dictates. Sometimes it's the middle of boom time and the way the construction industry works, it's a weird beast. Let's just make a theoretical example. You go and buy a home from a builder, you sell your current home. In order to get that other home, you have three months or six months until you have to move out of that home and then you have to move into this other home. Well, if the other home isn't ready in time and remember in boom time it's tough to get labor and construction has a million delays. So in six months from now, if that builder can't deliver that home to you, they're on the hook. Either you're going to sue them or they're going to be paying you some substantial money to put you up in some very comfortable accommodations that you don't sue them because that's pretty much the only two options. So when it comes to be winter and there's a blizzard and there's shortage of labor, they need to get that house built. It doesn't matter what it looks like outside or what conditions are or. And unfortunately in some cases they have to creatively get through warranty situations. I mean it's not really a great idea to install roofs in winter. So then you got to figure out how you're going to do it. Okay, well we're going to come back in spring, we're going to re tab all the shingles, we're going to do all sorts of expensive things that they have to pay for in order to make sure that you get your home. So there was work there available when I got to Calgary and literally no one wanted to do it. A really high motivation level and so just crawled on up and did it every day and you lose daylight most of the time, right. So I had a little headlamp and when it would be dark and everyone would go home, I would just stay up there. So the construction site would be a ghost town, just hundreds of quarter built or half built houses and I'd be just up there by myself with my little light slipping and sliding up there with my ropes and putting on the shingles that you got to do in order to make your payments on your overdraft into your credit cards because you screwed up your last business. And that's the reality of small business, right. This was my fourth venture at the time, the third one that we talked about. But the other one's very, very small. It doesn't really matter. You got to do it. You got to just make it happen. Don't complain about it, don't look back, just do it.

And what were the daylight times like? I never even thought about that. How much daytime do you have in Canada when you're working during December?

And it depends on where exactly you are in Canada. In Calgary, we would get sun coming up somewhere, give or take, around 8 in the morning, and it would go down pretty hard around 5:30 at night. That's all the time that you had. So I'd usually stay up till 7 or 8 at night and just work with the lights to squeeze in the extra few hours. Because, man, you know, in wintertime and in construction, there's so much time it takes to set up, get yourself ready, and then tear down. So you spend a good half hour in the morning just getting organized. And you spend a good half hour or an hour doing a full, proper professional cleanup at the end of the day too. So you lose two hours right there. You got to make up for it somewhere. So Christmas is holidays. And I remember being up there in Thanksgiving and one of the builders was upset. He said that he drove by on the Friday and the house wasn't done. So he reamed me out on the Tuesday when the holidays were over, just reamed me out. It was funny because I'd been up there the whole Thanksgiving. He just hadn't realized it yet. So the house is done at this point in time.

It sounds like, at least strategically wise and thinking wise, you had every head on your shoulders and everything else ready to go other than the finance, if you're having a credit card that you have to pay other people with. So I mean, how quick were you able to make money to get rid of the debt and start your own company?

It took about six months to get a handle on the debts, another six months to get a little bit ahead and buy a proper truck and get some proper tools and get organized. And by the end of the next year, I had about, oh, I don't know, 20 grand or something put away by the time I started, when I started on my own going to the general public and doing what I call the real business, I started with about a little bit under 30 grand cash.

And where were you living? I mean, were you just saving up all your money and like living really cheap or roofers getting paid a good amount? Because it doesn't seem too bad within a year being able to get that amount of money. But I didn't know personally if you're spending any money or what your personal life was like.

Yeah, there's sacrifice that you need to do. Right. And I rented a room in a house with a few other guys. I basically had no friends. It was a working life. That's all it was. There was no drinking or smoking or partying or vacations or anything at all. It was work. Buy tools to work better, save money, buy more tools, work better, and build that momentum on itself. So it was a full, dedicated lifestyle at the time.

Well, it sounds like at least within a year, being able to get out of that situation, it seemed like I'd be thinking positively about myself being able to do all that. I mean, is that what you had? Where does everything on track in your head as far as what you were doing?

Yeah, it made sense. I paid off the debt, started making some savings and built up a little bit of an asset base and got some client list. And back then, an only child from a single mom in the country. So a friend circle wasn't really important to me. And when I dropped out of high school, I partied a lot, I tell you, didn't really miss it. Taking this time off and focusing on being proper again. So everything felt right on track. It was steady and growth in the right direction. One of my favorite books, a couple. Well, two of my favorite books I read. One was by Thomas Stanley, the Millionaire Next Door. Essentially, it's one of the world's largest surveys and studies on millionaires and how to become millionaires. And I found it fascinating.

They listen to this podcast, right? Is that how it.

Sure is.

Sid Nova, tell us about the book, too. I'm kidding. It's called Millionaire Interviews, in case you forgot.

What's that?

Our podcast is called Millionaire Interviews.

The book's called the Millionaire Next Door. It's not called Millionaire Interviews.

Yeah, I know. Yeah, I've read it. It's a good book. Yeah, but tell us about that book.

It'll be the same thing that happens to anyone listening to me speak or you speak or all the other interviews that you're doing right now. There are common threads that you hear. And this is the point of downloading more than one podcast, Right? Download them all. When you do that, you start to make your own thread and draw it. When you're listening to this podcast, just put up a little whiteboard and write down the common threads from interview to interview. And this is what Thomas Stanley had done in the book. And one of the things that he drawn was that millionaires were frugal. We have to Be good with our money. It's different to have a fancy sports car and a big house with a pile of debt than it is to not have those things and actually have some money in the bank and be a real millionaire that has access to that capital. It was very encouraging to hear that a regular person, and again, like the wealthy Barber book by David Chilton, just a regular person can become a millionaire without having to change the world or be a superhuman. And these were very encouraging thoughts. Yeah, absolutely. Life was very much on track at that time. It's small little steps that happen every day, and they build on each other to build a pretty cool momentum.

So tell us when you kind of first quote, unquote, like, officially started your own company. Sound like a year afterwards? Like, just walk us through chronologically if we want to speed it up as far as what you learned in those early years and any mistakes that you made. Especially, like I said, in the early years.

So 2006, until 2009, I was primarily a subcontractor. So I had my own company. But mostly I was at the mercy of bigger companies. And if you have a large housing company, they'll sub off all the roofing to one roofing company, and that roofing company will then sub it off to other smaller roofing companies, and those smaller roofing companies will sub it off to even smaller companies. So I was right in the middle of all that and stayed there until 2009. 2009, I didn't want to do that and went to the public and I became more of an independent contractor. Even that was a little bit deceiving because when we worked for a large city project or a really large church project, we would technically become a subcontractor again. But it's different, you know, in this case, we had a proper office team and office structure. So in 2009 is when it went to the public, which, like I said, was just me knocking on doors and hiring a couple people and working with that office structure I told you about. And 2010 and 11 and 12, we grew that up a little bit. By 2011, I think it was, we had gotten a full office at one of those regis centers. By 2012, I believe it was, we rented a bay and it had a good shop space. And then we got a yard, and then we started buying some bigger equipment, like some man lifts and more safety equipment. We got our core certification and grew it up. To have more than one office person, I think we have to four or five office people at one time. And then a Lot of outside salespeople and repair technicians and developed different departments for different activities we were doing. You know, we have our repairs department, the replacement department, the full wrap departments, the warranty department, and just all the regular stuff that you build up over time.

Were you literally going doors to doors and can you tell us about marketing your company and being able to do that? Because I'm trying to distinguish what made you successful versus some of these other roofing subcontractors or contractors at the time, what worked for your company.

So yeah, it was physical door to door knocking. Looked at the landscape of the Calgary area and found a few neighborhoods that had some particularly older products. And so I would just knock on doors all day until I got some appointments. And once I got some appointments, then I'd make a presentation and show them that I knew what I was talking about and that I cared about their roof. That's the most important thing, is to show that I cared and then tried to close a deal. So yeah, it really was physical knocking on doors one at a time. And the trick to it is there's a couple of tricks. One is to be prepared before you go. I found a lot of people that are getting started in similar businesses or similar industries, they haven't really thought about the big picture. They haven't done that long term vision work. They haven't done a proper marketing plan or figured out their office structure. So they might have a great day one and all of a sudden the phone starts ringing and they don't know what to do. And then they can't return phone calls anymore. So they can't build on that momentum. So you got to have a way to build on your momentum beyond just what you do at the door. This to me, knocking on doors is just the very, very first step of the marketing plan. The next plan is to develop a referral structure and get some proper referral out of your clients and build up a new list of people that are warm leads that come from that, that referral list. But in order to get a referral list, you got to start somewhere. That's where the door knocking comes into play. So the door knocking is just one aspect of a greater vision. And simultaneous to doing the door knocking and building up a referral plan is I was building up the Internet marketing aspect of it and I'm dating myself here. But Internet marketing for construction companies in Canada anyways was at its infancy a dozen years ago I realized that. But also you can see that it was going to become a dominant force. So yeah, build up some YouTube, put my face to the website and some of the YouTubes were doing pretty well. We got a few hundred thousand hits on them and we had some walk on video at the time was popular. And instead of really focusing on search engine optimization, so I bought a few books, did it all myself, and just kind of figured it out one step at a time. And next thing you knew, the company was ranked pretty high on some keywords that were very relevant. And as the Internet marketing started to kick in, the door knocking wasn't so relevant anymore. And we started to get some momentum built up that way. The Internet marketing brought in a couple property managers. And property managers obviously are managing hundreds of properties or they're managing a dozen townhouse complexes. And once we got one property manager, it just opened up the doors to a whole world of new business that I didn't see before. And all of a sudden that shift needed to be big time out of marketing into operations. As soon as we started hitting the property management circle, one led to another and we're getting piles of phone calls that were tough to manage. One of the two traps are you don't grow enough and you go under because you don't have enough clients, or you grow too fast and you fall apart because you have too many clients. It's an ongoing juggling act that I think everyone has to go through. And once we hit the property management realm, it just tipped things over. The Internet marketing kick, the referrals kicked in. The property management circle started to pay attention to us and give us work. So it was all hands on deck and focus on how we're going to manage this volume. And we ended up being Calgary's number one fastest growing company at the time in the Profit 500. So that was pretty cool.

What year was that?

That was 2014.

Yeah, because we kind of sped through six, seven, eight years there. Why don't you tell us about how your role switched? Because obviously you said initially you're the guy actually hammering and then it sounded like you were the guy going door to door and then you were the guy who figured out SEO. Right? Just tell us over that time period, trying to take yourself out of certain parts of the business and then realizing other parts that you need to put yourself in. And was that difficult for you?

For me personally, it wasn't. My personality type is I like to do different things. I get bored easy. And sometimes that can be a bad thing. You know, if you get bored of your company and you stop doing your company, you're pretty screwed. I Learned that about myself and saw that that was a weakness or a threat anyways, I very conscientiously allowed myself that diversity to shift my tasks and do different things as long as it was revolving around a central theme. And the central theme in this case was my company. So I would have a lot of fun doing sales and direct sales and marketing for six months, and then I get bored. So I'd make sure that we're okay there and that we do have that at least some sort of automation or put someone in charge of it, and then I'd focus on something else. I focus on operations. Okay, let's build up our quality. Let's start playing with new products. Let's go above and beyond. Let's do more than just roofing. Let's start doing a whole bunch of different things, and that'd be very exciting and fun for six months. And then I get really bored of it. So just make sure that there's someone in place that can continue with the momentum. Maybe they don't build it as fast or maybe doesn't build at all, but at least it doesn't fall apart. So put someone in place and make sure it's good, and then focus on something else. And you know, hey, look, Internet looks like a lot of fun. Let's figure out how to build a website and do SEO and do videos. This is great. So I focus on that for six months and then get bored, and then focus on organizational structure and get bored, Then focus on safety and build up and get our core certification, then get bored. So as long as my focus was revolving around a central theme, and as long as I approach it maturely and conscientiously, then yeah, I could have that diversity that I think most people dream about without having any real sort of negative repercussions.

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Yeah. And it sounds like you're doing all the right stuff. You've had some outstanding growth here with this podcast, and it's really encouraging to see that. So congratulations. And one of the things that I bumped into that you might relate to as well, when I lined up interviews and interview dozen people, I would tend to lean towards hiring the people that were like me, the people that had personality traits similar to me because I related to them. I saw that they had the similar potential that I did, and so I'd hire them. And it was a terrible idea. It was horrible because they were just like me. They got bored.

Exactly. Yeah, I could see that 100%.

Yeah. So I was hiring the wrong people because I was looking at it emotionally, not logically. So ultimately, over the years, I started to figure out that that's not how that works. I have to hire someone that I'm terribly bored with in the interview that I essentially can't keep a proper conversation with because they're so bored. Gotta hire someone like that to work the office because I want them to be there for 20 years at a pace, and to them and their circle, they're not boring. It's really aggressive and condescending for me to say that because it's just my perspective. I am exciting and I like to do things. I like to talk about exciting new ventures and possibilities. And that scares the crap out of some people. They think that I'm a dangerous lunatic because I'm just always on some other thought process that scares them. It destabilizes their life when I keep doing this right to them, I'm this outlandish dreamer that is a threat to them. And to me they're just boring. I don't want to talk to them. But when we acknowledge that these are not bad things, these are actually strengths that each of us carry that are very different. And most importantly, they're strengths that are complementary, then we can start to really see who fits in which role. And an office person that I consider boring should never be doing sales or marketing. And a really good sales and marketing guy should probably never be sitting down doing your books. So you got to put the right person in the right role. And that comes back to this long term vision that I was talking about. Who is doing what role and what do they actually look like? Have you sat down and written several pages or at least one page summary of what your ideal employee looks like for the particular role? What do they do every single day, over and over, nonstop? What does their mindset have to look like in order to do that role over and over? Where are you going to find these people and how are you going to know that you found the right one? I know I found the right one. When I'm bored in the interview, that's usually a good indicator.

It's funny that you said bookkeeping, because I've heard this a long time ago, but I mean, even when I was doing bookkeeping for my older company, commercial real estate companies, I had fun killing it for a year or two, making sure everything was. I mean, I would only go in there and do it every couple months, but having everything organized and whatnot. But eventually I'm just like, it's so boring, I don't even want to think about it or do it. And there's people out there that are fine with just doing that all the time for like you said, 20 or 30 years. Because that's the way they're built. It doesn't mean they're wrong or anything like that. We're just different types of people who. Some people want to do all these different things and some people are fine with just doing that and rather focus on other aspects of their life, which is fine with them as well. But finding those people and putting them in the Role. You said the main thing was if they're going to be a repetitive person, making sure that maybe they might bore you an interview, but those are the perfect people you need for certain situations.

It sounds like, Yeah, I mean, everyone's different and no difference is bad. I mean, as long as we're staying more unethical. They mean to say, if everyone was repetitive and great at doing the same task over and over, we'd have no new ideas and we'd still be burning candles to keep our houses lit. Right. And if everyone had a new idea and no one liked to do any tasks, we would have thought of how we could expand across the galaxy. But still we'd be stuck lighting candles for our house because there's no one to actually do it. We have to work together and figure out the strengths.

So we made it up to about 2012. It sounded like, so what size was your company at that point in time? And then we can go ahead and just kind of walk through these last few years and what happened.

So in 2012, we were sitting somewhere, if I recall correctly, around the 2 to $4 million revenue mark. It's a very awkward phase, what I'm about to say. It doesn't really apply in every business, but to a degree, it sure does. For me, the company operated and functioned a very specific way up until around five employees. And if we had a stayed at five employees and stayed at that size, life would have been pretty simple. Life would have been very repetitive. Going from that five to 10 employees was a whole different phase. It was a whole different type of business that was being created. And the roles changed. My attitude had to change. People's roles had to change. So shifting from 5 to 10 was a big deal. And around 2012 was when we were shifting from the 10 to what I call the 10 to the 20 employee phase. I think we were just below 10 employees and kind of hovering back and forth there. And again, everyone's roles changed. And that meant a lot of people didn't fit anymore. Either they quit or they got fired, or we never agreed on which one happened, but they're not there anymore. And in my mind, too, I needed to look at exactly what we're talking about. I need to look at who I'm hiring and why and how do they actually fit and what value do they serve in the long vision? So 2012 was an awkward spot.

Can you tell us? You briefly just said, and I agree with you, we've heard this over and over in their interviews. There's a certain Amount of employees, where everything steps and differentiates like what it was before. Tell us, what are the differences in employees when you only have 5 to 10, and then from 10 to 20, how things are different like you're saying they are?

Well, when you get to a certain volume, you need to be able to have people that can handle it. So people that have essentially a higher stress load capacity, and people that can multitask a little bit stronger. And maybe the key word that I'm looking for here is specialization. When we were at one to two employees, the repair department, for example, would have one repair a week or two repairs a week. So the role of a repair manager would be one of many roles that a single employee would have. But once we got around the tenant employee mark, we started to have dozens of repairs every week. And so instead of it being at one role, that among many, it became a very specific job description that has its own very specific set of checklists and KPIs. The person who fit earlier, who had five or six different hats on, didn't fit anymore. When we needed someone who was really good at managing that kind of volume early on, I like to say that I hired a bunch of cheerleaders. I hired people that really liked me and that I really liked. And we got along well, and we celebrated all of our successes together, and life was fun and we all shared tasks. It was a big mix of responsibilities we share. But as we grew up and the business got bigger, we started to need to specialize. And specializing means less tasks for one person. But in less tasks for one person, the details being executed on that task get exponential. You're probably bugging the same thing. When you very first started doing these podcasts, maybe you had a certain type of microphone. And now when it comes to audio, you have a whole thought process that goes on your head about the type of mic, the type of wire, the type of sound, how far it's from your face and what editing program and how long that's going to take. And it's a whole different thought process now than it was when you maybe first started out doing the podcast. Am I right or is that wrong?

No, that's absolutely right. I mean, in the beginning, I had one person audio editing. Now it goes through four people, and I'm like, actually the fifth. So it's like. And they've become more of the defined roles where there's certain things that each person does now instead of like, generically adding them. Like, I had two different people doing two different interviews, but now I'm like, no, there's a chain of line that we're going to do this on to make sure it gets done. I want to make sure that they grow as well. So part of it is they get opportunity to learn from doing these interviews. That's part of it. I know they enjoy it because we talk about that. Maybe I enjoy it more just being able to learn from different entrepreneurs. But part of my long term process is I hope they don't ever get bored because I like my team right now, but I know eventually I'm going to take it to another level in order to even more defined roles and not have as many generalists, if you will.

Yeah, there you go. That's pretty much it. I do think there's some lines that the five employees, the 10 and the 20, it's probably a little bit different for business, but that exact process happens at every one of these major steps, these major milestones. At the time that I sold, like I said, we were just under 20 employees. I believe that the next step would have been a little bit more towards 40. We probably could have kept doing what we were doing with incremental growth in each department and reached pretty close to 40 employees before we had to do a major restructure again because that's just how the steps go over your personal.

Life during this time, did any of that switch? I mean, were you still working a ton and tell us about that. In the last few years of the business and the growth, there was a.

Certain amount of time that I was able to focus on the 100 hour workweek and Tim Ferriss would just cringe if I said that. And then my mind started to rebel, my heart, my soul started to rebel. And there's no point doing that without having a full fulfillment in life. It doesn't make any sense at all. So I started to shift my focus and look at other things in life. I started getting some more hobbies. I really loved dancing, so I got into salsa dancing and trained and competed and did that for several years. And I went all across United States to do different competitions and I didn't reach pro level. It's a long way to go to get there, but definitely met, you know, pretty good success at the amateur level. I danced so much, you know, 10, 20 hours a week sometimes just practicing and having fun. And then I got a circle of friends from that community. I started to have some travel in my forecast. I go around and do fun things like pick up some flights and do some hang gliding and jump into a Race car and a track and mess around. I usually just start spending money. Kiyosaki would call it doodads. I just started buying doodads and having fun. And in hindsight, maybe that wasn't the right thing to do. It spent a lot of money that could have gone into building up a stronger asset base or investing better. But you know what? At the time I needed to balance life with some fun. And it definitely was the right thing to do. I had a lot of fun. As the company grew and the income started to grow with it, I started to treat myself and have some fun balanced in with the mix of the stress because it wasn't all easy. We skirted on bankruptcy twice. Once was very, very serious. It's a very stressful experience. So to have a place to, I hate to use the word, but to escape the business and have an actual life outside of it that's fun and makes you smile and laugh is so important in the life balance and the long term sustainability, I believe of any entrepreneur or business person. And I found it through dance, frankly.

How about you just brought that up if we have some time to talk about those bankruptcy. Because I know at least in the US a lot of people know about the housing market and issues with that. If you don't mind briefly talking about that when you're on the verge of that.

Yeah, it was around 2014, coincidentally it was. It ended up being the same year that we got that prophet 500 fastest growing company in Calgary award. By the end of that year we were in some serious trouble. I had, you know, like I said, I didn't go to school, didn't do any business studying or any degrees like that. And I had hired and done all the things that I could think of. I hired management team to essentially run the company for me. And I had never done that before. I had never had experience with it before. And some things that they were very great. And we also bumped into a lot of challenges because I had pulled back a lot, I had stepped back from the company. I was verging on burnout. I was almost burnt out completely. And I've hit burnout probably tough to say now three or four times in the company and twice of them is pretty serious burnout. I described as when you wake up in the morning and you just don't care anymore. And when you wake up and you don't care anymore and the whole business is dependent on you, you're in trouble. I felt the burnout signs starting to creep up end of 2013. So very quickly hired a consultant and her and I strategized on how to prevent this from taking the company down. And the solution was to, like I said before, grow, do that, switch from the 5 to 10 employee size to the 10 to 20. And in doing that, I hired some people that had more experience with the larger company. And then I started to pull myself back and let that burnout sort of subside. But when I did that, it didn't go perfectly smooth. A lot of the energy and charisma that I brought to the company left with me. And that meant that a lot of the motivation and the practices in the field also left with me. By the end of that year, our reputation had changed with some of our clients and then I had to go and fix it all. We had also a downturn in the economy, obviously in that general time frame that we were dealing with. Oil prices were going down and that's a big stimulant in the Alberta economy. So we certainly had some decline in new construction builds and in general spending on renovations. It was a tough time in the economy, but also the company was shifting from being the Eric show into its own show. It was starting to grow up and walk on its own feet. So, yeah, it stumbled a few times and it was very difficult to get out there. There's some specific things you want me to share in that area.

Well, yeah. So what I was thinking is that this might be counterintuitive at the point in time is you had talked to your advisor and you actually hired more people when you said you're on the verge of bankruptcy, you had money left over because part of me would think you'd almost have to cut back people. Right. Maybe logically he's trying to cut money to save, but instead you went the opposite route.

Yeah, sorry, I may not explain that quite right. The burnout feelings came first. I started to feel like I was burning out. You know, we were growing, I was making all this money. It's great. But I started to feel it take over and I was declining. So I hired the advisor during the good time to figure out how we're going to deal with this growth in a way that's sustainable. So I hired all the management team before we had any trouble at all. The management team came on when we were in peak operation. Our reputation was the strongest, our cash flow was the strongest ever. And I hired this team to, in my eyes, take on a really successful growing company and make it better.

I imagine there's people listening right now who are exactly in that stage. Right. Because maybe they're getting a little tired of their company. They want to hire a company to come in and help, and then you think they would only make it better. I would think logically, and it sounds like that's what you thought, too. But I mean, what did they do wrong other than Eric not being there to run the show?

Well, when a person, anyone that's listening to this right now, when you're building your company and you've created something that represents all of your values and all your belief systems, you got to keep in mind that you did exactly that. You created a company that follows value your belief system. That's a very different question than the people you've hired. Does the company represent their belief systems, and do they represent what the company's values are? There's a big difference between what you bring to the table and what your employees bring to the table. And back then, I didn't realize it, but there was a difference. My employees got their motivation from me, their inspiration from me. They got their work ethic from me. They got their vision and their quality standards from me. I didn't realize that. I thought that we all just thought the same way. We were all on the same page. They got it from the head. And when I started to look a different direction and when I brought in an outside manager and put that outside manager in the head position and pulled myself out of it, they looked to that person for their inspiration and their leadership and their quality control, and it was different than mine. I think that in hindsight, I would have spent a lot more time working with that manager and working with the team to make sure that we actually were on the same page and that we kept growing in that direction. I made the mistake of hiring a qualified person and stepping away, telling myself, okay, well, they're qualified and paying them a lot of money. They'll figure it out. Well, there's a lot at risk. When you say they'll figure it out and walk away. There's everything at risk. It's not that easy.

So I guess what I'm thinking is we've talked about the whole time, if we're hiring people in certain positions, we don't want them to be like you, because then they're going to get bored of anything. But this is probably the only exception. When someone's going to take over, you probably want to find someone almost identical to you to take over. And it sounds like maybe this issue wouldn't have happened as much.

Well, we've got to differentiate between Core values and behavior traits. So core values, I can hire the most boring person in the world and them and I will be 100% on the same page on some core concepts, such as, every customer is treated with respect, every project is treated with high quality standards, every dispute or complaint is dealt with as a top priority. We can have that value system even though we go about dealing with it in a very different way. So core values is a completely different subject than behavior traits. And the behavior traits. And it's interesting, you can see who's got similar behavior traits and who doesn't. By watching people at work for five minutes. You can tell right away you don't see a core value, in my opinion, until you bump into a moment of truth. And a moment of truth is the way I like to describe it, is the true nature of a person comes out when they think that no one's watching.

Yeah, definitely.

And sometimes that doesn't happen for six months, but when it does, you see the true nature. And that's what a core value to me is. It's what the person does when no one's watching. And it's also the main thing that motivates to keep moving. At the end of the day, whatever philosophy is guiding their actions is what we're talking about when we're talking core values. And when I had stepped away and put other people in charge, it's not to say that their core values were bad. I'm not saying that at all. We just weren't on the exact same page.

Can you give us a little bit more detail on at least one example? Because I'm understanding the difference between values and personalities. Right. But there must have been something wrong that they were doing or something that led you down this path. So can you at least give us a specific example on it?

Sure, yeah. As I shared with you, I was in a lot of trouble when I started this company. It was live or die. That's an attitude that I carried from 2006 all the way until 2012, 13 and 14, where all this was happening to me. Every project was live or die. Every client that walks in, we got to impress the shit out of them. We got to deliver far beyond their expectations. We got to make this client so happy that they don't question the bill and the extra money, or they don't question referring their neighbor, or they don't question the upgrade. They don't question referring us to everyone and posting a review. We gotta really impress these people. Live or die, right? Every client is about at the Time. Every client was about how we're gonna put food on the table. And every opportunity, every employee that I hired, I looked at him with that in mind. Is this person going to help me put food on the table or not? By the time I hired the management team, I think the word is hubris. I started to feel a little confident about myself. I started to feel, man, you know what? We got tons of clients, we got tons of money. Things are going great. Maybe not everything is live or die. And I was thinking these things in my mind. And so when I hired on this management team, I ended up hiring them on with a mindset of, this is going to last forever. All the good times are going to keep on rolling. It's not a fight of survival. It's a guarantee that we're in business and we're doing awesome.

And you know what?

Winning that award was almost. It probably was a bad thing. It was exciting. It made my ego feel good. It changed my mindset in a bad way. I started to take it a little bit for granted. Oh, yeah, look, we got this award. It's great. Yeah, this is awesome. It took my eye off the ball, and that's what happened. This management team had a mindset of that this is just going to keep rolling. The money's going to keep flowing, the customer is going to keep coming back. And I didn't instill into them the same desire for every sale and that fight for survival that me and the team at the time had carried with us to build it to this point. So when the management team took over, they increased some overhead, they hired some more people. We got a bigger office. We spent more money on this, we spent more money on that. Some people worked a few less hours, and the whole core system, the machine that we built up to that point, it just started to fall apart, and it didn't work. So I had let them all go ultimately.

So, yeah, I mean, I could definitely could see that. What point you were able to get things back on track, you started putting more time into the business, right?

Yeah. So I basically had to let them all go. A couple left on their own because they saw it falling apart, and then I had to let go of the rest.

How many people? Because you keep saying, like, you let them all go, but it sounds like a lot of people.

Well, it wasn't a lot of people. It was a lot of important positions is what it was. So there was a senior safety officer. There was the senior manager. The general manager of the whole company was one, the senior salesperson for all of our key accounts was another. And then there was a couple other. So probably six or seven people in total. And you got to remember that we're talking about a company that had at that time somewhere around 10 employees. We kept some of the core team, but the whole management team left. The four key managers in a couple other smaller positions left. So it was a pretty big turnover the next year. The bankruptcy thing was very tough. We looked at it and no one knew about it until after. Very open with my books and told everyone in the team what we went through after we went through it, but they didn't quite understand. Getting out of it was a one day at a time. I thought for sure that every week was the last week, but in that week we would make just one more sale that would get us to the next week. And then I hired another business coach that helped guide me through some of that stuff. One week led to another week, led to another month. And then you know what, in the spring we closed our biggest contract, which was a little under 2 million at the time. And that contract really shifted momentum. And by the end of that year we did more than 6 million in sales. So by the end of that year that we were going to go bankrupt. We ended up being our strongest year on revenue. It also was one of our strongest years, if not the strongest year on the net profits. And we did it with a net result of about 30 or 35% less staff than we had any year prior. It was such a turnaround to see that year come.

So in case someone else is going through this and maybe they've lost that momentum or whatever, you were able to get it back around by you being there more and getting back to your roots. As far as showing everyone that every contract mattered, it sounded like and. And that kind of led the momentum to get back up and going.

Yeah, it's just like I described earlier with doing event production. You know, you can do a half assed event or do it with part time effort and you kind of get out of it what you put into it. And when all this stuff went down, you know, essentially I just canceled my social life, canceled the dating life, canceled the parties, and focused 100% on survival again and with 100% dedication. An entrepreneur with your kind of energy or my kind of energy or the people that are listening to this. With your energy out there, you've gotten as far as you have because of your energy. And there's some skills you're going to learn in these podcasts and books. And other consultants that you hire. And ultimately they complement that core energy that you already have. That core energy is what created the company, it sustains the company and it continues the company's growth. Whenever there's a question or a challenge, just trust in yourself, trust that you got what it takes to get through and then just don't let anyone stand in your way. Just do it. 100% commitment. Don't do it half assuming. Could you get half ass of regret for the rest of your life. You have what it takes to get through this, so just do it.

Yeah. And I think that's why most, like when they say it's the stats about small businesses or whatever, I know there's tons of people try to come up with podcasts and they don't work out, but it's because they're doing it like they might do a one hour recording, then just put it up. They don't go through all the other process that we do. And I'm like, it's going to have my name on it. I want to make sure that we have it as good as we can. Right. Anyone who's listening is probably, like I said, similar mindsets that we are as far as doing that. But then sometimes you get pulled away from it either by boredom or some other things and then you realize why it's failing. And it might be because of this, because the energy that you had before and focus that you had before is probably not there. So by re emphasizing that and putting it back into the business, hopefully it can get things back on track, I guess, kind of in closing, do you want to tell us why you end up selling and the best way for people to reach you if they want to say thank you for doing the interview?

Yeah, I've told you before about I get bored and I would shift my responsibilities around essential themes. You know, going through that, the bankruptcy stuff for a while and being in that industry for so long, I just started to get bored with it as a concept. It was becoming a challenge and simultaneous. Anyone who's in the construction industry can probably relate to me when I say that often the margins are very, very tight and the risk is often very, very high, particularly in roofing when you have deaths and injuries that come from a fall. So with the tight margins, the risk that was happening there and the boredom that was happening, it was just time to go. And it's just one of those things. You wake up in the morning and I would go and make my breakfast and I'd say to myself, you know, I just don't want to do this anymore. So to the team and told them that very openly and asked them if they wanted to take it over. But I wasn't really the right time for a lot of them and financially as well. So I ended up going external and found someone that want to and was ready and that's the route that I went. And then I had some other passion, you know, I just wanted to travel more and I wanted to write a book and I'm doing that now and I wanted to. Cryptocurrencies was getting really big, you know, last year and I found a lot of interest in that. So I started a little mining farm and doing some consulting and then I hired some software developers doing some software development. And I got so excited and had so much fun with these other ventures compared to construction. I just became more and more clear that maybe my time was coming to an end here. So when I saw an exit, I did. And a part of me, you know, I have mixed feelings about it for sure. So right now I'm just focused on. Just did a big motorcycle trip all around the west coast of the United States there. It was fantastic. Visited family, probably going to Portugal pretty soon and writing my book. That's my focus right now. Right now. A few coaching clients that I work with on their small businesses and writing this book is really close to my heart right now. It's about kids that are having trouble with drugs and how do they work through challenges and become successful in business by dropping out of school. Essentially it's my story, but put into a helpful format and anyone that wants to reach out to me, they can just email me or check me on LinkedIn. EricGilbertWilliams. Or you can check me on Facebook as well. Just my full personal name. It's Eric gilbertwilliams. And we'd love to chat and talk a little. You can ask me questions about your business. You know, the coaching that I'm doing right now is very early stages, so. So anyone that wants to just chat and call me up, we can chat for an hour and talk business. It's fun. I like helping people and I'd love to help you.

Is there an email specifically? Because I know when I was trying to look at LinkedIn I just found you. But I tried to do it in the beginning. It was kind of hard to reach out. I mean, is there any other method that you might suggest? Because it sounds like right now you're open to helping these people and while you're trying to find your Next thing to work on.

Yeah, sure. It's my full name. Ericgilbertwilliamsmail.com so that's e R I C G I L B E R T w I l liamsmail.com I know it's a big mouthful, but hey, I got a long name. What do you do? I'm right in the middle of launching my website. Eric Gilbertwilliams.com as well. It's not live at this present time, but it will be in the next, probably 30 days or so. Okay.

Yeah, so it'll be live by the time this goes live. So you can reach out to Eric there, visit the website, or send him an email, obviously. So we really appreciate you taking the time. Do the interview here. Is there any last words of wisdom for everybody? I know we've covered a lot and I really appreciate it. But one last thought that you want to leave with. Who's listening?

Yeah. To me, the most important one. Business is great. It's fun. We talked about core values a little bit here. If I can suggest anything to you. Sit down and ask yourself, what do you really want in life? What actually makes you happy? I got to say, the vast, overwhelming majority of people that I meet in business are not happy people. And it's not just in business. It's life in general. They're struggling with one thing or another. And most importantly, the deep down desires that give personal fulfillment are just being ignored too long by too far. Maybe you're just starting your company or maybe you've been in it for many, many years and maybe the most important thing to you has nothing to do with business. Maybe it's a little vacation or it's a book that you want to write, or it's a personal fitness goal or it's something you want to do with your significant other. Those are the most important things. And they don't go away. They only get bigger as time goes on. Fulfill those and make I believe that you'll have more energy to focus on your business. Life comes first. You know, I feel like people get in the business, they think, oh, I'm master of my business, when in reality, no, no, no, you're a slave to it. You're building something that you end up being stuck in and not happy with and that goes away the moment that you fulfill your own personal goals. All of a sudden business starts to help you fulfill more of them and it makes everything worthwhile. Just sit back and ask yourself, what's the most important thing in your life right now? It probably doesn't cost much at all to do it first.

Awesome. Well, thank you again, Eric for doing the interview. We really appreciate you coming on.

Thank you again for the invites. Hopefully this helps and I'll be sure to download the next several podcasts that you put here. I'm curious to hear what people have to say as well.

All right, well, thank you very much.

Thanks.

We appreciate you tuning in to another episode of Millionaire Interviews. If you're looking for other service based inter interviews, then consider episode 36 with Dan Fantasia or episode 26 with Tarang Gosalia. Or try out episode 25 with Zach Smith of Funded Today. This awesome podcast is now approved by Spotify. So if you'd rather tune into our episodes via the Spotify app, then just go ahead and search for Millionaire Interviews.

A woman will sell her precious My dad.