Navigating Through Uncertainty Ep. 7 with Patrick Readyhough

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 the Wealthy Contractor Podcast. This is Brian Kaskavalciyan. Kaskavalciyan with G4 Marketing Group. If you're one of our regular listeners, you know, I typically interview home improvement entrepreneurs and ask them about specific strategies they've used to become a wealthy contractor. In fact, we have quite a few killer episodes we've recently recorded with amazing strategies to implement in your business, but I've decided to put those aside right now because of the unique environment we find ourselves in. In. Instead, what I'll be doing over the next couple of weeks is sharing conversations I'm having with some of these same people to find what they're thinking, feeling, and doing right now. My hope is that by sharing these conversations, you'll hear how others are overcoming some of the challenges you might be facing right now. I also sincerely hope to inspire you and build your confidence. One thing you will notice in all of these conversations is the underlying expectation that what we are experiencing right now is a temporary setback. It will pass, and there will be even greater opportunity on the other side. So enjoy these conversations. We're all in this together. Stay the course. Do not give up. Keep moving forward. And always believe in yourself.

All right, everybody. So it is March 26th, about 10:30 in the morning. On with me is Patrick Redioff from Pond Roofing. And Patrick, Patrick is— Patrick's been awesome lately. I don't know, we met what, about a year ago or a little more than that, right?

We met a few years ago at a Certainty thing, but then I came to Accelerate last year and this year and we've been working together for the past year or so.

Yeah, yeah, awesome, awesome guy. In the middle of all of this madness that we are all going through, last week Patrick sends me an email that literally had me— well, I shouldn't say literally, I'm starting to sound like my kids now, but I was inside my head, I was doing just like jumping up and down for joy. It was an amazing email of— why don't you sum it up for us? You don't have to— don't give all the details, but why don't you sum up that email for us. And generally, you know, my question to— during these conversations is, what are you thinking, what are you feeling, and what are you doing? We are— I should just say this, it's Thursday. Last night, the Senate passed the bill, which as business owners, we still don't really quite know how that's going to affect us or impact us. What we know is that there's going to be a lot of stimulus, a lot of recovery money. There's gonna be, what's really exciting to me is the ability to go and borrow money, which we've never done. I don't know if, I don't think you have either, Patrick. Most of my clients have not had to borrow money to grow their businesses, but in times like this, we gotta do what we have to do. And so they're talking about a program where it's relatively quick and simple to get a loan that represents about 2 months of payroll, I believe. And I'll tell you what, if we can all get our hands on that, that's a total game changer. Because if we can get our payroll covered and we can sell enough to cover just our minimum expenses and overhead, we'll ride this thing out. And when it turns back around, I think in May, I think we can all be in a really good position. So that's, that's the backdrop of where we're at. But even in the middle of all of this crap, this guy sends me an email and sum it up for us, Patrick.

Well, you know, Brian, I've been listening to your podcast and I heard, you know, the first one or two calls. I mean, it was the first ex, you know, short call like this that you had done. And I was, And it fired me up, and I thought, you know, Brian's out here doing this great work, and maybe he could use some extra, you know, news about what people are doing to, you know, because I'm rolling around feeling an overall sense of progress. I just got to make progress. Focus on progress each day keeps my head in the right place, and because we're going to come out of this, so we just got to keep moving forward on things. And I, so I just wanted to send, you know, you a couple thoughts. So if you were talking to somebody who couldn't get their mind in the right direction. Hey, you know, there are, you know, here's what we're doing over here. Not necessarily like to combat what's going on, but just here are some things that we're still doing, uh, you know, to feel like we're making progress. And it was just basically, you know, I'm still ordering windows. I don't know when I can install them, but we're ordering them. Uh, I'm, you know, paid for some new software for presentations. I didn't do it just because I want to be able to present remotely. It was in the works, but it was $5,000 out of my pocket that I wasn't going to hold that back. We need to make progress, so we did that anyway. You know, a couple other things, you know, personal things that, you know, we're still moving forward on, you know, building a house. Like, these things have to keep going. And, you know, pressing the hit— hitting the send button on $25,000 worth of window orders was like just fired me up. I was like, yeah, we're installing those windows sooner or later. Let's get them. And, you know, so I just felt like, you know, maybe if you were talking to somebody, you know, they could use some news like that, you know.

Well, I think, yeah, I think we can all use some news like that. You know, one of the things that we are working really hard to do is keep all of our staff And, and, you know, and continue providing as much value to our clients as we can, which I know is what you are doing also. You're kind of stepping that up even.

Yeah.

You know, one of the things— and, and, and Patrick, I hope you don't mind my, my sharing this— one of the reasons why I believe that you can be confident and you can pull the trigger on some of these things is that Over the last year or two, sure, you've really focused on your profit model, right? I haven't talked in any of these conversations with anybody about profit model. That was a conversation we were all having, you know, I was gung-ho on profit model 3 or 4 weeks ago. And by the way, in the next couple weeks, I'm going to be doing more talk about that so that we can all prepare ourselves and get ready when this thing turns back on.

Sure.

But has that, had that work, all of that work that you were doing to essentially shore up your profit model, is that part of what has given you the confidence that you've got now to just kind of keep pressing forward?

Absolutely. Because I, you know, I'm sitting here going, okay, you know, we've got some, we got some cash in reserves. And so if we can just get this much work in and get this much done, to, you know, handle this part, you know, and then we've got, you know, if we gotta blow through a little bit of our cash reserves, it's not the end of the world, you know? I mean, we have to be here on the other side, you know? So what's my continuity plan? You know, I gotta protect the core of my business, you know, but we have to keep spending on marketing, you know? We can't just disappear to people. They need to see us, and so as soon as this thing starts to turn around, they're like, oh, those guys didn't, They didn't miss a beat. Does that mean we might move some money from one thing to another within marketing and advertising and maybe try to shrink the overall spend? Of course, a little bit of that. You know, there might be a few people that I can't keep on, but you know, I got this core group that I need them with me on the backside of this. So whatever I gotta do to protect that, I'm gonna do it. If I, you know, if it's stimulus money, if it's, company savings, you know, worst case personal savings. Like, there's got— this machine has to be intact on the back side of this. And so every day I just work towards that, you know. Go ahead. Well, I was gonna say, you know, I, I, it's just I'm not gonna sit here and try to tell somebody like I'm Superman, I'm bulletproof from like the negative thoughts completely, or the worries or anything. Like, I'm not sitting here, hey, business as usual, but it's an overall attitude of progress, stay the course as much as possible with a few variations to the formula. And certainly our profit, you know, it allows us to keep that attitude. But, um, you know, on top of that, I, you know, I start every day making sure I spend some time getting myself into the right mindset. So when I go to the office and when I talk to my people, some of which are working remotely, They hear progress. They hear work. Let's— we're going to be on the backside of this thing in good shape. So it's, it's important right now.

And, and it's not easy, is it?

I mean, no, it's not, man. I mean, there's mornings I wake up and I'm laying there. I'm like, okay, you know, cause that first thought is, what do I do? I have some, something maybe negative, but I got to, man, I got a note on my door that says you're going to feel better once you're moving. So I get moving. I walk out the front door with my dog and I walk up and down my street and I literally talk to my dog and I tell him, man, hey dog, my dog's name is Rick. Hey Rick, so grateful this morning for my wife Cindy and what she's doing to keep the kids in order and so grateful for the staff that I've got. Man, I say it out loud. I come back to the house, I feel up. I'm ready to put my mind to work on on the tasks of the day. But I, you know, I do— I've got to, you know, start with being grateful for what I've got. And it, you know, it programs my brain to look for opportunities rather than focusing on problems. Yeah, we have to— we have to right now be very careful about what we let into our brains and spend time on. I mean, you say it in your book, right? Like, what do you— what are you letting into your mind? What are you spending your time on? What are you thinking about? You know, are these thoughts problems or solutions? You better focus on solutions. Don't dwell on problems because it's a downward spiral.

Yeah.

And look, and this is, and this is temporary.

As, as destructive as it's been, I guess there's no other word. Let's call a spade a spade. It's destructive what's going on. But it's going to end. This is the United States of America. Just heard this morning, or this morning, I think it was this morning. Surprisingly, aside from the spike in unemployment that happened this morning, the numbers that came out this morning, but surprisingly, according to the Fed, the economy is still sound. Sure. Not sure how that will be a month from now and whether or not this is going to go another, you know, that much longer.

It might.

But, you know, You know, it was kind of interesting to hear the Fed chairman say, well, you know, the economy is sound. This is not an economic problem.

Right.

So it's— I love your attitude and you're always so like upbeat and positive. And I thought, man, this is— these are the types of people that I want to share with our community. And a lot of people are feeling hurt right now and they're—

Yeah.

And they're down and their confidence is low. And I hope by, by sending these messages out there and talking with people like you, that we can encourage people to stay the course, not give up. This is temporary.

Yeah.

Did I show you this?

Stay active through April.

April. I like it.

Yeah, we just, we just, as I think an hour ago, we just blasted this out to our list.

I love it.

And this is going to be— this is our mantra. Stay active through April. Hashtag SEDA. One of the things, by the way, my friend, if you would look at that email, there's instructions on there. And for anybody that's listening, what we're looking for are we're looking for 1-minute or less videos just from your phone, 1-minute or less videos just offering words of inspiration, encouragement, advice. Solutions, whatever, to the community, to the Wealthy Contractor community, we're going to be posting those on the Wealthy Contractor Facebook page. And so if you could, if you can record one of those for us, that would be, that'd be really awesome. Sure. Yeah. For, for those of you that are on our list, you'll look for that email, you'll see it. It's #SEDA. And then, and for those of you that are not on our list, get on our list, go to thewealthycontractor.com and you'll get access to all of the stuff that we're doing here to get through this. All right. So, um, I talked enough. Um, do you have any, uh, do you have any, uh, parting, parting words here? Cause I know you got to get back to work.

No, I mean, look, I can't tell people what to do within their businesses, but I can, I can say without a doubt, that right now more than, than ever, if you're a business owner, your people are watching you. You need to be a leader. You need to be a leader in your family. You need to, you know, if you've never been one for, um, self, self-improvement type stuff, you know, the, the, the Tony Robbins stuff, if you've shunned that, now's the time to just dig into something like that. Start, you know, find a gratitude practice. It's amazing if you can make your brain Program your brain to look for opportunities and not fears first thing in the morning, and maybe shut it down at night by talking, by writing down your wins for the day. Such a simple thing to do and so important right now. I mean, I've even got my children doing it. My daughter, she's 10, she's writing her gratitudes down every day. She does affirmations. My son does the same thing. And it's, you know, it's kind of helping to hold things together in the house while the kids are home. With my wife, trying to do some, some sort of schoolwork. So, you know, mindset is key right now and whatever you can do to protect that, it will help you get through the other hard work of the day. That's it.

You're the best, man. I appreciate you. Thank you so much.

No, we appreciate you, Brian. It's awesome that you're doing these. I know it's helping people because it's helping me.

All right, everybody, until next time. Thank you for listening to this special edition of the Wealthy Contractor Podcast. I hope it gave you the confidence to know that there are other other successful contractors out there just like you who are not letting circumstances get in the way of providing excellent service to their customers, serving their communities, and achieving their goals. This will pass, and your attitude and the messages you take in right now will determine your mindset and where you end up. I'd encourage you to listen to the other podcasts in this series that we're releasing regularly, as well as going back to prior episodes of The Wealthy Contractor podcast to hear from like-minded contractors in the industry so you can pick up on strategies, tactics, and tools that will help you overcome the circumstances around you. We'll be back to regularly scheduled podcasts soon. So until next time, this is Brian Kaskavalciyan with G4 Marketing Group and The Wealthy Contractor.