In this Business Blast podcast episode, host Tyler Wagner interviews Jim Johnson, the head coach of ContractorCoachPRO. The conversation begins with a personal story about Jim’s divorce party, illustrating the value of taking unconventional paths, which led to a 26‑year marriage and a fulfilling family life. Jim then explains his core coaching philosophy: contractors often focus on end results before establishing repeatable processes, leading to chaos when scaling. He emphasizes building documented training programs, sales, and production workflows before hiring sales reps. His broader business advice stresses differentiation—creating proprietary, valuable offerings to become irresistible. Jim discusses overcoming fear by confronting challenges directly, turning fear into confidence. He shares his view on happiness as serving others, recounting a pivotal moment when he resigned from a lucrative tech job after prayer and spent time with his dying grandfather, which clarified his purpose. Jim recommends two books: the Bible (highlighting love of God and neighbor) and "The Carpenter" by John Gordon (mastering one’s craft). His favorite quote, from Vince Lombardi, underscores chasing perfection to achieve excellence. The episode concludes with a plug for ContractorCoachPro’s website, offering free coaching sessions and a process system applicable to various businesses.
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Thank you for listening to the Business Blast podcast. So for all my listeners out there that have been wanting to do your own podcast, I'd like to introduce to you Anchor. Anchor is a one-stop shop for recording, hosting, distributing, and monetizing your podcast. So before I found Anchor, I had never actually done a podcast because all the research that I had gathered made it seem very complex. Then I found Anchor, and Anchor makes podcasting extremely simple. So if you want to do your own podcast, go to anchor.fm/start. I can't wait to hear your podcast. Welcome to the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite provides you with the support you need to finish your book. Best part is, after you finish your book, they take care of the entire publishing and marketing process 100% for you. So if you want to become a successful author, make sure to check out AuthorsUnite.com. Now let's jump into the episode. All right everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner, and today I have Jim Johnson. And he is the head coach at Contractor Coach Pro, where he and his team exist to coach contractors to win. So welcome to the show, man.
Hey, thanks, Tyler. Super excited to be on your podcast. I've listened to it and it's fantastic. Of course.
Thank you, man. I appreciate that. We're very excited to have you on. So, Jim, the first question that we ask on this show is what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
Well, when I usually tell a story, I get a lot of laughs. So, uh, uh, in my younger days, got married, uh, pretty young, and that didn't work out. And my best friends in the world were not a big fan of her, so they threw me a divorce party, which I did not think was the best thing in the world. So instead of showing up at my divorce party, I went across the street to a different location, met my current wife there. And so The valuable part of that is don't be scared to take a different path and pursue it to its fullest potential. It has worked out quite well. We've been married for 26 years with 3 beautiful kids and really a pretty good life. We've enjoyed it. She's my best friend.
That is awesome. That story is actually really cool too.
It's pretty funny.
Yeah, it is. I love that. So the next one I have for you, Jim, is what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
So as you know from the title, we coach contractors. That's what we do. And what we found is about 95% of contractors, they do things backwards. There's actually an order to building a great contracting business, and they really start thinking about the result first. They're looking at what the end is, and really what they need to do is they need to perfect the process. The result will itself become predictable and dreaming becomes unnecessary. Most come to us to learn how to scale, and, uh, and the way they think to do that is by hiring a whole bunch of sales reps. But then we start to ask them questions like, if you hire the sales rep, how are you going to train them? How are you going to produce the work that they do? How are you going to sell it? And all that stuff written down in a training program and available to them. And like I said, 95% of contractors do not have those type of things. So that's what we help them do, is to build out those processes, uh, so that they can make it repeatable and grow and scale their business.
And then what's your best piece of overall business advice? So not necessarily industry specific.
So whatever your industry is, whatever business you're in, do something different and valuable. If they're marketing one way, market another. If they're selling one way, sell it different. Be proprietary. Have your own unique offering, because when you do, it becomes valuable. Think and be creative, and that way you can become irresistible.
And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
Oh, wow. Boy, there's a whole bunch of those. This is a great question. It really was a bit of a challenge, but I think most people, whenever they're going to get into something, and especially when they're young, they don't have a lot of confidence, and so fear is a big part of the equation. It's like this fear stops so many people from doing great things. And fear is simply a creation of your mind placed on you by outward circumstances and the situations that you've been put in. And so if you want something badly enough, look inside, like look inside yourself and say, hey, this thing isn't all that scary. It isn't really something to be fear. And if you really want it, um, take on every fearful challenge that comes in your path and do it with dogged determination to become its master. Once you master it, the fear goes away and you're confident at that point, and usually you can deliver quite well.
And then, in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?
Another really good and tough question. Um, I think it's different for everybody, to be honest with you, Tyler. Uh, for me The key to happiness, it took me a long time to figure it out. I really, it's funny, 5 years ago, whenever I decided to do this, I resigned from my previous position through prayer. I had been praying about it and I had a great job and it was a lot of fun and I enjoyed it. We were changing an industry through a software platform that we had created and we were selling, but I just didn't feel that fulfillment, right? Like, I didn't— I wasn't getting out of it what I wanted. And so, uh, what it came down to is the answer I got through prayer was to resign. It's the first time I ever resigned without, um, at first having the next thing to do. And I spent the next 3 months with my grandfather, who went into the hospital the following day, and he would never come back out of that hospital. I was fortunate to be able to spend that time with him And he asked me, he's like, what do you want to do? I said, well, I want to be a coach. He goes, what do you want to coach? I said, well, I want to coach college basketball. He's like, uh, hold on a second, you're, uh, 43 years old. I don't think most coaches start though. And I said, well, you got a point there. He goes, what are you great at? I said, I'm great at this contracting thing. I've had a great business. I've done very well in it. I've actually taught a lot of contractors how to kind of thing. He goes, why don't you coach that? And so that was the creation of it. And really what it came down to, what made me happy about it, was the fact that I get to serve everyone before myself. You can't avoid all the opportunity that will come your way and the fulfillment that comes with it when you serve somebody else. It's amazing if you really put that first. Like, our purpose, the reason we exist, is to coach contractors to win. And we know that if we do that, we do it well, we serve them well. You know the whole saying, deliver, deliver gold and promise silver. When you do it, the business and the reward is almost unavoidable, but it shouldn't be your intent behind it. You should truly want to serve those that you're working with.
And then what is the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?
Well, I have a feeling your listeners are going to know the answer to this question based on my previous answers, and I have a feeling I'm not the only one that's ever said this, but the Bible. And there's actually two things. It really comes down to something simple for me. I've struggled with religion, spirituality my entire life. You know, what's this plan for me? And I don't really still know what that plan is other than to serve others. And so I'm going to do that. But the two things is love God and love your neighbor. All the rest of it is semantics that people tend to get in arguments over. But if we could do those two things, I think we can kind of all come together, whether you're Christian or whatever other spirituality it is that you follow. I think we can all get on board with serving our neighbor. And it's funny, we had an event down here last year, Hurricane Harvey, here in Houston, Texas. And it was obviously quite a traumatic event. People with water in their houses needing to be saved. And nobody was asking anybody, you know, what religion are you, what political affiliation are you. They just helped. And I hope to see that we do more of that as, uh, as we move forward instead of the division that's out there right now. Now, if somebody doesn't want to read the whole Bible, there's a shorter version out there. It's called The Carpenter by John Gordon. And really, the thing I learned out of that is mastering your craft. Be the best at what you do. And it's a great book for those of you, it's a short read, you can get it really quick, and it's just like somebody turns a light bulb on for you and you go, wow, okay, I can do that.
Hmm. And then what is your favorite quote and why?
Well, I am a Green Bay Packer fan, so Vince Lombardi's a big deal to us. And my favorite quote is perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence. And that's really kind of my whole thing whenever I'm coaching contractors is don't just try to do the minimum that you have to do to be out there and be successful. Do the most, be the best, gain the most knowledge, practice it, work it, and become somebody that everybody looks at as an expert or truly a master of your craft. And you'll never run out of business, ever.
Yes, man, I agree. So thank you so much for coming on. The last one I have for you before we let you, let you go, Jim, is where's the best place for our audience to find you online?
Uh, super simple, ContractorCoachPro.com. Uh, you can check us out there. It's got all the information about what we do and how we help contractors. We actually help all kinds of businesses, but we focus on contractors. Uh, we've coached everything from bike shops to, uh, security companies to all all kinds of different companies that it really is a process and a system to this that, um, we've learned over the last 5 years to, to really help contractors. So go check us out there and, uh, and get a hold of us. We'll do free coaching sessions and all kinds of stuff just to show you what we do.
