Get Your Mind Right with Adam Buttorff

Foreign. Hey, everybody, it's Jim Johnson here, the head coach at Contractor Coach Pro and your host here on Contractor Radio where we are here to hopefully entertain you a little bit, educate you some, give you some strategies and tactics for your business and hopefully help you do what it is that we do in our coaching, which is to get control of your business so you can grow your business and find some of that personal and financial freedom that you're chasing. And today we're gonna be talking about mindset and beliefs. I've got a special guest on today. This guy is amazing. If any of us had been through what he's been through, we might have some excuses for why our mindset might not be all that great. But. But he is one of the most positive influences in our industry. Can't wait to bring him on. But before I do, let's hear a little bit from one of our sponsors and we'll get rolling right from there. So that was a little message from our friends over at Kill youl Competition. Jessica Raina is the All Star Rockstar leader over there. And if you want to get your business famous, they're a great group to check out to help you do so, to drive more organic and direct leads to your business. So today we're here to talk a little bit more about mindset and beliefs. It's something all of us as individuals, we tend to have doubt creep into our world. And being mindful of our mindset has a lot to do with being able to get out of that as quickly as possible. And so I brought somebody on today that he's probably the epitome of this. Of all the people that I know, can't wait to have a conversation with him about it. Adam Bjudorf, welcome aboard. What's happening, brother?

Thanks, Jim. How you doing, buddy?

I am doing fantastic. You were one of our clients. We worked through with you quite a bit. As a matter of fact, some pretty major events happened in your life as we were working through. And you're one of those clients that's near and dear to my heart. And I think you can bring a lot to our listeners today when it comes to talking about mindset and belief. Like I said in the intro, you've been through a lot, man. It's been a bit of a. A roller coaster ride, ups and downs, and you could play this victim mentality and probably be well justified. And so tell us a little bit about the background and how you got here and kind of what's going on with Renown Construction.

I appreciate that. Jim, it's funny. I love hanging out with you. You make me feel like Superman for some reason. A little bit my story. So I got in the business, kind of like most people do, right, by happenstance sometimes and take the business we're rocking and rolling. I'm married, got two little boys. You know, the classic great lifestyle, as they say. And what's amazing is how life interludes interrupts that and messes that up sometimes. And so four years ago, almost five years ago, my wife falls down in a seizure right out of nowhere, like, what's going on? We're super healthy, fit individuals. Go to the doctor and turns out she has stage four glioblastoma brain cancer. Doctors gave her four to six months to live. And it's even I think about it, it's like I feel like I'm in a movie, right? That doesn't happen to people. We're young, we're in our 40s. That doesn't happen. And it did. She battled with it for last 13 months before I lost her in one of the most tragic and most difficult stages I've ever been through in my life. When you see the woman that you love, the mother of your children, the one that you want to share the rest of your life with, just fall apart day after day, week after week. Towards the end, she lost her ability to speak, lost her ability to write. It was just really, really rough, right? And then I lost her. Now I'm a single dad with two little boys. And you know, most people would say that you're justified in being angry. You're justified. You know, life isn't fair. The truth is that I had to take a different mindset to that because that doesn't benefit me, that doesn't help anybody or anything. And so I took a shift in that to go. I got 13 wonderful years of my life. I have two amazing boys. I got from that I realized I'm not promised tomorrow. I'm just. I'm thankful I got today. So it's made me change my mindset on specifically like valuing and appreciating life every day, right. It's a gift we take for granted a lot. We just assume the sun's going to rise and it's going to set. And so that shifted me to an others mindset even more than I ever had before. Here's what's crazy about that, is I tell you that because in the year that my wife is diagnosed and the year after, those are the two years that I'm not really diving in Plugging in my business as I should. But it's understandable. I'm reeling from the loss of my wife. I'm dealing with losing her. And what's crazy is Those are the two years we at the Inc. 5000, the fastest growing companies in America. And I say that because it's not about me. It's about my team. And I poured into them and invested in them, and I didn't take a victim mentality. Right. I cherished and appreciated them. And so fast forward here we are coming up on five years since that whole issue happened. By God's grace, I've. I met another woman and got remarried, and now I'm into a blended family. And I have. I call myself Brady Bunch 2020. Right? So now I have four teenage kids. Anybody has teenagers, you know, that's a challenge in itself. And so I share all that to share this with you. Life is about mindset. Business is about mindset. And I'm so passionate about it now because of those things. What I mean by that is I have to remind myself of this. And I tell my team this, and I want to share this with you. Do you realize you are a miracle? Every person listening, hearing, watching is a miracle. You beat out a hundred million others just to even be here. We forget that we are so far removed from like, oh, yeah. I mean, that was a feat in of itself. And I'm a terrible swimmer, right. For those grid swimmers. I mean, that's just the reality. Like, so what does that mean practically? Right? And that means is every person we've got on our team personally is a gift, a challenge, a blessing, but we just got to foster it. Well, and it's about how you think about that, right?

Yeah. So, you know, it's interesting you said why you were talking before we hopped on the show. We talked about that just a little bit. And I was thinking about it and, you know, the younger we are, it seems like the more opportunity is out there for us. Like little kids, just like, whatever, man, we can do it. We can jump over this and run over that and accomplish anything and stack these blocks up to, you know, as high as they can go. Like everything was possible. Which if you look back to even before that, we were one out of 100 million, that was possible. So we started out with this right mindset that all things are possible. And then over time, there's just these little chinks in our armor as we grow. And we keep getting told we can't or we won't or we. It's. It's impossible or any of that kind of stuff. And so that. That was kind of like, wow, man. I didn't even think back before I came into the world, like, what was possible. It was even bigger than when I was a kid. You know, the mindset thing, as you. As you went through what you went through with your first wife, did she play a part in your mindset on that as you went through all that huge.

We talk a lot about even, you know, when she was diagnosed, and it was like, there's no hope, right? Four to six months to live. There's. It's like from a country song kind of thing. And it's amazing because she's like, listen, no matter what, if I'm leaving here, I'm going to heaven. So I know it's a benefit. You're going to be sad. Life goes on. And I want you to live life right. Live it to the fullest, because you only get one. It's like I told my staff that. I said, listen, life is too short to be negative. There's too much good out there. Let's sideline the negative, deal with the challenges, but let's be positive about what we got. And thankful, because she helped me a ton. Right. Even to be able to move on, to even get remarried again. Right. Which is a whole different aspect.

Sometimes we need. Sometimes we need that encouragement with our own mindset.

Like, oh, my goodness. And we do. And that's. I'm glad you said that, Jim, because mindset is not just something. It's ourselves. It's who you surround ourselves with. I've heard it said by several mentors forever for decades, saying, I can tell a lot about. I can tell everything about you by your five closest friends that will determine who you are. Everything from what you make, your personality, what you think about things, your life, everything about those five people, because they influence you. We are who we hang around with. And so it's so important to get people in your life that encourage you, that drive you, that challenge you. A lot of mine were mentors from books, right. Because I didn't have a lot growing up. And I love what you talked about. We're amazing winners just to get in this world. And we're born, man, the world. You ask a little kid, what do you want to be when you grow up, man? He's got 100 things. I'm going to be an astronaut and a fireman and a police officer. I'm doing it. All right? And we're like, yeah, you do it. And what happens to life. The little chinks, right? Do you realize a kid, by the time he's three years old, has heard no, like 50,000 times?

Oh, yeah, I've read that book too.

In our brain, right? No, no, no, no. You can't do that. Have a backup plan versus. And so you're born, you have this open capacity, like anything you want to do, and then slowly dwindles. And slowly dwindles, and we become adults. And it's like, well, all I can do is this. But then it's like, no, open that up again. To realize there's so much out there. There's a thing called the. Not to get too technical, but the RAS system, Reticular Activating system. And what it is, is what you focus on expands and grows, meaning you'll see more of it. It's kind of like when you buy a new truck, right? All of a sudden, you see that truck everywhere. Why is that? They just start appearing. No, they've always been there. You just haven't seen them. Because you. You can't focus on everything. Your mind will crazy. But now that you've got one, you can see it. The same reason why if you're in a crowd of people, hundreds of people talking, going on, but you literally would be talking to someone, all of a sudden, you hear your name, Adam. I'm like, what? I can hear that other crowd because I'm in tune for it. The things we're in tune for, the things we look for, is what we find.

We bought a Jeep. So I don't know if you know this whole thing about the jeep thing, right? We bought a Jeep, and I didn't really think much of it. I had one when I was younger, and my wife really wanted one, so we went and, like, bought this Jeep, and my son says, hey, you know the Jeep wave? I'm like, I have no idea what you're talking about. He goes, well, you'll. You'll know. And so we're driving down the road, and sure enough, the. The reticular activating system kicks in. We start noticing every Jeep, and every single one of them are doing like this, hey, what's going on? They wave at you as you go by. You gotta wave with them. It's like this jeep wave thing going back and forth between kind of like motorcycle guys when they go, yes, yes. And. And now you're in tune for it. Like, I am absolutely. Like, I see a Jeep. I'm like, here comes the wave. Here comes the wave. Wave. How you doing?

Looking for it now. You see it, but now you look for it. That's the same thing with everything in life, if you're looking for opportunities. Because you said as we get older, we tend to like, oh, there's less and less opportunities. I would say the exact opposite. The older I've got, I feel like there's more opportunities than there ever has been in my entire life.

So I got a question about that, because I've had this, a bit of an epiphany as well. And growing up, beat down hard by my stepdad, you know, telling me that I wasn't going to amount to much. We'll just leave it there. But it wasn't good. And then the world kind of doing the same thing to me. I went through a divorce early when I was young, got married too young, and wasn't real smart about all that. Just all these factors were kind of proving out what he had said I was going to become. And. And then for whatever reason, there was a shift. You know, something lucky happened. And I would call it luck, although maybe I had some preparation to be okay. I know the difference between luck and opportunity, right? But there was this little thing that worked out. And then over time, I've started to realize that this is more about the decisions I make than the decisions that somebody else has made about me. And whenever I start to be in control of those decisions, the world starts to open up, like, oh, wow. So if I make this decision now, what does that mean down the road? And you start to realize there's so much. There's more opportunity on this planet today than there's ever been in the history of our civilization. It is ridiculous. I mean, there's one thing I know. Twenty years ago, I could have quit a job, and I might have had a struggle. Finding a new job is like, you had to go through all this stuff and resumes. I could quit my job Today, hop on YouTube and start doing YouTube videos, and probably start making some money pretty quick. I could learn how to code in about four months and go out and start coding. There's. So I become an Instagram influencer. Who knows, right? Like, there is so much opportunity in the world today that sometimes we have these blinders on that we think this is all that we can do. And contractors. Like, that's the one, right? Like, I think a lot of contractors feel like they've. What's the word for it? They've settled. Like, I didn't get to become a doctor, and then I didn't get to become a baseball player, and then I didn't get to become this. And so now I'm just this. I'm just a contractor. But there's so much there, so much in being this contractor of opportunity that's not even funny. And do you feel the same? Like, have you. Have you gone through that kind of, like, life cycle? Like, squeeze down to nothing, then the eyes finally open up for whatever? What do you think? What do you think makes the difference there?

Here's the deal is I came in the roofing business kicking and screaming. Let's be honest, both of them failed. My late wife was like, well, maybe you could sell roofs. I was like, sell roofs? What? I am not doing that. I'm way better than that. Arrogance and pride, right? I came kicking and screaming. I get in here, I'm like, I love this business. It's a fantastic business. And I said it for years, and I still do. I said, I love the fact that people feel sorry for me. That I'm a contractor for years is like, man, that's hard work. I'm like, you know, really? It's not that hard.

Nice. You don't have to be a rocket scientist. I. I went to my high school reunion. I can remember it was my 15th or 20th. Tells you how old I am. And I'm hanging out with the upper crust of the. The graduating elite, right? I had the valedictorian, the salutatorian, and all the. They. We were hanging around in a circle, and they were doing the comparison thing, right? And we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about this. And so valedictorian is a brain surgeon. The salutatorian teaches other lawyers how to be lawyers, right? These kids in school, and she. She was like attorney General of one of the states. Like, she really made it. And the others, they're all big business, tech stuff, all kinds of stuff. They're like, what do you do? I'm like, I'm a contractor. Like, what? I said, well, we. We. We do a lot of roofing. And so, yeah, I enjoy it. It's a lot of fun, like, man. And it was like, in unison, oh, we thought you were going to, like, back in school, man. We thought you were going to be the one that really, like, did something amazing.

And I went, no.

And I went, I did. I did do something. How many of you created jobs for 170 salespeople, 350 crews, and all the administrative staff to run that? How many of you did that? Right? How many of you changed the lives of all these People on a trajectory where they went from delivering pizzas to owning their own construction business. Like, how many of you did that? Like, great deal, man. I get the whole brain surgery thing, but that's not for me. That was for you. And you know what? I'm super happy doing it. And it was a little bit shocking to him. And I said, this isn't a pecking order thing of who's better and who's worse. We all did well, and that's okay. And so do you see that, too? Like, this comparison thing. Like, people worry too much about that.

Huge comparison. I always say this comparison to thief of any kind of happiness or joy you might have. Because here's the problem with comparison. You're taking what, people's exterior. Brain surgeon, right? I got a friend sprang surgeon. His life is miserable. I wouldn't want it. No, thank you. All right. But you take people's exterior, what it looks like and perceived by others, right? And what he shows, kind of a Facebook life, if you will. And then to what your interior is. My insecurities, my challenges, where I feel insecure, where I'm wrestling, where I'm. I don't feel confident in areas. That's what we're comparing it. It's never an equal comparison, ever. And so therefore, I'm like, wow, I wish. That's the challenge with social media, right? Because you look at social media lives and they're like, oh, man, I'm not doing those vacations. I'm not doing this. Everything you're not doing, it's making you feel bad about yourself, and that's terrible because that will destroy you. Stop with that. Stop comparing others. It's about what you have. You know, there's an old saying that says, start with Thanksgivingness, thankfulness, and thank Thanksgiving because everything else out turns better because it changes our mindset. And that's a mindset quote, really. It's a mindset of being thankful for what I've got. You want to be thankful, Go visit a hospital with kids. You want to really be thankful, go to a third world country, right? You're like, oh, my goodness. The fact I have running water. I mean, it's a little thing, but it's like, wow.

Well, you mentioned it earlier. We won just by existing, right? We won just by being in America. That was a lot. That was like winning the lottery. I mean, if you've ever been to another country, it is not like it is here. And it's. It's funny to me. I think it's because human nature Causes us to be a bit self absorbed. We put ourselves before everything else and we tend to look at it from a perspective of what more do I need to do and what more do I need to accomplish? Instead of looking at, wow, what have I already accomplished? What have I already done? Do you do any, like, tactics to keep yourself in the mindset that you are, like, do you journal in the morning or do you do any of that kind of stuff?

So I go in detail into the book I wrote. I was co authoring, Success Habits of Super Achievers. Yep. Part of that is kind of, what's your routine? And there's part of my routine is remembering. Right? And so, so many times we forget. I say this a lot. It's if you did everything you knew you could do, that you've been taught to do, you'd be a rock star in every area of your life. But we don't. Right? There's. I'm like, how many times we said, oh, yeah, I remember that. Okay, I need to do that a lot. And so for me, it's. My routine is to remind myself of one, all the blessings I have and the goodness I have and things I've accomplished, especially when I get down on myself. Because we as leaders, man, we're the front runners, the front chargers, and we have very, very high expectations for ourselves. At least I do. And so when I don't meet them, man, it's like, oh. And so therefore, I have to remind myself, like, hey, remember, the blessing is that I'm even alive. I've got full health, everything I've accomplished what I've been blessed with. I've got two healthy boys, and now I've got a wife and two more kids. So I'm like four healthy kids, right? And so I've got a vibrant family and friends. And, you know, there's a saying that says that the person thinks in his heart, so is he. Another way to think of that is Henry Ford said, whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. Right. It's how you think and what are you thinking? And so there's another thing that says, take every thought captive because it will direct your path. What I focus on grows. And so for me, it's focusing on taking the time with a journal and saying, okay, what have I done? Well, what are my blessings? What am I thankful for? And just appreciate because I am so quick to be narcissistic and forget everything I've got, everything I've been blessed with, everything I have and we all need to do that on a regular basis. For me, that's a big thing.

So I want to come back in just a minute. I want to talk about some of these tactics that you do, this routine that you do that helps keep you in the mindset, but we got to pay the bills and we got to do that thing around here. So I'm going to go ahead and run one of our sponsors amazing commercials, and we'll be right back. So that was a word from get the referral. These guys are amazing. If you want to add to your referral network, they do a great job of allowing you to not just track it, but reward those folks that you get referrals from. So, Adam, we're talking about mindset. And one of the things, like with mindset, to me that's so difficult is keeping it right. Like, I can sit down and say, man, I'm just in a bad place right now. And so what are all those books I read? Oh, yeah. I read the book on mindset, and I read this book and I read that book. Okay, so. Okay, good. And those I remember. And I start getting myself back into the right place. But it can be very short term unless you start to make this thing habit. Right? Like, I. I don't know if you can see this band that's on my arm, but it says, God is greater than I. And this is a mindset that I'm trying to be in, that all things I do are more about his kingdom than they are about me. And so I try to keep that mindset in front of me. It's one of the tactics that I use to do that is to wear this rubber band on my. It hasn't been off of my arm since Christmas. It was something I got at Christmas and it hasn't been off since. Shower, swimming, whatever I'm doing, it's on my wrist. What tactics do you use to keep yourself in that mindset? Not to necessarily get back to being in the right mindset, but what do you do to stay in that mindset?

I equate to this. We all know what it takes to get healthy, right? Right. Common sense. We get that. We know, hey, stop eating crap. Eat Twinkies and Ding Dongs all day long. You're not going to feel good. So we get the aspect of health, personal. What we put into our body affects our body, exercise and sleep and all those things. Think about your mind. What do you put into your mind? What are you listening to? What I watch and see. And so I put Things in parameters around me that I don't let negative things in, I just don't. I shut them out. I haven't watched news in 20 years. I just don't because there's nothing good on it. So for me, the system I use is I will use every venue mode out there, okay. Even TikTok, right, has great positive reinforcing things that you can encourage yourself on. I use books, I use audios, everything to continue to bring my mindset and keep it where it needs to be. Because I am, as the old melody goes, I am prone to wandering, right? And I like the analogy of NASA. They launched the from the Earth. So you're getting to the moon. If you're just off one degree, you think that's no big deal, just one small degree. You won't even come close to hitting the planet moon, not even close. It's a constant redirect and I equate that to our life, right? You constantly the redirects and for me, it's constantly seeing, okay, what am I exposing myself to that's allowing it. For me, it's listening to audios, it's listening to positive reinforcements, it's listening to videos. I can do motivational videos on YouTube that challenge me and encourage me. I follow people that I highly respect and that authorities, people like Darren Hardy, who's in this book, Les Brown, some aspects, Brian Tracy that encourage me and challenge me and. And remind me of the goodness I have, the blessing I have. But also is where are your next step? Where do you grow further? Because that keeps me in the right mindset. Because man, left to myself. I don't know about you, Jim, but left to myself I'm like, I'm like here, here, they're all over the place. I love to make things happen, but then I forget there's people involved around. And so it's those little things like, okay, let's bring it back in, bring it back in. And so it's a morning routine of reviewing that, spending time in the Word, that's for me, God's word that rejuvenates me and encourages me. And then every night as much as possible, I'm somewhat consistent with that is reading something positive, watching something positive. Because I need to funnel my mind in a right place. Because negative is easy, right? Do you know that negative is easy? You have about 50,000 thoughts a day. About 80% of them are repetitive and about most of them are negative. And so we are prone to negative. No energy, no effort, just like not taking care of yourself. Not exercising, no energy, no effort. I'll get fat and lazy and out of shape.

Yeah. Path of least resistance, right?

Yeah.

I got a problem with that whole working out part right now. Like trying to get my mind wrapped around getting back to it after tearing my Achilles and going through Covid and just all the other stuff. But getting back in that habit has been a bit of a struggle. So what I did is I started just doing a little bit every day and I started out with like five pushups. Just do five. Just do five pushups, see if you can do five. And then it was 10, then it was 15, 20, 50. I do three sets of 50 a day. And so I'm just keep adding and building upon of it. Upon it. And as soon as the doctor goes, yeah, you can go again, I'm going to. Okay, now I can start moving. We're going to do a little high intensity workout, low impact, just 15 minutes, just get that done. Then I'll do 20, then I'll do 30 and get back to where I was before. And so it's, I think we all try to take the big jump and say, I want to take that big thing. Take that big thing.

That's the problem. Jim, most people like exercise. You've heard, you know these people, I haven't worked out in years and they're start working out five days a week, two hours a day. I was like, you lost your mind? No, no, I can do it. I think I can manage it. I'll see you in about three weeks. When you quit, I did the same thing with you. I put a pull up bar in my house. Now when I put it in there, I could barely get one pull up. Okay. I was like, I'll just put it in there and just every now and then start making. I'm up to like 35 pull ups. I'm like, yeah, baby.

Man, that's awesome.

But it started with just one and then just two and just slow. I want to encourage everybody when it comes to mindset. Anything you want to accomplish in life, improving your life is not hard. It just takes time. It's like Darren Hardy wrote this book called the Compound Effect. It's a compound of small things done over time make big results. Like what Jim Rome said. He goes, you know, the definition of success is it's doing small things every day that leads to results. That same stuff. It's making bad decisions every day to lead to failure.

It's exactly our coaching work. Our coaching is the same thing. We're gonna take a little Step this week, a little step next week, a little step the next week, and a little. And we just keep taking those steps, and all of a sudden, hey, whoa, we're done. We got everything in place.

Give me the one thing I need to do, and I can transform our business and make it happen and make millions.

No, no. There's no such thing as a silver bullet. It doesn't work that way.

There's no silver bullet for anything. It's a dedicated effort. Right. And that's why it's important to surround yourself with others, to encourage you and challenge you. Because left to ourself, I like Henry Ford. Back in the day, he was challenged about some technical information, and he says, wait, wait, stop, stop. And he can bring some. And he brings his six smartest people, and he goes, ask them. Because, I don't know, I surround myself with the smartest, best people. And you need to do that in your life. If you're in a room of the people you hang out with, you're the smartest, There's a problem.

You need to get out of that room. I absolutely challenge myself to get around people. I'm uncomfortable with anybody where I feel like if I'm comparing myself to them, I'm less than them. That's who I want to be around. Now I'm at a point in my life where I don't really compare myself to others in that way. It doesn't have a negative impact on me. I don't feel lesser than them. I just feel that I don't know what they know yet. They know something I don't know, and maybe I know something they don't know.

Mindset. A mindset of, like, I can see that. I want to see how to grow and get better because I think you can help me, and I can maybe help you.

Yeah. My mindset has always been growth. My. My mom would tell you that from the beginning that there's never been anything that I didn't think I could do. And if I wanted to actually do it, that's when everything went really well, because I was very determined. But it has to have that want. You got to really want it for you to be growth. Mindset. Like, I suck at math. I suck at math, But I wanted to be good at it, and I dedicated myself to it. And I found out that I had some inherent talent in it, that my brain worked in a way that I could solve problems really easily, but I just couldn't do the work in between. And so I thought I did. I thought I Didn't do math well. Well, that work in between was where understanding comes from. And once I click to that, I figured out I gotta start learning how to do this, because at some point, that equation that you're trying to figure out gets bigger than you can figure out. Yep. You're not. You're not Einstein, kid, so you better figure this stuff out. And it was. It was mind bending for me to go, hey, to get good at math, I had to become worse at it. I had it. I had to figure out what was going on in between. My brain going like that to the answer. I can remember my algebra teacher calling my parents in because she thought I was cheating on a test because she'd have the equations and I just have the answer. But you're supposed to show your work. I said, I don't know how to do that. I just know the answer. I can logically figure it out. And I said, put a equation on the board that's equal to one of these, and if I can't do it, okay, I cheated. She put it on the board, and I literally, like, that, did it. She's like, how do you do it? I go, I don't know. She goes, that's the problem. You need to know how you're getting the answer, because if you know how you're getting that, you'll be able to solve even bigger problems in the future. And I'm grateful for that. But I wasn't. I. I had a fixed mindset about it, that I was just talented and I was good at that thing. Why do I need to learn all this other stuff without understanding the growth mindset behind it, that without. That I could solve even bigger problems and that you.

You just learned you were just a little unorthodox. Right. You didn't fit into the. What the considerable mold is. And so that's nothing wrong with that. Right? So understanding your strengths and weaknesses. Just because you don't fit in this mold doesn't mean you can't do it. Right? And that's the growth mindset. Says you can. You can do anything you want to put your mind to. Just put the right system around how you do it. I'm not gifted in math, but I'm great at, like, seeing the issue, like you said, solving the problem. And then, like, okay, I just. I come around it so different than most people, and that's. Okay.

You mentioned something there, strengths and weaknesses, right? There's. There was so much when I was younger that was out there in the world books and. And you Know experts and stuff like that that were. If you're weak in something, you really need to that thing so you can become greater overall. That's flipped on its head at this point. And I think it was a secret why so many people got ahead before they went. I don't believe in that. I'm just going to work on what I'm great at and I'm going to get other people to do the things I suck at. How do you approach that?

Okay, there is. If you could grasp one thing, it's this focus on the things you're naturally gifted in or your strengths. Because if you focus on your weaknesses, the best you can be is average. That is the best you're going to hope for is average versus focus on your strengths. Things that energize and feed you. You'll be amazing and then get others who have naturally gift sets in that and they can be amazing in it. Jim Collins wrote a book called Good to Great and said if you get the right person on the right seat on the bus, it'll transform everything.

It is an amazing book. If. Yeah, if people are listening, if they haven't read that book. Good to Great. Amazing book for business.

Really great book.

Yeah.

So I'm a huge believer in really diving into people and how they're wired and how they. How they're naturally gifted and then put them in those seats that do that and then continually reanalyzing it. Right. To make sure everything you're doing still in that seat. Because there might be aspects of their role that they're not a big fan of, but someone else might be and we can flip pop them.

So. So I once heard that your mindset is determined by your beliefs. And so is that the core of it for you?

That's the core. Think about this. Is even the FBI, when they do a witness for events and happens, they can have five witnesses, right? All witness the same thing. Every single person will see it differently. No two people will see it the same. Matter of fact, if they do see it all the same, they know they're lying.

They know there was a bland.

They said all exactly the same. They're lying because no two people see the same situation the same because of beliefs. I'll give you an example. My late wife was sexually abused as a child. Got some healing from that and great freedom from that. But before that, every time she saw a grown man and a child, a female child, she says she couldn't see it as normal. Something's wrong. Even though nothing was wrong because of what she experienced growing up and the belief system that was skewed in her brain, that's what she saw. Once she got healing from that, then she saw it as natural, normal. We do that all in life. That's an extreme case, but we do that in life, right? Things we believe we don't see. We don't believe what we see. We see what we believe is what we see, not what's actually there.

That's really good. Can you, can you dive in that a little bit more? What you mean by that?

Let me unpack this. When you see someone, meet them for the first time. First impressions say a lot, right? So say you saw me for the first time. What your impression of me is all based on your past. Who does he resemble? What does it look like? And what you think I am before. Before you even meet me? Maybe you have a five minute introduction.

Hi.

Bye. That's it. But you have a perception of me based on what you've been through. Because what you believe about me, until proved otherwise, is what you're going to believe. And a lot of times we have to overcome that. And the first aspect of that is identifying it. Most of us don't even identify it. And that is so big.

That is a frustrating thing for me is that we don't take enough time to understand ourselves enough. And the way that we think. The mind that we have. I once heard it said that what's in your heart is what you'll believe in your mind. And what you believe in your mind is what you'll say. And then what you say is what you'll act upon. So you can. I always think about it in that order, right? What's here goes to here, comes out of here and what I act upon. Do you see things like that? Do you see them similarly?

Absolutely. Think about this. The funny cartoon Chicken Little, right? The world is falling. The world is falling always. Always. Right? We've met people like this. And your mind, you're thinking, how can they always think the world's falling apart always? Or that, you know the old saying, hell, world's going to hell in a handbasket, man. What you don't realize is that your belief system, that's what your reticular, activating system is focused on. That's all you're gonna see. There is so much beautiful, wonderful, amazing things going in the world that we don't even focus on and see because we're not looking for it. Great example. The thing we hate the most, right? Traffic. No one loves traffic. Driving traffic that One must be a huge accident. Accident. Something going on. You drive it and you get to it and you realize it's not even on our side of the highway, it's the other side. There's nothing wrong with our side of the road. It's called Rubberneckers.

Why?

Because everybody wants to. What's going on? Accident. Slow down. I want to see it. All right? Because we're drawn to that negative stuff. Vice versa. You're driving along and you see the most amazing, unbelievable sunset in your life. There isn't a single person slowing down to see that. They're boom, boom, driving off.

I, I will go against you on that one. I, I was actually on my way to the sales event I was going to speak at this past weekend and I had to leave really early. I left it like five o' clock in the morning to be in the middle of nowhere West Texas. And as I was driving in to the event was when the sun was coming up and I was supposed to be there in like two minutes. I went, they can wait, stop my car hopped out and just sat on the hood of my truck and like, enjoyed this sunrise. It was going to be beautiful.

I could tell that's what you should have done.

It was amazing. And I walked into that event with a whole different outlook. I was like, man, I can't wait to be here. I can't wait to be a part of this.

Did you see that? You took two minutes to soak in the beauty and unbelievable, unbelievable things. And it transformed your day.

Yeah, I wasn't having a good day at that point. I was like, dude, man, I had to get up at 4:30 in the morning. I'm exhausted. I'm tired. I'm already tired from the whole week and everything. And this is Friday and I'm driving out to the middle of nowhere and I had to. There was just something that said, hey, you got to get your head right before you go in. And I need to stop and take a moment. I think we need to take more moments like that.

We do, we do. It's the old adage of stop and smell the roses. Right. But we typically don't stop until we're scrolling on the feeds of social media. And it's all the negative stuff versus, hey, stop and smell the roses, the proverbial sunshine to encourage you to reign over your mind. Because we are prone to do the wrong things versus the right things things.

So one of the things I do to do that, this is for me personally, it's a little bit like, you're remembering. Every night before I go to bed, I do about a 15 minute just reflection exercise and I write it down or like my reflection on the day, what went well, what didn't go well. And the purpose of that for me is to enjoy the journey. Like I'm on this path, I've got this thing I'm after and we all should or I hope you do. But sometimes we get lost in focusing on that thing way at the end. We don't recognize the joy of the journey itself. And so the reflection part of it for me is really good. Like I. I'm able. It puts my mind at rest and allows me to go to sleep because otherwise I'm just going a thousand. Do you do anything like that in the evening?

Yes, the evening time is a big thing of winding down of like, hey, I'm just, I'm going to either journal, I'm going to take some notes on my phone, but it's important for me to kind of review the day. I'm not as consistent as I would like to be on that. Honestly, I do it more when I'm feeling a little down, like I haven't accomplished. Felt like I've done my best that day and just reminding myself, I'm like, oh, this was good. Oh, I learned this because I love this thing. Repetition is the mother of all learning, right. So if I want to really grasp my. To review it, right. And soak it in, so soak in the meetings I had, like I'm gonna do that tonight about this, right. I'm more blessed about this than I, I don't know if anyone else is just to be part of this and sharing and just encouraging others with story and my stuff. Right.

How is this approach to your mindset affected your business big time.

It's amazing how you can say one thing but how you live out total different aspect. Right. And so it's affecting my business because I'm thinking, how can I best love, support and care for my team? Because when I do that, they're gonna, they're gonna transform everything for the business for me. Zigzagris should say, if you help enough other people get what they want, you'll eventually get what you want. And so by caring about my team, not just the numbers and the production I do and all those aspects which are important, right. KPIs, but it's also just caring about them as an individual, right. What's going on with them, encouraging them and sharing what's going on with me. Opening myself up a little Bit they feel like they get to know me more versus this, you know, oh, he's the boss and I'm just employee. I gotta listen. And I don't want that so much because that it's weird. I want it to be like, hey, I got this great idea. Let's do this, challenge this, move this great. Because I want to empower them. And so that's where it's really transformed my business, because I feel like I've empowered my team to grow, make mistakes, learn through it. It's been super helpful.

You said something earlier that I thought was really good, that I hope more people taken and like, they. They make a change in their life today on that thing. Stop watching the news because our human behavior tells us to pay attention to the negative. And that's what media ads are sold off of, is what we pay attention to. And so if we're inherently attracted to the negative, that's what they're going to play on media. So we'll watch it, and it just puts it in front of us all the time. All the time, all the time. And I can remember somebody giving me that advice about 10 years ago, and they said, don't watch the news for two weeks and see how you feel. Oh, like, that was just a piece of advice I got. And I went, well, I just watched the news because that's what my parents did. My parents watch the news. So I watch the news, and while you're eating dinner or before you go to bed or whatever it is, right? And I used to listen to news, talk radio. I learned news all day long, every day, just constantly. And, man, I was angry. I was angry at the world. I was angry at politics, I was angry at religion. I was angry at all of it. And so I took two weeks off. And. And. And it was a decision. Like, I was adamant about it, like, okay, I'm gonna try this. If I'm gonna try this, it's not just try, it's due, so do it. And so for two weeks, nothing. At the end of two weeks, I was like, man, this is wonderful. I'm never watching the freaking news again. And. And it did. It literally changed my life because I took one little piece of negative out. And from that, it was like, ooh, what else is negative that I can get out of my life? The hardest thing I did, I had two friends. Two friends that were just, sky is falling friends, right? All the time, negative. Watch the news probably a little too much. And. And it was always the negative stuff. And I went to him And I said, hey, man, I love you. You're my friend. You'll always be my friend. You need anything from me, you always come to me. But I'm not going to engage with you anymore. Like what? I said, I've made a decision to get all the negative out of my life. And you're one of those influences because of how you interact with me. And if you can be positive, I'm good. But if we can't, we can't. So those two friends and my parents, I had to have that conversation with my parents came around pretty quickly, at least in front of me. And so we were able to keep engaging. One out of the two friends got it figured out. But, man, it's made such a difference in my life. I just. I don't know. I'm an eternal optimist. Anyway, I like, I think all things are going to work out. I think that has a lot to do with my faith. I think it has a lot to do with getting the negative out of my world. I think it has a lot to do with mindset. I think it has a lot to do with, like, hanging out with guys like you. Like that. I do that by pure joy. Heath Hicks is another guy. Yeah, Like, I. I now search that out. Instead of the negative, I'm like, oh, that guy is a positive influence on me. I want to. John Dye is another one of those guys. It's like a kid is awesome. He's. He's always excited and everything's great. I look for more and more of that.

You made. You mentioned something earlier. Jim has said that. I don't know why I had the success I've had, because it's not based on your upbringing. It's not based on you were given anything or had the perfect upbringing or any of that stuff. Right. But I would tell you, it's exactly what you just said. It's. You have a positive mentality, you look for opportunities and then you grow. Right. Someone challenge you on that? Yes, I would challenge everybody. If you're a negative intaker of information, whether it be news media, social media, any of that stuff, take two weeks off. But even more so is every night just journal how you feel, any perception changes and do it for two weeks, just two weeks. And you're right, it will transform you. But the reason you're successful is because of what you just talked about, Jim. You have a growth mindset. You look for opportunities to grow, and you surround yourself with people that are positive and you make the difficult choice because most people can't say no to those negative people. And I would say step two is once you get that freedom from that, then it's like, okay, who in my life is negative? You got to put some boundaries in place, man. Because some might be family.

Yeah. Boundaries are. That's a boy. We could do a whole. Maybe I will at some point. I would add one other component to it. Like, see, that's one of those things. Like, people look at what we've accomplished here and go. Or look at me personally go, you're successful. Right. And that's that. That's that outward view. I think they don't know what goes on in here. And. And that kind of stuff. While I think I've done fairly well, I don't know if successful would be the exact. It's successful for me. Right. Like, that's all I'm concerned about. Successful for the way I feel. I don't drive around in Lamborghinis and got jets all over the place and stuff like that. And that's some people's version. Success to me is feeling fulfilled in what I do. And 17 years ago, I had a moment in my life where it was God moment, and I asked him for help and what should I do? And the only thing I heard was serve. And so that's been. The component is I changed to a servant aspect and said, hey, how can I help you? Which all led to that mindset stuff being positive, being around the right people and all that stuff. If there's any reason that I'm successful, it's because of that. Like, I truly want to help other people do well. And it's funny, I keep doing it and things keep turning out okay. And there's rough spots. I mean, there's tough spots. Right now we're going through something a little similar to some of the issues that people have. Our daughter has come down with an autoimmune thing that's pretty tough. And we're trying to figure it out, but it was awesome to hear her go, hey, I ain't dying, and we're Johnson's. We'll figure this out.

And.

And so that. That was a fulfilling moment for me because if I would have been like I was 10 years ago, she would have been extremely negative. Yeah. Because she would have learned that from me. But she's learned that, hey, there's always good in all things. And so, man, this has been good. It's deep. Wow.

A lot more on this, but this is good stuff.

Well, this is the type of stuff that I don't think we spend enough time on that. Determine your true success, which we concentrate on how do I make more sales or how do I get more leads or how can I recruit more people? That kind of stuff. Systems, processes, which are all important, but if you don't have the right mindset first, it never plays out.

Never does.

So what's the big thing in your business right now? What do you. What are you working towards?

It's interesting you say that. So I'm working towards what I call peace. And so it's people think what? That makes no sense. Right. First, I'm a contracting business. What's the thing of peace? And part of that is, yeah, people's.

Houses are burning down every day. Water's coming through.

I've come up with this thing called pep. So let's get some pep on our step, right? PEP on our step has peace. What that means is PEP stands for its acronym. PEP stands for process eliminates problems. And so the practical aspect is if we get processes for everything we do, every situation, every engagement, right. How to handle will eliminate the problems, most the problems going forward, which ultimately gives us peace, which means we have a stable business. Clients love us, people love working here, and it stabilizes everything. It gives peace.

Man. There would be a lot of people that would argue with you, right, because it sounds a lot like complacency, but it's not. Not according to what you said.

It's typically being proactive versus reactive. Because so many times in business, everybody knows there isn't a business out there that's been in business for several years that doesn't have all kinds of problems that you don't react to. Right. Initially. So instead of, like I said, we're going to stop taking a reactive approach. We're going to take a proactive approach. We're going to sit down and every of all our processes for the office offer sales, offer production, and every process, we're going to dive in deep, right? This is getting real nerdy. And dive in deep and ride it out. Here's our responses and what if a client does this? Here's our response, whatever this, and then here's our response and here's how we handle it. And deep dive into the process and then train everybody in the process because now it helps make everything better, right? Raving fans. Because you've clearly identified and handled any situations popped up. They know expectations, the client does, the staff does, they're trained on it. Everything goes a lot smoother. I don't have a lot of 91 ones what I did in the first few years, right, it was like chaos and putting up fires and this client's upset or whatever. I don't have a lot of those issues because we've been in a pep. Pep in the step, the process almighty problems.

You know how fulfilling that is for me to hear you say that? Because, like, those are things we go through. We teach our clients, we go and put those procedures in place and we actually teach them how to do it so they don't need us anymore. So to hear you go, hey, I'm going to dive in deep, get proactive about it, because we built processes, working with you, you're going to dig it even further. And you know how to do it, you know how to execute on it, and you don't need us to do it anymore.

Let me give a big shout out here because. And I brought you on. I was a little bit off all the wheels, right. So I felt like, right. And you came in and stabilized things. And where most coaches come in, they're like, oh, I'm just gonna work for you for an eternity, right? It's like forever, right? I mean, you're paying me to work for you. I'll never forget the day you're like, okay, we're done. I'm like, okay, so what's next? You're like, that's it. Like, what do you mean? You know, you're good. I'm like, that's it. You told me to stop paying you. I was like, nobody does this in the industry. Nobody. That's why I referred hundreds of people to you. I recommend you all the time. Because, listen, a great coach will transform everything. I say this all the time. The higher up you go in any sport, the more coaches you have. Did you realize that when you're in peewee, you got one coach for everything? When you're in the NFL, you got like 12 coaches, man. You've got line coaches, you've got Dutch coaches, you got golf coaches, tokens for everything, right? Nutrition, nutrition, coaches and strength, coaches, everything, right? But yet, it's funny, in business, we think, oh, the more success we get, the less coaching we need, which is so backwards.

Well, I think Tom Brady's now won seven Super Bowls.

Is that right?

There's one guy in the NFL that has more coaches than anybody else. Is that guy Reason. He understands what it does for. For them. Yeah. And to be transparent, there are several clients that we continue to work with until they get to the point to where I can say that, where I can go, hey, you Got this. Now go right?

Yep.

And. And there's clients of ours that'll say, I just want you to be on our team. You help me get to where we want to be. And we work with those guys now, there's plenty of them that I go, hey, I had complete confidence in you. Like, hey, Adam, plenty smart, great leader. He sees things for what they are. Now he unders. He gained some understanding of how this contracting business is organized. Now that he has that, he doesn't need me anymore. And I've been right, I think. So if you ever do need me, we're here. But I think you got this. Thanks for being on today. I know we stayed for a few more minutes, but I love the conversation. I always love hanging out with you. I'm so pissed at Corona because I don't get to hang out with the contractors as much as I would like to, but I think we're getting it under control. So look forward to seeing you again soon. I have something for you. So if you'll hang on afterwards, I'll go ahead and get this over with. But just hang on a minute. I got a question for you.

So absolutely.

Thanks for being here. If anybody wants to get a hold of Adam, what do they got to do to find you?

You can just email me adamantconstruction.com okay, perfect.

Adamrenownconstruction.com Absolute rock star. Good guy. He usually has an open ear if he's not crazy busy. And he makes time for people, which is really cool. Adam, thanks for being on the show today, man.

Thank you.

All right, cool.

Hi, I'm Ricky Harmon with Balance Claims. I'm here in the Balance Claims office to help answer one of the questions I hear all the time. Why use Balance Claims? Well, I have two of the account managers here, Travis Croft and Emily Caldwell, to answer just that contractors should use.

Us because we have experts on site that are, well.