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. All right, welcome back to the podcast. Number 112, it's killing you slowly and you don't even know it. Now, full confession, I've changed the title on this one like three times. I wanted to be a little dramatic, but at the same time, there's truth in this. There's things that we do as contractors on a regular basis that are slowly killing us and we don't even realize it. And I'm going to be all over the place on this podcast. I'm just going to warn you right now. I'm going to go lots of different places. I'm probably going to get upset. I'm probably going to yell. I might get emotional. Who knows? This is such an important topic. And I see this happening more and more and more. And with the readily available... access to technology through Facebook groups and TikTok and all this stuff out there, there's more and more people that are giving worse and worse advice. I saw it this morning. It's what triggered this podcast topic. Sometimes I get inspiration from things that happen, responses to comments or people making comments or posts. And I'm like, man, that's just so wrong. I get fired up inside. And that's what happened this morning. I was reading a post in one of the free contractor groups on Facebook. And this particular one has grown exponentially. It's got, I don't know,40,000 plus contractors. So I like to come in here often, read things, post things, respond to comments, try to provide value. Most of the time, people tell me I'm stupid. People say, you don't know what you're talking about. You're full of crap. Oh, you're just a marketer trying to sell me something. Those are the normal responses that I get. But I go in there because a lot of times I'll post a piece of comment. I'll get 20 hate comments, but I'll get 50 positive comments and things of like, oh, this really made a difference. Wow, this is really good advice. Thank you so much. So there's always going to be haters and that's not what I'm talking about here. But this particular post really rubbed me wrong. I got fired up. And usually, I don't let things bother me like that. I'll just give you guys a little secret, especially if you watch TikTok. Most of that that I do is for show. I'm polarizing on purpose for show. That's to get reaction. Sometimes people don't agree with it. Sometimes people think it's too far. And I understand there's different spectrums of where people want to be at. If you and I sat down and had a one-on-one conversation in person, you'd probably be shocked by the type of person I am. Now, I'm not fake. I'm not being this fake persona. It's just an exaggerated persona of who I am. So one thing I learned early on in my coaching business is that people love the polarizing content whenever it's new to them. But then once they try to get coaching or once they come in and want to really actually improve their business, they don't like polarizing feedback. And so I've had to... I mean, that's something I learned. I had to figure out how to be polarizing externally, but how to be encouraging internally. But I still get fired up. I'm very passionate about this, guys, because I live through all of this. Everything I speak on is because I made the mistake. And I made it much longer than what most people need to do. And so I want to try and shortcut this process for you so that you don't have to have the same path that I went down, which almost killed me. It literally almost killed me. So let's get into this. I saw this post this morning. And this is what it says. I'm going to read it to you and then I'll break it down individually. But a guy posted this and he says, these are things that new contractors may not yet understand, but will eventually. He's trying to give us insight into what it's really like owning a construction business. Number one, being in business for yourself dramatically increases your personal responsibility for both your work and the work of others. Number two, you are not your own boss. Every single customer you have is your boss while you're working on their job. And number three, you cannot shut off work when 5 o 'clock hits. You are either planning, stressing, or second-guessing 24-7. Now, if you would have said this or showed me this post like five years ago, I would have been like, yep,100%. That's exactly what it's like. You're right. This is what it means to own a contracting business. Five years ago, I would have agreed with you. Today, I say that this post is complete bullshit. Now, there may be truths in this. There may be times in your business where these things can be true. But this does not encapsulate what it means to be a contractor. This is one person's viewpoint who has not figured it out yet in their business. And what's sad to me is that on this particular post, there's over 92 comments and 168 likes. And a lot of these comments are saying things like, I've been up all night second-guessing myself on things I've done a thousand times before. So true. Other things like, I agree with this completely. Truth. All of these things. And there are some people that are saying, no, that's not true. I don't agree with number two. I don't agree with this. But the majority, overwhelming majority of the people in this response are saying, yes, I agree with this. This is so true. Now, let me ask you this. If you were brand new, and some of you may be brand new. Some of you may have started your business last week and you're hearing this for the first time. Some of you may be a year, two years in. Maybe you're thinking about starting a business and you haven't actually started one yet. And I came to you, or actually you came to me and said, hey, Brad, I'm going to start my own business. What's it like to be a contractor? And I said, man, this is what it's like. This is really what it's like. You're going to be stressed out all the time. You're going to be working 16-hour days. When you're not working on the tools all day, you're going to be tired. And you're going to have to go look at estimates in the evening every night. You're going to have to work Saturdays and some Sundays just to make money. And you're going to miss all of your family and kids' activities. And you're only going to make like $45,000 a year. And you're going to be stressed out. People are going to be calling and yelling and complaining at you. I mean, that's what it's like, man. It's so much fun. Who in their right freaking mind would say, sign me up for that? Not a single person would say, sign me up for that. Yet that's where an overwhelming majority of you are right now. You could be three years in, five years in, seven years in. And that's your life. I just described your life. And I want you to hear me and I want you to hear me loud right now. That is not normal. That is not what it means to run a construction business. That is the result of not knowing what you're doing in terms of business. I get called out for not talking about quality and all these things. And yes, there are some guys that do crappy quality that suck, right? And we can all have discussions about raising the quality and doing better service. But the overwhelming majority of contractors that I talk to, which is in the thousands, all do good work or acceptable quality work. It's not the problem of the trade. The problem is almost never the trade itself. Sure, there's tips and tricks and things to be more efficient and save you a couple hundred dollars here and there. Yeah, those things exist and that can help. But that's not the problem. The problem is you don't know how to run a business. And we get caught in this and believe that this is our life. This is what it means. And we start thinking things like, man, I just need to do more jobs. If I could do six jobs a week instead of four, then that will allow me to make an extra $500 a week. Well, if I got to work Saturdays... And here's one I believed. And here's the funny thing. Half of the time when we hear this stuff, somebody just made it up and had no real experience. They just made it up. Somebody said it and we hear it. We're like, oh, that makes sense. I'm going to adopt that as my new philosophy. And so here's one that I adopted one time from my painter, my painter that I used. He goes, you know, my dad, he said, you work. Monday through Friday for the business and you work Saturday for yourself. He would always work on Saturday for cash jobs. And he would just put that money in his pocket. But everything he did Monday through Friday was for the business. And I thought, well, that makes sense. Sometimes people ask me if they can pay cash or get a little bit of a discount if they pay cash. And I tell them no. But really, I could just do some of these jobs on Saturday. And that'd be pure cash. And I'll just put that money in my pocket as extra money. And that's true. If you work Saturday and make extra money, you're putting that in your pocket. But it's not true on how to run an actual business. And so we get this little idea, this saying, this quote, this opinion from somebody who we don't do due diligence. I didn't say, Oh, how successful was your dad? Like how big of a business did he have? Or how many years was he in business? Or how much money did he make a year? Or did he really enjoy what he was doing? We don't ask those questions to quantify or qualify that statement. We just say, oh, that sounds right. That makes sense. I'm going to adopt it. And now I'm just going to change how I do everything because this one person randomly told me something either in person or on the internet. And we just say, well, that makes sense. It's better than what I'm currently doing. So yeah, I'm going to try that for a while. And I did that. I did the Saturday thing for, I don't know, six, seven months or whatever it was. And I wasn't working every single Saturday. But I would start scheduling smaller jobs, like half-day jobs because I still didn't want to work all day Saturday. I mean, it's my Saturday. I want my Saturday off. I started a business so I didn't have to work as much. And there's a joke in there about... You know, entrepreneurs are the only people that will work 80 hours a week in order to avoid a 40 hour a week job. Right? So, yes, there's times when you're starting out that you're going to have to work harder. There's times when you're first starting out that you're going to have to work weekends. There's times when you're starting out where you're going to have to work late in 16 hour days. And there's times three years into your business where you're going to have to work two weeks straight to get this one job done. I'm not talking about those exceptions to when you have to do extra, when you have to work a weekend, when you have to work late, when you have to work hard. Those are always exceptions that need to happen. But that's not the norm. And if that's your norm, you're working 16 hours a day, every single day, seven days a week. That's not healthy, guys. That's absolutely not healthy. There's a reason why there's weekends. It's to have a break. Now, again, don't hear me wrong on this. If you want to make a little extra cash because you want to buy a boat and you need an extra 20 grand so you can go buy a fishing boat and not dip into your budget and you want to work four Saturdays in a row in order to make extra money, then by all means, do that. That's up to you. You can do that. It's different when you do things because you want to. Then when you do things because you have to, and I'm speaking to the have to's, you should not have to work on the weekends. And yes, again, there's always things you can do. One of the things that I would do is Saturday morning, I would go and do my invoices and my QuickBooks stuff. And that would only be anywhere from one to four hours, usually like a couple hours. I would go down to my office at my house and log into my computer, do some... QuickBooks stuff for a couple hours and then I had the rest of the day off. I'm not saying that that's terrible to do that. But if you're doing that every time because you have to, you're not doing something right. You should be able to run a healthy business and pay yourself $100,000 plus a year working five days a week,40 hours a week on the job. If you're a one-man show... You should be able to do that working 40 hours a week on the job site by yourself and be able to have the lifestyle that you want. If you can't do that, you're doing it wrong. If you have a team and you can't do that, you're doing it wrong. Again, not talking about the exceptions. Everybody wants to use the exception as the rule. Exceptions or outliers are called exceptions for a reason. You know, oh, we got to get this project done by Friday because that's our deadline. Shit went sideways on Tuesday. So we got to work late on Thursday, guys. Thursday and Friday, we got to work 10,12 hours to get this job done. Not talking about that. Those things happen. You're going to have spouts and spurts. I need to pick a different word. You're going to have times whenever you... You have to do those things. My family went on a vacation one time and they were leaving on Friday and I was not going to finish a bathroom remodel and I had to come in on Saturday to finish it. I needed to get this done. I couldn't stop and leave them without a bathroom for a week while I was on vacation. So I told them I'll just fly down there and catch up. They drove. They left Friday morning, drove down there. I flew down Saturday. Might have been Sunday morning because of the flight times. But I finished it Saturday, finished the job on Saturday, flew down on Sunday and caught up with my family. Sometimes those things happen. Not talking about those. So let me get back to this comment. Being in business for yourself dramatically increases your personal responsibility for both your work and the work of others. There is truth in this. You do have to increase your personal responsibility. Nobody's going to come and say, it's time to go to work, Brad. Nobody's going to wake you up. Your mom's not going to come, Brad, it's time to wake up and go to work and own your business. You have to have personal responsibility. Does it dramatically increase it? I don't know about that. It depends on your perspective and your background. I went into the Marines when I was 18 years old. And my first duty station, I was in security forces. It was a B-billet. And at 18 years old, I was standing guard by myself, guarding nuclear warheads. with a secret security clearance. And they told us on day one, if someone ever breaks into the complex and tries to steal a nuclear warhead and they take you hostage, we're just going to kill you to keep them from taking the weapon. And that makes sense. Like an 18-year-old kid, they're not going to be like, oh man, he's got an 18-year-old kid from Indiana. We're going to let you take the warhead so you can... potentially kill 20 million people. No, you're dead. They're going to shoot you. It's not even a hostage situation. They're just going to open fire and kill you. And they tell us that on day one. Now, do you think for me, in my situation, that I really needed to increase my personal responsibility when I started my construction business? Hell no. At 18 years old, I had probably the highest level of responsibility and personal responsibility that you could possibly think of. For me, getting out of the military, my responsibility has gone down ever since. It's easier. So it does depend on where you're at. It's not just automatically you're going to have higher personal responsibility. Some people, when they were 15 years old, their parents didn't do anything and they had to raise their siblings. from the time that they were 15 until they were 25 or whatever, and their brothers and sisters got older. They've had personal responsibility. They know what that means. So right off the bat, it doesn't necessarily increase your personal responsibility. But yes, there is truth in this that you have to be responsible now for yourself as well as others. However, a lot of contractors take this to heart. And this is where they get really, really... They get it twisted. They get caught up in this. And I've talked about this before. And that is, when you put your identity in what you do, it now becomes more personal. It now means a lot more. I was talking to a contractor this week who was interested in joining my coaching program and the Profit Club. And multiple times on the call, he said things like, it's my name on the business. And literally, that could be true. If your name is Smith and it's Smith Construction, then literally your name is on the business. Which, by the way, this is one of the reasons why you should never name your business after yourself. Because if it fails, it makes it seem like you're a failure. And the reality is that a lot of successful entrepreneurs have started multiple businesses that have failed before they find their... actual business that does extremely well. I don't remember the statistic, but I think it's like the average successful millionaire entrepreneur has launched and failed. I think it's three to four businesses before they actually founded the company that made them a millionaire. So that's just a little side note. That's why you should never name your business after yourself. It's probably going to fail. Considering that 96% of contractors fail. I can almost, with 100%, like 96%, it's kind of weird how statistics work. I can 96% bet your company is going to fail within 10 years. But whenever you, when you emotionally, when you emotionally place your identity in what you do, I am a craftsman. I am a plumber. I'm an electrician. When you emotionally attach yourself to what you do, you set yourself up for major, major heartache, stress, and failure. Because who you are as a person has absolutely nothing to do with what you do. Nothing. But we latch on to this and it becomes like our mantra of, I have to do exceptional quality work 100% of the time because if my customer says one thing like, Yeah, it looks great, Brad, but I wish this one thing could be better. Then we tear ourselves down and we lose sleep at night, which is number three, because we're second guessing what we do. Because our identity is so closely intertwined with our trade. And you guys have to understand that what you do is not who you are. Okay? On top of that, people have off days. That's human. That's human nature. People have off days. You're just going to have an off day one day. Your employees are going to have an off day one day. Your subcontractors are going to have an off day one day. Your material supplier is going to have an off day. Those things happen. And as long as you fix the thing and make it right, it's not that big a deal. Right? Now, again... Here's where the comments come out. Well, yeah, but if you burn someone's house down and someone dies, you know, that's on you. Yes, that's true. How often does that happen? Show me the statistics of how often that happens. It's like almost never because you did something wrong, right? And it's just not normal. That's the exception. It's not the norm. The reality of it is that most of us, you know, we do a... a seven out of 10 quality job. And then we lose sleep at night because it's like, golly, man, that one freaking tile, it was a 30 second off. The grout joint was 30 second off, but I really just couldn't do anything with it. I wish I, you know, if I would have known better, I would have, I would have taken the whole wall down and redone it so I could get that 30 second of a gap, you know, a little bit tighter. And the customer comes in and is like, oh my gosh, Brad, this is absolutely gorgeous. I knew that you did good work, but I didn't know it was going to be this good. And meanwhile, you're over there like, okay, but don't look at this one joint. Don't look over here at this one joint. I'm going to stand right here in front of it. That way, maybe they won't notice it right now. Guys, they're never going to freaking notice it. They're going to take showers in there every day for the next 10 years, and it's going to be three inches from their face, and they're never going to notice it. Because people who are not contractors... Do not put that much emphasis on what you do. They look at things from a 30,000 foot view. You're looking at it from a one millimeter view and you get so freaking stressed out about it that you go home at night and you lay up, lay in bed and you, and you think about, man, I wish I would have done this and I wish I would have done that. And, you know, John on that job really dropped the ball and, you know, screwed that up. And now they're going to go and tell all their friends how. Brad's just a terrible contractor and sucks because this one 32nd of a joint gap is too much. That sounds ridiculous, even me saying that. But you guys are probably nodding your head saying, yes, that's me. That's what I deal with. Guys, it's because you're too close to the identity of your business. If I hired you as a consultant to come into my business, my construction business, And I was showing you a bathroom, right? And I said, hey, here's a bathroom we did. We just got done. And you ask, well, what, you know, are you happy with it? Like, what do you think? What do you give it a one out of 10? How do you rate it? And I say, well, it's probably a seven, maybe an eight out of 10. We didn't do a good job on this, you know, on getting the countertop installed perfectly square because the walls weren't square. Okay. And you come and look at it. You might be like, Yeah, I see what you're saying. The wall's not being square, but it actually looks pretty good. I think you're beating yourself up. You would probably tell me I'm beating myself up and it's not really that bad, but yet you would go to your own job and absolutely criticize yourself and destroy yourself over the exact same thing. And we can't understand or recognize that this is not an issue of you not doing good work. This is an issue of your self-worth because you're tied yourself to what you do. You have to separate that. You have to separate who you are versus what you do. You're not a carpenter. You're not an electrician. You're not a painter. You're not a home builder. That's what you do. That's not who you are. So as long as you tie yourself to, as long as you attach your self-worth to what you do, you will always struggle with self-doubt, stressing, second-guessing, all that stuff. Always. You will always struggle with that because you have to separate yourself. There's plenty of jobs that I did where I wasn't happy with the outcome. The very last bathroom that we did, I could tell you at least three things. Off the top of my head, I'm remembering. This was a couple years ago. There's at least three things in the shower that I didn't like. If I could redo it, I would. But I also know that the customer was extremely happy with it. And they were picky customers. And so I know that I can let that go. It doesn't mean that I'm not a good person because I didn't fix those three things. It just means that it's not that important. Your job is to deliver. high-quality work and high-quality service, but not perfect. It doesn't have to be perfect. Because I promise you that whatever you consider to be borderline acceptable to where you beat yourself up, your customers think it's a 12 out of 10. And they're absolutely ecstatic. Now, if they come in and say, Hey, what about this one thing? Then fix it. Then fix it. That's it. Man, you're right. We missed that. We screwed that up. We're going to fix it. I'm going to take this tile out. I'm going to reset it and make it right. That's what you do. But you don't go around and actually redo everything 15 times so that you can avoid that one time where they may say, I don't like this. Fix it. Because you don't like the rejection because you tie yourself to your trade. And you put all of your self-worth in what you do. So whenever someone says, I don't like this, or this doesn't look good, or this doesn't look right, or can you redo this one thing? It destroys you on the inside. Especially if you like fume. I know guys that turn red and they're about to lose it because they feel like the customer is just nitpicking everything they do. And just, you know, and they're basically telling, it's no different than if I said, hey, John, you know, everything looks great. You guys are awesome. I did notice this one thing over here in the corner. I noticed that the baseboard, there was about an eighth inch gap, you know, off the floor. Is there anything we can do to fix that? And I'm just asking as a curiosity, like maybe there's not a way to fix it. And the answer might be, yeah, we noticed that. Unfortunately, there's no way to fix it. That's just how it is. But I've seen guys that literally lose their mind because to them, it's no different than saying, Hey, John, this piece of trim you did over here is the worst I've ever seen. And you're an absolute piece of shit contractor and the worst contractor I've ever seen in my entire life. And you should not be doing this because you're ripping people off. That's what they hear. That's how they interpret that. But in reality, the customer is just like, hey, is there any way possible we can fix this? And if there's not any way possible, okay, fine. We'll live with it. No big deal. Everything else looks wonderful. You guys are great. But that's how they interpret it because they're so freaking connected to what they do. They can't let go of it. And I want you guys to understand that you are not what you do. Yes, provide good work and good service does not represent who you are as a person. It's not your character. It's not who you are. And I'm giving you permission right now to recognize this and start the process of separating yourself from your business. Because if you don't separate yourself from your business, then you will take your work home every day. Your output and your success is not related to who you are and your personality and your character. It's just not. And all of the people who are super successful in life understand this and they're... easily, easily can separate themselves. I have clients that come in, join my club, pay lots of money, thousands of dollars. I never see them again. And I'll text them like, Hey dude, what's up? I haven't seen you. Anything I can do to help you? I kind of take that personally. Not to the fact of it's a reflection of me. But I genuinely, passionately want to help people and they're spending lots of money and I want to make sure they have a good experience. But if they don't give a crap, if they don't actually do the work, that's not on me. That's on them. It's not my fault that they're not doing the work. I'm going to follow up with them a couple times. But after two or three times, if I text them and say, what's going on, man? Anything happening? Personal stuff? Anything I can help you with? If they don't respond, then that's fine. Sometimes people don't respond. And then a year later, they're like, hey, I'm ready to get started. Where have you been the last year? I've been texting you. That stuff sometimes happens. I don't take that personally. And you shouldn't either in what you do. I told you this podcast could be all over the place. We haven't even got the number two yet. Number two is you are not your own boss. Every single customer you have is your boss while you're working on the job. That is not true. And I told him, I was like, this statement. And this mindset is single-handedly what screws a lot of contractors. This is an employee mindset. When you view the customer as the boss, I don't care if you're building homes, if you're building multi-million dollar buildings, if you're a handyman or anywhere in between, it does not matter. Your customer is not your boss. You do not work for your customer. You do not work. as an employee of your customer. There's lots of customers who think you do. And there's lots of contractors who will easily oblige that. And they love that because really most of you guys out here that are doing this, you never really became a boss. You just became an employee of your own business. And you never changed your mindset. You still think you work for the customer. But Brad, the customer's always right or we got to make them happy and I want them to just be completely blown away. Then that's great. Then set the expectation and meet it or beat it. But that don't mean you have to be a slave to them. They're not in charge of you. If you go to work at 7.30 and they say, hey, we don't want you to come in until 9 because we like to sleep late. Too bad. Too bad. You don't tell me what time I come to work. Now, hear what I'm saying. Again, hear what I'm saying. Yes, you can work with people. You can work through things and try to be accommodating. Being accommodating is not the same as being an employee. If your customer is like, Hey, I need you here at 730 and you typically come in at 8. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. I'll be there at 730. And you just roll over. Then you're just an employee. And you might as well shut your business down and go work for somebody else because that's the mindset you have. You work with people. It is a like-kind exchange. They have the money. You have the product or service. It's equally matched. Everyone's happy. At the end of the day, you get paid for doing the good work. They pay you for having a good experience and a good product that they're going to use forever. That's an equal exchange. One little trick that I do, and this is slightly different, but it aligns with this. A lot of times in the world, this is becoming less and less of a thing, but 10,15 years ago, five years ago, it was definitely a thing, but it still happens today in certain sectors. And that is calling people by their title. So if you have a doctor, someone who's a doctor, you say, hey, Dr. Johnson, nice to meet you. I'm Brad. With Brad's construction, I'm here to help you. I never did that because, again, what people do and what they've accomplished is not who they are as a person. They're on equal playing field with me. I'm not above them. They're not below me. We're equals. We're human beings. We're in this game, if you will, called life. And everyone's equal in terms of how much respect they get. You don't get more respect from me because you have a doctorate. You just don't. I'm going to treat you with respect, but I'm going to treat you with the exact same respect that I treat a homeless person. because I treat people with respect. And so sometimes people are like, hey, Dr. Johnson, I heard you got a problem. You need help with. Well, as soon as you do that, you've already put yourself as an employee because who calls him Dr. Johnson? All their subordinates, all the nurses, all the administrator, everybody calls him Dr. Johnson. I didn't do that. I always call him by their first name. Hey, Chris, what's up? What's going on, Chris? Hey, Chris, my name is Brad. I'm going to help you out. And I've never gotten pushback from a person. Never. Never got a pushback from someone I didn't call Mr. or doctor or whatever. Because they see me as an equal because I present myself as an equal to them. I've worked for CEOs of the power company. I've worked for presidents of banks. I've worked for doctors and lawyers and engineers and very high prestigious people. you know, news anchors. I've worked for a lot of high, what we elevate people to be like high prestigious people. I've worked for a lot of them and I always called them by their first name. Never once called them by their last name. Now you may have some weird, you know, traditional things that you follow with your ethnicity or where, you know, if you have a certain type of, if you're in a certain country or certain ethnicity, you have certain traditions you follow. That's fine. But my tradition is I treat you with respect and that includes your first name. And it's funny sometimes because my wife, my wife actually has two doctorates. She has a doctorate in physical therapy and she has a PhD in health sciences education. So she has two doctorates. So technically she's a doctor doctor. She's the same way, like her, her students, cause she's a professor. She, her students, you know, a lot of them will call her Dr. Hebner. But sometimes they'll call her Bethany, which is her first name. And she doesn't care. She doesn't say, oh, it's Dr. Hebner to you. No, she doesn't do that because that's not who she is. Right? We're not like that. We don't put ourselves up on a pedestal. And sometimes people do that. They want to put themselves on the pedestal. But what's funny is that in her profession, like in her professionalism, she's a doctor of physical therapy. If she's talking to a doctor, an orthopedic doctor, she would say, you know, Dr. whoever, Dr. Smith. That's just their professional courtesies. But there's times where I've worked with doctors at their house that she has worked in the same building or in the same profession. And maybe we'll see him out somewhere in town or whatever. And I'll say like, oh, hey, Andy, what's going on? And she'll be like, hey, Dr. Smith, how's it going? Right? It's just two totally different dynamics. Because she only knows them. That's just how the medical world is. They do that. I don't apply by that. I don't follow those rules. And so it's like, hey, Alex, what's going on? How's that project going? How's the work we did? Everything good? Right? And those people were equals. So no, you're not an employee of the boss. Your customers are not your boss. Yes, you have a responsibility to them. to make sure that you're providing the value that they're seeking. And yes, you can accommodate them on certain things, but you're in control of your business. You control what happens in your business. They're hiring you because you're a professional. So act like a professional. Don't act like an employee. Set the expectation. I don't give a crap how demanding they are. I've told this before. I had one client who used to be an interior designer. wanted everything perfect, wanted all kinds of stuff. And we became really good clients. And she was one of my best clients. She was my first client and also my best client. And one time we were working on our basement remodel. We did a full basement remodel. This was early on, like really early on. I did a full basement remodel. It should have been about a $60,000 to $70,000 remodel. And I did the whole thing by the hour because I didn't know any better. I think I ended up... Like I ended up making like total revenue for me was like maybe $20,000. Should have been like 60,70. I didn't know any better. Anyways, you know, great people. One time I was over there and she said, Hey Brad, I want to, I want to do this on the stairs. And I don't remember what it was, but she's like, I want to do this. And I just looked at her and said, no, Lynn, we're not doing that. We're not going to do that. And her neighbor was over there and was like, kind of looked at me weird. And then later Lynn told me because we had a good relationship. She was, yeah, after you left. the neighbor said, you let your contractor talk to you like that? And she said, yeah, he's great. And I explained to her, no, we're not going to do that because of this. We don't need to do that. You might think you want to, but really, we don't want to. And because we had that mutual respect of each other and what we're doing, I wasn't... Most people are like, if a customer says, I want this, and you say, they say jump, and you're like, okay. And you just jump. That's what some of you think the relationship's like. I got to make them happy. No. If somebody wants you to do something that you know is not going to work or be stupid, you tell them. John, I know you want to do this and it makes sense, but here's the problem with it. If we do this and this, it's going to cause this. And later on in about two years, this is going to happen. Oh, I never thought about that. Okay. Was there something else we can do? Yeah. Here's a couple other options we can do. This idea that if they say, I want this and you're going to do it because I'm paying you. And you're like, yes, ma 'am. Yes, sir. I'll go do it. Whatever you want. I know it's going to fail in two years, but I'll do it because you're paying the bill and you told me you want that done. That kind of relationship, I'm not even joking. Close your business right now. Close it down and go work for someone else because you don't have the right mindset to be a business owner. If you want to change that, that's fine. You don't keep that mindset. That's a losing mindset. It keeps you trapped. And the last thing, we're almost out of time. I hope you guys are still listening. You can't shut off work when it's 5 o 'clock. You're either planning, stressing, or second-guessing. This is difficult to do. I'll be honest with you. For me, in hammer and grind in my coaching business, I love it. And so I talk about it all the time. I'm thinking about it all the time because I love it. Not because I'm stressed about it. That's a little bit different scenario. I love talking about this. I love talking to contractors. I love talking to other people in the industry who do coaching and talking about coaching as a profession. I love it. So I don't ever get tired of talking or thinking about it. But whenever I had my construction business, there were definitely times where I was stressed out, thinking about it at night, staying up late. oh crap, I forgot to call so-and-so back or I got to send that email right at dinnertime and we're eating. I'm like, oh crap, I forgot to send so-and-so that email and I'll grab my phone right then and send that email. You're going to have, again, that's the exception where there's times where you're going to have to work late. You're going to have to stay up and do things, but that should not be the norm. The norm is at five o 'clock, four o 'clock,3.30,5.30, whatever time it is, you're off the clock and that's it. Now it's family time, right? And if you can't do that because you have so much stuff going on, you're not doing it correctly. You are running your business incorrectly and it will kill you slowly. All of the stress and all of the wear and tear on your body and all of the hard work. It's killing you slowly and you don't realize it. And when you're 47,52,65, you're going to die of a heart attack. Your blood pressure is going to be through the roof. You're going to be overweight because you eat too much. You're going to have to get knee replacements. You're going to have to have hip replacements. All of these things, you're not immortal, guys. You're not immortal. So you have to figure it out. You have to figure out a way. to run your business in a manner that gives you the financial reward, reduces the hardship on your body, and removes the stress that you have. Those are three things that you've got to do. And if you can do that, you can actually have a business that you enjoy. You'll wake up in the morning and actually enjoy it. And that is possible. It's very possible. But you have to ask this question. This is the question. This is the million-dollar question that I want you to take away from this whole podcast. And the people that are trapped in this mindset of like, this is what it's like to own a construction business, be stressed out of your mind all the time, work all the time, and not get paid well. And you're just somebody's puppet. People that get stuck in that is because they fail to ask this one question. And the question is, Is there a better way to do this? Is there a better way to run my business than I currently am? And if you start asking yourself that question, then the answers will start to come. There's a Chinese proverb that says, when the student is ready, the master will appear. And that's 100% true. As long as you live where you're at, as long as you stay in that mindset, you will keep getting the same results. But once you start asking the question, and I mean asking it every single day, is there a better way to do this? Then the answers will start coming to you. And if you do want help in your business, then please reach out to me and I'd be more than happy to share with you what that looks like. And you can now start to own a business. Once you ask that question and you start getting answers, you can now see that there is actually joy and pride and fulfillment in owning a construction business that does not consume your life. But you have to start with that question. Is there a better way to do this? Guys, I hope this podcast was meaningful. This is one of those that... Kind of went off the rails. I left it open. I wanted to make sure you understood. I'm looking at my notes over here. I didn't even touch all my notes. Sometimes. That's just how it goes. I'm not going to beat myself up because I didn't go through my notes. I'm just not. I don't care. Being a podcaster is not who I am. So let's just let it go. So anyways, Hammer and Grind Podcast, TikTok. Instagram, Facebook, you know where to find me. Go to the comments or not the comments. Go to the show notes. You get links to all my resources, all the things I can help you with. And I appreciate you hanging out with me. I really do. I'm grateful. I've been doing this for over two years now and not planning on stopping anytime soon. If you know anybody that would be a good person to interview, please let me know. I'm always happy to bring guests on. That's something I definitely want to do more of. You can help me out by recommending people. Also help me out by going and leaving us a review on the podcast, an honest review. And appreciate you all. And guys, remember until next time, profit is not a dirty word.
