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. My name is Brad Hebner, and I will guide you on your journey to mastery of your construction business. You can find Hammer and Grind on all the social media platforms. Just search for Hammer and Grind Podcast. Now, if you're looking for more help, you can check out our free Facebook group called The Contractor Profit Group. I do free trainings in there and it's a great community to be a part of. Now, if you're serious about making more money, saving more time, and creating a business that supports your lifestyle, check out my paid coaching group called The Profit Club. I've put together a proven system for creating a winning business. Now listen, I'm so confident that you will succeed in my program. I'm now offering a 10x ROI guarantee. That means if you don't make at least a 10x return on your investment within a 12-month period, I will refund you the full amount. You can find out more information about The Profit Club at hammerandgrind. com forward slash The Profit Club. Three reasons you're not winning yet. Now, here's a disclaimer. If you're very thin-skinned, if you like to be a victim, you might want to go ahead and just exit out of this podcast because you're probably going to get offended. You're probably going to get upset, butt hurt, as I like to say. And then you're going to send me hate mails or tell me why I'm stupid and don't know anything. So if you're a victim or if you're thin-skinned, go ahead and leave. You're not going to like this podcast. But if you want to win and you just can't figure out why you're not winning, Stick around. I'm going to cover three reasons what's preventing you from winning. So number one, this is probably the most important one. The other two are going to be just as important, but this one's probably the single most important reason. And that is you simply haven't decided to win. You have not made a mental decision that you want to win in your business or in your life. You have not went all in on yourself in the decision to win. People that win generally are relentless in what they do. They eat, sleep, and breathe whatever it is they're doing, their job, their passion, their business, whatever that is. It is not even in their vocabulary to lose. So in other words, they're going to win no matter what. The only question for them is, what's it going to take to get there? Am I going to have to work more hours? Is it going to take longer years? Do I got to spend more money? What's the resources or what's going to take to win? Losing is not even an option. And that's the kind of relentless mindset that you have to have to be able to win. But I want to deep dive into the not deciding to win and what that covers. So 90% of winning, in business and in life is mindset. 90% is mindset. It's not the actual doing. And for contractors, it's not the swing and the hammer. It's not the selling the jobs. It's the mindset behind those things. And it has to do with business. So if you don't have the proper mindset, then everything that you do will be done wrong. It'll be done incorrectly in the sense. that it's not going to lead you down the path to winning. You have to understand this. Your mindset and your knowledge base has gotten you to where you are right now in your business. Whether you've had help along the way or you've done it 100% on your own, what you know and what you've done to this point has gotten you there. And the reason you're stuck is because you don't know what you need to know to get to the next level. But for some of you, you refuse to get help. Okay. And that's, that's actually the, the, one of the next one we're going to talk about. But the mindset is what's keeping you from winning. It's not the external forces that you believe to be the economy, the gas prices. You can't find help. The prices, material prices are too high. Your customers are all cheap. That's all BS. excuses that you want to make so that you don't have to look internally at yourself and realize that you're the one that's holding you back in your business. I can promise you 100% the reason why you have not gotten past where you're at now in your business is 100% your fault. And it has to do with mindset. So this is a wake-up call for you to start the process of changing your mindset. Because it requires new learning. It requires new mindset to get to different levels in business. Think about this for a second. How much information and mindset do you need to run a lemonade stand on the side of the road? Whether you're an adult or a kid, it doesn't matter. You don't have to have a ton of knowledge or a ton of skill or the right mindset to run a lemonade stand. That's why kids... you know, as little as seven, eight years old can run a lemonade stand because it's not that difficult to do. Now, do you think someone who runs a lemonade stand could walk into a Fortune 500 company as a CEO and run that place with the same mindset and information and knowledge base that they have to run a lemonade stand? And the answer is obviously no. So you have to develop yourself over the years. That can be experience. As you work and get older, you have more experience. But most of the time, it's due to mindset. It's due to self-development. That's what this podcast has started off as, is the journey to self-mastery. Because you have to master yourself before you can master your business. And if you're not winning, it's because you're stuck and you refuse to decide to win. You refuse to put a pin in the map. your foot in the sand, draw a line, whatever it is, whatever cliche you want to use to say that I am going to win at all costs. So you have to decide to win. A lot of you have never even wrote down what your goals are. You've never wrote down what your ideal life looks like. You've never wrote down what you want your day to look like. what you want your week or month to look like or year. You've never wrote down what you want your business to look like. A lot of you don't even have org charts to have a basic understanding of what positions you need to fill in your business. That's why whenever people join the Profit Club, the very first thing I have them do is fill out an org chart if they haven't done it already. Because it shows them visually, wow, I'm actually doing seven different jobs in my business. And if I ever want to grow, I have to hire a salesman or an estimator or an office person, an admin, a foreman, whatever it is. I need to add these positions so that I can free up my time to work on the business. But a lot of you have never even filled out an org chart. And you think, oh, that stuff doesn't matter. It's not going to help me any. I just need to get boots on the ground. I got to have more people swinging hammers because that's going to solve all my problems. No, all it does when you scale a turd. you just end up with diarrhea. That's what happens. When you try to scale something that's broken, all it does is exacerbate the problem and make it worse. You're scaling the problem. So you have to decide to win. 90% of that is mindset. You don't write down what you want. You don't write down your goals. And on top of that, you should be writing down your goals every single day. The way your brain works, is through repetition. That's how things are learned. If you want to do some research on this, research myelinization. Myelinization is the process of learning things and creating neural pathways in your brain. Now, how do I even know what that means? The reason why I actually know what myelinization is is because I was trying to increase my skill level in shooting because I do competitive pistol shooting. I wanted to get better at shooting. So I went and did research on how to get better at pistol shooting. And through my research and journey, I discovered that through dry firing and repetition, you develop new skills. You develop myelinization of your brain and your neural pathways. And that is genuinely, that's actually how you develop skills. A lot of you have never read a book. You've never read a single business book in your life. You've never listened to anything else other than maybe this podcast or a few podcasts. And you're not really applying yourself to making yourself better, right? And so you got to write down your goals every single day. Everyone and everything wants to steal your time away from you. You have to understand this. When you wake up in the morning until you go to bed at night, the universe, people, businesses, everything out there wants to steal your time from you. And if you're not diligent about what's important to you and your priorities in your business, then you will fall victim to putting out fires, to responding to things that happen. There's a reason why people that like authors, when they want to write a book, they'll go on a three-day, five-day, a week, two-week sabbatical to a woods out in the middle of nowhere in a log cabin with no technology. Because they want to isolate themselves from everything so that they can focus 100% on writing their book. And you don't do that. You don't shield yourself from all the daily distractions. So that every day you wake up and you're just reacting to the day. And then a day goes by, a week, month, years go by, you wake up. You still haven't put the wrap on your truck yet. You still haven't hired an office person. You still haven't started doing posting on social media or whatever it is. You still haven't done these things because you're still reacting to the day because you don't have a specific plan of where you want to go. You have to start with a plan of where you want to go. If I dropped you in the middle of a desert and said, head home, and you had no idea where to go, you wouldn't know which direction to go because you didn't even know where you're going. You had nowhere to go. But if I dropped you there and said, hey, here's a roadmap to the closest city. just head this direction, then you would be able to overcome the obstacles along the way because you knew exactly where you needed to go. You don't work a plan. This is what I was saying. You don't work a plan. You got to create the plan and then you have to work the plan. You have to find out what you want, create a plan to get there, and then work the plan every single day. So that goes with why you just have to decide. One of the reasons you haven't won yet... Because you haven't simply decided to win. So the second reason why you're not winning is because you want to be a victim. You want to play the victim card. You want to make excuses, like I was saying earlier, around why you're not winning yet. It's the economy. It's gas prices. It's the material costs. It's the customers are too cheap. You can't find help. Blah, blah, blah. Cry me a river. little violin playing, you know, whatever excuse you want to make, that's simply so that you can be a victim. So you can say, look, see, I tried. I mean, I didn't try very hard, but I did try. I posted a job on Indeed and I had three people apply and none of the three were qualified. So you just can't find good help. I'm just going to cry about not being able to find good help because at least I tried. No, you didn't. You didn't try shit. You didn't do anything. You should have been posting every single day on social media. You should have been talking to people every single day. You should have been posting job postings on every single platform out there. You should have been hiring a recruiter to go out and headhunt for you. There's 15 different things you can do to find help, but you simply want to make an excuse. It's like, oh, I tried. I tried. It's just the economy. It's the labor shortage. Nobody wants to work. It's this generation. All they want to do is play video games. I can keep making up more and more excuses as to why I'm not winning. Even though the companies out there that are winning, they have the same problems. But for some reason, they just keep winning. I don't know. Maybe they're lucky. Maybe they were born with a silver spoon in their mouth. Maybe their dad gave them all their money and that's why they're winning. Can't be because they're doing something right. It's got to be some special circumstance. No, it's because you want to be a victim. You want to have a fixed or scarcity mindset. You have to understand that the universe will deliver what you ask for. Now, this isn't some crazy, you know, witchcraft, voodoo stuff, la-la land of like, oh, put it into the universe and the universe will deliver. That's not what I'm talking about. This isn't about the secret, right? Ask of the universe and the universe will deliver. I'm just using the universe as a universal way of saying that whatever you focus on, whatever you put into your daily life is what you will get. So if you continue to say, I can't find good help, then all of your actions will be to give reasons as to why you can't find good help. I'm not going to get too deep in the weeds. But your RAS, your reticular activating system, which is right at the base of your brain, that's the part of your brain that remembers things and it connects to your consciousness, your subconsciousness. So it's the reason why when you go buy a new car and you pick out a certain color and you've never seen that color before, and then you buy the car and then you drive home and you pass three other cars just like yours with the same color, but you've never seen them before. It's not because you haven't seen them before. It's because you haven't focused on it yet. You haven't gave your brain, your RAS, a reason to look for other cars of that color. But now that you own that car with that color, your brain is simply saying, oh, look, we like this car and this color. I'm going to be aware of this. And oh, look, there's a car over there just like ours in that color. And here's one over here like our car in that color. That's what your RAS does. So I've said before, garbage into your brain equals garbage out. So if you're simply saying every single day, I can't find good help, your brain will say, okay, let's find reasons as to why you can't get good help. But if you say, I can't wait until I find good help, or I haven't been able to find good help yet, but I know they're coming. I know they're out there. When you start changing the way you frame things, your brain will start to produce results to back that up. So when you play a victim mindset, then your brain will continue to show you reasons as to why you're correct. Your brain's duty, your RAS duty is to back up what you say or believe. Guys, I'm guilty of all of these, by the way. I'm talking from experience. This is just not me. sitting on a pedestal like I'm high and mighty. No, I'm talking from experience. I did this for years. It took me years and years and years to get over head trash and shift my mindset. It's not something you listen to one podcast or read one book and it fixes it. It's taken a long, long time for me to change these things in myself. So these are things that I'm speaking from experience. You can make a bet on that. I promise you. You want to be the victim. That's number two. Number three, and the final reason is your ego is preventing you from winning. Now, this may sound counterintuitive because a lot of times the people that we perceive to be winning come across sometimes as arrogant or cocky because they've won. I can think of someone like Grant Cardone, who I've read lots of his books, and I don't know him personally, but he comes across as very cocky. Very arrogant. There's a lot of people that don't like Grant Cardone because of that. But you can't deny him his success. You can't do that. Now, whether or not his ego allowed him to get there or his ego is preventing him from getting even more success, we can argue that all day. But I guarantee you that Grant Cardone decided a long time ago that he was going to win and then his ego backed up his mindset. A lot of you have the wrong mindsets and you have a fixed mindset and then your ego backs that up. So your ego simply says, we don't need anybody else. If you can build a house, surely you can build a business. We can figure out how to pour concrete. Surely we can figure out how to do marketing. If we can put a roof on, obviously we can figure out how to hire people. That's what your ego does. Your ego allows you to justify the fact that you don't need help. The ego is what's preventing you from getting the help that you need in order to be successful to win. The people that went from lemonade stand to CEO did not have ego because they knew that they had, in order to get to the next level in their business or in their journey, they had to get help. A lot of you with your egos, You'd rather look like you're winning instead of actually winning. By that, I mean you have the $80,000 pickup truck where you have $1,000 a month payments. Your business really isn't making that much money. It's doing okay, but you go out and you spend all your profits because you want to look like you're winning. You want to have the nice truck and have equipment that you don't really need so that everyone around you has the perception that you're winning. When in reality, you're not winning. You're barely struggling or you're scraping by or you're just getting along, you know, average. You want to win and you don't know why, but it's because you're spending all of your profits to look like you're winning. All right. The ego is a, there's books out there. There's things about death of your ego, right? Ego death. I've talked about it before in the podcast. The people who have become successful. after having lots of failure, have done that by killing their ego. Once you kill off your ego, it allows you to now open your brain, open up your mindset to receive new information. The ego is like the bouncer at the door in a nightclub. And the bouncer doesn't like anybody that's not allowed to come in. So the bouncer might be out there. A guy comes, shows up and says, hey, I can help you grow your business by $50,000 a year, guaranteed. The bouncer says, nope, we're good. Get out of here. And the bouncer kicks you out. That's the ego. That's what your ego does. The ego is the bouncer of your mind. Get rid of the ego and let anyone come into the nightclub, into your brain, and then you can filter out the things that don't belong. But if you're filtering out everything, then you're not going to learn anything new. So your ego is preventing you from getting the help that you need to win. So the three reasons I want to recap here. You simply haven't decided to win. That's easy. You can get off this podcast right now and make the decision to win. Because when you make the decision to win, all of your priorities will now change around winning. Your priorities will change around what it is important to you. A lot of the reason why we don't win with our time is because we don't make things priorities. You're like, oh yeah, I want to be a millionaire. Sure, I'd love to be a millionaire, but I don't really want to work more than five hours a day. Well, that's not necessarily a realistic expectation. The priorities have to be, I'm going to do everything I can to come up with something that's going to win to allow me to become a millionaire. And then once I have that established, then maybe I can back off. I can back off the time a little bit. But you have to simply decide to win. You have to write down your goals. You have to create a plan and then you have to work the plan. Winning is in the minute, mundane details. The stuff that's boring every single day, like waking up and looking at your sales records, looking at your leads, following up with leads. That's the boring stuff that's not sexy in your business. The people that win the most do the boring stuff the best. That's a fact. You want to be a victim? Number two, again, stop being a victim in your business. Stop making excuses. Take responsibility of yourself and what's happening in your business. First thing is realizing that it's your fault. The second thing is realizing that you need help and then go get help to do that. And the third reason is your ego. which is preventing you from wanting to go get help, right? Your ego also tag teams with the victim mentality, the fixed mindset. And those guys are tag teaming each other and saying, yep, listen, we don't want anybody that, you know, we're not going to hire anybody because we can't find anybody, but we're not going to go get help on how to hire either. So let's tag team and keep everybody out. That's going to be a good fit, right? Can't find the good people and we don't want to hire somebody that teaches how to find the good people. So now we're good. Our ego is protecting us. So those are the three things. Decide, stop being a victim, and get rid of your ego. Death to your ego and get help, guys. That's the end of this podcast. It's short and sweet today. You know where to find me on all the other social medias. Search for Hammer and Grind Podcast on Instagram. Discord, you can search for Hammer and Grind. Facebook, check out our free Facebook group, the Contract Your Profit group. And if you want help on taking your business to the next level so that you can win, check out the Profit Club. You can find out more information on that and other services at my website, hammerandgrind. com or reach out to me and let me know. I'll be more than happy to talk to you about you and your business and to see if I can help you. Until next time, you guys know what to do. Be the best version of you.
