Episode•April 12, 2021•43 min
EP7: Why Are You Working The Weekends?
Why Are You Working The Weekends? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Why Are You Working The Weekends? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
A contractor's journey to self-mastery requires discipline, integrity, and respect. Welcome to Hammer and Grind. Hey, what's going on, everybody? I'm your host, Brad Hebner, and I'm here with my co-host, Eric Triplett, and welcome to Hammer and Grind, the podcast built for contractors. Real contractors, true stories, real solutions. If this is your first time here and you receive some value from the show, Please leave us a review at the end. Let us know how we're doing. Tell it if you like it or if you're annoyed with the stuff we talk about. We just want to know from you what you think about the podcast. We really appreciate it. And also, I want to take a second to talk about our private Facebook group that we've created called The Profit Club. It's a community that we've put together to help contractors put profit back into their P &L. If that sounds like something you'd be interested in, visit us over on our website at hammerandgrind. com slash theprofitclub. On this podcast today, we're talking about why are you working the weekends?
This one hits home with me more than you realize, Brad. And hopefully this is not another podcast where I start crying in the middle of it, you know, and then you start laughing at me. But one of the greatest quotes, and I don't even know who it was. I was going to look it up before the podcast. It's just like, Champions create distance on Fridays and or the grind includes Friday. And to me, Friday extends into the weekend, Saturday and Sunday sometimes if necessary. And so for years, I'll grind out and work on weekends. And it wasn't until a couple of years ago where a friend of mine was talking about me working weekends and I played the whole badass role. Like, oh, yeah, champions create distance, you know, I kick your ass. Right. And he was like, basically, you probably have to work the weekends and that's why you work the weekends. And I was like, I got to question this for a minute. Do I have to work the weekends or do I? You know, it was an eye opening thing for me where I questioned myself and why.
That's exactly what we're talking about. I mean, are you working the weekends because you have to or because you want to? And what's the reasoning behind both?
For me, I mean, if I evaluate all my friends and contractors and my employees over the years and all that stuff, I mean, this conversation goes sideways in all the different directions. But the reality is, you know, I've always said, hey, I love what I do. So it's not really like working. So make your vocation your vacation. And if you're working on a Sunday afternoon doing something you love, is it really working? So I've always kind of had that mentality. But as I get older, I'm more like, I need some time off. You know what I mean?
Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. So you need more time off?
Well, you know, like, I mean, I've been doing this a long time. And so, and as much as I still love it, sometimes I'm like, hey, I want to, I just want to mess around with bonsai trees all day. Or I want to just go horseback riding all day or just go to the beach or something like that. And one of my peers who, he's a total rock star. He knows how to grind Monday through Friday, get after it, get it done. And he knows how to lock the office door, throw the keys in the drawer, and just check out. And I really admire that about him. He's a younger guy. He's in his 30s. And I really admire that about him. But then I'm like, well, you don't love your job as much as I do. But he's a champion, man. He's a champion who quits on the weekend.
Well, I mean, you know, part of this discussion that we would need to have is, are you working the weekend because you have to, right? That's a totally different conversation than if you want to. So let's start with because you have to, right? I've always, from day one, when I started my business, I never wanted to work the weekends. You know, the whole reason I wanted to become a business owner was so that I could have that, you know, flexibility and all the time off whenever I wanted it to. they start their business and realize, oh, crap, I got to work even more. I think there's a joke about entrepreneurs are the only people that I work 80 hours a week to avoid working 40 hours a week.
Right. For themselves instead of someone else and not make as much money.
Right, right, right. So, you know, but part of that is I never wanted to work the weekends. I mean, sure, there was times I did work the weekends. For me, it was usually paperwork. You know, I wasn't working out in the field on Saturday, but I would. That's when I would do a lot of estimates or invoicing or, you know, updating QuickBooks and all those accounting things. When I first started and when I was just a one man show and then hired, you know, hired a helper and so on. But I never wanted to have to work the weekend. And then somewhere a few years in, I read somewhere or heard or something. And the guy was like, you know, you work Monday through Friday for the business and then Saturday you work for cash. And that's, you know, that's to put money in your pocket. So then I started, oh, that's a good idea. I'll just start scheduling jobs on Saturday. You know, maybe not a full day, but a half day's worth of work or, you know, five hours worth of work, whatever, just to put cash in my pocket. And I mean, that was great for a little bit. But then I was like, well, I'm still working, though. You know, still having to work. So I've experimented over the years of, you know, working on the weekends, not working on the weekends. And I always say that I've never worked on Sunday. You know, maybe I think one time in my 11 years, I did a job on a Sunday and it was just it was a weird circumstance and it was kind of an emergency situation. And, you know, it was only like a two hour job. So I went out and helped this person. But I typically never work on Sunday. That even includes paperwork and stuff. But, you know, as an entrepreneur, I'm always working right. Nine o 'clock at night, I'm getting ready to go to bed. An email comes in. Hey, did you do this? And, you know, it takes two minutes to respond to it. Like, I'm always doing that type of stuff all the time. But it's never a, I'm going to sit down on Saturday and work from 8 to 12 or work all day doing this, or I'm going to work all day Sunday doing this. I just don't want to do that.
Part of this conversation, this can go so many different ways. And literally, you could probably have like a, you know, one hour conversation on all these different topics. But to kind of like. pull it all together is like, are you working the weekends because you just went into business for yourself? It's a little harder than you thought it was. The money is different than you thought it would be. Or maybe you killed it for the first year and then you didn't really put the taxes aside like you should have. And then all of a sudden you're like, oh my gosh, I owe a lot of money to taxes. And now all of a sudden, you know, I'm running my business differently. And now that first year, everything was hunky dory. And now you're like, oh crap, I got to run things differently. And maybe I'm not charging enough to enable me to have those reserve funds in the bank to pay my taxes on time and, you know, scale your business. So like there's all these different things. So are you working the weekends because you've been poorly estimating projects and not getting the right amount of profit? So you have to like pick up an extra day to make enough money to pay the bills. Are you doing improper time management during the week? You know, that happens, too, with some young entrepreneurs where they like, you know, they know how to grind it out. But then all of a sudden they let off the gas and then all of a sudden things bundle up on them. And they're like, oh, crap. You know, I got to, you know, I got to make it up on the weekend and they're working the weekends.
Yeah. I mean, I remember last year I was working. I had might have been a year and a half ago, but I was having going through employees and trying to find the right ones. And I had this helper who he was a good kid and he just. just wasn't the smartest guy out there. He just couldn't grasp things. I teach him how to do something, you know, three times and he still wouldn't figure it out. But part of the reason I'm telling you that is we had this bathroom tile shower we were doing. We were just ripping out an old shower, doing a tile shower back in there. And my family, my wife and her family, her parents, her brother, her sister, their family, their kids, like 15 people. We were all going down the Gulf Shores for vacation. And they were leaving. They were driving down and they were leaving Friday morning. Well, there was no way I was going to have the shower done by Friday. And I didn't want to leave them a whole week without a shower. And there was no one that could finish it. So I had to stay behind and finish the shower on Saturday. I had to work like a 12-hour day on Saturday to get done and then fly down Sunday. to catch up with them and my wife had to fly you know drive an hour and a half away to get me at the airport it was just big ordeal of like trying to make this work and I was so pissed off that I had to do that because you know I rather left on Friday down with the family and and hung out and you know that was the day Saturday was the only day they went to the beach where it was sunny and I didn't get to go so I went to Gulf Shores and everything went to the beach the whole time I was there brutal But, you know, that's like that type of stuff. That was more of a scheduling issue. Right. But it was also because of not having the discipline of making that work.
Yeah. Well, it's a discipline of not making that day a non-negotiable. So at some point, emergency on one person's part doesn't make it emergency on your part. Right. So that's probably where you failed on that. I remember when that happened. I remember you going through that last year. Yeah.
So what we're talking about. I think most people that work on the weekends because they have to, it usually falls into one of two things. They're not making enough money, right? So they have to make it up on Saturday and Sunday sometimes. Or two, they actually, they don't know their numbers. They don't know how to actually sell the jobs for the right profit margins so that they don't have to work on Saturday. And those are two separate things, really.
I would add to that that time management in regards of being taken advantage of by prospects, they're like, hey, I need you to come out and check it out and give me a free estimate and look at my property and give me some ideas. And hey, can you come on Saturday or can you come on Sunday? And all of a sudden they're scheduling around their clients' needs and desires and wishes. And so they get caught in that time management thing. And that's kind of a dangerous thing too.
Well, yeah, honestly, I didn't even think about that. I mean, I know a lot of times people will go out and look at jobs on a Saturday. That's when they that's when they go out and actually, you know, look at the jobs because they're working Monday through Friday. And then Saturday is the only day they can look at a job. So, you know, that's a whole other dynamic. But then, yeah, you got the you know, you're like, OK, I'm not going to work the weekends anymore. I promise my wife and kids I'm not going to work anymore Saturdays. And then the next week. A person calls in, hey, we want you to do this big remodel, $50,000 job. The only time we can meet is on Saturday. Can you come out?
Right. Of course. Of course I can. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Of course I can. Absolutely.
I'll just take Monday off. Yeah.
It'd just be for, you know, I'll do it in the morning. And then the customer's like, well, I can't, I mean, I can't meet till one o 'clock. Right in the middle of the day. Amazing. And you're like, you know, it would have been different if you could have went at eight and then still got back to your family by nine. No, you know, and so a lot of people fall into that, right? Like they fall victim of, I have to go meet this person because I need the job. I need the money. I need to sell this job. You know, it becomes a need to instead of a have to. For
sure. And so a lot of this can be changed by the way you communicate with your customers, of course. I mean, once, first of all, if you're bidding the jobs correctly, you're making the right profit margin. some of the desperation starts to slip away. If you're busting your tail, you know, Monday through Friday, and you're just not bringing in enough profit margin, that's the first point of this. The desperation sits in, you're nervous and you need more money. And then you just go out and visit people for free. And then you start conforming to your clients' needs and wishes and desires and timelines and stuff. If you can start by bidding the jobs correctly, understanding how to talk to clients correctly, then a lot of that goes away. And then you can have control of your weekends and choose to do what you want to, when you want to, and how you want to.
Yeah. So if you're listening to this now and you're like, yeah, I'm raising, you're raising your hand, you know, driving down the road, people are looking at you weird. You're like, yeah, that's me. I don't want to work the weekends, but I have to, because I can't make enough money on Monday through Friday working. You know, I work eight, nine hours a day. Monday through Friday and I'm still not making enough money. Well, that's just because you're not charging enough. Right? I mean, and this is subjective. I mean, if you're wanting to make $200,000 a year and you're just saying, I'm not making enough money, well, that's a different issue. Right? But if you're like barely making, you know, above poverty or you're barely making that national average and you can barely pay your bills. and you need to make more money, that's where it comes into where you're probably not charging enough for what you're doing.
Well, let's talk about a break-even analysis because that's a total different podcast topic in and of its own. But if you're out there making money and you're not generating enough profit to break even or have some extra net profit to do other things with, then you're always chasing it. And a lot of people, it takes them years to even... be open to understanding what the break-even is. You know, how much money does it cost to run your business per year, per month, per week, per day? And then you start to build your estimating around that. All of a sudden, life gets real simple because you have enough money, right? So I think that's a really important factor that people need to start to realize. Once they can gain control of that, then their estimating gets better. And then they're not desperate. And then suddenly they're like, yeah, I can't meet on Saturday. Is that a deal breaker? And then the customer is like, well, no, I heard really good things about you. Right. And then then all of a sudden you're like, well, I can meet any day during the week, Tuesdays and Thursdays. I'll even go late, you know, and you kind of like set that aside. And then now you're in control.
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I always say, you know, you can't call your doctor, your dentist. probably not even your attorney or whoever else and say, hey, can you meet on Saturday? They're going to be like, no, I'm playing golf, dude. Right. I'm not meeting you on a Saturday. Are you crazy?
Yeah. I'm on my boat.
Yeah, I'm on my boat. This is about knowing your numbers, right? So you don't know your numbers. And you even mentioned, you know, you said yearly, monthly, weekly, I would even say in daily, I would even say hourly. Like you need to know your overhead per hour. Because if you don't know that number, let's just say your overhead, your break even. you know, overhead per hour is $50 an hour. So in other words, you have to charge 50 bucks an hour just to break even on a 40 hour work week, right? And you're only charging $55 an hour. You're not making crap. You know what I'm saying? But if you don't know that, if you don't know that your break even is 50 bucks an hour and you're charging $55 an hour right there, I mean, that could be as simple as saying, oh, okay, I need to start charging. 70 bucks an hour,80 bucks an hour,90 bucks an hour, whatever it is to get that extra money to do what you want to, to make what you want to make. Yeah.
Again, that's what I was saying. Like the, that philosophy is all built. That's its total podcast on its own is a breaking even analysis, right? You know, it's interesting because I'm working with a guy and his philosophy is he looks at breakeven daily. I mean, he focuses every week on, on weeks, right? But he's always pushing daily, like, okay, this is my break even for the day. I have a little bit of net profit, a little bit of net profit. And by Thursday afternoon, he's made his weekly nut, his break even for the week. And then Friday, all of a sudden, whatever he does beyond his expenses for the day, his cost of goods sold, what's left over is like, that's his net profit for the week. And then he drives to try and get his guys to work Saturday so that... All the money that's made on Saturday is even like this bonus money. So he works on Saturdays or drives his crews to work Saturdays because he understands, you know, his break even extremely well. And he knows all that extra money on Saturdays is gravy.
Yeah. I mean, that's great if you guys want to work Saturdays. If you guys don't want to work Saturdays and you make them work every Saturday, that's how you get new guys.
Well, it's tricky. I mean, there's it's not just as easy as I just said right there, because once. You have control of your numbers and you know when your break-even point is and you know you already made your profit that you needed to make to cover your overhead by Thursday evening and then Friday's net profit. Then you can start to go like, hey, the net profit that we make on Saturday, let's turn it into a bonus program. Let's turn it into a game and let's share some of those profits. Then that changes the game a little bit. So then you're working weekends for different reasons, but... You know, as the true entrepreneur and business owner, the guy that I'm talking about, he doesn't physically work Saturdays. He has it all worked out and set up. And the system's in place where the guys can work Saturdays and they can get they can make good extra money. Not only time and a half, but bonuses on top of that.
Oh, yeah. I mean, there's definitely people that want to work Saturdays. If I hired a guy that's like, hey, can I get some overtime? Heck, yeah, you can. I'll throw you on a Saturday. Yeah. you know, work, work an extra hour each day or whatever. So, yeah, I mean, that that's all important for knowing your numbers. But I think most of the people that are working Saturdays are because they don't know the numbers. I would agree. That goes back to, you know, that goes back to are you selling the job at the right profit margins? Or do you understand what your production rates are? It's a lot easier if you're a one man show, right? If you're a one man show, you just look at how many hours you work. times what you charge and figure it out. Like it's not that hard, but if you have employees, then you got to start looking at their production rates. Like what are they actually producing? One guy may produce way more than the other. And so that gets into this, all this crazy stuff we're not going to talk about here, but at the end of the day, if you don't know what you're doing per day, I mean, how are you running a business?
Yeah. You got to keep score. You got to, and see, here's the thing too. A business is a living monster. I mean, it's like a creature and it's constantly evolving. And like the way you do things by yourself for a certain amount of time, and then you add some office staff and you keep doing things the same way. And then you add one guy, you kind of keep doing the same things the same way. All of a sudden you don't have enough money because your overhead is expanded and you don't like, you haven't figured it out because you're just kind of doing the things that you've always done. And then the phone starts ringing more. And then all of a sudden you're, you have to work the weekends. That's when it starts to evolve. And if you're not paying attention to it, the monster, which is your business, overtakes the entrepreneur and starts to push you around a little bit. And when I gained control is when I learned how to talk to customers better. And I learned how to evaluate the monster of my business regularly and see how the break even has, you know, expands and contracts depending on, you know. It could either be seasonal or business could be cyclical or all kinds of different things. So if you're paying attention to those things, then you can make adjustments and not let it just dominate you.
Well, yeah, you said something interesting there is it's much easier to figure this stuff out when you're a one-man show. Because if you can figure this out when you're a one-man show, and then when you start hiring people, it's easier to figure that out. If you don't know what your numbers are, you have no idea how much you're making per hour, per day, per week, whatever. You just know at the end of the week, if you check at the bank account and it says there's money in there, you think you're good. I call that bank statement accounting, right? Where it's just whatever's in the bank account or bank account accounting, that's how much money you think you have, not realizing that you still have to pay a bunch of bills out of that. But once you start adding a bunch of people, and you don't know your numbers, that just magnifies that. And like you said, it takes control. And, you know, now you're working the weekends to try and catch up, but you're not realizing that all you got to do is just change a couple things, right? Change a couple numbers, charge a little bit more here. It's just some minor tweaks that have to be done. But if you have no idea what those are, I mean, you don't know what to do.
Yeah. Well, I mean, here's the example of how... the business is a monster and it's always trying to attack the entrepreneur. You know, you have to, you know, it's like a lion and you're the, you're the lion tamer. You always have to be on your toes. Otherwise it could bite you. Right. Literally like two months ago, fuel here in, in California was like two 99. And now it's approaching four 99, two months later. And now all our materials are going up. We had the force majeure that when the, from the storms that happened in Texas, those ice storms. Now all of our PVC parts have gone up. Wood is going up. You know, lumber is going up by 35 to 50%. I mean, so if you're not making those adjustments, you get your ass kicked.
We did a deck. I bid a deck job last year. I sold it. I sold the deck. It was $14,000 deck. And I sold it like in August timeframe. And I told her, I said, we don't typically do decks until later in the fall when it's not as hot. You know, stuff we got busy and busy and busy. And then the prices of because of COVID, everything started creeping up. Right. And then I said, well, you probably don't want to do the job now because it's going to be like twenty five hundred dollars more just because material prices went up. And, you know, really, if they would have pushed it and said, no, we signed the contract, you know, you got to do it. I would have probably lost my butt on that job because when I bit the job versus when we were actually going to do it. The prices had gone up so much. Luckily, they kind of said, well, we're actually going to cancel that job and do a bathroom remodel instead. So I just transferred the deposit to the other job. But that's an example of if you're not paying attention to that stuff, it's just going to eat you alive.
So listen, I was working with a buddy of mine. I mean, I could probably sub this workout. A lot of times I just kind of flip it to some people I know. Hey, so I don't have to worry about anything. let them kind of come in, they do their thing, connect them with the homeowner, and I go out and do my other thing. And so since this was kind of revolved around a pond, and I had to set some pilasters to tie in and hang over the pond and so forth like that, I was working with him on connecting the people, right? Dude, this is so funny. And I imagine if he listens to this podcast ever, he probably won't, because I don't know if he's on the journey of self-mastery like we are. You know, I think he's just like doing his thing. I was like, hey, how much is this going to cost? I need to know. I'll communicate with the homeowner. I'll make sure we can set aside the money and get this thing done. He's like, okay, no problem. And he's looking at this sketch that I did. And he's like, is it 14 foot there? I was like, yeah. And he's like, is it 8 foot there? I was like, yeah. He's like, what about the post? I'm like, oh, there's going to be four real ones and like eight dummies just to kind of look like a boardwalk, like a dock. And he's like, I don't know. What do you think? Like 2,500 bucks? You think 2,500 bucks would be cool? And I'm like, what the? What do you mean 2,500? Like how many bags of concrete going to use? How many posts are going to be up there? Those posts are 25 bucks a piece. Like what? How long is it going to take you? What's your overhead? How long is it? You know, like he was just completely guessing. What do you think? 2,500 bucks? And I'm like, oh my God. I would hate to run my business in that regard. And here's the thing. He's a one to two man show. And so it doesn't really matter. It's like, Oh, you know, maybe I can make a thousand bucks this weekend.
Dude, I got one way better than that. You reminded me when you told that story, but this was several years ago and I knew another guy who was a home builder and he was, he was a home builder for a while. 2008 kind of put him out of business because of the, you know, the housing market crash. And so he was doing some other stuff. doing some sales and things. And then he kind of got back into it and he was doing some remodel and he needed some help on a bathroom remodel he was doing. So he, he knew I was doing my thing and he said, Hey, can you come help me? I said, sure. No, I don't have a whole lot of experience like framing, you know, I'm more of trim. I'm a finished carpenter by trade, do more remodels and stuff. So I'm not like framing houses and all that stuff. I mean, I understand how it works, but I'm, I don't do that. And he goes, Hey, look, I want you to look at this. Tell me what you think. And he pulled up his laptop and there was a picture of a house and it was, uh, you know, a typical like one story house with a kind of a high roof. He goes, the customer wants to add a second story and they want to do like a dormer where it's like the roof is flat on top, you know, like it kind of projects out the back, the whole backside of the house. They want to make it a second story. And I was like, okay, like, what's he going to, you know, what does he want me at my opinion on? And he's like, well, I was looking at that. It's, you know, it's this so many feet and this. And he's like, what just like, what do you think something like that would cost to do that? I said, you mean like the whole thing? And I was like, yeah, I mean, you know, you got this. And I'm so I'm like trying to ask some qualifying questions of like, well, OK, so, you know, it's this many square feet and you got this and that. And I was like, man, probably at least $50,000. I had no idea. Like I had no idea. He goes, well, yeah, I mean, I was thinking probably closer to 80. I was like, yeah, I mean, yeah, I guess. He's like, that's what I'm going to tell him. I'm just going to tell him 80,000. And he just put it in his little thing and sent him an email.
And he didn't work any numbers at all?
No.
Yeah, it's outrageous. See, there's the thing for an $80,000 job, man, you could really get taken hard. $2,500, it's like, you could probably survive that hit. An $80,000 project goes upside down and all of a sudden it costs you $160,000. You're in bad shape.
I mean, you know, it could have been a situation where the customer was just overpaying for the job or it could have been a situation where he got taken to the bank. Like, it just blew my mind. I mean, he was a home builder for, like, he'd been in construction for 20 plus years. Now, I would say in his defense, he pretty much just built homes. New construction homes is totally different than remodel. And I think he was just looking for work. Like he was desperate for work and he was just trying to take on whatever he could get. But I just blew my mind. Completely blew my mind.
Well, this is all going to wrap into, you know, knowing your numbers and knowing how to talk to people. I mean, the real thing is why we work in the weekends, right? That one moment where I, I got to be honest with you. So as my business started to develop, you know, I'd buy another horse for my wife. We'd get another truck. You know, I'd build another pond at the house. I'd put it in another fish tank. And then my electricity goes up and we get a spa and electricity goes up. And then suddenly, like, I kind of expand to this, to the wall of what my money that we're doing. And I, at this time when I was doing that, I knew my numbers pretty well. But, you know, as the business evolved and everything, I wasn't paying as close attention to that as I could have or should have. Right. And then so suddenly it's like, oh, I need to scale my business a little bit. Now suddenly. I got a couple extra vehicles. I got a bunch of horses. They cost a lot to, you know, to feed. And so then I was into the position where I was like, hey, I'm going to work weekends and I'll pick up some extra stuff and I'll scale the business a little bit and maybe hire a couple more guys, make enough to get another truck and scale and we'll kind of push to the next level. So there's a moment when that happens. And that's when I felt like really powerful, like, hey, champions create distance on the weekends. It didn't become, it became the weekends, not just Friday, you know. That quote is the champions create distance on Fridays. And I was like, champions create distance on weekends. And I was just like trying to get to the next level and just scrambling and fighting and grinding through it when I should have just slowed down enough to go, okay, let's evaluate numbers and figure out how to scale this without killing myself and giving up my weekends and my family time.
Yeah. I mean, if you're 25 years old, start your own business and you live in your mom's basement, like you can make a ton of money. You know, not having to work Saturdays. And so then, you know, then you get married and then you have kids, you buy a house and you start adding on all the expenses. And all of a sudden that great money you were making when you were single living in your mom's basement is not even enough to sustain life. And so you're like, well, I got to make more money. So the only way I can do that is to work weekends. Right. Right. I mean, because that's you're already working 40 hours a week. So the only way you can make more money is to work Saturday. When in reality, it's you got to charge more. Well, how do you charge more? Well, you got to learn how to sell better. You got to know your numbers. You got to know what you need to make so that you can charge what you need to make. And you got to learn how to sell jobs to be able to get what you need to get.
And you got to surround yourself with the right people, too. I mean, that's at a point where, you know, sometimes it's. It's cool to power through things yourself and figure it out, but man, you can save so much time when you connect with people who've maybe already been through what you've been through. Maybe that they've already scaled their business to a certain level that you'd like to achieve and then you can kind of peel some, almost like a mentorship. You can get some mentoring tips from people in your industry and that's the whole Tony Robbins thing. Find someone who's being successful at doing what you want to do. And ask them how you can scale. And it's flattering for them to turn around and help you on that. And learning the sales process and learning the numbers to help you get away from that, that all can be done. You know, that's all, I mean, that's part of what I love about our private community of contracts that we connected with. It's like everyone is just trying to help each other out. I love that.
Yeah, we had a new electrician join today and he's only been in business for a couple months. And, you know. Full disclosure, I mean, money's a little tight, and he's kind of scared about what it's going to do. But, man, as soon as he joined in, everybody was just jumping all over him, trying to set up calls with him, seeing how they can help him out, role-playing, all these things. I mean, it's great that we have that community for people like that. I wish I had it 10 years ago. I mean, the first eight years of my business, I didn't have a clue what I was doing. I really didn't. I had to figure it all out the hard way. I've even figured out that I've cheated myself out of over a million dollars since I've been in business.
That's a tough pill to swallow.
Yeah, I didn't know what I was doing. I wasn't charging enough. And not only that, I was cheating my family, Eric.
You bastard. You bastard.
That's it. I'm going to go flog myself now. 30 flogging. Here's the
thing. I mean, the thing is, when you kind of wake up and you understand it, it's like... you know, understanding what your problem is, is the first step to recovery, right? It's like, okay, this is a problem. I need to find some help. A lot of contractors just bull through and they don't even realize it. Like the contract that I told you is going to do this, this deck project for 2,500 bucks. He's just, he's just kind of like mulling through it. He's just going to get through and he might not ever change. That's the terrible thing. He's still young. I mean, he's probably around 50. You know, it'd be nice if you could figure it out now and just crush it for the next 20 years. It's pretty old. Yeah. That's pretty old. I remember when I was that young.
That's like almost, that's half your age. It's crazy. Hey, I do. I want to say one thing, though, you mentioned. Not everybody wants to scale their business, right? So to get more, I mean, if you want to obtain more wealth, you have to scale your business. But. you can still make a decent living and make good money without scaling your business. But what I was trying to say earlier is that if you're a one-man show or a two-man show and you're trying to make more money, the scaling by hiring more people isn't going to solve your problem. The only way you can do that is by charging more money or become more effective, right, if your productions are terrible. Right.
Well, you also have to look at branding and marketing, and that's going to be an important factor as well. And I'm proud to say that our private community focuses on that as well. But the only way you can really demand more money for what you do is almost you have to become like this, an artisan at that particular craft. For ponds, it's fairly easy to do that. For bathroom remodels, it's probably a little bit harder to do. However, if you build your brand in such a fashion that you're just in that much demand, then people want you to come in and work on that design and they want you to be involved in their home. So that marketing is going to play in effect right there too. But I think that's twisting it up a little bit. But if you want to make more money, have more time, you need to do marketing. You need to do sales. You need to know your numbers.
Yeah, I mean, I think the bottom line is you got to know your numbers. I mean, that's it. If you don't know your numbers. then you might as well just burn money.
That's when you own horses. It's like burning money. Like money is just flying out the window.
Horses and boats. Horses and boats. So I think we kind of touched on everything there. We didn't get too much into people that want to work on weekends. And I think that's just a choice. You know what I mean? If you don't have to, but you want to, more power to you. I mean, that's your thing. And I think there's nothing wrong with that. For sure.
You know, people grieve in certain ways. Some people, you know, lean into their work in a grieving fashion. So it could be that. Some people want to, like I told you about that one business guy that I'm talking to, he wants to scale heavy and he wants to provide bonuses to his workers. He pushes them to work on weekends. So it is an emotional thing as well. I wasn't going to go here, but I'll just tell you, you know, in my former life, I was married to a different woman. not the woman that I love and adore today, but I went through a divorce and I was working pretty hard at the time. I was probably working five, six days a week. And I literally like everything came to a halt and I went to working three days a week because I could, you know, like I benched up with a, with a buddy of mine, staying at his place. I just literally went surfing and skateboarding across Southern California for like, you know, probably six months. four days a week. And I just, I worked enough just to pay bills and make a living and sustain everything and like pay my way. And then once I was like, okay, this was good for me is just like, get some beach time and stuff like that. And then it was like, okay, I want to get back into the real world. I want to get back into the things I want to, I want to buy a house. I want, you know, I want to expand my business. And then, so then my emotionally, I changed into a different human being at that time. And then, you know, I met my wife that I have today and then it's like, hey, let's buy a ranch. Let's get horses. Like, so then the grind becomes different, right? So I think a lot has to do with where you are emotionally in your hat and you're in your life, whether you're physically fit or if you're sick or any of those things, divorced, grieving, all those factors of emotions play into effect. But it's all going to boil down to learning how to sell, knowing your numbers and knowing how to market. You can scale and have control.
Absolutely. That's a great story. I appreciate you sharing that. Let's give them some homework on what they can work on for trying to figure this out so they don't have to work on the weekends.
Well, look, like Cameron, the new electrician that just jumped in, he's probably going to want to work some weekends and kind of build a little bit. But I don't know. Maybe he just had a baby for all I know. He's got some young kids, I think, right? So maybe he wants to focus on them for a little bit. So the homework I would push out to people is evaluate you as you are in your business today. And if you have some history, like, you know, if you've been doing it for 10,11,20 years, whatever, you could probably trace back into your timeline through business and find out the times you worked the weekends. And you'll know, like, I had to do it then. And then you'll know times when you wanted to do it then. whether it's for scalability or grieving or whatever it was, like you can kind of identify that. And it's kind of interesting to see the statistics of the way you've worked over the weekends. And so my challenge to everyone is to look at your business history and ask yourself why you were working weekends when you did. And more importantly, why you're working the weekends now. And if it's because you don't sell at high enough margins and you don't know how to talk to people, you don't know how to sell and you're having trouble marketing, you need some help. That's the challenge.
Yeah, absolutely. And I want to give them an even more specific challenge, Eric. I want to tell you that you need to, I want you to figure out what your daily overhead is. What does it cost you to run your business per day? Figure that out.
Start with that. Let me give them, I'll just, I'll give them a little pointer. Is that a cool?
I guess.
Most people are going to work 250 days a year. Okay. That's if you take the weekends off and the holidays out. 250 days is about it, somewhere in that range. Okay? So add up your numbers. You can look at last year's statement. How much did it cost you to run your business? Your labor, your phone bills, your fuel, your automobiles, all that stuff. Chunk it together. If it cost you $250,000 to run your business last year, you got roughly 250 days of working, cost you $1,000 a day. It's real simple, $5,000 a week. because you're working five days a week,20,000 a month. I mean, so those are some of the numbers you can start. It's very basic in that regard. I just put those numbers together, but, and you can, you can figure it out. Maybe, maybe you're in a really terrible climate zone where you maybe don't get 250 days a year. California, I know, I know we're working 250 to 260 days a year. That's pretty, pretty average. So you just divide how many days you can work in a year. Or you want to work in there. That's a fun challenge, right? Like I only want to work four days a week. You could do the math and change it up. So figure out what your expenses are to run your business. Keep the doors on. Keep the lights running. Divide it into how many days you can work. And there's your daily nut.
Yeah, here's a crazy idea. You can actually design your business around the lifestyle that you want. I know that. That sounds crazy to some of you listening right now, but you can design your lifestyle and your business or you can design your business around the lifestyle you want. If you want to be like Eric and only work three days a week, you can do that. You just got to figure it out. But if you don't know what your numbers are, you'll never be able to figure it out. So that's my challenge to you is to figure out what your daily overhead is.
Yeah, it's a fun challenge. And so I kind of want to throw it out there, a shameless plug for. Hammer and Grind Profit Club. If you're looking to be surrounded by like-minded, you know, hustlers, people that like to get out there and grind, but also be smart and take some time off. If you want to learn more about your numbers and you want to learn more about how to talk to your clients correctly so that you're not being pushed around on the weekends, really the Profit Club is an amazing resource for you. And so if you jump on over to hammerandgrind. com and you can click on the menu bar, you'll find the Profit Club. You can find out more about that. So if you're having trouble with your challenge, then I would highly recommend you run over there real quick. Or if you've been inspired by what we talked about today, it'd be another reason to jump on over there and check it out.
Yeah, and if you need some help with that, honestly, hit us up on Facebook or Instagram. You can go to our website, fill out the form on there if you want. But yeah, we're more than happy to try and provide some direction on what that is. Yeah.
So part of the challenge and the homework we've been kind of throwing out to you in the past couple of podcasts, if you want to share those numbers with you, we want to help you. You know, you don't have to join the Profit Club for us to, you know, give you a little bit of feedback, but you can do that by hitting us up in the DM over on Instagram. Instagram is Hammer and Grind Podcast, and you can jump on over to our Facebook page as well. And you can DM us over there as well. That's Hammer and Grind Podcast as well on Facebook. So those are the two ways that you can. If you take the challenge and you want to share your story with us, we'd love to hear it.
Absolutely. I think that's it. Eric, take us out of here.
Let's do it. Hey, thank you so much for lending us your attention and your ears today. If you're enjoying the podcast, it'd mean the world to us if you just... Took a moment to give us a review. Make sure you hit the subscribe button so you can stay in touch with us on the up and coming content. Please smash the five star rating. It helps our position in the podcast ratings, as you well know. And again, just another reminder, you can follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Hammer and Grind Podcast. And if you want to know more about the Profit Club, jump on over to hammerandgrind. com and click that menu. Other than that, we're going to let you go. Get that homework done. Keep in touch with us and we'll catch you. on the next download.