EP46: Investing In Yourself With Robert Molinet

It's a really interesting question. I spend actually quite a bit of time reflecting on that. And I think it just comes down to, I was tired. I was tired of being, running the rat race, being stuck in the same routine that seemingly was going nowhere. You know, business was growing. All the things, my world around me was growing, but I was stuck in the same spot repeatedly over and over again. I felt like I was making everybody's lives better, but my own life was seemingly either stalk or perceivably getting worse. And I knew I had to do something to change it.

for sure. I started a company called Sierra Landscape Management in northern New Jersey in 2004. So we started off as being a typical landscape contractor. Anything that was outdoors, we did. And then about five years ago, we started niching down. And today, the current version of Sierra specializes solely in building outdoor living environments inspired by nature. And what that basically means is we create outdoor living spaces using natural materials. We don't use man-made materials, man-made veneers, man-made pavers, things like that. We use natural materials to create scenes in people's properties that very closely mimic the edges of what you would find in nature. So they could have a little bit of nature in their own lives without having to, let's say, go to a park and take a walk in the woods.

So we started the business in, I started the business in 2004. So that's what,18 years. It was probably... It was about three years ago where I got super serious on making a change. And what I mean is like being intentional, seeking mentors and coaches and things like that.

It's on my playlist for today, actually.

What was life like? I was living contractor rich. It was amazing at times. When it was high, it was high. Money in the bank, buying things, doing whatever we wanted. And when it was bad, it was really bad. How are we going to pay the mortgage? Do I have to buy my kids the generic peanut butter? Or can I even buy the peanut butter? And that was a cycle. And that would happen seasonally. There'd be times where we had 100K at the bank. There'd be times where I literally didn't have work two days out. And that would cycle. And it was an emotional rollercoaster, not just for myself, but for my family. Looking back on it, I don't regret anything because I think it makes us who we are. But I wish I took action sooner because I've only cost myself. and my family, you know, a tremendous amount of time, which is the most important thing, time with their father, time with their husband, and money.

Cool. So, so I guess what I'm hearing is what was the compelling moment that caused me to shift?

enough. So, I mean, prior to that moment, I mean, I knew self-help books existed. But I told myself they weren't for me. I didn't need them. What was the value? So the short, semi-short version is I had a client who brought me into his property to share his vision with me. It was a six-figure backyard he wanted to build. He was doing very well in business and he wanted to have a new space to make memories with his family. And he shared his vision with me. And I came across as arrogant. I didn't listen to his needs, which I think was the most important thing. Basically shot down what was important to him and told him what I thought he should do with his backyard. And at the end of that set of meetings and interactions, I didn't understand why I didn't get the job. And he called me up about two weeks after the fact. And he had mentioned that something was bothering him. Quick backstory is he was a previous client. I'd worked for him about five years before doing something much smaller. And he'd see me around town for a while. And he goes, Robert, you're a craftsman. You're capable. You and your team are capable of building amazing spaces. But you're a horrible salesman. He goes, and he told me, he goes, you didn't listen to me. I didn't feel important. And because of that, we're just not going to do anything. We're going to go buy a boat or something. And that's exactly what he did. And I walked away from that conversation angry. How dare this guy talk to me like that? Because nobody had ever confronted me in that manner. But I'm a very direct person, if you know me. So I may not have liked it at the time, but in the end, I appreciate it. So I went home, I Googled this man and found out he was a business coach. He was a branding coach and a marketing and a business coach. And I sat on it for about 48 hours and I reached back out to him. And I said, look, I don't know what you do, but I need help. And looking through your website and your business, I wonder if you could help me. And in the back of my mind, I'm thinking this is like a $500 conversation, right? That's what I'm thinking. And he goes, okay, well, are you ready? Are you ready to get serious? And I was like, again, in the back of my mind thinking, this is a $500 conversation. Yeah, sure, whatever. What do I got to lose? And he presents me with his initial entry-level package, which was 10K. 10K for one-hour meetings, $2,500 an hour. And I was just blown away because I didn't have the money. And I knew I was stuck. I knew I needed to do something. But something stood out to me. I couldn't sleep for like two days. My gut told me that I would be silly to not take action on this offer. And at the end of the day, what I had to do was call my credit card company, which it was a business credit card. It already had, I don't know, $35,000, $40,000 on it. Expenses that shouldn't have been there in the first place. And I asked for a limit increase. They gave it to me. I called them back up and I said, all right, we move forward. And that was the moment of change. interaction with that man, which caused me to go down, exposed me to the world of being better, seeking mentorships, coaching. Simon Sinek was a big part of that. He introduced me to Simon Sinek and I sat there for probably two weeks straight just ingesting as much Simon Sinek as I could. And it ultimately led me to places like where we were hooked up in a contractor training group.

That's a great question. Because, you know, initially, initially what happened was there were There were things within the business that were broken. There was, you know, the money wasn't right. The sales process wasn't right. The marketing message was off. Those are all very important things, you know, because at the end of the day, you can produce, you can produce work, you can build amazing things. But if those systems are not in place, you're just running your business into the ground. And full transparency, those were very easy to correct. It took a lot of work. a lot of hours. We had to hire some people and I had to burn the candle on both ends for a long time to get all those things right. But they were a seemingly easy fix. It was a set of systems, a change of a message, some mentorship and getting some people in different seats in the business, hiring some people that helped with that. The bigger picture was what happened after that, right? Because I think we all know that not everybody is meant to be a leader, right? Everybody is capable of being a leader, but not everybody is ready to be a leader. And it's not a two-day course you can take. It's not a Simon Sinek or a Tony Robbins seminar you can go sit in. And it's not a matter of years of experience. I think there's probably a lot of owner-operators that work within this company. You bring in those people that are like, hey, this guy's got 25 years of experience. But we don't ask, does he have 25 years of experience with a team or working by himself? You bring these people in that are capable of producing, but they're not capable of being leaders because they don't have the people skills. And that's the reality is we're not in the contracting business. We're in the people business. We're on this earth to have relationships. And it's the relationships that make things happen. So initially it was business. And then once I got the business in place, which took... I don't know, six months a year or something like that, I started saying, looking internally, right? I said, okay, I've now created this space. I'm no longer working nights. I'm no longer working weekends. I have a team that's kind of building things, but I still have turnover from employees. I still don't wake up feeling good about myself. What am I going to do with this extra time? So I started looking internally, you know, and started to look to surround myself with people that maybe were looking for a similar journey. You know, I jumped into the 75 hard program. That was very big for me. Helped me with a lot of personal discipline, developing grit. Been through that several times. That's been very helpful for me, as well as surrounding myself through another family coaching group, a group that's set up to, it's based for men. It's a men's coaching group and it's all fathers and business owners like myself. And it's primarily based around building. that long-term relationship with our children and our families, our wives, our spouses.

It's a really hard question to answer. I mean, the bottom line is the business has to be, It has to have the basics down. Because you could be the nicest, most personally stimulating person in the world. And if you are just blowing your money or you're not profitable, you don't have a business. So I would think on a base level, you need to have some basic business stuff down. You need to have oxygen. You need to have enough of a system to have your funnels being fed, your leads coming in. You have to have at least a basic sales process, which is going to take those prospects and convert them to paying clients. And then when you actually have that happen, you need enough of a system to make sure that that work is efficient and profitable. They don't need to be these massive, robust systems. If you're a small company, you can survive with some basic spreadsheets and just a little bit of accountability and a good accountant. But those are all semi-easy fixes. The business will never go beyond a certain point if you don't fix yourself. And that's making the assumption that we're all broken. I think in a way we are all broken because in a lot of ways the life we're living is not our own life. It's a life that was created by those before us. Parents, guidance, counselors, coaches. Basically what's referred to as domestication. We're living somebody else's life very often. And that's also what contributes to inferiority complexes and just not believing that we're capable of more than the life we're already living.

Yeah, for sure. There's definitely a return. I think initially, It's like anything, it takes time. Initially, especially once you start getting into one-on-one type coaching scenarios, those investments can be pretty heavy at times. Those are big numbers for a lot of us. So initially, you're laying out money just like you would in any business. You're going to lay out money for marketing. You're going to lay out money for equipment, tools, people, things like that. It's just a tool. It's a resource. And it takes time. And most importantly, it takes work. I think we've both known people in these groups that have come and gone. They've wasted a lot of time and they've spent as much money as we've spent and they've gotten much less of a result because they weren't intentional about doing the work. And to be fair, I think that's why a lot of these groups have such high price points. The price point has to be high enough where it's going to almost force you to take action. We all know these $79, $99 programs that... There's hundreds of thousands of people that sign up for them, and half of them don't even know that they're paying a monthly subscription fee because the number's not, it doesn't hurt, right? You know, when that first, when my first coach said it was 10 grand for four hours, I went to the bathroom in my pants. It was insane. I couldn't wrap my head around how somebody, how a doctor or a lawyer is worth 250,350 bucks an hour, how this guy's worth 2,500 bucks an hour. But the reality is he had the information that I needed to change my life. Direct ROI. I mean, I've been at this for a little under three years. I now have an actual budget. The company pays for growth, not just to myself, but my employees. It's part of our training. I have a number that I work with. It's actually gone down. First couple of years, I was investing more. And it was well into the five figures. It wasn't a small amount. It's returned itself 10x. I'm not going to get into the specific of the numbers, but my business grew 87% this year. And I shared this number via our group. My personal net worth, my net worth based upon investments that I've since made, some financial shifts I've made, has gone up 2,700%. That's a huge number. Wait

Yes. Wow. And to be fair...

Well, yeah. I mean, so when I hired that coach, and a lot of it started with a retirement program that I had that I really was flat. I wasn't doing anything. I wasn't active in it. This was about three years ago. I had about $30,000. And in my head, that was my nest egg. My business was unprofitable. I was unhappy. That $30,000 was going to maybe be $100,000 or $150,000 or $200,000, and that was going to be my retirement. And at the time, that was all that I had. Well, in that growth journey, I hooked up with a financial advisor and people I trusted that helped me not only contribute significant amounts more towards my investments. but also put my investments in places that were lucrative. And I think anybody that was in the stock market knows the last couple of years, it's gone up significantly. I mean, it's not to say that everybody's going to see that type of growth, but I made a journey into some extremely high-risk investments, legal stock market investments, but like hydrogen fuel cells, things like that. And they blew up. And that alone took that 30 grand. And I mean, it was probably 15,20x just on that alone. On top of being super intentional about every week, contributing money, not just to my own investments, but to my children's investments. They all have accounts set up. We contribute to them. Each of my children has an investment account, which has been set up by me and my wife. And by the time they're my age, if they don't take from it, they'll all be millionaires and they won't have had to do anything from it. But all those things come down to just being intentional and having the right people in your corner to advise you in the right direction.

Absolutely. 100%. We got super serious about branding. You know, prior to bringing in this coach, you know, we were your typical company. We'd show up, three different vehicles, three different colors, two different logos. Guys wearing three different color uniforms. The message was inconsistent. The numbers were inconsistent. And we got all that in line. We've gotten our digital presence and our community presence, I mean, super refined. Today we show up and no matter how many vehicles are sitting at that curb, they're all identical. They're all wrapped the same way. Our guys are all wearing the same shirts. Our message, whether you're on Facebook, social, you're looking at our billboard. that's hanging at the Little League fence at the park, they're all the same. It's that consistency because people trust brands. When you show up consistent as a brand, it builds trust. And then what happens is that when those people call, they already trust you. So they're going to be far more likely to enter into your world and trust your process and trust your information than if you're a little bit, are quite a bit more messy. And that's the thing I see all the time is inconsistency. We see our competitors, they hire a marketing company, they go super heavy for three months, and then they drop off and we don't see them for six months. And then they come back and they're like, hey, we're back. Well, in that six months, everybody else has left. They've gone somewhere else. Consistency is key,100%. So not only that, but inevitably, as we've done all these things, It takes time. It takes money. And so we've had to raise our prices. We are not the cheapest kid on the block. And in many ways, we are top shelf. However, we provide a level of value in customer service. I believe that's unprecedented in our area. And that's a big shift, is being super intentional about the value that we provide. Because I think a lot of times we wrap our heads around the thought. that people are concerned about money. Look, at the end of the day, it's a home improvement. They have to have the money to purchase the product. That's a non-negotiable. If they don't have the money, we're not doing business. But more importantly than the money, they want to feel important. They want to feel respected. And they want to feel like their time is valued. They don't want to be running around, making phone calls, chasing contractors. getting permits, gathering materials. They want it to be easy. They want a good experience. And if you can make all those things happen seamlessly, the money is secondary every time.

So we niched down. We became much more specific in the things that maybe don't fit our company well. As far as our core products, I would say that the product is consistently the same. What may have changed is on maybe the marketing end, certain products that we offer have become branded, right? They've gotten signature names, things like that. And the other thing is that the... The money, the increase in profitability has allowed us to make sure that it stays super consistent, that our guys are trained extremely well, and there's no chance that we're going to have to rush off a job because we're not making money or we have to cut a corner because we're shy on a material or something like that. So it's allowed us to be far more consistent and provide an overall better product. But core and core the same, our philosophy has not changed as far as wanting to provide. the same type of quality product?

I would say it's the opposite. And I understand where that thought process comes from. But the thing is you slave away, you work nights, you work weekends, you grind your guys into the ground. You provided a top shelf, amazing world-class product. You pull away, they see your taillights fade off into the distance and they never hear from you again. what's the likelihood you're going to ever get a call back from that person? People will buy the experience above the product every single time. Because inevitably, what's going to happen is products are going to age, things are going to fail, stuff's going to happen. When you have a good relationship, you become the first call. And you grow your company because you develop long-term clients, lifelong clients. And the lifetime value of the customer grows exponentially because it's not a one and done. And as far as the quality of the product, it increases because of the investment in the people. The product gets better when you invest in the people, not because you buy a shiny or nail or a straighter two by four. And all those things are important. You can't build the Taj Mahal crappy materials, but you can provide a a consistent B product with an A plus service, and you'll go much further than if you're providing an A plus product with C minus service all day long.

The number one thing that I think is guiding my journey today. is understanding that the narrative in which I have chosen to live my life up until not that long ago was never actually my narrative at all. It was the narrative that was created, like we talked about earlier, through domestication that happens. you know, parent society, coaches, guidance counselors, life experiences, environmental factors, all that plays into that. And that creates a story we tell ourselves of who we are and what we're capable of, that we're not good on things, that we aren't capable of achieving certain things, that we'll never be whatever it is that we maybe aspire to do, but convince ourselves that we can't do. And being intentional about understanding that narrative in which we or I have been living my life isn't mine and that I have the opportunity at any age to rewrite that story. And that is what is currently guiding my journey to want to find out really what I'm made of, is understanding that I can rewrite the story and you can at any age.

Don't focus on the money. Ask yourself deep down what it is that you are willing to do. I think a lot of times people, I think we sometimes create these roadblocks of, hey, I'm not going to spend. 500 bucks,1,000 bucks,10,000,20,000, whatever the number is on this program. And it's not because we don't think the program's going to help us. It's because we know deep down subconsciously we're not ready or willing to do the work. So ask yourself, reflect and ask yourself, what is it that you're willing to do? Is it that you're willing to not go into the pantry and have that extra bowl of goldfish at 11 o 'clock at night? You're willing to not open that. sixth beer on a Friday night. You're willing to spend two more minutes walking or on the treadmill. You want to go to bed, but you have a stack of receipts in front of you. You're just going to spend five minutes in QuickBooks entering in those receipts. It's whatever it is, whatever your journey is, personal, fitness, family, it doesn't matter. Build small wins within your life because a lot of times we look at the big thing, right? These people run these. these ultra marathons, these 100 mile plus 200 mile races. And they don't look at it as I need to run 200 miles in the middle of the desert over 30 hours. They look at it as I just need to take one more step. And if you always just take one more step, it's amazing how far you can go because you don't get consumed with looking at the elephant. Because what's the saying? How do you eat the elephant? You eat the elephant. one bite at a time. And that's it. You do one thing, one small thing. You get 1% better every day, every time. And when you do that consistently, you will grow exponentially faster and farther than you would if you stay stuck because you're waiting for the time to be right. I got bad news. The time is never going to be right. So you just got to do one step.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, you could certainly track me down. on socials, not super active on Facebook, but we're there. If you're a member of the Profit Club, please reach out to me. Certainly, you can track my company down. We're all over the internet, YouTube, Facebook, websites, and whatnot. And if they really need to, I guess they can always contact you and you can give them my number if it's appropriate.