Foam To Fortune #12 - Curt Janzen

Welcome to Foam to Fortune, the ultimate podcast for spray foam insulation industry. Whether you're a contractor aiming to take your business to the next level or a vendor bringing innovation to the market, this is the place where success stories are shared, insider tips are uncovered, and the industry secrets are revealed. Join us as we dive into the journeys of the spray foam pros who turn their dreams into thriving empires and discover tools and strategies to build your own path to fortune. Ready to elevate your spray foam game? Let's get started. Foam to Fortune, where innovation meets inspiration. What's up, guys? I'm your host Spencer of the Foam to Fortune podcast. And today I got a really special treat for you. We have Kurt Jansen today from the Beyond Group up in Calgary, Canada. We have another Canadian joining us. What's up, Kurt? How are you?

I'm doing well. Thanks for having me on here. I'm super excited about this.

I am. I'm so excited, you guys. I got a taste before the show of Kurt's personality, his huge heart. I mean, I've known the guy for 15 minutes and I already love him. So, Kurt, why don't you dive in? Tell us about the beyond group. Tell us about your 19 years of experience in the business.

Yeah, no, we started a while ago now and it was my brother in law and myself that started the company. His name is Kevin and we started as owner, operators and so not the smartest people in the world. I'd never touch a spray foam gun until we invested money and I actually built our first ever spray foam trailer. So I bought all the equipment and I hooked it all up together. I just kind of figured if I, if I was going to own a company, it's going to break. I got to know kind of what it's all about so that I could try and fix it. And although I'm not very mechanically inclined, I had to do that. And so, yeah, we went through the school of hard knocks for the first little while. First year in business, like I was telling you off camera, we did like $64,000 worth of work and we thought, man, like this is, I see some potential here. Maybe we'll be able to make an income on this. And then the second year we hit 1.1 million and it was just a skyrocket kind of thing for us. Year three, it was like $2.3 million. And we've just kept on growing since then and it's just been a really kind of a fun journey for us. What's been fun is that we went from Just beyond foam, just a spray foam company. And we really thought at the beginning if we could just get greatest spray foam, that's all we would ever need to do. We wanted to be the masters of one thing. But as we kind of got going, we realized, man, there's a whole lot of other things that we can do. And so our foam company turned into a full service insulation company doing batten poly, blown in attic insulation, asbestos abatement. And when that was kind of strong and kind of doing its thing, I was able to kind of do what I was good at, which was being an entrepreneur. And Kevin was able to do what he was great at, which was running a business. And so we decided to start a roofing division. And so again, school of hard knocks, I learned how to do roofing foam. I tell everybody if it comes out of a gun, I get a little horny over it. I get pretty excited about it. So we love the idea of doing three pound roofing foam. And myself and one of our employees named Lee, we started growing our roofing division. Once it was kind of established a little bit, I handed the baton off to him. Then I was able to start a thermal division and doing the fireproofing, fire stopping, intimacy coatings, kind of got that off the, off the ground. And then I realized, man, I gotta hire some experts at this. The school of hard knocks wasn't for me in that division. There's just too much technicality to it. And so we hired a really great team. I took that over and they're really successful, doing a good job on that side of it, which freed me up again. So then I started a concrete lifting division, obviously using polyurethanes to lift concrete. And we started by lifting sidewalks and driveways. And we're getting a lot more into the commercial industrial world in that default injection chemical grouts just kind of. The world is pretty big out there for uses for polyurethanes. And that's been established now for six, seven years. And we just started a coatings division and not the coatings that you use in your garage. We're doing like secondary containment for oil and gas, for municipalities, water treatment plants, that kind of thing. So over the last like 18 and 18 plus years now we have grown to a company where like now in the spring we sit, you know, around 80 people or so. We'll probably ramp up to about 100 for the summer and then kind of down again around Christmas time after that. So that's. It's kind of like the Reader's digest of the beyond group of companies now.

Wow, I got to take a second to soak all that in. That is absolutely amazing. Is there any other divisions that are going to be added in the near future to beyond group?

Nothing in the near future. We're always looking for the unique, specialized. We're always diving into what that could potentially, potentially be for us as a company. And for us it's way more, more about the who, not the how. And so it's if we find the right person that can really help us on that next endeavor, we probably get a lot more excited about it and pursue it more. Our growth, honestly, like it's, it seems pretty wild, but it's all been natural, organic, not forced. Just as we see opportunities, as we can gain skill sets, as we can bring in experts into our business, as we can do all these things, we've kept on growing our company to where it is right now.

Is there anything that you can attribute your guys growth that is some really, really impressive growth? I mean, obviously 64,000 to, I think you said 1.5 and then 3 and you're basically doubling every year, which that growth in any business is impressive. Is there something that you can attribute that to?

Yeah, yeah, for sure. It would be that Kevin's super smart, he can run a big business and that's a huge part. The other big part for us would be the fact that we just, we put culture first. And we are, we are so freaking bullish about our culture and the DNA of our company and who's allowed to be a part of us. And there's so much dissonance if people don't fit our DNA that they see themselves through the door or we shake their hand and wish them the best of luck. Moving on. But that's probably been our biggest success is the fact that we just held really, really firm to that. And it started a long time ago when, you know, when we first started spraying foam, if you had two feet and a heartbeat, we'd hire you, right? And we realized that these guys love their mom too much or not enough or were addicted to something or were pathological liars like that whole thing. And the epiphany happened when we hired one really good human being that didn't know how to spray foam. And within two years, guys that had six years of experience are going up to Chad and saying, how can you help me with this? Can you show me that? Because a good human being just wants to do great work, right? And that, that one hire led to another hire. And once we had a really good core group of great DNA people, really great culture people. That's when people from other companies started peeking over the fence to see what was going on at Beyond. And so we were able to Scoop the top 2% of a lot of these other of our competition and bring them over to a place where they were appreciated, they were challenged, they were, you know, we, we set big goals when we partied, when we got to the end and that's how we've just kind of built our company that way.

Yeah. Is there anything that you guys consistently do for pre employment? Like when you think you have a good candidate, are you throwing people through like a Colby a index, personality score or anything like that? That, that is really like kind of part of your guys's process. Because there's been, there's been times I know personally for me where you interview candidates and you're like this one is the one. And then you're just because you like their personality and you're a, you're, I can tell you're a personality type guy. You have a strong personality yourself. Sometimes we can get blinders with the personality piece and they're not the best fit for the position. So is there anything that you can share within your process for employment for, for sure.

And like we have different things we do for different levels in our organization. Right. You know, if you're coming in as an entry level, you know, guy, you know, as a helper on one of our divisions, it's a very different process than like we're actually actively looking for a new operations manager. So that operations manager is going to oversee other operations, people that oversee like a bulk of our company. Well yeah, we're big onto like Patrick Lencioni, six working geniuses doing personality assessments like psi tests, just figuring out fits on those bigger hires. We're going out for dinner with their family, we're hanging out with them. Like we are getting to know them because they don't have like skill sets. 20% of that job and the EQ part of it, the emotional intelligence, the being able to understand people and dynamics and moving parts, that's 80% for us and so on. That type of a role. Yes, 100%. We go full more on just kind of getting to know the person on the like lower on the org chart we have kind of a two step process. The first one is the beer and barbecue test and the second one is the DNA test and the beer and barbecue test is done by one of our managers, Ryan. And on the first initial phone call or Two, if he wouldn't invite you over to his house for a burger and a beer, you're probably not getting an interview. Right. So there has to be some sort of rapport core there. There has to be something there. And then as they go through the interviewing process, we talk about who we are as a company and most of the questions are not about skill set, they're about the person and the DNA fit. And we tell people like when we do our onboarding, when they sit in my office and we do kind of my section of the onboarding, I say, you know what, you can fake the DNA for three months, four months, five months, six months maybe if you're really good at faking. But eventually if you're not who we want you to be and you're not who we think we are, it's not going to fit. And you're going to be happier leaving. We're going to be happier if you leave. And that's really good. So we become quicker to fire. We're not great at firing people because we're so highly relational. That's kind of one of our Achilles heels. But we're becoming better at letting people out into the workforce that don't fit our DNA.

Most people see, you know, terminate themselves essentially.

Oh yeah, yeah. For the most part. Like we actually had a guy paid him like a high level salary guy like, you know, you know, over six figures as a starting guy. He worked for us for two and a half months. He shook his supervisor's hand and says, I'm not a team player. I'm, I'm not as optimistic as you need me to be. I don't fit into your growth mindset. I don't want, I don't want to have people like coming up to me and giving me advice and give, you know, you know, he's like, I don't fit. And he shook her head. He moved back up north three hours away from us again. And those are success stories for us. Just knowing that we just stay true to who we are.

Yeah. Because when you have cancer in the culture, it spreads quick, man. Unfortunately spreads quicker than the positive piece of things. So making sure that you're. Everybody understands what the mindset of beyond group is. Your guys core ethics and knowing where your vision is is going to help keep people happy 100%.

I did notice you mentioned EQ, right.

Yeah.

Share with us about how Kurt learned about eq because I think this is a really interesting story.

Yeah. The basis of it is people will tell you IQ gets you the Job Emotional intelligence gets you the promotion, right? And so you have to be smart enough to kind of get into someplace, and then you have to be able to maneuver around people and processes and emotions and all these things to actually advance in your career. And like, for me, I started as a young entrepreneur. My mom has always been an entrepreneur. She taught private piano lessons to hundreds of kids. She sold everything from Tupperware to pots and pans to lotions and oils and jewelry. And she's just been this kind of constant entrepreneur. And my dad was just a super steady, highly emotionally intelligent man that just kind of could act and react around situations and people better than most human beings, understood how to forgive, understood how to deal with conflict, understand all those things just intrinsically. And I'm lucky to have a little bit of a combination of both of them. Those people that have helped me grow to. To where I am today.

Wow. To hear emotional intelligence from my dad is. Is something that I don't hear often. That's extremely impressive. Kurt, as a man that's in his mid-40s, that has gotten an opportunity to work on his emotional intelligence. It's something that I really value now. And also valuing being able to actually, you know, change as a human in order to show my children the better aspects of emotions, especially being a father of daughters. And so.

That'S amazing to hear. I also understand you guys have this program called EX1.

Yeah.

Share with the listeners about what EX1.

Is, because.

For sure. And actually we're super excited. We were actually featured in the Last Grateful magazine and we talked a lot. Little bit about EX1 as well. But what it is, it's an eight chapter program that we're helping people kind of go through a journey. I went through a journey of reading, understanding myself, growing, failing, regrowing, and doing all this stuff. And I've done it through, you know, different personality assessments or tests or books I've read or podcasts I've listened to, and just kind of came to the realization one day I'm like, well, I'm guessing people around me want to journey this with me, right? They probably want to walk this path with me. And so I just made it open to our team. And it's not a mandatory thing for a company, but we have almost a third of our company that have signed up for it at kind of stage one, and we have more people interested in doing it. And we talk everything about personality assessments, we talk about understanding budgets, and we talk about emotional intelligence, we talk about working genius, we talk about volunteering in our community and philanthropy, we talk about public speaking and engaging people verbally. There's just, there's a lot of layers in there. And so we just have like a roadmap where they can kind of self go through it. And then we get together as a group at different stages and just kind of unpack that together. And it's just something that if they want to do, we really encourage it. I think that it's going to make them a better, make them better people as far as just understanding themselves, make them better husbands or wives or spouses or parents. Just, you know, all those things are a huge benefit. Like, probably one of the biggest epiphanies to me was I read an article a while back and it talked about these CEOs of companies that were like 50 million to $500 million. And it talked about what their number one trait was. And like the, the, the obvious answers were like grit and determination and IQ and even, even EQ and a bunch of different things. But what it ended up being is those people were the most self aware and that was the number one trait of these big CEOs. And when that, when I read that is like, man, like how do we as a company help our people become leaders? Because I want to, to go away from my job every once in a while and make sure problems are solved. So I need to help our leaders in our company get better at solving problems. Well, you do that by making sure that they know themselves and if they know themselves, they can act and react in great ways. And that's kind of really the linchpin of all of this and why we started it all.

Let's be honest, running a spray foam business is hard enough without having to worry about where your next job is coming from. Hey, it's Anna from Spray Foam Genius and we're the proud sponsor of this episode with Kurt Janzen from Beyond Group. We help spray foam experts get found faster on Google. So you're not relying on word of mouth or waiting around for calls that may never come. More leads, more control, more profit. Give us a call at 877-840-FOAM in the US or 8 4, 741 Foam in Canada or visit spray foam geniusmarketing.com now let's get into it. Kurt's bringing the heat.

Is is this a, a Kurt or a Kevin vision? Obviously probably not a Kevin vision since he's not the visionary, he's the implementer. But is is this a, a Curt vision kind of custom program that you have designed And. And if so, is it. Did you steal kind of from some other programs that you have seen out there?

No, I never stole. It's. It's my program. I never stole anything from anyone. I just really pieced together things I've learned over the last five years, actually. Well, I'll tell you exactly what I did. I made a list of all the things I thought were important. We have a core group, and beyond. There's a. There's a leaders circle here. We got together and I just said, what do you. What do our people need to know? You know, like what. Like what would help them grow? Not just skills, because that's. That is part of the. This EX1 program is actual skill development, but like everything else. And we made this massive list, and then I took a picture of it, turned it in, threw it into my AI tool. I said, build me something. And I just started working with. With Claude is one I. The AI program I use. And I just started just visiting with it and talking about it, massaging it and maneuvering it, and it really helped me bring this all together. And then I took my notes that I've made personally before, and I threw it in there after I'd done all this stuff. And then it put in all these different assessments and books and podcasts that I had mentioned in there and said, well, this relates here. This would fit in here, this would work there. And you know, it's an evolving alive document. It's not stationary or set in stone. And. And as we go through it, I improve it a bit and tweak this and add that or subtract this. But that's really where it came from.

Absolutely amazing, man. I know from a personal standpoint of consistently wanting to level up and grow, that's the environment I want to be in. And it sounds to me like your employees, your team members are exactly in that same mindset because they wouldn't be part of beyond group if they didn't have that. That mindset of wanting to evolve. And then you give them like the all you can eat buffet of beyond leveling up. And it just creates an environment of people thriving.

And that's really the goal, to keep on building into our people that build something beyond. Like, that's my corporate. Why is. I just like, I spend a majority of my time doing some like, marketing stuff or lunch and learns for engineers and that kind of thing, but when I'm in the office, I spend a lot of my time just talk, talking and hanging out with middle management. That growing leadership circle that really have the touch on the front line and on the office of what's going on. Those are my people that I love hanging out with and just diving into their lives.

Yeah. So it sounds to me you're, you're your 100% goal with beyond is to make an impact on people's lives.

Yeah, yeah. No, I've been, I've been put on this earth to be a builder and an encourager of people. Like hard stop. Like, that's kind of, that's where it ends for me. And I've been fortunate enough now that the business is big enough that I get paid to do that, which is, which is crazy weird to me. Like, if you're, if you're a Jim Collins guy, you know, he talks about you find your stadium and then you have to find your section and they have to find your row and then your seat. Like, I really feel like I've been. I feel like I'm pretty close to my seat now. You know, like I'm not, I'm not fixing pumps at 2:30 in the morning and then going then sleeping for three hours and spraying again. I've done that. Like that was the, that was my world for a long time doing that. And I realized there was a means to an end with all that. And now like we, we just hired just amazing people, like our sprayers, our frontline guys. Like, I trust them. Like, they just do good work because they're intrinsically motivated to do great work. And so I'm not, you know, I'm not peeking in the truck to see if they're smoking weed. They're good people that want to do good work for our clients. And I feel like, you know, this is my philosophy is my customers aren't number one. My team is number one. And if I can make them feel like they're number one, like just overwhelm them, that they're number one, they buy a natural byproduct when make our clients feel like they're number one. And that's, that's really a really great thing for us.

I love that. Like, I, it's the first time I've ever really thought about that process, but it makes total sense. I mean, if, if your people love to come to work every day, your customers are going to experience that joy and how much they love beyond group.

Yeah.

Sounds to me like you're absolute bonus book. Book nerd.

Oh, 100.

You said that you pre show. I think you say that you, you listen to 60 books a year, correct?

Yeah. On average. I usually have, like, one paperback book and a couple audibles going at a time, but I average 50 to 60 books a year is pretty normal for me.

Yeah, that's. That's impressive. That is consistently. I'm sure that's why your program EX1 is consistently changing.

Because your amount of intake is extremely high. So as you're intaking, you're like, oh, man, I need to add this, I need to add that. I need to tweak this program. I don't know if it'll ever be done. The EX1 program will be like, all right, we're finished. That's when Kurt basically stops reading. Right. But do you have some favorites that you would recommend? I know there, for a lot of people, reading is not as important as it should be. A lot of people, they come home from an exhausting day at work, they want to numb out, they turn on the tv. They're not filling their mind full of things that are going to improve their life. It's just a way for us disconnect from our problems and things. So is there some books that you recommend that have really changed your life?

Yeah. No. 100%. Like, in a statement that I learned from a guy, I think you follow him as well, Dan Martell.

Yeah. He said poor people have TVs in their house. Rich people have libraries. And there's. There's a reason. There's a reason for that. And I've invested a lot of obviously, time and money into books and reading and growing. And I feel like if someone's going to spend like a year or five or 10 or 20 years, their life to put all their knowledge into a book, I can. I can listen to it or read in six or seven hours. Like, that's a huge win for me. So, yeah. Dan Martell, buy back your time. Obviously, if you're a CEO listening to this, or a small entrepreneur that you're trying to figure out, hey, do I hire that? Do I hire a sales guy? Should I get an amendment? You know, who do I need to hire to kind of get to the next level? Buy back your time is a great book. Like on the personal growth side, like, I'm a huge, huge Dan or sorry, Ben Hardy fan. Who not how. And the gap in the gain. Great books, just kind of understanding how to treat people, how to recognize your who's. How to grow your business, and then the gap in the gain. A lot about, you know, just your mindset. There's. There's a lot of great things in there. If you're on the marketing side, I am really, really excited about Marcus Sheridan right now. I don't know if you've ever heard of him, but he's done a bunch of marketing books. His newest one that just came out is called Endless Customers, and it's really changed the way that we market as a company. His first, first big book was they ask, you answer. And just very much on the marketing side of making sure that we're answering clients questions before they even ask and trying to take some of that emotional energy off of them, put it on you as the expert. And that really buys rapport and obviously makes it easier to close deals. And then as far as I go or overall business guy, Patrick Lencioni, like, I have a total man crush on this guy. He's written dozens of books, and most of his books are like, parable type, style, like story type, and then the principles are at the end. But his latest one, the six working genius, really changed the way I look at people and how I develop teams within our company, how we build meetings, what the themes of meetings are. It's been a really big part of me, but, like, I could go over probably a dozen or two names of authors and books that have actually, like, really ultimately shaped who we are as a company, who I am as a person. But those would probably be some of the highlighted ones.

The six working genius, you said?

Yeah. So the six working genius is. The theory behind it is everyone has like two working geniuses, two working competencies, and two working frustrations. And so one of them fills a couple of them. Fill up your cup. A couple of them are like a coffee cup that has a little hole in the bottom that, you know, it kind of leaks out. You can do them, but you kind of lose energy over time. And there's two things that just frustrate you. And like what my. One of my biggest frustrations is tenacity. I've never finished a thing in my life. I probably never will. And you can ask my wife. It's a true statement. But I'm really great at inventing solutions to problems, and I'm amazing at galvanizing people. I can rally the troops like nobody else. And so if I can be put in situations where I can do that, then I feel like I'm succeeding. It fills my bucket, keeps me going. And I hire people with tenacity. I hire people with discernment. And I don't have a really good bullshit meter because I'm so excited about everything. And so I need a good discernment person. And so I walk next door to my business partner Kevin and he'll tell me if it's bullshit or not within in three seconds. And if he just says it's not, let's unpack it. He's the guy, sit down and we start making this list of kind of unpacking my brain and working through it. And so I've been able to surround myself with people that fill my holes and I've been able to be put into a place where I feel like my cup is being filled up. And so everyone feels like they're accomplishing things at that point.

So if we gave you the Colby A index, your follow through, it would be just nothing, right?

Oh, zero. Like, like I'd be off the charts.

They were like, it's not even ranking reading here. Kurt has a zero rating here.

100 minus three probably.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Awesome shares on the books, man. Like nothing. I sound like a total book book nerd. I never really got into to reading when I was a high school student. I was like a C student just like yourself. You'd said that, you know, not, not a, not a high. You're, you're, you're the dreamer sitting there looking out the window thinking about growing a business. And I was right there with you. I knew I, I didn't like school, but when I became an entrepreneur, a business owner now over two decades ago, that's when I realized the power of reading and leveling up. Because you're absolutely right, we can, we can hack all this knowledge in a very short period of time. And something that I discovered here within the last few years by Andrew Huberman, neuroscientist from Stanford, is actually listening to the audiobook while you read it. So now every book I, I do this and it helps with the ADHD mine.

There'S periods of time I'd read like a whole chapter and just read words and like I didn't even, I don't even know what I just read.

Yeah, so.

So being able to level up with reading of the books has really leveled up my personal life, my, my professional life as well. And it sounds to me like you can attribute your high intake of, of the knowledge to probably your growth within beyond. I mean in order to be able to continue to keep doubling. If you talk with it doesn't matter spray foam company or you know, any type of company out there to double your business every year or, or more is unheard of. Like that's not something.

We stopped that after a couple of years. There's been Constant growth to a company. But the doubling stopped. I think we would have been cash. Well, we've been broke there. There's no way that you could cash flow a company that doubles every year or, or even two or even three would be tough. When you start getting to some of those larger numbers, smaller, it's a little bit easier to absorb that. But like now if we doubled in size, we would need another 20,000 square foot shop. You know, we're talking like four or five, $6 million worth of infrastructure to be able to, you know, double up again. So our growth hasn't doubled year after year, but now we're sitting between that 15 and $20 million range. Won't be long till we're past that threshold. And yeah, those are all, it's all been done by this natural organic growth by like I said before, just hiring good people and just being on this constant growth mindset. One percent better every day. Understanding people, growing leaders, all that atomic habits.

One percent better every day.

Yeah.

So I was just thinking about this. If you could rewind time to like the 7 year old Kurt and show him a glimpse of what your life is today. Like.

Do you, I mean I, I think as, as we, we improve as humans and we get to this level and you shared with me you grew up poor. Like could you absolutely imagine your life at a younger kid of being where it is now?

I mean, like no, no, I, I, no, not, not even close. Like I think that I was probably 8 or 9 years old when I got my first pair of new blue jeans. Like I, like it was just hand me downs. That was just kind of the way, the way it worked. We had friends that had, you know, two boys that were older than me. Whatever they wore, I wore, I'm guessing underwear and socks too. Like it was, it was, it was the whole nine. And I never, like, I never felt like I was never malnourished and I came, grew up in a loving home. Just the, the funds weren't there. Right. I don't think I would have understood what it would. Well, I don't think I understood what I would have like as far as freedom goes or opportunities. I don't think I'd understand how much I could actually learn and grow past the age of 18 or 20, like getting out of high school and still actually, you know, mentally just keep on, on grown to where I'm at today. And like I say it to everyone is like when, like I'm 40, 48 right now. When I'm 58, if I don't say I'm an idiot. When I was 48, I've done something wrong in the last 10 years. Right. Like I want to keep on growing over this next decade so that I get wiser, I understand processes better, our systems or people or you know, piece, piece things together a lot better over the next decade. And so yeah, as a seven year old I was, no, there's no way that I could have understood even just being an entrepreneur and growing a business that wouldn't have even been thought of.

Yeah, I mean, because you were, you were just kind of wondering like, you know, gosh, could, if I could have a holiday that was cool, that'd be cool, right? Like you shared with us what your holiday was growing up as a child. Why don't you share the listeners?

We lived in a small town in Saskatchewan and my parents would rent a hotel in the city that was 15 minutes away, city called Saskatoon. And we'd go to the Travelodge, my sister and my parents and we would do the water slides on Saturday all day and ordering pizza and the next day go swimming a little bit more and then we'd check at a rotel, drive 15 minutes back to our house. Those were the memories. And as we got a little bit older, my parents like an old trailer, piece of junk trailer and we camping a little bit with that. But yeah, those are kind of my trips as a kid. Was a travel lodge in Saskatoon.

Yeah. So share with us what, what a trip looks like now for your children, for your generation, that you're, that you've changed.

Well, it's a little, it's a little different now. Like I have the opportunity to actually, to be on a board for a house building company in Mexico that builds homes for the working poor. And so I've been going down there since 2019. So three times last year my family and I went down to Mexico and built houses for families and we were able to still do another, another trip. On top of that, I have the opportunity, like I take off, not in one lump sum, but I take off 12 weeks a year, typically from work, whether it's long weekends or the odd week trip. And some of that's work related and some of that's fun related and some of that's going down to build houses in Mexico. But my kids get to kind of join along and experience the majority of that. So yeah, they get to see the world, the poorest parts, the best parts, the resorts, the kind of the whole gamut. And that's kind of mine and my Wife's philosophy is we're not about stuff, we're about experiences. And so we spend quite a bit of money on experiences with our children, which we love.

Those memories are going to last a lifetime versus the stuff nobody remembers the stuff.

Right before we dive into this incredible conversation with Kurt Janzen, quick question. What would your business look like if the phone rang every day with new leads? That's what we do at Spray Foam Genius. We, we help contractors get more visibility on Google so they get more jobs, not just likes or follows. I'm Anaa, your friendly sponsor. Today let's talk about growing your biz. Call 877-840-FOAM in the US 844741 Foam in Canada or check out sprayfoamgeniusmarketing.com alright, let's get back to this episode with Kurt.

The boys are having a different experience than the Travel Lodge. Your sons, you know, that's a different experience of going to Mexico, getting to enjoy some of the, you know, the culture and the experience. Granted, it sounds like it's, you know, a work trip and they're getting to, to, to really give back to those communities which fills, fills the heart, I'm guessing.

Man, different experience. It's definitely changing the generational wealth, it's changing the generational, you know, experiences, you know, and a lot of this stuff is, you know, if we don't change it, if we don't become the one, Kurt, it just consistently keeps repeating itself and passing it down. You know, if you look at how much of who we are as humans is DNA level and you can't change DNA unless you really make huge changes like yourself to, to grow up a poor child and not have a whole lot of things, you know, wearing hand me downs. I was right there with you. I, you know, I had a sister that was a tomboy. She's six years older than me and I was wearing her hand me downs. You know, thankfully they wasn't like wearing a dress, but it was, it was like, oh great. I get, I get to wear her pair of pants which were new to me. But yeah, so I, I totally get that and prestive, man. Like it's, it's really impressive and it's, I think sometimes at least for myself because I look back at that, that little boy, that seven year old boy and it's, it's really cool to see where I've come, how far we've grown. But also on the flip side of things, sometimes life can.

You know, you sometimes don't really appreciate those Things. And so for me, and I don't know if this is. If you can attest to this, this, but with your success is really just breaking it down to moments of gratitude on a daily basis and really kind of like the micro versus the macro. What's your take on that?

It's huge. And I'm a little bit out of. Actually. I used to have a gratitude journal that I would write in every day. That was part of my routine. I've kind of slipped away from that over the last little while. But I still that heart of gratitude. And that's something that oozes out of me when I'm talking to my kids or our team members or clients again, I'm just. I'm thankful to be part of everyone's journey and to be experiencing all these different things that are happening here at Beyond. And I think that that's really what centers me as a human is that that whole idea that I'm not a whole lot of anything and just be excited to be part of, you know, along other people's journeys is pretty fun. Fun. So. Keeps me humble. You said success a few times, and every time you say it, I come in the back of me cringes a little bit, just so you know, because I. Because I. I don't. I don't feel it. Okay. I don't. I don't feel like I've arrived anywhere and. And I really want to just, you know. Yeah. Like I said, in the next 10 years asking that again and maybe the next 20 years ask me that again. But I. I've never. I haven't arrived anywhere. I'm not even close to what I want to be as a human, who I want to be as a parent, as a. As a husband, as a leader in our company. But, man, I'm excited to kind of journey and figure out what that looks like over time.

Well, I respect the not feeling like you've arrived, obviously. Let's be real, man. You're successful now. You haven't reached the destination. And I understand what that's like because I remember growing up as a child with. When I heard about people making six figures, I was like, holy crap, that is a lot of money. And I remember in Middle of COVID I had the marketing business, and then I had an insurance agency that I owned for almost a decade. And Covid, we were able to hit six figures with the marketing company because everybody was home.

And.

I honestly was like, wow, that's cool. But this is definitely not the destination. Now, I know you and I have similar mindsets. For me, it's not about the amount of zeros in the bank account. It is about what that money allows us to buy as far as experiences, trips, the freedom, the less stress. So please understand that I'm not about the zeros, but it allows me to buy back my time. It allows me to spend the time with my family. It allows me to take them on vacations. All this stuff that you and I never had. I want to give my, my, my children, you know, experiences. Now I, you know, just like you said, pre show.

Your money is not your kids money. And it's a Jaquil o' Neal quote. You know, if anybody's heard Shaq say this, like, you know, the story about, you know, my money, not yours.

Yeah.

And, and, and I think that's important because what I, what I see a lot of times and today, today's society is as people, you know, we'll just say guys like ourselves that grew up poor make money. Then that money becomes their kids money as well. And the kids get to, like, embellish the lifestyle. Yet they've, they've never been part of the journey. So share with me about, like, kind of like the way that you're raising your boys and the, the way that you're kind of like preparing them for this really, really difficult world that we live in that's going to eat them up if they're not, you know, a little bit. Have a little bit of grit.

Yeah, no, I love this question. Like, this is. This is something that I've thought about a lot, and my wife and I have had lots of discussions about and, and like, for, for us, like, we don't give our kids money. Our kids earn money. And I give them as shitty a job as I can give them, and I pay them really well to do it. And I teach them, like, you are willing to get through these tough situations. You're going to earn something. And so, like, luckily their dad owns a business where they can come in here, sweep floors, crush barrels, do different things around the yard. We live on an acreage. There's always, there's always things to fix and maneuver and cut and trim and everything else. And so, yeah, the boys don't get an allowance. They do chores. That pays for their cell phone bill. They don't do their chores. We take their cell phone away from them and they work. They work for me, my twins that are 15, they work for our neighbor. He's a farmer. We'll call him Farmer Paul. They go there and they scrape Cow off of stuff and do different things. My oldest, who's turning 18, he works for me in the summertime in our concrete lifting division mostly, but he's done some of a fireproofing work and he's done some insulation work, and so he's really getting his hands dirty. His life will not be that. He's actually accepted into the university. He's going to get his accounting degree and then go into law. And so Daddy gets some pro bono law. We'll lawyer in, in a few years, seven years. But, like. But part of it is, I tell me, like, you have to know how to change your oil. You have to know how to fix things. You have to know how to deal with things that are outside your comfort level. And so our mindset on money with the kids is they get. They get rewarded for what they do. And, like, we love them for the. Who they are, and we're going to reward them for what they do because that's the way the world works. And obviously, obviously, Michelle and I are a safety net for our boys. We're going to be here to protect them and love them and support them, but, you know, yeah, we're not here to bail them out or to give them more than they deserve. I don't think that makes for a healthy childhood at all.

Yeah. Breeds entitlement.

Yeah.

Yeah. You know, when, when, when. When you work so hard to get to where you are now, and then they just think, well, I can just write off Dad's coattails here and. And enjoy. Enjoy Dad's money and, you know, drive fancy cars and live in nice homes and eat the finest steaks or whatever the case is. Like, that sounds like, you know, situations like, you know, Shador Sanders, if you follow.

Sure. And to be clear to the people listening, like, I don't pay myself a ton of money. Kevin doesn't pay himself a ton of money. I drive a truck that's eight years old. It's a decent enough truck. You know, there's things that we don't do intentionally because we're trying to build a business. We buy decent equipment for our guys. We're trying to build enough shops that we can host things. We're trying to grow the company in a way that's healthy and organic, but that doesn't put us into debt or to risk. And so I'm not the guy sitting there with bags of cash on the side by any means. I'm the guy that's trying to invest into our future and grow this thing, because, like I said, I'm turning 50. I feel like I can do this for a while longer. I want to grow it into something that is really, really great for not just me, but for maybe 120 or 150 families, not just for the 75 to 100 that are working here now, now. And so it's a bit of a delayed gratification thing for us as a family. Obviously, we're able to do nice things. We're able to use credit card points to travel. We're able to, you know, you know, take advantage of some of those business perks that we have, but we're not. We're not rolling in it. We're living. We're living the lifestyle we want to live right now, though.

Yeah. I mean, but a total different lifestyle than what Kurt grew up with.

Yeah.

I mean, let's just be real. Like, you may not be, you know, buying yachts and, and living in a mansion, but on the flip side, I think it sounds to me like you're living the life that Kurt wants to live and at the important.

And we tell our kids all the time, I'm able to do whatever I want, not everything I want. And so I, I, we. We pick the things that we really want to do, and we, we save for that, and then we invest in that, and then we come back and we do that. We do that all over again. That's kind of mindset.

Love it. So you guys have been featured with Within Spray Foam magazine a few times.

Yeah.

Most recently was an award that you guys won down in Daytona. Why don't you share with us about that and the Huntsman Chemical and then what you guys were able to do with that?

Yeah, for sure. It's a really kind of a neat story. And we were able to help support some family in our community. So, you know, down in Florida, we won the Spray Foam Magazine Growth and Excellence award, which was a complete honor. And we were pretty surprised. Didn't know that we would be in the running. We're, you know, what we feel like is like a little isolated, small, you know, area in Canada, and to kind of go up against everybody that's all the way through United States, which are obviously bigger players than us and have a lot of things going on. That was a big honor honor. And so, yeah, we were shocked by the award. And then when I was up on stage, Margot told me that, hey, Huntsman donated some material to you guys as well as part of the prize. And I was like, holy crap. So, like, as they're presenting the awards, I was actually visiting with a friend because I wasn't even thinking I was winning. All of a sudden they said my name. I'm like, what's going on? So it was. It was awesome. It was a great shock.

Shock, right?

Yeah, yeah. Super fun. Went up on stage. Luckily I was wearing something that said beyond on it. I was, you know, like, I. At least I was branded just a little bit for that was that marketing win, which was good. And so then went over to the Huntsman guys, talked to them, thank them. They said, yeah, we've got some material for you. Like, super exciting fast forward just a couple weeks after that, got back here to Calgary, and one of our estimators went to a house. And this house had crazy attic rain, water dripping on the walls, big black brown spots on the ceiling. Just like overnight, this house just started raining. And the next day they went up in the attic. They still had frost. I was up on the underside of the sheeting, so it was just going to happen more. They panicked, called us. And so Leon went there, set up a bunch of fans in their attic, trying to get air moving. Came back, talked to his boss, Ryan, and Ryan came to us and said, hey, what do you think we should. What can we do here? This is a bad situation. And not just the attic rain. That's only like part A, part B was the homeowner. He had stage. Stage 4 cancer in his terminal. And actually at the airing of this podcast, I'm not too sure what his status is. So this family was just dealing with all this emotional stress, like, can't imagine type stress. And then on top of it, their house is raining. And so we just took that foam and said, hey, how about we come in there, suckle dramatic, we lay down that foam, no cost to you, and. And trying to just kind of take one thing off your plate that you have to think about. And so it ended up being this, this amazing win win where we could, you know, kind of be part of their journey, part of their story. And then, yeah, having people like Huntsman and Spray Flow magazine kind of, you know, awarding that to us has been kind of a feather in the cap and a super exciting thing. So, yeah, that's kind of the story that.

That's pretty amazing.

That winning an award, you would probably never have thought like this, us winning this as a company is. Could possibly change somebody else's life. I can tell that's who you are. Kurt, with our conversation, it's like, like, okay, let's, like, we have this chemical, like, we want it, let's go ahead and like change somebody's life with this. It's, it's no sweat off your back. And I don't know if that was the intention, like on your flight back from, you know, Daytona to Calgary that like, you know, if there's a situation I can, you know, I have an ace up my sleeve. But dude, this, the impact that you made for this family while they can sit there and maybe take their mind off of their. I think it's their father at stage four cancer. And you know, as a, as a, you know, his wife is probably much.

You know, they had a lot on their plate and that's one less thing. I mean, I couldn't, I couldn't imagine having, having, you know, my dad dying of cancer and then it's raining in my house like, oh my gosh.

And it's actually a really fresh story. My business partner Kevin, who's my brother in law.

His dad, my wife's dad passed away of cancer last year. And so we know what that, that turmoil is to the household and the stress with the extended family, with everybody that we've literally lived it minutes ago when it feels like it feels super fresh and still. And so it wasn't a decision, it was just like, let's just do this. Not thinking of accolades, not thinking of, you know, anything like that. And actually what happened is I just, I was just so excited that, that we had this material. I just fired off to Huntsman and to Spray for magazine. Just a massive thank you in an email saying, you know, just, just so you guys know, like, we really appreciate this. This is massive. And this is what we did with that because you guys, you know, fortuitously, you know, figured out we got that stuff and I just wanted to thank you, thank them for it. And they're like, hey, can we tell this story? I said, sure. How do you want to do that? And they said, well, let's make a little video. Let's do a little, a few different things. And so that's, that's where that all came from.

The domino effect of that. Absolutely amazing. Obviously you said you didn't do that. You know, you're not sitting there thinking about the accolades, but that's just something that happens when, when, you know, great things happen when we, when we're thinking, you know, selflessly.

Yeah.

So is, is this, have you guys been able to do things like this throughout your 19 years of owning the company?

Yeah, we're always looking like we want to support our community. Like that's Part of our DNA. We've been involved in organizations like Homes for Heroes. They build tiny homes for ex military that are needing a hand up. They have these little communities. So we've done a bunch of spray foam work for those guys. We've done stuff with homeless shelters. And then our estimators are just really great human beings and they'll come to us and say, hey, these people need their crawl space done. There's no way they can afford it. You know, like, can we, can we help them out? And so it's always kind of part of who we are as a company to support our community. But this was an opportunity to do it with free material, which was kind of fun to kind of jump on board with that. And obviously the story behind around it now has been exciting. But yeah, we've done this since day one. If, if there's somebody in need, we want to be there and support it. That's who Kevin is, that's who I am. That's why we go down to Mexico and build houses for people. Those are just part of our DNA.

Yeah, I love it. And I just saw that video. I think Spray Foam magazine just pushed it out last week. And I was like, wow, that is, that's amazing. Like, I'm getting an opportunity to interview Kurt here later and what an amazing story. I mean, obviously you didn't do it for the story, you did it to help these folks. And I found this throughout this spray foam community over the course of the, you know, the few years I've been involved. There's so many stories like that, Kurt. I mean, absolutely amazing people. And I remember one of our last guests, Todd Bolton down in South Carolina, he said, it's not that we're looking for this stuff, but we're kind of looking for ways we can help out the community. And he's like, the second that we come across a situation like this, I can make a handful of phone calls and guys are flying in to help me 100%.

Did you ever hear what the story in Calgary where a fly by night guy got this little barndominium to spray? He literally hired some crackheads to spray it for him. It was like the whole building was like stalag tided foam coming down. There's ISO all over the place. This girl that was on site walking around barefoot through it, walking, you can see her footprints, ISO footprints on the sidewalk going out of it. It was like, you cannot imagine the disaster was. And so a few of us companies, there's probably, I don't even know now, six or seven companies from Canada, Calgary, all went over there one day and we had 25 guys literally hacking foam out of this building. And then I, I can't remember. I believe it was Elastocam donated some material. We resprayed the whole thing. And then DC315, the whole thing, did that for, for the, for the client. And we just, everyone volunteered their time, moved over there, mobilized and got a bunch of stuff done. One of the other companies donated their rig for the day and a half that we needed to foam it. Like, it was just an amazing thing. And that's what. It's not just us. Yeah, you're right. I think there's, there's kind of a brotherhood in the spray foam community, even amongst competition that's different than a lot of other different industries.

So I was talking to a contractor last week, a real solid guy doing great work, but barely getting any leads. He said, anna, I just don't get it. My competitors show up on Google, but I don't. That's exactly what we fixed. I'm Anaa with Spray Foam Genius, proud sponsor of this episode featuring Kurt Janzen from Beyond Group. We help contractors get seen and get chosen. Want to stop being invisible online? Call us at 877-840-FOAM in the US or 844-741-FOAM in Canada or go to sprayfoamgeniusmarketing.com or. Now let's get back to Kurt. This episode's been really fun.

Yeah. I mean, most of the time, people look at their competitors as competitors. Like, why would I go help Kurt? Because that guy works for Beyond. Like, we're part of blah, blah, blah company. And, and really, they forget the reasoning. You know, it's not, it's. This isn't a competition. I can work with Kurt and I can help out somebody that's going to change that person's life. So it's, it's absolutely been amazing to see this consistently happening. And it's not a, it's not for the accolades, like you said. I mean, it's really just about helping humans. And, you know, I feel like if we can get back to that a little bit more on a human level, life is a lot better.

So you're the second Canadian that we've, we've had on the show.

Hey.

Yeah. Hey, Canada.

First one is Trevor Cochran. He shared with us about regulation up there that you guys have had in place. Controversial subject down here in the States is, you know, where do we go for regulation? I, I think it's A census. That majority of people that are good, solid companies down here, they. They feel like we need regulation.

Tell us how the regulation has been going in Canada and, and do you think it's set up correctly? And could the United States mirror what you guys have done?

Yeah, like, I would say that we're, we are okay or good at it. I don't think we're great. Like, I think there's still ways of being a shitty contractor in Canada. There's always ways and loopholes and things that you could, you can work around. But how it works for us is if we want to spray a certain type of material, they have an engineering firm that third parties, and we have to go in there on a regular basis to get certified and recertified to be able to use their materials. And then we are filling out daily work records like the pole test, the density tests, sending them all of the environmentals. And that's just a very standard thing that we've done since day one here. When Kevin and I first started, we were at the asf and now we've sprayed a number of different faults since then, and they've all been the same. That governing bodies just kind of look over our shoulder to make sure that we're getting things done to the best of our ability. And they're also there to support us too. Like, if there is an issue or a problem, we're calling some of these engineering firms and getting them to come in and lend us a hand. And we've been pretty blessed with great manufacturers or people that work for these manufacturers that really step up and help us out when we need. And so, yeah, like I would say, so far, so good. I really think, you know, for me, like sprayers wearing fresh air and, you know, just keeping their bodies healthy is super important. And I want guys to want to protect themselves. I want guys to understand what they're doing. And how do you do that without some type of regulations? I'm not too sure because I don't think. I think it'd be pretty tough for. Have their own rules or training program on, you know what, the safety, the chemical makeups, the even troubleshooting, all that becomes tougher. And having a little bit of oversight actually doesn't hurt us at all. It helps our industry. Just we're just a lot more viable for or reliable or whatever word you want to use for our clients that they just know that we're going to do things by the book.

How old is regulation for Canada?

Oh, well, before me, so. Yeah, before me, yeah.

Okay. That's what I was kind of curious if, if you knew what it looked like previously. So even with regulation, you just talked about this story about the stalactites hanging from the ceiling. So there is still horror stories that happen because somehow people get their hands on chemical. Because right now, from my understanding, in order for you guys to get chemical, you have to have your certifications or your. Your licensing, and then the. The supplier is the one that oversees that part of it, right?

Yeah, the supplier or their engineering firm. It's actually. They have an engineering firm in, like that, on retainer or whatever that does the courses, that is that neutral third party. So, like on the case with the stalactite foam, the contractor bought the material, subbed the job out, and lent the. The equipment to a guy that said he knew what he was doing. Right. And so, like, it was. It was kind of like this little, you know, around the pole kind of thing. And like I said, things are always going to happen. There's always going to be loopholes. There's always going to be things that, you know, you can kind of squeal around. But it's tighter here than anywhere else. That's for sure.

For sure. So if you, if somebody came to you and was like, hey, we're gonna, we're gonna pay you to put together a training program for the United States or licensing or, you know, some friction. Right. Because right now the scary thing is a guy like myself that knows absolutely nothing about spray and foam could, could. If I had 60 to 100k laying around, I could go buy a rig and tomorrow I have a spray foam company.

Yeah.

And as. As, you know, like to become a plumber or an electrician or any other of these trades. There's apprentices, there's licensing, there's. There's a lot of friction that. That prevents this barrier of entry into the business. And so if you were in charge of something like that, I know we're just going off the whim here, but what would that look like, Kurt?

Well, you'd hire someone way smarter than me. That's the first thing you would do.

That's not part of the option here.

I'd be. The guy says, hey, we need to have a program. And then I'd hire smart people, people to come in alongside and do that. But like in the States, like the SPFA are a wealth of knowledge. They have so many processes, procedures. Their SOPs are dialed in. They have a lot of things on the go there. It would be just, how do you get Mass adoption of that. And you're like, and. And how do you get homeowners to say, the only person I want spray in my basement is somebody that is approved, that has a certification from something. And so I think it is. Education is where it really starts. But how do you educate 100,000 homeowners or 200,000 or 500,000 homeowners? I'm not too sure. Your podcast has to go viral for that to happen, so we'll really pump that.

We're pushing this baby.

We're pushing this baby, like, nowhere. 173 views. We're going to millions. Yeah, but it's going to take a lot of education. Oh, and. And then a lot of people just say, no, I'm not going to use an uncertified installer. Right.

Yeah. So you think the PCP program through the SPFA is a good first start for. For the, for the business, you know, for the industry to be. Basically use that as kind of your foundation.

Yeah. Like, from my limited knowledge of what it is and like, I know a little bit, maybe enough to be dangerous, but not. I don't. I'm not in the weeds with it, but it has to work someplace. And we've already got something kind of built, so I. I wouldn't be starting it from scratch. I'd be taking a look at that and seeing how do we build on that to make something great. Yeah.

And then. And then the enforcer. Because there's always going to be cowboys. We talked about this, right? You. You guys up there in Canada say we're the. We're the wild, wild west down here in the States. But there's always going to be cowboys that are going to try to figure out a way around it. But do you think the regulatory, you know, the person that's checking to make sure, is that on the manufacturer side, the chemical supplier?

Yeah, it's on the chemical supplier and their engineering firm. And so, like, when we're done a job, we have to leave a job site sticker. And all of our building inspectors in Canada know when they walk into a house, they see a certain color of foam. They can recognize the brand by the color. They go downstairs, they look on the, you know, the electrical panel or the main trunk off of the furnace, and they see a sticker with our CCMC number, date, installed, installer, installer number. Like it's. It's dialed in as far as that goes. That if things aren't done right, there's a. There's a chain reaction that goes up up the chain pretty fast that the manufacturer will get notified. Hey, this is the house. This is what? No job site sticker, we don't know who sprayed it, blah, blah, blah. Like people get caught in that stage.

Yeah. So have you seen, I mean, maybe not personally, but have you heard of like. Because there is somewhat of a quote unquote paper trail of how like some, you know, some foam that was installed incorrectly now are being able to be traced back to where that company is now in maybe a legal lawsuit.

Yeah, no, we've, like, it hasn't happened for a lot of years, but we used to do a lot of work, warranty work for spray phone companies that didn't do things by the book and it got traced back to them. They're obviously out of business because they did bad work. So they're. So then the manufacturer would, would give us materials and we'd go in there and fix jobs for them. And like, that hasn't happened, like I said, for like a long time, but that was a part of our business for a while.

Yeah. Like, I think we need that here in the States just to keep every. I think all the, all the great contractors want something. They just don't really.

They don't know where to start, I think. And, and as well as we don't want the, the suits in Washington D.C. getting involved because that's not going to turn out good for anybody. So I think we're self regulate.

Yeah.

Self regulate. Right. Kurt, it's been, it's been amazing having you on. One thing I would like to know, and maybe this might take you a second to think about. You've been at this for a while. If there is one thing you could change, you know, going back to 2006 and your business that you could share with somebody that's starting a spray foam company, Is there one thing that sticks out to you that you would. Done. Would have done differently?

Yeah, get a coach.

Like hire someone that's smarter than me. That like, when we first started, I didn't even know the questions to ask to get better. Like that's how dumb I was. And, and as soon as we started going through the school of hard knocks, we knew some questions to ask, but we had no one to ask. And, and that's not, that's on this, like the spray foam side of it's one thing. And I think we have an amazing support group with spray foam worldwide and organizations like that that we can ask questions. Questions. People are there to help and it's a true community. I Think it's pretty fantastic. But like on the, on the business acumen side of it, we had no idea. Like I still look at my business partner Kevin and say have you ever run a company this size? I'm like nope, like me neither, you know, so I don't know what that looks like. And so when now we grow a little bit and you're like have you like every six months we've, we've been able to do that. And so coaching has really helped me. Having somebody that I can ask questions that calls up my bullshit that they're to encourage me, help me, show me systems that bigger that that next level. And for me like my coaches, my mentors are not people that run 200, 300 million dollar companies. They're a couple steps above me and so they still remember my pain but they know they have the cheat code to get to the next level. And those been the most important people in, in our business lives. Is, is that coaching side of it. And I, if I were to start of that earlier, maybe we would have only been to this highs now but it would have been a lot less painful to get to the size now. I don't know if it changed speed or growth but it would have been a lot an easier trajectory for us as a company.

Yeah. So when, when you're mentioning about your coach, is your coach really a business coach or do they also know the aspect of spray foam?

No, they're a construction business coach.

Got it.

Yeah.

Yeah. I think, I think sometimes the mindset when you're first starting in business is dude, I can't even hardly afford to pay myself and you want me to go pay a business coach.

Right?

But, but it takes money to make money and in order for, for you to get to that next level you have to make sacrifices. And you're absolutely right. I have several business coaches now and I honestly can attribute a lot of my growth to one of them that has just mentored the heck out of me that is always there happens to be one of my best friends and sometimes he's constantly like hey, let me put on my business coach hat here, let me take off my business coach hat. Now I'm going to put my friend hat on. And I just actually had a coaching call today and there was some of that conversation. You know, he's like I love you and so I'm going to share with you this. Please understand this is your friend talking, not your coach. And you know, and so that, that I can, I totally agree with you and I'm so thankful that you said that because the. There's a lot of people that are tuning in that don't really know what to do and where to go and can be guided by a coach because we did have Robert 90 on from spray Foam Advisor and the knowledge that he shared with me is like, you're talking about the books.

You could spend a whole lifetime trying to learn what Robert knows or any other business coach out there. Why not just pay to hack? I mean, like, just pay to hack that knowledge because you can get to the. To the finish line so much quicker or less like you said with having that knowledge. So, man, I, I like that's. That's an amazing share. I appreciate that.

Well, thank you. I got it right. I appreciate that.

You got it right, man. You got it. You aced. You aced your first test as being a C student, right? Right?

Yes, man.

This has been a real pleasure of mine having you on. I feel like we might have been friends in a past life. Anytime that I am thinking about taking a trip up north. I've never been to Canada. I'm most definitely gonna. Gonna choose Calgary and, and stop in and check out Beyond 100.

Well, our Canadian peso to your American dollar. We almost pay you to come to Canada now, so it's the cheapest vacation you'll ever take. So you're welcome for sure.

And I probably could these days maybe import some liquor in my bag and make a killing down here.

Kurt, for those that are wanting to get in touch with you just to, you know, or just connect with somebody of knowledge, good heart, how do they reach out?

Yeah, so I'm on spiritual worldwide. So I'm on Facebook, just Kirk Jansen, Kurt with a C on Instagram, got. Kurt is my handle there. And I'm on LinkedIn again just under my name and heck, email me. Kurt BeyondGroup CA I love talking to people that want to grow and I'm always willing to make a few minutes for anybody that wants to be intentional, has a few questions. I'm definitely, definitely game for that.

Especially he rewards the action takers. If you're an action taker, he rewards that. I know his mindset. So. Been my pleasure, man, having you on and, and having a great discussion. I know we'll have you on again. I wish you the best success in these years to come with beyond and. And yeah, it's been a pleasure. Thanks for coming on.

Yeah, thanks for having me. This has been an absolute blast.

Thanks, man. Have a good evening.

Yeah, bye. Bye.

Yeah.