Surefire Local Podcast - Episode 01.mp3

6:41PM Jan 24, 2019

Speakers:

Keywords:

people

sales

work

create

called

talked

company

business

focus

predictable

day

ryan

started

selling

south florida

podcast

coaching

baseball

competition

life

Hello everyone and welcome to the Surefire local podcast. I'm your host, David read. Over the last eight years, I've worked with contractors and have had a real unique opportunity to talk with hundreds of very, very

successful owners,

as well as meet some really interesting partners

that

have developed some amazing systems and technology. So my goal with this podcast is to really give back to the contractor community and with the help of some of these thought leaders and experts help guide you on the next chapter, your business. So with that, let's get

started.

Alright, welcome everyone to the Surefire local podcast. My name is David Reed, one of the executives here on the team. And I have the distinct pleasure of inviting one of my good friends Ryan Groff from the sales transformation group.

So welcome, Ryan.

Thanks. Good to be here.

Awesome, man. Awesome. So, you know, you and I, you know, we, we go back a little bit and you're actually one of the, the individuals that I, you know, quite frankly, attribute a lot of my success to, because you were one of the people that really challenged me to, to take a bigger role here at Surefire and I think is kind of really helped the company I wanted to kind of give people a little bit of background into, you know, kind of how you got started, because, you know, quite frankly, I was surprised about your family background as well. I watched one of your more recent presentations, which I didn't even know about. I know about the baseball side of things. But yeah, Kenny, can you kind of give some background into, you know, how you got started and, and a little bit in your career and, and how you've kind of shifted over the past week yours?

Sure. Yeah, thank thanks for having me on and get a little bit of the story in the background is, you know, I'm probably common as a millennial. And, you know, under 34 years old, where most of us probably had a family that that divorced. And most of us have, unfortunately, that's the case. And so I kind of grew up, you know, living with my dad and my mom, she remarried and with the South Florida, and she and her husband just started doing contracting and I saw a saw, like, just the excitement I saw, they're making money, they got a house in Boca, you know, they got a boat, you know, a Jeep Wrangler, and a dog and a son, I'm like, man, life is awesome. Down there, they got another Jeep Cherokee, and I'm like, I want to be a part of this. Yeah, you know, I kind of just saw the excitement. But, you know, as they, they really start to grow their business. And I was helping out on the roof, putting shingles on homes and things like that started to see the impact of how the business really started to, to weigh on them, you know, I started to see the stress to start to see, you know, just so much of the challenges of the business kind of running them to the point where I was like, I don't know if I want to get into this, even though they talked about and, you know, be taking over the business one day after college and get my education. And so I kind of, you know, was really excited about that whole idea of getting in and running a construction company. But I didn't really like just just the way I saw, in fact, my family, so I decided to kind of carve my own path and see what baseball would do. And so I took baseball as far as I could, and made it to the professional level with the angels and or minor league system placing, you know, college baseball, couple different spots, and really just, you know, love to work ethic, the team and, you know, development, leadership, and all the qualities that come with being a collegiate athlete, division one, and professional athlete.

And it kind of got me seeing the big picture of like, what success looks like, you know, I see people signing for a lot of money, or, you know, making it to the big leagues, and having a platform to be able to make some kind of an impact. And, and that whole desire was what I was hoping to see at a baseball, although it didn't happen, I still had greatness on my horizon, right, I still saw greatness in something that would be large and impactful and meaningful was still on the horizon. So when baseball ended, I kind of moved to South Florida and, you know, did some different things and got involved with a, like a concrete restoration company. So that was here in South Florida. And there's the salt water that hits the ocean. So there's like a ton of dilemma, nation deficiency, you know, all these different things that happened to the condos. And so the country restoration company gets to repair and restore all those buildings and kind of keep them up to code. And I was excited to kind of get involved with them. But it was really a step up, like, just one step up from my mom and dad experience, which was like, you know, lighting fires, you know, I'm wear all these hats. I'm not really seeing that growth path. I'm not seeing anything that really felt professional, you know, where you see a real business. And so through networking, connecting, ended up connecting with a local roofing contractor in South Florida, whose was quoted by some folks like one of the best businessman in town, and he's really nationally recognized. And he was about four and a half years into his journey of developing a world class sales organization, and started its own little software program, that he had a program right for him to really solve the problem of structure and tracking and accountability, and just measuring sales effectiveness and performance. And so when I, when he and I met, I was like, ready for growth. I'm like, I want more, I want to see the big leagues for business. And this man was really functioning at the big league level on his local market. And I just, you know, he, and I hit it off. And we had a few years, man, five years of just mentorship, seeing how he developed his organization is cultures comp plan to structure and, you know, he was probably doing about 24 million when I met him, so, five years into his transition into sales organization, like private service for, you know, reproof type of work, we're not talking low bid world work. And, and, you know, by the time I left, he had gotten to about 50, and I Wow, thankfully felt to be very closely involved with that, you know, like, where, and here's kind of a couple more details before we go further. But, but, David, what happened was when I was taking the software company, you know, to the market, and, you know, really with him, just supporting me in the background, you know, he's running his roofing business, he's kind of support to me, and just kind of developing me,

I realized, I was like, these guys seen a whole lot more than software, you know, they need a restoration, you know, they need like, they need like an awakening. Yes, like, they need help. And he goes, you're right, man, you're right. And I'm like, What do I do? I mean, I didn't really ask, What do I do, here's what I did. I said, I can help. I said, Well, I can help him, I can get paid to do this. And he goes, Okay, let's put together kind of our deliverables. So I started coaching and training and consulting people with much of what I saw with his business. And of course, just the energy that I have in to want to help people and leading coach being an athlete like that, that kind of all created like the skill of sales training, sales development, cell structure, and it was just fascinating. And I and I just was growing like crazy, just getting to help others grow, see them change using, you know, the tool, really as a support system to help them bring predictability and get a predictable sales model build, like I saw in South Florida. And so that just created like two years of trout on the country. And, you know, and being a coaching, having a coaching arm and having software with just like a bootstrap budget was very, very taxing. And so it kind of got to the point where I realized we just need to be a software company and stop coaching as much as we can. I was too hard. And so that,

that we did that for about a year. And so I realized the coaching thing is missing. It's missing in my, you know, in my heart, there's a, there's an element that the market really needs. And so I approached everybody and said, Hey, what do you guys think about me doing this and helping your clients and we just kind of collaborate and they're like, we love it. So I stepped out and created sales transformation group with just the blessing of everybody and just, you know, dialing in the process polishing the way that people can execute, designing a, you know, a sales model in this industry.

Yeah, you know, one of the things that really, you know, kind of resonated with me, just honestly, in this this last year, you know, as, you know, I've kind of, you know, made some advancements in my position at the company. And, you know, one of the things that kind of hit me over, you know, Christmas this year was like, man, like, every, I have 100 people that are now writing on my ability to be able to, you know, project and create the right messaging and the right strategy and having the right plan around that. And I think a lot of people are really craving that, you know, kind of coaching and having someone that's kind of guidance, because I always had, you know, hey, you know, sales manager, VP, whoever, you know, tell me, what, how would you position this, and they're, they're giving me the feedback, but now, I'm the one that's giving that out. And, and so I think that, you know, that sort of coaching and, and that sort of feedback giving is really what a lot of people are striving to, they kind of get in business, they're good sales people. And now it's like, Okay, well, you know, I've now got this organization, like, how do I kind of take it to the next level? You know,

yeah,

one of the things that, you know, you talked about recently that I think was really interesting, I'm going to hit on kind of a couple of different points here was, you know, winning this storm versus winning the war, right. I know, you know, when the storm big conference Now, a lot of people are kind of in that storm market, she talked a little bit more about that, that sort of philosophy and that strategy.

Sure, yeah, when I get down to, like, the core value of being a business owner, it's having predictability. And when you can predict the future, you have the ability to do much more and dream bigger, and larger and more long term than you could if you didn't, right, so yeah, you know, like, try having try walking out of a storm with like, a million dollars in the bank, not knowing what next year is going to be like, and, and try to predict growing like a model, you know, developing people, it's, like, tried doing that you can't, you know, you can't, so it's like, you know, there's nothing wrong with that, if you want to, like, make some cash, how about ton of turnover with your sales staff, and, you know, just cash out and have them kind of work, you know, seasonally, and that that could work. But what I, what I find is a huge problem is, when you, when you can't forecast the future, and can't see and can't bet on the horses that you know, will always be in the race, then, you know,

you can't really develop something that'll Outlast you, you know, like, I think Scott seven, eight out of 10 of all these companies in this industry have some kind of a family or some kind of a second generation that's going to be involved. And if you don't have a predictable sales model, to create a predictable backlog, and have a predictable, you know, profit margin for a long period of time, and you're chasing the short term satisfaction game, which, you know, comes and goes with the weather comes and goes with the economy comes and goes with, you know, things that you just can't predict, then, you know, it's madness, if you think about big picture how, how short term thinking that is, versus the ability to say, you know, like to someone, like a second generation, hey, we took it from zero to 3 million to 5 million, and you're coming into this at a college, being able to, like, run a department of something that's already proven, are working on it, so that you can have a predictable, you know, wealth building machine. But not only is the wealth building, it's life changing, when you have the ability to invest in training, invest in culture, office, space, building,

marketing, doing whatever it is you want to do, to create something bigger than yourself, without predictability that is very challenging to do. So,

when you look when in a storm, yeah, you can create a sale structure around that event. But the event is, you know, it's not something you know, is going to occur, you know,

you can always build a structure around the horse in the race that I like to always there, I call the horse, you know, how the horses have all these different names, you know, yeah, the horse that I want you to bet on, is the horse always there, and,

yeah, so, so,

you just kind of spoke about this the other week at the Tennessee, you know, roofing contractor Association, talking about kind of, you know, Predictable Revenue. And, and I know, that was probably like, an hour long talk that you gave there. But, you know, what would be, you know, if you had to sum it up into, you know, the top three or top five, you know, how, how would you recommend businesses, what steps would they want to put in place in order for them to, to create a more sustainable or predictable model, if you will,

yeah, so, from a couple things that kind of come to mind is having the strategy of less, but on the horse always there, and, you know, David, what's always going to be there, no matter what the economy is, or what the weather looks like, what's always going to be their

residential or me or

Yeah, so, you know, to resit really, it's single family homes, a commercial buildings that you can Repair and Replace, right, like, that's all those are always going to wear down. So whatever the building is, you know, whatever type of contracting trade you are, you always going to be able to Repair and Replace and restore something. So when you kind of penetrate a market that is local based, you know, locally based on you know, around that you can, you can put your resources into that strategy and market and sell to that. So, there's that, I think, not knowing what success looks like. And having a defined version of success is really a problem when people don't know how much they want to grow in a year. I mean, they've had like, this is the growth plan that I here like, I'm talking like, $15 million roofing companies, even that say this, they say, yeah, I mean, my goal is to get as much work as we can, and do as much work as you can. Yeah, and it's

not uncommon from what we hear to be on common. So like, Yeah, you got a bet on the horse always there, which is be in the market of replacing and servicing and preparing

then you need to be on, you know, the plan of let's get a sales plan, and let's get let's say, who do we say no, to? Who do we say yes to, and let's do that. And then, you know, then you need to have, obviously, accountability and alignment around that. But I think another thing that's really important is understanding

the right mindset for, you know, sales. I mean, I evaluate folks with my sales evaluations. And it's really mind blowing, like how, you know,

how poorly trained the thought processes are, of the sales people in this industry. Not that they're, you know, not good people. Not that they don't know their trade, but just in case terms of becoming an elite salesperson, you have to become like a different person, you know, and it doesn't mean you lose your soul at all. You can be an amazing version of yourself and sales, but you have to like, you have to really, you know, understand that there's certain sales DNA that supports sales or sabotages sales. Like if you have a high need for approval and need to be liked, you're never going to ask good, great and tough questions. And that's what really brings the value is asking great questions. You know, if you are uncomfortable discussing money, you're never going to be able to dig in, and, and have an awareness of how to, like, you know, how people's resources are, you know, come come about now, you know, I talked to people, and they tell me how much money they have in the bank. Now, I mean, I never used to be that comfortable, you know, and that's because your confidence level, you're always imposing what you believe on somebody else. So if you're, if you're the expert, you're the Alpha Dog, you know, you're the one that's in control, but yet, you're very graceful about it, people feel that, and they sense that they, they trust you more, and they ultimately, and what's more important is they respect you more and, and sales in this industry. So many people are like, who, I'm a problem solver. So guess what they'd never do, they never asked any questions, they don't qualify, they don't get the real decision makers in there. Because they think that solving the problem is selling. And it's really not, it's really creating distance between their current situation and their future desired situation. And really getting as much information around that as possible. And then saying, I can help when you feel like it's a fit. And then they're basically closing themselves, because it's a, but a lot of people need help around that. So I would say, betting on the horse always there, getting your structure and plan in place, and making sure you're you're aligning, they're getting the mindset, right, you know, cleaning up the mind, and then, you know, getting people's energy and focus and time dedicated to the pipeline, you know, the,

the second part of the title of their, you know, it's Predictable Revenue. This is the talk that I did at that show it the second part is getting off of the revenue roller coaster. And you know, what, what happens when someone sells a bunch of work typically is they're going to go perform the work. So they start, they run the crew, they go to the job site, they see the homeowner, they see the building owner, or the proper the building representative. And what are they stopped doing is they stopped prospecting, they start meeting with people, and having interviews and qualifying and consultative selling them, they stopped creating value, they stop all this stuff. And so the revenue needles up and down. And then when they are running out of pipeline, they go and say, damn, I gotta hurry up and get some work. So let me just price some stuff really low. And they go low, get the job, and then they have to pry project, manage the heck out of it, just to squeeze some money out of it. And then you're basically living in this chaotic world. And that's because there's not enough energy and focus and time on the front end of the process. I'd rather have a predictable pipeline and not have the crews and finally cruise and have set sales, I can cover up a lot of sense then to have no predictability on my sales, and then have the best cruise in the world and say, This is what I got, right. And then just make a little money, like, on the way to perfect, the pass up a lot of good. And a lot of contractors, when they start to realize who, Okay, got it, I'm gonna get, I'm gonna bet on the horse always there, right, I'm gonna get my plan in place, I'm gonna get my mindset and listen

to that, go ahead. When you say, you know, kind of not enough prospering. I absolutely agree. I think, you know, that's a lot of people, they, they rest on their laurels, they close, you know, a huge job. And now they're focused on delivering that making sure that, you know, everything gets done properly, and, and take great customer, you know, great care of that customers. Absolutely should be when you're, you know, talking with an organization, you know, about prospecting, what sort of recommendations you give them in terms of their frequency, and things that they should be doing to make sure that they stay on top of that. And almost, you know, one of the things I've been personally talking about my team a lot about is, you know, time management of the day, you know, there's so many opportunities and individuals that you could be reaching out to, you know, how do you really manage your day effectively. So, when you're talking to, you know, contractor, what sort of things are you kind of recommending are talking with them about to make sure that they stay on track?

Yeah, before I force a calendar schedule on somebody, I kind of like being on a do a teaching on essential ism, and like, short term satisfaction versus long term thinking. And then like, you know, second, third, fourth order consequences of a decision. Like, if I eat fast food, you know, what comes after that, well, I feel bad. But then what comes out to that is, I don't do work and welcome that really means to like, you see the ripple effect of a short term satisfaction thinker. So I kind of tried to break that down and create a sense of like, the importance of, oh, instead of trying to do more to my schedule, I should stop doing the stupid stuff, like stop doing things that are not giving me long term gain, like, I don't need to watch Netflix every night, I don't need to be on social media, scrolling and looking at nothing, I don't need to be eating bad food, I need to sleep enough. I don't need to be at happy hour, four times a week, you know what I mean? So like, you start to realize, oh, long term thinking is way better. And I need to shut things down. So when you stop doing dumb things, it becomes easier to focus on the essential things. So talk about that. And then after that, I talked about the importance of energy focused and time. So like energy is basically if you don't have energy, or nothing, right? If you can't, like if you can't get up and work and you can't, you know, you don't have the ability to move and that fire that that he isn't able to go anywhere, then then you're in trouble. So like, most people function at like a four out of 10 energy, right, they don't really eat good, they don't sleep enough. They don't drink enough water, they don't exercise, they don't meditate, they don't get their thoughts together. So their energy's really poor. So I've talked a lot about getting your energy to attend. And then I talked about your focus getting into a 10 and then I talked about your time being never ending and just relentless versus like, doing something for like a day, and then stopping and then doing another thing for a day and then stopping. So after I kind of break down that mindset, and kind of clean that up, because it's really hard to change somebody in one moment, what I do is I impose a recommended schedule of non negotiable. And so I get their calendar, you know, we kind of dial it in, and I say, Here's when you sleep, you know, I sleep from nine to 345, I get up at 345, I meditate pray, I do a little little planner that I recommend people to do to kind of get their thoughts intent, intentional. And then I do that till five. And then before I did what I'm doing now, I had a, I used to have an app called that I recommend Michael to do just, it just tells you how to work out it just gets you a bodyweight workout. Because in your exercise is great. You were so on. But when you when you don't exercise, which most people don't, because they just get into the frantic day and they're all neurotic about what they got to do. And try to figure it out today, then they don't do it. Because it's not, it's hard. It's hard to do that, right. So I kind of build the hard things and other day like, meditate, pray, you know, get your thoughts in order, have a little journal time, right. And then you and then I work out, I used to have the app. But now I have

I have a personal trainer comes to my house like four days a week. And he works. My wife and I have from five to six for my kids are sleeping. And then and then it's just convenient. So I had to drive somewhere, drive back, you know, work half ass that day. Because I wasn't really into it. Like, this guy just helps me focus, right. So I get in there. And then from six to 615, I took a quick shower, come back in the zone. And then I close my door. And it's pretty much every single day. non negotiable. I am prospecting LinkedIn, and Facebook and getting 15 minute chat set up and scheduling meetings. Because nothing else is more important than moving the needle on your business and selling. So I make sales predictable

by making prospecting, basically a non negotiable. And then and then I do after that I have my coaching calls that I have that are non negotiable. I have, you know, my family time, that's non negotiable. And my sleeping time, that's not negotiable. There everything else I can work into that, you know, and then basically, if it's a sales call that's qualified, that's pretty much top priority, unless they had something already on the calendar. And then everything else that I have, I plot out in, you know, an another calendar that I call like, when the war calendar. So that's another list more task driven, but it's like, All right, here's my, you know, partnership calls that I need to make with partners and strategic partners to do joint ventures, you know, here's, you know, for a contractor that would be like, you know, kind of what you're doing right now, with podcast, you know, for, or a contractor that would be, you know, going to a networking event, or that would be going into an existing account to expand and develop that that would be a sales meeting that they have to have as a team every week and training where they're going to go through the numbers and forecast for the month, you know, whatever. So there's a lot of that that I that I want to help people do. But that's like next level stuff. Because now we're taking away all the kryptonite that holds down your super version of yourself, which is like the crappy food, the lack of focus and not knowing where you want to go. Because if we can eliminate decision fatigue, and we could just show up and execute the stuff that moves the needle, we won't be wasting time and that's what's like, that's when you start to see really great results.

But um, I saw I saw something else that you posted recently about the decision packs, which I definitely believe in. It's one of the things I talk about, Grant Cardone talks about it as well. I can you can you kind of talk a little bit more about that.

Sure. Yeah. So decision to x is basically like the reason I say taxes because it costs money, right? Like, yeah, and them or we're negotiating with ourselves on something. And the more of those things that we're negotiating, the more cluttered our brain is, and the more cluttered our brain is, the more difficult it is to feel free. I mean, have you ever gone into a home that's like a hoarder? Have you ever seen, like a hoarder show? Yeah, like you kind of like, you feel you feel like almost paralyzed in there, right. And that's exactly what people live in with their brains. Because they don't know where anything goes, or their stuff that this doesn't belong and so paralyzes them. So a couple things that I would say in sales people is if you want to close faster and you want selling cycles to shorten, then you need to clear all the pending decisions in your mind. And then, and then basically structure out all the things that are essential in your life to where they're basically a non negotiable, and you've already decided to do them, and you just show up and do them because then now your brain ready to take action versus get stuck. So whenever you're like, in an action oriented, decisive, clear minded way, like hey, this is solve a problem is that have long term upside? And can I afford it? Like Yes or no? Yep. Right. And then when you make decisions like that, like you buy a big screen TV, or you get out of debt, or you stop going out to eat for lunch every day, and you and you just decide you're going to do these things.

When someone tells you they're going to think it over. You don't really have any tolerance for that anymore. You're not like, Oh, I get it. Because when you think things over then absolutely emphasize with everybody, right?

Yes, yes. Yes. Yeah. So like, I was just talking about this with one of my other guys is, is because he runs into the situation a lot of times where, you know, he'll get off the phone. Oh, yeah. Then you think about like, dude, you know, you're, you're being sold right now. And, and you, you know, because, you know, you're weighing on your decisions, and you're thinking through, you just got to take action. And you got to have discipline, like, I really believe like, a lot of the things you're hitting on, like, just having discipline to do the tough things every day, every day, regardless of whether or not you want to do like, I didn't want to get up and go to the gym this morning. It's cold, it's, you know, I lived in Florida with us for

over a year,

70 degrees every day. Now, back up here in DC, and then, you know, freaking 20 degrees, and we have snow on the ground. I don't want to go to the gym. But I just got to do it. Because I know that if I don't, I'm not going to feel well, about my day.

And then if you have a four out of 10 energy, I mean, how good are you? Right? Absolutely. You're not like, you know, yeah, so, But to your point, the lower and I call this the buying cycle. And I actually measure this and my evaluation that kind of helps not to share, I can tell everybody what to do. But when someone's measured on oh my gosh, my by cycles really low. I have no idea what that means. What does that mean? Oh, gosh. Yeah, I buy everything based on price. And like, when people tell you that you're, you know, that they buy on price. You probably agree with them, don't you? You're like, yeah, so what do you do? You sharpen your pencil, make a lower and then what happens? Your margins lower than what happens here more, it's more stressful than what happens. So it's like, oh, my gosh, you're right. So when you start to create a buy cycle, that's like,

I

like look, dude, anytime someone sends me an invoice. I'm now like the rate. It's like a race to how fast I can pay it. Yep. You know what I mean? Because now I'm paying that I just want to get done with it done. It's done. So I want the next thing on to the next thing. So now, it's not like somebody asked me about payment. And guess what? Like, because of that I attract faster payments, right? Because like, I don't, I'm not like doing that in my life. I'm not late on stuff. And so when I someone tells me Think it over, I'm like, I'm not aggressive or mad at them. But I'm like, why do you need to get over it? The solution? Is it is it you that you don't trust? Is it me that you don't trust? This is the price help me understand. And then I you know, and then I just try to understand because I I want to know why? Because I don't tolerate in decisiveness in my own life. Yeah. So it's easier to demand decisiveness in the sales environment. When you've created more decisiveness in your own life. And so, the easiest way to create decisiveness is to throw all the shit out the door that doesn't really belong. So it's easier for your mind. To be clear, like, I feel so good about you. But whenever you have, like, stuff that you're in a house, like old clothes that you don't you wear anymore? Oh, yeah. And you put it in the bag, and you drop it off of goodwill, or whatever, or you give, like, How good does that feel, right? Your brain like, feels a sensation of like, Oh, my gosh, I feel so good. Because we we can't do more. We can only do what we can do. And the less we have to do the less we have to decide to do each you're just to just do

definitely not definitely. I absolutely agree with that.

All right. couple more questions. You know, before we kind of wrap things up, you know, one of the things that that I saw that that you mentioned, and it's it's a strategy that I kind of believe in as well is competition is good. And I wanted you maybe take a minute to kind of talk a little bit about that. And, and why you have because I think a lot of people Yeah, man, I don't want any competition and key kind of explain that, that theory behind that.

And you're asking great questions, by the way. Thank you.

Yes. So the competition side, it's good. Why is it good? Well,

well, let me tell you when someone doesn't like competition, why that's bad. So let's start there. Like, why is it so bad when someone's like, afraid of their competition? Well, first of all, it's exposing their lack of conviction in their own ability, their ability, yeah, because it's a whole lot. It takes, like, if someone gets my training, right? Do you think it's my training that's going to make them the number one on their market? Or do you think it's like a whole lot of other things like their team chemistry, their ability to lead that committed they are their ability to remove distractions, their focus, you know, their consistency, the yet to actually execute, right? So there's like, so much that goes into somebody actually being successful, you know, what, they get a nice piece of software or whatever, right. And people overestimate those things when, when it comes to their competition. And they get nervous. And what that does is it takes their eye off their own game. So when someone's worried about the competition, or they're concerned about the competition, and what they're doing, even if it's like, the most amazing thing in the world, like, even if they're doing the same business models, you, you know, and they, you know, their numbers, even if it's like, all good stuff, that should make you a little nervous, you shouldn't give it any energy, because your energy is now moving away from your own game.

And so when you're competent, so what's bad to worry about it just instead, you should say, dude, I'm inspired by them. They're killing it. I love that. Because guess what it does? It forces it forces you and it brings everybody up, right? Because you know what, maybe something doesn't work out with one of the guys and you get, you get an employee or you get an estimator. And trust me, no one's living on heaven on earth, and everybody's company, everyone's got issues. And we have, there's benefits to having be having a good company and a competitive market where talent shared. I mean, imagine trying to like, hire and train your own, you know, sales guy who's a beast or a project manager or whatever, there's a lot of costs, it goes to that so you don't thank somebody for what they did. And that's fine. But like, you know, when you take your eye off the ball, you know, that's a huge problem. But I when everybody is getting better, and you're getting inspired the real winners like the real winners,

they're like there's always more anyway in the tank. So let's find a way they're always like, you know, great, like, you know, Michael Jordan, like told Kobe Bryant exactly what he was going to do in a game and how we should defend them and he still scored on them and Toby's like, like they're like the real winners, the ones who are the real, like, the real real winners don't care.

There's a couple quotes that come to mind. You know, one, there was a really famous picture of Michael Phelps, when he was in one of his, his races where he's, you know, focused on the prize, and there's Ryan Lackey, who's like, in second place, and it's, you know, winners focus on winning, and, you know, losers focus on the competition, right? Yeah. And there was another one that I saw, that was really great from Simon's cynic.

Ooh, ton of great TED Talks, if people aren't familiar with highly, highly recommend checking him out. And he gave a presentation at Microsoft. And this was when, you know, there's a lot of hype about the, the audio thing that they created that was to try and compete with the iPod. I forget what it was called something like Zoo or something weird like that. Yeah. And so they, he gave a presentation there. And, you know, all the Microsoft people were asking him, you know, what, sort of things Apple doing, because he had just given a presentation, you know, at Apple, and, and so, they're all asked him what Apple doing, what are they doing, what are they implementing, and what sort of strategy and then, you know, he was in a, an Uber taxi with one of like, the top 20 people at Apple, you know, going back to the airport after another conference. And, you know, she's like, Hey, I got this opportunity. He's like, hey, I've got the new Microsoft thing. And the guy was like, that's great. You know, you just did, the guy from Apple didn't care at all, because they're not focused on that competition. They're focused on how can they continue to deliver, you know, the best product and in the best value to those consumers. So, yeah, it's a really good insight. I think a lot of people kind of missed that, in that, you know, competition is not bad, it makes us better as individuals. And, and really, you know, at the end of the day, it's a better product, or, you know, our consumers and more value that we're bringing

totally, you know, I don't know about you, but like, have you ever gone into parts of your career, like, or your future aspirations, and it was a little too close of a carbon copy of somebody else, you know,

or you're like, you know, I remember a friend of mine, who I was introducing the business world, you know, he already started and sold a couple software companies. And so he was like, a deck of millionaire like, 35, I mean, maybe you're in So, and we're, like, hanging out at church, and like, his wife, and kids and I were all friends. And we're, like, only eight years apart. And I'm, like, just kind of coming out of baseball, and starting the software company. And, and so in my desire to be great and inspired by somebody else, which could be competition. And this is, for instance, it wasn't, but I was like, I want to be like him, right? In a lot of ways. Like, I want to have this kind of desired situation that he is currently living in. And I remember kind of constructing my whole paradigm around trying to exit or have an end game like that, versus kind of looking and saying, what is currently happening in my life has happened in my life, that's a unique journey for me, you know, what's the mountains that I'm climbing that's kind of shaping me, because ultimately, like, when you just kind of do that, and go and take inventory and change and become that next level of yourself, you end up finding that nobody can compete with that person.

Because you're amazing. Because you're fully you, you're becoming the best self. And I think that like, when a company gets in, like, I know, companies trying to copy another company's business model, and they just wanted they think that they could just like, take the model and like, not have to take their own inventory of themselves, not have to dig deep and ask the deeper questions, not have to create their own culture and their own unique thing. It paintings around what they're trying to create, and they just want the shortcut, and it just, it just doesn't work. And it doesn't exist. Yeah, it's like, it's like a, it's like a, it's a pipe dream. It's like an illusion. It's an illusion, and like, nobody's going to be and then when you start to, like, Be true to yourself, and kind of fight your own battles. And like, just focus on your own growth and your own challenges, and your your own unique set of issues, you become a unique version of yourself that no one can compete with, like, you know, and then other people are like, Oh, how do I do what you did, and you know, and it's really, it's just like, dude, take your own inventory, file your own battles, and do the hard things and just don't stop and not happen. Don't be so focused on the future where it creates anxiety, just just kind of be the best that you can today and watch the world change. And I think a lot of contractors

need to do that. And they need to find that unique fingerprint, we all have a unique fingerprint, right? Like, nobody's got the same fingerprint. And we want to, like, do a business model in a company and copy somebody, or they're afraid that someone's going to copy them. It's like, do you think they're actually going to execute your unique idea? Are you serious, like, you think they're actually going to fulfill it the way you're fulfilling it, you know, heart that and people overestimate how easy that is,

don't say,

I know we mentioned earlier, Brian, Brian got laid off on the phone before this. And so one of the things that you know, so for those people aren't familiar with them. The owns a company called Wonderland and Wisconsin, phenomenal story we did on one of our other podcast channels with Mark Richardson we talked about amount, probably have more on this channel at some point. And he kind of went through his business started a company 10 years ago. Now, he's about $50 million. And one of the things that one of the challenges that he, you know, wanted to address was, they had this communication error, right? Once post sell, they sell a deal. And then there was all these communication challenge customers out, well, where am I in the process when this thing's going to get done. And so his strategy was, how do I eliminate communication, and the way that he did that is you buy today, and they install tomorrow, which is obviously an incredibly, you know, complex challenge. And each Sure, I'm happy to, you know, tell people, you know, how we do it, because they don't understand everything that went into the year of developing that, and the mindset that we have to have as a company and all that internal conversations that we have in changing how we present our business. And I think, you know, a lot of, Oh, I'm just going to copy this, and, you know, I'm going to be able to do it. And there's, there's so many other things that go along with it. I absolutely agree. You got to create your own best version of what you can be. And you know, you're going to have tremendous results. If you if you fall and you do the hard things and you're consistent.

Yeah, like, that's awesome. And yeah, let's go try to let's, let's tell everybody, we're going to start tomorrow. Let's see if everybody can turn that corner.

I'm sorry. So last last question. Real quick. Um, you know, me personally, I'm not all that sold on the, you know, content, US college education, but I love to, you know, hear about continuing education. I know you're a big reader, I like to read as well. I wanted to kind of get what's the, the one or two best books that you've read, or that you got a lot of value out of over the last, you know, you're

taking a quick turnaround here to look at what's behind me,

I would say,

yeah, the little, their little off track of our conversation.

But, um, I just got done reading a book called essential ism by Greg McCowan, he also co wrote multipliers with Liz Wyman Wiseman that books pretty common Lee adopted multipliers I read a few years ago, how the best leaders, make everyone smarter. So but essential ism is, is written just by Greg McCowan and he

really has helped me take this energy focus energy and focus into a more long term essential direction and I'm loving this material and I'm teaching it You heard me share some that earlier. So I love essentialism. And then, you know, my wife and I had recently taking taking something called the NEA Graham, have you ever heard of that? No, it's you know, you got Myers Briggs you got this you got you know predictive index and all this stuff any Graham I think, like the oldest one like of all time, you know, it's really, uh, it's, you know, from what I understand, I should probably do a little bit more research before I start quoting too much of it. But basically, you know, there's your categorized in numbers. So, like 123456789, and each number has unique, distinct traits. And I've never really read one that was so accurate, like, so accurate. And not only did it Tell me, my, you know, what was accurate about it, it showed me

my wife's mind, it showed us the bends that we have, which they call a wing. So I'm an eight, seven, my wife's a nine, one. And the, the eight is a challenger or the leader and kind of the rebellious one. And there's a lot that goes into it, but basically bringing more awareness to ourselves. And what, what we found and with the seven wing that the label is called the maverick. So I'm like, dude, that's awesome. I just bought this like, new briefcase, because it was called a maverick. I'm like, that's, that's, but, um, so basically, you know, all of them, just kind of show you what this shows you is your, your, kind of your, your image herself. Like, like, I'm aggressive, you know, I can be angry, I can be, you know, really just a not pleasant person, you know, I could be snarky and tear people down, because I don't think they're good or whatever, that's the immature version of myself. Right? Like, that's the one who's that's the eight who doesn't have hasn't really grown. But it shows like, the eight what eights look like, when they're really mature. And, like, it's mine was very magnanimous, like, very generous and giving very inspiring, you know, very self. Like, they're able to create that energy to bring more like, even says, like, historical proportions, like you like people, like who are eight who are, who are, you know, mature, like, they rewrite history, you know, because there, they have so much energy, and they have so much fire in them. And I'm like, Wow, that is so cool. Like, that inspires me, because it didn't just tell me, I'm a competitive person, you know, like, the disk does, like, oh, you're competitive? Oh, I didn't like I didn't know that are generic. Yeah. So, but like, what this does, it kind of shows that and then what also did is it show not only our best version of ourselves, but showed in partnership, how an EIGHT and a NINE work together. So like, my wife and I, I'm an eight. She's a nine. It totally like, talked about what a healthy relationship looks like. And then it talks about what an unhealthy one looks like. And I was like, Yeah, that sounds like the first couple years of our marriage. And she was like, yeah, does. And so we're like, chuckling you know, but we were really inspired. So I read a book called the NEA Graham, from a Christian perspective, by a guy named Richard Rohr. totally random, you know, but obviously, there's non Christian versions of all this that you can take a look at. So, you know,

that's a, that's, those are the two books that have been really a game changers. Because for me, it's been less about doing more in my life, and more about doing less and just calming down and like whenever I'm more in control, I'm not, you know, as anxious I'm just focused on today executing this stuff to move the needle on becoming better that's died, right. There's Give me the ability to have quantum leaps versus other other efforts and the thought processes

Awesome, man. Well, I I definitely appreciate those insights. I will absolutely check those books out. And we put them somewhere in the link here. So appreciate the time today, you know, great opportunity to kind of catch up with you and just a short little plug for yourself. Where can people get in touch with you, you know, when they want to?

Yeah, I have a Facebook page LinkedIn page So Ryan gross sales transformation group, my LinkedIn page for my company I don't really use I just use my personal one quite a bit so I'm active I post just about daily You know, my website sales transformation group. com, you can take a look at that. And if you're interested in kind of digging deeper, I'll do a you can you fill out a survey online after a taste study video on my website, or you can message me as chat. We could do a 15 minute chat and see if it's a fit and see if I can help and then, you know, schedule more of a deeper dive. But, um, yeah, that's kind of the way it starts and

where it goes from there. Awesome.

Awesome. Ryan will appreciate it again, and look forward to catching up with you. And I'm sure I'll see you around somebody that right.

Yeah, thanks for having me on. And it's always great chatting with you, David. You're awesome, awesome leader and doing a lot of great things. So really, pleasure.

Thanks, man. Alright, have a great day. Thank you.

Alright,

alright, everyone

want to close with a couple key takeaways from our conversation with Ryan here. The first for me was really the decision tax absolutely something I believe in as you want to get done and get things out of the way. So you don't have to worry about it. You know, I've got right now three different projects that I would love to just get off my plate. And I just need to get them done. So I can focus on the next project. And the next thing that I have to do. And I think that that's something as business owners and marketing professionals and even office managers that might be listening to this, you know, think about the things that you can just get done so you can move on to the next thing.

One of the other key takeaways for me and, and something that I really try and instill in my life is having more discipline now, Ryan, he's clearly a master this going to bed at nine. And getting up at 345 is quite remarkable. I'm not quite there yet. I'm, I'm working my way up to that. But one day, hopefully soon, I'll be there. But having a more discipline day as a big priority for me, one of the things I'll be taking away from, you know, not only our conversation, Ryan with other mentors that I had in my life is blocking out my day, having my morning sales meeting with my team. And then from that, I have one on one. And then from there, I go into do prospecting, or I'm working on scripts, or whatever it is that my might be doing, and actually listening to calls and going through the day to day things that we need to do in order to be a successful organization. And so that's something I would challenge each one of you is, how can you structure that day to be more efficient? One of our advisors, gentleman named Mark Richardson does another wonderful podcast with our team here. And one of the things that he talked about in one of his episodes was how he looked at everything that he had in his day. And one of the things was making coffee, which takes time and said, it took three minutes. And so he figured out, okay, how can I be more efficient with my, you know, coffee, and by shaving that time of just making coffee from three minutes down to one and a half minutes, that gave him an extra nine and a half hours every year, which isn't massive. But that's a pretty big just for one and a half minutes a day. So think about the things that we can prioritize whether, as Ryan said, it's watching that extra Netflix special or other things that we might have in our day that we could really prioritize and get out of our life to help us to become more successful business owners. Right. And the last thing that I wanted to talk about was predictability. This is one of the big things that's a focus for me and our organization is how can we create predictable results. And that I firmly believe just has a lot to do with really understanding your numbers and understand your business. I cannot tell you how many times I get on the phone and I talked to a business owner and they say, Okay, I want to grow my business by X percent. And I asked them you know, what, she your lead to appointment ratio, you know, what's that percentage have no idea, you know, what's your appointment to close ratio? Okay, I know that, that's great. That's a good starting point, right? But building that model out and really understanding, okay, if I'm going to create a machine, you know, I'm going to really take this to the next level, I need to know all of those metrics. I need to know, you know, if I'm doing advertising, you know, if I'm from advertising with Yelp, or with radio or TV and any other type of campaign, what is my cost to generate a lead where's my cost for an appointment cost per sale, so that way I can make sure that the business model makes sense and make sure the economics and that's something

you know, I believe, I'm a pretty strong expert at we've got some other experts here. And so if you do have questions, you know, would love you know, just some free advice on you know, hey, what are what are some averages, you know, based on industry based on market, where should I be be in terms of numbers and metrics, I'm more than happy to do this. Again, as I mentioned, the my goal with this podcast is really give back really provide some great educational information and insights. So hopefully this was helpful for you guys. Make sure to subscribe to our our channel here and look forward to having you on with our next guest. Thanks.

Thanks again, for listening. Take a moment to subscribe to the hardware key marketing podcast on your phone using your favorite podcast app by searching for sure if our local you can do so using iTunes, Google Play or wherever

At Surefire Local, we believe in a simple philosophy you can you CAN digital marketing in today's crazy world...if you have the right plan and technology in place to put you in control of your online presence. You can learn more by jumping over to our website at Surefirelocal.com or calling 571-327-3391.

to 733 19 one