So we think the act of consuming information is what's making us better. It's not. It's not. You need a little bit of information and a lot of action. That's the right thing. And if you have a little bit of information, you take massive action, and then you see very quickly that this is the wrong decision, then you just stop, you go back to where that decision was, and you make a different decision. It's not hard. It really isn't hard. You hired somebody you thought was going to be an A player. Three days in, you realize this guy is not an A player. You fire him right then. And that's exactly what I've done before. I hired a guy. Three days later, I fired him. He had a wife that was a stay-at-home mom, and they had five kids. I'm not saying it was easy. It sucked doing that. But the guy definitely needed to be fired. It was my mistake hiring him in the first place. I didn't do my due diligence to check him out and make sure he had the credentials and all that because I was trying to rush into it, and I made a mistake. I should have never hired him. But once I made the mistake, I realized within a few days that I needed to fire him. And so I did. And that's exactly what I'm talking about. If you make a wrong decision in this situation, I hired the wrong guy, then you fix it immediately. Three days later, I fired him. You don't let him work there for six months because, oh man, he's got five kids and that's really going to hurt. He's not going to have a job. Mom, no, no. I'm not saying be heartless. I'm not saying treat people like crap. I'm saying you make the right decision regardless of how hard it is. It's that simple. The resistance is the way. So the next part here is, well, how do we know what levers to pull? This is the second part of what I want to get into. We've identified that we're procrastinating. We're using information as a guise that we're learning. We're really not. But how do we know which levers to pull? Because sometimes we're like, I know I got problems in my business, but I don't know which levers to pull. So I'm seeking information in order to figure out which levers to pull. I get it. That makes sense. I'm going to give you some information here to help you figure out which levers to pull. So here's just some like, and this isn't the end all be all. Okay. These are just some examples of some major things that are going on. So if you think that you're not worth more, like you, you, you think that you can't charge more because you're not worth it, then that is a mindset problem. That's not a value problem. If you think you can't do it, you have a mindset problem. So now you need to look at pulling levers around mindset. Like how do I figure out how to change my mindset? You have beliefs. You have certain beliefs about things that are preventing you from being able to make this decision. So lever one would be like mindset and beliefs. I don't think I can do this. I don't see how I can charge more. No one's going to pay me more money. That's a mindset problem. Right? So now you need to look for solutions to mindset problems. There's four levers you can pull. There's four main levers you can pull in your business. There's mindset and beliefs. There's pricing slash sales. There's systems slash time. And then there's team slash accountability. Okay? Like those are the four main levers you can pull in your business. By the way, coincidentally, it's the exact same thing I talk about in my book. If you haven't bought my book yet. It gives you the four main levers that you're going to pull in your business. Right. So let me now let me give you some examples. If you're overwhelmed with, you know, cash flow, like you're not making enough cash flow, you're not making enough money, you know, you're struggling, you're drowning in money. You've got to pull the pricing lever. If you're not making enough money, you have a pricing problem. So you need to pull the pricing lever. OK, if your business is in chaos. And there's no structure. People are showing up whenever they want. And, you know, there's no system that you have for like how you handle leads. And then you need to pull the systems lever. You need to create systems in your business, an operating system, a roadmap, a blueprint, whatever you want to call it. You need to create a system so that people know what to do. You got to pull that lever. If you're if you have mass chaos, if you're burned out, like you're just. I don't know how to fix it. I don't know what to do. I just, I work 80 hours a week. I work six days a week, seven days a week. I'm working all the time. I have no free time. Believe it or not, it's a mindset problem. You got to pull the mindset lever because it's usually things like I can't find good helpers. Nobody wants to work anymore. I'm the only one that can do it right. And, you know, I got to work in order to make money. I got to work so many hours because I'm not charging enough. but I can't charge any more than what I'm currently charging because people won't pay it. Those are all mindset-related problems. So you got to pull the mindset lever, okay? If you have problems with guys not doing the right thing, culture foreman's not having the right foreman, you can't find the right people, then that's going to be a team and accountability lever, like leadership. That's a leadership problem. You got to pull that lever, right? Now, there could be more levers. specifically, but these are like the major levers in your business. And what's crazy is that when you fix the major problem, a lot of the little problems will disappear. This is called the big domino effect. Instead of, you know, you've seen dominoes, like where they, you know, they knock them over, they set them up and they knock them over. Well, a little domino, like in order to, in order to have that. effect where you knock over dominoes, you got to have hundreds and hundreds and thousands of little dominoes, right? But there's also big dominoes, like gigantic dominoes. And so what happens is a lot of guys are trying to knock over one little domino at a time. And if say there's a hundred little dominoes in this line, and then at the end is a big domino, right? You're like knocking over the first domino. And then you got to knock over the second domino. But these aren't like you knock over a little one and it's a chain reaction. That's not what's happening. You knock over one little one, you got to knock over it out. So you got to knock over 100 little dominoes in order to knock over the big domino. Or you can just shortcut all that and go straight to the big domino and knock over the big domino. And then the little problems go away because you fix the main problem. You have a main problem. And that main problem is creating. individual problems,100 little problems. So if you just eliminate the big problem, all of the 100 little problems go away with it. That's the big domino effect. Most of you are caught up trying to solve little domino problems. You're going to waste your time. It's going to take you years to solve stuff because you're taking out one little problem at a time. Solve the big dominoes first. Okay? So if you do learn something, then apply it immediately. Then measure the results of that and then make adjustments. Here's a little thing for you to apply to yourself. When you learn something new, apply that within 48 hours of learning it and then see what happens. Measure it and repeat. Okay, so don't overthink. Don't overplan. Don't be an analysis paralysis. Don't overthink. Don't overplan. Learn one thing. Apply it within 48 hours. Measure what happens. Adjust. Repeat. If you just do that, if you just take that one sentence and you apply it to your business and what you do, you will see some major results happen very quickly. Don't overthink it. Don't overplan it. Learn the thing you need. Apply it within 48 hours. Measure what happens. Adjust and repeat it. Repeat that process. Okay? That's it. That's all you got to do. So you don't need to scroll TikTok for another hour. You don't need to listen to 100 more podcasts. You know, I get guys all the time. They're like, man, I listen to every one of your episodes. It's great. I love it. Keep doing it. You know, I'm like, cool, man. How's business? What's going on? Oh, it's going. You know, I just, you know, having a hard time with finances, you know, trying to get people to pay me. I'm like, yeah, man, you just got to raise your prices, you know. You're probably not charging enough. You need to raise your price. I know, man. I hear you say all the time, I got to raise my prices. It's going to happen soon. It's got to happen if, you know, or I'm going to go out of business. I'm like, well, cool. If you need any help, let me know. I'm here to help you on the next job. Just raise it 10% and see what happens and then raise it again. That's cool. Great. Thanks, Brad. Three months later, six months later, a year later, comes across my radar again. Hey, man, how's business? Oh, I'm still struggling, man. Still stuck. You know, I haven't raised my prices yet, but I'm going to one of these days. I have to. You see this pattern. I know you guys do this. Maybe it's not pricing. Maybe it's something else. You think longevity is going to solve the problem. It's not. That guy, if he would have just raised his tip prices 10% on the next job, he would have made more money. And then if he would have raised it again on the next job, he would have made more money, would have built some confidence. He probably would have been in an entirely different business a year later. But he's still in the same business because he's not taking action. He has the information. He won't take action. You have to do this, right? You have to be able to see what levers to pull. And sometimes you have blind spots. I get it. Sometimes you don't know. Like, hey, I've never hired a foreman. I don't know what I should be looking for. I get it. Well, let's just help you do that. You don't need to go watch, you know,50 hours of YouTube videos and podcasts to figure it out. We can just show you how to do it right here. in a matter of 20 minutes, and then you can go implement that immediately, right? So the blind spots is why you need accountability. This is why you need coaching, by the way. It's not because I'm going to teach you things you don't know. It's because I'm going to help you unlock the blind spots in your business and then hold you accountable to make sure you take action on it. There's guys in my group, in the profit club, that, you know, I've told them, this is what you need to do. Like, you need to do this exact thing. They don't do it immediately. Three months later, they're still struggling. I'm like, you know what to do. Go do it. I know you. I know. Eventually, four or five months later, they do that thing that I told them. And then they have success with that problem. And now they're moving on to the next problem. But it took them four months to finally make that decision because it's uncomfortable. Usually it involves some type of self-improvement or change of beliefs or being very uncomfortable. And then they finally do it. The biggest thing I can tell you, like the biggest hurdle is rebranding. I've had several guys rebrand. And I mean, some that are in the process of rebranding right now. And some that are frustrated with it, super frustrated. I mean, I hate this. You know what? I'm like, dude, don't shortcut this. It takes time. It's going to be, it's going to take some time. You got to marinate on it. You got to look at the, you know, the graphics or the video or the name. And I'm going to poke some fun at one of my guys because he was trying to rebrand. He's a handyman. He wants to do remodeling. And I came up with a couple of names. I'm not going to tell you what they are. But I said, I really like this one. I really like this one because he's wanting to go more high-end artistry type business. So we're looking for some old classic, like, you know, things like that. And I said, here, I really like this one. I like this business thing. He's like, I don't like it. I don't like it. I don't know, a month, two months later. he's finally agreed to that name that I told him, you know, two, three months ago. But it took him two to three months for him, him personally, to get to the part of where he's agreeing that that is the right name. But during those two months, it's like nonstop. I don't know, man. I don't know if I like this. You know, I'm like, dude, get out of your own way. Get out of your own way. Get out of your own way. Get out of your own way. Right? Finally. He's getting out of his own way and he's recognized that in himself. And now we're on to the logo design. He's working with the brand designer and he's coming up with some really awesome stuff. Like, but it took, you know, two, almost three months to get there. And so like, that's, that's a, it's a prime example of like pulling the lever. Sometimes you got to fix the mindset. That's the part that took so long. He had to get out of his own way. And then once he got out of his own way, now we can make progress. So he's pulling that lever, right? If you don't do that, if you don't have someone like me telling you to get out of your own way, that you're going to put that off for a year, two years, three years, or never do it, right? So you need accountability to make sure you're following through with these things. And you need a soundboard or someone you can go to or a community who can say, no, man, this is wrong. I'll give you another example. I have another client who's rebranding. Um, he's going from doing like remodels, general contractor, general contracting to, uh, specializing in one niche, a very, very, very niche business. I'm not going to say what it is. And, uh, he's rebranding and he bought a new van and he wants, he was asking about branding for the van, like, you know, vehicle reps. And he posted our group, by the way, we have like WhatsApp channels where people can post like marketing channels, sales, different things. So like we can. talk about different topics. And so he's posted in the marketing channel pictures of a van that's black van with gold letters. And I'm like, it doesn't really look good. This is a high-end type of service that he's offering. Like, you know, only the top 5% of the world have this. And I was like, black is not a good color. Try it in white. Try a white van with different letters and this and this and this. So he went through a couple of iterations. And then at the end of it, he was like, I think you're right. The white does look way better. Now, I'm not, this is not about me being right in like two, that's not what I'm talking about. Because I'm wrong sometimes. I mean, there's like, I don't like his logo. I'll be honest. I don't like the name that he named, what he named his business and the logo. I don't personally like it, but I'm also not in that niche. So I don't know. But the color choice of the wrap and the vehicles, he shouldn't do black. So he did white. Now he likes it. I'm like, make this tweak, take this out, change this, remove this part. He's done those things. He's taken advice. He's done it. And now he's like, you're right. I like it. This is much better than the black option, the black van. So that's just an example of having someone in your corner who can hold you accountable to making those decisions. And then other people can chime in. Yeah, I agree. I like the white one better than the black one, or change this or that. And you get different opinions. But if you have like 15,20,30 people giving you an opinion, you start to see the mass, like there's a tipping point where 70% of the people are saying, yeah, I like this one. And so now you kind of have a more concrete answer of like what works best. So having a community, having accountability is going to help you make those right decisions. So, I mean, that's the, I don't want to keep going on just talking about the same thing. I think you get the point. I think you get the point that you have to make a decision and then act on it. Don't keep learning. I love that you listen to all my podcasts. I love it. But if you're still listening to my podcast and you're still in the same position a year later, what the hell are you doing? Don't listen to my podcast anymore. Just go start taking action. Take massive action. Learn one thing, take massive action. Stop listening to me. Or if you want my help, then join the profit club and we can work through this stuff. But stop trying to consume information, hoping it's going to give you the magic pill it's not. You just need to take action, right? You just need to take action. I recently read a Facebook post about Colonel Sanders and the KFC franchise and how he, at 65 years old, after he lost his business, traveled the U.S. going from restaurant to restaurant to restaurant to restaurant. trying to get them to use his chicken recipe and get a five-cent royalty off of every chicken they sold. And he had thousands of rejections, like over a thousand people rejected his idea. He still got back in his car, drove the next one. He got rejected over a thousand times, but he took action and he kept taking action, kept taking action until eventually somebody took a leap of faith with him. And then that launched the entire KFC empire. Right? The action part is what matters. It's not the consumption of information that matters. So stop consuming information. You already have enough information. If you want the right information, buy the book. You can get an e-book for $7. And if you really can't afford $7, send me a message. I'll give you a coupon. I'll send it to you for free. I'll give you the e-book for free if you really can't afford $7. But it's worth $7, I promise. If you buy the book for $7 and you think it sucks, message me. I'll give you a refund. I'm trying to make this as easy as possible. But you got to stop making excuses. You got to start taking action. Stop listening. Stop trying to learn and start taking action. That's all I got for this episode, guys. You know where to find me on the social search for the hammer grind podcast. And yeah, man, I don't know what else to do for you. If you need help, reach out. The profit club is changing lives. It's making contractors awesome. Guys are making a crap ton of money. It's a great community to be in. If you're looking for some help, highly recommend checking it out. You can go to hammerandgrind. com and book a call with me and we'll talk about that. I want to make sure it's going to fit your business and we're going to help you, but it's changing lives. So be a part of the movement. And until next time, guys, remember, profit is not a dirty word.
