Freedom Through Systems: How Austin Used EOS and StickyOS to Build a Legacy

Revenue is vanity. We chase this vanity metric of revenue. One of our key targets, our driving number is revenue per week. We know where our break even is and if we get beyond that break even, we know that we're having good weeks. Kind of the success rate of acquisitions being closer to like the 90 to 95% success rate when you buy an existing business versus the startup gain which is typically a 90% failure rate within the first five years. We built out the framework of everything. What this app does does is it's a project management app. It runs on a lean construction process systems, manages our activities and to dos it pairs well with the physical whiteboard in an office which we would call our war room, which is our project planning and everything around the operational side of the business, the actual day to day, the planning of future orders and procurement cycle.

Good day and welcome to the Wealthy Entrepreneur podcast. I am your host, Bob Govreau. It is a pleasure to have you with us today. This episode that we're going to focus on is going to be a special episode. Somebody that we've worked with over the last five years. When we first started working with him, his business was just over a million dollars and now he's exceeded $11 million. A really fantastic human being and someone who's dedicated to advancing the progress of all of the contractors as well, helping share and help them understand it is that he did and help bring them to the next level. But before I get too far and mention his name, I just want to remind you that this is the place where we dissect the elements that contribute to entrepreneurial success from mindset and leadership to profits and revenue. And once again I have the pleasure to introduce a good friend of mine today. His name is Austin McGinnis and he's joining us from Team Builders. He's the CEO of Team Builders Construction. He's got multiple locations down in the United States. Fantastic human. And we're actually going to call this episode 10 Xing your contracting business while building a life by design. Without any further ado, I want to welcome to the show Austin McInnes. All right guys, so really excited here as I mentioned, to bring my friend Austin in to share, you know, a lot of insights. You know what I, I've known about Austin, I think we've, we've known each other for maybe five years now, maybe maybe even longer. Austin is for sure a high performance individual. He's built a great business, he's expanded, he's gone through acquisitions. We're going to talk about some of these things. But, you know, one of the things that I connect the most with Austin is his ability to relay information, teachings, thoughts to other people and help elevate them along the way. So there's a little plug for you, sir. Certainly highly respect you and everything you've accomplished. So maybe start off by just sharing a little bit about your journey and how you've got to where you are.

Wow, man, those are big accolades. I hope to live up to those as I, you know, preach a little bit of my love this morning. But, yeah, I think for my story, it really kind of grassroots. Started right after high school, just getting into construction. Obviously, construction is what I do today. If I were to tell somebody, you know, someone asked me what you do, I say, I'm, you know, general contractor, but also, you know, on the path of helping others along their journeys as to. As I look to, you know, help others, seek contractor freedom, because that's what I feel like I've been able to accomplish. But it started when I was really young, 16, you know, started working at a lumberyard from. From there, got recruited by a carpenter, ended up going into carpentry. I did three years carpentry before going to college. So I didn't go to college Till I was 21. And I went to college engineering, undeclared. And I didn't even know the college had a construction engineering program when I went. But that's ended up what I ended up declaring that. Met a professor who came and talked to the undeclared students. And it was about construction. The guy talked about construction like it was like rocket science. You know, it's just like super cool. And he was very passionate. I was like, I can follow that guy. And that's where my journey really began. And I kind of went down a corporate path initially right after college and just through internships and stuff, and well into my early career, all the way through 2015. 2016 is when I kind of got to this point where I jumped a couple different careers in construction to the point where I was just like, you know, I just had a kid, you know, I had to show up to work for somebody else. You know, in that moment was when it really struck me like, it's time to become an entrepreneur and own your own destiny. And within probably three months, I had purchased my first flip house. I got more like, I kind of went down that real estate side first. And on that first flip house, just through the chaos of managing some subs and getting to know people and starting to network and build that Kind of book of business, if you will. I ended up connecting with a guy I went to high school with who came in and was like an amazing carpenter, Helped manage some subs, manage the chaos as I was still working as a full time engineer. And towards the end of that project, the dude built, his name's Trevor, built me a deck in the middle of January. I remember showing up on site, freezing balls out and you know, middle of nowhere, Iowa and he was wearing bibs and polishing a turd of a deck and made it look beautiful and did a lot of other custom stuff for me on the project. And it was, you know, already had the trust with him from going to high school with him and just was like, hey man, like I really think we could do awesome, like in business together. He had just left the corporate world too. Started his own thing as like a handyman business. And I remember the day that we were like, yeah, let's do this. And I got his book of like leads and he handed me like a spiral notebook which is like chicken scratch on it with people's phone numbers and what was about their project. He's like, I, you know, I haven't gotten to these guys yet because he was doing the every, he was doing everything right. He was the estimator, the invoice or the builder, the, you know, running to get materials, etc. That was my, my first ever experience with the contractor was that same, like it was a younger version of that older guy that I knew when I was 18, when I started in carpentry. And so just being on the back side of it, I just saw that kind of same dude that I was like, man, if, if he had a little bit of, you know, a guy that could run the business side, the administrative side and kind of know that aspect of construction, which was kind of like where my degree stems from. A lot of construction engineers go down that project management, administrative type of path, career path. And so pairing us together, where he was very good at the trade, not that I sucked at it, but I, you know, he was clearly better than me and I was more of the administrative side. We, we partnered up in 2017 and I simultaneously started that business with him. The same day that I started, I left my engineering job and I started teaching construction management at a university as well. And I did that for five years. I, I tag teamed both early on, getting my construction business out of the ground. We were paying my partner because he was the, you know, the everyday labor and putting projects in place. I never took a paycheck for two years. And so the university job, the teaching job actually supported my lifestyle as we built that business up. And it was probably, you know, by year three, I started paying myself, but it was still a measly salary. By year four, I was actually paying myself a legitimate salary. And today we've gone under acquisition, like you mentioned just in the intro, and we have two locations, one in Iowa, one in Florida, and we have over 30 employees today. And we're on track to do about 11 million this year. So it's been quite a journey and only like that hockey stick curve. You know, those first three, four years was definitely a grind and just having some really explosive growth. And every year it's like, hey, we're going to temper it down and just kind of put together like a solid year. But it seems like every year we just push for some sort of growth and we just hit a whole new level. So it's, it's been an exciting journey nonetheless.

That's awesome, man. And you know what? Like $11 million for any type of business, like, the statistics of people getting to that level is very low. Right. And I'm sure there's been some major learnings along the way. You know, I, I know that when we got to about 35 to 50 people, you know, I had to definitely learn. And one of the things that I had to learn at that stage, which I know you've already dealt with, is sort of the operational accountability side of growing and scaling a business. Do you want to maybe talk about that a little bit? About how you guys make sure that your team delivers?

Yeah. Early on, like when we were just a $1.5 million company, we actually started using EOS. And I know you and I have had a couple conversations about EOs and we went hard two years with that with like bringing on an implementer and kind of helping build that, but we were still so small that it was like some of it was like it was all healthy. Like it really helped set the tone early on because we knew we wanted to be the $10 million company. And that was the first five year vision we had, was we were like a one $1.5 million company in 2020. And in five years we wanted to be a $10 million company. And this is the year 2025 that we're hopeful to hit the over 10. And right now we're on track for 11. So it's, it's exciting. But I would say the EOS foundation with the accountability chart, right people, right seats, that kind of Mentality was key. And to your point too, like, when you get to that level, it's like it requires you to be a totally different leader, too. Right. And I would say a lot of my mentors in life have always told me, like, the business only grows as fast as the leader, so you as the leader, need to be growing, you know, just as fast as your business because you got to bring those other leaders up behind you and. Yeah, yep, Exactly. And every 90 days, our business shifts. We say that a lot too, because it's just from new people to, you know, a pivot to a different software or whatever that thing is, is we're always, every 90 days setting rocks for a quarter. And we're holding each other accountable with weekly meetings throughout the quarter to achieve those. Those rocks. And then those rocks stack up towards a goal. Those goals stack up towards a vision. And so it's kind of that iterative process week on week, tracking the metrics, what gets measured, gets improved, and then setting, you know, rocks every 90 days, setting goals every year of what's important to you and the business so that you do continue to achieve the next level.

Totally. And you know, again, from my experience as well, which is sort of piggybacking on what you're saying. You have to get in a rhythm and, and you have to be communicating to everybody what's going on from top to bottom and get alignment and buy in on everything.

Right.

And some of those cadence, like the EOS system and there's a bunch of other systems that are out there as well, but just giving you the framework to make sure that you can share that information. Right. And get the buy in that's necessary and, and also, you know, make sure that people are held accountable. Because when you start to grow in any business, you know, people just start to get lost in the. We're not really sure what it is that we're doing to contribute to the success of the business. Like, if we just don't do 10% of our work, does it really impact anything? And getting really dialed in on that to say, no, it does impact. This is how it impacts. This is what you need to get done. So we're all working together, you know, super, super powerful. I see a little sheet behind you on your whiteboard there. What do you got? What do you got back there?

Revenue is vanity. We, we oftentimes, in my business, we chase this vanity metric of revenue. And one of our key targets, our driving number, is revenue per week, which it's, it's there for a reason. It's because we know where a break even is. And if we get beyond that break even, we know that we're having good weeks. So it's, it's there for a reason. But at the same time, if you're not selling at the right margins or you're not building efficiently, you can still diminish the revenue metric. But revenue ideally is like a target for us. That helps us know where profit's at. But revenue is still vanity. Profit is where the sanity is. Right, cfo, you get that? And cash is king. And those are all three different things. And that's one of my fundamental pieces as the CEO in my business is helping under, helping, you know, the rest of the team understand what that driving number means, what revenue per week does for us as a company. If we're trying to hit, you know, 10 million, we need to be doing almost 200k a week. If you took it, if you just said 50 weeks in a year, simplifying and 200k in a week, there's, there's your 10 million. Right. So we know that we need to be hitting 200k weeks and we know that our break even is about 140. So anything north of that, you know, is really where we need to be to be a healthy and, you know, consistent company. And we also have ebbs and flows in the business. So we're not hitting 200k a week when it's cold because we're a builder. Right. So it's really the, you know, April to November time frame where you really need to be crushing above 200k to really hit that target too. And then cash is the other thing. You know, obviously getting invoices out on time, collecting deposits. And the whole cash flow side of construction is in and of itself its own beast. And so you'll go out of business faster if you're not, you can be profitable. But if you're not collecting the cash, that's what's going to actually kill you too.

So the number one reason why businesses fail is because they run out of cash.

Yeah, and there's, there's different drivers to that too. Right. I mean, it could be a simple shift of, Instead of collecting 10% deposit, you start collecting 25. Or, you know, there's instances on our deck and fence business, we collect 50% down and we'll do 50% upon completion. And that final completion invoice goes out literally the day that it's completed. And you know, we should not ever be financing a project and then on our custom jobs we do a 25% down and then 25% before we start. In some instances on larger projects, we would do a 15 and 15, but then you're at least collecting, you know, 30 to 50% before you even put a shovel on the ground. And oftentimes you are still expending a lot of money, energy and effort prior to even getting started. Where you're pulling permits, you're lining up labor who often require deposits, you're purchasing the cabinets, which is a big down payment because they want 50% before they even start, you know, fabricating whatever those things are. You are still spending that money and you're expensing supervision and project management too. So it's, it's not necessarily like, oh, you're robbing people and you're getting 50% down before you even do anything. It's like, no, you gotta know your business well to know where the cash is actually going to.

So, hey, if the dentist can get paid before we leave the office, when we get a teeth cleaning or whatever, why the hell shouldn't the contractors get paid as well? Right. Seems fair. So a couple things I want to dive into for you. So knowing that you, you did the acquisition, you started in Iowa, you ended up heading down towards the Florida region. You found an opportunity there. What were maybe some of the challenges in acquisition? Because they, you know, they sound nice. When you think of the vanity side of growth, it's like, oh, the M and A, the. It's exciting and it's really freaking hard, right?

It's a whole space on like Twitter and stuff too. Like, you could follow people that all they do is talk about it. There's people that have a portfolio of just business ownership, almost like it's real estate, right? It was a whole world that was new to me at the time when we started looking into it. And honestly, kind of to go back a step, the purpose of moving to Florida was a family first decision. It wasn't really a business decision. So a lot of people ask me that question and I think, you know, our heart was right in what, what we were trying to accomplish as a family. And the business got to be along for the ride. And I think that was an important piece to the success. And it was a grind even just getting down here for the first two years. It was probably a year and nine months before I really had felt like I had gotten out of the hole of just that transition period and dealing with the new business. And, you know, it was, it was a lot. But from the acquisition of like why Florida? Family first decision. And the way I found the business was just through Biz Buy Sell. I started reading books. There's a book that's out there called Buy, Then Build. Super interesting book about kind of the success rate of acquisitions being closer to like the 90 to 95% success rate when you buy an existing business versus the startup game, which is typically, you know, a 90% failure rate within the first five years. Right. @ least in the contracting world. Other, you know, business sectors could be different. And prior to even the Florida thing, we in Iowa were actually looking at other acquisitions. We looked at a plumbing company, a concrete company, another fence company. And really the first couple were just like tipping toes, dipping toes in the water, guys retiring that we knew and it's like, oh, what would that look like? And it was just kind of interesting. We did take a hard look at a fencing company. The lady ended up being a little batshit crazy and wanted way too much. And it was just like a whole manufacturing facility too that we just weren't ready for at the time. And all that kind of pre work then making this family decision is like, oh I, I know enough about acquisitions. I've read some books about it. And so I, I started looking on Biz Buy Sell, which is basically like Zillow, like root for real estate. But it's Biz Buy Sell is like the Zillow for buying businesses.

Yeah, it's, it's a huge network, right?

Yeah, huge network. You can buy, you can if you want to look up franchises for sale. Like you could have a franchise opportunity in your area and you could go find it on there. But anyways, I get on there and I know roughly like where my budget is. I'm like, I can't, you know, I'm not going to buy the 10 million dollar acquisition. I'm looking for something under a million bucks and also a GC business. So first one I find is actually like I do a Google search or the search in business by Sell for Florida Find a business comes up GC business for 650k. It was actually, I say 650 because that's what I bought it for, but it was actually listed for 890. So I got it at like a 2x multiple when it was listed for 3x and it had like an independent business valuation that was giving it that 900k value. But what really sold me was the broker. It was a really good broker, got to know me really well. I was able to go and actually tour the company before even submitting Any letter of intent, which is a little bit out of the norm. But I wanted that kind of arm's length transaction to be able to go and meet somebody, feel him out, shake his hand, you know, tour his little. He was working out of his garage, but it was like a nice contractor garage.

That is out of the norm, though, for sure. Like, I'm not sure how you. I'm not sure how you got that arranged. I know you're a convincing guy and a likable guy.

I wasn't willing to bend on it was like, you know, I'm gonna. I'm gonna fly down from Florida. I want to meet this guy, and I want to sit down and have a combo with him. The broker showed up to that meeting, the first meeting, and just kind of got to know him, know his book of business, you know, And I ended up coming down. So I went down in November, December, time frame of 22, and then in 23, January, in spring break of 23. But that was about the time that I was actually, like, submitted a letter of intent. And spring break, I went down and actually toured more of his business, got to meet some of his employees, which is also atypical prior to even, like, having legitimate signed documents. And I got to meet some of his employees. And his employees reminded me of the employees I had back in Iowa. They were young, they were cool, excited about their careers, and got to tour some of his projects. And he was in all the right neighborhoods. I mean, every corner in Florida at the time was, like, under construction. And I was just blown away by the amount of wealth and the amount of building going on. It made me feel really comfortable about what I was buying. And that was a big move, you know, taking my family from Iowa to Florida. When we all grew up in Iowa, both my wife and I and our kids and, you know, my. My oldest at the time was in second grade or maybe even first grade. And. Yeah, so I just. I wanted to be very confident with the decision. So to be able to do all that, like I said, was a little atypical, but as far as, like, learning lessons from that and, you know, I'd have to go back to another story of us trying to duplicate into Cedar Rapids. I think you were our CFO at the time, working with me a lot on that. And we lost a lot of money during that transition. When we went down to Cedar Rapids, it stretched us. We were an hour from our location, and we tried to start up a second location. And what we didn't have was ownership boots on the ground. We didn't have a Runway of projects. We were selling from scratch and we didn't have a good sub network down there to actually build with. And so we ended up transporting a lot of our guys from Cedar Falls, which is only an hour away. Not bad, right? But in Iowa, that's, that's a long way to go for work. And so, like, it ended up breaking our subs back, it broke our guys back, and we ended up pulling out about a year and a half later and, you know, to the avail of lost profits, lost morale, and we did a huge pivot and shift in 2022. And so learning from that experience and being able to take that to Florida was also really key because, like ownership boots on the ground, I knew that, that I could drive some success driving the power of like, I already had a sub network. But when I got here, I went to a few different networking events, started meeting some designers, meeting some, you know, suppliers, and just getting my name out there. After I had kind of a key group of, you know, three to five people, my name just started like, you know, they believed in me. They got to meet me face to face. You know, it's. It's hard to get leads and get projects when you go and buy a new business because people were buying from the other guy before and now they're buying from you. Who the hell are you? So it was actually really challenging for me in my first year and a half of like telling people in Florida like, I'm an Iowa builder, I just bought a new business. Like, that's kind of scary for somebody looking to do a 500k renovation or home edition. You know, it's like, well, what makes, like, why would I buy from you? This guy's been over here. You know, I can find any other contractor that's been here for 10, 15, 20 years. So that was probably my hardest piece, getting out of the ground here in Florida. But just power of networking and meeting right people and just getting plugged in was also really key to my success.

So, yeah, love that. Great story. And I'm sure we could dissect the entire thing. And there's probably 20 things that you did great. There's probably five things that you wish you had done differently. Maybe that'll be a follow up. We'll have an acquisition discussion and we could, we can jam on things that we wish we had done differently without a question. Take me back to your experience working at the university, because actually when we first started working together, you were heavy into that gig, which Was awesome. Explain maybe a little bit about that program and, and your part in it, because I think it was a pretty awesome sort of unique program down there.

Yeah, it was an awesome experience for me. I actually fell in love with teaching, fell in love with, you know, young, hungry students that wanted to grow and learn and be in construction and make it a career. So that was probably the most exciting piece for me. I didn't not, I did not like the red tape, you know, of a university. But it was an opportunity that fell in my lap. Honestly, when I was flipping the house and doing the engineering, it was something that I started to do on the side. I would teach a night class, so I would do engineering during the day. On lunch breaks I'd go and I'd be at the flip house trying to coordinate some subs. And in the evenings, you know, I'd be grabbing dinner, quick kiss the wife, and I'd be going to teach. And so that was my life during that phase of time. And then when I left engineering and I went full time with the university, they had a unfortunate event with a prior professor that ended up passing away. So they kind of had a need that needed to be fulfilled. When I was an adjunct, I think I was just carrying the load because he was sick, if I remember correctly. And then when he finally passed, they actually needed a guy. And then, you know, it was an easy transition for me to go in full time, especially because I wanted to get out of engineering and then simultaneously starting the construction business at the same time was kind of like, you know, oh, you know, I took a pay cut to actually go teach. And so I was like, I'll make up my, you know, other income with, with the construction business. That ended, not ended up being the case. And so we actually struggled a little bit financially for those first two years. But regarding the, the specific teaching experience, you know, I had a four year engineering degree, construction engineering degree, and I had five years of industry experience at that time. So I kind of qualified as this adjunct professor. The courses I taught was basically like, I taught like a Construction Management 101, like an introductory course for freshmen. We actually built multiple tiny houses. I think I built three tiny houses in my span. And it was, it was exhausting. It's like running, you know, running a legitimate construction project with like labor with no experience. You know, these kids were fresh out of high school, freshmen in college. You know, some of them hadn't even swung a hammer. Other, other ones came from, you know, a farming background or actually had a dad who was in construction and could run some stuff. But it's still like you're juggling, you know, 18, 19, 20 year olds or even you know, 21, 22, but just not a ton of construction experience applied. So building those is super interesting. I taught a safety course which wasn't, I did not have any passion towards that. I, I taught an estimating course which I had some passion towards but one of the ones that I ended up like after three years and actually being at uni for a while, University of Northern I, I actually got to, you know, at the time I was three years in, you know, building my construction business and so I got to actually create a course. I got to create an elective course for juniors and seniors and the elective course was construction entrepreneurship and I actually packed it out my first semester and I probably had, they had to give me the biggest, one of the biggest classrooms in the building and I had probably 30 students and I basically took them through, you know, the whole startup of like, you know, what is your niche going to be, what are you passionate about, what is a five year vision for this plan? The finance aspect too of how you going to fund it, you know, how are you going to get leads, how are you going to get, you know, like, say like. And then I'm packaging them with a team of partners too so they kind of learned a partnership aspect. But a lot of great responses on that. A lot of students say, you know, best class ever, you know, this one was finally worth the tuition I'm paying, you know, comments like that. I got some good notes after that class but that also was starting to get towards the end of my time, you know, with you and I where I really needed to go full time in my business for it to hit the next level. And in 2022, it was my last, my last semester was a fall, fall semester so I didn't re up in the spring and then starting fresh of 2022, I became, you know, full time in team building.

Awesome. I don't know if you knew this or not, but I actually taught at a couple universities early on in my career as well.

We connected on that.

Yeah similar right where it was like okay, I'm getting started here, you know, is this, I don't want to say was it a fallback plan, but it was definitely a supplementary income plan at the time and it was like I've got this knowledge that they, they want me to share, I could do that. So always sort of thought that my, my retirement play would be to go Back and teach at the university once I was done. You never know, that could still happen. But, but interesting. Right? Like it's a different type of person who wants to teach as well. Right. And I would say, you know, something that's unique to you, Austin, and maybe to me as well is that we're actually, we've done it too. Right. Because a lot of the time when you go into post secondary or any sort of educational side, they've always been professional educators, but they haven't got the experience of actually living it to, to know and, and definitely from, from your standpoint in the course that you created, you know, those post secondary institutions teach about theory and, and how to do specific things, but nobody ever teaches you how to run a business. And I think that was a pretty unique, cool approach that you created, which I think has driven to, you know, some other aspirational things that I want to touch on. One being that you've created this new sticky OS app which is, I'm going to let you explain it. But you know, tying all of these, these elements in, you know, someone who has worked, built a, you know, an eight figure business, has actually done research and built out programming and has formally teached and now teached. Formally taught and, and now on the innovative side, like all of those being innovative approaches to someone in your space, now you've actually created an app that. What does the app do? I'll. I'll maybe give that to you.

Well, I think important piece of just like my values, not just personally, but even in our company, one of our core values is just creative and innovative, like pushing the envelope on what could be. Always willing to ask the question of, you know, how could we do this different or how can we do this better? Is that monumental push for progress every day. And so the app really stemmed from that where we got to a point in our company where we had one app for communication, one app for, you know, like our project checklist, another app for employees to clock in. And you know, kind of the hr, it just ended up being like when I, when I was going through onboarding, I remember being, you know, download this app, download this, I've got to create a login. I mean it was 25, 30 minutes of just getting somebody to get an app and downloading and getting them implemented. And then before you know it, it's like drinking from a fire hose for them. You know, it's like, holy, what is this app for? And then I had to create a spreadsheet just to tell people what different apps are for. And it became, you know, overwhelming to me. And then honestly it was one of the meta apps, which is the workplace app where they just like all of a sudden were like pulling the plug. Like August of this year, actually in two months is when meta on their workplace app is like cutting, cutting it off. And they've told people for the last year and a half that that was going to happen on this date in August. And so it just became one of those things where it's just like holy shit. Like I'm, I'm subject, my processes are subject to somebody else in this line of, you know, with all these apps. And I also really was like, why like all of these could be combined and really healthy way. And so that's really where it started. And whenever you get started with a, with a software which I'm just, I'm still a newbie, like I'm just two years into this thing, right? It becomes like I, I, I would have never done it had I not had a personal, another instance of like that arms length transaction. Like I got to meet the guy that owns the software company, I got to show him my office. It was an actual like it just hap, by happenstance came up at the right time. It was almost like God was telling me like hey Austin, if you want to do this, this is your moment, this is the guy. And so it literally became kind of that we just got started, we built out the framework of everything. And so literally what this app does is I call it, it's a project management app. It runs on a lean construction process system. So it manages our activities and to dos it pairs well with the physical whiteboard in an office which we would call our war room, which is our project planning and everything around the operational side of the business. The actual day to day, the planning of future orders and procurement cycle. Like the app helps handle the procurement cycle. It helps handle the to do's that are required. It helps handle all the communication around that I have future aspirations to pull in subcontractors and suppliers and even a homeowner component of it. So that all the communication for any project happens in the app. And it also has AI components touched in because AI is big my market.

I've heard of it.

Yeah, yeah, I've heard of it. But it really is just, it's a project management app. It's not a CRM, it's not meant for sales. It's literally meant for running construction day to day aspects. And it pairs well with our whiteboard which also is like the manual version. And so it's bringing a little bit of the automations, the organization, the data metrics to the whiteboard that is manual and they pair really, really well together. I've actually taught it to at this point 16 other businesses and every single time by week three, four, when these guys have this thing implemented into their business, they're like, what the hell was I doing before? And honestly like I get them started on the whiteboard first, which is the manual piece. It's the easiest to implement but once you got that going, the app pairs nicely with it and then it's just kind of that sticky, you know, like, oh my gosh, like I love this thing and it becomes a little bit, it becomes part of the culture and it becomes part of the day to day operations. It's just I have a board here, I wish I could turn my camera and show you but it's every, everything is sticky and it's how I've been successful, it's what allowed me to get off the tools, it's what's allowed me to become a CEO instead of, you know, the guy that is the owner, operator actually having to do everything. Like I have a team that does a lot of my stuff. So it's, it's given me the tool to be proactive in my business instead of reactive and also, you know, showcasing, hey, I'm ready for the next guy, I'm ready for another, a player, I'm ready to plug in, you know, this role. And it kind of gives me that outline and gives me a modality to keep it all organized.

Love that dude, that's, that's awesome. And probably, you know, an invaluable tool for many contractors in any sort of industry to be able to have a tool like this that just keeps them dialed in. Like we talked about EOS as a, as an operating system and a, you know, a foundational sort of routine of this is how we should do things to make sure everybody's aligned. And it sounds like this app really takes that to a whole new level, which is pretty cool honestly.

Like if, if a viewer watching this is familiar with Slack Company Cam, you know, the base camps of the world or the Monday.com or the clickups, like some of those like management type tools. It has the right pieces of those but it's geared towards construction. So it's, it's chats, it's to do's, it's the organization, it's the calendar, it's the running of your projects, it's the communication about Those the procurement cycle of everything too. And then it pulls in some AI. My marketing team loves it because all the photos, like if you put a photo in a chat at like literally creates like the market. Like you can see a project from start to finish in the app. And my, my marketing team loves it because it makes their, you know, posting easy to do. They don't have to go out and chase content. My guys in the field are actually the ones getting the content from my marketing team. So it's just like it helps pull a lot of the facets together in just running a successful construction business and one that's on the forefront of everyone's mind because you have good marketing and you know, the like 100%.

One last thing I want to touch on. So I love working with incredible people and from day one when I met you, Austin, there was just something about you. I think first and foremost we always got along really well. You're incredibly intelligent, you're passionate about what you do. You know, your team builders brand. I always loved it. You know, it was bright, colorful, clean. You know, it just embodied what I, I would see as how you operated your business right. It was just innovative. There wasn't anything really I didn't like about it. And so it's been great to stay connected. Now you've got this new innovative tool that you're bringing to market and we've got another opportunity where maybe there's going to be a chance for you and I to collaborate. And I'm so grateful that we've sort of reconnected here as well. And the area that we're maybe reconnecting just for everyone's information is really focusing on this space. So Austin and I have a huge passion obviously for the trade space and you know, us looking at, you know, what the opportunity is to help support this market and how can we help these individuals really succeed? The entrepreneurs who are in this space, how can we help them succeed? And we're working on a project, we can't really talk about it at the moment, but it will be to an all new level of the value that we can create and helping support individuals in this space. And I'm so excited to continue to see this across the line. Austin, I know what my answer would be, but what is it that would excite you the most about continuing to evolve into expanding your coaching role and helping support this space?

I have a passion for just like the people aspect of the business and what I struggled with, what I was trying to achieve for so long doing it the hard way was really just like some level of freedom. You know, I wanted. I wanted it for my family. I wanted to be able to spend time with my kids. I wanted to be able to get home at the end of the day and be able to just like, okay, you know, works over here. You know, most. Most founders have a hard time putting the phone down. And I, I do too. But I also, like, can find some moments throughout the day where I get to be 100% with my family instead of I'm with my family, but I'm not there 100% because my phone's ringing because this job's going to shit or my phone's ringing and I'm having an employee issue over here, right? So I've lived that chaos, and I've been able to get out of that in a large way to the point where I actually have time to be able to focus on doing some sort of, you know, coaching and building an app. And, you know, the way I pour into my team today is different than where I was three years ago. Today I get to motivate my team. I get to pull them into bigger responsibilities, bigger roles within the company, and they get excited about that. And I get to help drive that growth by. By working with my people where before I was very customer focused, you know, so now I get to be more internal focused. And I feel like most founders would want that. And that's a level of, like, where I feel my unique ability is and not other founders are going to have that same unique ability. There may be other founders listening to this video that they actually like the trade. They like, they want to do the construction well, maybe they need to find the partner that helps counterbalance what I was to Trevor. And so being through that and actually coaching, that's what most people, when I run into them on the street of, you know, people that I know in this trade space, they want to know about, you know, where I'm going next and how they can get there, too. And so one of the things I find talking to a lot of people about is just that contractor freedom, that lifestyle, that ability to actually spend time with your family. There's so many people in construction that, you know, after five, ten years in the business, they end up divorced, you know, or they. They lose custody of their kids or whatever that may be. I hear horror stories of that all the time. And that's probably other sectors too. But as very heavily men in the space, it's. It's kind of pairing the contractor, the business side, while Also being that alpha male and, and winning at life and leading your family and being the husband, being the father, and just those two things, like, that's that pendulum of, of, you know, if life's going good and you're happy in your family world because you have time there, business tends to go a lot better too. And so I kind of look to bring that package together to help lead men to be not just leaders in their business, but be leaders in their family life too. And when you chase both of those things, you end up living a very fulfilled life. And then happiness pours out of you, your cup is full, and you end up flowing into your team too. And that's really where the long term impact is, is when you can impact the carpenter that's in the field who is maybe really going through a hard time. But, you know, I just, you know, one of my carpenters was having a tough living situation. I literally got on the phone, called a few people off Craigslist, found him a new apartment, and literally moved in within seven days. I was able to do that because that's my focus. I want my people to be happy. And he is so grateful for that. You know, that's just one story of recent. I could tell you dozens of others, but it's. If you're full as the owner in your, you know, marriage life with your kids and at the business level, getting to pour back into the guys that are on your team, that is really what drives impact into the rest of the world. And if you have a team of 10 people, that's 10 lives that you could impact in a really positive way. And to have the freedom to do that is when construction really starts to feel kick ass for me. So that's. That's what it's all about for me.

100% and love that every. Every ounce of that, Austin, and that's, you know, where you and I are aligned is so much around, you know, creating that. That success, that freedom feel where people get to enjoy life. So, you know, just. Just sort of to give a teaser out there, guys, when we're talking about a collaborative opportunity, you just heard Austin share, you know, all of his experience growing a business, you know, successfully building a family, you know, creating a legacy of something to be proud of that. That he's sort of leaving behind. You know, I'm looking at the exact same situation, you know, coaching numbers of businesses on making sure that their financial and accountability piece is right in their business so they have clarity to make informed decisions so that we can transition people into that successful part of their life, getting off the tools. So imagine, you know, the experience of one, financial expertise, two, you know, the experience of working with thousands of businesses and having insights on all different areas of the operational side, marketing, hr, building an entrepreneurial venture of my own, where we've now got 200 plus employees. You know, combining the experiences of Austin and I in a coaching situation where we're collaborating and helping bring value to people in a, in a specific market, it's a pretty powerful opportunity. And Austin, once again, I'm, I'm thrilled and excited, excited to see where we can, we can take this. So more to come on that, guys, but I, I definitely wanted everyone to, to meet Austin today to hear his story. Austin, you've got an incredible entrepreneurial journey. I love your, your component in there of teaching and education and I love, you know, your innovation of bringing new tools into this specialized space in the contractor space and building a life that you're proud of. You know, like that's all what doing. We're, we're all trying to do that and collaboratively, if we can all do it together, wouldn't that be pretty special? So, not sure if you have any last words related to that, Austin, but I'm sure you and I will be sharing a little bit more down the road as we get a little bit further and closer to some sort of launch.

Yeah, absolutely. I think just to wrap that up, it's the balance between life and business. And what good is having an awesome business if you don't have an awesome life at home? And what good is it having an awesome life at home if you don't have an awesome business? And typically those things go hand in hand. And that's what I look to bring to the world, is trying to help balance that for a lot of contractors.

Amazing. Austin, where can people find you right now if they're looking to piggyback off learning a little bit about your business, about you personally, where can they find you?

So everything of mine has the handle of AustinMacGinnis. So on Twitter, on Instagram, I also just converted my, my profile to public on Facebook. So just Austin McGinnis on Facebook and then also Austin McGinnis on LinkedIn. So those four modalities, if I'm posting something, typically goes there, but trying to really, you know, up the game in those, in those spaces. But as you know, consistency is everything and consistency is really hard with all that you juggle. So something that I'm working on and I hit a 60 day run, I actually did 60 days of posting consistently and honestly, it had a lot of opportunities coming my way. I've taken about a 10 day break which has been good. So I'm kind of on little, little sprints with breaks.

Yeah, that's okay. And you know, for someone like me, we do, we do mass sort of content recordings so that you can take the breaks and you can schedule it out. Right. Which is super helpful. Austin, we'll make sure that all of your links are in here. Super grateful to have you in my work world, buddy. I always enjoyed working together in the previous world that we had. Always loved seeing your updates and what you've been up to. Really grateful that the universe has sort of brought us back with some opportunities to collaborate even further. But for all of you who are listening, you know, more to come on this, this has been the Wealthy Entrepreneur podcast with my guest, Austin McGinnis, super extraordinary entrepreneur and definitely a skilled resource for anyone in the trades that we're going to bring to life in a really big way. For all of you who've been watching, thank you for joining today. We're here to empower entrepreneurs to have the financial confidence to make informed decisions so that we can change the world together. There's been an insight that you've seen here today that you feel would benefit somebody. Please copy the link, share it out. We're here to help support everybody. You know this is a free resource. We pour our blood, sweat and tears into this to make sure that we're helping people in any way we possibly can. So if you know somebody who could benefit from what we've shared today, please share it out. Please give us a like, definitely give us a follow. We've got another episode coming out next week and we always want to consistently bring value. If there's comments, questions, drop them in there. We'll make sure that we're answering anything we can. But without a question, we will continue to bring value. So once again, my name is Bob Gover. I'm the host of the Wealthy Entrepreneur. I appreciate you all being here with us today.