EP73: Being Intentional With Robert Molinet

My name is Brad Hebner, and I will guide you on your journey to mastery of your construction business.

All right, on today's episode, we got a special guest today. He's our second time on the podcast, Robert Molinae. Robert is a man who has committed himself to being the fulcrum of change for how the male shows up in his family's lineage. He's a father, a husband, a business owner, and he's constantly working to find out what the road to self-mastery has in store. Robert, thanks again for being on the podcast, man.

So I asked Robert to jump on here because I wanted to do a little bit different format with the podcast. And I wanted to have people on here to really have more of a conversation about specific things. Not really an interview style where I'm asking a bunch of questions, but really just two people, two contractors talking about different aspects of business and what that means to us. So Robert came on, we're going to be talking about being intentional. I know Robert's very much about being intentional in everything that he does. I am as well. So I'm excited to have this conversation. I hope you stick around and listen because I think there's going to be a lot of gold nuggets in here. So Robert, what's your thoughts on intention, being intentional? Like what's the 30,000 foot view for Robert?

Okay. Yeah. And that's across the board. That's not just business, right? I mean, you're the type of person who's very intentional in every aspect of your life.

Well, I mean, knowing a little bit about you and your background, I've known you for a couple years now. I mean, I know that, and I've seen your kind of come up, if you will, in your business. And I know that of all the people that I know personally, you're probably one of the most... intentional people that I've met.

So what does that mean? I don't think people fully understand this concept of being intentional. You probably are more intense about being intentional than I am. You have more purpose behind it. But I think most people, and this is a generalization, obviously, but I think most people react to their day every day. Like they wake up, yeah, they have an agenda like, hey, I need to get these jobs done. I need to call these people back. But for most people, they're just reacting to the day. Would you agree or disagree with that statement?

So what do you think as a society, how is that? How have we gotten to that? Because I don't believe like way back in the day, you know, I don't care how far you go back caveman times or whatever. Like, I think over time we've gotten more and more lax. What do you think is the cause of that? Like, how do we get to that point as a society where we're just reacting all the time?

Yeah, I mean, I think that's fair. Would you, I think me personally, I believe that a lot of it is just because of the distractions, right? I mean, obviously in caveman times, all you had to worry about was don't get eaten by a dinosaur, depending on if you believe they were around that same time, but don't get eaten by a dinosaur, kill the food and then cook it, you know, and that was like the things you had to worry about. Now, from whenever we wake up first thing in the morning, and I'm guilty of this as well, like I had to purposely, and here again, being intentional, I had to put this into my routine. So the first hour when I wake up, I can't look at my phone. Like I just, I'm not allowed to look at my phone. I do my, more of my, you know, visualization, meditation, prayer time. That stuff happens the first hour before I look at my phone because I know the second I look at my phone, I'm distracted. I got email notifications. Facebook notifications, all these different things that can distract me. Just like this morning, for example, as soon as I jump on Facebook, I usually jump on there and look and see if there's any posts in the contractor groups. And, you know, and I'll respond to some messages and stuff. But as soon as I get in that mode, I'll look up and 20 minutes later, I've been scrolling through Facebook. You know, I've been scrolling through different things because I just got distracted with some, you know, a video or a post or something. And I think that's like... Our attention span is so short now that we almost don't even know how to pay attention and be intentional with our daily lives. I mean, what's your thoughts on all that?

Well, I have mine next on my nightstand. And that's just because I use the alarm function. I mean, that's really the only thing. I've been looking for a like a Bluetooth alarm that I could actually have the alarm on my nightstand and put my phone away from my nightstand. But that's I know the kind of the route you're going down. And I I'm like right there with you. I just haven't successfully removed my phone from the nightstand yet.

So is that like, I mean, like you physically, you're not allowing yourself to take your phone into the bedroom. Like you've put up this kind of invisible barrier where it's not allowed. I'm just kind of getting an idea of like how intentional you are about this.

makes sense. Yeah. I struggle in the evening. I think this is, obviously we didn't plan this, but I think it's a great... These two things, I think, really set the entire day, the first hour in the morning and the hour before you go to bed. I've made the intention of not being on my phone the last hour before I go to bed. In other words, I'll read a little bit and kind of decompress before I go to bed. I mean, obviously, you can add in all the other studies about blue screen and having dopamine hits before you go to bed and how it prevents you from getting good night's sleep. Even if you take all that stuff away. Just from trying to decompress for the day, I've tried to do that. And that's one area where I struggle is the hour before I go to bed because I am on my phone. And even though I say, I'm just going to get on for five minutes, Robert, I'm just going to get on for five minutes and check my notifications. And then 45 minutes later, I'm still on it, right? So I like the idea of not having it in your bedroom. I think for me, I'm probably going to start with it. just by putting the charger and everything on my dresser, which is at the other end of the bedroom, and see how that works. I may have to move it out into the office. And then if that doesn't work, I may have to put it in my safe or something. I don't know. That's trying to keep me from doing it. But the first hour, no phone. The last hour before the bed, no phone. I think if people just do that, if that's all they did in their routine, their daily routine, like you said. it would probably change the entire day. I mean, do you agree with that?

Yeah, absolutely. Every morning that I don't do my routine, I'm always slower to start the day. It always takes me longer to get motivated. If I don't do my morning routine,

example, my alarm goes off at 5 a. m. And that's from 5 to 6 is my hour of no, that's my getting ready. Well, this morning, the alarm went off at 5 a. m. I've been taking some allergy medicines and it's been kind of knocking me out a little bit. So this morning I turn off my alarm. I say, I'm going to lay here for two seconds. 50 minutes later, I wake up because I fell back asleep and I just wasted that whole time of getting ready, right? So now I am in like, oh, I'm, you know, groggy and got to get going and try to get my day started right now because I didn't prep myself. And I think this is important that we need to go down too, but this is really about prepping yourself to be able to handle the day ahead. And if you don't, it's just like exercising. If you're not exercising, you're not getting stronger, you're not getting healthier. You have to prep your mind and you have to prep your thoughts around what's going to happen that day. I think this is all fascinating stuff. I've done a lot of research and stuff on it. I'm not the greatest at applying all of these in my life. I'm more of a... I'm very much a habit-based person. I started using an app on my phone to track my daily habits. And I highly recommend this if you're listening and you don't track your habits at all. I highly, highly, highly recommend you track your habits because you will realize that after a period of time of like how many things you say you want to do and you're not actually doing them after a period of time. You know, I can look at my habit tracker. And whenever I see, you know, if I have a really good week, like where everything's clicking, I'm getting a lot done, very productive. I go back and look at my habits and I'm hitting all my habits. I'm drinking my water. I'm getting up on time. I'm getting six, you know, eight hours of sleep. I'm exercising. I'm doing all these things that I've set. And it shows in my productivity level. It shows where I'm actually having success. But if I'm having a bad day or a bad week and I go back and look, I'm like, oh, I didn't even do half my habits. I didn't get to sleep on time. I didn't exercise. I didn't do these things. So, I mean, I don't know about you if you track habits or not. Is that something you do or no?

Well, just to clarify on what I track on the habits, I mean, obviously I'm tracking good habits. I'm not really tracking bad habits. But there's things like, am I hydrating? Am I drinking my gallon of water a day? Am I exercising? Am I getting up on time? Am I getting the six to eight hours of sleep? Am I meditating? Am I reading in the Bible? Am I... writing down 20 new ideas. Because that's an exercise I've recently started is every morning trying to write down 20 new ideas. And that's really just to create, to get creativity and kind of a goal setting thing in place. And so things like that where, and it's just with the habit tracker app and you guys can go on and there's like, there's probably 15 different habit tracker apps, but basically it's like just a little checkbox. So you just log into the app, check. Did you hydrate? Yes. Did you meditate? Yes. And it tracks it each day. I would recommend looking into that if you're listening to this and you're wanting to figure out how you can optimize your time. I would recommend downloading a habit tracker app on your phone and really just doing it for a week to see how well you are at running your routine. Because I believe that most people think in their mind that they're doing better with their routine than they actually are. Do you think that's, I mean, what's your thoughts on that?

Yeah. And there's lots of journals that do that stuff as well, right? Like you, you put in there and I've, I don't remember if you were on the trip that I went, we went with a group down to Nashville. Were you on that trip?

We went to, we went and we saw a kind of a, I wouldn't say he's a business coach, more of like a life coach kind of person. And he had this little booklet. It was like those little notepads that you would put in your pocket, just like a little, I don't know, two by four inch spiral bound notebook. He had one made up that had like habits, essentially habit tracker. And you would do that every day. You would write it down in this little notepad. So it's essentially, it does the exact same thing as the phone app, except it's not on the phone. So I agree with what you're saying in terms of... if we put habit tracker on your phone, then you're going to be more likely to be on your phone, you know, mess around your phones and it could be a distraction. So I think anyway, as long as you're tracking your habits of some kind, either on paper or on a phone, if you're disciplined, you'd be surprised at how much your daily routine will either change for the positive or how much you will realize you're not doing what you think you're doing. Like it'd be a wake up call.

yeah,100% agree. I wanted to share a story that kind of like what you just said. And then I want to touch on mindfulness because I think that's a good route to go in. But I had an electrician at one time that I was using. He was a subcontractor of mine. Great guy. I know his family, you know, just great person overall. And his electricians do great work. I mean, in terms of what they do, they're phenomenal. But he was always distracted. and very poorly used. I mean, he was not intentional with his time. And so the phone was ringing all the time. You know, it would take a month to get invoiced. I'd call him. He wouldn't call back for three days. And I'm like, dude, I'm trying to schedule. Like, I need to know what time you're going to be there. When's your guy's going to show up to do this, you know, stuff. Well, he calls me one day. He's like, hey, man, I want to take you to lunch. I was like, all right, cool. I'm not going to turn down a free lunch. So we went to the restaurant, the sit-down restaurant. And while we're there talking, His phone would ring, right? Because he didn't have it on silent. And he had his phone sitting on the table, right? Which instantly, if you ever watch Simon Sinek, he talks about this, about what does that mean when you have your phone in your hand and stuff. And the phone rings. And I'm not like, oh, you know, I have to have 100% of your attention. Like, I'm that important. I mean, I understand it's business. You know, there may be this emergency or something, time sensitive. And he picks up the phone and it was like a customer. Like he's answering a customer's call. Like a new client, not even an existing one. And he like does his little thing and he gets off. He's like, oh, sorry. I, you know, I had to take that or something. I don't remember what he said. A few minutes later, it rings again. He takes the call again. So finally, after like two or three times of that happening over like a 30,45 minute period, I said, hey man, can I just tell you something? He's like, yeah, what's up? I said, you asked me to come to lunch today because you're trying to build our relationship, right? You, you, you value my business and you're trying to, to get me to. to keep using you. And he goes, yeah, I mean, that's basically, I said, so then why are you answering your phone during this meeting? Because what you're showing me right now is that you actually don't care about me or my business. I'm not important enough for you to turn off your phone for 45 minutes to an hour to have a conversation. And he was like, oh man, I'm so sorry. He took his phone and he'll turn it on silent and put it in his pocket. But that's exactly what we're doing. When we, like you're saying, we're like, we're telling everyone else around us. You're not important to us right now. This little black box or whatever color phone you have has all of our attention. And I think it's true. Like what we're talking about with routines. I mean, this little phone has now captured everyone's attention. So what I wanted to follow up with on what you said about mindful. And I think I didn't learn really about mindfulness until probably a year and a half ago, almost two years ago. I actually hired a coach to help me with my mindset because I had a lot of negative beliefs. I had a lot of head trash around certain things around money and what you can charge. And so I hired this, if you want to call him a head coach or mind coach, whatever, mindset coach. And he helped me some things. Now, he was more of like, this particular person was more along the lines of like a... you know, yoga, yogi type person, you know, more spiritual type, all that stuff, which I'm not going to get into on this show, but that's fine. But he was talking about mindfulness and he started introducing this to me. And I'm just curious before we kind of dive into this, what is your thought on mindfulness or being mindful?

Yeah, that's a much more in-depth explanation of what I was thinking. So, but you said the key word, which is awareness. If I had to simplify what mindfulness is, it's simply being aware of your thoughts throughout the day. So like if you're driving down the road, guy cuts you off in traffic, you know, your initial thought may be to throw up the number one, you know, best finger, yell at him, honk your horn, whatever. That's a reaction, right? Which is what you said. That's a reaction to the stimulus. But in mindfulness, you're aware that you're getting ready to have this reaction. And it's, you know, it's cognitively, cognitively. Is that how you say that? It's being cognizant of your, or cognate. I can't, I shouldn't use words that I don't know how to pronounce on the podcast. But it makes you aware of the fact that you're thinking this. And even if you say it, like even if you react, it's then after the fact of saying, oh, I just had a reaction. Like I just had some kind of reaction to a stimulus and now, you know, I don't want to have that reaction. So now I'm aware of the fact that I do that naturally. So maybe next time it happens, I may be more aware and be able to stop myself before that happens. Right. So that's kind of how I define mindfulness. And there's all kinds of things you can do. But one of the things that my mindset coach helped me with is that he gave me, it's just a simple piece of paper, you know. Excel form, whatever, and it has columns. And it's basically a mindfulness tracker. It's just like a habit tracker. And you would, at the end of each day, you would simply write down, like, here's an event that happened. Here was the thought that I had. And what was my, did I catch it ahead of time? Did I react? Whatever. And you just start tracking that. And you'll be surprised of like, what you go through in one day's period of how many times we just react without thinking, right? Because it's a habit or it's just what we're used to. And so I think people would be, I think most people, if they're still listening to this podcast right now, we're 30 minutes in, if they're still listening to us, I think most people would be shocked, like really shocked. Because I'm pretty sure, I don't know this for a fact, Robert, but I'm pretty sure you're the same as me. I think most people would be shocked at how much energy goes into being intentional throughout my day. Like, I'm super intentional about little things that don't even matter. Like, how I open a door. Like, I'll be intentional about, am I opening the door the most efficient way? Am I standing in the right spot? If I'm out in public, am I in someone's way? Like, I'm constantly nonstop. My brain is going. an intentional manner of how can I be more aware? How can I be more grateful? Whatever. Like, how can I be, you know, less of a burden to someone else just constantly on? Like the brain wakes up in the morning, I turn on the switch, and then I'm very intentional about everything I do all day long. I'm going to guess that you're kind of the same way, but why don't you tell me?

You're not, Robert.

And you don't have to think about it either. Well, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I couldn't agree more with that. I like to use the illustration. Anytime I can talk about shooting, I always like to bring this up. So I think, you know, I do competitive shooting, but in shooting, if you're starting out, there's, there's a lot of different things. You got to draw a pistol from the holster. You got to aim, you have to reload, you have to move, like run, you have to pull a trigger, all these different actions, right? A lot of people, when they're, when they're starting out, they want to just shoot fast. But you have to get the fundamentals down. You have to get the big things down. So in terms of in competition, it's all based off of time and scoring. So you have to be quick and accurate, right? But the main thing is time. And so the two biggest things that you do in shooting that take up the most time are drawing your pistol and reloading magazines. Those are the two most time-consuming things. And so when you're starting out, You're not trying to shave a tenth of a second or a thousandth of a second off of your, you know, how fast you pull a trigger. You're trying to save a second or two seconds off of your draw. And so you focus on the big things first, which is kind of what you were talking about. Like you don't look at the whole thing like, oh, I have to, you know, I shot a match and this guy that beat me was 10 seconds faster on this one stage. I got to shave 10 seconds off my time. You don't start with trying to pull a trigger faster because that may only save you a hundredth of a second, maybe even a thousandth of a second. You start with the big chunks, which is drawing because that could save you one to two seconds right there. And then reloading could save you one to two seconds. So you could save four seconds on two different actions by practicing those two things and getting really good at them. When you get to the higher level of shooting, when you're up at the top of the food chain, if you will, now you start diving down and trying to shave a tenth of a second off of your draw. Now you're trying to save a thousandth of a second off how fast you pull the trigger. But what's interesting in shooting is that 90% of your time savings is in non-shooting activities. It's not actually pulling the trigger. which is what most people think. And so in business, a lot of us think that hitting a home run, like you were saying earlier with baseball, is what saves you in business. So we're trying to hit home runs every time. In baseball, it's getting base hits. Base hits wins game, right? In shooting, it's the non-shooting activities that shave time. And I think a lot of contractors and a lot of people get hung up on this huge... Like, oh, I got to do this massive thing right here. I got to land this one job that's going to be a $100,000 gross profit type job. But they're losing money on all these little $10,000 jobs that they're not doing right. They're not pricing right. Because they're trying to swing for this one big job. And they don't have good processes in place. They don't have a good team. And so they get that $100,000 gross profit job. And they waste like $30,000 of that through inefficiencies and all of the things that they would have perfected if they had practiced it on those little $10,000 jobs. You know what I mean? Does that make sense? Or am I just like randomly talking in circles?

Three weeks later, they call you.

Absolutely. 100%. I mean, I think we all know what you're talking about, like trying to fill in gaps. But you have to be super clear on that, right? It's like, hey, Mr. Customer. I'll give you a thousand dollar discount, but you have to decide like by tomorrow and we have to start in three days. If we can't start in three days, then I can't do the job for you and there's no discount. Like that's being intentional with how you're talking to your client and not just like thinking that because they called you like, hey, we're in a hurry. We really need to get this done. And you go, okay, I'll do it. We can do it. We can start tomorrow and they don't call you back for a week. Like just because they think you think they're in a hurry, that means they're going to like... What does hurry mean? Like to them, a hurry may mean we need to get this done in the next month. You're thinking they want it started tomorrow, right? Being intentional with how you ask them questions and how you clarify what they're actually talking about. There's so much of that is really more communication, right? Like being effective at communication, right? But it's the intention behind that is what's important. Are you intentional with every single thing you do in your business? Are you intentional with how you interact with your clients? Are you intentional with how you interact with your team, how you lead? Like all of those things come down to one, how serious are you about your business? Like my last podcast or two podcasts ago was three reasons you're not winning. And the number one reason people don't win is because they don't decide to win. They simply don't make the decision in their mind that this is it. Like I'm all in on this job, this business. No matter what it takes to get there, I'm all in. And when you have that type of mindset, then everything kind of falls in place of like, well, if I want to be all in and I want to win, what does it take to get there? What does it take to win in this business? And then you start looking at it. Well, I have to be intentional with everything I do. It's not going to fall on your lap. You're not going to wake up one day and everything's fixed. Everything in your business that happens is your fault. Whether it's good or bad, it's your fault. And when you have that intentional outlook on how things happen, you'll start to see almost with like, you almost like have an out of body experience where you can start to see how your daily actions are either helping you get to that point or they're hurting you and keeping you from getting to that point. Would you agree with that statement of like, when you have like a full 100% understanding of being intentional? that you can kind of see how that plays out in your life.

Well, I'm sure you've read books and stuff people talk about. Is what I'm about to do going to get me closer to my goals or not? Right? Like that's just a very simple question to ask yourself. I'm getting ready to jump on. I'm working on the job. I got a 10 minute, you know,15 minute break or I'm on my lunch break. I got time. Now I can jump on TikTok and get caught up on all my TikToks for the next hour. Or can I return some phone calls back to clients? Or can I get some materials ordered? Right? There's like being mindful and having the intention, the intentionality, if that's even a word, I don't know. But being intentional about how you're going to spend that time and being aware of that. Is what I'm going to do going to further my path to my goal or not? Are we going to have bad days? 100%. Things going to happen in life that knock you off? Yeah. I recently lost a good friend in an accident. And that knocked me off. I mean, it was a good three to four week detour of my daily routines because I was struggling with that. I was going through a depression. I was grieving. That stuff happens in life, but you can't stay there. Even while I'm not being productive, even while I'm conscious that I'm wasting my time each day, it's still in the back of my mind of, okay. You're allowed to grieve. You're allowed to go through this process, but you're not allowed to stay here. You can't stay here forever. You're allowed to have a few days, a few weeks, whatever, to get through this process, but you can't live there the rest of your life.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we could go on for hours, Robert, I think about this topic. We're coming up on 50 minutes. So I want to stay under an hour. I just had a couple more questions for you. And I always like to ask this question or these two questions. One is, what would you say to a contractor or anybody listening about, just in general, about being intentional? Like maybe a tip, a takeaway, a thought just around being intentional in your life.

Yeah, that's a great takeaway, especially checking the emails. An hour difference is not going to make all the difference. An hour later is not going to make all the difference. So that's some really good advice. Last question, Robert. What book are you reading right now? Or what's one that you would recommend?

Yeah, I've read that book. It's a really good book. It's been a while since I read it. I may have to go back and read it again. Well, Robert, I appreciate you being on the show and having this great conversation. Hopefully it's been helpful for those of you that have been listening. Give me your feedback. Leave us a comment. Go and let me know. Come to our social platforms, our Facebook groups. You know where to find us. You can search for Hammer and Grind Podcast. I'm on TikTok, Discord, Facebook, Instagram, all those Hammer and Grind Podcasts. You can reach out to me. If you want to see how we can connect and help you in your business. Until next time, guys, I appreciate you tuning in. You know what to do. Be the best version of you.