Overcoming The Three Major Business Gaps to Unlock Your Business Potential

Speaker 1 There's a difference between like facts and stories. And I think it's important that entrepreneurs, when it comes to building their team, separate the two.

Speaker 1 Like, facts are: you need to work harder to hire good people. You need to pay them a little bit more than you used to.
This is going to be more work. Those are facts.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Stories are like millennials suck, Gen Z suck. The government's ruined the workforce.

Speaker 1 I don't want to pay this person this much an hour. You know how much I made when I was doing that job? Like those are stories.

Speaker 1 And so it's important to like stick to the facts and not go down that road where you're kind of blaming external factors because it while it's seductive and makes you feel better it comforts you over the short term you're really shooting yourself in the foot before you even try to solve the problem which you know you're operating in 2022 you've got growth plans for the biggest year ever that's going to need people right they exist you can find them 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.

Speaker 2 Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello.

Speaker 3 Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. I'm your host, Tommy Mellow, and today I have Benji Carlson.
He's coming all the way out of BC, Canada, Klona. Benji is been at Breakthrough Academy.

Speaker 3 I know you guys are used to hearing Danny Kerr. Today we have a special guest, Benji.
Over the last five years, Benji has done over a thousand business assessments.

Speaker 3 He's talked to over a thousand businesses and over 2,000 hours really understanding what these businesses go through, some of the dilemmas they drive into. And he's found some common themes.

Speaker 3 So first, I'd like to know, you know, I know what Breakthrough Academy is, but

Speaker 3 tell me a little bit about your point of view the last five years, what Breakthrough Academy does and why you're there.

Speaker 1 So, Tommy, we're business systemizers. We work exclusively with contractors and we help the entrepreneur implement systems, build infrastructure, all the stuff that you know and talk about and love.

Speaker 1 We in a very hands-on fashion help the business owner get that stuff built properly so that the company can scale for the long run over the future. It's not so much work for them.

Speaker 1 It's more fun to run. It's more profitable.
Revenue goes up.

Speaker 1 I mean, you know what happens when good systems get put in place, but there's a whole group of business owners for whom that's an extremely challenging thing to do on their own.

Speaker 1 And they're just looking for a little bit of hands-on help in doing that. So we have a framework that we implement.
We call the Breakthrough Academy Management System. Certainly takes some time.

Speaker 1 It certainly takes some work, but the results that we see are pretty astounding. So that's in a nutshell, a very quick rundown on Breakthrough Academy.

Speaker 3 And you guys, so your position is exactly what at Breakthrough Academy?

Speaker 1 So I do, my role is going to change over the next year, but over the last five years, my job title has been an assessment specialist.

Speaker 1 So what I do is assess businesses on their way into Breakthrough Academy.

Speaker 1 Like you said, I spend doing 90 minute or two hours, sometimes two and a half, like long, exhaustive meetings with the business owner to make sure.

Speaker 1 the business as an entity, the organism that is the business is ready and in a place where we can help it. And what they need sort of matches with what we do, number one.

Speaker 1 And then the second thing I do is, is I assess the entrepreneur to make sure that they, as an individual, are in the right headspace. They have the right attitude.

Speaker 1 They're ready to take on the work involved because this is no small feat.

Speaker 1 So what I do is a mix of like sales and qualifying, but heavier on the qualifying thing to make sure that if we're going to hand someone off to our coach and they're going to spend hours and hours and hours a month with these people, I want to make sure that they're the right individual to do that with.

Speaker 1 So that's what these business assessments are: is a 90-minute to two-hour pretty intensive meeting where I essentially just grill the business owner on their financial situation.

Speaker 1 How well can you track your numbers? Do you know your KPIs? What does your organizational structure look like? Do you have deliverables for key staff? How do you hold people accountable?

Speaker 1 I ask them about the recruiting systems, their hiring systems. I want to know about their training and onboarding infrastructure.
I want to know about their sales and marketing.

Speaker 1 And I want to know about their strategic plan and long-term planning.

Speaker 3 So there's so many businesses I talk to. And so, one of the questions, I'm going to go a little off script here, but a lot of people go from being a technician to getting into the business.

Speaker 3 Why is it they feel like I'm a great tech, but now I decided I could be an owner? It's the EMIT basically backwards. And the E-Myth talks about I'm a tech, I'm a tech, I'm a tech.

Speaker 3 Most of the business owners you find is, I was really good at what I did, so I decided I should own a business.

Speaker 1 That's a great question. There's a couple of things.
I think that there's a level of pride that people like, you know, ego is a powerful force.

Speaker 1 And I don't say ego in like the negative way we've come to understand it over the next 10 years but like a good technician who knows that he's the best person on he on his crew and knows that he's competent at some point is going to get sick of being paid an hourly rate and he wants to take on more so there's like a i deserve to do this or i need to do this part of their mind and the other thing that i think is more current is like entrepreneurship has become pretty buzzy like it's a cool thing over the last 20 years in a way it wasn't before so there's a lot of thought leaders and gurus and and Instagram pages and podcasts about how easy it is and how great it is to be an entrepreneur, which is totally not the case.

Speaker 1 It's very, very hard. But that's also like, I think a force that sort of pushes people to the point where they go, you know what? Hell with it.
I'm going to do my own thing. Let's buy a vehicle.

Speaker 1 Let's get a logo designed and let's get some business cards and let's do this.

Speaker 3 It is really like that, but they don't realize there's recruiting, there's training, there's culture, there's sophistication of marketing, there's KPIs, there's SOPs, there's manuals, There's getting the trucks.

Speaker 3 There's getting loans because they're really good at what they do.

Speaker 3 They still own a job when they start. They don't realize that, man, I got to take all the calls now.
And when they take time off, they lose money. A business runs without you.

Speaker 3 So I don't really believe most of these companies are companies. They're still jobs.

Speaker 3 They're just jobs that they call their, I own a business. No, you don't.
Right. So show me where it runs when you go out of town for a month.
You know, my business makes more money when I leave.

Speaker 3 Does it? Yeah. Because I'm growing so fast.

Speaker 3 I i literally probably pull people off of their tasks because i'm a visionary there are a lot of people out there you know what i'd love to ask you is you got me fascinated by this assessment and i don't know if you're allowed to do this is there any way we could publish this to where people could at least look at the questions and maybe you could seclude some special for bta but just understand what they should be looking at in their business before they come to bta I could link you to something, a PDF I've put together.

Speaker 1 I think it's like a 75-point questionnaire that I have. Actually, I have two new assessments.
We have two new assessment specialists coming in to take this on.

Speaker 1 I've kind of built this SOP on all of the things that you need to be asking about and delving into. So if you want to have a lot of people.

Speaker 3 I'd love to see that just because it's a lot.

Speaker 1 It's very exhaustive.

Speaker 3 No, it's great. Probably a lot of it individual, a lot of it business, a lot of it of why you started.
A lot of it is like, where do you see the business? What's going to make you happy?

Speaker 3 See, for me, it's about being the biggest and best. Like, I don't compete with anybody.
He's heard me say this, but Elon Musk is the only person I compete with now.

Speaker 3 Why compete with another garage road company? We've already surpassed all of them. And I know that sounds kind of cocky, but at this point, I'm not worried about money.

Speaker 3 So, you've done this assessment for so long. I love this stuff.
This is what I live and breathe.

Speaker 3 What have you noticed in these assessments? What are you seeing?

Speaker 1 You know, it'll come as no surprise to you that, like, a lot of business, it's all the same stuff. Like, you can boil it down to the same four to six core issues.

Speaker 1 There's nuance, obviously, between between business owners and between geographies and different markets and different industries.

Speaker 1 We work with general contractors, roofers, painters, landscapers, a mix of sub-trades. So, electricians, plumbers, HVAC, drywall, and then home service businesses as well.

Speaker 1 And so, there's minute differences between different categories of businesses. But when you really look at it, generally speaking, entrepreneurs are bumping up against the same challenge.

Speaker 1 And the other thing that I've noticed that I'd love to dive into with you, Tommy, is like

Speaker 1 there's three really major gaps that I think I can point to from these assessments that business owners are really challenged by.

Speaker 1 Or another way to like the flip side of the coin would be to say these are areas that super high performers, like elite contractors, have found some way to do an excellent, excellent job of.

Speaker 1 And everyone else is kind of like trying to put out fires. Well, these three areas have really been dialed in by super elite performers.

Speaker 3 You know, I've got your three here and I'm excited about them. And I just keep writing down ones that I'm thinking of.
I want to dive into the three, but the one thing I find really

Speaker 3 for small businesses is this mentality of if I don't do it, it won't get done right. All my workers, they're not very smart.
I'm the smart guy. And you have this mentality of I need to do this.

Speaker 3 I need to do this. They need to do this.
I'm even going to call the customer because they're going to screw it up. And what happens is they become horrible delegators.

Speaker 3 They end up hating their staff and their culture becomes really unhealthy.

Speaker 3 And they try to hire an assistant and they go, She's going to screw that up, or he's going to screw that up because they're horrible leaders.

Speaker 1 Well, those people shouldn't have started businesses. If you just want to be a craftsman and have a van and do your own thing on your own for your whole life, and I don't want to knock that.

Speaker 1 There's a great career to be had for people who choose that route. That's just not what an entrepreneur is.
Sorry.

Speaker 3 Well, I think that there's a path because I think all of us were there and kind of frustrated at some point, unless we've got a really good role model that really shaped us or something like BTA.

Speaker 3 I think if someone were to start a business within BTA, like going into it, it might be a better choice because all of us at some point, I think, in the business have been a firefighter.

Speaker 3 And you smile at night and you go, put out 10 fires today. And then all of a sudden, you get standard operating procedures and checklists and manuals in place.
And you go, there are no fires.

Speaker 3 It's so vanilla. Al Levy always goes, man, your life just becomes so easy.
And you're like, dude, I got nothing to do. There's no fires.

Speaker 1 Maybe I'll go break something.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Let's go break something or let's grow.

Speaker 1 You're blessed. That's a very, very fun problem to have.
Like the business owners that we work with are at the stage now where they're, it's not just one of them.

Speaker 1 Like they're through that startup mode. They've got a small team built.
They have vehicles. They've got some stuff, but to get to enterprise level, they do need a little bit more help.

Speaker 1 And so that's where we come in and sort of plug in systems on the back end and they grow, sure enough.

Speaker 3 So the first one's very interesting. It's very interesting to me because I feel like vision is everything.
Right. So let's talk about the first big piece that you have on your list.
Okay.

Speaker 1 So the first big one I've titled unclear vision. So one of the first things I ask a business owner about is I'm like, like, where is this going? Like, what gets you excited?

Speaker 1 Like, there's got to be some painted picture, some mental image, some dream state business that gets you like really fired up.

Speaker 1 Like, what do you think about when you drive around your truck between job sites? What do you think about before you go to bed? Like, what do you want as an entrepreneur?

Speaker 1 And that matters for a couple of reasons. Like, we need to have a vision, we need to have a goal in order to coach someone effectively.

Speaker 1 If we don't have an end point to move someone towards, we're not really coaching, we're just kind of giving general advice. So, that's a really important question that I want to unpack early.

Speaker 1 And I would say, nine times out of ten, Tommy, like the question gets answered in a very vague way. It's just not detailed enough.
So give me an example.

Speaker 3 So, okay, tell me your vision. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So an example, well, we definitely want to grow. We'd like to grow.
And, you know, profit isn't that good. We're making some money, but I'd like to make some more money.
And I've got a young family.

Speaker 1 And so I want to work less. I want to, I want to be around for my kids.
And you're like, Okay, I want all those things for you too, right? A hundred percent.

Speaker 1 But that is to some degree pretty self-explanatory. And the answer I'm hoping to get is like in five years, this is the revenue I want to be at.
This is the net profit I'd like to see.

Speaker 1 These are the KPIs we're going to track. These are the key roles we need to put in place.
This is the tech we need to adopt, like, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 3 I love those. Really good answers.

Speaker 1 And I'll say this too, like the one in 10 person who is able to articulate their vision to me in a really clear way.

Speaker 1 Every single time, those ones, like a year later, two years later, their business has like 2x, 5x.

Speaker 1 Like when I speak to someone and and they can articulate that, I'm like, this guy's going places or this girl's going places.

Speaker 3 You know, you brought up a few things. So what are some of the KPIs that you look for? What are some of the commonalities? Like I tell you, you know, here's how I assess a business.

Speaker 3 I walk into your business today. I go right here on the wall.

Speaker 3 I want you to write down how much money you want to do, your average ticket, your conversion rate, your booking rate, your cost to acquire a customer.

Speaker 3 From right there, I could change your business overnight because I'll find out the biggest hole and fix it. So those are the KPIs I dial in first and then I look at the financial statements.

Speaker 3 Obviously, there's cost of goods and other things with the financial statements, but what are some of the KPIs that you're like, are there ratios you look at?

Speaker 3 Like, what are the ones that you hear commonalities that you're like, that's it. This guy knows it.

Speaker 1 Okay. So I'll be honest, the answer to this question would be quite long-winded because there's like 16 different industries we work with.

Speaker 3 Sure.

Speaker 1 And, you know, a general contractor is looking at gross profit off the job site very, very closely, over-under billings. They're looking at budget versus actual.
They're looking at AR, right?

Speaker 1 They've got a whole set of them, whereas a roofer, you know, they sub out most of the work.

Speaker 1 They pretty much only care about closing ratio, average ticket, and revenue, whereas a landscaper has got a whole other set of numbers.

Speaker 1 So I won't go too granular, but I would say broadly speaking, Tommy, if an entrepreneur can't tell me three years from now what revenue number they would want to be at, what their gross profit margin, their net profit margin they would like to see, and then at least have a basic laundry list of things that they think they would need to do to achieve that.

Speaker 1 That's usually a pretty big alarm bell in my mind. I'm like, okay, you have not thought about this to the degree that you need to.

Speaker 1 Now, I want to like give the entrepreneurs out there listening some credit because this is legitimately very hard. Like we can talk on a podcast and make it sound super easy, right?

Speaker 1 But like in reality, to find the time,

Speaker 1 think clearly, write it down, communicate it to the team, revise it quarterly, like that is some actual work. So there's a few reasons why this is really challenging.

Speaker 1 The first one, I would say, is while every business guru out there is going to talk about the importance of setting goals and dream big and this, that, and the other thing.

Speaker 1 Very rarely do I see anyone actually break down like the framework, like the painstaking process of setting goals, breaking them into smaller steps, reverse engineering that into a very linear path that you can achieve.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's a lot of work to do that. And I'm frustrated constantly at how no one ever talks about that.
It's more than just throwing down a number on paper.

Speaker 1 The other reason I think that it's a huge challenge, Tommy, and you tell me if you've had this experience as an entrepreneur, is like, I kind of summarize this with my favorite Mike Tyson quote, which is everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.

Speaker 1 And as an entrepreneur, especially a young entrepreneur, you get punched in the face often and early. I love that.

Speaker 1 And I think what happens, I suspect what happens is in your first two to three years, you are so reactive.

Speaker 1 You are such a firefighter, you are such a doer of all the things and fixer of all the problems that the planning goal setting part of your brain atrophies.

Speaker 1 Like it literally dies for a few years because you're just like, what's the point? Like, why would I bother? I wrote up a plan last month and it's been a shit show ever since. So why even bother?

Speaker 1 Right. And so that part of your brain kind of shrinks.

Speaker 1 But what happens is for most business owners after a couple of years, they will get to a point where it's not all dialed in, but they're not like hair straight back 24 hours a day.

Speaker 1 They do have enough space and clarity to like actually think and go, okay, what are we doing here?

Speaker 1 And it's really important that when that moment comes for business owners, that they take the opportunity and they do that.

Speaker 3 There's a lot that you mentioned there. And I do love that quote.
I think it's very difficult for business owners. I mean, they don't teach this shit in school.
No, they don't teach finances.

Speaker 3 They don't teach credit cards. They don't teach compound interest.

Speaker 3 They don't teach anything about get a loan when you don't need it. They don't teach about EBITDA.
None of these things. So at least you guys are out there teaching it.
Let's talk about the second one.

Speaker 3 What's the second really tough point?

Speaker 1 I want to add a couple really quick points on the planning thing, Tommy, before we go to two. So there's a couple reasons why this really, really hurts your business.

Speaker 1 I want to be detailed and rather than just sort of generic. The first thing about not having a clear vision is that it's really, really difficult to create buy-in or create a culture.

Speaker 1 Like a business that isn't going anywhere attracts people that aren't going anywhere.

Speaker 1 So if you're trying to like build a dynamic team with intelligent people who are creative, they're insightful, they're problem solvers.

Speaker 1 If you're trying to create that within your own business, as I know most of your listeners are, and you can't communicate them in stunning clarity, like this is where this business is going, and here's the role you play within it.

Speaker 1 You You know, you talk a lot about talent magnets all the time. Like, you are not a talent magnet.
You, if anything, you're a talent repellent.

Speaker 3 Detractor.

Speaker 1 The other reason it's really hard is, you know, you're a visionary. How difficult is it to make decisions? And how many forks in the road get presented to you on a weekly basis? They're constant.

Speaker 1 Like, do we go right? Do we go left? Do we do this? Do we do that? If you don't have a really clear vision, really clear plan, those shiny objects are just so seductive.

Speaker 1 And you will always be kind of going from one thing to the next.

Speaker 1 And then the other thing that I really believe, this might sound kind of hokey, but like, if you get really intentional and clear about what you want, the universe has this funny way of helping you out.

Speaker 1 Like, I do believe in the law of attraction. So if you're putting stuff on paper, you're communicating it to your team, your family, you're saying it to yourself.

Speaker 1 I don't know, stuff just starts to go your way. You get these coincidences.
You get a key hire that kind of like falls in your lap out of nowhere. You get this constant.

Speaker 3 You're right. You're right.
I love that notion. You know, you said something earlier and it really hit i got on here

Speaker 3 the shiny light syndrome for business owners we go oh my gosh my buddy bought a bar and made 300 grand last year my buddy bought a tanning salon my buddy's doing covet tests all of a sudden it's so easy without a plan to veer off of it i mean there's so many people that say i mean listen my buddy bought a uh a gym right we're gonna do yoga class whatever there's so many things that say take your eye off the ball ball that made us all the money.

Speaker 3 And you're right. A great plan.

Speaker 3 And just

Speaker 3 literally today, I told several people, I'm selling off all my other things. I'm not traveling near as much.
I am going beast mode. You do not want to see Tommy in beast mode.

Speaker 3 Turned into the Dracula.

Speaker 1 But it's happening, it sounds like.

Speaker 3 But here's the deal. Things don't move fast enough for me.
So I need to do other things. But I'm like, I'm going to make my own luck.
The thing is, make the plan, execute.

Speaker 3 I let everybody else make the budget. We said 151 million this year.
I said, come back to me because I don't want to influence it because I would have been at 500 million.

Speaker 3 But they said a realistic one and it's a stretch one, but I still think it's going to be very easy to hit. We're gaining momentum every day.

Speaker 3 But I know my best time, my best use is here praising the employees every day, praising them, add a boy, patting them on the back.

Speaker 3 When you start doing that in a business, instead of you're a piece of shit, I'm writing you up. We're doing a performance improvement plan, recognize the good things before you attack the bad.

Speaker 1 I think there's a a lot to do with culture there but you just said something as well which is momentum and i really think when that vision is defined these serendipitous events start to happen you're right land contracts that you had no business landing you get employees out of nowhere that you were like we could use this person and all of a sudden you meet them at like your kids soccer game and then they're hired the next week like this stuff just starts to roll your way but when you don't have a clear plan you're cutting yourself off from that power whatever you want to call it now i just have one quick we'll move on to the the second.

Speaker 3 He's great, man. You did great.

Speaker 1 I'm going to give you guys a link to include in the description of this show, and it will take you directly to our one-page strategic planning tool, which is a very, very simple.

Speaker 1 You know, you can make these as complicated as you want, but if you're like listening to this, going like, man, this guy's right. I need to put some stuff on paper.

Speaker 1 This is a very, very, very easy tool that will just help you collect your thoughts, lay out a five-year goal, a one-year plan, key initiatives, quarterly rocks, really, really clear.

Speaker 1 And then you can communicate it to your team.

Speaker 3 So check that out. No, I love that.
That's going to be very, very awesome. So we'll get the 150 assessment and then we'll get the one through one pager.
So let's go to number two. This is a good one.

Speaker 3 And there's actually a book, I think, called this.

Speaker 1 So the second piece is I've just titled tough conversations. And so one thing I ask a lot about with business owners is their leadership, their culture.

Speaker 1 I'm very curious about how rigidly they're able to hold people accountable. And I don't mean that in like cruel, top-down, militaristic way that no one wants to be a part of.
I just mean like

Speaker 1 when stuff goes wrong, when your employee like doesn't deliver on a commitment that they've given you, do you as a leader step up to the plate and address that in a way that is corrective?

Speaker 1 And I have noticed that despite the macho demeanor and the beard and the big truck and like the contractor swagger, Most of the business owners I talk to are terrified to hold people accountable.

Speaker 1 Like it's the last thing they want to do. They're totally avoidant.
They might bring it up in passing, maybe, but there's a lot of times where they just kind of let things go.

Speaker 1 And there's, there's reasons for that. They're uncomfortable.
No one loves conflict. Like no one enjoys it.

Speaker 1 There's people that are better at it than others, but no one actually gets off on this stuff. It's hard.

Speaker 3 I think another huge reason is like this labor market is so tight that it's hard to do it because you're scared of losing you're terrified you're like if this guy leaves because i tried to like hold the line one time like i am screwed so i think that there's a bit of a fear mentality there have you kind of noticed the same thing i got to tell you on this notion i think it's because a visionary has no purpose doing those things a visionary's role is to keep the vision keep the momentum going they need to find an integrator they need to find that person

Speaker 3 anybody that tries to be a jack of all trades is a master of none if you think you're going to be the accountant, the CFO, the CPA, I find it that some integrators can be both, but I think there's certain people, it's very rare.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And usually the guys that do both, they're not brilliant at both of them.
So, you know, I found an integrator a long time ago, and he's an amazing guy.

Speaker 3 And now there's several integrators within the business because I needed one in marketing. I needed one in the finance.

Speaker 3 He was operations, and he's still, now he's building something bigger and better, which is the umbrella, which is freedom,

Speaker 3 freedom. But ultimately, I find it that we try to find people that are like us, and that's the biggest mistake.

Speaker 3 When we build the org chart, you should find everything you hate, circle it, where you cringe when you look at it, and hire those people, and they're not going to be like you.

Speaker 3 And I think that's the problem is we hang out with guys we'll have a beer with, we find guys we can talk about marketing with, and then all of a sudden, we don't have the people we need in the company.

Speaker 1 No, totally. It's like, why can't you be more like me?

Speaker 1 And it's like, well, because they're not and that's actually what you want on some level especially for an integrator do you remember a point in your career are you still at this point where you hated tough conversations and you shied away from them like were they hard for you how do you deal with those it's really weird how this works the closer you are to me the more difficult conversations i'm willing to have Think about it.

Speaker 3 I will have a tough conversation now with my sister, my mom, my niece. I'll have a really tough one with my girlfriend.
I'll have a tough one with my dad.

Speaker 3 I'll have a tough one with the top guys that have been here a long time.

Speaker 1 Okay, key staff. Key.

Speaker 3 Key staff. But when it's a newer person, what I try to do is I've always hired people saying I'm the good cop.

Speaker 3 I have a hard time because if I'm the asshole, people go to Indeed, they go to Yelp, they go to Google, they go to Glassdoor, and they say the owner's an asshole.

Speaker 3 And I just got sick of seeing that, sick of getting reviews removed, but saying these guys were employees. So I said, do me a favor.
I'm going to be the teddy bear. that everybody loves.

Speaker 3 I'll have tough conversations with the key staff. But I got to tell you, it is difficult.
It's not something that I've been very good at.

Speaker 3 I'm probably one of the worst communicators there's ever been, but I love communicating with those closest to me. But you can't tell I'm not upset.
So they kind of dig it out if I'm like,

Speaker 3 oh, man.

Speaker 3 And I don't, I'm not great at the one-on-ones and all this stuff. You know, I hire people and I say, here's what I think it's important, speaking of this, realize your weaknesses.

Speaker 3 Realize your biggest weaknesses first. and you'll start dominating.
Fill those voids.

Speaker 3 You know, private equity companies, what they do is they build a grid for grids and they find out who is in your top management. Where do they fit in the grid?

Speaker 3 They find the missing grid or the low impact grid that there's not a lot of people. They hire for that grid, the company five times because you need a balance.
You need that personality gap.

Speaker 3 You need that person that's willing to take time and sit down and have those tough conversations.

Speaker 1 And I would say for the business owners out there who are doing like, you know, one to five to maybe $10 million a year, you're not at the stage yet where you have integrators.

Speaker 1 You're not at the stage yet where you can delegate tough conversations to other people yet. You'll get there.
You're still at the stage where you have to do all this yourself.

Speaker 1 There's a quote that I, um, you know who Sean McVay is? That sounds familiar. He's the coach of the LA Rams.
You kind of look like him, actually. So they just want a Super Bowl.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I kept getting during the Super Bowl.

Speaker 1 So they just want a Super Bowl. Sean McVay is the coach.
He has this mantra, and it's actually, it's right on the like wall of their locker room. And it's the standard is the standard.

Speaker 1 The The standard is the standard, which I just love. It's like my one of my favorite quotes.
And in business, my interpretation of that is like the goal is excellence. There's no ifs, ands, or buts.

Speaker 1 It's non-negotiable. It never will be.
That is the goal.

Speaker 1 And whether you're a custom home builder, a landscape or your garage door company, your roof or whatever, like you can apply that to your business. And I'm sure a lot of you have.

Speaker 1 Now, the issue is that human beings by default deviate from that standard, right? The LA Rams are going to miss a pass. They're going to lose a game.
They're going to make mistakes. And that's okay.

Speaker 1 But baked into their DNA is this like attitude that we will always be going for the standard.

Speaker 1 And so my point on this is like a fear of tough conversations isn't a hugely inhibiting thing for a business for a couple of reasons. One, it's freaking expensive.

Speaker 1 Like if you shy away from like holding the line with people, people learn that about you and they milk you like over the long haul.

Speaker 1 Like if you just like, I don't, I don't want to deal with this right now, that accumulates over time. The second one is you really can't develop people without having tough conversations.

Speaker 1 When I say tough conversations, I'm not like yelling and screaming.

Speaker 1 I just mean like you see something that's happened this wrong, you think about it clearly, you maybe prep some notes and then you deliver that one-on-one in an appropriate way to your staff members so that they can learn.

Speaker 1 The third reason that you need to have these is that being avoidant is a recipe for resentment. And that's a really, really corrosive emotion to carry around all the time.
It kills your creativity.

Speaker 1 It makes you more emotional, less logical. It'll literally make you miserable.
So my advice on these really quick, if you have any thoughts, chime in on it too, Tommy.

Speaker 1 Like my thoughts on this is begin to approach these from a place of caring. We had a guy on our podcast on a few.

Speaker 1 months ago who we just talked about this specifically and he said he's like what I do when one of my project managers like botches a job, he's 30% over budget and there's a customer complaint.

Speaker 1 I don't like go in there yelling and screaming. I say, hey, man, listen, I care about you so much that I have to address this with you.
Like your growth matters to me in this business so much.

Speaker 1 I can't let this slide. Can we talk about what happened on site this week? Right.
Like that little approach, that little just shift in mindset or attitude towards it makes it so much easier.

Speaker 1 And then the other thing, this is my quick shameless plug. We just released a five-part framework on our podcast contractor evolutions.

Speaker 1 It's titled Critical Conversations, how to have those conversations you'd rather avoid, but you know you need to have. That will go a lot deeper on this.

Speaker 1 But coming back to like just the overall theme here, I find that business owners hate having these and it is absolutely to their detriment.

Speaker 3 I think what needs to happen with this is Jack Tester, I'll give you guys, Jack Tester was the old CEO of Nexstar Network, and Jack Tester came up with a weekly, you should have no more than five direct reports.

Speaker 3 They should have no more than five direct reports. Five times five is 25 employees.
Most of you guys under 10 million fit in that category.

Speaker 3 So I say, even Jesus Christ only had 12, and that was 12 disciples, and he's the Lord.

Speaker 3 So the thing is, here is when people come in and they can present to you and they show you the results, and there's a data integrity team.

Speaker 3 They're basically confessing to you, and there's a checkup, there's a process in which they have to give you the results that you guys had discussed.

Speaker 3 So half the meeting is about previous, half the meeting is about what's coming.

Speaker 3 And when you could have those type of meetings that are very proactive, somewhat reactive of what happened, they've got to kind of tell you and you'll say, well, what do you think what happened there?

Speaker 3 And another thing is, listen, I want to protect you, but what we're doing here is growing a business. And sometimes I have to sacrifice one to save all.

Speaker 3 And COVID, we did pretty good we kept it under five we went through a sheet

Speaker 3 went through a sheet and rated every single employee put their pay put what their success is and we said can we live without this one right and we we could live without a few of them and we were prepared to go down to a crazy amount low like skeleton i mean i was ready to run jobs again yeah i didn't know what was going to happen i thought there was going to be military trucks in the streets and all kinds of beginning of all this oh i didn't know i thought it was like a real like hey this could be it and i'm like i might go run jobs again i was prepared to do whatever it took I think a lot about pets.

Speaker 3 I have this dog named Finnegan. You'll love this story.
And I was getting Finnegan trained.

Speaker 1 Great name.

Speaker 3 Finnegan is amazing. Yeah.
I said, Huckleberry Finn. And she's like, I don't like it.
How about Finn? And then we said, Finnegan. So Finnegan, this little white, amazing cavapoo, we got him.

Speaker 3 And I'm like, we need to get him trained. So we heard this awesome trainer.
I said, can't I just give him to you for a few weeks and you bring him back all trained?

Speaker 3 And she said, I could bring him back trained, but you're not trained. You're not going to know the right things to do.
Here's what we want with employees. This is the problem.

Speaker 3 People say, can you train my people?

Speaker 3 I could, but you're going to fail to keep them accountable. You're going to fail.
So yesterday I'm walking without his choke collar and he's pulling, tugging away and he's going every which way.

Speaker 3 I put the choke collar back on and it's been weeks since I put it on, right at my heel. I said, heel, he's right there perfect.
And the thing was, I was trained because I went to training with him.

Speaker 3 Right. And the deal is, unless the owners and managers are trained properly, you can send your CSRs to all kinds of training.

Speaker 3 If you can't hold them accountable, examine their KPIs, make sure they're following the SOP's bullet data integrity team. You will fail.

Speaker 1 The buck stops with you, the leader, and they know that.

Speaker 4 Hey guys, I hope you're enjoying this conversation with Ben G, the man, the legend over at Breakthrough Academy.

Speaker 4 I want you to stick around because we have a very special offer that Breakthrough Academy worked out with me.

Speaker 3 So stay tuned.

Speaker 4 If you're in a rush, no problem. Just go to btacademy.com forward slash home service expert and check out the special offer that Breakthrough Academy is giving to you.
Now let's get back to the show.

Speaker 1 So the third thing that I want to go deep on with you, because I listen to your pod, I know you talk about this a lot.

Speaker 1 You've got, and I'm glad you do, because it really is the crux of the issue with all this, which is the third piece most contractors really struggle with is attracting talent.

Speaker 1 So obviously I will talk about team. Who do you have? Who do you need? What are you doing to find them? Like, what does your hiring funnel look like? Can you talk to me about your tactics?

Speaker 1 And again, 90% of the time, I would say just holistically, their recruiting and hiring systems are woefully inadequate.

Speaker 3 Like, they're failed. They're not even there.
They don't have any.

Speaker 1 They're non-existent.

Speaker 3 They say, well, who's your recruiter? Well, I have somebody that works at a temp agency and I put an ad on Craigslist and I do it that ad on Indeed. And I tried social media.
It didn't work.

Speaker 3 Here's the deal.

Speaker 3 A lot of us have had bad experience with a recruiter, but when you're talking about a C-level person, you do not want to hire somebody that doesn't have a job.

Speaker 3 You don't want to find somebody on Indeed or Glassdoor or Monster or Career Builder or all these places. The problem I have with those people,

Speaker 3 I found this lady who's absolutely phenomenal and she's helping me build the team. And I got to tell you.
A recruiter? A recruiter that only recruits 10 people a year.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we have one too.

Speaker 3 She's amazing. And let me just tell you this.
They interview me. The people, they interview me because they tell them, listen, Tommy is this visionary.
He's crazy. He's got ADD.

Speaker 3 He's got a lot of ideas. He's going to be calling you at 12 at night.
He might call you in on a Saturday to work. He's the epitome of an entrepreneur.

Speaker 3 He's not this corporate level guy that's going to be all poised and, you know, relaxed. He's high energy, high passion.

Speaker 3 And the deal is, is you go out. What is recruit? Think about this.
You just talked about football. Think about high school again.

Speaker 3 Football, baseball, basketball, golf. I don't care what it is.
Does a recruiter let you come to them or do they go out, scout you, and find you and get get you or military? They scout you.

Speaker 3 They go out and get it.

Speaker 3 Now, you expect someone to come to you in this job market to be amazing.

Speaker 3 Now, the good news is about us, is we build our employees. We hire for attitude.
We take a young guy off the streets, you know, maybe didn't even make it through high school.

Speaker 3 He's got a clean background, clean drug tests. He's got a why.
We'll train him. But the biggest mistake I see with this is: number one, your culture sucks.

Speaker 3 Like you said earlier, you can't attract them. Number two, a real big one is you're looking for this guy to come in who's an A player that's going to do a million dollars a year.

Speaker 3 They're not coming to work for you. My A players will not leave.
I take them on trips. They've got benefits.
I praise them. They got trophies.

Speaker 3 Where are you going to get the, unless the guy happens to be relocating? Why would he work for you? Right.

Speaker 1 So you have built this organization. You've developed the culture.
You've created a talent magnet. And so you can speak to this with some authority.
Something has happened over the last 10 years.

Speaker 1 And I want to like talk about it briefly because I feel like it's a bit of an elephant in the room when people talk about recruiting.

Speaker 1 The fact of the matter is, like, team building is harder than it was 10 years ago. Like, it is fundamentally.

Speaker 1 Like, you could post an ad on Craigslist and it would, you just would get applicants, and some of them would be good. Like, those tactics that worked then just absolutely do not anymore.

Speaker 1 And so, I did a little research on this.

Speaker 1 I mean, talking about this a bunch with members, basically, this story begins, Tommy, back in 2008, big financial crisis, banks freeze up, the housing market implodes, new construction stops or decreases by 70%.

Speaker 1 1.5 million people left construction and trades at that time. Okay.
Between 2010 and 2020, most of those people came back. I could show you this graph.
It's very clear.

Speaker 1 A whole bunch of people left and they kind of slowly trickled back. And by 2020, we were about at the place that we were pre-2008.
What happens? The pandemic rolls through.

Speaker 1 We lose another million people. 80% of those come back, but we're still short.
I think 238,000 was the number.

Speaker 1 So there's two big hits to our talent pool that people do need to acknowledge and be like, okay, that has happened. People have left the sector as, you know, the economy has ramped up.

Speaker 1 So those are two big hits that really can't be ignored. There's also kind of like this weird, like this feeling of like a decreasing talent supply.

Speaker 1 So aging workforce, 2014, the average age of a construction worker was 40.5 years old. 2021, it's 42.9.

Speaker 3 Plumbers are 48.

Speaker 1 They're old.

Speaker 3 It's hard. So why is that?

Speaker 1 Okay, we could dissect the reasons. Steady decline of shop classes in our public education system.
Do you remember in high school going to like carpentry, going to metal shop, automotive?

Speaker 1 Those have been all but abandoned. Some of them have scrapped entirely.
And I'm not, you know, we don't need to get political on this podcast. I don't think that was a good idea.

Speaker 1 And I think I speak for a lot of us when I say not the best piece of policy there.

Speaker 1 So decline in shop classes over the last two years has been a a bit of like you know depending on where you live there's been some subsidies through covid for people to stay at home and not work and agree like i don't want to put too much on this but because like i say like the dude at home right now wearing pajamas eating cheetos on his couch is not what your business is missing that person is collecting a government check is not the reason your business isn't growing so like get over it but there is I need to say this, there is like a lethargic kind of workforce right now, which I think is going to correct.

Speaker 1 But so those are some reasons like the talent supply has decreased. While that's happened, there's been an increase in talent demand.
9 trillion with a T, 9 trillion in stimulus through COVID.

Speaker 1 I'm not an economist, but does that seem like an overcorrection to you? Like that's, that's a lot, a lot, a lot of money pumped in. Okay.

Speaker 1 Prime interest rates parked at an all-time low.

Speaker 1 Travel restrictions, border closures, a lot of like restaurants closed down, nowhere to go and do stuff.

Speaker 1 So all this, like, while homeowners' relative wealth has gone up, the places where they would spend their disposable income has been, there's nowhere to go. Where has it gone?

Speaker 1 Home services, renovations, landscaping. Let's paint this thing.
Let's roof this thing. Let's do something to our home.

Speaker 1 And so contractors have been booming, which is why anyone with half a brain and steel-toed boots is working already, which is why people are feeling the pinch.

Speaker 1 So that should be said, like there's some actual macroeconomic factors here that do need to be considered. If you're like wondering, man, this feels harder than it used to.
It is.

Speaker 1 But there's a difference between like facts and stories. And I think it's important that entrepreneurs, when it comes to building their team, separate the two.

Speaker 1 Like facts are, you need to work harder to hire good people. You need to pay them a little bit more than you used to.
This is going to be more work. Those are facts.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Stories are like millennials suck, Gen Z suck, the government's ruined the workforce. I don't want to pay this person this much an hour.
You know how much I made when I was doing that job?

Speaker 1 Like those are stories. And so it's important to like stick to the facts and not go go down that road where you're kind of blaming external factors.

Speaker 1 Cause while it's seductive and makes you feel better, it comforts you over the short term.

Speaker 1 You're really shooting yourself in the foot before you even try to solve the problem, which, you know, you're operating in 2022. You've got growth plans for the biggest you're ever.

Speaker 1 That's going to need people, right? They exist. You can find them.

Speaker 3 Well, what it is, is first start out and say, why would you want to work for me? And if you can't fill a list of reasons why, I need to look at everything.

Speaker 3 What I I try to do is I try to read a lot of books on waste reward employees, gamification. I got to tell you that I'm never going to be good enough to live up to my expectations as an employer.

Speaker 3 I'm always struggling to become better. You know, we got a beautiful couple of barbecues out there.
We try to do a lot of things, cook breakfasts, lunches, took 32 guys to Cabo last week.

Speaker 3 Wasn't good enough for me. It wasn't even close to good enough.
These guys are literally.

Speaker 3 I want everybody that works here to come out of this thing and say, I'm a better person for working at A1, number one.

Speaker 3 Number two is my whole life my kids lives i'm a better dad i'm a better husband i'm a better lover i'm a better person i'm a better smiler everything everything i really want that i want it to be an experience here at a one and for me to want that i'm telling you there's certain things that i've noticed that if i want it kind of you're right the world's a crazy place it kind of manifests itself and the employees see it and then they start to recruit for you and then you start to become this magnet.

Speaker 3 And it gets so powerful. It's like sticking a little snowball down a hill.
Then it turns into an avalanche. And I just see it.
So that's when I decided today, actually, that I'm done.

Speaker 3 I'm done with all the disfocuses. I am so energized, so pumped up.
And the number one thing I need is to turn every single one of my employees into promoters and recruiters.

Speaker 3 So one person might be great face to face. I put them in a B and I group and I reward them and I show them how to track it.
The next person might be a social media guru.

Speaker 3 We blow up their Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and their TikTok. The next person might be just good at church and they're great at church and they're in the band at church.

Speaker 3 The next person might be a soccer coach for his kid. I will figure out a way for each of them through interviews, just like you have your assessments.

Speaker 3 I'm going to assess each and every one of them to become amazing promoters. And I think when you start thinking about how always be closing to always be recruiting,

Speaker 3 you start closing the gap.

Speaker 3 And as much as I love the word top grading, I think most of the management needs to be top created at most companies because they don't give the coaching the person needs to succeed.

Speaker 3 Why would I want to work for you?

Speaker 3 Because they got an iron fist and I'm going to get in trouble if I don't do it. Give me reasons to try harder.
What's my life? What's in it for me?

Speaker 3 Always put yourself in the shoes of the employee instead of saying, What can you do for me? I started this business. You don't have no idea.
I don't sleep. I work seven hours.
You make all the money.

Speaker 3 So you take all of the risk. And as an employee, you are never going to make all the money because you're not going to go bankrupt when I go bankrupt.

Speaker 3 I like Shapiro when when he says it, he goes with the pencil. You've heard him and the Ben Shapiro is like, your work is alienable.
You took the $10 an hour job.

Speaker 3 You stick a piece of rubber and a pencil. That's what you get paid for.
Now, I could go have anybody do that. Now go borrow the money, take the chances I take it.

Speaker 3 So as a business owner, we do a lot of stuff. We deserve it, but also don't expect these employees.
What's in it for them?

Speaker 1 Well, that's just it, Tommy. The talent market functions like any other market, right? Like when supply goes down and demand goes up, you know, price increases.
And that's what's happening right now.

Speaker 1 And that's fine. Business environments change year over year, decade over decade.

Speaker 1 If you want to be an entrepreneur for the long haul, you need to be comfortable with kind of having a wide set of tools and using them, deploying them based on what the environment is showing you.

Speaker 1 And what the environment is saying over the last five to 10 years is that people are the thing that's rare. Good people are the thing that is in recession.
That's fine.

Speaker 1 You as a business owner, it's your job to change the way you do things to fix that gap, right?

Speaker 1 It's like, so in these assessments, right, I get sick of this because people talk about employees suck and I can't find good people and it's so hard and turnover. It's like, but you don't act like it.

Speaker 1 Like, if I actually looked at your business activities, you spend less than 10% of your time and money, like less than 1% of your money on recruiting activities.

Speaker 1 All your time is spent marketing and selling and doing all these other things. While like the biggest fire in your business, you're like, you know, I I don't know, I hope it goes out.

Speaker 1 It's like, if this is the biggest issue in your company, freaking act like it. There's so much that you can do that you're not doing.

Speaker 3 When COVID happened, it was amazing because actually I had an employee saying, cut my pay. They gave away their sick days to other employees.
You saw everybody come together and I realized

Speaker 3 how important these people are. And

Speaker 3 they really are the business. I mean, listen, I've got a lot of goals and people, I get up on stage and people say, look at A1.
It's not me.

Speaker 3 What it is is these amazing trainers and recruiters and managers and operators. It's literally, yes, I have a vision, but you know, it's interesting because you look at Walt Disney.

Speaker 3 You think Walt Disney knew what was in his bank account at any time? Hell no. Do you think he knew any of the contractors' numbers built in Disney World? No, Roy did, his brother.

Speaker 3 And you need a team, and you're only as strong as your weakest link. And I think it's important to identify weak links all day, every day.
And you're right.

Speaker 3 What gets measured gets managed and where you put your time gets fixed. And I'm not out there putting out fires.

Speaker 3 What I'm out there doing is finding the people that have already dealt with, I don't even want to say this fire. I want to hire people that have been where I want to go.

Speaker 3 And I'm very fortunate now because I can do that. Now, when you don't have any money and you're literally, this is the biggest mistake I see in businesses.
Number one is they say, I don't have money.

Speaker 3 I've got used trucks. I've barely got enough gas money.
I've been making month-to-month mortgage payments. And I'm like, you started a business with nothing.

Speaker 3 Yes, some people have that American dream, but you can't even get a loan. Your credit's torn up.
You decided to go on a dream because your wife said to do it, but yet you don't want to work weekends.

Speaker 3 You still want that old career for a nine to five,

Speaker 3 and yet you don't know how to get work. I tell people, listen, if I was back out there again, I'd be on the corner flipping a sign to get business.

Speaker 3 I'd go to each, every employee, I'd go knock on doors, I mean, to neighbors, and I'd say, give me five reviews. Here's why.
I'm an up-and-comer. I'm David.
That's Goliath.

Speaker 3 I need five reviews from you. Please, can I put a yard sign out? Can you give me your neighbors' names? Is there any opportunity to meet the HOA president? Can I come to the next HOA meeting?

Speaker 3 You are better, but you don't have the drive. Why did you start a business if you're lazy? You have no money.
It's called sweat equity. Totally.
And I'm like, why did you start this?

Speaker 3 And it really bothers me because they complain all day. And I'm like, who in the hell would want to work for you? Write down three things of why they'd want to work for you.

Speaker 1 Those are, we call them

Speaker 3 entrepreneurs. Don't be a wantrepreneur.
Yeah, no, don't.

Speaker 3 So, you know, I got some other things. I think these are three critical points.
I think you need to keep going on that one. Point three? No, no, no.

Speaker 3 I got a few other things I want to talk to you about because

Speaker 3 a CRM for me done properly with the right SOPs, the right manuals, it's impossible for me to run without technology. I mean, in this day and age, I'm texting the customers on the way it's automated.

Speaker 3 I'm able to reconcile bank statements, which would take three employees to do. It does it automatically through software.

Speaker 3 I mean, just the matching principles and accounting just the things we're able to do with the fleet fleet management gas like everything we do i'm literally running over 20 different technology systems yeah you gotta i mean 20 pretty big tech stack

Speaker 3 and i gotta tell you i look at companies that are barely getting started with a crm and they say it doesn't work right they say it's it doesn't work for my business

Speaker 3 and i go

Speaker 3 what city are you in because i'm coming to work there next you're making money i'm coming into your city because if you can make money still on paper I'm going to fuss you. Like, yes, I got to hire.

Speaker 3 I've got managers I got to pay for and this huge building and trainers and recruiters, but you don't even know where your marketing dollars are going. You don't even got call tracking numbers.

Speaker 3 You have no idea what your conversion rate is. All your data in there is crap.
You don't have good financials. How do they stand this chance against? I got to say, they're selling apples to apples.

Speaker 3 Ace hardware at least is different than Lowe's and Home Depot. But these guys are trying to sell the same stuff I am and I'm selling better stuff.
They can't compete. What do they do?

Speaker 1 Adopting technology is no longer optional. You're right.
Like, it's this isn't even a discussion. And the resources are there.
If you're a builder, you go get Builder Trend or Co-Construct.

Speaker 1 If you're a roofer, you get Job Nimbus. If you're a landscaper, you get LMN.
If you're a smaller business or a trade, you get job, right? The list goes on. Like the tools are there.

Speaker 1 You don't need to go and build your own SaaS product from the ground up. Like they have amazing onboarding.
They've got good customer support. No, it's not perfect.

Speaker 1 But if you want to run this archaic business that is a dinosaur, essentially, like, good luck with that. That's what everybody's getting out.

Speaker 3 They're literally seeing, they're going, the prices are up. I'm going to sell now.
That's what I'm seeing is you will see.

Speaker 1 See the valuations of businesses?

Speaker 3 Is that what you're saying? Valuations are going up, but what I'm saying is these old-timers, they get mad when I come in. They're like, you can't charge that.
You can't do this. You can't do that.

Speaker 3 But they're realizing,

Speaker 3 dude, prices just went up 130% last year. And I wrote on the back of here, you know what I'm praying for every night?

Speaker 3 No trucks for anybody because I got to get them. I'm praying that prices double again.
I'm praying that hiring gets way worse and it gets way harder. It probably will.

Speaker 3 I'm hoping it gets so impossible. I hope my employees come crying to me and say we can't find anybody because that's where I get good.
When the going gets tough, Tommy gets a going.

Speaker 3 You know, here's the other big thing and the last thing I want to talk about that I find most entrepreneurs are horrible at. Time management.
They have no idea.

Speaker 3 They're out there doing $10 an hour work all day. They don't know how to train a personal assistant or an executive assistant.

Speaker 3 They're out there pumping their own gas, washing their own car, doing their own electricity or paying their own electric bills, opening up their own mail, checking their own email, doing all of these very minimum wage tasks.

Speaker 3 When if they really learned how to optimize their time and how to plan for their day instead of letting their day plan them, they would be so much more successful. I'm traveling all of next week.

Speaker 3 I was in Cabo last week. I'm on a podcast today.
I'm not getting on the phone with a customer. I don't remember the last time I talked to a customer.

Speaker 3 I had a fire and I went out there because they wanted to meet the owner and it was a really nice house. He invited me skiing on his boat, but that was kind of more recreational.

Speaker 3 But I think people just are so like, I got to do it. I got to do it.
What is your take on time management for entrepreneurs?

Speaker 1 I don't think that most business owners, when they're in that really reactive place, stress levels are high, cortisol levels are spiked.

Speaker 1 It's very difficult to have the self-awareness to even realize the time that's getting wasted, which is why we do exercises like you talked about earlier.

Speaker 1 It's like we do a brain dump of everything that you do in a week. We categorize by what's high time consumption, what takes you forever, but relatively low skill.
Okay, get that off your plate.

Speaker 1 Hire someone or give it to a current employee. We work a lot.
Like one of our sort of pillars of our six-part management system is literally like planning and priority management, we call it.

Speaker 1 Time management is just like, can you show up on time? But priority management is truly understanding like what matters versus what doesn't in relation to your goals.

Speaker 1 And then aligning a calendar, usually Google Cal, but sometimes pen and paper if you're old school or Outlook, but using a tool to actually take the tasks that you've put out on paper, organize your week.

Speaker 1 If you get really good at this, you know, I'm at the stage now where I have three weeks to a month pretty well laid out in front of me. I know what's happening.

Speaker 1 I don't wake up in the middle of the night going like, I've missed something. Like it's all there.

Speaker 1 So it's this idea of like extracting what's in your brain and putting it on paper and organizing it in a really linear fashion so that then you can just go and execute is like a foundational, foundational step.

Speaker 1 And it's something that we address early with our entrepreneurs because if you can't tell me what you're doing next Thursday at 2 p.m., how the hell are we going to build infrastructure and implement systems into your business?

Speaker 1 So it's almost like a prereq. A lot of people struggle with it.
I totally get it, but we like, at least at BTA, I think that we kind of nipped that one in the bud really well and really early.

Speaker 3 You know, I love you, Mike Bailey, but one day I go,

Speaker 3 how come all the area managers are so busy? They can't be on interviews and grow in the market. And he goes, I don't know what it is, but my whole day gets taken up.

Speaker 3 He goes, Tommy, I promise you there's not a dull moment. And I go, your day gets planned for you.
The car broke down. I needed to go do it.
This happened. I need to go do it.

Speaker 3 I had a job that needed to get, like, literally, I look at their day and it literally is firefighting. And I guarantee you, this was about a year and a half ago.
He said that.

Speaker 3 He's starting to manage his calendar, delegate properly, build checks and balances. I will tell you, lots of things are changing here.

Speaker 3 What I love the most about time management and getting a great assistant, I'm getting her an assistant. She's going through executive training right now.
It was $7,000.

Speaker 3 I will invest in her all day long and I'm going to invest in her under her. Actually, he, Xavier, the guy right there doing the filming here,

Speaker 3 he's going to get buried. So I'm getting ready to get him a helper so I could double his.
And I'll tell you this: if I get a second helper, I'm not only doubling my time, but I'll four times my time.

Speaker 3 It's amazing how it works. If I could have somebody that take notes and have somebody build, this takes me an hour.
How do I get this long?

Speaker 3 It's called, there's a guy that wrote the book, Lean, Two Second Lean. It's called Getting Lean.
Paul Akers, I had him on my podcast.

Speaker 3 If you do it right, you take these tasks and you say, what can I do to minimize my efforts?

Speaker 3 So literally at the next house, I'm moving it to my other house that I got in Scottsdale. I got another one.

Speaker 3 I'm hiring a full-time lady. She's going to be walking the dog, cooking breakfast, lunch, and dinner, doing all my laundry, packing my clothes.

Speaker 3 I'm going to set up a system to dominate my time and every single thing I do. And here's what I know.
By the time I'm 39, I just turned 39. I know I look 25.
It's crazy.

Speaker 3 But by the time I'm 45, I will probably have eight assistants because I just know as you build this up, time becomes so valuable and my time becomes too precious.

Speaker 3 My time is best spent praising people because only the owner can do that.

Speaker 1 Well, I think the best way to put this is like Bill Gates and Elon Musk have the exact same amount of hours in a week as like your lowest performing friend from high school who is eating nachos.

Speaker 3 Right. It's like they have the exact same hours.

Speaker 1 Like they're not playing different cards. They have the exact same hours.
They're just able to optimize those hours and what they spend them on.

Speaker 1 Your idea of like multiplying, creating leverage is absolutely a fact and it's a hallmark of all high performers.

Speaker 3 Listen, Benji, you're an amazing guy. If I were to get a hold of you, what's the best way to do it? Okay.

Speaker 1 Our podcast called Contract Revolution is available on every single platform, Apple Podcast, Spotify, wherever you get them. Go check it out.
We release every Wednesday. That's our podcast.

Speaker 1 If you want to check out Breakthrough Academy, it is www.btacademy.com. So www.btacademy.com to find Breakthrough Academy, which is the coaching consulting organization that I work with.

Speaker 1 So that's where to find us.

Speaker 3 And what's your favorite three books that you recommend?

Speaker 1 Okay, there's three. One is called Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath.
And it's about how to make ideas compelling and how to make yourself memorable.

Speaker 1 So if you're in sales marketing, you're a trainer, you're a leader, and you want people to like listen to what you say and do something with it, it gives you a framework for how to do that.

Speaker 1 Most people are so boring, Tommy. And I hate that.
I hate that. Be colorful.
Like make a mark, be memorable. So that was a a huge book for me.

Speaker 1 Building a story brand by Donald Miller completely changed the way that we designed our brand. If you're trying to build a brand, you want to communicate with customers better.

Speaker 1 Make the customer the hero. Make the customer the hero.
You're not the hero. They're the hero.
You're the guy. Unbelievable book.

Speaker 1 The third one, just touching on the last thing we talked about, is called The Power of No by James and Claudia Alticher.

Speaker 1 Not the power of now, which is a very famous book, also good, but the power of no is about how to say no to things, which what we just talked about is like, what you need to get good at as an entrepreneur is learning to say no to the right stuff and yes to the right stuff.

Speaker 1 So this is a really, really great read on how to do that that I loved.

Speaker 3 One quick comment and I'll close this out. I'll let you close us out.
I never say no. I say, now's the time.
Let's address that later. Because as an entrepreneur, it's almost impossible.

Speaker 3 I'm like, I'm like, let's just revisit that in six months because We have such a hard time saying no.

Speaker 3 And I heard a really smart guy, I think it was Roland Frazier or somebody, he said, I don't say no. He goes, it's just too difficult for my brain.
I think about it.

Speaker 3 I just say, now's not the right time. Maybe we could revisit in six months.
And I keep pushing it down because entrepreneurs have a hard time saying no.

Speaker 3 So I got two other books on that. Gary Keller, The One Thing, and then Essentialism by McRiven.
So close us out. What's one thing that you want to tell everybody right now they need to do?

Speaker 3 Obviously, Breakthrough Academy, but really. What did we miss? What's something I could do for my business? What's the biggest thing today?

Speaker 1 Just be super real with yourself. If you've left loved this conversation and you're like, yeah, I actually don't have a very clearly defined vision for my business over the next few years.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm not very good at having tough conversations. And I've noticed that my business is suffering as a result of that.
And yeah, I really, really struggle attracting talent.

Speaker 1 You cannot fix what you don't acknowledge in the first place.

Speaker 1 So if that stuff lands on you, if that resonates, like accept that and then know that there is an infinite, there is a plethora of tools and help advice books breakthrough academy is one of them if this hits you between the eyes check us out but just trust that there is so much stuff out there to help you and go do something about it i gotta tell you brother benji it's a pleasure my friend this is a great podcast thanks for having me

Speaker 4 Hey guys, I hope you enjoyed the meeting with Benji Carlson at Breakthrough Academy.

Speaker 4 Listen, the fact is a lot of people ask me if I could coach them personally, work with them, and I'll tell you, A1 is going to do about 200 million this year we're really focused on a1 so when i found out what benzu is doing at breakthrough academy i figured it's a perfect opportunity i can vouch for them i know they're good at what they do the thing that i love most about this program is the done-for-you systems the coaching and the accountability that help your company grow huge fast so if you're making a million dollars or more money you want to grow you want to double in size you want to get organized you want an easier life just check the link below it's btacademy.com forward slash home home service expert.

Speaker 4 There's a special offer for you that I worked out with the guys over there at Breakthrough Academy. Hope you sign up.
I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Thanks for watching.