RISE Keynote - Clarity of Purpose

There was a point in my life where that was, you can ask my wife. Man, I had it all, every boat, every jacked up truck, all the. I had an accurate nsx. I mean, the whole schmear. Right. And I came to find out that I still wasn't successful. And so that's what I'm here to talk about today is kind of where my path has been. I think on your agenda it says something about clarity of purpose. And so the word that we have today and make sure this is working. Yep. So Rise. I didn't even name this thing. This was something that came up in a meeting that I wasn't even in. And whenever they said it, I was like, wow, that really fits me. It fits what I'm trying to do in this industry. And so I'm going to tell you a little story. Hopefully you guys can hang with me for about 30, 30 minutes here. We'll go through this and we'll see if we can have a little bit of an impact on you. Because that is what my purpose is. That's why I exist, it's why I'm on this planet. It's such a beautiful thing to think about for me because for the last. I'll tell everybody how old I am. I'm 48. So for the last 38 years I've been in search of something. I don't know what it was. I had no idea. I just knew I was searching for something. And I'm a very competitive individual. And so this Rise thing really fits me quite well because I, as a young kid did not have the perfect family life. I didn't grow up with June Cleaver. As a matter of fact, I had a stepdad, not the greatest guy in the world. Constantly beat me down verbally, physically, the whole bit. And so that made me very resilient. It gave me a lot of drive. I would think I was called a moron at least three or four times a day. And so when you get that on you all the time, you have a choice, right? You have this choice of either you're going to fight or you're going to give up. Well, fortunately, I'm a fighter. I'm lucky. Whether it's my genes or my talent or whatever it is, God blessed me and said, hey, you're going to fight this, you're not going to be taken down by it. And so even as a young kid, I got very lucky because across the street from me was a gentleman that he's a Houston police officer and he noticed that I had some drive. He's like, this dude is after it. Why don't you come mow my yard? You mow my yard for the summer, and you can have this motorcycle. Which I really wanted the motorcycle bad. And so I mowed his yard. And he told me how to do it. Wanted it exactly this way. Not only did I do it, but I did it a little bit better. Like, I tried to find other things I could do. I cleaned out the flower beds and just tried to add a little extra touch. So we get done. He's like, hey, you're really good at this. Why don't you mow some other people's lawns? Why don't you go ask them if they want you to mow their lawn? So I did, and so I started mowing all these lawns in the neighborhood. And he goes, well, I think that you could take this even further. Maybe mow other neighborhoods and maybe some commercial properties. I'm like, well, I'm 14, so I have a problem. And he goes, well, I think you need to figure it out. And so I was sitting there, I was like, okay, so I'm 14. Do I steal a car or no? Okay, so I've got to hire somebody, and they've got to be at least 16 with a driver's license. I'll buy the truck, I'll buy the gear and all that other good stuff, but. And it needs to be somebody that wants to work. So I went around the school. I'm like, hey, you drive a truck? Do you want a job? And sure enough, one of the guys did. And that was how my landscaping business started. My very first business. Ran it through my senior year in high school, my last year of owning that, it did $176,000, which, as a high school kid, not bad money, right? I had to pay people, but still did okay. I could buy the Jordache jeans. Anybody ever remember, like, the old people, we had Jordache jeans and Guess jeans and parachute pants and all that other stuff. So that's what I was after. I was after the stuff that was a status symbol, a sign of success for me, because I wanted to rise. I wanted to rise above my station, which really, as I've gotten older and a little bit more mature, isn't the most important thing. It's not about the watches and the trucks and the gear you wear and all that other stuff, because nobody walks past your casket going, dude, that guy had a badass truck. I don't know. I don't remember anybody saying that. Right. And at some point we're all going to go. And so we need to leave a mark. We need to leave a mark on this planet. And my mark is going to be in relationship to my purpose. So I've been after this since I was 10, just in search of something. And if you look back across my history, about every four or five years it would change. I would get bored. Guess where I'm at with contractor coach pro right now? Four or five years. I'm there right now and this is the first time I have not been bored. It's the first time where I still feel there is so much more that we can do. But everywhere else I've gone, I've been able to help that place be successful, whether it was my own or somebody else's. And so I coach a lot of contractors on this side of things. There's several of you in here that are my customer. And this is part of the first thing that we do, our culture, exercise. We're looking for purpose. Why the heck are we doing what we're doing in the first place? And it's fairly challenging. Heath, you're one of my customers back. It's a challenge, right, to come up with this and really believe it. I mean, we've come up with a bunch of them. But do the customers get behind it, believe it and enforce it and make sure that it is truly a part of their culture? That's a whole different thing. I can't make you do it, but it's relatively, in the big scheme of things, fairly easy to come up with a business purpose. And so Keith, you know a purpose off the top of your head. Yeah. Protecting homes, strengthening families, building community. Right. So that's his purpose. That's what his company does first. Your purpose is the first thing you do. Like all of you that get emails from us, I would bet that you've seen coaching contractors to win on it. If you've ever seen any of our emails is on almost everything that we send out. And I try to make sure it's on everything, but I can't see everything that's going out from my company. So if you see something without it on there, let me know, okay? Because I want that to be on it. It is our front facing statement. It is why we exist, it's why we do what we do. Building community, strengthening families. And I said it backwards. I'm not part of his culture, but he knows it inside now, even knew the words that they brought it from. And so developing these purposes for these companies Is something I really enjoy doing. It's probably the number one facet of coaching that is exciting for me because I get to see them buy into it and they get this reason for doing what they do. And I'm not going to talk a whole lot more about culture, because Zach Kerr is going to talk about that this afternoon. But I just want to focus on this one piece of it and why it's so important. And I'm going to add a little bit of mustard on it at the end. So coaching people on their company purpose, fairly easy. It's not rocket science. Like, what are the top 20 words that mean something to you? What are you all about? What's your core? Are you about fun and adventure? Are you about excitement? Are you about competitiveness? Professionalism? What is it? Okay, so start putting those words down and then developing this purpose of why you do what you do, and you put that thing first. And so we know that if we coach contractors to win and we do a very good job of that and we follow our core values that go along with it, that the money will come. The money's not the first thing. That's usually the first thing for most people whenever they start a business. How do I make some money? Our first thing is how do we coach contractors to win? Because if we do that and we do a good job of it, you guys are going to come be our customers. We're not here to sell you anything today, I promise you. We're not going to sell you anything unless, of course, you want to be sold. Come see us. But our purpose is to help this industry and to help contractors do well. So when these other vendors came to me almost a year ago now at the ire and said, hey, we want to do this group of vendors that do it right, man, they were speaking my language. And it was a little bit of a wake up call for me because it was really funny at my office. And I told Troy this when he came by to talk to me about it. I had a whiteboard, okay, whiteboard up on the wall. And on that whiteboard, there were two sides. The dark side and the light side of the force. All right? I'm like, okay, all those people, they're the dark side. I'm not gonna have anything to do with them. These people right here, the light side, and these guys written in brown in the middle. I don't know. I gotta figure it out. Because there are two different competing factors in this industry. And one of the things that worries me most about this industry is Greed. Greed is a tough thing and we all succumb to it every once in a while. I know I did. I can remember knocking on people's doors and I literally pictured a thousand dollar bill on their door. Like all I had to do was knock that door and get that thousand dollar bill. And so that was when I was a little bit younger. Things have changed for me now. And when they did change and we found out what our purpose was at my company, we blew up like I never thought we could. Our purpose at my company was we make it easy. So every single person that was in our company had to believe that, had to get behind it, had to be a part of it. And so by making it easy, they not only made it easy for each other, they made it easy for the insurance companies, they made it easy for our vendors. We tried to do that all the time and put that thing first because if we made it easy for our customer, they would send more customers to us. Okay? And so this whole purpose thing, I've been doing it for years, working with a lot of different companies. I've been a part of it in a couple of different ways of putting it together. Both from an ownership side of things all the way to sales guy side of things. Watching a company go through it, I've seen it done in quite a few different ways. But they're all good. Every single one of them usually turn out pretty good. But there's always a problem for me. I'm still searching, I'm still searching. I'm still searching. Five years, four and a half years, I get bored. I couldn't figure out why it was really starting to bother me. Like there's a very patterned thing for me. My wife, she knows it, she's like, oh boy, here we go. There's going to be something new again. And I'm not there with this. Like, I'm still all about this, which is what made me start thinking about it. And so what I found out through that is I started to have some clarity. That's what I was looking for. I was looking for some clarity. Why am I. Why am I here? You guys ever ask yourself that question? It's like a big, deep question, right? I'm one of those guys that don't sleep well at night. So I got my brains running all the time. I'm like, why am I on this big blue world and a part of it, you know, why do I sell roofing or why do I coach contractors or why do I do. Why do I do any of that? What. What difference does that make, really? And truthfully, think about it. If I got hit by a bus out there tomorrow, would I have made a difference? And so that part for me, is what I've been searching for my entire life. How do I make a difference? And really, the right word for that is an impact. So that's what started all of this. Back whenever we were Roof Coach Pro, that's what we were before we had a name upgrade to Contractor Coach Pro. Cause there's other contractors wanting us to help them. It was that I could find some personal purpose with it, some clarity of what I was after. I still didn't know what it was yet, but that's really what was happening for me. And I'll tell you the story. It was kind of funny. I'm at home, and. And just like, this feeling came over me, and I started to pray. Okay. And I was like, it's pretty rare for me to just start praying. And so I was praying about it, and I'm like, okay. I love my job. This is great. I'm director of sales at Acculinx. We're doing awesome. We're growing 300% for a year. We're the best software there is out there. Sorry, job nemesis. You weren't around much yet, and so we were just having fun with it, and. And I'm like, something's missing. Something's missing. And there was no voice or anything like that, but just a feeling came over me. You need to resign. And I have never stopped or quit working at a job or resigned from something without having something else there in my entire life. Like, I always had the next thing. Whenever I left this time, there was none of that. And it was. I mean, instantly, I'm going to resign. Wrote the letter, flew up to Beloit, met with the owner of acculinx and said, I'm resigning. And his jaw went like, what in the world just happened? Like, I thought you loved it here. Everything was great and hunky dory. I'm like, I really don't know why either, but I have to. And that was the actual statement. Like, I didn't know why. And so I flew home. That next day, my grandfather went into the hospital. My grandfather is like my dad, so he was my father figure growing up. I spent the next three months with him in the hospital before he passed away. And he asked me, like, what are you going to do now? And I'm like, I don't know. I really haven't thought much about it. I'm kind of thinking about you right now. He goes, well, let's talk about it. And he said, well, what do you want to be? I want to be a basketball coach. That's what I want to be. He goes, hate to break it to you, you're 42 years old, you're a little behind. I don't think you're going to get to be a basketball coach in college. I said, yeah, you're probably right. He goes, but you are good at coaching. You know, you've coached a lot of teams. They've done well. We've won a lot of championships and stuff like that. So you're good at that. What else are you good at? So I know this roofing game pretty well. He goes, well, why don't you coach people in roofing? Like, wow, that's pretty cool. That's not a bad idea. Maybe I'll try that. And so I put the word out that I was doing it, and my phone kind of went nuts and I went, wow, okay, this is something that's going to be a good thing. I started with just a couple companies and then four companies and then eight companies. And we coach anywhere from 12 to 16 at a time right now. And it's not about us, it's about you. To see companies like Heath and Tom, Jeremiah, there's several others of you in here, to see the changes in your businesses and your lives fulfills me. It is awesome. And so that's where I gained my clarity earlier this year. And this is how long it took, man. It took a long time. So I'm going to hopefully help you find yours quicker. I was doing the praying thing again. I was searching like, hey, I know I'm after something. What am I after? Why am I doing all this? What's it all about? What's my purpose? I know my company's purpose. That's great. What's my purpose? Why do I exist? Because I need that fulfillment in my life. And so I had to find an answer to it. And so I started to review and I started reviewing each and every one of those places that I had been at since I was 10 years old. And what happened? What was the recurring themes? What was happening at each one of those things? What did I do? What kind of effect did I play? And the one thing I started to notice is that each one of the places that I was involved with, whenever I stepped in, in a very short period of time, usually three to six months, I would find a newer, better, cleaner, faster way to do whatever it was that they were doing. So they could do more of it and make more money and be more successful, happier, do more and less time and all those types of things. I started to realize, well, there's my talent. That's my purpose. That's what I'm here for. My purpose is to help others succeed. Because if I do, I will. And that's what it comes down to for me. If I can help others succeed and they do, I will. And so I didn't know that when I started this whole coaching thing. This whole coaching thing was like, hey, it was kind of a whim almost to help some guys out. Everybody was always asking me those questions whenever I would go and sell them ACCU Links, they were asking me all kinds of crazy questions. And so my challenge to you is, yes, definitely have a purpose for your business and why you do what you do, but what's your purpose? And it's hard. And last I checked, I don't remember anybody sitting in high school, in 11th grade going, yes, I cannot wait to be a roofing salesman or a public adjuster. I cannot wait. We all wanted to be athletes and doctors and astronauts and all those types of things. But here we sit, right here we sit. We make more money than most doctors and lawyers. It's great. It's unbelievable, the opportunity that's in this industry. But how do you leave a mark? How do you make an impact? What do you do to make a difference in this industry? And that's what we're here for, hopefully today, is to help you do those things. Because making the money isn't all that hard. But we're going to challenge you. I'll go backwards here for a second. We're going to challenge you to rise up, rise up and make an impact in your community, in your business, in this industry, to actually have some real formative change. Because I'm worried about it. I'm really, really worried about it right now. This industry. Anybody else in here worried about it, like, where it's headed? I am. I mean, somebody, seriously, somebody could just. The insurance company could completely change the way they do business and we'd all be out of business. And so I actually have another talk about this later on today about taking the industry back. But what can you do to make that not happen? How can we get back in control of what we do? How can you use your purpose to do that? How can you leave a mark? How can you. Whenever that day comes and you're laying there in the casket, what are people going to say when they walk past your coffin? Because we're all going to be there at some point. I'm not trying to bring anybody down, but it's the reality of things. I hope that whenever people walk past mine, they go, that guy made an impact. He made a difference. And so I'll give you a little idea of what I've noticed over the last five years. Over the last five years, things have changed dramatically in your businesses. I want to make sure I'm on time here. Things have changed dramatically in your businesses. Would you agree with that? And if they haven't changed dramatically and you're sticking to your guns, the old school way of doing things, you're noticing everybody else around you doing things different. Would you agree with that? And so you're feeling like. So some of you might be feeling like you're behind the curve and you got to catch up a little bit, or you still dig your heels in and just say, I'm going to do it that way and that's the way I'm going to do it. Or you're the ones that are jumping ahead of the curve and you're saying, okay, I got to learn this, I got to learn that. I got to get this, I got to get that. Because this industry is going from the pen and paper and the pencil and a tape measure to automation as fast as it can possibly get there. And technology, this was, you think about it, we were like Neanderthals with fire. Five years ago, we got a smartphone. We were like, whoa, man, check this out. This is awesome. I feel like we were given fire whenever we got the smartphone. We had to actually use a camera to take pictures. It was weird. And you had to print them out and stuff like that. I had to take the flashcard out and go put it in over here. There was no automatic uploads or any of that stuff. And so the technology in this industry has changed dramatically in the last five years. And to the better, I would say. It makes our lives easier. We can do more and less time. We can be efficient, more profitable. We can communicate better if they're used correctly, which is the big part of it. Like, do you actually implement it and enforce it? But that's one thing. Then the other thing that I'm seeing is the level of professionalism has changed quite a bit in the last five years. I think contractors have really tried to step up their game, at least the newer, aggressive, let's do this right type of guys. There's a little bit of greed still there, especially when you guys are younger. No problem. I Get it? That's what we're after. But there's a whole different level that's being achieved in our industry right now. And it's if you don't try to rise up and get to at least that level or maybe even push that envelope further, you're going to get left in the dust. It's just the way it's going to be. If you don't get on board with the technology that's necessary, the processes and systems that are necessary, the tools that are available to you, people are going to leave you behind and they're going to maximize their opportunity. They're going to be able to go out there and grab more business quicker. Like Chris in the very back back there. Chris and I have been in this so long it's ridiculous, right, Chris? Now a storm would hit and it was like a two year deal, right? Like a storm would hit. How long does a storm last now? 6 months, 8 months? 6 months. Mag just gets wiped out because all of you are in it now, right? Like it's such an easy entry business. Everybody goes, wow, this is something I can make some money at. And we're like a virus. It's just new company, new company, new company, which is fine. It's the nature of things. I probably have 40 companies out there right now operating that were spawned off of me, which is cool. I'm okay with it. Because the industry is going to bear what it's going to bear. But that means you've got to get ahead of it. And so what you have to do, make sure this thing is working is you have to find clarity of purpose. Why? Because here's something that's going to be a challenge for you. Is it a challenge to hire new people? No. No. Well, you're my client, so that's not fair. Anybody else? Is it a challenge to hire new people, find good people, and when you do get good people, they leave any of that. You ever hire a good person that left. Why? Like if you answer that question, yes, you need to ask yourself why? So one of the first things I always tell people is would you work for you go walk in your door with fresh eyes like it's not you. You're just the first time you walked in and go, would I work here? And if your answer is no, you need to do something about it. You need to find some clarity and to figure out who you're going to be and what you're going to be all about. So my challenge to you guys is to find that clarity to Gain some purpose in what you do. Make an impact in this industry. Change the game, change the rules. Nobody says you have to do it the way the guy before you did it. It's hilarious. Like, I coach a lot of contractors, and you all have the same contract, but you say you do things different, and then you all have, like, you all have the same MO this. Knock on the door. Meet the homeowner. We'd like to do an inspection because we're working with all the neighbors, which you're not really, but okay. And so let us do an inspection. And up on the roof, you go and take an inspection. You inspect it for about five, five, maybe 10 minutes, take a few pictures, come back downstairs and go look at there, Mrs. Jones, there's a bunch of damage, man. We need to work with your insurance company. Sign this. And it's a race to see how fast you can do it. But that close rate is usually somewhere between 30 and 40% is what I've seen and measured with over time. But if you actually spent a little time and you started closing at 70, 80, 90% when you're out there, wouldn't it be an easier thing to do? And if you did it with genuine and authentic care for that person that you were there to help? Because that's our job. And I'm going to help you with one last thing to help you find that clarity of purpose before I get done talking. The mentality. How many of you? Door knock. Let's start with that. How many of you? Door knock. Okay. Raise your hands. Be proud of that. Don't go like this. Yeah. Door knock. Be proud of it, man. That's okay. Sales rabbit was writing your names down as you were raising your hands. So we doorknot and we canvas. How many of you like it? Raise your hand. Good. Okay, good. So you found a way to make that something enjoyable. How many of you dislike it? I'll raise my hand. I will. Okay. I dislike it. Oh, my goodness. I hated it. But I found a way to achieve it. And so we have a perception of door knocking, that it is a. It's a negative thing. I'm going to bother somebody. They don't want to hear from me. They're going to show up at the door with a gun. I don't know. But we have this negative feel about it, that we are salespeople knocking on their door. And just so everybody knows in here, you're not a salesperson unless you take money out of a homeowner's bank account. That's Their money. If you're taking money that's from an insurance company to do their repairs, you're not a salesperson, you're a facilitator, okay? You're not having to sell them anything. Come on, seriously. Hey, would you like this brand new Mercedes for $1,000? Who says no? Right? Sales in this and what we do should be very easy on the insurance side of things. Now, if you're a retail guy, it's a little bit different, obviously, but I had to get over this hurdle of going out and knocking doors. And what I came to realize was that it was the insurance companies that should do it. And so that's what made it easy for me. Why in the world. They know what we know, right? They got the hell. Is there anybody here from Hellwatch? Where you at? Right back there. Do any of the insurance companies buy hail maps from you guys? Okay, so they know where the hail is. Right? They own the policies. Right. They know the addresses of their homeowners. Could they compare those two things? Why don't they call them and say, hey, you should get an inspection? But doesn't it make sense? Like, doesn't that make sense, not doing the right thing? So if you're looking for purpose in this, above and beyond just making money, that's a pretty good purpose. It's our responsibility to let them know and to let them not be taken advantage of. To let them not just slide by and go, hey, we're just going to let us. Hopefully don't say anything. Hopefully you don't find anybody. Hopefully nobody knocks on that door. Hopefully they're not home all the time. It's our responsibility. And so if you can get that mentality into your team, door knocking becomes very easy. So I'm going to leave you with this one last thing. Never in my life have I felt more fulfilled than I do right now. This has all come together and I got to share my personal purpose with all of you, and I want you to find your own. So go back, look over the times that you've been at places before and look for that recurring pattern. Because we are given talent, it's bestowed upon us. And if we don't use it, we are failing ourselves every day. We don't. And personally, I'm failing that guy up there. If I don't use it, he said, here you go, here's a gift. Go use it. And if I don't, I'm failing. And I don't want anybody to fail in here. I want you to succeed. I want you to find your own level of success, whatever that is, whether it's just paying your bills, making a difference in your life, helping your family, getting that freedom that you're looking for. If you find your own personal purpose, a reason for being, you'll get there. I promise you. Thanks a lot for having me up here today. Thanks, Larson. Thanks. Appreciate.