Episode•May 6, 2024•40 min

EP165: The power of gratitude

Stop complaining, be grateful. Change is a natural part of life, yet many people fear it. However, embracing change is essential for personal growth and development. Break the cycle and start being grateful for what you have. In this episode, Brad talks about: Importance of setting clear goals and knowing your self-worth for achieving success. Why complaining can lead to doubt and a low emotional state, ultimately affecting self-worth. Suggestions on how to focus on gratitude to shift your mindset toward positivity. How to avoid negative influences or other sources that encourage negativity. Practical advice for achieving your goals. Links to Resources: Get the blueprint to create financial freedom & more free time before burnout or bankruptcy happens. A complete Done-With-You Program - Join the Profit Club Join the Free Facebook Group - The Contractor Profit Blueprint Get Paid for Estimates - Free Sales Guide Plan Your Profits - Profit Journal Help us get the word out to other contractors by leaving us a review or sharing our podcast! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Apple Podcasts Overcast

Transcript

0:09

Contractor's journey to self-mastery requires discipline, integrity, and respect. Welcome to Hammer and Grind. Hey, welcome back to the show. Today we're going to be talking about a topic that we're going to go all over the place. This is one of those wild card topics and episodes where we don't know what's going to come out of Brad's mouth. We're going to be talking about what do you want. It's a pretty simple question. What do you want? Okay. Yet, whenever I meet with a contractor to talk about their business and I ask them, what do you want? In other words, what are you hoping to achieve? What is your goals? What do you want your business to do? What do you want? Very, very few people can tell me or do tell me this is exactly what I want, Brad. I want to have a $5 million a year business. I want to pay myself $250,000 a year. I want to have a, you know, a $2 million house on 10 acres. And I want to have a brand new pickup truck. And I want to take three weeks vacation every year and this and this and this. And they just list out everything they want. Like it is going to happen. Almost no one can do that. That's probably why they're scheduling a call with me is because they're trying to figure out how to achieve this. The people that are very dedicated, know exactly what they want, usually don't have this problem because they just go after it. We label them as like go-getters, high performers. That's how we label those people. In reality, what it is, they just know what they want. This is my wife. My wife is one of these people. She's known from, I don't know, like the age of 12 that she wanted to be a physical therapist. And she did that. That's, you know, once she made that decision, everything after that didn't matter. It's whatever's going to get me to becoming a physical therapist. Right. And she set other goals and have hit every one of those. She went back and got her PhD, nailed it. She started her own side business doing physical therapy, nailed it. Like that's when she set something in her mind that she wants to do, everything else after that is going to drive her towards achieving that goal. Right now. I would agree that she's a high performing individual because she is, she's an overachiever, right? So she's very good at it. But if I ask her what she wants, she will tell me exactly what she wants. Okay. Now this doesn't mean like, if you ask a high performer, like, what do you want? Every aspect of your life that they can tell you every single aspect of their life, you know, down to the T and understand that it's just the major things. that people are trying to achieve, they know what that is, right? They may not know exactly what kind of house they want. They may not know exactly what kind of car they're going to drive, whatever. Some people do, but it's just, it's this idea of knowing what you want. So here's what happens most of the time when I get on a call with the contractor. What do you want? Well, what I don't want, right? Now here's the trick. If someone asks you what you want and you lead with what I don't want, it means that you don't know what you want. You literally have no idea what you want. You're basically saying these are pains in my life and I don't want to have these pains anymore, but I really have no idea what I actually want. I just know I don't want any more pain. Right. And so that is a problem. If you got on a call with me and you said. You know, last year we did 300,000 in revenue. This year, I want to double that to 600,000 in revenue. I want to get off the tools and then put, you know, put a lead guy in place so that I can sell more and do this and this and this. And I want to be able to grow into another city. And I want to have this other satellite office. And I want to add this service. If you told me exactly what you wanted, I would have no problem helping you achieve that. Because that's easy. Like that's an ideal client for me. When you know exactly what you want, right? That's not the majority of the people that I run across. The majority of the people I run across are, I don't like where I'm at in my business and I don't know how to get unstuck. But at the same time, I don't really know what a successful business looks like. I don't even know what I'm capable of doing. I don't even know what my business is capable of doing, right? That's the majority of the people that I talk to. And if you're listening to this, you're probably nodding your head saying, Well, that's me too, right? And so when you say things like, I don't want this, it means you don't know what you want. And here's the thing. People that don't know what they want in life generally have a low self-worth. Now, I want to be clear here. I'm not talking about your worthiness of like, you know, I'm better than you and you're better than me and who's, you know, who's higher hierarchy. That's not what we're talking about. What we're talking about is your own viewpoint, your own belief about yourself. Okay? Like, you could be the president of the United States and potentially have a low self-worth. You could be running a multi-million dollar business and have a low self-worth. And this is, you know, like seasons, it can come and go. And there's things that can cause this, and we're going to get into that here in a minute. But in general, people that have a high self-worth typically do better in the world, in life, because they know exactly what they want and they know that they're worth it. See, that's the difference. They know that they're worth it. If some 20-year-old is like, I want to buy a $20 million house, most of us would be like, you're crazy. You don't even have a college degree. You don't even have a job. Right. But if that person is like, I'm going to get a 20 million dollar house, even if it kills me because I deserve it, then that person probably has a high self-worth and they will have a higher chance of achieving that than someone who just says, well, I don't know what I want. I don't I know I don't want a 20 million dollar house, but I don't really know what I want. That person has a lower self-worth and the chance of them actually. getting out of what they don't want is very low. It's the opposite effect. See, if you don't know what you want, what that's basically saying is, I don't think I'm worthy of anything beyond what I can imagine. Straight up. I don't think I'm worthy of achieving $500,000 a year salary. I don't think I'm worthy of that. I think I'm only worthy of about $60,000, right? Now, we don't say that to ourselves, but that's what we actually believe. We believe that we're not worthy of achieving more for our business. So what causes this to happen? Because nobody wakes up and is like, I just want to live a mediocre life. I guarantee you, every one of you listening to this or watching this, when you started your business, you were in uninformed optimism, meaning you thought this was going to be awesome. You were going to kill it. You were going to have a hundred million dollar a year contracting business. You were going to be the best in your town. You were going to dominate everyone else. You were going to have a big house and a nice truck and just, I mean, you were just going to utterly destroy everyone and be awesome. Everyone has that kind of high expectation, high level of optimism about what they're going to achieve. That's uninformed optimism. Then you get into informed pessimism, right? And this is, I've talked about this before, but this is on the five emotional stages of change in your business. You start out at a high level, uninformed optimism. This is going to be great. You start running your business and you realize, okay, this is a little bit harder than I thought it was going to. I thought I just put a magnet on my truck and everybody calls me and I'm booked up for two years. The natural progression. We start our business, run through all of our friends and family. The phone stops ringing. What do we do now? I don't have any work, right? Things are tough. I talked to 10 people. Nobody signed up. People are lazy or cheap. Nobody wants to pay, blah, blah, blah, okay? Then we get into informed pessimism, and then we go down into the valley of despair once we get stuck in our business and what I call the crazy cycle where we really can't figure out how to get off of it, right? We're working more hours just to make enough money. And then whenever we stop working, we don't make enough money. And so we have to work more. And it's a trade-off between working 80 hours a week or spending time with the family and not making enough money and working 80 hours. And that's where you get burnout, right? And or bankruptcy if you can't end up making enough money, if you don't have leads coming in and making sales. That's all part of it. Okay, so fast forward where you're at in your business, six months, three years, five years, wherever you're at, if you're in the valley of despair, if you're on the crazy cycle, I guarantee you with 100% certainty that you've lowered your outcome of what you want based on what you thought was possible when you started your business. When you started your business, you were going to do $5 million a year. Now you're in the valley of despair and you're like, I would just settle for making $500,000 a year and a $60,000 a year income. Because right now I'm only doing $300,000 and I'm only paying myself $40,000 and I'm barely getting by, right? So what's happened in this process is essentially you've lowered your self-worth without even realizing it. Because when you started, you had a higher self-worth. It was uninformed optimism, but you still had a higher self-worth, right? But then through the process and seeing the struggles and running into a bunch of problems and banging your head against the wall, you come to realize, like, I guess I just had unrealistic expectations to begin with. I need to realign reality with what's possible, right? Some people just live in the valley of despair. forever until they just end up quitting or going bankrupt. And they believe like, this is just business and it's really hard and I'm not cut out for it. Right. So they just essentially give up. Some people do that. Some people realize that maybe they're the ones not doing something right. And it can be a lot easier. And maybe they go and seek a mentor or get coaching or buy a program or whatever. And they learn some new techniques and and ways of doing things that make it a little bit easier in their business. And then they start having some success and they may plateau at a little bit higher level. They may make some money, right? But they never completely realize their full potential, but they're okay with that because compared to where they were a year ago, they're doing much better. And at this level, I'm okay because they get to the next level. It's going to require even more effort and work for me. I don't know if I'm cut out for it. I kind of like my lifestyle that I have now. It's not perfect. It's not the greatest, but I can manage. I'm okay at $75,000 a year. I'm okay being stuck on the tools. I'm still making money. At least I get to set my own schedule, right? What's happened is if you still compare that little elevation to when you first started your business, it's still much lower. you've still lowered your expectations. It's higher than where you were a year ago, but it's not quite as high as what it was when you started your business. And that's just you settling for, in lieu of, actually putting in more work to get better. Most of us put our life on credit, and then we can't ever pay off the debt. And so we end up dying with debt in our lives. And what I mean by that is most of us will trade success, for current pleasure. It's much funner for me. It's much more fun to go home at night and, you know, maybe play video games or watch a TV show, you know, watch the sports or watch a movie or get drunk than it is to go home at night and log into a website and watch some courses on how to get better. Or it is for me to get on a coaching call. And be vulnerable and ask a question of like, hey, I really don't know what I'm doing here. What do you guys suggest? I don't want people to think that I don't know what I'm doing. So I just keep my mouth shut and not say anything and then live in quiet desperation forever. Because that's much more comfortable than actually doing what I need to do in order to get to the next level. Part of that is because for the last two, three, four years, you've been grinding so hard. doing it the wrong way that you've already 80% burnt yourself out. And so you get to the next level and you have a little bit of reprieve, you slow down just a tiny bit and now you're only at, you know,60% burnout. But that feels amazing because you just added an extra 20% of freedom to your life, but you're still burnt out in reality, right? Because you haven't learned that it's actually not, it doesn't require. more hours or harder work to be successful in business. Actually being successful in business is pretty easy compared to physically working on the tools and working a lot of hours. If I bet for most contractors who are listening to this, you would probably rather work 80 hours a week, okay, versus going to a therapist and working through childhood trauma that you're dealing with. You would rather work 80 hours a week than spend one hour in a therapist. You'd rather work 80 hours a week than go get leadership training. You'd rather work 80 hours a week than have to admit that you actually don't know what you're doing. You'd rather work 80 hours a week than, you know, have to, uh, be like, seem like you're vulnerable and actually share some information that you don't want people to know. You'd rather work 80 hours a week than have to do a 20-minute role play with someone because you're afraid you're going to sound like an idiot and you don't want people to know that. I would bet money on that 100 times and I would win 99 out of 100 times. I tell whenever people join the profit club, I go through a code of conduct because it's important that people that join actually understand why they're here. And we're not going to tolerate a bunch of tools or, you know, idiots or people that think they're awesome or whatever. Just not going to tolerate it. But one of the things in that code of conduct is be vulnerable. The most important lesson I ever learned in my life is the more vulnerable you are, the higher level of growth you will achieve. The more vulnerable you are, the higher level of growth you will achieve. If I go to a therapist and I choose not to share something that's embarrassing, something that happened to me, something I did, a thought that I had, an action that I take that I regret, if I share, if I choose not to share that because I'm embarrassed, then I can't actually work through that and get better. But if I'm vulnerable and I share that information with a stranger and they say, oh. That makes perfect sense as to why you have anxiety. Oh, that makes perfect sense as to why you don't like talking to this exact, you know, this type of person. Oh, it makes sense why you try to people please all your clients and they run over you like a steamroller. Because of this thing that happened to you when you were seven, this is why you act the way you are today. And then you unlock this and all of a sudden you have this huge jump in growth in your emotional state. And that thing doesn't bother you anymore. One of my clients in the group had an amazing, I wish I could share it and he probably wouldn't care if I shared his name in this situation. But out of respect, I haven't asked him. But he went from selling a big job, you know, double digit, six figure job to. essentially losing that job because the customer was upset over something, a miscommunication, to then going back and saving the job and not only saving the job, but then adding like an additional $15,000 at work on top of the original sold price. And the client at the end who was upset with him was crying and was thankful and apologizing for his behavior. Now, This is actually extraordinary because this particular contractor, before he joined, was very much a people pleaser. And if he would have lost this job, he would have been in a low emotional state for a long period of time. We worked through it. Other contractors in the group role-played with him. Everyone came together as a community to rally around him and his situation. gave our opinions, gave our thoughts. I helped him with some, some certain areas and how to approach it. You know, like, I mean, I'm talking about everything, like what to say in the email, how to respond in a text, what to say on a phone call, what to say in the, in the, you know, in the personal and onsite visit. Like, this is things that we work on, by the way. Like, I don't know if it's not just, Hey, charge more. And that's it. Now give me money. That's not what we do. Hey, just a quick timeout

19:14

from the show. If you're a frustrated contractor who's dealing with low profit margins, stuck working on the tools every day, or doing free estimates for people who are never going to hire you in the first place, I invite you to my private contractor community, The Profit Club, where contractors just like you are adding two to three times more profit each year without producing any more jobs and finally getting completely off the tools to never do another free estimate again. So if you're ready to increase your profits, stop doing free estimates and get off the tools, then all you have to do is click the link in the show notes to learn more about the profit club and see how I can easily two to three times the cash in your pocket, give you a proven sales process that will convert more jobs with ease and get you off the tools once and for all. And the best part is you can do all of this without having to produce more jobs than you currently are. Click the link to learn more. Now let's get back to the show.

20:08

This is like in your face, in your depth, you know, in your life. We're working through this. We're in the trenches together, helping each other get out of this stuff. Right. And so like if you're, if you're looking for a community like that, there's not a better community out there. Like I'll just tell you right now, there's no other community in the contracting space that is as strong and as positive as the profit club community. I'll put that up against any other business coach, any other community, whatever. It just is. It's the thing I'm most proud of. Right. But this community, we're able to help this contractor do something that six months, a year ago, would not even be feasible of doing. The conditions for this situation did not change at all. What changed was this this contractor's ability to work through the challenges and the emotional reaction. And then overcome those things and turn it into a positive situation. That's what changed, right? That's what the difference is. So back to the original question. What do you want? If you don't know what you don't, if you don't know what you want, okay, that's a low self-worth state. But how do we get there? How do we get into a low self-worth state? Well, this may surprise you. It kind of surprised me when I heard it the first time and I was like, holy crap, that makes absolute sense. It all starts with complaining. When you start complaining about things, that is like the gateway drug to eventually having a low self-worth. So here's how it lays out. When you complain, complaining leads to doubt. Okay. And when you start doubting things like my ability to grow the business, my ability to make money, it puts you into a low emotional state. We can call it depression, whatever. It just puts you in a low emotional state. And then when you get into a low emotional state, that leads to a low self-worth. So here's how it works in real life. I can't find good employees. Nobody wants to work. Millennials don't want to work. Everybody sucks. I can't find good employees. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. By the way, that is complaining. Whether it's truthful or not, it's still complaining. You just can't find good employees. That's a complaint. So what happens? I try two or three different techniques. I can't find any good employees. So then what do I do? Well, I guess it's just not possible to find good employees. So I'm going to regulate myself down to realize I'm going to be stuck on the tools or I'm going to doubt my ability to ever find good employees. I'm going to doubt that there's actually a good workforce. So now it's easier if I just change my strategy. Remember we talked about uninformed optimism at the beginning. Now I'm in informed pessimism. I'm going to change my strategy. If I just charge more, then I can just stay on the tools. And yeah, it's not my ideal situation, but I can make more money and set my own hours and I'll put a positive spin on it and everything's great. But in reality, I'm doubting my ability to ever grow this business. And then that goes on long enough that doubts. That's what turns into a low emotional state, which eventually turns into low self-worth. This is where you have contractors that are desperate to prove to themselves, not the outside world, but to prove to themselves. that they are worthy. And those are the ones that I say, go out and buy the a hundred thousand dollar trucks that they cannot afford in order to prove to themselves that they are worthy. Now we, it looks like they're trying to prove to the outside world because what is happening is they're getting accolades from the outside world. Oh man, you must be killing it. You're doing so well. And that boost our emotional, you know, our, our emotional, um, We go from a low to a high emotional state, and then we feel worthy in that second. But then the next month when we can't pay the truck payment, we go back into a low emotional state, back into an unworthy state, and it didn't really help us any. You see how this stuff's tying together? If you want to buy a $100,000 truck and you can't afford it and you just want it because you want to treat yourself, by all means, do it. I don't care. But what I'm talking about and what I witness and what I know to be factually true is that a majority of the people who are buying these expensive trucks cannot afford it financially. They're doing it to prove that they are worthy. They're doing it to prove to themselves that they're worthy of owning this. It's like trying to do heroin to prove that you don't have an anger problem. It just doesn't make any sense. It's a drug. essentially. So my drug of choice when I was in a low emotional state and had low worthiness was to buy tools. I couldn't afford to go buy a $100,000 truck. I knew that, but I could afford to go buy a $200, you know, drill. I can afford to buy a $300 saw or whatever. I could afford to buy a $2,500 dustless tile saw. And so I had lots of tools. Under the guise of this is going to increase productivity and which is going to make me more money. And in some cases that's true, but not to the level of buying that I did. Because I was buying tools that really shouldn't have bought in the first place. You know, I may have spent $300 on a tool that probably gave me a net production increase of like 30 minutes a year. Right? Like the tool you're only going to use one time, but you don't want to go rent it for 40 bucks when you can buy it for 300 because I'll use it again. And then over time it'll save me money. And then, you know, if I keep renting and renting and renting, then eventually I'll pay more than, I'll just go ahead and buy the tool. That way it's mine. I don't have to take it back, blah, blah, blah. Like all that justification. You guys are shaking your head because you know exactly what I'm talking about. Right? Those are all, those are all treating the symptom and not the problem. That's using a drug. buying things. When we buy things, we get a dopamine hit. We go from a low emotional state to a high emotional state. It feels good. And then this is where the term buyer's remorse comes in. When you go buy that big ticket and then the next day or week or month, you're like, why did I buy that? Now I got to pay the bill every month, right? That's buyer's remorse is what's happened is you're back to your normal, you know, low emotional state, if you will. But you felt good in the moment of purchasing. My wife and I just recently bought a camper. And, you know, after you buy the camper, you got to buy thousands of dollars worth of crap, dishes and towels and, you know, just everything that goes in there, pillows and mattresses and all that stuff. And then so you buy the camper, high emotional state, dopamine hit. This is going to be great. We're going to use it every weekend, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you got to buy, you know, another five, six, seven, $8,000 worth of crap to go in there. Yes, you're spending money, but it feels good while you're doing it, right? It feels good while you're doing it until you get the bills at the end of the month and you kind of get back to this low emotional state. Now, don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with buying nice things and wanting nice things and having nice things. There's nothing wrong with that, okay? If you can afford it. Where people get in trouble is they can't afford it. And they're doing it to try and increase their self-worth. That is when you get in trouble, right? That's where you get in trouble. And so if you complain all the time, then you will eventually have a, you will create a doubting situation. And when you have doubt, you get indecision, right? I don't know. I was having a conversation. Yesterday with a contractor who's wanting to hire a lead guy, and he's got two applications from two guys that are like in their 50s and 60s. And he's concerned that being older, they may not be able to work as hard or, you know, whatever. He just has this belief around it, right? That's a self-doubt, right? And that was leading by complaining that... You know, you can't find good help. It's hard to find good help out there. Now, here's where a lot of us get even more stuck in this. Sometimes we actually do something, have a bad experience, okay? And then we associate doing that activity as always having that outcome. And so this contractor had hired multiple people in the past because he thought he needed to to grow, had six or seven contractors. It failed miserably, had a really bad experience. And so now in his belief, the doubt is, well, if I hire other people, I'm going to have a similar experience. And if I hire older people, it's not going to be as good and blah, blah, blah. And there's a lot of doubt, right? And then you get into a lower emotional state. And so you don't make decisions. This is where indecision comes from because you have doubt. And so if you had a bad experience. What you need to understand is that that is just one experience. You have to look at this objectively. Is there anybody in the world who's ever hired an employee and had success? I think all of us can say yes. There's somebody in the world that's hired employees and had success. Okay, so we know it's possible. Is there a contractor that maybe we know or have seen online that has hired people, has employees, and has success? Probably so. There's probably somebody you know that has a contracting business and has employees and has success with that. So therefore, not only is it possible in the world, it's possible in my industry. And we can keep going down, like, do I know someone in my town? Yes, so-and-so has several employees and they're successful. And so what we can rationalize out of that... is that the problem was not that hiring employees results in a negative experience. It's that I didn't do it correctly. Maybe my experience is unique or I didn't have enough information or the correct information in order to hire correctly to get that kind of result. And if I can come to that conclusion, Now it's no longer a problem of doubt that I can hire or find good help. It's that I have a problem, which is I don't know how to find good help or how to hire properly. And that's a good thing because if I don't know that, I am now aware. And anytime we got to solve a problem, we got to be aware first. And so now I'm aware that I have a... information deficiency, I don't know how to find good people or how to lead them, I can now go and get the information that I need in order to do that. Right? And so now it's not a doubting thing. It's just a lack of information and information is everywhere. And now I know it's possible and I can go do that. Right? So when you have a bad experience, it doesn't mean that it's just not possible. It could simply mean you don't know what you're doing. I have a lot of contractors that listen to my stuff and they say, Brad, I tried to charge for an estimate and it just didn't work. I'm like, well, maybe you just suck at doing it. I mean, I don't mean to be so blunt, but it's very possible that you just suck at it. Because if someone calls you and says, do you guys do free estimates? And you say, no, we charge $50 to do an estimate and you don't get that lead. That is an absolute terrible way to deliver that service. Terrible. If you do that, you are doing it wrong and you suck at it. That is not what we do, right? If I were to teach you exactly how to do this and you practiced it to get good at it, I guarantee you, you would have success with that, right? So most of the time, whenever we don't have things go right in our business or in our lives, it's because We think it's not possible. And a lot of times we think it's not possible is because we're complaining about it all the time, which creates this doubt. And when we have doubt, it's not possible. Then we end up in a low self, a low emotional state. And then we have a low self-worth. So if you want to have a high self-worth, the first step you have to do is to stop complaining. That's number one. Even if it's factual. spin it into a positive. You know, it's very difficult. I can't find good help. And that's a good thing because if I can't find good help, that means my competition can't find good help. And therefore, there's an opportunity there to solve a big problem. And when you solve big problems, you get good payouts. You get big payouts, right? That's how you could spin that into a positive. The second thing, well, we got positive. The second thing is you have to be Gratitude. Yet stop complaining, number one. Number two is you have to have gratitude. Gratitude is the secret weapon to having a high self-worth. You can be grateful that you can't find good employees. And that may sound foreign as can be to you, but I promise you when you start becoming more grateful about everything you have, because there's a gazillion reasons to be grateful, trust me. You could be living in a different time period with no air conditioning. You could be a slave somewhere in some other in Egypt, building the pyramids, getting beat on every day. You could, you know, been born with no limbs and maybe you have been like there's always something worse that could be. So there's always plenty to be grateful for. Right. Like we can be grateful for, you know, living in the country, living in America. We can be grateful for that. Having free speech, although some would argue, oh, you know, we don't really have free speech. That's complaining. Right. We do have free speech. I'm talking to you right now freely. I have free speech. I can be grateful for that. I can be grateful for having a Second Amendment right to bear arms. I can be grateful for that. I can defend myself and my family. There's a gazillion things to be grateful for. If you wake up in the morning, open your eyes, and say three things you're grateful for every single day, and you do that every single day after about a month, you will notice an entire different... emotional state that you're in. Just every single day, be grateful. Better if you write it down, but you wake up, man, I'm grateful to be alive today. I'm grateful to have a house that I sleep, you know, in a bed to sleep in. I'm grateful to have a spouse that loves me. Whatever it is, I'm grateful to have a dog. I'm grateful for coffee. I'm grateful for caffeine. I'm grateful to have a vehicle to drive. I'm grateful to have clothes to wear. There's lots of things to be grateful for. So if you stop complaining and start being grateful, you will see a major change in your life in a very short period of time. I promise you. Now, this podcast is kind of teeing up my guest next week who's going to talk about really how to start achieving some goals, what you got to do. But if you don't know what you want, this is number one. If you don't know what you want. then you're definitely never going to achieve it. That much I promise. If you don't know what you want, you will 100% not achieve it. So start writing down what you want in life and don't restrict it to what you feel like you're capable of doing. Because when I ask contractors this, how much do you want to pay yourself? They instantly say, Well, you know, I'm only paying myself 40 right now, so I think I could probably only pay myself 60. What you're doing in that situation is you're trying to say, what is realistic based on the current situation that I'm in, the current knowledge and assets that I have, what is possible? And that is limiting yourself. Because what you don't know is that in six months, you may have a major breakthrough in your life. And in six months, the capabilities that you have will allow you to achieve three times that amount. So when you do this exercise, do not say, this is what I'm capable of doing with what I have right now. You just simply say, this is what I want. I want to have a Lamborghini. I want to have a $10 million home. I want to do $5 million a year in revenue. This is what I want. Not what I'm capable of doing. What I think I should be able to do is what I want. Okay? So I hope this helps you to start focusing you guys onto really what you want. Get laser specific on it and stop complaining on a regular basis about it. By all means, if you have contractors and friends in your life that do this, get away from them as quickly as possible. If you like to meet up at Thursday at Joe's bar and, you know, drink, drink your favorite beer and get drunk and drink away all your problems and compare, you know, who's got the worst employees. If that's you right now, stop, get away from those people, set some boundaries and say, hey, guys, you know what? It's been great. Love you. I'm not coming by there anymore. Or at least say, you know, I'm taking the next month off and see what happens. Promise you your life will change. If you go on social media, it's everybody complaining about how sucky their life is, right? Get off social media. Just get off of it as much as possible. Get away from the complaining as much as humanly possible. It's amazing how much your life will change in a very short period of time. When you remove all the negativity and head trash and garbage, stop watching the news. That's number one. Stop listening to talk radio. Stop getting on to Facebook groups. You know, people that have similar opinions of yours. So you can all root, you know, this current administration's screwing America. Right? Like stop that stuff. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it's true. Stop hanging out with garbage and you won't be garbage too. Guys, you know where to find me on social medias, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok. And YouTube, just search for the Hammer and Grind podcast. I hope this episode was helpful. I hope you take action. And until next time, remember, profit is not a dirty word.