The Home Service Expert Podcast - How To Conquer Your Biggest Obstacle To Growth

Episode Date: January 24, 2020

Kenyon Curtis is an expert at team-building, small business, and leadership development. Kenyon has had a decade’s worth of professional experience as a trainer, accountability partner, and personal growth advisor to entrepreneurs, with a particular focus on helping them develop the right mindset for success. In this episode, we talked about team-building, small business, leadership development...

work with some accountability stuff and then work to where you need it less and less and less. And there's a bit of a bit of a shift for that, but yeah, but there are things that are super helpful. Like, so here's what you do. You put it out there to people in different ways. Say, Hey, I'm looking to be more accountable. If you're also looking to be more accountable and we can work together, if you're that kind of person, let me know so we can help each other out because now it's about us together instead of just you helping me. And so you do want to be in groups. You do want to have, like you said, put your goals out there. Let people know that you're going to be doing it

and let people know that you're going to be checking in and things. And also be really, really honest because what some people do is they start to slide off and then they just kind of quit communicating out there what's going on. And I'm like, no, like when you slide off, you've got to let people know, hey, I'm slipping off. You know, somebody just remind me real quick and look for that support and find people that can really support you in that.

Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. My name is Tommy Mello, and today I have Kenyon Curtis in town. He's quite the man. He's a friend. He works with me, and he's a native here in Phoenix. Actually, I don't even know if you're a native, are you? I am. Well, I claim it as native.

I was born in another state, but only lived there for three months. And I've got family that's five generations deep here. So I'm native. Cool. Well, listen, let's go through a little bit about you. You specialize in team building, small business, leadership, development. I know you really focus a lot on mindset. You've been helping a hell of a lot right now at the Home Service Expert and Influence and

Persuasion Specialist. Before that, you worked at Big Mouth Marketing and Influence Training. And before that, you worked with Michael Bernoff and you were an accountability partner and personal growth advisor. And you've had nearly a decade in helping entrepreneurs out. So you've got quite the dynamic background. And I think one thing that you kind of specialize, what I've seen is more letting people get past themselves. I think that's kind of at the core of what you've learned. I've been to some of Michael's stuff. That's where I met you. And tell me a little bit about where you came from, who you work with and where you're at today and some of the things you've noticed. Yeah, thank you for that lead. And that's what's really cool. Like you and I met at an event, partly because I did work for Michael, but because, you know,

you were there to work on, improve your communication and improve your leadership skills. And that's what big top leaders and top earners and producers do. You know that, they're students. And I'll let you know, man, like for a long time, I thought I was a student, but I was kind of like one of those pain in the ass students where I wasn't very coachable because I really came in like I knew everything. And I felt that way because I had accomplished a lot. I had earned awards for many of the companies I worked for. I even ran a small business for a couple of buddies of mine for a couple of years. You know, they were they were off on hiatus. And for almost two years, I ran their company for them. So I came from a lot of background and experience that gave me a lot of, you know, a lot of confidence and thinking, okay, if I've got so much figured out, why am I still stuck? You know, I'm doing okay. And I've got good months and bad months and stuff. And so I really started my own real, I should say, personal development, business development growth about seven years ago when I finally reached that point of, you know what, I'm not where I want to

be. Where I'm at's okay. It's not too bad, but it's not where I want to be. Yeah. It's hard for an entrepreneur to look in the mirror and say, I'm not doing the job I need to be doing. I need help. How do you make that step? That's a big one because that's, man, you can really bruise someone's ego when you let them know that they really don't know much. And some people really have a hard time accepting that. So there's one exercise that I usually do with a lot of our, our one on one coaching clients,

and I've even done it with in the group stuff that we do, where I have a conversation, I love sharing this example, because it was a friend of mine from Florida who was involved in a course. And he wondered at first, he wondered, Okay, why am I here? Right. This guy, he lives in Florida. He's a real estate investor, you know, the dude's like six to, you know, 40 pounds, something like that. He was a big dude. And, you know, he's making 400,000 a year. He's got a great relationship with his wife. You know, they get along, they don't have major challenges, you know, they work things out, communicate well. You know, he even told me, he's like, you know what, Kenyon, maybe I can lose 20 pounds. He says, but I don't really know why I've got so many things going for me. I don't really know why I'm on this course to make some improvements. And I said, well, let me, let me ask you this then, Robert. I said, on a scale of one to 10, where would you rate yourself of how much do you think you know of what you need to know to do what you've got to do? And he said, well, you know, I don't want to have too big of an ego, but I'm pretty confident. He says, I'm probably myself an eight or a nine. And then I said, you know what, man, looking at you from the outside, I would agree. You're probably at

an eight or a nine, but with my background, I would rate you a two. And he goes, what? You know, he kind of freaked out and he did not like that at all. In fact, I always share the story. It's a good thing we were on the phone and he was in Florida and I was in Arizona because his attitude was like, you probably would have punched me for saying that. But it hit him pretty hard. And I said, dude, you're not even a two out of 10. You're a two out of 100. And then he really got hurt. He's like, what do you mean?

Like, because his ego wanted to keep that eight or nine out of 10. And I said, look, dude, I said, how much money are you making? Because I hit him where I knew it would hurt him the most, but hurt him in a good way, because you don't really want to hurt people. You want to challenge them, right? And so really, this conversation was challenging the way he currently looked at just at himself in general. And I said, look, if you're making 400 grand a year, if you're an eight or a nine, how much room have you given yourself to grow your income? And he oh and i said wouldn't you rather have would you rather have 20 better than where you're right now or 98 better he's like oh okay i get it and at that

point he like he lowered the ego and said okay maybe i don't know everything i need to know let's go to work and boy i tell you what man that dude's that dude's earning well over six figures uh actually i think he's up over a million. He's a seven-figure internet. One of the things I've kind of looked at in my past is do you go to be a well-rounded person or do you really try to amplify your strengths and live in your own lane? And I got to tell you, it's taken me a long time to realize, but I live in the latter. I don't want to become an expert forensic accountant. I don't want to know exactly some of the tedious things that needs to happen on the day-to-day. And I don't want to be an expert in my own warehouse. Have I done some of the jobs in the past? Yes. I mean, I think as an entrepreneur, you've probably at least some

point in the growth of your company have had most of those roles or have answered the phones or done some dispatching, but I just don't think that's where you want to stay. And the hardest part for me was saying, I'm going to pay this lawyer $500 an hour. Well, some people are like, you know what, I'm just going to go on a legal zoom or whatever. But I, now I question how much is my time worth and how well is the job going to be done? Because I can get a lot of things done for cheaper, but is it going to be done on my timeline? Is it going to be done the best it can be? And the only reason I'm bringing this up, Kenyon, is because a lot of times I see owners getting involved in places, especially small business owners in the home service industry,

where they have no business or place being involved in. And I know this because I was late just now on this call because I was in my financial quick check. And I told the guys a year ago, our numbers were nowhere near as accurate and valuable to make these decisions we're doing because we were disagreeing. I had four other guys in the meeting and we were disagreeing with each other. We all had valid points. That's the good thing. We walked out of that room, all deciding, okay, here's the compromise, but that's what's nice. I have people that challenge me within my own company. And I love it because the one thing I told them Kenyon was, I'm not walking out of here until we all agree. And you guys have just as much say as I do, because this isn't a dictatorship. Although, I mean,

there's been times that I'm like, I'm like, I gonna fire my stepdad you know what I mean well at the end of the day you got to make the final decision but their input is helpful because it helps you come to that I guess like a more informed decision because you have different aspects to look at it's really really important to just build a culture of just having listening to people. And we're getting ready to do a poll here at A1 Garage Door Service to find out. It's a blind poll. There's a company that comes in and it surveys different people and what would they think we could build the culture with different ideas because people are afraid that they might get looked at differently or fired. But what I love is just really thinking about this new year and how we're going to grow.

And I think that, uh, one of the powerful things I've learned a lot with you is the power of masterminds and the power of getting a consultant because I've had a lot of them, you know, I've had a lot of them. I've had, I've had some crappy ones in the past. These are, you know, a decade ago, but in the recent years I've learned so much and I've pulled so much out of it. What's the power? Sometimes it's maybe just talking out loud and hearing your own problems and saying, wow. Like I once told someone, I told them I was talking out loud, and I said, wait a minute. Now that I think about it, I think I know the answer.

But I had to say it out loud or write down the problems before, because a lot of times I don't even look at it, you know? Yeah. And that is one of the things that happens on a lot of our conversations is mostly because I know that most people do know the answer already. Or maybe they don't know the answer, but they know how to find it. And one thing that I tell people is, look, I don't have all the answers. I have all the questions.

Because when you start to ask better questions, like I may already know something too, but I like to pull the answer out of them to show them that they've already got the answer inside. And sometimes you're right. Just having the conversation. Because a lot of business owners, they won't take the time to have a conversation about their work. You know, they won't take the time to work on their business. And they don't understand how easy it is to work on your business. On your business is as simple as

listen to a podcast for, you know, five minutes a day. If you don't have an hour, five minutes a day, you know, read a book five minutes a day, you know, have a conversation with somebody else outside of your circle. That's going to bring a different perspective. And like you said, maybe challenge them and ask them questions and then put the ego to the side and say, okay, maybe I'm doing something not wrong, but just not better yet. And that's one thing I realized a lot of times. And that was me. Look, I had, I had, again, I had a really big ego when I, when I myself personally went through that, you know, where are you? One out of 10 exercise. Boy, that, that hurt me because I realized, holy crap, I really don't know what I need to know. But that's when you really start to learn and grow and make a difference because now you're starting to come up with real answers instead of just, you know, a lot of guys, they just, they wake up every day and they're so busy and they're so stressed out or, you know, they're either busy or stressed out or both or things are going okay that they don't take five or 10 minutes here and there just to evaluate. What if we made this better? What if we made this better?

What if we made that better? And they just go day to day, day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year, and not much changes. Well, I think that you hit the nail on the head. You go in and nothing changes. And I always tell people progress, not perfection. And someone asked us on a call, me and you were on a group call and a great group of

guys, by the way, I get a ton when we're on these calls. They said, Hey, Tommy, I got a question for you. They said, do you think you could do this again in any other industry? And I said, yes, because I've already made the same mistakes. You see a lot of people that are multi-multi-millionaires lose it and get right back there the next year. Oh yeah. But here's what I know, Kenyon. Now, when I really peel that apart, I know one thing.

I know there's systems I've learned to use. There's ways I've learned to get more done in a day. But you know what else? I know I'd have to pull in some team members. There's certain critical people to get right back to where I'm at in any industry. Because I know there's better facilitators. I know there's certain critical people to get right back to where I'm at in any industry. Because I know there's better facilitators. I know there's better operations guys. I know I do good at marketing and sales training. So living in my own lane. And I know there's other people out there that could do that. And I could identify them easier now because I've gone through

so many people. But it's kind of interesting to think about that. Can you go, and I'll tell you what, you get to a place where you're like Elon Musk or Microsoft or any of these big guys, they're going to tell you, no, they're going to say I was at the right place at the right time. I hired some of the right people and we built a team and yeah, can I be successful in anything I do? Yes. They're going to say that, but they're going to say, Bill Gates probably wouldn't say I can make $60 billion in another industry today. So because, well, it's what you learn along the way. And that was one of the things that, um, I think when you have a coach or consultant,

when, when you really start to pay attention to what works, like one thing that came up on one of our calls was I put out this question to, to the group and I said, okay, what do you think you need to get your business to the next level? Like, what do you think? Like just one little step. And one guy, he piped up and said, you know what, I think I just need to get some capital, you know, maybe, you know, borrow some, borrow some money and get a little bit of working capital to get me over the next three to six months and use that to really grow my business. And with my background, I said, I agree, you do need that. But there's something else that's holding you back more than anything. And this is where I get into the mindset of it.

Based on our conversation, what I was learning about him, again, by paying attention to what he was saying, I said, dude, let me ask you this. You've got a choice here. You can only pick one. What's going to help you take your business to the next level? Becoming a better decision maker or more capital? And that hit him hard. He's like, oh, my gosh. He's never thought of it that way.

He says, you know what? If I was a better decision maker, that would help. And I, and we went through the process, but why and how? And he says, well, because I would probably make better decisions with the money that came in. And, and, you know, I'd probably look at things differently if I was a better decision maker, because right now he's not a great decision maker. And that's one thing I brought up on that call also, as I said, look, I know a lot of you guys want to follow Tommy's systems and you do, right? Everything that Tommy's learned to get where he's at, you do want to follow that. But here's one thing that most people don't address or don't bring up. Let me ask you this, would you rather have Tommy's systems or Tommy's decision-making ability? And they're like, oh my

gosh, yeah, I would love to make decisions like Tommy. And so those are the kinds of things that we get into in the mindset because, boy, you start to make decisions differently. You're going to go so much farther because you probably make decisions differently now than you did 10 years ago in business. Oh, my God. It's night and day. You know, Kenyon, I got to tell you, if you talked to me a year and a half ago, I would tell you I produce a lot of money. I'm a revenue generating machine. But as far as keeping the revenue, you know, right now I'm growing.'m growing. Who cares? That just means pay more to Uncle Sam. But what I'm realizing is what it creates is this overabundantly

amount of waste. And I got rid of my gym membership because we have a gym here at the office. I mean, that was only 30 bucks a month, but that's a small example. I've downgraded buildings in different markets. I've gotten rid of certain expensive employees that really weren't cutting their weight. I've gotten rid of subscriptions I've never needed. I've re-negotiated about five different contracts for marketing. I've re-negotiated my credit card rate that I pay on my merchant account when people use their credit cards. So, so many times on this podcast, this is the first time, it's a new year, it's a new year's resolution. I've talked about ways to create a ton of money. The problem is you need to keep that money. And I think we need to start focusing on just, do you really need that? And when a lot of us become shoppers, we need to buy stuff and we're

looking for the next best inventory, this and that. I say go lean as possible this year and create as much money. This is an amazing economy, the best I've ever lived in. And it's time to make a profit. If you absolutely need to buy something, rent it three times first. Like if you need like a forklift, like really decide if you really need that or if you should keep the working capital in the bank. Right. Yeah. Those are the decisions these guys are faced with because they don't realize how simple it is. Just like, let's just,

let's just take one simple decision. You said you made of canceling the gym membership and just having, because you have a gym at the, at your new building, these guys, what, what a lot of these guys do. And I shouldn't say these guys,

like it's them or whatever, but what a lot of people do, right? Just people as humans, we keep trying to hold on to something rather than to make a decision that's gonna move you forward. Because what they keep saying is like,

well, I'm gonna keep this gym membership because I'm gonna go someday. And when I say, look, if you're not going to the gym now, look, just cancel that for right now. Just say, you know what? I'm not the kind of person that's gonna go to the gym right now. I'm gonna cancel right now

because why have that hanging on there? Because if you have a gym membership and you know you're not going, it's a literal weight on your brain of you're paying for something that you're not using. And so how can you progress if you keep making decisions like that? So you make a decision that, okay, I'm not paying for the gym membership right now. I'm going to cancel it. I'm going to move forward. I'm either going to find a way to work out at the house or I'm just going to, you know what? I realize I'm focusing on my business right now and I'm going to decide. I'm going to focus on my business for the next three to six months. And then I'm going to get back to my health and then I'll decide if I'm going to get

a gym membership or not. But that's a whole strategy that most people don't even think of with something even that simple. You know, it's kind of funny because I drive a 2012 Titan. I have a pretty nice house in Scottsdale, but I live in the apartment complex that we bought. And so I rent that house out. And you know what I've noticed is I get so much more time to make critical decisions because I'm not worrying about taking care of this big-ass house. I remember I had this brand-new 2019 Dodge, huge, badass truck, and I'm driving it around. All the employees walked outside. They started circling the truck.

They gave it to me because I buy a lot of Sprinter vans from the Dodge. And I said, I don't even want to deal with this attention. Because every single thing I see a lot of people, they have all these things. Well, there's so many things to worry about. And it infringes upon your decision-making abilities and you just get tied down. I don't know how homeless people feel. I don't really know that many homeless people, but I could only imagine. It can't get much worse. It can only get better today. You know what I mean?

Whereas the people that have a lot are always worried. A lot of people worry about losing everything and status and stuff like that. So I think your decision, the clarity comes forward when there's just less to worry about it and just keep things, what do they say? Keep it simple, stupid or Simon, whatever. Yeah. Keep it simple, stupid. Yeah. Because like a lot of people don't, and this is where the

mindset is so critical. I never understood it, but when I realized that everything does start with the mindset. So a couple of things, one is the decision-making like a lot of people love Steve Jobs. You know, he was very successful, did a lot of things. But if you pay attention, he usually wore jeans and a black shirt, long sleeve black shirt to a lot of his things. And when you start to understand how successful people think and you just solidified that,

is why waste time deciding what to wear? It doesn't matter, you're dressed. Just grab the jeans, grab the black shirt and go. And that way it's not, well, do I wear the blue one or the black one? This guy didn't want to waste three seconds trying to make a decision about what to wear. Just grab it and go, grab it and go. No decision, just move on to bigger things. And that's obviously a small example, but that's a lot of things. That's a big thing that's holding people back in their business. And then the other thing is a lot of people are looking, well, how do I get to the next level? And I love using health as an example, because one

thing I've learned is, and I've heard this said many different ways, but the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. And that's helped me because as I've learned to become more effective in one area, it's helped me get, you know, it helps you get way more effective in other areas. So health is a perfect example. Like, for example, my sister-in-law one time, we were at a family thing. And she was sitting there saying, well, you know, I'd like to get healthier, make some changes. You know, I'd like to take care of myself better and, you know, exercise a little more and eat a little better. And I was there and her brother-in-law was there. Now, her brother-in-law, muscly guy, fit.

You know, he was eating, like, He was eating cottage cheese and pineapple or something for lunch. This dude is strict with his diet, strict with his workout plans, and he's got it nailed down. And he started telling her, he's like, no, here's what you do. He's like, you want to be healthy? Here's what you do. You open her fridge and her cupboards. He says, you take all this stuff and you just throw it away right now so it's not even in your house. Then you go to the store and you only buy healthy stuff so you can only eat healthy stuff. And he's just like with that intensity, right? Like almost like raising his, not yelling, but just very passionate, right? About what he was, about what he was telling her. But her eyes, man, I was watching her reaction to

him. Her eyes just kept getting bigger and bigger. She was backing away. I mean, you know, you would have told her, Hey, to lose weight, you're going to have to give blood every day or something crazy. And so his way would work. But that's what I call forcing it, you know, forcing it. And it's almost a long, hard and painful way because you're forcing yourself to turn into this healthy person. And that's where the mindset can get you there faster. Right. Because the mindset shift is, is an interesting thing. It's when you have like a realization, like an aha moment of the way you're doing is not working and you really want to do something different. Like when I hit Robert with that, hey man, you're really a two out of a hundred, not an eight out of a 10, that hit him, that woke him up. Now you can build your business, right?

By just implementing things and doing trainings and stuff. But when you focus on the mindset first, it speeds things up because now you're more willing. Like any resistance you had before is lower. And so with her, I'm like, look, if you really want to figure out your health thing, let's have a conversation. Let's get your mind in the right place so that you can shift your focus. Right. And so, um, help shift her focus and then it becomes more enjoyable. And it's not this big, like almost, uh, like a torturous change that someone's got to go through. There's a lot faster ways.

Yeah, man. Mindset is everything. And it's not easy to change. And I think that some of us make bad habits and it's hard to change habits. We face addiction problems, whether it's soda, food, alcohol, cigarettes, and there's certain things that get in our way. And as we clear those out of the way, it makes it easier to kind of achieve goals and set goals. You know, when it comes to business, I go back to this, I was just in this meeting and I'm going to go back to it as sales is everything. We're raising our prices 3% next week. We didn't hit our goals on EBITDA, which is our profit. And the fact is, everybody, and I'm guilty of it too, had excuses. But I said, wait a minute. So I just wanted to paint a quick scenario and I want to get back to mindset. So we have different markets. We're in all these different states. And the discussion was, Kenyon, do we raise the whole company up to these expectations or do we do it market by market?

And I said, we got to do it the whole company. I said, because I've seen a guy go from market to market to market and do the same exact sales. It's not the market. And I said, but here's my biggest problem. This is the number one thing that all companies face. I promise you. Well, it's tied between two things, but this is the big one thing that all companies face. I promise you, well, it's tied between two things, but this is the big one in this economy

is we're holding on to performers that don't belong to be held on to. We've never created a way to get more people to apply that are qualified. We haven't built a great enough employee recruitment plan to pay them to recruit. We haven't done our job yet. And we're sitting

here with mediocrity in a lot of these cities. And if we look at it, it goes back to the people we've hired and not enough training and retention. So the end all be all is this. If you want to create more profit, higher revenues, have a better company, you need to hire better. You need to become a magnet for talent and it takes time, but it takes effort. You know, somebody will spend $35 on a Craigslist ad and then they'll go out and spend $10,000 a week on Google ads. And you'll say, well, the $35 guy I got off Craigslist should be running my $10,000 a week Google ad spend. Why wouldn't you spend $20,000 getting the guy and continue to spend the 10,000 and triple those numbers that you're getting?

I just wanted to say this because it's kind of on the top of mind. It's a mindset of really understanding you could look at a job and I could look at a job and see two different things. You could say, well, this is a broken spring. This is a better job. I could say, well, the tune-up is in a better area of town. They've got three wood overlay garage doors versus the one according to Google Maps or Google Street View. But we're not wrong. Either one of us aren't wrong. But when it comes to decision-making and really looking at the bottom line, there is a better answer.

But it's hard to know that because I can fight both ways to a lot of things and you never know. But, you know, when it comes to mindset, Kenyon, what's the biggest challenges do you think that most business owners face? Well, most business owners face just understanding that it's even their mindset to begin with.

Because I'll give you a couple examples about that or at least one example. Because they don't understand that their mindset is part of the, I shouldn't say it's the only challenge, but part of the challenge, right? Dragging yourself to the gym every day will get you healthier, but flipping how you feel about it and going in with just a little bit more pleasure is going to get you there faster. But the challenge with it is understanding that it's the mindset that's part of the challenge, right? Because you

have somebody that says, well, Kenny, you know, I've tried and tried and tried and tried and I've never done it. Well, but no one's ever come up to you and talked about your mindset along with your system, right? Like your mindset and the system, not just the system. Because you've probably seen this. You could give 10 people the exact same system about one person's going to crush it. Another two or three people are going to do pretty amazing with it. Another three people out of that are going to kind of do okay, and the others are just going to screw it up. And the only difference is the way they look at it and their mindset about it. So I guess the challenge with the mindset is understanding that it is the mindset, but then also how to flip it. Because I've heard so many podcasts and

coaching programs, and they say, you got to change your mindset, you got to change your mindset. You got to change your mindset. You got to change your mindset, but they don't ever really give you a plan how to do that. They just know that you need to do it, but they don't know how to do it. Like I was watching my daughter's basketball game one time and I was a little frustrated with her coach because I could tell these girls were in their head and they were, you know, kind of making some errors in a game one time and he just kept screaming at them, get out of your head. You them, get out of your head. You got to get out of your head.

I'm like, okay, but why don't you teach them how to get out of their head first? Teach them out of their head so that they know. Because now they're in their head trying to figure out how to get out of their head. And they're just kind of stuck. And that's what happens with a lot of business owners. In fact, one of our clients, he's in an interesting area with an interesting market with just the dynamics of it he's an electrical contractor and he's in an area where he's next to a big uh a big metropolis uh area

and he's a little bit rural and here's what he always said he kept telling me dude i'm just in a tough hiring market so this is what he was saying but it was also his mindset oh i've heard that a million times right i'm gonna tell you you experienced it with, with, well, you know, we can't sell in this market because the market's tough, but then you put another tech over there and he triples the sales. Why? Because he's got to, cause he doesn't care what market he's in. He's going to sell. Well, Hey, real quick. One of my guys called my manager in Milwaukee and he goes, well,

have you seen the standard income or the average income in my, so he's on his computer. He looks it up and he goes, yours is higher than in Milwaukee. And the guy's like, and he looks at him, he's like, oh, but in his mind, he limited his own belief of his accomplishments because of some BS excuse. Right. And so what happens is a lot of people, they create those excuses and there's a couple of reasons they do it. One, they think it's a fact and then they let a fact get in their way. I don't care about the facts anymore. Like people say, well, it's flu season. No, screw that. It's not flu season. It's never flu season in my brain. And my kids always ask me, why do you never get sick? Because it's never flu season for me. I just

don't, I just, I refuse to accept it, but it's a fact. I don't care. You can believe it's a fact. I choose not to. Okay. And so like this guy, for example, right, he was letting those facts get in his way. And also a lot of people, a lot of people are really challenged in how do I grow myself. And so it's a lot easier to blame their failures or their, their, you know, short success or their, or their, let's say mid-level success on a fact or data than to admit that they could actually do something about it. Okay. And so a lot of people keep themselves where they're at and they actually make it a lot harder. So like this one guy, so this is, man, Tommy, you can switch. This is what the thing that I've learned is you can switch mindset in a second. Okay. It doesn't take

six months or six years to do it. Like for example, there's a great video out there by Dr. Lipton. He's got a lot of stuff, but he has this one video. I think it's called, it's why the rich stay rich and why the poor stay poor. And in him, I don't like his answer, but I do like his concept. His answer is it takes a long time of just telling yourself over and over again, right? I can make money. I can make money. I can make money. I can make money to override your poor mindset or your, you know, poor or broke mindset. And I'm like, okay, that's one way. That's the hard and painful way that we talked about earlier. The faster way is when you get a different perspective and just accept it. So for example, this guy that was saying, you know, I'm in a tough hiring market.

And so I came up to him and I said, okay, well, I got a question for you. Are you in a tough hiring market or you haven't found a way to attract the right type of person yet? He's like, oh, well, I like that one better. Okay. So just accept it. I said, so again, are you in a tough hiring market or you've got to be a little bit more creative with your pay structure? He's like, oh, well, that sounds good. So everything I was giving him was better than it's a tough hiring market. Because if you believe it's a tough hiring market, dude, there's not much you can do. You're screwed. Right. But what I was getting him was different beliefs and different perspectives. And he was like, oh, I like that. Oh, that sounds better. So then from there, what we did is we developed a different pay scale, a different pay structure.

We developed a different hiring plan and all this stuff, because if you believe it's a tough hiring market, almost anything you try is not going to get you very far. Well, let me tell you, Kenyon, it is a tough hiring market. That's why you can't hire. You got to recruit. Yes. You want to hire off of the pool of Craigslist and Indeed and find all the people unemployed, which is way less people right now that are unemployed than people are looking, then you're screwed. So my mindset is I need to go out there and have somebody, 84% of people are ready to leave their current job in the next year. They're unhappy. And if you realize those stats, what did I just do there though? I think completely different about the same thing he's looking at. Totally. So that's a great addition to that. So is it a

tough hiring market or you have to be a recruiter instead? It's a great recruiter market, but it's a tough it's a great recruiter market. So screw the hiring market. So don't get in a hiring market. It's a tough hiring market. Great. Then don't go into the hiring market, go into the recruiting market. Right. And that's, that's how you flip that. Because I, again, I don't, when people say it's a tough hiring market, I don't believe that. I believe that. Okay. You got a little, get a little bit more creative. You got to go recruit instead because now it's not a tough hiring market. I don't believe that. I believe that. Okay. You got a little, get a little bit more creative. You got to go recruit instead because now it's not a tough hiring market. If you can recruit, it's just looking at it those different ways that it frees your mind and it gets rid of all the, let's say bullshit excuses out of there. So you can start moving forward fast.

You know, one of the things that I was thinking about when you mentioned mindset is I was reading a book not that long ago and and two Navy SEALs. These guys are exactly the same. They're the exact same weight. They can run the 100-yard dash at the exact same time, same amount of push-ups, sit-ups, pretty much the same mental strength. And the one guy has a different mindset or perspective. And he goes through and he starts this impossible journey of two weeks to make it through the Navy SEAL training. They drown you, they resuscitate you.

I mean, it is hard. The one guy says he goes through the first day, it's lunchtime, and he looks at his buddy and there's a bell that they allow you to ring. You can ring this bell when it's time to quit. And you can leave there, you get a steak sandwich, and you get your clothes back, and you say, sorry, I give up. Well, it's very, very easy. They want to antagonize you with this bell, put it always available when you're at your worst. So what did he say in his head? He said, I can't take two more weeks of this. Well, great. So he quit. He rang the bell. The other guy

is a different perspective. Now the exact same body, exact same tolerance. He said, I don't know if I can take two weeks of this, but I think I can at least make it through dinner. So he makes it through dinner. Now the next morning happens and he goes, I don't know if I could make it two more weeks, but I know I can at least make it to lunch. So instead of thinking about it holistically, he says the same thing with cigarettes, same thing with alcohol, same thing with pushups. I think I could get one more pushup in. I think I can make it this one hour without smoking. Now that hour's up. I think I can go one more hour. Instead of saying, I'm going to quit smoking for the next year. You say, I'm going to quit smoking for the next hour. And you set little goals that are accomplishable and you focus all your attention on that hour. And it's just a mindset, isn't it?

It really is. In fact, was that on a, was that on Lewis Howell's podcast? I think I heard the same one. No, it was on a book called Consistency Chain. Okay. Got it. It might be the same guy, man. Cause I just heard this great podcast with that. And the guy said that it sounded almost exactly similar story. So it's got to be that. I was trying to remember the Navy SEALs name. But no, that's one of the big things. Like when I, what I learned about six or seven years ago was right, sometimes just the next 30 minutes, because what happens is some guys get through the day. And they say, well, you know, gosh, dang it, I didn't I didn't do what I needed to my business. And I'm gonna try again tomorrow. But then they wake up tomorrow with the same mindset and the same plan.

And that's why nothing changes. And one of the biggest things I learned, and I shouldn't say the biggest thing, but a lot of little things that have helped me because I used to be stuck, fluctuating income. And sometimes I hate to admit this, but in my early 40s, I had given up. I thought, you know what, maybe this is just my life. I've tried so many things, man. I had, I had audio tapes that I would listen to. And if I listened to them every day, they helped. But as soon as I quit listening, it was gone. And I'm like, I'm like, man, I just, I don't understand where this permanent change comes from. And I finally, I finally found it. But one of the things that helped was,

was just taking a look, just like you said, evaluate, okay, what have I done the last hour? And this might be something for the business owners that are out there. Okay, so what did you do for the last hour, for the last day to work on your business? You know what? I haven't done much. I've been really busy in the day-to-day stuff. Okay. Have that real conversation with yourself and get really honest and say, I have not worked on my business like I need to or want to for maybe the last hour or the last day. So you know what you do? You say, you know what? It's important. So in the next 30 minutes, I'm going to do something to work on my business. And whether that's have a conversation, make a phone call you've been putting up, listen to a podcast, at least do something,

pick up a book, do something that lets you work on your business so that you can start to make that change. And that's how you start the ball rolling to bigger and bigger things happening. You know, it's kind of funny that you mentioned, it's the old cliche from the e-myth is work on your business, not in your business. Well, my new year's resolution is to work more in my business because I've gotten so to the point

where I don't take the time to complete tasks anymore. I delegate everything. I have a person for everything that I just want to go back and say, all I do is refresh my CRM and look at numbers and make phone calls and do this. And, you know, as a CEO, I love the fact that I could go create relationships. I'm strategic now, but I want to go back and say, you know what? I'm going to take this task and I'm going to dominate on it. Because here's the thing.

There's only a few thinkers in my whole establishment that could take. What I want to do is find something that I can add 30% volume to all my calls, which is going to be a huge deal. And not to say that I don't have faith and believe in my staff. I just know that for what I want to do with it, I'm going to need to sit down and work in it and actually work through the numbers, make phone calls, test it out, follow it, build systems around it. Unless I do that, it won't get done to my specifications and it won't make an impact that I needed to make. So I'm kind of the opposite now. Like I've gotten really good at growth and I love my job. I love what I'm doing. I love my company. But now I'm like, you know, I want to take a couple steps back and really go through this process again and dominate at it. So

it's just kind of funny that you mentioned it. You know, one of the things I wanted to talk about Kenyon is, is this is a tough one, but discipline has a lot to do with success. And what I mean by discipline is whether it's staying out late, getting up to work out, waking up early in the morning, setting your day right, meditating, you know, stopping and getting your white flowers, whatever that looks like. Yeah. Discipline. How do you teach somebody discipline that's never had it in their life? Okay. Perfect. Great. I love that question. The tough ones, the tough ones are the most fun because if we can give these guys, you know, anyone that's listening some, some different answers than they're used to hearing, uh,

super exciting. Now, first of all, so part of, part of what I do is I pay attention to how people listen to or process the words that are being said. For example, there was a study done, I think it was a psychologist, a doctor up in Canada, and he would study how people react to certain, how their brain reacted to certain words. And the word change actually created the same mental or brain response as the word torture. And so it's interesting because most people don't want to change because to them change is tough. It's hard, right? Like it's a tough hiring market. They have a preconceived belief about it. The word discipline is the same. Like for example, quick sidestep, like working out. I don't really like to work out. I love to train

though. And so I've learned that going to the gym to train gets me there more often than going to the gym to work out. And that's just a mental, whatever you want to call it, a mental trick or a hack. You want to find the words that get you going. So like, instead of waking up early, you could say starting my day, right? Yeah. Starting my day, right. You know, whatever that looks like. And so for example, discipline, dude, nobody wants to be disciplined unless you do. If somebody like, if you like the word discipline, then use the word discipline. But if there's a better word for you, you want to find out what that is. Okay. And so let's say that you do want- Focus maybe or something.

Yeah. Focus. Hey, I want to be more effective. I want to be more effective. I want to be more effective with my time. I want to be more effective with my decision-making. It's one way that I help people with their health, for example, because a lot of people have the goal of, well, I want to lose 20 pounds. Then what happens is they lose 20 pounds. They got their goal. So they put the weight back on again. Like, well, I put it back up. Okay, do the goal again.

Lose 20 pounds, drop it. They got their goal. So it's always this like over and over again thing. Yeah. Right. And so the outcome is instead of, don't tell yourself, hey, I got to lose 20 pounds. Tell yourself this. I want to be a healthier person. And then you look at your decisions. Okay. If in the back of

your brain is I want to be a healthier person. Well, you know what? I just ate a cheeseburger. You want to every now and then have a conversation with yourself and say, okay, I know my focus is now to be a healthier person. I just ate that cheeseburger. A healthy person wouldn't eat that. So the next time I'm faced with that, you know what, I'm going to make a better decision. And so this is how you start to make, and a lot of people think, well, Kenyon, isn't that a slower way? It seems like it's going to really slow down your growth. It actually, no, it actually speeds it up because you're actually finally having the right conversation that your brain needs to hear to get there. So for example, let's say that you do want to be disciplined. You want to figure out, okay, what does discipline mean to you? Okay. Does it mean getting up early? Does it mean

reading a book? Like I know you mentioned earlier, you know, like you don't need to, or you don't want to like be an accountant and you shouldn't have to be right. But there are some things that you do need. And so for example, let's say like I've met many business owners that say, well, you know, I'm not really a reader. Well, that's one thing you probably want to learn to figure that out. You've got to be. And if you know, let's say you're not a reader. Are you are you a learner? Well, that's a big problem. And I hear that all the time. Yeah. And so but it's like the words.

Well, I'm not a reader. OK, well, that's fine. Like if you so you've got to listen to an audible. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I'm like, look, OK, you've got two choices. You can either learn to become a reader or find something else because maybe you're not a good reader, but are you a good listener? Oh yeah, I'm a good listener. Okay. Well then try audio books.

And I've had some people and some people say, well, I don't like audio books. Okay. Well then how about YouTube videos? Well, I don't like that. And I'm like, well, then you're screwed then. Right. Because at some point you've got to put your ego to the side and realize that there are some things you are going to have to do to get yourself to grow. Like there are some things you

can kind of work around, but other things you just, you just can't like, you've got to, you've got to do the work. Uh, you know, if you're not willing to, you know, answer the phones for the first while that you're, you're in a business, well, then you're just not there. If we go back to the word discipline, maybe it's not the word discipline, but it's the word dedicated. Look, if you're dedicated, if you're committed to this, then you're going to start to make different decisions. I don't know if you've ever listened to David Goggins' Can't Hurt Me. Have you listened to that audio book yet? Yeah. Dude, that guy's a badass. And one of the things I love that he shared in there, which really ties to this, I think they were getting up at like five or six in the morning and he had like an hour commute to where they were recording the audio book with him and the ghostwriter guy that actually put it together for him.

And he talked about it. He said, you know, I am committed, dedicated, disciplined to whatever words you want to use that works for you. He says, I am disciplined with my fitness. And he said, it would be real easy to say, you know what, for the few weeks or whatever, we're doing this recording. I'm not going to get my workout in, or maybe I'm just going to cut it short. But in his mind, he says, I can't do that. That's not who I am. He says, so he was up at one in the morning, going to get his two hour workout in, doing his thing, getting his hour commute. And so the guy was working on like, you know, four or five hours

sleep. But he said, but in his mind, he was, it was temporary. And he was doing that because he was committed to it. And I think that's one of the ways you build discipline is just understand, you know, have a conversation with somebody or with yourself and say, okay, what do I mean by being disciplined? What are the things I need to accomplish? And I say, you know, start finding a way to start doing something get started a lot of what stops a lot of people you mentioned it earlier and I know because a lot of people listen to to you Tommy when you get talking boy you give them so many answers that I just know that some people are probably taking notes and say okay I've got a

I've got to get a better CRM and I've got to measure my KPIs and you know I've got to get an accountant and they start making this list of all the things you give them. Well, they need to prioritize. Right. And some people then they look at that whole list and they don't know where to start. And then they say, geez, I don't think I could ever be as big as Tommy. That's a belief that then sets in. And then they, so what happens is if they say that, as soon as they say that they're screwed and they don't go very far. A better question would be, okay, these are all the things that Tommy's doing. Where can I start? Where can I start that makes sense for me now? And then they get going. And that's how you, so you don't just get disciplined overnight. You may get a little

better a day at a time, a week at a time, a month at a time. And as you get a little bit better by taking a look at those, you know, the, Hey, was I very effective or disciplined in the last hour? No. Well, if I was more disciplined for the next 30 minutes, what would that look like? And then you make that new decision to go differently. And then you start building your discipline. Let's call it your discipline muscle, right? You start building that discipline muscle up because some people's discipline muscle is very, very tiny. I agree. And I think that something that goes along with discipline is accountability. And accountability is, okay, to stay disciplined disciplined i'm going to quit smoking cigarettes

this week accountability is me going and telling all my friends and family to back me up and saying my goal is to quit i want you guys to work with me and more importantly telling a group of people puts more pressure when you let the whole world know what your plan is, you feel like you're letting people down. Yeah. There's something to be said about that. So how important is accountability in all this? Well, it's huge.

It's huge. And there's a lot of ways to do it. And it goes like with anything. You either want to learn how to be accountable and get yourself to the point where maybe you need an accountability partner a little less, but you want to find out what works for you to get you where you want to go. You know, telling, telling friends, you have permission to call me out. If I slip, if I slip, you've got to say, don't tell me I screwed up.

You've got to tell me things like, you know what, your health is important. When are you going to take better care of your health? You know, being around for your, your friends, your kids, your family, whatever it is, that's more important than smoking. What are you going to take better care of your health? You know, being around for your, your friends, your kids, your family, whatever it is, that's more important than smoking. What are you going to do? And that's one of the things to affect a faster change is you hit people emotionally where it hurts and get them going. But yeah, accountability is big. I guess here's a little thing. Like I had a friend of mine one time, he, he sent me a text and he says, Hey, I'm, I'm, I'm working to be more accountable this year. I've got big goals and I need your help.

So I want you to meet with me every three days and hold me accountable to my things. And it sounded like a good plan, but here is where I challenged him on it. I said, dude, why are you making your success my responsibility? He's like, what do you mean? I thought we needed accountability partners. I said, we do. I said, but the way you put that, you're basically saying that if I don't call you every three days, you're going to fail. I'm not responsible for your health, dude, but here's what I will do. If you need to have a conversation, you text me and say, Hey, do you have a minute?

And if I do, you have a minute to chat. And if I do, we'll do it. And if not, we'll schedule a time. I said, so you want to learn to, I guess, make that shift, right? Of work with some accountability stuff and then work to where you need it less and less and less. And there's a bit of a bit of a shift for that, but yeah, but there are things that are super helpful. Like, so here's what you do. You put it out there to people in different ways. Say, Hey, I'm looking to be more accountable. If you're also looking to be more accountable and we can work together, if you're that kind of person, let me know so we can help each other out. Because now it's about us together instead of just you helping me. And so you do want to be in groups. You do want to have, like you said, put your goals out there, let people know that you're

going to be doing it. And let people know that you're going to be checking in and things and also be really real and honest, because what some people do is they start to slide off. And then they just kind of quit communicating out there what's going on. And I'm like, no, like when you slide off, you've got to let people know, hey, I'm slipping off. You know, somebody just remind me real quick and look for that support and find people that can really support you in that. Got it. I love this stuff, man. So let's jump into a couple more topics that I'm just going to ask a couple last questions. So we've all heard about humans are social animals and we should be part of a group or community. How important is it

to be with people with similar goals, priorities, and visions? That is super important. I've heard that many different ways. You probably heard that if you take the five people that you hang around the most and average their income, that's probably where you're at, right? Yep. Okay. So a lot of people say, well, how did then I, I grow my income without losing some really close friends. And I said, well, you got to make a decision. You got to make a decision if you're really committed to, to growing your company or not, because here's what will happen as you grow your business. And as your income grows pretty soon, there are people in your life that just don't fit anymore. Right? One of the things that keeps people from quitting smoking, for example, is,

let's say they quit smoking. Well, not hanging around smokers every day. Yeah. Well, they're not out on the smoke break and their friends are like, hey, what's going on? I thought you liked us. And then what happens is, well, I do like you guys. So you know what? I'm just going to keep smoking again because I would rather have friends than not smoke And that's where you really got to pay attention to that and say okay What's going on here and understand that if you really want to become a non-smoker if you really want to for example become A very successful business person. There are some relationships that will either change Or go away and what happens is the great thing about it is it's a lot easier when you find some better

relationships first. You don't just go on like clean house and get rid of all your friends. You go find a few people, one or two or three people that you can connect with. Find out something that's mutually beneficial, right? Don't put your responsibility on somebody else, but find out something that's mutually beneficial. Find a little group or a person or two somewhere that you can tap into and say, you know what? I'm going to beneficial. Find a little group or a person or two, somewhere that you can tap into and say, you know what, I'm going to hang out here a little while and leave my friends alone, my other friends maybe a little less and start working that out to figure out how to make that switch. And then what happens is the more you hang out with one group of people,

again, those other people that are in your circle, look, they may follow you. I've seen that happen too, where some of your friends have just been waiting for somebody to lead. And now that you're starting to take off and do more things in business, they're like, Hey, I want that too. What are you doing? And maybe they're now part of your new circle or they're like, and I've seen people do this, man. What are you doing? What are you, how come you're over there? Well, that might not be the person that if they're not there to support you, that may be someone you have to cut out. Unfortunately, it's just the fact. And it's tough. I'll tell you, I've lived through it and cutting out people's stuff, but the best place to look is who do you want to be? What's your main

goal this year? And there's so many people, whether it's your advertisers or your distribution centers, or they'll get you around similar people. And you say, look, I want to go to a shop. You could find your biggest, best advertiser that you use, whether it's ValPak or maybe your Google people, whatever that looks like, and say, can you give me an introduction? I just want to go tour their shop. And the fact is people are excited to show you what they've built. And more importantly, they're kind of paying it forward. I won't say that they're conceited. They're more wanting to help out someone that's interested in learning because somebody paid it forward to them at one point.

So being around people that you want to be around, that you want to be more like, and that you can bounce stuff off of. I was on a phone call this morning. I haven't talked to a guy in two years. He said, hey, I saw one of your trucks. I thought of you. I want to bounce a few ideas off you. And he was just talking to me about some random stuff. But the point was,

I was like, call me anytime. I love your ideas. I want to share some of mine. We can grow our businesses. They're not in the same industry, so we can grow them together. So it's great stuff to have great feedback. Yeah. Well, you really want to do become the kind of person that says, Hey, I like what they're doing. I wonder how they're doing it. And would they, like you said, would they be willing? And just go ask, man. You're right. So many people would be willing to help you out or give you a few tips or say, hey, you know, I'm part of this mastermind. Go find out what they're doing. That's one thing that really stopped me is, again, when I thought I had all the answers, it really stopped me from going out and asking people, hey, what are you doing? You know, I saw you do this amazing thing. How did you do that? Maybe there's a couple of things I can learn. It's really cool to bounce stuff off of people. And, you know, you've had me,

I actually got on the phone with one of our guys from our group that we just started. And he turned me on to a couple of things because he used to be in the real estate market of the lead gen stuff. And that's one of my other companies. And he taught me a lot of stuff. It's just used to be in the real estate market of the lead gen stuff. And that's one of my other companies that he taught me a lot of stuff. It's just cool to be around people that have good ideas. And it's just crazy how it all works. You know, we've been working at the home service

expert group and really putting something that's affordable together that everybody could grow. You've really been the pioneer of the program. We've gone through all, I built that course and you've kind of dissected it and really helped mindset different ideas and ask questions and see how we could grow together. And then I get, I'm obviously on the calls once a month to be involved.

Tell me what this is all about and how much some of the testimonials that have come out of there and really from soup to nuts, what it's supposed to do to a company. Yeah, absolutely. Because it is, man, it's the perfect combination of systems and mindset, you know, because a lot of these guys are thinking, well, if I could just hire better. You're right. You do need to hire better. And then usually I ask, instead of just give them some solutions, I like to find out, you know, where are they coming from. And that's where this example came from. This guy, well, I'm in a tough hiring market.

I'm like, no, you're not in a tough hiring market. And he wanted to defend it. Yeah, I am. You don't understand, right? And he told me a story, but I don't buy it because I don't buy people's excuses. And I see that as an excuse, not as a real reason. And I said, look, you're not in a tough hiring market. You just got to get a little creative with maybe the way you hire or the way you recruit or the way you pay and stuff so that you can make your company more attractive. And he's like, oh my gosh, never thought of it that way. Those are some, now here's what's interesting. Those are some things that he was working on, but he wasn't like leaping and bounding in it. It was just like this just painful, torturous thing that he was trying to solve.

I mean, he was looking at becoming like a co-op where all the employees are owners in the company. I'm like, dude, why? Because he was going to these huge extremes to solve this problem. And when I told him, no, are you in a tough hiring market or you just need to hire differently and structure? He's like, oh yeah, I need that. That enabled him, his brain to finally open, create a different plan. Dude, the guy has a phenomenal compensation plan now. You know, we got him out of his head, creating it. He's implementing it now. He's more excited about hiring

than he was just two weeks ago, you know, which was exciting. And those are the kinds of conversations that come up when you're part of a group that's designed to help you get there. Just like the other guy that he thought he needed more capital to grow his business when all he needed to do was become a different decision maker. And in the first guy that he thought he needed more capital to grow his business when

all he needed to do was become a different decision maker. And in the first, I think in the first three weeks of us working with him in this membership group, he's already making business decisions differently than he used to. He hired somebody to start answering the phones finally, right? Because he finally made that decision. Because in fact, I even talked to him about it. I said, so how did you do it? Because I like breaking down the dynamics of it, right? Like, let's take this apart and dissect what happened. He said, you know, Kenyon, he said, I caught myself saying, I need to hire somebody to answer the phones. And then it's like, he said, then it's like, I heard my old decision-making come up and say, well, you can't afford it. You're this, you're that and stuff. And he says, holy crap,

that's what Kenyon talked about. That's my poor decision-making at play. He says, you know what I did? I just realized I want to decide more like Tommy, right? And I want to decide more to move forward. And he said, so I just decided, screw it. I got to put all those things aside and hire somebody. So he hired somebody on the phones and now they're on the phones. He said, you know what? It dropped off a little bit, but now we're going to measure it. And so now he's actually, he's dude, he's acting like a business owner now where before he was just acting like an employee, just scared to do anything. And this is dude, this is why this program, I'm super excited about it. Because at first, I'll let you know, at first, when we're having the mindset conversation as part of the

solution, a lot of people just aren't used to it. And they don't, they're not exactly sure where it fits. But then when you hear those kinds of stories, and you're like, oh my gosh, it is, it is that perfect combination of improving your mindset, thinking differently about how you, how you want to run your business and then start acting on it. It makes everything easy. Yeah. So I think there's, there's mindset, there's strategy and there's tactics. And you know, what I love is, is I love the fact that I got on and there was a million questions and I love these questions because I was there. Look, I have a lot of different businesses.

A1 is my big one. But to start off, I do lead generation in the real estate game. I've got the Christmas light business. I've come up with different compensation models for tons of different companies. I deal with different managers, different recruiters. And I learn all kinds of stuff all the time, little honey holes. I've started to attend more annual meetings for big companies. I'm going out to different things for large franchises. It's just the podcast and speaking and the book has helped me be in front of people.

So when I'm at one of these conventions, I always take the advantage of going to them. And what I try to do is just share everything I could with our group. And I don't have all the answers, but you know what I do have, Kenyon? I have a network that I could get most of the answers to any questions because it's taken my network for me to answer a lot of my own questions. The people that I've hired to advise me over time that are more than excited to jump on a call with me because they love seeing a student of their fruits of their labor, let's say. But where does somebody even go check us out for this, Kenyon? So anyone that's interested in finding out more about this membership group, you're going to want to go to homeservicemillionaire.com Forward slash training. So homeservicemillionaire.com Forward slash training and uh, you'll see a video there. You can book a time to chat with me

We want to find out if it's a good fit for you What are you really working on in your business and get you plugged into something because look here's what I tell a lot Of people and you can keep waking up every day expecting things to be different, but you just keep waking up and doing the same thing over and over again. Right? What's the definition of insanity, right? Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. And so sometimes a lot of guys will think, well, but I am doing something different, but you know, I'm trying this and I'm trying that. But here's what the challenge is. You're trying a lot of new things with the same mindset.

And so if you seem like, or feel like you're not making much progress, dude, get on, let's look, let's have a phone call, find out if this is a good fit for you. And, uh, and then we'll go from there. You know, I just, I'm going to go a little bit over because I want to tell a story and it relates to what we're working on, but it relates a lot more to just me witnessing something. So I'm working on buying a lot of broad lot more to just me witnessing something. So I'm working on buying a lot of broadster companies. My plan is to grow through acquisition as well as organically. And I got the pleasure of meeting an amazing guy, really great company. And I went to check the business out and he knew I was coming. Super nice guy, super pleasant staff. But what was cool about it, Kenyon, is from my perspective, I saw so many holes in the ship. So my job, if I bought this company, was to identify the biggest holes.

Well, I noticed things on his shelves that were 15 years old that never got thrown out. The guy was a pack rat. I noticed a pile of papers on his desk. The first thing I noticed was he's a leader that is so unorganized. It's forcing everybody else in the company to be unorganized. And I said, that one thing alone could turn this company five to 10 more percent profit. It was just crazy. So I started making a list.

His call booking rate was way too low because he was closed nights and weekends. I noticed that he didn't have enough Google reviews. He had nine Google reviews. He's paying $3,500 a month for Google SEO. I'm like, dude, what the hell? And I started looking at how much he pays for stuff compared to me because I'm much bigger. And I found so much more value. But it's just interesting when you can hear from another person's perspective and you can share your stories and share ideas. It's super powerful. And I just, sometimes I love it when people walk through my business and they give me all kinds of constructive criticism. They tell me this could be better. I love the good stuff, but I'm more interested in the stuff I need to work on and fix.

So Kenyon, I kind of finished up with a few questions at the end uh first give me three books that you really really like i noticed uh well i heard let's see here you really like why the rich stay rich the poor stay poor but that's not a book is there any books that really you recommend that change the way you look at things yeah i'll give you a few books and then one quick story because like extreme ownership, for example, as a business owner, extreme ownership, powerful, powerful principles to live by. The other one is going to be, yeah, can't hurt me. The David Goggins story can't hurt me because boy, you think you've got challenges. And I tell you what, if you want to adopt a mindset,

you want a Navy SEAL mindset.'s interesting because uh the extreme ownership and can't hurt me are both by Navy SEALS and um one book that really it really changed a lot for me was living with a SEAL that was the Jesse Isler book that he wrote when he actually hired he paid David Goggins to live with him for a month have you ever read that one you You know, it's on my shelf. It's so good. And this is, this is a quick, I guess, a quick little reminder or an example of a mindset shift. So I read that book and there was one line in it, one line in it that when I read it, dude, it, it hit me. I, I cried. I like, I almost hate admitting that because, but dude, I did. I teared up because it, it made me realize that I was not playing my life the way I needed to.

I started posting on Facebook about it. I had a friend of mine call me, or he messaged me. He says, hey, Ken, what's the name of that book? I want to get it. He says, it looked like it helped you so much with your health. He says, I want to read it too. I said, great, dude, it's living with a seal. And he says, okay, great. And about, and about a week later, he messaged me back. He says, okay, I read it. Now what? Like, well, if you read it now, what, then you didn't get it. You didn't get the experience reading it that I did. And that's one thing that really taught me that in order to get the mindset shift, you want to find an experience. It's really just, that's really going to wake you up. And that's one of the things that I do. I've gotten really good at helping people get that mindset shift. And that book, man, from the day I read that book, it has completely changed the way I work out because one line, the one line from it, it was a quote that Jesse wrote down that

David shared with him. And he says, I don't quit when I'm tired. I quit when I'm done. And boy, you want to learn discipline. You adopt that mindset and you live by it. Because I was thinking, look, I grew up on a cotton farm. I grew up on a farm in Arizona and I knew how to work hard. And we didn't go home at five o'clock. We went home when the work was done and when it was done for the day, because you can't leave certain things undone when you're farming. And I realized that somewhere along the way, I had lost that.

And I was starting to quit when I was tired, thinking, well, you know, it's five o'clock. I can pick that up tomorrow. No, I decided I can't keep living like that. And it's changed the way I do business, the way I do my health, and the way I do a lot of things. So yeah, love that book, Living with a Seal. All right. Well, listen, you got me on my damn bookshelf.

So I got this book that I haven't read yet, but it's called The Art of Saying No, How to Stand Your Ground, Reclaim Your Time and Energy, and Refuse to be Taken for Granted Without Feeling Guilty by Damon Zaharyan. And I was at this convention not that long ago. It has to be a couple months ago. And I'm actually speaking at a pretty big event next week.

This guy said, it hit me like a ton of bricks. He said, finishing what you started creates happiness, but quitting is the secret art of winning. I'm just going to finish up here and give you the floor here as it's finished out too. But so many times I've had to close markets. I had to

close four markets last year because I wasn't profitable. I had to get out of commercial because it didn't make sense. I had to quit. This year, I've completely quit doing home warranty jobs. I've quit so many things and I've decided that's not what we do. And by quitting is the secret art of winning. And I love that. And it kind of goes with this book, The Art of Saying No. Of so many times now, I have so many opportunities. Being no is definitely something I'm getting better. Saying no is being something I'm better at. So I just want the listeners to really let that sink in. Quitting is the secret art of winning. Quitting and getting out of all these different things you're working on and different ideas and real estate flipper. I'm going to do this. I'm going

to do this. I'm going to do this. I'll be good at this. I'll get in a commercial. I want to go do low stuff. No, do what you're really good at and scale that. So anyways, I'm going to do this. I'll be good at this. I'll get in a commercial. I want to go do low stuff. No, do what you're really good at and scale that. So anyways, I'm going to give you the floor here. I want you to kind of give the listeners one last pep talk and one idea, maybe something to go do today and get some changes in their business and their life. Well, thank you for that, Tommy. And again, man, it's been awesome getting to know you. I just love watching people succeed and obviously and, and, and obviously learning, learning from them

and then sharing what I can as well. So if there's one other thing I was going to, I would share, it would be maybe a quick recap and a different perspective on some things that we've already talked about, which is becoming a better decision maker. It's one thing that most people don't ever talk about is building your decision making muscle and to understand that in order to get where you want to go, you are going to have to make decisions differently than you did before. And some of those decisions might be like you just said, Tommy, right now is quitting some things because here's what happens. If you are wanting to double your, let's say you want to double your revenue. Let's say you don't even want to double

it. Let's say that you just want to increase it another hundred thousand or quarter of a million, whatever that goal is. There are things that you are currently doing that do not fit in your life or in your business that are holding you back from getting there. So sometimes it's not about what you need to do. It's about what you need to let go of. Some of you are holding on to maybe, you know, to a certain person on your team that's just not performing well. Maybe some of you are holding on to a relationship with someone that's doing your marketing that you just know that they're not doing that great, that they could be doing better. So you're right.

You do need to quit some things and you need to make those decisions. Because again, if you keep making decisions the way you have been, you're just going to stay right where you're right. You do need to quit some things and you need to make those decisions. Because again, if you keep making decisions the way you have been, you're just going to stay right where you're at. And man, we don't want you there. It's so much fun on the other side. I love it. I love it. I love it. So you said that's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash training, right? Yeah. Homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash training. And it's a simple thing, man. Check out the video. If you like what you see on that page, book a time.

You're going to get on the phone with me. We'll have a quick discussion about what's going on. Find out if it's a good fit for you and get you started, man. Look, it's time. So many people wait too long to make changes when it's super easy. So you know what?

It's affordable. It's easy to get involved. And I guarantee one thing that I've always tried to do, Kenyon, is I've always thought it kind of necessary to deliver 10 times the value of whatever we do. And, you know, I know a lot of people

go through two weeks of this and they're just covers a year. And look, my goal is ridiculous amounts of money for my main core businesses. This is a way of just giving back. And what it does for me is I get a lot out of it. I learn a lot of stuff. I've got a bunch of companies coming to visit me.

All the guys in our group are invited to come visit, do a walkthrough, hang out with us. Anybody that listens to the podcast, I don't care if you're a membership or a member or not, but I just think there's a lot of value. I think we're going to get a lot of guest people on here. We've got a good thing we're working on. We've got some big goals for this year to deliver lots and lots of value. So I think this podcast was amazing, Kenyon. I'm glad I got to know you. Glad you're my friend.

Glad you and I get to work together. So appreciate you coming on. I got a ton out of this. I always do when we talk. And we'll do this again soon. Awesome, man. Super, super cool. Hey, I just wanted to take a quick minute and thank you for listening to the podcast. You know, most people don't understand this, but the way that the podcast has grown is when people

subscribe and they leave a review. So if you would please, please, please, Wyatt's top of mind, take a quick minute to subscribe and leave a quick review. It'll you would please, please, please, Wyatt's top of mind, take a quick minute to subscribe and leave a quick review. It'll help me out so much. If you just took a little bit of time right now, I can't tell you enough how much I appreciate the listeners and the feedback. And also when you subscribe,

what I'm going to do is let you know the next guest coming on the podcast and I'll let you email me anything you want me to ask that next person coming on. All the pros I have on here, I want your feedback. I want you to subscribe so you can start giving me the questions you want me to ask and help us grow together. Also, I'm giving away my book for free now. All you got to do is go to homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash podcast. You got to cover the shipping and

handling, but I'm giving the material out for free. It's 200 pages. It's a hardcover book, homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash podcast. I appreciate each and every one of the listeners and thank you for making this Home Service Expert podcast a success. I hope you're having a great day and thanks again.