Webinar Replay | How To Remove The Worst Bottleneck In Your Business and Create A Surge of Profits

Okay, this, this webinar is going to be a little bit, um, different, um, than what we normally do. Um, I'm going to talk about a concept here, the bottleneck concept, that is, um, it, it is a concept that is generally way above my pay grade. However, what I'm, what I'm going to do here is I'm going to take this, this complex, um, um, what do we call it, um, this complex thing, um, this idea of bottleneck, and I'm going to, um, make it simple for us to understand. Us meaning, you know, mostly me. Most of you are a whole lot smarter than I am, and so a lot of times the concepts that we're talking about here, part of my job is to bring you these concepts but also to deliver them in a way that where we can take action on them, to where we can actually execute on them and use them in our business to improve and get better. And so this concept, um, is, is, is one of those concepts. Um, hey, oh, more people coming in. Matt Hollander is here. What's happening, Matt? Patel. Okay, Todd. I'm just going through the list. I'm sorry, I'm just looking for people that I already know. There's a lot of you here and I welcome all of you. Okay, cool. All right, I'll leave. Valerie is here too. She'll be monitoring the chat. She will be monitoring the Q&A. I often will get, you know, distracted by the chat. So if it's okay with you guys, Valerie is monitoring that, but I'm going to turn it off because it does distract me. And I'm going to turn off the list of participants because as I see people coming in, you know, obviously I'm looking and I get distracted. So this concept, I need to be focused on you guys. So Valerie, Just to make sure you're there, you're going to be monitoring the chat for me. Just jump. Awesome. Okay, thanks. Okay. So, um, how to remove the worst roadblock bottleneck in your business and create a surge of profits. That is our topic for today. And so here are some of the things that we're going to cover. One, we're going to talk about what is a bottleneck. What is a bottleneck? How do you find it or them? And then what do you do about them or it when you do find it? And chances are good, chances are very good that there is one main bottleneck, and we're going to talk about that at the end. Okay, there's one main bottleneck in most of our businesses, and it's simple to identify. It's not easy to correct. However, I'm going to give you a lot of information here. This is one of those webinars where I'm going to give you lists of questions to be asking yourself in order to identify, um, your, um, you know, your bottleneck, what's holding you back. Um, and so you're going to want to like stay focused, you're going to want to write down some notes. Now, one thing that I think that we do need to discuss is, and, and be cognizant of, is that we are, for all intents and purposes, we're in a home improvement boom. Okay, we have fortunately been positively impacted by by the current environment, all right? And I know that most of my clients, some of which are on today, businesses large and small, have pretty significant backlogs of work. So backlogs are good to a certain point. I mean, we— I think we always want to have a certain backlog. It gives us, as owners, I think it gives us the ability to sleep at night to know, okay, we're, we're good for 4 weeks, we're good for 8 weeks. I think once we start to get past 8 weeks, it creates a whole new set of problems. I have a client right now that has a 40 $40 million backlog. $40 million backlog. And that's like, how many weeks of business is that? That's like 16, I think 16 or so weeks of business. That's a big, big backlog of work. Now, why am I bringing up the backlog? Well, hopefully you guys are chipping away, getting caught up, and you're going to be ready to enter, you know, next year at a place where you'll have a reasonable backlog for your business. And things will maybe— and we don't know, I'm not a fortune teller— but maybe things will start to level out a little bit more. We'll have to get better at lead generation. We're going to have to get better at sales conversions. We're always, always, always, always have to get better at profitability. Um, and so today we are going to touch on bottlenecks of lead gen, bottlenecks of sales conversions, but I think really the place to focus on for most is profitability. Are you as profitable as you should be? Are you as profitable as you could be? Because here's what would be a shame. It would be a shame to have gone through this time period of, again, for our industry, economic boom, and not come out of it wealthier, not come out of it stronger, not come out of it in a position of strength going into next year. Okay, that would be a shame. This would be a huge wasted opportunity. And so that's why I thought September, this would be a good time as we're getting— again, typically we would be starting back up again in our busy season like right about now, mid-September. Um, so whatever is the thing that you believe is holding you back in your business Let's make sure that you are, you know, that you are really focused on profitability, strength, stability going into next year. All right. So with all of that said, what is a bottleneck? So a bottleneck is one process in a chain of processes that its limited capacity reduces the capacity of the whole chain. A bottleneck can have a significant impact on the flow of manufacturing. So when bottleneck is a term that's used in many different types of processes and systems, and we can interchange some of the language here. So where it says manufacturing, I didn't want to mess with the definition, but the what's in red are, are, are the, um, uh, the equivalent in our businesses, in the home improvement business. So manufacturing— most of you aren't manufacturing companies. You are— you manufacture leads, you manufacture sales, and you should be manufacturing profit. So that's why there I put lead gen sales profit. Okay, um, By the way, you also have— there's production in there as, as well, of course. Okay, lead gen, sales, production, and profit. Okay, so a bottleneck can have a significant impact on the flow of lead, sales, production, quality, profit, and can sharply increase the time and expense of production, or increase the time and expense of getting to success whatever that means for you, getting to success, okay? Certain level of revenue, a certain level of profitability, a certain leadership team, certain process, whatever that happens to mean for you, whatever success means for you. A bottleneck affects the level of production capacity. Again, the number of leads that can come in, the number of sales that are made, the number of— or the, the rate of sales conversion, right pricing, okay? And of course, profitability. It's funny that I left out production. I just noticed I did not put in production. Production should be in there as, as well because you got to install the work in order to get paid for the work. And so bottleneck affects the level of production capacity, number of leads, sales, sales conversions, pricing, production profitability that a firm, your company, can achieve each month. Okay, now this idea came from a book called The Goal. Okay, The Goal is, it's an interesting book, it's told as a story story. It's written as a novel. However, it is all about it, and it's like, how many of these things have been sold? Like 6 million copies. Give you some perspective on how many— that's a lot of flipping copies. Now, the book's been around forever, but, um, that's a lot of copies of a book to be sold. Um, so, um, the The book is called The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement, and in the book he talks about the theory of constraints. Okay, so this is where it gets a little bit deep, so forgive me. I'm going to bring it back to the practical, but I think that we need to have some frame for this before we jump into the practical. Okay, so the theory of constraints is a methodology for identifying the most important limiting factor that stands in the way of achieving a goal and then systematically improving that constraint until it is no longer the limiting factor. In manufacturing, the constraint is often referred to as a bottleneck. Now, for our purposes here today, I don't think any of you are actually manufacturing manufacturers of a product, but you are manufacturers. Again, you are manufacturers of leads, you are manufacturers of sales, you are manufacturers of profit. Okay, so that's why this also applies to all of us. Okay. The theory of constraints takes a scientific approach to improvement. It hypothesizes that every complex system, including manufacturing processes, consists of multiple linked activities, one of which acts as a constraint upon the entire system, i.e., the constraint is the weakest link. So if we look at this, takes a scientific approach to improvement. You've heard me say this before. This business is not art. This business is science. It's based on metrics. It is based on numbers. Okay, if you look, there's, there's a number of my clients that are here, and I'm not going to name names. You know who you are. Okay, I've had many discussions with you. Um, so I know that this is how you run your business. It is by the numbers. Okay, it is by numbers, very clear. Okay, it hypothesizes that every complex system— your business, the home improvement business, is a complex system. It requires a lot of moving parts, okay, including manufacturing processes that have multiple linked activities. So think about this as, for example, like Lead Gen. Okay, so lead generation is not just standing out in front of your building and saying, hey, we're here, come and see us. That's not— that would be easy, right? Wouldn't be effective, but it would be easy. For most of you, it includes internet advertising, it includes TV, includes radio, includes print, it includes canvassing, um, big box stores. It's an entire mix of activities that give you the result of manufacturing leads. Okay, and in those activities there's almost always a constraint. Okay, he calls it a constraint, but think of it as a bottleneck. Okay, so I could not find, uh, I could not find this image blown up and in better quality. But this gives you kind of an idea of the theory of constraints. So here's, you know, the, the elements are going in here, they enter here, they go through step 1, they go through step 2, they go through step 3, 4, 5, so whatever, and then they come out completed on the other end. So at the other end of your business, there should be money. Okay, this should be money, profit. Okay, so the way that we're going to look at this today and think about where the constraint might be in your business or where the bottleneck might be in your business is we're going to revisit the wealthy contractor success Wealth and Freedom framework. All right, so some of you are familiar with this. This is also another one of those— it's a, it's a complex system, but this is the business, okay? So if you want to build the business, and again, I can pull out all of my most successful clients and I can put them in a room and I can put this model up on— that's me— for— I can put this model up on the wall, and every single one of them, without exception, without exception, will have this entire structure or framework in place. Okay, so before I show you that, for those of you that are new, that don't know who the hell I am or why you should be listening, I'm not going to go into my whole long bio, but I am a— I was about to say I run. I don't run. I work here now. My partner runs the business, but we own a company called G4 Marketing Group. Because my partner is basically running the business, I get to do stuff like this. So, we also own The Wealthy Contractor. We have a program, we basically do relationship marketing for some of the top home improvement companies in the country. At last count, about 200. Interesting statistic, our clients in the last 12 months have done over 100,000 jobs. Not sure exactly what the revenue volume is, but it's somewhere minimum, somewhere between $750 and $900 million. Probably, you know, very close to a billion dollars. We also have The Wealthy Contractor, and through The Wealthy Contractor, we do stuff like this where we do education. There's my book, The Seven Secrets to Becoming a Wealthy Contractor, which by the way, if you do not have a copy of The Seven Secrets, go to, not right now, but when we're done, go to thewealthycontractor.com and I basically offer you a book for free. I'll buy it for you. Just, yeah, I just ask you to pay shipping and handling. Okay. And we have the podcast, The Wealthy Contractor Podcast, and we put on events like this. This is our annual event. This was the 2020 event that happened in February. By the way, we, are— have just between us, we are having an event in January. It's going to be live. There's going to be some twists and turns, but be on the lookout. You may want to save the date if you want to come live. Half the seats are already gone. We're limited by how many people we can have. So half the, like, live seats are gone as we speak already, and that just from people these people here from last year. Um, but keep the dates, 26th and 27th of January. Save the dates. Um, you are not going to want to miss Accelerate Live 2021. It is going to be— you'll see. Anyway, so that's who we are. Enough of us. Let's go back to you. All right, so this is the whole framework, the, the Wealthy Contractor Success Wealth, and Freedom Framework, um, and it is based on 3 big ideas: people, process, and profit. Okay, so this is the whole thing. Now let's break— we're going to go down into each of these and how, uh, all of this works. All right, in the middle of this framework, right in the middle, you— if we If I go back here, see this right here? That is you. That is you. Okay, what do you want from your business? Well, I know for sure, I know for sure there are a few things that you want. That you didn't go into business just to have a job. You went into business so that the business can fund your ideal lifestyle, whatever that means for you, okay? Whatever that means for you. So when we look at this and you see my little, uh, stick figure guy, and then you see the little heart there, the heart is your desires. What is it that you want? What do you want to get out of your business? What do you want to get out of your life? All right, and so again, your business funding your ideal lifestyle and giving you the freedoms you need to live your best life. Again, whatever that means for you. So your business exists to fund your ideal lifestyle and give you the freedoms you need to live your best life. So one of the things, and we talk about this in the Seven Secrets book, is are you clear about the outcomes that you desire? From your life, from your business, because the business is only a tool. That's it. It is a tool, and you need to use it properly. Okay, um, this is called living with intention. Now I've put up here 3 freedoms. There's more, but the main ones for sure I know that all of us have in common are time and money. Time freedom, and money freedom. The third one can be interchangeable, so I put there impact. That's just the place I'm at in my life right now, and I know a lot of you also feel the need to make an impact, to be more than just about money, to be— to do more with giving back. What, again, whatever that means for you. I have a client that donates thousands of pounds of food to his local food banks. They are involved in other charities. I have another client that does Habitat for Humanity. I have clients that give away roofs. I have clients that give away wind. Whatever impact means for you. It might not even be impact. It might be something different. The idea, though, is that there are these core freedoms that drive you as an entrepreneur. Okay, so some questions to think about, okay, because this is where everything stems from. Okay, you can't talk about bottlenecks and constraints and all of that until we understand what is it that we really want from our business. So how much money specifically, like a number, do you need to make from your business so you can live your ideal lifestyle, whatever that means for you. For some people, it's 5 grand a month. For some, it's 10 grand a month. For some, it's 100. For some, it's a million. Whatever, the number doesn't matter. The principles are the same. The process is the same. How much total wealth do you want by the end of the year? These are just some things to think about. Um, if you have total control of your time, what would you do different than you're doing today? What are your goals outside of the business, and are you working towards them? These are, you know, your purpose goals or your impact goals. Um, how much time away from the business do you want so you can pursue your life's interests? So, you know, what makes you happy? Do you have any hobbies? Do you have things that you want to go and do, you know? What do you want for your family? How do you want your family to live? You know, what opportunities do you want to give them? What, you know, think about these things. Do you want a new home? Do you want a new car? Do you want a boat? Do you want a plane? Right. There's somebody on the call right now that's got a plane, and it's not a little plane, like a jet plane. Okay. It's cool. I'm hoping he's going to take me for a ride in it one day soon, but I kind of have to like make my way over there. Um, all right, so to get these freedoms, your business must be organized around 3 fundamentals. Okay, number 1 is people. People. This is a people-driven business. Process. Process and profit. People, process, and profit. People, process, and profit. Get that in your head. People, process, profit. That's this business, okay? These 3 fundamentals provide you as the owner with leverage. These are the 3 fundamentals that need to be in place in your business in order for you to scale your business, to multiply your business, to multiply your profits, to multiply your effectiveness, to multiply your, what, your impact, whatever. People, process, profit. Okay, so think of it as this, okay? Leverage equals speed. Okay, leverage equals speed. It also, it also equals stability in your business. Okay, um, this is— I'm not going to go into it here, but you noticed here I've got the 80/20 here. I'm not going to go into it here. We talk By the way, this is the kind of stuff we talk about at Accelerate Life. Okay, these are some heavy, heavy topics, and we go deep into these. Here I'm just giving you kind of an overview of it just because we're limited by time. We have an hour, you know, we don't have 2 days to go over all of this stuff, which is what we do at Accelerate. We break all of this down and, and, um, we go through this over the course of 2 days. So people People is all about having the right people in the right seats working towards the same vision. I do not know one successful business owner in this or any other field does not— that does not have a grand vision and is able to communicate that vision to their people. I don't know one. Okay, so when it comes to people I'm going to give you questions. I'm not going to tell you what to do. I'm just going to— this is about thinking. Okay. And again, when we're in an environment like an Accelerate Live, we actually go through and answer some of these questions. Again, we can't do it here. So I'm going to say to you, write down these, these questions. Okay. So who are we? This goes to culture. This is all about who are we as a company? Who are we as a group? Where are we going? Really important is who we are and where we are going attracting A players. We all want A players. We don't want B players. We don't want C players. We don't want other companies' leftovers and rejects. We only want A players. Okay, are we accountable for our results? Are we accountable? So are people being held to a number, a metric, a KPI, right? Is someone accountable? So here's a bottleneck question: do you have the right people in the right seats, and is there an opportunity for you to recruit new A-players? Right. Without this stuff, if you don't have a great culture, if you don't know where you're going and have a good vision, right, you are not going to be able to hire A-players. The second piece of this is process. Process. Creating reliable, consistent, and predictable results. Okay, you cannot build and scale and grow a business without reliable, predictable results. Okay, nobody, not one of my clients, will say, oh, I'm gonna scale my business, but I don't know what my close rate is, or I don't know what my NSLI is, net sale to lead issued. Can't build a business that way. Okay, and so we have to create systems and processes that deliver consistent results, because when we have consistent results, then we can really start to scale the business. So how do you do this? Well, you do this through creating standard operating procedures, scripting, and checklists, and you need process for effectively and profitably generating leads, converting those leads into sales, installing the jobs that you sell, getting paid, and developing customers for life. So when it comes to process, look in your business and ask yourself, can my sales system be taught? Can I teach it? To somebody else? If you can't, you don't have a business yet and you can't scale. Can we replicate this process over and over and over again? So if I bring in, you know, 5 people— and I'm going to use sales because it's just the simple, you know, it's actually very simple, right? So I know that again, for my top clients are always recruiting, they're always looking for new people, particularly salespeople and installers. Okay, so can I teach a new recruit, a new salesperson, my system, and can they go out and replicate the results that the other salespeople are getting? So if our conversion rate right now is, is 3 out of 10 issued leads, can I bring somebody on, teach them my sales system, and can they go and close 3 out of 10 deals? Okay, and then is there a system in place to measure whether or not they actually did it? Very important. It blows my mind how many people have processes, okay, but they can't measure whether or not the process actually works and delivers the result it needs to result. Okay, can we rely on this process to deliver predictable results? So again, can you— can— does this system work predictably without you? By the way, by the way, the big part of all of this is all of this has to happen without you, okay, as the owner. Has to happen without you, the owner. So can you go away for a month? Can you go away for a month and will sales still be made? Will leads still be made? Will jobs still be installed? Will customers still be happy, thrilled, raving fans? Can we continuously tweak and improve the results of this process? So can we look at each process, look at the results that we are getting, and can we work on little, you know, twists and turns little tweaks to, to improve our results. So question, your bottleneck question is, have you reviewed your processes? Have you made improvements as needed? Okay, this is a good time. I know a lot of people are running around like crazy, but now is the time that you want to be looking at your systems and your processes. So let's look at, in this case, I want to look at a real-world example. So only when you have reliable, consistent, and predictable results can you scale your business. So this is, this is, um, a diagram of what I call the 7 home improvement profit multipliers. And when we look at these, so this is sales and marketing. Okay, make no mistake, you're in a sales and marketing business. Okay, you're in the customer business. And so the 7 parts to this is, and you'll notice the shape, right? It's not a stop end. It's a continuous flow. Right, it's a continuous flow. So number 1 is the number of inquiries that come into the business. Inquiry is not necessarily a lead. An inquiry is just somebody that called in, they were curious, okay? They raised their hand and said, hey, I'm curious. The next step is taking that inquiry and converting that into an appointment. That appointment then goes into a demo, an actual sales presentation. From there, there's a certain number that are going to be sold. Number 5 is at a certain job value, right? Sorry, my nose is a little itchy. Number 6 is how many of the ones that we didn't sell can we get back? And number 7 is the number of people that we can get to come back and buy from us again. Or deliver us their friends, their family, and their neighbors. Again, that's why this is a continuous loop. People that end it— most businesses, by the way, most businesses, and this is a huge mistake— they end somewhere around number 4, number 5. That's where they end. Okay, um, you don't want to end there. Okay. Generating leads and converting leads to sales is all about, you know, how many inquiries, number of appointments that come in, how many leads are actually issued to a salesperson, how many demos do we actually do, how many sales presentations do we actually make, how many of those demos turn into a sale, what is the average job value from those, what is the net sale to lead issued. So if I give a salesperson 10 leads, right, they close 3 deals and it's $30,000 total of work, that means that the net sale to lead issued is $3,000. So for every lead I give a salesperson, they bring me back $3,000. And then we want to also be looking at lead cost by lead source. Okay, so installing jobs, getting paid, developing customers for life. So, um, what percentage of our business comes from What percentage comes from repeat business? How many reviews are we getting posted online where they matter, like Google? Okay, Google reviews right now, it's like currency. And this also helps to build equity value in your business, which again is a much bigger conversation than what we can have here today. But how powerful is this? Let's do a demonstration, right? So we bring in 100 inquiries, we convert 70% of them into appointments. And, um, that would give us 70, uh, appointments. If we demoed 80% of those, that would give us 56 sit-down face-to-face presentations with prospects. Of those, let's say we sell 30%. Okay, that gives us 17 sales. If the average sale is $10,000, that gives us $170,000. Sorry, I made a mistake with my math. $170,000 in sales. Now if we look at how do we make improvements to process, how do we create these predictable results, and then how do we tweak and improve them when you know your numbers. Again, like my— the most successful people I know in this or any other business, they know their numbers inside and out. So if we can get a little bit better at setting appointments and we go from 70% to 75%, that gives us 75 demos. By the way, I left the number of inquiries the same. We could have increased that, but I thought, let's not— for purposes of demonstration, let's just use the same number of inquiries. Right, and again, I'm going through this very fast, and I admittedly, I'm going through this very fast because I'm watching the clock. And again, this is like 2 days of stuff that you're getting in 1 hour. Okay, if we can improve, improve our demo rate, meaning the number of times we actually get in front of a customer, to 85%, we just got a little bit better. You'll notice here we went from 70 On the same 100, we went from 70 to 75. We went from 56 demos to now 64 demos. Okay, if our sell rate stays the same, let's just say it stays the same, we've just sold 2 jobs more. But what if we can get a little bit more for each of those jobs? Look what happens. We go from $170,000 to $209,000 on the same number of inquiries, okay, times 12. And again, I hope that this math is right, but it's a lot of money, okay? $348,000 in top-line revenue. And by the way, that top-line revenue, that $348,000, is more profitable more profitable than the initial. Okay, so that's process. The final piece here, super important. This is the piece that most people— it's funny, it is the most important piece and it is the piece that is given the least amount of effort and energy. Okay. Profit. Okay, so let's be clear about profit. It is fuel. Without enough of it, you won't have enough money to effectively market your services. Look, there's a couple things going on in the home improvement business, okay? There are some companies out there that are attempting to consolidate this industry. There are people out there that are buying up other home improvement companies and bringing them into their fold of people and process and profit model. Okay, as these companies get bigger and bigger, when they come to town, it is going to get harder and harder for you to compete against them. Why? Because they know their numbers. They know their numbers, and they will outspend you on marketing. Okay, if you don't have the right profit model in place, right, they will outspend you. And so how do you compete against that? Well, you compete against that by making sure that your profit model gives you enough money to effectively market and make leads. Okay, I'm not telling you that— look, look, This whole, this whole thing about, um, I don't want to go off on a tangent, the whole thing about Walmart, when Walmart came to town and how it decimated all the small men. You remember that conversation? We don't hear much about that as much anymore, but those business owners, what they did not do, they knew Walmart was coming, and what they did was they listened to all the noise and they continued doing things the way that they had always done them and they got squashed. There were some though that said, okay, Walmart's coming to town, I better get ready. I need to up my game and I need to pivot and I need to reinvent my business and I need to get much more focused on who I serve, okay, how effectively I communicate to them, how effectively I communicate my value to them. And on and on, right? This is basically what has to happen for you. Now, I'm not saying just because one of these companies comes to your market, all of a sudden they're going to take all the market share. No. But it's going to be harder to compete. Okay, especially because the only way they're doing this is because they have the people and the process and the profit in place and tight. Okay. So, um, you won't have enough money to hire great people, right? Nobody wants to hire mediocre people. No, I don't want to get a deal on somebody, okay? I'd rather overpay and get great people than try and make a deal. You won't be able to give your family the rewards that they deserve, and you won't have a solid foundation that you'll need to make it the next 10 years in your business. Okay, so profit is the fuel. To have a high-performance business, you need high-performance fuel, and that is your profit model. Okay, profit is not something to add on at the end. It's something to plan for in the beginning. It requires both a decision on your part that we are going to be profitable at this rate? To me, it's minimum acceptable is 10%. Minimum acceptable, 10%, after everything and everyone is paid, including you. Okay, ideal profit is 15 to 20%. Okay, this is what you want to work towards, 15 to 20%. Okay. Being in business today without a firm grasp on your financials is irresponsible. Okay, and so you need to know the numbers. I'm not going to go into all of these, but you need to know the numbers of your business and how they work together so that you create a model, a profit model, that spits out at the end the right level of profitability for you to get what you want, for your family to get what they want, for your teams to get what they want. Okay, and then finally, you do all of those things, you take care of all of those things, then you can think about your impact in your community, okay, and the people around. Okay, but take care of you, your family, and your people first. The only way you're going to be able to do that, by the way, is to be super profitable, right? So profit— do you have a defined profit model that you work towards? Does your profit model deliver a minimum net profit of 10%? If not, it is broken. You have a broken profit model. And I hate to say this to you, but look, if your profit model is broken at $1 million, it's going to be broken at $3 If it's broken at 3, it's going to be broken at 8. If it's broken at 8, it's going to be broken at 20. Okay, I've said this 100 times before. I'm going to continue to say it until more and more of you get it. I talk with people all the time, and I've talked to people that do $20 million in sales and they're proud of it. They puff out their chest. They do $20 million in sales, and you ask them, what's your profit margin? They say 3%. What? You're basically turning money. To me, money doesn't like you. 3%? Yes, people say, well, it's $600,000. I don't give a crap. One bad month and you're wiped out. Wiped out. $600,000 is not enough to sustain a $20 million business, right? And again, the math It doesn't have to be $20 million, doesn't have to be $10 million, doesn't have to be $5 million, doesn't need to be $3 million. It could be a million-dollar business. Okay, are you vigilant? Vigilant— I use that word on purpose— about protecting your margins and your cash flow? Are you disciplined with your finances? Is your profit model sustainable? Meaning, here's what I mean by this, because this is the mistake I made that made me go broke. We did not grow through cash flow. We did at the beginning in, in, in my last— in the, in the, the, the big company that I had, okay? The— all the other ones before all grew through cash flow and very little debt, and they were profitable and they did really, really well. But the last one, we were trying to grow this monster-sized business, and so what happened was we didn't have enough cash flow in the business, meaning our profit model was severely broken. And so what we would do is in the, in the, for the sake of getting bigger and bigger, what did I do? I took on debt. Big mistake. If you're taking on debt to grow your business, something is wrong. You do not need— you talk to the, the majority of my clients that grew from nothing to something did it without debt. Okay, um, bottleneck question: have you reviewed your pricing model? Because more than likely, if you're not getting the profit that you want, more than likely the problem is not that you're overspending. The problem is probably you're not charging enough, okay? And look, if you want to get 15 to 20% net, like many, many— I can line them up for you and I can prove it to you, okay, that it is doable in this business. If you want to get to 15, 20% net, you must be one of the highest the highest-priced providers of your service in your market. You have to be. There's no way around it. Okay, so all you have to do is you have to be a better value to your customer than the next guy, even though you're charging more. Okay, value does not necessarily— value is not necessarily only about how much people pay. There are other value factors. Wow, I crammed a lot in in 50 minutes. So any comments from anybody? Any questions? By the way, we're not done, we're not done. I'm, I'm, I'm pretty sure I know where the bottleneck is in your business, okay? We're not done, but I want to hear from you. Does anybody have any questions? Does anybody have any comments? Am I talking to myself? You know, really? Okay, so Valerie, either I've done a really good job of explaining this, or, um, or, uh, people just aren't, you know, either they're, they're, they're they're not listening or they don't care. Do you have a question for Bob Koons? Give him John Anglis's information. Look, somebody's asking, I need a sales process, any good tools? Yeah, depending on the business that you're in, a sales presentation already exists. Just go buy one. Okay, I know how that sounds, but so many people get stuck on this idea that, oh, I got to create my my processes from the ground up. No, you don't. No, you don't. There's plenty of people out there that already have a process in place. Go and learn from them. If you have to pay for it, pay for it, you know, shortcut the process. Simple, okay? Don't make this any harder than it already is. Um, again, there are, there are people that are here on this training, okay, that run— one of them has a $50 or $60 million business, the other one's got like a $20 million business. They're here, right? Why? Because they're looking for one thing that I might say, one little thing that I might say that will, that they can leverage inside of their business to make more money, to get more time off, to create a better environment for their people. Okay, and so, and, and those people, by the way, they're all willing to help if you reached out to them and said, hey, I'm a non-competing company, I'm actually 1,000 miles away from you, can I come and learn from you? Most of, most people, most of these guys will say, absolutely, of course you can, and they'll show you everything and they'll talk to you and they'll spend time with you. Okay, I just did an interview, um, a podcast with Tommy Mello, Tommy Mello of A1 Garage. This guy's got a $50 million garage door company and he's, and he's growing this thing by leaps and bounds. He talks about this, he talks about the same thing. It's like he was, he was saying that he had people come in and look at his operation You know, and he showed them all the softwares that they're using for recruiting, the softwares that they're using for CRM, the software that they're using. He has like 16 different, you know, software platforms that he uses, but he'll let anybody come in and see what he's doing. Well, maybe not anybody, but you know what I mean. So where is the bottleneck in your business? So I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell you a story. All right, so I'm in a local mastermind group and love the guys in my group, love the guy. We've been together now, this, this core group, probably 2, 3 years. As it is today, it was— anyway, there's a guy in there, there's one guy in there who about 3 months ago, he brought— and he's a very analytical guy— and he brought up and he put all this stuff up on the board and of these numbers, and he was sure that he had a sales problem, okay? And that's what he wanted to focus on that day, was he had a sales problem. So we're asking him questions, trying to understand what's going on, and what he's doing Oh, I did what I said I wasn't going to do. I looked at the Q&A. OK, I'll get back. I'll get back to the Q&A. Close, close. I'll answer those questions. So sales, sales, sales. Well, what about this? And what about that? And we're looking at the numbers. And the numbers were pretty consistent across the board. Nothing had really changed. This is— and by the way, this was in— I'll tell you when it was. It was in June, was the first time it came up. June or July. Anyway, right in the middle of the pandemic. Okay, and this is not a home improvement guy, but it doesn't matter because the principles are all the same. Okay, so we're asking him some questions. It's not anything different. And in my mind, I'm sitting there, I'm thinking, this is not— this is— is this really your problem? I mean, we're nitpicking this. This is not— this is— there's a different problem here. And so I asked him, I said, well, where are you trying to get with this? Well, I want to grow. I want to get bigger. I want to make more sales. Well, why do you want to make more sales? Because I want to make more money. All right, well, how much money did you make last month? I don't know. What do you mean you don't know? It's the 15th of the month. How do you not know how much money you made last month? Well, because— by the way, and I said this just recently in the podcast that I did, any time you ask somebody a question and the answer begins with the word "well," stop them, because that's not a real answer. Okay, but he goes, "Well, because—" and he starts giving me all these excuses about his bookkeeper. Come to find out, by the way, that he's paying this bookkeeper a ridiculous amount of money. Ridiculous amount of money, okay, just to do his books because he thinks he has been sold by this person that this is a much bigger concept, that this is, oh, this is so complicated, this is the bullshit, okay. He got— he's getting taken. So the next month we meet again, and I think I had to miss one month. And so we come back again, same shit's going on. This is last month. And I said to the guy, I said, look, I— first off, I can't believe you still have this bookkeeper. Second off, where are your numbers? Can you show me your numbers? Still could not show me his numbers. Okay. This is— I know that this is a super long story, but I'm, I'm gonna— what is it? I'm bringing the train into the station. Okay, so I said to this guy, I said, look, because I really like this guy, he's a great guy, he's in my mastermind group. This is the, this is the point of mastermind group, is you hold people accountable, you help them wherever you can help them. I said to the guy, I said, look, I've been through this. Let's get on a call. Let's go through your numbers and let's flush it out. Because again, he brought, he brought his thing last month was, okay, well, I did $4 million in sales and I made this much. I did, I'm going to do $6 million and I'm going to make $50,000 more and I want to go to $10 million so I can make more money. I'm like, you're barely making the right amount of money on $5 million. Why do you want to go to $10? If you made the right amount of money on 5, why would you— why do you need all the headache of going to 10, right? So I said to the guy, I said, look, call me, let's get on a Zoom meeting, let's work this out, because he's sick and tired of not making money. Anyway, there's a whole bunch of things that are going on in here, but bottom line is, okay, bottom line, this is where he thought the constraint was. His sales. Okay. The real constraint was when I got on the phone with him, I said, let's go into your QuickBooks right now and let's look at your numbers. He said, oh, I can't do that. What do you mean you can't do that? Well, my bookkeeper has all— has the login. I said, okay, why don't you just send her a text message or an email and ask her for the login? Oh, no, no, no, I can't. No, I can't do that. Well, because she'll ask me, well, why do you want it? Why do you need it? I'm, I'm on top of it. Why do you need it? I shit you not, for half an hour, half an hour, we went back and forth on this. I poked and I said, we'll do it like this, we'll blame it on me, we'll do it like this. He wouldn't do it because he was afraid. What was the real constraint? What is the real constraint? Does he have a sales problem or does he have a different problem? And my experience is, my experience is that the bottleneck, that the constraint— I wanted to show you guys this video, but I'm gonna go, I'm gonna skip over it. Chances are very good that if my business has a bottleneck, the bottleneck is me. Okay, the bottleneck in your business more than likely is you. Now, and I'm not saying that— I'm telling you this just out of the same place that I told him. It comes from a place of respect. It comes from a place of wanting to help. And not have you go through the things that I went through, okay? And not have to go through the, the pain of not getting what you want from your business. So you have to seriously step back and look at your business from a— what's the right word? I want to say from a mature, serious point of view, business is serious. Business is serious, and we need to be real with ourselves, and we need to be self-aware enough to know where we are holding things up. As the owner of the business. And so you got to look at your business and you got to look at the whole flow of your business and you got to ask yourself, okay, well, I might have a constraint when it comes to sales. Let's say I may have a constraint there because I don't have a process. But the, but the thing that you have to now ask yourself next is, well, why don't I have that? What am I doing? By the way, if you get this book, secret number 3 is taking 100% responsibility for every outcome in your life, right? Good, bad, or ugly. It's entirely on you, right? And that's what this is all about. It's about taking responsibility. It's about taking charge. If you're not making the kind of money that you think you should be making or you want to make, yes, there are parts and pieces here in the people, process, and profit model that are not working, but the real question you have to ask yourself is, am I the one that's getting in the way? Okay, and if I look back on a lot of the mistakes that I made, you know, and I continue to make, by the way, continue to make, by the way, I have to look at myself and I got to say, how am I How am I being the bottleneck in this? How am I being the bottleneck? And so when you can do that, when you can do that, you can get— and you can get your ego out of the way. Years and years ago, um, some of you might know him, he's been on the podcast before, he's a good friend of mine, Jer Ronan. From Yankee Home Improvement. This is a guy that came to America from Ireland with $80 in his pocket, was homeless for a while, today runs a very successful— I think he did $10 or $12 million, um, home improvement company. And years ago when I met him, one of the first things he said to me is, Brian, I'd rather be rich than be right. And that whole— that thing that I'd rather be rich than be right is all about ego. It's all about getting your ego out of the way. It's about, you know, not having to be the one that's always right. The smartest people, the wealthiest people, the happiest people, to me, from my experience, go outside of themselves. You know, they don't rely solely on themselves Sorry, they're not relying solely on themselves like, oh, I'm Superman, I can— I'm the only one that can do it. No, you got to get that out of your, your mind. And so you'll notice that these are all P's: people, process, profit. Okay, so those are the 3 main P's, but there's another one, a 4th one, and that's personal. Okay, personal, the, you know, the fundamental here is understanding who you are. It's having clarity, it's having focus. It's about understanding, well, where are we going? Having a vision, knowing, well, this is how much money I really need to make. Most people, by the way, most people don't need a $10 million business to live the life they that they wanna live. Most people can do it on less than $5 million a year if your profit model's right, okay? So for some people, it might be a $2 million business, okay? You don't have to build a $10 million business. Now, I have, again, I have clients that if they did $10 million in a year, they'd be out of business, right? But that's the machine that they built. and their income is, you know, $3 million a year, $8 million a year. But most people don't need that kind of money. But it's not about that. It's about you. It's about what you want. What does your family want? What do you need to live the life that you want to live? Okay, it's about self-management. It's about being able to look at yourself, and it's about being able to manage the thoughts you think and how you spend your time and the people you spend your time with. And it's about protecting your confidence. It's about protecting your confidence. So that's your fourth P there. Okay, so here's some more questions. Okay, who are you being? Are you the owner? Or are you a salesperson? Are you an installer? Are you a fireman or firewoman? Whatever the the right terminology. What are you doing every day? Are you being reactive? Are you being proactive? Are you working on in the business activities or on the business activities? And is what you're doing right now leading to you having more leverage or less? Okay, so if you're out running leads or installing windows, that's not a leverage activity. But teaching and recruiting, hiring and training salespeople, recruiting, hiring, and training installers— that's a leverage activity. That is one you should be doing as an owner. Okay, and again, it's all in the book. You can go to thewealthycontractor.com and get that book for free. So I found this and I thought this was really funny, so I'm going to say to you, and again This is only from a place of respect for you and real genuine hope that you can build a business that works for you, for your family, and for your team. Okay, so don't be a bottleneck. Step outside. Look at your business from 30,000 feet. And ask yourself a simple question. What am I doing right now, or what am I not doing that is holding my business back? Okay, so, um, that's what I got for you guys. Um, there are a few questions. Um, Okay, this is cool. So here's one of those guys, great guy, um, Matt Hollander, Holco, great business. Um, I mean, just great business. He says, there's a big difference in sales and revenue. Our team is thinking outside the box from non-judgmental views and using our core value Change and adapt. Change and adapt. That's a core value. By the way, this goes back to people. This goes back to culture. So if you go to Hulko, you can actually just go to their website and you will see their core values. Okay, core values are an integral part of your company culture. It's like, who are we as a company? And when you're talking about A-players, See, at Holco, and again, go look at their website, you'll see a great example of this. Go to their website and you're gonna see who they are looking for. Here's who we are, and we are looking for more people that are like us that'll come and fit and work in our culture. And if you want to come to a place where you're gonna win, okay, where you're gonna win, Come here. Okay, so sorry I interrupted, but our team is thinking outside the box from non-judgmental views and using our core value, change and adapt. But it's just a big number to get under control. We will keep pushing to make 20% and 30% improvements, not just 5% improvements. What he's doing there, what he's talking about— I talked about this in my first book— is he's talking about making more exponential changes rather than just incremental change. Little changes are great, they're great, but this guy, he's thinking big, and he's thinking of how do I take my demo rate, for example, and how do I improve it by 20%, and what would that do to my business? It's a different level of thinking, okay? As the owner, by the way, That's what he does. That's what he— he sits and thinks, you know, that's what he's paid for, and he's paid very well because he thinks, and then he presents a vision to his team, and then the team goes and implements that vision. Okay, all great, all great companies have a visionary, somebody that is out in front that is saying, look, here's where we're going, come with us. Okay, um, Matt, I didn't— I don't understand the other, the other, uh, the other question that you put in there. I think you were joking. Um, Anonymous: People, process, or profit, which is the best place to start? That's a great, great, great, great question. I don't know. I need to know more about your business, but my initial guess My initial guess is your profit model. My initial guess would be look at your profit model. Okay, are— is it delivering a minimum 15 to 20%? If that's the case, then I would say go to process next and look at all of your processes and see, do I have a process in place for creating leads, for inquiries? Somebody to raise their hand? Do I have a process for converting those inquiries into appointments? And on down the chain. Then you start to look for people that can execute on those processes. Where do you even begin to relieve the bottleneck that you create as the owner? Well, you just did. You just did. Because you said, hey, I'm the problem. That's the place to where you start. Believe it or not, believe it or not, like the story that I told you, he still has not— and I don't know, I'm going to find out tomorrow because we're meeting tomorrow to get what the update is. And see where he's at because— but he still has not acknowledged the fact that, yes, I am the bottleneck and I need to start to do something about it. So anonymous attendee number 1 or number 2, where do you even begin to relieve the bottleneck? Is do this, do what's on the screen right now. Step outside of your business, look at it from a 30,000-foot view like like you should as an owner and start to ask myself and ask yourself, what am I doing or not doing that's holding my business back? Make a list. And then, and then, and then put them— put those things in, in order of importance, and then you start chipping away at it. But, but also you do have to work on yourself. You do have to work on yourself because a lot of these concepts look These concepts aren't easy. It's not easy to, to say, well, I was, you know, my, my profit model is at 8% and it needs to be at 15. I need— I'm charging $100, I need to charge $140. Those are not easy changes to make, but it all starts with recognition. It all starts with acknowledging the fact that I have a problem and I need to fix it. Okay, um, anything else? I hope this was valuable for you guys. Um, I'll make a plug for G4. If, um, any of you, uh, listening are not, uh, already using G4 Marketing for relationship marketing and you're doing at least 10 jobs month. What are you waiting for? We would love to talk to you. Talk to this guy, Big Pete. There's his contact info. Let's do a 10-minute discovery call with Pete and let's see if we could even help. All right, and then for those of you that are not there yet— sorry, that are not at a million dollars in sales yet, um, and— where'd it go? Or you're stuck at a million to $2 million, um, go get a copy of the 7 Secrets book. That's a good start for you, um, because it's going to give you a lot of the groundwork that you need, um, in order to execute on this, on this framework. All right. And you can get that at thewealthycontractor.com. Thewealthycontractor.com. Okay, cool. Wow. I went way over. I didn't mean to, but I hope that again, I hope this was valuable for everybody. Thank you for being here. If I can help with anything, let me know. All right, y'all. Thank you, and, uh, listen for the podcast. Got some great episodes coming up. Um, the last one that was released, I think, was Tommy Mello. The one before that was Charlie Gindel. That one's amazing. They're all good, but, you know, Charlie's— Charlie's always good. Go and listen. Bye. Thank you.