Brian Elias - Ep. 50 - Start Off Everyday Like You’re Broke

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.

All right, everybody, welcome to the Wealthy Contractor Podcast. This is Brian Kaskavalciyan with G4 Marketing Group, and this This is actually episode number 50 of the Wealthy Contractor Podcast. And quite frankly, between you and me, I had no idea it would get this far. And I thought, you know, I'm gonna do something a little bit fun with this one. And I thought what I would do is I would bring back my very first guest from episode 1, Brian Elias from 1-800-HANSONS. Brian, are you there?

Hey Brian, how you doing today?

I'm doing good. Thank you for, uh, for coming back. So I, I told Brian this the other day. It's kind of funny when me and Brian go anywhere, it's Brian and Brian, but you could tell from our voices which is, which is which. But I was telling Brian the other day that his podcast episode is actually the number one most downloaded episode. There was a while there where one of my episodes, where I was actually by myself, was beating that episode. It crept up on it and then it surpassed it in number of downloads. But now Brian's is the, you know, episode 1 is the, the most downloaded episode in the whole Wealthy Contractor Podcast. So that's kind of cool. So I thought let's have him back on because whoever knows Brian, you know Brian's always got a lot to say. He's got a lot to talk about and it's always good stuff. So, uh, with that set up, Brian, putting you kind of on the spot there, for anybody that doesn't know who you are, why don't you give everybody kind of the, the 1 or 2 minute backstory on Brian Elias and 1-800-HANSONS?

Well, when I was a kid, my mother and father thought one of two things was going to happen. I was going to get really, really rich, or I was going to be in jail. And I realized that I had to do things right. I was actually selling pots and pans out of the trunk of my car. I would pull up into places, buy them from a wholesaler, and then sell them to consumers. So I got really used to getting rejected. Because obviously more people said no than yes. And once you learn to accept no and learn how to turn those nos into yeses, you can make a whole lot of money in this business. People think that when people say no, there's, you know, there's a reason behind it. And it's really— the only reason is they haven't gotten enough information to make them say yes. And I realized this early on, so I started working for a window company, knocking on doors, and the customers of course would say no, and I would turn it around and get them to say yes. Example, um, have you thought about doing the windows at some time in the future? And most of the customers would say yes. Then I would say, well, it couldn't hurt to get our price while I'm here, could it? And then I would literally knock myself in the door, and that's how I started. And I've been doing it ever since and training the same principles that I learned way back when, and I'm using them today. So really, it was selling pots and pans that really got me started.

There's something to be said about when you're in sales to have started with something like that. That's, that's hardcore, you know, pots and pans, encyclopedia sales, which, you know, doesn't happen anymore. But a lot of very, very successful home improvement salespeople started off selling stuff like that at the door, just basically going and knocking on doors. Vacuum cleaners, back in the day it used to be the brushes, Fuller Brush salespeople. All right, so you start— when did you start Hanson's? What year was it?

1988, in December of 1988, in the middle of winter in Michigan. I was out knocking on doors drumming up business. Door to door to door. I had, I had a thought, only one thought in my mind until I knocked myself in that door. I was not going home, period. Somebody was buying windows that day and I put my mindset on that and I never ever turned away from that mindset.

How do you stay confident in those situations?

That's, that's a funny question. I get asked that a lot and I seem to have a lot of confidence and the reason why is I always believe in acting as if you're confident before you start. So it's putting on your confidence hat and making it where you're going to show everybody around you how much confidence you have, especially when you don't have it. And all of a sudden, after you keep showing it and showing it, all of a sudden you're like, hey, yeah, this is me. But when you don't practice being confident, you can't be confident. When you don't practice hitting the golf ball, you can't be a great golfer. It's the same thing.

How many jobs has, uh, Hanson's done in the last, say, 12 months?

I'm going to guess somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 jobs.

10,000 and 15,000. How many salespeople?

We have over 100 salespeople.

Over 100 salespeople. So 1-800-HANSON'S is one of the largest home improvement companies in the country, and I just wanted everybody to kind of get your background. And I think one of the important things too is that you basically had a car. Your parents weren't rich. Nobody came and gave you anything. You basically— what you have created, you created out of your, your confidence, your will, and your hard work.

I look at things different than others. Is if somebody puts a challenge in front of me, I'm going to do everything I can to hit that challenge. And I know if somebody else can go out and knock on doors and drum up business, there's no reason that I can't. It cracks me up where I'll see a small contractor and he'll be out doing a job and he'll be checking on his guys and bringing them pizzas and all those great things, and then they get in the car and they leave and they don't even think about knocking around that job, introducing themselves, giving out a business card, setting the appointment right there. Hey, Mr. Smith, we're working on your neighbor's house. If any debris happens to blow on your lawn, I wanted to give you my card. Let me know, I'll come out and get it myself. Also, I wanted to introduce myself, see if any work, you know, you need any work done in the future. I'd love the opportunity to go to work for you. If you do that around your jobs every day, I guarantee that every other, every third job that you knock around 5 doors in each direction, 10 across the street. I guarantee you will pick up business, business that you didn't have, and business that costs you nothing more than a little time to drum up.

What I was going to say was, you know, most people, when you mentioned about the challenge, if so, if you're challenged with something, you know, for most people, they don't operate that way.

They don't. A girlfriend of mine I grew up with was telling me a story how she all of a sudden became afraid to drive on the freeway. And she called me up and she says, Brian, you're the most sensible guy I know. What do you recommend? I said, I want you to go down an exit ramp onto the freeway, drive for 1 mile, get off on that, circle around and keep doing exactly the same thing for 2 hours straight. And she says, why would I do that? And I said, well, if you can keep doing the mile, sooner or later you're gonna get so bored with it that you realize there's nothing scary about it. All you have to do is do it. She's now driving on freeways, by the way. Right, right.

So, you know, that all goes to growing a company and building a company. And now everybody, you know, this is one of the interesting things, you know, not everybody aspires to build a company that does 10,000 jobs a year, that does tens of millions of dollars. You know, everybody kind of has a level where either they want to be or they're comfortable at. And the thing that's always— I've known you now probably almost, I don't know, 9 or 10 years, and you never stop. Even when things are really, really, really good, you just keep kind of going. And I don't know, is that something— have you seen that as something people can develop themselves over time, or is that something that's more innate in you?

I'm going to give you exactly how I think, and I think you might understand it after. I— people— there's people out there who have jobs, and there's people out there who have businesses. In my mind, a business works for me. In my mind, a job is something you work at. So my goal was always to build a business that worked for me. So whether I was there or not, that business ran and provided me an income. So I always built my business to continue to grow. And if you want to really get rich yourself, the secret of getting rich is to make enough other people rich. So around me, I put people that they had a chance to grow and they had a chance to be successful. And a rising tide rises all boats. So my thought was always, let's keep growing this and let's keep growing people and not be the only one making money. Let everybody make money. There's plenty of business out there. And if you get these really great people working for you and you don't provide them opportunity, you, you're inviting them to become one of your competitors one day. So if you start thinking of it from that point of view, you say, how can I, how can I make sure I retain somebody, make sure that the golden handcuffs keep them there and that they have an opportunity to grow and it's worth their while staying with you? And when you think like that and you think like having a business work for you, I can go and even when I was running my business, I could take 2, 3, 4 weeks off, no problem, if I chose to. But the joy of building something and building other people and watching their successes, to me, there's nothing better.

So I want to point something out to you, the listener. I think what Brian just said over the last, whatever that was, 60 seconds or so, I'd go back and listen to what he just said 3 or 4 or 5 or 10 times. And I'm not exaggerating. Here's why. The whole point of this podcast and the reason why I asked Brian to to, to come back again. And I'll have Brian back again and again because there's no shortage of stuff that we can talk about and no shortage of value that Brian could provide to you.

See you on your 100th podcast.

Yes. But the thing is, is that this is all built around the idea that most people in this business work way harder than they need to. They struggle much more than they need to. They don't make the kind of money that they should be making. And it's my hope that by doing this podcast with the newsletters that, that are also part of the Wealthy Contractor Program, providing the Wealthy Contractor Community, doing webinars and events, that we can help you think about your business in a way that your business serves you and not you being a slave to your business. Now, what Brian just said about the, the business works for him is what I have also strived to do my entire life, ever since reading the book The E-Myth, which Brian, you've consumed also, you know, years and years and years ago. The business is supposed to be working for us, to provide us with the lifestyle that we want, and for us, and give us the opportunity to live our best life. And too many people are too wrapped up in the business and stuck in the business. And again, that's one of the things that, that I hope that we can help you overcome. And so again, if you look at a guy like Brian Elias, go back and listen to what he said. He gave you the entire secret of what the business is and how to keep growing the business in that one, in, in that one little minute. So anyway, I, I just wanted to point that out, Brian, because I, I think that's critical. And that's why, but you know, you shouldn't have a business because you need something to do. Otherwise you just have a job and you're better off going and having a job. There's too much risk in it, there's too much liability in it, and there's too little money.

I'll see, I'll see owners on the phone scheduling their jobs with their customers. Yeah, and it's nice to have a rapport with the customer, but they're doing $10 an hour work, right? And they want to continue to grow. You cannot grow doing $10 an hour work. You have to put $10 an hour people— they're like, well, I can do that work, I don't need to hire somebody. Yes, you do. You need to make sure you're doing $200 an hour work, $500 an hour work. That's how you grow. So you have to work on your business, not in your business.

So as the owner of a home improvement company, what are those $200, $500, $1,000 an hour activities? What are the, the real jobs that the owner of a— or activities that the owner of a home improvement company should be focused on?

3 things: planning, driving, finance. Okay, you can toss marketing in there too to make sure that your marketing's happening, but those are really covered in those 3— planning, Driving, finance.

Talk a little bit, if you would, talk a little bit about each of, each of those. So a little bit about planning, a little bit about driving, and a little bit about finance.

Planning is everything. What do you want your business to look like a year from now? Well, you want to have 6 salespeople. Well, that's great. So when you think about 6 people, 6 salespeople, What does that really require? Well, that requires 12 leads per day, every day. So that's 60 leads per week. Now you have to figure out how you're going to get 60 leads per week. Well, they're not going to magically show up at your door. I don't know if anyone's seen the movie Field of Dreams. Build it and they will come. They're not coming. Build it and you have to market it and you have to bring in 60 people every week. So now, by the way, if you're going to get— if you're going to do that, you're going to have to have lead sources. So you're going to have to figure out how you're going to get 60 people in your door every week. And when you start sitting down and thinking about it and putting a pen to paper, you can come up with a game plan. Well, I'm going to spend this much. Last month I spent $400 on internet leads and I got 10 leads. Well, assumably, if you spend $4,000 You're going to get 100 leads, and you want to be thinking in terms of that. And you'll see people that will do advertising, and they'll put an ad up on Google. I'll see it: save 14% on your window— on windows for your home. I'm like, okay, there's nothing wrong with the ad until you— they're not looking to see what their competitor is doing, and their competitor has an ad that says save 20%. What that means is mom's going to look at that and she's not going to click on your ad. She's going to click on your competitors. And you have to be thinking that you're in competition to get that business as early as possible before your competitor steals it from you. Because we're not like Amazon where, hey, you didn't get the sale, it's no big deal, Amazon will get them next time. For us, there is no next time. They're going to buy windows once, they're going to replace their roof once, their air conditioning unit one time, and that's it. And most likely you're never going to have that opportunity to earn that customer again. So you need to win right now. We are in a race. We're in a race to get that lead and to sell that customer. That's why we have to get them that day. And that's part of the planning process. So you have to be thinking in terms of here's what it's going to look like. So you build this little org chart of what your business is going to look like a year from now and 5 years from now. and then basically you're playing fill in the org chart, and the only job that you have to do is to manage all of your people. And until you, until you build this on paper, okay, you don't have a direction. And when you don't have a direction, any road will get you there, but it's certainly going to take you a long way to get there without a plan. So you plan it out, you plan out your org chart, And any seats that— any, any positions in the org chart that you don't have filled, okay, you put your name in it because you have to do that job until you hire somebody else to do it.

What about driving?

Driving is every day. Okay, just— you're, you're out, you're on your management, you're on your team making sure that they're producing because they'll get stagnant and you don't want them to get stagnant. They need to know that you're driven Because speed of the leader is speed of the follower. So they want— you have to build the culture of we have to do it now, we're in a race. You have to get a little paranoid like somebody's going to get your customer from you. Otherwise you're going to have a sluggish company, and sluggish companies just don't win. They can survive, but they don't win. Sometimes you have to look in the mirror, you go, am I sluggish? Is my company sluggish? You look around at some of these other companies and you'll see that some of these companies are so driven and you want to be a part of it. You know, you want to be the guy who's in the driven company and driving a driven company. If you're in a sluggish company and everyone's slow and, you know, I use the word fat, meaning they just sit around and do nothing but eat, you can't grow that way. So you have to sometimes look at yourself in the mirror and be your own worst critic. Most of the problems are at the top. It's not your employees. It's the people managing the employees and the people managing the expectations. So you have to drive hard every day. Believe it or not, the employee wants that. The hardest, you know, you think like the military, the Marines is the toughest group of all of them and they work the hardest, but they love being a Marine. And the people who work for you, when you're driven, they'll love working for you because they want to help a successful man be successful and they want to be successful themselves.

Or successful woman, of course. Okay. And then the last piece, very important. So plan, drive, finance. Talk to us about finance.

Real simple. You got to know if you're making money or not, right? You're not in the business to sell more jobs. You're in business to make more money. I'll hear people say, well, Brian, you know, I wanted to get that job so bad. And I'm like, but you undersold it. You're only making a small amount when you add up your hours and your people's hours. You're not making money on this job. You need to make sure that you're making a double-digit net profit each and every year to the bottom line. That means your margins for your business have to be right. And when you start spending money on advertising, that means you have to raise your price, period.

When you hire people, of course you have to raise your price.

You have to make sure every month you're bringing down double digits. And if you're not, you need to always be looking to adjust your price. You're not going to get every job. So if you're going to get only some of them, get the expensive ones. Get the profitable ones. Those are your jobs. They want to pay you the money. Allow them to.

Yeah, and the important thing is, and this is something we talk about a lot on this podcast, I mean, it's called The Damn Wealthy Contractor because you've got to make money. There's so many people in this business that are— they're okay with, well, I didn't make as much money this month, but or I didn't make as much money this month, or I didn't make enough money this month because of this. And because— and they're okay with it. You're not okay with it, and I'm not okay with it either.

You're— you've got to look in the mirror and realize that you only have so much time to be successful in your life. Yeah, time is finite. Sooner or later, you close your eyes, you wink, and you're 10 years older. You need to make sure you're filling your bank account. That's it. That is the only measuring stick. Is your bank account growing month in and month out? If you're just getting by, get a job. You're there to make money. You deserve to make 6 or 7 digits every year. And I'm not just saying $100,000. I'm saying $300,000, $400,000, $500,000. Why not? You deserve it. You're entitled to it. You work hard. Build a team around you. Well, how do I do it? You build them person by person, and all of a sudden, a year down the road, you got this great team and you're investing in your team.

What hurts people is that they, they, they wonder, well, how can I afford that person? How can I afford— if I'm barely making money as it is, how can I afford to go hire this person or that person or all of the people I need to fill the org chart.

You're, you're investing in your business, and sometimes you have to go without to build your team for a little while. Then all of a sudden, poof, it skyrockets on you. You know, you'll, you'll hear people do it— I'll do it them— I'll do it myself— because they don't want to pay somebody to do it. That is such the wrong answer.

It is.

Pay somebody to do everything. You should do nothing but plan, plan, and plan every single day.

Yeah.

And then execute on that plan. I want to see everybody— I, I want to see everybody that listens to this take— walk away from this podcast and go, I'm going to take this information that this guy says and I'm going to turn it into money. Because everything I'm saying here will make people money. Yeah. Well, Brian, you don't understand my market. Your market is the same as everybody else's. You have great people in your town. Well, I can't find any people. Pay more. They will magically appear. People out there looking to change jobs because they're not being paid enough. You be the guy that pays them enough. Overpay. Because when you have a great team around you, they will lift you so high. And also, when you have somebody— everybody has one of these in their company— you have to constantly be looking at your company When you have Brutal Brenda working for you, you need to fire Brutal Brenda. She's the one that's nasty to everyone, says it can't be done. She's a problem. She needs to go because she's bringing down your organization. It's like trying to drive a boat with an anchor in the water. You're dragging it. It's not that the boat won't go. The boat will go, but it's just dragging along and you're fighting and it's She's unapproachable and she needs to go.

Good advice. Okay, so there's two directions that we can kind of go here. So one area is based on what you were just saying, you know, kind of piggybacking off of that. You have done a pretty spectacular job of not only building a company and making money from your company, but also of creating wealth outside of the company. Do you want to talk about that at all? Do you want to talk a little bit about what some of the people listening, what they could do with their profits to build real wealth for themselves?

I cannot tell you how many times I hear stories about people that literally have their money sitting in a savings account or a checking account. And you want to invest wisely in things. There's professional investors out there. Hire a Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, or any private banker. They're there to help you grow your money. So hire a professional. That's number one. Number two is if you want to be in the finance business, finance some of your customers. I built a portfolio starting with one job, and all of a sudden I have, I don't know, thousands of loans out there that I've gotten into the loan business. And these are people who've had, you know, some credit challenges, and I built a business around that. But you don't have to do that, but you have to take your money and have your money work for you. Your money needs to go to work for you And investing it wisely will make sure that all of a sudden you're going to wake up one day, if you commit to yourself to putting literally just $500 a week away, all of a sudden at the end of the first year you got $30,000, next year you got $70,000, next year you got $400,000. It, it grows exponentially. So always look for a way of placing your money in a place that you can grow. Also, the thing that I did that I'm not sure your listeners know or not, I also took on a private equity partner and sold the majority interest in my business. So when you build a business, it's of value to somebody else, and then one day you're able to sell your, sell your way out of it and put that money away to take care of your family. And that's really what this is all about, is taking care of you and those who you love, because that's what life is about. Because you're not going to take your money with you when you're gone. So enjoy taking care of the people that you love.

And another thing that you did, if I'm not mistaken, is you bought the real estate that Hanson's sat on and operated out of.

And real estate is a great investment.

Yeah.

So, anytime you have an opportunity to buy something and then create income on top of that, that's a wonderful thing. So, if you can find a building to buy that you can work out of, that's ideal. Why pay somebody else rent when you can pay yourself rent? And the real estate business, I mean, if you just look at history, it's always grown. I mean, there was a downturn, 2008 and 2009, But overall, we've already surpassed those numbers and we're way ahead now. So real estate is a huge, huge move. And if you look at some of the most successful things, it's real estate and it's financing. So I mean, those are, that's where people, you know, gain wealth. So don't hesitate. Also, a lot of people in our business, they buy and buy homes and then rent them out. I know people in our business, that have 30, 40, and 50 homes, all each collecting between $500,000 and $1,000,000 apiece. That's a lot of money. And you want to be thinking in terms of investing your money. We make good money, invest it wisely, so one day you never have to work another day in your life. And then you work by choice, which is the most fun.

Yeah, but this is all also predicated on the fact that your business, as you say, is earning a double-digit net profit. At a minimum, at a minimum, your business should be netting 10%. So if you got a, you know, $5 million business, you pay yourself a salary, a reasonable salary for whatever, you know, the job of the owner in your business is. And then on top of that, the business should net a minimum of $500,000, ideally more like 15%. And that's the money that you then take and either reinvest some of it back into your business or do some of the things that Brian suggested. One of the things that really— I, I, and I didn't know that this happened until I met you, was the whole financing of the jobs thing, financing your customers. When did you first do that?

I think I did that originally probably at the beginning of 2000.

How big was the company then?

We're going to put it at $8-10 million. I had excess cash and I saw other people making money doing the financing, so I reached out to an attorney, helped me draw up some papers for it, and then I started becoming the finance company. So I built a separate business so the consumer had no idea they were paying us. I built a separate business and I started— all of a sudden I'm getting $12,999, $13,999, $14,999 on my money when the banks are offering 4 or 5. And it's, it's turned out to be a goldmine for us.

Yeah, I think that's just— I think it's a brilliant strategy. It's actually a very unique business that I don't know a whole lot of business— like in my business, I couldn't— I can't— there's nobody for me to finance. But in your— in the home improvement business, wow. You know, if you are making excess cash, that is definitely, I think, something to look at as a as a wealth strategy.

You do the math at a $10,000 job, cost is $5,000. So you're putting $5,000 out there. Okay. To bring back over terms, $15,000 or $20,000 with interest.

Yeah.

I mean, you, you're, you take a look and you say, well, that's pretty good. Yes. There's a percentage of the people that don't pay, but the majority pay. And when you have the majority paying and you can collect good interest on your money, and all of a sudden you've got payments coming in. Doesn't sound like a lot, $129, but 10 of those is $1,290. Yeah, 100 of those is $12,900 a month. All of a sudden, your bills are— all your bills for your life are paid, right? That alone. And then everything else is profit. So your money grows so quickly and exponentially.

Right.

But you have to do the work and you have to invest. It just doesn't happen on its own. Yeah.

The fundamentals of the business have to be strong.

The fundamentals of the business have to be strong. And when, when you know the fundamentals of the business is when the business runs without you, right? Well, if the business runs and it strictly depends on you, and if you weren't there, everything would fall apart. You don't have a business, you have a job.

And, and the interesting thing is, I mean, there's not a chance, as talented as you may be, there's not a chance in the world that you could have grown even a $10 million business on your own. Do you just keep—

what do I want?

Nor would you want to, but it's just, it's physically impossible. It's— I think it's mentally impossible as well to do it on your own. There's a cap. I mean, once you get to about a million million, $2 million, $3 million. That's it. After that, you have a decision to make, and the decision is, am I going to stay like this and continue just doing everything in the business, or do I take my business to the next level, which requires me to now put in people and systems and tighter controls? And obviously you made that decision many times because you hit those different points at, you know, different levels of business.

And that's why you have to systemize and dumb down your business. Yeah, where people do the same job every day and they come in and do it so they can be successful to help you be successful. So they need it— they need to be able to come in, know exactly what to expect every day, and you give them a job doing that and they'll work hard for you. Okay, if you give them chaos, it'll be chaos.

Yeah, so it's interesting, is the first time I went to Brian's office, wants to show me his system. You know, it's interestingly enough, when I think back on it, you were so proud of that system. You still are. And you took me into the call center, and you— I've seen you do this on multiple occasions since then, but go into the call center, and when you talk about systems and you talk about process, just taking the call center as an example, how the phones are answered Brian would just basically just say something to one of the people, just pull them off if they weren't on the phone and start somewhere in the script, whether it was the beginning of the script, the middle of the script, or even the end of the script. He would just start somewhere in the script and boom, his people would respond back based on the script, based on the training. So when he says dumbing things down. It's not that people are dumb, it's just that you have to have a process and you have to have a simple system that you can teach people, that you could train people on, that's repeatable. That's one of the things about Hansen's that's just absolutely brilliant. So the call center has a system, the salespeople have a system, production has a system, finance has a system.

Right.

Marketing has everything. Everything has a system. So what's Brian's job then? Brian has nothing to do except figure out where are we going, make sure that everybody is headed in that direction, planning, driving, and finance, making sure that, hey, at the end of the month, we're supposed to make double-digit net profit, whatever that number is. Did we hit that number? Are we hitting that number? That's the job, you know, and you could do that from— you don't have to necessarily be there all the time to do that.

And the other thing is, is that, you know, when I brought up the planning, when once you get it right, it's still broken because there's always something wrong. It's never right, right? People are like, when will I be finished?

Never, never.

It's never right. You could always make more, do more, do this faster, do it better, find better crews, find better people. It's always broken. So, you make a list of the things to do and you make sure you do those things. And the biggest mistake that I look back in my own career is not making the hard decisions faster. I make hard decisions, but sometimes it takes me too long. Like, oh, should I fire her? Should I not fire her? Should I fire her? If it looks like a duck and it walks like a duck, it's a duck.

What are some of the other mistakes, quote-unquote mistakes that you made, learning experiences. What other kinds of learning experiences did you have?

Oh gosh, so many. Number one is not measuring quickly enough, not seeing the problem. If a guy's not closing, he needs help. He's doing something wrong. You know, just not sitting down and listening to that guy's sales pitch to figure out what is he doing wrong that I could take the same sales pitch and close. And this person's not. Well, you know, you'll hear people say, well, I'm too busy to listen to that salesman. Every time you send out a lead with that sales rep, you're handing him $500. You're giving him $500 for that with that lead, and if he doesn't sell it, he just lost you $500. It's almost like taking— handing that man $500 and telling them to walk up to the shredder and shred it. Now, when you think of it on those terms, you realize you need to make the time to make sure your people are doing the right thing. You have to look and say, when there's a problem, you have to be able to spot it fast. Well, he's new, he'll learn. Well, he's not going to learn without somebody teaching them and showing them, here's how you could do it. Everything requires attention, and your job is to help make sure that that attention happens. If you don't have a sales manager, you remember I told you, you put your name on the org chart, you're the sales manager, and you need to make sure that guy can sell. But most of the time it's a training issue. It isn't whether he is good enough or not. If he's got talent and he's outgoing, there's no reason why this guy can't sell. You just have to teach him to sell. There's lots of things. It's, it's really, it's all about looking at yourself in the mirror and finding your faults and acting upon them instead of pretending like they're not there. Oftentimes I feel like people stick their fingers in their ears and go, 'No, no, no, no, no, no,' so they don't have to, you know, deal with their problems. But when you're willing to deal with your problems, you can grow your business.

Well, look, we've gone, I think, a little bit over our time. We could keep going. I think the best thing to do would probably be to ask you to come back again. I probably won't wait 50 episodes though. Let's not wait 50 because there's a lot more that we can talk about. But I, I do appreciate you coming back again. I do appreciate all of the advice that you share very freely. So for everybody listening, I hope you got a ton of value out of this. I would go back and listen to it again. This is one of those episodes that you want to go back and listen to again and again. Brian will be at our Accelerate event. It's— I know it's early, it's September, but it will be in February, and Brian will be there and we will sit down and we will have a conversation in front of everybody. I've got a topic for Brian in mind that we will be covering at that event. And Brian will be at, um, I think you'll be at the Dave Yoho event in October, am I correct?

I will be.

Yes, I will. You can't miss Brian. Go up and say hi to him if you have questions. He's very generous with answering your questions. Just ask him one and then go do what he tells you and then come back and ask him a second question. He can't give you all of the secrets all at once, right? You got it, just one at a time.

Many questions as you can fire at me. What drives me is when they don't act on it.

That—

well, that's why I said just one question, go act on it, and then go back and tell Brian, hey Brian, I asked you about this, I went and did it, and this is what happened. Now what about this? And you will make Brian a very, very happy guy, and you will make a very fast friend because, uh, Brian likes people that take action. Them, as do I. So, episode number 50, Brian, Elias, thank you very much. I appreciate you doing this. And, uh, to all of you listening, until next time, this is Brian Kaskavalciyan with G4 Marketing Group, and this is the Wealthy Contractor Podcast. Thank you.

All right, so that's it for today's episode of the Wealthy Contractor Podcast. Let me ask you, did it help you look at your business in a new way? Did it spark an idea or ideas 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. Now, 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. And a favor, I'd really appreciate it if you'd go to iTunes and post a review of this podcast. Let us know how we're doing. And finally, we started The Wealthy Contractor as a resource to help you, the home improvement entrepreneur, regardless of where you are on the wealthy scale. Get where you want to go. We want to provide you with the motivation, the confidence, the resources, and the tools so you too can live the life of the wealthy contractor. Now, the wealthy contractor is a place where it's okay for you to want it all. In fact, it's not only okay, it's encouraged. So until next time, this is Brian Kaskavalciyan with G4 Marketing Group.