Adopting a Growth Mindset to Turn Your Business Vision Into a Reality

The only way that you'll ever have success beyond yourself is to learn how to leverage. Middle class doesn't know how to leverage, right? So you have to learn how to leverage time, money, people, and knowledge.
If you understand how to leverage those things, you can have extraordinary success. But if you don't understand how to leverage it and your ideology is that I'm a self-made person, I will do everything myself.
I don't want to pay somebody else to do something. You'll stay stuck in that place for the rest of your life.
It's about understanding that the money and the resources that you need are here. Learning how to bring them into your life or manifest them is a skill set that everybody can learn.
Success is actually easy. And I tell business owners, you need to start programming your mind that success is easy, that it's not difficult.
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 Mello.
Welcome back to the home service expert. My name is Tommy Mello, and today I have David Nagel with me.
He's an expert in coaching business growth, personal growth, leadership training. He's based out of Morrisville, North Carolina.
David's a founder and president. His life is now a multi-million dollar global coaching organization that assists thousands of business owners expand their businesses.
He's the author of The Millions Within, How to Manifest Exactly What You Want and Have an Epic Life, a best-selling book that documents his journey from high school dropout to a multimillionaire entrepreneur. David also aims to provide access to top strategies for success in business and life through hosting his podcast entitled The Successful Mind Podcast.
David, what's happening today? Not a lot. Just working like you are, making things happen.
Cashing checks and breaking necks, huh? Yeah, something like that for sure. So this is interesting because one of the things I talk a lot about is manifesting.
And I tell all my guys, don't think you're going to buy a house. Write down exactly how many jobs you need to run.
Conversion rate, average ticket. Let's get your wife on board.
Let's get your kids on board. I don't want you to think about that house.
I want you to go do tours in the neighborhood. I want you to envision exactly what it looks like.
And I want you to figure out what needs to happen today, this week, this month, this year for that to happen. Because thinking about stuff is great, but actually having a plan is so much more.
And I've been obsessed with this. By the way, I just had a shot of espresso.
So I'm sorry. But tell us a little bit about your journey to get to this coaching program and a little bit about what you do these days.
So my parents got divorced when I was around 13 years old and it created a tremendous amount of chaos in my life and my brother's life, my younger brother. We kind of ended up raising ourselves on the streets of Chicago.
My mom was very absent after this. My dad lived in Arizona and there was no leadership.
There was no guidance. There was nobody to correct us, put us on the right path.
I'm actually really surprised we didn't end up worse off than we did, to be honest with you. But to make a long story short, I got married very young.
I quit high school at 17. I had just had it with the school system.
I was bored out of my mind. I wanted to work.
So I quit high school. I went and worked about three jobs every day.
And then I got married and we had two kids right away. And I had no idea the responsibility that I was taking on versus my ability to live up to that responsibility.
And it started crashing down around me really quick and mostly from a financial perspective, but that spills over into relationships and all of that. But in this financial perspective, you know, we wake up one day, my car's repossessed and we can't afford to pay our rent.
And I go and I ask the guy that's renting the apartments, can you let me out of the lease? I can't afford it. I need to go find something smaller, you know, something more expensive.
He says, absolutely not. So we rent a truck.
We leave in the middle of the night. We move about 60 miles

away into a not good neighborhood. And I'm coming home from work.
The only skill I had, by the way,

was I could drive a truck or a forklift. That's what I was doing to try to make ends meet.

And every day I'm coming home and I'm just so ashamed of myself. I can't see straight.
Like this is the husband and father that I turned out to be. This is not what I wanted, but I didn't know how to turn it around.
So I was working for this food distributor in Lyle, Illinois. It was the largest food importer, not distributor.
And for two years, I was working there and I could not budge past $20,000 a year. Just nothing was working.
And I was getting in trouble at work. I didn't care about the work that I was doing.
I was angry. I was bitter.
And in about two years into this process, I kept thinking to myself, if I could just get to 40 grand, everything would be different. Little did I know.
But that's where my mind was. So I'm trying to figure out how do I increase my income and nothing's working.
So one night I had a really bad day, got to work, got in trouble twice before I even punched in on the clock, had a screaming match with my bosses. And then I'm working and I just had a meltdown.
Like I emotionally just broke down in the back of this trailer while I was loading it. And I'm just sitting there crying.
And I said, God, if there's any way you could show me how to get out of this situation, I'll do whatever it takes. I just don't know what to do anymore.
I can't figure out how to solve this problem. And a voice in my head said, David, change your attitude.
And it was so clear and concise that I literally stopped crying. I got my composure.
And I thought to myself, what is that? What is this attitude thing? Because I used to hear it when I was a kid, I would get, you know, C's and D's and F's and they would call my dad into the school when I was little. And they would say, Dave's a pretty smart guy.
He just has a terrible attitude when it comes to the, to his schoolwork. If he would change that, he would probably do pretty well.
And I would go home and I would get grounded from one report card to another, but nobody ever taught me how to study, nothing. It was like the answer to the problem in their mind was punish him and that will solve the problem.
Make him miserable and eventually he'll change his attitude. But it never changed.
I mean, it just progressively got worse. So I was thinking to myself, what is this attitude thing? And I thought, where do I see somebody with a good attitude? And it just so happened, the guy that I worked for, the person that owned the company that I was working for, built it from scratch.
He started off in his garage in the suburbs of Chicago, and he built the largest food importer in the United States. And I thought, what's the difference between this guy and me? So I recognized three things.
He must have loved what he did because he managed to grow it into this huge company. He must have done a good job at it.
Neither one of those things was me. I hated what I did and I was not doing a good job.
I could care less. I was working to go home.
I just wanted to get out of there every day because I was so miserable. And the third thing was this guy had respect for everybody that he came in contact with.
He had one of the first warehouses that had been modernized and automated. And he would have all these people come in from different corporations and he would give them a tour of this place.
He would never walk past an employee without saying, hello, how are you? How's your family? About 85% of them didn't even speak English at the time. And he would still stop and talk to them.
And what occurred to me was that this was like the first kind of belief discrepancy that I had. I grew up hearing that successful people were really jerks and they didn't care about anybody.
And this guy was representing something very different than I was taught to believe. So it caught my attention and I said, okay, here's what I'm going to do.
I'm going to change these three things in my attitude and I'm going to see if this has any bearing on my results. I'm going to act like I love what I do.
I'm going to do every job to the best of my ability. And I'm going to treat people with total respect.
In 30 days, my income tripled. And I thought, how is this even possible? How is it possible that I've been struggling for years now with this issue? And I changed this attitude thing.
And 30 days, my income tripled. I was so astounded that it piqued such curiosity in me, I had to figure out what I had actually done.
Because everybody was telling me, you just got lucky. You got lucky.
Don't screw this up like you screwed everything else up. Stay there forever.
You know, you got a good job now. Because I switched companies that I was working for.
And I knew that they were wrong, that there was something else, but I didn't know what it was. So that started my path of learning.
Then I studied for about seven years. I found a gentleman who became my mentor.
And in 1999, I started my own company. On that journey, I started coaching other people just for free.
People were saying, how are you doing so well? You were doing terrible. Now you're doing amazing.
I started off in a company, driving a truck. And when I left it seven years later, I was in charge of expanding it across the country.
So it was no further education at all. And I thought, you know, I would really like to go do this on my own.
I think that I have an ability to really help other people. And that excited me.
And that's when I decided to leave. I decided to leave.
I started my own company and I never looked back. And that was 24 years ago.
24 years ago, 1999. And you started loving what you do.
You do a great job and you respect everybody around you. Yep.
Well, do more than doing a great job, giving everything my best. And what was significant about that was I didn't know what my best was and I didn't't know how to best my best.
I didn't know how to give my best, and then how do you go beyond that? How do you do even better the next day? So nobody taught me that when I was a kid. I had to learn it myself, but it was significant because it kept me in a growth phase for the entire seven years.
I just kept doing those three things, and I was just growing like crazy. And I was growing within the company that I worked with in amazing ways.
You know, we talk about this on a weekly, if not daily basis here at A1 Garage or Service. We say, better your best.
Today is the best I've ever been, but the worst I'll ever be. And it's something that I talk about a lot is so often we spend times with the people that need help the most instead of pushing the top.
The top have a way of rubber banding everybody up to the top. You prove that it's possible.
I say this all the time, but the guy that wrote the four minute mile or he did a four minute mile, he was the first one. Once he proved it was possible of people did it yeah and you know if you look at phil jackson do you think he spent a lot of time with the third string team or did he work with michael jordan scotty pippen and dennis rodman and make these guys better their best yes and it takes a lot of self-reflection and it takes yourself to stare at your demons sometimes.
You talk a lot about neuroscience

and getting in the right mindset for success and growth. Can you talk to me a little bit about that

mindset for business owners? Yeah. So I really became aware of something very fundamental that

if you were raised middle-class working class, the idea that you were raised with the belief system

was all about being safe, not taking risks, really being loyal to the company that you're working for, doing a good job for somebody, but not really expanding outside of that ideology. Entrepreneurs and business owners have, like it's a 180 on the way that they think and what they believe.
They're about growth. They're about taking risks.
They're about creating. They're about adding more life to other individuals, creating jobs, solving major problems.
It's so significantly different. And one of the things that I found was that you mentioned something, you have to really look inside and be honest with yourself.
And it's a radical honesty, because there's a lot of beliefs that you have to completely let go of and naturally turn around so that you can run a company, so that you can be a business owner, so that you can solve more problems. Because with everything that you're doing, if you're not willing to take a risk and expand beyond what you know, and at least attempt to do something different, like what Bannister did with the four-minute mile, you're never going to do anything incredible.
Everything is going to be about how can I stay safe? How can I save money? Well, I mean, middle-class people, they're great folks, and what they do is very important, but they don't even know that they're stuck in a place where they have the potential to expand, but their mindset's keeping them in a reality that they're creating for themselves that just has no expansion to it. One of my favorite books when I was young was Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki.
And in the book, it's such a fundamental, easy lesson. Poor Dad said, go to school, keep your job, work hard, and one day you could retire when you're 70.
Rich dad said, take calculated chances, make friends with people, explore success because success leaves clues. Think outside of the box.
And one of the things you talk about is financial freedom. And I explain financial freedom to do what I want, what I want with who I want and never have to worry about how I'm going to, you know, I remembered going on dates when I was younger, really paying attention to what the girl ordered to decide on what I was going to order, if I was going to be able to afford it or not.
If she ordered market price something, I was like, I'll take the soup and water, please. So what does financial freedom look like? And what systems can we set up to achieve financial freedom as a business owner? Well, first of all, my belief is very similar to yours.
I think that, you know, do what you love with the people that you love. But when it comes to money, having the ability to create or earn the amount of money that you need at any given time.
So you're not stuck in this idea that you can't do something. You can't overcome a challenge.
There's a universal law called the law of polarity. And it basically states that everything in the universe, both physical and non-physical, has an opposite side to it.
You can't have one side without the other. So you can't have a problem without a solution.
And you can't have a need or a desire for something without the thing that you need or desire actually being there. And for many business owners overcoming that idea in their mind to realize that, okay, I need resources to be able to expand the company, right? I might need to bootstrap the company.
I might need people to invest in the company. Everything that you need is already here, but you have to point yourself in that direction and you actually have to ask for it.
And the other thing is that the only way that you'll ever have success beyond yourself is to learn how to leverage. Middle class doesn't know how to leverage, right? So you have to learn how to leverage time, money, people, and knowledge.
If you understand how to leverage those things, you can have extraordinary success. But if you don't understand how to leverage it and your ideology is that I'm a self-made person, I will do everything myself, I don't want to pay somebody else to do something, you'll stay stuck in that place for the rest of your life.
It's about understanding that the money and the resources that you need are here. Learning how to bring them into your life or manifest them is a skill set that everybody

can learn.

Success is actually easy.

And I tell business owners, you need to start programming your mind that success is easy,

that it's not difficult.

And the reason for that is because we grow up with this idea of hard work, which I totally

believe in.

But if it gets too ingrained in your ideology, like if that's how I'm relating myself to things being hard, I will make them harder than they need to be in order to have the success because that's how I build my self-esteem, by doing hard things. So you could take something that's very simple, you make it extra hard because that's what you were taught, and then you struggle in business and there's no reason for it.
You don't have to struggle in business. Everything in business is cause and effect.
Understand the cause and you'll create the effect that you want. Totally agree.
And so many people miss this point. I think when I was first getting into business for myself, I'm glad I didn't have the SBA give me half a million dollars because I made a lot of mistakes.
So I had to walk before I ran and crawl before I walked. I would say, ask for it.
So many people don't ask. And I'd say leverage has always been a bad word for a guy like most people listen to Dave Ramsey in the middle class.
And I agree with Dave Ramsey for the average human being. Don't get a lot of credit cards because compounded just could be your worst friend, but also be your best friend.
I've got a lot, a lot, a lot of money in an account of Goldman Sachs that gets 4.8% right now. And a lot of it's invested in the S&P 500, which nobody's outdone that in the last decade.
I don't care what investment you were in. You were in Bitcoin at the right time.
There's little stents where you might have made a lot of money. And the most of the people that make a lot of money really fast lose it.
They didn't learn how to make money. And that's the true definition of wealth, in my opinion.
Getting rich is, I think rich is different than wealth. Wealth is making money while you sleep.
And I like what you said, time, money, people, and knowledge, and being able to leverage those four things. Talk to me a little bit about that.
So you can only do so much yourself, right? It's ingrained in our mind, at least where I grew up. I mean, I grew up in Chicago, and everything was about doing it yourself, right? The joke is, why would you hire anybody to do anything that you could do yourself? So one of the first things that I did, and this is important to know, I would have never achieved what I had achieved if I did not use a credit card to buy my education, to buy books, tapes, go to seminars.
I went into debt to be able to pull myself out of this life that I was living into success. Now, I paid it, right? And I understand that if people get overly in debt without understanding or having the ability to pay it, that's not a good thing, like Ramsey says.
But for the average person, they've got to find a way to pay for the education that they need to be able to get out. And to understand how to leverage things is to realize that most of the answers in business is not about how you can do it, but who could help you do it, right? So we have a saying, it's who, not how.
If I've got to do everything myself, I cannot expand the company. And I'm not going to be good at everything, right? I'm going to be good at a couple of things that I'll be brilliant at.
But if I'm going to build a business, I need to find other employees that are way more brilliant than I am in the different skill sets that they have so that we can expand in a really great way. And I also believe I'm paying top dollar for those employees.
When you want somebody to come in and really do their best and they have the ability to do their best, pay them what they're worth. Pay them top of market for what it is that you're hiring for.
We do it with all of our employees, but we hire A players, right? It's not like you're hiring a B or a C player and you're paying them top of market. We hire A players.
We came up with performance pays that are, there's no ceiling. I don't care if a guy makes 400 grand in a year.
I really don't. We made sure that we make money.
We make sure that everybody wins. I wrote a book about elevating your business, build a business where everybody wins, the customer wins, the vendors get to win, I get to win.
There's no reason why a person can't make six figures if they're great at what they do, but they got to have skin in the game. I just don't agree with that anointing somebody without any KPIs driven.
You can't apply that to every single person, but for the most part, I think you can. And I think learning what you just said changed my life because I think I could pretty much fix anything.
I could take it apart. I've done a crown molding.
I've fixed everything. I can fix the toilet.
I won't touch any of that stuff unless I really, really want to. If you enjoy mowing the lawn, mow the damn lawn, get away from your family and take a chance to read a book or listen to an audible.
But if you really look at what most people that consumes their day, there's probably an hour of that that was very valuable for you to be doing. But the other eight, nine, 10 hours where entrepreneurs, we work a lot and you're not always efficient a hundred percent.
If you get to 80% efficiency, you're, you're beating everybody. And one of the things I always do is I'm the dumbest guy.
I find the best people. I've read the best books and I get them on the podcast or I go fly out and meet these people and I ask for help.
I literally say I need help. In fact, writing down earlier, I wrote down that I need help with my rehash team and I'm gonna go find the solution because I'm connected now.
I've networked with these people. I think the number one skill of a great, I met a lot of billionaires.
I meet a lot of them, a lot of them. And I don't say it's hard work.
I think it's the ability to delegate properly and network and find the solutions and not be afraid of asking for help. And a lot of people just think they're not worth it.
They say, why would this person help me? But it can't come from just a thought of, I need your help, it needs to be listened to. And I've heard Gary Vaynerchuk and Grant Cardone and a lot of people say, just dazzle them and show them how much you appreciate them.
What can I do for you today? I think the servant leadership word is used so often. And I'm like, you can't do anything for me, really.
I don't need you to do anything. But the best people in the world are connectors.
They say, listen, I got a guy that you need to meet. And that is a huge favor, right? That's like, listen, I got a guy that will come and he buys a hundred houses a month and grant, you need to meet this guy.
And you do enough of that. You know, you're not asking for favors.
You're helping each other, the wealthy and an abundant mindset help each other. And I don't think that- Let me ask you a question really quick.
Was it difficult for you to learn how to ask for help or did that come naturally for you? Well, I didn't get trained on it, but over time, I literally started just asking everybody. And I almost got to the point, if I could ask someone to go to the bathroom for me, I would.
I mean, if I could ask somebody to sleep for me and work out for me, certain things I've got to do myself. Definitely work out.
So yeah, no, it didn't come easy. I would say it came through trial and error.
And then I realized, man, I'm so worried, you know, Michael Gerber working in the business all day, instead of finding out how to get myself out of this rat race, I made a calendar of what I did all day. And I circled the things that took up the most time and I figured out, wait a minute, I'm spending all my time on this stuff.
When if I hire an ace in the hole and I slowly began to, every year I do an exercise to divide how much money I made into my hourly, how much I'm making per hour. And the numbers got up and then it jumps way up.
And now it's like an astronomical thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars an hour. And there's really nothing I can't pay for that would actually, if I could get to the answer faster, if I could skip third base and second base and go straight to home plate, how much is that worth to get the decision faster by the person that's already done it? And it wasn't easy in the beginning because I didn't have money to blow on a bunch.
And a lot of guys go out there and they go, I'm going to hire this guy. I'm going to get consulting from him, him and him.
And I got lucky with a couple consultants. Al Levy was one of them that they guided me in the right direction.
But, you know, I think sometimes the same people I see at every seminar, they're at every fricking single one. You take a lot of notes.
And I'm like, you know, I speak at a lot of events and I'm like, are you working at all at the business? Are you just getting help? Like you got to actually put in the work too, unless you've got a great general manager, a COO that's handling things. And more importantly, a CFO, because if you don't have your, a lot of us avoid what's in the bank, we don't want to look at it.
We spend what we have. And that's a vicious cycle.
I was really great at making revenue, but I was great at spending it. I wasn't good at keeping it.
And they don't teach you this. I got a master's degree.
They didn't teach you how to build a budget. So that's one of the things we try to teach everybody here is how to get what you want.
My dream's got to be big enough to fit all their dreams inside. I like that.
That's good. Yeah, for sure.
You say that most business owners, number one skill that they need to learn is how to make a decision and have 100% commitment in the outcome. Right.
Explain that a little bit to me. Well, that's another thing that we're not taught.
We're really not taught how to make decisions growing up as kids. And if you let's say you draw a line as an adult at 20 years old, how many people of authority were in your life as a child or a teenager where they were literally making decisions for you or telling you how to make the decision instead of empowering you to do it, letting you experience the consequence, good or bad, and then letting you figure out how do I learn from this consequence and change it to make a new decision.
When a person understands how to do that, because so they don't get paralyzed in the idea of making a decision, they get stuck in wanting to know more information they could possibly ever know without making the decision. I mean, once you make the decision, you're going to learn quick whether you made the right one or not.
And then you can make changes once you do that. But just certain things you're not going to know until you actually make the decision.
So learning how to be very decisive, learning good questions to ask in order to make a decision, and then not get stuck in the idea of what if I make the wrong decision? What if I screw this up? If I'm going to screw it up, I want to screw it up fast. So I learned what I did wrong and I can change it and continue to move forward instead of being paralyzed by the idea of not doing it.
So a real successful person that I've ever met really understands how to make decisions very quickly. And they're not concerned in the least bit if they make the wrong one.
They know that they can change it, learn from it, grow from it, acquire new knowledge in order to make a better decision next time. It's the fail fast type idea.
You know, it's in sales. I want to get to the no as fast as possible if it's a no, so I can move on to the next.
Yes. Oh, there's a good book called go for no.
And I love that book, but instead of counting the yeses, you count the no's once you reach, reach 200 no's. One of my sales mentors, Joe Cresora says, there's one of three options that are going to happen.
You're either going to get a yes, a no, or you're going to book the next appointment. You are going to book the next appointment to close.
And if you can't get one of those three, you move on. Because we waste so much time with the maybes and we all know that.
And the maybes are the guys that procrastinate and they take their time and it's always going to be a no, but they're afraid to say no.

Right.

And I just think that's a word to the wise.

If you can't do one of those three in the sales position, then you got to ask for the sale.

And what's involved with asking for the sale is getting one of those three.

And the maybes are the worst clients ever. I mean, you try to convert a maybe to a yes when they really don't want to.

They're a pain in the ass, those clients, right? They cause problems. They want refunds.
Nothing's ever good enough. When we're training salespeople, one of the things that we kind of instill into their mind is, you should almost be looking at this like an interview.
Do I actually want to take you on as a client? Just as much as they want to purchase or not purchase from us, I want to still be in that power position. Because I don't want to work with somebody that's miserable to work with.
I don't care what they pay you. Absolutely.
You'll get gray hair, lose your hair fast. I think one of the things that I look at when I'm dealing with a client is I say, what is stopping you from making this decision today? I mean, we've went over everything, We showed you the value.
And a lot of times I'll say, well, I got to talk to my wife. And a lot of times I'll say, I'll try to get the wife on the phone in advance.
And when I can get both of them there on the phone, at least it's a lot easier situation for me. But a lot of times you say, well, what do you think she's going to say? And this is peeling the onion back to get to the real root causes.
That's a lot of money. And if that's a lot of money, did you know we had a promotion going on? It's to isolate the objection.
This is one-on-one, but it's just to say, look, my mom worked three jobs to keep our house. My mom and dad got a divorce when I was seven.
And I started doing garage doors and I'm a nobody. I came from Detroit.
I didn't have a lot.

I didn't have a golden spoon.

And I tell clients this.

And I say, my mom and stepdad moved out here in 2010 to help me with the business.

I've grown the business because people like you tell their friends, their neighbors, and

their family that I actually care and I do care.

I started A1 Garage Door Service.

I put my heart and soul into this.

I'm going to treat you exactly like my mom.

And this is what I would do in the circumstances that you called me out for, but I'm here to earn your business. I want to make this work.
Let me know what I need to do to earn your business today, because I want you to say I use A1 because I know I'm going to get you to program my number in your phone. And if we do a great job, I'll give you a five out of five service.
I know you're going to share this with everybody, you know, because I'm your guy. I want to be your guy.
So I've got options for you. And because I believe if you're not giving options, you're giving ultimatums.
So let's work together to figure out what this is going to do, because I want to be a garage door guy. If we just did that every time and I could have my guys repeat that and tell an emotional story about why they're doing what they're doing.
It's so easy. And if someone says, I just want the rock bottom cheap, I just want, okay, you flip houses.
That's great. How many houses do you flip? 20 a month.
I'd love to earn your business. In fact, I'm going to go fight with my vendor to pre-order your 20 doors if I can look at them all.
If it's a 16 by seven standard door, I'll get them to make a price change to earn a client like you. We'll all be in this together.
But very often do you see people fighting because it's not their business. So if you could instill that into people by training them and role-playing over and over and over, I played sports my whole life.
We played one three-hour game, but we practiced 10 times. In business, we say, you're going to go do a ride-along for two weeks, and you're playing in the game forever.
And I just don't think that's the way it should be. I think we need to feed into our people.
The people are everything. They want to hear that it's possible.
They want to know exactly the steps they need to take. I can't tell my sincere story out of their mouth.
But I had a guy cry at graduation and he said, I maxed out three credit cards. I'm here now.
I missed two of my house payments. I've got kids.
And he put his head down and started crying. And I said, listen, I gave him a hug.
And I said, we're in this together now. We're going to see to this that you pay all your bills and you live the most abundant life possible.
And I said, that story, though, I said, I'm not trying to make this a sales. Use it.
Use what you did to come here, to make this happen for your family. For sure.
I really love getting on these calls, especially with someone that talks about mindset, because a lot of people say it's not mindset, it's KPIs, it's OKRs. It's all about getting to the outcome and key result.
It's literally put your head down and grind work weekends. And you are going to work weekends.
You are going to sacrifice some sacrifice some relationships the business was easy everybody would be doing it and anybody that says the four hour work week by tim ferris is the way to go hire a few vas have an e-commerce say become an influencer i've heard all that that stuff is not lasting if you're looking for your work balance i never once have i prayed three times a day worked worked out five times a week, been very healthy for myself, breathing in and out, working, spending time in my relationships. I'm off balance on purpose.
There's a good book about this. And I've never heard of this perfectly balanced life, this perfect work-life balance.
I don't know, maybe I'm different, but I love Mondays. And I don't think you should be ashamed of yourself by loving what you do.
Yeah. The founder of Home Depot just wrote a book called Kick Up Some Dust, Bernie Marcus.
It's a great book. And he started the thing when he was 49 because he got fired from the company that he was working for.
He walked into work one day. They showed him the door.
He was very successful, but the guy didn't like him. And after he had a major career with this person, he got fired and they went out and him and a partner started Home Depot.
And he talks about the amount of time and hours that he put in to build that company starting at 49 years old. And I think he's 93 now.
And he's a philanthropist. He does all kinds of really great stuff.
But he talked about the amount of time that him and his partner put in and the things that they did in order to make that company what it is today and how highly competitive it is. And it was significant because even at the age that he did it, there was absolutely nothing about trying to get home early.
He had a conversation with his wife. He said, this is what it is.
This is what it's going to be. I mean, I'm going to be working seven days a week to do this.
And what was really cool was that he had 100% support. You need it.
You need the family's buy-in. When we hire somebody, it's so important.
We're not perfect at this, but getting the other person involved, it could be any position. You get your support at home.
And when you show up late for work, you can say, listen, we're this step closer to buying a house. We hit our target this week.
And it takes personal discipline, sacrifice. You're going to miss some stuff.
But some you know, some people say live for it today. Enjoy it because tomorrow is not promised.
Then the other side of it is your older self is worth more. We don't move as fast.
We don't think it's clear. We should pay our future selves.
And the freedom we talk about doesn't come easy. We see that with everybody.
And, you know, I went to Ace Harbor this morning because it was closer. And I knew these guys are going to tell me exactly where the screws were.
They were going to do it. And Ace Harbor has a whole different philosophy.
And if I want a pro to tell me exactly what aisle and go help me do stuff, I can't find that at home Depot, but home Depot murders Ace, but he still has a position in the marketplace. And it's interesting when I think about that.
Now that you brought that up, I just ordered the book, by the way, I wasn't looking away. I was just ordering the book because I love that grit, that hard work ethic.
And he enjoys what he does. And I think my mentor, Al Levy wrote the seven power contractor.
His wife's name is Nancy. And he comes home from work one day and he goes, you know, it's your 12 year old daughter wish for today at school? He goes, Nancy told me my daughter wished she could see her dad more.
And he said, tears came to his eyes and he had to recalibrate everything. And he said the next day to Nancy and he talked to his two daughters, I'll tell you what I'm going to do.
I'm going to be here and I'm going to spend quality time. But the next two years, I'm going to put systems and processes and manuals in place.
I'm going to make sure that the systems dictate the output instead of me being the firefighter all the time. I'm going to make sure that there's systems that get an expected outcome.
And he goes, two years later, we were in Hawaii and sure enough, his pager didn't go off at all. Because back then we're talking, you know, people's pagers.
And he said it was the hardest decision in the world not to be able to solve the problems as they happen. And sometimes we've got to let people make mistakes and then build systems around those mistakes to make sure they don't happen again.
And now we've got AI technology, CRMs, we've got a lot of stuff. And it's hard to pick the right decisions.
That's why having a mentor, having a consultant really makes sense for a lot of these things to not make the mistakes they made. Success leaves clues.
Like I said earlier, you know, business owners, sometimes we get negative. Sometimes we tell people you don't work as hard as me.
I took all the sacrifice. You work for me.
You know, why? Because I said so. And I've always hated those

type of leaders. And how a lot of times people say, I just don't have great people.
What if I

told you my C players became A players when I enabled them and I gave them the coaching they

need? If they got a will, I'll find a way. As long as they're engaged and want it and they smile

and they ask for it. I've seen literally people that couldn't exist at another company because 83% of people say

they'll leave where they're at right now because they don't feel appreciated.

So what would you say to keep a better mindset, especially as a leader or a founder or the

CEO of a company?

Well, one of the things that I have found and my CEO, Steph Tuss, has found that's significant is to understand what kind of a leader you actually are. For instance, like if you're a charismatic leader, so you have a charismatic leader, legacy leader, limitless leader, and a catalyst leader.
And they each have very different ways that they envision their leadership. So if let's say you're a catalyst leader, catalyst leader is somebody that seriously loves to get in there and work with teams and build teams to learn from the team, to have a relationship where everybody is participating together, you know, to get jobs done.
People are bringing their expertise to the table. It's not about just telling a person, hey, do this.
This is the job or the outcome that you absolutely have. It's a collaboration of how to do it.
Charismatic leader is more of a leader that's a visionary, right? But the charismatic leader does not do well in areas where they have to run and lead teams, they need to find people to do that.

They'll communicate their vision to an integrator, somebody that really knows how to build systems, as you were talking about. Their talent is the vision.
They carry the vision. They hold the vision.
They sell that vision to the company, to the teams, to the other management that is working there. And then they have people that actually carry it out.
So I know that for me,

understanding what kind of a leader I was,

having my CEO understand what kind of a leader she was, what are our strengths, what are our weaknesses, how can we have people that do amazing where we're weak, totally change the dynamic of our company. And we work with hundreds of companies over the years to help them build their company.
And as we taught that, it seemed to make so much sense for the individuals that were understanding what kind of a leader they were and what they actually needed to help them build what they wanted to build. I think one of the worst things is for a person to get up every day in a leadership position and think to themselves, I have to go to work.
This sucks, right? They should really have the mindset of, I get to do this. Like I've made a choice in my life to do this.
And this is fricking amazing that I actually get to do it. And when you understand what kind of a leader you are, and when you understand what you need to help create that vision and get the momentum going in that direction, I think it makes all the difference in the world.
Yeah, I'm definitely the visionary and I need integrators. You know, you hit the nail on the head.
And when you went through that, I was like, I know which one I am for sure, because I am not the guy anymore and I don't enjoy it. I enjoy motivating people.
I enjoy selling people. People say, do you think you could outsell me? And I said, well, I sold you to work with me.
So apparently I was okay at it because you work with me now. I think it's kind of, I say my teammates are my coworkers.
I don't ever say my employees because we do work together cumulatively. And unfortunately, at certain sizes of the company, we've been siloed.
And it's my job to unsilo that and realize we're working at the same goal. We all win this way.
And sometimes I've got to make really hard decisions. And I'm not a good, bad cop.
I am a much better, great cop that smiles all the time. So I've hired people.
Everybody that works here, for the most part, I've hired for my weaknesses. I didn't try to be well-rounded.
I never said I'm going to be really good at the chief financial officer's position. I never said I'm going to really be good at a pivot table.
I never learned the intricacies of service tied to our CTO, the chief technology officer. Why would I? I make sure there's people that are cross-trained in those positions.
And, you know, God forbid, you know, what I like to say is they hit the lottery and they decided to move on instead of they got hit by a car.

But I think it's important to recognize who you are and how your employees like to be

treated because not an every employee wants to be pulled up to the front of the room and

acknowledged.

Some people will quit because of that.

It puts them in a weird spot.

Some people, and I just did a podcast with, uh, wasn't Gary, one of the doctors that wrote the book,

the five languages of appreciation in the workplace.

And if you learn how people want to be treated and what their goals are, their dream might

not be the same as your dream.

It might not be to make a lot of money.

Right.

In fact, money is not a big motivator after $60,000 a year.

And after 250, it doesn't change any outcome.

So people work harder for appreciation all day long.

Thank you. after $60,000 a year.
And after $250,000, it doesn't change any outcome. Yeah, people work harder for appreciation all day long.
And it's the little things. You know, you give somebody a bonus and they'll pay their gas bill with it.
Then it goes away. But if you take them on a trip or help them do something they wouldn't have done on their own, or if they're a runner and get them a nice pair of shoes, I think that building a company that's built to last is important, even when you're not around.
That's legacy stuff. One of your core missions is to help more leaders make a bigger impact so they can lead their greatest possible lives and serve the greatest number of people.
And you mentioned in one of your interviews that there are different types of leaders. You just went through those five.
Now that there's all these trends in home service business, is there a leader that you see that does better than others? That's a great question. And the answer is, I don't know that I could answer that honestly, from the way you're asking the question, because a lot of it has to do with their second in command, right? Are they hiring somebody to complement their weaknesses like you talked about? If they do, then it doesn't seem to matter which one they are.
They can be a rock star or the company could be a rock star, right? Well, one of the things that you find, because I'm more of a charismatic leader, right? I do not want to run teams all day long. So if I have somebody that's doing that well, that person is probably going to stand out more in a leadership position than I'm going to, but I'm the one that actually owns the company.
I really do believe that it has a lot to do with the second in command. If they are willing to hire for their weakness and they will spend time doing what they're great at, I think that they're all equal in that perspective.
I don't know that I can answer that any other way. That's what my observation has been so far.
So many people say, how do I find that great number two? Like, how did you find the person that saved your life? As they asked me, they go, how did you find Adam in 2014? And the great news is I was able to describe exactly what I couldn't stand doing. And he actually had a passion for doing what I hated.
And someone's got a passion to do the things. If you don't love to do payroll and HR and work on certain things with the CRM and you love marketing and sales, then find somebody that's very, very good, that doesn't have to learn on your dime, and pay them with a bonus structure that's going to allow them to make a lot of money.
But you got to be very calculated and understand if they make 200 grand, I made an extra 500. And I find that most businesses don't have a clue on letting the data.
Working with the private equity companies, they're like, what caused you to make this decision? And if you can't give a really great answer of the thinking and the logic and the equations that went into that, then we failed. Because guess what? Private equity investors, they're taking on LP's money and they sit in front of a board and they've got to explain to their bosses.
So they're going to ask you tough questions because they're going to get tough questions. And I love being held accountable.
There's nothing better in my life because I'm much better in school than online school. But I admit that I have a lot of weaknesses.
I have probably more weaknesses than anybody I know, but at least I could admit that instead of saying I could do anything. That's the key in this book, kick up some dust with Bernie Marcus, one of the interesting things that he talks about, I guess he is kind of a charismatic leader also because he talks about his partner keeps him grounded.
He's a great visionary. He comes up with really interesting solutions to solving problems, but he can also go way off the edge of the diving board with that if somebody does not ground him.
So he found the right guy to be his other. And I mean, that's how they ended up building the company.
Otherwise, without having those two, their individual perspectives of what they're good at balanced, it probably wouldn't have been there. 100%.
You know, you look at Rocket Fuel, Mark Winters. The first example they give is Walt Disney, dependent on Roy, his brother.
Walt Disney had a vision. He didn't know what the contractor was doing on site.
He didn't know what was in the bank account. He was busy drawing up cartoons and designing his dream.
And Roy was making sure everything happened. And I think that that is so important because I'm a dreamer and trust me, I got a lot of ideas and I think all of them would work, but right now is not the right time for them.
And we got to say, we got to analyze each and everything I think about and every idea I have and say, is that the right idea for now? Will it work? And I think no one ever wants to think their ideas are bad, but if you really go through a drill and understand, is this really going to move the needle? And most of the things we think will move the needle, it's a great idea. And I see a lot of business self-sabotage because they go, we deserve this.
We deserve this Harley. We deserve this second house that's not an annuity because we're not renting it.
We deserve this, that, and the other. They're not grounded.
They have no schedule. They have no budget.
They're flying by the seat of their pants. That's right.
And they don't have enough time because they're so busy. They got big enough to where there's so many fires happening, they can't get anything done.
And I think those people out there that are listening right now, and they're going, holy shit, that's probably exactly where I am. I get no chance.
I go to the seminar, and before I can implement anything, I'm drowning. If I leave for two days, the company is failing.
And finding those people, you just got to be very clear on what you want. Telling somebody, I need you to come in and help with everything is not fair to the person you're bringing on.
They should have clear, concise goals on what they need to hit and how they need to hit them. And to come up with that, you might need consulting or you might need better numbers.
You might need to see what's going to move the needle. Most businesses, 80% of them fail within the first five years.
And you talk about this thing called terror barriers. What is a terror barrier? Terror barrier is when the doubt, the fear, the worry, the anxiety that you're experiencing as you try to make progress forward just paralyzes you and you can't seem to break through that kind of reptilian brain that's causing the fear to just lock you up.
What we teach is that fear is actually a good thing. One of the most common questions that we get is how do we make fear go away? You don't want fear to go away.
Fear does a really great job of telling you that you need to pay attention to something that might be serious. You're then supposed to engage your intellect, right? Instead of being all emotional about it or running away or, you know, fight, flight, or freeze type of an idea, you engage your intellect and you go, okay, is this something that I need to be concerned with? Thank you, fear.
Thanks for alerting me to something. And then you really analyze what it is that you need to do with whatever you're perceiving in the moment.
So when you talk about mastering fear, that's really mastering fear. It's really understanding what it is, that it plays a significant role in our life.
If we didn't have the ability to experience fear, we'd probably be dead in a week because we would do such stupid things without having that higher genius inside of ourselves that says, hey, wait a minute, watch out for this. But we're only born with two fears, the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises.
All other fears are learned. So given the fact that we can learn them in two ways, we either experience something to be afraid of and then we develop that conditioning, or we're around somebody as a kid who's constantly afraid about something, and they're putting that into our mind.
The key is to understand exactly what it is. It's only an alert system, right? You have to step in as an emotionally mature person and say, is this something that I really need to be concerned with? If so, why? And then what do I do? And that's as far as the fear goes in your life.
It's like, thank you for the alert. I've got it from here.
So people that suffer from the terror barrier, they don't have the ability to do that. They experience fear and they freeze or they run or they self-sabotage.
They don't understand how to actually work with it, what it is and get better because of it. I love anxiety.
I love stress. I very rarely feel it.
But the Bible says, if you ignore your conscience, it'll start going away. And it's true.
Like, listen, if I kept eating 10 Big Macs a day and I knew it was bad for me and I just kept doing it eventually, I don't even think it's like whatever. I have avoided my conscience and that feeling started to wither away.
I ignore that there's no money in the bank account. I keep making poor decisions and just avoid the bank account.
Or I feel stressed in my leg and I don't get it checked out and it turns into a lot worse problem. It's like anything else.
If you ignore your brakes squeaking, then your rotors and your calipers go bad because you ignored the problem. And you just said, I'm going to live with it.
So I agree with that wholeheartedly. One of these questions, this will be one of the last questions.
So I want to figure out how people can get ahold of you, but we're very busy, right? An entrepreneur's life is just slammed and it's hard to grow personally. What are some things that we can do every day or simple habits that we could build upon to make sure we're getting better each day personally? So I think the way that you address your day right after you fully become awake in the morning, number one, when you wake up, get up.
Don't mess around with hitting snoozes and laying around in bed. When you wake up, get up.
Get fully awake and then sit down and take a look at what your schedule is for you to do and ask yourself a question. Who do I want to be today? As I'm looking at my calendar and the different meetings or projects that I'm working on, who do I want to be as a person when I do this? So that I become conscious of the person that I'm deciding to be every day instead of waking up and just following whatever mood I'm in or the weather or an argument with your spouse or you get bad news or good news or you hear something on the news.
It's really taking conscious control and saying, this is the person that I want to be today. This is the leader that I want to be today.
This is the way that I want to show up and run that meeting. So all of that is very conscious.
And then consistently learning every single day, putting something good in your mind to offset all of the negative, because the negative creeps in when you're not paying attention to it, right? If it shuts down your ability to reject the information, it just seeps right into your mind. And once it gets into your subconscious, you begin acting on it automatically without even realizing you're doing it.
You'll end up self-sabotaging. So what we do with people every single morning is have them focus on who they want to be, make a conscious choice, determine what it is that they're going to do for that day to make it literally productive, and then ask themselves another question, which is, is there anything that I need to prepare for today that I know is not going to go well? Is there something that I know? Am I going to end up being around a negative person? Is there something that I would consider bad news on the horizon? And how do I actually want to deal with that ahead of time so that I'm preparing myself psychologically to handle it in the best way that I possibly can to get the best outcome that I can? I love it.
I love it. I love it.
I love it. I think making a plan for the day and really understanding what you're going to get done.
I think that the smartest people I know, they said that, you know, you've heard big rocks, small rocks, stuff like that. But ultimately, what are some real obstacles that I'm going to solve for some systems, something I'm going to actually do to create less stress tomorrow? And it will be a complete system that I'll have a data integrity team and make sure that the numbers are accurate because that will help guide me to the right decisions.
Two books you guys got to read so far, The Millions Within, How to Manifest Exactly What You Want and Have an Epic Life, and that's by my friend David here. One of the other books you mentioned was Kick Up Some Dust, and that's the Home Depot story, and it's okay to work a lot david is there any other book other than the e-myth or seven habits or the ultimate sales machine or four disciplines of execution or darren hardy just something outside of the norm a lot of people say the bible is there another book that really maybe a hidden gem of yours that you really recommend that we should be reading? Yeah.
Working with the Law by Raymond Hollywell. I got turned on to that book in the 90s from my mentor.
And it's one of the best books to understand the principles of how this universe operates so that you can literally train yourself to think according to those principles. Because everything is based on cause and effect.
And if your thinking is off, you're going to experience that as an effect. But most people, what they do is they think that the world is happening to them instead of them actually creating the world that they want to be in.
And that's a fantastic book that teaches you how to think according to the seven basic universal principles. I love it.
You've got 145, almost five stars. That's absolutely amazing.
Definitely got to go check out David's book, The Man's Within. If someone wants to get ahold of you, David, they want to really get their mindset right.
They want to break through some barriers. They're ready to live a life of abundance.
What's the best way to get a hold of you? So one thing that they could do is they could listen to our podcast, the Successful Mind Podcast. It's free.
They can listen to it. They can decide whether what they're hearing is right for them or not.
But if they actually want to do something where they're actually taking some action to find out something about themselves, if they go to lifeisnowinc.com forward slash leader, they can take our leadership assessment and it'll tell them exactly what kind of leader they are and what their strengths and what their weaknesses are. And it's a real eye-opener for people.
It doesn't cost anything. You do it and it's an amazing thing.
It'll take you 15 minutes at most. Okay, lifeisnowinc.com forward slash leader.
You guys need to go take that test, see what kind of leader you are. Yeah.
And Dave, we talked about a lot of things. I've got a ton of notes.
I really enjoyed this podcast. I ordered your book.
I should have read it before. I'm sorry.
It's okay. But it's coming in the mail now.
So I will read it. And we did talk about several things and I just wanted to see if you had the listeners, there might be something they need to go to today.
Maybe just something for advice that we didn't mention, but I wanted to give you the last couple of minutes to close us out with a final thought. So I think that the best thing that you can do is to create a vision for your own life, right? I don't know if you've ever read the book Vivid Vision.
I can't think of the author's name right now. It teaches you- Vivid Vision by Cameron Herold.
Oh, yeah, I have read this, yeah. Yeah, it's a fantastic book.
It's a little bit different twist on creating a vision. Instead of doing a 5, 10, 20-year plan, he has you do a three-year plan and break down all the individual areas of your life, how you'd like to see it in three years.
It really, it helped me create a more significant vision for myself to be able to work on on a regular basis. Me and my CEO, we did it together and it really helped.
It made a significant difference. All right.
Well, listen, guys, you heard from David Nagel. He's the man man he's definitely relatable to all of us he didn't get uh handed anything he didn't have the greatest childhood he worked his ass off to get where he's at today it's all mindset this attitude of uh you can accomplish anything you you strive for one of the things i loved is leveraging time money people of knowledge.
So take David up on his offer. You really should.
You need to go to lifeisnowinc.com forward slash leader. You got it.
You got it, Tommy. All right, David.
Well, listen, this was a blast. I'll check out your book.
Everyone else is going to listen and read your book. Some people are audible lovers.
And I really appreciate the advice. This was fantastic.
Thank you so much for having me. It was an honor.
All right, my friend. Well, listen, have a great week and we'll touch base.
Okay. Take care.
Thanks. Bye.
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

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Thanks again for listening

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