EP115: Removing The Chains Of Your Business With Robert Molinet

Trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.

No, no, seriously, man. Life's a journey, man. And I love it. And I'm grateful for for everything that I have and that I'm able to recognize. So what have I been up to? A lot has gone on. Been through some major changes within my business, my landscape construction business. I started that in 04. We talked about some of this in some of the previous episodes. And over that journey, I've grown up, right? I've figured out how to run a business, a lot of trial by fire. But back in 2019, it was just kind of vanilla. I was just kind of floating along. I mean, business was okay. We were producing, it wasn't a ton, it was like 40K a month, but I was probably the worst treated employee in the business. You know, took care of everybody else first, make sure the clients were taken care of. Always took care of myself last. You know, so back in 2019, I probably had a net worth of probably about 30K. It wasn't a lot. And it really pained me. to see people that maybe weren't as committed to the success of the business, meaning like employees and things like that, go home at the end of the year with more take home than I was doing. And I was putting in three times the amount of hours. And I said, something has to change. There was a series of events that took place. I think I shared this on probably 46. And nonetheless, sought out some business consulting and coaching. That's ultimately around the time that we got hooked up together. And I've been on just this whirlwind of a new journey ever since. Obviously, the pandemic has affected all construction businesses for a while there. It was touch and go. And then it was almost like shooting fish in a barrel. If you literally called somebody back, you pretty much had the job. If you could get the materials to do it. Well, that's kind of cooled down, at least in our area. But 2019 and 2022, major, major changes within our business. So we went from just kind of humming along. Right around half a million bucks, a couple of employees. And coming out of 2022, I felt like a freaking rock star. I had tripled the size of my business in that amount of time. My net worth went from like 30K to like, I was just around 900K. I think I shared this on one of the earlier episodes. We took the revenue. gross revenue, monthly revenue to about 140 a month. So more than tripled our revenue, which ultimately positively impacted our bottom line, right? And most importantly, I learned how to take care of myself and my family, right up there on the top of the spectrum, right? Implemented some tools, profit first system, all that fun stuff was doing well and felt really, really good. But I really, I was kind of going through the the process riding high on the wave and kind of turning a blind eye to what potentially could happen if this ride that we were all on going through the pandemic and everybody working on their homes kind of lightened up. I think I was being a little bit too optimistic and was blind to the idea of what would happen if somebody took their foot off the gas. So fast forward May 2022, started noting that a lot of our bread and butter, business, our mid-market business, which is like 40K to 100K, the market was off. Something was changing. Our real avatar is like north of 100K, but we did probably about 50% of our business was at what I'm calling mid-market,40 to 100K landscape installations, small backyards, medium backyards with a medium level of involvement. And I started noticing first back in May of 22 that the lead flow was down, especially for March. I'd been in this game At this point,18 years, it was super, super consistent. I mean, you could set your watch to it. Phone leads started coming in real hot February 1st. And basically by July, we were booked for the year and we just produced. And that just repeated. And then it would pick up again and it would get quiet in July and August and it would pick up again September, October. And then basically November, December, January was a ghost town. So we really knew that by July, we had to book out our whole year because that's when our... the bulk of business would come in. And so we noticed in March that lead flow is down. And we were marketing. I mean, we were spending heavy, heavy 10 figures on marketing. And at the time, a full-time content guy. And we're doing a bunch of stuff. And we started to notice that the lead flow is down. So we started doubling down on that. So we increased our ad spend. We started producing more YouTube videos, a bunch of stuff. more paid ads in places that we hadn't had paid ads. The ads that we did have, we were expanding the size and volume of them and all that stuff. By July, nothing really had changed except we were spending more money. And I noticed that we were going to be in trouble. So we went from like kind of being aware to like, okay, we need to start planning for what this looks like. Keep in mind, the company had tripled in size. So we had... You know, at this point, multiple crews. I had an assistant, a project manager, content people, people in the production, you know, which we'd only had for about two years. And so one was learning how to manage them, but also understanding the expense that comes with that. So anyways, going through July, yeah, nothing really changed. August came and at that point, it starts getting quiet. You know, everybody's on vacation. Nothing really had improved. Phone stopped ringing because it always does in August. And regardless of, you know, at this point, we're up to six figures in marketing and advertising spend, probably about 100K had already been spent for the year.

No, no. So we only had work at that point till about mid-September. So it was at that point, this is August. We got nothing on the schedule. Now, keep in mind all throughout my journey. in life, in contracting, it always worked itself out. 2009, it worked itself out. All the other times when we didn't have work, somehow magically the phone would ring and it would work itself out. So after doing this for 18 years, I said, you know what? I'm not going to overly worry about it because the phone's going to ring. Well, this time it didn't. So August came around and we started saying, okay, we have a lot of overhead. We have a lot of people. We have a lot of expense. coming on a daily, weekly, monthly basis that we need to be mindful of. So we need to start putting some stops and metrics in place if, you know, go, no, go gauge that if we get to this point and we don't have, you know, X revenue coming in or something, we got to make a shift. So we started putting those metrics down. And unfortunately, October,2022, I laid off 80% of 85% of my company. One of the hardest things I've ever had to do as the owner of a company. Really, really hard, dark, depressing time for me. Took on a couple different ventures, went down an education route, started an academy called the Stoneworkers Academy. We had 30 people come in from around the country, brought them into New Jersey. We did a couple different events, taught them kind of our way of working with natural stone. Awesome, awesome experience. Not really something that was as profitable as we would have liked. The amount of effort that it went into getting those 30 people. We kind of felt like we had maxed out in the amount of people that were willing to pay what we needed them to pay to come and learn this craft, even at a base level. From the corporate level, so many of these people are doing branded seminars and things like that through corporations. pay $100 or even a lot of times they're free, go have lunch for the day. You kind of tinker around, you learn some stuff, you get a certification, whatever. This was just straight up, you got to pay to come. So cool experience, wasn't really profitable. Started looking at some other things to kind of keep myself busy, asking myself what's next. What if I could start from scratch, what would I do? Started getting around the idea of like, I wanted to... I've always enjoyed helping people. I've always enjoyed coaching and training. I started going through the idea of like, okay, what if I started like consulting with businesses, businesses that maybe were looking for something that I had experienced in, you know, whether that was building a team, you know, whatever. At the end of the day, I probably underestimated how much work it is to get super, super clear on your message and actually get results out of that. Some really awesome conversations have come in and I definitely helped some people there. But in my mind, it was like, if you build it, they will come. And that totally didn't happen. One thing that did come out of that, that was super positive was created the Calibrated CEO podcast, which was kind of a revamp of a podcast that I started back in 2019. And I really, really enjoy that. That podcast is really just there with the idea of as a business owner, sometimes you feel like it's a lonely road. Just having a voice of somebody sharing their experience that maybe you've gone through or experienced something similar gives you that sense of safety, a little bit of like, okay, I'm not alone. How can I work through whatever challenge it is that I'm having? So it's a really varied podcast. Have everything from like professional athletes to business consultants and business owners share their stories, things like that. So that's been a lot of fun. But again, it's kind of like a passion project at this point. Anyways, a lot going on there. While all this is going on, I'm hemorrhaging cash at a massive rate. Figure at this point, we're three, four months in of no work. I got, again,85% of my team's laid off. Little, little bits dribbling in here or there, but I'm hemorrhaging cash way faster than I'm making it. January 23, decided to cut all non-essential expenses. Hard thing to do. Liquidated over 300K in assets. Call them assets, liabilities, vehicles, equipment, tractors, whatever. And started taking a really hard look at the business. Started asking myself, what other ways can I do this? In addition to that, January 2023, I had shoulder reconstruction surgery. I've always classified myself as a high performer, physically fit, always want to go, go, go. And literally in a moment's notice, it stopped. Six weeks, completely sedentary, can't do anything, can't lift, can't move. I mean, move around, but like can't work out, can't do any, all the things that like I found joy in. And that also had a mental toll. So now I have my business, which is like, oh my gosh, what's going on there? I can't even express myself and relieve myself through working out and all these other types of things. So that even takes me into an even darker place. And one day I wake up and I say, you know what? I think I understand what's going on. I've spent my entire life trying to build a business that was like Swiss cheese. I would work to build a business to be able to cut a hole in it so that I could fill that hole with something that I wanted to do that provided personal fulfillment or maybe spend time with my family, take a vacation, whatever. And I'd done a really good job of doing that. So I'd created this really awesome business with Swiss cheese that looked like a pile of Swiss cheese until the market, the mid-market shifted, which is a whole nother conversation. And started asking myself, okay, well, what if I could redesign it, right? I have an opportunity here, have an opportunity to redesign. So what if instead I could create the business around the life that I wanted to live? What are the non-negotiables that I need to have, whether that be time off, time with family, amount of income, whatever it may be? So I started taking a real good reevaluation of, I have the opportunity here to basically start over. If I were to do that, what would that look like? And that was a game changer. It is a game changer. So I'm still going through it. But I think just the simple idea of putting hard stops in within where the business is and is not allowed to operate has allowed me to express more of myself. And find more of that joy and freedom in the journey that I've been looking for. Because I think a lot of times as business owners, we carry all the weight. And we're just hoping that if we just work harder, stay with it a little bit longer, this hole is going to open up and we're going to get to that place. And it's just going to be a better experience. I actually get razzed a lot by a lot of the guys from being non-emotional, being kind of stoic sometimes. And if you're in the profit club, it happens. And it's fine. I'm used to it. But that's because I've been carrying that weight for decades. I don't think

Right, right. Which is why there's drug use and alcoholism and people just give up and walk away from businesses and all these other things that we put all this time and effort into and we just snap. And I didn't want that to happen. So anyways, yeah, something really interesting happened during that journey though. Usually the phone rings in February and... This year, it was a little bit different because what was happening was over time, all that marketing, all that branding, all that the ads, the YouTube, everything was always showing our avatar product, right? So avatar product being, we produce amazing backyards north of 100K. And we were pushing that out to try to fill that mid-market void of 40 to 100K. So essentially, we were showing these epic landscapes or if your kitchen bath, whatever, it's like showing $150,000 beautiful kitchen to somebody that's got a $30,000 budget. And they're like, wow, these people do amazing work. I can't afford them. Now, that was our fault because we were using, we had allowed the business to continue serving both markets. What happened was we weren't very clear what we offered. We even had stated minimum levels of investment,50K. Here's the problem with that. Some people are going to listen to this and they're going to go 50,000 minimum level investment. That's crazy. That's insane. Let me tell you why it was a bad mistake. Because the people that were wanting to spend 40 to 100K saw 50,000 minimum level investment and they go, this guy's going to be way too expensive. I can't get as much value or bang for my buck from this guy. So I'm going to go somewhere else. And the people that were like, we want the specialist at any cost, it was too cheap. So we sat on that for a little bit. And meanwhile, something started happening. I've always had, over the years, I've been building this YouTube channel. And we have a YouTube channel for a landscape company. And we've got a couple hundred videos out there. Everything from DIY to showcase, project showcase type stuff. And on the back end, I get one conversation a week from homeowners. Like, hey, I watched a video. Can you give me some advice? Whatever. More than happy to do that. Every once in a while, we'll get a lead. But something changed. When we stopped serving that mid-market, not because we wanted to, but because it dried up, we stopped serving that mid-market. All that was left was this avatar market. But the avatar market saw that. And in doing that, we said, If I could redesign this business to be what I wanted, what would it be? Well, I will only want to serve the avatar market. It's like the kitchen and bath guy that says, I want to build really fancy kitchens and baths, but you know what? I did this $25,000 retrofit at this condo for this lady, so I'm going to put that on Facebook. And everybody that sees that goes, well, his ads are $150,000 kitchen, but on his Facebook page, it was a $25,000 kitchen, so there's a disconnect there. So we raised our MLA. I mean, not just raised it. It's literally on my website. To work with us is $100,000 minimum level of investment. I caught a lot of flack for that. A lot. People are like, you can't do that.

TikTok melts my brain. I'm trying to figure it out. I'm trying to figure it out, but it's, oh man, that's a whole nother discussion. Yeah. So, you know, I mean, even business consultants, I wound up firing a business consultant that I was working with through this because he was like, you can't do that. I was like, I'm doing it. And, you know, because at this point I was like, I got nothing else to lose. Something really amazing happened. The freaking phone started ringing with people that were willing to spend more than a hundred thousand dollars. And not only that, they were coming through YouTube. So this YouTube channel that I've been investing time in for about three years, which never really did anything other than like pad my ego a little bit, all of a sudden started producing not just leads, but fully freaking qualified leads. And it's brought in these clients that say, Robert, we've been following you. We've been watching your projects. We've spent You can go listen to Marcus Sheridan and they ask you to answer. I think he says they have to watch just 30 pieces of content. You can go track these people in our software and say how many hours that IP address has hovered on our stuff. And you're like, Robert, we've been basically stalking you for six months. We're now ready because XYZ situation has happened in life and we're ready to go. We know it's going to be within this range and we just want to know what it's going to take to move forward. So this year, it's really amazing because what's happened is we're able to serve the market and only the market that we want to serve. It's creating some challenges too. We have clients that we've had to outsource to other contractors. which has created another journey, right? Because we pride ourselves in doing a good job and calling people back. And unfortunately, most contractors don't operate as smoothly as we've learned to operate. So that's created some disappointment and headaches along the journey. But in order to protect ourselves and do what we need to do, this is the route we've had to go. But something really amazing has happened out of this. It's created freedom. and time, not just for me, but for my team that has stayed with me. Because they would rather be specialists in what they do. They're craftsmen. Craftsmen at heart. They don't want to run a business. They want to be craftsmen. They get to go to work, do the craft that they love, be paid well for it, not have to do it 80 hours a week or 70 hours a week to make ends meet because they're doing a craft that they're being paid an appropriate amount for. And they get to live their own lives and have personal fulfillment, not just in their work, but that the other things that they get to do with their lives, such as spend time with friends and family and things like that, because they're working whatever it is, four or five days a week, a regular amount of hours. And when they are working, they're doing something that fills their bucket. On my side, because I'm no longer fielding hundreds of leads a year. You know, back in the day, you go back to listen to some of the early recordings we did. It was like most people, going out, seeing people for free, you know, had the story about Angie's List,147, you know, site visits, sold one $9,000 job, like really heartbreaking stuff when you look back on it. Learned how to pre-qualify people, went to selling people over the phone. Still was having hundreds of conversations a year. Well, now we're at the point where I'm only having one or two conversations a month. And most people are going to go, wait a minute, that's freaking horrible. But the close rate on these conversations is like 80% because they're coming completely pre-qualified coming out of YouTube. I just sold a job last week,250K because of YouTube. That is something that most businesses I think would love to do, but they don't know how to get out of their own way to unlock that, where they want to take the short road.

Yeah. I had an aha moment along this way. And I think in life we have. We have these breakthrough moments, whether that be the day we decide to go hire a business coach or the day we decide to revamp our business or the day we decide to say, I am not going to charge. I am not going to go and do estimates for free or give my, not even estimates, forget the word estimates. I'm not going to provide free consultation, spend three hours with a client consulting them on their project for free anymore. Insert whatever vehicle you want into that conversation. But I think you have to be at a certain low spot. You have to be tired enough of whatever the current situation is in order to make change. And I think that the combination of my business going through change that I, at the time, wasn't quite understanding, having the shoulder surgery, which caused me to just be in a funk myself, and my mental capacity was in a funk, even though I went into it in the best physical and mental shape I've ever been in, that was something that I didn't plan for. And in that, it caused me... to ask questions. And I seeked counsel. I had a lot of mentors and people on my side that I would ask these questions with, have conversations with. This is the importance of having a coach, a mentor, a mastermind, somebody on your side, to be able to have these conversations and ask different and better questions each day. And along that journey, I had this aha moment and realized that I just had spread my wings too wide. I was trying to be within reason, all things to all people. you know, within this niche market that we had kind of created. And, you know, like I said before, what happened was we were too fancy for the average person, but we weren't boutique enough for the person that really was looking for that like special thing.

So that's such a great question, right? And I think part of that is understanding that a lot of times we inadvertently take our business to places that we never intended it to be in. You know, the ideal being like the craftsman that's like, hey, I want to build kitchens and baths because that's what I've done, maybe working for somebody else. And that's what I'm passionate about. But I'm new in business, so I'll take whatever I can get. And Joe needs his gutter hung and so-and-so needs a garage door put in. But it's all I got. So I'm going to take a picture of that, put it on my Facebook page. And then now all of a sudden I have a garage door division or business because everybody sees me as the garage door guy, right? You know, that's fine if you're not tied to a purpose, right? And I think for me, it was being really clear in what I want out of life, kind of like what you were saying. Being tied into my purpose for being on this earth and how I need to express that. I express that. The vehicle I use to express that comes a lot of different ways. In my personal life, I do it through coaching soccer teams and leading Cub Scout groups. In my business, I do it by building outdoor spaces that families get to create memories with. I just put a picture the other day of a patio that, when I went and took a picture of it, had children's charcoal over it. And the premise of that post was that when I was younger in business, I'd show up and I would be like, that would make my blood boil. How dare these kids deface this beautiful work of art that we created? Literally would be the thought that would go through my head. And now I see that and I'm like, oh my God, I wish that could stay there forever. Because that tells me that we've done exactly what it is that we set out to do. We have changed this family's. trajectory, their life by giving them a space to now create memories. Right. And so, so the question I think is, is how do you do that? I think to a, to a certain capacity, you have to be willing to, you have to be willing to take a little bit of risk, but you also have to have faith in knowing that if you do something well, and you provide value, to the world. People will see that. I think there's too much of this, and this is, we're talking offline about this, but the problem with like AI coming into certain aspects of business, in some ways, super, super valuable tools. In other ways, it's completely revamping the content industry right in front of our faces right now, because each day there is exponentially more content put out, but not all of it's good content. The AI is learning, but it's not necessarily learning. What people see is valuable. It's just learning. So if you provide value to people, I mean, I'm talking real freaking value. I'm not talking about like, I'm a contractor and I'm super valuable because I call people back and

And I'm fully insured. You know, that's guys, that's not value.

And you have to know what is valuable to the buyer. There's going to be some people, like maybe the person that's hiring the budget companies. We all know that guy that wants the cheapest guy to cut his grass or whatever. That's what's valuable to that guy. But our avatar, the people that are... buying our products, what they value more than anything else is time. And what they want is a smooth experience from day one to day 1 million, right? They want it to be smooth. They want a professional. They want a business that knows how to do that and doesn't need to involve them every step of the way. So they pre-qualify, which is why YouTube, when it got to that certain level of having enough content because it's consistency. When we had one or two cool jobs and all that, it didn't really do that. But now there's dozens and dozens of the same, all different projects, but same type of level of commitment and service and consistency repeated over and over and over again. Those people see that and they go, okay, I feel comfortable writing a significant check to this company. And in a lot of cases, like, hey, man, here's the key to the house. We're going to freaking Hawaii for three weeks. We'll see when we get back. Like, you know, not everybody, but it happens because you've developed that level of trust. And they know that there is nothing they can add to the conversation that's going to help you do your job better other than making sure that the funds are there so you can keep the project moving. Like, they know you are the actual expert in whatever it is you're doing. They've pre-qualified you, and that's why they're hiring you. So to direct answer to the question, there has to be a level of risk involved, but you also have to have a level of trust, but you have to be authentic. You have to hone in on what your actual value is, which is a learning experience. I think a lot of people try to fake it or get, I think, a little bit confused as to what value is based upon what they think the world wants to see. Forget what the world wants to see.

It only works if you're smoking a cigar and showing your watch. I've tested this. It only works that way.

Yeah,100%. I mean, I don't think it's the... I don't think it's necessarily the hard and fast rule. There are going to be, you're going to have that outlier, but by and large, at least the people that we attract as a combination. Yeah, they're successful people. Absolutely. I mean, the part that I love the most is as we get to the end, having like having high level conversations with this people, you know, instead of showing up and being like, Hey, how's the weather today? Okay. Let me pet the dog. Like you can have like real world. conversations. You can talk about money. You can talk about business, you know, bringing money in the conversation. That's, that's actually another part of it is in the journey. Now, certainly things like what you, what you teach in the, your sales accelerator and, and, and sales training is super valuable to be able to have the right types of conversation and extract that. But people that have money know that money attracts more money. When you have a mindset that attracts money, it just freaking comes. That was something that I had to learn over the years. So for those types of people, they are very comfortable talking about money because money is not evil. Money is the thing that just allows them to live the life they want to live. And they're aware that if they spend six figures on a landscaping project, that there's another six figures coming in right behind it in most cases. And that is something that doesn't make them nervous. Where that mid-market, that 40 to 100K, Like they might have the money, but that's probably a lot of money to them. They might not have another 100K that's going to replace that. It might be the one and done project that they need to get right. Then we can bring in the whole pandemic conversation about how I think what happened is that market never really changed. But what happened is the pandemic was like a big boulder that got thrown into the lake and it created this ripple. So everybody that was going, okay. Mid-level, white-collar executive. I'm stuck working from home. The kids are home. I'm going crazy. Let's put in the pool. Let's put in the backyard to get them, give me some space. And since we're going to be here indefinitely, because that's the way it looks, we're just going to do that project that maybe they're a little young. Maybe we thought we're going to do this four years from now. We're going to do it this year because I can't wait any longer. So I think all that happened is the market just kind of accordioned and condensed. So the market didn't actually grow, which the manufacturers would like you to think that it did. It did not. The market did not grow. It just front-loaded the next couple of years together. Well, what happens when you have a wave? You throw a rock in the pool and it creates a swell, this wave, this tsunami-type effect, while on the back of it's the swell, the down, right? And I think that's a little bit of what we're seeing in that mid-market. And I don't want to get too much into that, but it was a blessing in disguise because it... allowed me to restructure my business to be what I actually wanted it to be the day that I got into business 19 years ago. And it's unfortunate it took me that long to get there, but it's only 19 years.

I mean, you know, it is my success. I'll tell you, and I'll share with you one, one of the, one of the most impactful parts that I would have never guessed. During the last couple of years, as we're growing, we more than tripled in size from 2019 to 2022. In doing that, yes, we learned to be profitable. We improved that. But we had to work really hard, I mean really hard, to hit a 47% GPM. I know you teach 50%, but when you're doing $100,000 projects, you're hitting 47% GPM, crews running everywhere, equipment, all this kind of stuff. There's a lot of room for error to really screw with that. So if you can hit that consistently, which we did for at least two years, that became our new standard. Well, in all of this, what I realized is that that mid-market, because those projects required more transportation, those requires more setup, more takedown, or more volume of that. Even though the client pays for it, it's more downtime in the year. Also, those people were tended to be a little bit more needy. So they consumed a little bit more off billable time. And by reducing that mid-market and getting rid of essentially the fat of the pig, it allowed our GPM to change. So with this new model, this new market that's coming in, these people that are coming from YouTube, north of six figures, fully pre-qualified, it's like running from... The drop of the flag, you know, the start flag of the race, right? We're running full throttle from the moment we start our GPM through what we've done this year has gone up to 65% on landscape construction, which is, I mean, I've heard of pond guys doing that because they're running. A lot of them run super lean, but like most landscape contractors can only dream of that. It's almost unobtainable. And I'll tell you why, because as landscape. contractors, I think a lot of times we start off as small fish in a big pond. There's more than half a million landscape companies in the country. And we justify our success. And you'll hear clients ask, how many trucks do you have? How many crews do you have? We justify our success based upon the size of our company. So we think that the more machines we have, the more equipment we have, the flashier our stuff. And don't get me wrong. There's value in branding, there's value in vehicle wraps and all that. But we are horrible at going out and just buying stuff because we have money and probably have not been well-educated on how to use it appropriately. So what unfortunately happens is we wind up having really heavy overhead. It's kind of like riding a bicycle really, really top-heavy. If you ride a bicycle really fast, you can put a bunch of weight on it. But if you slow down to a crawl or hit the brakes and you got all that weight up top, it's going to fall over. And that's exactly what happened to my business, which caused me to restructure. And this is a lot of times why businesses go under too, is the second it stops, they fall over and they don't have the room to recover.

A hundred percent. And, you know, this kind of ties into like, you've been having a lot of content lately about the different levels, right? And obviously your program's geared towards helping somebody that's in a certain stage of business. You know, and I think in line of kind of that conversation, I had hit level three and I wasn't really prepared to be at level three. So I hit level three and didn't necessarily make the adjustments along the way. In actuality, all this has gone through is I think it's necessary. Now, thankfully, I was smart enough over the last couple of years to stockpile a cash reserve. We had a fairly significant cash reserve going in, which unfortunately, I burned a lot of it. And I got it back when I liquidated a bunch of stuff. But nonetheless, that is what saved me. Most businesses, because they're buying the $80,000 trucks and their equipment, they don't have that. So when that happens, three months not operating, They're cooked probably for clothes on their house and everything because they don't have that. Thankfully, I had enough good people in my corner to say like, hey, man, you need to save this for a rainy day because that rainy day came. And you know what? It's put itself right back where it needed to be. So I'm going to open up the conversation and close to the idea that when you hit level three, understand that it's only the beginning of level four. of level five. Because what happens is when you hit level three, you've probably exhausted your skillset of being the technician, of being the contractor. And now it's time to learn how to be a leader. Because now you're at the point in business where you can't produce all the widgets to everybody anymore. You need people to do that for you. So now you have to seek. new council, new members, new mentorships, surround yourself with good people, other businesses that have done this before you to learn how to effectively run that business as you scale to that next journey, right? Which, you know, goes to those additional levels. And, you know, we were talking about this before. It's, you know, how many levels are there? I don't know. But, you know, level three is like a false mountaintop. Certainly a lot to aspire to do, but just know that when you get there, There's still work to be done, you know? So I share this message with a bit of like, I wanted to just kind of share the story. I wanted to catch up with you and let your audience know that there's a lot more out there. You never really do arrive. You know, you can take the message how you want, but, you know, just as business, just, you know, be mindful of who you are. Remain authentic. And really hone in on what value you provide to the world because that is what is going to save you on a rainy day.

Absolutely. Yeah. So you can definitely find our channels on YouTube. So Landscape Channel, Sierra Landscape Management on YouTube. We also have the Calibrated CEO podcast. You can find that on all the major networks. If you want to email me, that's probably the easiest one to write down because some of them are kind of long. You can hit me up at calibratedceo at gmail. com. And yeah, I'm always happy to chat. If you're local, we'll go have lunch, have a cup of coffee, something like that.

I am currently reading this book called Game On. It's about gamification of workplace culture. That's by Arthur Carmazzi. He's actually a guest on one of my podcasts, but basically it's just about how to make learning and creating culture within your business fun.