Why 80% of companies don't deserve to be in business w/ Adam Sand Ep. 190

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What's up, everybody? Welcome to another interview for the Big Stud podcast. We appreciate you guys tuning in. And the podcast continues to grow. You know, we're. We're not hitting like, you know, any kind of crazy numbers. We're hitting like 10 to 12,000 downloads a month right now. And that's because you guys, as the audience, continue to share, talk about, and support the message. Like, we. I was actually just got done recording and Ask Mike Anything episode with Nate and just kind of thinking about, like, I've been doing this since 2019. I've done 300, like 60 episodes of a podcast and still have something to talk about. And big part of that is bringing on guests that I continue to meet along the journey because, look, I can have different perspectives and I can share different things. And the Ask Mike Anything has been great episodes because you guys, as the audience have brought. Brought really great questions, which a lot allows us to have a different conversation than what we would just normally navigate towards. You know, these guest interviews have been great. You know, we're probably close to 200 guest interviews we've done, you know, over the course of the last couple years. And like, that's been a journey, it's been a grind. It's been a struggle. If anybody who creates consistent content knows, you know, I. It's. It's hard, but, you know, it allows me to jump on and have great conversations with people like today's guest, who I met for the first time last year. But look, you guys as the audience, make this whole thing worth it. You know, yes, I have gained clients because of the podcast. Yes, I have gained clients because of the 500 plus YouTube videos I've put out. The content's part of the game. But ultimately, you guys continue to come back and engage in it and enjoy it and learn from it is why I do it. You know, back when I was getting very little downloads and I was making very little money on this effort, you know, it was the same, same intent. My goal is make an impact, and you guys as my audience are a big reason I do that. And watching the audience grow and has been an enjoyable experience, to be honest. You know, putting in this effort, if it wasn't growing, it would feel a lot less worth it. But because of you guys continuing to share, continuing to like, continuing to leave reviews, that's why it continues to grow. So you don't know who needs to hear the message that resonated with you. So if you hear an episode, whether it's a Mike's money motivation, an interview and ask Mike anything. If you something landed with you, share it. Someone in your audience who you maybe have never talked to before needs to hear the message. And yes, it helps me grow my audience. Yes, there's absolutely selfishness to this. But, you know, ultimately we put out a lot of great things and, you know, people like the guests come in and volunteer their time. They don't get paid for this, and it helps them grow their brand just as much as it helps me. So if you're an audience member who's been getting value from this, please do your job. Share, like, comment, engage, whatever. Do something to help somebody else get the message that you're benefiting from today. But today's guest is somebody that I, I met in person at an event I spoke at and in, I'm pretty sure was Indianapolis last year, was a one of Jen Silver's events and didn't really know him beforehand. He's big like me, so he stands out in a room. You know, he's got big broad shoulders, so you can't really hide. You put him in like those little chairs at hotels. He just stands out. So, you know, he stood out to me. He was engaged. He listened to what I had to say, which you can tend to see in the audience when people are actually caring and engaging and giving you the respect that you want as a speaker. And they're making eye contact, they're paying attention, they're taking notes. And, you know, as a speaker, that's a really. It stands out because you don't always get audiences that, that engage. And so he. And then we've been probably, you know, I don't think we've even engaged back and forth on social media. More just followed. You know, I've been following his journey. I'm sure he's been following some of mine. And, you know, over the course of last year, he made a post recently that really just struck me on the amount of effort he's put in to get his brand where it is. You know, he's been traveling for almost 18 months straight. Not occasionally, not every week, not a couple days a week, like pretty much consistently throughout that time period, he's built a brand around bringing technology to roofing companies. So. Adam sand, welcome to the interview, man.

Hey, man, thanks a lot. And I love how you mentioned the, the conference and the watching you speak, because I take two great prides in how I handle myself at a conference. I always want to remain forever a student because you don't know what you don't know. And it's always. There's always an opportunity to learn something. But then the other thing I like to do is I also like to take the souls of people on stage. I try and stare at them in the eyes and watch them for two reasons. One, so, yeah, they might notice I'm listening to. I like to see if I can mess them up. Tim Brown, nothing more fun. Staring at him in the eyes and watching him slip up when he knows I'm watching him super intently. And just when I know that I'm like, got you. There's a part of me that loves doing that to people. It also lets me know how. How confident they are in their material. Because sometimes people get up and they feel unsure of themselves and what they're speaking about. And I almost know how serious to take their. Their presentation if I can slip them up simply by paying attention, by just looking at them in the eyes so that when they, you know, gaze throughout the room and do the whole, like, am I right? You know? Yeah, they kind of can do that. If they do that with me and then they notice me, like, super intensely staring at them. And if it messes them up, I go, all right, well, let's see what he has to say.

Because you. You have a very unemotional face, right? So, like, you're staring, but you're not. Like, your facial expressions are just, like, muted. There's, like, nothing happening. And you, like I said, you don't hide in a crowd, right? Like, just like me, like, you walk in, like, you just stand out just because we're just got big shoulders, loud, you know, deep voice, right? You just stand out. So, like, people, their eyes gonna catch you from stage. I don't think you slipped me up, though, if I remember correctly.

No, no, you did. You did. You did good. Yeah, there was. There was no messing. There was no messing you up, so that was good. You definitely knew what you were talking about.

That's the first I've ever heard anybody that actually admit the fact that from the audience they're trying to slip up the speakers. I can see Tim absolutely, like, catching your eyes and like, like slipping up a little bit. I can see that happening.

Yeah, it's. It's. It's. It's. It's one of the. It. It's. Because the. It's. The benefit for me is twofold. One, I generally pick up and learn more. If I. If I try to be the most active listener and pay super hard attention to the speaker and try to connect to the speaker, that benefits me, then If I can also have this six sadistic soul taking thing that also happens, it makes it more fun for me to be.

Are you tracking like your success rate on, like, how many people you actually get to slip up?

No, but you know what? I should start.

You should start doing that.

It be fun to have. It would be fun to have a little running list of souls taken. Yeah.

All right.

Well, I've never said that out loud before. It's fine.

Well, hey now, you know, a very, you know, decent sized audience, I'm gonna say. The whole world's gonna hear that. No, that's not true either, but hopefully Tim will.

Yes.

All right, so. So roofing business partners is RBP is what you typically post about, right. And it's a mission that you've been on for. How long have you been doing that? Like, I don't need the whole backstory, but like, how long have this been something?

I appreciate not having to tell the backstory because that's where every podcast host starts.

I hate it. I just want to know how long.

16 minutes. Yeah, basically we. It was something I did as a side hustle for six and a half years or so. And then in December. On December. In December of 2021 is when it officially became my full time gig.

Oh, so you went from like side hustle to like, I'm on a road show for. For the foreseeable future?

Yeah, it was. I. I also owned a roofing company in the city, and there's a long story that I'll tell there someday, but basically me and my business partner, you know, we just had different visions for the business. I wanted to be huge. He wanted a lifestyle business and I can totally appreciate why he wanted that lifestyle business. Wife, no wife, two kids. You know, he's got to take care of these two kids. He was, you know, he was a shingler, you know what I mean? So he was. Never had big dreams, you know, he just didn't want to have a boss.

You know, he couldn't see the next roof. Basically. He was just like, we gotta get this right installed and then next one.

Yeah. And I just, I just, I have like these bigger dreams, so to speak. And so we just could never see eye to eye on where to invest our time, energy. And so we just agreed that it would, you know, the long story made sure is that we agreed to just go our different directions and sort that out. And then that meant that while I was on site rolling out a CRM in the winter, which is when I usually did, this was a Winter side hustle. We made the decision to do that, and then that officially became like, all right, well, I guess I'll figure this out. And I drew a. Drew a line on a map and said, hey, roofers, this is where I'm going. And if anybody wants to meet up along the way, let's meet up. It's because I had sold two more CRMs. When me and my partner made this decision. I had two CRMs, one in Syracuse, New York, and one in Fort Wayne, Indiana. And so I kind of had those two sold. And I said, well, I'm starting in Los Angeles because that's where I fly back from Hawaii. And me, my wife, and my dog basically spent 10. 10 months driving across the country and worked. You know, we had about two and a half months to make our way to Syracuse, New York. And so it's like we had met up along the way and built a business as we went.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

All right, so, like, why were you so sure that was the path? Like, and I mean this respectfully. I'm not knocking CRMs, but, like, from. From somebody who's been in sales for 20 years, I've coached hundreds of companies through different technologies and CRMs, like, they're. I know this is not. This is a broad statement, but, like, they're all kind of the same, and they're all kind of different. Right. And it can become a very convoluted environment to become a subject matter expert in. Right. Because it's. There's so many variables and so many options and so many, like, the same CRM. One person loved it, one person hated it. Right. So a lot of technology like that either has champions or. Or detractors. Like, there's really very rarely. I was. Okay. I would suggest maybe using it. Like, you get either hate it or love it.

Right.

And so you went all in with your wife and your dog and said, we're gonna drive from LA to Syracuse, New York, and we're gonna go sell CRMs out of the trunk of our car, basically.

I've never heard it put that way, but it's basically it.

And so, like, how did you choose that? Like, because that seems like such a convoluted, kind of very gray wash area where they're all kind of similar, they're all kind of different, and none of them do everything you want them to do. Like, it's like a pretty common theme without plugins and stuff.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You're. You're 100, right? It's like roofers. They're selling the same thing and sold the same way by the same people, use the same tools, same amount of time for the same price. What really makes a roof? Why do. Why does. Why do 80% of roofing companies deserve to exist? I don't believe they do. I don't believe that 80% of roofing companies need to be open because there's nothing that really separates them from each other. And most of it comes down to experience and consistency. Those are the two things that actually make a roofing company stand out is what is the experience with them Deal. How. What is the experience like and how consistent can they deliver on it? And so through the last I, you know, this RBP started out as a podcast that was helping roofers make Facebook ads that eventually turned into I don't want to do it myself. Can you just do it for me? So it became an agency. Then we made people so many, got them so many leads back in the day when, like, Facebook was like shooting fish in a barrel. Um, you know, at one point it really was right. It was just stupid easy. And so then we, so then we, the clients, started under serving their customers. And then we started to fire us because we were getting too many leads. And so then I was like, well, who fires the marketing agency for getting too many leads? Like, that's super weird. And it turns out when we looked at how they ran their business, it was really dumb. You know, they had whiteboards and some. Maybe something kind of CRM. But then it was always like folders and paper and all this kind of stuff. And I was like, that's so busted. And I made an app and sold it when I was young. So I kind of always seen, like, I'm kind of like, if you're a. If you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So I kind of just seen like, what's a software? That seems to me like a software problem, right? So, you know, everything I always looked at is like, well, should be solved with some systems and processes. And so we stood. So I said, well, don't fire me. Keep paying me the same money, and I'll make you a CRM. And so that was the experience that I'd had for the last few years was every winter I would go and fly down to the U.S. and make, make or update our clients CRM softwares. And we really focused on 2 things. Revenue per hour and revenue per capita revenue per employee. And in the. What we found was there were some pretty predictable things that happened when you instituted technology properly. And so we did the whole like, oh, we'll do, we'll build your job nimbus, we'll build your accu links, you know, all those things. And, and what we found is that it was just always we word of mouth, reputation of, oh, Adam's so smart, he can make cool things. And then we ended up disappointing people because turns out I can't do everything because some of the CRMs don't allow it. So then we made a decision about three years ago to stop just to work on the CRM that made allowed us to say no the least often. And what that meant was we could specialize, become really good at it. And so we looked at all the different softwares and we settled on HubSpot as being the main base of all of our builds. And that allowed us to do things to scale up the human effort. And when you, you know, improve the unit economics of delivering a consistent experience, well, then you can make the work a lot more rewarding for the people who work there. But. And you can also engineer a better customer experience. What that translates into is a deeper institutional knowledge within the business. Longer retention, more successful employees, higher earnings, which then allows you to kind of allow everything time to gel and get better because you're not constantly replacing people, because the people who work for you are more successful than the people who work for your competitors. And the owner gets what they want by accident. So it's really, we just set out, we didn't set out to make CRMs for owners. We set out to make the work that their employees did more rewarding through engineering better customer experiences. And the owners got what they want by proxy.

Well, I mean, it's not just customer experience, it's the employee experience too. Like, how easy is it to do the job? Like, how convoluted like we actually talked about today, just ironically, it's just like you have to be easier to do business with, whether you're trying to recruit employees, recruit customers, recruit vendors, you know, whatever it is. Like, you have to be easier to do business with in today's environment because of how consumers are used to engaging with brands they trust. Right. It's just like, yeah, how simple and easy can you be? Can you do business with it? It's as important to the user experience on the employee side, in my opinion, as it is the consumer side and keeping people around.

Absolutely. Think about the young generation today, right? They look at how like they can, they can uphold five group chats, three Snapchat conversations, they got group messages and Instagram, they Can quickly and easily share images and files back and forth shot quickly, underline something, send it back. You know, they can make decisions and plan vacations through group text, but then they come to work for a lot of us and they're forced to work on these antiquated, broken, poorly put together systems that were designed by, you know, in our industry, let's say a roofer, right? Or like maybe the smart kid that you know is the uncle or, you know, or like the nephew of a guy who owns a roofing company. And it's kind of something they've pieced together from what they heard at a conference, something they saw on Facebook, something they might picked up in a group somewhere. And so, you know, our deal customer, our ideal customer avatar is usually a company that's making 15 million or more because that's usually when they have about 14 to 17 systems that are all kind of siloed. Right.

And then there's some on their, their P and L every month they have like 27 different subscriptions under their technology.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so they're, they're like the, at that point, if they've been doing two years of 10% net profit is or better at the $50 million mark range, they figured out customer acquisition. But this, the marginal utility of more money in their bank account is just getting this diminishing rate of return on their happiness. They, you, they go buy another Denali, they can take their wife on a vacation. They could, they could pay $100,000 signing bonus if they wanted to, you know what I mean? To get a great person. But they just wish their business could run the way they've always seen it in their head. And those types of people are the ones that are willing to rip something down to the frame. Like think of like a 1967 Camaro. Like, let's lift the body off, let's take the engine out, let's take the suspension off, let's completely sandblast the frame, no pun intended, and then, and then go through. I just came up with that on the phone.

You need to do, you need to write, let's come sandblast the business. Yeah. And so clean it up.

It's funny because my, my employees have said that, like when they get in trouble with me, they call it getting sandblasted. So that's where I thought of it from. But, but like when you rip something down from the frame, you get to build it back the way you want. You get to say, you know what the 67 Camaro would have been awesome if it had like coilover springs and like a pro touring, like independent rear suspension. But to try and like Franken CRM that shift together, it looks like, it looks like duct taped, you know what I mean? Like it just, it's, it's like sometimes you have to completely like make the space for it. And they have to be tough enough companies that can take a punch because it's 30 days of pain, 60 days of hell, generally a quarter of down sales, you know, turn of about 10% of employees. And it's an 18 month project. And so in there, you know, we kind of have not just been like, oh, we'll build a CRM, but also we build a better business process along the way. Like we really design a better way of doing business and then try and, and really it's like we build. The CRM is kind of like the surface level, you know, flashy thing in the back of the trunk. So as you said, but really what we're doing is we're selling change management, right? Because the tool doesn't matter as much as the process in which you use the tool and the process that, in which you intend to use the tool doesn't matter if we don't get adoption. And so the change management and adoption is really what we're doing. We use the fact that we have a tool that now can do, you know, your CRM could do 100 things, ours can do a thousand. There's 15 things that it can't do that your old CRM did. But because of these other things it can do, how much more time could we save you? So if we could redesign it from the ground up, what would we, how would we change our customer experience? And then by the way, this is a tool that we build it on. You know what I mean? So we kind of like work our way backwards from change management and adoption. And then yeah, I mean the, the results are, are, are really cool to see because we end up with like happier employees and you know, businesses that people are really proud of because they had a chance to go back and rebuild it and just do what they always seen in their head.

No, I mean that's a really, a really well explained reverse engineering of the process for you. And like, so like you just said a lot of things that I want to ask a very specific question about. That kind of puts a bow on several things you just said that you might actually take for granted and may not even realize how important this is, but you have an incredibly clear understanding of your ideal client avatar and the pros and cons, they're going to go through, right? You talked about the pros, but you all talk about the cons. Like it's going to suck for 90 days. You're going have another 90 days of down sales and it's going to take 18 months to go through this process. But you know it, and you know it very confidently. What was the process you went through? Like, more. This is more of an entrepreneurial question more than specific CRM. But you have a very clear understanding who your ideal avatar is, which means that you're very confident in what will and won't work, why it will and won't work, and what the impact of that activity is going to be, which most business owners struggle figuring out no matter how long they've been in business. You know, identifying their ideal client, what, what the pain points are, what the pros are, what the cons are. And you just basically summed it up in like a, like, literally a five minute little, little tidbit there. So how did you get there and how did you become so confident and not have the shiny object syndrome of we're selling CRM on the back of our car, we need to make money? I assume you were in a need to make money type position, Right. But you still were able to qualify and quantify what is right for you, which I think you might be underestimating how valuable that part of the process was. And maybe you get it, but how.

Did you think that it. I think a couple of things is that a lot of the stuff that I've done my whole life, whether, you know, was military, running a tennis lawn, making an app, you know, car industry, whatever, everything I've done, I felt like I did because I had to do it. This is the first thing I did because I chose to. And so if I was going to choose to do something, I wanted to design it. And it wasn't like I was completely, you know, ever. You know, it wasn't like I was totally able to see around all the corners and predict the future, but there was a certain element of design that came with it. And then it. Then there was some experience, you know what I mean? Like, one of the lessons that we learned along the way of that drive was some of our qualifying questions that we did to even enrich that ideal client avatar even more, because it became about the people that work there, right? So now we ask like, okay, you have three types of employees. You know, you've got ones who love technology and want to see how it can Help them do their job. Two, people who tolerate technology and understand it's a part of their job. Three, people who hate technology and wish they could go back to pen and paper. 50% of your employees have to be in the first category. 70% have to be in the first two. Only 30% or less can be in the third. Because this isn't about you, it's about your people. And if we're really in the business of selling change management, you need to have at least you plus the 50% outvote the rest. And the 70% or better means that when those 30% find themselves on one of a few islands, which is they're slow to adopt. Sally, they're I don't want to do it dawn. Or they just quit, you know what I mean? And so really like finding these Personas that exist in the businesses allowed us to more quickly identify who, whether people would be successful doing, you know, engaging with us or not and then really how much pain and misery we were going to put ourselves through. There's nothing worse than like sitting there being responsible for trying to sell this like dream outcome and having like Some you know, 58 year old sales guy literally falling asleep, you know, while you're teaching him how to use the configure price quote software or they're showing up 15 minutes late answering their phone in the middle, you know, texting all the way and you're just like dude, like this isn't going to work for you. And you know, what we understood was that they don't care, they don't want it to. And so we actually have to turn people down because you know, they have kept the wrong people in their business and we will not be effective. And that's really, really, really hard to, to say to people. And it's even worse when you've signed a six figure contract and now you're stuck there dealing with the worst kind of people imagine imaginable. So it's both a bit of like by design and picking up experience along the way with where the flaws in our design were and then kind of tertiary that is also paying for it, paying for as much knowledge as possible. Like paying people going to conferences, paying coaches, consultants. Like we've spent you know, to date $190,000 on coaching and consultants probably closer to 230, somewhere between 190 and $230,000 in coaching consultants in the last 12 months to make it so that we would have access to learn the lessons. Right. Like the light bulb above me, you know, that Took an entire lifetime for that guy to make that light bulb. Now for 50 cents, we get to buy the lesson and we get to work into the wee hours of the night building our dreams and passions. You know, that, that less that is such a simple explanation for it. But like how many lessons and dumb tax and slow tax can I avoid paying by buying the lessons? So when you take like design plus tracking and learning lessons, being willing to be humbled and learn your lessons, like if you don't, never waste a good opportunity to learn a lesson, never waste a good mistake, right? And then on top of that, then avoid as much dumb tax and slow tax as possible by paying for other people's lessons and mistakes. I think has been a little bit of like the trifecta of what's making things seem like somewhat of an accelerated rate of success for us. But I mean, at the end of the day, I'm 39 years old. I've learned a few things along the way as well.

No, I mean it's definitely a combination of both. Like I think you need the sponge there for a coach or consultant to even matter, right? Like if you're, you're a rock, right? Like you're not interested in absorbing anything, you just know it all or the ignorance or you just feel like you can't learn, like that's, that's a bad starting spot. Like as a coach, consultant, I've been doing this full time for five years. You know, you see different avatars like you said, right, that, that either absorb or don't. So you know, you're the lessons you learn the hard way is what softens you up a little bit to be the sponge to learn some lessons the easy way. But let's, let's talk a little bit. So like as a, as an entrepreneur yourself, you've had to go through some tough challenges and changes. One of the biggest pushbacks I get from clients about implementing change, whether it's technology or not, is the potential pushback from like their long term employees. Right? So you talked about the three layers of sales reps, right? This dude's been me for like five or 10 years. Like he's not going to want to do this, but he's been great for us. How do you help overcome that? Because it's not just technology changes that does that. I mean, that's a big part of what you bring. But a lot of business owners, entrepreneurs out there struggle implementing change specifically with what I would consider legacy employees, people who were with you in the previous season and maybe are not what you need in the next season, if that makes sense. Right. What got you here is not going to get you there. That's a really hard thing for a lot of entrepreneurs to overcome. How do you help bridge that gap to them or help them see it differently in order to help them make those changes? Because I mean, I'm sure you run into that just as much as I do.

Yeah, you bet you. The seed of the answers were in everything you just said. Because I know you've had to deal with this because you, you said the answer in the way that you positioned the question. And so I guess to kind of point out what you, what you said for those in the audience who maybe didn't pick it up. And we deal with this with when we convert to inside outside sales because with the capability of the tool we can convert to an inside outside sales model. Which means now suddenly you have a 50 year old sales guy who realizes that he's a picture taker, note taker, presentation maker and there's people in the background who are going to do his follow up and introductions and appointments setting and all that. And now they have to make a team like relationship with this 20 year old girl under the belief that this system is going to work better. Right. And so we have to go through this and the business owners, you're right, are always like, well we're going to keep this guy on this legacy pay plan or we're going to like let him do it that way and have this new thing this way. And, and you know, in the way that you said the question is like in this season of, you said in this season of business, what got you here won't get you there. You're, you're absolutely pointing it out right there. It's like this. What got you to this point in your business and all the problems that led to you seeking the answers from someone like myself was because you understood the inherent vulnerability in your business. Because you have legacy. Legacy, Larry, that just stays stuck in his way and that you can't duplicate.

You have like this full list of charact that you have like legacy layers.

Yeah, we have them. We have, we have, we have them as Personas and HubSpot. Do it for me, Danny. Like that way we can, we all know who we're talking to. Someone else comes to the CRM and they look at somebody right at the top it says Persona. And so if you can see, like.

That'S funny, you know what I mean?

Like so yeah, it's like shiny ball Sean. This is the customer who's going to send us messages every day being like, hey, have you heard of this new app? And like, you can tell they haven't even gone to the website yet, but they just like heard, heard of it. Now they want me to procure it and send seldom if it's good or not. But so yeah, I love, I love Persona. So, right. So if you, so if you have this legacy Larry that doesn't want to, doesn't want to change, you have to. I find that what works for me is I say, hey, you know, legacy Larry, is what led you here to begin with is that you understand the inherent vulnerability in that and that in that season of your business, you needed people who you could just plug and play, install and you built your business around them. And now you're here, which means you're building your business around what is the best possible customer experience that you can deliver for your market, you know, and what is the best and what is the most efficient process in which for you to process a unit of business. And then the people you hire have to fit the role. So this is the difference between hiring an all star player. You know, it's like, look at the Kansas City Chiefs, right? They traded some great players, but then they got some role players in, right? And they played today, they recruited around their playbook, not around players. And when you recruit around the playbook, then you find it easier to duplicate the people in your business and you can measure them based on their magnitude of the impact that they have on the playbook that you're running, not the, their what they bring as unique, special snowflakes in your business. And so that fear has to be battled against the fact that if your business can't survive without legacy Larry, if you have that fear, then do you even really own a business? And so the only way for you to prove to yourself that you're actually a real CEO is to do the exact thing that scares you the most, is get rid of legacy Larry and build a business around these brand new people you don't have. And when you challenge them to do that, they either rise to the occasion or don't. And then you find out what people are made of and then they know if I pick the right customer or not. You know what I mean? So I try and have these conversations earlier in the buying process rather than after I show up on site. I mean.

Very well said. You just punch some people in the mouth for sure. I love it.

Yeah, I, I mean, it's a lot of a Lot of doing businesses eating glass and staring into the abyss as, like, Elon Musk says, Right. And so it, like he, he coined that statement or coined it from someone else, but he, he says that. And there's a lot of truth in that. It's like our businesses are kind of built together by continuing to duct tape on solutions to problems over the years. Like, one person farted. Now everybody wears rubber pants. But then we need someone to make sure that there's a rubber pants inventory guy. And then we have. We spend. We're spending a lot of money on red rubber pants. So then we need to have an accounts, accounts payable person who's maintained the relationship with the rubber pants people and procuring a better relationship for rubber pants pricing. So we're not spending too much on rubber pants. And meanwhile, it's like we don't focus on the upstream problem that's causing this. Right. I did this live the other day, you know, talking about it, where it's like a lot of business owners will solve problems like this. So they pull up on the side of the river, and it's one of the rivers running through their business. And they notice that there's people getting tossed into the river and they're drowning. And so they pull over and they drag a person out of the river. And then they get that person aside and they look and there's two more people going down the river. So they swim out and grab the other two and pull them to the side. And by then, the first person's kind of caught their breath, like, what's going on? Oh, there's a guy up the river throwing people in the river. And so he goes, oh, gosh. And then there's another two people. So he swims out and helps. One says, hey, can you help me grab this other person? They do. Another person pulls over, hey, can you. Can you come help me pull these people out of the river? And these are the employees that we hire. We help get them to help us, you know, pull people out of the river. And we go and get another person. And then finally someone comes along and says, I'm going to go. Stop throwing. Stop that guy from throwing people in the river instead of us all just taking turns swimming people to the side. And sometimes business owners go even further. Instead of recruiting more people to help pull them out of the river, they'll get someone help them tie a rope across the river to try and make it so that the people can pull themselves out, or at least they can have a rope to help Them pull the people out, they will literally go around to the point of designing systems to help make it easier to pull people out of the river before they hypothesize. Can we stop that? Sometimes that's Legacy Larry doing paperwork, taking four photos and signing contingency review, and walking in like he's the dawn of all sales gods. Right? And it's like, really, he's just throwing, Tossing people in the river and then counting on the rest of the business to pull them out before they drown and die. And it's like if someone just went and took, you know, Legacy Larry behind the woodshed, put one between his ears, they could put three people up at the top and nobody would be ending up in the river. Yeah, I mean, like, and. And they probably reduce their cost of sales, improve their customer experience, and have a more duplicatable team that they could then, you know, churn people out more often and then gradually increase the magnitude of those people's impact. I just love this conversation because it's. It is, it is the reason 80 of roofing companies don't deserve to exist is because they. We lack such leadership in this business. And that's not something I teach or coach on, but it's a, It's a really, It's a lack of leadership and, and grit as an entrepreneur that causes these weak solutions to problems like tying a rope across the river rather than being a leader going upstream saying, hey, stop throwing people in a river. Pardon me, I. I don't know if he's swearing this.

Oh, you're more than welcome. We. We will not be editing that out. You clearly have not listened to many of the podcasts episodes I put out. But, you know, look, I don't think it's. I don't think that problem or issue is secluded to roofing companies. You know, I coach home service companies across all spectrums of the, of the, of the industry. You know, there's plenty of people that even after they sign up for help, still don't want to do the work. They're just like, you know, they don't, they don't want to. They don't want to change. They want the results to change. They don't want to change. You know, that person who's taking the easiest thing in front of their mind is. Part of. It is ignorance in general. Just. They don't know. They don't know. Right. If, if all they've ever seen is ropes be thrown across the river, to use your analogy, they never even consider that the person throwing people in could be stopped. You know, so sometimes it's. It's their own environment, it's their own perspective. It's, you know, you hear this a lot. Well, it didn't work for that person, so I can't do it. Right. So maybe one of their competitors or one of their friends went to try to stop the guy from throwing people in and got punched in the mouth and came back saying, that guy's a meaty bleeding and it doesn't want to do anything about it. So the other guy's like, well, I can't go. I can't go. Take that guy on.

Right.

And so some of it is just like you said, paying for the help, paying for the advice, paying to get people involved, paying sometimes just borrow confidence. Like I don't want to say a substantial amount of time, but a lot of time. I'm sure you as well see this with our clients. The advice we gave, they had already considered but then talked themselves out of.

Yep, that's actually a really good point.

And so you're basically, you're giving them the confidence or the borrowed confidence to say no, that's a great decision. Do that. Here's the challenges you're going to see, because I've been through that, right. The pros. And this is going to be 30 days of hell. This is going to be 60 days of an incredible difficult training with your team. You are going to have attrition and it is going to take 18 months, but it is going to be worth it because if you don't know if the step you're taking is right, the first sign of friction, you're going to say, oh, that was wrong. And so it's incredible what you can have by just bringing people in who have been through the journey, have seen what works and what doesn't work, have seen the risks and how to avoid or overcome them a lot of times by dealing with the impact of that risk or failure yourself. And like, I've never heard anybody say the actual, like 80 of roofers don't deserve to be in business, but you ain't wrong. But that's not just roofers. That ain't just.

That doesn't make. That doesn't make a lot of people popular. And it certainly doesn't sell by the user SaaS product.

No, it doesn't, but it does is it aligns yourself with the 20%, which is what I said earlier. Who is your target audience? Who does agree that they're tired of having to sell against the. That their competitors put somebody through because it creates an. Like, I'm a coach. Right. You're a consultant. Right? We are. We're not just selling against the problem we're trying to fix. We're selling against all the stories, all the letdowns, all the previous investments. They didn't get anything from that top 20% of roofers know 80 shouldn't be there. And, and they want to understand that. And they'll align with you because you understand your target audience. If you were trying to sell to the 80%, you couldn't say that. But you're not. Like, you as a person are not. You're trying to sell to the 20, that 20 agrees with you.

Yeah. And that's, that's how we've had to really find. Yeah, we've had to find the confidence to say, okay, if we truly want to serve, you know, if we want to truly solve for the minimum viable numbers, minimum viable number of players required are needed in any given market, you know, to create the maximum upward mobility for the employees of those companies. If that's like our true vision of the future, then we need to be able to design the business in such a way that I can't be scared to offend people because I'm trying to keep people in my 300amonth school for roofers, you know what I mean? And I don't have any problem with like people trying to up level the baseline performance of the roofing industry because that is good for the industry overall. So if people want to sell these, you know, programs that help, you know, like, like Dimitri's school, you know, Dimitri is a close friend and, and he sells a valuable product. He, he gets, he at least stops people from making the dumbest of dumbest rookie mistakes which ultimately bring down the industry, which make roofers untrustworthy, all those stupid things that sometimes they do when they get started in their first year, he can help them avoid that. But that isn't my business model, you know what I mean? And my business model isn't to make a software product that charges $24 a user. That's company count as business model. They can't say what I say, you.

Know what I mean?

Like, because they're, they need to align with the industry as it exists. I want to align with the industry as I see it in the future, which is, you know, 97 million people in 25 counties. I don't. That's 17,460,000 households. I don't think that that's a $10 billion residential market alone. That's not Safeway and Seven Eleven and churches and community centers and federal state buildings and libraries. That's just homes. That $10 billion market, I don't believe needs to be served by more than, I mean, I always say 500 to not offend people, but I don't even know if it needs to be more than 50, you know, but because really it's just about staying organized. You know. What I mean is how do we keep, how do you organize that much? Usually we have to give people a CEO on their, on their business card to have them just have the grit to kind of get through organizing two or three crews, you know what I mean? Organizing two or three sales guys. But if we can build systems and technology that can make it easier. It's kind of like cab companies, right? Like cab companies. And I, everybody loves to use Uber, an example. So I, I try not to go down this road too much. But you know, with, with something like Uber, you used to have, you know, local dispatchers where Gertrude got on the phone, she was smoking a cigarette and she could tell where the whole city was. And you had cab drivers who kind of. I have, I have a buddy who's a cab driver and he knew every pothole and, and mailbox and colorful landmark in the city. He could be your navigation before there was navigation on people's phones. And you know, you used to need these highly skilled people that were really not well paid because they were the only people who knew the city, you know, and then now Uber come when the technology's in the right place at the right time, something like Uber can come along and eliminate the need for that, like super, you know, well informed cab driver or that dispatcher who's really good at like keeping the boys on the right track and knowing who, who they, where they are and what they're doing, who they, you know, that kind of thing. And, and you don't need somebody who can quote fares over the phone, you know, and all this kind of stuff. You can use the technology to, to, you know, scale up the human effort and then you measure that with revenue per employee to see like, are we eliminating the need for human beings from this process such that we can make a business that scales up the human, the unit economics of the business, right? To decrease the amount of human effort to process that unit of business. Then we know if the technology is performing the way it should be because we're trying to do stuff that's never been done. So it's really just a test and measure game in as Many markets as possible. But I think that when you do that, some of these guys who own roofing businesses would actually love to be the marketing guy, you know, because you always see them in the groups trying to talk about marketing stuff or you see them talking the groups about making video or they would really like to be a commercial project manager or they really just like to name that shingle expert. And they would really just be better working in the claims department of like gigantic roof company X, you know, because they really have certain passions. But there was either a low paying job with no opportunity for advancement or starting a roofing company. So they chose the option B and they didn't necessarily belong there.

It's just like any, any technology that's come through though is like the technology itself is not going to put people out of a job. It's the people who learn how to use it is going to put, put people out of a job. Like you said, it's, you're not firing everybody, you're minimizing your per unit capita, right? It's how many people does it take to execute the process? So it's not the software itself, it's not the technology itself that's going to put people out of business. Like some people have that victim mentality of like this is going to put me out of a job. No, someone who learns how to use this tool is going to put you out of a job. And so, and no matter what you're building, no matter like because I'm actually having a podcast recording I think later today actually with somebody who's like wildly against Chat GPT in the AI world because of what it's doing and how it's, you know, creating very lazy approach to business and life and communication and marketing and everything else. But the program itself, you know, Chat GPT specifically is not going to put anybody out of business. It's going to put people who don't know how to use it out of business.

Well, yeah, like that conversation, I would love to talk to that person because I think that they're seeing is, they're seeing the, the just the inexperience is the problem, right? People are, are seeing AI and for its power in composition, right? But there's really like five things that are required to like make something real. You have like ideation, then research, then composition, then refinement, then distribution. Any kind of idea of any kind of like blogs are obviously easy thing with AI to talk about, but it's like sure, you can go like write me a blog headline, write Me five blog topics. Write me, you know, a paragraph for each of these five blog headlines. You know, write me an introduction, write me a conclusion, you know, and then finally format autocorrect, spit into surfer, SEO it and then post. You know, that's like the laziest, easiest approach. But then what happens if you, you reinvest the time you used to spend on composition into ideation and research, refinement and editing. Well then all of a sudden this becomes a tool that produces better content because most of the crap that's getting put up nowadays is just written by robots to optimize for robots. So you can get a better SEO ranking from the Google robots. We could actually use AI to start, start making better content for humans because we actually, you know, reinvest the composition time to ideation and research refined.

Look, you could say the same thing about the Google for people who used to have to go to the library to read encyclopedias for information. You know what I mean? Like at some point they were like, well, they're not gonna have to go read anything, they're just gonna get a answer, right? So like it's unavoidably the next piece of technology that you need to understand.

Of course. Because how much faster do we solve arguments and, and work our way to solutions when we can just quickly say, well, I don't know, I really think that like this is a mitochondria does. Well, I don't know. I think this is what mitochondria does. And then, and then now these two personal trainers can have an argument about lactate threshold and come to the correct answer relatively quickly with a Google search. But then they can more quickly come up with a workout program for a customer, for a sports team that they're coaching, because they could, they can quickly shore up the gaps in their knowledge without having to drive to a library, rip through a book, you know, figure out the Dewey decimal system and then we'll find the answer. Google it, you know, look, and accelerates the pace at which we solve problems.

You talked earlier about three different Personas of a business, right? I don't remember them exactly, but it was like the quick learners, the slow learners, and the not interested in learners, right? This is gonna be the same thing. You're gonna have people that utilize it for good, you're gonna people that utilize it for bad, you're gonna people that take the lazy approach and put out inaccurate information because they're just going to copy and paste the first answer that they get from chat GPT and you're going to the people that don't want to use it at all. And they're all right and they're all wrong in my opinion. Depending on what your outcome in as a person, like what are you trying to accomplish in life? What money do you want to make, what lifestyle do you want to have, what type. What type of people do you want to be around? They're all right and they're all wrong depending on what their desired outcome is. What I hate and what frustrates the out of me is, is people that don't want to change but then and moan that they don't have. That's the person that drives me up a wall. Because people like you who left their, left their, Their comfort of their, their, Their employment and drove cross country earned it. You evolved. Every stop along that journey, you evolved to what needed to happen for your mission in your life to come true. Which is, I'm sure there's financial outcomes you want relationship outcomes you want people outcomes you want impact outcomes you want. You evolved along the way to get it. You don't want to learn that, you don't want to go through that, that journey, fine, I'm not judging you. But then shut the up. When I have more than you. That's the part that drives. But I don't think any one of those individual Personas are wrong. I just think there are people that get stuck in the wrong Persona but then want the results of a different.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's. They don't like the, the insidious thing about victimhood is that you're right. Right. Yeah, that's. But now what? Okay, great. And so you're right, you're a victim. But now what does this. True, this truth might be evident, but does it serve you? You know what I mean? Tom Bilyeu wrote a blog article a long time ago that kind of got him on the map and it really was because he said if you. His blog post headline was if you go out at night and get hit by a drunk driver, it's your fault. And everybody got really mad about that. And he said, you know what? It's like, you're right. You, you could come up with 38 reasons why it's not your fault that you got hit by a drunk driver, but the personal growth and mindset that it takes to, to take responsibility for something that you really didn't do to yourself. What comes from that is a sense of personal responsibility that will benefit you in the other 99.99 of of situations where you usually would default to victimhood. And that was really powerful for me because, you know, a lot of people would say, well, you can't have a good relationship. Me and my wife had some of the best memories of our life. You know, sleeping in my Yukon in between stops because there was no decent hotels and try, you know, trading spots, driving and working in the back seat with 150 pound dog breathing in our ear. We had the most fun ever. We got engaged, married and pregnant while on the road.

Are you like, are you like writing a book? Did you like take notes and on this? Because like, you definitely need to write a book.

I mean it's, it, it. I mean it could be. It's not something I've necessarily sat down and said I should write a book. But I mean it's like, I mean it was sure be. It sure, sure made an interesting story that I've been interested in. In.

No, someone needs to hear that story to give them some perspective on what they're actually dealing with in their lives.

Yeah. Because I mean we, we built, I mean we built this great life. I mean, yeah. Now we moved to a place in Hawaii and you know, we've emigrated to the United States and working our way towards eventually citizenship. So we can maybe. Right now we're working like visas, but visas go to green cards go to citizens and citizenship and stuff like that. So you know, we've, we've, we've done it all with, with all of that. And I mean we like, like I said, like, we got engaged on the road. You know, we got married on the road. Right. We just walked into, we just basically met up with some friends and went into a chapel and got married. And we have like, we have like the funniest story behind our engagement. The funniest story behind our marriage. We found God on the road. We, you know, some people want a mission to spread the word of God. We went on a mission to hear it. And so I'm not trying to make this into a preachy thing, but I'm just saying like, like everything that you think is a natural barrier or a obvious no, that could never happen because is usually in negotiation is usually quite negotiable. There's this guy who, he's one of the sherpas that takes people up Everest. And he got really annoyed about all these like rich white people. You know, I'm not like one of these, like, I'm not like the, the person who usually says that, but like, he's basically sick of all these Rich people would come there and basically pay to go up Everest, and the Sherpas do all the work. And so he went and did all these, like, seven summits. These are the seven summits that are like, oh, they're like, crazy high. I can't remember the thing. But basically, they're, like, the hardest things to do. And he went and did them all in a year. And some people haven't been able to do them all in a lifetime. And he did them all in a year's time. And he was like. He went to this one mountain where the weather was blowing in. It was their only window to be able to climb this mountain. All these other experienced climbers were like, no, we're not going. And he's like, well, I came here with this specific intent to climb this, and I got to keep going, climb the next one, the next one, next one. So I have to do this. So I'm. I will go up there, and I will help you guys get up there if you want. They're like, no, we can't. He said, look, sometimes you think you're. And you're really only 45. And sure, he went up there and he climbed it, and it was a show. And someone. And someone else who went up there not with him, but someone else who went up there went up there and died. And. And no, because it wasn't.

It wasn't the time frame he did it. And it was also, like, how fast he did each one was, like, unheard of fast.

Yeah, it was. Yeah, it was. Crazy story. I remember. I. I can't remember.

It's a documentary. It's called, like, the Summit or something like that, or Peaks or something like that.

Yeah. And it was like he. He did him in record time. And everybody wants to. Like, it's kind of like the Iron Cowboy. Everybody has their thing that they want to be stuff about. About how he did it or if the. If he did it the right. Right way or not. But just the mindset it took to say, hey, you know what? Sometimes you think you're. And you're really only 45. And that was the last 18 months of my life. You know what I mean? And. And on the other side of it, you know, we built something that has now created employment for a bunch of people, and we've allowed ourselves to get into the room with people that we never could have been able to get into the room with because, you know, we. You chose to live very, very lean driving, you know, living on the road, basically. And that allowed me to pay for education from and to learn from people that, you know, I couldn't have afforded to learn from if I was living in. At a house and all that kind of stuff. But because I basically lived on the road, I had very low living expenses. So if I need. If I wanted to spend $40,000 to learn from a coach for a very short period of time, but have really specific answers to very complex questions, I was, I was able to do that. And that feels like the greatest blessing in my life. And so, I mean, I would just, you know, kind of just say like, you know, people just need to not see so many barriers in their lives and just not be such victims and just have us an enormous. That you live in a country that rewards personal responsibility. That's the one thing that's amazing about this country. That's why I wanted to move here. And if more people could just see that, like, that is what is rewarded for. Like, that is the number one secret to success in this country. That is something that you don't get anywhere else because sometimes it's just your family name. You know, in Canada you can be successful just because. Because of who your parents are. Here the, like the top 50 richest people changes all the time. And most of them are immigrants and most of them are self made. And everybody in life is self made. It just sounds better for some people than others. But this is the one country in the world that rewards personal responsibility above all else. So just look in the mirror and say, you know what if I get hit by a drunk driver, it's my fault and that mindset will help me in every other facet of my life. And then just take the parking brake off your life and get going. 1.

Adam, how can someone get in touch with you if they're interested in seeing how you can help them or how you can bring this passion and energy and knowledge into their business? So obviously you have a very specific avatar we've covered. If someone just has questions, interested in following along on the journey, how the.

Easy way is find me on Facebook. Go to roofing business partner.com if you can't find me. I'm not doing my job, so should be easy to find.

Man. What? That was a really great conversation, man. I really appreciate you taking the time today.

That was enjoyable. I liked it. Thank you very much. I appreciate getting to spend time on some cool topics.

Yeah, no, it's definitely better than like, well, tell me how you started. I like if I have one more Pete person ask me, like how I started my non profit. I'm gonna. I'm just not gonna answer it anymore. Like, I've answered that question, like, 300 times, so. But for you, man, I appreciate coming on. I appreciate getting to spend some time together. Obviously, we. We cross over an industry that I'm sure we'll see more of each other at, so. But thank you for taking the time today. Thank you for making it happen, and we'll talk soon.

Okay? Sounds good. Take care, Mike.

Appreciate it, man.