63. Don't Wreck The Business - Focus Matters

Foreign. Hey, my friend Kenny Chapman here, your host of Leadership in a Nutshell, where we're focused on growing the home service professional in a leadership capacity. This is episode 63, and I'm super pumped to be with you as we're, we're going to talk about don't wreck the business today. Focus matters, my friend. And so, you know, we, we look at all these different things and I, you know, some of my coaches will, will say, you know, I'm, I'm going to wreck you today. I've, I've said that for years. Like, you know, if I'm working with a client and they, they bring me a strategy or talking through something and it's kind of that kind of calm question. We might be on video looking at each other and I'll go, can I wreck you for a minute? They're just like, you know, what's funny is progressive people, people that are growth oriented and, and personal development driven, they always say, yes. They're like, yeah, man, wreck me. I want to know. I want to get better. Okay, so, so we might be able to wreck some things in a, in a positive way, if you will, here and there. But today I really want to talk about your focus and how it can be wrecking your business. And, you know, it's, it's might be like, whoa, that's a little bit weird for a motivational guy, an influencer to talk about how, you know, how you wreck the business with focus. And, and that, you know, the focus part, it doesn't care. It's kind of like the subconscious mind. You know, I study, coach, and train on the subconscious mind all the time for shifting and getting and create, you know, reprogramming better results. And at the end of the day, the subconscious mind doesn't care. Well, neither does focus. Focus is simply an act. Like whether you're focused on 100% positive things or you're focused on 100% negative things, it doesn't matter. Your mind doesn't care. There, there's no judgment there. There's no good, there's no bad. There's just focus. If I'm focused on why this industry sucks, then that is what it is. And guess what? You're going to continue to get reminded why the industry sucks. If you're focused on, we might have some challenges in the market, but you are the leader that can learn, can develop, can evolve, can grow and step up, and you're the right person to lead this business through these challenges. That focus doesn't care. It's Just simply guiding your mind. And so, you know, we, we, many of you have heard some of the, you know, past stories of my father and, and some of the, the, the challenging history of my relationship with him and him parting the planet way, way too young. In, in my opinion, he was only 54 when he left the planet. But, but he left at the right time and, and he, he executed the, the life that he needed to execute while he was here. And, and I love him for that. And one of the, one of the cool things that he did teach me is he taught me a lot about racing. He, he had a, a need for speed, if you will. I think, isn't there another Top Gun coming out sometime this year or something? But maybe it's already out. I don't even know. But I, you know, I, dad taught me about kind of living on the edge. He taught me about going for it. He taught me about playing full out. And yes, early, early as a young man, I kind of followed some of his avenues of playing full out and living on the edge. And I wound up finding myself in a little bit of legal trouble based on those activities and those actions. And so I shifted my focus and I grew up and I learned a lot and I became an entrepreneur. And the funny thing is that I have a lot of those same traits that dad taught me. I just apply them legally in business now and in influencing people just like you to, to make the changes that you want in your life and your life experience and your leadership ability and your capability and your confidence and your team and the results that you ultimately get in your life and finances. And so, you know, one of the, one of the areas that dad, when he was kind of sorting out who he was going to be after my parents divorce and my Aunt Tiny passing away and, and leaving him with a little lump sum of money back then, or pretty big chunk of money back then, I guess. But he got into racing and all the way to. He bought an Indy car, believe it or not, for my racing friends out there. He. NASCAR wasn't near as big as it is now, but he started out racing formula Ford and did some dirt year or some road racing, and then he ended up in kind of a sprint car, funny car series, dirt racing. And then he bought an Indy car and he didn't actually drive the Indy car. He just funded the team because it was a shoestring budget. It had no, like, looking back now, it makes no sense whatsoever. But the point is he loved racing and he loved driving and he taught me how to how to race my motorcycle and go karts and picking lines and, you know, leaning in and where to focus and things like that. And I just want to remind you today that your business and the results that you get is very much like driving a race car. And you know, Chris crew, the president of blue collar, will, will tell me oftentimes he'll, he'll say, you know, look, here's, here's the deal. I'm. I, I want to drive. I want to, I want to, I want to run. You know, when I first promoted him to president, we had a deep conversation about what roles and responsibilities looked like. And his analogy was around. He's. He's going to drive this car, this car of blue collar and he's going to race it and he's going to go as fast as he can with it with as safe as he can. But we're going to make pit stops here and there. And he, you know, he said, I'll, I'll race it as fast as I can without wrecking it. And I thought that was a pretty cool analogy from a president stepping into taking over the day to day operations of a company. Like, hey, go as fast as you want, but don't crash the thing, right? And the cool thing is he understands that where you focus dictates where you end up. And so, you know, one of the old kind of adages of racing is if you go into a slide. I grew up in Colorado too. After we left San Diego, I spent my, I drove by like I was old enough. I didn't drive until I lived in Colorado. We moved there when I was a young kid. And when you're learning how to drive in the snow, many of you can relate. Like when you start sliding in the snow, you don't, you know, you don't focus on going off the cliff. You focus on where you want to go. And one of the things in racing is don't look at the wall, right? So if, if you have an ability to take notes today, I want you to write that down right now. Don't look at the wall because that's a metaphor. So in the race car, if you start sliding or you're, you're. Things aren't going, don't look at the wall. Look at where you want to go. If there's a car that's spinning out in front of you, you don't look at that crash that's happening. You look at where you want to go. If you're racing and you're right behind somebody, if you're in, you know, in a, a closed car series where you, they have windshields or you're looking through, you're not looking at the back of the car, you're looking through that car, picking your lines of where you want to go right on, on down the track. And so the, the same is true in leadership and in implementation and in behavior change and in the systems and processes and things that we implement into our businesses. And something this simple is just a big reminder. Don't look at the wall. And so it doesn't mean that you're not mindful of it. It doesn't mean that you don't know that it's there. And it will totally wreck your, if you're not paying attention. If you, if you like, you know, if you're not driving within your capability, let's say you're going to hit the wall no matter what and the wall is going to wreck your car and it's going to tear up your stuff and it's going to cost you a bunch of dough and you're going to lose your spot in the race. All of those things are true in business, right? So if you're, if when I say don't look at the wall, don't look at the wall that, oh, there's no skilled trades people coming in, there's, there's an influx of private equity, there's competition getting stronger and stronger, there's a ceiling to pricing, there's. Technology is going to take over the industry. Whatever walls that you self impose or you believe that the industry has, I want you to not look at those, but rather look at where you want to go. So if there's a wall there, where are we going to go? To go around it, to stay within the boundaries, to keep racing, to keep running, to keep moving up our spots. Right. And so, you know, when you, when you think about just human behavior, some of your technicians, some of your CSRs, frontline team that, you know, might be living paycheck to paycheck and they're, they're looking at their bills every, every night, every week, every. And they're just focused on this. And so it's, it's just driving them nuts. And it's like, oh man, it's rather than focusing on, okay, I've got this bill, I've got this debt, I've got whatever, how am I going to get out of it, how am I going to shift it, how am I going to change it, how am I going to attend training and learn how to sell More. How am I going to learn how to cross sell? How am I going to learn to set leads? How am I going to learn to sell on tune ups? How am I going to create better options? How am I going to ask my service manager for better communication training, whatever that is. Right. And so the same is true for you. If you're looking at overhead and oh my gosh, overhead, overhead, overhead, over. Or are you looking at, you know what, I need to reduce overhead as a percentage of sales. Maybe I'm not going to reduce it by a dollar figure, but I'm going to reduce it as a percentage of sales. So I'm going to focus on growing this business. What about that? What's it take to do that? The wall is the overhead. Don't focus on the wall. And yes, you can cut, absolutely. I'm not saying you don't. You know, you run lean and mean. You know, a lean, mean fighting machine. Right. I don't remember who said that, but you know what I'm saying. And so, yes, you want to operate very lean. I'm a fan of lean overhead. But you're not going to cut yourself to success. You're not going to cut yourself to winning. Sometimes we need to adjust and take a step back. But if, if my wall is, is the, you know, going into another trade, if my wall is getting better at my own trade, if my wall is, I already mentioned, like this labor shortage. If my, I'm just going to skid right into that and then I'm going to find other people. You know, think about it like, okay, I wrecked my race car. Now I, I, I go to the infield hospital. They check me out, I'm okay. Now what do I do? I go back to my pit or I go sit with the other drivers that also wrecked this, this race. And we're all sitting around going, yeah, man. Well, the crew, Yeah, I, I think it's the, the maintenance crew. They didn't, they didn't clean up those pebbles, those rocks in turn three. Man, look at all of, most of us hit that. That's where we wrecked was turn three. I'm. Oh my God. Wait a minute. Maybe it wasn't our fault, right? Where's that showing up for you? Where do you get with other contractors, with other leaders, with other peer groups, with other Facebook groups, for Christ's sake. Oh my gosh. What about this? Well, there's so much advice flying around on the Internet that nobody knows about your business. Most of them don't know about their own business. I Don't mean that negatively. I mean, it's just that you can't effectively coach somebody if you don't know their own situation. Just because you're in the home service space, it doesn't mean that you operate the same way. So, yes, I've got a podcast here for home service leaders. Because you are a leader in the home service space. That's where our commonality ends. From there, it's a matter of me sharing strategies that I've seen work, that I know work. But guess what? I'm sure I'm also sharing timeless rituals, timeless laws of success, timeless human behavior strategies, all these different types of things, right? So I want you to think about, you know what, where your focus is. Because, you know, I've said it in previous episodes, but let me just say it this way to you today. The universe does not deliver you what you want or don't want. You go, holy crap, Kenny. You've been saying the opposite of that for years. Check it out. I'm saying focus on what you want, right? You're going, yeah, but you just said all. What I'm saying is the universe doesn't care whether you want it or you don't want it. The universe only cares that you give it attention. Let that land for a minute. So I want to have the biggest company in the market. Okay, cool universe doesn't care. Oh, I want to be double digigit, net profit profitable. Okay, cool market doesn't care. I want to be totally out of debt. Okay, cool market doesn't care. I want to pay off my house by the time I'm 50. Okay, cool market doesn't care. I want to fill in the blank. Okay, guess what? The market, the universe, God for that matter, doesn't care. And you go, holy cow, Kenny. Now you're really pushing the line. Here's what I'm saying. You get rewarded with what you give attention to. The universe delivers on where you focus and what you give energy and attention to. So if you're constantly focusing on, I don't want to fail at this. I don't want to mess up this. Then where do you need to stop that crazy thinking and stop looking at the wall and decide what do I need to learn or focus on so I can improve my situation? This is not an ostrich in the sand approach. This is not. I'm going to bury my head and pretend like there's just this vast, overwhelming abundance of technicians in the market that are completely skilled and want to play the game in the trades. But Guess what? What if you shifted and said, there are enough for me? I used to say that I operated in a small market. And guess what? We had recruiting challenges. I sold almost. When did I sell 17? I sold four. Four years ago now. And for as long as I can remember prior to selling, we had recruiting challenges and we always solved them. But I'm saying they're challenges because people weren't just flying through the door. But what I always said to my leadership team is there are enough. We don't need all of them. We just need to fill the trucks we've got and be able to grow and hit our budget. The same is true for you. I can focus on the wall. I can read a column in Plumbing and Mechanical magazine or contractor mag and go, oh, man, there's a shortage of this. And here's a national trend. Okay, cool. National trend. Be mindful of it. Don't focus on the wall. Focus on where you're going to go, my friend. That's ultimately what it's about. Don't wreck the business. Your focus matters. This is episode 63, my friend, leadership in a nutshell for you home service professionals out there. I'm your host, Kenny Chapman. Don't wreck the business. Focus matters. Give us a like rating review. Please share this episode with somebody that you care about and until we talk, make it a better than fantastic week. I'll see you soon.