Shaun Newman Podcast - #744 - Blue Collar Roundtable #7

Episode Date: November 13, 2024

I’m joined by Blaine Stephan, co-owner of Guardian Plumbing & Heating, Paul Hunter, owner of Noble Floor Coverings and Drew Mckay, owner of AMC Electrical. We discuss the struggles of entrepreneurship, stretching yourself thin while running a business, the cycles of industry and mindset.  Cornerstone Forum ‘25https://www.showpass.com/cornerstone25/ Clothing Link:⁠⁠⁠https://snp-8.creator-spring.com/listing/the-mashup-collection⁠⁠ Text Shaun 587-217-8500 Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcast E-transfer here: [e-mail] Silver Gold Bull Links: Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/ Email: [e-mail] Text Grahame: [phone]

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Let's get on to that tale of the tape. The first is the co-owner of Guardian Plumbing and Heating, the second owner of AMC Electrical, and the third owner of Noble Floor coverings. I'm talking about Blaine-Stefine, Drew McKay, and Paul Hunter. So buckle up. Here we go. Welcome to the Sean Neumoo Podcast.

It's a Guardian Plumbing and Heating Blue Color Roundtable. joined by Drew McKay, Paul Hunter, and Blaine, Stefan. So Blaine, though, let's talk, can we talk just a sales pitch here on Guardian Plumbing? It's been almost a full year of the Blue Collar Roundtable. We got one of the owners of Guardian Inn, so maybe we could just start there. Sounds good, yeah.

So, you know, Guardian Plumbing and Heating. We're located in Lloyd Minster. We do everything from your plumbing and your HVAC. We specialize in the special. Our vision is to protect our customers from the unexpected through innovative solutions. And that goes from everything from how we do your system to how we take care of you. And that's a big part for us is making sure that our customers that we hear you, that we know the things that matter to you, the things that you're looking for.

And then we design solutions that are going to solve the problems that you may not even know you have. But we're going to find out what that is by the conversations we're going to have and help. Is it only for Lloyd Minster? You know what? We've got systems from into Manitoba, right out, we're fixing stuff in BC. So when it comes to, especially our power solutions, when it comes to eliminating your electrical bill, giving you, we call it two for one utilities. For our grain dryers, we have the world's most high efficient grain dryer that my brother

Joey developed and and all of those we've got all the way across western Canada and uh and we're constantly servicing them and taking care of them so there you go i'm um you're one of many companies that supports what i've been doing and i can never seem to find the words but like you know like you have people listening all across Canada and at times you know the i hear one of the things i hear jents is like well i'm not in lloyd minster right so it's like which is fair right you're sitting you're sitting over in Manitoba as you have mentioned and you're like yeah I'm sitting in Manitoba they ain't getting but to hear that

oh wait a second maybe there's some solutions that could be found elsewhere and you never know where a phone call goes I know there's been people reach out to you so it is another edition of the blue color round table brought to you by Guardian plumbing and heating so that's pretty cool now I'm not going to forget this so here here's the next part

and what I'm passing out is a one ounce silver coin silver gold bull one of the things that I get a lot of pleasure in is when people come in studio. I get to give them a silver coin. And, you know, like, with the way the world's been going, you know, I don't know if any of you guys are big on silver and gold or if, you know, that's your first coin.

But regardless, it's, you know, silver and gold is one of the things we did this year was anybody who came to studio as an added, like, tip of the cap for coming in this realm, my realm, and talking things, trying to give, you know, something of value that you can take away other than just the conversation. So that's super cool. I was super jealous of Joey, so I'm glad you got more to my own. Even a current Maple, you went all out. 100%.

I shouldn't say I went all out. Who am I kidding? That's Silver Gold Bowl that sent that. That's 0.999, not 100%. Thanks to Graham and the fellas down there. Beautiful. You got to pull your mic closer. Drew was asking, how close do I have to be to this thing this time?

Closer. Closer. Closer. I feel like I'm eating it. We were talking, you know, we got to go for breakfast this morning and have a little bit of a conversation. And one of the things I wanted to talk about with you three was, you know, the stress, one of the things I've been seeing in my walkabout of Lloyd Minster and further is I see mainly men, but I don't mean to just say men, because obviously there's women who own businesses as well. But one of the things I see is stress and struggles with the ups and downs of the economy. And I just thought we could just explore that.

All three you guys own businesses. And from the stories today, you've dealt with your fair share of ups and downs. I don't know. You guys have been chatting all day. I just want to kind of preempt the, you know, kind of spark the ignition and see where this goes. But, you know, like, you know, stretching yourself too thin to, you know, like just getting out of working for somebody to, starting to realize all the things that come with running a business, a hand up over here. That was one of the things, you know, I had this stupid thought of like, I can't wait to put my feet up on the desk and not have to work for the man.

And now I work more hours than I ever thought I would. And I'm having lots of fun, but you have to do everything, right? And you don't realize that, or at least I didn't. So I don't know. There's the starting point. I want to listen to you guys chat about, you know, some of the things that, you know, we've been discussing. But mainly stress, stretching yourself thin, being a business owner. and the ups and downs of that.

Yeah, it's funny. Actually, somebody, it might have been, we were talking earlier, that the whole E-myth book and the guy talks about having an entrepreneurial seizure. And it's like everybody who's, especially I find,

I hear a lot of tradesmen, oh man, if I was the boss. And all of a sudden you realize that, yeah, someday you, you know, you could be the boss,

but you got to realize too, your boss then is a lunatic. Because, because, you know, you look at the guy who's in charge now and he's crazy, you know, and it's because it's you. And, you know, you think, oh, man, yeah, we'll just, we'll be able to take time off whenever we want.

We'll be able to, you know, just make our own hours, you know, all those things. And you come to realize that, you know, if you're going to run a business, if you're going to, even if it's a sole proprietorship, you're your own boss, right? You're not really. You're often, you know, somewhat mandated by your customers, you know, the people that that you're working for are going to call the shots. and you don't just get to shut it down at five o'clock. You're responsible.

You're the boss 24 hours. And so, yeah, it's definitely has its pluses and minus. I wouldn't trade it for anything. That's the funny thing. Like you said, you mean, I love every minute of it. I wouldn't go back. But don't be naive enough to think that all of a sudden it's an easier lifestyle. And, you know, you just get to just take off when you want to and everything.

everything has a give and take. My boss is a complete ass. Definitely. Yes, and the best thing about being self-employed, if I want to work 80 hours a week or more, there's nothing stopping me from doing that. Well, your wife might have something to say. Oh, she definitely has something to say about it.

But I like to communicate that to people when they talk about, oh, it must be great to be the boss. Oh, yeah, I can work 80 hours. a week or more. You know, nothing's stopping me from working. It's just it doesn't. At times it doesn't end. You know, there are times when you know it does end, but there's lots of things that are going on. Lots of things that are always rotating in the back of the head. I don't know about you guys, but even I'll wake up in the middle of the night and all of a sudden, huh, to get my mind to turn back off after that 3.30, 4 o'clock wake-up call of mine. Uh-huh, huh, huh. But,

I wouldn't trade it for the world. Not a bit. I don't think I, I don't think I could work for somebody in more ways than one. Terrible employee I would be. Yeah, I'm way too broken to be anybody's employee at this point. I guess the one positive that I think we can all agree on is that your decisions, whether they proved to be the right ones or the wrong ones in the end, they were your decisions. you have to live with it, right?

There's nobody else to blame. So that's a great thing, but it's also a huge source of stress too. Because you can second guess yourself. Yeah, I'd say that being self-employed is probably the best performance plan out there. You know, performance pay plan. You know, at the end of the day, you get rewarded for your efforts. And when things don't work out, well, it's very honest with you. And you get to look back and realize, okay, what did I?

do right and what do they do wrong and and uh you know fortunately the numbers don't lie you know we can try to you know ignore them sometimes but uh but they typically tell a story and once you start to learn to read that story and that's been you mean some people go to school uh you know and they pay for an education and some people don't go to school and they still pay for that education sometimes it takes a little longer to get there but uh you know that's been uh yeah how many years have you guys been running your own business? Since 05, so just about 20 years with partnering with other businesses in between there along the way.

Okay. So, some big partnerships, but 19, 20 years? Paul? 94 is one. So you're 30 years? Yeah, 30 years. Yeah. Yeah, 2010, so 14.

14. So I guess I don't know how easy this is to do, but if you could go back and align it, because I'm into you year. I'm going on year six of podcasting 5 plus, but actually running a full-time business where it's your sole income, I'm just over two years now. So if you go back to when you're in year one, year two, maybe it's the first five years.

I don't know where you guys would, you know, because I don't think you stop learning lessons, I'm going to assume, but maybe what was one of the first lessons you learned about running your own business that you didn't know about? Or maybe the first stresses you have,

had like maybe there was things he didn't realize that uh you know guys like myself or others are probably trying to manage right now as they start into the the foray of of trying to run a business yeah i think one of the first things i was told and i and it i mean was to uh hire slowly and fire quickly um and i uh i don't i didn't always take that to heart uh because i well joey and i we both we just care about people too much sometimes. And, you know, so we, you know, sometimes along the way maybe should have made decisions faster than we did along the way. But the biggest thing is just making sure, I think probably looking back would be to really

establish what you stand for and make sure that everybody that you connect to that vision or to that, those values aligns. Because if you take the time and make sure that everybody is on the same page as you you've got a better chance they're going to be there long term and they're going to stick around with you as well. So yeah, just take the time to make sure you know who you really are as a company,

what your values are, and then hire and hire, fire and reward based on those values. Yeah, and to expand on that a little bit, the lesson I learned very early on, like within the first couple years, sort of where you're at is, those good people that you do find and you do hire, And they want to help you, let them help you.

Because I got into a spot where I thought I was the only one that could make business decisions. I thought I was the only, I thought I knew better, right? I was 20, 24 years old, figured I was a smartest electrician in Alberta. And I had a guy that would have helped me grow my business exponentially. And we ended up, he went on his own and his business grew exponentially. he set some trials and tribulations along the way too, but, you know, if I would have accepted his help at the time, I'd be, well, I'd be retired by now.

We both would be long retired. So I guess if somebody is... Why? So you just, like, why wouldn't you accept his help? Just because you thought you knew better? Because I thought that this was, this business thing was something that you had to do on your own, right? that if you were going to own a business,

you had to be the only owner of that business, right? You had to be the only one that was making decisions. That, you know, bringing somebody else in was somehow, I guess, a form of weakness, let's say. Right. Yeah, it's interesting. You know, I've had people come along to with a, and a different scenario.

It was like a consultant, you know, one of our wholesalers brought somebody by and Joey and I were really confident. in the way that we were doing things and we had this, you know, and he told us, well, you know, you probably should look at doing things this way. I mean, he had kind of this system that he'd been using and, and, you know, this is why, and Joey and I were just like, we laughed at him. And, and we continued on the way we were. And, and yeah, it wasn't three or four years later, we were doing it his way. And, and, I mean, and we could have started that sooner had we been.

And so now you're very right. You mean, I'm much more apt to, listen first and really evaluate. And what I look at is is the fruit. I mean, what does this person, what is their, what have they accomplished and what does it look like? And then, you know, and then say, okay, well, tell me more. You mean, but we were just really, you know, bold. I mean, at the time and just, you know, thought we, and things were going well. But it was at a time in Lloyd Minster where I think, you know, you could, you know, you almost made money in spite of yourself just because everything was going crazy. You know, I mean, everything was busy and you just went out there and just worked hard.

And if you were a hard worker, you could, you know, do well. And, you know, life continues on. And there's, there's been years, you know, in the last 10 years where, you know, you actually have to put some effort in. You have to be strategic and you have to take care of people and, you know, to be able to make ends meet. And, you know, we learned a lot of those lessons along the way. not that we ever didn't take care of people,

but we didn't know our numbers and we didn't know what made sense and you know things, you just kind of did things always the same way and then next thing you knew, you know what I mean, it was a year where it's like, oh man, we didn't pay ourselves this year. You know what I mean?

And you didn't know that until the end of the year and then it hurts, right? Trades, you know, especially with trades people, you know, we're all specialists. You get through trade school, you're officially a specialist. Specialists don't sometimes like to ask for help. So I can totally, I totally get what you see,

what you were saying there because, you know, well, you know, I've already, I already know everything. I was the smartest floor guy in the world once I got my ticket. Of course, my dad was there with 41 years of other experience on top of me. Oh, what would he know, right? You know what, you know, but I am the specialist. And, oh, I totally hear that. I can understand that.

Especially when you're younger, right? In your 20s, there's so much that you don't know. And you don't know what you don't know. Right. And on top of it, I suppose, there's this idea that you've built this thing. And it's your thing. It's your baby. You've created, right?

This idea that's turned into something that's, you know, it's beneficial to other people. It's important. applying people, it's providing service, it's doing all these good things, you don't really want to share that, I guess. Well, I struggle with that right now. Right? I've sunk so much time into building what you're sitting in, right? And it's just at it, you know, it's like creating something out of nothing, essentially,

which, but every business is kind of that, right? Yeah. You have an idea, you have a vision of like where you want to go. You set off in search of it or aiming at it. and then to let people in on it. It's like, man, I struggle with that all the time. I'm like, I've worked way too hard to give up any of what I've built. And yet I feel like that's probably not the most healthy thing in the world.

It doesn't mean you let everybody in. I don't know. I mean, maybe I just throw that out to you guys. Because, like, I struggle with that. I struggle with letting people in to, you know, like when Toos started working with me on the mashup, I was like super skeptical of them. I don't know, twos if you're listening. Maybe he knew it, right?

I can't imagine why. But I was like, I don't know. Like, is this going to work? You know? And here we are, I think we're a mashup 132 this week, 133. I don't know. It's somewhere in there. And like, I can't believe it's gone that long.

And at times I'm like, I still probably should hand over more to twos to let, you know, but I'm like OCD on it. I don't know how not to be because it's taking everything and then some to get the podcast to even where it's sitting right now to move it to the next level. I feel like maybe need to. let go with some of that, but I'm not sure. What you'll find is as soon as you let the right person take something, right? Like what you're doing is totally different, but for what we're doing, say it's your,

your safety department and your safety program. Well, you need to refine this part of your business in order for your business to grow and you're trying to take care of this and everything else that's involved in the circle. Well, if you just let somebody take this portion, then it allows everything else to improve. right yeah for sure if you can if somebody else can do what you're doing even at 75% of the capacity that you can yeah you're 75% ahead you mean and I've definitely you know part of for joey and i in the last little bit was just even laying out uh you know an organizational chart of our entire company and just

saying these are the different roles that have to happen inside of a company and yeah we fill a lot of them like you know my name's in many many different spots but you make the spots that your company could or hopefully will someday be. And then you start to fill those spots and you recognize that I don't necessarily, you know, like I do fulfill a marketing role is where I am and Joey's a lot of sales. You mean? And we've got other people in finance and stuff like that. But when you start to see it laid out like that, then it's easier to actually relinquish some of those roles because all of a sudden, especially once you've done it once, you all of a sudden see, oh man, yeah, maybe they don't do it exactly how I would.

But man, are we going further? Because I'm not trying to do that as well as everything else. And you got to be doing that, you know, again, you got to take your time and pulling that off. Because all of a sudden you just fill all those roles, but your company isn't big enough to handle it. And all of a sudden, you know, you're falling apart too. I mean, it's over-managed. But that's great advice for anybody out there considering going out on their own is to build that org chart. and even if it is your name in 90% of them,

at least you know what you need to fill, right? You have something to visualize in front of you. Whereas most of us, we just keep that in our little squirrel cages and half the time it shows up in a flash once in a while and then it's going. 3.30 in the morning. Yeah, 4.30 usually for me. Nice. But the time change.

Yeah. Depends if we're calving or not. Yeah. If we're calving. the wife usually wakes me up. Nice. When I was just starting out, like I, family run business, my dad did it. You know, I had to be self-employed because there are no hourly floor guys.

That's how it works. From day one, I wanted to take it on. You will run your own company. Learned how to pay the government on time. I learned that one real quick after my first year. That's good lesson. But I think if I would look at it. Oh, forgive me.

Did you not pay the government? Well, put it this way. I was a little slow in pain. And I think we all are in some areas. But I had my account frozen for $350 that I didn't, you know, in the, let's see this would have been a 95. 35. 350 bucks. And but you know, back then though, $350 was a lot for me. I had it. I just wasn't getting around to doing it. It was kind of funny because I was self-employed, but I was. wasn't incorporated at that point. I ran my business as sole proprietor for far too long. But I guess the lesson that I learned, now here again, I learned the business from my dad. I am not

here to throw my dad under the bus by any means. The guy was the best tradesman you could ever find. The stuff that he taught me, I would not even teach half of the stuff that my dad taught me to anybody else just because they're products that

don't exist anymore. It's a service that's not even being offered, nobody wants it. But every once in a while, I'll come across, you know, one of these little fine unique things, like somebody wants a wool carpet. Well, I know how to work with that. Nobody else does because, frankly, we don't do with that stuff anymore. But my dad was a great trades person, but he was not a businessman. He did not like the business end. And until I bumped into somebody who was a good businessman who could help me out on that end to organize myself better. So that way I could grow. And, you know, doing it through our incorporated company.

And I stumbled across a really, you know, an amazing dude. Amazing. Boy, I owe that guy everything. But the illusions of this is my dad, he's the smartest guy in the world, this is how the industry works. If I could go back, I would have. Listen to my dad on how to treat people properly, how to do the job. But I would have definitely tried to find somebody who could have helped me with the business end. To take it from a labor of love, shall we say, into a business.

And that's one thing I would say. How do you differentiate a labor of love in a business? My dad would sit there. I watch my father. Okay, my dad and my uncle had a business to give. Yeah, they had like one of the largest carpet stores in the Vancouver market. And things were going great. You know, they lost it in the span of a couple of weeks during the 80s in that recession, okay?

And my uncle did more of the back-end office work. So they were a team. My dad was sales and installation. He ran the sales team and he made sure the installations and everything were being done. My uncle did sales and he did all the back-end work, all the numbers. You know, he did all the bookkeeping. And so they were a team. And then when that business broke up, my dad just said, I don't want to ever be a target again.

I'm leaving. And he kind of went small. And he stayed small. So, hand was slapped. And instead of saying, I'm going to take this as a lesson and move into another business, starting again, because we failed. So let's start again. Let's do it right. My dad's idea was, in the back of his mind, was why, if I failed once, I'd fail again.

And my dad. just wanted to do other things. You know, he loved the job. He just didn't like the business end. And so if that's the case, that's cool. Those are the kind of guys that we would love to employ. I mean, we'd love to employ those guys. You know, but they're few and far between. So for my dad would go on a job, we did incredible high work. We worked for Jimmy Patterson. We worked in his own personal house. My dad knew people, people loved him. And he would go in and he would just put countless hours extra unbilled

to get a customer happy. And I like that. That's neat. When that customer's Jimmy Patterson, you build them. It's called business. You don't offer it for free.

He put his heart into it. And I hear again, I am not criticizing my father. No. That is a wonderful thing. That is a wonderful lesson to learn. I am deeply within his debt. I wish he was still here to listen to this podcast. I would still say this. You know, I would still say that my dad would probably nod and say,

yeah, you know, yeah. It was a certain time in his life where, you know, he got really kicked really hard. I'm just a hell of a lot more stubborn. I get kicked and I'm just like, well, let's do it again. You know, I mean, because, you know, I got that stubborn streak in me. Don't tell me, I can't do it. I'm going to show you that I can do it. Now it's personal, baby. But for my dad, it was personal. And that's what I'm trying to learn. And that's what I'm trying to learn is I do take things personal when things go wrong I want to help but I'm learning how to not take it personal as I'm getting older I'm learning don't take it personal but the business end the management end to be structured to to grow right from the start if I would have had the proper

structuring from the start my business would look very different than it does you know then it did for at least for the first 15 years for sure Well, by all means, you guys hop in anytime you want. I don't think I need to say that. But I am kind of curious of like then, you know, you guys are many, many years past or further along than I am. At what point did you, you know, you mentioned the guy coming through, Blaine, and you're like, yeah, we laughed at him. And four years later, we were doing the thing. And you're like, if we just started it, right?

It's like, you know, if you can go back and talk to your younger self as you're doing business, now and try and impart some wisdom and be like, listen, you got to start doing X. It's going to make your business thrive and actually start making you money or whatever you value. I assume money is a huge chunk of it, right? You don't got enough in the bank account to pay yourself a wage or to pay your employees or pay your bills, right? That's a giant, giant stress. But if you go back, talk to your young yourself, like what would you be, you know, is there advice you give? You think you probably wouldn't listen but I mean I'm pretty stubborn person when I think back to my younger self but if you would listen like what would you try and here's some things you should do

immediately yeah like for us a big thing is partner with partner with somebody like you talked about you know that person and like and you had said the guy that you knew as well we work with a best practice organization that has given us some amazing tools like they work with thousands of companies across North America that allow that and they they've they've tried all of the things and so they've tested all of the scenarios and and they've given us these amazing tools and a lot of it is the financial tools it's that it's knowing how to price your work knowing how to know if you've done a good job of that what you need to do for the size of your market and then how to test to those things and to be able to look at those things and it's interesting because like I remember

early on my wife is just like, I mean, like you need to talk to somebody about this stuff. Like, you mean, we keep doing the same thing and we get the same results. And it's like, can you talk to your accountant about this? And my accountant is amazing. He's a local guy. I love my accountant and stuff. But the problem is that they don't know my industry. And so they don't know plumbing and heating. They don't know the, the ebb and flow of HVAC and how you need to lay out where this company works, like I said, it's a member organization, thousands of companies and their whole intention is to help us to be profitable. And so by partnering with them in the last two years has made one of the biggest differences because they've given us the tools.

And it's and it's the tools to know how things should look and what the warning signs are specifically for our industry because plumbing and heating is different than flooring. And it's different and, you know, it's similar to electrical, more similar to electrical. But but similar in a way that it it actually depends on the type as well. And that's where, you know, Drew, you and I were talking earlier. We used to be very heavily into a lot of the commercial construction and things like that. And we've shifted because at the end of the day, it allowed us to have more control over our future, essentially, because we have the ability to be more predictable.

Because when it comes to what we do now, which is much more, they deem it service. and installation. So we take care of the service work. We build maintenance packages for people. And those all, if you've got this many customers, eventually over time, they will need new pieces of equipment, furnaces, air conditions, stuff like that. And so based on the data we've been given, it allows us to actually chart our future, you know, be able to look at it. But I didn't know any of that information. And so by finding the right people, and that might have even been, you know, even just having the courage to go meet somebody in another town because you're not going to be able to go to your competitor and say, so, you know, what are you pricing things at these days?

What are you paying your employees? You know, what does it look like? You know, because you think, you know, you know what somebody else is pricing the job at, but you don't know what their numbers look like. And so they may be given a deal to this customer just to, you know, just to, you know, pay the bills that day as well. You mean, and so, you know, pricing yourself off of the people around you is not a good solution. But knowing what it actually costs for you to do business, knowing the cost of your employees, the cost of your overhead, your building, your material, and then knowing how to turn that into something that's profitable so that you can actually pay yourself at the end of the day. And it all starts, you know, was just knowing what it costs to run the business. And then build

your business off of that instead of what everyone else is doing. Because as soon as you start, if you decide to run your business off of your competitors and what everyone else is doing or what, you know, people are telling you, you're going to go broke. So, you know, well, that, that's what creates that race to the bottom that we were talking about. That's, it's all too common in the trades industry. You know, you get somebody that's only concerned with getting this job because then they think that they'll get the next job and the next job. So they're essentially buying the work. And it just pushes, yeah, it drops the, the average for everybody.

But I totally agree. Know what you need to keep your business moving. And pay attention to those numbers. Like I look at mine monthly and I use that as a tool to say, oh, sometimes you'll catch even, you know, you miss something because that happens, right? But why are we so, you know, we're down this many points this month? Why was that?

So you get going back through receivables and, oh, Well, we missed this. Yeah. Okay, so you go talk to the customer and a lot of times they're okay with you, moving it forward. Sometimes you got to eat it, but. Sometimes you got to eat it. But if you don't know those numbers, 12 months go by and, yeah, I made that mistake

when I was younger. Yeah. You know, if you wait to the end of the year to know your numbers, you're going to, you're going to be in a lot of pain. What do you mean you, I may have just, you guys are all nodding, your head and I'm like, I miss something there. If you wait to the end of the year to know what numbers. Your margins.

You're looking at what the job costs, what you actually made, and then knowing that number and being like, oh, God, I got to up my price because I just made $2 on a, that's what you mean. Exactly. So like take it back to COVID times. You mean, when all of a sudden, and like for us, it was, we had never, like, our industry, there's increases, but it was never as crazy. in COVID, my furnace supplier was almost monthly telling me that we were seeing a 10% increase, 10% increase.

And we were working hard just to keep our team together, trying to get out, take care of customers, dealing with all of the parameters and stuff like that, everyone was dealing with, that, I didn't want to raise my prices. I didn't want to affect this to other people. And at the end of the year, it all came back to bite us. You mean, the cost of our actual equipment was way higher than we had forecasted, and it kicked us in the butt. And, you know, that's one of those things that you don't recover from necessarily in one year even. You mean, like it's, it's a, you mean, and so from there, that taught me a huge lesson. And you're right.

We, we meet weekly with our leadership team, and we have certain scorecard measurements. And now, you mean, when you're looking at it weekly, because, you know, you can only be, so accurate that quickly, right? But it gives us a snapshot on a weekly basis. And yeah, by the end of the, you know, the 10th of the next month, it's our mandate to have, you know, a closed month for the month before so that we can make decisions. Okay, are we on target for the year? And, and, you know, are we going to be able to hit our numbers? And, I mean, what changes do we have to make? What is it, like you said, it's digging into the things. What cost us more? At a month where I'd like $15,000 in vehicle bills.

It's like, what is going on? I mean, all of a sudden, and so we dug in and, you know, and it was awesome because we talked to our guys about it, but we had guys, you know, who were missing, you know, walk arounds and they, we had tires falling off of vans and, you know,

and things like, it was crazy. We talked to our guys about it, and it actually helped. I mean, it's knowing those things and being able to address them, so. Yeah, and if you, if you don't drive Dodgers, it helps quite a bit too.

Ooh, boy, I tell you. So much hurt. So much for that Chrysor sponsorship you would go for in the business. Oh, no. And also sometimes when you also have these jobs that are over a period of time, you know, where you have products need to go, but then you have labor and it needs to be continually built. But you can't really bill halfway through the cycle.

You need to bill when it's completed. But yet you still have to pay your guys in the middle of it or pay yourself in the middle of it. So you have to be constantly watching, you know, like, I mean, the good thing about our industry, industries, it's usually like a two or three day job. So, you know, I don't necessarily have that, but when I start getting on industrial stuff where it's large scale, then the unexpected costs and also then the initial quotes, how well do you, like, I pride myself that when I give you a price, that's what's your pain. If I made a mistake, that's my problem. And that is a very

hard thing to do in our industry because, like, when I walk into someone's house and he got carpet all over the place and they say, we want to expend every. thing. How do I know what's underneath that carpet? Well, there are ways that you could know, but also some of that comes down to, I've seen enough of these places that I'm about 95% sure that this is what we're going to see underneath there, you know, and it does work. But then there's that one time where it doesn't work. And then you're like, okay, make sure that when you're billing it, you have enough profit and enough wiggle room in there. So if something does go wrong, everything can still get paid, all the guys get paid. And hopefully you might see a

shekel or two out of it at the end of it. But then that's the lesson that has to be learned. You know, but it's the lesson that has to be learned. And those mistakes, estimating in our industry is the hardest thing that most companies struggle with because they just say, well, we'll train an estimator. Maybe in some industries you can get away with that. In our industry, I can tell you if you have an estimator, if you're a business and you're struggling and your labors all over the places, because it always comes down to that estimation. because it's very hard to figure that out. Because we deal with a lot of asbestos in our industry.

Get into the older houses, there's asbestos everywhere. So then we have to learn how, because we can't remove, we can cover it up, we can deal with it. There's lots of these things. You miss that. And if you miss that, you're out a lot of money. So you're eating the cost of that abatement then. Yeah, because you might have a guy who's certain to cut into a floor

when he's not supposed to be. Yeah, that's. So we don't, you know. So, I mean, you know, but we can spot that. But that's lessons you've learned along the way. Oh, and also that's lessons that I've watched. I have watched guys get sued. I have seen the guys just get, you know.

I have never been, I've never had that problem personally because I was so scarred from watching that go down with two or three guys. Like, when my dad, like, we used to sand asbestos for Pete's sake. My dad used to sand it. And, you know, you know, come out, why is it goes? Hey, look at me. I'm covered in dust. No, you're covered in asbestos, dude. And we were always around it. I went and helped my dad when I was a little kid, a big mental institution. It was hilarious.

Big, long hallways, and they were sanding down vinyl asbestos tile, keyword asbestos to put down new vinyl asbestos tile. My dad said, do you want to come to work with me? I'll pay you. I'm like, woo-hoo. So I'm sweeping and all the dust is about this high off the ground. And when I'm that high off the ground, my dad's on his knees with a grinder. come out, what is a ghost? And, you know, when my dad passed away, you know, they couldn't cremate him. They'd been sitting there for like five days

trying to burn them with all the asbestos he had, no way, it wouldn't happen. But, you know, but here again, I was in that industry right where it was starting to change and then all the fear factor of asbestos and the realization of what the stuff was. You know, so I was right at the start when all that asbestos remediation

was just starting. And then, of course, because to get guys to compensate occupational workplace safety, all these guys, had to find guys because they were still sanding the stuff and pumping it into the air for the customer. See, it was kind of like this whole little thing, you know. And so, you know, I got to see that I knew guys that got pretty well taken right out of business because they had like a $60,000 fine for what happened. And then they got sued personally after it was all said and done. And, you know, here again, it was like, you know, those, those, okay, safety,

Departments were not heard of any business. No one had one. Nobody did. So when we started, it was called Wild West. We didn't worry about that stuff. You know, there were a lot more injuries. Yes, there were. A lot more stupid stuff going on.

Yes, there were. And then we've also taken that safety to a high over-extreme now where it's almost too much. It's too much. It is too much. And now safety is used as a weapon. You know, it can be used as a weapon. But if I go back, you know, like, maybe my brain's hearing it wrong.

I just go like, you know, how do you learn some of these? Some of us just like trial and error and you hope you don't. Like I guess one of the things I was trying to figure out from you three is like is there any,

you know, like lots of it's trial and error small mistakes or small mistakes. You go, oops, don't do that again, right? But getting sued and losing your entire business or something like that.

I'm like, well, that's a pretty big mistake that I think a lot of us would like to avoid. Avoid. But some of those guys knew it though too, right?

They were smarter than everybody else. This is the way we've done it for 30 years. I'm smarter than everybody else. You know what? You're not smarter. I've been at it for 30 years. Great. I learn every single day I'm learning something new.

Just to keep up in my industry. I am constantly learning. There's this thing called humility. Can you learn from somebody else's mistake? For me, first 10 years? No way. I take it back to, you know, you talked about your dad, running its own business.

I know you guys both are kind of the end all. I've got a partner. So my brother and I, we work together. And I think one of the biggest challenges, though, as tradesmen, as entrepreneurs, as people that own businesses, is that isolation factor, that feeling that the buck stops here. And I'm the only one that's, you know,

that everything is responsible to. And, I mean, we can get, I think, really trapped. I think, you know, maybe that's even, you know, to answer your question, Sean. You mean, I think it's super important for us to get outside of our own selves and recognize that sometimes it's even just a matter of finding another business owner to have a conversation with. Because every time I talk to somebody like you guys, I recognize that I'm not alone in the things that I know cause. that extra stress and that extra burden, right? If I may, I read this on Forbes a while back. I was trying to find out when I feel like it's an old article.

Yeah, it's saying in 2018. I can't remember when I got sent this, but it was entrepreneurs and suicide risk. And one of the things that it said was the feeling of being trapped. So it was kind of what you just, this alone, this like, you know. And I was saying to you guys before I started, I'm like, I keep running into these guys. there's struggling a bunch

and you know I'm like oh I may look like I got my stuff together but I don't I'm the duck on the water my feet are going 100 miles an hour I don't know what the heck I'm doing in the next six months let alone tomorrow for a lot of things I stress about a lot I try not to overburden my family with it

because if I do every time I've opened up too much to my wife and I love my wife and she's like the best woman ever I stress her out I'm like nope don't do that again don't do that again right and I try to it's not healthy to bottle it all in,

but you got to make sure that when you're talking to people, you're picking the right ones. And I was trying, you know, with this first edition of this, because I'm like, I find this conversation really fascinating. And I mean first edition on this kind of topic because obviously we've done lots of these

is trying to let guys and gals know that are running businesses. Like we're all dealing with this in our own ways. And they're trying to give them, not only the idea of like, hearing different people talk about it. But then maybe some ideas of like, oh yeah, here's a major pitfall or here's one of the lessons I learned

through maybe one of the low times in business. Well, I know that, I mean, for every, it's not just entrepreneurs. It's basically, I'd say men are at high risk for this in general, just that we are typically providers, we're protectors, we're the kind of people that want to make sure that everyone else is taking care of,

I don't want to put it on a high horse. But in the end, we, like you said, we'll bottle it up. We'll pretend like everything's okay until it's not. And then you mean that's the reason why the high rate of suicide. And it's, you know, but it's the guy who, I think Joey had mentioned it this morning when we were chatting. The guy who has a credit card bill that's $1,000 and it's overdue, you know, and he's an employee, you know, I mean, has that same level of stress as, you know, a business owner that's got, you know, half a million dollars in debt to CRA and they're coming down and going to shut things down and I mean all of those things along the way you mean the pressure is still very similar and I think

I mean I'll take it to you know for me I've got a Christian worldview and so you know for me it boils down to when those things happen I have to recognize that that you mean what what can really what can happen. You mean, you mean, it's just, it's just money. It's just a job.

It's just business. And what's important is, number one, for me, it's my relationship with God. Number two, it's my family. And, you know,

especially my relationship with my wife and then my kids. And so when I, when I take it in, I just look at it in actual perspective, my job is to just keep moving. My job is to work hard

and keep going. and I believe that, you mean, ultimately, no matter where I go, you mean, if God takes it all away from me one day, then I'm going to go where he takes me in that direction. And, I mean, and that just relinquishes the stress. I don't have to worry about that. You know, you know, we, you know, it tells us not to worry. And actually, I mean, worry can be construed. You mean, when we choose to worry, we're not giving control over to God. And we're not allowing him to have control over those things. And so then we take on that burden ourselves.

And he says not to worry about tomorrow because tomorrow has enough worries of itself, you know, and just give it to him and surrender that. And that has been, I guess, a big challenge for me in the last little while. It's just determining what does surrender look like in the realm of actually still moving ahead and working. And it's fascinating when you look back in history and you look at, say, the Israelites, you know, and they had left this country of Egypt, and they needed to get to the other side of this river, and until they stepped into the river, the river didn't part.

And so it was important for them to move forward and to be in action, and while they were in action and while they were moving, then God made things happen along the way and made the way for them as they moved. And so, I mean, I think a lot of people sit and they get stuck. in waiting for the right answer.

And I just think as long as you're, at least, you know, for me, as long as I'm spending time in the Word of God every day, and as long as I'm praying and I'm seeking after God, as long as I'm moving forward, he's going to direct my path. And that's a neat thing. In Proverbs, it says that. You mean, man makes his plans, but God orchestrates the steps. And so we can plan.

We can make our goals and all those things, and it's super cool. I love goal setting all those things. But at the end of the day, trusting that God is going to orchestrate it And wherever he takes me, that's where I want to go. And in light of that, it's definitely relinquished a lot of the stress that I've dealt with over the last few years. Sorry. Sorry. No.

Long chat there. That comes back to the old. If you want to make God laugh, just make a plan. Right? Basically. I mean, stress. Like, okay, people say, stress, stress, stress, stress, stress. Everybody talks stress.

Well, life is stress. You go to the gym. What are you doing? you're stressing yourself. What does that do for you? It makes you stronger. But what happens when you overstress yourself? You know, I mean, if you sat at the, you know, bench pressing all day long, yeah, that bar's coming down.

It's going to kill you. You're going to hurt yourself. You know, it's, there is stress no matter what you do. You will have stress. If you're around people, you will have stress. It comes down to the person. You have to find a source. I'm not going to speak for you guys,

but I have things in my life that have absolutely nothing to do with my job, nothing to do with work. And when I don't do those, that's when I have stress. And that's when my life sucks. And my dad worked. And if my dad didn't work, he worked at a church. That's what he did all the time. But my dad didn't have any hobbies outside of those too.

That's what he did. an uncle who just recently passed away. He just worked, work, work, work. He had no hobbies. He had nothing to go on there. It sounds funny, but I work to do the things that I want to do and the things that bring me joy. And what the things that bring me joy are going to be different than everybody here. I mean, nobody would want to do the things that bring me joy. I mean, I hunt, I bird hunt. This is what I do. My business rotates are in the fall. It rotates around what the migration of geese are doing. And when I'm driving up here to come visit you guys, I'm watching for geese flying to go,

okay, they're flying. You know who's going to be the first guy to be at that A-frame? Yeah. It's going to be false. Because I had the county map open and I'm looking at all the watering holes as we were getting to the place. But that's just, but when I'm in that frame of mind where I have that release, it allows me to think. Scripture talks about be still and know that I am God. You cannot know God unless you were willing to be still.

Sorry. That's how it works. If you want to contemplate, now I'm 50. I'm starting to realize my age. I have young kids. I'm starting again. But is an awesome thing in the world. That's great. If you as a man, it doesn't matter if you're an entrepreneur, employee, or whatever, do not stop and think.

You will never stop. and think. You will just move. You will just act aimlessly. Then you'll wonder why, oh my goodness, I'm 50 pounds overweight. I'm only 20 pounds. But then you get into that point and you just go, how did I get here? Well, little bit by little bit, by little bit, by little bit. We learned how to be tradesmen. We learned our skills little bit by little bit by little bit. but one of the things my dad was very bad at he couldn't sit down for 15 seconds yeah you know and that's okay that's who he was but in light at the end of the day when you get older i'm trying to think i'm trying to remember who quoted it i'm just going to butcher it when you get older it doesn't

mean it you get wiser it doesn't mean you get wiser it just means you generally get more cautious might have been Hemingway. You want to become a wise person. That takes work. And that takes contemplation. It's having to know yourself. I want to impart this to you guys. I'm a few years on you guys.

This became a priority in my life about eight years ago that I will know each, I will know myself. I know what makes me tick. I know what brings me joy. Now here again, it's all in balance. I can't just say, I'm just going to go hunting every single day for the rest of my life. I've got a couple of retired guys that would love that.

They tell me, you know, all this work that you're doing gets into way of hunting. And I'm like, I do know. And but my wife's like, no, don't do it. But here again, though, we have to have some balance in our life and to do some things. I don't take vacations. We don't go off all over the place. You know, Sharon and myself, we have this thing kind of going where we don't. Now we're starting to talk about doing a little bit more.

But in my daily life, I would. will pause. I will say no, I'm not doing that. The call comes in. It can wait, it, and go to voicemail because I'm sitting here still for 10 minutes. The only 10 minutes of stillness I've had all day. And I just stop, and I don't make any apology for it. And then all those little nagging things in the back of my head, they end up being solved. Because I have been still. And it's discipline. It's hard to do. Our culture does not promote it. Be busy. Be busy. You should be doing something. every 15 seconds of your life. I am not going to go through my life that way.

I want to be a person who is wise that maybe would have something to impart to that next generation other than just work hard. You know, one of the, from what I do with the podcast, you know, setting aside time where I can go and not have to worry about the podcast

is like really, you know, like just little simple things. You know, I just think of like, it doesn't have to be so complex. One of the things I do is Monday, Wednesday, Friday is to play noon hour hockey. Do I make it every time? No. But it's on my schedule that I should be there. And I stopped trying to fit everybody else's schedule around mine.

You think, you know, like I do podcasts five days a week. Sometimes I do like eight podcasts. And I used to schedule it whenever it worked for the other person. That gets really self-defeating because they walk all over your schedule because they're doing what works for them. And at some point, what I hear coming out of you, Paul, is like, At some point, you just got to be like, no, here's my boundaries. Because if I'm going to be a healthy business owner, I want to do this. And this is what makes me healthy.

This is what brings me joy. And when I'm a good part, like when I'm in a healthy mindset, not only does my business start to become better, but everybody around experience it, gets a little bit better because I'm in a healthy mindset. And like another little, a little tiny thing, because everybody knows my phone's attached with the podcast, right? You can text me at two in the morning. I'm going to wake up and I'm going to see it.

What I've done is now from, 5 p.m. until 8 a.m. Do not disturb on everything. So I can open it and I can see. But I've already put it in my brain. I've just, I've used technology to be like, nope, nobody's touching me. So you could call, go right to voice bell, don't really care. Or I can answer it.

Or I can text you back. Or I don't have to text you back. So do you guys, I guess just to clarify my conversation about moving forward wasn't also just about being busy. because something that's super important to me has been routine. I mean, and part of that routine. And just like you said, you have to build the first thing that goes is rest. I mean, the first thing that will eliminate from your schedule is any sort of downtime, any sort of rest. And so I was given that advice from somebody a long, long time ago that the first thing you do when you decide to look at maybe even your year is you build in your rest.

You put in your hunting or your holiday time and you do that first. And so for me, it's very similar idea. And then don't feel guilty about it. Yes. Yeah. You're not, you mean, and so,

you mean, so like my mornings are pretty, like sacred. I mean, they're my time. I mean, like when I get up at, you know,

5, 5.30, you know, I have my, I used to be, I would listen to podcasts. And, and I realized, kind of to your,

to you said, I realized that my life was surrounded by noise. I was always had something in my ears. And my wife kind of brought it to my attention, too, that you mean, we always have, whether it's music or podcast.

It was just always noise. And I felt like, number one, I was, I wondered, why do I never hear from God? You know, and so it's like, oh, it's because I'm hearing from everybody else and I never take time. And so for about six months, I just, from the time I woke up in the morning, I didn't look at technology, didn't listen to anything until I got to work. And at work, that was when I opened my email. And so that was just my time, my, that moment.

And I would, you know, that's when I would read the Bible. That's when I would pray. Those are the things that that would, you know, kind of start my time. day off, what I believe is in the right direction. It says to pray without ceasing. So, you know, the first thing that comes out of my mouth when things happen, that's when things, you know, so in that, same thing, my noon. I mean, I started going to CrossFit 11 years ago. It's the only thing. I tried all the things, swimming, all the, just everything to do. And nothing could keep my attention for two weeks. After two weeks, I would sleep in or something would happen. I'd been going for 11 years.

you know, shout out to Scott Noble and the CrossFit Lloyd Minster crew over there because they kept me going and just fell in love with it. And it was just, I mean, it was honoring that noon. And it started off at three days a week, but then, you know, you'd make an exception one day. And so then I just made it the routine that every day I went. And so you're really messing you up today. Oh, yeah. You know, so you end up, though, it's funny how it works.

So you end up at a at noon and you are expecting to be there. Your body is like, gearing up to go there. And so people call, and you're right, I don't have lunch appointments typically. I say, hey, you know, I do my lunch at 1.30. Does that work for you? And if it does, great. If not, then we reschedule. But you got to be okay with it.

Like that's a, you know, like this little by little that, you know, like you build skills little by little by little going to CrossFit and slowly building that in your routine. And it's little by little, right? It's day by, you know. And I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you'll all disagree with me. But one of the things that I've really wrestled with, and still wrestling.

was from time of time. This was the first year in July slowed the podcast down. That was a first. But I knew I needed at some point, my wife and I talked, Mel and I, that like we go on holidays to see her family and I can't turn my brain off because I'm worried about next week and I'm worried about the week after.

And so I consciously went, I'm going to slow it down. That goes against everything in my body because I don't want to, I want to keep it going. And then Trump got shot. And then Trump got shot, right? And then I'm like, and she could, She's like looking at me, you're okay?

And I'm like, no. I mean, you know? Twitch, that's right. But in fairness, I slowed it down. I stockpile, I don't like stockpiling episodes because then I think they become stale because you're not talking about what's actually going on. But for the month of July, I just went, okay, even if I lose everybody, let's just go worst case scenario. Nobody tunes in.

They all say it sucks and they never come back. Take your worst fear and just, it's like, okay, well, life will go on, right? We can deal with that. And so, yeah. like July, I felt guilty about that. But it was so healthy. The noon hours are healthy. And I used to feel guilty about going and playing hockey, right?

And yet it's moving your body and it's getting like, I don't know. To me, I had this guilt about being able to do that. And I don't know why that is. I don't know what, you know. Well, it's because you feel like you should be spending that time on the business because now you're taking time away from family to do the business stuff because you wasted this hour in the middle of the day. day and it just you in your mind you just you make it seem like it's this horrible thing that

you've done right and I think every business owner with family especially does that because you're you're so worried about being here for this this and this and this well if I take this block for me then I've actually taken it from them right and once you once you get over that hurdle it it changes everything right like it's I'm still not there. I can talk about it. Yeah. But I don't know how to do it. Exactly. Yeah. I can see what other people are doing and I like that they're doing it and it makes sense. But to get your brain to accept that, boy, it's, I don't know what the answer is. I think the other thing that's neat is, and we talked about this a bit this morning too, is including your family in those things. You mean?

So yeah. You mean, yeah. And so actually when we started working out at noon, it was a date. So my wife had just had a, had a baby. And so we went, I knew nothing about CrossFit. She just looked and found something. She was in the business with me at the time. She was like doing all our books. And she had, I got a picture of her with like my youngest, Ethan all swallowed up. She's sitting at a desk doing books, right?

And so we knew we needed something. And we needed to do something that because our kids were young, it wasn't going to happen in the evening. We couldn't get up any earlier. And so we found something at noon. And we found this and we went together. We brought our baby in the, bassinet sat him in the corner and and it became a date so the two of us fell in love with it together

and so I sometimes call it voluntary group torture because you know you literally go there but the neat thing about torture you know is that POW you know prisoners of war when when they come out they have this camaraderie that nobody else does and it's nice when your wife and you are POWs together because you know when you're sitting there making supper and you're you know reminiscent about the pain you went through together earlier that day. There's some neat things that come out of that. Right. And so that's been a neat, I guess, out of that.

And I, you know, same thing. Even with me and my kids in hunting, it's like you could, you know, I could take off and go hunting, but I don't just go hunting by myself. I take both my boys with me. My girls are interested in it. They love to shoot. They actually, my one daughter is a better archer than anybody I, you know, like she's just phenomenal.

And, you know, but include them in the things you love. and then you'd never feel guilty because they're with you. I mean, and then you get to impart some of the things, and they get to see that, and you get to grow in that together. And then you always have things that you want to do together, right? You're not, you know, all of a sudden, oh, yeah, dad's going hunting.

I guess we'll go find the things that we like to do. And then you just grow apart. I mean, and so, anyways, we don't have it all together, you know, but at the same time. Well, I don't think any of us have it all together. We're all certain, that's the whole point of talking about it, right? And hopefully, you know, bringing more. business guys on the target because one of the one of the things that shocked me you know i'm the i'm the

newbie when it comes to being a business owner right it feels really weird because i do a podcast with my name on i'm like that you know sometimes it just feels like a a personal journey and people are just along for the ride but like you know you get into business and i realized real fast i didn't know jacks like i just i just didn't realize what it all entailed right you know you go from working uh in in the corporate world, you know, and you think you got an idea of what it takes to run a business, right? We were talking about working for somebody, and I could do it better than this.

And then you start to factor in all the costs and what that is, you know, like, oh, my God. Like, how did I'm such a moron, you know? And I'm only at the beginning. I'm like, I'm just at the start of all this. I'm not, you know, I look at all the experience you three have. And then you probably look at older men and they have more experience. Or heck, even a younger guy that's,

started when he was 20 or 18, you know, there's there's guys that can be further along just by going through the experience and earning it every year. Well, there's something learned from everybody regardless of where they are in the process, right? There's if you can actually allow yourself to learn somebody, everybody has something to teach you. Yeah, for sure. It might not fit what you're doing, but you can keep it in a toolbox for later. Humility. Humility to admit that I don't know that. that oh, my system is not nearly as good as this guy's system,

or at least look at this guy's system, because maybe one day I'll have to do it that way. And now at least I'll have something in my toolbox, you know, to say, hey, there's more than one way to do it. I mean, I find that myself. Like, I am doing more sales work, less hands-on work. My older brother's taking over the hands-on work. And it's, I mean, it's hard for me to let that go.

Yeah. Because he has a different system of doing things. At the end, we get it all done. And I just have to say, I don't know it all. I am not the smartest. You know, I'll tell everybody else on that. Yeah, for sure. But being willing to accept help too along the way.

I think, you mean, that's, that's been one of the biggest things, you know, in the years where things have been harder and things have been, you know, more challenging. It's being willing to, when somebody offers you something to say, thank you and actually accept some of that help along the way and relief some of the burden, maybe that you're trying to. you're trying to carry yourself. And yeah, the humility to just know that, that, you know, I can't do it on my own.

I mean, I might need somebody else to help me. And I might need to just sit down and have a conversation with somebody. There's been, I keep bringing it up, I keep running into different people who are, you know,

I think at times, from my eyes, they're successful. And they look like they're dealing with something that, you know, most of us probably can't see, right? You don't know the inner workings.

I'm curious, the three of you, do you have like a date or not a date, a specific date, but maybe a day or an event or a time where you've thought maybe your business was doing okay? And then you started to see that and you realized, you know, like, I don't know if it's the roughest day of business owning or if it's like just a tough time, a season. You know, you think of the ups and downs of the oil field and how cycles go and like all of a sudden it's just going as hard as you can go. And then all of a sudden you're getting no phone calls. Do you have, does that spring to mind anything?

And then I guess the only thing I'd add to that is, what did you do to get through it? Well, being in oil and gas specifically, there is no date. There is no definitive one time that that happened. That's a yearly, sometimes monthly occurrence, right? Whether it's because of policy due to poor governance or whether it's because of commodity prices, you're in this perpetual state of growth. They're going to be doing all these projects. All this capital is going to flow in.

Life is going to be great. This thing happens that's out of your control that you don't entirely understand. And all of a sudden, everything just stops. There's no rhyme or reason. There's no, often there's no even communication. It's just, nope, this is done as of today. And you have to be able to, I guess, to accept that you have no control over that.

It took, well, I'm still not, obviously. It's like I have PTSD from it, honestly, because it seriously messes you up. Because you're just like, you're so amped, you're hiring guys, you're, you know, everything is looking so good. And then some unseen, unexplainable thing person, decides that nope you you're no longer relevant you're no longer important your business doesn't matter anymore we're just stopping everything that we told you we were going to do right now is there any there's probably no way to like not head me I probably hedge against that to like have you found ways to make the baseline of your business

stable oh yeah and that's that's why for for me personally now that I've sort of started up again pretty much exclusively beyond my own well I brought in a young guy as a little bit called like a junior partner kind of okay to actually help out and he's he's awesome he because he can deal with a lot of the putting of things together and actually building things right but as a business to deal with those ebbs and flows you have to build up this I guess secondary income flow right this I don't know what it's It's always something less than what you want, but it's something stable. So it's for us, we're getting really into solar and like commercial agriculture spaces,

wiring shops and putting in lights and stuff like that that wasn't every part of our business and it's not big money, but it's, it pays the bills, it keeps the lights on, right? And then you can go through these highs and lows because this is always here. You know, it's not making money, but it's keeping you afloat, right? And then when you're up here, well, you make that money and then comes back down. It just kind of float along for a bit. But the hope is that you don't have to let anybody go in those times, like where it used to be, we would man up, like when I was partnering up with some of these big money guys,

you're manning up to 100 men, you know, like that's a lot of mouths to feed. That's a lot of people looking at you on payday. And then all of a sudden, well, 08-09, 14, 15, you know, take your pick, 2020, these things happened. And all of a sudden, you're having to tell all these guys that sorry you're, we can't keep your own, right? So, to, yeah. Yeah, that's tough one. But instead of trying to always shoot for the top to make the most money, have the most people, you have to first build this security blanket, this net underneath here, right?

Because you're going to fall. I'm sure we all have, right? Everybody's been there. And now that I've learned that you need to have that there, at least that's the peace of mind, right? Yeah. I think I look back to earlier on. And just there was those, there was that time.

I mean, when you looked at the week and you knew, okay, barrel's coming at the end of the week. You mean? Yeah. Need to bring this in by the end of the week. Okay. Looking at the things, you know, you start hitting the AR, you know, you're going through the numbers.

You're looking at all the stuff and you're going through it. And, and yeah, you're getting closer to the end of the week and closer. And, you know, that's where, you know, the stress starts to boil up. And there's the nights where you're going home. And it's like, you mean, and you got to send it off. You got to press the button, right? you know, hit the direct deposit and there's time frames on those things and stuff like that. And those time frames are coming and it's like, okay, well, you know, we're short here at this point.

You know, so what do we do? So you're calling the bank and then the bank's not answering. And you know, you're doing all these things. And it's like, so you're praying. You mean, it's like, God, you mean, where are we at? You mean, and you mean, need that direction, need your help through this. And it's just you wait. And it's like, okay, well, at the end of the day, you come to the point where it's like, you know what? we're going to do what we have to do no matter what it takes to make this happen. And, I mean, it, you know, nothing, nothing. And the last second, you know, oh, sorry, I didn't get my phone here, boom, boom.

And it's like, you know, sometimes it's just like, okay, a little opener. And in those situations, you mean, I'm grateful. God pulled through in that situation. But at the same time, if he hadn't, that's okay. You mean, those are the ways that, you know, that was the lessons learned. And, you know, when you look in James and it talks about how, how, you know, trials are what build our perseverance. And, you know, and that we need to be able to, and that's, you talked about stress. Everyone's got different levels of it and ability to handle it.

But that happens over time and working our way through it. And then because of those situations, learning to, okay, now I'm not going to, yeah, what do I need to do to create that net, that buffer so that we don't, it's like, thank you for the reminder. Thank you for the little kick in the butt. You know, let's work on the perseverance. Yeah, the humility. You mean, knowing that, you mean, yeah, it could have been, I could have been facing the guys and said, okay, here's, here's checks, you know, sort of thing, you know, and stuff along the way. But at the end of the day, knowing that, you know, he had her back.

I mean, and either way, I mean, we've got to recognize that, you know, every good thing comes from God. And but along the way, you know, sometimes we get to go through trials. And that creates perseverance. And we become better through those things. And it's exciting to be able to know that, you know, because of that, different things happen so that we don't end up putting ourselves in those positions. But it's part of that growth and building that safety net looking.

And I think we talked earlier too just about even, you know, debt. You mean, debt is a tool. Cash is a tool. You know, and I mean, but, you know. Debt is a tool of the devil. And 100%. You mean, it's I. And, you know, we get to the place.

where, you know, we talked about debt being slavery, you know, essentially, too, you know, to, to whoever is your, your debtor. And, you mean, you know, I think, you know, most people end up with a mortgage of some sort, you know, along the way. But, you know, wherever you can go to live inside of the, you know, what your numbers allow you to, knowing that you're able to take care of things and having things in such a place, you know, we've tried to diversify some different things. I think it's, you got to be careful on that too. You can diversify to the point where you're so diluted that, you know, you can't do anything. That's right.

You know, it's. Jack of all traits, master done. Yeah, it becomes a, you know, challenge, you know, and you're like, oh, man, I want to, I want to make sure that I've got things in place that when this industry is not doing well, I can be over here. And then it's like, oh, but you're not very good at this one. And so now all of a sudden things are harder. And so, yeah, we've kind of had to sometimes refocus, retool and say, okay, this is what we're good at. That balance is, once you find it, figure it how to maintain it, you're doing pretty well, but there's a lot of trips and falls.

I remember the one time it was a Wednesday and payroll was due on Thursday. And I went to Calgary because this one client hadn't paid for, it was over 100 days. And I remember sitting in their office, this was back, well, 15 years ago in Calgary. and waiting and waiting and I I just kept saying to the lady I can't leave here without payment right like I cannot go home without a check because these guys need to be paid their families need groceries like you you can't allow me to leave here without a check and finally it was about three o'clock in the afternoon some guy in a suit came out handing me an envelope and the way I went But from that day forward, it's like, not getting into this position ever again. Those are the stories that people need to hear, right? Because that's what so many guys are going through, right?

Well, when you're like. In my small world, I think I've been so fortunate over the course of two years to have only ever had one company not pay. And it was less than a thousand bucks. And let me tell you, it was still a kick in the teeth. Right? Because I, you know, like, I mean, every cent I bring out on this. sucker is really important, right?

But on the grand scheme of things, there's less than a thousand bucks. It sucks. But it isn't 200,000. Not that I'm making 200,000, but you get the point. It's not this giant number. But to everybody, you know, you were talking about 350 bucks once upon a time. Once upon a time, that was a huge deal. And to some, that still is a huge deal.

Yeah. And I want also, I mean, anyone is listening who doesn't have a business. I mean, you don't have to make a huge business. like if this is what you want to do there were times when I wanted just to you know shoot for the stars or whatever I'm now 50 years old I got more time behind me than in front of me my time means more to me now it is the most precious commodity I have there are ways and there are lots of businesses that are small and I will keep my business small only until it doesn't make any sense to keep it small I I can downsize my business.

See, business is, oh, it's always about growth. It's about growth. Yeah, that was 15 years ago. We're coming into some interesting times now. I'm watching for what's going on. I could lose my shirt. I could lose my business. I can do that.

I'm at peace with it. If it happens, happens. There's things I control. There's things I can't control. But it doesn't have to be this thing. Well, I'm only making, you know, like $20,000. You know, I'm not an entrepreneur. No.

If you're making handbags, my wife likes to buy stuff at garage sales and resell them and I kind of giggle and she comes up with some really cool stuff. But here again, that's how our world works. It works with small things. It doesn't have to be big unless you want to be big. Growth doesn't have to mean revenue. Yeah. It doesn't.

But also, too, it's just like the way you're going to run your company and the way with your brother you're going to run a company is going to be a lot different than I'm going to run my company because I know what business he means to me. me. And I know where my family is. I know what's important to me. I mean, I want to just encourage anybody who's like, oh my goodness, like this is horrible. This never get into business. No, it's rewarding. But it doesn't have to be huge. And we all say the same thing. We wouldn't change it. I wouldn't go, I wouldn't go back to work for somebody. Yeah. Oh, no. I mean, no. The amount of, I, I, uh, when the route was still in Lloyd Minster. Yeah. They had this guy coming. He was phenomenal. He was a one man band. So he sat there and a song took about 15 minutes.

And he started by playing, I can't remember the order, but let's just say he started playing the guitar, and then he'd stop, and then he had a foot pedal, and he'd play that for a bit, and then it'd start to loop together on itself, and then he'd start to play a couple different,

and he'd go through it, and then he'd start to sing, and he'd play the entire song, and it was all the different parts, and then he'd loop it together on whatever the heck, you know, and then he'd play it out for the crowd. It was unbelievable. And every day I'm like,

I am becoming the one man band, where I'm like, I'm just like doing all these different things. And at the same token, I go to U7 hockey practice or I go to U9 hockey practice. I'm on the ice and I hear other dads talking and I'm like, man, I just today was a day. And I have those days too. And they're like, I just can't wait until I don't work anymore. And I'm like, I plan to do this until I can't do this anymore.

I like I love what I do. I always want to do it better and more efficient and make sure that the companies that come and work with me are getting as much exposure and as much that I can give them as, humanly possible. But like this is like this is wonderful. The thing that I think, um, the reason I wanted to have this conversation is I worry about getting trapped. I, you know, that fear of like, I can't make payroll or, or, you know, like, how am I going to find, you know, in this world, ad sponsors or or somebody to come along on this idea or whatever? And it's funny. It's like, it's in your head. You're literally in your own head. And if you just

started talking on their business owners, I bet you they'd have a, idea or two and it pops you out and you're like oh yeah yeah something's still shining all right and and you can start moving again because at times that we can get paralyzed with all the things we're talking about yeah those days of reflection or I'm not sure what the proper word is but when everything just sort of becomes clear again here because your heads down and you're going so hard and you're honestly you're you're running past all these opportunities but you're just you're so focused on this, this, whatever your goal is, right, that you're missing all these things.

And then all of a sudden one day, I don't know, it's like every month or two, maybe it just, everything stops and you're looking around and, oh, things aren't that bad. We're doing okay. You know? And then before you know what, you're back in tunnel vision focused again. But yeah.

There are people that should never start a business, ever. I mean, there are lots. Okay. So if you're one of those persons out there that's listening, we're not judging you or whatever. If it's not your bag, it ain't your bag. It ain't your bag. But if you got a little adventure streak in you, if you like to create, if you like to do these things, that's what it is. Canadians, I think it was about, in the early 80s it was about 80, over 80% of all Canadians were self-employed. It is now under 10, if I'm not mistaken. Under 10?

It is very low. Oh, man. Because, you know, so here again, we have a bunch of people, you know, that were, you know, they are employees. And there's nothing wrong with employees. We all need good employees. But there's also people that are employees that are sitting there and they are trapped. The only time I ever felt trapped with my life was when I was working for a church and I was taking a salary and I hated every second of it. I was trapped.

I had some guy coming out there. I'm waiting hat and hand for my little check and couldn't handle it. And I'm like going, not to say that I got to be that guy out there, but it is just, we are wired differently. We do things differently. The three of us, the four of us, we are all different. We go about it at the same time. There's things that we have in common.

There's things like, I mean, I'm not kidding. I'm laughing my gut out because I'm thinking I'm jumping back 10, 15 years, listening to this and I'm going because in that time, that's what I was expanding. I'm just busy, busy, busy, can't stop, can't stop, can't stop, can't stop. I'm not doing that anymore. I'm not doing that anymore. And I'm making better money, by the way, doing it. So there are ways around it.

There's not one carbon copy way to do it. It is, I cannot distinguish, sharing of myself, cannot break up, well, this is work and this is family, this is life. No, it is like a big giant family farm. Everything is the family farm. Everything is work. Everything is life. Everything is family. It's all combined.

I honestly don't know any other way to do it than that. And I wouldn't want to learn it. And it is exciting, nerve-wracking. It's great. But you know what? I got no problem when I'm slow at the shop, and I've done everything I need to do to sit down there and smoke a pipe and I read a book. And I got a customer coming in and they're seeing me do that.

They look at me. Oh yeah, I don't care. I don't have to be busy every 15 seconds. I will not be that way. But when we work, we work. When we do it, we go hard. And when we stop, we stop. Because I am in control of that.

And the guilt. Or the guilt to be busy. The guilt to be busy. That's my dad. Just go, oh, the guilt to be busy. Now, be still a no. Right? What is that serenity prayer that's out there?

I pray for the wisdom to not be able to stress out over the things I cannot change, but change the things that I can, but the wisdom to know the two. There are things that we can change. There's a lot of things that we can not. Yeah, I look at, you mean, you talk about you have a circle of influence, you mean, and there's only certain things that you can actually have control over. And I mean, and one of those things is how you do things. Your reaction to things.

We talked about that earlier today too. You mean, we get a choice to do things with joy. Or we can go and do things in stress and in anxiety and frustration and irritation and anger. You know, we get to choose our attitude every day. And if we decide that we want to do it in anger, you're still going to get the job done. You still have to get the work done. but I'll tell you it's a whole lot more fun to do it joyfully. And I enjoy my job a whole lot more when I do it that way, right?

But there's certain things we don't have control over, and that's other people's responses and other people's reactions. And, I mean, we can only control ourselves. We can only affect us. And so when we get all stressed out about how other people are going to respond, well, that's not our place. I mean, we don't need to worry about that. And we have to just recognize the things that we do and work on those.

and then, you know, let other people or let other things. I tell my guys, you know, you have control over your process. You don't have control over the result. I mean, the results is the customers, and they get to choose, and whatever they decide is a great option. And no is a perfectly acceptable answer as well. You mean, so all we can control is how we purring answer. I feel like every time I sit down, you know,

you get still and you start to think about things and what you're really enjoying and what you what's making you good money and maybe some things that you're doing that you think could maybe lead to good money that aren't or whatever and you start to just okay here's my plan I'm going to shave off a couple things on the outside I'm going to start using no you're Paul you talked about power of no earlier today power of no and you start aiming again and it's kind of like just a little readjustment little realignment things seem to like joy just seems to I'll steal your guys word you've been saying joy instead happiness which I've really enjoyed and I I feel like that like stems out of part of that right like I used to run around like I can get I can be just like everybody else I can get running around to where I'm not even stopping to breathe almost right I'm just going as hard as I can and then you go what the heck am I doing like what why am I doing this don't I you know like I didn't start this so I could just

brace around and not because like my this world of that I built can bleed it never shuts off it literally never shuts off and it can bleed into my family life to where I'm not even there anymore like I'm there but I'm somewhere else and I try to really wrestle against that right Trump gets shot in the head I mean literally you know even my wife was laughing at me because I was just like I don't know how to shut this off I'm trying really hard here to just enjoy holidays right but you know big events happen in the world all the time what do I talk about big events in the world all the time and so it bleeds into my life every day i wake up i've wake up the last two weeks i woke up at three in the morning on the button sat there and stared at the roof

i'm going to go check on this you're not going to go check on this and finally i get up and i go check on it because it's bugging me so much and that's one of the things i didn't you know i'm pulling us off off topic probably i just uh you know one of the things when you when you start to push things off and start to say no to things you'll line up where you want to go the things that working and you you I guess one of the things you guys are reminding me up is like to check in on your business whether that's every quarter every month every week I don't know the time frame but if you're not doing it or you're only doing it once a year you're actually not doing yourself service no you're gonna end up in a bad spot if you're only doing it yearly

and if the only time you really look where your business is done is on your CRA form that you're filing it's probably too late to make any adjustments Yeah. Yeah. For us, it's, you mean, it has to happen. Like we need, like I said, we look at it weekly. Yeah. That's awesome. And but it's, you mean, it's, did you start out that way though, Blaine? No, not at. And that's the, like I said, working with this new group, I didn't know what to look at. And that was the huge challenge initially was that, I mean, I didn't know what to look at. And so it was a yearly thing. And at the end of the year, some years it was like, woo-hoo, you know, like surprise, let's do this.

You know, and other years it's like, where did this go wrong? I mean, and there was even years where we thought that things were going really well. And then at the end, an inventory adjustment of like $150,000 all of a sudden, you thought you were profiting $200,000 and you lose $100,000. You know, I mean, because of an inventory adjustment, because one of your guys wasn't applying furnaces to the jobs and you thought he was, right? And so, you know, for me, if I look at a month and all of a sudden a month looks way too good to be true, well, I'm going to dig into every one of the jobs to make sure that all of the material got added to the jobs properly. And but I can't do that. And even if I did look at at the end of the year and decide, oh, I should go look at that and see, well, where do you find that 12 months ago? I can hardly remember what happened last Thursday, you know?

let alone 12 months ago and where did that furnace end up? And is that, you mean, what serial number is that? And I mean, because, you know, so for me, it's extremely important to be somewhat granular that way and now having the tools to know what to look at. What is important. We call them KPIs, key performance indicators are extremely important. There is freedom to me in the knowledge of this. And I'll be honest.

You mean, there's, we've got some huge investments into our company, Joey and I. And, you know, we got lots of work to do along the way. And, you know, there's a balance in that, you know, with my family. And I, because they're so important to me, I incorporate them in a lot of things that we do. But work really hard to find that time to be with them. But at the same time, you know, we're all in. I mean, like we are all in. When it comes to Guardian, Joey and I, you know, in Lloydminster, we are here for the long haul.

And we're excited upon what we do. The things we do are neat every day. and it's like how can you get excited about crap literally you know Joey's Joey's a grad quote in grade 12 your crap is my family's bread and butter I mean like people wonder you know why you know how can you be enthusiastic about that right but it's it's not about that it's about peace of mind it's about comfort when I look at the things bumper sticker or a great shirt you know your family's crap is my bread and butter that's that's the next guardian shirt that's right but just being able to look at how

You know, when I hear the stories of the things, there's like two situations looking back. You mean, as much as the stress, it's being able to look, number one, just understanding that the stress doesn't make it any better. I release it to God and I say, God, this is your business. You gave it to me. I trust you with it and I'm going to leave it in your hands. But I look at the situation. I had a guy, went to a customer of ours house and couldn't get an answer. Couldn't get an answer.

Finally, he just had this feeling. Called 911, the guy had a diabetic attack and was ready to. to die on the floor. We saved the guy's life that day. And then we had other ones where we've had people, you know, wear carbon dioxide or the family had several different people in. And they were, you know, their house had toxic levels of carbon monoxide in their house and stuff like that that other people hadn't discovered because they didn't have the due

diligence that my guys take when they look at it. And I'm not saying other companies don't. I'm saying that this situation, we were able to see these things. You pride them. You pride yourself on how you treat people. On our team. Yeah, like our team. And how personal it is to you, right?

Man, it's, I mean, and that, you know, excites me. I hate to break up just a funny thing because I can't get it out of my head. So I'm going to, you know, it's like it's the Guardian blue collar roundtable where your family's craft is our bread and butter. That might become my slogan for this entire thing. Oh, my goodness. That's a great. I mean, I can't, I'm going to.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I might start every blue collar roundtable with that. Oh, man. He's going all serious. I can't get it out of my head. I mean, that's fantastic. That's fantastic.

You got to treat people good. You don't treat people good. Like, I mean, you know, where we are, we're the only show in town. But I'm also one Facebook, a review away from having my reputation ruined. Yeah, ruined. Ruined. And I like that. That's what keeps me on my toes.

You know, I mean, honestly, that's what does keep me on my toes. You know what? The thing is with reviews, like, I, you know, we, I mean, we have. We are in the top two companies on Google reviews in Lloyd. We're within 70 reviews of being the top most reviewed company in town with a 4.8 rating. And that is important to us because a lot of our customers specifically look for that. And we get a lot of, and so those are important. But I also don't shy away from the times when we get bad reviews.

That happens. And it happens because we sometimes step outside of our process. I talked earlier about being a process-driven company. and that's because we want consistency. I want Sean to get the same experience every time, no matter which one of my technicians comes there, that you have a great experience, you know, across the board, that you know what you're paying before we start the work,

all those things along the way, right? And so, you know, when I get a bad review, what that is is it's an opportunity. And it's the old Zig Ziglar, you know, he talked about the alarm clock. No, he says it's my opportunity clock. You mean, only negative people have alarm clocks, you know, because you want, you know, it's your opportunity to get up and do something new today, right?

And so with my team, it's like when that happens, we talk about it. We bring it up. This is the situation. We screwed up, guys. This is what, we're going to do everything we can to make it right for this person. But sometimes it's unsalvageable in we're not getting a better review. But we're going to do everything we can to make it better and then grow from that and not make that mistake as many times. And there's people you can't please too.

Yep. And a lot of my business is it's my job to spot that person and say no. Yeah. How do you do it? Oh, it's great. I'll talk 30 minutes with a customer before we ever even get to it. That person we cannot work. Have you ever heard the term firing a customer?

Oh, I do it all the time. Because here again, you just know, like, it's funny. I'm new in a community. I don't know all the stories. I don't know who hates who and all these things. I don't care who hates who. But I can spot trouble pretty quick. And after a conversation of 20 minutes,

when I've heard the dirt on every single person in 10, that's a person I'm not working for. It's to be able to say, no, sorry guys, here we go. There are people that you don't work for. That's more trouble than it's worth. Way more trouble than it's worth because one, you'll never please them. And I want them to be satisfied customers, okay? But here again is there are people in this world that are nothing but trouble.

And you stay away from those people. You cannot save them. You cannot change them. Every time that I have worked for them, I have regretted it. And I knew they were trouble when I was working for them. Because I try to talk. I do more business around a kitchen table than I do anything else. I'm in someone's house.

I'm helping them choose products. I'm giving them specs. We're doing this. It's very personal. It's very relational. We're around the table. And I can tell pretty quick if that person's trouble because I'm listening to my customers. I'm getting them to talk.

They're telling me their story. You know, I want to know about them. I generally like the people I work for. I love my community. It's great. But there are people you do not work for. Our pricing is all. You mentioned the estimating is, you mean, and I think, you know, probably for you

too, you mean, estimating could be a huge source of stress because, you know, we're the ones that are putting our neck out on the line at that point. And so, and our whole model is about, you know, even for service work, it's all upfront pricing. I mean, so for my, so we take the risk. And that's where, you know, often we're able to prevent that thing because, you know, when we go to the customer and we walk through, my guys give them a full evaluation of their, their system, and then they bring the pricing to them ahead of time. And the customer gets to choose at that point whether or not they want to move ahead with us every single day so that, you know, at that point, they are in control.

I want my customer to always feel like they are the one that gets to make the decision at all times and never feels trapped. Just like us being feeling trapped in our businesses, I never want a customer to feel like they got trapped into doing this. They got to choose it for me. I'll be the first to attest to one of your guys who, when we got the new hot water heater, I'd had in, and nobody was bad in Lloyd.

I want to make that perfectly clear. I had a couple different companies in. It was before I'd started work, well, before we'd really met each other. So we'd moved into our house. And, you know, the hot water heater, I couldn't get it going. So I had a guy come look, oh, it was just this one little part, whatever. So they put the part back in, not a big deal, and off it goes.

And you'd notice a couple things with the hot water, and I didn't, you know, it's a 2004 house. And you're going, doing math, I'm going, how much long does this hot water heater have? And I've been, like, periodically, maybe constantly checking to make sure it didn't leak and, you know, on and on and on. Anyways, started working with Blaine and Joey, and my hot water heater went out again. So I just called him, and a guy comes over, and he goes, you know, I could change out this part. And I'm like, I'm going to stop you right there because you're going to tell me any know. And I'm like, I just prefer it or whatever. And he goes, he stops me.

And I forget how he did it. It was really slick because he'd already, he's probably already been through this. 70 million times with customers are like, I get what you're doing, just fix it. And let me get on with my day. But he'd take pictures of the bottom because I was already worried about it. And show me the bottom of saltwater. I'm like, oh, my God. Oh, yeah.

It's time. It's time. It's time. And so, like, I give a, like, I forget that guy's name. Oz. Yeah, Oz did a number on me because I didn't want to spend money. That's all what it was about. I don't want to spend money.

But I already knew in the back of my head that I was going to spend money on it at some part. That's right. Until, yeah, 100%. You don't get to show your friends. The wife doesn't really care. It's funny, though, you say that. I bet you would all be like, oh, you got a new water? Let's go do it.

I mean, at the Rough Rider game the other night, the guy wanted a set of tires, you know, I'm sure all of a sudden. That's actually pretty good. I'd like a set of tires. That's a pretty good news for a lot. Let's get him out to Oz. Because he did a really good job, you know? Yeah, it's about value.

You mean, it's, you know, we're all, they actually say that a customer's number one, all customers are anxious when you're coming to their house. I mean, they're super stressed out about the experience. And so how do you take care of that? Well, our team comes in and we do everything we do is to try to alleviate that anxiety. It's letting them know, number one, how the visit's going to go, what we're going to do through the whole thing so that the customer knows, okay, so that's how long it's going to take is what I need. And then they give them all the pricing up front. Everything is all done,

a whole lot of communication. I'd say probably 90% of the training I do with my team is on how to communicate with customers because we want, I don't want people to be stressed out. And as a customer, we probably all dealt with this. You've dealt with bad salesmen before where they just won't read social cues. And you're like, just like, listen. I don't want what you're selling. Just leave me alone. And usually they're door-to-door salesmen that come right at suppertime. Cold collars, baby.

Oh, yeah. You know what? Vacuum cleaners? I'd have four of them that wasn't for my wife. She's beautiful. Before I let you guys out of here, I want to make sure if people are listening to this, right? Because you've got a ton of people through Alberta, a ton of people through Saskatchew, a ton of people in Western Canada.

If they're like, oh, I need flooring, I need an electrician, I need some, you know, plumbing, heating, et cetera. If they wanted to find you guys, where can they go? I'll start with Drew and just whatever you want to say, just for people listening.

Well, I guess if you're interested, we're on the Facebook there, AMC Electrical, and the website isamccelearchal.com. Anything you need to contact me is there and call any time. Unfortunately, I will probably have my phone on me.

And I guess, for, if this is our closing comments for... Wait, we'll give closing comments after. Sorry. Paul. Noblefloorcoverings.com is our website. We are also on Facebook. We do a little bit on X, but not much. We service the Hanna, special areas county, but we travel everywhere.

So if you are interested, we do in-house service. We do carpet cleaning. We do warranty stuff. We do repairs. So we can do it all from residential to commercial, to even industrial. We do stuff in people's shops. We do them in their houses

and we fix little granny's little leaky old bathrooms as well too. Drew, what area do you serve us? We're typically west of Red Deer from say, Drayton Valley to Cochran. So Highway 2 west to Nordegg and then north and salt, Trayton Valley to Cochran

within that zone. I mean, unless you got a really cool project that is in, Lloyd Minster, then I might come take a look, but typically we try to stick to that area. And if you, I guess I didn't have nearly as good job as advertising as Paul did. But outside of our oil and gas stuff, like I was saying, we do a lot of solar and generator hybrid type installations. We do a lot of commercial spaces, shops, a lot of agricultural work, grain dryers, green handling systems. barns, yeah, but what do you need really?

Sorry. No, no, no, no, it's all good. I want to make sure that you, you know, like, because people are going to listen to us, and maybe they never need a grain dryer. Or maybe that's exactly what they're like, oh, oh, I just want to make sure that, you know, people, because, you know, you sat here and listened to us almost two hours, right?

Chances are they're like, my, actually, I was thinking about doing flooring. Where does he go? Oh, it doesn't go out to Winnipeg. Okay, fair enough. that's not my, you know, cup of tea. Or maybe they're sitting in Paul's area. You get the point. So, Blaine, I don't know.

We had the chat at the start. I don't know if you want to add any thoughts on Guardian here to go in line with the boys. Yeah. Just, I mean, again, you know, best place to find us is guardianplumbing.ca. We're on all the things, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and stuff. But I really encourage you. Yeah, I got some really funny. Usually there's just little clips of our big ones.

but I do recommend people go check out our YouTube page. We have a little segment there called The Guardian Angle, and I've got all kinds of, like, I've got, I think, 30 videos specifically just on things that people can use to be, you know, understand, you know, if you're in the market for a new furnace and you want to know what the difference is between them, why you may be considering an on-demand water heater, why do you use a filter in your furnace, air exchangers, like I've got a little thing on each of those. And the whole idea is to help homeowners just know maybe how to, you know, turn off their outside taps so they don't freeze there and flood their basements and stuff like that, how to check your sum pump, things like that. So I got a whole list of things there.

And there's even one on there that talks about code generation and the benefits of that. So, yeah, I'm just trying to get people to our YouTube page, but you can get to that from our website as well. I didn't mean to wrap the conversation up. I just wanted to make sure, because, you know, I'm listening to guys. I'm like, oh, what if I'm looking at doing my, how do I, now they're going to text me, right? I'm like, let's take some burden. Let's be smarter about this. If you want any of these guys, that's how you get a hold of them.

Now, final thoughts, sure. Yeah. If you got some final thoughts, Drew, or you want to keep the conversation going for 20 minutes, I'm perfectly fine. I just want to make sure I snuck that in. Well, I guess I just wanted to reiterate to anybody that's considering, starting business, any young entrepreneurs out there, or even old ones. Just don't be afraid to let people help you.

Because you need that time to step back and look at your business from a thousand foot view because the value in that is more than you can ever make by trying to do the field work, the office work, the safety, the everything else that goes along with it. If you're trying to wear every hat in the business, your business is never going to be successful and uh yeah other than not trying to avoid debt i hate debt yeah hate it with a passion that's funny i'm i'm trying to do every job right now and i hear that and i'm like time at a place to do it there's a time of it yeah for sure for sure i mean it's allowed me to get to where i am right oh you mean it's the wearing of all the hats yeah well it it's tough right it

It depends on what your vision is and what your idea of growth is and what you want your business to be. Maybe your business is you wearing every hat. I don't know. Maybe your business is twos wears a monkey hat sometimes. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe bangs the symbols together for a day or week or two for the band to help out. Yeah.

Kicks at the drum. Yeah. Yeah, I know that, I mean, just to take it back, you know, every hat, there's things that I've taken. in back control. There's a while in COVID. I took some of our marketing and I hired a company out of the States. I was HVAC specific and we got a lot of really great traction with it. We saw an influx of different leads and stuff like that, but it was so expensive. And so one of the things is looking at how to, you know, to look at your ROIs, your return on your investment. You mean so to be able to, if I'm going to invest this much in advertising, how much am I getting

back from it because, you know, and I, and just reminding even your team, you mean, if you're getting a bunch of stuff in and they're not able to handle it, book the calls, things like that, well, you mean, now you're just wasting your advertising money and stuff like that along the way. So I've taken a lot of that back even myself. So hats that I relinquished in over time, you know, I brought back and I built our website, the last one. And I, you know, and that I found out that I really liked doing that. And so in turn, I ended up actually, like I said, built one for my wife, you mean, in my spare time.

But, you know, things like that, you know, you start to see the things that you really love. And so for me, our branding, our marketing, that piece, I love that part. I love being involved in the community and being able to share the message of what we are trying to offer to the community. And that's, to me, I'm really passionate about that, especially because, you know, I look at, you know, Joey, my part partner in it is that he's really good at telling the stories about, you know, what we can offer and coming up with new ideas and finding those innovative solutions. And so then he makes it really easy for me to go and tell stories. And we just have a ton of fun with that, right? And so, yeah, you know, don't be afraid to relinquish the hats you don't like. You know what I mean?

To people that are better at it than you. And I mean, and that's, you mean, like if you are suck at books, hire an accountant. Yeah. And then there's a caveat there too, right? Let people help you that you trust. Right? Don't do not give people your blind trust. Yeah. Because Lord knows they will take you for everything you got out if they can. Yeah. Right. And always have those checks and balances. You mean, just because, I mean, somebody says they're, you know, a bookkeeper, don't just throw everything on their desk. Thank you, finally. And then run away. and never look at that. That's where it takes it back to knowing your numbers. You mean, an endless source of stress, our conversation earlier, is not knowing those things. You know, when you finally, I found freedom, number one in, you know, reducing debt is a huge freedom piece.

But another one is just even understanding the numbers. You mean, and it's the numbers, I hate them. I mean, it's like, I'm not a numbers guy. I'm a, I'm a, you know, there's the English brain and the math brain. I'm the English brain. You mean, so I've learned to follow. in love with the numbers because they told me a story and because when I learned how to read the story of the numbers and that took having the right people come alongside and give me those tools, the stress went away because it wasn't a matter of waiting to the end of the year to hope that something worked out. It's along the way. And then being able to affect that change monthly or even weekly, there's times when a week will really suck and I'll say to the team at our

leadership, me, I'll be like, guys, you mean, like, we did not. We did not. We did know. We did not. We're hit any of our targets this week. What went on? Oh, well, we had four guys on holidays. Oh, okay. So next week, you know, we have these guys back. Okay, we're going to have to try to, you know, make things up here or you mean, okay, we're going to adjust our targets now because, you know, we didn't take into account this month that we were going to end up with a couple of guys on holidays and you can only work with the people you have, right? And so it's, it's learning to understand the story that the numbers tell you so that you can actually be at peace, you know, with, because you can have some control over it. You mean, you can actually affect

And be willing to adjust to change those numbers too. That's right. Because there's nothing worse than at the end of the year, you're sitting down with the bookkeeper to the account and you get that PL statement. And there's this big number. There's this, you know, $200 and some thousand dollar number and it's got parentheses around it. Oh, what does that mean? Well, sir, that means that you lost that money.

You didn't make it. That's a negative. Oh, that, that's a lesson, right? I remember that lesson. And the numbers weren't quite that big, but it was still a big number in parentheses. And this was the second or third year. And I went, oh, boy. Yeah, this is something we need to look at.

Yeah. And you're right. Don't be afraid to make that change. But don't be, don't be paralyzed by that. No. I mean, because that's the, I think that's where you get into, you know, the numbers tell a story. But you get to change the story. You're writing it.

Yeah. You know, and that's the thing is don't be afraid, you know, don't get fearful. You know, I mean, of, of, the numbers. that, you know, and that's where it's like, okay, I just need to make a change. I can't keep doing the same thing. And, you know, I mean, it's not that you necessarily even have to work harder or longer all the time. You have to work smarter. You have to stop making the same mistakes. Don't work harder, work smarter, dad would say. Yeah. And, and just, but as soon as you get in fear of it, you actually paralyze yourself. And then you stop being effective at anything you do.

And that's where for me, it was a surrender piece. And it was like, God, I, you mean, This sucks, but I'm not going to own that right. I'm going to own my responsibility to move forward from there, but I'm not going to let it paralyze me today because I know you've got a bigger plan for my life and I'm going to walk with you through that. So true. Well, I will just say, guys,

your time is your most valuable asset that you will have. The best thing had ever happened, those two little squirts that I got at home. I'm not kidding you. It was that thing where I have. my oldest working with me and I got a six and four year old at home and I work for them and it's awesome and one day I want to pass off my business to them if they so want to so it's local we chose to do our business local I'm not trying to expand to the big cities I don't mind it I'm from the

city that's fine we serve our community but at the end of the day it's only money it's what are we going to give am I giving to my kids am I giving to my kids am I giving in my community, the chamber, a church, anything, you know, if you want to be successful in life, you need to be generous in life. And I'm learning that. It's giving that money away as well. It's not, you know, I mean, you know, commence all dollars and cents. You know, we have to pay the bills. But we need to be generous, but also too. If we as men do not manage ourselves, if we do not manage our hearts, our time, if we have no peace,

if we can't find peace, if you don't say, oh, I can't devote an hour and a half to sit every day just to do nothing. I'm like, it's not what I do. And what I do is not going to work for anybody else. But there are times and days

when you go through life and you do have five, 10 minutes. And you can choose to take that five, 10 minutes and do something with it that will make you personally better. Or you can just fill, fill it up with clutter and you can fill it up with noise.

If you so choose, right? We do have it. But I will say at the end of the day, you're only on this earth for so long. And why I do what I do is it allows me a little bit greater control over my time. And I'm starting to realize that I want to pass off a legacy, something to my community that if they said, if I left, my community would say, oh man, I really wish they were still here or my county would be going,

now we don't have anybody. And it wasn't that they were just there. They were actually really good. And they liked this place. That's what I want. And in our world where we have an aging demographics of baby boomers, we're stuck on trying to find trades

because there was not enough trades. We hear this over and over and over again. There are community groups, shutting down everywhere in our town, in our area. And I'm looking at saying there are some areas on some groups and some things that need to be added. And I'm going to do that now. Because I'm going to give some of my free time away to give to something that's bigger than me and greater than me. Good for you.

And that's what we're going to do because at the end of the day, it is only money. And we can, you know, we can make a big pile on it, roll on it naked, have all that fun. Ooh, this is great. And it can all go away in a split second. You can be rich. And the next day,

you can be poor. My pile is pretty small. Yeah. At 120s, that's your butt cheek. Break it down the loonies. It feels nice against the skins. And if you find,

like, you do have this abundance of time and money in your life, then go out and buy some cows, and you'll never have either again. Yeah. We've solved. But they are delicious.

Let me tell you. But don't hesitate to ask. You know, I don't know. I'm not going to speak for you guys. My information's out. If you're hearing and you got questions, I love chatting with people. Ask. No.

Never. Never. But ask, okay? We are a team. We're all together. This is made my week. I love listening to these stories. I love, I just giggle.

I'm thinking, well, there's a couple things here that I have to work on as well, too. And I hear these things, but it's about getting together and asking, you got questions. You got hunting questions, you ask. It's about a community of us getting together and doing life. Some of us are going to do it differently. Some of us have expertise in some areas and some of us have none. You know, one of my regret, like I got to interview Shep. These two probably won't know who Shep is, but Shep was a big hunter, sportsman, shot, like was a national champ. And I always wanted to go shoot with him. And then, of course, he passed. And so that kind of passed.

And I'm like, I'm not going to make that mistake again. So at some point, I'm going to go shoot some birds with Paul. I'm just like, you put me on the birds. I'll bring the equipment. And we're going, bring the boys. Doesn't that sound like fun? You know, one of the things, one of the things I want to do next year, I shouldn't announce this on the podcast.

But, well, what the heck? We'll throw something out there into the universe is I want to have a fundraiser. I, like, I did so many things for my community. And then COVID happened. and it just pulled the fabric of the community apart, and I was part of the part, pulled apart, I guess, I don't know, like, discard it and really annoyed me. And so I'm like, fine, I'm not doing anything for my community anymore.

Like, you know, what a stupid thought. It's just a very emotional thought. And now I'm like, ah, I really want, like, I really enjoy that because it's really, like, fulfilling to help and build something and do exactly what you're talking about, Paul. And I want to do a ski shoot, right? Of, like, because I'm like, what do I like doing? I like shooting things.

and could you raise some money for something in town here? And would people come from afar for that? Yes, they would. Yes, they would. The answer is yes. The answer is yes. Right. And so you're like, maybe, maybe, well, we'll have some chats offline because I think

there's things when you talk about creating and building things and building things in your community that they could use and need. Part of that is just bringing community together. When community gets together and they do fun things, money just is a natural byproduct of it. You just raise some money. It's easy. I mean, I shouldn't say it's easy because at times it seems tough. But I think when you do things, I don't know, in my world, I seem to have figured out how to make some fun times happen.

And money just seems to flow from it, you know? Yeah. It's just money, guys. Like, seriously, we ought to live with it. We do these things. But you know what? It's a tool. Yeah.

But what isn't is more important, though, is everything. It's community. It is your community. It's the guys that you're with your kids you're with. I don't go hunting just to go hunting about. myself taking my kid taking my brother i take people from all over all over the states i got more people you know in that in that world from high and influential people just regular old folks like me and it's high influential people you could just slide them by a podcast oh there you go if if you ever want you

know we deal with some pretty interesting folks but it's about getting together and you know you're in the blind and you're just yapping you're doing your thing and you realize that you know they they got the same problems you do you know the old lady texts them says bring home milk and you're like I've had those conversations a couple of times do. We all put our jeans on the same way. You better believe it. I've got a pretty unique way of getting my jeans on something.

I stand on the table and kind of jump into, no. Depends if it was leg day before. Some days after legday. That's what I want to see. I want to see that in TikTok. Oh, God. Appreciate you guys coming in and doing this. The blue collar roundtables never.

Never disappoint because it's, you know, real men doing real, well, real people. I shouldn't say men. But it has been all men, actually, to this point, I think. So far. So far, maybe we've got a remedy to that. I don't know. Either way, to this point, it's been real men doing real things and creating things. And, you know, it never disappoint.

So I appreciate you guys coming into my creation and doing this. When good people ask you to do something, you answer the call. It's all there's to it. Yeah, thanks for having the conversation, Sean. It's an important one. So we really appreciate you. Any time. Anytime.