Prosper with Integrity: The Contractor's Guide

There's nothing that bothers me more than somebody professing to be a top quality, an elite, a highly ethical contractor, and then to watch their actions and what they do, their character doesn't match what they're saying they are. And so you may think you are, but I'm going to ask you some very pointed questions. Whether you are or not. Have you ever not paid somebody when you should have? Did you ever try to figure out a way to get out of paying somebody something that you should have? Have you ever gotten money on a project that you shouldn't have and did you give it back? Did you offer somebody something at a price and it wasn't a priced correctly and you had to go back and up the price? Or did you stick to your word like you're supposed to? These are all the questions that I challenge people of, whether they're high character or not when they're working with their clients. And so if you have any of those that may have resonated with you, here's a promise I can make to you. If you are ethical and you are of high character, you will prosper. There is no doubt about it, because nobody can take that away from you. It's the one thing that no one can ever take away from you. They cannot take your character or your reputation. One of my favorite folks out there, his name is Rory Vaden. He talks about this equation, this equation that is about your brand. And you can use another word to just insert into that word brand as reputation. And so that's what your brand truly is. It's not the logo or the colors or the wrap truck or any of that other stuff. It's what everybody else out there believes you are. They believe that you are this. They perceive this to be who you are. And so if you ever get an opportunity to take five minutes and think for just a second, go put your feet in the shoes of the consumer out there and who do they actually think you are? Do you think you have them faked out because you have five star reviews on everything and you've been able to get the others off because you paid some guy to do that for you? Have you ever considered that the fact that those people out there aren't stupid? They know the word gets out, whether it's internal or external, the word gets out. And so this equation that I'm talking about that equals your brand or your reputation is over here in this world of results times reach. It's a mathematical equation. Your results times your reach equals your brand or your Reputation. And so your results could be great and amazing. You could be that five star, high character contractor. And if you are and people don't know about you, we can help you. Because you don't have any reach. They don't know who you are. And so your brand is very small, your reputation is very small. Or it could be the other way around. You have great reach. You're Mr. Marketer, you're all over the place. You're Mr. YouTube, TikTok, Instagram sensation. You're the world's greatest contractor and that's your handle and all that other good stuff. And you're just spouting off all of this information about how amazing you are. And everybody sees it, but what happens when they experience it? Is it? And if it's not, and your results are not what you're saying they are, your brand is going to be damaged. Whenever you get your brand damaged, like trust. And if all of you are very aware of trust, I know what it's like when somebody burns you. It's hard to earn that trust back. As a matter of fact, it's not even the thing of me trying to get it back from you, it's what are you doing out there in the world? Now you're telling everybody. One of the things we talk about with contractors, whenever we're talking sales and we're talking coaching, is this idea of, Mr. Jones, have you ever worked with another contractor before? And I'll ask you, you're listening to this right now. Before I answer, what's the first thing that you think people say? Is it positive or is it negative? What do they remember more of? And people are human beings. We are wired to look for the negative. And so whenever we look for that negative, it stands and it carries on for a long period of time. Now we can all compete on a variety of different things. I get really frustrated watching people compete on price because it's a race to the bottom, who can be the cheapest and who can do it the skinniest. And whenever you do that, you compromise quality, you compromise the crews, you compromise the products. And so that's one approach. And then we have another approach that's product. Like, hey, maybe you have a great product, even maybe a great installation side of. But if somebody else can do it, that you can be competed with, you cannot gain market domination in either one of those two things. If you're Mr. Gaf or you're Mr. Certainteed or Mr. Owens Corning, guess what? A whole bunch of other people can sell that stuff too. You're not anything special. So the one area where you can be special is customer experience, the way that you engage and interact with a customer and whatever that looks like. If it's high character, it's going to be remembered for a very long time. If it's low character, it's going to be remembered for a very long time. So this customer experience thing is neutral in the hands of us as human beings and contractors, and we can decide which way we want that to go. So if you want to change a little bit of what your reputation or brand may look like, you're going to need to start to consider what customer experience looks like. And that starts with employee experience. What is it like to work work for you? Is it a place where people want to be? Are people just hanging around because they like to be there? Are they engaging with each other while they're there? Are they engaging with each other outside of work in a positive way, not that negative way, talking behind your back all the time. If it's not like that for your business, it's actually something that can be fixed, but it's something you have to work for too. It's not just a snap of a finger or press an easy button. It's a decision to change not only the way you do business, but to change the character and core values of the way that you approach your business, which are two very different things. It's actually one of the biggest challenges in our coaching is that people come to us with a certain mindset that we've got to get ahead, that we've got to be successful, we've got to grow and scale and be this amazing thing. And we're listening to what the world is telling us. We're supposed to be out there instead of listening in here of who we actually are and what we actually want to be and what we are designed to do for others out there. We're truly designed to serve others well, to be humble and to have humility to put the other person first. But we don't do it because we have been tempted by the world to go a different route, to get ahead to one up, to compete at a high level and push everybody else down. That approach may work in the short term, there's no doubt about it. I've seen lots of companies grow really fast and you know, they're all over the place. But whenever you see somebody like that, where are they five years later, where are they ten years later? Where are they legacy wise? And very few of those have I seen actually become a legacy type company, an inheritance to their people and to their family. That's because it all became about now and it all became about them instead of it being about everybody else out there. And when we put everybody else first, their natural response is to put you first. And so we actually have built a blueprint to put those things in place for each one of our contractors so that they can sustain this thing that is an actual vehicle that leads them to prosperity and success. Because prosperity might not be what the world is telling you it is. It's actually something different. Prosperity is this feeling that there's hope that you have achieved something that is for others, not necessarily for you. It's having enough, but not necessarily too much. And what do we do with the too much? Right? Like, can we be generous? Can we give back? All of those things have everything to say about your character. And people of high character, others want to be involved with, others want to be around. Think about it. Think about the people that you have seen in your life, the ones that you want to be around. Are they people of high character or are they not? And if they're not, why are you attracted to them? What does it say about your character if you're attracted to what you think success and prosperity looks like? Because that's what the world says it looks like. What if it's actually something different? What if it's actually feeling fulfilled in the work that you do and doing it well every day, not grinding or pushing or beating anybody else, but just doing your work well every day. That's the sign of somebody with high character. What about community? Like, does your community know who you are? Are you involved in it? Do you give back to it? Do you engage and create relationship with the community that you serve? Those are just two of the seven pillars of leading a prosperous life. If you want help in leading a prosperous life through this vehicle that you have, that's a contracting business, it's what we do. We help people identify truly what they are about and what they believe in and help them build what it is that allows them to live the lifestyle that they're choosing. Instead of being forced to live a lifestyle we're told to or forced to live a lifestyle that we don't have knowledge to change the trajectory so that we can be wise about where we're going with this vehicle that we've built and to sustain our lives. It's what we're all about here at Contractor Coach Pro. It's how we help people. I love doing it each and Every day. It's my drive. My drive is by watching others out there say they're one thing, but they are actually a different thing. To hear them say how they care about others and then to see a post about wishing horrible things on somebody, that's not what we're designed to be. We're designed to be something different. We're designed to stand out because of how well we do what we do and how much we care about what we do because it affects and impacts others. I'm tired of watching it. I'm going to do something about it and I'm going to talk about morals, ethics, character, purpose, all of those things that it seems like, at least from the outside looking in. Maybe I'm not there at your house, but I watch on social media just like all of you guys do. And it tends to be pretty negative. It tends to be, look at me instead of, hey, how can I look at you? How can I help you? How can I be there for you? How can I serve you? When we get into that part of the world, everybody wants to be in our solar system. Everybody wants to be around us. Don't you want people to be wanting to be around you, wanting to work for you, loving to be where it is that they do their job because they know they're doing something special? If that's what you're looking for, come check us out. There's no obligation or anything like that. Take an assessment. It's super easy. Take an assessment. We'll give you a free coaching call. Won't even charge you a dollar for it because that's our goal. A high character. Serve you well. If you decide to become a client, great. If you don't, at least we did our job of serving you well that day, giving you the next maybe two or three steps that you should take in your business. And maybe it's just the wrong time. We'll take those two or three steps and you'll do well. But why would you not at least take advantage of that offer? Like, seriously, we are genuine about it. We want you to do well. The more people that do well, the more people that serve others well, the better this world becomes each and every day. And we don't have a whole lot of impact, but we can impact our little industry and we can impact each contractor. And who knows, maybe if we all kind of get on board for that, we can impact a world together. Have you heard that there's a social network just for you? Well, if you haven't, you're going to it's the Contractor Collective. It's a purpose driven social network that we built just for you. So you have a community that's just like you, sharing information to make us all better. No negativity, no distraction. If you're anything like me, you hate social media because of all the distraction and ads and all the other garbage algorithm telling you what you want. This allows you to create your own algorithm to follow the people you want to follow and get the feed that you want to have. There's also all kinds of other training, content groups to join. Fun stuff to do as a community of contractors without the distraction of traditional social media. If that sounds like a good thing for you, go to the Play Store, go to the App Store, download the app and join today or join right below. In the description there's a link. Invite all your friends and we'll see you inside. Contractor Collective.