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. All right, on this podcast, this is going to be... one of those podcasts that I hope you bookmark and you come back and you listen to over and over again because I think this is going to be very valuable for a lot of you. That's my hope at least. We're going to be talking about mindset. So consider this your mindset masterclass. Okay, I've talked about mindset in different capacities in past podcasts, but I've really never deep dived into mindset, this topic, and that's what I want to do on this episode. We're going to be talking about three different aspects. We're going to be talking about growth mindset versus fixed mindset. We're going to be talking about limiting beliefs and how they affect us. And then I'm going to give you tips at the end on how to develop the right mindset. So that's what we're going to be going into. So buckle up because this might get pretty heavy and I got to share some stuff that I've never shared with anyone publicly before. So this should be a good one. So let's dive into the growth versus fixed mindset. This is based on the book by Carol Dweck called Mindset. It is a phenomenal book. I've mentioned it before. If you have not read or listened to this book, you absolutely need to add it. It is a must read to your library. Again, it's called Mindset by Carol Dweck. She's a PhD and she's done a ton of study on mindset, specifically in kids. and how we train kids, how we teach kids growing up, things that we do as parents that affect our kids that we're not even aware of, and then ultimately go on to affect us as adults. And we're going to dive into that a little bit in part two. So in her book, she has a chart, and I'm just going to kind of read off of this chart, but she has a chart that is the two mindsets. And on the left of this chart is the fixed mindset, and on the right is the growth mindset. The fixed mindset is a belief that intelligence is static. And so what that means is that whatever you're born with, when you get born, you're born with a certain IQ, and then therefore you can never really get above that. What you were born with is what you get. That's it. There's nothing more that can be developed. If you're born with athletic ability, then you're going to be athletic. If you're born with intelligence and you're just going to be smart, whatever it might be, that's what you're born with. That is a static belief around mindset. And that's what people with fixed mindsets believe this. So I'm going to read through this. People with fixed mindset, it leads to a desire to look smart and therefore a tendency to... One, avoid challenges. Two, give up early. Three, see effort as fruitless or worse. Four is they ignore useful or negative feedback. Five is they feel threatened by the success of others. So again, they avoid challenges. They give up early in obstacles. They see effort as fruitless. In other words, the more effort you give, you're not going to get any better in life. They avoid criticism and negative feedback. are threatened or offended by the success of others. And as a result, they may plateau early in life and they achieve far less than their full potential. And so a lot of us have a fixed mindset. And here's one thing about the mindset is you can have fixed mindsets in some parts of your life and have growth mindsets in other parts of your life. So it's not across the board, universal. You could have a fixed mindset about your business, but have a growth mindset about relationships, like your spouse. So it's not a universal, once you have this, that's what you're dealt with across the board, everything. And so understanding this, you can start to go through different parts of your life and seeing where you have a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset. So what's on the opposite side with the growth mindset? People with a growth mindset believe that intelligence can be developed. So you're not just born with a certain IQ and that's what you're dealt. They believe it can be developed. And this leads to a desire to learn. And therefore, you have a tendency to embrace challenge. You have a tendency to persist in the face of setbacks. You see effort as the path to mastery. And you learn from criticism. And finally, you find lessons and inspiration in the success of others. And as a result, people with a growth mindset, they reach higher than ever levels of achievement. So those are the ones that end up going on and being your top 10% of earners. You're not going to find a Jeff Bezos of the world with a fixed mindset. They 100% have a growth mindset. top athletes of the world have growth mindsets. They don't have fixed mindsets. And so the part of the book, she goes on to really explain how we come to this, how we end up with fixed mindsets versus growth mindsets. And so it's a really good book. I highly recommend that you read this. It will totally open your eyes to some things that maybe you have in your life that you didn't realize were holding you back. And so I'm not really going to go too much into the book, but just understand that there's a difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. And you can have kind of in between, like you may be threatened by the success of others, but at the same time, you may get benefit from criticism. So it's not like a universal, this is what you have to have across the board everywhere. You know, the people that look at success of others, they see like a Donald Trump and they go, yeah, he's a billionaire, but he would have never had that success if his dad didn't give him a million dollar loan. Right? It's a but. Yeah, but. Yeah, but he didn't, you know, he had that because he gave a million dollars. Somebody gave me a million dollars, I would be a billionaire too. That's a fixed mindset. Whereas the growth mindset is... Yeah, he may have been given a million dollars, but he still had to go out and build his entire wealth. He had to do that himself. That's two different ways of looking at the exact same person through different lenses, different mindsets, if you will. So as I go through the rest of this podcast, just kind of keep that in mind, the difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. So limiting beliefs. What are limiting beliefs? Why does it matter? A limiting belief is a belief that we have about something in life, a way that we feel about something, a value that we have that limits us in how we get past that, how we get further in life. It limits us. It's a limiting belief. And the thing about beliefs is that most people's beliefs are developed by the age of eight. And these are like high level beliefs. Do you believe in God? Yes or no. Do you believe in sexual things? Yes or no. Like different things. Do you believe that people are good or that people are bad natured? Yes or no. Like these are kind of beliefs, like high level beliefs that we have that are developed before the age of eight or by the age of eight. And so once you're eight years old, you've already developed your core beliefs that you have in life. Again, it could be about religion. It could be about money, financial beliefs, right? And a lot of this is, it is impacted by your environment, but it's not necessarily directly regulated by the environment. So you hear stories of people that grew up in poverty that go on to be uber successful. You also hear stories of people that grow up in poverty and they stay in poverty. Or you hear stories of people that grow up in wealth and then end up becoming poverty. So there's no universal like, oh, if I'm in this environment, therefore, this is the output of my life. That would be true if you have a fixed mindset. I'm born into poverty. Therefore, I'm going to live in poverty the rest of my life because that's the maximum level of achievement that I can get to. And therefore, I'm going to stay here. That is a fixed mindset. Whereas a growth mindset, it's going to be I'm born in poverty, but I'm not sticking around. I'm going to do everything I can to get out of this and have success. So your limiting beliefs can also be affected or created by things that happen to you. It can severely be affected by childhood trauma. And the thing that we need to understand with trauma in our childhood and our beliefs is that when we are a child, we're not able to effectively defend for ourselves. We can't just leave the house. If you're 10 years old, if you're 8,10,12,14 years old,6 years old, if something's going on at home, you can't just pack your clothes and leave. You don't have that option. You're stuck in that environment unless you get removed by authorities. But what happens to us as children is that whenever we have different things that happen, like really bad things or mild bad things, We develop coping mechanisms. We develop coping mechanisms to deal with that because that is the only thing we can do as children is develop a coping mechanism to deal with it. Some of you may have grown up with abusive parents. Some of you may have grown up with dads who are alcoholics or drug addicts, or some of you may have had a sexual abuse type of situation. And as unfortunate as that is, you develop a coping mechanism to deal with that. The problem is that whenever we become adults, we're still filtering our lives. We're still using the framework of our beliefs that we developed as children, which protected us as children. But when we become adults, it no longer serves us. That belief no longer serves us because we don't need protection. As we become an adult, we can defend ourselves. We can remove ourselves from the situation. We can move away. We can get rid of relationships that are not healthy. As adults, we have that option. However, we still have the frameworks that were developed to us through our childhood and our experiences, through our parents' beliefs, through our social and economical beliefs, through everything, through abuse and the events that happens to us. So we have to first recognize this. We have to recognize the beliefs that we have before we can do anything about it. Some of us have a, especially, it's very prevalent in people that were in abusive situations. Someone may have been abused as a child, and then they get older, and then they don't like that other sex, or they don't like certain type of people. that have certain similarities to the type of person that they were abused by. Right? And so as adults, we hold on to that belief. But the reality is that as an adult, we're very unlikely to be abused by that same type of person or have that happen to us again. Right? And this is not to dismiss anything that's happened as a child, any type of abuse that you've had. It's not to dismiss any of that. It's actually recognizing that this can lead to problems as an adult by which the framework we filter everything through. Okay, so I don't want to go crazy deep into that. I just want to acknowledge that sometimes our beliefs are created through our life's experiences, especially as children. But as adults, they no longer serve us. And we have to either eliminate those beliefs or rework them in a different way. So here's an example of beliefs. Our beliefs create frameworks for what we filter everything through. So if we have a belief, let's say, for example, you had a sibling who unfortunately, and I'm sure this may have happened to some of you. You had a sibling who passed away through a terrible accident like drowning. You had a brother or sister who happened to drown in a pool. Will that affect you? And where are you at going swimming? Would you tend to not want to go swimming anymore, especially in a pool, because that's what happened? That's going to put a certain framework around your belief growing up as an adult. And it doesn't have to be trauma. It can be anything. It can be any type of situation that we've created for ourselves that affect us later on as adults. And so if you think about a framework as the viewpoint through which we look through things, we've all probably heard of or seen like beer goggles. You've probably seen maybe even put them on. You know, they're goggles you put on your face and it mimics like how well you can see when you're intoxicated, right? That's a... That's a viewpoint. When you put these goggles on, you can't see very well. It's affecting your viewpoint. And that's what these frameworks do for us. And most of the time, it's subconscious and we don't even realize it. It's easy for us when we're sober to put on beer goggles and say, oh, wow, I can't see anything. There's no way I would ever try and drive a car drunk. I can't even see where to put the keys in. There's no way I would do it. It's easy to say that when you're sober. But what happens is when you take a drink of alcohol, you don't just go from sober to drunk in two seconds. It's a slow process. And so when you're filtering through life and you're using these frameworks, you don't recognize what's going on because it's a slow process that's been developed over years and years and years. get to the point of being drunk in this situation and you need to go home, you're not looking through clear, unfiltered framework. You're looking through beer goggles, but you don't recognize it. You don't realize that you're looking through beer goggles. And so our judgment becomes clouded and we make decisions that we shouldn't make. Nobody wakes up and says, I'm going to go to the bar tonight. I'm going to get... drunk off my mind. Then I'm going to drive home and get into an accident and kill somebody else. That sounds like a lot of fun. I'm going to go do that. That's not what happens. Nobody does that. But we don't recognize is that we're looking or we're filtering our life through these beer goggles because we haven't actually recognized it yet. Here's an example of how frameworks can affect the way you see things. I posted in my free Facebook group today. Just today, I made a post and the post says, you're not making as much money as you want because you're not as good as you think you are. Now, this is just a post. There's no value assigned to these words. It's just words on a screen that you can see. Our filters, our frameworks that we use apply value to those words. And so based on if you have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset, you're going to see the same words that everyone else sees and apply a different filter, ergo a reaction to it. So what's interesting about the comments and the reactions is that everyone who commented, who is currently a member in the profit club, my coaching group, they all commented with funny things, kind of sarcastic, funny things, because they understand. the value behind the post and what I'm trying to accomplish because we talk about this stuff in the Profit Club. The ones who are not in the Profit Club who commented, one of them was, how do you recommend we get better? Now, if you can't identify it, that is a growth mindset. He's open to criticism. He's open to feedback because he wants to know how to get better. That is a growth mindset simply based on that post. Another comment was, laughing my ass off. What? What are you talking about? Now, regardless of the severity or the seriousness of these comments, it does give you insight into people's reaction and their mindset. Why is there two totally different people? One who's looking to get better from the post and the other one is saying, this is dumb. There's no value in this post. And yet a third person says, I feel personally attacked. How can that be? How can words on a screen evoke different reactions from different people? It's because of the framework, the lens that they look through things based on their mindset. Are they have a fixed mindset or do they have a growth mindset? So hopefully that makes it a little bit more clear. Now, the thing you have to understand about this information is that a lot of times... We surround ourselves with garbage in the form of information that we put into our brain. A lot of our self-talk, a lot of our self-worth, a lot of our beliefs and our framework are developed or curated because of the surrounding that we keep ourselves in. A lot of times POWs, especially in like World War II and Vietnam, They would put POWs in these cells and they would isolate them from everybody else. And they would bring them in and do all kinds of mind tricks with them, do all kinds of things to convince them that they're not the enemy. Actually, the country that they are fighting for is the enemy. Even sometimes to the success of having a POW read out loud a statement that they wrote that says, Vietnam is a great country and they're doing all this and Americans are the oppressors and blah, blah, blah. And essentially getting them to become a traitor on their own country. And then when they got put back in their cells, the other cellmates would turn on them. Right? This is all through psycho warfare. And this is the stuff that we're doing. Some of us, we are POVs in our own environment because we put ourselves there. We keep ourselves there. If you take a piece of garbage, that you throw away, right? Your trash bag. And you took that trash bag and you put it in a grinder and it grinds up all the trash. And on the other side of the grinder, it spits out little pieces of trash. There's no difference in the value that come out. It's garbage going in. It's just smaller pieces of garbage coming out. And that's what we do with our mindset whenever we consume junk. Whenever we put ourselves in situations and environments where all that's being consumed is junk, is garbage. The term is garbage in equals garbage out. You see that prevalent on contractor Facebook groups. When someone goes in there and makes a comment or a post asking for help and then 30 other contractors rip them a new asshole and tell them how stupid they are and they shouldn't do this. And if you don't know how to get leads by now, you shouldn't be in business and all this stuff, right? And then they believe it. You start to believe it because you're surrounded by that all the time. Conversely, if I took a piece of gold, a gold bar, and I took that gold bar and I put it into the grinder, and then on the other end of the grinder, little pieces of gold come out, there's still value because it's a precious metal. It's just smaller pieces. And so if you put gold, if you put precious information into your brain, and then run it through the grinder, on the other end, you're going to get smaller chunks of precious metal, of precious information. And so you need to be able to decipher from garbage and precious information. And what you need to do to help with this is remove all of the garbage that's coming in and replace it with nothing but gold, precious information, precious metals. This is how you start to change the framework of your brain is by replacing the old beliefs with new beliefs. And this is why I talk a lot about mindset. It's why I talk a lot about ego. It's why I did the podcast on death to your ego because that's what you need to do. Your ego protects you. It protects the framework that you currently have in place. It's like the wall, the perimeter wall around... the fixed mindset. You have to tear down the wall first in order for the new information to come storming the castle, if you will, and get rid of the bad information. But the wall, as long as that wall is there, it's not going to happen. Your ego is going to protect that. So, filters. Why are frameworks so important? So, I want to share a story with you. I've never shared this publicly. I mean, I've told people about this. I'm not embarrassed or anything about it. I've just never had a platform to publicly share this. Whenever I went into the Marines right out of high school, I went through the School of Infantry. Then I went through Security Forces School. I was an infantryman, but I had a B-billet job of security forces. In security forces, we guarded strategic weapons for the Navy and didn't really understand what that meant when I signed up. I had no idea what that meant. I get to my first duty station. And essentially all you are, think of it as a prison guard, a corrections officer, right? Except you're not, instead of keeping people in the facility, you're trying to keep people out, you know, trying to keep people from coming in. So that's exactly what it is. And you work very crazy, very hard hours where you only get two hours of sleep at a time. If you're lucky, you get four hours per day of sleep. And when you go down there, you are there for three, four, five days, depending on the rotation. And so you can go three, four days with only two to four hours of sleep each day, working 12 hours a day. It's very taxing on your body. It's very stressful. It's a very hard to get used to environment. Like it takes several weeks, three to four weeks for your body to even get used to that. And what happened is I got to the duty station where I was at. And you always start out as a guard, a tower guard. And so I'm 18 years old, fresh out of school. I'm in my guard tower. I don't remember how soon it happened. If it was the second time down there, if it was the third post I was on. But it was fairly new. I was fairly new to the experience, less than a month into that duty station. And I was standing tower, standing guard tower. And in the guard tower, you have a loaded rifle, condition three rifle, magazine inserted with 30 rounds. There's no round in the chamber. And then you have extra ammunition and grenades and stuff in the tower and an ammo can in case you were to get attacked, right? You can defend yourself. And you're in the tower, an 80-foot tower by yourself. And at nighttime, when you're working like 2 to 6 in the morning, you got a little single red light over your head. to keep the light down so you're not exposing yourself to any threats. And it's a very, very sleep-induced environment. Like when you're sleep-deprived and you're sitting in a tower that's dark outside,2 o 'clock in the morning,3 o 'clock in the morning, with the red light on, it is a fight to stay awake. It takes everything in your effort to stay awake. And after doing this for a second, I said several weeks, I came to the determination based on the framework, based on the lens that I was looking through at the time, which is through the military, which is after boot camp, you don't do things to jeopardize your team, right? You don't go to sleep on post. You don't walk away from your team. You don't give up. All of this framework that's drilled into you through boot camp. That's the framework of which I was looking through. And I was so tired and I was so defeated because I had a two-year duty station there. I was going to be there for two years doing this. And it hit me that early morning. I was like, there's no way I can do this for two years. All of my friends are back home, you know, at college, partying, having fun, doing all this stuff that, you know, I'm jealous of. And here I am stuck in a... a guard tower in the morning, sleep deprived. And here, I just can't do this. There's no way I can do this for two years. And so I had two options, really, based on the framework. Keep in mind, based on the framework that I was looking through, I had two options. One, I could quit. In other words, I could call my COG, SOG, Corporal of the Guard, Sergeant of the Guard, whoever, my leadership. I could call them and say, I can't do this. I quit. Right? And face ridicule, face criticism, potentially face criminal charges, like all, you name it, all of these things that could possibly happen to me, which sounded terrible. I would let down my family. I'd let down my friends. I'd let down all my, you know, all the Marines, everybody in my squad and everything. I'd let down everybody. Or option two is, I have a loaded rifle right here. Like I could just end it, right? That would solve all my problems. I wouldn't have to face criticism. I wouldn't have to be embarrassed. I could just end it right here. And there was nobody in that tower that was going to stop me. If you've ever been in a situation where you were as enabled as you possibly could be, this was it, right? This isn't like, oh, I want to end it, but I don't have any way of doing it. Like I can't drown myself. This was it. I had a loaded rifle. I was isolated. Nobody could stop me. And it was only really through the proper framework. This is the other side of the coin. The proper framework that thankfully my parents blessed me with, which is my framework in my faith and my belief in God, that I got down on my knees, bawling my eyes out, and I prayed to God. To save me. And in that moment, he did. He did save me. And from that moment on, I've never really asked why about any specific situation. I've never doubted anything. And this podcast is not about faith or anything like that. That's just what got me through that. But it was based on a framework that I was given through the military of what it means to give up. But it was the framework that I was given through my parents. and their belief that actually saved my life. And so we have a collision of two frameworks here. And this was the moment of truth. Luckily, the right framework prevailed. For others, that doesn't. That's why you hear about 22 a day. That's why veterans come home and they kill themselves because they don't have the right framework to counter that other framework that they have. And so this is... Just an example of how one little opportunity, one moment of time, how frameworks that we have can alter our lives forever. Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. The thought of wanting to kill yourself is a temporary problem, but suicide is a permanent solution that you can't come back from. And I'm thankful that I obviously did not do that. Otherwise, you wouldn't even know I'm here. And I can't speak to the the impact of what it's meant for me to be in that situation, to start a construction company, to start a coaching company, to start a podcast, to tell on you right now, there's no way I could quantify how that all came to. Maybe all of that happened for the sole purpose of one of you listening to this right now that it changes your life forever. And if that's the case, I'm okay with that. Truly okay with that. But I say all this and I share this with you so that you understand how powerful frameworks that we use are in our lives and how much they affect our lives and we don't even realize it. Do you think the government cares about me? Seriously, does the government care about me? The military machine, do they care about me as a person? Absolutely not. If I were to go through with that that night, You know what would happen? The government would say, oh, we're one man down. Hey, John, you got to cover Brad's shift for the rest of the week. And then they put in a requisition to get another warm body into their platoon. That's basically what would happen. But the framework of which I was looking for was going to affect my life, really, for the rest of my life, whether it was short or till today. This is just an illustration of how powerful your frameworks are in our lives. So with that, I want to talk to you about how to change your mindset, tips to help you change your mindset. And there's really two different tips. There are permanent change, things you can do to permanently kind of change your mindset. And then there's an awareness, there's a situational awareness to temporary problems. Okay, so let's start with the tips for permanent change, the very first thing you have to do is you have to become vulnerable with yourself. You have to understand that truthfully, I mean, truthfully, nobody cares about you as a person in the sense of what you do. Your parents, if you went out and your business failed miserably and you lost everything and you had to file bankruptcy, your parents would still love you. Mostly. Most of you. Yes, there's bad situations, but taking those away, most people would still love you. Your spouse, if you're married, would still love you. Your kids, if you have them, would still love you. They would far rather you be bankrupt and work at McDonald's than do a permanent solution to a temporary problem. So you have to be vulnerable with yourself. and realize and recognize that whenever you see that nobody cares about you in the big scheme of things, it frees up this tension. It frees up this pressure that we put on ourselves of success, of performing. We have to perform. We have to be successful. It's this pressure that we put on ourselves. When you realize that nobody really cares about you other than your family, outside of your family, it removes this pressure of like, well, if I screw up, who cares? If I try a marketing thing and it falls flat on its face, who gives a crap? If I buy a piece of equipment and it breaks down or causes damage to someone's house or whatever, okay, yeah, it's a sucky moment, but it's not going to last forever. So you don't need to be scared of it. You don't need to be held back because of it. So become vulnerable and understand that nobody really truly cares about what you're doing. They care if you're still alive or not. Right? So remove some of that pressure that you have for yourself. Another thing is take inventory of what you believe and what you want to believe. Right? Because what you believe and what you want to believe are two different things. And so here's a simple little task or a little thing you can do to help you to identify this. Get a piece of paper out, write and draw five columns, five vertical columns. on the page at the top of each column. The first column, you're going to write situation. The second column, you're going to write my thoughts. The third column, you're going to write fixed or growth mindset. The fourth column, you're going to write growth mindset thoughts. And the last column, you're going to write growth mindset actions. Now, this is from a worksheet that I did not create. You can find it online. But this is the five columns. Situation, my thoughts, fixed to growth mindset, growth mindset thoughts, growth mindset actions. That's what you're going to head every five columns on your paper. So what you're going to do in the first column is you're going to write down a specific situation. Let's say hiring help. Everybody's struggling to find help. The situation is you can't find help. What are your thoughts on that? Let's say your thoughts are... There's no good help. Nobody wants to work anymore. This younger generation does not want to work. That's what you put down. If that's your true thoughts, this young generation doesn't want to work. You write that down. Then you filter that through the worksheet that I told you in the mindset book. Is that a fixed or a growth mindset? It's just a simple yes or no or which one. Is it fixed or growth? Is you saying, nobody wants to work, is that a fixed or growth mindset? And you pick which one. Okay? If it's a growth mindset, which in this case it's not, but let's say you pick something else, then you're good. You're basically good. But if it's a fixed mindset, this is where you train your brain to start thinking differently. So in this case, it's a fixed mindset. How do I know it's a fixed mindset, Brad? Well, because if that were a true statement, If nobody wanted to work, there would literally be no employees anywhere. No single construction company would have any employees anywhere. It would just be owners and that's it. And I could go right down the street a mile from my house and find construction companies that have employees that are working. So that is a fixed mindset belief that nobody wants to work. Now, I'm not saying it's not easier or harder to find help. But the statement of nobody wants to work is a fixed mindset belief, which is not true. And so how do you change that? How do you change that mindset, that framework of which you see things through? Well, you write down growth mindset thoughts in the fourth column. What's a growth mindset thought that counters that? Well, if I say nobody wants to work, I could change that to... I haven't found someone who wants to work yet. Or I'm doing something wrong. What's keeping me from finding the right people who want to work? We know this is true because, again, there are other companies who have people working for them who are very successful and their employees are happy. So if that's a true statement, then there has to be something going on that I'm missing. And the growth mindset thought is, I haven't found the right person yet. Right? And that poses a question. And so what is the fifth column? What's a growth mindset action? What action can you take towards having a growth mindset in this particular situation? Well, one thing you can do is that if you have other contractors nearby who have employees. You could interview those contractors or have a conversation and find out what they're doing in their business to keep those employees and or find them. That would be a growth mindset action. That's an action you can take to reframe your mindset and change it and figure out how to fix that. Okay? Because it is truly, when you say there's nobody wants to work, that truly is a fixed mindset because it's not true. And don't get me wrong. I fall victim to these things a lot and I have to catch myself. And all it takes is one time you say it and then you start to develop new neural pathways in your brain. That's the garbage in. And you make it even easier. And every time you say that, you make the pathway easier to walk on. So every time you repeat to yourself, there's nobody that wants to work. And all of your contractor buddies that you hang out with all say, nobody wants to work. And you keep saying that over and over and over again. You're literally developing better and clearer pathways in your brain for the garbage to pass through. You will start to develop that framework that, yes, nobody wants to work. And you will start seeing it through that framework. And so what you will end up doing is that when you have an interview with someone who wants to work, you're going to filter them that interview through the framework of nobody wants to work and your brain will start looking for all the little clues. in that interview to justify that your framework is true. And he says something, you know, in the young 20-year-old who's just looking to get started, you know, makes a comment about, I like playing video games. Yep, there it is. I knew it. I knew it. You didn't. Nobody likes to work anymore. He just wants to play video games all day. Well, that's not what he said. What he was saying is that on his time off, he likes to play video games. But really, he's a hard worker. And he puts in 100% each day. But because the framework of which you were looking through was nobody wants to work, your brain, your subconscious, your reticular activating system will say and look for, yes, this is evidence to back up what you're looking through. This is the evidence to back up the lens of what you're looking through, the framework of what you're looking through. That's how that works, guys. That's literally how you develop fixed mindset and negative frameworks in your life. It's by constant exposure to the fixed mindset beliefs. So remove yourself from those situations. Take inventory of the different situations right out to figure out where your mindset is. Start reading books like the one I just told you, Mindset by Carol Dweck. That's a must read. Surround yourself with people who have similar mindsets. Now, go back to the post that I made in Facebook. I told you that everybody who's in the profit club, the members that are in the profit club, they're posting in there and they're making jokes and funny posts and being sarcastic. Why is that? Why is there a similarity between the contractors who are in the profit club and the ones who are not in the profit club? There's a complete difference, right? It's because they're all surrounded by other contractors who want to win. who want to get better, who have growth mindsets. And that's one of the reasons why I'm very protective of who I let into the Profit Club. I don't care if you're successful. I only care if you have a growth mindset. Because if you have a fixed mindset, you're not coming in. That's just it. So you get into a community of other contractors who have similar mindsets because... And I just had this conversation today on one of our coaching calls. I was telling a new member who just joined last week, I said, if you were to post in our private Facebook group something like, if you were kind of frustrated having a bad day and you posted, man, I'm so sick and tired of these kids, nobody wants to work anymore. I would check you on that post. I would say, hey, hold up a second. That is a fixed mindset belief and that is not true. And let's work through this. Let me share with you why that's not true. And other people can hold them accountable. to start to have the right mindset belief, right? Because everyone in there has a growth mindset. And people who have growth mindsets, they only want to have gold coming in. They don't want garbage coming in. So when you come in and start spitting garbage, they're going to put up the brakes, the barriers and say, hold up a second. That's not true. And let's identify why that is and let's fix it right now, right? That's the benefit of being around other winners and other... people with growth mindset. So surround yourself with a community and have conversations that lift you up and not tear you down. If you're the kind of contractor who likes to go home at the end of the night and drink a beer, talk to your neighbor around a fire and just complain about everything going on and how you're going to solve everything and that's what you do, you're not going to get too far in life. I'll just tell you that right now. The ones that are going to win are the ones that are very intentional about how they spend their time and who they spend it with. The other thing you can do is remove people from your life that don't add to it. If people aren't adding gold to your life, remove them as far away as you can. If it's your spouse, set as much boundary as you can. Limit that exposure until they get the point. You can do it. It's very hard, but you can do it. Your parents, they have negative mindset. Limit your time with them until they get the point. There's something to be said about community. And one of the things that I've mentioned it before, one of the things I love doing is shooting. I do competitive pistol shooting and I shoot in IDPA and USPSA. And even though I've been doing this for six years, six plus years, and I'm in probably in the top 10% of the shooters in the country. I still look for opportunities to learn. And what I love about the shooting community is that everyone is there for the love of the sport, not because of all the other things that go with it. They don't care about politics. They don't care about religion. They don't care about all this stuff. Case in point, last weekend, I shot in the Indiana State match up in Indianapolis. And there were two guys that flew over from Turkey. Because IDPA is an international sport. There's different, you know, different countries have different chapters and stuff. But two guys came over from Turkey. One of them is a airline pilot for Turkey's Airlines. The other one that owns a restaurant and some other businesses. And they both came over and they shot in my squad and I got to know them. And they're really nice guys, super guys, right? Had great conversation, developed a friendship with them. They were interested in my... Pistol Caliber Carby and I were shooting because they don't have that over there. We just had a really good conversation. And so you're part of this community that's really unique, right? They're from Turkey. They're not Americans, but we still had a common bond there. But what I wanted to say is at the end of the match, we were sitting around waiting for the scores to be tallied up to tell us who won. Just cheap $5 wooden plaque that doesn't mean anything. And I was talking to another shooter who I compete against. He won the division and I compete against him. He happens to be from my town. I know him. I shoot with him fairly regularly at club matches. But he was my direct competitor, right? And so we were just having a conversation afterwards and he was talking about... you know, shooting and coming into positions and, you know, making dumb mistakes and this and that. And just in the conversation, I picked up a gold nugget. Now, I've been shooting for six years. I know a lot about different things around shooting, but I don't know everything. And having a conversation with the competitor who I'm directly shooting against, he was sharing information with me, which gave me a pointer that I can now apply. towards myself to get better at potentially beating him. But the community itself is not about necessarily winning, right? It's about the community. And so that's just an example of how when you're involved in a community that's positive, you can win even if it's your competition. For some reason, contractors, they want to hide from the competition. I don't want to put my prices on the website because my competition might know about it. And then they may price things cheaper than me. Is that a fixed mindset or a growth mindset? You tell me. Right? So these are all just examples of how a community actually helps you get better. Having the right community. Okay? So those are just some things you can do. Take inventory of your thoughts. Right? Read the book, Mindset by Carol Dweck, or really just read any books that help you get better. surround yourself with people who have similar mindsets, i. e. communities, local groups, whatever. Listen to podcasts like this. Anything that's going to have a positive impact on you, consume it and remove anything that does not provide gold for you. Remove all of the garbage from your life. Remember, garbage in, garbage out. Lastly, situational awareness. This is to a temporary problem. A lot of times, guys, we make bad decisions. because of a situational problem. For example, whenever I was contemplating suicide, I was sleep deprived, very sleep deprived. If you're having to make tough decisions in life, don't do it when you're sleep deprived. Don't do it when you're in a stressful situation. They say don't spank your child if you're upset with them. Wait until you calm down and then spank them if you need to, if you do that. Right? That's sound advice. If your situation is changing you in that moment, don't do things in that situation. We have recently got two puppies and they're crying at night and we're not sleeping well. And I'm frustrated and tired and I'm in a bad mood like that. You know, it's easy. Like yesterday, my son touched one of our puppies who's having some pains and we're trying to figure out what's going on and he yelped. Because I was sleep deprived, I snapped and I yelled at him. I yelled at him, don't pick the puppies up. That was a response to a temporary situation where I was sleep deprived. That wasn't the right way to handle it. So you need to recognize that when you're in these situations like that, don't make decisions that are going to be permanent. Remove yourself from that situation first. and then look at it from a growth mindset and then approach it. Okay? So some of these things are situational. Boredom. Boredom leads to a lot of dumb stuff, guys. We are bored. So what do we do? We get on Facebook and we go to the contractor groups and all we consume in there is garbage. You don't know what you're doing. You're stupid. You're an idiot. You don't know how to do that. What a moron. If you're charging people 50%, you're ripping them off. Like all this dumb crap that we see every day, you're consuming it. Garbage in, garbage out. So boredom leads to that. So protect yourself from boredom. Read a book. Listen to a podcast if you get bored. Adjust your environment for maximum performance. This is the last thing. If you know that you're going to be in a situation where you're not at your best, then adjust your environment. If your desk is full of crap, so that every time you come in there, You're stressed out because there's crap everywhere. Adjust your environment. Clean the crap off your desk. It's actually worth taking the time, an hour or two or three, to organize your desk so that whenever you come in, you're not first off pissed off by the disorganization and then starting from a pissed off perspective. This is like be aware of your environment and adjust your environment for maximum performance. It's the same with learning. So here's a lot. We're going long on this podcast, but this is such an important topic. And it's really something that I barely even touched the surface on, to be honest with you. You could spend days talking about mindset. But here's what I want to leave you with. A lot of the podcasts, I'm getting on you talking about contractors and what they do wrong and all this stuff. Here's what I want to tell you with. This is what I want to leave you with. You have to persevere. You have to. It is your duty. as a human being, to continually persevere. We were designed to grow and build and make. We were not designed to cower and sit back and sleep and give up. That is not how we were designed. If that were true, we wouldn't be here today because all of our ancestors from thousands of years ago would have just gave up and civilization would have died. We are designed, whether you believe in God or not, whether you believe in evolution or not. We are designed to survive and thrive. And so I'm giving you permission right now. I'm giving you permission to continue fighting for what you want and believe in. Okay? Don't give up. The only difference between success and failure is the amount of time that you devote towards something you believe in. Some of you may have the mindset, the fixed mindset of that if you don't reach a certain dollar amount, let's just say you want to do $1 million in revenue. That's your goal. You believe with a fixed mindset that until you've reached $1 million in revenue, you're a failure. You believe that up until the point of $1 million, you're a failure. And then once you hit $1 million, you are now a success. And that is not true at all. You are a success from the day you make $1 until you make $1 million. You only become a failure the second you quit. And that is the truth. The only difference between failure and success is the amount of time that you put towards that. Some of you need to change your framework, myself included, of what success looks like. Because if you've made $1, you've successfully done something. If you've made $2, you've successfully done something. You've doubled the amount of money you've made. If you make $5, you've been successful. If you make $500, you're successful. If you make $5,000, $50,000, $500,000, $5 million, you are successful every single time you do that. So look at things as a not yet. I haven't failed, right? I'm on my journey to success. I'm also successful. The goal is to do 1 million, but I'm also successful every time I accomplish a new milestone. That is success. Success is the journey, not the destination. So start changing your perspective, your framework to realize that the fact that you own a business right now, you are a success. And you can continue to have more success by changing your frameworks that you currently see things through. And as you develop and get better and become a better leader and a better businessman, you develop new frameworks. You can't have the framework as a 10-year-old to run a multi-million dollar company. It requires new frameworks that are built on top of each other. As you develop a new framework, you build a new framework on top of that. You build a new framework on top of that and it keeps going and going. No one believed that the four-minute mile could ever be broken for decades. Decades. Nobody could beat the four-minute mile. Roger Bannister broke it three minutes and 58 seconds. A year later, three other people beat the four-minute mile in the same race. And then since then, it's the norm. If you want to be anything as a runner, you have to do a four-minute mile or less. So it only took one person to change their framework to believe that it's possible to break that. And once he broke it, it opened the door for everyone else. Okay? So use that and understand that you can't give up. You have to keep going. If you're struggling, you need to change your frameworks. You need to change the community that you're hanging out with. You need to change your situation. You can't get the different results. Living in the same situation with the same tools and the same mindset. You have to change all that, guys. That's what this podcast is about. Creating positive growth mindsets and understanding that you're already successful and you just keep fighting until you're ready, until you can't fight anymore. Like literally. And then even then you just keep fighting. Don't give up. Failure is a choice. Okay? Just like success is a choice. That's all I want to talk about today, guys. I know it was a long podcast. I hope it was beneficial. Do me a favor. If anything that I said resonated with you, if it moved something in you, if you got some tingling, if you felt convicted, if you're like, today is the day, comment. Drop me a post somewhere. Wherever you're listening to this, send me a message. Leave me a review or something. Get back to me. I want to hear your thoughts on this. I want to know. If this was helpful or not. All right. Do that for me. I'd appreciate it. It's a small thank you for all the time and effort that it takes to put into these podcasts. Shoot me a message and let me know if it resonated with you. So guys, you know where to find me and all the content. I'm on all the social media platforms, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. You can join my free Facebook group, The Contractor Profits Blueprint. Lots of exciting things happening in there. I'm adding more value, more content. You want to want to check that out. You can find the link to that in the bio. If you want to find out more information about my coaching group, you can reach out to me there as well. I'd be more than happy to share with you what that looks like and what the investment is. And I hope that this was a helpful podcast for you guys. And like always in every podcast, I always say this until next time, you know what to do. Be the best version of you.
