Business Innovators Radio - Episode 15: Growth Mindset & Sales Transformation in the Construction Industry With Chaz Wolfe and Ryan Groth

Episode Date: May 30, 2023

Growth Mindset and Sales Transformation in the Construction Industry. We are going to learn from 2 dynamic speakers and we will discuss strategies on how you can grow your company and modernize your sales process. Chaz Wolfe is a high-performing, serial entrepreneur. He has built, purchased & sold multiple 7 figure ventures in franchising, real estate and consulting. Chaz is a studied and accomplished professional who values discipline & integrity. He’s an operations & process maximizer and an award-winning sales and business mind. Chaz is known to push the limits of work ethic, mindset and results. As a dynamic leader, consultant & speaker he has helped both domestic and international organizations achieve massive levels of growth and success!Ryan is a former professional baseball player who got into sales in the construction industry after his career in baseball ended. Growing up, his parents owned a construction company and he saw the pains that they went through due to not having a predictable, consistent sales system in place. Today Ryan has helped transform over 500+ contracting, trades, and building materials businesses through the sales transformation model.In The Zonehttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/in-the-zone/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/episode-15-growth-mindset-sales-transformation-in-the-construction-industry-with-chaz-wolfe-and-ryan-groth

Welcome to In the Zone, brought to you by U.S. Construction Zone, bringing you strategies for success with construction innovators and change makers, including In The Zone peer-nominated national award winners. Here are your host, Jeremy Owens. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Construction Executives Live. I'm your host, Jeremy Owens. I'm founder and owner of U.S. Construction Zone and three generations improvements out of Sunny Fulsome, California. Yeah. Our goal at U.S. Construction Zone is connect executives in all aspects of the construction industry. We want to allow for collaboration, mentorship, and education. We do want to be a valuable resource. That's our number one goal. And that's part of the reason why we started construction executives live is we want to be able to provide valuable content. And we're excited about today's topic, which is growth, mindset, and sales transformation in the construction industry. We have two dynamic speakers that you guys are going to learn a lot from. And I do

encourage you to reach out to them after this. They are a wealth of knowledge. They've been a wealth of knowledge to me already. We're going to talk not only about that growth mindset piece about how do we change our mindset to be better owners, but also creating a sales program for you and your team. If you're not familiar with Airmeat on your right side, you will see little chat function, you can chat amongst yourself. And then also there's a Q&A. If you have a question for one of the speakers, go ahead and drop it there. And Matt will help us put it on the screen and get those questions answered. We are also streaming live on LinkedIn. You can converse there as well. So we appreciate everybody being here. I wanted to go ahead and just get right

into it. So let's get started with our first speaker. Our first speaker today is Ryan. He is a former professional baseball player who got into sales in the construction industry after his career in baseball ended. Growing up, his parents owned a construction company, and he saw the pains that they went through due to not having a predictable, consistent sales system in place. Today, Ryan has helped transform over 500 contracting trade and building materials businesses through the sales transformation model that he'll talk about. Please help me welcome. Ryan Gough, thank you so much for being here, Ryan. Hey, Jeremy, thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

Yes, yes. So let's just get started with, you know, how did you get started in construction? Yeah, so like I said, you mentioned in my introduction, my parents had a home remodeling business, custom home building business in South Florida. And, you know, I'm thinking, you know, second generation parents are starting to make some money. And you see a couple new cars and a decent home. And we didn't have much growing up. So it was kind of an exciting chapter for us. And I'm like, wow, this is awesome. like the construction industry can be a very good business and create a great future.

But it was kind of heading right into the recession. And right 2008, 2009 was when I was in college. So I wanted to pursue a sports career and ended up playing collegially and professionally in the game of baseball. But as that happened, my parents' business, you know, they really struggled and they, you know, file for bankruptcy. And it really deeply impacted me because, you know, you start to kind of envision your future and envision like a better future.

And so I was kind of had some hopes that that would be a plan B would be to fall back. And so when it didn't happen, I was also just deeply motivated. So from there, ended up networking in South Florida. I met a large commercial roofing contractor who built a CRM for himself, decided he and I were a good fit and joined him. And for four and a half years, we learned from outside sales trainers he brought in. I became the sales trainer. And then I started to train and coach other companies on software, which was a sales management

platform for pipeline, sales process, closing ratio analytics. And started incorporating sales training material into the companies we were working with. So we were consulting, started helping Cass Vision, lead people. And I got to use this, you know, 50, 60 million dollar commercial roofing company in the local region who's an incredible outfit as my laboratory, my anchor. to learn and test everything I wanted. And so for me, it was pretty cool. And in between that post-baseball pre-roofing company, I worked for a, you know, a concrete

restoration company that I was going to be a salesman. And then, you know, within four weeks, you know, because they didn't have any sales process, structure, system, software training, none of that, no growth-mindedness. I'm over here slapping concrete on the building. And not that I'm better than that, I just knew that my. my talent, you know, as a kind of a professional or aspiring professional would be thriving in sales. So I'm like, man, there's a disconnect here. I see the industry.

Most companies don't have an off-the-shelf plug-and-play way to bring in a talented 25, 35-year-old, growth-minded person, steer them away from some other industries that are more professionalized and put them into our space of construction. So I started to find that hole and say, how do I address that so that ultimately the industry can feel more professionalized? It's leveled up. It's better business acumen and people who look at the construction space and say, I want to be here. This looks awesome rather than maybe that's a transitional job for me. I'd rather go somewhere else. And that's what I felt the potential could be. Let's create careers for aspiring sales professionals and leaders in the space.

That's what I've been working on. Okay, cool, man. I'm fascinated by athletes. I'm a B athlete myself, so I'm an avid coach, and I still involve in a lot of sports. But I'm just so curious about high-level athletes. How does that translate into business? Because you see it so often, right? You know, the Tom Landry's, like, there's so many, like, examples of, like, people who go out,

like Roger Stalbach, for example. Like you go out and you create like a mogul, but because you have like this mindset already about, you know, maybe it's, you know, just your dedication. I don't know. What is it for you? Yeah. So I remember there was like a little ancient proverb that I read during my

playing career. And it was like the sluggard craves and gets nothing. But the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied. So I just remember like 16 years old saying, Okay, basically, if I'm going to be lazy, I can get nowhere. I'm going to want, but not get. But if I'm diligent, everything I go for, I'll get. So I started to just sink my mind into this level of commitment that just became relentless.

Like, look, I'm never going to, if I'm going to be the best, I got to outwork you. You know, if I, you know, excuses just, I can't, I can't consume them and entertain them. I got to get past that. And I started a sacrifice. You know, I wasn't much of a partier. I didn't do a lot of extracurricular things. I was the first one and the last one out. And so when you start to build, here's the thing.

When you start to do that and you see yourself go from walk on to a junior, to a D1 to walk on at a, work at a restaurants to support yourself, to getting drafted, to getting a scholarship, to getting a D1 scholarship, to playing really well, to being, one of the best players on the team, being given MVP rewards to getting drafted again. You have a lot of confidence and you say, I know when I put something in, I get what I want. And the only way I got that was through sacrifice and focus and obviously right place, right time. And so you're also selling yourself. Like you're selling yourself as a leader, as how your locker room presence is, the camaraderie you are able to build,

what kind of teammate you are, what kind of performer you are, and you're always performing. So there's a lot of inherent pressure on you because someone wants your job. So you look at that, you're like, hey, I'm a contractor who is relentless. I know I'm a good teammate. I'm a good leader. I'm a good communicator. I'm the first one in, last one out. I know that the fundamentals is what gets me there, not just talent, but I got to work hard and be consistent. Process helps me, you know, teamwork, offense and defense. I put points on the board by scoring runs.

Well, how do you score runs? You make things happen. Well, same with business. You've got to put points on the board and you have to put money in the bank and you've got to have oxygen flowing in. You always got to put points on the board or else you're going to lose because you're always working yourself out of a job. Whenever you sell a job, as soon as you start that,

job you're working yourself out of a job every single time. So you're like, I got to consistently be putting more jobs up or else I'm going to be, I'm going to work myself out pretty fast. And if I have fixed overhead costs or I want to grow and add to my overhead to grow, man, that's going to require even more on the front end to do that. So when I saw the translation, it was just like, I've been selling myself to try to make it to the next level as a performer, as a talent for a long time. So when I saw my ability to build relationships and build trust and establish credibility and be relational and all that, it's like that translated so easily and to be measured and to be held accountable, so easily translated to lead people and expect high standards, easily translatable.

But if you're playing, you know, literally baseball, it's different. But when you're playing Division I for a championship, you're playing, you know, you're playing competitive professional sports, there's just things that. is not tolerated at all. And you just start to adapt. So therefore, the bar you set and the expectations that you're creating become normalized. But when you realize and you look around and you come into the business world and you look around and you're like, oh, this is not normal.

I'm actually abnormal. And that's why I'm successful. But the reality is, is when you start to look around, soon enough, you'll see that the reason why the people are at the top of their market is because of that mindset, focus, commitment, dedication, relentlessness, creativity. And they're there for a reason, but not everybody's like that. It's kind of like, there's definitely different levels in different leagues in each industry, in each market in our industry.

Yeah, I mean, it's crazy. I tell my kids all the time, learn how to be a good salesperson because it just translates to everything in life. I mean, you could really relate it to anything. that you related to relationships, you know, how you interact with people, grocery store. Like, once you have that mindset, it just things shift for you. And yeah, partly it's because you're trying to get what you want, right? But it's just a skill that you'll never lose.

And so it's just funny to think of it on a sports side of it too. It's true. I mean, you're selling all the time, right? It's just, that's the way it is. I had no idea that it was going to serve me in business the way it has. Like, I was actually looking at like my wife's family had a lot of medical and nursing. So I didn't really know. I was coaching baseball. I was doing some fitness camps. And she's like, go, let's be a nurse. Because I didn't have a, I didn't know what I was going to do yet.

And so I go in, I'm like, I'm like post baseball. I already got my degree and something else. And I'm like taking a nursing class. I'm like, give me out of here. I'm not doing this. And as soon as one of my friends and mentors recommended sales and I was, I felt like it was a bad word. Like what sales? Sales is a bad word. Right. When I got into it, I'm like, oh my gosh, this is so easy. for me. I love this. In fact, you can have a process to help you make more money and have more freedom. Like, sign me up. And now we get to teach people how to do that. Sign me up. So, yeah, I think sales is incredible. And it just, it translates and it never ends. You can always get better. And it, you know, so it's a fun journey. Yeah. I mean, you mentioned a little bit about your

parents' business. I had the same thing. I had my parents who were in construction. when I was a little boy and they had a failure in the early 1980s when interest rates went to 18%. So like describe, I guess, that detail. Maybe there's a feeling too. I know there was a feeling for me as a boy. Like you're just like, oh, crap, that's what failure looks like. And how do you rebound from that? So I guess describe that to me a little bit when you were growing up.

Yeah. I mean, everybody's got different upbringings, you know, and in mine is everybody's got different uprings and affects them differently. You know, for me, my mom had already divorced once. And so when she remarried and started this business, I had like a fresh set of, like a fresh amount of hope about the future for our family because, you know, you see a breakdown. The family unit breaks down. And there's, there's trauma that happens with that.

And actually, you don't even feel it necessarily at the time. But you look back, you're like, wow, so what's going on? And then when I saw them start to have more money, right? It's like, hey, we have, we're cooking on the grill. Wow, we have this nice cold beer in the fridge. Wow, it's not like fast food. Hey, you know, they got a Jeep Wrangler and a Jeep Cherokee and a boat in South Florida. Like, this is awesome.

And then you start to see that, like, we're going fishing and we caught a fish. Like, that's all for me. It was, like, completely new. I was like, this is, because I was a raise like that. My dad's home was, he bought a $70,000 home in Florida. and that's how we you know I lived in a simple very simple home and so when I saw them start to succeed I was really proud of that I'm like hey like I could be this this would be like the family business I can come and take over so I it's still a lot of hope so I was excited about that and I started to learn

and get a feel for the go to the supply store right use a company card and the company account I'm like this feels empowering right to go run some material but I also saw the stresses I I saw then, you know, struggling to pay, make payroll. Right. I saw them scrambling. I saw them drinking and in fighting. And I saw them, you know, their home was their office. They didn't have an office yet.

So, like, there's tools in the front when you come into the house and it's everywhere. You know, you have, it's like that their house is the worst kept house because they're taking care of everybody else's house. And I see them, you know, struggling to sell and make change orders because they don't want to. you know, frustrate the customers. So they're eating it. And I just saw them not pay themselves. I saw them not take good care of themselves first. And, and then when I, so I just was deeply impacted by that. And then I saw all the pain, the emotional turmoil, the frustration. And then I, and I started to lose respect for, you know, my stepfather in terms of just how he was going about it. So all that, like, affected our relationship dynamics. It was just complicated.

But what it did was at the time, you know, 18, 16 to 18 years old, it gave me enough excitement for the future, but also gave me enough motivation to figure it. And so when I went and played baseball, they ended up going through a divorce and they shut down the business. So I literally go out, play baseball, come back, and there's no family business to come back to, you know, my dad wasn't in a great spot either. So I was just like, wow, I got to figure something out. And, you know, what are we going to do?

And so that's, it was like, hey, I bet on myself before. and let's do it again. But what I did was I said, I love this industry. I just need the right mentors and the right people to learn from. And that's when I met the roofing company and we partnered together in 2013 through 2018. That's what really set me up for the ability to make the impact and to help the industry. Yeah, very cool, very cool. Now, I mean, describe your platform now.

It's called Sales Transformation Group. But what is it, what's the platform and how does it help the construction industry? Yeah. So in a nutshell, we're helping them transform their current company and team into a high performing sales organization that happens to do X, right? It could be roofing, painting, commercial, residential. So we have, we want to help you create a sales and growth atmosphere. So ATTMO. So our approach is we analyze you, you're in your sales process, your sales competency.

We actually put the answers into a percentile benchmarking ranking and help you see where you stack up amongst other professionals with your sales competencies. What are the gaps? Whether it's limiting beliefs or desire and commitment or do you think things over too much, how do you buy all the behaviors, sorry, all the mental beliefs that support or sabotage sales. And then we go and measure competencies like consultative selling, qualifying, prospecting, relationship. So we kind of like gap, we gap everybody. And it's like, it's like going on a roofing job or doing an inspection for a building and you say, here's all the areas of deficiency of your building, basically. But we do that for you as a sales professional and a sales leader, manager. So we do that. And then from there, we create a pathway. Um, mess of what we like to do

every single time is create a sales vision and sales plan. Look at some compensation stuff. Is it in line with your sales goals? Do you need to adjust compensation? Are you paying too much. You're motivating the wrong behavior, right behavior. So we solve that. And then we help you create a sales kickoff experience where we're really getting everybody on the same page onto a shared vision and their own like kind of team building environment.

So they're like creating this environment of growth and vision and personal attachment to the sales success of the company and their career. And then from there we start training. So we analyze, train. The training is all about sales process. So they have like a residential training, commercial trainings, there's door to door. And we start to train on sales process and the why of the milestones and the belief systems that require to support it. And then just give scripting.

We've had technology to reinforce it dashboarding. We do sales automation of the sales process now. We have some other cool tools. And then we want to just work with the sales leaders on ensuring they have a culture of accountability, how their metrics, how their KPIs look, how their sales meetings look, how their huddles looking. And then from there, it's like, how do we optimize? So we have measurement in place. Now, how do we optimize? Well, optimization is going to come from reinforcement coaching.

We do group coaching, one-on-one coaching with them and through them. We have recruiting tools to help them recruit and onboard and ramp up. We even have a new piece of technology where we have the ability to do a custom-branded LMS platform through our company, where at this point they're getting trained by us, but now they're ready to create their own branded sales environment or even any learner or company to ramp up a salesperson. Here's how we use our software. Here's our core values in our founding story. Here's some examples.

Like all the internal training, we can host and create learning tracks. So it's very robust. What we do is like we can help a single owner up to companies doing over $100 million in, you know, an overall revenue. We're pretty capable. It's pretty fun. And so it's a combination of online learning. group coaching one-on-one coaching and the live events.

So we have a live event a few out throughout the year, one in October called the Transform Conference. It's in Dallas, you know, a nice event, really big deal for us, like our Super Bowl. And we have some spring, you know, smaller events that are kind of niched out based on certain, you know, kind of client profile. But yeah, it's super fun at STG. We do a lot. Yeah, very cool.

So in that benchmark marking process, what are you finding, some of the biggest challenges you're seeing construction businesses face right now? A few things. One is, you know, they're really, when the economy's good, you don't have to be that good. Economy is going well and materials are available. Like, you don't have to be that good to compete. Yeah. So, like, show up, follow up, you close the deal for the most part.

But what's happening now is the confidence, required to sell in this environment are more challenging. I've been singing this song for years because my mentor started getting sales training after 2008 and 2009 in response to him not being able to just get new construction jobs anymore. He couldn't do anything. He couldn't cut overhead anymore. He had to sell his way out. So he started to really focus on sales process and selling value and building the right

partnerships and the right clients and holding people accountable. like that's what got him but he's also like I've seen this movie before we're ready for it we're not going to be incapable and incompetent when the next time comes so so a lot of what we would do is you know you need you need to have sales competencies that can like sell in this environment just to continue to compete and be successful another thing that you know we teach is with a lot of the material shortages you know you don't want to be a one-trick pony and just try to sell the material shortages. Like we work with a lot of service-based companies because, you know,

you can build recurring accounts through service repair, maintenance programs, so you name it, whatever your industry is. And if you don't have that figured out, and your sales team's not excited about selling that, you're missing out because you're going to sell a lot more right now, service projects or service repair work and maintenance contracts. Right now, people's wallets are tightening up and they can't get materials. what happens is you're growing that business and as soon as the money starts opening up,

your construction business will boom after that because you've already got all these relationships you've built through the service channel. So we're big proponents on trying to build relationship through a service and relationship, whatever trade you're in. And you're getting your salespeople excited about that because, so I'd say strategically service and then competency-wise, they've got to learn how to sell value. They got to learn how to qualify.

You got to learn how to prospect right now. You know, leads, leads are tight. How do you go prospect? Can you go haunt? You know, these are the things that you want to double down on. Because guess what happens when you do this now, Jeremy, when it's tough? You make it. So, A, you make it.

And then B, now when things change, you have such a high level of competency. You start to outperform everybody else in the environment. I like to think of it as like, you got more gravitational pull right now. It's like there's G4. of what I'm doing. So I got to strengthen up to be able to continue to make it. But what happens is now when the G force is lightened, it's like, boom, you're jumping through the roof now. You're jumping out the gym. And that's how we want to be thinking. And then if you're smart, you're like, I ain't going back. I don't ever want to be in that

panicking place, that frantic place anymore. So what do I need to continue to become the best just because I don't care, rain or shine, good economy, bad economy. We're going to be the best sales organization we possibly can be and continue to foster growth because and so that's what we're seeing now is like hey let me hurry up and figure out my sales organization now because a i need to make it right when things are going good i i know how to do this and i can keep adding fuel to the fire and keep making you know making things happen yeah so we we chatted a little bit about the other problem that i see with a lot of construction businesses is those really slim margins how do you i mean a lot of businesses are one bad job away from failure.

How do you, I guess, coach and teach that? Because I see it everywhere. I mean, especially with the supply and labor issues that we have, you know, everyone needs to raise their prices, right? Yeah. I mean, you know, you got to, A, know your value as an individual salesperson for one. If you don't think you're worth that much money, then that's going to immediately be cascade through your conversation. So A, you got to know your value and know that your workmanship

and the margins you make is the right not margin. So like, look, I don't care of what we're doing. If it's a replacement job, we've got to be 30% or more, right? If it's a repair job, I've got to be 65% or more, whatever your number is. Work with healthy margins. If it's a more dangerous job, more difficult job, a dirty job, the less people can do it, the more margin you can demand. So it's just good business. You want to create and demand as much margin as you possibly can. But so one of the things that I teach is you may just be in the wrong environment. I mean, you know, I like to compare, I live on Maui right now. We're moving the Texas first season here soon. But it's like Mars or Maui? What's the easier place to thrive and what's got better

resources? Well, Mars is kind of like, it's kind of like the new construction bid game. You're just bidding. It's like a reverse auction. How low can you go? Mars is like, or, Maui is like the negotiated sector with end users who don't really, they're not as professional of buyers as the new construction market or the national account market, for example. So when you have a environment where it's easier to sell to because they're less professional buyers, don't beat you up on price as much. They're not trying to do a reverse auction on you. That's going to be step one. So always focus on that. But even when you're in that environment, you want to make sure that you're believing your value.

You have to know your value. But then you have to have the guts and the sales process to support you talking about consequences if they go with the low bidder. Right. You have to talk about consequences if they spend less to get this job done. Or if they spend, they cut corners. Well, I mean, first of all, I'll just kind of role play with you. So, like, Jeremy, if someone's a low bid, why do you think they might be? a little bit. Who knows? Yeah, cutting corners, not doing things the right way, cheap labor. Sure. So,

yeah, so let's just ask, let me ask you this, Jeremy, appreciate you sharing that. If someone cut corners on the job, you get cheap labor, what could happen with this job if you do that? I mean, we could have nightmares, right? The product might not be installed correctly. We could have warranty claims. We could have sleepless nights. Okay, so let's just take the emotion out of it for a second. What could that potentially cost you if that doesn't work out additional, you know, investor, additional costs? Can you tell me what that might look like?

I mean, we may have to pay for a job again or pay for someone to come back and repair it. So, yeah, the cost will go up. For sure. And then how could that affect you and your client or your end user on this project? Does that affect your relationship with them? Oh, yeah, 100%. Yeah, we'll lose them. lose them for life for sure.

So you won't have repeat business. You might have to spend the same amount of money twice. So is it worth, you know, so are you willing to spend a little bit more to do it right the first time to make sure it's done right? Yes, absolutely. So I've had, I've actually had commercial roofers use this in the end user market, no problem. But like when you go into the GC world, they actually use this process.

and instead of the GC having the humility to say, I'd rather just spend more of work with you. What they did was they disqualified the other one. They disqualified them. So therefore they were now the low bidder, but it was because the other bidders were disqualified now based off the safety, right? Right.

So you can create value and maybe the GC, if that's your client, is it going to say, hey, I'm spending more work with you, good job. I didn't care about the price. But what they really are doing is they're disqualify. buying some other bidders based off of certain criteria that are that's now important to them right you might have pushed back right so i've seen this happen you know many times whether it's government

work doesn't matter um so so i try to really teach how to sell value and create a sales process and encourage and give emboldened the sales team to stand up a know their value be working in the right environment so they're not dealing with as many professional buyers but no matter what if you have a sales process and how to navigate it. You can lean in the consequential impact financially to, you know, to get them to speak in the sales process, the prospect or client, what it might cost them an additional, you know, and so there's some fear that could come in, but it's like, but it's logical. It's like, you know, but you guys are saying, hey, we got to do it right the first time.

You're going to spend more work with us. Right. So I think as long as we're comfortable having those conversations and we're not scared, then I think that professional salespeople can sell value in matter what. Yeah. Cool. I got two more questions. So lightning round here.

I got one that came in on the Q&A from Mark. He has a question for you. He said, what are some ideas or strategies to align sales goals with operation in a construction business where it's so easy to oversell and undersell capacity? Got it. Yeah. You know, I think I think what I would say is it's, yeah, sure, it's easy to oversell.

I mean, we need to have some accountability on who's pricing the job and things like that. You know, but you got to, I think what's important is you got to know your backlog and how many weeks out you are and be really clear on your backlog because, you know, your pipeline could just be a bunch of, you could just easily sell whatever, right? But what we want to do is sell the right type of work because at the end of the day, your resources, yeah, you can get material all day, all day, but the resources is your labor. So you want to get your labor in the most profitable environments possible, not just keeping them busy. You don't want to just keep them busy. We can keep them busy all day long, just give away the farm, right? We don't want that. So we want to get your crews, if you have two options, right?

you to keep the same amount of capacity you have and sell more margin and more value and better customers or you reduce the quality and level of customers that you sell into and the margin you're making and you have a process to continue to add crews and train people, which is challenging. Or you can do both, right? You can have both. Super profitable. So I think that you've got to be aligned and have communication with, you know, what your true

capacity is, what your capabilities are. and then if you just have too much looseness on the front end of your sales force, you got to tighten the reins and maybe you got to let somebody go, whatever. But I always start to say, hey, I only have a certain amount of resources. Let's start to target the jobs that,

because look, you could sell two jobs and make the same amount of money as you have one job. Yeah. If you had, right? So it's like, let's focus on those jobs, those clients that are going to pay us what we want or we believe we're worth. And then let's make sure that the front end

management of that act of the sales team or person is doing what it takes on the front end to continue to um fill the backlog up and you know at the right type of jobs so i hope that answers your question awesome thank you last question for you um you know it's no secret you're a hard worker but i also notice how important your wife and kids are to you so you know this is a question that a lot of us uh you know we struggle with is finding that work-life balance? What could you say to that? Yeah, I had to, you know, I'm driven and I think everybody here is driven. I think like I had to do a definition exercise. What is success to me? I had to really ask the question. And to me, I came down and I've been holding down this

definition for three years now. It's success is to be faithful to grow all that I've been entrusted. And so what that does is it gives, it takes the, financial or the status or the industry wherever out of out of the entirety of the definition and it includes an all-encompassing holistic reality of hey if i have a bad month and i lose money this month but i invested into the team and my family and i got to spend time here whatever or invested in my family in my relationship with my wife we had a breakthrough in something um i'm successful right but if I you know I I know there's some mentors out there that I follow that have no kids they have no hobbies because work is literally all that they're and their wife are passionate about

and that's completely fine because they define success for themselves I have to define success because I don't know about you guys but like every marriage goes through challenges and we're going to the elephant in the room is like the D word right they're going to let the D word fly around our house and we're like no we're not like that's not going to happen. And I believe that, you know, husbands, yeah, there's a lot I'm learning about man, wife, husband, masculine, feminine. I'm doing a lot studying around that right now. But, but I do believe that the man does create, does need a sacrifice, you know, for the betterment of their family. And so if you're like a high performer like me, you can easily make everything

about you. You can easily contort and manipulate the whole world to make. make it about you. You're building a kingdom, right? I'm the king of, I'm the king of my kingdom. But at the same time, what kingdom wants to be led by somebody who's, you know, just all about themselves, right? I mean, and so if I want to be a good king in my kingdom and my family, I know Chaz is a lot of, a lot of influence in this space here, and he's doing a lot of work in this space. I need to, I need to serve my family and lay down my life for my family in the right ways. It's not, so if the whole thing I'm doing seems to be about me with most of my actions, then it's up, it's problematic. But so I had to make some sacrifices, uh, to, to continue to see

my family thrive and at the expense of my business. But what I end up finding out later is because of my willingness to sacrifice, whether it's my business or whatever for my family, that ends up coming back to me ultimately for my business too, although that's not my reason. because I could say, I said to my wife, Blu, and I'll say it to myself, if my business fails, but you and I succeed, I'm more successful than if my business succeeds and you and I fail. I'm for sure more successful. And I had to answer that question in my heart, because we can all just put our head down and put blinders up and just try to go be the best in the world of something. But it's going to come at a cost. I mean, you just can't deny that. So I would rather, you know, but I also am not in a stage of my life. or I'm like, hey, let me go be a stay-at-home dad and, you know, just hang out. It's all day. I'm not there either. So, yeah, yeah. Really interesting tension that we live in. Other things had to go. I can't play men's league

baseball. I can't do certain. There's just no way. I can do it all. So, yeah, I think that, that really is only two or three buckets that I live my life in now. Everything else has been thrown out and in a distant memory. Right. And so define success is big. I'm already going over my time. So, yeah. Well, thank you so much, Ryan. We appreciate all your time. And, you know, we invite everybody to reach out to you. Are you on LinkedIn quite a bit or what's the best way to get a hold of you? On LinkedIn every day.

You can find me. Or you can email me at RGroth at SalesTransformationgroup.com. And I know for that so much, Ryan. I look forward to staying in touch with you. I appreciate your time. Thanks, Jeremy. All right. Thank you.

All right. On to my next speaker here, Jazz Wolf is a high-performing series. entrepreneur. He has built, purchase, and sold multiple seven-figure ventures in franchising, real estate, and consulting. Chas is a studied and accomplished professional who values discipline and integrity. He's an operations and process maximizer and award-winning sales and business mind. He is definitely known to push the limits of work ethic, mindset, and results, and he's a dynamic leader, and we appreciate Chas Wolf being here. Thank you, Chas. I appreciate that intro, Jeremy. Thanks for having me.

And I appreciate the little setup by Ryan there, talking about kingdoms and King. I know. It was like such a great little segue. I should have just, okay, we're going to jazz. Yeah, yeah. That's what's what's what brothers do for each other. That's right. That's right.

So as a serial entrepreneur, I guess when did that get started? Was there a mentor that got you there or was that just a, you personally born to be that? Yeah. Well, I think we define this in a couple different ways. First off, what is a serial entrepreneur? And I think we need to separate that from I got a business and I have some side hustles, right? And so there's a lot of side hustles out there. I have nothing against side hustles.

I was once a master of side hustles. A real entrepreneur is somebody who is a CEO of multiple companies. And they're not necessarily the technician in the businesses. They are leading multiple real deal businesses. And so I think that the next thing that we have to define is that, that sounds really cool and sexy, but it doesn't just happen. And so it didn't just like, when did that be, when did that happen? Well, when I bought the second one, you know?

I will tell you this in my first industry because Ryan actually, he didn't talk much about this, but what I so appreciate about Ryan, he kind of even laid it there at the end is that he lives his life in three buckets. He has this immense ability to like dial in. And I think that for almost every entrepreneur out there, we struggle with. you know, the all over the place distraction syndrome, shiny light syndrome, if you will. And so we get a good business going, two, three, four hundred thousand, maybe even a couple million. And then we go, well, now else what I want to, you know, what else can I do?

What can I put my money in? You know, I get distracted. And so I think that most entrepreneurs just need to stay right here. They need to stay in one lane. And even looking in my own journey, I did the same thing, me starting in a different industry, of course, I wasn't in services. I was in franchising. But I spent five plus years. Obviously, I'm still in that world. So I'm over a decade in. But I spent the first five years building seven locations, 60 plus employees, three different states.

You know, so although it was multiple businesses, it was one lane. I had created a system. I knew how to build a team. I knew how to fill roles. Right. And I was, you know, so I think, although it maybe sounds sexy to be a serial entrepreneur, I think that pressing into what you have until. a certain place. And then if you have the drive, if you have this like definition of success,

as Ryan was talking about, if you have this identity where, man, I love to do multiple things. Now we're talking about identity, right? And so me as a person, I have the identity where it's like, look, I could be doing multiple completely different things. I'm in real estate. I'm in, you know, the franchising world, obviously in the service space through, through my mastermind group. We've got, even in the real estate space, we've got multiple companies. And it's like, I love it. I eat it. But you can't start like that.

Yeah, I imagine it's kind of like if you do have a mind like that, it's kind of dangerous, right? Because you can spin your wheels, right? Like you have to, you have to create something. We press in for a certain amount of time. And then when it starts to be a little tough, we go, ah, let me go to the next new thing. Yeah. I mean, I can see that being a problem. I mean, the other thing that I liked about our call that we had was your relationship.

chip with your mom and like your upbringing, you know, family was everything for me and still is owning a business called three generations improvements. Like it's all around my DNA. So talk a little bit about how that was for your upbringing. Yeah, I mean, obviously what you're referencing single mom family. And so I got to see, you know, like any other, you know, child of a single parent, I got to see just complete diligence, diligence to duty, diligence to work ethic. You know, There was no quit. There is still today no quit in my mom. And so when I look at that, what it translates to, of course, all the characteristics

of work ethic and integrity and doing what you said you're going to do and following through. And, you know, these basic things, these principles that we, of course, want to pass on to our children, there was no, like, conversation about it. I got to see it in action. And so, of course, we, you know, financially always weren't the best off. but what that did, even though she was working two and three jobs, I don't even remember the Christmas I didn't get gifts. It doesn't even matter.

It's not even about the girl stuff. What I got from her has made me who I am outside of my DNA, of course. And so I look at that and I'm like exuberantly thankful. You know, just how I have kids now. I look at that and go, how did you even do that, you know? Right. Yeah. Exactly.

No, that's what's wild. is like she modeled things that you didn't even know she was doing right it was just like these habits and you're and of course you're going to take that on so i don't know i'm always just fascinated about i guess the beginning part of all of our careers and and how that's impacted us now um yeah you know and then the other thing that i was fascinated by is like you said you spent you know hundreds of hours before in your beginning part of your career learning from friends and mentors and not charging for your for your services in the beginning. You know, what did that look like?

Why did you kind of go down that path? And I guess how did you come to the realization that you needed to really kind of immerse yourself in with these mentors and business people? Yeah. So I was probably 18, 19, 20. I was introduced to the concept of mentorship. And I was part of a business team that really was probably more associated around selling product more than anything.

But what I gained from that three-year period was being, given direction and then seeing if I could go execute number one and so physically I know the limits of my of my body of my mind I know I know from that period of time when when it goes because I've pushed it there multiple times and so to translate that forward into you know edible arrangements was the franchise I started with and to have multiple locations on a Valentine's Day is insane it's probably a lot like contractors in the summer right it's like it's the Super Bowl. And I've gone days without sleeping, especially early on when I didn't have a whole lot of systems and it was just all ambition. Literal days. And I knew that from the previous experience I had.

Plus, I've read, I don't know, probably 100, 150 books in three years, 18, 19, 20. You know, and a lot of the time I'm reading a think and grow rich at that time that just right over my head. But it was things like win friends and influence people or, you know, how I raise myself from failure to success in selling, you know, life insurance history there and, you know, all kinds of just people, process, mindset type books that took a 18 year old very ambitious person and just like parlaid me into, okay, here you go. And then I started implementing those things into, you know, like side hustles, like I told you guys, but my main thing for a long time was I was in a sales career, you know, until I was 25, I bought my first franchise and I even continued in my sales

career for quite some time, even owning multiple businesses. But sales for me and then leadership in sales was the playground to be able to use the leadership skills that I was reading about or the win friends and influence people and how to actually care and how to like, you know, maybe find someone's need and you think of a deck or when you think of a remodel or we just, we just built a new custom home. Like when you think of those things and then the problems that it solves for the person, it's not like what Ryan was saying. It's like. It's like what I'm saying. It's like, It's not sales. It's not a bad word.

I get to literally help this person. And it should just like fuel you on the inside. Right. You know, it's such a unique thing. Like I tell people about our business. Like, no,

I never feel bad selling because I am 100% confident that we're going to do better than anybody else. And if you don't believe that, then maybe that's not the right business for you. Because then you, then you undersell yourself or then you feel like you have to be the little bitter. And it's just, it's such a strange thing.

That psychological. component where you're like, I'm not selling a car here. I'm, I'm going to be good at this. So I'm 100% confident in our ability to do it. And that doesn't feel like selling at all. It feels like I'm just helping them with something they have a need for. So I think selling sales can be maybe a little, a bad word for a lot of people. But for me, it's like, it's not that. It's just, it's helping. Yeah. Yeah. And that and that phrase is so oftenly used and so people hear it, but they don't feel it. And it's because it's about them.

They've made it a selfish mindset. And you can translate this into your business. Like the business hasn't grown. It hasn't gone past a million or whatever benchmark we want to talk about because you're what I call the warrior stage, right? It's all about you. And that's okay for a period of time. It is okay.

It has to be about you. And maybe the guy to your left and right. You got blood on your board. You're in it every day. You're tactical. You're right there. You're in it. But in order to have growth,

you personally have to then transition into a king. Like what Ryan was saying is that it's not the king that is a dictator that like, it's the king that literally has to transform into this whole other person because at the king level, the king mindset is taking care of your team, taking care of your family, taking care of your community, your church.

Like think about a kingdom. Think about all the people that are associated to their livelihood to the king. The weight of that, literal weight that you and I and all these people listening, the weight that we carry in that, that is very, very unique in what we do as entrepreneurs. Like, there's not a whole lot of other people that feel that. And so when you press into that and you become good at that, like what Ryan was saying, it's not about necessarily money.

It's about it's about impact. It's about leveraging time, leveraging resources, leveraging key relationships like this, you know? Yeah. Dang, that's inspiring. I want to go out and sell something. Now, tell me a little bit about your business model now and how are you serving your clients. Yeah, so obviously lots of businesses, specifically talking about Gathering the Kings, I think is the most apt to be.

Inside of Gathering the Kings, we have kind of a split model. We've got a peer-to-peer group and a bunch of coaching inside for six-figure business owners. And we help them define their purpose or clarity of vision. It's definiteness of purpose. get that from Think and Grow Rich. We help them with business basics. So there's four business basics to every business. There's marketing, sales, client fulfillment, and finance.

We help them create structure and hit the repeat button. And then there's leadership. You have to become a leader like we were just talking about. So we help the six-figure folks do that inside of a peer-to-peer community, accountability. Obviously, there's some coaching elements to that as well. And then on the seven-figure plus side is really how it, you know, Gathering Kings was born, I guess, for me, because seven, eight,

or even multiple sevens. I've interviewed some people on my podcast or in the nine figures. Like you have this immensely different conversation happening, right? Like I just described to you. Bigs figure, what we just talked about? Warrior. You're in it. You're there.

You got, like, you got battle scars. You got the blood literally fresh on the sword. The guy in the seven figure plus group, they're looking to leverage time, resources, and key relationships. It's not necessarily about sales talk or marketing, although those things do come available. Right. Right.

Like we're around the round. the roundtable. We're talking strategy. We're doing hot seats. We've got events. We've got different calls that we got these guys on. And it's about community. It's about accountability. All the same principles, but it's a higher level conversation happening when you've just gotten to a certain point in business and also in your in your mind. Yeah. I mean, that's a good point. How did you, how did you coin that phrase? That is, it's perfect for what you're describing. Yeah, I appreciate that. You know, my team and I, we went rounds and rounds. And, um, We thought about, you know, council of kings, kings' counsel in all these things.

Of course, I'm drawn to the name king because I love the life of David in the Bible. And the way that he is described as a king and the things that he's willing to do for his men and for his community and for the kingship. And even for like unto the fame of God and not himself. Like I resonate with all of those things. Right. So the word king defines who we are. if we embrace that identity. And so it kind of goes back to, okay, who is this that we're talking about?

Well, who am I? I'm defining myself. This is a peer group. Like, these people are at my level, maybe even some above. And it's like, I want to get around people who think like me or even bigger, you know. And so that was the definition of king, realizing who it is that we're talking to. It's me. It's you.

It's all these people that are around us that want more. They want to reach for their potential. They want to be around other people. people also doing that. And then the gathering, I literally changed the word. At the very last minute, we changed it to an action rather than just like a noun of like Kings Council. Right. It's like, I have a mission and I'm gathering kings together because I know that we're more powerful together. I know the things that have gone on inside of gathering the King's mastermind is specifically on the seven figure side. We've got some great results in the six figure. But we've got guys partnering together.

We got guys flying across the country to do projects together. We got new. businesses starting. We've got guys that have experienced burnout. They're doing millions of dollars a year. And they type of post about, hey, this is how I'm feeling. And then talking about community and raising this guy up. And instantly, he's like, refueled and recharged to go hit another day for his family and kingdom, you know? Oh, man. You're so right. We're so much more powerful together. I mean, that's definitely my philosophy in life, too. So I, back to the kind of the construction component, you know, when you're talking to construction owners, what are you finding their biggest challenges are right now?

Yeah. So the immediate one that comes to my mind is that you, the construction trades person, the person that's a good at their trade, right? At some point, they have to figure out that you can be a great fighter, you can be a good warrior, but it's a different skill set to be a king. And so I'm using obviously this, this Warrior King language, but really what it means is that you have to work on the business,

not in the business. And this isn't construction specific, but I see it, obviously we have lots of members that are construction services folks. And the reality of the fact that you think you're the best, right, that no one can do it better than you or that you can't find good help or that you're a perfectionist and you come back around

and get it done anyway, or you feel you have to be on every job site or talk to every customer. Like literally the bottleneck is you. And this is not, again, not unique, but do I see it in the trades? Going through building this house, dealing with all the trades, because I would just try to get in there. I just wanted to learn.

I'm a curious individual. I like talking to people about business. I can tell you right now, not only from the issues, from the builder, all the way down to the smallest little trade, I can tell you all of them were so solvable. Now, granted, some things are, you know, COVID related in materials. I get it. Some things we can't control. But most of the issues that I experienced were controllable. They were dealing with communication. They were dealing with time management skills. They were dealing with the ability that you personally are in your own way, my brother.

You know? I know that's a little bit of a general answer, but I think it's so true. Well, I mean, I can speak to that too. Aren't most business owners kind of control freaks? Like, I'm one of them. Like so it's like, it's like going against the grain, right? the whole, like, you need to be replacing yourself and you need to be finding people that can do everything that you're doing and more and better. And I mean, I've struggled with that so much. It's like, because it's always like that mindset of like, oh, you know, it'll just be easier if I do it. You know, but I'm not getting to that end goal of replacing myself. I'll give you a way to take this into account. So the person's listening and they're hearing you say,

yeah, I have felt that moment, right, where I just could have done it myself. I'll give you a super easy thing directly from my life. When I, so like I operate as such a high frequency of energy, of just focus, time management. I'll go hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and get a crap ton done. And I think a lot of people people out listening today are like that. And so because of that, I'm naturally like, well, I probably could do it faster. and I probably could do it on the way to do it in this other thing that I'm going to do, right? Yeah.

But there's attention units, right? And even though I might have a lot of attention units, I'm still giving some away to that email or to that little task that really should be given away. And you don't know what it feels like to have all your attention units used until you start giving a few away. And you're like, who, I was, I was on max power. I've been on max power for a while. And even though I still could do it, giving it away, allowed that power bar to come down a little bit so that I could be the longevity of the next 20 years, the next 40 years is sustainability. It's not just a million dollars now or doing a million dollar deal that I'm closing on tomorrow. It's like, I want to be able to do this for generations.

I want to be able to have my grandchildren learning how to do this. So that's part of it. And hopefully that answers your question. Oh, yeah, totally. I mean, you're right. You just, my attention is like getting older, too, it's not quite as sharp, you know, so you got to keep that in mind. And same question that I had for Ryan.

You know, you guys are both hard workers. I look up to you guys in your work ethic, but you also have a wife, Julie, and three beautiful kids. So how do you strike that work-life balance? Yeah, and I'll add one to you, Jeremy. here. So since the last time we talked, Julie gave birth again. And we got four. So my, my beautiful, newest daughter, Romi Joe is like four, maybe she's five weeks now. But the question remains, right? Thank you. The question remains. And I think that Ryan hit the nail on the head and I'll take it

maybe a slightly different angle. It's the same point, but just a slightly different angle. So where he said to find success, I'm going to say, figure out your identity. Right. And so here's what I know about me. I know I'm a David, right? I referenced that earlier. What does that mean? Okay, what unspiritualize that for me, chas? What that means for me is that I'm a builder. Okay? So for me, when I look at the life of David, he was willing to go to war. He was willing to push back the enemies. He was willing to push back literally like enemy lines and expand the territory. He was growing up the army. He was growing up the, the king. Like all of the resources were being gathered, right? Right. And what he wasn't able to do was build the

because that was the next phase. That wasn't for him. That was for his son. And so what I know is that my children and my grandchildren will be doing things really, really cool and big things that I can't even imagine yet because of the foundation and the things that I'm gathering right now. So what that does is it gives me permission to build, to go, to thrust, to be on shows like this, to help entrepreneurs, to build my real estate business, to spend time with my

teams in the retail market. Like it gives me permission to do that. But obviously at the same time, you have to remember, just like what Ryan said, part of my success is, well, if my kids and grandkids are able to take this stuff over and be able to like actually go do it, that means I'm going to have to pour into them. I'm going to coach and train and teach them and them going to college, you know, to become a dentist isn't going to be helpful for my legacy. You know, so that's a little selfish perspective. I had to kind of say that. But the reality, that I've got to pour into them. If I want them to pick the pieces and expand, whether it be in business or whatever,

right. I'm going to have to spend time and pour into them. Right. It's so true. That legacy piece is like, I mean, if someone asked me why I'm doing it, it's legacies. That's it. Like, I want it to be lasting. And for my kids, the same thing.

I want them to have an option, a different option. It doesn't mean they have to do it, but at least you have a foundation in place for them. So, Chaz, thank you so. much for being here. I think we're all left so inspired by you too. So thank you so much. How do people stay in touch with you? LinkedIn or what's a good place for you? Yeah, LinkedIn. Chas Wolf. I'm pretty sure I'm the only one. You can find me on Facebook. I'm the only Chaswulf there. Gathering the Kings.com. Chaswolf.com you can find us or better yet, we'll find you. I've got a podcast also called Gathering the Kings where I invite high profile

entrepreneurs and we try to help other folks just like this all across the all across the country. Thank you so much, Jazz. I look forward to staying in touch with you. Absolutely, brother. Talk soon. All right. Thanks. All right. Thank you guys so much for being here on another episode of construction executives live. If you have ideas of being a speaker, please reach out to me, Jeremy, at us construction zone.com. Our next show is September 7th at 10 a.m. Pacific. We will send you guys a link to go ahead and put that on your calendar now.

Our topic is going to be kind of related to the economy. is it's going to be called is a recession coming time to know your numbers we're going to get into the numbers part of all of our businesses i think a lot of us struggle with that we want to really get to know our numbers before we head into what could be a recession we want to be prepared for this so we're going to talk a lot about that we already have a speaker lined up and another on the way so please register and put it on your calendar thank you guys so much for being here again i really enjoyed today's topic. It's going to be tough to beat those two in terms of content and inspiration. I'm inspired. I want to go sell something or build something or put a king hat on. I don't know,

but I'm going to go do it. So thank you guys for being here. Bye. You've been listening to In The Zone with Jeremy and Valerie Owens. Be sure to subscribe to In The Zone and stay in the know with the best minds in the construction industry. To nominate an innovator or change maker in the construction industry, connect with your management. peers and stay up to date with construction industry news, be sure to visit usconstruction zone.com.