A contractor's journey to self-mastery requires discipline, integrity, and respect. Welcome to Hammer and Grind. And welcome to the Hammer and Grind podcast, the podcast built for contractors to help maximize profits and get you off the tools before burnout or bankruptcy happens. I'm your host, Brad Hebner, and I'm here to help you on your journey to self-mastery. Make sure you check us out on our social media platforms, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. Just search for Hammer and Grind Podcast and you'll be able to find me there. Consider joining my free Facebook group called the Contract Your Profit Blueprint. I created this free group to give you as much information as possible to help you in your business. I go live in there once a week, tons of content to help you in your business. Now, if you want to accelerate the success, consider joining my paid coaching group called The Profit Club. In there is a great community of contractors all willing to share information and help each other succeed, as well as hundreds of hours of training, coaching calls, everything you need to accelerate your business. If you want to learn more about that, you can find out more information on hammerandgrind. com forward slash The Profit Club, or just send me a message and I'll be happy to share that with you. Now, let's get on to the show. Hey, welcome back to the podcast. I have an interesting episode today. This is something I've never done. I want to do this. It's me responding to critics from some TikTok videos that I've made. I made one yesterday that went somewhat viral, and I had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, over a thousand comments. Most of the people were agreeing with it. And I had a lot of people that were criticizing and commenting. And I just want to respond to these. I did some videos on TikTok responding, but I want to do a podcast where I respond to these comments because there's lots of value in this. And so I'm going to read what they say, and then I'm going to give a response to that. And the specific video that I posted was... essentially me telling you that you need to mark up your labor and materials 100%. If you've listened to my podcast, you already know this. But in this TikTok video, I do edit another video and I said, you need to mark up your materials 100%, your labor 100% in order to get a 50% gross profit. This is not new. I've talked about this until I'm blue in the face. But for whatever reason, this particular video took off, had a couple hundred thousand views so far. And a lot of people are upset with this. And it's somewhat comical. Some people have good comments and I want to address these. So the first one is, how many competitive bids has this system secured? Talking about charging, getting the 50% gross profit. I actually did a response video to this, but the answer is zero. Zero competitive bids have come out of this system. And the reason is because We don't compete on pricing and neither should you. You should never, ever, ever compete on pricing. When you compete on pricing, you become a commodity. So the answer is how many competitive bids have you won? It's zero because you shouldn't be competitive. Now, if you talk about how many bids have people won using a 100% markup and getting a 50% gross profit, it's in the thousands. In the many, many, many thousands. I'm not the only one that talks about or teach this type of profit margins. There's lots of other coaches that say the same thing or similar. And they have clients and students that are doing this. So there's probably, if I had to guess, in the tens of thousands of contractors who are getting these kind of profit margins on the regular. That one wasn't a bad one. The next one I got. I got lots of these comments. This might work for small jobs, but it would never work or be competitive. There's that word again, competitive on higher value projects. Most companies won't hire someone with over 10% margins. Well,10% margins is absolutely ridiculous. If you're only getting 10% margins, unless he's talking about net and confusing gross and all that. you might be able to have a decent business on a 10% net margin. But on a gross margin or a 10% markup, if that's what he's talking about, there's no reason you should be in business. You should just close up and go work for someone else. 10% is ridiculous. That's an absolute ridiculous margin. Secondly, why would your customers know your margin? Because you should never disclose that information. They should never know what your margins are. If you're doing line item pricing, stop it right now. Quit doing that. Now, I understand that some business models and some trades do this. It's more common. Like a plumber who does service work, they may do line item pricing, labor, materials, so on and so on. But you still don't have a markup in there that says, I'm marking up X. That should be factored into either your material costs or your labor costs. So you should never know what your margins are. But this does work on higher projects. It absolutely works on higher projects. I know home builders that are doing $300,000, $400,000, $500,000 jobs and getting 100% markup. They're building a $300,000 house and selling it for $600,000. I know home builders doing this. Does that mean it's going to work in every single city, in every single location? No. It doesn't mean that it's always going to work across the board. Okay? But does it work? The answer is yes. It 100% works at any price point within reason. I'm not saying you can go take a $20 million job and sell it for $40 million. Most of my clients are smaller contractors that are doing sub $1 million or at the most under $5 million. So yes, is commercial different? Absolutely. Commercial is different than residential. But again, I know commercial clients, depending on what trade you're in and what you do, that are getting 100% markup. So yes, it's possible. Is it easy? No. But is it possible? Yes. There will be external factors that determine to what level of success. Let's see what's next. One guy says, ain't no effing way. The market is far too saturated in half-assed contractors that will do it for less. Guys, since the beginning of time, since Earth was formed, since Adam and Eve walked on Earth, there has always been someone who is willing to do something cheaper than you. Always. There's always someone willing to do it cheaper. This has not changed since the beginning of time. This idea that there's competitors out there that are willing to do it cheaper. Yes, of course there are, but you're not competing with them. And if you are, stop. Stop competing with people that are working for cheaper. Let the cheaper clients hire the cheaper contractors. You need to switch your market of who you're going after and get higher priced clients that are willing to pay more. Somebody, another person said the same thing and he said, that's not going to work because all the illegals down the street are doing this and blah, blah, blah. And I said, well, quit shopping in the same location. If you're competing against people that are getting cheaper pricing, the contractors that are winning cheaper price bids. It's because you're shopping in the wrong location. Don't go to Walmart and say, well, people aren't willing to pay premium prices. Well, that's why Target exists. Target is more expensive than Walmart. But Target has a little bit nicer things in there. And then you go to the next store. And then you have Nordstrom's and always different levels. There's levels to every game, guys. People don't go to a custom tailor. to have a $5,000 suit custom made for them, those people are not going to go to men's warehouse and buy a $300 suit. There's different levels. You're just trying to sell a high value price to a cheap-ass customer and it's never going to work. So yes, if you are in the wrong market, it ain't, what's he say, ain't no effing way. It's not, it's... The F and way ain't going to work if I turn that around. Yes, you have to be in the right marketplace. And then the other one, this is actually a good one of mine. And your bid goes in the round file. Of course it does, guys. Again, if I'm working for the wrong people, it's going to go in the round file. But I'm okay with that. I'm okay if my bid goes in the round file. But here's the thing. You're never going to get the bid from me in the first place. to put it in the round file because I'm not going to waste my time with you. I'm going to pre-qualify you over the phone before I ever go to your house. So I'm not going to waste my time with you. You're going to pay me a consultation charge of $250 upwards of $3,000 to come out and give you an estimate. If you're willing to pay me $1,500 for an estimate, there's probably a pretty good chance that you are wanting to hire us. And because I've already told you that this project is going to cost somewhere between $60,000 and $50,000, and you're perfectly okay with that, now I'm willing to invest my time with you. But if I say this project is going to cost $50,000 and you go, ain't no effing way I'm paying that much. Okay, cool. Thanks for calling. Have a great day. And I don't waste another second of my time. So this belief, and there's a pattern in these comments. If you guys go watch this video, I'll probably link it in the podcast just so you can go see it. But if you go look at the comments, there's lots of people in here complaining, which we're going to get into, but there's lots of people complaining that basically I'm screwing people. I'm ripping people off. It's okay if you don't want to hire someone to do good work. That's okay. You go hire the cheaper contractor and then you can complain later on that all contractors are a con artist, right? So here's another one that came in. We just had our roof done, got five bids, ranged from 10K to 28K. Most were using the same brand materials. Why would someone pay more? Now this is a valid concern. This is a valid question. Why would someone pay more between $10,000 and $28,000? That's a big spread. I can get my Rift done for $10K or on the high end it's $28K and then a bunch of sprinkled in there. Now the key with this one is she got five bids. Five different bids. If this doesn't tell you right off the bat that this person is probably shopping for the cheapest price, then you haven't done enough bids and wasted your time enough. You should keep wasting your time. Just because someone gets multiple bids doesn't always mean... that they're looking for the cheapest price, but it's a pretty good indicator. The reason why you should pay more, and this is not always the case, but most of the time it's the case, is because the contractor who is charging more usually does a better job. They usually take their business more serious and they want to provide a better quality product and therefore they charge more. Are there some that charge outrageous amounts? and do crappy work. Yes, unfortunately, they are. And those are the ones that we need to try and weed out of the marketplace. But most people who charge more do better. And the thing about roofing, which is crazy to me, is that it's one of the least regulated parts of a trade. And it should be the most regulated. Because when roofs fail, the whole entire house is ruined. Or the inside of the house is ruined. So the answer is, usually, the more you pay, the better quality you get. And that's why you should hire the person that charges more. Here's another one. If you want jobs and keep busy, you can't do this. This is like probably if I had to condense it all down into the mindset of most contractors, it's this question right here or this comment right here. If you want jobs and stay busy, you can't do this. Guys, quit being busy. Busy does not mean successful. Busy does not mean profitable. You can be busy. You can work 80 hours a week and still be broke at the end of the year. Busyness is not an indicator of you being successful. I remember early on when I had an employee and he was my lead guy and I would leave jobs to go and look at jobs. I felt bad like he was working all the time and I wasn't. I wanted him to know that I wasn't just at home watching TV. And I would say things like, oh, I got to go look at some jobs. And I still remember very distinctly telling him, man, we're really busy. I got to go look at 10 jobs this week. I was doing free estimates back then. I got 10 jobs to go look at this week. We're crazy busy. And I don't remember how many I won. I won a few of them. But that is not an indicator of being successful, guys. You don't need to be busy. It's far better to sit at home and do nothing for a couple of weeks than to go work for a couple of weeks and lose money or break even. Why would you want to go work for two weeks just to break even or lose money? I'd rather sit at home. But when you properly price your jobs and you get that 50% gross profit, you can do less jobs. The goal is not to do more work. The goal is to do less work for more money. And I don't understand why this is such a hard concept. But here's what happens. Again, we're talking to the same people that are going and shopping in the wrong, that are shopping at Walmart. I went to Walmart and I tried to sell 100 jobs at a 50% gross profit because this Brad guy told me that's what I need to do. And I didn't get a single job. And now I'm broke and poor because I didn't sell any jobs. So what I had to do is discount my pricing just to get jobs so I could stay busy and have work. You're still shopping at the wrong place. And you will always have that problem as long as you're shopping at the wrong store. So elevate who you go to and start selling jobs at a higher gross profit. I could sell one job at a 50% gross profit. that last two weeks and make 10% more money than you if you sell two jobs at a 20% gross profit and work the entire month. So I can do one job, make 50, you do two jobs, collectively make 40%, and I still make 10% more money than you, and I work half the time. That's what you want to do. You don't want to stay busy. The next thing that piggybacks on this is, Well, if you have employees, you got to keep them busy or they'll quit. Now, there is truth in that. If you can't pay your guys, if you can't keep them busy, they're going to quit, right? But here's the thing. Most contractors that I talk to who have multiple employees, like upwards of three to six, have three to six, or I should say one to three, too many employees. They have more employees because that's the only way they can make profit. But if you're profiting correctly, you don't need as many employees to make the same money. So you don't need as much work to keep them busy. Instead of having six guys, you can do the same amount of work and make more money with three guys. And so you have three guys less amount of work that you have to produce. So you don't need to sell as many jobs. And I'm oversimplifying this on purpose, but that is basically, what you're doing, what you can do. A lot of these guys have too many people because they're only making $10 an hour extra off each person. So they hire more people so they can make more money, right? But it's because they're not charging enough in the first place. What's some other ones we got here? There's tons of people saying great video. Absolutely. I've been doing this for years. Listen to this guy. There were an overwhelming response of people that are saying, this is what you should do. Here's another one. I'd never work again because no one would accept my bids. Same mindset. People don't know the difference between markup and margin. That's right. A lot of people don't. So I'm trying to find some of these bad ones. Here's one that says, what are the odds that 100% is the correct markup? I understand what they're saying. And yes, you should look at your business and your costs and figure up accordingly with what money you want to make. There are some mathematical calculations that you should do to get the precise amount of money that you should charge. But here's the thing. The overwhelming majority of contractors that I talk to are not business savvy in terms of the numbers. I'm terrible with numbers. I hate math. I freaking hate it. So this is the simplest formula that will produce a profitable result if you do it. Are there some companies that can do an 80% markup and still do well? Yes. Are there some that need to do more than 100% to do well? Yes. But across the board, if you do a two times factor or your cogs times two or 100% markup, which will give you a 50% gross profit, unless you're wildly off on your overhead, like you're paying for so many things that you shouldn't be, you will have a successful business using this formula. Because it's a very basic and easy to understand formula. Are there more complicated ways of factoring markup and margin? Absolutely. But because I'm dumb and don't know my numbers and how to do it, I make it as simple as possible and still make a lot of money doing it that way. I like easy. Because the more complicated it is, the less likely it is that you're going to do that. What's the next one? That's why people get their own materials. Yeah. The cheap customers who go to Walmart want the cheap materials. They don't want you to make a markup. They're more than happy that you screw yourself and your family. There are people out there that will jump up and down because you go out of business on their project because they save $2,000 or they save $5,000. They don't give a two craps about you going out of business as long as they save their money. The reality is that I've done surveys. I have over 100-plus contractors that I've surveyed, and the average median price was under $75,000. I don't remember the exact percentage. I'd have to pull it up. But there were 50% of the 100-and-something people that were surveyed were making less than $75,000 a year. And 25 %... we're making less than $50,000 a year. So 25% of the contractors out there pay themselves less than $50,000 a year based on this survey that I did. Contractors are not making nowhere near as much money as people think they are. So this idea that you're going to screw people because you're raising your prices is ridiculous because they don't understand what it actually takes to run a business. So people that want to go buy their own materials to save on money, that's fine. Let the cheaper contractors who don't know what the hell they're doing go do those jobs and they'll go out of business. And now you have more business available. I'm totally okay with that. There was another one that was saying, this is why I do it myself. This is why I DIY it. So I don't want to get ripped off by a contractor. Guys, do you realize that people who are capable of doing a skill set will never value it as much as someone who's not capable of doing that skill set. I can't do brain surgery. I will never be able to do brain surgery. So I have to pay a brain surgeon a lot of money because it is a very minimal amount of people that can do that. And it's a high-risk job. Therefore, they get paid more money. But I could probably stitch myself up. I could probably do stitches myself if I really wanted to. So I can say, well, I'm not going to go get stitches. I'll just put a Steri strip on there and I'll save $300 to go to the ER where they rip you off and charge you $300 for a Band-Aid. Those calm artists and capitalist pigs, they just want to screw everybody. That's the mindset of some of these people. How dare you try to make money in a living? That's my money you're spending. No, it's not. No one says you have to hire these contractors. So it's a free market. If it doesn't work, if you can't get a 50% gross profit, then people won't pay for it. And then you'll be forced to lower your prices. And that ties right into the next question that says, ha ha ha, try that in a recession. I started my business in 2009 at the height of the recession. Everyone was leaving the industry and I thought that'd be a good time to start a business. And it was because when people leave, it creates a vacuum and it creates opportunity. There will always be people buying during a recession. There won't be as many people, but there will still be people buying who have the money during that time. There will still be people that need their plumbing, their water heater replaced, even if there's no money because they want hot water. They're going to pay a plumber to come out there and replace it. If they don't know how to do it, they're going to pay someone to come out there and do it. If their electricity stops working, they're going to pay an electrician. That stuff needs to be done. If their roof has a hole in it, they're going to pay someone to come out and fix that because it needs to be done. So even in a recession, there's going to be people paying for it. There will be a lot less people and it will be more difficult to find these people, but it's still possible. The other thing is that you don't use exceptions. as a rule to govern how you do everything else. So during a recession, mind you, you have to change tactics. During the recession, might you have to lower your profit margins? Yeah, that's a possibility. But maybe instead of getting 50%, you only get 40%. There's still contractors out there only getting 20%. But they're not getting the work at all because they're still shopping at Walmart. So yeah, during a recession, you have to change tactics. But you don't say, because in a recession it doesn't work, therefore I won't do it at all the rest of the year when everything's really good. That's really stupid. That's a dumb way to look at something. Of course, the exceptions are times where things don't work. But you don't use that as the norm. What's the next one here? Here's one. I wish I could. I'd never land a job. Yes, I've tried it. 20% is even getting scrutinized these days. Guys, this is just someone who has a limiting belief. Again, they're shopping at Walmart saying, I can't even get people to pay 20%. I don't care where you live at. There's somebody who's willing to pay more. Always. In every city, I don't care if there's 300 people that live in your town. There's the top 10% that live there that will pay more than the rest of the... 90% that live there. It may only be 10 people. It might only be 20 people,30 people, but they're willing to pay more. This idea that it doesn't work is because these people, these contractors, they don't understand how to sell. This is why selling is so important. Most of these guys are order takers. Someone calls them and says, I want to get a bathroom remodel. Can you come out and give me an estimate? Sure. They go out there, they take their tape measure, they measure stuff, they give the client a price, and they say, here's the price, customer. It's $12,000. And the customer says, well, I just got a bid yesterday for $10,000. Oh, well, okay. I'll do it for $10,000. I need to work. I'll do it for $10,000. This guy on TikTok, Brad or something, he's saying that you can charge more. That's crazy. I can't even get... I can't even get 20%. I marked it up 20%, which gave me 12, and they weren't even taking that. Again, it's because you're talking to the wrong people and you don't know how to sell. There was no selling involved in that process. There was order taking. Guys, going out and giving someone a number to do their job is not selling. That's order taking. Of course, you're going to have trouble selling someone because you don't know how to freaking sell. Selling is about getting people to believe that you're the only one who can solve their problem. And if they want their problem solved, they have to pay your price. That is what selling is. Selling is not going out and doing a free estimate and then emailing them an estimate later on and then never hearing back from someone. That's not selling at all. That's order taking. And the reason why most of you are having trouble with it is because you're order takers. You're not selling. Selling is communicating value through the process. What happens when a customer wants to pay for materials? You don't work for them. Pretty simple. Hey, Brad, I want you to come do this bathroom model. We're going to provide all the materials. I just need you to do labor. Nope. Not doing it. Not doing it. I provide the materials so I can control the outcome. Not just get the markup. control the quality of the outcome. I talked about this on, I think I talked about it on the podcast. Maybe, oh, should you provide materials? Yeah. It's like going to a restaurant, you know, gourmet restaurant and giving them a McDonald's patty and then yelling at the chef because he didn't turn it into a gourmet burger. It's ridiculous. Stop working for people that provide materials. Does that mean, but Brad, there's this one exception where we're on Mars. And there's only one place that you can get materials and they want to provide the two by four. And that's the only way I can get work. Okay. I guess it's always the exceptions. I always make all my decisions in my business based on 1% of the time that this happens. This goes back to try it in a recession because 1% of the time is every time. No, it's not. It's not. Okay. Stop trying to use exceptions to justify the norm because you suck at doing the norm. The exceptions are called exceptions for a reason. They're outliers. They're one out of a hundreds, right? It's the things that almost never happen. And we don't build our business and run a business based on the exceptions. So they want to provide materials. Great. Let them provide materials for another contractor. That's not you. Here's a good one. This would only work on jobs with no competition and no other bids. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. It's just not even true. I mean, come on. It's not true at all. There works with people with lots of bids and lots of competition. If you are good at what you do, if you provide real value, if you know your real value. If you learn how to solve problems instead of taking orders, it works. I promise. Here's a really good one. Oh, the great inflation begins. A lot of these guys don't even know how inflation works. You raising your prices does not create inflation. If anything, it lowers it. I mean, if it had any impact, it would lower. Because if everyone raised their prices, demand would lower, which would bring prices back down. It's not because you're raising your prices. Does inflation add to the cost? Yes, it does. When a 2x4 goes from $1.30 to $4.50, yeah, it's going to cost more money to produce the work. But that's not your fault. It's not your fault that you charging more didn't cause inflation. This is the byproduct of inflation. So some of these comments are just absolutely dumb. Here's another one. The exception is on a turnkey project. Nope, not an exception. Everything we do is turnkey. Everything that most of my clients do are turnkey. So it's not the exception. It's actually the norm. So on a turnkey project, you are providing more value. And so therefore you charge more and you make more money. So it's actually the complete opposite of what this person said. It's not on a turnkey. It would be on a piecemeal. Like if you were doing labor only work, then yeah, it would be much harder to do that. So this is the complete opposite. Here's one robbery. I love the fact that people who have never owned a business, who have never, you know, have no business sense whatsoever, they know what your profit margins should be. And they know what your overhead costs are. And they know that you're robbing them, that you're ripping people off and that you're screwing people. Guys, that's the biggest joke. And don't, fall for that crap. Nobody has to hire you. Again, this is how free market works. People don't have to hire you. If you price yourself out of the market, then the market will tell you, hey, we're not willing to pay your price. But if you only shop at Walmart, then everyone's going to tell you that they're not willing to pay your price. If you shop at the custom tailor, and he says that he's not willing to pay your price, then maybe you're too expensive. Maybe there's a recession that you need to consider changing your pricing structure. But you can't go shop at Walmart and then say, oh, the whole world's falling apart. No one wants to pay anything. No one's willing to pay more. It's not going to work. Because you haven't shopped at the right place. You haven't found the right clients who are willing to pay you what you're worth. And it's not robbery. Just because somebody is living below their means or living above their means and they don't make much money, it is not your responsibility to lower your costs and screw yourself and your family and your employees and their families just so Joe Blow can get a deal on his project. This is capitalism, but more importantly, this is how the real world works. If you live in Afghanistan, you either grow your own food so you can eat or you learn a skill so that you can create things and then barter with someone who has food. The old bartering system where you actually had to bring some type of value to the marketplace. And the people that had the skill sets to create things that were in high demand, like maybe tools. You need tools to plant a field, right? To eat. So if somebody learned how to make shovels and pickaxes and all these different holes and all these different tools, that might be worth more value than somebody who maybe makes baskets. I don't know. But the more value you provide to the marketplace, the more you're paid. So this idea that you are robbing people is absolutely ridiculous. You're not robbing anyone because you're not putting a gun to their head and saying, you have to hire me or I'm going to kill you. So they have the option of free will. Now we can get into the unethical part of it where you take advantage of people, but I've never once said that you should take advantage of someone. Never. Matter of fact, integrity is extremely important to me. Being ethical is extremely important to me. And being, even though I hate the word fair, being fair in the sense of not taking advantage of someone, that's important as well. So no, you're not robbing someone. If someone who can't afford you decides to hire you and they spend all their money on your services, that's on them. It's not on you to carry the burden of that belief. I'm telling you right now, if you're listening and you're struggling with this, charge them appropriately. This is the get out of jail. This is the get out of moral jail card right here. If you're having a hard time with charging someone 100% and getting a 50% markup, and you feel like you're taking advantage of someone, like you're making too much money, here's what you can do. At the end of the project, if you indeed make too much money, then give some of it back to them. If that's what you want to do. Or... Donate a portion of that to a charity who actually needs the money. Not Joe Blow customer who spends $100 a week on cigarettes and complains that you're charging too much. Not that guy. Go donate it to a charity who needs the money. And if you need some charities, let me know. I can recommend some. But if you have a moral dilemma about making too much money, then donate it to a charity. or give it back to them. But I promise you, if you underbid the job, they're not going to come and give you more money at the end because they feel bad for you. They will say, that's your fault for not estimating correctly. So these same people that say you're ripping them off will have no problem ripping you off the second that that happens to you. And you should not feel bad about that whatsoever, as long as you're providing good value. Let's do one more here and then we'll wrap it up. Here's one. It's really another contractor. How much heavy equipment do you own? I can't sell a load of gravel to anyone for $700, not including trucking. Well, yeah, like I said, it doesn't apply across the board at every single trade 100% the exact same way. But my uncle actually owned a trucking company for like 40 years. And so I understand a little bit about this. The way you provide more... The way you can charge more money for services that are typically more commoditized, like a load of rock, is by providing more value. What can you do as a trucking company who delivers rock to someone? What can you do to provide more value? You have to figure this out. And you have to come up with clever ways to provide more value. Could it be one-hour service? Maybe you can provide one-hour service from the time they call until you get the ROC is one hour guaranteed. Would I be willing to pay maybe $100 more or $50 more or whatever it is if I needed it in one hour? Probably so. If everyone's saying it's going to be two days before we can get ROC out there and I need it this afternoon and this company can bring it to me within one hour, I would pay more money for that service. Now, I'm not saying it's $300 or $400 more per se, but it's still more money. What else could you do? This is where you look at the marketplace and you look at what the demand is and you look at who's not meeting the demand. Where's the gap in the marketplace that you can provide more value? And the easiest way to figure this out is to go to your competitors and read their reviews. clients are saying about your competitors. Read the good ones and read the bad ones. The bad ones will tell you where they're falling short. The good ones will tell you what they're doing right and you need to replicate that. If you go read your competitors and all the negative reviews are saying they didn't come for two days or whenever they came out here they left ruts in my yard or what else? They didn't bring enough rock. When I told them I needed more, they shorted me. Whatever it is, you find out what those problems are and then make sure that you over-deliver on those. There's things you can do like not leave a rut in the yard. I'm sure it's happened. Truck comes and leaves rock. Actually, my house, my first house I ever bought, had a single-axle dump truck come, drop some rock off for our driveway, and then he had to turn around in the yard to get out and got stuck in our yard. Left big old ruts. It was my uncle. It was actually my dad that was driving the truck. But my point is, it's still a real thing. Trucks getting stuck and leaving ruts. So what could you do to maybe eliminate that? Maybe you carry steel sheets on your truck that you can lay down and drive over. I don't know. I'm just spitballing here. My point is, you figure out where the voids are in your marketplace and then provide a solution that none of your competition is providing. And you can charge more for your services. That's how that works. So guys, I hope you enjoyed this format. I probably won't do it again, or unless you want me to. If you like this, if you want me to respond to more criticism on different things, let me know. I'll do another one of these maybe in the future. But I just thought this would be a fun little change and provide value through these criticisms of what we're doing. Keep your head up, guys. Listen. This is my advice to you right now. Turn off the news. Stop listening to all the fear mongering and keep your head down and work hard and charge accordingly. Get your money now. Is it going to be harder in the future? Possibly. It is. But guess what? We'll deal with that when we get there. We don't start today by discounting our pricing so that in six months to a year, we have to discount more. No. You get as much money as you can now and then we'll deal with that in the future. Okay? So keep your head up or down. I guess I just said keep your head down. Keep your head down in your books and working hard, but keep your head up and don't let this stuff discourage you because you can do it. I know you can do it. And if you want any help doing it, reach out to me and I'll be sure to help you with that as best I can. All right? I appreciate you hanging out today. You can find me on TikTok, Facebook. Instagram, Hammer and Grind Podcast. Go check it out. I'll throw the link to this video in the show notes so you guys can go have a good laugh at the comments. And do me a favor. If you do go watch that, drop a comment and say, I heard this on the podcast. So I just want to know how many people heard this and went and did that. Just, you know, listen on the podcast in the comments. Appreciate you all. And remember until next time, guys, profit is not a dirty word.
