194. What It Takes to Go the Distance | Brian Kaskavalciyan
Brian Kaskavalciyan lays out four pillars for contractors to build lasting businesses: Vision, Commitment, Capabilities, and Accountability. He breaks capabilities into People, Process, and Profit, arguing that hiring A-players, building repeatable systems, and maintaining financial discipline separate contractors who go the distance from those who burn out.
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When you have a clear vision of what you want to achieve, of the results that you want, that's what brings about the resources that are going to help make that happen. There's awareness of, oh, I need this. 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, Brian here. So today's episode is my opening presentation from our annual event Accelerate Live from February of this year. You'll notice this episode is much longer than most, so there is a lot to unpack here. Our theme at this year's event 2023 was Going the Distance. So you'll hear some mentions of Rocky. Take your time, and as always, thank you for tuning in, and I hope you get a ton of value from this episode. By the way, I haven't asked you in a while, but would you please do me a favor and drop a review of the podcast wherever you listen from, whether it's Apple or Stitcher or Spotify, wherever? I'd really appreciated. So thank you again, and let's get to it. Let's jump into this. Got a lot to cover. So, uh, as you may be able to tell if you've been here before, I'm a little bit of a Rocky fan. And as I was starting to put this together, um, I have this book at home, this big giant Rocky book, and I came across this quote in the book from Stallone. He said, "When the idea came to me for Rocky, I was pretty much stuck in the basement of future potential." I'm like, "Whoa, that's an interesting line." The basement of future potential. Potential can sometimes be a little bit of a bitch. Going nowhere fast, driving with my brakes on, what I concluded for myself was that me and many others simply want a chance to be the champion in our own lives, providing— this is a funny line— providing a worthwhile existence during our brief stint on the planet. To get a chance to take the shot, one shot, no matter what the odds, to see if we have what it takes to achieve our elusive dream. If we fail, so be it. At least we got the chance. This guy— does this remind you of anything? This reminds me of our journey as entrepreneurs, doesn't it? Give us that one shot. Let us take it. If we fail, so be it. Most of us have had some level of failure, some of us spectacularly. And what do we do? We get back up and we do it again. And so that got me thinking about our journey as entrepreneurs. And is anybody familiar with the hero's journey? It was made famous by a guy named Joseph Campbell in a book called "The Hero with a Thousand Faces." So the hero's journey is very interesting. The hero's journey is basically Every great story throughout history has followed a certain framework, if you will. And this guy Joseph Campbell laid it out and he called it the hero's journey. And, um, what's interesting about the hero's journey is in a lot of ways it's our story as entrepreneurs. So, The hero's journey, and by the way, you are the hero of your story. By the way, by the way, I also happen to believe that you entrepreneurs are the heroes in our society. Who creates opportunity for others? We do. 70+ percent of new jobs are created by who? You guys. So to me, you guys are the heroes. But you're also the hero of your own story. So let's walk through the story. Let's go on this journey. So it starts with— Discomfort. It starts with not being happy with where you are. So a lot of you started either on the sales side of the business or you started on the install side of the business. And you got this idea that, hey, I can go do this. He calls it the call to adventure. So you got the call. You're unhappy with something. You were dissatisfied with something. Whatever the reason, you got the call and you started on that entrepreneurial journey. So the next thing that happens is generally there's a little bit of resistance. In the Rocky story, I'm going to go back and forth between you and Rocky story. So Apollo Creed, the fighter he was supposed to fight, got hurt and he had to replace him. So what does he do? He goes through the book of local fighters in Philadelphia and he says, "This guy." And then they go to Rocky and Rocky thinks they're offering him a gig to spar with the champ just so he can warm up. But no. Hey Rocky, you're going to fight the champ. What does Rocky say? Says no. A lot of times when we get that call, there's resistance there. How many of you waited a while before you started? From the time the call came to when you started, There was resistance. There was a little bit of fear. There was a little apprehension. Maybe the people around you didn't believe in you, but at some point you believed enough in yourself to go to the next level and you started. The next step in the process is meeting a mentor. For me, for me, It was 19— I want to say it was like 1995. I'm in this little hotel-like conference room. I meet this tall, dorky-looking dude with like this Fu Manchu mustache and a perm named Dan Kennedy and became my mentor for years and years. But not only that, live mentors. Like Rocky had Mickey, could be the books that we read, could be seminars we attend, it could be other people that we meet. Mentor doesn't necessarily have to be Mickey. It could be somebody we meet for a minute or two, it's a book that we can interact with. Then an interesting thing happens. It becomes real. You start getting— phone starts to ring, you start to go out there, you start to sell jobs, install jobs, collect money. It's called crossing the threshold. So what's interesting is now, up until this point, we were in what is considered the normal world, the world we live in up to that moment. But when we cross the threshold, we go into an unknown world, something we don't know. It's new to us. How many of you went into business knowing exactly what you needed to do every day to make the phone ring, to convert that sale, to get that job installed, to get paid and to make money? Not a lot of us. So when we cross that threshold, interestingly enough, for Rocky, it was when he saw himself on TV. He saw himself on TV and realized, "Oh crap, this is real. I'm fighting this guy." Right? The next part of this is called trials and failure. Trials and failure. Who in here knows a little something about trials and failures in business? All of us, right? We get beat up, we make mistakes, we do it wrong, wrong. But that leads to growth, leads to learning, leads to the next step. It's generally painful. For Rocky, it was getting up at 4 o'clock in the morning, cracking a few eggs, starting to run. Interestingly enough, did he make it up the stairs the first time? Mm-mm. He wasn't ready yet. And he needed the mentor. He needed the physical and the mental training so he could make it up the stairs, so he could prepare himself. That's what you guys are doing here, aren't you? You're here for new capabilities. This is training, learning, growing, finding what works and what doesn't, developing new skills. The next step is interesting. He calls it death and rebirth. It's very dramatic. Death and rebirth. For Rocky, it was when he realized he got up to the top of the steps and he realized, "OK, I'm ready. I can do this. I can do this. I can get in the ring with this guy." For you guys, it's what? Selling system starting to work. I can hire salespeople. Marketing is working. Phone's ringing. I'm hiring people. This thing's starting to work. I'm starting to make a little money. Death and rebirth. Then comes the revelation. Then comes the revelation. Now, interestingly enough, the revelation is different for all of us. In Rocky's case, it was going to the arena the night before the fight, walking around, looking around, walking the streets, going home to Adrian and telling her what? "I can't beat him." In fact, he said, "Nobody's ever gone the distance with Creed. And if I can go that distance, if I can go that distance, and that bell rings and I'm still standing, I'm going to know for the first time in my life that I weren't just another bum from the neighborhood." That was success for him. He defined success for himself. That was the big revelation. By the way, just as an aside, most important scene in the entire movie. They didn't want to put it in. They were out of time, they were out of money. He fought them to keep that scene in. It's the most important scene in the movie. And this is where he talks about going the distance. So that's the revelation. And then there's the change. Then there's the change. Remember, we're still in the unknown world here. This is all new. Had the revelation. I can do this. It's working. I can make this happen. I've got new skills. I'm changing, I'm growing, I'm developing, I'm getting better. New resources are coming along. New people are coming into my life. I'm getting better. I'm getting good at this. But there's pain there too. But there's pain there too. But it's your willingness to go through the pain. That's what sets you apart from everyone else. For Rocky, it was still standing at the end. In fact, he even knocks Apollo Creed out in one of the early rounds. Nobody had ever done that before. Gave him confidence. It's like, "I can keep going with this. I can do this." Just like you guys in your business. Things starting to work. I can do this. And then the next part there says you get a gift. What's the gift? The gift is confidence. I can go back into the normal world. So why going the distance? Why do we have going the distance all over this event? Because as entrepreneurs, we're constantly being tested. Can we generate enough leads and appointments to meet our targets? Can we convert enough sales? Can we maintain our pricing models to our desired gross margin? Can we maintain our net profits? Can we hire the right people? And on and on. How many play this every day? Whack-a-Mole. I got it figured out. Damn it, another one pops up over here. Now I got to go take care of that one. Just as I got that one, I got to go over here and take care of this one. Whack-a-Mole. We're constantly being tested, and not just in the business. We're also being tested mentally, emotionally, and physically. Will I battle through emotional and physical exhaustion? Will I battle the demons that challenge me every step of the way? Do I really have what it takes? To make my dreams come true? Has anybody ever had that thought run through their heads? I have. Will I be able to go the distance? Will I be able to go the distance? Going the distance, by the way, is different for everybody. To your next 2 days. I'm going to take you on, hopefully, on a little journey. And I think to successfully get through this journey, I think we need a few things. I tried to keep it to 3. 3 is the magic number. I'm giving you a bonus. I'm giving you 4. 1 is vision. 2 is commitment. 3rd is capabilities. And fourth is accountability. These are the 4 areas that I want to help you with over the next couple of days. Now, those of you that have been here before, which seems like it's a lot of you, you know, it's like drinking from a fire hose. A lot of information is going to get thrown at you. But here's the deal. None of us can implement 100 ideas. You're looking for 3, 4, 5 really good ideas that you can take out of here and go and execute into your business, implement into your business. The 3 to 5 things are, that are going to have the biggest impact on your business and your life. What we don't want is— I don't want you taking piles and piles of notes, getting home, putting them on your desk, saying, okay, I'll get to that. What happens? You never get to them. So the more focused that you can be— and I did send out a prep sheet for this. Hopefully some of you used it. But I basically said to you, think about the 3, 4, 5 things that you want to get out of Accelerate when you are here. So when you come in, you're here with intention. Now, something else. Somebody asked me, I always, I actually always get this question about Accelerate. Well, what's going to be different this year? This year. And I always roll my eyes to myself. And, uh, depending on who it is, I debate on whether or not I should say this, but I'll say it to all of you. I could come up here and deliver the exact same thing, word for word, slide by slide, year after year. And it will be just as impactful for you this year as it was last year. You know why? Because you ain't the same as you were last year when you were sitting here. What you heard last year was what you needed to hear last year. What you heard this year is going to be a little different. Even though it may be the exact same material. Now, it's not the exact same material, but there are certain fundamentals of this business, and we're going to talk about them over and over and over again. We may put a different skin on them, but the fundamentals don't change. That's why they're fundamentals. Okay? So you may have heard some of what you might hear before. Consider it a reminder. Okay? We have a lot of really good stuff here for you. Now, in order to get the most out of it, when you hear what's going on up here, you want to suspend disbelief. You don't want to be, "Hey, that may work for them, but that's not going to work for me. I already know that. That'd never work for me. They don't understand my market. My customers are different." Hate to tell you, they probably ain't. And your market probably ain't different either. I love this line. I love this. I think I got this from Curry, but I'm not sure. I stole it from somebody. It's what you learn after you know it all that really matters. So be open-minded here for the next couple of days. Make no mistake, you are here to shop. You're here to shop for ideas, strategies, tactics, resources, and tools. A lot of that you're going to get from up here on stage. There's a lot of it that are in your workbooks. You're here to shop for strategic partners. That is all the good folks that are outside. And you're here to look for strategic relationships. There's a lot of really good people in this room, a lot of really smart people. Talk to them. Don't run away at breaks. Be here. Be present. Meet new people. You never know who you might meet. That might be able to unlock something that you've been stuck trying to figure out for months in a 3-minute conversation. It's not about working harder and longer. It's about working smarter. It's about looking for shortcuts. Yeah, shortcuts get a bad rap. But they're available if you're looking and you're open-minded. One of the things about everything that we do at The Wealthy Contractor with our events, the podcast, the mastermind groups they know well, you may not like what you hear. You may not want to hear it. It may make you uncomfortable, but know that it's coming from a place of love and respect. Tough love. Tough love is telling you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. Every one of the speakers that is here is here for you. Is here to serve you. We're not here for us. We're not here for our egos. We don't get off by telling you, oh, you're wrong, I'm right. It's not what it's about. There's no need to be right here. It's about being helpful. So if you hear something you don't like, if you hear something that rubs you the wrong way, know where it's coming from. You want to see what tough love looks like? Tough love. Not always what you want to hear, but if you're open, it might be what you need to hear. So as Mickey says, I hope that by the time you leave here tomorrow, that you're going to Eat lightning and you're going to crap thunder. All right, so let's get into the 4 things that we want to help you with over the next couple of days. First is vision. Vision. So the great Muhammad Ali said, champions aren't made in the gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside of them. A desire, a dream, a vision. A vision is what is going to make you a champion. In Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill says this: There's one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants and a burning desire to possess it. The knowledge of what one wants and a burning desire to possess it. I'll often ask people, why did you go into business for yourself in the first place? I mean, look, business becomes all-consuming sometimes. You're so far in it, you don't know how to get out of it. And so sometimes we need to be reminded of why are we putting ourselves through this? What was it? What was our dream? What did we think was going to happen? When we went into business for ourselves. For a lot of us, it was about freedom. I want to be free. What does that mean? Well, I want to make a lot of money. Well, what does that mean? I want to control my time. What does that mean? I want to be able to live my purpose. Well, what does that mean? So you have to be reminded, and we have to think about it. It's really important to realize that your business is just a vehicle. That's it. We make it to be something so much more than that. People get super emotional about their businesses and they start making decisions from emotion rather than from logic and knowledge and experience. If you do this business right, it'll give you all the things that you dreamed of, whatever those things might be. But in order for it to do that, you gotta be crystal clear about what you want from both your business and your life. Now, in business, you don't have a great vision, how are you going to surround yourself with great people? Because your team is looking to you for leadership. They want a big vision that they can get behind. That's exciting. And just making more money is not a very exciting vision. But you have to determine what that vision is for you. When you have a clear vision of what you want to achieve, of the results that you want, That's what brings about the resources that are going to help make that happen. There's awareness of, oh, I need this in order to get here. And if I don't know what the this is and where I'm going, how's it going to show up? By magic? By hope? By prayer? Sorry, those aren't very good business strategies. A lack of clarity leads to distraction, chaos, confusion, and indecision. I see this a lot. Jack Welch said this great quote: Good business leaders create a vision. Articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and I love this, relentlessly drive it to completion. Look at that again. Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, What is that? Articulating the vision means selling it. Last year I talked about a client conversation that I had and he was talking about the vision for his business. And I asked him, I go, besides you, who else in your company knows about this vision you have? What was the answer? Nobody. So how are they going to help you get there? How are they going to get excited about all of the work they have to do to help the business get there? Articulate the vision. Passionately own the vision yourself. Live it, breathe it, and then relentlessly drive it to completion. I love that word, relentlessly. To what does success look like for you? Let's pause here for a quick break. It's that time again. We're calling all the top home improvement business owners from around North America to join us at Accelerate Live 2024, happening in Orlando, Florida on February 6th and 7th. Start 2024 with the tools, resources, and relationships you need to have your best year yet. You know, I'll only bring you the best speakers with the most up-to-date strategies and tactics so you won't be stuck having to figure it all out on your own in 2024. Regardless of your current level of income, if you are really serious about accelerating your success, your wealth, and your freedom, there is one event you can't miss. Accelerate 2024. Discounted pricing is available for a limited time, so if you want to save big and secure your spot, go to www.accelerateevent.com. That's www.accelerateevent.com. Make sure to enter coupon code Wealthy24 at checkout to lock in the lowest price. Don't put this off until tomorrow. This event is sold out in each of the last 4 years, so grab your seat today. Remember, this event is 100% guaranteed to be profitable for you on day 1, or not only do you get your money back, you'll get $1,000 in cash. So don't wait, go to www.accelerateevent.com and secure your spot today. Now back to this week's episode. So by the way, you know, when I meet with clients and we sit down and they give me a list of things they want to discuss with me, typically like, you know, well, let's talk about marketing, or let's talk about selling, and oh, let's look at my P&L, let's look at Invariably, in almost every single case, it goes back to this: What does success look like for you? How much money do you want to make? What do you want your life to look like? I mean, we can do— we can figure out all the marketing stuff, we can figure out the sales stuff. But if we don't know what you want and what the business looks like, how are we going to design all of that? You think you need 100 leads a week. Maybe you don't. Maybe you only need 40. Clarity. So this is in the 7 Secrets book, but, and I'll run through these real quick, but what do you really want? How much money specifically Specifically, do you need to make so you can live your ideal lifestyle? How much total wealth do you want over the next few years? If you had control over your time, what would you do different than you do today? What are your goals outside of the business? What are you working towards outside of the business? How much time away from the business do you want to take to pursue whatever other ventures you want? What do you want for your family? And then do you want stuff? Do you want a boat? Do you want a car? You want a plane? Is Scott in here? You want a plane? No. Your business exists to fund your ideal lifestyle and give you the freedoms you need to live your best life. Say that again. Your business exists to fund your ideal lifestyle and give you the freedoms you need to live your best life. If it doesn't do that for you, how in the hell do you expect it to do that for anybody else? My favorite answer to the question is, well, what do you want for your business? My favorite answer, and I've heard this not once, by the way, I've heard this 3 or 4 times over the years. Something about, "In my community, I want to provide jobs and a good living for people," and blah, blah, blah, blah. You know what my question always is? How's that going for your family? Is your family living that way? No. Don't you think maybe your family should live that way first and then you can figure out how to do it for all of these other mystery people that aren't even here right now? This is the whole thing with the airplane. What do they tell you to do? There's a drop in cabin pressure, the masks are going to drop. What do they tell you to do? Put it on yourself first. How are you going to help anybody else get rich or make their dreams come true if you haven't been able to figure out how to get rich or make your dreams come true? Your business exists to fund your ideal lifestyle. So, are you clear about what your outcomes are? Of what that looks like for you. So, a few years back, I created this exercise. I say, let's start simple. Let's start simple. Tell me, how much money do you need to make in order for you to live your ideal lifestyle? I came up with this exercise. I call it the 4 Numbers Exercise. Very creative, right? It involves putting 4 numbers together to get 1. This is in your books. This is in your— by the way, I've tried to do better with page numbers. You will see up in the corner a little yellow box with a number in it on some of the slides, and that'll tell you where in the book you can get it. But just for now, just listen. Trust me, it's in there. Okay. 4 numbers. By the way, this changed my life. I was stuck at a certain income level and I couldn't get past it. My goal was 4 times that number. And I was doing all the stuff and the head stuff and the mindset stuff, and I was doing all of that. Wasn't unlocking until I figured out how am I going to use that money that I want to make. I had no idea. It was just a number. So I broke it down into these 4 categories. I said, okay, lifestyle. How much money do I want to make? Or do I need to make in order to live in the house I want to live in, drive the cars I want to drive, travel where, how I want to travel, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, send my kids to whatever school they want, you know, all that. How much money do I need every month in order to make that happen? Number. Then, okay, how much money do I want to put away towards future wealth? Number. How much do I want to give? Number. And then, how much money am I going to need to pay off debt, liabilities, and/or cover taxes? Number. You add them all up, and you got one big number. So now we got a number to work towards. By the way, this is an exercise I do with people because it's like, how much money do you want to make? Well, I don't know, I'd like to make $300,000. All right, well, how are you going to spend it? Well, I don't know. Well, figure it out because you ain't gonna get there until you figure it out. So how much will it cost you in money and time for you to live whatever your version of your best life is? By the way, everybody's number is different. Everybody's number is different. Doesn't matter. The only number that matters is yours. And then Once you do that, now you got to put a really strong why next to it. Why? What will that do for me? How will this make my life different or better? You got to feel it in here. We're going to talk more about this tomorrow when we talk about implementation. How do you feel it here? Because if it's only up here, Oh, it's tough to get there. It's so tough to get there. You got to feel it here. So that's vision. So as you go throughout the 2 days here, think about your vision for your life and your business, your future. What do you want that to look like? The next thing is commitment. Commitment. I'll often ask people, how committed are you? How, I mean, really, how committed are you to making all of this happen? Because it ain't easy. How many of you in here think that, oh, my business is so easy to operate, like so easy? Yeah. I haven't met that person yet. Even for the guys here that, that, you know, in our groups that are running EOS like we are and have integrators and they have a whole team. Is it easy? It's easier. But you gotta be committed. You gotta be committed to making your dreams come true. It ain't just gonna happen. I'm sorry. I wish there was a magic way to make it happen. There isn't. Now, commitment has a process. Commitment starts with the desire. It goes to a decision. Once I've got the desire, now I've got to go make a decision. Once I make the decision, now I get committed. And once I make that commitment, then I've got to live as if that result is coming to me. I have to live in expectation. And then, and only then, do you have a chance at that outcome showing up. Now, of these, what is the most important piece of this? It's the decision. The decision to be, do, or have something different than what you have right now. Because once you make that decision, and you got to ask yourself, am I going to be willing to do what it takes to make this happen? And then you go to commitment. There are bridges here. From desire to decision is one bridge. That's that If I make that decision, that means there is no going back. I am only moving forward. There's no squirming my way out of this with excuses and blame and whatever other stuff. Okay? There's another bridge between commitment and expectation. That's a tough one. Because what that requires is behavioral congruence, meaning that if I make that decision and I commit to this outcome, that means I better live my life according to that. I better behave as if that outcome that I desire is on its way to me. I can't be back here. Remember the normal world and the unknown world? I can't expect to be the, the, the leg breaker for the loan shark and be the champion of the, the world. Can't. So I've got to live my life congruent My thinking, my beliefs, my habits, my actions have got to be congruent with what my desire is, with what I want to get. Now, when you make your decision, now you're going to need a plan, right? Here's how most people plan. You guys have seen this before and you're going to keep seeing it over and over again. You know why? Because people that have seen this 3 and 4 times still come sit in my office and I ask them to see a plan and it's this. How much did you do last year? We did $3.4 million. Great. How much money did you make? Well, inserting excuses for bad behavior here. What do you want to do for next year? What's your goal next year? "Want to do $5 million. Why?" Insert all bad reasons here. A better way, to me, is to actually engineer your success. Work it backwards. Think about creating A plan that's actually based on real numbers, on a real vision, and on a really strong why. Then we figure out the size of business we need, and then we plan it that way. We figure out how many leads we need, how many sales we need, how many people we need, and we go and we build that business. Now, part of commitment is you got to be willing to do the hard things because what got you here will not get you there. One of the hardest things to do in this business Somebody asked me, I was at an event a couple weeks ago and somebody asked me, Brian, I'm at, I think they were at like a million, million two, and they said, Brian, what does it take for me to get from a million, million two to 2 million? And this was a new group for me. I didn't know this person. I said, do you really want me to tell you? Yeah, I really want you to tell me. I go, you got to stop selling. Got to stop selling. So for some people, they think that, well, I'm willing to do the hard things. I'm willing to go and run 3 leads a day. I'm willing to work 6 days a week. I'm willing to stay up all night and do what I have to do. That's not hard. It's just very labor-intensive and exhausting. You know what's hard? Building a selling system, implementing that selling system, learning it yourself so that you can then go and teach it to someone else so that you can create leverage so that you can build a business that works for you. That's the hard things. And in order to really do this, you got to take control over lead generation, selling system, your customer experience system, your pricing, and your margin, and your finances. What this requires— and again, we talk about this in the 7 Secrets book— is you got to take responsibility for every outcome that comes to you. No excuses, no blame. I learned a long time ago, do you— if you want any measure of control of your life, you have to take responsibility for every outcome. For every action you take, you have to take responsibility. Responsibility equals control. Control equals responsibility. So how committed are you? I mean, like, really, how committed are you to creating the business of your dreams? Because without commitment, success is virtually impossible. Commitment always starts with a decision to be, do, or have something different than what you have today. And for every goal, you've got to ask yourself, am I willing to do whatever it takes— of course, within legal, ethical, and moral bounds— am I willing to do whatever it takes to make this happen? Because if you can't answer that question yes, then guess what? I say let that goal go. Because if you can't get 100% committed to it, why beat yourself up over a goal that you can't get. Whenever we set big goals, you will be challenged along the way. You will be challenged. You will face resistance. Your faith will be tested. Your commitment is what will help keep you moving forward. We're going to talk more about that tomorrow as well. Okay, so here is the big one for you guys here over the next couple of days. Capabilities. Capabilities. That's what you're really here for, is to learn new capabilities, discover new capabilities, meet new people that can help you execute these capabilities into your business. Now to me, capabilities will all fall under this framework. Oh yeah, there you go. There's a page number. What is that? 21. So this is something I created a few years back. I call it the, the Wealthy Contractor Success, Wealth, and Freedom Framework. It's wrong? Is it really? What isn't it? Well, geez. Sorry. All right, well, just— you don't need the book right now. Just pay attention. So in this— model framework, that is you right there in the middle, right? What you want from your business is time, money, and freedom. And to get these freedoms, your business has got to be organized around these 3 fundamentals: people, process, and profit. People, process, and profit. Okay, people is all about who, not how. People is about putting in the people that you need in order to get where you want to go. People, uh, somebody that's in charge of marketing, making leads, somebody that's in charge of getting sales done, somebody that's in charge of production, getting jobs installed, and on and on. It's about surrounding yourself with an incredible a team of people who share your vision, are accountable to your vision, and are driving to get there. They're committed, they're aligned with you, and they are working with you to make that vision a reality. Some things to consider with people. Who are we? Who are we? This is all the culture conversation. Who are we as a company? What do we stand for? What are our core values? Where are we going? What's our vision? Is it an exciting vision? Is it something that people will get behind? Is who we are and where we're going going to attract A players? Because I'll tell you what, I am surrounded. I am so fortunate today to be surrounded by A players. God, what a difference it is. Because I'll tell you what, my entrepreneurial journey did not always include having A players. Anybody relate? I had a lot of Bs and Cs and quite a few Ds. A players, are we accountable as a team for results? By the way, winners, A players, love being held accountable. They love it. They thrive on it. Tell me what the goal is. Tell me what we need to hit. They love it because they want to win. That's who you need to surround yourself with. By the way, it's all— it's not always about skills. You can teach them the skills. What you can't teach them is attitude. Right? So there's a lot going on now. In the industry about not necessarily hiring for skill, but hiring for attitude. Big question too is, can we pay top dollar? Can we pay top dollar for talent? You got to set up your business so you can. I mean, you're going to hear from a number of speakers here that they wouldn't have gotten where they got if they weren't able to pay for good talent. A couple of things to look out for. A couple of things to look out for. Some flawed thinking. So, God, this is— I've heard this more in the last probably 7 or 8 months than I have in the last 3 or 4 years. But I keep hearing this idea of, I'm going to hire this person. For example, like the most common one is a sales manager because this person is going to solve all of my problems. I call it looking for a savior. I hate to break it to you, probably don't exist. They're very difficult to find. Don't look for a savior. Have a process, have a system. Find somebody with the right attitude that you can train, Show them what success looks like and then drive them to that. Don't look for somebody that's going to come in and set up a selling system for you and then go and hire all your salespeople for you. Don't look for someone that's going to come in and generate every lead that you could possibly need starting next week. They're unicorns. But here's the ironic thing about it. Even if that person was sitting in front of you, more than like— I told somebody this the other day. I said, they were talking about a sales manager, and I told them straight out, I go, a good sales manager, the person you're looking for, will never come and work for this company, meaning your company. Never. Not enough opportunity, no systems, too much work, too much heavy lifting. They'd rather go and work for the O'Learys. Why? Because when they go work at the O'Learys or at Herbert Roofing or at, at, at, uh, RGS, or, you know, a bunch of these companies, Jer's company, John's company, Mark's company, They're walking into systems and processes and accountability. They're going to walk in and they're going to be able to take their talents and take that to the next level. They ain't going to come and work for your little company that's got none of that and no way to pay them what they really need to make. I'm sorry, that sounds harsh, but it's what you need to hear. Don't go looking for a savior. It's a waste of time and it's a waste of money. In this day and age, you got to offer benefits, PTO, performance bonuses. That goes back to having the money to be able to pay for top talent. Not having a clear and exciting vision. You got to be able to— you got, you got a good person, you got an A-player sitting in front of you. You better be able to sell them on a great vision, something that they can really get excited about. You don't have that and you are not clear and you are not living it. They're going to run. They're going to run. And the other thing here with people is you've always got to be recruiting. You've always got to be looking out for that next person with the right attitude that you can bring in and put them into your processes and your system and teach them and develop them into a leader. You can't go looking for people. If the last few years has taught us anything, is you cannot wait until you need somebody to go hire them. You've constantly got to be looking. The next piece is process. Process. Process is about creating reliable, consistent, and predictable results in your business. Processes have to be replicable, they have to be measurable, and we've got to be able to constantly tweak and improve them. We need processes for generating leads, We need processes for converting leads to sales. We need processes for installing jobs, for getting paid, for developing customers for life. We need systems. We need processes to make this happen. The, the cool thing about a process is when you spend time to do it right or good enough, because sometimes good enough is good enough. To the point where it creates a predictable and profitable result, now you can create a benchmark. We can build a business around benchmarks. We can plug in proper probabilities into the equation, and then we can grow. Processes can be created, they can be bought, they can be ignored. But inconsistency, erratic results, random acts of execution, no rules will all kill good processes. And I see this every day. Charlie's going to talk a little bit about this when he talks a little bit later this morning. Only when you have reliable, consistent, and predictable results can you scale your business. This is why people that through pure muscle and hard work get to a couple, $3 million in sales, and then they say, well, I'm now, I'm going to go to $5 or $6 million, and the business goes completely off the rails. Why? There's no process in place. It was all done through muscle. It was all done through effort. There's no consistency. Every salesperson is doing their own thing. They got their own presentation. It's shocking to me how many companies I talk to. I ask them how many salespeople they have. 3 salespeople. What, what, what? Tell me about your selling system. Well, really? So they just go out and do whatever they want. Yeah, but it works. They're selling. Oh, great. Bet you if I look under the hood, it's a different story. Wealth, security, and independence are created— sorry. Through systems, not labor. Look at that again. Wealth, security, and independence are created through systems, not through labor. So this is that whole argument of, well, we'll just work harder. Okay. It's only going to get you so far. You're definitely not going to get to the money you want and the freedoms that you want through labor alone. By the way, let's talk real quickly about equity. So how many of you heard about this thing called private equity coming into the home improvement business and starting to buy up a bunch of companies, right? Okay. So it's attractive. It's like, oh, maybe they'll come and buy my business. Well, not likely unless you can demonstrate to them that you've got a system that predictably and reliably and consistently and profitably generates leads on a daily basis. Unless you can show them that you've got a consistent and reliable and predictable and profitable selling system that converts at prices higher than your competition, that you've got a production system that creates raving fans and lifetime customers and a system that produces a 15 to 20% net profit. Now, can you get acquired on less than a 15 to 20%? Yes, you can, but you're going to get a better deal at a higher net. Okay. Just a little bit about equity. So process considerations. Can this process be taught? Can we replicate and repeat this process over and over and over and over again? Can we measure the efficacy of this process? Can we rely on this process to deliver predictable and consistent results? Can we continuously tweak and improve the results of this process? Can we get better? Now, fortunately for you guys, right outside those doors, there's a whole bunch of companies with a whole bunch of capabilities and processes that you can just plug right into your business without having to go figure it out yourself. In front of you, there is a sponsor map. These are your partners for your success. Don't ignore them. Go and talk to them. They will help you get where you want to go faster. That's the name of the game. Let's talk about profit, the third piece. Profit. So your profit, I think, and I've said this for years, 10% to me is like breakeven. 10% is like breakeven. There are too many companies. I heard a statistic. Yoho did a a survey sometime last year. 41% of companies in this industry, 41%, earn a pretax net profit of 3% or less. Really? You guys went, ooh, like you got sick in your stomach, didn't you? That's how I feel when I hear stuff like that. It's like, God, you guys work way, way too hard. You take on way too much risk and liability to only make 3 points. By the way, that's why I'm not impressed by big companies anymore. I used to be. I'd see people at events and, "Yeah, Brian, we did $20 million last year. Brian, we did $40 million last year." I used to be like, "Oh." Wow, you must be rich. Until I got under the hood. Ooh, it's a mess. I'll take a $5 million business with a million-dollar net all day over a $20 million business that has no idea if they're making money or not. All day long. Profit is not something that can magically be added on at the end. You know how many people actually, like, believe that? We'll just add it on at the end. We don't need to plan for it from the beginning. It's just going to happen. No, it's not. No, it's not. Profit is the fuel of a business. To have a high-performance business, you need high-performance fuel. You gotta make money, because if you don't make money, how are you gonna pay for all the things you need? Because you need a lot of things to make this business work. How are you gonna pay for it? You gonna go into debt? I've been there and done that. I went bankrupt. It's stupid. I don't let any of my— our mastermind members Ooh, the word debt comes up. It actually doesn't even come up anymore because they know how I feel about it. No, you're going to grow through cash flow. You're not going to take on debt. I did that. It's stupid. It means your business doesn't work. Want to make a lot of money? Understand the math and the economics of your business. Get your pricing right. You gotta measure, you gotta track, and you gotta report every number in your business. You gotta make a plan, create a scorecard, and work that plan. We, when we adopted EOS, and a lot of our mastermind members, and I know a lot of the, the people here in the room use a system like EOS. Doesn't have to be EOS. There's other ones out there. I know Patrick, who's going to be on a panel later, uses a different system. I know Mark uses a different system, but have a system with a scorecard, with accountability, because you got to hold your team accountable to results. Profit is not something that's magically added on. It's the little things that we do every day. That are going to make your business profitable. It's about understanding how the money works in the business. It was shocking to me, shocking to me when we started doing Accelerate. I've started— I've talked about profitability since day one at this event because it was shocking to me how much people were not making money in this business. Finally, I ran into somebody who was a friend for a while, but then we started to talk And we realized nobody teaches people— well, I shouldn't say nobody. There are, there are some people out there that teach how to make money. I know CCN does it, but there's really like, there's these consulting organizations out there that say they're going to help you make money. They don't teach anybody how to make money. So I partnered up with Mark. I just saw Mark, he left. Mark Curry. And we started to put on a profit workshop. We've done 2 of them. We're going to do another one this year. To actually teach people how to make money in this business. The numbers you got to know. You got to know your material cost. You got to know your labor cost. I know this sounds dumb, but you know how many people don't know these numbers? Material cost, fully loaded labor cost. You got to know your gross margin. You got to design your business around your gross margin. You got to know your fully loaded marketing costs. You got to know your sales expense. You got to know NSLI. You've got to know your overhead. You've got to know your net profit. If you're in business today, if you're in business today without a firm grasp on your financials, you're being irresponsible. Because how will you know how to price jobs? How will you know how to make any money so that you can do all of the things that you need to do in order to build and scale your business and to attract the people that you need and blah, blah, blah. When looking at a P&L, you only have 100% to work with. By the way, don't do the math because I just realized that I didn't fix it this morning. One of the numbers is off, but you only have 100%. Okay? So if you want to make a 15% net profit, And guess what? You can only spend 85% of your revenue. You want to make a 20% net profit? You can only spend 80%. How do you spend it? How does that line up? There's different formulas, but you only have how much? You only have how much? 100%. There's no 110, there's no 115, there's only 100. And by the way, by the way, some of you are sitting out there saying, God, I don't know how the hell could I ever— Hi, Justin. How could I ever make 15%? How could I ever make 20%? Well, I'm not going to do it now, but if you want me to, I'll line them up in front of you. I'll line up all the people I work with and the clients I have. They're at 15, 20%. By the way, a couple of them are over 20%. Okay. But 15 to 20% ideal. Here's some flawed thinking as it comes to profit. If we just sell more, we'll make more. Who's been given this advice? Oh, just go sell more. Horrible advice. I tell people more often than not to sell less so they'll make more. More often than not, I will tell people sell less so you'll make more. That is not always true unless you've got all the other stuff working, right? Then you can. If your profit model is broken at $2 million and you don't do anything about it, guess what? It'll be broken at $5 million, it'll be broken at $10 million, it'll be broken at $20 million, and on and on. Too many people in this business think, well, if I just get to $10 million, just $10 million, as if that's like easy. If I just get to $10 million, yeah, this will all get worked out. I'll make a boatload of money. No, not if you didn't figure out how to make money at $2 million. No, you won't. We'll make it up in volume. Always remember, revenue for vanity, profit for sanity. Now finally, aside from people, process, and profit, there is, I think, what I call the ultimate capability, and that is personal management. Management of self. Do you have clarity? Do you have focus of, of where you're going? Do you have self-discipline? Do you have mental toughness? Do you have behavioral congruence? Are you working every day to protect your confidence? That to me is the ultimate capability. And we're gonna talk more about that tomorrow. And then finally, we've got accountability to self and to others. So I ask you in your business, Who in your business is accountable for results? Who is accountable for results? Who's accountable to putting the number of leads on the board that we need every week in order to hit our sales targets? Who's responsible for sales targets? Who's responsible for installs? Who's responsible for finance, for collecting the money? Who is accountable in your business for those results? Somebody needs to be. Ideally, it's not you. Ideally, but you can work towards that. So that's in your business. But who holds you accountable? You know, as entrepreneurs, a lot of times we're on an island. We're by ourselves. That's one of the beauties of having a mastermind group. Is that you're not alone. You're not on an island. You have other people that will hold you accountable. You have other people around you that will say the tough things to you. You need somebody that's going to hold you accountable. And in a lot of cases, that somebody's got to be you. Look in the mirror. This is all about personal management. And the question is, how much time are you spending there every week. And again, we're going to talk a little bit more about this tomorrow. So over the next couple of days, I hope that we can help you get clear on vision. We can help you confidence to commit, that you'll learn a bunch of new and discover a bunch of new capabilities and relationships. And you'll figure out whether you're going to hold yourself accountable or maybe you'll have somebody else that could do it. But think about how am I going to develop accountability in my organization and in my life? But above all else, but above all else, tomorrow I'd like you to leave here with more confidence. In the industry, the current environment, and in your own ability to live your best life. Okay? And with more clarity on creating your ideal business. I think an ideal business for all of us makes more and more money, cash, creates more and more wealth, creates more and more security for you, for your family, for your team. Provides more and more independence, freedom for you to pursue whatever it is that you want to pursue in your life. And it does all of that predictably, month in, month out, year in, year out. Okay? So on the road to success, wealth, and freedom, you have two choices. Here's one. Anybody guilty of this? I did it for years. Or you can follow proven formulas and models. The business is very predictable. Now the bad news is there is no easy button. Sorry. And it ain't going to get easier, by the way. Over the next few years, it's going to be interesting. You will have to decide whether you're willing to do the right work. You'll have to be open-minded and willing to get uncomfortable. You will have to decide if you're going to use these formulas or continue to do things your way. It's up to you. But now the good news is you're going to see many of these formulas over the next couple of days, and you'll have the opportunity to meet and interact with people that are successfully using these formulas, and you will have the opportunity to work with some of the same partners as they are. I got a great lineup of speakers, amazing lineup of speakers. Here's what I want you to do. We had created the card, but it didn't make it here. I'd like you to go in your books and tear out one of the notes pages. Okay? Go and tear out one of these notes pages and put it right in front of you. Put it right in front of you. There's going to be plenty of opportunity for you to ask questions. There's one panel that's happening this afternoon. There's another panel this after— or tomorrow afternoon. And you're going to have plenty of opportunity to ask some really cool people questions. When something comes up, when you hear something, you've got a question, Write it down so you don't forget. Write it down so you don't forget. So when the opportunity comes up and we have the catch boxes and we're throwing them out, you guys will be able to get your questions answered. Don't be shy. What do I do with the clicker? Here we go. So back to the journey. So you are the hero of the story. Now, what's great about the story, by the way, is when you go the distance, when you return back to the normal world, you return changed, transformed. What happened to Rocky at the end of that fight? Do you think— well, we know the rest of the story because there was Rocky II and III and IV and V and Rocky Balboa and Creed I and Creed II, so we know the rest of the story. But if we didn't, would you say that at the end of that fight, Rocky was a different person than he was in the beginning? Would you say his life was going to be better? Because of what he went through, the journey that he went on. So when you go the distance, when you come back transformed, you have a new vision, a new commitment, new capabilities, and new accountability to yourself. Most important is to yourself. And above all, you have a new level of confidence. In yourself. You believe in yourself more. Look, no one's going to make you successful except the person you see in the mirror every day, right? So when you go on your journey and you come back and you go through all of this, you can't be the same person again. You just can't. You've learned too much. You've gone through too much pain. You've picked up too much along the way. You've had success, you've learned, and now you've come back to guess what? With your new vision, with your new commitment, with your new capabilities, accountability, and confidence, you start a new adventure, but not as the same person you were. This is what's exciting about this. This is what's exciting about learning and growing. Too many people get stuck. They don't learn, they don't grow, they don't pick up a book, they don't go to workshops and seminars. You know how many other people were invited to come to this thing? You guys showed up, right? That says a lot about you and who you are. You're open to learn. You're open to grow. So back to Stallone. "There's a point where reality sets in when you've talked the talk." This is Stallone talking, by the way, this is not Rocky. "There's a point where reality sets in when you've talked the talk, but can you walk in front of the world? Are you really ready mentally?" Do you really believe it in your soul? Are you ready to go the distance? So if you're ready, say, I'm ready. Again. Awesome. 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.
