EP209: Design, Build, and Thrive: Lessons from Nikita Petrov on Running a Successful Construction Company

Thanks, Brad. I appreciate you having me on, man.

Absolutely, man. So my name is Nikita. I'm in Charlotte, North Carolina. I have a construction business called Outdoor Influence Design Build. We specialize in outdoor living, high-end Cherokee. We're a design-managed company. We do a little south of $3 million a year. And I also have a marketing agency called Contractor Lead Solutions.

That is correct. Absolutely, man. So my kids will be first, Jim, but I came in 2011. My family was very blessed to get a green card. I'm from Kazakhstan, Asia. Everybody just usually says this word Borat from. Yes, it is. So that's one good thing about it. But we came here and, you know, this is completely different world from where I come from. I mean, everything from the culture, the opportunities. So that's kind of where my hardworking mindset comes from because I've seen my parents work for it so, so hard to give us this opportunity. And, you know, we came here and I was young. I didn't really, it took me a second to adjust to the culture, the language. I only spoke Russian back then, but with time learned everything. And for example, you know, where I come from, college wasn't really a thing. we had three universities in the town where I came from, which was the capital. And it was either go medical, engineering, or construction. And that was it. Here, everything's completely different system-wise. And I started cutting grass back in the end of my middle school days, just working for somebody, just part-time on weekends. And slowly... With them, learned all the landscaping and barely, barely any hardscaping, just like flagstone patios. And I started my own business when I was about 21.

So I was actually, I lived up in Boston. for a year, reffing hockey, like D1, D3 hockey and very minor pros. And whenever COVID hit, I decided to move back home to Charlotte, North Carolina because the rent up there was just so expensive. And the only thing I knew back then was how to cut grass. So I slowly started advertising for landscaping services. And looking back at it, it was big time shiny object syndrome. I was like, I want bigger jobs, bigger projects. And that's where I started to step up into hardscaping patios, walls, and then eventually got into pools later on.

2020, yes. It was officially incorporated. Paperwork is November,2020. Okay. I

Yeah. So COVID happened in March and I came in and it was very much booming market, which of course I didn't know. I didn't have the experience, but I realized opportunity-wise this was kind of something I needed to capitalize on, whether it was low interest rates or demand for everything. And that's when we started to really... push things into bigger jobs.

So I had a 2011 Toyota Camry and a five by eight landscape trailer. And I got a few lawn care clients and I would rent a mower for like two days and do two days of lawn care. And the rest of the week I would do landscaping projects. And my first big break happened. I will never forget it. I sold the job for like $2,400, which I thought was the highest amount of money in the world. I thought I was on top of it, man. I was living life. And it was to clear this hill in the backyard property of a homeowner. And, you know, I needed to rent a skid steer and et cetera. So, you know, after a few days, the job's scheduled. We pull up to the job site, and it's me and a family member of mine. And the family member looks at me. He's like, where's the driver? And I was like, I'm the driver. And I've never driven a skid steer the whole night before. I was watching YouTube videos on how to control it. And the videos I was watching were joystick ISO controls. The skid steer came, it had the foot pedals. So I had to completely kind of scratch everything. And on top of it, the first time it rained the night before, which I didn't really think anything of it. So we went downhill and I was stuck down there for like an hour and a half after. But yeah, we managed to get it done, of course, but that was like the first time that really opened my eyes to like, hey, maybe there is something here other than like $60 lawns.

Yeah, it came. I, you know, even back then, for example, right now, Instagram and Facebook, the aspect of social media, you see all these fancy jobs and crazy stuff. I wasn't following the big guys in regards to doing these like half a million dollar backyards, but I was just following some landscape guys. And I was like, okay, they can do these jobs that are like five,10,000. I totally can too. And I started targeting with that. Back then I didn't know anything about ads. I knew a little bit about Facebook and Instagram, wasn't taking it seriously. So I really approached more of a, like next door and Yelp and stuff like that. And like Thumbtack, you know, the worst apps there are for leads.

Or I didn't get into the hardscapes for a bit. So it probably took about maybe. six months of landscaping, like mulch and landscaping. And, you know, it adds up. There are jobs that are 5K,10K. But then I got an opportunity just to homeowner. They were like, hey, do you do hardscaping? I was like, yeah, yeah, totally. I do this every day, years in the industry. And I've never done a patio. I've never done a retaining wall. And they had this. this really garbage patio which was just like one by one low style pavers just kind of dropped not leveled nothing and then a railroad tie two-tier wall so i came out there and i'll this was another interesting story so i came out there and after that i took some measurements elevations i called a few kind of industry acquaintances that i knew and i asked them for help i was just like hey i have an opportunity to bid this can you please help me out and they did And so I submitted a bid, which was, let's say, $30,000. It was right around $30,000. Maybe like a week later, a woman, super nice lady, super nice lady with her husband, they would like to review the quote. I go out there. I tell them everything in detail, all good. Two days later, she calls me. She's like, Nikita. So I had two other people come out. One of them gave me a bid for $10,000. And immediately, it was so cheap. I just wasn't confident in it. I told them, no, thank you. The second bid was for $20,000 from the Russian guy, this Russian guy who didn't speak any English. I didn't feel that it was safe to have him near my kids. So we're going to go with you and get this done. And that's how I got my first landscape job from zero to 30,000. Hardscape job, excuse me.

It is ridiculous, man. I see, you know, a lot of young people now reach out to me because they see the projects that we post and they're like, man, you know, I'm struggling with this. I'm struggling with that. And if you. In my opinion, if you surround yourself and you have that mindset constantly of the scarcity or a lot of competition or whatever, that's just what's going to happen. And even back then, we tried to kind of carve our own little niche market. Like, we weren't going to be the cheapest, but we will do the best job by far. And I can confidently tell you once that probably four weeks process of getting out on that job, submitting the bid and getting the actual job done. I've learned more about paper patios and retaining walls than anybody out there.

No, absolutely. It's just, it's two different worlds. And a lot of people, especially that are born inside the United States, they really don't understand the opportunity they have to achieve these, you know, goals. And just like the basic concept of democracy that's existing in here, like where I come from, you either know somebody and that's, that's your only way to go up. Other than that, you're going to be stuck at a dead end job no matter what you do. So that's why my family made the hard decision. They moved here. They didn't know anybody, not a single soul here. And my dad, he was working as a, he had two jobs. And one of them was like with an American company and he was making good money, great money. He moved here. He started truck driving, never saw his family, but that was his first way of like making money. And my mom, that's another perfect example, she actually worked as a, like a stocker, stocking shelves at Walmart at a night shift. And she did that while she got into a local community college. She took some basic classes because we had to pay the bills no matter what, you know? So she took some basic classes. She applied for the dental hygiene program and then did that. And now she's a dental hygienist. My father works at a big bank as a business analyst. And it's just a perfect example of Kind of like a story that you hear all the time that immigrants come here with nothing, they work hard for it, and they get it.

Absolutely. So present day, we're a design managed firm and we only have, including myself, formally on paper, two employees in the company. It's me and then my fiance, she's the designer. I'm the builder guy. Like I learned Spanish, so I'm trilingual and just do, you know, opportunity to connect with subcontractors much easier. And I can tell her how to build anything. She handles the design side because I know nothing about the design. I don't understand how to bring these materials, styles, flow, and everything together. And she is just amazing in that. So we control everything. I'm a, I like to say, very high-paying project manager also. And what we do, I would say an average project that we do is about $250,000. And we specialize in doing outdoor living. Majority of our projects,90% have a pool as the centerpiece of the backyard. And then we do everything around it. So whether it's the patio, the landscaping, fire pit, kitchen structure, fence, irrigation, sod, we do all of that. I got my general contractor's license for exactly that purpose. And that's kind of where we are now. And we only do maybe at once, we do three to four projects. I do not want to be doing more than that. I just want to be there every single day that the guys are on and just control everything. I have a little bit of OCD with that, but it's worked out well.

Correct. So we do self-contract everything out. And I actually, initially when I got into pools about two years ago, we had 20 employees. And my idea was I worked as a subcontractor doing pavers, paver patios, excuse me, around big franchise pool companies there in the area. Because my goal was, hey, I'm going to do this and I can learn how they do it. So with time, I saw the process. I saw how they do it. I got the context. But I thought I was smarter than everybody else. So what I did was. hey, these guys subcontract everything out. That's just how big franchises are. They just have a project manager who handles it. I thought, hey, let me be smart. I'm going to in-house the labor. And it worked out for a bit, but whenever you looked at the overhead that was necessary to start another crew, the brand new truck for 70K, brand new machine for 70K, another 30K in tools, and then the hard part was finding reliable employees. We did that for a little while and my stress levels were so high. We decided, Hey, let's pivot to the design, like manage model instead of design build.

About two years ago, we decided to do that.

They do other jobs and we just use them as needed. The few subcontractors that... So for example, for each part of a pool, there's like the excavation, steel, shock creep, plaster, and so on and so forth. I usually have about three companies of each. They're a very similar price range, almost the same, honestly. And I usually message them and just see their availability on things. Whoever is able to get there quicker. And that's how I approach it.

Every single contractor that's ever, like I've talked to about pools, about my business, ask for advice. They always have that question because their fear, they want to pivot to that model, but they fear that. And at first, even I was afraid of it. So I would give the guys like all brand new shirts in the morning. So they're all like outdoor influence decked out and et cetera. But very quickly, I realized nobody cares. Absolutely no one has ever cared about it because what I kind of. What my solution came to is that the only thing they care about is that the job done on budget, on time, and you're communicating with them. As long as you're communicating with them about everything that's going on, they couldn't care less. And that's what really opened my eyes to this business because I've had the same fear. I thought, oh my God, they're going to say, Jose is out here. Who's Jose with? Or somebody has another company truck sticker. But that's just not the reality of it.

Exactly. I couldn't agree with you more. And you know, originally when I went into it, honestly, my goal was to build custom homes. I wanted to build homes for myself, for homeowners, but as my own business. And I thought about it like one day randomly. I was like, you know, I don't think any of these builders have any in-house traits, which is true. They really don't. That's how they have the project manager. who handles all of it. And when you look at an outdoor living project, it's the same way. This is practically a small house, especially with the way pricing has gone up. I mean, we're talking an average project being quarter million dollars. And they just want to see the job done properly, on time, on budget. They do not have any questions about who's actually doing it.

So whenever we transition into specifically pools, for example, which is what we do now and for the last two and a half, maybe three years close, we've been doing pools as like the focal point of everything. We started looking at Facebook ads, Instagram ads, and social media just in general. Organic, it was hard to justify doing SEO from perspective that SEO obviously takes time, but... We just went from lawn care to hardscaping to pools. And I still had that idea of homes. So it was like, I don't want to invest six months of my time, a good amount of money with an agency or whatever it is, and then have to pivot hard. And Facebook ads, I can tell, honestly, right now, I could run ads as a home builder and I'll get leads for home builds. I can be whoever it is on social media like that. We worked with an agency originally. And I learned very quickly that the barrier to entry for the agency space was the floor. I mean, I would get spammed. I'm talking probably 10 to 15 messages, like kind of all over, whether it's like Instagram, Facebook from just cold DMs. hey, do you do hardscaping? Hey, do you do pool building? And of course, me being a young business owner, of course, yeah, yeah, I do. How can I help? And they're like, well, we can help you get more leads. Like, oh my God, please stop. And we worked with a few different agencies and we found one that did it decently, but the communication was horrible. And I learned quickly that they were a very big agency. They did a solid job, but the way it worked is the ad would be great for, let's say, two weeks. that performance would kind of slide down for two weeks because they aren't updating anything. They're not optimizing anything. And then I reach out to them, but the reach out and change of things would take another like three to four weeks. So that's what really pissed me off. And that's when I kind of decided to take things into my own hands and test with that. And social media, like organically speaking, posting on Instagram and Facebook for me personally was an absolute goldmine. I distinctly remember. I had, at the time on my business page, I had maybe 1,800 followers. And I would just post every day stories of me at a project, short-term videos, the basic stuff. And we got a DM, hey, I'd like to get a pool. Can you guys come out and give me a quote? We got a project from that, which was $165,000. And then she recommended us to two of her friends, which was another $200K in revenue. So right there, $360K organically. from Instagram, from just for free. It's crazy. The social media aspect and the power there is just absolutely insane.

Yeah, I posted every single day for about four months maybe. And personally, that's... Totally worth it. Like in my opinion, totally worth it. Because a lot of contractors, that's the biggest excuse that we see all the time in our industry. I really don't have time. I really don't have time. I'm very busy. I can't post anything. Dude, take out your phone at a job site for 10 seconds. And all you do is you just record exactly what you're looking at, point your finger maybe three times, and explain what's going on. It's not rocket science. Come on.

Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. And I understand, you know, a lot of contractors in just the overall contracting industry are kind of older generation. So they may not be inclined like best with social media. And then, of course, there is so many different platforms. And it's like, do I focus on one? Do I do all of them? So that's a big question always.

I completely agree with you, man. And I get it. It's like awkward, I guess, talking to a camera, like whether it's in a room or out there. And then like you say something, you're like, I can redo it and do it better. 20 takes later you're like i should have done the first one so i get it but like you said there's so many tools out there to just whether it's scheduling the posts out and repurposing it like everybody thinks you need one for youtube one for tick tock one for facebook dude just record one video and post in all of them it's all different audiences Yeah.

Personally, the biggest hurdle for me was to even kind of realize that it is possible. Because when I first started getting into pools, I was like, there's no way someone's going to pay like over $100,000 for their backyard. I thought that was crazy because I didn't, my family didn't have that kind of money. I didn't have that kind of money. I mean, dude, where I come from, I didn't even know pools existed. I remember distinctly when I was a kid, I was like nine years old. We went to the best hotel. It was like a skyscraper in the middle of our city in the capital. And there was a pool you could get like an entry fee, like 20 bucks a day. That was my first experience with a pool. I come here, pools are everywhere all of a sudden. But so that was the case. And I just didn't know that it was possible. And I remember distinctly like quoting out my first pool job. And I still like really didn't know what I was doing too much. But the homeowner was very cool in regards to everything. Like they, I'm guessing, wanted to believe into a young guy of some sort. And when they signed the contract, I was like, no way. Like this is absolutely crazy. And I quickly realized that the level of clientele was very, very different. And from perspective that, let's say, I heard more complaints on like $5,000 landscape jobs than these jobs. A lot of people, even like as we got higher in the price ticket, like we've had, you know, half a million dollar projects and the homeowner is not even questioning the price. They're like, oh, like I'll send you a check. You want to check? You want wire? Whatever. While I have that $10,000 landscape job that's trying to haggle it down to 9K.

That's how it is. That's the reality. And I feel like it applies to all these industries also. And like practically. With getting those higher-up clients and higher-end clientele, I realized that the word of mouth is very interesting how it works. And it got spread very quickly. Like we did one neighborhood where we did four pools all in one neighborhood because they liked me so much. And my angle was the turnkey aspect. Locally, there's maybe... I'd say 20 companies. Charlotte is a very big city. There's probably 20 companies that do pools, but Turnkey, like all outdoor living project is probably maybe five or six. So that's our big angle to apply for that because those people, if you're investing, you know, a quarter million to your backyard, you're making a lot of money. And you don't have time to be a general contractor for your project. You don't want to spend the headache on you need a pool guy, a hardscape guy, a landscape guy, so on and so forth. It is so much easier that they just find one company and they work with us. And that's where we kind of approach from that angle because we saw a lot of issues with that before.

What you just made me think of very, very much about, so whenever we were doing landscape jobs, of course, you go out to the quote and you look at it, you maybe write up some piece of paper, but there's no design involved. When we started doing pools, we had to do some sort of design because you have to show, you know, hey, this is what it's going to look like. And what we were under impression of is that in our area, all the franchises, they do it for free. And I thought, dude, I could never charge for a design. Oh, my God. And we were losing some jobs. And I get it. Like, you're getting multiple quotes. I would, too. So we're losing jobs and we're wasting a lot of time with these quotes. And I was like, you know what? I'm done with this. And probably last, not, not. not the winter heading into 25, but the winter heading into 24, we decided, hey, we're going to change this. We're going to implement the fees. And we charge for a full backyard design, give or take 2K. And the amount of ease that was just so baffling in my mind that I saw, like the homeowner would inquire and I tell him on the phone, hey, we charge $2,000. And there were a handful of no's, but the yeses were so easy. I was just, what? Like, you're actually going to pay for this? This is crazy at first. Of course, like a lot of work goes into it. We should send them the design examples, how the plans look like, and so on and so forth. But again, that like quality of client was unreal. I mean, they were so understanding, so helpful, so working with us. It was just very eye-opening to the things that are possible, honestly, in my opinion.

Absolutely. And it was whenever we weren't charging for designs, it was a lot of, we will send a PDF file and then we just kind of wait. Then in transition to whenever we started charging, hey, we'll send them a PDF file. We'll schedule a Zoom call to go over everything. We'll go out and paint it out. We'll schedule another Zoom call to go over any changes. The quote will be a lot more detailed. We'll go do a design sample consultation, stuff like that. But the funny part was that whenever we started doing designs, of course, we were absolutely garbage in them. I'm not going to lie because it was brand new to us and we didn't know what to do or how to do it. But over time, I knew that we were good. I just didn't know how good. And I just simply remember a homeowner sent us a different design that they got. And they were like, I hate this so much. Please don't do anything like this. And it was so, so bad and just so horrible. And it kind of clicked like, oh, my God. So these full franchises, they don't pay. anything to their salesmen other than the commission. So like if they sell the pool, it's great. If they don't, who cares? But because of that, the churn was so crazy, you were bringing in new guys all the time who had absolutely no experience. So that became our big kind of sales point. Hey, we have an in-house designer with years of experience. I mean, my fiance Hannah she's so amazing at this stuff like I mean we could walk outside or drive through a neighborhood somewhere she'll be like this is this plant this is this plant this is this plant this is this material she knows everything a to z and I honestly credit everything in our business to her because she is the hidden kind of key to everything especially on the large projects let's say Homer calls us out the backyard's blank they don't understand how to bring the vision to life. Honestly, I can't either. I can't lie there. And whenever she does it and she kind of finds their pain point, like so perfectly exactly what they envisioned, they're just like, Oh my God, I love everything. Like here's a blank check. Just put in a number. Yeah.

Absolutely. I mean, she, a lot of people are just, she's not on the social media on the face of the business as much as I am. So a lot of people think like, oh, Nikita this, Nikita that. And then after usually the first kind of design meeting, it's very obvious that it's all Hannah. I just speak Spanish. I tell people I speak Spanish and that's the only thing keeping me involved in this so far.

For what we do is we do Facebook ads and SEO services. Facebook ads is something we started a much longer than SEO. SEO is a newer feature that we added, but Facebook ads have been bread and butter. And we only work with specifically hardscapers and pool builders because that's what I do. So my kind of big, Helping part is that I work with a lot of people. Let's say they just they're just now getting into pools. They have so many questions. Just call me like I've been in pools. I know how to do things. Just call me. I will help you. And that's the big thing that I found was very rough whenever I was young and working with other marketing agencies. You were calling these kids or. You were calling these individuals who didn't know anything about your industry. They kind of knew ads, yes, but if they don't know anything about your industry, they don't know the sales process and how it works from the design, the meeting, the payments, and so on and so forth. And I found that Facebook ads personally, in my opinion, work the best. And again, from what I was mentioning earlier, the biggest thing is that I can... You know, Brad, if I wanted to, I could make ads for you tomorrow and you'd be the number one builder in all of Omaha. I don't think you're in Omaha. You'd be the number one builder in all of Omaha, Nebraska, and we can run ads for you. And you'll get leads for home building. Versus organic, it takes a lot of time to build that up. And we found, especially controlling the lead flow, especially in the slower seasons, like let's say in the winter, hey, we can angle to specific service for example in the colder up north you obviously can't do a lot of landscaping in the winter because it's snowing hey we'll run ads for snow we'll run ads for indoor work we'll run ads for pool projects that are selling in the spring to get your schedule booked out ahead of time. And we can really appeal to that because, you know, as a contractor, you have a lot of variations in leads. If you're just letting it fly, you don't have any plan. So we want to make sure it's stagnant and predictable for you and your business.

Absolutely, man. But we see a lot of in our industry, a lot of people have a similar path like me. They start doing lawn care, they transition to landscaping, to the hardscaping, and then maybe pools. But the one, two, three is, I see this almost every day. And a lot of people, let's say they work on their SEO for landscaping. That's great. You're getting organic SEO leads. That's awesome. But they're calling you for landscaping. If you want to do the hardscaping, your two options are, hey, you can spend another six months that's great but you might miss that let's say warm season and you might not be able to do that and then that's why we do facebook ads because tomorrow you'll have leads not tomorrow within a week you'll have leads for those hardscaping services that you're advertising. And in no way, shape or form, am I saying, hey, no matter what, prioritize Facebook over SEO. I highly recommend always to everybody, you still want to have an awesome website, you still want to work on your SEO, but the two need to be complementing each other in a proper way. Yeah,

I couldn't agree with you more. And like right now, for example, we are experiencing a lot of that for our physical business. We're getting tons of organic leads from those referrals, but it has taken some time. And for some people it works, that's great. But for me, if I am trying to grow my business right now and I'm not really looking at that like five-year mark. I'm looking to do ads now and I'm looking to get those leads now. And a lot of people, you know, I get so many calls that people are asking, hey, how do I do this? Can you review all my ads? You can totally do the ads on your own. I mean, I have posted hundreds of videos of educational content for business owners to learn how to do it. But at the end of the day, as a business owner, you are the CFO, COO, you're the salesman, you're the project manager, and now their hat. going to be adding to your business there is not something that's worth it. It's just not how it is. Like I'm sure a lot of business owners, they have their schedules packed. They don't have any more time. They're trying to prioritize family, let's say. Adding more hours and learning this concept of Facebook ads or SEO or whatever it is, is just not something that you should be doing. You should be really prioritizing things a little differently.

And another big thing, like you said, learning curve is huge. Technology is constantly evolving. Like there's so many changes happening 24 seven versus let's say like heart skipping industry, new materials. Yes. And the style is evolving, but so much slower. technology whether it's like ai or ads and everything like that facebook algorithm that's changing 24 7. for example a great example i talked to a buddy of mine not too long ago and he's been in business for i'm talking 25 years he was telling me how whenever facebook initially came out the way he did ads was there were no Facebook ads back then. He would add friends that were local realtors and local kind of business owners and he would post his work on Facebook that way and it worked for like 10 years amazingly. I'm pretty sure Facebook is gonna like block you. or limit your friend amount that you can add within a day if you try doing something like that. So that's just an absolute technique. Same thing with Thumbtack that you mentioned. Initially, it was a goldmine. The leads were good. The leads were cheap. You could milk that cow for a long time. Now it's a completely different story on how it works.

Exactly. And like you just said, your time, like how much is your time worth? For example, if you're like a brand new business owner, you have no money to spend. I will never, you know, I have so many people that reach out to me and they're like, I really don't have the money, but I can maybe like take a deposit from the next job and pay you. well i don't i don't want that please do not ever do that or like a hey i have absolutely no no money i have no work lined up these are my last five thousand dollars i'd like to spend them with you i am this is not a hail mary Like, please do not ever do this. And if you think this is a good idea, that's horrible. So clearly at that point, their time is, their money is worth much more than their time. They can spend that time and maybe learn some sort of concepts online, post more organic content, post on social media, versus, for example, when you work up in the business and go to your situation, you're at a certain level where spending 10 hours on figuring this one thing is just not worth your time. It is so much better. and so much more valuable to be used somewhere else. And a lot of people don't really understand how that works.

That's the best way to scale. I completely agree with you. And we see, for example, there's a lot of businesses that reach out to us that we work with that have multiple sales guys. For stuff like that, for example, dude, unless you have a massive business and somehow you're getting enough sales leads to keep the three busy, you have to be investing into paid advertising resources and Facebook ads being one of them. Especially when you're trying to fill up three pipelines, that is a lot of work that you need. and you have the money at that point, like your business is big enough to afford three sales guys, that's something you should be looking at investing in.

I'm actually big into reading. So this year, my New Year's resolution was to read every day. And my goal this year is to read 35 books. I'm in four so far. Never Finished by David Goggins. I read one. Then I read Building a Story Brand. And then I read The Ride of a Lifetime by the Disney's CEO who just retired. A book I would recommend to people, though, I always recommend the same one, the one that opened my eyes on everything in this world is Rich That Poor Dad. I'm hoping not too many people say that one by Robert Kurosaki. He is just an amazing entrepreneur, talks about everything A to Z in his books, and it's such an easy read. That was the biggest thing for me. I read it when I was about 17 years old, and it was so straightforward. And so just easy to digest and understand. And I recommend it to everybody. He talks about business in there and different ways to like grow your wealth. That's another big thing that contractors don't pay attention to that they need to prioritize because they may have a lot of money coming in. But the biggest question everybody asks is, what's your top line? What's your revenue? Dude, revenue does not matter. Oh my God. What's your net profit? Like, shut up. Nobody cares that you make, if you make a million in revenue, but you're losing a hundred thousand a year, or even if you're breaking even, that's absolutely horrible. You need to be investing the money. You need to be putting it away for your retirement, putting it into assets. And that's what like rich dad, poor dad, why I recommend it. He teaches you those basics from, you know, square one.

I have a collection of 11 of his books on my shelf as we speak. Cashflow Quadrant is the second one of the series.

Yes. I just did. It's so funny. I just finished it last week. So I was reading all about it, like refreshing my memory reading it. And it just, uh, yeah, it shows how, you know, for he focuses on kids because he wants them to understand early the concepts of it. Similar to, you know, similar to contractors, some contractors dive into the industry before they understand the numbers. oh my god please stop like stop what you're doing right now if you don't know how much money you're making or how much money you're losing or your overhead don't spend a penny on ads that's what you should focus on understanding your numbers before you do any of that

Absolutely, man. I enjoyed speaking to you, and I hope somebody gets some useful information from this. And, yeah, I love your pod, man. I've listened to – there's a lot of episodes, so I've only listened to probably like 60 in full, but I'll keep grinding and chipping away.

Exactly. That's what I'm saying, man. I'm slacking. But thanks, Brad. I appreciate your time, and thank you for everybody listening in.