Brian Kaskavalciyan - Ep. 75 - The Power of a Great Mentor

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. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Wealthy Contractor Podcast. This is Brian Kaskavalciyan with G4 Marketing Group, and today I'm going to do something a little bit different. I want to talk to you today about the power of a great mentor. Too many business owners are going at business alone. In fact, I've heard it said lots of different times, and I've had the feeling many, many times that being an entrepreneur, being a business owner, sometimes is like the loneliest place that you can be. A lot of people don't understand us. A lot of people don't get how we operate. And so as a result, we find ourselves, you know, kind of alone, going at it alone, even though we may have like teams of people around us. One of the ways to really accelerate your success is by learning from others, people that have been there, people that have done that, or people with a certain specialized knowledge. You've heard me say this here over and over and over again: don't go at this alone. There's plenty of help out there, there are plenty of resources out there, and there's plenty of people out there that can help you get where you want to to go. One of the best things that I think we could do for ourselves as entrepreneurs is find ourselves a good mentor. Now, I don't know what the dictionary definition of mentor is. Um, I probably should have looked it up and read it to you, but to me, a mentor is somebody that you can look up to, somebody that is somebody that has the experience that maybe you don't, somebody that has been there ahead of you and is willing to share with you and help you get there faster. I think at different stages of our lives, we probably have different mentors. I think for some people, their father is a great mentor, maybe their mother. An uncle, somebody in their family was a great mentor to them. Um, others find the, the mentors maybe in the business world or in other places. I remember when I started in business in 1993 on my own, I really didn't have anybody to look at as a quote-unquote mentor. That's not to say I didn't have good people around me. I just didn't have people that were experienced with what I was about to venture into, you know, this thing that we call entrepreneurship. Now, there were people that I had worked for before, particularly like the people in the construction company where I, I worked, but they were not great examples. I didn't leave there on the best of terms. And they just were not the type of people that I would want as a mentor. Because to me, a mentor has to have very high integrity, very high. A great mentor, you have to be able to trust. And a great mentor is going to look at you and want what's best for you, even before themselves. And I think that that's like one of the telltale signs that you've got a good mentor, is when they look at the relationship as, as if, hey, I want to give, I want to deliver more value to this person than I may get back from them. You know, some people do mentorship just as a way to give back. Um, some mentors you can pay. Um, some mentors are, you know, in your life for a few minutes or a few hours, and yet they leave a mark on you for the rest of your life. There was— I remember when I was 17 or 18 years old, and I had this friend Kelly in high school, and her father Jim was the first guy that I could look at and say, wow, this guy is— he's awesome. This is the guy I want to be, right? This guy was— when I met him, funny enough, when I met Jim he was, um, they had, they had moved from Ohio to Southern California where I was at the time. And basically he had a company that he built up, and whatever reason, I don't remember all the exact details, but basically it went belly up and they had to start all over again. And when I met them, they were in this, you know, he was in the process of rebuilding his business. And this was a amazingly smart guy. And this was a guy that also was really into personal development. And he loaned me— I'm going to say quote unquote loaned me— the book Think and Grow Rich. Now, the reason I say quote unquote loaned me the book is because I never gave it back. Um, I still have it to this day. It's old, it's marked up, it's highlighted. I've read through it. You know, Think and Grow Rich, I've said before, is a book not to read but to study over your lifetime. And he was the one that kind of started me on this personal development journey. And when I started my, my business 5 years later, or 6 years, 5 or 6 years later, Jim was around. But I didn't have the confidence in myself to go to him and say, hey dude, would you help me out? You know, would you give me advice? Here's what I'm trying to do. And this kind of carried on for me for quite some time. I remember, and I tell the story as often as I can, um, both as a warning and as a tribute to Charlie Gindel, who has been on the podcast a couple of times and who speaks, or who has spoken at our Accelerate Live event. But when I first was introduced to Charlie, and I went to his office and I sat down with him, I was probably, I don't know, 26 or 27 years old. And I was I, you know, I had a business and I was just starting to get into advertising and marketing. And somebody said to me, the person that sold me advertising, Debbie, said, hey, you have to go meet Charlie. I'm going to introduce you to him. And this guy could be a really good, good guy for you to know. She didn't use the word mentor, at least not that I remember. But she said this would be a really good guy for you to meet. And so I go and I meet with Charlie. I go to his office in Laguna. I think he was in Laguna Niguel or Laguna Hills at that point. And I go after hours and I get there and I, you know, they asked me to sit down and just wait a few minutes because Charlie's wrapping up the day basically. I think it was like, I don't know, 6 or 6:30, might have even been like 7 o'clock. And I go in and I'm a young guy in business and I had really been doing it on my own without a whole lot of help. Again, partially because I didn't know who to go look for. I didn't know back then the power of a great mentor. And I really didn't have the confidence in myself to be able to sit across from somebody. And I always felt like, what am I going to give to this guy? What is this person going to get from me? So, you know, to the Charlie story, so I'm sitting there and Charlie's showing me stuff that is just blowing my mind. I mean, this guy is a planner, he budgets, he does You know, he's a numbers guy. If you go back and you listen to the podcast episodes, you'll, you'll get what I'm saying. Um, but he showed me, basically showed me all of the numbers for his business and he says, look, this is my plan. This is how much, um, revenue, um, we're going to do this year. And I remember him saying it with that much confidence. This is the revenue we are going to do this year. And at the time, I believe it was about $5 million. Um, Today, Charlie's business is multiples of that, but back then it was like $5 million, which was probably, you know, 5 times or 6 times what I was doing in, in my business. And not only did he show me, okay, here's the plan of how we're gonna get there, but he also showed me, okay, here's what I'm gonna spend on marketing, here's what, you know, how many leads we need, and here's bottom line, here's how much money we're going to make. And so I'm looking at all this and I'm thinking, wow, wow, wow. But at the same time, in the back of my head, that insecurity is just like, why is he showing me all of this? Why is he telling me all of this? What is he getting out of this? And so with that, I left his office thinking, oh my God, I just saw some amazing stuff. But because of all of that insecurity and lack of confidence, guess what? I didn't call him back. I didn't call him back. And that's one of my big regrets in life. This is probably 1997-ish, 1996 maybe. Probably 3 years into— I think it was right when I started Surface Doctor, the second business, I started doing advertising. And so somewhere in there, '96, '97. Anyway, a year later, a year later, I saw Charlie at a home show. And I went up to him and I said hi, and it was awkward. So awkward. Because come to find out now, you know, 20-something years later, that he was wondering, whatever happened to you, dude? Where'd you go? And, and so it was awkward. And it wasn't until 2009 when we started G4 Marketing Group, our current company, that our very first client to come on is none other than Charlie Gundel. Still a client today. And as a result of him, you know, coming on board and being essentially being our first client and then introducing us to, you know, this whole world of, you know, replacement contractors and events and, and speaking from the stage and all this stuff, um, I come to find out that, man, for the last, um, however many, 15 years or so in between the time that I— no, wait, I'm doing the math wrong. Whatever, you get the point. A long flippin' time, um, I had the opportunity to have probably for somebody in the home improvement business, one of the best mentors you could ever ask for. And I completely blew it because of my insecurities. And so part of the reason why I'm sharing this with you is, if you're listening to this and you don't have a great mentor, I really hope that you'll go and get one. Because man, when I think back to all of the mistakes that I made and all of the poor decisions that I made, how much could Charlie have helped me had I developed a mentor-mentee relationship with him? Now, of course, I'm not 26 or 27, however I was, however old I was back then, anymore. I'm a grown-ass man. In fact, I'm older now than Charlie was when I first, when I first went there and met him. And I now know that a great mentor loves to help others. They love it. And Charlie, while I'm sitting there thinking, well, what's he getting out of this? And why is he doing this? And why is he showing me everything? All of that crap that was going on in my head. He's thinking, wow, look at this guy. He's, he's ambitious. He's— look what he's doing with his business. Maybe what I'm sharing with him maybe is going to help him be more successful in his business. And I didn't see that. I chose to see, right, the insecure lack of confidence on my side. So I would urge you, if you don't have one, to go look for a great mentor. Now, where is this coming from? So I'm sitting here, I'm going to tell you exactly, it's Thursday, August 22nd. 2019. And yesterday, I— a buddy of mine texted me and said, have you seen this? And apparently on— well, not apparently. If you go on Facebook and you look up Dan Kennedy, there is a message there written by Dan, basically saying, I know this is weird. But I'm going to be dead in a few days. And I was in— I was actually in a Zoom meeting with my team, we're actually talking about our Accelerate live event that's happening in February. And I just couldn't continue. You know, they're— they all noticed something happened. And I said, guys, I gotta go. I can't, I can't be here. And so I made a couple phone calls. And come to find out that my mentor of 20+ years, I think 23, at least 23 years, is probably by the time you listen to this might be dead. And it was a complete shock, came completely out of the blue. And so I, so I really, between yesterday and today, I've been really thinking about how do I, how do I process this? You know, what do I, what do I do with this information? And I thought, well, let me sit down at the microphone and, and see what comes out and see if maybe what I've learned over the last 20-some years, having a few really great, amazing mentors, maybe I can reach somebody that is struggling right now, which is the whole point of this podcast, is really how do you use your business to live your best life, whatever that means for you. Whether that means more money, more time off, more personal relationship, or better personal and business relationships, getting to live your purpose. And so I thought back to— and, and by the way, and the other side of that is, uh, how do I honor this man that really I can't even imagine what my life would have been like had I not met him. So I'm going to go back, if you'll indulge me here for a minute, and tell you the story of how I met this guy and kind of some of what I've done. And I guess in some way, this will be my way of, I guess, honoring him, but also imploring you, the listener, to go and find yourself somebody, a good mentor, because a good mentor can really change your life, can really shorten the learning curve for you and really help you get where you want to go faster and maybe with less bumps and bruises. So in 1996, I was in the carpet cleaning and dyeing business. And one of the big suppliers— and this is in Southern California— and one of the big suppliers was having a marketing seminar. And the marketing seminar was being done by a guy named Joe Polish. Now, Joe Polish is, I think, was my age at the time. And what Joe's story was and still is, obviously is. He was a dead broke carpet cleaner and he discovered marketing. And when he discovered marketing, his life changed. And here's how it changed. And then, of course, you know, if you give me whatever it was at the time, X amount of dollars, I'll give you my whole marketing system. And so I'm like, hey, this sounds really cool. And I heard things that I'd never heard before being in business for, you know, just a few years, again, entirely on my own. I was hearing things that I'd never heard before. And so I was really intrigued. And then after Joe, this awkward, tall, grumpy guy gets up. And, and when I say get up, I mean, goes to the front of the room, there was probably, I don't know, 20 people in the room, 15, 20 people in the room. And he goes up and they're using an overhead projector. Okay, so think back to the '90s. For those of you that can, we didn't have, we really didn't have PowerPoint. We didn't have projectors like we have now with these overheads. And you would put a slide down on the overhead and it would project it up on the screen. And these were just black and white, mostly words, or, you know, in some cases maybe like a cartoon or something, but it was just like black and white words. And this guy Dan Kennedy gets up and gives me what I now know as his famous magnetic marketing speech. And I was captivated. I did what I was supposed to do, or what that presentation is intended to do, and that is to drive you to the back of the room and give your credit card. And I did, and I did so happily. And that then started my deep dive into marketing, business development, sales. And all throughout, I remember a couple years ago, the organization that actually bought Dan's business, GKIC, I did an interview with them. And I called it— it was, it was my— so it must have been like 2016 when I did this. So I said that this was my 20th anniversary with Dan. And that I had received his newsletter uninterrupted month after month, year after year for over 20 years. Now in between there, I was also a private client. I was in his mastermind group for a number of years. And through, you know, throughout the years I've worked with him one-on-one personally. Um, in fact, I had just sent over a fax because that's the only way you could communicate with, with Dan. Um, I had just sent over fax a couple weeks ago, um, to, um, to his assistant Vicki and said, hey, um, can you give me a couple of dates, um, that Dan is available, um, for consulting? I'd like to book a consulting day, which by the way is like 20 grand. For one day. That's how— that's just how good Dan is. And over those 20-some years, Dan has been probably the most prolific outputter, if that's a word, of information of anybody that I know. Aside from the newsletters, there's books. Aside from the newsletters and the books, there's audio. Aside from the newsletters, the books, and the audio, there's live seminars that Dan, that Dan would do. And through all of that, and I tried to go to as much as I could. In fact, Dan, I'm in Dan's $100,000 group. He would, you know, he would say to, you know, to some of us that have over the years given him $100,000 or more, he would say, oh, you're in— I forgot what he called it, but you're in the $100,000 group or whatever, the six-figure group. And so I desperately have been trying to get a message to him, because he's not obviously not seeing anybody except his immediate family. And I think I might have found my way in through his best friend, hopefully. But I tried to deliver a message to him just to to say thank you and, and let him know that I'll never forget him and to thank him for everything that he's done. Because my life— I'm not exaggerating— my life would be very different had I not met him. And that also got me thinking that, you know, things can be taken away from us. The important things could be taken away from us. Just like that, in an instant. And so I'm kind of like upset with myself that now that I know this, that this is it. I'll never see him again. I'll never get to talk with him again. I'll never get his advice again. I'll never get his counsel again. How did I go, you know, how did I not do everything I could to spend more time with him? To get more advice, to get more, because he had so much to give. And the one thing that I'll say, and I'll kind of start to wrap up here, is I said to him, and I said this to him a few years back, because one of the things that I would do is if I went a full year and I didn't see Dan, or I didn't talk to him, or I didn't communicate with him in any way, I would send him a progress report. And I would just say, hey, Dan, just to let you know, here's what's going on. And it always included a message of appreciation. Always included a message of appreciation. Hey, here's what's going on. Here's what we're doing. Here's how much money we made. Thank you. A great mentor is somebody that would look at that and would just be honored by it. And Dan wasn't. If I didn't give Dan $100,000, which by the way, I wish now that I had given him more, a lot more, because the value he's given me is worth multiples of that. I wish I had given him more. But a great mentor cares about you and cares about the impact that they're having on your life, and, um, there's really no substitute for it. So with that, I will again say to you my my— I really— my— the reason I'm putting this out is that if you are out there and you feel alone in your business, you don't need to. Go and look for somebody that could be there for you, that can help you. And some of the ways to do that are you can go to your supply house if that's who you buy from. And ask them, hey, who's doing it right? Who do you know that's doing it right in the business that we're in? Or go to your manufacturer's rep. You know, if you buy windows from Sunrise, you know, talk to your guys at Sunrise. Or if you buy, if you buy, uh, roofing from CertainTeed or GAF or whoever you're buying your materials from and ask them, hey, who's doing it really good? Who's running a great business, is making money, has a great life, and, um, would be open to me taking them to lunch? And you'd be amazed at the names that you'll be given. And then call those people and introduce yourself and say, hey, my name is Brian. I run a company called G4 Marketing Group, and I am looking for some business advice, and I would just really love to sit down and maybe take you to lunch or come and meet with you. I'll bring you coffee, and if you wouldn't mind, I would love to just sit with you for you know, 20 or 30 minutes and ask you a couple of questions. And most people, most people, and again, I'm gonna go all the way back to where this started. Entrepreneurs are typically very lonely people, because a lot of people don't get us. From my experience, when a great entrepreneur gets that phone call, They're thrilled. They're like looking forward to meeting you. And so when you meet with them, be open. You'll know pretty quickly within a few minutes if this is the right person for you, because will you mesh or will you not mesh? And don't fill your head with crazy insecure ideas like I did. Be open to what you receive. Now, not everybody is great at this. You may not, you know, hit a home run with the first mentor or the first person that you speak with. So speak to a few of them. It's kind of like, you know, I hate to say it, but it's a little bit like dating. You don't want to marry the first person you meet. You want to, you know, develop the relationship. And so after you meet with them and they give you advice, here's what you want to do. You want to go and implement whatever they told you to do or whatever they suggested you do. And then what you want to do is you want to report back to them. Report back and let them know, hey, I did what you suggested. And here's the result, here's what happened. They'd love to hear that. What you don't want to do is go in there, get a bunch of information, take, take, take, take, take, and then go and disappear and not report back. Or take the information, not do anything with it, and then call and go back again and have the same conversation, because that will only happen a couple of times, and then they really won't want to see you anymore because you're not an implementer. Part of the reason why I would send the messages to Dan on it, if I hadn't seen him and wasn't able to give him an update live and in person, was because I wanted him to know, hey, the information you're putting out there is, here's how I'm using it. Your advice, here's how I'm using it. Because they want to know. So I know I've rambled here a little bit. And I hope that— well, first off, I hope I release this. And if I do, I hope it's of value to you. I don't know if I'm probably going to go back and listen to it now and see if it was, you know, if it was something that I want to put out there and have downloaded thousands and thousands of times. But I think the message is important enough to get out there. Now, I will say this in honor of Dan, if you— I've actually interviewed him before, you can find my interview with him in one of the podcast episodes. I forgot what number it is. I'll I'll put it in the show notes. But I would strongly recommend, if you are not familiar with Dan Kennedy, go to amazon.com. He's got probably 20 books at Amazon. Start with a book called The Ultimate Marketing Plan. Start with The Ultimate Marketing Plan, and then just start going through all of his books. It will, you know, there's probably 30 years of information in all of those books and advice and guidance and education. I think that my master's degree, which I don't have from a formal university, I think my master's degree comes from the school of Dan Kennedy and every, you know, everything that's in orbit kind of around him. The other thing you may want to look at is if you go to— and I don't know the exact website, sorry, forgive me, it's kind of a tough day for me today— but if you go to just go dan kennedy.com, I'm sure that's going to take you to the Advantage Media or the Magnetic Marketing website. And go and buy Magnetic Marketing. I think it's like $300 or $400, which It's, it's, by the way, it's the same price as what I paid for it 20-something years ago. Magnetic Marketing is, Magnetic Marketing is Dan's signature product, and it completely transformed my marketing abilities. And there's a ton of stuff in there. If you're, if you're not a marketing person, you want to learn, or you are a marketing person and you want to learn more and you're not familiar with Dan Kennedy, there's a ton of value there. And then go and read every book he's, he's got. Go back and read his newsletters, anything that you can get your hands on. He wouldn't be happy about this because he was not a fan of people pirating his stuff and putting it up on YouTube without paying him for it. But you could probably find Dan Kennedy on YouTube as well. And just so you know, he is going to be grumpy. When you see him. He is— what's his— one of his monikers is the Professor of Harsh Reality. So he always tells it like it is. In fact, in my final message to him, I thanked him for that, and always telling it like it is and never once steering me wrong. Never once in 20-something years. That can't be said about a lot of people, by the way. But Go and check him out. And so with that, again, I hope this has been of value to you. We'll, we'll be back with— I've got some great interviews lined up for you that are coming up. And then we've got some, some great surprises for you at thewealthycontractor.com. My latest book, this is the first time I'm mentioning it. My latest book is called The 7 Secrets to Becoming a Wealthy Contractor. And that is going to be a available very, very soon. So if you haven't done so already, go and get yourself on the Wealthy Contractor list so that when that book is available— and by the way, I'm, for a limited time, I'm basically going to buy the book for whoever wants it, and you'll just pay shipping and handling. So go to thewealthycontractor.com, make sure you get on our list. This way you'll know when it's available, and you'll get to get a free copy of the book. All right. So with all of that said, until next time, this is Brian Kaskavalciyan with the G4 Marketing Group, and this is the Wealthy Contractor Podcast. 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.