Your journey to self-mastery requires discipline, integrity, and respect. Welcome to Hammer and Grind. Hey, welcome back to the episode. Today, I'm going to be talking about something a little bit different, something I've never done before. I'm going to be really just talking about what's on my mind in the construction industry. I'm going to talk about a few different things that I see happening right now in the industry, and we're just going to riff on it. So I have no plan, no notes, nothing. We're just going to riff on this. So the first thing I really want to talk about is, is the market slowing down? And I do believe the market in general is slowing down, you know, comparatively to the last four years. Okay. So yes, you have an election year. Anytime you have an election year, things always get a little crazy. People are unsure, you know, what's going to happen. Am I going to, I don't want to go spend a bunch of money and then the wrong person gets elected. And then all of a sudden, you know. I've run out of money because there's no work. And, you know, a lot of what if scenarios, worst case scenarios, you know, fear sales, right? So right now, all the news and everybody's selling fear, right? It's all fear mongering. They're selling fear to try and get a reaction out of you to try and get clicks, try and make the algorithm work in their favor. Okay. So first thing I would tell you right now is turn off the news. I mean, just straight across the board. Many years ago, like four or five years ago, I was stressed out all the time. I was listening to talk shows, you know, famous talk shows, people, spokesmen. And it was like all day long when I was driving around or working or whatever, I'd be listening to it. And I was just always mad, like all the time I was mad. And after the 2016, or no, after the 2020 election happened, I was like, this is dumb. I'm not going to watch any more news ever. I don't watch news on TV. I don't look at news articles when they pop up on social media. I don't look at anything news related. And it changed, fundamentally changed my perspective and my attitude for that. I mean, just like I stopped being mad all the time because I wasn't being fed a specific narrative that people wanted me to believe. So the thing with news, here's the comment I get. Well, Brad, how do I know what's going on? Well, if something is that important, if aliens are attacking the earth, if nuclear weapons were launched, right, if somebody important died, somebody else is going to tell me. Like it's, it's impossible to hide unless you move to the wilderness, you know, a hundred, a hundred miles from any civilization whatsoever. And you have no internet, then maybe you might not know what's going on. That might be the scenario, but you can't like your neighbors are going to say something. The person at the gas station is going to say something, your clients, your employees, somebody is going to be talking about stuff. If it's that important, you're not going to, it's not going to get by you. Right. So the things that aren't important, like who the new president elected to their cabinet, you know, who they elected as the new CIA director, that stuff doesn't affect you, at least not on a local level. It's not going to affect you. It's not going to affect you individually. Right. So just turn the news off, like just completely turn the news off. So that ties into this election stuff that's going on. Everybody's stressed out. Everybody's worried. You know, everybody wants to point fingers and all that stuff. Is it slowing down a little bit? Yes, it is slowing down a little bit. And last year, like a year ago, I was telling people, hey, you need to start putting a little bit of money back because they thought this year was really going to be a significant recession. Some people say we're in a recession. I don't think that we're in a recession. By definition, I don't think we are. You know, there's. always levels. Like if the GDP doesn't go up, does that mean you're in a recession? I mean, I don't know. Like if it's only down a half a point, does that mean you're doing bad? You know what I mean? Like I'm not an economist, but like people like to throw words around like that, that again, fear mongering to try and push an agenda. So here's the thing. When I started in 2009, it was a recession. a legitimate recession. The housing market specifically had crashed, right? People, tons of people defaulted on loans. Everything was crazy. And I was in like 2009 in the middle of the recession is when I started my construction business. People were leaving the industry by droves. I think of it like, um, like some kind of movie where, you know, it is an alien attack and everybody's leaving the city and their cars on the interstate, you know, one. The inner, the direction leaving is packed. And then the side that's going in the town is completely wide open. And I'm the only car driving. That's how I like to think about my decision. Then like people are leaving the city and by the thousands and I'm driving in, right? This is a good time to start a business in a city when the aliens are attacking. That's kind of my thought on that. So it was hard. Like it was really, really hard. My first year in business, I think it did like $60,000. I remember I started as a handyman. And so like that was almost all profit or at least revenue. There was not many, much materials in that, but it still wasn't a lot. Like it wasn't a lot to live on. And so, you know, for the next, I don't know, let me think about this 10,2009,2010. So really until about 2018, I would say. It was hard. Like it was just plain hard to get business. It wasn't easy. COVID 2019, actually 2018 on after, actually it was really after 2016, but 2018 is when it kind of started booming. But 2018 on, especially after COVID, it was the easiest, the easiest time. to start a construction business that you could possibly ever imagine. And so what happened is a lot of people started in 2018,2020,2022, when everything was so freaking easy to own a business and you could just throw a magnet on your truck and your phone would ring off the hook. And they believed that that was normal. Like, oh man, this starting a business thing is easy. You know, I'm killing it. No, you started in a boom. You started at the height of the gold rush. You didn't start. You weren't part of the original 49ers that went out there and actually tried to find the gold, right? You were jumping on the bandwagon after it was already good and easy to get. And now you're saying, oh, the economy is slowing down. It's really hard to get leads. Well, what's happened is You never built a brand. You never did any marketing. You didn't build a website. You didn't do any SEO. You didn't do any reviews because the phone was ringing off the hook and you thought that's all you had to do. So what's happening right now for a lot of contractors is you are reaping what you didn't sow for the last four years. For the last two to four years. You're getting exactly what you planted in the field, which was nothing. And so now you're saying it's very difficult. Yeah, because you literally ate all of the crops that someone else planted and you didn't plant any of your own crops. So yes, it will appear to you like things are really tough right now. Those of us, myself and others who have been in the business longer are laughing and saying, well, we tried to tell you several years ago, And you didn't listen because that's the reality of it. You didn't build a brand. You didn't create a website. You didn't build SEO during that time. You weren't collecting reviews. Now, this is one of the things that I did in my business that had a tremendous impact on my ability to stave off during the first six years in business. I was the first one to have a website. I was the first one to get a vehicle wrapped. I was the first one to start collecting Google reviews. I was the first one to start advertising on Google. I was the first one to start doing social media posts on Facebook. I was the first in all of those categories because I saw an opportunity that all the old fuddy-duddies, all the old know-it-alls weren't taken advantage of. And I've talked about this before. You know, marketing that works today in 10 years, probably won't even be around. TikTok right now probably won't be around in five years. You know, social media today, as we know it, will be completely different in three to five years. And so if you're not constantly changing and implementing new ways and new technologies, you're going to be behind the power curve. I will share with you right now an opportunity that I guarantee you maybe less than 1% of you are taking advantage of. And that is your, I forget what it's called. I forget the actual terminology. But your Google and your Alexis voice-activated type of devices, you can get on there as a listing, a voice-activated listing, to where someone could just say, you know, hey, Google, I need an electrician. for my house. And it's going to pop up and say, okay, would you like me to call so-and-so electric, right? Or here's the options available. Or you can just simply say, Hey, Google, you know, have my electrician come by and fix the light. And it's just going to automatically schedule that person because you're the contact in there. It's the same with Google reviews. I started collecting Google reviews. Nobody else was none of my competition was I got to. over 120,130 something reviews. And my closest competitor had 17. You see the difference? If someone goes to Google and they search for the, you know, my services, my hometown, and they see me in all the competition, I had 120 plus, you know, Google reviews,4.9 star rating. My closest competition has 17. Who do you think they're going to click on first? It's me every time I beat you. And even if I were to stop collecting reviews, the closest competition might take them two to three years to catch up. Right. But if I keep doing reviews and I keep adding them, they'll never be able to catch up to me ever unless they just quadruple the output of what they're doing. You know, if I'm only doing 10 jobs a year and they're doing 40 jobs a year, then, yeah, eventually they'll be able to keep up, you know, catch up to me. But this is how you separate yourself, guys. You look for new and emerging technology. You want to know what's going to happen probably within the next five years? In the next five years, we will have full autonomous robots working in construction. I guarantee you, if aliens haven't attacked yet, if we're still on Earth, if there hasn't been a nuclear war within the next five years, We will have full autonomous robots building, you know, specifically in new construction, not remodel type stuff. But in new home construction, new building construction, I guarantee you we will have robots. Guarantee it. So who's going to go out there and start looking into and investing into new technology? Who's going to understand that your typical labor is going to change? From a skilled laborer to a robotics engineer, you're not going to have people who are out there swinging the hammer. You're going to have robots doing that, but you're going to have people on your team that can program them, that can troubleshoot them, that can work on them, almost like a mechanic, if you will. That's where that will change. And if you're like, oh, I don't believe you, Brad. There's no way robots are going to come take over. Well. then you're going to get left behind. I mean, that's just, that's just how it is. You're going to get left behind. So you have to start looking at new opportunity. What's a new one? What's another one? Well, another one is VR headsets, you know, your Oculus Rifts and all them, like you're going to be able to go into a customer's home who wants a kitchen remodel and you're going to be able to meet with them. Right. And whether it's like on the first meeting or on a follow up meeting, whatever, you're going to be able to hand them goggles. They're going to be able to put them on and in 3D see their space. And then I already that technology already exists. Like you could do that right now, but nobody's taking advantage of it. So what's going to happen is you could probably go into a meeting, set up a camera. Oh, what's the camera system? What's the main one that everyone uses? The. Matterport, like you set up a Matterport camera, you 3D scan the kitchen, you put it into a software, then you can go into this software and probably drop, drag and drop some, you know, pre-made type of things like where you can, like say they want new cabinets. You can just drop a cabin in there, change the color, two clicks, change the color. you know, change the countertops, blah, blah, blah. Within 20 minutes, you have a brand new 3D rendered kitchen that they want. They put their glasses on, they see it in real time and they have the kitchen of their dreams. That's going to happen. Are you investing in that technology? No. Why? Well, because nobody does it. Nobody. Yeah. You have to be the person bringing it to the market. When you're the person bringing new things to the market, you are seen as the expert in that new thing. If you wait until everyone else is doing it, it's too late. You have to be on the tip of the spear. And this could be anything. Like I'm only giving you a few ideas here. Now, we went way out of, we went way off the path of the economy. Okay. So. The problem right now is that if you don't have a website right now and you built one tomorrow, you had a full website built tomorrow, it's going to take you three to six months, maybe a year before that website is fully bringing you business. The thing with marketing and branding is that it takes time. And so if you haven't been doing these things, you've shot yourself in the foot. Right now, here's the next step. When the economy slows down, let's say you're spending $1,000 a month right now on, let's just pick Facebook ads. Let's say you're spending $1,000 a month on Facebook ads right now, and that's getting you five leads, like five sold jobs a month. Okay. However many leads, it doesn't matter. Let's just say you sell five jobs. What's going to happen when the economy slows down? is that you will have to start spending $3,000 to $5,000 a month to get five sold jobs. You actually have to spend more in a slow economy. And when you're not making as much because you haven't been selling as much, and then I'm telling you, you have to spend more outgoing, a lot of people can't do that. Because they haven't been pricing accordingly anyways. But now all of a sudden you're saying, wait a minute, I'm making less money. And now you're telling me I got to spend more money. That's crazy, Brad. Yes, that's exactly what you have to do. You have to spend more money to get in front of more people. That's how that works. This is, this has been the reality for, since the beginning of time, this is just how marketing works. It's not new stuff. Okay. Now, of course, there is always, you know, outliers. If you're in a very niche market, you're the only person in your town that does this thing. You're probably going to be just fine, right? Unless it's a luxury item. One of my friends sells hot tubs. He sells hot tubs and above ground pools. And that's a luxury item, right? If people are struggling financially, they're not going to go buy a hot tub. So his market has lots of ups and downs. based on the market because when things get tight, people don't waste money or spend money on luxury things. They only spend money on the things they need to spend money on. During COVID, he was blowing up. He was like doubling his revenue during COVID. He couldn't even keep up. It was crazy. It was gangbusters, right? But he has a lot more ups and downs that's directly related to the market and what's happening, being in the luxury market. Hey, just a quick timeout 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. Now, home services is not a luxury market. I mean, obviously there's elements to it. Like you could say, well, I'm a pool builder. Well, yeah, that's a luxury item. But if you're doing remodeling or if you're a home builder or landscaper or electrician or plumber, like those aren't really luxury things typically. So you're going to have a little bit more stable business throughout the year. Those are just some of the things on the market. Like if you listen to the news, you would think we're all on a trajectory of dying. Like I watched a video yesterday and I mean, I scroll sometimes on TikTok and stuff. So, you know, I, things come across my feed. But I was watching one that was like a guy was saying that the, I don't think it was a Hubble telescope. I think it was a different telescope that picked up a large item that has changed course and is now heading towards earth. And they potentially believe that it's some type of alien craft. I'm just like, I'm just repeating what this video is about. I'm not saying I believe any of it, but. I did watch a video. I watched the video. I looked at a couple of his other videos because some of that stuff is just interesting. Like, I don't believe it, but it's just interesting. But like, is that true? I have no idea. It's probably not true. I don't know. Maybe it is. Maybe next year, the aliens are going to attack. We're all going to die. Who knows? But I don't live in the future in terms of worry. I can only do what's in front of me. I can only pay attention to what's in front of me right now. That's some of the stuff on the economy. If you believe what people tell you, then you will, your subconscious will start to find reasons to believe that. One of the things that I get all the time on my TikTok videos that I record. is when I talk about raising your prices, charging more, people always want to argue with me. They want to say, yeah, that's not true. It won't work in my town. It doesn't work in my city. It doesn't work in my trade. The market, you know, the demographic sets that. The market determines that. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All these excuses. And I've said this before, like, yes, there's always a tiny bit of truth. Does the markets, you know, affect your pricing? Sure, it does. At a very minuscule amount. But what a lot of contractors do, and this is transitioning to the second thing I want to talk about, is really just the belief system, the scarcity mindset that so many contractors and people in general, not just contractors, but contractors are plagued with this. They're probably the worst of any type of business on earth. Contractors are absolutely plagued like a cancer of scarcity mindset. They believe that all of this is true. And what I truly believe is that this is an ego response, meaning that most blue collar people are very prideful. They're very egotistical. They have a lot of ego, especially ones that are actually good with their craft. The ones that actually have a decent business or a good business, they tend to be more. prideful and more, you know, egocentric, right? These are the guys that are like, it doesn't take long to go on to social media and look for the guys that are bragging about what they do. Now I'm not talking about like sarc sarcasm type stuff. I mean, people that literally believe they're the best, that they're good at what they do. Right. And this, what's crazy about this is the people that tend to have less success financially. usually have the highest egos because since they're not doing well financially, they have to find a reason to justify to themselves why they're still valid as a person, why they're still valuable as a person. And they do that by hanging their hat on their skills or their craft. This is where you see every single day in videos when someone posts a video on social and they say, here's how you build steps for your deck. You'll get 15,20,300 comments of people saying, that's not how you do it. That's stupid. My way's better. You should have done this. You should have done that. You should have used these screws. And if you just read through all the comments, every one of them contradict each other. This guy is an expert deck builder for 20 years. He's built 5,000 decks and he would never, ever, ever use screws. You should always use nails. And then right below that comment is a guy who's been building decks for 20 years. He's built 5,000 decks. He's an expert deck builder and he started using screws 10 years ago and he'll never go back. And if anyone uses nails, they're stupid. Like I'm not making this stuff up. You guys know exactly what I'm talking about. You will have two comments right after each other that completely contradict each other. Well, who's right? You know, somebody has to be right or maybe they're both right. They're both right given their circumstances. But the ego is where this comes from. I have to prove to someone else that they're wrong and I'm right. You know, maybe the guy who's making this video and maybe he's not doing it, you know,100% correct. Maybe there's legitimacy in the comments of how he's doing something wrong. But if this guy who's making this video has a successful business financially, meaning he's doing very well financially, the people in the comments have to tear him down because he's financially doing better than themselves. And so they have to go to, you know, I can't win with the pocketbook. So now let me win with the skill. Let me tell you why I'm so much better than you. That's the ego. That's the pride. That's the destruction of successful contracting businesses. If you have a problem with somebody telling you that you did something wrong, then you have the problem. If you have a problem with someone telling you you did something wrong, then you have the problem. I don't mean the problem that you did wrong. I mean the problem that you can't take criticism because your ego is so big, then you get upset. People who have almost zero ego or pride do not get offended. They don't get upset. And they don't react emotionally to anybody who's criticizing them or cutting that, even if they're trying to be hurtful. Even if the person is hurtful to them on purpose, they don't get upset. They don't get offended because they don't have any ego or pride. How can you hurt someone's feelings if they don't put the value in their ego and their pride? If I did a, maybe you guys tell me this podcast sucked. Maybe I record this, I post it, and I have five people go to the reviews and say, man, this podcast really sucked. This was the worst podcast. This guy is terrible. He doesn't know anything about what he's talking about. He just mumbles on, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Get to the point. You know, which those are some of the comments I've heard before. The funniest ones are like, get to the point, get to the point. Anyways, if I had five people go and review this and say, this podcast sucked. I wouldn't get upset. I wouldn't clap back at him and say, well, what do you know? Where's your podcast at? I'd be like, oh, what part of it? Please tell me. I would reach out to them if I could and say, hey, I saw you said the podcast suck. Would you please share with me why? What can I do better? How can I change it? See, that's feedback. My ego is not hurt by that. My pride does not take a chink in the armor because of that. Now, I'm not saying it's fun. I'm not saying I enjoy people saying that I suck. Okay. Of course not. But I don't take that personally. I don't let my ego and my pride take over and get all offended and then get pissed off and yell at my wife and, you know, have a, let it, let it ruin the rest of my day. So on and so on. I just say, this is an opportunity for feedback. Please do tell what can I do better? And if they say, I don't know, you just suck. then I can dismiss that because he's not giving me real feedback. He just, he, maybe he's in a bad place and he's got to, you know, the saying hurt people, hurt people, people that are in a bad spot. They're having, they have a heart problems, you know, emotional heart problems. They have to take it out on other people. Or if I say, well, what's wrong with it? And they go, well, you know, it's just, uh, you didn't really give any value. You didn't, you just talked and you mumbled on and blah, blah, blah. And I don't really care about your personal opinions. I like to hear more factual and I'm like, cool. You know, what would be the best, you know, what would you like to hear on the podcast? Well, I'd really like to hear this. I'd really like to hear you interview other contractors and, and see what they did in their business. Okay. That's a great idea. I appreciate the feedback. See, when people are saying bad things about you or they're criticizing you, those are feedback loops. Yes, you have to take it and look at the source. Is this a good source, right? Is this some dude who's, you know, an alcoholic and he's a failed businessman and he's just, you know, he's got to bring everybody else down. I don't, I can look at the source and say, that's not a valid opinion. If this is someone in my industry who I respect. who is also doing what I'm doing, and they're saying, hey, this really isn't very good. I'm all ears. Please give me more information. Give me more information. You need to create more feedback loops in your business and in your life. But when you have an ego or a pride problem, you won't do that because you literally think you know what's best. And nobody else can tell you any different. I don't know if you remember my guest, Brian Gottlieb. He was on the show. a few months ago. He is a business owner, sold out his business. He had three different businesses. He sold them out a couple of years ago, I believe, and had like a hundred million dollar exit. I don't remember the exact number, but it was a ginormous number. You know, I see him as somebody that I respect. Like he is a true entrepreneur, very successful. You know, he's a public speaker now. He just released a new book, which I highly recommend you guys go read or listen to. It's called Beyond the Hammer, a really, really good book. But because he was a podcast guest and because I had his contact information and because I actually have just released my own book, which you should know by now, but if you didn't, I just released my own book. And because he had experience in this field, I hit him up and I said, hey, Brian, would you have any feedback for me on... doing the audible version because I want to record an audible version of the book, but I have no experience whatsoever recording an audible version. He said, yes, absolutely. I got time next week. I can meet with you. And so we jumped on a zoom call yesterday for about 20 minutes. He was very gracious with his time. He gave me some tips on that. We had a little talk about business in general, and then I can take that information and use it. Right. that's the difference between saying like, I don't know how to do something. I'm going to seek out an expert versus I'm smart enough. I'll just figure it out on my own, which is the default programming for contractors. I'm smart enough. I'll just figure it out on my own. No, I want to go right to the expert and figure it out. Have them tell me so I can save my time. So by the time this podcast drops, I don't know. I doubt the, the audible will be released. But the physical book, the e-book, the paperback, or the hardcover are available. They will be available on Amazon. I'll have links in the show notes. But if you want to get bonuses that come with it, I'll also have a link in the show notes that is going to take you to the e-book version. It's through my website, not through Amazon. And there's additional bonuses that come with that. You can get like a seven-day fast start series, video series. We'll help you cut through the main topics of the book and get a head start. There's gonna be like the job costing worksheet and potentially some other worksheets that go in there. So if you want all of the extra bonuses, go through the website link. Don't go to Amazon. Go through the website link and you'll be able to pick up those extra bonuses that way. So I got the new book. It's coming out. That's the big announcement. I have it right here for those of you watching. This is just a proof copy. It's why it's got a little not for resale on there, but it's called the Contract Your Profit Blueprint, how to boost your profits and reclaim your freedom in four proven steps. It is jam-packed with just actionable information. There's no fluff in here. There's so much non-fluff that after you look at the table of contents, it goes right into the introduction. There's no forwards. There's no thank yous. There's no anything. It's just bam, right into the good stuff. That's how I do all my coaching. That's how all my information is because I don't want to put out anything else, you know, any more information that's not relevant than what you absolutely need. And that's what I've done in this book. There's actually fillable worksheets in the book. There's things in there that you can fill out so that you can. you know, while you're doing the book, you can do exercises in here. There's action steps. There's, you know, things that you can do to, um, in the next, you know, week or 30 days, depending on what it is to start taking action on things. So I wrote this book as really a guide. I mean, it's a blueprint. That's why it's called a blueprint. There's action steps and key takeaways at the end of each chapter so that you can actually implement this stuff. Because if you guys read a book, and then you don't implement it it's you just wasted your time reading it so this isn't going to be something that you're just going to blow through you know it's not written in a sexy way where it's like you know a parable or some really engaging kind of content you probably want to pick up the audible version once it comes out but you're going to want to grab the the physical version as well because that way you can go back and reference it This is going to be a book that's going to be like a reference book. You're going to go back and pick it up a hundred times. You're going to mark in it. You're going to write in it. You're going to highlight stuff and you're going to implement, implement, implement. So that's a reference for the military. They say execute, execute, execute. Anytime you're attacking, execute, execute, execute. So you're going to implement, implement, implement. So if you guys want to pick up the book, it's the first of what I hope to be. several that I write. You can pick it up. There's links in the show notes for that. Guys, I think that's about it. I think I've covered a few different things here. Like I said, this was totally different. I just was riffing on stuff. I hope you've enjoyed the guests that we've had on the last several weeks. And I am trying to book a lot more guests on the show as well. And so, yeah, every once in a while, I just got to do a solo cast and just get some information out there. I appreciate you hanging out with me. listening to this podcast, do me a favor, seriously, go leave a review on any of the platforms that you listen to, if it's Spotify or iTunes, whatever, just do me a favor and leave a review. If you get any value, see, here's the ask. I'm asking you for a favor only after I've delivered the value. This is how you should do everything in business. So if you've gotten any value out of any of my podcasts, please do me a favor. and just take five minutes to go leave a review and leave an honest review. Seriously, like if you think it's a one-star review, then leave that review. I might reach out to you if I can because I want that feedback. But also, you can send me a message. You guys can message me anywhere. You can find me on any of the platforms. You can message me, DM me, and tell me directly, hey. Enjoy the podcast, but this one sucked. I enjoy the podcast, but can you talk more about this? I'm always looking for feedback. You know, uh, what type of podcast you want me to do? What kind of episodes, what kind of topics, what kind of format, please give me that and let me know. But I do appreciate you very much. Appreciate you hanging out with me for going on close to three years of doing this podcast. I think this one's probably going to be like one 90 or something like that. So. We've been going strong and I appreciate it. I don't have any plans of quitting anytime soon. So thank you again. I just want to share my appreciation for you. And like always, you know where to find me, Hammer and Grind Podcast on any of the social medias or go to the show notes and look for the links there to learn more. Guys, thank you so much. And until next time, remember, profit is not a dirty word.
