Contractor's journey to self-mastery requires discipline, integrity, and respect. Welcome to Hammer and Grind. Hey, welcome back to the podcast. This is episode, I believe,137. And this is about three mental frames that you need to understand. Now, mental frames, what is a mental frame or a framework? A framework is a foundation. Right. Think of like a house. A framework is the foundation. It's a structure that holds something together. Now, a mental framework or a mental model. And these words are used interchangeably across the interwebs. But a mental framework is a structure that allows us to properly think. They are a kind of explicit or implicit rather explanation or mental software that allows us to more easily analyze and understand reality. That's a fancy way of saying it's a framework is a lens through which we look through at the reality around us. Most of us live in our own world. Most of us have developed our entire belief system by the age of seven. So if you have kids that are older, like my son just turned seven this year, his belief system has mostly or almost completely been developed. Does he believe in God? Yes or no? Does he believe in good or bad or poor or rich? Does he believe in different things? Like a lot of these mental models are developed by the age of seven. And there's a great book that I've recommended before. It's called Mindset by Carol S. Dweck. Really talks about this in depth so you can understand it. She talks about the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. And we're going to get into more of that in the second framework. But I just wanted to bring up like it's a mental model, right? It's been said, too, that it's harder to break a mental model than it is to split an atom. So in other words, our beliefs that we have that are developed by the age of seven that we carry through adolescence into teenage and adulthood, it's been with us for 15,20,30,40 years sometimes. And this is what we believe the world to be. Now, are those things shaped by your environment? Yes. Are they shaped by your parents? Absolutely. Is it shaped by your friends and your school? 100%. This is why it's important to make sure you surround yourself with certain types of people. Now, some people are unfortunate and they have to grow up in an environment where they're exposed to bad models, bad mental models. But that doesn't mean that you can't change it. Right. It doesn't mean that you can't change anything about your mindset. And these frameworks are going to allow you to see things in a different way. That's what a framework does. If your frame of reference is X and I can show you a frame of reference Y that contradicts frame your frame reference of X and I can prove it. Right. And I can use data to back it up. It challenges your framework. and forces you to look at it and say, wait a minute, maybe the way I thought about stuff all this time was wrong. And so here's the first framework. Now this kind of piggybacks on like the law of attraction. And it sort of is, sort of isn't. But this is about attracting things into your life. Now there's a book called The Law of Attraction. I'm not saying whether I agree with it or not. There's another book called The Secret. You know, all this about whatever you put out into the universe, the universe will bring back to you. And whether you add a spiritual element to it or you add karma, whatever, like that's for you to decide based on your frameworks. I have my framework. I'm not trying to push that onto you. And in regards to like the law of attraction or karma or putting stuff in the universe. OK, so the law of attraction, we were talking about this this morning in the our. WhatsApp messaging group, everybody in the profit club, we use WhatsApp to communicate. And we have a group chat where we have lots of discussions sometimes, you know, in the mornings or somebody will post something and we'll have a good discussion. So it's like being part of a ongoing discussion, if you will. And I posted this this morning in the group and we were talking about it, but this is what I call it. I'm calling the cool kid framework. Okay. This is the cool kid framework. A lot of contractors. whenever they start in their business, they have this belief or this framework that they are working for the client. In other words, the client is the boss and you're the employee. Now, another way of saying this, and I've said it before, is like having an employee mindset where you literally believe you're working for the client, right? They have the money and you own a business, but really you're just an employee. It's almost like you own the business, but really it's like a division of a company that's owned by the employee. This is how a lot of you see yourself as business owners. You're the president of a division, right? Your business. But that division is actually underneath the client and the client is the owner of the entire company, the entire corporation. And you're just running a division. That's kind of like the employee mindset where you believe you work. for the client. Now, the framework specifically that I'm talking about with the cool kid is that in high school or in middle school, regardless of your upbringing, regardless of what, you know, what group of kids you are with, the cool kids, the jocks, the emos or the goths or the nerds or whatever, right? Whatever every generation changes. We all have someone in our group or even in the school that we would consider to be the cool kid, right? Like that kid's cool. And then we find out that the cool kids having a party and we're like, you know, we tell our buddies, oh man, Sam's having a party. I really wish I could get in there. There's going to be all kinds of, you know, hot girls and party and it's going to be so much fun, but I'm just a, you know, I'm just a nerd over here. I'm not, I'm nobody special. Right. And I wish I could get in there. Like we're waiting for the invites. We want to be invited to the party. And that's how a lot of you approach your clients. You're going to your clients and saying, you're the party. You're where it's at. Please, please, please invite me into your party, right? That is the framework of the cool kid. You are almost begging your client to hire you, to invite you to the party. The framework I want you to start using is that you're the cool kid and you're hosting the party. And now the clients are coming to you and saying, Brad, We really want to join your party. We really want to get into your party and see what this is all about. We really want to hire you to do our project for us. Could you please, please, please consider working with us? And that little framework can make all the difference. Now, this is not to be confused with being arrogant or cocky or thinking you're the best or, you know, superior to everyone else. That is not what this is about. Okay. This is about just a simple framework of that when you create a business where from the outside looking in, regardless of the inside is true or not, but from the outside looking in, you got your branding on point, you got your marketing on point, you got the business culture on point, you got the product on point. Everything about your business from the outside looking in looks like you're an amazing company. And we want to be a part of it, right? We want to hire you because we're confident. And I've said this before, certainty of achievement is important to clients. They want to know that if they hire you, they're going to get a certain level of achievement, right? Whether or not they're confident, you're going to be able to deliver the end results without taking their money and running, you know, jacking up the price mid project, finding all kinds of things, leaving the project and not coming back for four months. Like all these horror stories, they want to make sure that if they hire you, they're getting certainty of achievement and all that can be done through the appearance, the optics of your business. This is why I say it's so important to have a strong brand, to have your trucks wrapped, to have uniforms, to have a good sales process. All of these things, to have a good production process. All of these things are important to provide the optic. from the outside looking in that you get your crap together. And when you do that, then people are attracted to that. People are not attracted to the 40, you know, the 40 year veteran, a guy who's 65 years old, he looks like he's homeless, and he has a beat up truck. And he does great work. He might be the best freaking contractor in town, but people are not attracted to that person. Right. From the outside, they're not attracted to it. It doesn't matter what you think about it. This is facts. This can be backed by data. This can be backed by science, by research. This is facts. The optics of your business matter. So if you become the cool kid in your town, in your industry, in your service niche, you can start attracting clients. OK, that's the framework. You be the cool kid who is inviting, who get to decide who you invite to the party. You're not begging someone to invite you to the party. This also, coincidentally, is the exact same framework for hiring A players. Everybody says, nobody wants to work. These young kids don't want to work. I can't find good help. It's not true. Every single generation has lazy people and has hardworking people. It's not true that, you know, the new generation doesn't want to work. That's not true. It's BS. I'm calling BS on it. The problem is you are not hosting the party that the A player wants to go to. The star quarterback of your high school does not want to go hang out with a bunch of nerds on a Friday night who's going to be having a all-nighter Super Mario game fest. That is not what the star quarterback wants to do. Right. The star quarterback wants to go hang out at the if he's a senior in high school, the star quarterback wants to go hang out at the college parties, you know, at the fraternity parties or the sorority parties where there's always people older than because he sees them as cool. And so he wants to go hang out with them. He is attracted to something that he doesn't have access to that he wants to be a part of. And you have to create a business that attracts A players. But whenever you think it's all about how hard they work, A players aren't going to go there. Just telling you right now,99% of the guys out there that say they can't find good work, it's your fault. You do not have a culture. You don't have a business that attracts A players. If you're listening to this podcast and you haven't listened to the one that I did with Brian Gottlieb. should be the one prior to this, episode 136. He successfully exited three businesses for $100 million. And he said in one year, he received 9,000 applications for employment. He was hosting the party. He was the cool kid. He was hosting the party that everybody wanted to go to. And when you are the cool kid, you don't have problems finding good help. You don't have problems getting clients. So be the cool kid and create a business that attracts the right people. And it has nothing absolutely to do with the freaking quality of your product. I want to start punching people in the face when they say, my quality sells itself. Brad, my quality sells itself. All right. The second thing, the second framework is a scarcity mindset. Okay. This is what I was talking about with the book Mindset. The framework is a scarcity mindset. The opposite of that is abundance. Okay, you want to have an abundance mindset. But the framework that most of us have is a scarcity mindset. Brad, I can't raise my prices because the guy down the street's cheaper than me. That's a scarcity mindset. I guarantee you, if I come to your town and I don't give a crap where you live, I don't give a crap what service you do, I can come to your town and I can find someone doing the exact same thing as you. that's more expensive than you. And I can find someone that's doing the exact same thing as you, that's cheaper than you. The difference is the people that are more expensive, they understand how to be the cool kid. You do not. You do not understand how to be the cool kid that attracts the right people. Scarcity mindset is what keeps contractors stuck in their business. And I was severely hampered by this mindset. Scarcity mindset kept me for years, years of my life from achieving success in my business because I had a scarcity mindset. I hear people talking about charging more, charging for consultations, not doing free estimates. And you know what I said? That might work in Chicago where it's a big town, a lot of people, but it don't work in Evansville, Indiana. Small town, Midwest town, it doesn't work here. Doesn't work here. Small town doesn't work. Might work in big cities, but doesn't work here. Complete and utter BS. It's complete and utter BS. I remember one time I went to look at a job. It was a shower, like a shower redo. They had a water leak or something. It was like a fiberglass shower. It might've been tile. I don't remember. They wanted to redo it. And I had, I was familiar with the concept of charging for a consultation, right? I wasn't, I didn't think it worked. in my town. And I went to look at this job and I was talking to the wife and while we were talking, she goes, yeah, we got to, we talked to another contractor and he wanted to charge us $500 just to come out and give us an estimate. And I was like, yeah, that's crazy. I can't believe they can get away with that. I don't know how they're in business. Meanwhile, in my brain, at the same time, I'm thinking, wait a minute, you mean to tell me there is a contractor in Evansville, Indiana, my small town, that's actually charging and getting away with it? How is that possible? It doesn't work in my town. That customer telling me that this other contractor was charging for consultations broke my framework. It broke my scarcity mindset. Even though I knew that this was a thing that's being done across the country, a customer telling me that broke my framework. And it opened up the doors to being more open-minded to the idea of charging for a consultation. Now, don't get me wrong. You got to do it right. There's skill in how you do this, but the ability to do it is there. It works. But a scarcity mindset will keep you from actually trying it. A scarcity mindset is that, you know, if you have a, in the book, Mindset, she talks about there's fixed and there's growth mindsets. There's two different mindsets. There's fixed and there's growth. A fixed mindset is also identified as a scarcity mindset. A fixed mindset believes that whatever your IQ you're born with, that's it. Like you cannot learn anymore. There's nothing you can do in life to get smarter, to get better. If you're born and you have the ability to run really fast, you've been blessed and therefore you should be a runner. Because I wasn't born with those genes and so I can't be a runner, right? That's a fixed mindset. It's not true. Anybody can learn to be, you know, good at anything. Now, are there genes and, you know, physical limitations? Sure. But outside of that, you could take two people with the exact same gene bone structure, you know, the ability to run fast and one person can just simply believe they can't do it. The other person doesn't. One has a fixed mindset. One has a growth mindset, right? So growth mindset is anything's possible. If so-and-so can do it, I can do it, right? If Oprah Winfrey can be abused and, you know, have a terrible childhood and then become one of the richest women in the world, then I can also overcome things and become, you know, rich and famous if I, you know, if that's what I wanted to do. There's lots of people in the world who have overcome very, very tough situations to become successful. And that in and of itself is proof that a fixed mindset is not true. There's examples all around us, all around us every single day. A fixed mindset will not allow you to look for them because it's like a blinder. When you have a fixed mindset, you're talking to a buddy of yours. And you go, have you ever heard that Brad guy on the, I think it's like the Hammer and Hammer podcast or Hammer and Grind or something like that. You ever heard him talk? And, you know, your buddy's like, no, I haven't. And he goes, well, he said something about charging for estimates. And your buddy goes, you know, I tried that once in 1982 and it didn't work. So I haven't done it. So what I do is I just add a little extra to every single job that I win. And it just makes up for it. Because going out and doing estimates, that's just the cost of business. That's just the cost of doing business. So if you just figure it into your numbers, then you're not really losing out. You just add an extra $200 or $300 to every job you win, and that helps pay for all the ones you lose. And you go, well, he's a successful contractor. He's been in business for 25 years, and he said he tried it one time and it didn't work. He must be doing something right. And that's this guy on, you know, this. Brad dude on the podcast doesn't know what he's talking about. It must not work in our town. He must be in a bigger town where it works, but it won't work in us because I talked to the successful dude. That's how frameworks are established. And when you have a fixed mindset, once you've done a tiny, tiny bit of research and the research that you've done is you asked one person who said he did it one time and it didn't work, then that's like, see, confirmation. I mean, this is confirmation bias. He's a successful contractor. He said it doesn't work. I take his word over some random dude on the internet. So it doesn't work. Shut down, throw away the key, lock it away. You know, charging for estimates doesn't work. Done. So don't even talk to me again about it. Right? That's what happens. 99% of the time when something doesn't work in your business is because you didn't give enough effort, period. You hire two guys who didn't work out good. So what do you say? You know what? You just can't find good work. I'm just going to have to do it myself. I'll just be a one man show. I can make more money. Now the justification comes in. I can make more money if I work by myself. I can set my own hours if I work by myself. Because, you know, I hired two guys and they didn't work out. There's all the proof I need that it's not possible. Meanwhile, people all over the world. Hire people all the freaking time, have success, make millions of dollars, retire a multimillionaire, but it just doesn't work for you, you know, because it doesn't work anywhere. It's just those are special circumstances, right? They live in a special city or they do a different trade. No, no. Your framework is keeping you from understanding this. Your scarcity mindset is keeping you from understanding this. There is an abundance of money out there. A scarcity mindset, a fixed belief is that there's only a certain amount of money in the world and most of the rich people have it. So the only way I can get more money is for the government to take the money from the rich and give it to me. That's a fixed mindset. There is more money in the world than there actually are people to consume and spend it. That's a fact. There are, I think, somewhere around 600 millionaires in the U. S., something like that. I know, I'm saying maybe it was 6,000. It's a lot. It's a lot. It's a very big number. It's not like you think it is, right? Hey, just a quick timeout from the show. In the next 30 seconds, I'm going to tell you exactly how you can transform your contracting business. Imagine being part of a community of winners where you can find out exactly what they've done to be successful. That's exactly what you get when you join the Profit Club. But it's not just the community. You get lifetime access to all of my course-related material, including all future material that I add. But wait, there's more. Each week, you'll get access to three group coaching calls to talk about sales, marketing, and business problems and answer any questions that you may have. Still not convinced? How about personalized one-on-one coaching to help you overcome your limits? And here's my promise to you. I guarantee you will double your investment within 90 days or I personally will work with you one-on-one until you do. So don't wait. Elevate your game with The Profit Club today. Now let's get back to the show. Regardless of what you hear on the news, on TikTok, and there's five families that own all the money and all that stuff, there is a lot of people. that own have a lot of money, because they don't have a scarcity mindset, they don't have a fixed mindset. All you have to do is pre create. This is going back to number one, the cool kid. All you have to do is create a cool kid environment. And people will come to you with their money. And they will be happy to give you all of their money in return for what you're offering. The truth of the matter is, is that if you're having a hard time selling jobs, it's because your offering sucks. That's the truth. What you have to offer them sucks. There's a reason why Alex Ramosi wrote a book, $100 million Offers, and now he writes a book called $100 million Leads. Your offer, your message, your business, your brand, your optics are important. And if you don't have that right, you're not going to attract the money into your life. You're not going to attract the clients into your life. So scarcity mindset is a fixed belief that you are a victim of your environment and that there's no way you can overcome it. Now, again, I could prove this all day. Data, I could show you data. I can show you my clients. I can show you all this to prove that you're wrong. You may not be open-minded to receive it, but the data is there to prove you're wrong. So this isn't a matter of, oh, it's theory or conjecture or stuff that you believe. No, this is fact. This is actual hardcore,100% data-driven facts. And facts don't care about your feelings, right? You're feeling about, well, people won't pay it in my town. BS, you suck at delivering a consultation charge. Fact, fact number one, you don't provide enough value for them to see the benefit of paying a consultation charge. Fact number two, right? I can do this all day, all day. I can destroy all of your beliefs with actual hard evidence facts all day long. So when I post something on TikTok and I get 15 contractors say, you're so full of shit. Shut up, dummy. Right? To me, it's amusing, for one. But two, I know that that guy has a fixed mindset and a terrible life. He probably lives a terrible life. Because it's not true. Again, facts. Don't care about your feelings. And I love the profit club is the community. And one of the ways that you can start to break down these frameworks, if you have a scarcity mindset, because you can join and get coaching and still have a scarcity mindset. You can be like, okay, Brad, I heard you enough. You've beat the drum. You've convinced me. I'm taking a chance here. I want to give you my money so you can help me, but I still don't believe it's possible. I'm just taking a chance here. I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that level of, you know, scarcity of fixed belief. But when I put you into a community, when there's 20,30,50 other contractors who every single day in our community are talking about wins they've done, they've sold a job at a 50% gross profit for the first time. They didn't think it was possible. And then a couple of months later, they sold a job at a 60% gross profit. They didn't think it was possible. Or they just got off the tools. They hired two people and now they're off their tools. They didn't think it was possible. When you're exposed to that on a daily basis, and you're in our WhatsApp community chat, or you're in our Facebook group and having these every single day shown to you, you can't help but start to believe differently. You can't. If I put you in a room with 20 millionaires, and you spend a year with them, at the end of the year, you're either going to be a millionaire, or you're going to be on your way to becoming a millionaire, because you're surrounded with people that have different frameworks of life. It's so important that you surround yourself with the right people, and that's how you can break through the scarcity mindset. Entrepreneurship is a very, very lonely journey. I'm recording this podcast in my office inside a warehouse. There's no windows. I'm completely isolated. I have no friends here. I have no coworkers that I can talk to. I'm isolated, and it sucks, to be honest with you. I'm actively trying to get out of here. Because of the mental stress it puts on me being completely isolated all day long with no windows, nothing. I can come to work in the morning. It's 80 degrees sunny. And at the end of the day, I walk out and it's like a tornado came through and I don't even know. I have no idea because I'm isolated. That's what business is like. And you have to not be isolated. That's what communities do. So if you have certain frameworks that you are trying to break through, surround yourself with people that have the opposite framework, that have the correct framework. It's no different than language immersion. You could say, I want to learn Spanish and take Rosetta Stone or whatever, you know, for six months trying to learn Spanish. And you may, you may learn Spanish. But if I dropped you into Mexico in an area where no one spoke English. Within about a month, you would learn, not only would you learn Spanish, but you would actually learn like actual slang and dialect because you're immersed in it. That's the same thing with immersing yourself in communities. That's the scarcity mindset. The last thing I want to talk to you about is loss aversion. Now, this is a thing that plagues contractors, but it can also help you understand your clients and your employees. Loss aversion is when people tend to prefer avoiding losses more than they do acquiring equivalent gains. So if you had the option of I said, would you rather find $10 on the ground or lose $10? You know, keep from losing $10. In other words, you dropped $10, you found $10, but you dropped $10 and then you found it again, right? Would you rather prevent losing $10 or gaining $10? And across the board, people would prefer to prevent losing $10. And that's true. So loss aversion is bad in our business, like I said, but can be good to use with customers and not in a manipulative way, although it kind of is, but manipulation for the benefit of the customer. Okay. And by the way, everything in life is a manipulation. Manipulation is not necessarily a bad thing. You can manipulate people to do good things. Manipulation is just a control method and everything in life is manipulated. A billboard on the side of the road is a manipulation. A radio song is a manipulation. You know, saying I love you to your spouse is a manipulation. So everything in life is a manipulation. The only difference is if it's used for good or bad. And we're not using it for bad here. Just want to throw that out there because people get all weird and crazy when you start talking about manipulation. So like I said, people are afraid of losing $10 more than they are winning $10. There is a video I've seen on YouTube or TikTok or whatever. There's this guy in New York City. I think he owns a jewelry store or something. I don't know what he does, but he'll go out to New York City. on the streets and he'll have like, I don't know the size. It's like a half an ounce of silver bar. It may be a quarter ounce. I don't remember, but it's like a little tiny silver bar, you know, worth two to 300 bucks or something like that. And he'll go out there with like 10 of them, like 10 silver bars. Right. And he'll go up to people. And I can't remember if he asked them to do something very simple. And then he gives them a silver bar or if he just says, Hey, would you like a silver bar? I can't remember if there's like a, they have to do something first or not. But you would not believe that a majority of the people walking by do not accept his silver bar. Why is that? It's loss aversion. What are they averting? What loss are they averting? Embarrassment, getting their hopes up, right? Some random dude on the street says, hey, here's a one ounce silver bar. Do you want it? And you think in a microsecond. this guy's probably trying to sell me something. There's probably some trick. It's probably fake. Could be a prank, right? I don't want to get in trouble. I don't want to embarrass myself. I don't want to get my hopes up. So it's easier for me to simply say no than it is to accept it. And every once in a while, somebody will do the thing or get the bar and they're like, they take it and then they're in disbelief and they go, is this real? He's like, yeah, it's a hundred percent real. Go take it to a jeweler and ask him. And then finally they're like, Well, cool. Thanks, man. Thanks. I appreciate it. You know, you're right on. And this has been tested on many different mediums, like using different things, money, you know, giving away money, all kinds of things. The truth is that people won't take advantage of it because they're afraid of what's going to happen if it's not true. If they take that silver bar and they go an hour out of their way or they go 20 minutes out of their way to a pawn store or a jewelry store and they say, hey, check this. And they check it and they go, no, it's fake. Right. You got you got scammed. And they go, man, I knew it. Just wasted 20 minutes of my life and got my hopes up. I thought this was going to be able to pay my rent. They don't want that. So they completely avoid it. Right. So that is loss aversion. Let me give you another example. And by the way, this can also be like FOMO, fear of missing out. Loss aversion is a fear of missing out. So several years ago, my friends went on a cruise, a friend's cruise. And I believe it was a couple's only. I don't know that for sure, but I believe it was a couple's only. And they went on a cruise down in the Caribbean. And when they got back and we couldn't go, my wife and I couldn't go. And when they got back for like the next week, all of my friends, and this was like five or six couples. Right. Like it was like all my friends except us for the next week, every day they're posting like 30 pictures of them hanging out on the beach, you know, drinking alcohol, having fun. We go over to someone's house to having a party. Everybody's talking about everything that happened on the cruise. And the entire time I'm like, man, I wish we went on that cruise. I really wish we went on that cruise. I missed all those memories, so on and so on. And then unfortunately last year. My best friend of 34 years was killed in a motorcycle accident, and he was one of the couples that went on the cruise. And so this year, they started planning last year after his accident. They decided to go to Mexico, to Cancun, on another friend's trip. And I was like, I'm not missing this one. Like I told my wife, we're going on this trip. I'm not missing it. And that was because of loss aversion. because I did not want to miss another trip where all of these memories were made and I was not a part of it. Right. That is a loss aversion response. That was the only reason why I wanted to go because we already have this year. We already had a family vacation. We basically have had three family vacations planned. We're going on a cruise with my family at the end of this year. We already had vacations planned. This was like an additional vacation. And this one was like two weeks after our other family vacation. And so like, it was a lot, right? A lot to be away, a lot of financial costs. But I was like, there's no way we're missing it. I don't care. We're not missing it. That's loss aversion, right? You can do the same thing with your clients. If they don't hire you and they hire the cheaper guy down the street, what are they missing? Like, what are they missing out on? Go back to the cool kid example. If you're the cool kid and I don't hire you and I hire the nerdy kid, what am I missing out on? Right? Am I missing out on a better experience? So you can use loss aversion in your marketing and stuff. Let me give you another example. And this is one that I see, I mean, pretty much every day when I talk to contractors, especially around coaching. See, if I had a 12-sided die, it's a die with 12 sides on it. And 11 of those sides had $1,000. said $1,000 on that. And if you rode $1,000, you won $1,000. But one side, just one out of 12, had a $10,000 number on there. But that was $10,000 that you owed me. So if you row $1,000, you keep it. If you row $10,000, you owe me $10,000. Most of you would not take that risk. The loss aversion framework or the loss aversion law says that you can't afford to lose $10,000 even though you have a 12 to 1 odd of winning $1,000. The odds are forever in your favor, right? Do some whatever. What's the movie with the? I just blanked out. What's the movie with Jennifer Lawrence? Yeah, that movie. May the odds forever be in your favor. Right. That is you have the odds. You have the house. Basically, you own the house position. Ninety nine percent of you would not take that chance. You would not take a chance because the chance of losing ten thousand is far greater than the chance of winning a thousand, even though the odds are forever in your favor. Now, if I said to you, you can roll as many times as you want. I mean, you could roll a thousand times. The odds will say that even though you may hit $10,000 that you owe me, occasionally you will make more money, right? Because 11 times you're going to make $1,000, which is $11,000, and so on and so on. So over a row of 20 times or 50 times, you should come out ahead. And that's just like statistics. Statistically, you should come out ahead. Some of you still wouldn't take that offer. Because the thought of losing $10,000 is far greater than the opportunity of winning more. But what if I said it's flipped? 11 sides have $10,000 that you win. And one side that's mine has $10,000. All sides have $10,000. The 10,011 of them that you win, the one I still win, you pay me, right? It's no different than 1,000, really. The odds are the same. You have the exact same odds. It still wouldn't change. Most of you would say, no, I don't want to take those odds. Some of you might. But what if it was 10,000,11 side had 10,000, and one side had a 1,000, you owed me. And you could roll as many times as you want. Now it starts to get a little more creative, right? Now it starts wanting to take risk because the odds are way, way jacked. Even if you roll it one out of 12 times,1,000. but you roll the other ones 11 times, you're going to come out way, way ahead. But when it's simple, when they're the same, so you can lose $10 or win $10, when the outcome is roughly the same, loss aversion will always take over. It will always prevail. And so this doesn't always have to be monetarily. It can be time. You're in time investment. Sometimes I talk to contractors and they go, yeah, I'm interested in, but I don't want to spend the time. I don't want to invest the time required. I'm too busy right now. I'm working on the job. I'm on the tools every day. I just don't have the time available to put towards, you know, making my business better. I believe what you're selling works. I just don't have the time. And that's that loss aversion. I mean, you do have time. Let's be realistic here. When someone tells me they don't have time, I instantly think BS. I instantly think bullshit. So if I've talked to you before on a coaching call and you've told me you don't have time, my first thought was you're a complete liar. You do have time. Now, you may not know that. You're not lying to me on purpose. You just think you don't have time. And the loss aversion kicks in and says, well, the only where I have extra time is in the evenings when I like to drink beer and watch my favorite sports team. or go out in my garage and tinker around, or do this or do that. Or, you know, I don't want to take away from my family, which I'm not saying is right or wrong. But it's you see is like a net time of I'm already maxed out with time. So the only extra chunk of time I have available is my free time. And I don't want to lose that. I don't want to lose my free time that I have. What little free time that I have, I don't want to lose that. It doesn't matter if I showed you like, dude, if you could just spend 10 hours for the next two weeks, Like for the rest of your life, you would have extra free time. Like I'm going to show you how to create more time. No, I don't want to do that. I want the risk is too high. What if it doesn't work, Brad? What if I spend, you know,10 hours over the next two weeks and it just doesn't work? That's too great of a risk for me to lose all of that time. The 20 hours and two weeks. Again, it's BS because you waste more than that in one week's time. You waste more than 20 hours in one week's time. But the loss aversion, and this is where we get trapped in our business. The loss aversion can be, I come to you and say, hey, for a few thousand dollars, I can change your entire business and your life. Guaranteed. Here's the proof. Here's the case studies. Here's all the results. Here's the data that proves it to be true. The loss aversion framework will keep you from making that decision. So it can plague you 100% in your business. So being aware of loss aversion and understanding that your mental framework around loss needs to be rewired into opportunity. Because loss aversion does not consider opportunity costs, right? The opportunity of you winning $10,000 on every row does not even factor in because it's being blocked out. by the loss aversion framework of you losing potentially $10,000. So if you can eliminate the loss aversion framework and start seeing things through opportunity, right? Again, this ties in with the scarcity, the fixed mindset versus growth. If you have a growth mindset, everything's an opportunity. Every door closed is a new opportunity opened. That's a growth mindset. Every dollar spent, right, comes back to me 10 times. If there was some magic, you know, magic formula or whatever, where, or machine where when you in like an ATM machine, let's go, let's say there's an ATM machine. You go there and you stick $10 in. Every time you stick $10 in, you get a hundred dollars back. You get 10 times your money back, right? You would basically spend your entire life there. Just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, throwing money in money's coming out, right? You invest 10, you make a hundred. You invest 10, you make a hundred. All day long, you guys would take advantage of that. But again, if you put money in and half the time the machine doesn't work, that loss aversion would keep you from doing it. Even though statistically, logically, and backed by data and science, it tells you you can't lose, your emotional framework of losing will keep you from making that decision. And that's how loss aversion keeps you stuck. I hired two guys that didn't work. I don't want to lose any more money. This guy is an A player, but he wants 40 bucks an hour. And I can only, I only make 30 bucks an hour. I don't want to pay someone more than what I make. That's loss aversion. I'm assuming I'm going to lose money if it doesn't work out. If I hire this marketing company and it doesn't work out, I'm out the money. That's all I got for this episode. There's one book you can read. It's really, it's kind of a hard read. At least it was for me because it's very, very scientific, very, very heavy in data, like results. It's all about experiments, like hundreds and hundreds of experiments that were done on human behavior, why people do what they do. And the book is called Predictably Irrational. I love the title. Predictably Irrational, the Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions. It's by Dan. O 'Reilly, I believe is how you say that. It's a good book. It's a long, for me, it was a hard book to get through. I listened to it on Audible. Maybe if you read it, it might be easier because there's tons of data, like numbers and charts and stuff, which can be hard listening to on Audible. But it's a good book to understand human behavior. And there's probably, I don't know,50,60 studies that were done on everything. So it's a good book to understand human behavior and why these frameworks shape the way we do things. Guys, thanks for hanging out with me. I appreciate it. Hopefully this added some value. Do me a favor. If it did go leave a review because I'm trying to help move up our podcast and the standings and reviews are the number one thing that helps do that. So if you get any value out of my podcast, this is my ask to you is to go leave a review on your favorite platform to share the love. I put a lot of time and energy into these podcasts. This is 137. It's 137 episodes. I haven't missed but two weeks in over two years. And it's a lot of work. So you can share your appreciation by simply leaving me an honest review. You know where to find me if you want me to help with your business. If you want to get more of my content, if there's anything I can do, reach out, let me know. Go to Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, search for the Hammer and Grind podcast. You can find me. And guys, remember until next time. Profit is not a dirty word.
