94. Business Vulnerability Part 2 - External Exposure

Foreign. Hey my friend, welcome back to leadership in a nutshell where we're cracking the code of that driven mind. We've got Today it's episode 94, believe it or not already episode 94, business vulnerability part two. I'm doing a three part series for you around vulnerability in business. And today I want to talk to you about part two, external vulnerability. So last week I talked to you about just overall exposure and we talked about the fact that if you're alive, you are going to have a certain level of exposure and certain level of vulnerability. Now today I want to talk more about external vulnerability and then next week we're going to put a bow on this three part series with the internal vulnerability that we may have. And so today though, I want you to focus on, you know, what are some of the areas that you have vulnerability that are outside of the business. Okay, so what I would encourage you to do is maybe even pause this and just do a quick exercise for me and, or with me and just jot some areas. Where am I vulnerable? Outside of my business, outside of my control, outside of my circle that, that I can actually touch and influence. What are some of these areas? So maybe just jot down 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, whatever those are depending on your mindset. And this isn't a challenge between, you know, abundance mindset or scarcity mindset. We've talked about those in the past here on, on leadership in a nutshell, I'm not challenging you on what those are and what those look like. I just want you to think for a moment about, you know, where am I exposed externally. So certainly some things come to mind like your, your competition. Okay, we don't have control over what the competition does. And last week when I was talking about private equity movement into the space and the different areas of external exposure could be, well, I've now got more private equity operators in my market. You're not in a very big market if you don't have already some private equity competition. And so you can view that as massive vulnerability. I also share with you that it also can mean massive opportunity. There's pros and cons to private equity seeing some really good movements done, we're seeing some disaster movements done. We're seeing incredibly terrible acquisitions that are made. We're seeing businesses being ruined, we're seeing leaders displaced, we're seeing leaders that can't stand what they do. We're seeing other leaders that, that love the partnerships and love getting involved. And so private equity isn't good or bad. It is what you make of it and who you make it with. So let's just be clear about that. But there's an overall perception sometimes from smaller operators, say, you know, 3, 5, 10, 15, $20 million operators that, oh my gosh, the big guys and gals are in town now. And so I have this massive threat. Okay, you know, we're gonna talk next week about internal vulnerability, and I wanna put a pin in that conversation until next week because you have a much bigger vulnerability internally than you do externally. When it comes to private equity competition, or mom and pop competition for that matter, you might have local competition that is family owned, you know, family business, whatever that is. You've. But you've got some external competition that could be on your mind. When it comes to vulnerability, where else are you vulnerable? You're vulnerable in marketing and marketing platforms and marketing methodologies and the way that marketing happens. I was blessed to own a plumbing heating air company for, what was it, 24 years. And I got in. When I was able to dominate the yellow pages early on in my career, I bought full page ad and then I bought a double truck. And I was in a market that never supported a triple truck. But we saw those take place in other client markets and different things. And what that meant was I lowered my vulnerability in marketing when I got to the first position of the book in the plumbing section because that was, you know, you got plumbing, pizzas, attorneys. Some of the biggest sections back in the yellow page days were tied to marketing. Well, now marketing has shifted tremendously. Now there are third party companies that hold the keys to your marketing. Castle. When Google changes from their, their algorithms, whether it's that, whether it's Facebook, whether it's now, you know, privacy settings being shared and we can't serve certain ads to certain people, whether Google changes from, you know, local service ads, whatever that looks like, you've got some external vulnerability there to be mindful of. Right. How about hiring? Do you have any external vulnerability when it comes to the quality of team that you can attract, the level of people that want to enter the trades that are, that are looking to come into the home service space and, and where they want to live and breathe and build their careers and take care of their families? So certainly we might have some external vulnerability around hiring. Once we have them hired, then we've got to train them. And we're seeing more and more companies that are getting better and better with in house training. And as a blue collar member, you know, if you're a member of blue collar, you Know that we've got the best training in the industry inside the new portal that was launched in, in early 2021 and helping you build internal training programs and departments. You've got some exposure, you've got some, some external training that you know if you've got to go get FAD credits or CEDs and different things like oh my gosh, I've got or CEUs, CED, CEUs, continuing education, different credits and different things. There's some bad trainers out there and I say that with massive empathy because I've worked my entire career of being focused on being one of the best and pouring my heart, soul and energy into my own training education. And now we do the same with the gifted, amazing, talented team that we have at blue collar. But you've got some exposure to external training and what that looks like. How about retaining your team? And so next week I'll talk more about internal vulnerability, but you've got vulnerability retaining because you've got other people that want your team. If you're building a team of badasses, which I'm sure you are, then other people want badasses. Right. So other people are focused on coming and trying to get your top talent and get your. Who's that are making it happen for you. Right. What else? We've got client perception out there that's kind of, you know, somewhat within our control of what we do, what our messaging in is, what our marketing is. But we've got this whole client perception based on what the entire industry does. Right. Remember the butt crack plumber thing? Well, that didn't come from nowhere. That came from client perception of people going under people's sinks and their butt crack hanging out. And then the next thing you know, after that happens a thousand or ten thousand times, suddenly it becomes the way that we view plumbers. And as a drain cleaner at heart and as a. I started as a drain cleaner, then we went into plumbing, then we went into heating and air conditioning. I have massive empathy for trying to bend over under a sink and not show that butt crack. But that's just simply client perception. And so as the clients perceive as our cost of doing business goes up and our prices go up accordingly so we can maintain fair and and generous profits for our industry. There's external perception that happens there. And when I think about hiring, I also think about recruiting perception, external. When you look at the labor pool and the labor market, you know, we've had college education has just been force down people's throat. Now I've been saying For a while. I'm going to continue to say over the next few years, I believe that we're going to see a massive shift in higher education. I think there will be some reform that takes place when it comes to higher education because now we have generations of people, we kind of, you know, got to watch it. I'm in my early 50s. I have the gift of being able to see the generation that I came from where it was like, yeah, you probably ought to get a college degree, Kenny, because you're probably going to be a loser if you don't get one. And all the good jobs are going to go to people that have college degrees. And good for me, I was a good baseball player. So I got a six month or a one semester ride to a college and then quickly flunked my way out of that and moved on and never ended up getting a college degree. I got a life experience and I became an entrepreneur and I worked my ass off. And fortunately I was able to elevate my consciousness and create a certain level that I now have the benefit of creating jobs. And I've been doing it since I was 22 years old. And so I'm very blessed in that capacity. But I also watched the message was you kind of had to go get a degree. Then I got the gift of watching people that were younger than me that kind of hit the time where you have got to get a degree, otherwise you're not going to be employable. You can't get any kind of a job, you're not going to have any kind of a life if you don't get a degree. And the better degree you get, meaning more expensive, right? Has nothing to do with the education, but it has to do with the status of the university or the, the frat club or the football team or go fill in the blank, whatever it is. Right now, the higher education you get, the more the, you know, the better job you're going to get all that, which means the more student loan debt that you're going to have, but you're going to pay it off quickly because you're going to get that great job right now. Please understand, I'm not dogging higher education. I'm not dogging anybody that has student loan debt or goes through it. I'm just sharing a perspective of a revolution that is coming or a reform at least that is coming and why. So then we take that generation and we go through, and now we've got millennials having kids in the workforce, buying their first homes. As, as I Speak. One of the things driving the housing market through 2021 wasn't just a pandemic and a lot of free money out there, but there was also millennials buying their first homes. And now millennials are sitting there going, well, hang on, wait, I've got the student loan debt and I want this mortgage, and now I can buy less of a home because I have the student loan debt. But I'm also working down the hall from so and so who didn't get a college degree, got a little life experience or has an associate's degree, and then and so on and so forth. And so, as we continue to evolve in the trades, we've gotta make sure that we are marketing externally for coming into the trades and helping people realize, yeah, you can be a few years into this thing with no debt and making a great living in a predictable environment in a recession, proof and a pandemic, proof, so on and so forth type of a situation. So regardless of your own beliefs and how you think the higher education reform may take place, what I'm telling you is there is massive opportunity. Massive opportunity. There's a lot of people out there going, oh, we've never been more vulnerable than we are right now for getting people in the trades. Yes, we've been this vulnerable for the 30 some years I've been playing in this, in this space. The difference is other industries are now having hiring problems. We've been having hiring problems since the beginning of time. Right. Or for a long, long time anyway. And so, you know, I don't remember a time in my career. I got into my first drain cleaning company in April of 1994, and I had a hard time adding people to my company. I had a hard time convincing people that they should want to play in the sewer game that was. I've been through massive ups, massive downs, the Great Recession, everything in between. And now there just happens to be attorneys that are having a hard time hiring people. There's doctor's offices that can't fill their, their quota, so on. And so now all of a sudden, it's become national news. And therefore in our industry, we tend to think that it's worse than it actually is. It's not any worse than it ever was. We just have a perception that it is. And the story that you tell yourself becomes the truth. How about you become the strongest company? How about you eliminate some of your external vulnerability? Regardless whether it's competition, it's marketing, it's hiring, it's training, it's retention, it's client perception. It's recruiting perception, whatever that is. Let's just take a look at it. Let's start hedging it. Let's be mindful of it. And next week in Part three, I'm going to talk to you about internal vulnerability and how to really address and fix these things. Thank you. Thank you so much for being with me. Episode 94, Business Vulnerability, Part 2 External Exposure until we talk, my friend, do me a favor and make me a solid. Kick this over to somebody that this might be able to help and make our listenership grow. I appreciate you. Until we talk, make it a better than fantastic day. I'll see you soon.