From Tradesman to Entrepreneur: Andrew Houston’s Business Journey Part 3

If you don't know who you're trying to find, whether it's fishing or hiring somebody, your chances of getting what you want is pretty rare, okay? If you're trying to catch a tuna out of the lake that I'm on right now, it's never going to happen. There's no tuna in my freshwater lake. How to keep them? How do you keep your A players? Now, here's some reverse psychology, guys. Which one's the most important one? Is it finding? Is it attracting? Is it landing? Is it keeping?

What you'll find. When you really get this dialed in your marketing on attracting the right people, you will have the wrong people want to be part of it because it becomes exciting and they want to be the A player. But maybe they're not.

If they can't show you in 30 minutes or less how they can more than double what the fee is within the span of no more than 60 days, then you're talking to the wrong people.

All right, so here we go. Guy comes to me says, hey, Andrew, want to go fishing? So, yeah, okay, cool. What do you want to fish for now, guys? Why is that so important? How does this got to with hiring guys if you don't know who you're trying to find, whether it's fucking fishing or hiring somebody, your chances of getting what you want is pretty rare, okay? If you're trying to catch a tuna out of the lake that I'm on right now, it's never going to happen. There's no tuna in my freshwater lake.

Yeah, you can fish all day long. So you need to know what is it you're trying to find and where are they? Because working really hard at fishing for tuna in my lake, guess what? Is going to give you zeros all day long. No matter how committed you are, no matter how hard you're going to work at it, no matter what where you go on the lake, it's not going to work. So you need to know where to find them. So ask yourself, do you know where to find them? I gave you a major direction on this. Your competition is one of the best places. But who are you trying to find? Why? Because if you don't know who you're trying to find, you cannot speak the language to attract them. What do you mean, Andrew? Let's say you did pick a fish that's in my lake and you and I go head to head. Well, I'll tell you what. If I know how to catch walleye and I'm using the right or in the States, maybe Called pickerel or whatever. Okay, Pickerel, walleye, same thing. Okay. It's a fish type of fish and I know what kind of lures to use and I know what depth and I know what time of day. And you're just going to go out and randomly use anything out of the fricking tackle box. Guess what? Odds are almost guaranteed I'm going to kick your ass all day long. Why? I know where to find them because I know who it is I'm going for. Number two. I know what lures to use so it attracts them. Okay. Any you fishermen out there or not, you don't use a musky lure that's almost the size of a fish for walleye. It'll scare them away. Now, it's good for muskie, but it's not good for pickerel. Why? Because it's the wrong lure. It doesn't attract them. So you need to know how to track them, how to talk their language and their pain points. Okay, number three. Okay, so find, attract. Now you're going to land them, you're going to get the phone ringing, you're going to get the emails. You got the fish come the right fish, the pickerel coming right to the boat. Can you get them in the boat? What do you mean? Well, just because they knock on your door, which is, I guarantee is going to happen, if you do not have a process that backs up everything else to get them to want to work for you, that there's actually an interview process that gives them confidence. You get them to get a tour, you get them to meet some of the guys, you get them to feel this culture that you've got, then you're not going to land them. Guys, this is like fishing. Isn't this interesting? Oh man, I'm fishing for muskie. It's a 40 pound fish. I forgot the net. Well, good luck getting that thing in the freaking. In the boat or duna. Oh, I'm just going to reach down and grab it. What? You would think you were crazy if you saw a fisherman doing that, right?

Absolutely.

But yet this is what we do in fucking business when we're hiring somebody. Now what's the last one? The last one's the most important. How to keep them. How do you keep your A players? Now here's some reverse psychology, guys. Which one's the most important one? Is it finding, is it attracting, is it landing or is it keeping? I'll give you the answer. It's keeping them. It is keeping them. If you cannot keep your A players don't worry about finding, attracting, or landing. And let me tell you something. Your best source of finding, attracting and landing is your current A players. A players hang out with A players. What? Yeah, they do. Do thieves hang with good people if the good person knows that they're a thief? No. Well, guess what? A players don't hang out with D players. Why? He's a dogger. This is a worker. This guy has pride in what he does. This guy doesn't give a shit. These two in the trade world, they do not like each other. As a matter of fact, I've seen it get like this in the trade world, okay? Even myself dragging a guy off a job site. Because we don't do it like that, guys. Notice the principles in life are being applied to the principles in hiring. You want to find a good friend, you want to attract a good friend, you want to land a good friend, you want to keep a good friend. Well, there's some common sense principles with those things. Isn't it funny? But if you can't even keep any classic, right? Or spouse. If you can't keep your spouse happy, you can't keep the kid. You can't keep your friends happy. Don't worry about finding more. The best, like, everybody's probably listening is going, holy fuck, this makes sense. Yes. So what do you have in your business that's actually systematic, that has a structure that guarantees that, that you know, this works in a flow and that you keep your A players, guys. So there you go. That's what the book's about.

I want to jump in on one piece of your analogy just so that I can play in the fishing game. Here's the thing. Sometimes when you know where to fish, you know what you're looking for, you know, the depth, you know, the right bait, right? You throw. You're looking for a muskie, and you throw at the muskie lure. Every now and again, you're going to get a perch or a bass, jump onto that lure, and that's okay. But that's part of identifying that, hey, that's not necessarily what we're looking for. And, and one of the things that we'll find, guys, as you pinpoint this, and honestly, recruitment is like, that is. That's my baby on my side too. So, Andrew, I can completely appreciate why you've got so much passion attached to this because people are so important to our businesses, right? Like, we need those A players. And, you know, these people are the people that we spend the majority of our time with. Like We've got to make sure that these people are creating the right environment for us too. Right. So what you'll find when you really get this dialed in your marketing on attracting the right people, you will have the wrong people want to be part of it because it becomes exciting and they want to, they want to be the A player, but maybe they're not. And so you might find that you have to sift through a little bit more. You got to take the perch off the musky lure. But you know, as long as the musky lure is in, in the water, at the right depth, at the right time, looking for the right fish, you will eventually land them. And sometimes you have to be a little patient with it because there are going to be some other fish that are maybe excited about what you're trying to do. So anyway, that was my little contribution to your analogy. And then the only other part that I would add in is, and this is what we're finding now, Andrew, and I'm sure you're seeing the same thing between land and keep. There's that time where you know, we're landing this new tradie, this new A player, this new foreman, this new estimator, this new hands on laborer that is just ready to grow as an individual. We give them an offer, they've, they've found the bait, they've been attracted, they've come in, they're excited to be part of what we're building together, right? And then they go back to their job site, we've accepted an offer, they're ready to move, they go back to their job site and shitty CEO who's got chaos everywhere says we're going to be better, we're going to change, we're going to create opportunity for you, we're going to get, we're going to match their salary, we're going to do all this. So there's a gap now that I feel needs to be a focus area between the land and the keeper that has them showing up on their start date between land and start date, that we have to show them some love. And I'm sure everybody who's listening has experienced, oh, we had this really great candidate, we signed them up and they never showed up because their employer, their former employer said we're going to change, we're going to do this better. We know you, they know like trust. That person doesn't have to take a leap to go into something unfamiliar. We just need to do a really good job. And that's part of Andrew formalized The terminology to be onboarding that needs to be starting at the time that you make that offer, that onboarding needs to start, connection needs to happen. We need to get them the hell out of that workspace and into ours as fast as possible. And you know what? The A players are going to be the ones who say, we're going to give them extra time because we don't want to burn any bridges. We want to help them. We don't want to leave them stranded. They are the good. The good people. And then we want those people to do the same to us, right, that treat us with that respect. So we have to really focus. I had this experience. I've had this multiple times over the years, right? Our team's about 200, and we just hired a manager with 12 years experience. Excellent, excellent candidate. Hired her. I did the interview, which I normally don't do, but I was excited about her, got her excited. Sign the offer. She was coming in. She was supposed to start. It was three weeks. She was supposed to start on the Monday. We had got close to the three weeks. We got a notification that she rescinded her acceptance. She was going to stay immediately. And this is maybe just a secondary piece to this. I needed to do a better job there. I needed to do a better job making connection, making sure that she felt she was part of our team. You know, that three weeks, we lost that, and she decided to stay. And so I called her immediately and I said, okay, what's the situation? Well, they said they were gonna change. They were going to give me this opportunity. They were gonna do this. And so I went back and I said, well, what was it that attracted you to us in the first place? And we went back through it. She's like, I know, they convinced me to stay. And I was like, you can stay, but I'm still committed to all of these things. This is still the firm with the values that you are wanting to be part of. And at the end of the day, she went back and she. She did join us and she left there. But. But there's a gap, and that's not, you know, I'm not going to win that 10 out of 10, to be honest, like that, that typically once they make that commitment to stay, they're not coming back. But we just have to do a really good job in that gap to not lose that connection from, hey, we're really excited. They're going to sign on, they're going to come over. And then all of a sudden it dies off and they're like, oh, shit, buyer's remorse. And just like every sale, right, Andrew? Right. Like you, you go through, you know, we meet with, with our prospects, whatever business that you're in. You talk about the excitement, the value you bring to your contract, to your projects. The person gets excited, they sign a contract. If they don't hear from us between the time that we sign that contract to the time we show up, their excitement drops off and they're like, oh, shit, did we make the wrong decision? Are we paying too much? Should we be getting quotes other places? We have to keep that connection and that energy high, otherwise we lose people off the back end. So anyway, totally.

Well, I got something to say on that.

Yeah, please.

So for those of you that are into marketing, you know what I'm talking about when I say this. And if you don't, I'll just give you what the definition of this is. In my definition. What we're talking about here is the value journey. Okay? So in marketing, they call the value journey, which is as soon as the person sees a piece of your content, what value? From the point that they, whatever their first point of contact, come across you to the point of where they become a client. Well, the onboarding, the. From a. Now I'm getting deep here, but just, you know, this is why this works. The onboarding actually starts at the find. Okay? So you, if you properly lay out your value journey, you're never going to get 100 bob. You're absolute right as far as people like committing. But one of the greatest ways to reduce that, you know, towards elimination. Towards elimination is to make sure you have your value journey mapped out. Not just for marketing sales, but in essence, when you're trying to hire somebody, you're actually marketing and closing them is a form of sales. So you want to define what your value journey is from the moment that you're finding them to the moment you're attracting them, to the moment that you're landing them and that moment in between. One of the greatest factors that makes people follow through with you is how well they believe they see themselves in your story, in your journey. So that's where you have to really emotionally connect with these people. So when I use the analogy, or not the analogy, I said, you know, you want to get somebody, come in and meet some of the team players. You want them to be part of the story of them thinking, man, this is so great, I can't wait to work here. Okay, if they just meet you and don't meet the rest of the team, if they don't experience some form of culture, they don't come to some form of an event. Let's say all the guys, I'm just using example, let's say nothing. I shouldn't say guys, but say the team is going out for pints at the pub. I guarantee you this, you will increase significantly your percentage of people going from the land to keeping them. If these, let's say it's tradies and you invite that person out to the pub, I swear to God. Think about this. If they're coming out and having a pint with you and the other team members, they have, you know, shooting the shit. Not just talking about work. Hey, you guys got kids, you got family? Now they become part of the story, the part of, they see themselves as part of this culture in this community. What Bob talked about earlier, about why it's so important to reach out as an owner and be part of a community, well, guess what? As a team player, they want to be part of a community as well. Hardly any companies do that. Why do you think Google guys, think about this. These guys have mastered some of this. Why do you think they have huge cafeterias, food is free, they have all these events. Why outside of work? Because it's community. What do they got in there? Got pool tables, guys. Yeah, I've seen it. Right, right, true, right. They got ping pong tables. Why? Because having fun at work now doesn't make you feel like you're at work. And people are like, man, I want to be part of that. They have family get togethers. But when you come into an environment like that and you're working at a place that has none of that, when they come to you and the, you know, when that current employer says, hey, I'm going to give you this. When they experience something that is magical that they cannot see themselves experiencing at the other place, beyond money guys, the chances of them sticking is massive. Hopefully that helps. Bob.

I love it. No, I completely love it. And you know what, guys? So here's the, here's the deal, right? Everything Andrew and I have talked about, this is why you invest in working with people who have this knowledge and experience. Not only have we lived it, but we live it through our clients and all those people that we're supporting as well. And we continue to invest in learning how to help solve those problems if we don't have a solution as well. And that's, you know, that's the expertise, the wisdom of the coaching and the consulting side and then the community and the collaboration of Everybody else. Andrew, I created this slide. I've been doing a lot of speaking this fall, as many of my listeners will know. And I've been doing some presentations in the accounting world and in the bookkeeping world on leadership and what it means to build a team and how to build a team. And one of the slides that I put on when I'm not dealing with accountants is what the dream team is. Right. So what the entrepreneurial dream team is. And I'm gonna say that both of us are on that dream team. I usually say it starts with a good bookkeeper, right up to date, accurate financial information so that you have insights. The cfo to make sure that you're getting those insights and turning it into strategy. Financial strategy.

Yes. Yep.

Number three, which. Which some of these, like, could all be wrapped into one, but I have them separated, obviously, to talk about what we do. Third one being that tax expert, to make sure that you're minimizing your tax exposure and that you've got the right structure and you're protecting your family. And then the fourth is the business coach. Now, we would have shared today, you know, a lot of. A lot of this sort of goes from, okay, here's the. The first three components are. Let's get the numbers right, let's interpret them, let's make sure that you're protected. And now the business coach can take that information and say, okay, great, you've got the foundational piece in place. Now we can analyze this and give you the systems and structure to accelerate your business and help you in those areas to improve your sales, marketing, recruitment operations, even finances. Helping with all of those to say, okay, great, foundation is taken care of. Now let's talk about scaling, optimizing, growing. And that is why, you know, when I look at the dream team, it involves these groups, and it is so powerful. And once again, Andrew, I'm so grateful for our collaboration, you know, in the past, in the future, because us coming together is just exactly what business owners are going to need in order to get to the next level and to become that champion CEO. And. And lastly, I'll say. And I'm sure you've got some insights on that too, guys. You know, to work with an. Andrew, I think everybody's been working with an accountant to some sort of fashion. Get a good one, though. Like, get a bookkeeper that's not your aunt or uncle or spouse, to be honest. Like, not to say that they're not good bookkeepers, but, hey, you're on the same schedule as them. So if you're trying to go on holidays, they're going on holidays. You know, it doesn't necessarily always work out. There's some financial strain that goes in there. Just get somebody who knows exactly what they're doing, can give you the insights that you need. Make sure you're working with an accounting firm or a tax group that knows exactly how to help specialize in the contractor space, how to optimize structures, protection, compensation, whether it's the use of family trust or whatever. Don't be cheap. Right. And I would feel like so many. We do a lot of fixing, right? We do a lot of fixing. So get that group right. And then looking at the coaching, this coaching is an investment. And Andrew, I think to work with you at profit for contractors, it's 30, 30,000 a year, right? 2,500amonth. And so guys, listen, if you have a problem with investing $2,500 a month, you've got major problems beyond anything that, that you need to get over that first. Okay, so here's, here's the thing.

Well, and just say something though. I just want to say there's other, there's other, there's other entry points as well. But yes, that one of the, one of the, one of them is. Yes, that.

So, so let's look at the maximum level investment and say 2500amonth gets you the community, the coaching, all of the systems and resources around all of the things we talk sales, marketing, recruitment, finance, all of that. Now to get and free up $2,500 a month. If you're working with a good tax person or a good bookkeeper, they can likely free that up for you to invest in yourself to grow. And so like again, dream team here. You need to be willing to invest in yourself though in order for you to get out of the chaos that's that you're dealing with in the day to day. And you need to open up your mind to investment because if you do the same thing over and over again, how are you going to expect to get a different result? Look at Andrew Proffer, contractors, other coaching groups that are maybe specific. If you're not a contractor and you're in the salon business, I've got Jason Everett, really great working with salon owners.

He's a rock star.

Yeah. And find your community and your value coach that can help you solve the problems and do exactly what, or demonstrate that they've done this, they've helped people, they can help you. That 20$500 a month investment is going to be the the least of your worries because you're going to 10x that every single month by implementing a few small new skills or tips. And I lastly, I'll say this. The coach that Andrew and I worked with, where we met 10 years ago, okay? And this is. Guys, I think this is important. I think we were paying like $70,000, $80,000 a year, Andrew, on that. And it was a monthly coaching. It was in. In the coaching space. Guys, I'm a cpa. I was in there to help understand and learn from the coaches. Okay. I was trying to gain knowledge and insights on the coaching industry. And I got to connect with a lot of the coaches who ultimately ended up working with me in many different ways, which was great. That was part of it. But this $80,000 a year, I was part of this for 10 years because I didn't want to not commit to it, knowing that if I got one thing out of it, it was going to 10x that investment every single year. And, you know, one of those takeaways that I got was connecting with Andrew and working with profit for contractors and, you know, financial collaborative opportunities aside, the impact that we've been able to have together was well worth that investment 10x over and over and over again. So, you know, it's not going to just be the quickest financial. It's going to be the one thing that you can implement every month that's going to be worth way more than twenty five hundred dollars a month that you don't want to miss in taking your life and your business to the next level. And rant for me, but as you guys can tell, both Andrew and I are extremely passionate about this. We love the people that we serve. And what we really want is to make sure that everybody has the best life and is as successful as they can be. And we want to give them everything we can to get them there.

Got it. You know, and you know, when you guys are talking, if you guys reach out, whether it's here, BFC or with Bob and his team or anywhere else, I have a little filter, fast thing for you guys to think about to see if this person is the right fit for you. If they can't show you in 30 minutes or less how they can more than double what the fee is within the span of no more than 60 days, they you're talking to the wrong people. And I'm not just talking about things that you might be like, oh, I thought about that. I'm talking about that's a paradigm shift where you're like, oh my God. I never looked at it that way. I never saw it that way. So if they can't show you that in 30 minutes or less, time for you to move on. Okay? Because Bob and I could look at your businesses literally in a way less than that. For me it's probably less than 10 minutes. And if I can't show you a way to at least double what the fees are, I won't even let you in.

Because you know why? Because that means you're not the right fit. Because I'm not here to make you have cash flow issues neither spot or have profit issues. Like that's part of our filtering. Like you get chosen into what program is the right fit for you. Okay. From a financial perspective and from a mindset perspective, little hint, do not come to PFC pointing. Everybody else is the blame. That call will not last long. But if you're willing to go, I'm here to grow. I'm here to actually learn things and be beyond better than what I am today and evolve as a champion CEO and actually tangibly look at things that are going to have an impact. Well then, yeah, then you should raise your hand for Bob or I or both. But if you're sitting there going, I can figure this out on my own, I'm sorry to say, you're going to have to learn it the hard way. And hopefully it doesn't cost you a marriage. Hopefully it doesn't cost you not being a great dad. Hopefully it doesn't cost you your life or long term illness notice. I didn't mention about the business, guys. Yeah. And the other side is, hopefully it doesn't cost you just a life of an invisible prison fucking sentence. Because working 80 hours a week in most cases less than what you're paying your guys is fucking insanity. And it doesn't need to be that way no matter what business you're in. So like I said, you know, Bob asked me when I was 20, what was the thing? Put your pride aside, okay, and think about yourself and all those around you to actually go, hey, I need some help or I need to at least have a conversation to see if there's something there that can actually help me. Okay? So there you go.

I remember my, my first coach. His name is Rob Nixon. Andrew. He was also in that coaching community where we connected. He's a beautiful, beautiful human. And I remember and sort of this is just tying in this last piece, guys, because I know we've, I've sort of beat the coaching piece to say drum. Yeah, yeah. Like, you've got to consider it and you know, I'm going to let it go. But man, you know, if you really want to grow your business and scale your business, you've, you've got to invest in yourself and, and find the people who've done it. You know, that would be my number one thing, I would tell myself, find the people who've done it and work with them to help you get there fast. When I was working with Rob, early, very early, I started coaching and investing in coaching the year I started my business, which was 2008 and he was in Australia. So his time zone was a mess, but it didn't matter. He was the best. He has done what I wanted to do and he's been incredible for me along my journey and we're great friends now. Although he said I've grown out of him being able to coach me because I don't fit in his market anymore and he hasn't worked with 25 million a year companies. But, you know, he still gives me the insights of, you never, you never lose those foundational components of, hey, you know, here's the efficiencies of how to do a job faster. Whether I'm 25 million or a million, those things still continue to come back. So, like, I disagree with him. I think he could still coach me. But anyway, one of the things that Rob said to me that hit me and struck me so hard, in fact, I think it was put out in our marketing this week was if we don't share every way that we can help support our clients be successful, then we're doing them a disservice. And his intention was to say, hey, if you offer multiple solutions, make sure your clients know about them. And the reason that I'm pushing, you know, the concept of coaching so much and Andrew, I've, I've dragged Andrew through the rocks on getting deep on some of these coaching. Elements of it is because of how much I believe that that is really the key element to taking your business to the next level. And I want to just be certain that I've done my duty of making sure that everyone understands the importance of coaching and the financial foundation that you need in your business. Guys, this is the key, so I'll let it go there, but I wanted to just give the context as to why I went so deep on it because it's so important that you guys understand this is a way that we can help you. And I don't want to have the regret of saying I didn't really Offer everybody every way that we could serve them and help them succeed. So that was me doubling down. But Andrew, this has been such a pleasure, my friend. I have, I have not done a podcast with anybody that's getting two hours long and I feel like we're just scraping the surface and we could have probably done a full day long session today because we, you know, again, our collaborative expertise in this space I think is so powerful and what you have built with profit for contractors is incredible. You should be extremely proud of that. It's always a pleasure to collaborate. I hope we get to collaborate for years and years to come. And unless you have anything, last words here. Happy to end this off here, but once again, thanks. I appreciate your time.

No, thanks, dude. It's been awesome. Appreciate, you know, everything we covered off and hopefully the listeners, you know, guys, just my last thing and then I, I gotta run myself. Is this. Listening is a great thing, okay? But it's what you do with it, you know, and, and here's my little analogy in this. I've had many people being surrounded by CEOs or others will say, especially, let's just focus on the owner side of things, how many books they've read. Like, what's this got to do with anything? It has a lot to do with it. It's not about how many books you read. It's about how you apply the principles from what you read that's valuable. I would rather read one book like the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People or this book or Bob's book a hundred times and haven't changed my life, then read a hundred books and not change anything. So, guys, take the podcast. Take something, not all of it, one thing, do something with it. You know, even if it's. Forget about, you know, whether it's coaching or not, but just take one principle test and go, holy shit, this works. Now you're making progress. Now you're growing. But listening to another 50 podcasts, not doing anything with it. What a waste of time. So make it happen, guys, and that's it. I'll see you in the flip.

All right, thanks everybody. This has been the Wealthy Entrepreneur podcast. I'm your host, Bob Govreau. It has been a pleasure to have you here today. Once again, Andrew was incredible, sharing his wisdom, expertise and honestly, probably a dozen different tactics that you could implement in your business now that will make a difference and make an impact. If there's something that you heard today that you feel, you know, we talked about tradies, hanging out with tradies. You know, if there's something that you're hearing today that you feel would benefit one of your colleagues or someone that you know, grab this as a voice, voice note, send it to somebody. We are here to ensure that we're maximizing our impact on supporting business owners to financially succeed and ultimately make a positive change in the world. So please do that. Leave a comment. If you have any questions, drop it in here. I'll answer it. I'll reach out to Andrew. We'll get you connected, make sure that you're leaving those. We want to make sure that we're addressing anything that, that we can help support you with. And lastly, give us a follow. Give us a like as you can tell, this is probably going to be a multi part series, probably broken into three because we don't want it to be long for people to digest in a single episode. So we'll do this over the next three weeks, but we release an episode every single week and I want to make sure that any insights I can bring will be to you in your inbox. So give us that follow. But once again, the pleasure to have you all here. It's an honor to host the Wealthy Entrepreneur podcast and I look forward to seeing you guys next time.

There you guys, that's it.