Unlocking Success: The Entrepreneurial Mindset with Austin Zaback

How you do anything is how you do everything.

And I think that applies to every aspect of, you know, when we look at relationally, financially, physically, emotionally, spiritually, right?

Go into every single thing that you do and give it your 100%.

Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business.

Now, your host, the Home Service Millionaire, Tommy Mellow.

Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you.

First, I want you to implement what you learned today.

To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview.

So I asked the team to take notes for you.

Just text notes, N-O-T-E-S to 888-526-1299.

That's 888-526-1299, and you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode.

Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out.

I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states.

Just go to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast to get your copy.

Now, let's go back into the interview.

All right, guys, welcome back to the Home Service Sex for today.

I got Austin Zabak in the house.

Did I say that right?

Zabak.

Zabak.

And he's an expert in real estate sales and business.

He's now in Peoria.

He was in Scottsdale, but he's local here.

Founder of Zabac Group, president of Space Real Estate, and founder of One Roof Investments.

Zach is a real estate entrepreneur and founder of Zaybac Group.

He's also the president of Space, a fast-growing real estate team with hundreds of agents across multiple states.

Zaybac is known for his work as a mentor and educator, helping others buy and sell real estate and young agents overcome their fears.

He's also the host of a podcast where interviews, he interviews high achievers from various industries.

It's a pleasure to have you here.

Dude, pleasure to be here, man.

I appreciate you having me.

It's funny how many people we know.

I mean, I guess I just think the world keeps getting smaller.

You mentioned Cody Sperber back in the day, the old Clever Investor.

I used to go meet up with

those guys all the time, and now we're doing business together.

So cool.

Yeah.

Cody was my first mentor that I ever hired in 2014 to mentor me in wholesaling, you know.

And well, I hired Clever Investor, right?

And I didn't know Cody at the time.

I got a mentor assigned to me.

His name is Torsten.

And a year and a half, two years after me getting into the game, then me and Cody eventually became partners and good buddies.

And one thing kind of led to the next.

So pretty, really small world.

Yeah.

I was born here, though, too.

So I feel like in Arizona, it's even a smaller world.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If you're born here, you know everybody.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Pace Morby was just sitting where you're at, not that.

Okay, cool.

Yeah, I know Pace real well.

I was at his house in Montana a few months ago.

And that's cool.

Yeah, great dude.

Love Pace.

You know, it's funny.

I wanted to talk about this because you said, look, I'm getting into the home service niche very soon.

And it's funny that all the people listening are mostly home service people that are coming to me and they say, how do I invest in real estate?

Sure.

And all the software guys that I know, the SaaS companies are like, I'm getting into home service.

And it's like, we all want what we don't have.

I mean, look at Cody getting into the flooring stuff.

So what do you think it is?

What's attracting you to home service?

Why is it that you've got a very successful real estate investment business and now you're looking at home service?

So I own two main real estate companies.

You mentioned them in the beginning.

You know,

One Roof Investment Group is a wholesaling company, right?

And we're one of the largest wholesalers in the nation.

We wholesale nationwide.

And that company does really well.

And it's a cash cow, right?

But it's not a sellable company, you know, really.

I mean, maybe you could figure out some creative way to sell or finance it or some, you know, to somebody, but ultimately, it's just a cash flow company, right?

We built it for cash flow.

It's great at what it does, and

nothing more, nothing less, which is cool, right?

Space, which is the retail real estate team that we own, is one of the largest in the nation.

We're in four different states right now.

And so that company will do about 2,000 transactions this year, closings.

So we have 2,000 clients a year right now that already like, trust, and respect us, buyers and sellers.

We already bought or sold for them, represented them.

And the first person they call is is us for all their home service referrals.

So they're asking us, you know, throughout the transaction process, right?

Who's a good pest control company?

Is that all?

Is that local?

No, it's in

Texas, Florida, Arizona, California.

Okay.

Yep.

And so,

you know, we already have all that whole book of business that we already refer other home service companies to.

So what we do currently is we partner up with other guys like A1 Garage or whoever, right?

And we'll create some sort of agreement where we'll say, hey, you'll be our preferred vendor for that company, for us.

You know, anytime somebody asks us to, you know, for to fix a garage door or whatever, we'll refer A1 garage.

In return, you know, then we'll make a deal with you, whatever that looks like.

It's different for every, yeah, an affiliate deal, whatever, right?

And so my whole thing is I want to, now, obviously I can't do them all.

I'm the only, you know, we're entrepreneur.

We got to be careful not to chase too many rabbits at one time.

But I knew that home services was the future for what we were trying to do because I want to, I want to build a company that is sellable, right?

Not that I will sell, maybe I will, maybe I won't, but I want to at least build a company that I can have the opportunity to sell.

And we already have that book.

So why not?

You know, every business I touch will have a five-year plan or less to sell.

Yep.

That's what we're doing.

Yeah.

Three to five years.

No matter what.

Three years is better.

Yep.

And so that type of thinking causes a bigger, better dream.

And it allows you to reverse engineer faster and move quicker.

I think a lot of people are like, man, I live the greatest lifestyle.

I pay for my boat.

I pay for this.

I pay for the chef.

I got the plane on this.

And I'm like, yeah, but the multiple, it's arbitrage.

You're missing the boat here.

And I think people think if they sell their business, and I'm curious what you think, but a lot of people think they lose their identity.

Like that's their purpose.

And they act like, man, I'm just used to going in, being the guy, and I've got a pretty good, easy lifestyle.

But, you know, you build a $10 million business at a 12X, that's 120 million.

And you can still roll equity into that.

Yeah.

And then go three, four exit again pretty easily.

And I always ask this question,

if you were going to sell in a year, what would you do?

And they're like, well, I do this, this, this, this.

Why don't you just do that now?

Yeah, totally.

Yeah.

I mean, look, I agree and disagree, right?

I think maybe it depends on the type of person, but I think that for me, at least, and it sounds like probably for you, I'm just a natural entrepreneur.

Like I, I, it doesn't matter.

Like, I'm not going to retire.

Like, I don't see myself just going and hanging out on the beach.

Like, I would, dude, I would be bored in 48 hours.

And my wife can tell you, she's sitting behind the camera.

I can maybe lay on a lawn chair for an hour and I hate my life.

Like I'm like, we got to go scuba diving.

We need to jump out of a helicopter.

Like we got to go do something.

Right.

And so I think I am addicted to building companies, you know, providing value to the marketplace.

That's what we do in America, right?

We're a capitalist economy.

I think it's really cool to take an idea, you know, and to bring it to the marketplace, to provide real value, a good product or service, whatever that is, and to see the fruit of that labor on the back end.

And so if I were to sell a a company, I would just go start another company, right?

Like it would just, it would lead to something else.

Like my identity is in the fact that, you know, I, it's in other things.

It isn't in one said company, if you will.

Right.

You know?

And I think there's a lot of people that try to do that.

What Richard Branson does is he says, I'll never be the CEO, kind of like Warren Buffett again, but I'm going to hire the best top down instead of bottom up, like your first company where you had to go do all the work.

So you get the right team, the who, not how, which is Dr.

Benjamin's Hardy.

It's his book and

Dan Sullivan.

It's get the right people on the bus.

Let them go do it with your guidance, your connections, your network.

Totally.

So valuable.

Yeah.

You know, this economy, I hear good, bad, and indifferent.

What do you think is going to happen here in the next year or two?

Yeah, great question.

I mean, nobody's got a crystal ball, right?

I do, however, think that in the next couple of years, the

overall economy is going to look pretty good.

It's just my opinion.

You know, I'm I'm very optimistic actually about the next, you know, three or four years.

I think there's a lot of turbulence right now, but I think at a certain point, a lot of that is going to calm down.

The markets are going to stabilize.

And then the real estate market, we just need interest rates to come down.

The only X factor when it comes to real estate is that they say for every 1%

that rates come down, a million new buyers will come to the market on a national level.

But I think that, you know, and this is pure speculation, but I think a million sellers will come to the market too because of everybody who's locked in right now, right?

So what will that do?

I think initially supply and demand will just cancel each other out is my kind of theory.

And then over time, demand will outpace supply and we'll see appreciation again.

And again, it'll be submarket by submarket, right?

California is going to look different than Arizona, which will look different than Atlanta, Georgia, right?

You know, for the listeners, I know quite a bit about wholesaling, and there's a lot of ways to acquire customers.

You can send them handwritten letters.

You get door knockers.

You go to the courthouse and you look for overgrown property.

You go to hoarders.

You go to a place for mom.

You know, there's ways to get through to these people that are looking for a cash offer.

How do you generate, just go through the business model a little bit, what you've learned in the model and how you acquire leads.

So I've done it all.

You know, great question.

I've done the door knocking, the cold calling, the texting, the pay-per-click, pay-per-lead.

I mean, you name it, right?

And, you know, the only thing I haven't done is TV and radio as of yet

for that company in particular, right?

So I've never dabbled in that.

I do eventually want to.

Like I I know Doug Hopkins.

I know you've done.

I mean, like, I know, you know, people who could get the door open for us.

But here's what I'll say.

I've spent a lot of money on direct, we call that direct-to-seller marketing, right?

Meaning we're going directly to the homeowner to get a property under contract below market value, then flip that paperwork, right?

Do you ever take it down yourself?

Yeah, all the time.

Yeah.

We don't do much lately because.

So you do the remodeling and everything.

We've done a lot.

And now you're just flipping it to the next one.

Now we just wholesale.

That's all that Doug does, yeah.

Yeah, because look,

flipping can be really cool.

It's a pain in the ass to scale, right?

It sure.

If you want to flip one or two houses at a time, be my guest, right?

I've done that.

But I've gotten to a point where we had 15 or 20 flips going on at a time.

It just doesn't make any sense.

We make the same amount of money wholesaling the paperwork that we do on the flip when it's all said and done and the whole the wholesale deal takes five minutes and we never have to leave our office.

So we like wholesaling better.

Flipping is cool, you know, for some people.

Do you have like five or 10 major buyers that you're just feeding?

We have a lot of buyers.

Yeah, but, you know, I would say we have our VIP buyers is what we would call them nationwide.

We probably have a thousand, like really good buyers that just buy deal after deal after deal.

But, you know, I'd say 50% of our deals sell to new buyers every month, too, right?

But to answer your question and come full circle really quick for the listener,

what we do now more than anything is we don't spend a lot of money on marketing anymore.

What we do now is we have really two main ways that we bring in deals through real estate agents and through other wholesalers where we'll just co-wholesale, right?

It costs costs $0 in marketing.

Okay.

So our overhead, like our overhead is minimal.

And we can operate a profit margin on that company of 55 or 60% when we do that at a high level.

And there's thousands of wholesalers in the market today that don't know how to get a cash buyer.

They don't know what the hell they're doing.

They stumbled across a deal because they went door knocking or driving for dollars or whatever the case may be.

And they need our help.

They need the list of buyers.

They need the list of the thousands of buyers.

And we'll just split that deal with them 50-50.

And you started about 12 years 11 12 years ago yeah i started wholesaling in 2014.

yeah how old were you then 18.

nice yeah uh-huh that's a good way to get started so i love people that go out and they figure it out uh

i would tell anybody listening do not get into wholesale if you're in home service stay focused the one thing by gary keller agreed not saying don't do it but i'd rather go to a guy like Austin here and say, let me become an investor in the business and let me figure out a way because,

you know, real estate can be good.

We all know Grant Cardone.

We all know cash flow is everything.

Robert Kiyosaki, cash flow, cash flow, cash flow.

I don't necessarily agree with just cash flow because, you know, my deal, we did, I got a couple hundred million.

Yeah.

And the next deal, I'll get a billion next year.

And not to mention all the other businesses, you add up, that's 500 million more.

Yeah.

I love cash flow.

But you know what the cash flow is when you invest a billion dollars in a good PE deal, 22% IRR?

That's a billion dollars at 22% IRR is 220 million a year

cash flow is great but like you said it's hard to find a buyer for that so you don't get rid of that you worked hard for the last 11 years to build that so that's the cash flow to build up these home service companies and just remember what I told you figure out the business analyze the business find out what they're selling for find out how you're gonna scale it yeah because certain businesses are getting a lot more like our front camera

Pest controls got the highest because Terminus went public.

And now they could pay crazy multiples.

whereas

a window company or a front door company is not a demand-driven business.

Right.

So you're not going to get as high a multiple.

Totally.

Yeah.

No, I mean, and that's why I'm, I'm excited to get into home services.

What, what, if you have,

from what you got now, a couple thousand clients, whatever,

what one gets you excited the most?

Which home service?

Yeah, which home service?

I think I'm going to start with pest.

Pest control.

Yeah.

Well, that's what, so I go speak at all these events and I speak to inspectors.

I went out to massive inspector show and all these guys have pest control companies because that's the easiest one to sell.

Yeah.

Like they, that's how they build their business.

Barrier of entry is easy.

Landscaping would be good if it was higher end.

Agreed.

And then pool cleaning.

Pool cleaning.

So I wanted to do pool cleaning really bad.

Okay.

Cause I owned a pool company when I was a kid, a little baby pool company, right?

But I understand pools at a very high level.

I could teach it like with my eyes closed.

Like I get it.

Right.

And Cameron, being the good friend that he is, talked me out of it.

He, he's like, listen, pools are great, but, you know, you did it at a really small level.

Like, I'm telling you, when you scale it, like, it becomes very difficult.

Technicians are impossible to train.

You need repair guys on the road all the time.

Like, it was a dip because he owned pineapple pools, obviously, right?

And so, um, the good friend that he is, you know, I just trusted his kind of thing on that.

Now, eventually, I might do pools.

I own a couple of domains, you know, I could get into the pool industry, but and correct me if I'm wrong, maybe you know more than I do.

There isn't that high of a multiple on the pool company for whatever reason.

Well, it is, it's kind of like landscape.

Pool and landscaping are very similar, whereas pest control is your in and out.

Yep.

And it's like you see nasty, nasty stuff.

And

within pest control, you could do pigeons.

You could do roof rats.

You could decide you're going to do bed bugs.

Bed bugs is a big one.

I was on a podcast like seven years ago with a guy that had trained dogs to go into hotels and find bed bugs.

So these German shepherds would go, they know exactly what bugs have them.

And like the dogs would go in, it's crazy.

What do you think is going to happen?

I was in, you know, the 70, 72 sold.

I was talking, we went to dinner with Greg Hay.

Yeah, Greg, great guy.

And he thinks the real estate market's going to completely change.

He's like, obviously,

the buyer agent commissions have kind of came down.

It's the seller's agents that there's new rules coming in.

And he's like, I'm just going to be very transparent and free, but I'll sell all these other services.

He'll be the title company, he'll be the inspection company, he'll make all the money on ancillary things.

What is your take on the future of what real estate looks like?

So we already do a lot of that.

You know, I own a title company, I own an insurance company, we own a mortgage company.

So we already make money multiple times on every deal.

You know, with that being said, I agree with Greg.

You know, I think that, look, for your average agent, unfortunately, the industry of real estate agents is 1.8 million or whatever there is in the U.S.

right now, according to NAR.

The majority of them are not very good at what they do.

That's just

the reality of the situation, right?

That, you know, 5% of them are really good and 95% of them kind of suck ultimately, right?

And so those are the ones that are struggling to fight for that commission because the law did change.

And now you have to negotiate before the seller's agent would just tell the seller, hey, we're going to pay the buy.

If a buyer, if a buyer's agent brings us a deal, we're going to pay him 3%.

Are you okay with that?

Okay, cool.

Sign here.

You're going to pay me three.

We're going to pay a buyer's agent three.

If I happen to also be the buyer's agent i'll get six right and it was pre-negotiated so when you when a buyer's agent went on the mls to find their client a deal then that it was just like you would ask the seller hey what am i getting paid it would be right on the mls it would tell you it'd say 2.5 or 3 you knew immediately what you were going to make now it's not on the mls anymore so if you're a buyer's agent right you need to call that seller's agent say hey if i bring you a buyer ready willing enabled buyer and i write a contract will your seller pay me a commission and have a verbal conversation and then you actually have to negotiate that commission and get try to get the seller to pay for it.

And the seller can ultimately say no, right?

And then if they say no, then you got to go to your buyer and say, hey, well, do you want to pay me?

Or do you like, or we can't, I can't represent you.

Like, you know, I'm not, I don't work for free type of thing.

Right.

And so you have to be a really good agent to have those conversations.

Now, we're really good at it and my team is really good at it.

So our, believe it or not, our average commission as a company when NAR rolled out that lawsuit and it took effect went up, not down, right?

So our average commission went up by about 0.2%, so 0.20.

And, you know, that's just a result of us being really good at what we do and being able to have that conversation at a really high level and get those sellers to pay our buyers agents what they're worth, right?

But, you know, the industry as a whole, yeah, dude, I mean, look, AI.

technology, I mean, in five or 10 years, and that's why I'm getting into home services ultimately, right?

I love the real estate agent, you know, company that we've built and it's an amazing company, but I'm not naive to the fact that AI is going to redefine the majority of these types of jobs.

And it's not a matter of if, it's just a matter of when, right?

And I think every agent watching this should also have a backup plan, right?

Hey.

Spend less than you make and go buy rental properties.

Like go, you know, if you're making 200 grand a year right now, stop spending 200 grand a year, spend 80 grand a year, spend 60 grand a year, drive an old beat up car so that you can afford to invest.

And, you know, if something does happen to your job, you're not freaking out on the the street.

100%.

You know, it's funny.

We're looking at a bunch of real estate deals and I don't know where I'm at yet, but I want to be diversified in the way that

there's a few guys I know,

bigger pockets.

Yeah.

Brandon.

Brand Brandon.

Beardy Brandon.

Bearded Brandon.

Big Red Beard.

He and I, I went out to do a podcast to Hawaii.

Yeah.

And that's a really interesting model.

He has a ton of real estate.

I think he's got a couple billion under contract.

Yeah.

And he gets paid on the, you know, after a while.

Yeah.

His is all later in the game, but I love that idea of

syndication, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, are you big into like single family or do you think there's a real big game for multifamily?

I think there's a huge game for multifamily.

I think for me right now, I'm 30 years old, right?

So I have to, I have to kind of look at what I, what I have built so far.

We've mastered the single family game so much so that I have these two main real estate companies will sell a few thousand houses a year and growing, and I'm hardly even involved, which is what is allowing me the time to go get into home services, right?

Because I have such good partners and such a good team that I'm able to kind of venture off and do more things, which is why I'm doing that.

For me right now, it makes more sense for me to get into home services because I can.

I'll make more money quicker at the age that I'm at and for what we have going on, right?

Like the multifamily game would just, it's a great game for me, but it's a game that I could get into when I'm 35 or 36 or 37.

Like it's not going anywhere, you know?

I'd love to go try to sell a company first and get, you know, put hundred million or so or whatever in the account and then go and venture into what that might look like.

So from what you've heard, you've been putting the feelers out there.

What do you think your biggest challenges are going to be when it comes to home service?

I mean,

you know, hiring, I think

we're really good at at culture.

You know, like we have over 500 people between our companies right now.

So like I understand how to build good culture.

I understand how to bring the right people and put them in the right seats.

I understand systems and processes.

I would just say, I would say the mechanics of the industry itself will be the biggest challenge, right?

Like learning, like I personally am going to go get in a truck and I'm going to go spray, right?

Like I'm going to find somebody that will take me and show me, you know, and because I need to be able to understand it 100%,

every aspect of it.

That way I can stand at the front of the room and teach the technicians and really, and they can actually respect respect me right so like i've literally told my partners i'm like i'm gonna disappear for a few months and i'm gonna go learn pest like i'm gonna learn everything about it right because the back end won't be as hard for us sure it'll be difficult right everything but business is difficult we're used to that you know but in terms of like finding people putting out ads like bringing people building the truck you know wrapping the truck the decals getting the product you know And then building systems and processes, getting the right CRM, putting everybody in Slack, like that stuff's not that difficult for us.

So, yeah, I think learning the mechanics of the industry will be the hardest.

So, here's a piece of advice for the listeners out there.

What I would do is Cameron knows a lot of the same guys I do, but you find the top bankers in the industries you're looking at.

And they've done deals, they've done terminus deals, they've done the biggest, best deals, and say, Look, a lot of these, there's information out there to find out.

If you're on the wrong CRM, you'll take a 2x multiple less.

If you didn't build

your models correctly on the, like if you did door-to-door, you're worth half as much.

Yeah.

As versus because the door-to-door, the clients turn over quicker.

So I go say, who sold for the highest multiples that are public?

And can I get a look at their balance sheet and income statement?

So I got to understand where my cost of goods need to be.

I got to understand where my late, all these different things.

And that way you could have kind of an architecture.

I call it R D, rip off and duplicate.

Yep.

Just reverse engineer what that is.

And there you know what the golden, the golden star is.

I love that.

That's great advice.

And

what I'll also tell you is I pay to play.

I've got more consultants.

For every 40 podcasts I do, I hire a consultant.

And the last guy I hired is about to fire me because he's not taking on any more clients.

And he said, I'm done.

Dan Martel.

And he's like, Tommy, I never told this story, but I'm actually cropping the video and sending it to people.

He goes, I'm going through this phase of knowing my life.

And he goes, this is a $500,000 watch.

And I'm not telling you that to brag.

He said, I remind myself who I am with this 30-cent bracelet.

But he said, there's a $500,000 watch.

Do you know why I'm wearing a $500,000, not a $600,000 or $400,000 watch?

Because a $500,000 an hour is what makes a billion a year.

And he goes, so you're not going to pay me $500,000 an hour.

I have a path to get there.

And I'm in this stage in my life where I'm saying no to anything that's a distraction.

And as much as I try to help people out, it's not always about money for me.

It's about.

networking, meeting the right people.

The network is your net worth.

But it meant a lot to me because I tend to say

And if I say yes to you, I'm saying no to my fiancé.

I'm saying no to my potential kids that are coming, hopefully, once we get married.

Yep.

And I'm saying no to a lot of my family.

So

how do you deal with that?

It's hard, you know.

I mean, you, you just, I think Dan Martel's right on the money, right?

You have to get good at saying no at some point, you know?

And I think what's interesting about entrepreneurship, and tell me if you agree, when you're first starting out, like for people who are watching who are just starting out as an entrepreneur, you have to say yes to everything, right?

And then somewhere along the way, you have to completely 180 and say no to almost everything.

And that's actually a difficult transition to make.

I don't know if you could pinpoint the exact moment where you had to make that transition, but I can remember where I, you know, because you have to, in the beginning, you just have to say yes to anything that comes your way.

Cause like, you're just trying to freaking,

you need to make a living, right?

You need to make payroll.

So, you know, but then at a certain point, it's the polar opposite of that.

And it's, it's actually a hard transition, I would say, more than anything mentally, because you're so used to mentally, you have to kind of like retrain your brain to be like, to think the opposite way that you've always thought as, as, you know, a startup entrepreneur.

So I'm at a point now similar to you.

You probably say no to slightly more stuff.

Obviously, you're older and more wise and ahead of where I'm at.

I'm 30 years old at the end of the day, but I am embarking on the journey of saying no, and I'm getting pretty good at it.

You know, I would say for me right now, the biggest thing I have to say no to is any business opportunity that doesn't vertically integrate with what we're already doing.

Like if you really look at every company that we own, right?

And you look at from my media company to my two real estate companies to title, mortgage, insurance, and then now, you know, getting into pest control, they all go hand in hand.

They all vertically integrate.

They all talk to each other and feed each other.

You know, if a wholesale deal, somebody doesn't want to take a cash offer, it goes to my retail company.

If my retail company's out on a listing appointment and they want a cash offer, it goes to my wholesale company, right?

Both those companies, we send to our title company.

We send to our mortgage, our insurance, right?

And now we're going to say, here's our preferred pest control company, right?

And so for me right now, if I get approached with an amazing opportunity that I could look at and it's like, that would make me a ton of money, but it doesn't vertically integrate, I have to say no.

Like I just, I can't, I can't, I don't, I don't have the bandwidth.

I can't say yes to something that doesn't vertically integrate to what I'm already doing because it would take me, it would actually pull me in the wrong direction.

That's a great thing for the listeners to hear because, you know, there was a time where I was flipping real estate.

A1 would have grew way faster.

It took 18 years to get to this point if I didn't get distracted.

And I said, this idea of an entrepreneur, this visionary idea is I could do anything I put my mind to, but it still takes time.

It takes effort.

It takes energy.

It takes money.

So I love essentialism, the one thing.

Those are two books that the listeners should be reading that they want to learn to focus.

And yes, we can make anything work, but you're robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Is it like, you got to really do this spreadsheet analysis and say, if this thing goes well, how much am I making per hour?

And some of the stuff I do, I don't make anything.

Like literally, I go speak at an event.

Sometimes I don't even charge, but I'm out there meeting people and networking.

And there's certain people there that I go in intentionally wanting to meet.

And those people sometimes turn into consultants.

Sometimes they turn into really good friends.

So I would say, never give up this opportunity to go out and network and meet the people.

Because that's, I think, the best opportunity that you should be spending your time.

And be very purposeful in who you're going to meet.

I agree.

Yeah, especially if you're the visionary of the company, right?

Which I assume most of your listeners are.

They're probably not the integrator.

They're probably the, you know, the visionary.

I mean, obviously you can be both, but the majority of people are one of the other.

No, right.

Yeah, there's a lot of people I know that think they're both.

Yeah.

Look.

You still lean one way.

Oh, 100%.

I've met a lot of people that read,

you know, fuel.

What is it?

Rocket Fuel.

Yeah.

Yep.

And Gino Wickman and Mark Winters.

I had them both on the podcast.

And the deal is, is they're like, yeah, I could do both.

And I'm like, but trust me, once you get the right integrator, I mean, most of us with ADHD that are visionaries, that are founders, are not the guys.

We could do it.

I've had to go down and build the compensation plans.

And shoot, I was in the truck for eight years.

And I was forced myself to do it, but I didn't have as much fun.

I need help getting these ideas fulfilled.

Yeah.

And when you get the right integrator, you start sprinting.

And the hardest part, I'm going to tell you this right now, the best advice I could give you in the home service industry,

form an EIP, equity equity incentive program.

I'm writing a book on it right now.

It's called Pay Them What They're Worth.

And to be able to attract people with a stake in the outcome that are running, that say, I'm an owner, but let's say you build a business to where it's worth 5 million bucks.

And then you say, I'm building this program.

That 5 million is yours.

And then they get 1% and the business sells for 100 million.

They get 950,000.

Got it.

That makes sense.

So it doesn't have to be rolled out the day you start the company.

It doesn't need to be rolled out the same day.

And I wouldn't do it the same day.

I do it when there's value there for yourself.

And the other thing I can tell you, what happens with it, is you could recruit way stronger people.

Like you could get, camera's got to non-compete, but you could start going after people that have made a lot of money.

And they say, wait a minute, you built a great business, but if I come turn a few dials here, I could 10X this business, but it's expensive.

You can give me a couple hundred grand, but I want an ownership.

Sure.

And it's earned.

So that's, and it works.

Every private equity company does this.

Every public traded company does stock options.

But the home service companies haven't figured this out yet.

For whatever reason.

And here's the deal.

You make a mistake with this.

You gave away half your company.

It's a really bad thing.

And it's not something you play lightly with, just handing equity to everybody.

I did it.

I probably made a few mistakes, but I'm glad I did it.

I've reverse engineered.

I whiteboarded doing it versus not doing it.

And it was fun because a lot of people became millionaires, 22 people.

And hindsight, some of them maybe didn't deserve it.

Some of them probably deserved a little more.

It's not a perfect.

It's not a perfect plan, but it's a great plan.

Totally.

I agree.

You know, big advice.

You know, you've founded a lot of companies.

What do you think?

You talked a little bit about culture.

Culture used to be a bad word when I first started.

I'm like, these guys are smoking.

They're getting in accidents.

They're stealing my stuff.

But I didn't have the right infrastructure and I didn't reward them the right way.

I didn't come up with the right compensation programs.

What do you think?

What do you think?

What makes a culture go well?

What are the things you've learned in the last 10 years?

Well, it starts from the top.

You know, I mean,

as a leader, you have to lead lead by example.

You have to set that example every single day of your life.

I really believe that.

And eventually, when you're so big, if you're not the guy, then like your leadership team has to be those people, right?

Like it, it all starts at the very top, you know?

And so I think you have to build it that way.

And then I think a lot of it is paying people well.

I mean, truthfully, right?

It's like you said it a little while ago.

freaking pay people what they're worth or more than they're worth for that matter, right?

Like I've, I've actually, in a lot of my companies, probably overpaid people, to be frank with you.

I mean, I've probably actually like not paid myself as much money as I could have paid myself or that the company could have just profited because I actually paid people too well.

I paid them above what the market would have dictated that I would have had to pay them, right?

But they never leave because they're getting paid a lot of money.

People can say, oh, it's not about the money.

But at the end of the day, it's like, I mean, come on, my employees show up to work because if I stop paying them, they're not going to work for me.

So it's clearly about the money.

I mean, I get that they also want to, everything else is really important too, right?

Take your executive team to Cabo, buy them dinner, take them to Mastros, you know, have incentives.

You know, it's kind of the collective of all of these different things, I think, that equal culture, in my opinion.

And I'm sure you would agree.

Yeah, I think that

there's no one word to describe culture, but what I do think is you got to get the whole family on board.

You come home from a hard day, you're greasy, you're smelly, it's been a long day.

Maybe the day didn't go right and you got your significant other to say, look, they treat you perfectly.

Today was a tough day, but last week you made a ton of money.

They take you on these trips.

They take us to a park.

Some people are like, I can't afford to do all the stuff you do.

I was like, can you afford Bisquick?

Can you make pancakes?

Yeah.

Everybody's got a reason why they can't.

And I usually say this in the podcast is I always say, like, my goals are massive.

My dreams are really big.

Like, my dreams got to be big enough to fit everybody's dream inside.

But don't have my dreams.

Like, why?

I'm 42.

I've never been married.

I don't have any kids yet.

I had to sacrifice a lot to get to this level.

And the fact that I didn't get married was because duty calls.

I mean, I'd walk out of a theater on a first date with a chick and say, I got to go run this call.

I'm sorry.

And if they wanted to date me, they'd have to go run calls with me.

I mean, that's, you know, over a decade ago.

But, you know, I think what people should do, and this would be a great exercise for you, you're never going to stop.

I can see that in you.

But to reverse engineer, just say, look, mom, dad, sister, brother, whoever it is, I got an uncle, I got this grandma, I want to help.

Figure out who are all the things, what do you want to do for for them what do you need to do for your family do you want to set a trust for your kids all these things and have a number that doesn't mean you're over it just means i was it people like i'm never going to sell i'm like well how do the people in your company win how does your family win yeah like they're going to watch you work for 10 more years

so you're never going to buy the boat that you promised them you were going to go fishing every summer You're never going to be able to take them on that trip you promised.

And some people have enough cash flow to do some of these things.

But if you do an EIP program, that doesn't come to fruition until the company changes control.

So I think it's selfish to not want to sell.

I agree.

Yeah, I agree.

I agree with everything you said, even the part where you talk about bringing in the spouse and the significant other of the person.

We've actually interviewed people before where we're like, hey, we want you to bring your, your, your husband or your wife to the interview.

Like we want to interview you with your husband and wife in the room.

Like, cause we want to, we want to make sure that when you, when it, it becomes a good fit and we get through this interview and it's a win-win that you already have the approval of your significant other.

Like we don't want you to try to go home and convince them and then they're not on board and this, that, that, and the other thing.

So I agree with you completely on that as well.

So it's funny because obviously I just got engaged six months ago, but we've been dating for a long time.

It was overdue.

And Dave Ramsey talks about four things when you get married.

Yep.

Guess what the four things are?

I'm just curious.

You got to

take a stab.

I actually am not sure.

I don't listen to Dave Ramsey too.

And I don't really listen to him a whole lot because I believe in maximum leverage.

Which opposites.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, talk about, you know, your finances probably.

It's It's probably, it all has to do with like being transparent, I'm sure, about like, do you have credit card debt?

You know, how much money do we, do each of us make?

Who's doing what in the household?

Like coming to some sort of agreement, I would imagine.

Well, the money's a big one.

How you're going to raise your kids if somebody's Mormon, somebody's Catholic.

Sure, of course.

How's that going to come together?

The other one,

politics.

Yeah.

I mean, think about it.

If you got a raging left Democrat and a raging right, right-wing right-wing skin heavy, you know, hopefully you would find that out by the first date.

Yeah.

No, that's a big one.

And then the last one is in-laws, believe it or not.

Okay.

Because an in-law could come in and really change things up

with the way you parent, with the way what they believe.

I mean,

you know, I could tell you stories about that, but not I love, I love her.

I'll love my in-laws, but I've seen families come apart because it's just, my grandma was pretty tough on my dad.

It was my grandma on my mom's side was really rough on my dad.

But I think it's so my COO, an amazing guy, and I don't think he'd care if I shared this story.

He was kind of in a really bad relationship, and he had kids, and they worked it out, and they're still civil with each other.

But he's remarried, and I've never seen he's in the best shape of his life.

You can talk to her about work.

She's always smiling.

She supports him.

And it changed who he is.

Like, he developed so fast.

He's like, what book do you want me to read this week?

I just listened to this podcast.

Could I go on you, this shop tour?

Yeah.

And it's just crazy.

It's the most important decision you'll ever make.

Totally.

I agree completely.

Yeah.

I, I, um, I, yeah, it's why I, you know, picked the one that I picked.

Yeah.

You better say that shit right here.

Hey, guys, quick story before we dive back in.

My team sent me a comment from someone who attended last year's freedom event.

And honestly, it made my day.

Landon Taylor wrote to us, My dad, who was a general contractor for over 30 years, would have died to have had this kind of resource when he was building his business.

I felt like I was attending as his proxy.

Guys,

that one hit me hard.

My dad owned a small transmission shop.

My mom worked three jobs.

I watched them argue about bills and eventually get divorced when I was seven.

Money problems almost tore my family apart.

And that's why I built Freedom 2025.

It's the resource I wish my parents would have had.

A room where you can learn from people who have turned their money from a constant fight to a solved problem.

If you're like Landon and you're ready to be the branch that changes your family tree, this is your chance.

And it's going away in six weeks.

So go to freedomevent.com and lock in your seat today.

That's freedomevent.com.

All right, back to the episode.

What's the best advice you've ever received and from who and how did it impact your life?

Well, one of the pieces that comes to my head immediately is how you do anything is how you do everything.

You know, like brush your teeth like a freaking champion.

Make your bed like a champion.

Like, what do you do?

Like, you know, wash your car.

Like, I'll interview people and I'm like, let's pull your car up.

Let's go.

I just, on the first interview, because I don't want to tell them that in advance.

I'm like, let's go look at your car.

If they have trash and stuff all over the car, dude, they are not a good fit for our organization.

I'm telling you that right now, right?

If they got a tidy, clean car, like, that's what I'm looking for, you know?

So, how you do anything is how you do everything.

And I think that applies to every aspect of, you know, when we look at relationally, financially, physically, emotionally, spiritually, right?

How, you know, go into every single thing that you do and give it your 100%.

You know, too many people are walking around planet Earth, giving 50% here, 20% here.

Like they're like, they go home, they give their, their spouse their leftovers, they go to their, their company, and they give their employees leftovers.

Like, it's just like,

then why are you doing anything?

Like, just give it.

And they chose to have that position.

Yeah.

And the other thing is I realize a lot of people don't feel.

They don't feel right.

Their bodies aren't working anymore.

And that's just, they don't want to go to the doctor.

They don't want to exercise.

They don't eat enough sleep.

They don't eat healthy.

And that's just when I see people change that piece where they're on the, like, whether it's

something to do with your estrogen or testosterone levels, or maybe it has something to do with your digestive system leaky gut.

Sure.

But when you get that stuff fixed, especially when you hit 40s and 50s, you find that your time is.

actually a better effort.

Like you, like some people are like, well, listen, I don't like to work out.

Can you go for a walk?

Right.

Here's a quick joke.

So this guy's in this interview and he goes,

why don't you give me your worst quality?

And he goes, well, come to think of it, it's probably that I'm too honest.

And he goes, well, I don't really consider that a bad quality.

And he goes, well, I don't give a damn what you think.

I mean, I say the joke differently, but since we're a podcast.

That's actually funny.

So, yeah, the advice, how do you decide who you're going to take advice from?

They have to have what you want.

in whatever area it is that you're trying to get advice from.

What I will say on that, though, very quickly is that, you know, you don't, one, a a mentor doesn't have to be a mentor in every area of life.

You have to be very careful.

I've had a lot of mentors in my life that knew how to make a lot of money, but I would have never gotten relationship advice from them, right?

Their marriages were or their, you know, everything was just garbage, right?

Their friendships, their, their, you know, or, you know, maybe somebody knows how to make a lot of money, but, you know, they don't have the same faith that you have.

It's like, I'm not going to go to you and ask you about scripture from the Bible because like, that's just not right.

And so I think like I have different mentors in my life that give that feed me different things so you know i might have a spiritual mentor a financial business mentor right i might have you know a physical right a trainer you know so i think that's important too many people they go to their trainer and they get freaking relationship advice and it's like you're talking to a single like you know it's just like you've got to make sure that when you get advice from somebody that they have exactly what you want to have if they don't have what you want why the hell are you taking advice from them no you're right and a lot of people, like, if you're going to go to a trainer, you want them to have the body maybe you would consider having.

Yeah, if your trainer is 100 pounds overweight, you're probably not going to hire them.

I'm sorry.

I, I, like, you know what I mean?

Like, you're not, why would I hire that guy?

If he knew how to do what he's telling me how to do, why isn't he doing it?

Right.

Now it's smart.

And when it comes to marital advice, parenting, there, there's, I always say, success leaves clues.

I'm not going to read it, I will read books on parenting, but the fact is, I was with a couple recently, Bryn and Mark, We were in

Jackson Hall, and their kids, they'd run up and give me a hug.

They were laughing the whole time.

They were very obedient.

And Bryn would be like, Don't talk like a baby.

And like to her four-year-old.

And she'd be like, Okay, mom, I'm sorry.

And just very respectful.

And I'm like, you guys are going to give me parenting advice because these kids are phenomenal.

Wow.

And that's what I mean is like, if the kids were crying the whole time and angry and weren't listening and on their iPad the whole time, I'd be like, probably not going to listen to these people.

Probably not.

Yeah.

No.

And you can see it, right?

Like, that's why I think people are silly when they're like, when they get bad advice or something, because it's like, it's pretty clear, whatever, whatever person you're trying to get advice from, like, if they have what you want or not.

For the most part, money might be the only one that maybe somebody could fake, I guess, you know.

But other things, it's pretty hard to fake, right?

Like, you're either a man of God or you're not.

Like, if you're at the club every weekend, all the time, 24-7, like, I'm probably not going to come to you for like spiritual advice.

Like, you know, it's pretty clear.

Money's the one thing where it's like, I've, you know,

I don't think you can fake it forever, but there are a lot of fakers out there, unfortunately.

Yeah, where it's just all leverage and credit cards and debt and whatever.

So you got to be a little careful, I think, with the financial one, like try to make sure that they have what you want to have, you know, because I've seen people that look like they, they have what I want, but then when I really get under the hood, I'm like, dude, you don't have what I want at all.

Like you're, you're stressed out.

You're like, you know, you spend every dollar you make, like whatever, right?

I think those people are chasing a lifestyle.

And once you reach a certain lifestyle, it's hard to move back.

And I see a lot of people, their biggest mistake is the business starts making money and they go, hey, listen, they talk to their wife or husband and they say, we deserve.

We deserve.

We worked hard.

We deserve.

And you got to live below your means for a while.

It's almost like a snowball.

You pack it, you put it down the hill.

Once it gets big enough, you get to go.

Like, I've done a lot of nice things the last couple of years, but ultimately, I mean, it wasn't that long ago, I was living in a thousand square feet.

I own the apartment complex, but it was a thousand square feet.

I watched a video of yours the other day where you said you drove for, I don't remember how many years.

You can say, but you drove an old vehicle for a long time.

It wasn't important to me.

Right.

And I knew like, hey, if I put this back into the business, and plus, I didn't know what was going to happen because people do look at you a lot differently.

And it's a good thing and it's a bad thing.

Sure.

Because I try to stay super humble.

I was in Idaho when we brought my chef and my driver with me.

And people were like, and it's Idaho.

And they were like, wait, what?

And I'm like, it's kind of embarrassing, honestly, but like, they really help us out a lot.

And this allows me to be way more focused at work.

Allows me, like, I don't enjoy driving.

I don't hate it.

I don't cook that well.

Yeah, especially the healthy, like, cooking with the seed oils and all the stuff.

So, I got a guy that does it so much better.

And he does stuff perfectly.

And it's so much easier.

People are like, man, it must be easy for you to say.

I'm like, go back and live my life before you say that.

Everybody wants the views, but no one wants to take the hike.

Yeah, dude.

And we get awarded for public for the work we did in private, you know, and at the end of the day, any, any, any public accolade that anybody's ever received, all they're doing is receiving an award for decades of work that they did behind the curtain that nobody ever saw yeah and that they never got an accolade for so yeah people are silly when they say crap like that right it's like anybody that's truly successful put in a lot of years behind the freaking curtain where they didn't they never got praise they never got an accolade ever yeah anybody i don't care who it is i've never you know one of them

maybe some of the bitcoin kids maybe but even then dude like then they'll lose their money because their financial thermostat is not where it needs to be so like there's no such thing as fast money i really believe that That's why almost every lottery winner, 90% of them think they go bankrupt, right?

Because remember, their financial thermostat was at 100 grand a year or 60 grand a year.

They knew everything about 60 grand a year.

Now they have 100 million.

They don't, their thermostat didn't, Bob Proctor used to talk a lot about this, right?

Like you, your, your finances will just come to match whatever your thermostat is set at, you know?

So, um, but anyways, yeah.

So with your podcast, I'll tell you, when I started my podcast, now this is the eighth year, and I actually used it.

I didn't realize when I was starting it, I felt like I had a lot to say of the mistakes.

I didn't want to go in there and say, God, look what I did.

But what happened is, is every podcast, I'd be able to get, like, I'd have a problem with HR.

I'd go find the number one person in HR in the world.

They'd get on the podcast for an hour that they might charge 100 grand for that.

They'd be glad to come on for free.

And I'd get all my questions answered.

And people listen to the podcast are like, dude, you.

Your questions were like when you were at 10 million, it was all the questions I had at 10 million.

And then I listened to it and I got to 30 and you were asking the questions at 30.

And yes, the technology has changed a little bit, but overall, it's the same advice.

What did you start the podcast for?

What are some of the biggest takeaways?

Dude, you nailed it, bro.

I mean, that's literally why I started it.

To be frank, I started it very selfishly to do exactly what you just described, right?

It was an excuse to talk to cool people that I wouldn't otherwise be able to talk to, right?

And then it evolved, you know, and then it became about the other people.

It became about, you know, just networking in general, providing value to the people.

But like, it didn't start out that way, you know?

And I think it kind of goes hand in hand with like being an entrepreneur, right?

Like every entrepreneur, I always tell young people, you know, you can, it's okay to just want to make a lot of money when you're brand new at entrepreneurship, because I know for a fact it'll change over time.

You know, you see so many people that are like, don't do it for that.

It's like, no, dude, you can have a goal of making a lot of money.

Right.

And I think that goes hand in hand with the other thing too, right?

It's like, it's okay to be honest and say, hey, I did this for a selfish reason, but then it turned in to a selfless act.

Yeah.

Right.

And that's really what it has done for me as well.

Now, you know, I bring, dude, I connect so many people.

I have people that come on my podcast, and I'm like the connector now, or I try to be, right?

It's like I'm literally thinking about who do they need to know.

And then, as soon as we're done filming, I'll send like three group texts.

Oh, yeah, and I'll be like, dude, you got to meet this guy, blah, blah, blah.

And I'll just provide value, value, value.

And I won't ask for anything in return, right?

And, you know, maybe one day, five, ten years from now, sure, maybe I will make a phone call and ask for a favor, right?

But that's not my intention.

No, it's great.

Yeah, I love that.

I have about five connectors that basically could give me access to anybody.

And I use it only when I really, really need it.

Some of them are too big of connectors where they'll send me 20 names.

I'm like, just give me the top one.

I really got the specific need.

And it's very interesting because when you get that, that's so true.

When you really start to network and take care of people and ask for nothing in return, it comes back full circle.

Zig Ziglar said, you could have anything you want in life if you help enough people get what they want.

Love that.

And it's so real.

It is.

What's the most difficult time that you've had to go through in business?

There's been a lot of difficult times.

You know, I think just all the times over the last 11 or 12 years where, you know, you'll have a great year and you really start to think that you're, you know, making it happen or whatever the case might be.

And then the next quarter or year or whatever is just garbage, you know, and you go backwards.

And the first thing that entrepreneurs do, by the way, is they stop paying themselves, right?

It's the first thing that I've, that comes to my mind.

If we had a bad month right now, let's just say, hypothetically, the first thing I would do is not pay myself that month.

I wouldn't fire like, like, you know, I might do that the following month if it doesn't improve, right?

But the very first thing that I'll do is make, is I'll be the one to suffer before anybody else suffers.

Right.

And I think that's just the natural instinct of a true entrepreneur, right?

And so I've had a lot of years like that.

You know, it took, there was a lot of years where I didn't pay myself a dollar, you know, and I went from like making a ton of money to like zero again.

And then you go back to, it's like a roller coaster, you know, I think people think success is linear, but it really is not linear at all, right?

We've all seen that meme floating around like, yeah, you know,

literally, the bridges.

Yeah.

And, and that's the reality of being an entrepreneur.

So I don't know, you know, to name one particular instance, I'm not sure.

Probably getting into bad partnerships and stuff, you know, just that didn't work out.

And you got to like start from scratch, get rid of your, you know, like divorce your business partner, separate everything, go rebuild it all over again, like hiring the wrong people.

Like I've had a lot of seasons where, you know, you bring in one bad apple and they, and then all of a sudden next thing, you know, you got to fire like 20 people because they've contaminated everything, you know, so like those seasons are really hard, right?

Because it's like, you really do feel like in that moment, like you took one step forward to take five steps backward, you know, and, and, um, and to be frank, you know, you want nothing more than to quit, but You and I both know better than anybody, we're not capable of quitting.

You know, it's in my DNA to not quit, to not give up, right?

I would go sleep in a car.

Dude, I grew up in a garage.

I grew up in my grandpa and grandma's garage, and I ain't afraid to go back.

Yeah.

And I think the scariest thing of a competitor is somebody that started with nothing is like, hey, what's the most you can take?

Literally.

Yep.

I wanted to ask you, so

with partnerships,

I don't think anything in life is 50-50.

I don't even think marriage is 50.

It's great if you could get to somewhat like 49, 51, but I always think there's give and take in a marriage, and there's other things that you don't even realize they're going through.

And same thing with partnerships, but I think it's all in how you define the operating agreement and how you could wind it back.

And there's expectations built into it.

And I don't love lawyers, but they're a necessary evil to do it the right way.

I mean, what do you do now when you look for a partner?

I mean, obviously you probably vet it.

You talked to the last partners and things like that, but how do you make sure you're getting,

i mean look i did a deal with cody you know and and i know he was going to hustle and we've got meetings on marketing i got my team helping out a lot i've not put a ton of effort because quite frankly i kind of want them to fail yeah and few things i don't want them to fail at all right but i want them to learn the lessons smaller than i had to learn sure and when they're ready And for the next level, I'm like, I don't want to pour a

bunch of leads when they can't keep up with the ones they got.

And there's all these things that happen early in business.

It's less than a year old.

So they don't mind mind that.

They fall forward.

They get back up.

This wasn't a big mistake.

They come to me when they're ready.

They go, we're ready for more leads.

We're ready to start the TV buys.

We're doing this.

We're doing this.

We're doing this.

And I've used every contact I have.

I've been using my network.

When I jump in, give them more time.

It's going to be tough for me because they're going to go, well, we don't want to do that.

And I'm going to say, well, how much do you want this business?

I asked.

I said, do you want a $30 million business, the worth, the net worth of the business?

Do you want a $300 million business?

He said, $300.

I said, that's not going to happen overnight.

We're going to have to crawl a little bit, then we're going to walk, then we're going to sprint.

But that type of business is a lot different.

$30 million, I could get you there in two years.

And they do trust me.

And I do have a lot of the mistakes they've made.

So it's one of those things where I was okay moving slower.

They don't have these high expectations of me, but I've used the team.

I've got a family office with a lot of guys that could do the software side and got the financials and get the reporting and figure out the tax benefits of doing things a certain way.

That's somebody that the missing thing that you'll probably need, if you're like me, is the best CFO in the world.

If you get the best CFO,

there's so many crazy things, accelerated depreciation, things you could do.

100% bonus depreciations back.

It's a beautiful thing.

It is a beautiful thing.

I'm not in the jet.

You know, we've got a, what is it?

Not net jet, but one of the set jet or

it's there's a few of them.

Yeah, I forget what it's called, but you know, we sentient?

Not sentient.

It's jet links.

Yeah, yeah.

And what I've learned is what I don't want because they always give us these light jets.

And I'm 6'3 ⁇ .

And I'm like, okay, we're going to have to get something bigger.

And by the way, the goal is that I bring my friends, my neighbors, the A1,

my coworkers, I call them a set of employees.

I want to bring them with me everywhere.

I want a little Gulfstream.

I do.

I think a Gulf Stream.

I think in like, I mean, in a perfect world of G6.

Those are about

50 to 60.

Right.

Which is a lot of money.

You can get them used.

Yeah, I'll probably go used.

You know?

I'm still, you can take the guy out of the trailer park, but you can't take the trailer park out of the guy.

100%.

And I'm not the kind of guy that I need to post at all.

You know, we post some of the stuff, but I told everybody I built this house in Idaho because everyone's going to be there.

Yeah.

Family, friends, and my coworkers

and business acquaintances, like all the time.

We didn't build this house for me and Brie.

It would have been a third, a tenth of the size.

You get bored.

Yeah.

And I'm the type of guy I spent my first seven years kind of when my mom and dad got a divorce after seven, I was alone all the time sure i had my dog max my best friend and i went to a private school so i didn't have any neighbor friends and i that slowly changed but um i'm like i don't like to be alone anymore yeah i'm with you i hate it i love company i love entertaining too and if you could i feel like you should yeah i agree yeah yeah share that's why i love having a boat right because it's like a boat is one thing you get to like see the joy of other people when you bring them on your boat where do you show them a good time you know it's like a cool thing right it's like i don't want to be on the boat

i want seven or eight people on the boat that i can show a good time to you know like seeing them have fun and surf and whatever the case may be is like why it's like that same concept right of having a cool house where you can entertain and have your team over or whatever you know so you what is your goal this house in peoria Friday, it's three to five year house.

It's not our forever house, you know, but it's we were living at the Optima for a little while because we had a different house and then we sold that, moved into the Optima thinking it would be temporary, ended up staying there for like three and a half years.

And then we were like, okay, we're like, I got sick and tired of the Optima.

It's beautiful.

We were blessed.

Don't get me wrong.

Definitely the nicest apartment in the state, you know, but

we were ready to just like, we have a dog and it's just like a pain in the ass after a while, you know?

So we got a good deal on this house.

We got to, you know, kind of essentially build it almost from the ground up.

We got involved when they were like, they'd already poured the foundation and done some of the stuff.

And then we got involved.

We kind of took over the project, picked everything out moved some stuff around you know um but we have a i have an 1800 square foot garage which is like bigger than anything i've had yet yeah um which is really cool so enough for some car lifts and stuff like that you know i'm a huge car guy i love cars i don't own a lot of cars right now um but i've owned a lot of cars in my life right just not at one time but yeah so

you know stoked for that and then obviously we're right by the lake which will be cool so we can go out

yeah you have a slip out there and a lift and everything like that you get smoker and wi-fi and all right It was cool.

Yeah.

Oh, it's so fun.

Bree had a boat that she bought from her grandpa.

We just didn't go to Lake Pleasant enough.

So Sand Point, Idaho, and Ponderey Lake is where we're building a boat.

Which is really, I mean, I'd love to eventually have a lake house, you know, in Idaho, like Corda Lane.

I mean, dude.

Court d'Alane's 45 minutes.

We spent a lot of time here.

And everybody's from Paradise Valley.

But I heard Corda Lane, like now, it's like too expensive.

Like it, like the prices just went out of control.

So we moved 45 minutes to Ponderey Lake.

It's a bigger lake.

It's a, in my opinion, it's a really cool lake.

I love going to Court d'Alane to go to Gaza, which is the golf course.

It's the who's who's in Courta Lane.

If you want to be seen, the Kardashians, Justin Bieber,

you know, there's a lot of famous people there, and I don't really care for them.

I don't, it's not that I don't like them.

It's just Mark Wahlberger, that'd be a guy I'd hang out with.

He seems to be a genuine person, but I'm not like the paparazzi.

Like, let's go see.

A couple more questions and we'll wrap it up.

If you could go back in time and give yourself advice at 20 years old, what would it be?

Believing yourself, probably, you know, just

and don't be too hard on yourself.

You know, believing yourself,

don't beat yourself up.

Give yourself grace.

Like, you know what I mean?

Like, be patient.

Like, work hard.

Work your ass off.

Like, be, I think there's a difference between being patient.

And I'm still not good at this, but I still haven't mastered this.

And my wife can tell you.

But, you know, but I'm better than I was, right?

Like, I don't think any entrepreneur is patient.

Like, I don't think those two go hand in hand, but I think we can learn the idea of patience and we can do our very best, right?

But ultimately, you know, things don't happen overnight.

And you've got to, you've got to slow down, enjoy the journey a little bit.

It's hard, dude, because guys like us, I mean, I can speak for myself, you know, we tend to just like move the field goal post, right?

It's like, oh, I'll celebrate when I get to this thing, you know, and then

you immediately get there.

The goal immediately changes.

You don't celebrate at all.

You don't even slow down for five seconds to celebrate, right?

You're like, oh, oh, it's beat, and you kind of beat yourself up over it.

It's like, what, what, what used to be a goal, now you've achieved that goal.

And then in that moment of achieving that goal, I'm actually hard on myself about it, typically, right?

It's like, oh, yeah, but I could have, I should have done better.

It could have been bigger.

It could have been more, you know?

So I think that would be my advice, you know, back then is just like, enjoy the journey, right?

Because like, at the end of the day, we could die tomorrow, right?

Like, we don't know what we're guaranteed to live here, you know?

So you got to enjoy it a little bit.

I mean, you got to, I'm not saying go out and party all the time, but like slow down, have a beer, go, go, do whatever it is that you want, that a person wants to do.

Go to Australia.

I don't know.

But like, try to enjoy the journey every so often, you know?

Yeah, I guess I enjoyed the journey probably too much this last week.

I think a vision board is a great idea for a lot of people that they could move that, like make it a magnet board and move it to an achievement and have, what are you going to do to celebrate?

What are your winnings?

Like, even if you get through the body fat you want or you hit a big goal is like, not a big fan of like, hey, let's eat a cheesecake, but like do something cool.

Yeah.

Like you got to celebrate the wins.

I agree.

And celebrate the wins with the team too.

So what about, you know, this is not a pleasant thought.

It talks about Stephen Cubby, Seven Habits of Highly Successful People.

What do you want to be known for?

When at the last breath, there's people around.

You are, hopefully a lot of family and friends are there to celebrate your life.

It's not a fun way to think about things, but it's a great way to reverse engineer.

who you want to be known for.

I think it's cliche, but impact, right?

Like, what was my contribution to the the people around me?

You know, what, what positive impact did I have on everybody at that funeral?

You know what I mean?

And, and, uh, and I want them to party, by the way.

So they better say, go outside, nobody wear blacks.

Frickin' party, man.

If I, if I die tomorrow, I want everybody to party.

But, you know, I want them to celebrate my life.

But ultimately, I think that I try every single day of my life to genuinely help people in whatever capacity I possibly can.

If somebody calls me and asks me for advice, I'll sit on the phone with them for as long as I have to to make sure sure that they feel like they got good advice from me.

And I just, if I interact with my team, my people, you, anybody, you know, I just, I want to try to leave a positive impact on people, right?

It's all about giving, not getting, you know?

And I always ask people, like, on Christmas morning, which one feels better, you giving the gift or you getting the gift?

And I think everybody can agree which one it is.

Well, well, I would say it changed when I turned about 12.

Yeah.

Because I really like getting gifts.

Well, I think every kid likes to get it.

You get what I mean.

Yeah.

As you get older.

And here's the other thing that I've kind of learned is you ever ask somebody, they call you up and they want all this free advice, but they never do the advice.

Dan Martel's like, how much free advice do you take?

Yeah.

And I'm like, no, when I pay, the more I pay.

The better you'll implement.

The more I implement, the more I'm like, I got to do this.

I paid a lot to learn this stuff.

And I love giving free advice.

I just find the same people keep coming back for free advice and they never move.

You don't, don't let them keep coming back.

You got to like,

you got to have something to say yeah it's like hey did you execute on that last advice i gave you like you almost have to call them on it right yeah it's like you know because you can't do that forever i mean at the end of the day you want to see them win so if they're not winning i think it's our duty as a mentor to be like hey what the hell bro like i'm gonna call you out call them up call them up yeah you know like not in a bad way but like hey i want you to go take action like you need to go execute call me once you've executed Like, you know, if you had a bunch of free tickets to a real estate show, it would fill up halfway.

You started charging a thousand bucks.

People are not canceling that.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

They're more expensive, the tickets.

I don't think people understand that.

Like, why do you charge?

Well, I have a team I need to pay.

And the better the team, the better results you're going to get.

And by the way, even with my home service freedom group, I don't take a paycheck.

I don't.

I don't even want to.

I want to be able to pay my team more and get it better for everybody that's in it.

Totally.

Yeah, I agree.

What, if someone wants to reach out to you, Austin, what's the best way to do that?

Any platform.

Austin Zayback on Instagram.

Probably Instagram would be the best way.

Yeah.

I know we're a different age because mine's Facebook.

Facebook's good too.

I'm on YouTube.

I'm just at my first and last name on every single platform.

There's no weird underscore or anything like that.

Give me one book that's not, you know,

the mainstream book that really impacted your life.

Probably John C.

Maxwell,

The Leadership Bible.

Okay.

Yeah.

Phenomenal book.

You know, I think of that book.

For any entrepreneur, any, any, any visionary, anybody trying to build a company, I mean, it literally is like, you have like the Bible should be be like, if somebody's a person of faith, obviously, that's like your number one book, right?

And then your number two book should be like the leadership Bible.

It's a big, thick book, and there's a lot of value in there.

I like John C.

Maxwell a lot.

He's a really smart dude.

And, you know, I mean, obviously they're all good, right?

Dale Carnegie's great.

Bob Proctor, you know, Jim Rohn,

you know, Zig Ziglar, Tony Robbins, right?

But I mean, you know.

I think that's, that would be my number one book.

And this is the last question I always ask.

We talked about a lot of things and we probably didn't touch on every topic you wanted to hit.

So I want you to leave the audience with the final thoughts.

Maybe just go take action or whatever it might be.

Don't be afraid to fail.

You know, don't be afraid to fail, right?

Like that's the one thing, man.

Like you got to get out there and execute.

We were just talking about executing, right?

The people who don't execute are the people who have analysis, paralysis, they overthink.

You see people, they go to every seminar, they go to every event.

Like I went to a Joe Dispenza event, right?

I'm sitting in the, you get to know some people.

It's like a retreat where you do like meditation and stuff.

And it's pretty cool.

Lewis Howes was there with me and, or not with me, but he was like in our event and multiple other high-level people.

And, you know, you talk to some of these people and I'm like, how many of these have you been to?

You know, they're like, oh, this is my ninth one.

I'm like, your ninth one?

You didn't learn how to meditate after the first like maybe two, three?

I mean, like, you know, what do you mean you're on your ninth one, right?

And so you see these people that they just are always learning and never doing.

Right.

It's like, dude, I would rather you learn nothing and just go freaking try than you learn.

Like, I think we're actually at a point in time in our day and age where there's too much information out there.

It's like turn at some point, you got to turn it off and go execute.

That would be my advice.

Such good advice.

Austin, it was a pleasure.

I will say that I start out all my conferences going, you guys don't want you to take the best notes ever, but don't put it under your pillow for the note fairy to come grant you all your wishes.

You got to actually, because they take really good notes.

I've seen their notes and I'm like, how much of this have you applied at the the last three events you were at of my events?

So great advice.

Great doing a podcast, man.

I appreciate you being here.

I really appreciate you having me on this.

It's fun, man.

Yep.

Thanks, everybody.

Oh, by the way, go leave us a review.

If you love this podcast, you got to ask.

My favorite three letters, ask.

If you love it, share it.

Leave a review.

If you hate it, keep it to yourself.

Hey there, thanks for tuning into the podcast today.

Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy.

I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states.

The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization.

It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high-performing team like over here at A1 Garage Door Service.

So, if you want to learn the secrets to help me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700-plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast and grab a copy of the book.

Thanks again for listening, and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.