Every second of the day that you're doing something, it costs something. There is a trade-off. If you're going and getting materials, that means that you're not doing the estimates you need to do. You're not doing designs. You're not doing sales calls. You're not doing the project management. You're not ordering the materials. You're not talking to the subs. You're not doing any of that stuff. Depending on your role in the business, if you're going and getting materials, then you're not able to do other things that are more important that actually provide more value to the business. You should not be getting materials, period. Well, Brad, my guys are stupid and they don't know what, they always get the wrong stuff. Well, then getting new guys. Why do you have morons working for you if that's the case? By the way, back to point one, when you make more money, guess what you get to do? You get to pay more money for better employees. Now you don't have to hire the meth head. you know, at 15 bucks an hour, because that's the most you can afford. Now you can go pay someone 35 bucks an hour because they're worth it. That's what happens when you have more money. That's why I said it's number one, because everything else trickles from there. So time management is you waste too much time doing stupid crap in your business that you shouldn't be doing. You waste time because, you know, it's not, maybe it's not fun. You know, it's not fun looking at numbers and crunching and doing all that stuff. It's still a requirement, but it's not fun. So you put it off, put it off, put it off. And you make up stuff you have to do. Well, I got to go out and check on this job. You know, I got to go out and check on this job. Cause I I'll do the, my P and L later. Cause it's not fun. So you put it off. You're, you went out and look at a job that you didn't need to go look at. So you're wasting time. So time management is something that we deal with time blocking, by the way, just a, just a little tip. If you're doing sales calls, but this is really anything. Here's what most contractors do. You know, I get up and I go in the job. I go to the office where I go to the, you know, the, warehouse or whatever. And from eight to nine, I'm doing emails. And from nine to 10, I may be doing estimates or eight to 10, I'm doing estimates. And then after that, I do invoices. And then after that, I go look at the job sites. And then after that, I come back and do some sales stuff or I go to appointments. You're doing the same thing five days a week. So every day you're doing estimates, every day you're doing invoices, every day you're doing sales, every day you're doing project management. That's not how you manage your time. You should only be doing estimates one or maybe two days a week. You should only be doing invoices no more than one day a week. You block out these times of when you do these things. The benefit to that is that when you're in estimating mode, and you got four estimates to bang out, you're in that mindset already, and then you do one, which takes you a little bit of time to get into it, but now you're in the groove, and so you bang the second one out, you're getting faster and more confident, you do the third and fourth, you can do four estimates in two hours, tops, time, depending on what you do, but if you do one every day, if you do one estimate every day, it takes you 45 minutes to an hour to do one, Because you have to get into that mindset and that mode. And so instead of doing four hours, I mean, instead of doing four estimates in two hours, you're doing four estimates in one hour over four days. And so now it's costing you four hours of productivity when you could have done it in two if you just grouped it together. So you should be time blocking the things that you do to match what you're doing in your business. And you also have picked certain times. We don't do sales calls 24-7. If we have a discovery call scheduled, we have certain days of the time, certain days of the week, certain times and days of the week that we are available. So maybe we're available on Mondays and Tuesdays from four to five or from one to five. And then Thursdays we're available from eight to 12, you know, and Friday we're available from four to five again. Like we have different time slots. So when our clients pick a time to do the discovery call, it's going to fit within those times and you're in sales mode. So you're not on the job site swinging a hammer and the phone rings and you're like, hello? And they're like, oh, hey, can I get a free estimate? And now you're frustrated because, you know, you were up on a ladder trying to install drywall or whatever. And now you got to stop. You got to come down off the ladder. You got to go out to your truck. You got to get a phone or grab a piece of cardboard off the ground and get your pencil out and start taking information down. You're not in sales mode. You're in carpenter mode. And you're not going to be good at the sales process. So my clients don't take sales calls when they're on the field. If they do, if they have to do that, they're doing it in their truck and their truck is set up to do sales. But typically they're having dedicated times that they're doing the sales calls. Now they may answer the phone, but then they're going to reschedule the sales call for one of those block times that they have. That way they're in sales mode. If you're groggy in the morning till 10 o 'clock and you got to have five cups of coffee before you wake up, you should not be taking sales calls before 10 o 'clock. You need to be at your best. When you're at your most confident in your best, that's when you take sales. So we work on time management to make sure you set up a time that you can take sales and be effective or do anything else. So time management is a big one for a lot of guys. The next one you may think is kind of controversial or not important. But it actually factors in quite a bit, and that's branding. Now, branding and marketing, they go hand in hand. But when I say branding, I mean we work on creating a strong brand that people recognize in your marketplace and put you as the expert, as the professional in the marketplace. When you're seen as the expert in your marketplace, then you can demand expert prices. Right. So this all goes hand in hand. If you want to charge premium prices, but you look like, you know, some homeless man driving a rust bucket, you're going to have a hard time being able to do that. I'm saying it's impossible, but you're definitely going to have a harder time trying to do that. So we got to make sure you look professional, you act professional, you present professional. And that includes, you know, the way your website's designed, the name of your business. I've had four clients. do a complete rebrand after joining. They realize that their brand sucks. And so they rebrand and they niche down. Chris was one of them. He was on the podcast a few episodes ago. Go listen to that podcast if you hadn't. Chris with Blue Mountain Bathrooms. He's had a phenomenal results of rebranding. So I've had several clients rebrand. I do a complete rebrand, change name, change logo, colors, everything. I've had some clients that have just cleaned up. like use the same name, but, you know, create a different logo or branding around that. That's important. The brand is important. And then we work on creating websites, your social media, your, you know, your output, blog posts, things like that. So again, make you the expert. Those are things that I go under, under branding. You know, we talk about marketing, like the different types of marketing that works. There's long-term or short-term there's pay, there's free. That ties into the branding aspect of it. Also talk about niching down. A lot of clients of mine niche down because they realize the, the easiness of it. It's much easier to run a business when you have one service than it is when you have six different services. It's much easier when you have one, everything else becomes easier. So a lot of clients are niching down. They're deciding, Hey, I don't want to do roofing, siding, windows, doors, decks. I'm just going to niche down and do siding. Or maybe I'm just going to do roofs and siding. That's some clients that went from being a handyman and now they're rebranding and they're niching down and doing outdoor living. They're doing decks and kitchens. You know, they're niching down to more specific things. That clients that have done general contracting across the board, but now they're going to just pick one service or maybe a couple. That's part of branding. You want to be branded as the expert. If you're a one call does it all, there's nothing professional about that. You are not the expert. One call does not do it all. Maybe in your mind it does. Maybe in your world that you live in that's not reality, you may think that works. But one call does not do it all. That's a lie. You're lying to yourself. You're never going to be the expert. People are not going to see you that way. One call does it all is the same as going to a general practitioner doctor. I have a meeting Friday with a pulmonologist, you know, a lung person, respiratory expert. I have a meeting Friday with an expert who deals with lungs and stuff and specifically like post-COVID damage and all that because that's what I've struggled with because he's an expert in lungs. I'm not going to see a general practitioner who's a doctor who just works on your whole body. I'm not going to see someone who is an orthopedic surgeon who works on knees and elbows. I'm going to an expert who knows what they're doing. The one call does it all is going to the general practitioner who just works on you, a family physician. That's what you are. You're like a family physician. An expert does those things specifically. If you're a kid, had cancer and needed to go see a specialist to solve their problems, you're not going to go to a generalist. Guarantee it. Bet money. You're not going to a generalist. You're not going to a family doctor. You're going to go see an oncologist person who specializes in cancer because it's that important. It's no different than your business. For some reason, there's like a block in your head that you think that doesn't matter. But in your world, Everything you do, you go to a specialist, but for whatever reason, you can do everything. And you don't think that matters. It does matter. It matters so much. So, so, so much. It matters. The name of your business matters so much, so much. But we just, you know, most people are just like, that doesn't matter. I got pictures. Let me do my voice. I got pictures, Brad. I got pictures and all this stuff that we can do. Doesn't matter. You're not the expert. I digress. Yeah, so that's branding number four. The last thing, this isn't really something that I fix, but it's something that you need. And I've talked about it before. The last thing, the fifth thing that I help my clients with is putting them into a community. I cannot stress enough of how important it is to get into a community and stop trying to loan Wolf it in your business. Stop trying to just figure it out on your own. Stop thinking that you, if you ask for help, that you're weak. I've had people get on a call with me that want to get coaching and they're like, you know, it's taken me three months just to schedule this call. And I'm like, why? What's up? Well, I just, you know, I just feel like I'm a failure if I have to get help. I'm like, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. I didn't tell them that. But like, you think you can't get help? You think that you have to figure this out on your own? You think that if you ask for help, that's weakness. It's stupid. It's so freaking stupid. Why would anyone ever think that? Every successful person on the planet has gotten help from someone else. They've all asked for help. Not asking for help is the single dumbest thing you can do. And so when you get into a community, you're no longer living on the island trying to figure it out. Now you can have conversation, right? You don't have to, you don't feel alone. You're not isolated. You're with others. You're with brotherhood, sisterhood. You're with other people that you can connect with and rely on. That's way more important than anything. You know, this is why we have hobbies and we have clubs. You want to go hunting? You know, maybe you're a hunter and you join like a hunting club or something. Maybe you're a bowler, you go join like a bowling league. It's the camaraderie that you have that really makes it valuable. I do shooting, competitive shooting. When I go to my club matches and I see the guys that I shoot with over and over, they're friends. We give each other a hard time. We make fun of each other. We congratulate each other. It becomes a community. You don't feel like a stranger. You don't feel like you don't know what you're doing. I mean, if you were to come to one of our club matches and see me, you could come up and ask me anything. And I would... you know, bend over backwards to try and help you out, give you advice, tell you what you should and shouldn't do. I mean, that's what you need. You need community, right? And through community, you can have mentorship. We have a WhatsApp channel for the profit club. And of course, there's always messages all day with stuff going on, but there was a message. I'm trying to find it here. I probably should have had this ahead, you know, figured out ahead of time. But the guys were talking about some estimating and like, the ways they do their estimates and proposals and all that stuff. And they were talking about it. And one of my latest clients that joined a couple weeks, a few weeks ago, he made a comment and he said, I'm going to try and find this here. Okay, here it is. I just found it. He said, this was a comment. They were talking about, you know, proposals and stuff. And this is what he said. Again, this is like his third week in the program. He said, this entire thread just opened it up for me. Good grief. I've been doing things the long way. So like just having a conversation about like the process of how they've different guys do proposals. Cause by the way, there's depending on what you do, if you're a drywall finisher, you're going to have a different process for doing estimates, you know, in sales than if you're a general contractor building homes or whatever. Like, so it's not like everybody follows the exact same process, but even within that there's nuanced things. And that's what he's saying. He's like, that just this thread alone has opened my eyes and I realized I've been doing things a long way. That's a community result, right? Now, had he come to me and said, hey, this is how I do this. What are your thoughts? I could have told him like, hey, you know, shorten the process. But because there's so many different things in business, like there's hundreds and hundreds of, you know, moving parts in your business, it's hard to like articulate or like say these are like. You know, here's the 97 things you need to fix in your business because every business is different. So a lot of times gold nuggets and information just comes out organically through conversation, through chat messages, through posts. And then you learn like, oh, that's a little bit of wisdom. And you would have never had that had you hadn't been in the community. You know, if he hadn't joined the profit club, then he would have been continuing to do it the long way for who knows how long, maybe months or years. Just that, you know, just the community aspect alone has now gave him one little piece of nugget that's going to save him time and execution. So there's a saying there's power in numbers. That's true. You know, you don't want to be in a zombie apocalypse. It's better to have a community of people that can support each other than being out there by yourself. So it's no different in business. It's better to have community. It's better to have power in numbers. And so like, that's, that's the power of community. And so when you get plugged into a community, which by the way, I'm very protective of my community. If you're listening to this and you've, we've had a conversation and you've been interested in, in getting coaching. And I've told you like, I don't think it's a good fit. That's probably because I don't believe that you're going to fit well with the community. I don't just let anybody in by the way. The way I keep it a premium community is by gatekeeping. Just because you call me up and say, Brad, I'll pay you double does not mean you're getting in. I don't care about the money. You have to fit and you have to be willing to be part of this community. And I will put my community against any other community out there, free or paid. I don't care what it is. My community of clients, contractors are the freaking best in the world. You won't get to be a part of that because, I don't know, you want to do it yourself. You want to figure it out on your own. I don't know why you would do that. That's just what happens. So that's the five things, guys. We got to make you profitable. We got to change your mindset. We got to fix your time management and make you more efficient with your time. We're going to fix your branding, and then we're going to plug you into a community. And from there, it's just win after win after win. We just keep winning and winning and winning. So if you guys are interested in the coaching, feel free to reach out to me. There are links in the show notes. You can get more information about some of those. I do have two. Currently, I have two coaching programs available. I have the Profit Club. That's my premium group coaching. And then I have a newly released Profit Accelerator. It's a much, much more condensed version. There's not as much, there's not as many features. There's not as much support, but it's much cheaper to make it affordable for people so that they can get started and not, you know, use money as a reason not to get help. So if you're interested in the profit accelerator, it's only $97 a month. It's dirt cheap right now as we're launching this, you can get in at the founder price. Eventually the price will go up as we add more people because it requires more, more time for me, more staff, more. back-end support. And so take advantage of that now. It's only $97 a month. It's dirt cheap. You can cancel anytime. And there's so many, there's so many things that come with it. I can't even tell you it's way underpriced. Like I'm treating myself in the foot here. I'm just being honest, but I don't want you to have any excuse for not getting help in your business. So check it out, the profit accelerator, or if you just want to go for the home run, the grand slam, check out the profit club there as well. and we can help you with your business. That's the end of the show. That's the five things that are super important to your business. Do me a favor, share this episode. Give me a review if you got any value of any of the episodes that I've put out. Here's the thing. If you've listened to more than two episodes, like all the way through, you owe me a review. That's the least you can do. Go to your platform, leave a review. That's the payment. This is episode 207 or 18,218 episodes. It's a lot. to do. So pay your dues, leave a review. If you want help, check it out. That's all I got guys. You know where to find me on the social media. You can just search for the hammer and grind podcast. And remember until next time, profit is not a dirty word.
