Webinar Replay | The 4 Freedoms You Must Protect

So today we're going to talk about the 4 freedoms you must protect as a wealthy contractor. And this webinar is being brought to you by G4 Marketing Group, by Don't Go, and by Destination Motivation. I'll talk to you a little bit about all of those throughout here. All right, so let's start off with good news. I'm not even going to address the damn plague, but let's talk about some other stuff. Okay, there is more money than there has ever been. There is more wealth than there has ever been. There is more opportunity than there has ever been, and we are living in a time of unprecedented prosperity. Now, yes, there are— this year has presented its own share of challenges, but none of this has changed. None of this has changed. And even with all of that going on, yes, there is some bad news. And the bad news is that there are still, you know, too many contractors out there that are working way too hard for way too little. There are too many contractors that are struggling when they should be prospering. And so part of my, I guess, part of what I'm hoping to do here through The Wealthy Contractor and through G4 Marketing is to help change that. And this webinar really, we're not going to be— we're not really going to be talking about leads and sales and all of that. We've done that on many other webinars, and if you go to our YouTube channel, you could see that, that stuff. And, and so today we are kind of continuing off of what we did last month, Mindset Over Skill Set, and because I'm a big believer that the majority of our success comes from our mindset, not from our necessarily from our, our skill sets, the majority of it. And it, we tend to focus more on skill set than we do on mindset. And one of the things that I'm hoping to bring to this industry is more talk about mindset. And you'll know if any, you know, those of you that have a copy of the Seven Secrets book here, grab one, you know that the book is really all strategies about mindset more so than they are about sales and all of that other stuff, you know, that could be bought, that could be rented. Anyway. So yes, it's been a tough few months. It's been a tough year. We started off incredible. I mean, it just started off incredible. This for most people was gonna be the greatest, greatest year of their lives yet, not ever, but yet. And there have been some challenges, but there's still a lot going on. I mean, look, all of us are fortunate to be in the home improvement industry. Why? Because home improvement is, Through the roof. I mean, it's incredible how busy everybody is. Okay. People are using this time also, you know, in between the busyness to kind of stretch their mindset. And you can too. You'll hear me say this a lot. I say success leaves clues. So you don't have to do it all yourself. There are, there are resources and tools and relationships that are available to you to help you not have to do all of this alone. And so, you know, one of the things that we want to do here at The Wealthy Contractor through the podcast and the books and the webinars and the trainings and other services and events like Accelerate, which is happening, it is going to happen at the end of January in 2021. Our whole purpose here really is to help you guys, the contractors out there, the, the home improvement and home service business owners, enjoy greater success, wealth, and freedom. Now, as business owners— and this, this training is really designed for business owners, most of the ones that I do, so I'm sorry if you're not a business owner, there's still going to be value here for you, but most Most of all the trainings that I do are really focused on the entrepreneur, on the business owner. So one of the things that we always have going on as, as business owners is people always want a piece of us. So whether it's vendors, it's customers, it's employees, even our family and our friends. And now more than ever. We have to be certain that we're protecting our freedoms. Our freedoms are really the reasons why we went into business for ourselves in the first place. And, you know, part of being successful, part of being wealthy, a big part of it is living your life by the freedoms that are important to you. You know, so all of us went into business for, you know, different different reasons. Um, but protecting those freedoms, um, is, is really all about your wellbeing. I mean, if you're not protecting those freedoms, your wellbeing suffers, and then you don't make good decisions, and ultimately your business and your profits suffer, and you don't get to live life happy and excited. And, you know, it becomes too much of a struggle. And so I know that this is kind of heavy, um, but it's a topic that's not talked about in our industry, and I want to start talking about it because I know what's happened for me in my life by focusing on these things, especially over the last 5 or 6 years. Um, so anyway, so that's what we're going to be doing here today. Um, stay to the end, we're going to give away We're going to give away 5 books. We're not— by the way, there's nothing being sold here today. So, you know, put your credit cards away. There's nothing being sold here. I will show you how if you're not one of the people that got a copy, if you're not one of the 5 people that got a copy, I'll tell you how you can get a free copy of the book. But there's really nothing being sold here today. So I always like to give credit where credit is due, and I put my own spin on things from obviously coming from my experience and my experience with hundreds and hundreds of, of home improvement and home service business owners like all of you. But I first learned about this kind of structure and these Four Big Freedoms from this guy. He was a mentor of mine for a long time, still kind of is, although I'm not involved with The Strategic Coach anymore, the organization. I still read, you know, the books that he puts out and his podcasts and all of that. He's a brilliant, brilliant guy. His name's Dan Sullivan, by the way, and he talks about the four main entrepreneurial freedoms. Now there are others, but the main ones are time, money, relationship and purpose. Time, money, relationship, and purpose. So I thought today, um, those are the ones that I will talk about as it relates to our specific industry. Now, um, for those of you that don't know who I am, um, I'm not going to bore you with a whole long story. I will tell you this though, I come from the home improvement industry. I've owned home improvement companies. In 2009, my business partner Addie, who's also my wife, we started G4 Marketing Group. And G4 Marketing Group today, um, we, we serve nearly 200 clients around the country, around, um, uh, the U.S. We provide relationship marketing services for them. The majority of our clients are, um, well, no, every one of our clients really is a multi-million dollar home improvement company. Um, And, you know, we're fortunate that we work with some of the top names in, in the industry. The other thing, because my business partner is so awesome— there she is right, right there, if you can see my cursor— she basically runs G4 Marketing. They just, you know, need a few things from me every week, and they usually put me out on the road. I am the one that you'll see on stage and doing things like this. But as far as the, the business goes, she basically, you know, runs, runs all of that, which allows me to do things like this. Um, it gives me the ability to, you know, write the Seven Secrets book— sorry about that, my throat's dry— um, do the podcast, um, and, um, put on events like our Accelerate live event. This is a shot, for those of you that can see my screen, uh, this is a shot of our, uh, 2020 event, which was in February. And again, our, uh, 2021 event, um, we're in full swing. Um, it's gonna happen, and we're moving to a bigger hotel. We've already got, I think, 30% of the seats are already gone. We haven't even started promoting it yet. Um, you're going to start to see promotion for that very, very soon. Anyway, the whole, the whole thing here is that, you know, the real reason you should probably listen to me about all of this is because I have suffered with all of this. All right, I, I got into business for myself really because I didn't want anybody telling me where to go and what time to be there. I was working for someone else as a, as a commissioned salesperson. And I didn't like the idea of somebody else controlling my time. I also didn't like the idea of somebody controlling how much money I made. And so that's why those are the main reasons that I went into business for myself. As I have grown and I've gotten older and I've been doing this now for 30 years on my own, the other pieces of it have become increasingly important as well. The relationship piece and the purpose piece. I mean, thankfully today, and I— and look, I don't say anything to, to try and impress you. The reality of it is, if a guy like me figured this out, and is doing well in these areas, you can too. And my job now is how do I get better at these things and how do I seek out people that are really good at these things and bring them to you and bring you the strategies so you don't have to figure this out. It took me, it took me, and I quote unquote knew this stuff, took me 25 years to figure it out. And it took me a long, long time, and I don't want it to take that long for you guys. I want you to get it. I want, I want you to like see this and hear it and give you strategies to be able to, to really make this work for you. And, you know, look, time, time is really all about— to me, it's like, it's how are, how are you spending your time? Do you like what you're doing? And by the way, we're going to go deep into all of these, but are you spending your time doing the things that you want to do, right? Do you get to leave? Do you get to go away? And me, I get to come and go as I please. I mean, I don't have to be at work at any time in particular unless if I have an appointment or something. And guess what? I control when I have an appointment. I could take as much time off as really as I want. Now, obviously now there's nowhere for me to go and nothing for me to do. Right now, I actually was supposed to be on a trip, but obviously that all got canceled. But time for me is number one, right? We'll talk about that in a minute. Money-wise, you know, knock on wood, make more money than we've ever made. We're wealthier than we've ever been. And it's not because of luck. It's not because, oh, we just got lucky, or, oh, that— no, this is hard work. But the work is not always where people think it is. It's not only about selling more. Relationship. Relationship is just who do you get to spend time with? Do you like the people you spend time with? Again, in this area, I I have gotten to the point where I can identify people that are toxic, people that I should not be around. And fortunately, and by the way, you know, we're going to talk about all of these things, but these are all things that I think are probably important to you too. And, and, um, I think you probably like me only want to be around people that you want to be around, that you like spending time with, that are going to lift you up, not tear you down. And then finally, purpose. I use purpose and impact interchangeably, and you'll see my kind of version of this in a second. But I use purpose and impact interchangeably. And for me, impact is about what I said earlier. How could I help people that are stuck or struggling, not making the kind of money they want to make, being a slave to their business, being, you know, their business could controls them and owns them, and how can I help give them strategies and resources and relationships to help them get past that? That's really like my thing right now. It's, it's, it's like burning in me, right? And I get to go and do that. So in, in these 4 key areas today, right now, personally, I'm in a really really great place, like better than I've ever been in my entire life. So why? So just real quick, too, about mindset over skill set. You know, why do, why do I talk so much about mindset over skill set is that the real answers that most people are looking for are in the mindset. Not in the skill set. See, skill set is all about if I could just get better at selling, if I could just get better at generating leads, if I could just get better at, you know, the finances. Those are skill sets. They could, again, they can be bought, they can be rented, can be outsourced, automated. The important work The real work is what's going on up here in our heads. That's the real work of the entrepreneur. That's the real work of the business owner. And by the way, it is the work that is missing in most people. Most people aren't willing to do the work. I think it was Henry Ford that said, and I'm paraphrasing, but he said something like, thinking is the hardest work to do, and that's why so few people do it. And so that's why I want to bring you more of this mindset over skill set stuff. And none of this stuff is really about working harder or longer. You can't really muscle your way to success, wealth, and freedom. You've got to be smart about it. And the great Jim Rohn, I love this, this quote: Work harder on yourself than you do on your job, or in our case, our business. Working harder on your— working on your job will make you a living. Working on yourself will make you a fortune. All right. So let's get into it. So let me ask you a question. Why did you go into business for yourself in the first place? And if you're in a place where you can jot a couple of things down, this is gonna be helpful for you. I want you to write down the 2 or 3 reasons why did you go into business for yourself in the first place. I'm gonna give you a minute to do that. I opened the, what do they say, open the kimono, and I shared with you some of what's going on with me. Now you don't have to share back and with everybody that's on here, but this is for you, and it's gonna make what we're doing here today much more impactful for you if you can answer this question and just jot 2 or 3 things down. Okay. My guess is that it's going to be somewhere in the areas of time freedom, money freedom, and impact freedom. By the way, I'm not going into it today, but the model, the framework one of the frameworks that I created called the Wealthy Contractor Success, Wealth, and Freedom Framework, this is the center of it, the very center of it. And this is you. The heart here represents your desire, your, you know, they say your heart's desire, but what is it that you really want in life? And more than likely, they're gonna be around these 3 areas of time, money, and impact. Time, money, and impact. I kind of, you know, again, just, I work in 3s. I don't like 4, I like 3. So time, money, and impact. I took impact and I put purpose and kind of relationship into there. And so that's why, that's my kind of my take on Dan Sullivan's Four Freedoms is minus three. But anyway, and I talk about all of that stuff. You know, I talk about all of it in the Seven Secrets book, but it always boils down. So whatever you wrote down, if you really think about it, it does boil down to freedom. It's about being free. Being free to buy what you want to buy, spend time how you want to spend time, build wealth, give back to your community, be of service. And by the way, impact— and we'll, again, we'll talk about this— it doesn't— you don't have to be doing stuff for the world. You don't have to be for the community. You make an impact in the world by how you are being, right? Each of us can have an impact in the world by who we are being because there are people around us, right? And so if we're a positive force in the lives of our families, in the lives of our team members, in the lives of our customers, that, my friends, is making an impact in the world. Okay, now, if you've been here before, you've heard me say this over and over and over and over again. Your business is only a vehicle. It is only a vehicle. It is designed— if done properly, it should be designed and created to give you more freedom, not less. Now, Unfortunately, what happens with a lot of people is they go into business to have more time, money, and freedom, and what ends up happening? They end up having less, less time, less money, less freedom. Okay, so again, I want to help change that. All right, so And by the way, with the business— and we talk about this in other trainings and other webinars— you get to choose the type of vehicle you create. You get to choose. Is it a high-performance machine, or does it sputter along, or does it actually drag you down? Right, so freedom number 1: time. Time. So how much control do you have over your time? How much control do you have over time? By the way, by the way, why does time come first? At least for me, why does time come first? Time can't be replaced. Time is the great equalizer. Time is the thing that we all have the exact same amount of. So somebody that makes $100,000 a year doesn't work twice as hard in most cases as somebody that makes $50,000 a year, or twice as long, I should say, twice as long as somebody that makes $50,000 a year. Somebody that makes $1 million a year doesn't work 10 times longer than someone that makes $100,000 a year, or 20 times longer than somebody that makes $50,000 a year. How would that work? Right? There's only 24 hours in a day. That's it. It doesn't matter if you're Jeff Bezos, who happens to be the richest, uh, person in the world today, or, um, you know, somebody that's working, you know, part-time at McDonald's. You know, behind the cash register. We all have the exact same amount of time. And so to me, time is the most important thing because look, you could take my money, you could take my money, and I can replace it quickly. But you take my time, you take my time, I can't replace my time. By the way, to me You waste my time, that pisses me off. I don't know about you, but I've gotten very good at determining who is gonna waste my time, and I do my best to avoid those people. I make them— if you want me, if you want me to spend time with you, I'm gonna make you jump through hoops, okay, if I don't know you. Okay, if I don't have experience with you, because I have a lot of relationships where I know that if I spend time with you, we're both going to come out better because of it. But if you're new and you want to get to me and I don't know who you are, I'm going to make you jump through a couple hoops. I've had people waste my time before, and it's one of the things that pisses me off more than anything else, and it should. By the way, piss you off too. So one of the things about time freedom that's important is taking time away from the business. So when was the last time you really were able to take time away from the business? Okay, now Jeff Hager is gonna put his hand up right away. I know he's gonna say, and he's gonna list out in the chat how much time off he takes. And by the way, I did a podcast interview with Jeff Hager, who owns a very successful plumbing company in Ohio. Sorry, Jeff, Ohio. But that dude has it figured out. That business runs pretty much without him. So that means that he gets to go and spend his time how he wants to spend his time. Now, one of the things I will say is Jeff loves his business. Okay. He has fun in his business. So he spends time there. Let me see if he's commented. Mason, Ohio. He has fun in his business, right? I'm not putting words— hopefully I'm not putting words in his mouth, but go back and listen to the interview that I did with him. And he talks about how he— yes, COVID has definitely put a damper on the vacation, but you could still like, you know, walk away. Because there are people in place and there are processes in place and there's a profit model in place that allows you to go and do that. Now, by the way, Jeff is not the only one. Jeff is here and Jeff is fun and he's a great example of this, but I could pull out 20 or 30 other examples of this. I'm sorry, again, look, I'm getting distracted by the chat because I brought up Jeff and now he said, he says, I have to stay at work to watch you on a weekly basis. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. It's good to have familiar, familiar faces here and people that'll tell me, hey, you know, later on, Jeff hasn't— Jeff's been very kind. But I'm always open to feedback too, by the way. So, you know, any kind of feedback that you guys have about what is being covered in this or any other training, I'm definitely open to hearing about. So when was the last time you took real time off? Now I say real because why? Because real time off means no email, means no phone calls from the office, means no doing work. So lots of people— so we have in the, the office next to me our operations manager, Yanni, who's awesome. My client, you know, any, anybody here that's a client, I mentioned the name Yanni, you probably know who she is. She's behind the scenes. She's awesome, awesome. She, she runs all of operations here, which is, which is a huge task. She has the most people in her department. There are the most moving parts in her department. On the 4th of July, 4th of July, she sends an email at like, I don't know, at night. I got, you know, me and Addie the next day, we're like, what are you doing? Why are you answering emails on the 4th of July? Now, that's, you know, when you take time off, and, and I, and for us too, by the way, here for, for our people, if they take time off, we don't want them checking email. We don't want them doing work. It's, it's one thing that we have learned is just like you and me get burned out and we get tired, so do our people. And so when it comes to time away If I expect when I go away not to have emails, not to have phone calls, not to have to do any work, I got to do the same thing for my team. But a lot of people that I know in this business still, they'll take time off, they'll take a vacation, but they'll just be like, well, I'm just going to spend an hour in the morning and I'm going to check email and see what's going on. But no, that's That's not real-time freedom. That's staying tethered. That's being stuck to the business. Now, some people are just wired. They love it. You know, they would not be able to enjoy their vacation. I was like that, by the way, and it took me a while to figure it out and to actually go and not do anything. And, and you know what? Once I started to do it, and I, and I, and I felt the, the, the, the, the real freedom that comes from it. Oh man, now, if I'm out, I'm out. I'm not checking email. I'm not getting phone calls from the office. I'm not doing any, not a stitch of work. I'm just going and having fun. Okay, so to me, real time freedom is about that, is about being away from anything that's tethering you down and not allowing you to do what you want to do. So obviously, for the most part, you get to design your schedule and how you spend your day. So if you don't like it, if you're like this dude here, one-man band doing everything yourself, that's on you. That's on you. So what are some of the things that you can do to fix that? Well, one, you got to study how you are spending your time. How do I spend my time? And you have to look at and identify what are my high payoff activities and what are my low payoff activities. Okay, so I'll give you a hint. High payoff activities include— are, um, have leverage built in. Okay, so if I am working on, uh, scripting, let's say, for our, um, how, how calls are being taken, you know, inbound leads are taken, and I am tweaking it to make it better. That's a leveraged activity because once I'm done with it, then that goes to the call center. And you can have one person in the call center, you can have 100, and that what, what I worked on, that small change, once gets— goes in there and gets tested and becomes a part of what they do their new scripting and improves performance by 1 point, that's a high payoff activity. A low payoff activity is running out and doing a service call on somebody's window. You know, somebody's screen broke and you, you as the owner go out and fix it. Or, you know, they need caulking around, you know, your guys didn't do a good job, so you got to go and re-caulk all the windows. Those are low payoff activities. Activities. Okay, the other thing to ask yourself is, who are you spending your time with? Dan Kennedy talks about time vampires. He has a way with words, but I like it. Who are the time vampires in your business? Identify who they are and really figure out whether or not you need them around. And find out now, if you do need them around, can you put a buffer in place? Okay, now, time vampire is basically sucking out of you. Okay, I like the language there because they're, they're sucking life out of you. If they want you to do things that you should not be involved with and you don't want to be doing, you got to push them off to somebody else or get rid of them. Okay, one way or another, you got to get rid of them. And you've got to be proactive with this. You can't do everything yourself. You've got to be proactive. Proactive with this. So one of the secrets in the book is taking control of your time, you know. So you take control of your time and you will take control of your life. Okay, now time is number one, freedom number two is money, money. So are you making the amount of money you want to make? One of the things before, you know, people ask me for advice and one of the things I always have to ask, and by the way, it is secret number 1 in the book, is, well, what do you want? How much is it going to take for you to live the life that you want to live? Again, anybody that's read this book knows that we start with this. None of the rest of this stuff matters until we identify, well, what is it that you want and how much is it going to cost you to live the life you want to live? What kind of a house do you want to live in? Do you want to have a beach house, right? Or do you want to have a lake house? I have clients that have lake houses. Maybe I shouldn't mention their names, but I can think of 3 off the top of my head that have lake houses that they go to, that they escape to. What kind of car or truck do you want to drive? What kind of money do you need to build wealth for the future so you're not, you know, so you have at some point you have enough passive income coming in passive income coming in so you don't have to go to work if you don't want to. Ideally, you set up passive income, right? And then you have active income that's coming in every day, right? That's your business. But the passive income more than covers everything that you need in order to live the version of your life that— and, and the problem here is that most people don't know what this number is. It's shocking to me. People are working, working, working, working more, more, more, more, and yet there's no like number of like, this is what I need in order to live the life I want to live. That's where all of this starts right now. The good news with that is there are no limits on how much money is available to make. But here's the bad news: there is a limit on how much money you can make. There's a limit to how much money you can make. Now, the limit is self-imposed. So we— this is like good news too, right? Because if it's self-imposed That means that it could be adjusted. So I give the example of the thermostat, of the set point, and again, I talk about it in the 7 Secrets book. So your income is kind of like this thermostat. It's set at— what is this one set at? 68 degrees. Okay, 68 degrees. So 68 degrees might be $100 grand. It might be $300,000. It might be $800,000. It might be $2 million. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. The number itself does not matter. Everybody's is different. And so when it's set at $68,000 or at $100,000 a year, well, okay, That's where your head is. The mistake that people make is they say, well, now I'm selling $2 million a year, now I'm going to sell $5 million a year so I can make more money. You know what usually happens? Usually, and by the way, from experience, okay, you sell more but you make the same. Why? Because of the limit that you've imposed on yourself, the set point that exists up here, not out there. It's in us. The answer is always inside of us, not outside. It's inside. So limits, all of these limits are self-imposed. Now, I don't have the time to go through this whole thing, okay, but here are some ways that you can take control of that and protect those freedoms. So if we know that all limits are self-imposed then you must have a clear picture of the money that you want to make. You must understand the math of your business or the economics of your business. One of the sessions that I did at Accelerate this year, I called Money Math for Contractors, OK, because a lot of that— and by the way, we're going to, we're going to do that again in January. But you've got to understand the economics of your business. Every business has economics, and it amazes me how people go into business without understanding the economics, without looking for other models. You're not the first person to start a home improvement company. You're not. There were hundreds, thousands before you, many of them very, very, very successful. So Why wouldn't you go and learn from them? Why wouldn't you model what the most successful people do? I have clients that net 18 to 23% in this business, and I know people that do less than 5. What's the difference? The difference is the self-imposed limitation. That's it, right? So if you're under 5 and you want to get to 15, what do you have to do? You got to change the conversation that's going on in your head. You got to understand how the money works. And then go, you know, if you have to learn from someone else or you have to have someone else show you what that looks like, that's what you got to work on. And you got to work more on what's going on between your ears than you do on what's going on, you know, you know, with your sales team. You must have a profit model that delivers a minimum 10%, ideally a 15 to 20% net profit. You hear me say this over and over and over again, and I will continue until more of you get it. And then you must pay yourself first. You've got to pay yourself first. You've got to engineer your business so you get paid first. Freedom number 3: relationship. Relationship. So do you enjoy the people you spend the most time with. I'm at a place where I do. I'm happy with the people that I spend my time with. What sucks is this week— well, I won't go into it, but I'm tired because of the whole plague, the COVID thing. Don't want to get people sick, don't want to be around sick people. And as much as we hate it, I know I'm trying to be— I'm, I'm being good. I'm I'm being good until this thing blows over. But really, I mean, do you spend enough time with the people you love most? Do you get to be home for dinner? Are you watching your kids grow up? That's a time thing. Sorry, I mixed time and relationship. But, you know, or are you spending time with people that you don't really like, but you'd rather be with your kids? Or you'd rather be with your spouse, you'd rather be with your partner, you'd rather be with your friends, you'd rather— wherever, right? From employees to customers to vendors, the people you do business with and you surround yourself with are your choice. They're your choice. So to have more relationship freedom, one of the things you want to do is you want to look at the 5 people you spend the most time with. Who are you surrounding yourself with? One of the things about relationship to me that's important is, are the people that are around you lifting you? Are the people that are around you cheerleaders for you? Um, something happened last week. Um, somebody told me about a deal that they are working on, and I could tell they were very reluctant to speak to me about it. And that's a conditioned response. I'm the same way, okay? And I said to this person, I said, look, one thing about me and Addie— and this is somebody that I like very much and that I respect very much— um, I said, one thing about me and Addie is that we're past the point of envy. We're past the point of looking at somebody else and saying, wow, look at what they have. Woe is me. Why don't we have it? We're way past that. And I look at people, including every single one of you, is that whatever your goal is, I want to help you get there. I want to be your cheerleader. I want to be the person that tells you, yes, you can do it. And here's, you know, here are some ways of how you could do it. And I told this person that. I said, look, man, if you go and you're— and I just made up some numbers— if you tell me that I've got this deal going on and I'm going to make $7 million on that deal, I'm going to be happy for you. I'm gonna be thrilled because you're a great person. I'm happy, you know. I'm not going to look at you and say, well, fuck, yeah, $7 million, yeah, how come I can't do that? And I'm never going to do that. So you've got to look at the people around you and wonder, you know, too many people have people around them that are bringing them down. I, again, I talk about it in the book. It's the bucket of crabs theory. Hey, so in business, are you, are you in a mastermind group? Are you around people who are doing better than you in business? You know, one of the things that I've— there used to be a time where I wanted to be, if not the smartest person in the room, I wanted to be one of the smartest people in the room. Today, not at all. I just want to be in a room with smart people. I don't want to be the smartest, because if I'm the smartest person in the room, there's nothing to learn from. Nothing. There's no growth, right? And I'm all about growing and learning. And I think you are too. You wouldn't be a business owner, right? The whole thing about being the smartest person in the room is all ego, and it's limiting. Can you say no to clients that are not a fit for your business? I love that we're at a point now where if we don't think that you're going to be a good fit for us, or if you give us crap, we're going to fire you. We're not going to do business with you. Well, I don't need that. You don't either, right? Do you have any employees or vendors that can hold you hostage? That's one of the worst things that, that you could have is one salesperson that sells everything. That may or may not be a good relationship. Okay, the worst number in business, by the way, is what? One. One of anything. And then you got to look at toxic people in your life. Who's toxic and how do you move them out? I mean, that's relationship freedom. Um, so let me do a quick commercial. So G4 Marketing is a sponsor of this. What we specialize in at G4 Marketing is getting more 5-star reviews, getting more referrals, getting more repeat business. Basically what we do is we help you create sticky, profitable, long-term relationships with your customers. And so If you would like to schedule just a 10-minute discovery call, that's it, 10 minutes with us to learn more about how we might be able to help you. I just launched a poll. Let's just go ahead and fill in, fill in the poll. And I'm perfectly fine with you saying no, just I'll put this up there and let you guys answer, answer that poll. We're— and, and by the way, we're all about making it easy for you, which means that, um, we do the work. All you have to do, you create the customer, you take good care of that customer, and then we are going to, uh, do all the work on the back end. We're going to say thank you, we're going to, um, get reviews, uh, for you, we're going to ask for referrals, we're going to ask for repeat business. We do this through email, through direct mail, with gifting, and all, all, all of that stuff. So I'll leave this up for another 5 seconds. All right, I'm going to end that poll, and I am going to move on to our final freedom, which is freedom of purpose or impact. I use them interchangeably. So are you doing what you want to be doing? Do you get excited when you wake up in the morning, or do you dread it? Okay, so again, good news, bad news is you're in charge. Okay, now impact or purpose comes in many different forms. So I've got— I'm giving you some examples here of some of our clients and some of the the things that they are doing in their communities to make a difference. And look, like I said before, you know, like I said before, making a difference, making an impact, living your life to, you know, whatever, does not only have to be things like that. It could also be internal, it could be who you are being to your family, who you are being to your team, your employees, your vendors, your customers, your clients, the people that are directly around you, okay? It doesn't mean you have to go out. You know, too many people think, well, I have to go out and I have to do this and that for the community. You don't have to if you don't want to. It's okay. It's okay. I'm not telling you be selfish and do everything only for you, right? You're not that. I doubt you're that type of person, right? By the way, by the way, almost every single owner that I have met in this business, almost every single one, wants to have an impact on the world around them. I think it's inherent in entrepreneurs. I think it's just something that's built into us, that it is something that we want to do. Because think about it, being a business owner is all about service. It's all about service, right? And so it's already there, right? I like this, you know, love this Gandhi quote. The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. So if you really want to make a difference and you want to figure out who you are, go and serve others. And again, that could be your family, your kids. Your, your nieces and nephews, your whoever, you know, the people that are directly around you, your, your, your staff. So some of the things here is explore your own values, and then does your company align with your own values? Do you have values, core values in your, in your business? Do you feel fulfilled by what you do? Okay, and, and, you know, like I was saying before, this is not a competition. Just because Jer does his community outreach or Bill McGraw, you know, takes, you know, truckloads of food to his local food banks doesn't mean you have to. Now, if you want to, that's great, that's great. By the way, that whole food bank thing, we have that as a PDF document that you can download exactly how they do it and what they do. It's It's 2 pages. It's super simple. But the amount of food that they drive to their local food banks is unreal. And you can do the same, by the way. But you don't have to. You don't have to, okay? Ultimately, making a difference starts with us, you know? And it's really, a lot of it is about confidence. You know, you feel good about who you are. You feel good about your place in the world. So I was, you know, to me, this is the real work. This is the real work of being a business owner. The other stuff works itself out. I know how crazy that sounds, but, you know, building a sales team and building a marketing team and getting leads and all of that, you could, you could hire that, rent it, buy it. The real work is between our ears. And again, as somebody that's been at this for over 30 years, I got my first copy of Think and Grow Rich when I was in high school by Jim Gollighan. You know, God rest his soul, he died a few years back, died early. And I don't give that man enough credit for the journey that he started me on. On. But the real work is this. And if, you know, as a 52-year-old man, the thing I would go back and I would tell my 25-year-old self is don't just read the book, do what it says in the book. That was my thing is I quote unquote knew what to do. I just didn't do it. And I didn't seek out enough guidance and I didn't have enough confidence and trust in myself. And so what changed about 6 or 7 years ago after losing everything was a real focus to, okay, now that I tried that, and that didn't work out well for me. Why don't I now really start to work on this part of it? And the changes and the things that have happened in the last 5 years, I mean, are just, are incredible. Incredible. Okay. And again, so by the way, and those of you that do not have a copy of the Seven Secrets book, um, you can go and get a free copy. All I ask you to do, by the way, is pay $6.95 shipping and handling. All right. I lose money every time I send one of these out. But I— it's an important book and I want to get it into the hands of as many people as possible. And so if you want a copy and you don't have a copy, go to thewealthycontractor.com and you'll see a page. You'll see this page and just, you know, follow the, the offer. The offer there. All right, so I hope this was of value to all of you listening. Thanks for spending an hour with me. I hope that, again, I hope this was of value to you. I hope that either, you know, there was something that you can take away from this. And if you if you need anything from us, please reach out. Jerry, did you have a question? How do you— okay, Jerry, have you— okay, so Jerry asked, how do you change your mindset? Jerry, you have access to the Blueprint program that I created through The Wealthy Contractor in Module 1. At the end of it, we— I go through pretty in-depth how you do that. But basically, it's, it's you— once you identify what it is that you want, like really, really want, then you've got to go to work reprogramming your thinking. So let's use money as an example. It's a simple one. Okay. So my set point for money is that, again, the numbers do not matter. I'm just going to make up a number. If my current set point's at $100,000, right? And my new set point, I want my new set point to be $250,000. Now I have to start to work on making that a belief in my mind that, hey, I am a $250,000 person. Again, the numbers do not, absolutely do not matter. Okay. It's different for everybody. But now you've got to go to work and you've got to spend time with meditation. You've got to spend time with visualization. You've got to get you. I believe in speaking it out. Out. So take time, you know, obviously when nobody's around and speak it, right? I'm so happy and grateful now that I'm earning $250,000 a year. I'm so happy and grateful now that I'm earning $250,000 a year. Write it down over and over and over again. By the way, I did all of this stuff, you know, to quadruple my set point, to go from this level, which was— it was this level for years and years and years, and I wanted it to be 4 times that. I did it. It took me a little while, you know, it took about 18 months to make it happen. The speed of it, by the way, is all about in the belief. It's how quickly can you convince yourself that that is your number, you know, and I don't know how else to, I don't know how else to say it, you know. Oh, Jerry is saying I was asking you to provide the answers for others that might not have the blueprint. OK, cool. Thank you. I've been working on those things each day over and over again. And it's— look, it's repetition. It's right. You can't just— to me, from my experience, you can't just set the goal and say, OK, I'm going to make— I want to make $250,000 a year. OK, first, some people can automatically say, yes, OK, that's my new number. And then they can start to build around it. But the majority of people that I've met It's, it's not that quick and simple. It takes work. And look, it's the people you hang around, right? It's one of the things that I always recommend to people is so you've identified the house that you want to live in. Okay, so me and just by the way, I'll give, I'll give a personal example. I don't even care anymore. I used to not want to give personal examples, but now I will. Okay, so me and Addie, had a very specific neighborhood and location in mind for where we wanted to live. And there's a, you know, our area. So in Miami, there's this, this town, like in the middle of it called Coral Gables. And Coral Gables, the best way that I could describe Coral Gables, again, this is not to to impress anybody because there's, you know, there's good and bad and there's— we're not, you know, in— there's other parts of this neighborhood that are, you know, much grander than our area. But this is— but we knew that this was the area that we wanted to be in. So it's Coral Gables, but very specifically in Coral Gables, there is a very cool hotel called the Biltmore. And so we wanted to live right by the Biltmore. There's like 2 or 3 streets that are positioned right around the Biltmore. That's where we want it to be. And so what did we start to do? I mean, we start, we put in our heads Biltmore, Biltmore, Biltmore. We started to spend time in that neighborhood. We started going to the Biltmore. And we put ourselves in the environment. Well, 3 years ago, we— and by the way, we were doing open houses. We were actually looking for houses, even though we weren't sure what we— if we were going to be able to afford it. We— when we started it, we put ourselves out there. We started to look at open houses. We spent more and more time in Coral Gables. Well, of course, once you start to put yourself in the environment, once you start to get your mind convinced that this is where you should live, and then you start actually like looking for stuff, stuff starts to show up. It's kind of weird how it happens. We went to a— we went to this open house one day. I walked in, um, the price was low, and the first thing I asked the real estate agent was, well, what's wrong with this house? And she said, well, it needs a new roof. I'm like, well, okay, it needs more than that. But is that it? And she said, yeah, that's it. And, you know, long story short, we bought that house. Now, was it the house we, we wanted? Was it our dream house? No. But today, right now, as we speak, that house is being transformed into the house that we want. It took a little bit of time. But that house is being transformed now into the house we want. By the way, you know where it is? It's a block away from the Biltmore. Our gym now is the Biltmore Hotel gym. That is our neighborhood. That's where we live. In fact, we can't live in the house. And we have another house, but we didn't go back there and live there while the construction was going on. We actually rented another house in Coral Gables. Because we now live in— we're Coral Gables people. We're not Miami people anymore. So, you know, and I tell you this again, it's— it doesn't matter. None of that— all of that matters. That's personal to me and to Addie. Where you want to live and what you want to do is on you. The car you want to drive is the car you want to drive. But you got to start moving towards it and you got to convince yourself that this is who I am now. That's how you do it. And I'm sorry, I, I, there's no, you know, people are selling you all kinds of quick fixes. There is no quick fix. Sorry, there is no quick fix. It's work. But I'll tell you what, you can make it happen fast because the faster you believe it, the faster you can make it happen. And I will say this one thing though about this, and I always warn people about this. I am not, and there are a lot of people, I'm not at this point yet. But there are a lot of people that can go into a neighborhood, buy a house that they cannot afford, and say it to their mind, I will, when I buy this house, I'll figure out how to pay for it. The money doesn't matter. There are people that can do that, but they're few and far between. So, what I'm suggesting to you is, I am, I'm not suggesting you go and just buy the house, buy the car tomorrow. What I'm saying is you got to be smart about it. You got to get yourself to a point where you feel comfortable enough in that house that when you do put your money down to buy it, you're not gonna your mind isn't gonna all of a sudden now tell you, no, wait a minute, we gotta go back, we gotta go back over there, we gotta go back over there because this is way beyond our comfort zone, this is way beyond our set point, we gotta go back over there. Because what'll happen is you'll buy that house, and if your mind isn't right, guess what? It's going to be a burden. You're going to end up losing the house. It's going to be a miserable experience. Michael, I'm sorry I'm laughing. I'm sorry I'm laughing, but I feel your pain. Michael said, keeping a positive mindset has been harder the longer I am sheltering in place with the same 3 people since early March. Believe me, I feel your pain. I feel your pain. It is harder. It has been harder. There have been some unique We've all had to deal with unique circumstances. All right, so I have talked enough. If there are no more questions, I will leave you all to your day. We lost a bunch of people during that. Hopefully— well, hopefully actually I did scare some people off. Look, if you don't buy into this, then, you know, and you got a better way, you know, good luck. But I'm just talking to you from my experience and my experience with hundreds of home improvement owners just like you guys. So with that, you're welcome, Vincent. I appreciate you as well. Or Doug. Two first names, Doug, Vincent. Thank you, Doug. I appreciate you as well. All right, guys, until next time, we— I'll see you. Brian Kaskavalciyan, G4 Marketing, Wealthy Contractor. Protect those 4 freedoms. See you next time.