Massive Planning - Coaches Roundtable

Hey, everybody. Welcome to Contractor Radio. Hopefully my camera will zoom in on me here in just a second. There we go.

Good.

Today we're going to talk about planning and why planning is so important for your business, for your life, and really for a lot of things that we do. Just in general, like if you're going to go on vacation, it's pretty rare that you just go, hey, let's take off. Everybody hop in the car and let's go. And so there's at least a little bit of planning and how important that is is going to determine the end result of that thing that you do. I got some coaching on this many, many years ago. 1992 is when this started. And over the years, I've been able to go to more and more coaching about planning for the future of my business. And through all that, coaching has really helped kind of predict what's going to happen. And so we want to make sure that we provide you guys with some great information today and maybe fly in the of a lot of things that are going on out there. We want to welcome you to Contractor Radio live today. This is unusual. We usually record these in advance, but I have some very special people near and dear to my heart. They are our coaches here at Contractor Coach Pro, and we want to talk about this planning and how it can have such an impact on your business. So without further ado, I'm going to go ahead and bring on our coaches. Welcome to the the Contractor Radio Show. Nathan Thibodeau.

Good morning.

Also known as Ted Lasso. No, just kidding. It's good to have you, Nathan. We also have Ginny, our finance coach. Hey, welcome aboard, Ginny.

Hello.

And we have Roz. And Roz, like, a lot of people use the terms hr. Like, HR sounds boring and terrible. We're more like employee experience. Like, what does that look like? And these are all things that we have to plan for and hopefully, hopefully forecast, predict what's going to happen. And last but not least, we got jt, the man with a plan, John Townsend joining us. And we're live today. Hi to Facebook Land. All right, cool. So today we want to talk about massive planning. You hear this term all the time, massive action.

Right?

Like, I'd take massive action. I won't mention the guy that made that his call sign, but I think it can lead to a little bit of making some mistakes if we just jump out and start doing. The people that you see usually do the best are the people that say, all right, that's cool. I want to go take Some action. But before I do that, where am I going? So I've been working on this concept of problem solving. And I think problem solving actually starts with the end result in mind and working your way backwards. Those are problem solvers where problem creators are the people that start right here and take massive action. And every problem that comes along lines like, hey, there's a new problem, there's a new problem. They start creating problems that maybe shouldn't existing if they would have just planned a little bit. And so first off, I want to start with this and I'm going to ask Nathan, Nathan, why don't people plan?

Well, there's a lot of reasons behind that. Everybody's reasons are a little bit different. I think that oftentimes, I think the number one reason is we're not totally sure how to plan. Often we speak with a lot of contractors. And it's funny how often I speak with an entrepreneur and I ask him a question like, him or her a question like, where are you going with your business? What's going on? Like, what are you trying to do? Why did you start your business in the first place? And it's the why did you start your business? They're usually pretty good answer. Like, I work for companies that I don't feel like did it right or, or I didn't want to have another boss anymore. I wanted some freedom, you know, I wanted to do it, do it my way instead of doing it somebody else's way. But then when you say, well, where are you going with this thing? What's your end game? What is the target that you're aimed at? Most entrepreneurs, I've found, don't really have one. And so I think the problem that oftentimes people have when they just sit down to trying to decide and plan for their businesses, they don't have a compass to really give them an idea whether they should go left or go right. And so without having that, that compass, then all ideas are as equal as any other idea. And so whichever idea sounds and feels good at that time, that's the one we attack. And then it takes us down this path. And we don't know if that's a good path or not, because we don't know if that path has taken us where we want to go because we don't know where we want to go. And so I think that a lot of the reason why people don't plan is they don't have an overarching understanding of, of, you know, where they're trying to get and so they don't know what to plan for. You know, like, if you're going to take a vacation, should I be packing, you know, shorts and sandals and tank tops, or should I be packing hiking boots and, you know, in fleece jackets? Like, you don't know. Because if you don't know where you're going, you don't know what to prepare for.

Yeah, I ended up in Colorado and I needed warmer clothes than what I had. So lack of planning, maybe. So, yeah, I agree with you. I think a lot of times when we talk with people, they know kind of why they started it and where they're going, or at least they have a pretty good foggy notion of it. But to work it backwards, right? Like to work it backwards and say, hey, this is the step I need to take today to get to there, that gets a lot foggier, a little bit out of focus. So, John, in your experience, you've worked with a lot of clients and you've coached now for a while. What do you hear from guys? Do you think any of it has to do with just fear? Like, they don't know how to build a plan or how to structure a strategy?

I do. I think fear is a major component. Fear of a couple of things. I think when we talk about planning, that's not necessarily a sexy word. It involves work, it involves time. The folks that the entrepreneurs and people in the contracting business work hard. They're very busy. And I think that when we say, okay, when we have that end goal in mind, that envision of where I want to go, and now we reverse engineer it, sometimes it can be viewed incorrectly as a challenge, I think, to your current process. Right. As a challenge to maybe how effective or efficient your work is right now. And so I think that that could be. That can be a limiting factor, is that they view it as. And that can be some of the fear tied into it, you know, exposing ways where we aren't as optimal as we can be. But ultimately it comes down to putting in time, putting in effort, and being really introspective and understanding.

It's kind of like you don't.

You.

You don't want to go to the doctor because you don't want to find out what's wrong with you.

Exactly.

Yeah. So. And I'm gonna dig into that a little bit. Could it be that the leader, the main leader, feels like some of his deficiencies might be exposed as a leader and as a planner, and if he just avoids doing it, then he won't look so bad in front of all his people. Do you think there's any of that?

Absolutely. There's a general. And the idea that to his or her people, that the sense that I'm doing this to you, I'm creating this process, I'm doing this planning to you rather than for you, rather than to help offload responsibility and stress and where joy may be lacking.

Right.

As opposed to this is I'm doing this, I'm doing this for you. And it can absolutely seem, you know, put them in a tough spot if they're not willing to take that on.

Right.

If they, if they question their leadership ability. I think, yeah, there's fears of very motivating factor.

Well, I think it leads to a lot of problems in our businesses in the areas we don't do. Well. I can use myself as an example. I am not a fan of finance. I think think it's like watching paint dry and it's just not exciting to see Jenny there, but she's about to nail me on this. But I knew that I needed to do it. Like, it wasn't a want or be nice or anything like that. I knew I needed to do it. And so things like finance and HR are not my strengths. And so that's why we brought in great coaches like Jenny and Roz. And so Jenny and Roz, asking you in your particular areas, do you think people spend enough time in planning and budgeting and finance and then also their like HR and employee experience stuff like, what do you see whenever you're out there coaching.

From the finance side? I mean, I think I come across a lot of people that want that and they have one of two things. Either don't have the experience or training to understand it so they lose value or, you know, they just, they don't. Like you said, take the time, make it a priority to say, I know where I want to be, but I don't know how to get there. And I don't. I don't take the time to take, put the work in to get there. All those same things, you know, Nathan and JT mentioned there of the fear or whatever prevents them. They want it, they see it. You know, you maybe hear about, yes, I want a budget. I want to hold my, myself and my team accountable to a budget. But they realize it takes some work, it takes some effort, and they don't always make that a priority.

Yeah. So for me, it was two things. It was fear, like, okay, I don't know that stuff. And there was a, like, I didn't understand, like Financials as well as I should. Now I understand math. Great. And so there was a bit of my ego stepping in there too, going, I know we're making money, we're making great money. I don't need to spend a bunch of time over there. I need to spend time over here. And that ego came back and bit me on the rear end pretty significantly with a theft from our company that I wasn't aware of because I was just trusting somebody too much. I wasn't planning, I wasn't budgeting, I wasn't doing the things I needed to do, and it exposed a weakness that was taken advantage of. And so, Ross, from a employee experience aspect of things, how can we damage ourselves by not planning there?

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for calling that out. Because I think it's so critical for the employee experience and it's often overlooked in the importance of that. Because here's, here's the reality is, if you haven't gotten clarity on the direction that you want your organization to go and the steps that you're going to take to get there, how can your employees possibly know where they're going? That'd be like, to use your travel analogy, getting on a plane, and you don't even know where that plane is headed. Like, how many people are hopping on that plane. Just saying, like, I don't know where we're going, but I hope it's somewhere good. Right? Like, so what I often see is sometimes even with the best of intentions of, okay, we're gonna, we're gonna plan this out, it's often stopped at that high level overall company standpoint, like, okay, even if we've done the steps and now we've planned and we actually do have a strategic plan, what are we doing that to trickle down to our employees so they understand their individual role in executing on that plan. And I think that is so important from an employee experience side, because if I can see clearly the importance, the impact, how my actions will personally contribute to that end goal, I am so much more motivated and I can actually see tangible results as I'm going along because I know that my efforts are connected, tied back to the strengths of the organization, and we're all working toward that same shared goal. So it's huge. So huge from an employee experience standpoint.

So my epiphany moment, like I said, was back in 1992. I was in the health club industry at that time, and I was pretty good sales guy. I was a sales manager, and I ran all the five clubs that we had. But we were kind of getting stuck. We would. Every single year, we'd get together and we'd write up on it. We had a big whiteboard, like a lot of people do. And this is how most of our planning sessions go. I think you take this big whiteboard and you write up all of these amazing things that you want to have happen, how you think they're going to happen. And it is awesome. I mean, it's literally like you're going to dominate the world and be the greatest thing since sliced bread. And everybody walks away from there going, yes, all right, we're fired up. And a week later, those things are happening, but we're thinking about them and we're trying. And it's disconnected. It's not unified. These guys over there doing that and that gals over there doing this. And it just kind of kept me in the same thing. And so, thankfully, the leadership of that company brought in a coach and said, okay, so this is actually how you plan now. The whiteboard was fine, but how do you take it from the whiteboard to reality? And so that was my first, like, wow moment, right? Like, oh, there's more to planning than just brainstorming and putting it on a whiteboard. Right? Have you guys ever been in any of experiences like that and seen how have those gone for the people that you've worked with or for?

They're almost more like a New Year's resolution is what happens. We sit down and we go, what do we want to do next year? And you're like, oh, we want to have a.

You know, we want to create a.

Daycare for our employees.

That's a great idea.

We want to, you know, have a coffee bar in the office. Oh, it's a great idea. We want to do days of service and all this. Like, it's like. It's like New Year's resolutions. Like, I want to lose so many pounds or I want to get in shape, you know, and then. And then you go, okay. But if you don't start laying out the actions and then creating the disciplines around the whatever your New Year's resolution is. I know John or JT down there is like, wanted to read a book a week, right? So if he just put that up on his whiteboard, he'd be like, that's a really great idea. But then if he didn't actually start reading the books or laying out what books he's going to read, they're not. It's not going to get done.

Or when he was going to read them, right?

I mean, it's, it's, it's. It ends up being like this New Year's resolution. And then, and then because we didn't lay out a plan, we just have a bunch of really great ideas. Then life starts happening. Right. Right.

Big.

Then life starts happening. You know, the, you know, we gotta, we gotta research and buy our general liability insurance. We need to get somebody to help fix these things in our CRM. And then we have a customer that has a problem, and then all of a sudden we lost a crew. We gotta find a new crew. And then, oh, we lost a couple salespeople gotta hire, and this stuff just starts to compound and that whiteboard just starts to fade into the background. So, yeah, I've definitely seen this.

Yeah. I think from an employee experience standpoint, that can actually really hurt your employee morale. Right. Because they were part of that planning experience, they're bought in on those ideas like they deeply want to see them come to fruition. And if you have a sequence of years doing that with your employees, it's going to start to get disheartening for them. They're going to feel like, oh, we just, we're all talk, we talk about those things and we don't actually take action. So don't underestimate how much while those dream exercises can be really fun, don't underestimate that if you're not executing on those things or you don't have clarity around which things are priority to execute on, your employees are going to be kind of left feeling a little disheartened, possibly.

Well, they'll lose trust as well. And then anytime, like, they lose trust and they just start to think, oh, well, the owner's just doing one more thing. We brought in a consultant. Now we've got a coach. Now we've got this new department. And it's just one more thing that we're not actually going to execute on or complete or accomplish. And then if you, when you actually do want to implement and move forward and strategically do something, they're not bought in at all because they feel like if they put their effort into this, it's just gonna fade away like everything else we tried to do.

Yeah. So that was first epiphany moment, whiteboard. Nothing happened. We brought in a consultant and gave us some structure. It wasn't great, but it was pretty good. It was better than what we were doing before. And we went from five health clubs that had been kind of slowly progressing to that over about 10 years to 40 health clubs over the next three years, because we actually had a plan. We knew we were going. We worked it backwards. We had some structure for it, and we had a very key component in there that is what actually made it happen. Can any of you say what that key component was? What the thing was? Anybody know? Anybody guess? Accountability. There was an accountability aspect of it. There was dates and times and goals that needed to be achieved. People that owned it and all this stuff. It wasn't really well structured, like the way that we do things today, but it was enough. It was enough that gave us the structure that we said, okay, things need to be accomplished by this time. But there were multiple divisions, okay, so there's sales, there's marketing, there's the floor, there's finance. And all these people had to be on the same page with those dates and times because they aligned with each other. One had to be done before the other one could, and so on and so forth. And so once we had that kind of track, things got a little bit easier. Now on down the road a little bit, I get out of the health club business. I met my beautiful bride and she wanted to be in Wisconsin. So I said, okay, let's be in Wisconsin. I don't know if people do health and fitness in Wisconsin. So I can do anything. I'm just kidding. It's a joke. It's a joke. I'm like, hey, I'm going to start a beer studio. No, just kidding. I get up there and I get into contracting and did halfway decent. Brought some of what I had learned from that to the contracting world. Did pretty well, and then started my own. And I wanted to plan better, I wanted to get better. So I actually hired a coach to have them come in, and they did. They gave me some structure for a meeting. This meeting that allowed me to. I think it was like almost you hear this term a lot out there right now. Operating system. There's a little bit of an operating system for my mission for that year. So, hey, we're going to do this cool thing. What all do we need to do that and execute that? And then when are we going to do it? Who's going to own it and meet about it once a week? We do a lot of that here at Contractor Coach Pro. What have you guys found and value from that as we. As we kind of have that way to keep people accountable?

I think the momentum of activity and movement toward the goal stays at an even keel. There's no real heavy dose of activity and growth and achievement. And likewise, there's no taking your Eye off the whiteboard and everything fading to existence. It just keeps. There's a consistency that I think that method of accountability in parts.

Yeah, I think that continual movement towards trying to accomplish your projects will oftentimes expose things you weren't aware of. It's like, man, we keep trying to get this thing done, but we can't seem to get it done. What is it that's standing in our way? And then you discover, oh, man, we set this objective over here, but turns out we don't actually have the tools to accomplish this thing. We need to pivot a little bit and we need to get this other thing done in order to get, like, if you, if you decide for your company that we want to have accurate analytics and data and reporting for the year, we want to know how much money we're making per job, we want to know our closing percentages, we want to know our at bats, our, you know, lead acquisition values. And we start going, okay, well, we need to get this. And then also we discover we actually don't have the systems or the, the tools to track those numbers. So now we need to set this idea of tracking these numbers on the shelf and start figuring out what, what tools and software and things we need to implement so that we can get this other thing. And so even if, even if you establish a plan and you discover, ooh, maybe that objective was the wrong one, you at least had something that led you to a positive conclusion and you can focus where you need to focus.

Yeah, it might have been the wrong one, but it leads you to the right one. And without it, it would have never happened in the first place. It'd still just be kind of shooting from the hill.

You know, it makes me think of like that, that whole diverse thought process too. Behind your dreams, right? Your owner may have these big dreams, but bringing it to a strategy process and getting buy in from that employee experience with differing thoughts, differing opinions, I think there's just immense value that can come to the execution power when you have those different eyes. Because what can seem like a maybe easy task, maybe I'm speaking from the finance realm, to come in and poke analytically at some of different thoughts and processes. Just when you get that wide range of people with that buy in during that process of creating those to dos and creating that plan, it just made me think of that as you were talking about that, Nathan, of the power of that diverse thought.

Yeah, absolutely, Jenny. I couldn't agree more. I think it's that collaboration and just ownership, right? Like sometimes we Think we have to carry it all ourselves. And it's amazing how when we have a plan actually laid out now, we can start to identify who are the best people to tackle this. Because I actually may not be the best one for this specific thing that needs to get done. But, hey, I bet I've got some cool people around me that know some stuff that could really be powerful in executing in different areas. And so not only does it allow you to delegate, it allows you to empower, really is what it's about. It's not just about delegation. It's truly about empowerment through that process.

I'll tell you the thing I think most powerful about that structure that we use for building the strategy itself. We get that put together and then we actually execute on it with our mission meeting. The thing that has been the coolest part of all that is it's helped me as the leader, identify the strengths of people and where they really shine. Like, I wouldn't have known that without this type of process and this type of planning that we do. Holy cow. Jenny is an absolutely amazing spreadsheet wizard on the planet. Like, I have some indication of that. But I. Until she took something on and actually did as a holy moly, she solved a lot of my problems, thank goodness. And we tend to be like, I can solve my own problems. Right? And whenever you see those, you're like, oh, man, this is great, Roz. The same thing. Like, Roz has been. She's. When she came in, she said, I got some marketing background. And I'm like, okay, I've heard that one before. But she actually does in some process and some system, and those things really started to shine and bring out really who Roz was and the impact that she's had on everybody else about how they get organized and how they process things and. And the. And the empowerment of her people that she's leading has been amazing. Never would have happened without any of this planning. It would have been either happening in a vacuum over there and nobody knew it, or it would probably be what it really is. In most companies. Shoot from the hip. Hey, we're going to spend $1,000 on marketing today. Let's go. Right? And there's no plan or reason for it because I've been on this train here a lot lately that I believe every decision has a return on investment. And if you're not planning for those decisions, you run a huge risk of having some. A lot of failures. And I hate that term fail forward. I really do. Like, why would I feel forward if somebody else has done it before. So, okay, so planning is important. We've established that. Yes. Everybody agree? Hopefully you guys that are out there paying attention, listening, and Facebook and YouTube and TikTok or whatever that is, if we're on there, I don't know, we're on everything at this point. We want to help you guys, and we do this thing every year. We call it the Contractor Strategy Conference. But we're concerned that people don't really understand what it is that they, like, think it's. I don't know, it's the same conference that you go to anywhere else. You got a bunch of speakers up there. They throw out a bunch of good ideas. You take a bunch of notes, whiteboard, and you go back to your office and life gets in the way. And none of that stuff actually happens. And if it does, it's maybe one or two things, but nothing really impactful. But our conference is a little bit different. I actually kind of wonder if it should even be called a conference. It's more of a workshop. And we walk people through what we call a game winning strategy. Restructure the strategic approach for your business, and we guide you through it hand in hand. So this becomes a skill that you learn that you can go and implement in your business and become the professional planner for your business. Forecast your future predetermined, your destination, and then we give you the tool to actually execute it that we call a mission meeting. Now, I am not the brilliant guy that came up with all this stuff, that we've added some nuance to it and things like that for contracting actors. But several years ago, I believe it was 2011, I got the opportunity to go into a $50 million software company and watch how they plan. If anybody's ever heard of infusionsoft. Anybody ever hear of infusionsoft? You guys on online, you can, like, put a thumbs up if you have. They're a pretty big company. They got bought and became cheap and all that. Like, they're like, I think they're about to go public. None of that would have happened without this structure that we use here internally that they taught us. And it cost us a lot of money to go and learn that. I think we spent, like, $50,000 to go spend two days with them to get a cool notebook and two days of instruction. There wasn't really any execution. There wasn't any real, like, hey, go do something. So we came back and we actually executed. I don't think many of the other companies did because ACCU links Actually become something pretty amazing nowadays. And they still follow this process. And I brought that over here and we've been following that process. We keep growing and things are going pretty well for us. Everybody that you see on here has been in my strategic planning from the beginning. It was one of those things like, hey, I'm thinking about this. These are the people that we need and who we want and why we need them. Also thinking about numbers and what we need to achieve those and products that we offer. And as each of these people have come on with the company, they've gotten involved in these meetings and guess what? It is exploding. It's crazy. And we do this with our companies. We do this every single year for the last six years, right? Six years we've been doing this. I think we called it the fourth quarter rush the first year, but then it became the contractor strategy conference conference. And we sat down and at the end of the year, we put together their strategy for their business overall review and looking at it in 12 different areas of their business, and then help them build the mission for the coming year. I think of the mission is like, I'm going to climb Mount Everest or we're going to take Baghdad, or we're gonna like, whatever, like pinnacle moment a year from now. That's that thing. So you guys have all been involved in the strategy conference, except for John. John's new with us. I can't wait for him to get there. What was your first impression the first time you ever saw it? You're like, oh, that's completely what. Nathan, why don't you go first? You're, you're, you're the senior tenured person here.

Well, the strategy conference has evolved is what's happened. I think that there was a vision years ago for what we wanted it to be, and we took a couple of different approaches at it. One of the approaches was kind of that fourth quarter rush, right? Like, okay, what are we going to do in the next quarter to ensure that we're well set up for next year? That didn't necessarily quite grab what we wanted. Then we decided this should be an overall themed conference and the theme is planning. Right. And then we're going to bring people in to help you understand what you should plan and give you ideas and things like that. Great conference, well attended, lots of good stuff. Still not quite what we were looking for. And then two years ago, not last year, but two years ago, 2019.

We.

Kind of keyed in on something. The conference was a little bit smaller and we really keyed in on the specific things that people were trying to accomplish inside of their business, the real specific things. And it wasn't about bringing new information to them. It was about the information and the stuff that they already had. And that a light bulb went on at that event. It was in San Antonio, I remember it. And some of you listening might have actually been there. And that's when the light bulb went on. The feedback, the practicality of it really got focused. And then in 2020, we ran our virtual version of this conference and I think that is the one where we actually executed what the vision for this thing was like, the thing that we want. So it took years for us to get this thing to where it is now. And this year I feel strongly this will be the best year that it's ever been done. Last year was fantastic and the results were amazing and the attendees loved it. Lots of great feedback. And this year we're going to do that even better. And so that's a little bit of the evolution of kind of what's happened with it.

Okay, Ginny, you're next.

Yeah, Well, I came in at that 2019 point, so I know the newest evolution of it. And you know, one of the things I think of is, you know, we're all, we all love to coach, we all love to teach, we all love to have that sort of relationship with our clients. And it was amazed me how when we all came together, how it was just such a powerful event to be able to do coaching live within the event too, which was really neat. And I think the biggest comparable in my head is it isn't like you said, Nathana, I needed to sit down and take in a lot of information. I get to actually go to work and leave with the finished product versus leave with a whole list of ideas that who knows if they're going to come off of that whiteboard or not. And that's what I find just so powerful about it, is you walk away with a tangible, a tangible strategy that you get to go ahead and have that accountability that everybody wants. We're kind of hand holding you and putting some heavy lifting into what that year end planning can be.

How about you, Ross? You got your first shot at like you had just started. Hey, I'm here, let's do strategy.

Yeah. And it was great because one of the things I loved about it was what Jenny spoke to is we had clients who were working through their different components of their workbook and they would tap in and say, hey, new HR coach, we need some insight on this and so I could provide real time feedback to them. So that was really powerful and really fun to step into. But one of the things that also really stood out to me was the collaboration. I mean, I thought it was so cool to watch these contractors sharing their feedback. I think that's one of the things I really appreciated about CCP's intentionality of it is it's not just talking at them. There's a lot of time during that conference to share to, hey, what'd you come up with? What are you putting down? And so they're collaborating and they're ping ponging all these ideas back and forth with each other. And we all know when you have kind of that diversity of thought that Jenny mentioned earlier, it just is so much stronger. And so I thought it was really cool just how interactive and collaborative it was among the members too.

So that's, that's the thing for me. And from the beginning, any, any event that we do, we usually will have something practical that you're going to walk away with. You're going to get some kind of workbook, you're going to get some kind of exercises, maybe some videos. There's. We don't believe learning is just listen to somebody, take some notes and go. Do doesn't exercise very well and planning is hard. It's not an easy thing to do. And so every once in a while we might just need a guide to kind of walk us through the process so that we actually understand it. But the cool thing to me has been like, we've been doing this now for several years and walking them through this process, they keep coming back each year, they keep going, hey, that was awesome. And I understand now. I know what I'm getting into. I'm going to do it even better this year. I love having somebody walk me in that order. And also those other guys over there, they got a lot of great ideas. I want to hear those, I want to hear those. And I think maybe Nathan hit on this and this is maybe the most impactful part. We all have these great ideas. They're all running around in our head, especially as visionary type owners. We've got these amazing ideas, we want to see them happen, but we just don't know exactly how to get that down into an order that I can communicate it to everybody else. I can talk about it till my, the cows come home, right? But until I give some kind of structure and the roles that people play and exactly how things are going to happen, it doesn't go very well. And we're not good at that. I'm terrible at. I have had to force myself in an immense way to get to where I plan. And even then, I kind of have found that Roz and Nathan and Ginny better at it than I am. And so I lean on them heavily, like, okay, I want to do this cool thing. How do we make that happen, guys? And a lot of times they'll shoot holes in it. Like, they'll challenge that. I think that's a big part of this Congress too, is hearing the teams internally challenge each other on, hey, are you sure we can do that and do that in this amount of time? And then team versus team going, hey, we tried that thing. That thing didn't go real well. Well, and here's why it didn't go well. And then the team come back and, well, we're going to do it this way, which makes it different. Right? Like, that's been a pretty amazing thing to watch in this. And then they take that information, they get it down into a strategy plan, we call it the one page strategy plan to keep it at a high level, say, hey, this order focused. But then now that information comes into this mission meeting, that keeps them on track all year long. All year long. As long as you have that meeting once a week like you're supposed to, you'd be shocked at how well people execute. I was talking to one of our attendees last year, and they came in doing about $2 million they had put on their mission. They want to do $5 million, want to hire a certain amount of people, they wanted to do a certain number of jobs, they wanted to hit a certain amount of profitability, and they want to implement this new thing. That thing was a giving back, you know, being charitable. They built all that while they were at the conference. And I asked them, so how'd you execute? How'd it go? Like, oh, we did all of that and more like, because we had that done and we were actually able to execute a lot faster than we thought. We were able to do some other cool things. We broke 5 million in a year where a lot of companies are down, which that was super cool. They started giving and started giving more than what they thought they could give. They created some new leadership stuff for their, like, they were able to go above and beyond. And what that has done for their business has become very attractive to people that want to come with employee experience. Like, oh, they say they're going to do this thing and they actually do it. And so that was one of their big hurdles when they came in was, I can't hire people. When I do, they leave. And so there was a bit of like, hey, maybe these are some of the reasons why maybe if we put some structure to it, people might stay. And they're having that now. John, you're newer with us. You haven't been to the contractor Strategy conference, but you're familiar with the process. You've seen us go through this. We're very consistent with it. We have a certain date every single week, certain time, going through this mission, kind of operating system to make sure things happen. What's been your experience here for the last few months?

I found much, you know, not to echo really everything you said, but being the new guy, it's been an opportunity.

It's. It's.

I feel like typically in a meeting, there's someone leading it and then there's. And explaining, hey, this is what we want to do. This is what I, what I want to do, what we should be doing. And then there's one person over there going, holy cow, like, how do we get all this done?

But this is. But the.

But our methodologies and our operating system, as it were, is not like that. And like you said, it does give people the ability to step in to. To challenges that we might have or issues we might be facing and really step up, step into them. And to step up and say, hey, I'd love to take that on. This is something I'm comfortable with. I've been fortunate to do that on a couple, you know, a few times in our meetings, just in my brief time here. So I think that that layer of, of connectivity with the team, like that everybody's in. Everybody has a really strong role to play with in this strategy. Within this meeting where we have a mission, we all play a role. And to Roz's point, like, everybody's. Everybody's effort moves the needle and is counted on and depended on and feedback and input. It makes a world of difference. I'm not, I'm not just there as a bystander. I'm there to really impact this organization. And I feel it every single time we get together. And it translates. And that translates into every single other interaction that we have outside of that beat. Does that make sense? It's not just that one time a week that we get together. I now have tasks that I know are going to move the needle and are going to make me feel fulfilled. Right. So, yeah, it's been incredible. Yes, it's very consistent. It's very impactful. Every time that we're together. But the sense of fulfillment that as an employee, as a team member that I get, I think transcends the meeting itself.

That's a big one right there that John pointed out. There's a lot of leaders out there that are frustrated with their team. You know who you are? You're hearing this and you're going, yeah, that's me. My people won't step up. My people won't take responsibility. My people are not taking on tasks. My people are not owning things. Right? And since my people aren't doing that, that means that I have to do all of it myself. And since I got to do all of it myself, I'm not gaining the free freedom that I wanted from my business in the first place. Okay, well, one of the ways that you can own that is giving people direction and giving people the opportunity to know what needs to be done. Because if all you're ever doing is spouting stuff out of your brain and ideas that you have and then going, hey, you do this and hey, you do that, you're always going to be the choke point in your business. Always. Because then people. People don't really know exactly what they're doing. They just know that they got handed a thing from the owner that they need to try and go execute. But if you actually sit down and lay this plan out with what we're trying to accomplish in the next year, people have an opportunity to go, okay, I see that thing, and I see. I see why we need to do it. I see how it affects the overall objectives. And I think I can do that, and I can take that on. Okay? Now there's some. There's some warning here. Okay, so what that means then for you owners out there is that if you create this capacity, okay, you can't just keep piling stuff in. And so for you people who work for owners who tend to do that to you, you now have an opportunity to hold them accountable as well. Because you can say, hey, hey, look, we laid out this plan for this year, and now you want to go buy a spray foam machine and you want to start rolling out panel metal and you want to start doing windows. None of that stuff was on the plan, okay? So are we going to stop doing one of these things and take that on, or are we going to put that on the shelf and do that next? And so for you leaders, it should free you up by creating these plans and give people an opportunity to own some of that stuff. And for you people who feel like you're constantly Getting inundated with new ideas and objects, objectives, and you're never, you're always off balance. It gives you a plan on something you can focus on. And so this, I'm very passionate about this conference and it's, it's, it's important to me because this is. It isn't a matter of whether or not you should do this or shouldn't do this. You absolutely should do this. Now, whether you do it with us at strategy conference or not, that's fine. Like, you don't have to come to strategy conference to do this. But this is, it's not. This isn't. This, this event got lined up with something that you've got to do, not optional. And so that's why we did it.

There's a funny thing, like, I know for a fact that if I would have said we are going to have the contractor marketing conference, we would put a thousand people in the room, no doubt about it, and generate all kinds of revenue and all the other kind of stuff, right? But that's not maybe the right thing to be focused on for companies. And we take this pretty seriously that we need to look at our entire company, not just one thing. And so, Roz, I got a question for you. Should everybody in the company be at the contractor strategy conference and in these mission meetings?

So, I mean, we're all maybe a little familiar with the phrase too many cooks in the kitchen. I think what's important is having clarity, right? And so I think you can have additional mission meetings, you can have additional strategy sessions where you're kind of breaking people out. But that initial deciding, that initial direction that you're setting, you want to get your key leaders involved in that, especially right now. That's not to say that you shouldn't necessarily bring your whole team. It depends on where you're at, really, with kind of laying out some of your strategy and your structure. So I think about, like at ccp, our approach, right, we start with kind of that overall mission meeting. Here's the direction of our company. I actually also lead a marketing mission meeting. Right. And so that's where the marketing team now has clear direction on how we roll up to those overall goals. So does every person on your team need to know your strategy? Absolutely. Does every person on your team need to be a part of understanding how they contribute to that strategy? A thousand percent. Does every person need to be in the room making the decision on how that might get a little tricky, Right. Because we've got a lot of ideas coming in. And so you really want to focus in on who are those core people. Know your business, know your goals, know your direction, know your history. And that really can be that power, powerful collaboration partners with you. So just like you talked about earlier, Jim, you know, you kind of bring Jenny or I or Nathan in into strategic conversations at the right time. Sometimes it's all four of us together. Sometimes it might just be one or two of us at a time. Right, because you're kind of tapping into our strengths for what you need for that time. And so I would recommend the same for people who are working on their overall strategy.

Yeah, this is for your key leaders to get together, make some decisions on a strategic approach of your business, your mission for the coming year, and then communicate that to everybody else that works with you and show them how they play a part. Like, that's the key to understand. Hey, so you can't just go, hey, we created this new thing. We're going to create this new referral program. Go do that. You can't. Like, they don't know how that relates to everything else that's going on. And so it's this thing that lives in a silo or a vacuum, and there's no understanding of how it affects the bigger picture. So most people don't like that. Most people don't want to be a part of that. So in this conference, when we get together, we sit down, how do you guys feel about how we interact? Because this year we're doing a little bit different. So last year, Nathan kind of gave everybody how this thing has progressed. Last year we had to do virtual, which actually went really well. But the only feedback we got back was we still like to get together with you guys. Like, we want to, like, we like that, you know, personal in, like at the table, giving a hand, touch. And so this year we've decided to do it hybrid. Two sessions early online to get all the prep work and all that good stuff done. And then the last two days, coming all together, knocking all those things out, getting it down on paper and saying, okay, this is our strategy for our business. This is our mission for this year. We're going to hit the ground running January 1st of 2022 and nail it out. Now, what is it that you guys like about the virtual side? Let's start with that. Anybody?

I can start? I mean, I think the virtual provides a unique opportunity in that you can include maybe more people than you could if you had to travel for the sake of an event. It also provides a little breakup in what you're executing to give you a little bit of that breathing space to, you know. So I am extremely excited for the hybrid because I think there's value in both. And I think the intentionality we put into the hybrid is. I think it'd be really fun to see how it plays out.

Yeah, it was a big, big component, like everybody last year being virtual. The analytic part of it, the analytics. If you go to a conference, you go to a work. I'm just going to start saying workshop. You go to a workshop like this, right? And you got to bring your stuff, right? You got to bring your homework, you got to bring your information, you got to do all that. And so one of the things I'm excited about in doing this in a hybrid fashion is that if we're doing financial analytics, right, we might not have our QuickBook. Like, if you do, if you have QuickBooks Desktop, okay, and you show up to a conference and they're like, hey, here's all the stuff we need to figure out so we can calculate our ebitda, and then we're going to talk a little bit about the actual valuation of your company. And you're sitting there going, oh, I don't have my, I don't have my QuickBooks here. I don't, I can't get to this information. And so doing a lot of the business analysis, like, and when I say that this is a little bit of. Put the coaching hat on here for a second, right? So one of the key components to this is that we need to take a look at the different areas of our business, like marketing and sales and leadership and culture and our accountability and our finance and our HR and all these different components. We need to take a look at what those things have done or accomplished over the previous year, right? So there may be some analytics and some numbers that are involved with that. Then we need to take a look at where they're at now, what's their current status? And then in light of this big goal that Jim was talking about, where we're headed in light of this goal, what do we need from those different things? And so by doing the internal business analytics and an evaluation, doing that virtually means that you should have access to the, to the people and the data right there in your office to do that analytic, right? Because those analytics are going to lead us to some conclusions, and those conclusions are going to lead us to the things that we need to focus on for the next year. And so that's why I really wanted to have all that analysis and internal data Organization and look done virtually so that you had access to all those things. Then when we get our determinations from those things, then we get to get together as a big group and take that information and start to build.

Yeah, that was kind of the epiphany with the virtual deal last year. When we did it virtually. There was space, right? Like before that, it was like day one, day two, day three. And then there was a day one, day two, day 3, day 4, 4. And it's like, wow, man, that is a lot of information. Fire hose going really fast. But by having it virtual, like, we meet this week, get this done. You got a whole week to get it done. Boom, come back, we do this. And there was space that allowed for that business analysis and prep work to get done.

Well, in this week, there's an entire, like Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving actually falls between the two virtual days. So it's not one week and then the next week it's actually one week and then a whole week and then we meet the week after Thanksgiving. So you've got like some time in there.

Yeah, some good space, some good direction on what needs to get done. It's pretty step by step. Like, hey, do this, this, this and this. We give you a whole workbook. We actually mail it to you, send it to you in advance. And it helps walk you through this. And it's actually something like, if you didn't ever want to come back, you learned something that's going to be valuable to your business forever. And like this. That was the. My takeaway from going to infusionsoft. I learned something that I didn't know before. That has been. That was in 2011. It is now 2020. That's 10 years of value that that thing brought me. That has had an unbelievable effect on what I do business wise. And this is the same type of thing, but very practical, like you're gonna want. That would have been. The part I would have liked from them was, hey, here's all the cool ideas, now let's do it. And they didn't do that, fortunately. We had enough people that were like, pretty intense and we did it. That's not normally the case.

I think Roz had something she wanted to add.

Yeah, go ahead, Roz.

Yeah, I was just going to mention that another really cool feature in the virtual sessions is the breakout rooms. It's really neat that we have an opportunity to allow people to kind of go and meet with their team, virtually break out, but then also still tap in a coach. Right. So they actually had the opportunity to message the moderator and like I mentioned, ask for like a specific coach in a specific area when they had questions. And because it's virtually. It's not like we had to run across the room and try to get to somebody, it was super easy to just hop into those breakout rooms and connect with them. And we also utilized our sponsors. We had amazing sponsors. We will again hear who were able to hop into some of those breakout rooms as well. So using our, those sponsors as partners, you know, we're very intentional about who we bring in on as sponsors because we want people who are going to really help drive the quality of our, of our workshop. Right. Of our conference, that they're actually contributing members, they're providing insight, they're providing feedback, which is a really kind of, I think, unique approach that we take in allowing them to give insight to people who, who are there from their expertise as well.

That's when I knew this was an amazing thing that we put together. Excuse my ego there, but that when I had sponsors coming up to us after going, you have no idea how much information I got from that. That applies to my business. I took tons of notes. I'm making some changes. I'm going to do my strategic plan. Like they weren't doing those things. And to have your sponsors go like that is something that we need too to tells you that this is pretty powerful information that we share there. And to see everybody working together is super cool. We're about 53 minutes in and people I don't know. You bored with planning? I don't know. I love it because I. Here's the thing I love about it. I love that I know when I build that plan, I'm going to achieve probably five times what I would achieve without it. That's the cool thing. Like I know I'm going to do better. I may not hit the big number and all that other good stuff and all the big plans that I had, but I'm going to do significantly better than if I didn't have a plan. Any final comments, notes, anything any of you want to share, just raise your hand and go for it.

Well, I'll just say as like the social butterfly on the team that I'm. Well, Jenny is too for sure that I, I hope that, that we see some people who are listening in at the event because one of the things that we do is we coach people virtually and so it is so, so fun to be in person. And I love that we have that hybrid piece because we'll get a chance to kind of make these connections. And it's amazing how that video conference that you do ahead of time just helps you feel like you already know somebody. And so you're going to come to this conference, conference, and whether it's us coaches, you know, if it's your first time connecting with us virtually with the coaches, you're also going to see other. Other fellow industry leaders at that. Right. On these virtual calls. And so that when you come to the event, you're showing up and it's like you already have this amazing strength in your network, in your, you know, in those interactions where you get to come and just immediately have interpersonal connection with other people who are just powerhouses in this industry. So I think that's something to really look forward to, too.

Yeah. If you're sitting out there and you're looking around you at some of these contractors that have done some pretty awesome things, a lot of those people have been at our conference and that's how they. They built their strategy, they built their mission, they executed. Now they got some coaching too, but a lot of them. But some of them haven't. Some of them just go to the strategy, commerce. It's all. All they do because it's the one thing they know that. And I almost forgot something that was super important to mention. Should you have a strategy meeting of any kind, whether it's with us or anybody else at your office? Should it be in your office or should it be off site?

Here's the thing. Is anybody ever get interrupted during a meeting when they're trying to do it at their office?

Yeah.

Oh, all the time. Right. And so I think with something so critical like this is truly the direction of your business, what matters more to you and to your team than knowing what your plan is going to be for next year and in the coming years? Right. So if there ever was a time to cut out distractions, now is it. Right. You have to do this meeting. Like Nathan said, this is not an option. Whether you do it with us or not, this is not an option. You have to have a strategy meeting like this for your team. But doing that where there's distractions is tricky. So if you can go off site, absolutely, I would definitely recommend that. But if you are going to do it from your office, I think you really need to be intentional about setting expectations. And we say the same for anybody who's attending the conference as well. When you're doing those virtual days, you have to set expectations that this is priority. This isn't distraction time. This isn't call me with, you know, what's going on with that contract time. You know, you set up your plan so that other people can handle those things, so you can truly be focused and avoid those additional distractions when you do this.

Yeah. So like I said, I went to the one at infusionsoft and they were talking with us about this and they said, hey, the prep work and stuff, all good. You can be in your office, get all that done, get it all ready to go. But when it's time for the actual putting the strategy together off site, no choice. Like, seriously, do not do it in your office because you will be as intentional as you possibly can to set everything and leave your phones outside of the office, put a big sign on your door, do all these things and stuff will still happen. And so, like, we're going to be in an Airbnb. We're gonna, we're getting away from the office. We're the opposite of everybody else. We finally get to get together, which is super cool because we're all over the country, but we're still going to go off site. We're not going to come to my offices. We're going to go somewhere that's not my office to get this thing done and remove all distractions from us. Because I know if I'm in this office, people know where I am. I don't want anybody to know where I am. One of these days, I hope that we, like, go to Cancun or something to do it. So that'd be a lot of fun. But New Braunfels, cool town. Come hang out with us for two days. It's off site, no distractions. We don't allow any phones or anything like that. It's the two most important days that you'll spend on your business for 2022. How about, how about you, Jenny? Any final comments?

I think I need to echo what Ross said. Seeing people in person and getting out there and just getting that, you know, a little plug from the finance realm. When you mentioned return on investment, Right. When you hear, hear you saying 10 years worth of value from that conference and the amount of coaching content, the amount of real life work that, like he said, if you don't come back, you still still have that structure now ongoing. I think the return on investment is just, you know, far outweighs and a lot of other choices.

Yeah, it's a big one. I can't think of anything that's had more of an impact on the results of my business than sitting down and focusing on my Strategy for two days every single year, and then another two days once a quarter to make those things happen, just to make sure we're still on track, making sure we're still focused, making sure that we haven't lost sight of things, making sure that Jim Johnson hasn't thrown some monkey wrench into the works, which he tends to do. And all of these guys hold me accountable. It's amazing. It's really cool. John, any parting shots on the importance of massive planning? Yes.

Must steal a page from Coach Thibodeau's book, but I think that the main component here is belief. I think that Contractor Coach Pro. Our purpose is to empower people to believe. And we have plans and we have goals. We have goals, but do we believe in what we're setting out to achieve? Do we believe that we can do it, but we should do it, that it's the right thing to do, that we have the skills and the tools and the people to do it? This Contractor Strategy conference, I think, is much like all of our, you know, our clients currently. This is our chance to help you build that belief system in the form of your strategy, in the form of your mission and the tools that it takes to get there. So it all comes down to the. To your belief. How much do you. Jenny, you can rep that shirt. I'm see wearing the belief shirt. Yes. It's what we believe in. And I'm excited to step in and for my first time and take part in and helping you guys find that belief.

Cool.

All right.

Nathan, how about you?

So if you're on the fence, just. Just register and check that box. You know, you need to do it at the end of the year. Let's go. Let us help you do that. We really want to do that. And if you've attended in the past and if you weren't there last year is a different conference than you've seen if you've been to one of our past ones. It is very evolved from what it has been in past years. Look, Registration deadline is November 12th. We have limited space, so you guys have a week. Okay? A week to get this thing in there. You won't regret it. And we believe in it as much as we do everything else that we do. There's a money back guarantee on this thing. You want to. You want to show up, give it a shot. And if you just tell, you decide that this thing wasn't worth coming to or being a part of, we'll give you your money back. So just. I'm really looking forward to it. For those of you who are coming. I can't wait to see you guys. It's going to be a lot of fun. It's going to be a lot of work, but it's, it's, it's so very worth it and I'm going to be exhausted once this thing is over.

Yeah, it does take a lot out of us. It is an intense event. You're going to get work done. You're going to walk away with, hey, this is my plan for next year. This is what I need to do in the first quarter. This is when I need to meet at the end of the first quarter and I know the structure of what I need to do at the end of the first first quarter to plan the second, the third and the fourth to achieve that overall mission. It is something that is a skill that I learned that I can't think of one more valuable other than connecting and communication. That skill from my mom was a really good skill that's really helped me quite a bit in my lifetime. We hope to help you with both. We hope that you come and join us at the Contractor Strategy Conference. I want to be really clear because Nathan left to out a little tidbit. We only take 30 contractors. We're not like other conferences that say we're going to sell this many and then they sell 10 more. It is 30, because that's the only way that we can be as engaged with you as we need to be to ensure, to ensure that you get the service that you've come to expect from Contractor Coach Pro and to make sure that you walk away with what we say you're going to walk away with. A lot of people aren't really concerned about that once you show up, it's. What I want to know is a year from now, a year from now, what have. I like, that's the cool stuff. I love those stories. Those are the things that make it fulfilling, enjoyable for all of us as coaches to hear those. As you come back to this Contractor Strategy Conference, say, hey, I'm. We have a client that has never worked with us in any shape, form or fashion, except at the Contractor Strategy Conference. And they come every single year. And I don't know what happened to my camera. Hey. Oh, there we go. Good. Weird. I was so excited. It made it foggy. It is amazing. And they, they love coming to Advent and to help them achieve some pretty amazing things with their business, we want to help you do the same thing. We want to give you a skill that you can use for the remainder of your business life and we hope to see you there. Any I'm going to throw something out there and this is one of those things where it wasn't planned. But do for anybody that watches this or sees this or anything over the next seven days. Do we have a coupon code that we could give them?

Yeah, absolutely. So if you want to use coupon code, thanks. That's T H A N K S. You can get $500 off your registration.

Whoa, 500. Okay, so thanks like and seriously, thank you guys for hanging out with us. There's been a lot of of you watching. Thank you for watching. We appreciate it. This is that month of being thankful. It's Thanksgiving. Be thankful every day for the bounty.

That'S been given to anks. You can get 500 after registration.

Whoa, 500. Okay, so thanks like and seriously, thank you guys for hanging out with us. To us, this industry that we work in, the people that we work with and the people that we serve. And we want to thank you guys. So coupon code of thanks and we hope to see you guys at the contractor strategy conference and thank all of you. Appreciate it. I know this is hard to get us all in the same place, same time, same bat channel, but really appreciate it. You're very helpful today.

Thanks, Jim.

All right, bye, guys.

Bye.

All right, so that was contractor.