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. Welcome back to the podcast. Super happy to have you. We are coming up on 100 episodes. This is episode number 99. Are you living the lifestyle that you want? And I'm looking back and just thinking almost 100 episodes is pretty remarkable achievement in and of itself. A lot of podcasts start and I think statistically, they stop after like maybe 10 episodes is the most. the average. So I appreciate you guys for hanging out with me, listening to the podcast, giving me feedback, reaching out. Definitely helps and make it worth the effort because it does take a lot of effort. I'm not going to lie. It takes a lot of effort to put on the podcast every single week, come up with ideas, book guests. It's almost a part-time job in and of itself. But I enjoy doing this to get this information out for you guys to try and make an impact in your business. Now, before we actually get started on this episode, I actually want to tell you about a company that I've partnered with. Now, this is not a paid advertisement. They're not paying me to say this. This is just a company that I have actually fallen in love with and what their mission is. And I want to share that with you. And the company is called RPG Coffee. And what that stands for is a real people giving. This company is designed... specifically to increase your health through some technology that's used in this coffee. It has aloe that's infused in the coffee bean. And some of the benefits of that are like gut health support, antioxidant, immune system support, and cognitive function support. So it actually makes you healthier as you drink this coffee. And the great thing that I love about this coffee... Besides the fact that it tastes really good, and this is coming from someone who's been drinking Black Rifle coffee. Nothing against Black Rifle coffee. I like that coffee. But after switching to RPG, this taste, in my opinion, is much smoother. And I just really like it. So the benefit that I really like about this company is 50% of their net profits, net profits go towards veterans and first responder communities. So the real people giving is that every time you're buying coffee from them, you're actually supporting our veteran communities and first responder communities. So there's a link in the show notes if you want to check that out and get you some coffee. They also have these sticks. They come in a 32-stick bag. So you can take these on the go. You can drink it hot or cold. If you've got access to hot water, you just open the stick. It's kind of like a cake up, if you will, but you don't need the coffee maker. You just throw the stick in there, mix it up, and you're ready to rock and roll. So check them out. Link's in the show notes. Now, are you living the lifestyle that you want? This could be a very impactful podcast for some of you. And I really want to drive this topic home because I talk to hundreds and hundreds of contractors on a regular basis, and most of them are stuck in their business. hating it. They wake up in the morning and they hate what they're doing. And I was one of those people many years ago. For many years, I was stuck in the crazy cycle, wondering what I'm doing wrong. How can this possibly be? I don't understand it. People are cheap. Clients don't want to spend the money. All these excuses that I had given myself, I see every day on Facebook forums, TikTok, everywhere you go. I see the exact same questions, the exact same problems that they're having in their business. And a lot of it is because of this simple fact that you haven't actually sat down and purposefully figured out what kind of lifestyle that I want. Now, some of you are saying, well, what the hell does your lifestyle that you want have to do with customers that are cheap? Well, I'm going to explain that to you. So you have to sit down. Whenever a new client joins my coaching program, The Profit Club, the very first module, the very first training in the module is designing your ideal lifestyle. Design your lifestyle. Because you have to have a target of what you're trying to go after. Waking up in the morning and then reacting to the day and then at the end of the day saying, oh, was it a good day or a bad day? That is not how you... get the kind of lifestyle that you want. It just doesn't work that way. Every single person who has risen to a high level of achievement or the lifestyle that they want, the people you see on social media that are like, oh man, I'd love to be that guy. If you're like Ed Milet or Gary Vee or any of these top people that you see, they didn't get there on a wish and happenstance. They had plans and they had goals. And those goals of what they wanted to do and have were far greater than all of the thoughts and the idea of giving up or the hardship that comes along with owning a business. There's nothing easy about owning a business. Otherwise, every single person would do it. So the fact that you own a business, you've elected to say, I'm different. I want to have more for myself. And therefore, I'm willing to put up with more crap, more hardship to achieve what I want. But because you've never outlined what you actually want, you get into your business and three, five, seven years later, you're stuck. Every year in January, you look back over the books and you had the exact same experience, the exact same expectation. Yeah, you may have added some... some profit to your books, but it's not like you're making more money. You just sold more jobs, right? More revenue, but you weren't really making more money because you had more revenue, but you also had more expenses. And so you're not really making money. And so you get stuck in this crazy cycle. And then you're like, Oh man, it's just not worth it. And then we start looking for excuses as to why it's not working. Excuses like... people in my town won't pay for a consultation. Excuses like, all of my clients are cheap and they want to discount my prices. Excuses like, I can't find good help. Excuses like, oh, the economy is bad. There's a recession going on. These are all excuses for you to feel better. These are external excuses so that you can justify the internal problem. which is you. You are the problem. You are the bottleneck in your business. You are the problem as to why you can't find good help. You are the problem as to why you can't find leads that want to pay your prices. You are the problem in your business. And until you wake up and realize this, you will be stuck in your business in the same thing, cycling every year, having the exact same results, Because you refuse to look internally at yourself. And so what we're going to talk about here is how to start the process of looking externally at a goal, right? So that you can internally figure out what you need to do to get there. Whenever I have people go through this exercise, when I have clients come through and they do this exercise and I ask them, what did you learn about this exercise? The number one response is, I'm not making enough money. I need to make a lot more money in order to live the lifestyle that I want. And my response is, bingo. You're not making enough money. Because 90% of the contractors that I talk to on a regular basis are not making enough money in their business. They're simply not charging enough. So the way you get to the lifestyle you want is by charging more. It's by being more profitable. And that's when all of the excuses, again, come out. Nobody's going to pay that much. I'm already more expensive than everyone else. People are too cheap in my town. Excuses come out again and again and again. And it's just excuses. The reason why I created the Profit Club and why it's affectionately named the Profit Club is because when you make profits in your business... you now have options available to you for your business and for your lifestyle that you want. So when you go through this exercise and you realize, holy crap, I need to make like $2 million in the next five years if I want to have the kind of lifestyle that I want. And it forces you to realize like, there's no way I'm going to accomplish that on the current trajectory that I'm on. And that's why this is number one, the first exercise in my program. Because I want you to say, holy crap, how can I afford this? How can I do this? I was talking to one of my clients the other day, recently joined, and he's struggling a little bit with some of this exercise. And he was like, I don't know how I'm going. He's trying to design his lifestyle based on how much money he's currently making. And that's not how you do that. You don't say I'm making X amount a year. I'm making $80,000 a year, but I want to go buy a 20-acre land and build a half a million dollar house and have horses and all this stuff. But I can't afford that because I'm only making $80,000 a year. So I'm really just going to have to go buy a $300,000 house on half an acre and forget the horses. That's not how you do this. You have to start, some people will call this like a BHAG, a big, hairy, audacious goal. It's something that's so far out of the realm of what you think is possible that you probably will never get there. That can be like a BHAG. That's not the purpose of what we're trying to do here per se. We're trying to say is what do we want our lifestyle to look at? Some people go through this exercise and realize They actually make enough money right now to do three or five of these things that they want on their list, but they've never actually sat down and done the math to figure out, oh, I can actually go get my pilot's license. It's been a dream of mine to get my pilot's license. And after I've looked at this, actually, I make enough money now to do that. So what's keeping me from calling tomorrow and setting up my first license ride or whatever? Starting that process. What I'm encouraging you on this podcast and the reason for this podcast is to sit down and figure out what do I really want. Now, this worksheet that I have in the Profit Club, I'll explain it a little bit. Unfortunately, you don't have access to this because you have to be a member. But what I can tell you is that the first thing you got to do is write down what do you want. Now, some of these things may not be financially... There may not be finances required. If you want to get married and have kids, that's not necessarily something you have to have a bunch of money to do. Although raising a family costs money and is expensive. But it's not something where it's like you're trying to buy a house and you need $50,000 down to buy the house. That's a financial requirement. Some of these may be things like, I want to write a book. It could just be a goal of yours. It's go slash with your lifestyle. How do I want my lifestyle to be? It can be, how do I want my mornings to look when I wake up? How do I want this to work? Well, if you're a one-man show in your business and you have to go work from 7.30 to 4 every day on the tools, then you may not be able to afford or have the time, I should say, in the morning to be able to go to the gym. and hang out and then get started around 8 because you have to get on the tools. But the way you get to that lifestyle is by growing your business, making more money so that you either don't have to work as many hours or you can hire people and build the team and get off the tools and then you can come in at 9 o 'clock in the morning if that's what you want to do. There's no right or wrong way as to how you set this up. It's totally up to you. And if you're married, you need to sit down with your spouse and do this. Another thing you can do is you and your spouse separately create a list and then come together and look at it and see if there's overlap, if you guys have the same goals, or maybe you don't. Maybe you find out your wife wants to go back to school and become a nurse, and she's never really told you that before. There's so much benefit to taking a second and sitting down and saying, what kind of life do I want? We get stuck in this idea that we have to work nine to five. you know, whatever. It's a metaphor, nine to five, Monday through Friday, because that's what everyone else on social media does. That's what businesses do. There's nothing that says you have to do that. I mean, maybe you want to work in the evenings and sleep during the day. Maybe you're a night owl. I don't know. Well, there's jobs out there that work in the evenings. Maybe you pivot on what you're doing, what services you offer. Maybe you pivot into the commercial. which a lot of things happen at night because they don't want disruptions during the day. There's ways that you can figure this stuff out. But if you've never actually sat down and figured out what do I really want, you're just waking up every day and reacting to the day. That's what's happening. So the first thing you're going to do on this is you're going to write down... Step one is you write down what do I want. Pretty simple. What do I want? There's no financial restrictions on this. It can be I want to go to space. Right. There's no there's no limitations whatsoever that you put on this. Now, do the process. You're going to you're going to rank these. And some of these things may not happen. If you're 65 years old, have a bad back, you know, and you have diabetes, you're probably not going to be an astronaut. Right. But we still throw it down there on this paper. This is not a limiting exercise, per se. You put everything on here that I want to do with my life. And this isn't necessarily like goal-based, like, oh, I want to go see the Grand Canyon, although that could be part of it because that requires a financial investment to do that. But this is more along the lines of how do I want my life to be on a regular basis? When I wake up, this is how I want my life to be. And these are the things that I need to have in order for this to happen. So your want could be, I want a pool. Maybe you like swimming. You don't currently have a pool, but you want one. It could be a lot of land. It could be horses. It can be material things. So you write down, what do I want? And then step two is, why do I want it? You need to attach a reason, an emotional reason behind why you want it. This is part of the process of understanding the reasons why you want it and how you prioritize this. Step three is, when do you want it? What time frame? Now, on my worksheet, I have it broken down into one year, three years, five years. Because this is going to help you to prioritize things. I may want a pool in the next year, but I may want horses on a ranch, but that could be in five years from now. And so there's different priorities as far as when I want these things and then as far as also money and what needs to happen. Then the step four is, is this a need or a want? Sometimes we need things. I need to have surgery. My mother or whoever you're taking care of or whatever, like my wife needs to have surgery and I'm going to be out of pocket 50 grand. Well, that's a need, right? A pull could be a want. So you put it as a need or a want. This just, again, helps to create priorities in these things. Step five, how much will this cost me? How much will this cost me? Now, this is, you can go super deep in the weeds on this. If you know that you want a 1974 Mustang or whatever,1968 Camaro, and you've been dreaming about it your whole life and you've researched and you know that it's going to cost you like $40,000 or whatever. I don't even know what the costs are. If you know this stuff because you've been researching it and studying it, then throw that price in there. But if you don't really have a clue what the price is, you just kind of get as close to what you think it's going to be. right? If you want to buy a new bass tracker boat, and I have no idea what those costs, but let's say it's 20 grand,30K, I don't know, then throw that in there. As close as you can get. This is not about getting exact pricing. Step six is you rank your things that you want. You rank them from like one to 20. On this worksheet I have, there's 20 spaces. You would rank them from like one to 20 in the order that you want to achieve these things, not based on dollar amount. It's not based on importance. It's not based on necessarily timeframe either. It can be timeframe. If you want it next year, then that's going to be a higher priority, possibly. But a lot of times there's things that we think we want quicker because it's a cheaper price. I could say, I want to go buy a new gun that's only $800 because I could go buy that tomorrow. But there may be something else that I want. I really want to buy a hot tub. So that I can, you know, after workouts, I can get in there and relax and, you know, all that stuff. And that may cost me $8,000. So it's not like, okay, I want a gun that's 800 or I want a hot tub that's 8,000. You know, I can afford the gun now. So I'm going to put that as a priority. No, you don't do it like that. You put it on there like what's going to be the higher priority that's going to give you the lifestyle that you want. Maybe it's the hot tub. So you rank them. And then number seven is... you break it out to what that costs per month to do that. So if the hot tub is $8,000, you break it out into what it costs per month to do that if you're going to finance it. The cost per month is really for larger purchases if you're going to get a loan or if you're going to finance it. That's really what that's for. So if I was going to go, maybe I don't have the money at $8,000, but I want a hot tub and I'm going to finance it. It's going to cost me $150 a month or whatever. You put it in there. Now, Once you've done all this, you do a little bit of math, okay? And you total up and I have an example here. It says, let's say you want a house, it's $500,000. You would figure out how much of a down payment you would need and then what timeframe you want it in. So let's say you want the house in five years and you need $100,000 for a down payment, depending on whatever the price is. You divide that by five to get a yearly goal of $20,000. then you divide that by 12 to get $1,677 per month. So that would be in the cost per month. So it's like, I want this house in five years. And in order to be able to buy this house, the current, and I need $100,000 down payment, okay? Then I break it out into $20,000 a year over five years, which comes out to be $1,677 per month. So what you start doing is you start planning. Like financially, you're planning to be able to make these purchases in the future. I'll share with you one of my goals in life that I want to do is to fly, to get a pilot's license. And although I would like to have a fixed wing or an airplane license, what I really want is a helicopter license. Since I was a little kid, I've always wanted to fly helicopters. And there's a new company that started last year, last couple of years. called Hill Helicopters, who is doing some phenomenal things in the aerospace industry in terms of fabrication, completely changing the helicopter from the ground up, which is going to make it like three times more affordable for most people. And so it seems like a lot of money because it is. But right now you can purchase or pre-purchase. They haven't even started making them yet. You can pre-purchase these. now to be delivered in 2025,2026. They're already three, four years out on the list. And this helicopter is going to be somewhere around between $500,000 and $700,000. It's a lot of money. But if I know that in five years, I got to drop $700,000, I can back that out. Okay, how much money do I need to save from now till then? in order to be able to afford that in five years. And so that's where it comes down to of what kind of lifestyle do you want? What do you want in your life? And then the second part of the equation is, how can I make my business create the revenue that I need to live the lifestyle that I want? Because most of you just wake up, react to the day. At the end of the day, you're like, oh, Looks like I made $100 today. I guess that's how much money I have to live my life. Whatever money you make is what you just live off of. I'm telling you, that's not how you run a business. That's how people who don't know how to run a business, run a business. But that is not the healthy way of running a business. And so you have to figure out how to make your business produce the revenue that you need. to live the lifestyle that you want. I hope this is starting to come together and make sense. Some of you right now are saying, well, that's great, Brad, but I've never made more than $200,000 a year in my business, and I don't see how it's ever going to make any more. I need to pay myself $200,000 a year to live the lifestyle that I want. Well, then you better start figuring some stuff out. You better start figuring out if you need to pivot. You better start figuring out if you're not charging enough, which you probably aren't. You better start figuring out if the trade that you're in is not going to allow you to get there. That's the pivoting. Maybe you're a carpenter now that frames homes, right? And you're maxed out at making $100,000 a year. And you want to make $200,000 a year to live the lifestyle you want. you got to start pivoting. Do I need to add other services? Do I need to pivot into a different industry? Maybe I need to switch to commercial. Maybe I'm in commercial. I need to switch to residential. Whatever it might be, when you start seeing this and you have clarity around, what am I shooting for to get that life? It now creates a path. It creates a path forward so that you know that when you go home at the end of the day and you only made $100, you know you just came up short on what you need to do. in order to live the lifestyle that you want. Now, some of you are like, I'm very simple. I can live in a tiny house off of solar powered on a half acre lot. And I don't need to make that much money. And I'd be super happy. And that's it. That's great. If that's what you want, at least you know that. And then you can create a business around. Maybe you only want to work 20 hours a week. You live in a tiny house. Your monthly overhead is like $1,500 a month. to keep everything on. And then whatever money you make in your business allows you to not have to work. And if that's the lifestyle that you want, then do that. But you also have to plan for retirement. See, most of you guys have no retirement whatsoever. I know this because I've done surveys and I've talked to contractors and over 90% of you don't have a retirement in place. So you might be making okay money now. But when you're 60,65 years old,70, and you can't even walk anymore because you beat your body to death, what are you going to do? You're going to be one of the Walmart greeters that sit in the chair at the door and check receipts? I mean, is that what you really want? Some of you need to learn delayed gratification. I'm not going to go down that path today, but some of you need delayed gratification. I'm just telling you that right now, myself included. I've always been a get what you want kind of person within reason. I've never purchased outside of my means, but I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I don't have lots of guns in the safe that costs lots of money because I do. Just don't tell my wife how much money I've spent. There's a joke that says my biggest fear is not that when I die, my wife sells my guns. It's that she sells the guns for what I told her I paid for them. No, I don't hide that from my wife. I just thought that's a funny joke. Now, I want to take a pause for a moment here because I want to talk to you for a second about the Profit Club. And 99 episodes in, I've not done this because I don't want to be the type of person that's always self-promoting. But I've had mentors and coaches and people explain it to me this way. And it makes sense. And this is why I'm doing this. If you have information... that you know would be beneficial to someone else that could help them in their problems in their life, that could change the directory of their life, and then you don't yell from the rooftops every day about this so that people can understand this and learn this and know this, then that comes from a position of being selfish. So it's actually selfish not to share with people on a regular basis what you can do to help them. And so for that reason, I just want to take a second to talk to you about the Profit Club and what it is because some of you listening may have never even heard or know that I even have this. And that's why I'm doing this. The Profit Club is my paid coaching group. It's my premium group where I put all my effort into. And what it's designed to do is help contractors like yourself who are struggling financially, who are not making the money they want, who are not living the lifestyle they want, maximize their profit. What we do is we teach you how to sell jobs at the highest profit margins possible so that instantly, and in most cases, on the very next job they sell once they join, they add anywhere from 5% to 25% gross profit margins on their jobs. I've had clients that have done an extra... $1 million a year over a 12-month period. I've had clients that have done hundreds of thousands of dollars over a 12-month period. I have clients that have made their investment back on the very first job they sold once they joined. I've had clients that have made over $100,000 additional profit on one single job. It's really crazy how much profit is out there. If you know how to structure it, if you know how to sell it, And if you understand the nuances, if you understand the emotional part of selling, if you understand your numbers, if you understand the mindset of what it takes to grow and run a profitable business, if you understand all of these things, it's very, very easy to have a profitable business that will support the lifestyle that you want. And that's exactly what I teach contractors how to do in the Profit Club. So if you're interested in learning more about that, There's links in the show notes. You can reach out to me on any platform. I'd be more than happy to share with you what that looks like. And it may not be the right fit for you. So one of the things that we do is we'll have a free strategy session. We'll jump on a call, you and I. We'll talk about your business, what your needs are. And if I can't help you, I'll tell you that. And then I'll even share with you two to three strategic actions that you can take immediately to try and help in your business. So at the very minimum, you're going to get some strategic information that you can implement immediately. Just reach out to me and get more information about that. Back to the podcast. So I hope you're seeing why this is so important to be able to create the lifestyle that you want and then use your business. Your business is a tool. Okay? It's no different than a hammer or a shovel. By the way, that's what's on my logo. A hammer and a shovel. It's no difference than a hammer or a shovel. It is a tool. Your business is a tool. And if you don't understand that, if you don't see it as a tool, then you get wrapped up into it. And all of a sudden, the business is your master and you're the slave. And so you're trying to do everything you can to support the business. I got to work this weekend, babe, because I got to make payroll. I got to work this weekend, babe, because... This customer wants this job done by Saturday or they're going to lose their shit. You're working for the customer like you're their employee. Your employees are making more money than you because you can't afford to pay yourself more. If any of these things sound familiar to you, the good news is there is a solution to all of this. You can find a way out. This is not what it's designed to be. This is not how business, how the world of entrepreneurship is designed to be, where it consumes your life and you get no upside to it. Some of you actually have pretty good profit margins. Some of you make pretty good money, but you're working seven days a week to get that money. I shouldn't say profit margins. I should say you're making good money. Some of the clients that come in, they actually make... like the amount of money they need to make. But the only way they can make that is by working seven days a week. So there again, even though you're making the money you want, your business is not allowing you to live the lifestyle that you want. I have one client who has young kids at home. He makes really good money, but he never gets to see his kids because he's working seven days a week,12,14 hours a day. That is not a business that's helping you. That is a business that's consuming you. So I want you to do this exercise, guys. Do not pass this. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Sit down with you or your spouse and write down what do you really want your life to look like. Assign a dollar value to that. And then you're going to have an oh shit moment. Wow, I need to have X amount of dollars. I'll never be able to afford this. And if that scares you and wakes up your eyes and you don't know where to go from there, then give me a call. I'm more than happy to help you out with that. But at least have something to shoot for. At least have a plan forward so that you know I got to do something different. All right? So I appreciate you hanging out with me today. Don't forget to check out the RPG Coffee. It's really, really good coffee, guys. I don't care if you... I'm not making tons of money off of that. But I just really like their coffee. So check them out. And you can always find me on the social media platforms, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. Search for the Hammer and Grind podcast. And if you haven't joined my free Facebook group, you really, really should because the amount of content I put out in the podcast is like three times that amount of content in the Facebook group. So really, that is where I put a lot of my energies into the free Facebook group. to provide as much information for you guys as possible. There's links to that in the show notes as well. And I'm going to change up. I'm going to change up. I'm doing it. We're almost at 100 episodes. I probably should wait until next episode to do this at 100. But I'm going to do it right now. I'm changing my tagline. You guys know, I say tagline, my ending sign off. There you go. In the past, I've said, you know what to do. Be the best version of you. I'm changing it. This year,2023, we're changing it. It's going to be... Profit is not a dirty word. That's the new ending sign-off. So guys, until next time, remember, profit is not a dirty word.
