A contractor's journey to self-mastery requires discipline, integrity, and respect. Welcome to Hammer and Grind. Welcome to Hammer and Grind, the podcast built for contractors. Real contractors, true stories, real solutions. Hey, my name is Brad Hebner and I will be your guide on the journey to self-mastery in your construction business. If this is your first time here, Check us out on Instagram and TikTok under Hammer and Grind Podcast. You can also check us out on our free Facebook group called The Contractor Profit Group, where we have free trainings and conversations to help you in your business. Or if you simply want to change your business forever, invest in yourself by joining our paid coaching group called The Profit Club. Guys, listen, lives are being changed in The Profit Club. This is not BS. I'm not just blowing smoke up your butt to get you to join. Real lives are being changed forever. Businesses are being changed. Families are being changed. If you haven't heard our other podcasts, go back and listen to Drew and Thomas. They can attest they are both ambassadors and they are the ones that are helping lead this movements that we've created with Hammer and Grind. All right, check us out. at hammerandgrind. com forward slash theprofitclub to get more information about that. So on today's podcast, we're going to be talking about intentions. But before I get to intentions, I want to give a brief update on where we're heading for 2022. This is our first recording for 2022. So I want to kind of lay out the foundation of where we're going with the podcast. You may have noticed some changes over the last few weeks. The biggest change is that Eric is not on the podcast anymore. If you want to reach out to him and find out what he's doing, the direction that he's going, feel free to do that. But on this podcast going forward for 2022, we're going to be doing a lot of focus on interviews. Notice we've done a lot more interviews in the last few weeks. We have a lot more great ones scheduled to come up. And I'm pretty excited about guests that we have planned to bring to you guys in. Basically, we're going to be trying to get industry leaders on here at different areas of their respectable trade. So people that specialize in videography, marketing experts, different things like that, as well as other contractors to talk about them and their business and what things might be working for them in their business to share that knowledge they have with you guys. More interviews, a lot more interviews planned for 2022. Also, a lot more content on our social media. Right now, TikTok's pretty hot, and so we're going to be hitting that pretty hard. I'm going to be spending a lot more time on TikTok moving forward. So that's where we're at right now for 2022. First episode hitting the new year, and we're going to start off by talking about intentions. Being intentional about your life and your business. So why intentional? Why intention? Why does being intentional matter? Why is that important? I want to read Webster's Dictionary version of that real quick. And we're going to talk about that. So Webster's Dictionary version of the meaning of intention is the thing that you plan to do or achieve, an aim or a purpose. And the second version here is a determination to act in a certain way, being intentional. Now, on the surface level, most of you would be like, yeah, I understand what intentional means, what my intention is, all that stuff. If I'm going to turn left, I put my turn signal on to show my intention to turn left. That's pretty self-explanatory at the surface level. But I'm not talking about the surface level. I'm talking about... deep in your core, your entire being, your life, every day, every second of your life, being intentional about every single aspect of your life. And for some of you, you're like, holy crap, that gives me anxiety just thinking about it. And to that I say, good, because that means that you're probably not living an intentional life by the true definition, the way that I... define it, which is literally living every second of your life with intention. I'm talking about the way I grab a door handle, I do it with a certain intention. The way I drive down the road, I do it with a certain intention. Now, I'm not saying my brain is on 24-7. Every single aspect of everything I do, I have full intention of what I'm doing. However, that is my goal. And I would argue that I probably have a higher level of intention on a lot of things that most people would just like not even ever think about having intention about. And so I try to go down as deep as I possibly can. But we're not really going to dive into that that deep. What I want you guys to do is to actually just start having a regular intentional life where you are purposely. You're living with a purpose where you have an aim, right? You're aiming at a certain goal. Remember what the definition said, having purpose, having an aim or a purpose in life. All right. So being intentional about your life and business. The first thing I want you to do, if you haven't done it yet, we're in 2022 now. First podcast of 2022. If you haven't done this yet, stop what you're doing. Go back and review the past year. Go back and look at all your financials. Go back and look at all your personal goals that you may have set, any business goals, any goals that you've set. You need to go back and review them. Okay? This is about tracking. Just because you set a goal in 2021 of, I want to do a million dollars a year in revenue, and at the end of the year, you have... let's say $920,000 in revenue. How did you get that? Where did that come from? Why did you fall short? How did the 80,000 not get there? What'd you do wrong? Or maybe you had a million,1.2 million. How did you do that? Where did the extra 200,000 come from? If you're not tracking this stuff, how the heck are you going to know what's working and what's not working? So the first thing you need to do is be intentional. about going back and reviewing your past year. That's what you need to be doing right now. You should have already done this. I usually leave the last couple of weeks of December to kind of reflect back on what I did for the year, look at some books, close out whatever I need to, and start planning for the future, the next year. A lot of people tell you you need to do that earlier on. And that's just personal preference, in my opinion. But you need to be doing it regardless of when you do it. Now, for me, I planned the last two weeks of December. Of course, I got sick in the last two weeks of December and have not been able to, as I'm talking to you right now, I have not been able to go through and finalize everything because I've been sick. And then our family went on a little short vacation. So I'm actually behind the power curve. Just being honest, keeping it real with you all. I'm still a little sick now, if you can't tell. Not to say that I'm not going to go back and do that. You got to go back and review your year. You should be tracking it all throughout the year. We're going to be talking about that here in a second. So review the past year, set new goals for 2022. You should always set revenue goals for the year because if you don't know where you're, I mean, like if you don't have anything to aim at, then what the heck are you aiming at, right? If you just go out there and you wake up and I go, oh, that's going to work today. I don't know how much money I'm going to make. I don't know if I'm going to be profitable. I'm just going to do something. As long as I'm working every day, I'm good. I'm busy. I heard that today. I went to the plumbing supply house to pick up some stuff. And of course, the guys working there, they're small talking it up with the contractors. And there was a plumber in there. And he's like, hey, how's your year been? He goes, oh, we've been busy. We've been busy all year. And I hear that. And I'm just like. What does that even mean? You're busy. You can be busy all year and not be profitable, right? We get hung up in this, I'm busy, so I must be killing it in my business. And guys, I'm guilty. I've done this myself for years, literally for years. I remember telling my lead guy one time, man, I got 10 jobs to go look at this week. And all I was doing was driving around looking at jobs. Because I wasn't intentional about how to run my business. I wasn't intentional about how I, you know, to create a sales system that worked. I wasn't intentional about not wasting my time. I wasn't intentional about knowing what my time was worth. You see how this all comes together? See how it all plays as one big part? So you have to be intentional about every aspect of your business and in your life. Okay? So review the past year, set new goals. Now, some of you may be like, well, how do you, I mean, yes, I understand what the word intention means, but like, how can I be intentional? Like what are some steps to be intentional? And so I have a few things here for you that I do and you should be doing all of these or some of them in some capacity. So the first thing you got to do to be intentional is you got to get your mindset correct. You have to have the right mindset about everything, about your finances, about your business, about your relationships. You have to have the right mindset about those things. One of the things that I'm going to be hitting very hard in the Profit Club this year is mindset. We're going to be talking a lot about mindset. I'm getting ready to invest a lot of money into hiring. Yes, I'm hiring coaches as well. I'm hiring a coach that specializes in mindset. I've already hired coaches that specialize in mindset. Two years ago, I had to get over a negative mindset around money. And it was the very first thing I had to do in order to be able to change the way I see my business, how I do business, how I charge for my things. I had to get rid of negative mindset. So you have to have the correct mindset in order to be intentional. And that in and of itself is being intentional, right? Like my intention is to have the correct mindset. So the question I ask is, how do I get the correct mindset? And the answers are, you know, hire a business coach, do some research, whatever it might be that you need to do to find the right mindset. So I'm being very intentional about that in my own life, in my own business. You need to create morning routines. This is so critical. A lot of you guys wake up and you just, you know, you get up and you put your clothes on and maybe you shave, maybe you don't. You get some coffee, probably get some, eat some cereal or some nasty crap breakfast. And then you walk out the door for the day and you don't even really know what you're doing. Like, you know, you got to go do a job. But other than that, it's, you're just going to react to the day. There's a lot of you contractors out there react to your day. And if you ever want to have a successful business, you cannot be reactionary. You have to be proactive. You have to be intentional about your time and about your day. Because people will love to waste your time. Your customers will love to waste your time. So if you're not intentional about saving your time, then you're just going to react to the day. And then at the end of the day, you're going to be like, man, how come I didn't get anything done today? What happened all the time? I guess I better work 12 hours tomorrow to catch up. And then the next week, man, I didn't get anything done this week. I got to get this, this, this, this, and this done still. So I guess I got to work more hours next week to get caught up. And then before you know it, it's a year, it's five years or however long. And you look back over your last several years and you're like, how did I get here? Why am I not on the right path? Why am I not achieving the goals that I want to achieve? And the answer is, and listen, I'm talking to myself here. I'm looking at myself in the camera and I'm yelling at myself. The reason why you haven't achieved the goals that you wanted to in the time that you wanted to is because you were not intentional about your business. You were not intentional about your goals. You were reacting to everything. I can't even put enough emphasis on how important this is for you. I'm a little fired up right now, if you can't tell, because I'm so passionate about this and I've lived through this. I don't want you guys to do what I did. I don't want you to be in business for nine years and steal a million dollars from your family and be frustrated with all of the things that I was doing wrong. I don't want you to do that. I want you to be able to start your business tomorrow and by the end of the year, kill it. But if you're not intentional about your actions, you're not going to be able to do that. It's plain and simple. So you got your morning routine. So let me share with you my morning routine. And I don't do this every single day because it involves exercising. I don't exercise every single day. And because I've been sick, I actually haven't been doing this completely. But my typical routine is on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I will get up at 5 a. m. I work out for 30 minutes or so. And then, you know, take a shower and then I will read. I will listen to some type of either an audio book. I have an app that I'm currently listening to about mindset and the videos are five to 10 minutes long. So I will consume some type of knowledge for five or 10 minutes. I will meditate for 10 minutes. I have an app. I use a calm app. It's, you know, it's kind of guided where they. say different things or tell you what to do. I do that for 10 minutes and then I'll read in the Bible for 10 minutes and then I'll write down my goals for the day. Every single day, I will write down my goals for that day. And I have a very specific worksheet that I use on my Remarkable 2 tablet. And it's one that I created for myself and it has quarterly goals, it has daily goals. It has whether I won or lost that day. At the end of the day, I'll put it in there. It has my sales goals for the day, how much money I sold that day. It has several different aspects of my personal and business life. And I fill that out in the morning. And then I also journal. I have a personal journal where I write down just what's on my mind. A lot helps me to clear my mind of things, but also to go back and review, you know, in six months or a year or whatever. Sometimes they even go back several years ago and look at what I wrote down. So I'll journal, I'll eat breakfast, obviously finish getting dressed and then go to work. Okay. So every morning I try to do this with the exception of the exercise and every day. The rest of the stuff, I try and do that every single day. And that's important because it helps keep that stuff fresh and center in my mind. If I'm writing down my daily goals, my quarterly goals, I have affirmations that I write in there. It helps me to keep that stuff front of mind so that I can be intentional about it. If I don't write it down, it happened to me this summer. I got super busy. I was short staffed and I stopped doing those things. And what happens is my entire mood, my entire disposition is changed. And I start creeping back into old ways. I start becoming old Brad where... I don't really care as much and I'm a little moody and, you know, different things that are going on if I'm not intentional in doing this on a daily basis. So it's super critical. You know, bad habits, they don't just like knock on your door and be like, hey, Brad, hey, I'm your bad habit. Can I come back in and hang out for a little bit? That's not what happens. Bad habits creep in slowly. They're like a worm. They just kind of inch in a little bit, little at a time. And then before you know it, that bad habit's back in your life. So if you're not intentional about keeping the bad habits away, they will find their way back into your life. All right. So create a morning routine and stick with it. I also have an evening routine. I'm not going to get into that. But before I go to bed, do some more journaling and things like that. So you should have some sort of routine every day. and stick with it. Create a schedule. This is probably one of the biggest things that most contractors get wrong, especially if you're a one-man show. It can be super difficult to keep a schedule because of people calling and different things happening, right? You do have to react to some things. Obviously, if you get a phone call from one of your employees and a piece of equipment broke, yes, you're going to react to that, right? but you can be intentional about what you're going to do. If you were really intentional, you would have protocols in place for if that equipment broke. You would already know what to do. You would have an SOP that you created that your employees follow that says, if said equipment breaks, follow these actions. And then they wouldn't even have to call you, right? Like that's high level stuff. I know most of you aren't ready for that. But you can still be intentional and be proactive even with things that don't go right. But you need to create a schedule. You need to stick to it. Schedule your sales calls at these specific times during the week when you're at your best. All right? I did it on my sales mindset podcast a few weeks ago. Create a set schedule for your sales calls and stick with it. Okay? If you... job comes in that's really important, it better be like life or death important and you're going to be making 80% gross profit before you schedule it during your sales call time. It should be where you have to make a decision, almost like a life and death decision. A lot of you guys are flip-floppers and you're just like, oh yeah, I can change my whole schedule. No worries. Because I don't really have a schedule. Schedule your time. Schedule your Time to work on your business. Schedule your time to do your sales calls. Schedule your time to work on yourself. I don't care if you don't work out in the morning. Maybe you do it at lunchtime. That's fine. But schedule that and don't deviate from it. Be intentional about doing those things. No things you got to be doing this year in 2022 if you want to kill it, guys. You have to be tracking your numbers. Now, I struggle with this. I have. I don't like doing it. but it's super important. You have to track your numbers. What are numbers that we're tracking? We're tracking our leads, how many leads we're getting, where they're coming from, your sales, how many sales you're closing, what the total amount is, and your job costing. Those are the three most critical things that you have to track in your business. Yes, there are other things that you should be tracking, but these three are the most critical things. And again, you have to be intentional. about tracking these things. Your leads are super important because you need to find out what marketing works. You can't be throwing a net in the water and trying to catch all of the fish, right? You're catching bluegill and crappie and catfish and bass and all you're trying to fish for is bass and you're just throwing a net out there and you're catching minnows and bluegill mostly and you're wondering why you can't catch bass. Your phone's ringing. You're busy. I mean, you're super busy with all these leads. You're getting 50 leads a month. Never mind that only three of them are qualified leads, but hey, you're busy. I mean, you're killing it because you're super busy. Me personally, I'd rather have three calls. I'd rather have three leads and close all three than get 20 leads and close three. That's just me. I may be weird. But I like to be super intentional about my leads and my marketing and my branding. This might blow some of your minds, but I only spend about no more than $200. Usually it's about $150 to $800, $180 a month on Google pay-per-click ads. Like that's the most. That's the only paid advertising I do. And for the last couple of years, I've consistently had over 600 leads per year. You don't have to spend thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars on advertising. You just need to be laser specific on who your demographic is. You got to be intentional here. You got to be laser intentional. Let's use that word instead. You got to be intentional about who your demographic is and then going after that demographic. A lot of you people are fishing with nets. If I'm going bass fishing, I'm using... worms or topwater bait, whatever, whatever, whatever I know works for that fish and that lake in that time of the year. That's what I'm using. Very specific. And I'm fishing in very specific spots. I'm not fishing in the middle of the lake, you know, the bottom of the lake for bass. I'm looking around those tree structures and the banks and all that stuff where they like to hang out. It's no different than marketing, but you got to be super specific and intentional. about your leads and you got to track that. You got to know where they're coming from. You should know that 20 leads came from your vehicle and 15 came from Facebook and 10 of them were referrals and how many of each. You got to be intentional about that. Your sales, you got to be intentional. You need to know what your closing rate is. If you're closing 90% of your leads, that right there is a big red flag that you're not charging enough. Listen to me again. If you're closing 90% of your leads, you're probably not charging enough money. Now, are there specific circumstances where you can close 90% and have healthy margins? Of course there are. That is not what happens for most people. Okay? That's the exception, not the rule. But you wouldn't know that if you're not tracking your leads. So you got to track your leads. And then more importantly, you got to track your job costing. This is how you know if your production... if you're estimating correctly, if your guys are hitting their production rates, all of those things. You got a job cost every single job. I don't care if you do the exact same thing. I don't care if what you do is epoxy garage floors and that's all you do is two car garage floors every single day. You need a job cost every single job, every single one. If it's the exact same, you need a job cost every one. If you get laser intentional about that, you will find out every fine tooth. Essentially, you would be able to know like every crack in the garage floor that has to be fixed. You would know like how long it takes if you're tracking that. And then you would literally know that for every crack, it's 50 bucks extra. And then you would just dial it in. You just keep dialing it in, dialing it in, dialing it in, dialing it in until you know every... of where everything in that job goes. And when you become that intentional, you're unstoppable because you will know exactly what it costs you to do that job. That's what I'm talking about being intentional. Some of you guys are lucky enough to keep the receipts when you go to the store. You throw them on your dashboard. And then six months later, you're looking for that receipt on your dashboard and there's 500 other receipts and you're going through them with your coffee mugs and everything else and wrappers and all the other crap you got stuffed on your dashboard. That's not being intentional. So track your numbers, lead sales, job costing. There's other areas you got to be intentional about. You got to be intentional about asking your employees about their lives, being invested in their lives. I'm very guilty of this. Even to this day, it's something that I have to work on. I have to be super intentional about. When my guys come in in the morning having a quick conversation, hey, how's it going? How was your night? What's going on? I used to be like, dude, you're a minute late. Get your stuff and get out of here. We're busy. We got to get this done. Get in the vehicle and get out of here. See ya. I mean, are there days where that needs to happen? Sure. But if it's every day like that, who wants to be a part of a business who's like that? I listened to a podcast one time where the owner, she talked about this. She really struggled to keep people around. And she started assessing what's going on. And she realized that she was just a driver. They would come in. She had 10 or 15 employees. I don't remember how many. They'd come in every morning and she'd just drive them, get the stuff and get going. And when she figured this out, I don't know. I don't remember exactly if she. did some surveys or talked to them. I don't remember how she came about it, but she realized that she was being impersonal. You know, to them, it seemed like they were just a number, a cog in the machine. And so she changed it. She started having morning meetings and roll call and like, you know, five or 10 minutes of joking around and having a good time. And it completely changed the dynamic of her business. And she attributed that to... that one thing to changing the trajectory of your business. So you don't find that information out unless you're intentional, right? You have to purposely care about your people's, their lives. You know, what's their wife's name? What their kid's name? What do their kids do? What's their wife do? I know you D personalities out there like, ah, that's too much, that's too much time and effort. Again, I'm guilty. I'm talking to myself here. You know, I've had employees that worked for me for three or four months who were married and I didn't even know what their wife's name was because I didn't take time to find that out and actually care. So be intentional about your employees' lives and their families. When they know that you care about them, they will actually start caring about your business. That's if you hire the right ones, of course. So to summarize what we're talking about here, being intentional. For 2022, what you guys need to be doing is become laser focused and intentional. Find out what you need to do in your business. And here's the thing about most of us for contractors. Contractors are, for whatever reason, we like the worst industry of all the different industries where we don't want to invest time in things. We're always so busy. Remember being busy? We attribute being busy with being successful. The reality of it is I would rather, if you gave me the option, I would rather work four hours a day and make X amount of money than work eight hours a day and make the same amount of money. That's just me. But if you become laser focused, laser intentional, you could do that. I mean, you could essentially achieve the same amount of finances in half the time. It's possible. So being intentional. Review the past year. This is your homework, guys. Review your past year. Set your new goals for this year. Your goals should include revenue goals. It should include personal goals. You know, things like it could be weight, exercising, weight loss, you know, time with your family. One of my things that I did for goals was that I had to spend so much time with my kids each day. That was a personal goal. And I track that. Imagine that. Be intentional with your goals. Be intentional about your mindset. Find the right mindset. Create a morning routine. Create a schedule and stick to it. Track your numbers, leads, sales, job costing. Track them. If you don't have a forms, get with me. Shoot me a message. We have some job costing. You can go to our website, hammerandgrind. com forward slash job costing. There's a free job costing. Excel sheet on there that's super easy. It will track your job costing for all your jobs. Again, lead sales, job costing. And lastly, be intentional about your employees and your family. It also extends to your family as well. Obviously, be intentional about your spouses and your kids, your parents, whoever's around you. Be intentional. That can be as simple as... And guys, here's a hack for you. Create a reminder on your phone that every Tuesday morning or every Wednesday at noon, whatever it is, you're going to call your daughter and check on her, right? Like it can be that simple. Schedule your intentional moments in your, put it in your schedule. Put it in your schedule every morning, whatever time you start. If you start at 730. Put a reminder at 725 that goes off on your phone. It just says, be intentional with your employees. That's all you got to do. Put a reminder on your phone that if you get done at five o 'clock or whatever time you get home, typically put a reminder at 430, be intentional with your family. Create these reminders so that you can be intentional. Quit trying to remember to do all this stuff because if you don't prioritize it, if you don't make it intentional, it won't happen. Special bonus for whoever can tell me how many times I use the word intention in this podcast. Post it in one of our platforms and let me know. I got a special bonus for you. All right, guys, that's all I got for this episode. I hope that I drove home to you about why it's so important to be intentional. Be intentional in 2022. Make this the year that you are going to excel all of your goals and everything you've done in your life. If you need help with any of this stuff, please, please, please reach out to me or on our free group. And if you really, truly want to change your business forever, consider joining the Profit Club. It's not hocus pocus. It literally is changing contractors' lives. And I hope to see you in there. That's all I got for this episode. Check us out on our podcast. I mean, not podcast. We're on the podcast. Check us out on our social media accounts, our TikTok, our Instagram, Hammer and Grind podcast. You can also find us on Facebook, the free group, Contractor Profit Group, or you can check out the Profit Club, as I mentioned, on our website. So I appreciate you all. Until next time, be your best you.
