Contractor's journey to self-mastery requires discipline, integrity, and respect. Welcome to Hammer and Grind. Hey, welcome back to the podcast. It's your host Brad here. Listen, this episode may be a little short just because I'm fighting through this chess code, all this crud that's going around. Yeah, I'm going to do my best. So if you're watching this on video, you may notice the background's totally different. That's because I just moved offices. I'm moving into my new office to be able to offer even more services and bring on some staff and really just create an awesome community and source for contractors to do some phenomenal things in their business in the next decade. I mean, there's just so much great going on right now in the world with opportunities and it may not seem like it, but there is. You just got to trust me on that. I got clients that are absolutely killing it. Even though it may seem like it's down and everyone's uncertain, there's still plenty of opportunity if you know how to tap into that. And I'm excited about it. I hope you are too. So let's dive into this episode. Today, I want to talk about the emotional cycle of change. And this is when I first saw this, so many things clicked in my head. Like it was just like an instant aha moment of holy crap. This is what I've been struggling with for so, so long. And if you are, if you're not familiar with this there, you can just go online and just search for the emotional cycle of change. You'll get a little graphic. It looks like a V, you know, a line plotted on a graph looks like a V. And there's five stages to this, which I'm going to go through. But just so you know, you're looking at the right thing. On the left side of the graph, it's emotional stage. On the bottom of the graph, it's your timeline. And the first stage is stage one is uninformed optimism. I'm just going to read through these and then I'll come back to them. But stage one is uninformed optimism. Stage two is informed pessimism. Stage three is the valley of despair. And this is really important one. Stage four is informed optimism. And then stage five is success and fulfillment. So what this graph is, you know, lots of data, lots of people smarter than me put this stuff together, done a ton of research. And this is pretty well known to be understood and accepted as the legitimate emotional cycle of change. Now, this can be this can apply across many different spectrums of your life and business. Right. So it can be. The emotional cycle of change in your business can be emotional cycle of change in your relationships, you know, emotional cycle change and learning a new hobby. Like it doesn't matter. You have to go through these. The only difference is, is if you're seasoned, these, these timeline may be shorter and the valleys and dips may not be as great, but you still have to go through every one of these stages. before you have some success in your life. So let's talk about number one, uninformed optimism. What does this mean? Well, whenever we decided to start our own business, and I remember I was working for, it's my wife's cousin at the time, but we weren't married yet. I didn't even know her until I found my wife was through my old boss, but he had started his own business and I was a construction manager for a developer in Scott. was his name. He was the carpenter that we were using to do all of our finished carpentry. And after a couple of years of him doing work for us, I got to know him a little bit better. And he's, he's about my age, might be just a slightly young couple years younger than me. But we kind of hit it off became friends. And then whenever my boss was going through some financial times, I saw the writing on the wall is time to leave. And so I, I, I signed up with Scott and he brought me on as a carpenter. really trained me up in a lot of the finished carpentry techniques. And so I worked for him for a couple of years and him being younger and newer and, um, let's just say not as motivated to do, to be uber successful. Um, he, he didn't really care if there was a lot of work. So, you know, a 20 hour work week, no big deal, you know, two days on three days off, no big deal, you know, just whatever the work comes in. And, you know, I was, um, recently divorced and I had my two daughters and I was trying to provide a family for them and it just wasn't working out. And I remember thinking, well, if, if Scott can have a business where he's only working 20,30 hours a week, uh, and he's not that motivated, I know I can do it myself and I could probably do better because I'm way more motivated. I'm a way, you know, way harder worker. I got my kids. I got to try and raise and blah, blah, blah. So This is the uninformed optimism. Like I'm very optimistic that I can do this, that I can start this business, but I'm completely uninformed about everything that's required to actually own a business. So we jump in, you know, feet first into the deep end or head first, whatever. And we're going to sink or swim, right? So it's the uninformed optimism. We start our business and day one, everything's exciting. We tell our friends and family and we get a bunch of work right away from our fans and friends and family because they feel sorry for us. Those are the mercy. I call those the mercy jobs. It's like, yeah, you know, I think I need my handrail replaced. Yeah, why don't you come out here and do this? You're like, oh, yeah, absolutely. You all know what I'm talking about. Right. But the thing is that once you burn through your network of your friends and family, then all of a sudden there's just not quite as much work out there. Right now. And then it's coming wintertime and things slow down and you start to get a little nervous. You start to see some writing on the wall. You start to become a little more informed. Right. And this is where you cross that line, the optimism slash pessimism line. If you're following along with me online. You can see the dotted line there. You have the optimism on top, pessimism on bottom. You cross over from optimistic to pessimistic and you become an informed pessimist. You become informed like, holy crap, this is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. Everybody makes it look so easy on the internet and all these, you know. Facebook gurus and Instagram millionaires with their jets and cars that they rent. You know, I mean, it's all a bunch of bullcrap smoke and mirrors. Right. And so you start to be like, okay, this is hard. I'm not sure if I can do this. I'm going to keep pushing forward and see what happens. And then you get to stage three, which is where most businesses die. And that is the Valley of Despair. This is the point where you've done everything that you know is capable, that you know capable of doing or are capable of doing, and you're not getting results. People aren't calling you. You can't find good work. You know, I mean, good helpers, you know, good laborers. You can't find your clients are telling you you're too expensive, even though like what you're charging is barely enough to keep the lights on. Like this is the valley of despair. This is the point where we're like, I don't, how are guys staying in business? Like, how is this possible? This right here is the most critical point of the entire thing, because this is where most people quit or this is where shiny object syndrome kicks in. Because I guarantee you when you're in uninformed optimism, nobody can knock you off, right? You just start your business and Two months into your business, somebody comes along and is like, hey, I need a new lead guy. I'll pay you $150,000 and give you a truck. It'd be great. And you're like, no way, man. I'm starting my own business and I'm going to be a millionaire. There's no shiny object there. You can't be distracted because you're so optimistic. But as you get into the valley of despair, you're like, okay, this is not working out. It's a lot harder than I thought. Somebody comes along and says, hey, you want to? You know, I'll give you this business. I'll give you this, this job at 150 K a year and a company truck. And you're like, you know what? Starting to sound pretty good. Starting to sound pretty good. I have only been making $40,000 a year. This is my second year in. I don't see it ever getting any better. I think it's time to move on. Who wants to pass up a job like that? Right. That's the Valley of Despair. Shiny object syndrome. Hey, I do, you know, I'm doing a roofs. And there's a lot of roofing competitors and it's just really, really hard. So you know what? I'm going to start doing fencing as well. Shiny object. So here's what happens. You're in the valley of despair. It's really hard. You can't see anything out because again, you're in the valley. You can't see over the edge. You don't know how far you got to go to get to the next level to get out of the valley. And along comes Mr. Shiny object. It's a new service offering. It's a new, a new job offering. It's a new this. Right. And so what we do is we say, oh, this looks great. And we we sign on because three people asked us if we could do a fence for him and we turn it down because we only did roofs. But I don't have enough roof jobs and I need to do some work. So fencing sounds great. Let's get into fencing. And what you do is you return from the stage three, the valley of despair, and you return back to stage one, which is uninformed optimism. It's new. It's exciting. It's shiny. It promises all kinds of fortune and excitement and good, you know, good being, well-being and everything else is just going to be awesome because now we're going to start doing fences. And then you are in your uninformed optimism. And then shortly you get back to informed pessimism, which is. There's actually twice as many fencing contractors as there is roofing contractors, and you're in the exact same boat. And now you're in the valley of despair once again. And here comes Mr. Shiny Object Syndrome. Hey, you know what would really be cool? It'd be cool if you started doing decks. Because I've had four people in the last month ask if we do decks. I think decks where the money's at. And once again, you go from stage three. Valley of despair, back to stage one, uninformed optimism. Decks are going to be great. And you start doing it. Six months, a year later, you're back to valley of despair. Right? Because what you're trying to do here, guys, is you're trying to shortcut this process. You have to go through the valley of despair. You have to. That is the only way. And so whenever I talk to contractors and they're like, hey, we do 15 different services because it makes us that way we stay busy. That is all results of Valley of Despair cycle back to uninformed optimism and going through this process. Right. It just is. You can't. You have to push through the Valley of Despair. Here is here is what's the most critical thing you need to understand. This is probably the most important information I've ever given somebody. If you take this advice, it will change your entire business. It will change and push you through the valley of despair. Okay. What you have to do to get through the valley of despair is you have to learn new information. Think about this for a second. You're in the valley of despair because you've maxed out the information that you have. You've tried everything that you currently know what to do and it hasn't worked. This is the exact reason why consultants and coaches and courses and books and YouTube videos, why all of these things exist. Because you have to get new information. You have to acquire the information that you're missing in order to get out of the valley. If you were stuck in a hole and you don't know how to get out of the hole and I come along and I say, hey, why don't you just, you know, use a shovel and dig out around there and dig out a ramp and then you can walk yourself out. You might be like, hey, that's a good idea. I never thought of that before. Yeah, because you were stuck in the valley. You were stuck in the hole. You didn't know that. Why don't you make your own ladder? Why don't you get that stick behind you and break it up and stick it? I mean, there's all kinds of ways. But when you're in the valley, all you can think of is I'm in this valley. I don't know how to get out. It sucks. I don't want to do this anymore. 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.
