184. Get Clear On Your Vision | Brian Kaskavalciyan

At the end of the day, always remember, always remember, your business is a vehicle, a tool, plain and simple. It is a vehicle for you getting what you want from your life. You can create a high-performance machine that delivers success, wealth, and freedom, or, or you can allow your business to drain your wealth and freedom. The choice, my friends, It's up to you. This is the Wealthy Contractor Podcast brought to you by G4 Marketing. Interviews with today's top home improvement entrepreneurs about marketing, sales, money, mindset, and lifestyle. Now here's your host, Brian Kaskavalciyan. Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Wealthy Contractor Podcast. On this episode, you are stuck with just me. And I think this year I'm going to do quite a few of these because I have a lot to say. And I would love to get your feedback. Let me know, do you like hearing from just me? Or do you not want to hear from me and just hear from my guests? So I'm recording this in the middle of March, Q1 is almost over. Next week, we've got our Wealthy Contractor Mastermind groups coming in from all over the country, 24 companies. And I am really excited and can't wait to hear about everybody's progress. Now, one of the things that we talk about a lot is planning. And so, you know, at the end of the year, one of the things that we do with our clients and of course with ourselves in our businesses is we think about next year. We set targets and we make plans. Now, most companies— and by the way, I am guilty of this too back in the early days— for most companies, there's not really a plan per se in place. It's really more about, well, I hope this happens. And by the way, I spoke with somebody yesterday— not yesterday, the day before. And, um, I asked him, well, what are your goals for this year, for 2023? And their answer was not a committed answer. It started off with, we'd like to do this. Sorry, my friends, but we'd like to do is not a committed plan. Now, to me, all success begins with clarity. It's about knowing what we are working towards. And now, you know, as I'm older and I've experienced quite a bit of success over the last few years in business, I look back on how I used to do it when I was younger, and it was that. It was, well, we'd like to do this. And so I wanna talk to you a little bit about that today, and because all of you started off 3 months ago, you know, December 15th, probably with an idea of what you wanted this year to look like in terms of revenue. Hopefully, if you've been listening to the podcast, you also thought, about profitability. For me, you know, when I meet with our mastermind groups individually or in a group, a revenue goal alone is not enough. I want to know how much money do you want to make. I want to know about profitability because we can build a business around profitability. If you've read my book, The Seven Secrets, you know I talk about reverse engineering. People wonder, well, why are you so focused on profitability? Well, I focus on profitability because that buys you time, and the time and money, you know, so not only does it give you money, which is important, which is the point of being in business, but it buys you time. And when you have time and you have money, you have a chance at getting some freedom. And so anybody I talk to about their plans or their goals, I will push them to tell me what the profit number is, but also what it will do for them. I want to know why. Why do you want to make whatever the number is? Call it $250,000 a year. Well, why? How will you spend the money? What will it do for your life? What will it make different in your life? What will you do with the freedom that the money will buy you? And once they've given me a clear and concise answer— and sometimes I have to push people to, to get that— but my next question will be, well, how committed are you to that outcome? So if you tell me you want to make— and by the way, the numbers don't matter, I'm just using an example here of $250,000. I want to know how committed are you on a scale of 1 to 10? How committed are you? Will you do what it takes to make that number happen? Of course, within— I always have to say it— ethical, legal, and moral bounds, right? Now, this question is critical because again, if you've read my book, The 7 Secrets to Becoming a Wealthy Contractor, you'll notice the pattern. You can have a goal for how you want the year or quarter or month to play out. That's your vision. But unless you're 100% committed to the outcome, then it's just a hope or a wish. How do I know? I know from painful experience. You know, people ask me, well, you know, where did the book, the, you know, 7 Secrets come from? And I tell them it was born out of pain, my pain from doing almost everything wrong and making critical mistakes that led to struggle, frustration, and ultimately bankruptcy. I was 40 years old. I didn't understand commitment. I thought commitment just meant showing up every day. It's not. That's not enough. Commitment is the willingness to do what it's going to take to make your goal or your outcome become a reality. Now, one of the most important factors is knowing your targets day by day, week by week, quarter by quarter, and having a team of people around you who are accountable for hitting those targets. No excuses, no blame, no bullshit. In my case, I didn't have an accountability system in place. Way back when, not even with myself. So let me do for you what I do with our mastermind groups using this structure, this structure of vision, commitment, and accountability. So let's start with vision. Vision starts with dreaming about, and I use that word purposely dreaming about what your life can be, what you want it to be. So here are a few questions to get you started with creating your vision. What if you made 2 times, 3 times, 5 times, 10 times what you make today in income? How would you spend your time? How would you spend your money? Who would you spend your time with? Who would you spend your money with? How much money do you want to make this year, next year, in 2025? Really sit down and figure out what it will take for you to live the life you want. Just throwing out a number, say again, using $250,000. Well, I want to make $250,000. it doesn't mean anything. Yes, it's a nice number, but without having any meaning behind it, in and of itself, it's not very motivating. But if I know that I'm going to be able to upgrade the house I live in, the cars we drive, how we travel, where we hang out, then it gets exciting. If I know that I'm going to use, let's say, $150,000 to fund my future wealth account, that's clarity and that's exciting. The next piece is commitment. So now that you've got your quote-unquote number, it's likely a bigger number than you're used to. This is a good thing. It should be uncomfortable. The thought of upgrading your life should be a little uncomfortable. That's how you know it's the right goal. Now you've really got to ask yourself if you are going to be willing to do what it takes to bring that reality about. It will likely mean that you'll have to do things differently than you do them now. It will likely mean that you'll have to spend your time different than you do now. It will likely mean that you will have to work on yourself as a leader and as an entrepreneur. It definitely means you will have to become a master of the numbers of your business. You'll have to create a real plan that is broken down by quarter, by week, and by day. So in order to hit your, you know, Q1 target or your Q2 target, We have to do X amount of revenue per week. To do X amount of revenue per week, we need to sell and install Y number of jobs. To sell Y number of jobs, we need to issue Z number of leads. Not only this, but you'll also have to manage your gross profit and your advertising budget and keep a grip on your overhead. The beauty is you don't have to do all of this in one year, by the way. I like to set 3-year targets because you can work them back. So let's say that your vision or your target number is, say, $500,000. Well, you're not going to go from, you know, making $100,000 this year to all of a sudden you know, going to $500,000, but in, in one short year. But you can definitely do that in 3 years. Regardless, you've got to begin developing yourself as the leader of a company that makes a significant enough profit for you to become wealthy, whatever that means for you. The third piece here is accountability. Accountability. I learned about accountability through EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System. I wish I had understood it 20 years ago because I let so much stuff go. You might think you know what accountability is. But my guess is if you're not getting the results that you want to get and the outcomes that you want to get and making the money that you want to make, you don't understand accountability. Accountability is basically responsibility as a team, whether your team is one person or it's 100 people. This is what we are committed to as a team. So these are the results we are responsible for producing. Again, quarter by quarter, week by week, day by day. Our plan tells us what must happen. For example, again, X amount of revenue, Y sales installs, Z issued leads. And every week we've gotta meet and make sure we are hitting our metrics. In EOS, we say, are we on track or are we off track? If we're off track, we've got to address what needs to happen immediately for us to get back on track. So as I'm recording this, we are in the middle of March. Q1 is just about over. I want to know if I'm— if my goal for this year was, again, I'm just throwing a number out, $5 million. All right, and this quarter we've only done half a million so far. We are way off track. I want to know about it now, and I want to start working and solving the problems now. I don't want to wait until the end of the year and say, well, you know, we wanted to do $5 million, but we only did, you know, whatever, $3 million. You know, too many people wait until it's too late to do anything about it. And so when you have this meeting week by week, you know exactly where you are. We on track or we off track? This is, by the way, one of the most powerful aspects of a system like EOS. Now, accountability is a team sport, but make no mistake, it must be militant. You have to be militant. I can line up every one of my most successful clients regardless of the size of the company, and I will point you to a leader who is militant Don't be reluctant about results. If your plan calls for 40 issued leads per week this quarter in order for you to hit your goals, and the person who is responsible or accountable for that result comes up short this week, it is an issue to be solved today, not a month from now, not a year from now. If you show up 3 weeks in a row and you have not hit your targets and thrown everything else, chances are good you won't be around next week. By the way, again, this is the thing I didn't understand about accountability way back when. One, I didn't give people, you know, targets that, hey, we have to hit this number every single week. And then if they didn't hit that number every single week, I wouldn't do anything necessarily about it. I kept people around for way too long. There was really no consequence for not hitting your numbers. At the end of the day, always remember, always remember, your business is a vehicle, a tool, plain and simple. It is a vehicle for you getting what you want from your life. You can create a high-performance machine that delivers success, wealth, and freedom, or, or you can allow your business to drain your wealth and freedom. The choice, my friends, It's up to you. It's your choice to make. I say it all the time. You work too damn hard to settle for poor performance. You provide a valuable service to your community and you should be properly compensated for it. So as you are thinking about Q2, as you're thinking about the rest of 2023, and beyond, stop and think about your business as a vehicle and think about what you want it to do for you. Get clear about what that looks like. Get excited about the life you will live when your business works for you and begin your planning from there. All right, so that's a wrap for this episode. I hope you got a ton of value out of it. If you don't have a copy yet of my book, The 7 Secrets to Becoming a Wealthy Contractor, you can get a free copy at thewealthycontractor.com. Thewealthycontractor.com. I'll send you the book. You just pay a small shipping and handling fee. All right. So hope this, again, hope this was of value to you. I'm gonna do quite a few more of these. Reach out, let me know if you like this or you don't like this, and, or if there are any topics that you want to hear about. You can reach me through thewealthycontractor.com. And till next time, this is Brian Kaskavalciyan with G4 Marketing Group, and this is The Wealthy Contractor Podcast. Thanks for listening to today's episode of The Wealthy Contractor Podcast. Let me ask you, did it help you look at your business in a different way? Did it spark an idea or ideas that you hadn't thought of before? Do you have a list of action items that you can take and implement into your business or your life today? I really hope so. If it did, I'd like to ask you a favor. Would you leave a 5-star review of the podcast? By doing so, you'll help other contractors find the podcast more easily so that we can help them achieve more success, wealth, and freedom. And before you go, make sure you subscribe to the Wealthy Contractor Podcast so you get access to the latest episodes as soon as they're available. We're always striving to provide you with great content, so you don't want to miss what's coming up. In fact, if you haven't already, make sure you go to thewealthycontractor.com and get your free copy of my latest book, The 7 Secrets to Becoming a Wealthy Contractor. Just pay shipping and handling, and I'll take care of the cost of the book. And finally, a big thanks to G4 Marketing for sponsoring The Wealthy Contractor Podcast. For over 12 years now, G4 Marketing has been the secret back office relationship marketing team for hundreds of home improvement and home service businesses just like yours. You get the customer and our proven system turns that customer into 5-star reviews and profitable repeat and referral business. If your home improvement or home services company completes at least 10 jobs per month, they have a solution that will work for you. To find out more, sign up for your free, no-obligation, 10-minute discovery call at www.gfourmarketing.com/strategy. That's gfourmarketing.com/strategy. Set your discovery call up today and they'll help you set your business up for long-term profits and success. So until next time, this is Brian Kaskavalciyan.