Jan. 22, 2025

Ep 22 - Forged for Success: Brandon Vaughn’s Blueprint for Scaling Electrical Companies

Unlock the secrets to business success with insights from Brandon Vaughn, a second-generation home service entrepreneur who mastered scalability and sustainability. Brandon shares his compelling journey from working in his father's window cleaning business to creating a thriving venture of his own. Discover the vital concept of the "bus factor" and learn how building systems and processes can transform a single-point-of-failure business into a robust machine that runs independently, preparing it for potential sale.

Explore the art of delegation and the power of a competent team as we venture into strategies for scaling a business effectively. Brandon and our host delve into trust issues, accountability, and the pitfalls of the DIY approach. Learn how industry giants like Steve Jobs and Richard Branson harnessed the strength of others to lead their companies, and how you can apply similar principles to avoid the dreaded bottleneck that can stifle growth. The conversation taps into the valuable insights of Dan Martell and others on leveraging team strengths to maximize efficiency and business potential.

Shifting mindsets from scarcity to abundance is essential for entrepreneurs, and this episode offers guidance on overcoming financial fears. Through personal anecdotes, Brandon illustrates the importance of investing back into your business and the substantial returns that can result. The discussion also covers building assets, presenting options to clients, and structuring a business for eventual sale, drawing inspiration from Michael Michalowicz's frameworks. Elevate your business standards through strategic systems and processes to ensure consistency, reliability, and long-term success. Join us for an episode packed with transformative lessons and real-life success stories!

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00:00 - Becoming a Successful Business Owner

09:28 - Delegating and Scaling for Success

21:11 - Overcoming Scarcity Mindsets in Business

24:54 - Building and Leveraging Business Assets

31:55 - Achieving Success Through Providing Options

38:45 - Building a Business Ready for Sale

45:57 - Elevating Business Standards Through Systems

WEBVTT

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Hello, hello, hello and welcome to the Million Dollar Electrician podcast, where we help home service pros like you supercharge your business and spark up those sales.

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I'm Joseph Lucani and, together with my co-host, Clay Neumeier, we're here to share the secrets that have helped electricians sell over a million dollars from a single service van.

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Now it's time for sales, it's time for scale, it's time to become a million dollar electrician.

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All right, guys, welcome back to the show.

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We just had some fun backstage with some audio technical difficulties, so we're entering with a bit of laughter here, but this is no laughing matter.

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We've got Brandon Vaughn on the show as a great guest here.

00:00:46.579 --> 00:00:47.561
Welcome, brandon.

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If you notice, brandon's actually walking, he's putting the miles in and I think personally, joe, this is a testament to brandon's character.

00:00:55.447 --> 00:01:06.129
Uh, brandon, I'm going to be able to lightly introduce you, but you got a ton of stuff going on, man, so you're going to have to go into kind of bragging right city here and fill us in and everything that you've been up to.

00:01:06.129 --> 00:01:07.853
I'll start you off, though.

00:01:08.474 --> 00:01:11.182
Brandon and I were introduced here not too long ago.

00:01:11.182 --> 00:01:16.721
We hit it off right off the bat, because we both came from, I feel, like some real school of hard knocks.

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We both had some adversity, joe as well.

00:01:20.250 --> 00:01:23.121
Right, we've done the interviews, we all know about that.

00:01:23.121 --> 00:01:34.489
But we're going to learn a bit more about Brandon's today, because Brandon's done some exceptional things in the home services industry and I was thinking, you know, maybe Brandon's like the sixth guest we've had on.

00:01:34.489 --> 00:01:38.722
That's not an electrician, but since you just bought an electrical company, you're working on that.

00:01:38.722 --> 00:01:40.930
I don't think that even qualifies brother.

00:01:40.930 --> 00:01:48.004
So congrats on the big purchase, purchase there, the acquisition, and please, man, tell us a bit about you, why you here, what's going on?

00:01:49.168 --> 00:01:50.049
well, thanks for having me.

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First of all, and yeah, it was the second that we got on a call together.

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I was like dude, it's clay, it's like my brother from another mother.

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He just immediately connected and hit it off uh, which is?

00:02:01.510 --> 00:02:06.329
Is is rare, it's, it's, it's rare to rare to be able just make that kind of instant connection.

00:02:07.299 --> 00:02:12.061
Let's see, I've been in home services my entire life, second generation home service business owner.

00:02:12.061 --> 00:02:17.993
My dad was a owner operator, window cleaner, started his window cleaning business in 1978.

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And for 33 years, 34 years, he was a owner operator.

00:02:25.330 --> 00:02:29.301
So between zero and one employee for all of that time period.

00:02:29.301 --> 00:02:31.608
Wow, guess who was one of the first ones?

00:02:31.608 --> 00:02:32.979
Well, maybe not one of the first ones I have.

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I have four, uh, four brother, brothers and sisters.

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All of us worked in the family business.

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I started working with my dad full-time at age 13, homeschooled through high school while I was working with him full-time.

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And he started mechooled through high school while I was working with him full-time and he started me out, like you know, paying me five cents a screen to wash screens, and then eventually, you know, we just kind of started working together on a regular basis, four days a week, five days a week, and yeah, that's kind of how I got started in the home service space.

00:03:00.161 --> 00:03:03.907
That's actually how I knew what a business was.

00:03:03.907 --> 00:03:07.393
Was like my dad's model of one guy.

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That's the business.

00:03:08.835 --> 00:03:23.354
Of course, over the years I've learned that, no, that's a job, not really a true business, because there's something else that I learned called the bus factor, which is how many people in a company have to get hit by a bus before that business ceases to exist.

00:03:24.020 --> 00:03:30.693
And my dad's score was one, only he had to get hit by a bus before the business ceased to exist.

00:03:30.693 --> 00:03:42.903
And you know and I can kind of dive into that a little bit later, but you know, in effect, metaphorically that happened and so that was a pretty pivotal trajectory move for myself as kind of a business owner and entrepreneur.

00:03:42.903 --> 00:03:52.282
The day I turned 18, I got my first business license and mostly almost entirely been self-employed, 100% commission-based pay ever since.

00:03:53.164 --> 00:04:00.227
Wow, that is intense and I honestly I just want to start using the bus example going forward because it just makes it really simple to understand.

00:04:00.227 --> 00:04:01.509
It's like okay.

00:04:01.509 --> 00:04:04.306
Well, if you have a team member, how many people need to get hit?

00:04:04.306 --> 00:04:06.802
That's a very clear and direct answer.

00:04:08.246 --> 00:04:08.828
Yeah, it's a cool.

00:04:08.828 --> 00:04:10.131
It's a cool score and metric.

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That I learned from somebody else, a mentor of mine, and one thing that was you know that that bus factor can be yourself.

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It can be someone else on your team.

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It could be your spouse that does the books, it could be your key employee that you're like man.

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If I lost this key employee, I'm screwed.

00:04:27.483 --> 00:04:48.502
Anytime a business has a very low bus score, it's a dangerous position to be in and the more redundancies, the more systems and processes and documentation and training videos and very clearly defined job roles and descriptions, the more easy it is for anyone in the company to be replaceable.

00:04:48.502 --> 00:04:53.543
Everybody in the company should be replaceable, including the owner, if you're going to have a true business.

00:04:53.543 --> 00:05:00.269
Um, man, it took me years and years and years to truly learn that and even still I'm.

00:05:00.269 --> 00:05:08.071
I feel like I'm I'm learning little spots of myself where I have to build those redundancies out, because I kind of fall back into that trap again.

00:05:08.920 --> 00:05:13.050
I was just going to say that's not spoken like someone with a bus factor of one.

00:05:13.050 --> 00:05:16.127
So it must have grown.

00:05:16.127 --> 00:05:17.406
You must have done some things.

00:05:17.406 --> 00:05:27.351
Yeah, give us the fast forward now and then we'll break it to, to humble beginnings and some adversity and stuff that led to this.

00:05:27.351 --> 00:05:34.091
Um, but where are you at today, Brandon, with, uh, with reference to the bus factor of one?

00:05:35.560 --> 00:05:35.822
Well, I've.

00:05:35.822 --> 00:05:54.495
I've had a lot of businesses over the years, learned a ton, had some successful exits at some successful acquisitions, had a successful coaching company for a while that I sold, and then today I own 12 companies total and have CEOs and GMs that run.

00:05:54.495 --> 00:06:16.528
The vast majority of those and one of those companies is a software company called Hirebus that I am CEO that's where I spend my full-time work in is that it's an AI-powered recruiting software program specifically for home services, so we hire the top 3% of talent without business owners having to ever write a job ad.

00:06:16.528 --> 00:06:20.824
We do everything, and so that's where my primary focus has been.

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But one of the other companies I have is called Hammer and Forge and it's a acquisition group where we're buying electrical companies and expanding that out.

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We just closed on our first one January 1st small business that we're turning into kind of a platform company.

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We're going to be documenting kind of the growth of taking a business that's small, rebranding it, putting in systems.

00:06:42.502 --> 00:06:44.329
I hope we're going to be able to work together on that.

00:06:44.329 --> 00:06:48.682
I have a lot of cool ideas on how I could use your guys' help and expertise to be able to do that.

00:06:48.702 --> 00:06:49.985
We'd be grateful to serve.

00:06:49.985 --> 00:06:52.833
What's that I said we'd be grateful to serve?

00:06:52.833 --> 00:07:16.466
Yeah, I know you guys would be, cause that's actually how we got introduced to each other was a mutual friend of ours who came to me when his business was super struggling and you guys turned him around Like it was mind blowing to see the transformation of what you guys did, which is why I was so happy for us to be able to connect is you're obviously rockstar entrepreneurs as well as coaches, let's see.

00:07:16.466 --> 00:07:19.452
And then my one of my other businesses is called wise coatings.

00:07:19.452 --> 00:07:28.004
It's a garage floor coatings company that I started in january of 2021 and that's actually a youtube video and channel called map to a million.

00:07:28.384 --> 00:07:31.211
So there's 16 episodes on starting that company from scratch.

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Built it from zero, got 100k month in revenue, month four, hit seven figures our first year and now, you know, fast forward four years later, we have 37 locations, we're doing about 2 million a month and, uh, some cool things.

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I can kind of talk about that and kind of building that, but I have a CEO that runs that company and GMs that runs a lot of our individual locations, so that's another business of mine Very cool Starting to collect businesses.

00:08:00.860 --> 00:08:02.742
I think that's my new hobby.

00:08:02.742 --> 00:08:12.689
Slash personal interest is, instead of investing in the stock market, just investing in businesses and viewing them as an asset, which is it's been amazing.

00:08:12.809 --> 00:08:16.612
It's been really fun been thinking about a couple of things there, one being hire bus.

00:08:16.612 --> 00:08:17.692
That sounds interesting.

00:08:17.692 --> 00:08:33.351
Recruiting is hard and we're struggling with that, which is something we talk to electricians about and hear from electricians about every single day.

00:08:33.351 --> 00:08:40.158
But I imagine there's another really powerful point there that has people's interest peaked and I think we saw this coming too.

00:08:40.158 --> 00:08:42.743
This is probably two different podcast episodes.

00:08:42.743 --> 00:08:58.509
We'll go with the flow today, but ultimately, the fact that you're investing in electrical companies is really interesting and the fact that you have experience in exiting as a strategy and Hammer Forge being focused on building that realm up.

00:08:58.509 --> 00:09:12.923
I imagine there's a lot of questions out there on that and what it takes to build a company for exit and how to plan for that and the steps to achieve that in general, and I think that you'd have a ton of wisdom to share on that today, brandon.

00:09:13.604 --> 00:09:14.966
Oh man, I'd love to geek out.

00:09:14.966 --> 00:09:23.423
I'm an open book, so happy to talk about everything on that side, including, you know, valuations, how to get things set up, how to increase your bus factor.

00:09:23.423 --> 00:09:25.471
Yeah, wide open book.

00:09:26.480 --> 00:09:27.725
Awesome man, Joe, did I interrupt you?

00:09:28.679 --> 00:09:44.485
I mean, honestly, the thing that really came to mind that really kind of made my jaw drop on all this is you've said a lot of really great stuff, but the key thing that stood out to me was that you're replacing yourself with almost more competent individuals and you're saying you know what I'm going to?

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Surround myself with high-level individuals that I trust with my assets, that I can walk away from and know that someone is reasonably and professionally handling it.

00:09:54.525 --> 00:10:10.745
That takes an immense amount of trust, but it also shows personally to me, it shows you have a very good judge of character, and I think that's not something that can easily be taught, because for you to have a business that you would trust to someone else and then see them grow it and scale it, you have to really be good at judging people.

00:10:12.128 --> 00:10:15.181
Yeah Well, it did not start that way from day one.

00:10:15.181 --> 00:10:23.832
I would not say it's an innate talent that I have to, just In fact, if anything, I believe that it was actually one of my weaknesses as an entrepreneur.

00:10:23.832 --> 00:10:37.645
So when you look at my behavioral profile, I have a behavior called low criticality, and criticality is the scale that measures your desire to be critical of people and things.

00:10:37.645 --> 00:10:40.232
And people that are very high criticality.

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They poke holes in things, they challenge things, they question things.

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They don't take everything at face value.

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People with low criticality, like myself, think everyone's amazing, wears rose-colored glasses, thinks everything's going to work out great.

00:10:51.950 --> 00:10:54.427
My wife has extremely high criticality, by the way.

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So we have this really great work-share relationship where she is always challenging me and asking me like well, what about this, what about that?

00:11:01.548 --> 00:11:12.822
And the reality is that a lot of my early hires on as an entrepreneur were I think this person's awesome, I think they're going to be great, how could it possibly go wrong?

00:11:12.822 --> 00:11:17.979
And constantly being surprised at wow, did not see that one coming.

00:11:17.979 --> 00:11:27.249
You know, either I got stabbed in the back or that person's a really low performer, or keeping them for too long, or giving them too much and giving them too much forgiveness and just being like the nice boss.

00:11:28.510 --> 00:11:33.044
I got a lot of guidance and mentorship over the years that taught me several big key things.

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Number one inspect what you expect.

00:11:35.289 --> 00:11:43.186
So if you have an expectation for one of your employees or one of your team members GMs, whoever it is you have to be able to inspect them.

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You have to hold them accountable.

00:11:44.549 --> 00:11:46.716
Gms, whoever it is, you have to be able to inspect them.

00:11:46.716 --> 00:11:47.940
You have to hold them accountable.

00:11:47.940 --> 00:11:53.763
You put locks on doors to keep the honest people honest.

00:11:53.763 --> 00:11:57.693
Locks don't keep out criminals Criminals will break in but making sure that you have frameworks and guards and safeguards in place.

00:11:57.693 --> 00:12:22.008
So this is dashboards and accountability and third-party verification having a third-party bookkeeper and financial person that is auditing your books to make sure that nothing weird is happening and the data is getting ported in your dashboards by a third party so that people on your team don't have that temptation to be able to fudge the numbers or maybe lie or try to get around something if you're a little bit more of an absentee owner.

00:12:22.008 --> 00:12:32.370
So these are all things that I've learned honestly through kind of a lot of trial and error and mistakes that I've made over the years.

00:12:33.541 --> 00:12:35.567
But I will say that I have.

00:12:35.567 --> 00:12:42.969
You know, one of the other big quotes that always stands out to me is Steve Jobs, who says I don't want to hire people so that I tell them what to do.

00:12:42.969 --> 00:12:44.495
I want to hire smart people so that I tell them what to do.

00:12:44.495 --> 00:12:47.465
I want to hire smart people so that they tell me what to do.

00:12:47.465 --> 00:13:08.044
And, like with Wise Coatings, for instance, when we knew we wanted to grow that to a whole bunch of locations, I hired a CEO that took a company from eight locations to 220 locations in eight countries and brought her in to be able to run the business, and she's a way better operator than me.

00:13:08.044 --> 00:13:13.845
She understands manufacturing and distribution and all these other components that would go into.

00:13:13.845 --> 00:13:24.096
You know how we would get this all set up, and I've learned that that's a playbook of really, really successful entrepreneurs that bring in people like Richard.

00:13:24.096 --> 00:13:32.662
Richard Branson when he wanted to decide to do Virgin uh cruise lines, he hired the number two from Carnival cruise lines and made him the CEO.

00:13:33.363 --> 00:13:34.566
You know, it's just like that it's.

00:13:34.566 --> 00:13:45.029
It's a playbook, and it's not something that I invented, but have kind of learned over time to kind of follow the patterns of success of people way more successful than me yeah, really good, Really good.

00:13:45.120 --> 00:13:49.927
That reminds me actually something that's recently trending Dan Martell buy back your time.

00:13:50.480 --> 00:14:06.474
He talks a lot about that, too, and I love Dan's positioning on this particular play, because he said look, the first time I hired someone better than me to be the CEO of my company, that person asked me to stop attending my own meetings, and he was so butthurt about that.

00:14:06.474 --> 00:14:09.946
It's like this huge epiphany moment, though, isn't it?

00:14:09.946 --> 00:14:12.610
I'm not the best.

00:14:12.610 --> 00:14:14.114
I'm not meant to be the best.

00:14:14.114 --> 00:14:23.586
In fact, what would happen, just strategically thinking, if we continually sat at a table of people we considered to be less than equal to us?

00:14:25.070 --> 00:14:26.133
well, eventually lowers us.

00:14:26.133 --> 00:14:37.640
Yeah, the problem happens is that you're the smartest person in the room and anytime that you're bringing people on that, you have to teach and train and coach up to a level of your own competency.

00:14:37.640 --> 00:14:52.787
You are this person that now everybody else relies on to for answers and it becomes extremely overwhelming to be the bottleneck inside of your organization on all fronts.

00:14:52.787 --> 00:15:10.250
You know, if you think about the marketing, the phones, the project management, the financial, the sales, the production, you know systems and SOPs, and I think the problem is is that people fall into the DIY death trap where they feel like you know systems and SOPs, and I think the problem is is that people fall into the DIY death trap where they feel like you know I can.

00:15:10.250 --> 00:15:11.331
I can figure that out on my own.

00:15:11.331 --> 00:15:11.860
You know.

00:15:11.880 --> 00:15:20.283
It might even be the reason why some of the people listening to this right now, why you went into business for yourself, was that you're like this is you know, I know how to do this stuff.

00:15:20.283 --> 00:15:35.442
I'm going to go out and do this on my own, but being talented and being good at a lot of things can actually be a detriment, because there's business owners out there that are way stupider than you and they've built very successful businesses because they just realized I don't know how to do this.

00:15:35.442 --> 00:15:38.941
I'm just going to go find the smartest person I can possibly find that's already solved this problem.

00:15:38.941 --> 00:15:45.931
Pay them a bunch of money, you know, to save me time with having to learn it, and those are the ones that usually build businesses way, way, way faster.

00:15:45.931 --> 00:15:59.442
And I think there's a lot of challenges that come with kind of that ego and hubris that, well, I got to be the person that knows how to do everything and I got to be the person that's you know, uh, uh, does it better than everybody else, and it's just, it's just not true.

00:16:00.144 --> 00:16:06.054
I've got the agenda for this particular avatar in my mind and I know this.

00:16:06.054 --> 00:16:07.405
I know you guys know this.

00:16:07.405 --> 00:16:12.292
Hey, I'm going to get in business for myself so that I have more schedule control.

00:16:12.292 --> 00:16:17.370
I actually have more time and I'll have more money, because it's my boss that's making the real bucks.

00:16:18.232 --> 00:16:18.452
Yeah.

00:16:18.600 --> 00:16:24.952
But no one ever makes that next step, as the specialist that you mentioned, and ends up with those two things.

00:16:24.952 --> 00:16:33.166
It's quite the opposite you end up with more money problems and less time than you ever had before, and maybe less sleep.

00:16:33.166 --> 00:16:35.195
In fact, for a lot of them, I know that's the case.

00:16:35.195 --> 00:16:37.101
So a lot of people listening to this.

00:16:37.101 --> 00:16:44.595
As soon as you said, well, you're the bottleneck of your own business, I know I felt like raising my hand, and I know countless others did too.

00:16:44.595 --> 00:16:51.140
We're all fighting that, and half the calls we get on to help electricians every day they're saying that exact thing.

00:16:51.140 --> 00:16:56.312
When it comes down to this question, what's in the way of you achieving this on your own?

00:16:58.100 --> 00:16:58.621
Well, it's me.

00:16:59.143 --> 00:17:00.365
I'm the biggest bottleneck.

00:17:00.365 --> 00:17:10.166
I'm out of time, I can't afford to do the next thing, which just relates back to a pricing and a service issue, a value proposition issue and all these things just mothball.

00:17:10.166 --> 00:17:28.901
But it's really back to this one thing that you mentioned I'm a specialist doing too much in my business and I need some help it's one thing.

00:17:28.921 --> 00:17:47.421
One thing that you mentioned that resounded really well with me is the time side, and and I can't afford x there there's only two things that are expenses in our business things that cost money and things that cost time, and I think the the the challenging part about a lot of us is, as just humans in general is that we don't know when our time runs out.

00:17:47.421 --> 00:17:58.150
It's not something that's necessarily measurable, in a certain way and it feels kind of infinite because it's not something that we're reminded with all the time.

00:17:58.150 --> 00:18:02.903
But time is infinitely more valuable than money.

00:18:02.903 --> 00:18:04.448
You can save money.

00:18:04.448 --> 00:18:05.490
You can lose your money.

00:18:05.490 --> 00:18:06.684
You can gain it back again.

00:18:06.684 --> 00:18:09.469
You can choose to spend it, you can choose to hoard it.

00:18:09.579 --> 00:18:22.628
But, like, time is something that you spend every day, every second, whether you want to or not, and every day that you decide to, you know, in an evening or a weekend, spend time working on the business, spend time with your family, with your kids.

00:18:30.720 --> 00:18:31.020
That's not time.

00:18:31.020 --> 00:19:02.903
You get back period, and I think the biggest epiphany for me over the years that I wish I could go back and tell younger Brandon was spend money to save time, and that's one of the reasons why I love Dan's book Buy Back your Time is that he hammers on that so eloquently where anything you can do to buy back more time for yourself, even if it's at an 80% proficiency level compared to you know, the person that you're hiring compared to what maybe you could even do, is a hundred percent absolutely worth it, because the things that you could be working on your business they're they're valued at $10,000 an hour, a hundred thousand dollars an hour, if you're really intentional about it.

00:19:02.903 --> 00:19:16.729
And I think that's the, you know, the number one biggest challenge that we all have is identifying what are those lower level tasks that we can truly have someone else do so we can focus on those higher leverage tasks, and that's a hard, hard thing to figure out.

00:19:17.633 --> 00:19:29.328
You know, I also want to like touch on something here, because you're also aligning with a particular value that I feel is very, very crucial to a successful business owner, and that is what you choose to spend your time on.

00:19:29.328 --> 00:19:49.894
Once you now have it back, and for me personally, whenever I get free time, I'm trying to spend it taking care of my kids and being with my wife and cultivating that relationship, and you're completely correct that if you can gain time back, you could choose to invest it in yourself or in those you care most about, because life is linear.

00:19:49.894 --> 00:19:58.084
We don't know when we're going to drop off of it, but the things that we use in our time that better the lives of others continues the ripple of our legacy onward.

00:19:58.084 --> 00:20:00.811
I think it's really, really cool that you're investing in that.

00:20:01.539 --> 00:20:02.643
Yeah, man, I love that.

00:20:02.643 --> 00:20:14.750
Thank you, I appreciate that it's been, it has it has been something that is, uh, made a big impact on just my overall health wellbeing and, interestingly enough, my my personal wealth as well.

00:20:14.750 --> 00:20:25.950
Uh, and I think that's one of the biggest impacts that a lot of people really underestimate is when you do start systematically creating a stop doing list instead of a to-do list.

00:20:25.950 --> 00:20:32.483
What are all the things that I should stop doing on a day-to-day basis that I could outsource to somebody else?

00:20:32.483 --> 00:20:39.483
That would open up more capacity for me to do other things that are more important that currently no one else in the business is doing.

00:20:39.483 --> 00:20:44.785
That really, really accelerates your net worth accumulation.

00:20:44.785 --> 00:20:45.909
It's kind of wild.

00:20:47.160 --> 00:20:59.825
Yeah, I want to touch on something there because I want to drill down a bit deeper and I think there's a very specific reason where people really get this mixed up and it comes down to some serious financial misunderstandings.

00:20:59.825 --> 00:21:07.556
I think it's a misrepresentation of your wealth that leads to the erosion of that very thing.

00:21:07.556 --> 00:21:09.425
Let me explain what I mean by that.

00:21:09.425 --> 00:21:12.567
I wasn't born with a silver spoon.

00:21:12.567 --> 00:21:15.867
We had to work for everything.

00:21:15.867 --> 00:21:19.067
I remember weeks went by where it was peanut butter and crackers.

00:21:19.067 --> 00:21:21.313
That's just what we had and that's what I ate.

00:21:21.313 --> 00:21:27.227
Unfortunately, at that time I was also into smoking a little pot north of the border, canadian here, guilty as charged.

00:21:27.227 --> 00:21:29.555
So it was a brutal cycle.

00:21:30.601 --> 00:21:47.490
But that poverty mindset stayed with me a long, long time and I remember specifically as I got into this trade that's well beyond my first company I actually started to accumulate more money than I'd ever had before and the banks started calling me every day, which I hate even calling them banks.

00:21:47.490 --> 00:21:49.247
They're financial intermediaries.

00:21:49.247 --> 00:21:51.366
There's a very important reason for that.

00:21:51.366 --> 00:21:55.826
I'm not going to deep dive on it right now, but let's just say you don't need them.

00:21:55.826 --> 00:21:56.827
They're not the boss.

00:21:56.827 --> 00:22:00.344
You can control your money, and you should, and so they're calling you every day.

00:22:00.344 --> 00:22:00.625
Why?

00:22:00.625 --> 00:22:08.894
Because they want you to invest your money in what bonds, right, like low interest endeavors, so that they could have more money locked in.

00:22:08.894 --> 00:22:16.881
That was a really good feeling, but something developed with it, and it was the same as before, when I didn't have money.

00:22:16.881 --> 00:22:27.407
It was scarcity about using that money to my advantage, to develop myself, to develop my enterprise and to develop my lifestyle, even for my family.

00:22:27.407 --> 00:22:38.727
And I found that my habits were consistent throughout and it didn't matter through the times I've had $0 in the bank or the times we've had $300,000 in the bank.

00:22:39.910 --> 00:22:45.448
That same thing haunted me, which was well, slow season's coming, I better not use this.

00:22:45.448 --> 00:22:49.301
Oh, there's something around the corner that's going to plague us.

00:22:49.301 --> 00:22:51.586
So we better not Now.

00:22:51.586 --> 00:22:57.741
I don't want to suggest we'd be irresponsible with our capital, not that, no, I'm a Michael Michalowicz fan.

00:22:57.741 --> 00:22:58.683
Right Profit first.

00:22:58.683 --> 00:23:12.186
We got a nest egg, but should we really be hanging on in a scarcity mindset or are there certain times where you realize you've got to double down and you're going to have to invest to see a return on investment?

00:23:12.186 --> 00:23:15.291
100%?

00:23:15.291 --> 00:23:19.048
Man Love that Been a huge, huge game changer.

00:23:19.048 --> 00:23:21.268
And, by the way, I ought to be vulnerable.

00:23:21.268 --> 00:23:23.708
That plagued me just two months ago again.

00:23:23.708 --> 00:23:25.907
It's not something that's like a switch.

00:23:25.907 --> 00:23:29.586
It's not oh, I turned that off, I'm good on that for life now.

00:23:29.586 --> 00:23:39.086
No, it's something you keep on exploring and realizing wow, I'm holding myself back again for some reason, even if only for a week or a day or a month.

00:23:39.086 --> 00:23:41.413
I never really find that acceptable.

00:23:41.413 --> 00:23:43.247
Have you ever experienced something like that, brennan?

00:23:44.901 --> 00:23:50.046
Oh yeah, man, absolutely I resound with what you said.

00:23:50.046 --> 00:24:04.320
That's came to mind when you were describing this is, you know, your store of value and enterprise value and putting cash in the bank and kind of the differences between liquid value and non-liquid value.

00:24:04.320 --> 00:24:18.688
A lot of people don't understand just how massive of a return on your investment you get when you invest in your own business and when you're putting your cash back in and your time back into your own business.

00:24:18.688 --> 00:24:38.515
There's actually a really cool internal rate of return calculator that you can use to show what your cap rate is on your own business, based on how much starting capital you had, how much net profit has been generated from that, what your multiple of your EBITDA looks like and what your current valuation in your business is.

00:24:38.515 --> 00:24:41.565
Now there's a lot of people listening to this that are millionaires.

00:24:41.565 --> 00:24:53.849
Whether they may know it or they may not know it, their business is literally worth millions and when you start looking at a business in that way, of what kind of value you can create.

00:24:54.292 --> 00:25:11.821
For me, that was one of my biggest epiphanies when I started my exterior cleaning company and grew that from zero employees to 70 employees over the course of five and a half years and suddenly realized, holy crap, my business is worth millions of dollars.

00:25:11.862 --> 00:25:27.404
And I did that over the course of six years like literally that's the equivalent of making an extra million bucks a year, plus because I grew that business and reinvested back into this and, yeah, I only took a tiny little salary out of my business while I was growing it, so I kind of felt poor.

00:25:27.404 --> 00:25:52.568
But when I sold, all of a sudden, you know it's like there's the cash, there's a withdrawal out of the bank of our business and there's just a lot of things that you can shift in your mind when you realize exactly how valuable your business can be If you are investing your right, you know, time, energy, money, resources, uh, into expanding that and growing your bottom line.

00:25:52.568 --> 00:25:57.490
Um, and I think that's that's a big, it's a big miss for a lot of people.

00:25:57.490 --> 00:25:59.443
They just don't really equate that.

00:25:59.443 --> 00:26:04.522
All they just feel is not paying myself very much on a month to month basis or an annual basis.

00:26:05.285 --> 00:26:21.766
That reminded me of I think Grant Cardone talks about this as a principle the income and the lifestyle rate and how your income will steadily climb, and it should right If you're continually improving and get more experience and more knowledge and you're better, you get more leverage, you continually improve.

00:26:21.766 --> 00:26:24.520
But your lifestyle is always going to kind of follow that.

00:26:24.520 --> 00:26:31.463
People don't really become independently wealthy from just income your general expected income, right.

00:26:31.463 --> 00:26:48.185
But what you mentioned, I believe, was about those income spurts where all of a sudden you realize the additional equity payouts become liquid at some point because of the sale of a business or because you worked on your property for X number of years, as Grant Cardone would also talk about real estate.

00:26:48.185 --> 00:26:50.030
Does that kind of ring a bell for you too?

00:26:51.000 --> 00:26:51.583
A hundred percent.

00:26:51.583 --> 00:27:04.364
Yeah, it was a big unlock for me to realize like, holy crap, I could build a business, I could sell it, and then I could build another one two times faster, four times faster, ten times faster and then build that up to sell it.

00:27:04.364 --> 00:27:15.442
So every company I have now is thought very intentionally with a mindset of build it to sell, whether or not I decide I want to keep it and hold it and continue profit distributions and keep that going.

00:27:15.442 --> 00:27:28.876
The act of building a business to sell or building a business to keep that is truly an asset that can run on its own without your day-to-day involvement is the exact same.

00:27:28.876 --> 00:27:30.459
It's all the exact same steps.

00:27:30.459 --> 00:27:35.470
So you kind of have that freedom and flexibility to be able to kind of choose your own adventure once you get closer to that.

00:27:35.470 --> 00:27:37.374
But the paths to get there are both the same.

00:27:38.579 --> 00:27:42.438
So it's like a mindset shift and it's almost like what gets measured gets managed.

00:27:42.438 --> 00:27:48.124
You're looking at it, you can see the scoreboard and because you can see the evaluations of it, you can plan future moves.

00:27:48.124 --> 00:27:49.308
It's really, really cool.

00:27:50.180 --> 00:27:51.480
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

00:27:51.480 --> 00:28:00.367
We've been on record saying a few times that we believe we're creating a billion dollar economic ripple in our industry specific to service electricians.

00:28:00.367 --> 00:28:04.711
Absolutely, and the reason that is is perfectly in line with what you're saying.

00:28:04.711 --> 00:28:11.276
And we try to explain this to people because even our programs it's no secret, we have programs People come, they learn, we share the wins.

00:28:11.276 --> 00:28:13.457
In fact, win of the week is coming next, joe, and you're ready.

00:28:14.619 --> 00:28:15.122
I'm so ready they learn.

00:28:15.162 --> 00:28:15.743
We share the wins.

00:28:15.743 --> 00:28:17.009
In fact, win of the week is coming next, joe, and you're ready.

00:28:17.009 --> 00:28:25.771
We got a great one or two or three this week, but we help people work on themselves ultimately and release the bottleneck, and that doesn't just affect this year, this quarter, this period, whatever your measurement is.

00:28:25.771 --> 00:28:35.667
So we try to price our programs really on a one-tenth, 10x rule, which is from some consulting mentors I had way back in the day.

00:28:35.667 --> 00:28:51.704
But ultimately what that means is well, hey, if we're going to have you invest $1,000 into yourself, then we expect, during the period of that investment, a $10,000 return that you can measure, and that's what keeps it really easy and simple.

00:28:52.125 --> 00:28:54.740
But we rarely talk about what happens after the term.

00:28:54.740 --> 00:29:03.968
And the reality is, if you learn some skills and you gain some leverage and those improve and you prove to yourself how great you are and what you're really worth.

00:29:03.968 --> 00:29:07.826
As for brandon's logic here today, then what about next year?

00:29:07.826 --> 00:29:13.279
Do you stop doing those things that worked or do you continue to leverage those?

00:29:13.279 --> 00:29:16.626
Do you continue to build off that, train more and expand?

00:29:16.626 --> 00:29:20.614
And so in a 10-year period it's like holy cow.

00:29:20.614 --> 00:29:23.967
Here's my direct results, my direct return on investment.

00:29:23.967 --> 00:29:37.911
But then I trained Joe, who is my journeyman, who just came up from installer to service to now sales tech, and then he trained his apprentice and that apprentice went on to have their own company and they taught their brother, son, daughter, whoever.

00:29:37.911 --> 00:29:47.393
And so this thing just grows and grows and it's got a heartbeat and that's what we're in it for, that specific heartbeat I.

00:29:47.613 --> 00:29:54.047
I know for 100 fact that your 10x analogy is completely flawed because it's way, way, way bigger than that.

00:29:54.968 --> 00:29:56.250
All right.

00:29:56.430 --> 00:30:00.194
I was going to say you're so conservative with it.

00:30:00.335 --> 00:30:01.655
I mean the 10 X value.

00:30:01.655 --> 00:30:04.464
Oh my gosh, I can literally.

00:30:04.464 --> 00:30:09.933
I can literally measure hundreds of X improvements over.

00:30:09.933 --> 00:30:14.671
Well, because, just like you said, when you learn something you never unlearn it.

00:30:14.671 --> 00:30:18.426
You know, when you invest in your own education, you invest in in something.

00:30:18.426 --> 00:30:23.626
It becomes a skill set that you use in every single one of your business ventures, moving forward, every single one of them.

00:30:23.626 --> 00:30:27.083
And for me it I've tried to break it.

00:30:27.083 --> 00:30:29.574
Hey, how much can I spend on coaching?

00:30:29.574 --> 00:30:31.221
How much can I spend on personal development?

00:30:31.221 --> 00:30:31.461
I wonder?

00:30:31.461 --> 00:30:34.667
I wonder if, like where the, where the law of diminishing returns comes.

00:30:34.667 --> 00:30:37.093
I wonder if we know the 10 X rule or the whatever X rule.

00:30:37.093 --> 00:30:45.673
And you know, and in this last year I was, I was paying a guy 10 grand a month for coaching and it like I'm familiar, joe, yeah.

00:30:45.996 --> 00:30:51.067
I was going to say, I was like my wife looked at me like I was a psychopath or spent.

00:30:51.067 --> 00:30:54.732
She's like what are you even thinking right now spending that much?

00:30:54.732 --> 00:31:05.182
But a lot of these things that I'm talking about with owning multiple businesses and buying companies and doing these acquisitions guys, I didn't know any of this stuff not that many years ago.

00:31:05.182 --> 00:31:07.670
I mean I'm talking, like you know, less than five years ago.

00:31:07.670 --> 00:31:22.209
A lot of this is just kind of compounded just off of some of these things and it's come from the direct result of these coaching investments that I've made in myself and you know the value of it is so much greater than 10X and it just continues to compound, like you said, over time.

00:31:22.209 --> 00:31:32.791
So, yeah, if people need to just think about a 10X return and be like, yep, that sounds good to me, it's an undersell and an overdeliver that they will be pleasantly surprised about, for sure.

00:31:34.055 --> 00:31:35.378
Beautiful, Beautiful.

00:31:35.378 --> 00:31:36.361
You heard that, folks.

00:31:36.361 --> 00:31:41.872
I just got called down on our own podcast let's talk about.

00:31:41.872 --> 00:31:43.054
Let's talk about some.

00:31:43.054 --> 00:31:46.227
This period wins man when you're ready, when, in the week, here we go.

00:31:46.688 --> 00:31:51.223
Okay, I actually I have three that I feel like are all equal here.

00:31:51.223 --> 00:31:53.767
If that's okay, Can I get into it a little bit?

00:31:53.987 --> 00:31:54.667
Yeah, unleash.

00:31:55.548 --> 00:31:58.593
The first is one of our clients, alex.

00:31:58.593 --> 00:32:05.646
Alex was an amazing individual, but he went on a particular call that I'm incredibly proud of the result he did.

00:32:05.646 --> 00:32:14.627
So he went to a situation where the customer had called and said hey, I have a range cord, I bought the material.

00:32:14.627 --> 00:32:18.394
I want you to come and change the range cord for me.

00:32:18.394 --> 00:32:20.523
What's your diagnostic?

00:32:20.523 --> 00:32:21.367
What's the cost to do that?

00:32:21.367 --> 00:32:23.164
He's like well, I'm going to have to evaluate it.

00:32:23.164 --> 00:32:24.008
Let me come out and take a look.

00:32:24.660 --> 00:32:28.991
Turns out the stove is getting 120 volts because of a miswiring situation.

00:32:28.991 --> 00:32:35.826
But he checks the panel, he runs the play, he checks the panel, he looks at the electrical system, he designs a range of options for the customer.

00:32:35.826 --> 00:32:39.490
Now, this customer is completely aware it started as a 150 diagnostic call.

00:32:39.490 --> 00:33:04.932
He ended up selling a $24,000 platinum renovation project oh my gosh when he went through the home and he addressed that there were concerns and he presented and the thing was where the real win is is like yeah, that's like several thousand X at that point it's like but the thing was is that the customer chose it willingly.

00:33:04.951 --> 00:33:13.863
This wasn't a situation where he could have technically done a far less solution to get that stove working, but he chose something better because Alex offered it and he said I wanted the best because you did that.

00:33:13.863 --> 00:33:21.522
So that's a huge win to say you can go on a small call where you think there's nothing happening oh man, they bought the material themselves.

00:33:21.522 --> 00:33:32.284
But then when you actually learn to sell not sell but serve when you're serving the person on a both physical and an emotional level, the returns and dividends are huge.

00:33:32.284 --> 00:33:34.407
So that's one win.

00:33:34.407 --> 00:33:37.381
The second I say something on that right there.

00:33:37.602 --> 00:33:40.509
Yeah, hey, that's freaking amazing.

00:33:40.509 --> 00:33:58.066
And B the other thing I thought about when you mentioned that is, you're not your target customer and so often what ends up happening is is we put ourselves in the mind of our, of our homeowner, and we're like I wouldn't ever spend 24 grand to redo all my house because you're thinking like an electrician that knows how to do it.

00:33:58.066 --> 00:34:00.240
But you know, it's like it's.

00:34:00.240 --> 00:34:09.460
It's not possible for these people to be able to do this on their own and the value that you give is so insanely high and people have disposable income and they want the best and they want this.

00:34:09.460 --> 00:34:12.226
Maybe you don't, maybe you would rather DIY it.

00:34:12.226 --> 00:34:12.907
I know I would.

00:34:12.907 --> 00:34:13.969
I'll figure that out.

00:34:13.969 --> 00:34:15.793
That's how much and I'll do it myself.

00:34:15.793 --> 00:34:17.606
That's like my death trap.

00:34:17.606 --> 00:34:25.847
I love the fact that he got out of his own way and just sent the package and lo and behold, man, that happens all the time, doesn't it?

00:34:25.847 --> 00:34:26.710
We end up getting surprised.

00:34:26.710 --> 00:34:28.722
Our customer's like really, You're going to pay that much for that.

00:34:28.722 --> 00:34:30.625
Really, it's cool.

00:34:30.625 --> 00:34:32.967
Not your entire customer, that's cool.

00:34:33.047 --> 00:34:34.090
And similar.

00:34:34.090 --> 00:34:37.695
The other two wins actually are exactly lined up with that concept that you said.

00:34:37.695 --> 00:34:40.989
So I feel like you almost knew what I'm saying and getting ready to set me up for it.

00:34:41.619 --> 00:34:46.391
So the second one was where Jesse, another client of us, got out of his own way.

00:34:46.391 --> 00:34:51.210
What happened was he went out to a call and he had said it was actually for a basement renovation.

00:34:51.210 --> 00:35:03.637
Same kind of situation Customer wants to do some of the work themselves and he goes in and he offers a range of choices, from I will do everything and you do nothing, down to you work with me and I'll give you a hard hat and we'll just do it.

00:35:03.637 --> 00:35:10.465
And the customer said even though you're more, you're the only one who offered me more and gave $10,000 to do this job.

00:35:10.465 --> 00:35:13.213
And I asked him I was like what would your previous job have been?

00:35:13.213 --> 00:35:20.969
He's like well, before we worked together, it would have been no more than 3,500.

00:35:20.989 --> 00:35:22.956
And the whole reason I got the job was, he told me, that I offered better than everyone else.

00:35:22.956 --> 00:35:28.579
So even if I was that much less because I didn't offer the additional services, this particular customer might not have gone with me.

00:35:28.579 --> 00:35:30.684
He was telling me he wants to do it himself.

00:35:30.684 --> 00:35:33.989
I would have given him ways of doing it himself and then he wouldn't have wanted to do it.

00:35:33.989 --> 00:35:36.373
But when I said said I'll do everything for you.

00:35:36.373 --> 00:35:39.081
He's like I don't have to do it, dude done.

00:35:41.067 --> 00:35:43.331
You don't have to lift a finger except to write a check.

00:35:43.331 --> 00:35:44.963
I love that.

00:35:44.983 --> 00:35:55.467
I love that and the last thing is our team at Matthews, and I'm sure this comes at no surprise, but one of the things that I really, really, really love doing is building options.

00:35:55.467 --> 00:35:58.172
It is almost like a professional calling.

00:35:58.172 --> 00:35:59.335
I love it more than anything else.

00:35:59.335 --> 00:36:08.572
So we actually have options classes where we teach exactly how to do that, and in one of those classes we had trained Cameron on a particular presentation that he was getting ready to go into.

00:36:08.572 --> 00:36:11.824
He said the presentation is coming up, I need you to help me prep for it.

00:36:12.284 --> 00:36:14.226
No problem, we helped design a whole range of options.

00:36:14.226 --> 00:36:15.989
The next day he comes in the class.

00:36:15.989 --> 00:36:23.248
Now he steps out for a minute and then he comes back in and he goes hey, joe, by the way, you know, the options helped me build.

00:36:23.248 --> 00:36:47.090
We just sold the $9,500 platinum on it and the best thing about it was that in that situation he wasn't fully comfortable with the sale, but because he had the opportunity to prep for it and he said I want to get ahead of this, he took the initiative to prep himself and because he prepped, they bought the best thing he could have offered, rather than perhaps missing it and then having an email it over situation.

00:36:48.199 --> 00:36:48.681
You know what?

00:36:48.681 --> 00:36:50.605
That is a great win from them.

00:36:50.605 --> 00:36:54.673
I'm surprised you chose that one, though I'm all ears.

00:36:54.673 --> 00:36:55.507
Let me explain.

00:36:55.507 --> 00:37:00.199
Explain something amazing happened yesterday and, brandon, I think you're going to find this one particularly interesting.

00:37:00.199 --> 00:37:14.076
Austin and cameron had a double platinum win and I just saw in the chat they actually, on the week of christmas, made a 5k platinum sale, which means top option, which included their club membership.

00:37:14.516 --> 00:37:16.402
Yep, january slows down a bit.

00:37:16.402 --> 00:37:21.842
We're all about smoothing out slow season, so they go and do their full home annual inspection.

00:37:21.842 --> 00:37:24.809
Cameron moves a 16k platinum again.

00:37:24.809 --> 00:37:47.554
Here's why that's really remarkable, not just because of the inspection and the additional platinum, not just because, yes, that did smoothen out some slow season for them, but also, if you remember, we had Guillermo Castillo on the show and they deep dove on their data and he said gentlemen, our average ticket this year for 2024 was $2,000 and change.

00:37:47.554 --> 00:37:49.923
And we went yes, and he goes.

00:37:49.923 --> 00:37:50.827
Yeah, I'm so proud of that.

00:37:50.847 --> 00:37:52.780
But that's not the deep reveal here.

00:37:52.780 --> 00:38:02.054
He said our average ticket for the second transaction with our customers is just over 3x that at $6,000 and change.

00:38:02.054 --> 00:38:09.842
And we went whoa, this is amazing, great find For Austin and Cameron.

00:38:09.842 --> 00:38:13.088
That exact thing just happened with their initial 5k.

00:38:13.088 --> 00:38:15.672
Platinum led to the club membership.

00:38:15.672 --> 00:38:36.840
They went back and the second transaction was you guessed it 16k, which is just over 3x the initial transaction, and so we start to see playing for the base hits sometimes is all we need to do you go, you serve, they choose, and when they choose you again, what will happen then?

00:38:36.840 --> 00:38:38.565
Just knock it out of the park.

00:38:38.565 --> 00:38:41.971
Awesome Way to go, guys.

00:38:41.971 --> 00:38:42.472
That's cool.

00:38:43.094 --> 00:38:44.804
Man, I feel good at even saying that.

00:38:45.646 --> 00:38:48.030
Okay, brandon, I know that we only had so much time.

00:38:48.030 --> 00:38:56.889
We spent a bit of time in technical difficulty to get started today, but we have another bit of time booked after, so are you cool to continue for another five or 10 minutes here on this podcast?

00:38:57.309 --> 00:38:58.192
Absolutely yeah.

00:38:58.331 --> 00:39:00.322
All right, I want some help.

00:39:00.322 --> 00:39:02.590
I think this would be a great way to finish.

00:39:02.590 --> 00:39:06.003
Can you help us understand, or audience understand?

00:39:06.003 --> 00:39:11.284
You said you know you got to build this way, whether it's healthy for you or healthy for someone else for sale.

00:39:11.284 --> 00:39:12.909
What is that?

00:39:12.909 --> 00:39:14.996
What is that way we need to build for?

00:39:14.996 --> 00:39:16.481
Give us some insights to.

00:39:16.481 --> 00:39:23.210
What does that company look like that's ready for sale, that maybe even your endeavor is willing and interested in hearing about.

00:39:24.255 --> 00:39:25.956
Well, put yourself in the mind of a buyer.

00:39:25.956 --> 00:40:03.905
If a buyer wants to buy a business, not a job, and they're willing to pay for that, knowing that if they put their money in itX depending on the size of the company and the size of that EBITDA and how big that is EBITDA is a fancy term for net profit with a couple of things added back in.

00:40:03.905 --> 00:40:05.637
We'll just leave it simple like that.

00:40:05.637 --> 00:40:26.521
Yeah, so in order to be able to build a business that is attractive to a buyer, you really have to be able to say I can step away today and I can be gone forever and the business can be successful and the owner of the new business doesn't have to come in and work a full-time job in order to keep the business working well.

00:40:26.521 --> 00:40:29.407
So how do we do that?

00:40:29.407 --> 00:40:32.016
We put in team members.

00:40:32.016 --> 00:41:01.664
We grow to a certain size that we can afford to have those production managers, operations managers, office managers, csrs, rehash specialists, marketing people, sales people and we have all our different departments kind of covered inside of our business and there's clear job descriptions and roles, there's checklists, there's systems, there's processes, there's training videos, there's a good pipeline of technicians that can come in.

00:41:01.664 --> 00:41:19.545
Everyone inside the company is replaceable, there's a strong brand, there's a repeatable process for buying customers, you know exactly what your customer acquisition costs are, what channels work really well and the whole business can literally run without you.

00:41:19.846 --> 00:41:24.820
And maybe there's a general manager in place or someone at the helm that knows all the operations and supervises things.

00:41:24.820 --> 00:41:31.557
And that's an attractive business for and supervises things.

00:41:31.557 --> 00:41:36.536
And that's an attractive business for a buyer because they can add it to their portfolio and they can see the return on their investment come back to them over the course of the next few years.

00:41:36.536 --> 00:41:45.724
So that path of putting all those components in place, creating the systems, creating the training documentation, it's the same either way.

00:41:45.864 --> 00:41:56.467
If you want to be a semi-absentee business owner, fully absentee business owner, or have a business that has high enterprise value that can be sold, it's all the same kind of stuff.

00:41:56.467 --> 00:41:58.199
So it's just a matter of kind of picking.

00:41:58.199 --> 00:42:28.527