If I dropped an extra $10,000 per month into your business right now, how many of your problems would disappear instantly? Hey, it's Brad here. And before we get into the show, I want to tell you about today's sponsor, Next Insurance. You know, a lot of us contractors spend so much time keeping the jobs moving that we push off the boring stuff to the back burner. And insurance is usually at the top of that list. until the day you really wish you had it. A customer slips on a job site, a tool breaks right in the middle of critical work, a supplier screws up again and leaves you holding the bill. You can lose thousands overnight. And most folks only realize they need insurance when something's already gone sideways. That's why I really like what Next Insurance is doing. They've made business insurance ridiculously simple. You just answer a few questions online and Next tells you exactly what coverage your business needs and you're insured in minutes. No sitting on hold, no paperwork, no call us back later nonsense. Next is built for builders, contractors, tradespeople, or anyone running their own shop. And here's the kicker. Their policies start as low as $29 a month. And you get your certificate of insurance instantly, which means you never have to delay a job because you're waiting on insurance. Protect what you've built and keep your business moving with confidence. Get covered in minutes at nextinsurance. com forward slash hammer. Now let's get back to the show. Hey, welcome back to the show. I am your host, Brad Hebner. And on this episode, we're actually going to be talking about my catchphrase, which I've. never done a podcast titled it. And the title is profit is not a dirty word. And I say that at the end of every episode. And again, that's like my catchphrase. And some people think it's funny and all, you know, people ignore. Some people don't even listen to the very end, which I understand. But it's true. It's the embodiment of what running a business means. You have to have profit. And there are a lot of people. who treat it like it's a dirty word, like it's a four-letter word you're not supposed to say. Your clients, you know, who want breakdown on their prices, they don't want you to have profit or they don't want you to have too much profit. You know, everyone understands you have to make some money. You're not going to work for free. Duh, right? Everybody knows that. But, you know, is 10% okay? Is 25% okay? Is 40% okay? Is 50% okay? What about 80% profit margins? If you did a line item pricing breakdown and you're doing and showing that your company's making a 75% gross profit margin, do you think your customer's gonna be like, oh, I'm so glad I'm paying you $65,000 on this project? The reality of it is they don't understand. Even if you were getting those margins, you're making money. Yeah, you're taking money home, but you're not keeping all that. Right. You're going to have 20,25,30 percent operating expenses that come out of that because you got to run a business. You have a business. So you're not keeping all that money. But the clients don't understand that. And so this taboo word of making a profit is completely misunderstood. And contractors absolutely love not making profit. Now, you're going to say, wait a minute, Brad. I mean, I want to make money. I'm in this, you know, I'm in business to make money. Are you really? Because I talk to a lot of you, I mean, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, either through comments or emails or messages or talking to you on a Zoom call or whatever. I've talked to a lot of contractors and I can tell you the overwhelming majority, and I mean like probably close to 85%. 85% of you think you're making enough money, but that you have something else wrong in your business that you need to fix. And then the reality of it is, is you just need to make more money. I mean, just full stop. That's it, right? If I dropped an extra $10,000 into your business account every month, starting today, how many of your problems would disappear instantly? How many of you would raise your hand and say, dude, if I made an extra $120,000 a year, I would have an awesome business. I would be able to pay myself more. I'd be able to go on a vacation. I'd be able to buy new equipment. I'd be able to get that website built that I needed to have done. I'd be able to pay for marketing. I'd be able to do a lot of things in my business if I had an extra 10 grand a month. Nobody would argue that. I shouldn't say nobody. There's going to be some people that are doing well in their business and they're like, I don't, I make plenty of money. I don't need to make more. But why wouldn't you take more money? I mean, why wouldn't you? If you have extra money left over, you can donate it. You can do a lot of good with it. You can start a nonprofit. You can build a house for, build homes for the homeless. There's lots of things you can do if you had more money. I don't know anybody that says, I don't want more money. Now, you may not need more money. That may be true. But no one says they don't want more money. Okay. A lot of people lie to themselves. They get to a point in their business where they just can't make any more money. You know, they're making, they're paying themselves $60,000 a year. And no matter what they do, they really can't make any more money. And so you know what they actually do? And this is crazy. They'll actually start lying to themselves. They'll actually start telling themselves, you know, you really don't need it to make $100,000 a year. You have a house, you know, you go on vacations, you have a pretty good life. I mean, it's not perfect. You know, I'd love to have more, but I mean, we're not suffering. We're doing okay. You know, we can survive off 60K a year. Like you start lying to yourself. And then... Once you've established those beliefs, whenever somebody else comes along, a friend, a competitor, somebody on the internet, whoever, and says, man, I have the exact same business as you, like literally the exact same business, same number of employees, same number of vehicles, same type of work. And I mean, I pay myself $120,000 a year and the company makes money. Because you establish that belief that you lie to yourself, you now start saying, Well, you're probably doing something wrong. You're probably screwing someone over. You're overcharging your customers. You're doing something illegal. You're hiring illegal workers or you're doing something that's not on par because I'm doing the exact same thing as you, but I'm making half of what you are. So you have to be doing something wrong or illegal because you develop that belief that. you just can't make anymore. You hide it under this belief of it's okay. Like we're doing well, this is okay. And then it turns into the belief that it's wrong to actually make more money. And then you turn and start blaming others who are making more money. They're doing something wrong. They're lying, they're cheating, they're stealing, they're crooks, you know, they're ripping people off. How can you do this? You're what's wrong with this country. You're the reason there's inflation. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All the excuses that come out. And by the way, when I make videos like TikTok videos or whatever, and I put them on social media, I get blasted all the time with people that tell me those things because I'm telling contractors to make more money. I'm telling contractors to raise your prices. And I get customers in there in my... You know, in my comments, they're like, what's wrong with America? And how can you rip people off? And I mean, all of those, all of those, I get them all the time. I laugh at them because it's not true. Like, I know that I'm not doing the things that they say about me. It's just not true. There's just a lot of ignorance that happens to be going on in the world. The problem with having so much access to information is that people can get... information that opens their eyes about stuff, but they don't understand or they don't get all of the information to fully comprehend what's happening. The same people that are telling me that I'm ripping people off because I may do 100% markup on materials are the exact same people that buy an iPhone that has a 1000% markup on it. Clothes have anywhere from 100% to 200% markup on them. Like everything they do in their life has an extreme markup. But the fact that you want to do 100% markup means you're a crook. How's that possible? It's because most people like that see contractors as hourly workers. They actually see them as beneath them. Like there's something wrong with you. You couldn't get a real job, so you had to become a contractor. That's where some of those peoples come from. It also comes from because they are an hourly employee and they only get paid. 20,25,30,40 bucks an hour, that they don't think that what you do is any harder than what they do. And so you shouldn't be getting paid more than that yourself. It's just they've developed that belief that it's not hard and that you shouldn't make more money than them. But let's bring this back to you, the listener, the contractor. Profit is not a dirty word, okay? If I asked you, what's wrong in your business? And again, I talk to a lot of contractors all the time. Hundreds at this point, probably in the thousands of people that I've talked to, had conversations with. It's always, man, I just, I'm not getting enough leads. If I can just get enough leads, I'd be killing it. Or I just can't find good work, good workers, you know, help. Just can't find good help. If I could just find one or two good carpenters or one or two people, man, I'd be making so much money. Or... I'm just, I'm tired of dealing with tire kickers, people that are wasting my time. If I just had a good way to weed through them and only deal with the people that are ready to buy right now, man, I would have so much free time. It would, it would just be amazing, right? These are the things that people tell me whenever they, they talk to me and they want to, you know, ask them what's going on in their business. Almost never is it, I'm not making enough money. Now they may include that like, well, you know, and I'd like to make more money, but the. The reason for the reach out is almost never I'm not making enough money. It's always some other problem they're trying to solve. I need systems in my business. I need to create systems. You know, all of these different things that are going on in their business that are masquerade as problems for them. It's really not their problems. It really isn't. You may be saying, Brad, I know my business and you're full of crap. I'm not getting enough leads. Like I have to have more leads. My guys are sitting 20 hours a week because we don't have enough work. I have a lead problem. And on the face, on the surface, I would agree with you. But what is the thing that's keeping you from getting more leads? Can you not go and run ads? Can you not go and, you know, get billboards or get your vehicle wrapped or get yard signs or send out mailers? I mean, isn't there things that you can do to help increase the amount of leads that you're getting? Yeah, I mean, yeah, there's things I could do, but I can't afford those. Ah, ding, ding, ding. So you don't have enough leads because you don't have enough money, aka profit, to be able to afford to pay for ads or the website you need or the marketing that you need, the SEO, the vehicle wraps, the uniforms. You don't have enough money to be able to afford to pay for those things. And so you believe you have a lead problem and you want to solve those lead problems with some kind of magic pill. And what usually ends up happening is that you resort towards using your time because there's only two currencies in the world. There's money and there's time. That's it. If you don't have money, you're spending your time. If you have money, you don't waste your time because you spend money. But the people that are broke. The people that don't have real profits, healthy businesses, they have to spend their extra time in order to do that. And that could be doing more jobs. It can be working nights, evenings. It could be working 16 hours a day. It could be working seven days a week, working on the weekends. It can be you just giving more effort because you're trading your time to make the money that you need. But in reality, if you were to do the math, you're probably only making like 12 bucks an hour. I mean, seriously, if you're working, you know,60,70,80 hours a week, if you do the math on how much you pay yourself, you're probably making less than 12 bucks an hour. Now, why would anybody in their right mind go through all the trouble of owning the business and get paid 12 bucks an hour? You tell me, like, I don't know a single person that would want to do that. But that's exactly what you're doing. Because I talked about this on, maybe, I don't know, maybe I didn't talk about it on the last podcast. But recently, I like the phrase of, your time is not free. Contractors have this, again, limiting belief, wrong belief, head trash, whatever you want to call it. Most contractors that are business owners have this belief that their time is free. So what the amount of hours they put into it is just more money they're making. That could possibly be one of the greatest lies that we tell ourselves. Your time is not free. It never is. You're either sacrificing time with your family. You're sacrificing rest and recovery time. You're sacrificing, you know, hobbies and personal pleasure time. Like you're sacrificing something to be working more hours. So from that capacity, it's not free. And the fact that you're not charging or maybe you're not charging enough for it, you may actually be losing money. Not only is your time not free, but you may be actually paying, literally paying money. to go work more hours. That's crazy. That is absolutely crazy. And that's what most of you do if you're working 60,70,80 hours a week, especially if you're working more than 40 hours a week on the tools and you're working 60,70,80 hours a week on the tools, then you're definitely paying, you're paying to go work because you're just not making enough money. You're doing that because you need to make more money. Now, there is one caveat here and I will acknowledge it. Some people, Like making lots of money and they work on the weekends, not because they need to, but because they want to. And that's a, that's a different situation. If you're making plenty of money, a healthy margins in your business, you know, five days a week. And you're like, Brad, I'm single. I have no kids, no wife, nothing. I just work all the time. I want to save up money so I can retire when I'm 50 or whatever,45, whatever. And so I'm working six, seven days a week. Dude, go for it. Like, you know what you want. You have a plan. You're going for it. You're making plenty of money. You're just working extra hours so that you can, you know, enjoy your life longer when you retire. That is a great plan. Go for it. That is not the same as the people that have to work six, seven days a week because they simply don't make enough money. Those are not the same people. Okay. So I'm excluding the ones that are doing it because they want to. I'm not excluding the ones that lie to themselves. That that's the reason they do it when in reality it's not. Because I know people that do that too. I know some of you lie that way too. You lie to yourself that you're making more money. You know why I know this? Because I did the same thing. I did the exact same thing. By the way, that's why I know most of this stuff's true because I did all of it. Like when I'm talking to the camera and I'm looking to a camera, I'm talking to the mic. I'm talking to myself. I'm talking to myself. however long it's been now,15,16 years ago when I started my business. That's who I'm talking to. That's how I know that what I'm saying is going to have an impact because I wish, I wish that somebody was telling me these things when I started my business. Now, let's talk about a few other things here, okay? Profit is not a number. Profit is oxygen in your business. It helps you breathe. Again, like I said in the hook, if I dropped an extra 10 grand into your account, every month, you would take a breath. You would be like, oh man, this, this feels good. You know, if it takes an extra day to get this job done, I don't, I'm not really too worried about it because I'm making an extra 10 grand. So yeah, it's costing me another four or $500, $1,000 a day to finish this job. But dude, I'm still making plenty of money. Like I'm making way, you know, lots of money, stupid money. It gives you oxygen. Profit gives you oxygen. And when you don't have enough oxygen, what do we do? We panic. Now, last year, well, since COVID, I got sick right before COVID. I had a lot, you know, COVID. I was sick for like six, seven weeks. Ever since then, my respiratory has been jacked up. Now, I had like exercise-induced asthma. And so, but ever since then, like, I have problems sometimes breathing. I have to take inhalers now and all that. It's damage done by, you know, asthma and then COVID on top of that. And last year I went to a spell where I would get sick and like I felt like I couldn't breathe. And I was having anxiety out the roof. Like I couldn't go to bed at night. I would lay down and then instantly felt like I couldn't breathe. I'd be freaking out no matter how much mind over matter crap I would do because I can do that. I mean, I can apply a healthy amount of mind over matter to get over things. I couldn't do enough. I would still freak out. I would have to like get out of bed. get on TikTok and just doom scroll for like an hour because it would take my brain off of the fact that I was, I was having some trouble breathing. That's a fact. But my, my brain was telling me or lying to me that I'm not getting enough oxygen, right? Like I'm suffocating. And that, that wasn't true. But I would doom scroll on my, on my TikTok for an hour until I got so tired, I had to go to bed and then I would be able to go in there and fall asleep and, you know, kind of bypass that initial. shock of not being able to breathe. Why am I telling you all this? Because it's no different than when you don't have enough money in your business. There's no worse feeling in business than when you know you have to pay something that you don't have money to pay and you don't know how you're going to pay for it. Like you have no idea how you're going to be able to do that. That is a very sinking feeling. It's a sucky feeling in business. It's a hopeless feeling. And that's when you also make a lot of dumb decisions. I know people that would go out and get, you know, they'd have four or five credit cards and they would just like make payroll, you know, on their credit card. And then they're like 50,75,100, $200,000 in debt because they weren't making enough money in their business and they were paying to float that, to keep their business alive. That is a very, very bad situation to be in. I've had clients in the profit club that came in with that scenario and working with them over a year, two years, they actually were able to pay off all of their debt and start making money. And that's an awesome feeling to be a part of that. You know, it takes time. It doesn't happen overnight. You know, if you're $100,000 in debt and you make an extra $10,000, it's going to take you at least a year to be able to pay that off. And that's assuming that you've made that money, you know, regularly. So it's not easy. But it's possible. But when you're not making enough money, just all the time, it sucks. You're like always in panic state. all the time. You rush things, you make dumb decisions. Like I was saying, you underprice jobs because, you know, the phone stops ringing for three days and you're like, oh my gosh, I got to make some money. Somebody calls you like, that's too much money, Brack. And you knock two grand off. Oh yeah, I'll do it because I need the job. You start selling jobs at a lower price, not because you think that that's going to help you, but because you need some money, even if it's less money than what you need. Like you just need some money. So you make dumb decisions. And most importantly, You stay stuck. 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 it 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. You stay in what I call the crazy cycle. And you just live there. And every January 1, you wake up and you say, this year is going to be different. I'm going to do what I need to do. I'm going to work twice as hard. I'm going to start reading books. I'm going to do this and this and this. And it's, we're going to kick butt this year. You know, and your spouse is like, yay, honey, I know you can do it. I believe in you. And then January 1, the following year, one year later, you wake up. And you say, this year is going to be different. I'm going to work really hard. I'm going to work because it didn't change. Your business didn't change in that year. It's like Groundhog Day. You woke up the next day and it's the same thing. You wake up a year later. It's the same thing. Yeah, maybe you had like 1% growth. Maybe you made an extra $10,000. You know, you made $300,000. last year and this year you made 310 and you're like well it's some progress maybe you did a million dollars last year and this year you did a million you know uh 50 000 or a million 100 000 and you're like that's not really the kind of growth i was hoping for and your problems are still the same like you still have the same problems you had a year ago you still can't hire people you still have a lead problem you still have a sales problem you still have all these problems going on you just made a little bit more money that's because you didn't have any disposable income you didn't have any real profits to be able to pay for those things. I said this before, when I talk to contractors, every problem that you can tell me always ties back to profit. Time problems. I'm overwhelmed. No, you can't afford help. On the last episode, I talked about hiring a VA. You can hire a VA to help you in your business. You can have lots of VAs actually, but you do need money to pay for them. So even if it's only $1,500 a month or two grand a month to hire a VA, you still have to pay for that. And if you don't have the money, you can't afford it, right? So you don't have a I'm overwhelmed problem. You have, you can't afford to hire help problem, meaning you don't have enough money, okay? More profit buys back more time. Hiring problems, can't find good guys. No, maybe. You can't find good guys because you don't want to pay them what you need to pay them. Brad, when I started in 1942, I was getting paid $2 an hour. And I'm not going to pay my guys more than $2 an hour until they can prove to me that they're worth it. It sounds so ridiculous, but that's a lot of you guys. That's how your mentality is. I made $15 an hour when I started out. So I'm going to start people out at 15. I made 20 bucks an hour. I'm going to start people out at 20. You're just recreating the experience that you went through. Meanwhile, inflation goes up, labor pool shrinks, gets more competitive, and you don't want to raise your prices. Partly because you think it's like a rite of passage thing, and also because you simply can't afford it. If a diamond in the rough, an A player walked in the door and said, I want 40 bucks an hour. And he's, I mean, he's legitimate. Like, he's going to produce. And you're like, man, I just can't afford 40 bucks an hour. I can pay you 30. He's going to be like, see ya. I'm going down the road. John Doe down the road is going to pay me 40 bucks an hour. That's not a hiring problem. That's a you can't afford to pay for people what they're worth problem, meaning you don't have enough money. You're trying to find good people on a welfare budget. Think about that. Your business is on welfare right now. And you're trying to hire the top of the line people with food stamps. essentially is what you're trying to do. Now, I'm not trying to make fun of people on welfare and food says, I'm just saying as an illustration, your business is suffering, your business is in trouble. And financially, you can't afford to pay top dollar for people. And then you lie to yourself that you don't pay that because you didn't get paid that much money. Guys, an A player is worth their money. If a dude walk in the door and said, I want a hundred bucks an hour, if he's able to produce two, $300 an hour worth of value to the business. I'll pay that. I don't care because he's paying for himself. An A player will pay for themselves. But the person who's like, I don't have enough money, man, I can't afford to pay you a hundred bucks an hour. How about this? I'll pay you a 30 bucks an hour for 90 days. And if you really do amazing job, I may possibly, not likely, but maybe give you a raise. Sound familiar? That's a profitability problem. It's not a hiring problem. Marketing, my leads are too slow. Well, that's because you can't invest consistently because your margins are too thin. I talked about this a while ago. Equipment problems. What's wrong with your equipment? Well, it keeps breaking down. Why is it breaking down? Because they're old and they need to be replaced. Why don't you replace them? I can't afford it. Profit problem, stress problems. By the way, especially in marriages, but even in your business,90% of your stress is financial stress. When you remove the financial stress of your business, your life like almost instantly gets better. You know, you see on the news that people that are talking about inflation and cost of housing, which is, you know, those are legitimate complaints. They are going up. But if you had plenty of money, you would not be complaining about those because it wouldn't affect you. Right. I mean, that's just how it is. Like if you have plenty of money, you don't worry about money problems. You worry about other things. So when you have less money, there's lots of stress. Lots and lots of stress. Again, remember the worst feeling is when you have to pay somebody or pay bills and you don't have the money. That's about as stressful as they can get in business, especially if you have to pay to stay in business. Like this is, you know, you got to pay a vendor or they're not going to give you materials for the next job that third customer already paid you deposit on and you don't have enough money to pay that. By the way, I've had customer, I've had clients that have been in that situation. They're literally robbing Peter to pay Paul and they're trying to finish a job just so they can get paid. but things keep going wrong or something comes up and they have to go buy more materials, but they can't go buy materials because they have no money and the customer's not giving them any more draws until the job's done and you're stuck in this catch-22. That's a crappy feeling. It's a really crappy feeling, all right? Look, here's the hard truth. Most contractors I talk to think the answer is work harder. And yes, you can work hard. You can grind it out. You can grind a long time. It's not realistic. You can't grind and work long hours forever. You will break down your body and you will shorten your lifespan. You will also shorten your work span because your body will be so broken you won't even be able to work. That's not true. The answer is not work more hours. That's never the answer ever. Hustle doesn't fix margins. I see, you know, hustle culture. We've got to get my, you know, I'm hustling. I got to show my Lambo and all this and how I'm a hustler and hustle, hustle, hustle. Well, you're hustling because you have to, because you have crappy margins. That's hustle culture doesn't work unless you're like actually making a crap ton of money. Like you're going for the, you're swinging for the fences. If you're hustling and then, and then you try to portray on social media that you're hustling and work until 930 at night because you're a hustler when secretly. You have to work till 9.30 because you need the money. You got to finish the job today so you can get paid, so you can start the next job and make payroll. But you'll put it on social media that you're a hustler. I made a post yesterday. It says excuses sound good only to the person who makes them. To everyone else, they can see right through them. So when I see people say like, oh, I work until 9.30 at night, you know, get that money. I see through that. It's BS. They have to do that. They're just spinning it like they're hustling. By the way, a lot of times I'll call people out on that and they don't like it. They'll start firing it back at me. Sometimes I like to poke the bear. I'm not going to lie. I just, I like to poke the bear. It's just fun to kind of get in there sometimes. Here's a rapid fire of some profit leaks in your business. When we talk about, you know, you need more money. Let's talk about what's causing some of these leaks. One, underpricing. That's the biggest one. Two, discounting to win the job. Not tracking job costing. Scope creep. Poor change order process or not one at all. Wasted labor hours because you're not familiar with production rates or what you guys are doing. No systems at all. Talking or taking every customer who calls. I made a post or comment like this past week about, you know, you're not going to sell every job or it's not your job to sell every person that calls you. And of course, in the comments, here comes Mr. Know-it-all. It is your job to sell everyone. I'm like, okay, whatever, man. Whatever. So there's a shift that has to happen, guys. There's a shift that has to happen in your business. You have to build a business that pays you. I've said this many times, and it's a framework for how you think about it. A lot of people think their business is an extension of them. I'm Joe Contractor. I own a construction business. All the money the business makes just goes in my pocket. That's treating your business like it's an extension of you, okay? Like you're an employee and... This is the boss. The business is the boss that's paying you. The reality of it is, is that your business is a living, breathing organism. It has to be fed. You have to feed it profit. So your business has to make money above and beyond you and what you pay. Now, yes, whatever's left over at the end of the day technically is your money. But if you go in there and you suck all the profits out of there because you had a really good year. You're setting yourself up for failure for the future. I mean, I'm just telling you that right now, if you don't leave some money in there. Well, I got a high, you know, I don't want to pay taxes on this brand. I got $50,000 in the bank and I don't want to pay taxes on that. So I'm going to go buy a $75,000 pickup truck because I don't want to pay taxes on 50K, which whatever. If you're not using an accountant, if you don't have a good accountant, let me know. I can recommend a few really good accountants because they'll tell you that that's a stupid plan. I love paying taxes. Absolutely love it. You know why? Because the more taxes I pay, the more money I make. Now, I'm not saying be dumb and like, don't take advantages of tax breaks and things that are available to you. You should absolutely do that. But I'm not going to go out and just make a huge capital investment so I can avoid paying taxes. You know, obviously, if you need that, that's good timing. That's beneficial. But I'm talking about people that are just like, I don't want to pay taxes. Screw Uncle Sam. I'm going to go and keep all my money. and buy a new truck. That's stupid. So when you shift to a business that pays you, profit is what turns self-employment into a business ownership. Profit is what allows you to take a step back. Profit is what allows growth without chaos. The number one thing that contractors think you have to do to make money is more. It's more production. It's volume. Most contractors that I talk to, again,80,85% think volume is the answer to profit. If you don't have a profitable business right now where you're at, I don't care how many employees, if any, if your business is not profitable right now, scaling it is not going to make it profitable. It's only going to scale your problems. If you don't have enough money with one employee, you're not going to have more money with five employees because you haven't solved the problem. Right now, that's holding back your money. So a lot of people think scaling and doing a crap ton of jobs, not scaling, more production, doing more, producing more. They think producing more, doing more jobs is how you make money. That is a 100% recipe for chaos. You can't do that. You have to be profitable where you're at. And then when you grow your business, you're actually growing your profit with your business so that you will always be profitable. as you grow your business. You have to be profitable right now where you're at. There is no, when I get here, when I do this, when this happens, that's all bull crap. It has to happen now. You have to be profitable now. So here's three practical takeaways that you can go with. Number one, and you just missed it. If you guys didn't sign up for the webinar last week with Aaron Andrews, Level Accounting, missed a phenomenal. workshop. I said webinar, it's actually a workshop on knowing your numbers, right? There's a lot of things you need to know in your business. Knowing your numbers is super important. If you don't know your margins, if you don't know how much money you're going to make before you sell a job, you are in a world of hurt. Like you are, you're screwed. I'm just going to say it. If you don't know how much money you're making before you sell a job, you probably shouldn't be in business. You have to know how much money you're making. You have to know your numbers. You can't just go off what somebody else did, what your old boss did, what your buddy down the street's doing. You have to know your numbers of your business. That's the biggest takeaway. Number two, raise your prices. You raise your prices and stop the bleeding. It's that simple. You have profit leaks in your business. The profit leaks are causing you more money than you're making. So you're always in a negative. You're spending more money on profit leaks than you're bringing in. If you can bring in more money, by raising your prices and you have an, yeah, now you're making more money than the profit leaks. You can reinvest that profit into solving the profit leaks. Guys will call me and say, Brad, I need help with systems. Okay. Yeah, we can do that. What makes you think you need systems? Well, because we're losing, I mean, the guys are just losing money. You know, it's taking longer to do a job and, you know, we sell a job for two weeks and it's taken three weeks. I'm like, yeah, that sounds like you're losing a lot of money. I can see why you would need systems, but. Why does it matter if the job takes an extra week? Well, because I'm losing money. I'm not making any money. Bingo. You don't have a systems problem. You have a not making enough money problem. You have to make money first and then use the profits to fix everything else in your business. Once you make enough money, then you can throw money at the problem to solve it for you. You don't have to be the one solving it. Do you need systems? Absolutely, you need systems. Especially if you're on scale, you have to have systems. You know, if you're a one or two man show, you can figure it out in your head. You can write on a piece of paper. You start getting, you know, doing more jobs and bigger jobs and hiring more people, more subs. You have to have systems to be able to manage that for sure. But if you're not making enough money first, you have to do that. Number three, this might be controversial, only take profitable work. Busy is not the goal. Again,75,80%. How's business? Oh, super busy. Don't really care. I don't care if you're busy. Are you profitable? Well, you know, it's ups and downs. It's ebbs and flows. It's feast or famine. Again, those are lies that contractors tell themselves because they don't know the truth. They don't know how to make money. So they come up with these sayings and they latch on to them and, you know, it's feast or famine. No, it's not. If you know what you're doing, it's not feast or famine. There's no famine that happens unless you have like literally a depression. or a major market situation. Normal markets, you don't have feast or famine. You don't know what you're doing. You're not making enough money. That's what's going on, right? Being profitable is a go. It's far better to stay at home and do nothing than to go work for a week and make no money. Because again, you're working for free or you're even paying to be there. You just stay home. If you don't have any work, stay home. Take the day off, whatever. Taking jobs because you have to, quote, keep your guys busy is not a good reason to discount your jobs. However, yes, there are exceptions. Sometimes you have to do that. What I'm talking about is where you just instantly know that come wintertime, you're just not going to make any money. You're going to have to discount everything. Keep the guys busy. And that's just how it is, Brad. You know, we're slow in the wintertime. You're slow in the wintertime because you didn't market in the summertime and you didn't sell in the fall and you didn't plan ahead of time. That's why you're slow in the wintertime. It's not feast or famine. It's you don't know what you're doing. That's what's happening. And you can't do those things because you don't have enough money. The summertime for most projects, remodeling projects, big projects, you have to sell them in the summer to do the work in the winter. When are you the busiest? In the summer, when are you least likely to make sales or let sales follow off or try to avoid and only pick the very, very best jobs in the summertime? So most contractors screw themselves because they're super busy in the summer and fall when they should be selling jobs for the winter. Winter comes and they go, I don't have any work. I need to go sell jobs. Hey, customer, if you hire us, I'll knock $5,000 off and we can start tomorrow. I know some of you do that. I know that for a fact. That's because you didn't plan ahead. Because you didn't have enough money. Being profitable is the go, guys. Being busy is not the go. Being profitable is the go. All right? Look, we're getting ready to close this out. I just want to say this. Listen, I wanted to share this. If your problems... are because you don't have enough money, meaning it's not because you're not working hard enough. By the way, most people that come in here, they work their ass off. Like, it's not a working problem. It's not a work ethic problem. That's almost never the situation. Like, maybe less than 1% of the time, the people just aren't working hard enough. That's not the problem, is that you're not making enough. Your business isn't making enough. Profit fixes stress. Profit fixes time. Profit fixes growth. Profit fixes freedom. That's why my book, my book that I wrote is called The Contractor Profit Blueprint. It's a blueprint on how to make more profit. Why does that matter? Because profit solves everything else in your business. It's not the how to get more leads book. It's not the how to hire new people book. It's profit. This is the most important thing you have to get right in your business. first, and then you can invest in the things that need to be done, the hiring and so on and so on. It's profit. It's why I have the profit club. It's why I have the profit accelerator. It's why everything is around profit because it's the most important thing in your business. And it's not a dirty word, I promise you. So because this is a problem that everyone has, I put together a little quiz that you can take. It's 17 questions. It's just for you to be able to see where you're at in your business. in regards to making money. It's going to ask you some questions. You're going to answer them. And it's going to show you like, am I having this stress? Do I have these problems because I'm not making enough money? Or what could it be? It's a very simple question. Take it less than five minutes. Like I said,17 question quiz. And it will help you reveal what's going on in your business. Okay? You can go to, there's two ways you can get the link to the quiz. You can go to hammerandgrind. com forward slash profit quiz. Because again, the quiz is about making money. So it's Profit Quiz, hammerandgrind. com forward slash Profit Quiz, one word, P-R-O-F-I-T-Q-U-I-Z. Or you can text hashtag quiz, Q-U-I-Z, hashtag Q-U-I-Z. You can text it to phone number 812-405-4610.812-405-4610. You can text it. Text quiz to that number, or you can go to the website, hammeringgrind. com forward slash profit quiz. You can take that quiz. It'll help you kind of figure out what's going on in your business. So guys, that's all I have for today. Thanks for hanging out with me. Nothing's going to be fixing your business without money. I hope you take this serious. I hope you really understand that profit is the most important thing in your business. You're not screwing people. You can't scam someone that hires you. They ultimately have the decision to hire you. You're not scamming someone if they say yes, unless they're just incoherent and they don't know. It's the only exception. But if my bid is $10,000 more than the other guy and the customer says, yes, I hire you, I didn't scam anyone. I'm not overcharging. That's just what the price is and the customer agreed to it, period. There's no scamming, marking up, overcharging, none of that crap. Don't believe what people tell you. All right, that's all I got, okay? Thanks for hanging out. You know where to find me. Search for the Hammer Grind Podcast on all the social medias. Get the quiz. Go take the quiz if you want to reveal some of what's going on in your business. And remember, until next time, profit is not a dirty word.
