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. Do you know what the top two things that will cost you the most money in your lifetime are? There's two things that you will spend more money on than anything else in your life. And those two things are number two is taxes. You will pay more taxes than pretty much anything you'll ever do in your life. But number one is where it gets interesting. Number one is not knowing. You will lose more money. You will pay a higher price financially for not knowing something. than anything else in life. Now, what does that even mean, Brad? Like, what are you talking about? If you don't know something, if you don't, if you get a credit card and you don't know that the interest rate is 24,25%, and then you go buy something that you can't afford to pay off right away and you're making monthly payments, that interest rate is going to kill you because you're going to be paying an absorbent amount of interest through the life of that. of paying that off. If it takes you a year or two to pay it off, you're going to be paying lots of interest. So you didn't know what the interest rate was because you didn't look at the fine print. And as a result of not knowing, you paid a higher price. You paid a higher interest rate than maybe if you looked for a different card that had a lower interest rate. That's a very primitive example. What I'm talking about in business for contractors is not knowing what to do in their business. For me, this took nine years to figure this out. I didn't know that you should be job costing jobs. I didn't even know what job costing was. I had no idea what that was. What's job costing? What the heck does that even mean? Some of you may not even know what it means. Job costing is simply doing a job and at the end of the job, looking at your numbers, looking at your expenses, looking at your payroll, your labor hours, your subcontractors, looking at everything that it costs to produce that job. and comparing that to your estimate of what you did to bid that job, which you estimated to do that job. So, for example, if you thought you had 100 man hours and then you end up with 120 man hours, what happened? Where did the extra 20 man hours come from? Because you don't know. Maybe you underbid it. Maybe you thought it was only going to take 100, but in reality, it's 120. Maybe your guys had a bad day. a bad week. Maybe one of your guys is going through a divorce or a traumatic event and he's only working at 50% because he's not there mentally. You don't know what these things are unless you go back and look at it and figure it out. And then being able to approach your team and say, hey, what happened here? I had 100 hours figure. We're at 120. Where'd the extra 20 come from? They may say, well, you know, you always bid these jobs. You always bid installing a new door and you only give us four hours. statistically, it takes us six hours to install these doors. So we're losing two hours on every door. And there was 10 doors in this job. So, I mean, there's your 20 hours right there. And if that's a simple looking at it, like, okay, well, I'm bidding that four hours, you're taking six. What's the difference? Where's the two hour difference at? What's happening? And then you can work through that. And then once you understand and figure that out, now, you know, going forward, you need to bid six hours for doing that. Or maybe your guys have been installing it wrong and you didn't know it. Maybe there was a shortcut that you knew and never told them and they didn't understand it and it could shave an hour off. I mean, there's unlimited possibilities of where this could go, but you wouldn't know that because you never job costed. You never sat down and actually looked at your numbers. I talk to a lot of contractors on a regular basis every single day and a majority of them don't do job costing. an overwhelming majority don't do job costing. And more importantly, they don't do it on every single job. And you have to. You have to do it on every single job. And this is just a small portion. This podcast is not about job costing. This is just one little tiny aspect of it, of not knowing. So if you don't understand these things, like if you've never heard of job costing and you continue to sell jobs, and you're selling jobs at 100, you're doing, you're selling the same job at 100 hours every single time, every time it's taking 120 hours, you're losing 20 hours of labor on every single job. But yet you didn't know that because you never job cost it. Right? So that's just, again, it's a small example of one tiny aspect of your business. I didn't know this for like nine years. And some people are like, well, that's crazy. How do you not know that? Well, that's because I started back in 2009. The internet was, you couldn't get on the internet and search for Facebook groups and hire coaches like you can now. Like that stuff didn't exist. You could go and buy a book or rent a book from the library or whatever. You could find a mentor who's had experience. Maybe they do or don't know how to do stuff. But it was all like basically handed down through very small channels. Today, there's so much information out there. If you don't know these things, I would be shocked. But the reality of it is most people, most contractors don't know this because they never invest in themselves. They never actually get on a journey to self-mastery. They understand a skill, a trade. They understand how to build X, how to do X, and they believe that's all they need to know. They don't... go out and learn leadership skills. They don't go out and learn sales skills, customer service skills, marketing skills, how to create systems, how to do things properly. They don't go out and learn that stuff. It just comes to them naturally through trial and error. I'm not knocking learning things the hard way, the school of hard knocks, right? What I'm telling you is that I learned a school of hard knocks for a very long time. And in the end, it cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not even a million dollars in lost revenue. One, because I didn't know where the problems were in my business, so I couldn't fix them. I didn't know how much to charge. I wasn't charging correctly. I didn't know how to be a good leader in the sense of hiring. Coming from the military, I knew how to get stuff done. I know how to attack a hill. I know how to motivate people to do that. But I didn't know how to deal with... someone who's got a personal problem at home and it's affecting their work. I didn't know how to do that because in the military, that stuff doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you're going through a divorce. It doesn't matter if something happens. Your mission is to attack that hill, you do it. No questions asked, you just do it. So I didn't know that about leadership until I started learning and experiencing it through hiring people and then they end up quitting because they were stressed out or didn't want to work for me. Those are things that can be learned ahead of time to shorten that process. With the amount of technology today, things like this podcast, Facebook groups, books, YouTube, there's so much content out there that you can consume. There's really no reason not to be good at your business, except for this one thing. It's what's holding most contractors back, and that is their ego. Their ego is what's preventing them. from actually looking at themselves in the mirror and saying, you know what? I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I don't have this figured out. I need to go out and figure this stuff out. And I can figure it out on my own. Sure. It'll just take you three or four more years longer. Or you can find somebody, read a book, watch a YouTube video, listen to a podcast, hire a business coach. There's thousands of different ways you can do it to learn this process. Now, part of this... podcast topic I'm talking about came from a post in one of those free contractor groups. It's a pretty large contractor group. It was like 40,000 contractors in this Facebook group. And it's one of those like just a general contractor, you know, get in there and everybody gives advice. And it's not, the people that own the group are not trying to sell anything. It's just a free group. What's amazing to me is the amount of bad information that's given out on a daily basis. I mean, really bad information. There was a comment made, a post made the other day, and the guy was asking about markup. And he says, is 20% markup on materials a lot? Is that a lot or is that not enough? He's like, normally I don't mark up materials. But if I'm running around picking up materials, I feel like I should maybe mark it up. Now, if you've listened to me for more than a second, you know I'll tell you you should mark up everything 100%. The default answer is 100% markup on materials. That's the default. This guy's asking if 20% is too much. And then you look at the comments and about 80% of the comments are saying either one of two things. That's too much or that's about right. Some of them were, that's a little low. Most of the comments were, that's about what I charge. I charge 25%. I charge 30%. I don't charge anything. You're ripping people off if you mark up materials. Everyone's got these opinions on what they should do. And there was about a handful, five or six people that were like, no, that's way too low. You're screwing yourself. You should be closer to 80,100 percent, so on and so on. But the reality of it is you have people that don't know. They don't know how to properly run a business. And they're teaching other people who are just starting out or know less than them. and taking their information as gospel and then using that in their business. And all they're doing is going out of business faster. That's all they're doing because they didn't know the proper markup for materials. So I made a post about this and it was more of a rant. It was like, this group is ridiculous because the sheer number of bad advice that's giving, and I'm talking about financial advice. that's given to contractors is going to hurt them in their business. It's reckless. It really is reckless. Because you have idiots who don't know how to properly mark up and run a business, giving advice to people that don't know any better. And then those people are going out with false confidence, meaning they think the information they're getting is real and they're applying it in their business and all they're doing is shooting themselves in the foot. So there's this whole void. of contractors who don't know what they're doing, who are advising everyone else on what to do. And that cost of not knowing can literally be hundreds of thousands of dollars, as was the case for me. It's a speculation. I can't figure it up exactly. But if I go back and look at how I underestimated, if I would have job cost and figured out that I was way too cheap and underestimating and not even like not charging enough, like underestimating how long jobs took. then it would be easily in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. But take that times nine or 10 years on an average of $100,000 a year in lost opportunity or lost revenue, that's close to a million dollars. And when I learned this a few years ago for the first time, I felt sick. It made me sick to learn that I had been screwing my family that much for that long. Now, see, being in the military, I'm very persistent, very strong-willed. So when you get someone who's very persistent and is ignorant, i. e. not knowing, what you end up with is somebody who refuses to give up, but then puts themselves through misery for an extended long period of time. Because I let my ego shroud this reality that I needed to get help in my business. And as soon as I did, as soon as I got help in my business, everything changed like that. A snap. Everything changed. Because I had eyes from the outside looking in, peeking in behind the curtains of my business and saying, yo, Brad, yeah, you suck at running the business. Like what you're doing, you think you're like the higher price contractor. You're actually the one who's the low baller and you don't even realize it. That's the reality of what's going on here. Most contractors are not charging anywhere near enough what they should be. Most. And then you hear the excuses of, oh, but everybody in my town is cheap. And I live in a town of 50,000 people and there's 40 contractors and all 40 of them charge half of what I charge. So therefore, I can't mark up my materials anymore. Guys, that's bullshit. It's straight up bullshit. That is your mindset stopping you from doing what you need to do in your business. I'm not saying it's going to be easy. I'm not saying you just raise your prices by 30% and you go out there and everything is going to be great. But that's just one element of it. You have to get good at sales. And I don't care how good you are in person. I don't care how much people love you. I don't care everyone thinks you're the greatest. All I got to do is get in front of them and shake their hand and everybody falls in love with me. Again, that's more bullshit. That's it. You need to learn how to actually sell. Selling is when you can take something that's too expensive and make a sale out of it. That's when you know you're a true salesman. When someone tells you, Brad, I don't want to spend that much money. My budget was $20,000 and you're telling me it's going to be $30,000 and I don't want to spend that much money. And when you sell that customer at $30,000, now you can say you know how to sell. But just because you're too cheap and you think because you get in front of them that you're going to sell them, now you're a good salesman. That's a lie. I'm saying this because that's exactly what I believed. I literally believed I was a good salesman because I would close 90% of my jobs. All I had to do was get out in front of them, shake their hands, and everybody loved me. And that made me a good salesman. And then I actually got real sales training and learned that, oh, maybe I'm not as good as I thought I was. And it turns out I wasn't. It's easy to be a good salesman when you're cheap. Because really all you are is an order taker. You come in there, they expect it to be $30,000 and you're like, I know. Now Cindy, this is probably going to be more than what you think. So don't be mad at me, but I can do this job for $20,000. And they're like laughing on the inside because they thought they were going to pay $30,000 and they just saved $10,000 because you don't know what the hell you're doing. That's the cost of not knowing. That scenario just cost you $10,000 because you didn't know. what you should be charging, and you didn't know how to actually sell that job. So that's the cost of not knowing. And this applies across every aspect of your business. I had a coaching call or a discovery call rather with a potential client a few weeks ago or last week, actually. And he's interested in joining the Profit Club. He was taking care of some financial things first before he could make that commitment. But when I asked him about... joining and why he called and he said he'd been listening to the podcast for a while and I asked him, you know, what's the holdup? And he said, well, honestly, I felt like a failure. I felt like getting help meant that I failed. And I was taken back by that. But it's actually, it's an aha moment for me because that's what a lot of people believe is that getting help in your business equates to being a failure. It equates to you not... being able to figure it out on your own, and now you need help. They equate it to like you're trying to run a marathon and you get 100 yards from the finish line and you can't finish and you collapse on the road and somebody comes out of the stands and helps you across the finish line. And so now you're a failure because you couldn't do the whole marathon on your own. I mean, that's what people believe, but it is the complete opposite of that. Getting help would be the equivalent of hiring a running coach who trains you on how to run long distances, who goes to the track and they get their timer out and they say, do these exercises, lift these kind of weights, do these types of things that build muscle, do this, this, this, and this. And they train you and they record you and they push you and they show you proper techniques to running and they show you how to breathe properly. And they show you all of these things to help you be better at running. And then you're able to cross the finish line on your own. How can that possibly be a failure? It's a mindset shift in your brain. It's a mental block. It's an ego thing. When contractors refuse to get help in their business, it is a ego protecting them. It's their ego protecting them from getting help. And that's it. Like that is the it. That's it. Every high performing athlete, every high performing businessman, everyone who has ever had any level of moderate success has had people in their corner rooting for them, mentoring them, teaching them, coaching them to get there. I don't care who it is. Pick anybody. And I guarantee you they've had people in their corner helping them. And it's not just like, it's not just hiring a coach. It can be watching videos. It can be reading books. It can be joining groups and asking questions, right? There's multitude of this. But what I'm telling you is that you will have much quicker success if you hire someone who knows the right steps to take. I promise you, I have a call next week. By the time you listen to this, I have a call a day after. This podcast drops on Monday. The next day, I have a call with a coaching group that I'm probably going to hire. It's going to cost me $6,800 to invest in this group for 13 weeks. I'm going to pay $6,800 to hire a group for 13 weeks of training, coaching, and accountability to learn how to do one specific thing in my business. Because I understand the value of investing in myself, investing in knowledge, and what that does. When I invest in myself, my net worth goes up. My self-worth goes up. Your net worth is equated to your self-worth. I need to write that down. That's golden. I just made that up. Your net worth is equal to your self-worth. And if you don't know what you're doing, you don't have high self-worth. You're out there pissing in the wind, figuring stuff out, putting out fires every day. You make a plan on your schedule. I'm going to do this, this, this, and this today. And then you get Monday morning or whatever day it is. You wake up, you go to the office, and right off the bat, you get a call. Hey, boss, we just got here to the job and the materials aren't here. You're like, what? They're supposed to be there yesterday. Yeah, they're not here. oh, crap, now I got to figure this out. Let me call. And you call them and then they don't have it and it's not there and you got to get in your truck and now you got to drive an hour to the vendor and pick it up and you take it to the job site and deliver it and on the way, a customer calls and has a question. And then all of a sudden, it's five o 'clock, the end of the day, and you didn't accomplish anything that you wanted to do that day. Because that's how most of you operate on a daily basis. It's just reacting to everything that happens to you. And you think, for whatever reason, that that is the perfect plan to grow and scale your business and scale your pocketbook is by reacting to the day every day. And then whenever you have some time available, it might be a month or so, but whenever you have the perfect time where you're not tired and the kids aren't screaming and you just happen to have an extra hour of time and you have the energy. You may watch an hour's worth of YouTube videos and then you believe that that's going to give you the edge that's going to change everything in your business. This is what we think, guys. This is the craziness. It's crazy. It's crazy that we think we're going to figure it out on our own. There's 100,000 different things you have to figure out on your own in your business. And you're going to somehow figure it out in your spare time. Because you don't want to spend some money. What if I spend a couple thousand dollars and it doesn't work out? Well, what if you spend $5,000 and it does work out and you make an extra hundred grand and you save 20 hours a week of your time and your life actually gets better? What if that happens? Why are we living in this belief of, well, what if it doesn't work out? What if I just waste my money? Again, what if it does? What if it's the best decision you ever made in your entire life? That's what I'm asking you is what if it works out? What if you actually get the information that you need and then you're able to apply it in your business and then you actually create income for yourself so you can hire more people, pay them more, buy more tools. Now you can go on vacations. You can do all these different things. One of the clients in the profit club just got back from a three-week vacation. He's been able to build up his business good enough that he can leave for three weeks. He went overseas to other countries, spent a great time with his family for three weeks, and his business operated without him. Yeah, there were a couple little tiny hiccups, but they figured it out. They worked it out. He didn't come back to a business that was burnt to the ground. That's the type of stuff I'm talking about. That's what we all dream of getting to, but then we never want to actually... take the risk of investing in themselves to actually figure it out, to get the help they need. So the cost of not knowing is exponentially. It's in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. It could be in the millions of dollars, even over a short few years. My question to you is, what are you going to do about this information? Are you going to continue to hope and pray? that you land this one big job because that's what everybody thinks. They think they're going to, if I could just get this home run, if I could just land this really big job where I'm going to make $50,000 profit on this one job and that's going to solve everything for me and then I'll be set for life. No, it won't because you still have all the bad habits. Even if you get a windfall of cash on one job, you'll blow it. You'll get a bunch of money. You'll think you're sitting high. You'll go buy a stupid $80,000 pickup truck, have $1,000 a month payments or whatever, and you'll blow it all. And then six months from now, it'll all be gone. I know this because I had similar situations. Yeah, I'd be a little bit responsible. I'd put a tiny bit back. I'd pay off some debt. And then I'd just go get more debt because I think that's what I needed to do. I needed to scale my business. We all know we got to... Scale. We got to add more people and scale, scale, scale, scale, scale, because that's how you make all the riches. That's another lie. That's another straight up lie. I know one man operations making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year profit. I know three, four man operations making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in profit. I know companies that have 30,40 employees doing millions of dollars and the owner doesn't make jack shit. they make less than $100,000 because they believe the lie that you have to scale in order to make money. And all they did was scale a turd. If you have a turd of a business and then you scale it, you just have a bigger turd. And bigger turds are harder to flush, just so you know. So that's what you're doing. You're just trying to scale turds because you refuse to take a look in the mirror and say, you know what? I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I actually need to figure it out and take steps and action to get there. The second side of that coin is once you have the knowledge, once you do know what to do, now you have to take action. You have to actually take action. And the way you get massive results in your business is by taking massive action. If you learn a new piece of information and then you just sit on it or you just halfway do it, you only spend an hour a week implementing this new information, you're going to get an hour's worth a week of benefit from it. But if you take that new information and then you execute on it extremely violently and massively, you will have a result that's way beyond what you think is possible. Guys, most businesses are 12 months away from success. I don't know if you understand how close you are. A lot of us think we're far away. A lot of us look at our situation and we see, okay, I have three people working for me. I'm only making $60,000 a year. And that's the most I'm ever going to make with three guys. So I got to hire more people. It's probably going to take another six months to hire one person and that'll get me to four and blah, blah, blah. I need to grow to a three team, you know, three teams of three, just so I can make $150,000. And that, you know, you're like, that's probably going to take me like two years to get there. The reality of it is you can, some people can get there in 90 days. Like you're literally 90 days away from having success in your business. That's way beyond what you thought was even possible. I know this because I have clients in the Profit Club that have done this even since January of this year. I have several people in my group that have made well over $100,000 in additional profits. Not profit, additional profit, which is pure profit because they're making more money in less than three or four months. So you're, I mean, you're... You're 90 days away from having a business that actually works for you. But you're probably three years away from coming to the conclusion that you need to get help. And so for three years, you're going to lose the potential of several hundred thousand dollars, all because your ego says, I know how to do this. I don't need help. And what if I spend this money and it doesn't work? And that's what's keeping you from having the level of success that you can and deserve to have. And you're only about 90 days away from that. I can't make that decision for you. I posted in this group about the one that was the group that was the guy was asking about 20% markup. And I made a long post, kind of a rant, kind of saying like, this is ridiculous, guys. If you don't know what the hell you're doing, don't give advice because you're hurting these new guys that are coming in. You're giving them terrible advice. And a lot of people are like, yeah, this is great. I love it. 100% need to be said. right on, agree with you. And then there was a people that were, well, how dare you say that we don't know what we're doing. And you're just a spammy marketer. You're just in here posting stuff because all you want to do is try and market yourself and you don't know what the hell you're doing. Nevermind the fact that I've had a business for 11 years, but I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just a spammy marketer. And that's the mindset of a lot of people is that this guy is a scam. He doesn't know what he's doing. I don't trust this. You know, all you got to do is find a mentor and you'll be fine. Blah, blah, blah. And that's all the stuff I believe too. I was that guy five years ago. I would see stuff about coaching and think it's a scam and they're going to take your money and you're not going to learn anything. And I've hired coaches where I didn't learn stuff. I felt like I didn't get my money's worth. So I'm not saying it doesn't happen. It does. But it's not as rampant as what most people believe. I could name off four different coaches off the top of my head, contractor coaches, that if you hired them would give you the same kind of success that if you hired me. So there's lots of good ones out there,100%. This podcast was not designed to be a sales of why you should hire me. It's to get you to open your eyes to the reality of not knowing what you're doing in your business is costing you dearly. significantly it's costing you. So here's what I want to do to close this out. I created a little calculator. Actually, I created it this week on a suggestion from somebody. There was a guy that I paid $1,000 to write, create six Facebook ads for me. I paid a guy $1,000, a copywriter. I gave him $1,000 to write six Facebook ads, like the actual copy, the part that you read. Some of you may think that's ridiculous. $1,000 for six articles? Dude, pay me $1,000 and I'll write you six articles. Ha ha ha ha. No, this guy's a professional. He's a professional copywriter. He does research on the market and what people think and believe and puts effort into it. And then he's going to produce these six Facebook ads for me. And then you know what? After I implement these and have some success, you know what I'm going to do next? I'm going to give him more money. I'm going to give him even more money to write some email copy for me. And then I'll probably give him even more money after that to write some stuff on my website. And then I'll probably give him more money after that. I look forward to the day I can give this guy $50,000 for his services because I know that that investment will net me a return of investment far greater than that $50,000 cost me. And a lot of you guys look at this as an expense. You look at investing in yourself as an expense. It's not an expense. It's an investment. Investments return money to you. An investment is you spend X amount and you get X amount back. That's an investment. So when you invest in yourself, when your self-worth goes up, it equals in net worth because you have the knowledge now to do the things in your business that equal money, equal profit. That's what an investment is. Stop looking at all this stuff as an expense. I talked to you guys on the phone. You want to join? Yeah, man, I'm excited. I want to do it. I want to do it, but I don't have the money right now. I got a lot of expenses coming up and I got to save up for those. I don't want to put it on a credit card because I just hate debt. I don't want to go in debt because it's an expense and I just don't want to do that. Give me three months, Brad. Give me three months and I'll come back with the money. And when I hear that, when I hear potential contractors tell me I'm interested, but I need to come up with the money, I know from experience,100% of the time, I'll never hear from those contractors again. And the reason is not because they don't want to join. It's because they will never produce the money to make the investment because they don't have the mindset, the correct mindset, and they don't know how the knowledge. How can someone who has not made the money in three years of being in business, now all of a sudden in a two to three month period, come up with the money when everything they've done prior to that has not produced money? And because I know that they're going to save up $2,000 towards the investment. And then three weeks after that, their car is going to break down, their truck's going to break down and they got to go spend that two grand that they saved up to fix the truck. Because again, they don't know what they're doing. And then they start back at square one. They got $0. And I reach out to them two months later. Hey, man, how's it going? How's business going? What's happening with you? Well, I had a setback. I had to start over. I had to spend this on the mix of my truck. So it's probably going to be another three months. That's cool. I understand, man. You know, I'm here when you're ready. Three months goes by, reach out to them. Well, I had a couple more issues. I had a couple guys quit and I had to go back out in the field. It's just been really tough this year and I just don't know if I'm going to be able to do it or not. Yeah. So the last five months that you haven't learned anything, you could have potentially made, I don't know, $40,000, $50,000, $100,000 in the last five months, additional profit. But because you don't want to take on a little bit of tiny debt and invest in yourself, now you've wasted potential $50,000, $100,000 in additional profit. because you don't know what you're doing. But somehow, because you don't know what you're doing, you're going to figure out on your own how to do it so that you can have the money so that you can invest in how to do it. Do you see how silly that sounds? Like how crazy the thought process is in this? You know, I created the $50,000 guarantee. I created a $50,000 guarantee if you join the Profit Club and you don't make an extra 50 grand in 12 months. I'll give you your investment back. The only reason I created that is because people think that it's a scam, that what I do is a scam. That's the only reason I created it. The reality of it is you're probably going to make way more than that, like a lot more than that. If you actually do the training and practice and do what you're supposed to do, you'll probably make way more than $50,000. But I have to kind of factor in the fact that some people are going to come in and not do anything. And then at the end, they're going to be like, hey, I didn't make 50 grand. I want my investment back. And I say, well, what did you, did you watch the training videos? Did you do this and that? Well, no, I really, I watched one of them. Oh, okay. So you didn't do anything then. And then you want your money back. Luckily that hasn't happened yet. Luckily I haven't, I haven't had to refund anybody because I know if they do this stuff, they're going to make more than $50,000 easily. Most people make their investment back on the very next job. About 70% of the people who join make the investment back on the first month. Within 30 days, they broke even on their investment. But, you know, hey, I'm going to spend another three months figuring out how to do it on my own. Guys, this is what the cost of not knowing is doing to your business. If you don't want to hire me or anyone else, that's fine. Listen to all the podcasts. Go join the free Facebook groups. Buy some books. Do something. Invest in yourself. Just invest in yourself. Hire other coaches. I don't care. If you're like, hey, I want to coach, but I hate your guts, Brad. I'll give you three other coaches' names. Just shoot me a message and I'll tell you who else you can hire. And they're good coaches. They'll help you. I have no problem giving out my competitors because they're not really competitors. That's the cost of not knowing. Sorry for the rant, guys. I didn't turn this into a sales pitch. I get super frustrated when I talk to contractors who are in desperate, dire situations and they want to do good for their family. And I say, listen, man, I can help you in your business. I can set you right. I can get you on the right course. Yes, there's a sizable investment, but I promise you, you'll get the money back plus a lot more. And the response I get is, well, I got to save up the money. And I know that's the curse. Zero,100% of the people that say, I got to save up the money and come back, never come back. It's not because they don't want to. It's because they never will have the ability to figure it out on their own. And that's heartbreaking, especially when I know the situation, when they're having financial troubles, when their marriage is on the rocks and stressed out, when they're missing time away from kids. It's heartbreaking to me. Believe it or not, I actually have feelings, guys. I do. I don't show them very much. But internally, my heart's breaking for these contractors because I want to help them. And they just can't let their ego, they can't turn off their ego for half a second and realize that it's possible. There is help. You just got to reach out forward and look. So I created this calculator. I'll throw it in the links. It's a very simple potential profit calculator. You throw in your markups and it will spit out what you would typically charge for your jobs. And then below that, it will spit out a number of what you could be making. And it should be an eye opener for a lot of you. Because a lot of you think you're getting good money and maxing out your profit and you're not. Some of you are not even halfway to where you could be. Some of you, if you actually did 100% markup on one job, like totally change your entire life, but you're scared to. You're scared to do it. And you got a bunch of mindset, limited beliefs that are keeping you from doing that. And that's what I help to do with contractors is remove those belief systems, provide you with a support system of other contractors who have gone there, done it, had success, and then provide you with all the training on how to do that. And it's ongoing. I just created a whole new dashboard this week for my... new members to have access to all the training information, tons of stuff in the works of providing even more value. So it's totally up to you. Totally up to you. But I'll put the links in the show notes for the calculator. And then guys, if you need help, like reach out to me, send me a direct message. You know where to find me on all the social media platforms, Hammer and Grind Podcasts, TikTok, Instagram. I'm on all the podcast platforms. iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, all of them or most of them. Just search for Hammer and Grind Podcast. Join my free Facebook group, the Contractor Profit Group. I go live in there twice a week with training and Q &As. It's the same live I go on TikTok twice a week for an hour at a time. It's two hours a week of free training. Lots of free things that I throw in these groups to try and help contractors. My goal is to help contractors. That's my goal. So I hope this didn't come across as me beating you up. But sometimes as contractors, we need to get our own heads out of our ass to be able to see what we need to do, what decisions to make. And hopefully that this is kind of a wake up call for you and you start taking action in your business. So guys, until next time, you know what to do. Be the best version of you.
