A contractor's journey to self-mastery requires discipline, integrity, and respect. Welcome to Hammer and Grind. And welcome to the Hammer and Grind podcast, the podcast built for contractors to help maximize profits and get you off the tools before burnout or bankruptcy happens. I'm your host, Brad Hebner, and I'm here to help you on your journey to self-mastery. Make sure you check us out on our social media platforms, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. Just search for Hammer and Grind Podcast and you'll be able to find me there. Consider joining my free Facebook group called the Contract Your Profit Blueprint. I created this free group to give you as much information as possible to help you in your business. I go live in there once a week, tons of content to help you in your business. Now, if you want to accelerate the success, consider joining my paid coaching group called The Profit Club. In there is a great community of contractors all willing to share information and help each other succeed, as well as hundreds of hours of training, coaching calls, everything you need to accelerate your business. If you want to learn more about that, you can find out more information on hammerandgrind. com forward slash The Profit Club, or just send me a message and I'll be happy to share that with you. Now, let's get on to the show. All right. On this podcast, I'm actually going to be reading from a book called With Winning in Mind. That's the title of the podcast, With Winning in Mind. The book is written by Lanny Basham. He is an Olympic and world champion in rifle shooting. And the reason why I read this book in the first place is because I've mentioned before on the podcast is that I do competitive shooting. And somebody recommended this book to me many years ago when I first got started to help with some of the mental side of the game. But what I want to read about this book or why I want to talk about this book today is because most of this, if not all of it, translates 100% into business, into entrepreneurship. Now, Lanny, after he won the Olympics and all that stuff, he went on to start a consultation business and he helps top athletes. professional golfers. I mean, anything that has to do with sports, he does that and consults with them and helps them at the highest level. Okay. So I'll put a link in the show notes if you want to grab this book. It's a great book. It is written, again, like I said, for sports, for high-performing athletes. But there are a ton, a ton of things that carry over in the business. And I'm going to be reading from this book some excerpts that I've noted that will... translate and hopefully help you in your business. So again, it's called With Winning in Mind by Lanny Basham. He created the mental management system. It's his system that he created. And we'll kind of get into that here in a second. So I'm just going to start by reading some of this. And this is in chapter two, winning is a process. So he says, in my more than 25 years in competition, I've been both a participant and a winner. I can tell you it is much more satisfying to win. I think everyone knows that. A fact that is not so widely known is that 95% of all winning is accomplished by only 5% of the participants. 95% of all winning is accomplished by 5% of their participants. Now, if you've ever heard me talk about contractors and contracting businesses, You've probably heard me say that according to the Labor Bureau of Statistics,96% of contracting businesses fail in the first 10 years. So 4% are successful. Do you think there's a coincidence in that between him saying 5% when 95% of the time and 4% of contractors are successful? I don't think that is a coincidence. I think there's some... thoughts about that that we need to be looking into. It goes on to say, it is my observation after competing against and teaching the world's best, the primary thing that separates the winners from the others is the way they think. Winners are convinced they will finish first. The others hope to finish first. Winners are convinced that they're going to finish first. The others hope they finish first. That is a mental state, right? That is a mental state of what you believe. It's a core belief that you have. He says, I'm not saying that everyone who expects to win will always win. What I'm saying is that if it is not like you to win, you have no chance of winning at all. In other words, if you think that you don't have a chance of winning, you're definitely not going to win, right? That's the confidence of it. So let's keep going. He goes on to say this. So think about winning in training and keep your conscious mind on performance in the big event. By the way, thinking about losing while competing works every time. This translates over to sales calls. If you're on a sales call and you think you're not going to get the sale, you're not going to get the sale. It's that simple. What's your game? Golf, sales, shooting, singing, parenting, managing, coaching, teaching. What percentage of what you do is mental? I have asked that question to hundreds of Olympic athletes and PGA Tour pros. They have all answered that their game is at least 90% mental. The top athletes in the world all agree that the game that they do is 90% mental. The top 5% agree that elite performance is 90% mental. Then I asked them the second question. This is what's amazing. What percentage of your time and money do you spend on training the mental game? The answers are always similar, very little or less than 10%. So 90% agree, I'm sorry, the top 5% agree that it's 90% mental, yet almost all of them spend very little or less than 10% of their time and energy on increasing their mental state. This is the same for contractors. This podcast, when I started it, was about being on the journey to self-mastery because I've recognized and I've learned that the more you invest in yourself, the more you will make financially, the better you will do in business and the happier you will be in general. It is all about what you invest in yourself. So he goes on to... He kind of puts this into a frame and we'll get into that in a second. But he talks about the conscious mind, the subconscious mind, and self-image. Those are the three things that he talks about. So let me just say how he defines the conscious mind. The conscious mind contains your thoughts and mental pictures. The conscious mind controls all of the senses, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. It is what you picture or think about. Every time we think about something, we do it consciously. The conscious mind processes our environment. Its normal function is to gather information and give us options. I think most of us understand what the conscious mind is and how that works. It's what we think about. It's what we do, right? It's what we do intentionally with our mind. The subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is the source of your skills and power to perform. All great performances. are accomplished subconsciously without much conscious thought. We develop skills through repetition of conscious thought until the subconscious mind automatically performs them. The conscious trains the subconscious. Once that skill can be performed without conscious thought, it has become a subconscious skill. In most applications, there are far too many parts moving at one time to consciously think about all of them. This explains why most performance applications seem difficult in the beginning. When you're learning a new skill, let's say you want to take up golf and you go out to the range for the first time, you probably suck. You're not even going to be remotely close to being good at it. There's so much mechanical things that have to happen that you can't think about all of them at once. Your conscious mind can only focus on one thing at a time. And so if you're trying to think about how you're holding the club, then you're not paying attention to your feet or your backswing or any of that stuff. You can't consciously think about it. This is why when we start learning new skill, we suck at it. Whenever contractors come into the profit club and we start teaching them the profit sales system, they suck at it in the beginning. Of course they are. It's natural. You're learning something new. It's a different way of doing it. You're going to suck at it, right? When you get better at it, when you consciously get better at it, and then you train it so much that your subconscious can now take over that task, now you become more competent. There is the four sayings of you have unconscious competence. That's when you don't even know you suck. Then you have conscious incompetence. That's when you realize that you suck. Then you have conscious competence. And then unconscious competence. So basically, you don't know you suck. Then you realize you suck. Then you get better. Then you realize that you're getting better. And then you're better without realizing it. That's the dumbed down version of it. So next is the self-image. And this is really the most important one. The self-image makes you act like you. It is the total of your habits and your attitudes. Your performance and your self-image are always equal. This is the most important of the three because the self-image and success are directly related. I talk to a lot of contractors and I can just tell through conversation without knowing much about their business or their history or anything. I can tell when talking on the phone with someone if they're confident in their abilities or not. because it comes through in words they say and how they talk about things. Your self-image is what keeps you from getting where you want to go. Now, he talks about the balance of power. So think for a minute, when you're performing your best, how much effort are you using? Great performances seem to flow. It's a wonderful feeling and has been experienced by almost everyone at one time or another. When this happens, you are in what I call the triad state. When the conscious, subconscious, and self-image are balanced and working together, you perform smoothly, efficiently, and seemingly effortlessly toward your goal. Now, if we translate this into business, you ever felt like your business is out of control? Like everything's on fire, you're running around with the chicken with your head cut off, and it's just out of control. But there's probably been times in your business where everything's ran smoothly. I can remember when I was working for a developer and I was the construction manager for his company. And I distinctly remember times when things were crazy. There's so much going on. Everything's crazy. Subcontractors are calling, trying to get stuff scheduled. And I'm just like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, solving problems, taking care of things, giving information. And then I remember this from, this has been almost 15 years ago. I remember the feeling of like, yes, I got this. This is awesome. Yes, everything's on fire. But I have everything under control because I know what I'm doing and everything is going the way it's supposed to. In the sense of I'm taking care of solving problems. I distinctly remember that feeling. The problem is we don't feel like that all the time. Those are fleeting feelings that come and go at different parts in our business. But whenever you have all three of these, your conscious, subconscious, and your self-image are in line with each other, it happens a lot more frequently. And it can even happen on demand. He talks about the principle of balance. When the conscious, subconscious, and self-image are all balanced, and working together, good performance is easy. Why am I reading this book, by the way? Because most of the problems that contractors have in their business is self-inflicted. It is literally your self-image. It's the way you talk to yourself. It's the way you think about things. I'm telling you right now, it is not the economy. It is not the lack of labor pool. It's not bad leads. It's not customers are cheap. It's none of those things. It comes down to you. You are the problem in your business. And I don't know how else to say it. Until you fix it, until you make changes in you, your business will never get better. You're not going to have one person that you hire who's a rock star and then everything else in your business is automatically fixed. It doesn't work like that. It starts with you. Now, he goes through this book and explains how all three of these things have to be grown or nurtured together. So you can't have a really strong subconscious and a really low self-image, and it won't work. So all three of these, what he calls the triad state, has to be the same. They have to grow, and they have to be the same size, and they have to work together. So he goes on to talk about... different action statements for principles. And this is principle number seven. He says, the principle of reinforcement. The more we think about, talk about, and write about something happening, we improve the probability of that thing happening. And we've probably all heard about write down your goals, write them down on paper. When you write things down, you retain it more, all that stuff. So this is kind of a common sense thing. If you understand, if you've done any second of self-improvement, the more you think about, talk about, and write about something happening, we improve the probability of that thing happening. Every time we think about something happening, we improve the probability that it will happen. Be careful what you think about. What do you picture? Every time you worry, you improve the probability that what you are worrying about will happen. If you are worrying about failing an exam, you're imprinting that it is like you to fail and the self-image with all of its power will move you to make the imprint true. It is not what you want, but it is what you will get if you continue to think this way. What you must do is picture scoring well. Whatever you focus on will come true. Also, be careful what you talk about. I've seen the following situation hundreds of times. Two shooters meet after a match. Shooter A asks, how did you shoot? B says, I did terrible. I shot three times in a row. I shot a nine three times in a row. Two were out to the left for win, and the other one came just because I held too long. Shooter B has just improved the probability of having nines the same way in the future because he is thinking and talking about this mistake. Whatever you talk about will come true. Now, I remember shooting a match a few years ago down in Mississippi, in Memphis, and there was a pretty well-known shooter in the shooting community. I mean, the shooting community is not small. There's, I don't know roughly how many, but if you combine all the different shooting sports, there's probably a couple hundred thousand people that shoot across the country and the world. But there's always like a handful, you know,20,30 people that are just known in the industry as... as leaders and experts and high-performing shooters. And there was one particular shooter who I learned about, and he actually shot in my division. I was competing against him. Very nice guy. And I found out that he was shooting in my squad. I was like, oh, cool. And this was several years ago where I was still trying to get better, looking for ways to get better. And so he was in my squad. We shot the first stage. It was a very difficult... mechanically challenging stage. And I did terrible. He shot. I did. And then I shot later on and I did terrible, like really bad opening stage. And so the next stage we were kind of standing around and I took it as an opportunity to go up and talk to him. And one of them said, Hey man, you know, we've met before, blah, blah, blah. Like on Facebook, I friended you, blah, blah, blah. And, uh, he goes, yeah, how's your day going? And immediately I said, well, it was going good until the first stage when I screwed up and he goes, stop. If you're going to talk about how bad you did, then I'm not going to listen to you. I'm more than happy to have conversations with you, but we're not going to talk about all the bad things that you did wrong. And he was right. And I knew this because I had already read this book. I mean, I already knew this, but old habits die hard. And he was very respectful, but he was like, stop, I'm not going to listen to you because he doesn't want that information. Even if I'm the one saying it. oh, I did bad. I shot a non-threat and blah, blah, blah. He hears that and processes it and your subconscious is like, oh, this is new information. This is what we want to try and do. So he's like, stop. I don't want to hear that stuff. That's what we have to do as contractors. So a lot of you are in these free Facebook groups that is completely full of, and I hate this word, but it's full of toxic mentality. You have people that are shitting all over each other. telling you you're stupid and everything else, you should leave those groups immediately and stop. Get out of there. Don't let that information creep into your brain. I know some of you listening to this have gone on to a Facebook group and you didn't even post anything, but you're reading another post and someone says something like, Hey, I had this problem happen with a customer. They wanted to pay by credit card and there was a fee. I told them that they would have to pay the fee and the customer got mad and blah, blah, blah. And how should you handle that? And then you have all kinds of people saying things like, well, don't be a cheapskate. Just freaking pay the fee. It's a cost of doing business. And other people are saying, man, you really screwed that up and blah, blah. And you're not even the one that said it. Someone else commented and posted this. But you're reading these comments. You're reading people dogging the original poster. And that information is going into your brain. It is taking root in your brain because you're simply reading it. So stop being in groups like that. Stop reading comments and posts that are like that. This is one of the core fundamental beliefs that I have of my free Facebook group is that you're not going to do that. If somebody starts doing that, I will shut it down immediately. I want that group to be nothing but positive reinforcement. that we can help contractors. So if you're looking for a group, by the way, shameless plug, where you can go in there and interact with other contractors and ask questions without being ridiculed and made fun of and said you're stupid, I would suggest checking out my free group, Contract Your Profit Blueprint. There's a link to that in the show notes as well. Remove yourself from all the negative talk. The problem is that most of us, like 95% of the negative talk comes from ourselves. We come from ourselves. We talk bad to ourselves and myself included. I'm terrible at that. One of the reasons why I started reading this book and getting help. He talks about how to do reinforcement, how to reinforce positive traits and stuff. This is what he calls positive prediction, reinforcement in advance. People perform as we expect them to perform. There is a technique that I call positive prediction that is useful in increasing performance. Guys, listen, take note. This is going to apply to your employees and subs. It is a compliment given in advance of a future action. My father once told me that to obtain what you want, you must first provide someone else what they want. He goes on to give in a scenario. I received exceptional service at my local bank. Although I am certain the employees at my bank attempt to provide fine service to everyone, I am positive that I received special treatment. Why? I use positive prediction technique. From the very first day I opened my account, I have consistently complimented everyone in the bank in advance for their excellent treatment of my business. I said to the teller, I appreciate you. You always have a smile for me when I come in the bank and you're really good at your job. The tellers have told me they rarely receive this kind of treatment from the bank customers and they look forward to my coming to the bank. I seldom have to stand in a long line. When I come into the bank, someone usually says, Mr. Basham, I'll open this station for you. Prediction is an attitude that says, I expect exceptional service because you are an exceptional person. This can go super deep with employees, with subcontractors, with your suppliers, your salesmen, anybody you come in contact with. I've done this before at the fast food restaurant. I remember one time I was checking out and there was a young, probably a high school girl working. And she just had a very pretty smile. And I just said, well, you have a very pretty smile. Now I'm confident in my marriage. I love my wife and there's no issues. There's no jealousy. It was just a genuine compliment. And when I told her that, she lit up like a light bulb and was super excited to receive that compliment. It was not flirtatious or I had no ulterior motive. I just said, oh, wow, you have a really pretty smile or beautiful smile. However, I don't remember how I said it. And then all of a sudden, my service went way up. Every time I would go in there, my service was very good. She made sure I had all my stuff. It works. I've done this again. And I may have told a story one time at Menards. There was a gentleman that worked in the plumbing department. He lived a certain lifestyle that a lot of people don't agree with. But I always treated him like a human being and I treated him like a friend. And there are many times where I would go in there and I needed something and there'd be a lot of people and he would purposely seek me out to see if he could help me. Because I built that relationship with him and literally just treated him like a human being. I treated him like a nice person because he was. And he was really good at his job. He knew what he was doing. I would bypass other associates that work there to go find him because he was good at what he did and he would always take care of me. This works with your employees too, which by the way, I'm terrible at. The other one is praise reinforcement after the fact. Praise good performances and good performances will repeat. If praising others becomes your habit, you will soon become surrounded by competent people who love to work with you. A lot of people that companies that praise their employees do really well at hiring and keeping employees because they understand the value of praise, right? Appreciation. Now, self-image. I'm not going to go through all the different ones, but I do want to touch on self-image because this is important. So this is about steps in changing your self-image. Changing a self-image that is keeping you from reaching your goals may be the most important skill you will ever learn. I believe that you can change any attitude or habit you do not want. You should experience a corresponding change in performance when the self-image changes. Here's how to do it in four steps. First, you must be willing to change. And that is literally the truth. When I talk to contractors... And they're like, yeah, man, I want to grow my business. I want to do this and this. Okay, are you willing to change? No, not really. Okay, well, then you're not going to be a good fit. Because if you're not willing to change, then you're not going to get any better. And that's it. I mean, it's that straightforward. You must be willing to change. Usually, it's when you hit rock bottom. Usually, people are reaching out to me because they're rock bottom. I only got a few hundred dollars in my bank account. My phone stopped ringing. I haven't had a lead in two weeks. Well, for most of you, it's too late. You've waited too long. But that's usually when I get the calls when they're at rock bottom. You don't have to be at rock bottom. I mean, you could be on top of your world right now and still want to change and get even better. But you must be willing to change. Our self-image does not respond to changes others want us to make. You must decide for yourself and you must choose to do it now. You can't wait until you get your jobs finished. You can't wait until you have money in the bank. You can't wait until this. You have to be willing to make the change right now. Right now. Not tomorrow. Right now. Second, you must identify specifically the habits and or attitudes that you need to change. Be specific. For example, I'm looking for a solution to worrying about shooting below my average in the days just before a competition. I've done this before. It's like, oh man, I got a competition coming up this weekend. I hope I do well. Hope I don't shoot any non-threats. And I just really hope I do good. That's worrying. So he's saying identify that and then try to figure out a solution to prevent you from worrying. Number three, you must identify a new self-image that is in direct conflict. It is in direct conflict of your old self. For example, I only want to think about what I want to have happen concerning upcoming competitions. So if you worry about upcoming competitions, you have to now identify a new self-image that you only concerned. I only think about what I want to have happen. Instead of thinking about, I hope it doesn't happen. He's thinking about, I'm going to win. I'm going to shoot well. I'm going to perform well. I'm going to win. Number four. You exchange the old self-image for the desired one by only imprinting the new attitude or habit you are trying to eliminate imprinting the old one. Imprinting is whenever you think about something, it creates neural pathways in your brain and you increase the myelinization of that pathway. I've talked about before, if you have woods and you're trying to go through a path in the woods, the more you go down that path, the more the path becomes more clear. That works with negative talk. It works with negative self-talk the exact same way as positive. Remember, your self-image is the current state of you. It is not the final state. Be aware that your self-image is evolving in the direction of your imprinting. The better you control your imprinting, the better captain you will be of the submarine that is taking you to your goals. Nothing is going to change unless you change. You're not going to buy a course or program, even the Profit Club, where you come in and you learn a secret word track. And then all of a sudden, you're good at sales. It's not how it works. If you come in the Profit Club, the very first module that we go over is your mindset. We start to strip away limiting beliefs because that is truly what's keeping you from obtaining the goals that you want. I am a firm believer that the reason why 96% of contractors fail is because they simply do not want to look inward at themselves and make the required changes to be the person they need to be. They simply want to blame external forces for not having success because it's much easier than looking in the mirror and saying, you are one fucked up individual, Brad. You really need to fix yourself. I'm convinced that that's why most contractors fail. They simply do not want to look at themselves. So here's the last part here I'm going to go over. The principle of value. We appreciate things in direct proportion to the price we pay for them. We appreciate things in direct proportion to the price we pay for them. If you bought a Ferrari, paid $200,000 for a brand new Ferrari, you're probably going to appreciate that more than if you paid $2,000 for a piece of crap car. The more money you pay, the more you appreciate it. It also applies to your customers and why it works whenever you charge more money and they pay more money, they actually appreciate the value and service you provide more. We learn from the shots we miss more than the ones we make. We are taught when we are growing up that making mistakes is costly and should be avoided. The key is to discern what lessons these experiences are trying to teach us. And the focus must be on learning from failure, not thinking that you are a failure. I've had people come on my calls, interested in the profit club, telling me, I know I screwed up. I know I'm a failure, blah, blah, blah. No, you're not. You're not a failure. That's the self-image again. You're not a failure. You just make mistakes, and maybe you're not learning from your mistakes. There's a great saying I've heard once that said, the thing about lessons is if you don't learn them the first time, they just keep getting harder and harder to learn. So use it when you make a failure, or use it as a learning lesson, and then evolve. There's a quote here by George Bernard Shaw, success does not consist. in never making mistakes, but in never making the same one a second time. So again, learn from your mistakes and then you won't have to make them again. It's not learning everything you need to know ahead of time so that you never make a mistake. You're going to make mistakes. I've made plenty of them. So this is the book and I want to leave you with a challenge. And that challenge is, I simply challenge you to take action. I'm challenging you right now if you're listening to this. to take action towards the goal and results that you want. One simple thing you can do is buy this book. You can buy this book and read it. It is geared towards shooting sports, but there is a ton, a ton, a ton of gold in here. It's well worth the read and it will help to start to change the way you look at things in life. So I challenge you to just start taking action. I hope you enjoyed me deciphering this book. I didn't even touch on probably 5% of what's in this book. It's all I got time for. It's well worth the read. If you're watching on YouTube, again, I'll hold it up. With Winning in Mind by Lanny Basham. There's a link in the bio. I'm sorry, in the show notes. Go read it. It's a great, great book. And here's what I have a request from you. I want you to comment wherever you're listening or watching this. I want you to go to the comments. and tell me what you're going to take action on. Just put in there like hashtag take action and then what you're going to take action on. Hashtag take action and then what you're going to take action on. And I'm going to pay attention. I may call you up or not call you up, but I may message you in a few weeks and see how it's going. I'm going to hold you accountable. If you comment and send a note to me, I'm going to hold you accountable to that. Okay, so don't do it if you're not going to. If you don't want accountability, don't comment. But if you want some accountability, comment. Hashtag take action. And then what you're going to take action on. So I appreciate you tuning in today, guys. You can find me on all the social media platforms, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. Search for Hammer and Grind Podcast. Check out my free Facebook group, The Contractor Profit Blueprint. It's in the show notes. And if you want to elevate your business and accelerate the success that you have, make sure you... contact me and I can share with you about the Profit Club. One last thing I'm excited to share with you if you're listening to this live when it's released, I'm going to be releasing a new program specifically for sales. It's going to be the Contractor Sales Accelerator. It will be a sub-program of the Profit Club. And I've made this to be a much more affordable program for a lot of contractors. who really need help with sales, but they just can't afford to join the Profit Club because it is a sizable investment. Or there are some contractors that just need help with sales and nothing else. So I've created this program, hoping to be released here soon. Maybe by the time you listen to this, it may already be released. You can find out more information about that by going to the show notes and going to... There's a website I have, contractorsalesaccelerator. com. If you go there and it's not set up, it's because it's not set up yet. But it's going to be here very soon. I wanted to get the word out. You can also join my free Facebook group and I'll be releasing information in there about it as well. So I hope to see you in there if you need help with your sales. Guys, until next time, you know what to do. Be the best version of you.
