#40 How Adam King Scaled a Multi-Million Dollar Business Without a Backup Plan

If you’re stuck working IN your business instead of scaling it, this episode is for you. Adam King (“The Caulk King”) breaks down leadership, systems, hiring, SOPs, branding, entrepreneurship, business growth, and how he built a multi-million dollar company through relationships and relentless execution.

In this episode of Based Business, Parker McCumber interviews Adam King, owner of Bonneville Caulking & Waterproofing, about scaling a construction business, overcoming entrepreneurial bottlenecks, building systems, and becoming a true business owner instead of just an operator.

Adam shares:
• How he started his company with no backup plan
• The relationship strategy that fueled massive growth
• Why most entrepreneurs stay stuck
• The importance of SOPs, hiring, and delegation
• Lessons from losing a major client to bankruptcy
• How branding helped him stand out in construction
• The mindset required to scale a business successfully

This episode is packed with practical advice for entrepreneurs, founders, contractors, business owners, and anyone trying to grow a company without burning out.

Topics Covered:
Entrepreneurship, business growth, scaling a business, leadership, systems, SOPs, hiring employees, delegation, branding, construction business, founder mindset, commercial construction, sales, networking, resilience, operations, and wealth creation.

Subscribe for more conversations with elite entrepreneurs, founders, creators, and operators building real businesses.

🔗 Connect with Adam King:

🌐 Bonneville Caulking & Waterproofing
📸 Instagram: @thecaulkking
💼 LinkedIn: Adam King
📘 Facebook: Bonneville Caulking & Waterproofing

00:00 People Systems Scale

00:24 Meet Adam The Caulk King

01:43 Lean Into The Brand

03:50 Backstory No Plan B

07:02 Supportive Spouses And Going All In

10:29 Childhood Roots And Finding Mentors

12:23 Communities That Raise Your Game

15:05 Rejection Volume And Relationship Building

18:39 Networking Shift And Contractor Collapse Lesson

23:15 Scale Faster With Team And Systems

28:08 Meetings After Action Reviews Improvement

29:47 Entrepreneurship As Self Development

33:23 Parker Superpower Tenacity Story

39:03 Refusing to Quit

40:38 Pregnancy Changes Focus

41:09 KPIs and Meta Ads

42:32 Base Hits Not Home Runs

44:29 Success and Resentment

47:36 Outgrowing Old Friends

53:39 Building Career Paths

58:24 Incentives and Innovation

59:31 Keeping Spouses Onboard

01:02:20 First Hire Lessons

01:05:41 Hiring Your Weaknesses

01:06:32 Rainmaker Triad Explained

01:11:09 Trust and Delegation

01:13:59 Right People Right Roles

01:14:25 Hiring With Challenges

01:16:22 Coaching And Boundaries

01:18:22 Relationship Driven Growth

01:20:41 Social Media Debate

01:26:23 Deepening The Bench

01:28:34 Why He Does It

01:35:14 Authority Engine Framework

01:36:21 Build In Public

01:45:00 Story And Wrap Up

#Entrepreneurship #BusinessGrowth #Leadership #ScalingABusiness #BusinessPodcast #FounderMindset #ConstructionBusiness #SmallBusiness #Entrepreneur #BasedBusiness

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

I feel like I'm such a better human being now than I was because of my business. It works. It works every time. You remove yourself, you build the team, the team runs the systems, the systems scale.

SPEAKER_02 0:09

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 0:10

That's the secret. It really is the secret sauce, Parker. People are the root of everything that we do in business. They're necessary to grow, scale, lead, and find success in pretty much any avenue of life. I'm here today with Adam King, and his superpower is building excellent relationships with the people that he works with and serves. Adam, why don't you take just a moment, introduce yourself, tell us who you are and what you do?

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Yeah, thank you, Parker. So uh as you said, Adam King, owner of Bonneville Calking and Waterproofing. Um we're a commercial subcontractor doing all the iconic projects here in the state of Utah. And as Parker said, he asked me at the beginning, what would my superpower be? And I told him people. It's been people that I've got close with, worked with, served that have helped me get to where we're at today as a business and a person. So can you tell them your Instagram handle? Uh Cult King81.

SPEAKER_03 1:05

Oh, I love it. Uh I I referred to you earlier today as the cult king. Yes, sir. And uh Bart's like, wait, what? You can't say that on a podcast. And I'm like, no, no, it's A-U-L-K. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

I always tell them, get your mind out of the gutter, you're thinking the wrong cult. But uh, as you can imagine, I've had every kind of joke and slander and everything with that thrown at us. But it is called. I love it. You lean into it. That's it. You get it's brand. Yep, it's brand. You can get a chuckle out of people. Um, in fact, one of my old bosses, his slogan was uh we cult any crack. And that's a good one. Oh man, that's a good one. Isn't it? Especially back then, it was like the time of the big Johnson shirts and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. It just fit right in.

SPEAKER_03 1:43

But well, I'm a big fan of um leaning into it. One of my friends and mentors, uh Robbie Summers. I had expressed to him that I got a lot of hate on social media when I started trying to promote for my um my first event last October. And people would just call me all kinds of names. It was this is uh that guy's a Mormon scammer because from Utah. Oh, spam trash, just another coach, um, you know, all that kind of stuff. So he was like, why don't you just lean into it? You make them, you make the haters feel really bad. Right. And it's a visual hook. So I went and had I should have brought them in. I had those hats made. I've seen your hats. So I I've got a half dozen hats now with the insults that people call me online, but I just lean into it and it's fun for me. It creates a hook on social media, people will engage with that, uh, helps distinguish yourself as a little bit of a brand. Yep. And obviously that's not in all my content or anything like that, but it's something that captivates attention and brings people in, and that starts the conversation. Yep. So I'm a I'm a huge believer and lean into all that stuff.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Yep, yep. And and that's initially how we started was as a caulking company and leaned into that hard and then got into other verticals uh as we continue down that path and growing. Our customers uh Parker was really kind of my customers saying, Hey Adam, why don't you add this scope on or add that scope on? And now we offer most of section seven in the spec book, and and it's been great. So yeah. Uh and and it was kind of because people were making fun of the call stuff or whatever. I don't know. But I leaned into it too, and it definitely led me down a right path too. But yeah. Awesome.

SPEAKER_03 3:21

And I I like you identified something just if the viewer didn't pick up on it. As your customer recognized there was a need for more, you provide more value. That's right. So it's a an um a built-in almost ascension model. As you solve one problem, another problem arises, and you solve that problem, and you it essentially create a model right out the gate that you've identified where you build the lifetime value of every customer. Correct. That's an awesome model.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Yeah. And it's worked great for us, you know. Great, great for us.

SPEAKER_03 3:50

So let me ask um before the show started, I was telling you, you know, one of the things we we like to talk about is your backstory. And the reason I ask about your backstory is because I think it takes a very unique individual. I mean, think about the struggles of entrepreneurship that you you've maybe in endured here. You have so much risk. Other people's livelihoods are on the line, right? Like there's a burden of responsibility that you have to carry. And I don't think that everyone can carry that. So I want to get to know your background a little bit. What led you to thinking that this crazy journey of entrepreneurship, uh, starting a business, serving people, what what brought you to that?

SPEAKER_00 4:32

Great question. So um I worked for my stepdad. He owned a similar company, worked for him for a lot of years, and I was groomed, I thought, to take that over and uh put a lot of my younger years into that company. Um, got to a point where uh I thought I was ready to take it over and went and asked my former boss, um, hey, where do you see me in this company in the next 10 years, in the next five years? And he said, Adam, you're really good with people. I'm gonna keep you in the field where uh you're really good at executing the jobs too. Um, and then probably hire some people to do the estimating and the sales, the business development, which I always wanted to do when I was in the field installing. So I went home to my new, I was newly married at the time too, Parker. So you talk about that risk. It was like double whammy. Oh, yeah. Um so I went because I had my in-laws, I wanted to prove right and everything like that. So I went to my wife, bless her heart, and she was like, if you think you can do it, I'll stand behind you. And um, so yeah, we we went down that road. It what forced me was I hit a dead end in the career I was in. And so that forced me to go create my own path and go down that route. And I'm so thankful for it. At the time, I was a little scared. My old boss signed all this paperwork saying, if I vouch for your hours, you'll never work for this company again if yours doesn't work. So I didn't have a backdoor either. And I I've thought back on that and reflected on that many times, and I think that's one of the reasons that it worked so well for me early on, too, is because Bonneville was the only thing I had. I had no, no backdoor, no escape raft, no nothing. It was Bonneville the whole way. But I was kind of, I wouldn't say forced into it, but uh it it made a lot of sense to me at that time in my life, if that made sense. I didn't have a lot of debt, I didn't have a lot of uh I still it was risky, but it wasn't like I had accumulated a lot like this part of my life or if I went to start a business now.

SPEAKER_03 6:25

But yeah, I like the concept that you're sharing about the back being up against the wall, no plan B. It's like uh Cortez burning the boats, you know, there's no turning back. Um I think that that's it's something that holds a lot of people back. I agree. You get comfortable in what you do on a day-to-day, so you don't take the first steps into starting something, but then you also recognize well, yeah, I could do that, but I I also could just stay here. I could be a little bit more comfortable. Um if you're gonna go all in on something, go all in on it. I think that that's just the the best course of action and plan there. Now you mentioned newly married when you started your company. Yes. Man, my wife. When we um when we first got married, she was my sugar mama for sure. She was she was uh an elementary school teacher, you know, making 30 grand a year. Big money is about honestly, right? I was uh I was going to school, I had just built my first decom business. I was reinvesting everything back into the the company. Right. So I I brought home no money for like two to three years, um, where she just took care of everything. But having that support system, like you said, she she was willing to bet on you. Yes, sir. That was invaluable to me, and I'm assuming to you as well. Because it it facilitated the the thought process that I could just go in and try. I could just do my best. And if it wasn't gonna work out, you know, maybe I was gonna join the army again and go back to active duty. Correct. But but that wasn't something that was immediately available to me. That wasn't an immediate solution, that wasn't money on the table tomorrow. So I had to try my best. Yep. And I think that the parallel there is something that's a common theme. Oops, smacking my microphone, that I see with successful entrepreneurs is you go all in on what you're doing, you burn the boats, so to speak, and you commit that you are going to take action until you find success.

SPEAKER_00 8:20

Yep. Yep. And that was it. We just kept pushing and pushing and pushing until we found it. We had, I didn't have hardly any relationships when we got going. We had to develop everything from the ground up, and and that's it. I mean, I was just too ignorant and and brawny to quit. I just kept pushing Parker and pushing and pushing. And then about year three, you know, but but circling back to the those wives, because I will I want people to understand this. Uh, my wife is my biggest supporter, and she she has been by my side through thick and thin. And I think some of my friends that have not had that support that you and I have, it's kept them from jumping in on their own. Absolutely. I have multiple friends, it would be way better business than I am, but they are lacking that support from their number one supporter, and so they stay in that comfort zone, if you will. Yeah, I feel really blessed that my wife supported me early on and uh told me to go all in because we went all in and we went hard, buddy. And it's been fun. Hell yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:15

I like the um you also mentioned you asked about where you the the employer saw you in 10 years, five years. Correct. And the recognition that if you were going to continuously improve, if you were going to keep developing as an individual with your knowledge and your capability that you had to create your own path.

SPEAKER_02 9:32

Correct.

SPEAKER_03 9:33

I it's something that I I try to teach and that uh if I could just you know give you one piece of advice as a viewer, it's how do you get into the process of continuous improvement for yourself, for your business, or for whatever. But keep learning, keep taking action to develop your capability, your capacity, what you can offer and provide value and service to the place. And and then just don't stop doing those things. So when you run into an obstacle like an employer that's gonna have you capped for a while, how do you create your own path to then go and continue to grow as an individual? And I think that that principle carries over not just in entrepreneurship, but in your relationships. That's probably what's made you so great with talking to people and getting to know.

SPEAKER_00 10:18

I would I would think so, Parker. And yeah, and uh kind of more on that thought. Oh, I lost my train of thought there. But uh yeah, yeah, you're right. You're right.

SPEAKER_03 10:28

Was there anything maybe from your childhood or childhood experiences that planted the seed of entrepreneurship where you thought maybe I want to start a business one day?

SPEAKER_00 10:38

Yeah, another great question. So young in my childhood, uh, our dad worked for the power company. He was a journeyman lineman, great job in the in the early 80s, late 80s, but we moved around a lot. And I feel like us moving around a lot made me uh be able to make relationships really quickly, develop relationships really quickly, and uh be approachable to everyone too, if you if you will. And then my parents got divorced, and then my mom, so uh no, not really, not until my mom married the stepdad that I worked for. But at that time, I was like probably 12 or 13, and then that was my first taste of watching an entrepreneur. My grandpa was a dentist. We didn't come from like a line of entrepreneurs, we came from a line of college educated and then go work for a big corporation or a dentist office or something like that. But um, so yeah, I'm kind of the the anomaly in my family, if you will, too. Um, not a lot of my cousins, they all work for the school district or uh work for people. I'm kind of the only entrepreneur in our family besides my stepdad. But yeah, so I don't know. I I would like to say I was kind of forced into it. My back was against the wall. I knew that was the best thing. I was smart enough when I was younger to be looking down the road, like we talked about, to see myself five, 10, 15 years. I wanted more for Adam than what this gentleman was able to give me. And nothing bad on him. He just didn't want to grow himself. And I've always wanted to grow. And I remember what my thought was is always putting yourself around people that are better than you and like just willing to lift you up too. Isn't it so huge? It's so cliche and it's so overspoken, but it's it's what's made me continue to develop, become a better business owner, leader, owner, everything that I dad, even spouse, everything, you know, putting around people that I admire.

SPEAKER_03 12:23

Shout out to uh, you know, Fast Lane Drive and Club Paddock. Of course. We met through those organizations. I joined those organizations because I had got to a level of success in business where I didn't have friends who could relate anymore. But then I realized after a few months, years, that I was starting to stagnate and that there I didn't have a drive to keep getting better, and that I wasn't surrounded by people who could have success influence that, relate. So getting into those organizations where I could surround myself with other people who were uh entrepreneurs, running businesses, you know, leading organizations, finding high levels of financial success, that put me in a position where, like I I shout him out often here, uh, like Raul. I look up to that dude. Like I mean, uh, his story is super inspiring to me. Like from high school dropout to uh board of American Express. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:21

That's and one of the most genuine human beings you'll ever freaking meet in your life. For sure. Like you're like an amazing person. He can go around being snotty and snooty and everything, but he's not. And and that's that's it. Like these organizations, Parker, are a high concentration of amazing individuals. Yeah, that's what I tell people when I when they're like, hey, what's the paddock or whatever? Is it B and I? Is it this? Like it is a high concentration of people.

SPEAKER_03 13:44

It's even better than any of those. I'm like, where else do you get to meet a guy who built a cock empire? Let's go, drives a pista. Like awesome, awesome. I love to see that stuff. And and to be honest, it's super motivational for me to just be in that group.

SPEAKER_00 14:01

Me too. It makes me want to be better. Me too. Uh, in fact, I was golfing with some of the homies this morning, and I'm probably the brokest dude of the group, right? But I'm like, how cool is it to be with these guys? And then they just they they want to inspire you and bring you up too. So if there's any people out there that are intimidated to walk up to me or Parker when you see us in your cars, don't. Because we love. In fact, Jess, I know Jess is one of your uh guests here. We were at a little Gondolfo's sandwich shop the other day in our cars, and a kid just grew some balls and walked over and talked to us. And Jess and I were like, we'd love to give you our number because 90% of people wouldn't even dare to come over here and talk to us when we're talking around our cars or whatever. So, like part of it, like I like to reward people that go out of their comfort zone and approach me, and I'm sure you're the same, you know. But yeah, no, the the the the paddock in the fast lane drive and the the people there are amazing, and they have made me want to do better, not only in business, but in everything else too. So yeah, I'm very thankful and I'm thankful I've met you, and I'm thankful I've met all the other people there too.

SPEAKER_03 15:05

So let me ask, because uh the people aspect is obviously a big part of those um communities like paddock and fast lane. It's also something that you identified you started developing from a young age, you know, moving around. Yes, people skills. Where what advice do you have for somebody who's maybe looking to start a business right now? They're struggling to get their foot in the door, build relationships, or talk to people. Because I mean, that's that's daunting. And I think uh one of the reasons a lot of people don't take the action or don't try is because they have a fear of rejection. So you necessarily had to overcome that to do what you do. What advice would you have for somebody that was trying to improve on that?

SPEAKER_00 15:45

Yeah, great question. But I would say just keep trying. You know, as cliche as that even sounds too. Just keep trying. If you keep beating those doors down and beating that down, you will get the result you want. Um, I've almost to got to a point now I can almost dictate my outcome just by the amount of effort or the kind of effort that we put into. So if you're having hesitation of walking into that contractor's office and getting on their bid list, I'm saying do it, go humiliate yourself. It's not as bad. They're probably looking for your skill set anyway, is what I've learned. I mean, I'm a caulking guy for crying out loud. And I've been able to find so many people that need my services that, like Parker said, we've turned it into a small little empire, if you will. But yeah, my my advice to that is just keep doing it, and rejection is okay. It's totally okay. I lose, I mean, that's one thing I want to, and we'll probably get there, but I lose, uh, Parker, probably 90, 94, 95% of the the estimates that we put together as a team and both. Yeah, I mean, so I'm winning maybe 10% of the time, but it's enough wins and they're good enough wins that it makes everything else work.

SPEAKER_03 16:51

Well, there's a thought that I really like. It's that the most successful people fail more than the average person does. And I think it's just you have to put yourself out there enough times. And I I like the concept that you're you're bringing up about overcoming the the fear of rejection because at the end of the day, I think about it from from this perspective, I send at least a hundred cold messages every single day. That's how I do a like a lot of lead gen outreach. I get people into my lead magnets or sell my book or any of that stuff. And out of those hundred messages I send, 90 of them will tell me to F off or they won't even answer. But I get 10 real responses. So that's 10 conversations I can start. Out of those 10 conversations when I go to try to qualify or lead to a sale or even a lead magnet or book, nine of those people are gonna tell me F off. Yeah. Or they're gonna ghost me. Yep. But I'm gonna get one. Yep. And so it becomes just a volume game. That's it. And as long as I can be comfortable being rejected 99 out of a hundred times, correct, I know there's a sale on the back end.

SPEAKER_00 18:00

That's almost our same motto too. We we get told no or we're too high, or this guy so many times. On our follow-up, we have a follow-up procedure, and we get told so many times no, but we keep bidding with them, we keep trying, we keep and then if I see a pattern, though, Parker, I'll maybe say, Hey, can we go to lunch or something? You know, and don't be afraid of that too. If you're not getting the result you want, don't be afraid to take another avenue or take another path to it. Absolutely. Get the outcome you want. So that would be another little piece I could uh say is, you know, if you get told no, maybe try a different approach on the next one or swing it into another kind of area that maybe it's the answer you need.

SPEAKER_03 18:38

But yeah, you mentioned also that you're at a stage now where you can almost dictate success based on the effort applied. I want to unpack that concept a little bit because I think it's what you're you're just starting to talk about there. But also at what level or how much time did it take you to maybe identify this pattern where you could just put more time in, talk to more people, maybe you go out to lunch, but with enough effort, you would get success in your endeavor.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

Right. Great question. Uh, probably about like my third or fourth year in. I started as an owner operator out in the field, and I always knew there was some uh but there was always some business to be drummed up, taking the guy, the estimators out and stuff like that. So as soon as I could, I saved up enough money to hire an employee, got the employee doing the operation stuff in the field. And then I started networking with the project managers, estimators, those kind of guys, building those relationships. So about two or three years into it, Parker, before I started recognizing how important that was to our growth and to where we needed to go.

SPEAKER_03 19:46

When you started to realize that, how did you test the concept?

SPEAKER_00 19:50

Great question. Uh man, I don't even know. Uh how did I test the concept that that was working? Uh, I it just kind of worked. I didn't even really get to test it. Yeah, and that's maybe why I don't have a good idea.

SPEAKER_03 20:03

You just identify it's working, so we're gonna keep doing it.

SPEAKER_00 20:06

We're gonna lean in harder on that, and Adam's gonna get even further out of the field, and I'm gonna go just spend more time with people that can sign contracts and the power to make the decision. So, and then when I really start doing that, things really caught on like wildfire. But um, we went through a kind of an interesting part. So we're talking about you know, five, six years into my business at this point. Um, we were working with a big general contractor up in northern Utah. They were one of the biggest in the state at the time. And man, we were doing almost every job they were doing, had a great relationship. And then they go out of business. I thought my bit, like, I was like, oh my goodness, what are we gonna do? Nine, and this this was a learning period for me, but 95-96% of my contracts were with this one particular business because it was such easy work. I'd just go in, they'd say, Hey, Adam, uh, da-da-da, we're building this, we need you a number here, da-da-da. So, uh, but what actually happened, Parker, I was sitting there and I'm like, oh my gosh, it's over. I'm seeing just all the negative in it, negative, negative, negative. And then what happened is those people dispersed. They went to this general contractor, they went to this general, they went to this. So now they pulled me to all these other buildings or whatever and contractors. And that's how we really went to that next level is in a moment where I thought everything, I mean a moment of destitute where I thought everything was done, or we had had a great run, it ended up spinning into one of the most beautiful opportunities that we ever had in the last 12 years or 13 years.

SPEAKER_03 21:30

Well, and I think that's a reflection of your superpower of building the relationships and working with people. Because if any of those people had had a bad relationship with you, they didn't like you, they thought you were a scumbag or something, they're not taking that back to those those next employers. Yeah. So I think that investment in the people and the relationships, I mean, that that compounded for you.

SPEAKER_00 21:51

It did. In fact, Parker, they would bring me over to, say, XYZ contractor in Salt Lake, and they would say, Hey, this is Adam, my caulking water. Proofing guy, and that's usually a scope that they have a lot of trouble with, anyway. It's kind of a step kid scope. Yeah. Um, and and so I would make them look more powerful and better to their new company by having a guy that came in, executed, got trap done. And that was very valuable to them, exactly. And it made them look better to their organizations also. So, yeah, but just people. We called it going through the trenches trenches together. We had done a couple jobs together. They knew how I operated, I knew how they operated, they knew that we could stand the time of not getting paid like we do in our industry, yeah, and not be calling them and howling them for money every day. And yeah, just just honestly, a lot of those people, Parker, I still work with them to this day. That's awesome. 13 years. And you know, in my world, it's cutthroat, man. You work you like you work with the guy for a year or two, and then you guys have a fallen out and you never work again. And a lot of my guys, I'm very thankful for them, and I've worked with them for a very long time, and I'm very appreciative of them. That's awesome. And I'll do anything for them. And they know that. I'll uh if the guy called me today and said, Hey, Adam, I need you to hop in a truck and go to St. Louis and do the temple, we'd be in a truck headed to St. Louis. So, yeah, and that's value to them too, and they know that.

SPEAKER_03 23:09

So it definitely seems to me like the foundation of the business is the people and the relationships. If we were to maybe go back in time, you're starting your business, you're looking to grow. What would you do the same? What would you do differently? What advice would you give to somebody who's looking to start their business today?

SPEAKER_00 23:28

Great question. Uh, grow faster. So I I would have not been involved as an owner operator as long as I did. I feel like I kind of stalled out for like three or four years. I just, it's all I knew though. The organization I came from, the owner was in the field too. And so I just thought, oh, that's how you own a business. You're actually in the field doing the work. I had not I wasn't a club paddock member at that time or had met other people uh to mentor of or whatever, Parker. But uh yeah, so yeah. Uh about yeah, the what I'm I apologize, Parker. Remind me what no worries. What would you do the same? What would you do differently? How would you start a business? So I would have I would have taken myself out of it earlier, and then I would have hired people sooner too. Yeah. And then develop systems and processes sooner, also. Oh gosh, I love all the things you're saying right now. Get a tickle out of you on that one.

SPEAKER_03 24:20

So one of the things that is well, this is actually just flat out the most common issue that I I have when I bring in a coaching client and I'm I'm helping them, you know. Essentially the goal for them is always they want to scale, they want to make more money. The goal for me is let's identify where the problems are, the bottlenecks, what's keeping your team from being able to grow and operate efficiently now. And that's what allows you to scale, right? Your business is never gonna outscale your leadership.

SPEAKER_00 24:48

Correct.

SPEAKER_03 24:50

Like nine times out of ten, not hyperbole, the issue rests with an operator or an owner who is stuck in the lens of an operator. And they're the bottleneck because maybe they're out in the field. But the reality is they've got to remove themselves from the day-to-day work so they can be focused on the overarching vision and the connection and the relationships that all have to go into place to facilitate that. One of the tools that I I give people now earlier is uh a book from Dr. Benjamin Hardy. It's called Um The Science of Scaling. Sorry. He has a couple, but there's a 10X is easier than 2x and the Science of Scaling. And they have a similar message in there. But in short, encourage people to set a 10-year goal for themselves. Where do you see yourself in 10 years? Where do you want to be in 10 years? What does that revenue look like? What does that lifestyle look like? Let's get into the nitty-gritty of how your life is better because of this goal. And then we blow their minds and we say, hey, you're gonna do that in 12 months, 24 months, right? One to three years tops, and all of a sudden it's not a linear progression anymore. They have to change their model. And a hundred percent of the time, for those nine out of ten that have this problem, it's I have to remove myself as a bottleneck, and I have to be focused on how we do this at a much different scale scope or model. But it works, it works every time. You remove yourself, you build the team, the team runs the systems, the systems scale.

SPEAKER_00 26:25

Yep. That's the secret. It really is the secret sauce, Parker. And and this, the and that would be my little nugget to a guy if you're thinking about it or you've already started your business and you're just fresh into it, is the quicker you can identify key people and then systems to to run your business, so you can be out there promoting it, pushing the vision forward, finding people, like whatever you need to do to take that forward. But yeah, I mean, that that was me looking back. That's one of the mistakes I made is I was like, oh, I'm the best in the state at this. I can just work harder than anyone. But what I failed to realize is even three mediocre caucus can blow the doors off of one guy in a day. And so we started doing that. You know, I caught a lot of flack from my competition because I started to get delegate my work, but I made sure we start our quality stayed the same. We had very strict quality. You trained, developed coach, correct, did all that stuff uh properly, but they would still kind of heckle me and stuff, you know. Oh, and I'm just like, no, you guys watch. Give me a couple years, you know. I believe in my team. And then obviously, too, we've had some bad players come through our organization, but it's it's it's the way we're set up now, we find out within two, three months, you know. They can maybe buffalo us for a month or so, but within a couple months or whatever, they're either showing some signs of weakness or whatever. Um, but yeah, and then just finding those key people, creating those uh standard operating SOPs, and then just making sure that the team sticks to them as you or I would. You know, I I'm always willing to listen to my team's input, but I'm very uh slow now to implement it unless it's really makes sense. You know, we kind of meetings too, Parker. Here's a thing that I didn't do for a long time is meetings. Uh I wasn't a meeting guy at all, but now we hold three meetings a week. We hold a staff meeting at six in the morning every Monday with all of our installers and our management team. And then we do a management meeting at nine o'clock on Monday, and then a sales meeting every Thursday at 9.32, just to get a snapshot, try to identify any problems at the very beginning of the week. Sure. Any fires that are burning from last week, anything we need to put out. And then doing that, oh my gosh, it's kept my phone quiet that we're we're able to handle possible. Yep, that's it. We we set a vision for the week, we set uh goals for the week that we try to hit every time, and and yeah, it's pretty it's been very fun. Sounds like uh a mission brief. Yeah, exactly. And I I think I was telling you, and that's it. I didn't know the term for it, but a mission brief would be a great, a great term. And then and you recently told me you started doing after action reviews. Yes, sir. I watched one of your little shorts on YouTube, and I was like, I took it, that little nugget, right back to our manager's meeting the next day. And we do those on the end of every job now. So thank you. I love it.

SPEAKER_03 29:15

I that's I share that in my coaching practice. I teach it on stage. It is the single most impactful thing, I think, that an average business, really anybody, you could take that, you can plug it in immediately. You don't have to do anything special. No, you don't have to develop anything special. Just gonna ask a few questions, you're gonna find the answer, and that's going to guide you to improvement.

SPEAKER_00 29:37

That's it. That constant improvement here comes again, you know. And as a business owner, too, don't be scared to always constantly improve. Yeah, it's that's part of the beauty of it, I feel. In fact, my wife and I reflect all the time on how amazing of people we are now. Not that we weren't good people then, you know, we were just kind of stuck in in whatever, but I feel like I'm such a better human being now than I was because of my businesses.

SPEAKER_03 30:00

Well, think about the level up. Entrepreneurship, in my opinion, is the single greatest method for self-development. I agree. And it goes beyond just the business. I mean, you think about it. I said a minute ago, the business is never going to outscale your leadership. So you're developing leadership capacity, you're developing relationship capacity with your team and with your clients. You're learning skills like marketing, you're learning skill, and with that, there's a communication messaging piece. Correct. Uh, you have to learn some psychology around what the buyer and the client wants and needs. So you get all of these little developments as a result of that, but also the associated benefit to the community is something that I don't think a lot of people think about. For example, you make more money now, you're living a good life, you have a little bit more freedom and time. Correct. I bet that allows you to spend more time with your family, with your friends, to develop those relationships. They in turn go and spread that positivity back into the community. For me, it allowed me to spend more time volunteering, coaching youth sports and high school athletics. And I was able to take that, you know, interest and in volunteerism and scale that. We could also donate to the, you know, the youth sport programs and things that we support. And so there's a charity aspect of it, but all of that comes because we got into entrepreneurship. That's right. So it's really a tool not just to better yourself, yeah, but better the lives of everyone around you, better the community.

SPEAKER_00 31:28

Yeah. I agree. I agree. And you know, young, I was young and naive, and I used to think, oh, you know, uh, and you may have had these thoughts too, you know, these guys that are 100 million, 10 million, even a millionaire at that young age. What I'd failed to recognize, Parker, is the person that they had to become to be the steward of that or to be that successful. And that's been a big kind of eye-opener to me is like as I develop these skills and become this better person, my income seems to be disaligned with it. And it's so amazing. And I'm sure you've probably seen that in your life too.

SPEAKER_03 32:01

Well, so you become a more valuable individual, and subsequently the market rewards that. Yep. Yep. So I I I wholeheartedly agree. Um, especially now, you know, the last couple of years, I've branched out. I kind of stopped just being exclusive into e-commerce. I started doing the coaching, the consulting, the content creation, all of those different things. And I'm learning a different skill in each one of those. But that allows me to take a different level of value back to my clients. And actually, let's tie that in here. You mentioned, you know, when you built your business, you have one thing that you do. Your customer has another problem. So you add a service and you solve another problem. Yes, sir. It was the same thing for me. You know, the more I learned about social media algorithms, content creation, and um the clipping the authority engine, all that stuff that I teach now, that allowed me to take that back to the coaching clients, provide a higher level of service. In turn, that's worth more to them. It pays me more and everyone wins. Everyone's happy. Yeah. I mean, my super evil secret scheme when it comes to coaching is can I help an entrepreneur make enough money that it's just a no-brainer to stay on with me or go to the next level? That's a good way to look at it. That's that's the evil plan. Yep. And everything I learn how to do, every skill that I develop, every testimonial that I get just feeds that.

SPEAKER_00 33:22

Love it. So you asked me at the beginning what's my superpower? Do you mind if I ask you what's yours, Parker? What do you feel? Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_03 33:31

Nobody's ever asked me that before. Oh wow. I uh totally caught off guard. Yeah, sorry, but so for me it's it's I'm gonna I'm gonna say it's the tenacity, the relentlessness.

SPEAKER_00 33:46

Yeah, you're just no quit, brawny, just go, go, go. I grew up very poor.

SPEAKER_03 33:52

Um so for me to have money or do things, I had to start grinding. That was like I was the the you know eight-year-old entrepreneur selling the lemonade stand, whatever. And then that progressed into doing landscaping and then mowing lawns progressed into like actual full service landscaping. We were redoing sprinklers and laying sod and that kind of stuff. Uh, into high school, that's like a contract to do mulch for the city. And like, okay, so there was growth. Yes. Uh, I ran away from home and joined the army. That was my like escape from poverty. Okay. Um, and then I'm making 30 grand a year and I think it's the coolest thing ever. You know, I got a car and some disposable income. But those experiences let me go out and see the world a little bit differently and recognize there were different level layers of wealth and success. And so I started to study that and learn about it and realized that people that were at these higher levels of success weren't smarter than me. Correct. They weren't luckier than me. Right. They were operating from a different mindset and different, different toolkit. So then I started trying to reverse engineer that. And I I left the active duty army in 2016. I started my own business, and that was a trial and error period for me. Um, this is my superpower. I worked for free on that business for about three years. Yeah. We didn't take a paycheck. I reinvested every cent back into the company. My wife was the sugar mama. Yeah. Um, but there's not a lot of people who will work for free for three years.

SPEAKER_00 35:26

Agreed. And that's I would say a problem with kind of our generation, too, is they want to see that quick turnaround or quick, re quick reward. Um, similar story. Like, we didn't really make money in our business for like three or four years, too, Parker. Everything we were doing was going back into it. Thank goodness. My wife had a stable job too with a constant uh paycheck so we could afford our rent. But yeah, like without that, I'd have been hosed too. But and thank you for your service, too.

SPEAKER_03 35:53

Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 35:54

No problem.

SPEAKER_03 35:54

I I mean, really interesting. I went from, you know, $30,000 a year in the army to a student essentially. I was at UVU doing the business management school while I was trying to start my own business. So I was essentially living on student loans to pay my bills. My uh wife was a teacher. Nothing, I mean, frivolous from us for those three years. I reinvest everything back into the company, but what a difference having that perseverance, that tenacity, that relentlessness was for me in the sense like uh then 2019, maybe that year, I made like 250 grand that I made that I took home. Um, life-changing when you go from a kid making 30 grand to 250 grand. Woof, look out world, you know. Yeah. Well, and and that was a level of money and success that I didn't even know was possible. I bet not prior to that. Coming up from your childhood, yeah. It's like, who would know? But at that point, then you have more resources to reinvest into the company, to reinvest into yourself. And that's something I wish I would have done earlier was reinvest or invest in myself more, faster, quicker, learned more, got a mentor. Um, because the reality is you can learn how to do anything. But you teaching yourself how to do something, maybe the learning curve is me starting an e-commerce business taking three years to become profitable, versus I get a good coach, a good mentor, somebody who can help me teach me where I can do it in a year. 12 months or so, correct. Correct. You can shortcut the time requirement with a good, a good mentor. But that three-year investment uh becomes 250 grand, becomes a million, and then the business just takes off and becomes an empire. Um, but that becomes the facilitator for everything else that I do. Yep, of course. So that was all the long way of answering, you know, my superpower was probably that I just didn't give up. Just perse persevered. I just persevered.

SPEAKER_00 37:48

I love it. And and that's probably a common one that you'll find with a lot of entrepreneurs too, is we're kind of bad at giving up.

SPEAKER_03 37:57

Yeah, we're bad at giving up.

SPEAKER_00 37:59

There's a lot of things that suck, but I'm gonna Yeah, it's like a lot of people wouldn't even want to get out of bed and get excited, and I'm like, oh, let's go. I'm just gonna crush it today. But yeah, uh, but yeah, don't don't be don't be scared to not see a reward too, because those rewards will come, and it's okay to have your target down the road and tell people that too. You know, it's okay.

SPEAKER_03 38:17

I'm grateful for that mindset in particular. I don't think I actually I've done a disservice, I don't talk about that enough. Um, when I was finishing like uh my undergraduate, right? It was business management and military science. Um, and I had the option to go join the army again. I wasn't making any money yet. So active duty army, maybe I make you know $100,000 as an officer. Um or I had the option via networking connections that I had made in in the business school, that maybe I go get a job and I make you know $120, $150,000 a year. And that seemed, you know, huge to me. I'd never never even thought about that kind of money before. But why? It takes away from everything that you've been working towards. And that's where I had the the issue where I like I couldn't quit, I couldn't give up because I've been working towards something, I'm gonna see it through. I want to get the payoff. If I'm gonna put my name on something, I want it to be something that I can be proud of. Yep. I almost felt like if I walked away and took one of those other jobs, sure, they would come with stability and I would have benefits and like that would take care of me and my family. That would never give me the lifestyle that I dreamed of. It would never let me become the fullest version of myself. It almost becomes something that I would have to acknowledge that I failed. And I wasn't willing to acknowledge that I was failing. I was gonna find a way to succeed. That's it.

SPEAKER_00 39:51

No, no, Parker. Uh, did you have a lot of people counting on you early into your journey, or was it just you and your wife? Like did you have children yet? Did you have the same family members that was counting on you?

SPEAKER_03 40:02

Great, great question and thought here. Um when I started, and actually I think this is why I failed for so long. Okay. There wasn't. There wasn't people depending on me. Okay. It was just me. And so I was trying to hit everything out of the park, get rich quick. Yep, getting up there and just swinging for the fences. Yeah, yeah. No traction. Okay. My wife, uh, like I mentioned, she was a school teacher, she was making 30 grand a year or whatever, but her bills are paid. I had student loans. So like we were our needs were met. But that also meant that I didn't have a reason to continue to grow. But my uh senior year in college, um, we find out my wife's pregnant. Changes everything, everything shifted. I mean, like that is the definitive moment in my life where I went back to the business that next, you know, Monday morning or whatever, and I wasn't swinging for the fences anymore. It was a no shit, how do I put food on the table? Okay. How do I feed this child? Base hits more or less, yeah. Correct. Um, but I got into the real nitty-gritty stuff. I started actually learning about the different KPIs I needed to track when it came to like my meta, Facebook ads, things like that. I started looking at, okay, what's the click-through rate on my ad? And if the click-through rate on my ad is good, that means the ad is doing well and it's taken to the landing page. But if the landing page isn't converting, then there's a message with the story there. So I got into all of that stuff. And that's when I started um trying to learn how to do things in a different method. So instead of just taking the textbooks from the business school, I start finding and getting exposure to people like uh Russell Brunson, the ClickFunnels World, but his book, Expert Secrets, and I'm learning about how to do the hook, the story, the offer, and the messaging that's gonna relate to people. And I started putting my face on the company and the brand and the products. And it wasn't just me trying to sell a product on a sales funnel. It was me going out telling a story or making the sale or doing something goofy. Like I had ads where I'm wearing like a 1920s bodybuilder singlet costume uh or like I'm doing I'm doing Y squats with a flagpole over my head, you know.

SPEAKER_00 42:10

Love it, just whatever dropped their attention.

SPEAKER_03 42:12

Correct. And and I went all in on it and I got to know the nitty-gritty stuff. I got to learn how the business was actually going to function. And like you said, it was base hits. Yep. I just started hitting enough base hits that I was getting runs.

SPEAKER_00 42:27

And then if I'm getting run enough runs, you know, you know they're gonna start stacking up for that's it. Maybe uh we should talk about that for a minute. Is I think too many people, when they start on this entrepreneurial path, that they go up there and try to hit grand slams and home runs. It's okay to just get little bunts and little base hits, but like Parker and I identified, you want to stack those, and then all of a sudden, like in my industry, I try to get one anchor job a year, like a big, big anchor job, a home run. And then we just are very selective on the stuff that we kind of bid throughout the year. But a lot of it's small, small little wins. There's very few big home run jobs that we're we're hitting, they're just consistent, solid, flow of all the time.

SPEAKER_03 43:06

So, and that's I think what you you typically want to try to strive for, right? Because if you restart every month from zero, yeah, that's a huge risk in your business. You want to just how do you how do you have a consistent base? Yep, and then build that. Yep. So for me, it was I got really good at meta ads, Facebook and Instagram, um, to a landing page. I got really good at the messaging, being consistent from the the ad to the landing page to convert through a sale. The fulfillment was good, upsells, and then uh how do we provide a greater lifetime value to the customer with additional products that support the initial product or services that support the initial service? And it sounds like you have a similar model, you know, you get in, you product next thing.

SPEAKER_00 43:49

And then we try to build a relationship with what we've identified, uh, Parker, is if we can build a relationship. So in my world, there's a spec book, we get blueprints and spec books. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the contracting, but there's Blueprint spec books. And then in the spec book, there'll be certain manufacturers that I have to work with. There's typically three that are listed. So what I've done is build a killer relationship with these manufacturers. So I'm their preferred installer, if you will. And that's very, very huge. So even if the GC doesn't really care for me, I usually, and there's obviously there's been a couple guys in my history that we haven't seen eye to eye or whatever, but I'll still get on their job because the manufacturer and I have such a great relationship. Let me ask you this, because this is a question people ask me all the time.

SPEAKER_03 44:32

Yeah. Do you ever think that somebody looks at you with uh the level of success that you have now? Okay. For example, you got a Starbucks on right now? Is that that it? Okay. Yeah. You got a Sprite? Yes, sir. Uh you got a you've got a pista club panic. Correct. Awesome car. Thank you. But do people, do you ever get the sense that people just resent you because of the success? And so that maybe presents you from getting jobs? Or do you view the alternative where they say, man, that level of success, like that's somebody that is trustworthy that we can work with?

SPEAKER_00 45:04

So you, you, my wife would love to hear this question. So the first one, a lot of people have kind of snubbed their nose at me. They feel like I'm bragginocious, they feel like I'm flexing a little bit. There's very few people, Parker, in my industry that even know that I have like I would never go to one of I I wear my watch to meetings, but I would never roll up in my car or anything like that because of the. You don't jump out of the pista with the cock gun. Correct. You read no ladder strapped on it. But what it is is like the guys that I write the contracts with, they would take it as like uh encouragement. But the guys that I'm dealing with in the field, they're just nine to five guys, they're kind of stuck in this dead-end job, they're miserable. And so I really I went in there first thinking they'd be so proud of me. I was like, you know, check this out. I I I actually climbed through the ranks, like I got up out of the mud. Like I'm they're like, dude, why do I give a crap? Like, get that piece of crap out of here, you spoil a little. And I and it's so yeah, I've had a mindset thing. I think so. And I've had a lot more hate than I have had love from my industry about my car and my lifestyle and stuff like that. But it's interesting because there's a ton of money in contracting, but a lot of the guys stayed at that poverty level or at least act like it so they don't get sniffed out or made fun of or whatever, too. But I'm very proud of it. I'm very proud of who I am. And and uh no nothing came easy to my wife and I. So I'm gonna go around and be who I am. And uh obviously there's a lot of people that like me for who I am. And if you don't like me for who I am, I feel like it's your loss, you know, because there's a lot that we have to offer too.

SPEAKER_03 46:37

It's it's an interesting one. I get asked that very consistently. Um and to me, I always view it as a it's a it's a scarcity mindset thing. Like the people who are are afraid of the cars, they view that as something uh negative, they view that as a sign that that maybe you're just being a show-off, or like you said, braggadocious that you know it's it's their own fixation, their inability to recognize this is someone who has worked hard, became someone valuable enough to earn enough to have that, to live that life. I view it as an inspirational thing. You do, but I I I recognize there's a pretty big split on that. And so the people who are typically willing to grow, who want to grow, who want to learn to do better, they're the people that support correct you and that. And the people who are stuck in a fixated way where they aren't going to progress, they haven't learned the lesson they need to learn at that level, those are the ones that typically have the issue from my perspective.

SPEAKER_00 47:35

Mine mine too, Parker. And uh even touching back on what you talked about a while ago, like uh my high school buddies, like we were talking about kind of stuck developing younger years. I had to get away from all like my peers and stuff because I couldn't share my wins or my losses. That's another thing that a lot of people don't think about is my losses are so big or whatever that I was they felt like I was bragging to them about me and uh landing this yard. They were like, I can't believe you're even bidding jobs like that or doing jobs like that. And I'm like, whoa, like that's just kind of normal. But yeah, it was kind of interesting to hate exactly. It kind of outgrew them, and then to get hate from them, and then to hear comments that they felt like I cheated my employees or things like that, too. You know, it's just like that's that one always always frustrates me because like we we go out of our way to really try and take care of our people. Every one of my people loves me. Like they you could pull them in here and they'd like Adam treats us fairly. We pay probably the top wages in our industry. So I took it really offensive when my high school friends are like, yeah, you're you know, you're cheating people to get where you're at. Like, I'm paying them fairly, but I'm I've got a lot more risk. And that's maybe something that a lot of these people fail to realize. Parker is the risk that you and I have, you know. I've I've got it all in. If one of my guys today, bless his heart, falls off, wrecks a truck, falls through a roof, anything like that, we could be talking about a totally different situation, you know. So there's a ton of risk involved in what we do. Um, even our hot tar, we have a hot tar kettle that gets this uh tar to like 350 degrees. That'd maim someone for life if it burped on them or bubbled on their face or whatever. So there's a lot of risk that goes into what we do too. But yeah, it was kind of hurtful because I was like you, Parker, growing up. I was always encouraged and inspired by the people that had more. Even though I didn't grow up with it either, I was always encouraged by it. And so when I got into that position, I was like, why aren't these people coming to me and asking me for little nuggets or whatever? And and what it was is they were intimidated by me. Even though I was the same Adam that they grew up with, it was almost like I was a reflection of things they didn't do in their own life, maybe. And they just correct. Yeah, they they they were resentful that I dared do it, and then that I come and talk about it so openly too, you know. But yeah, that was a that was a kind of a hard transition in my life, honestly. Uh losing my peers and all that. But I'm I'm thankful because I kind of outgrew them and now I've I'm around amazing people like you guys that let me know that it is okay to prosper and it is okay to be all these things that we are.

SPEAKER_03 50:04

You know, I I'm curious for for the viewers, if you've experienced something like this, would you just drop a comment below, maybe share the story as much as you're willing to? But I'm I'm I think this is actually a lot more common than most people recognize. Cause and it's not something that I've talked to other guests about really, but it's true. Um and I as you're yeah, as you were sharing that, I'm I'm thinking the parallel in my life where okay, I started to have a lot of success 2019 through 2020, 21, 22. Um, and that's when people maybe started to reach out was 2022 about like, hey, how are you doing this, man? Yeah. And I'm like, oh, why are you asking now? Like I was when we were hang out or whatever, and you saw and you you were there, you just made fun of me for not going snowboarding with you on Friday anymore, not hanging out late on the weekends or any of that stuff. Like I was I was a little bit ridiculed for the things that I was sacrificing to build the company. And it took years for them to come around and finally swallow the pride and start asking you know for help, tips, advice, any of that stuff. But those relationships had already been lost. Correct. Like it just was never the same after that. Correct.

SPEAKER_00 51:20

So I'm I imagine that this is something that's and do you feel that it's more on them? Because I feel like like like we were talking about earlier, I've kind of developed and got turned into a better person, but I'm willing to bring that person up with me. And I've I've always told myself, like, the reason they don't invite me snowboarding with them or snowmobiling or whatever is because like yeah, I I don't know. I just feel like they resent me now, to be honest. But yeah, I've had that that feel too. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 51:46

Is it on them? Maybe, yes and no. Um, here's the the nuance that I will admit is that relationships require time and attention to cultivate and maintain. And perhaps I sacrificed too much time or attention from those relationships for them to be maintained on my end. And so maybe there's a resentment there that I left them behind or that I, you know, I stepped out of the relationship enough that they could it's a good way to look at it.

SPEAKER_00 52:16

Yeah, like while we were grinding or whatever, and they were playing, but yeah, like we they felt like maybe we left them behind during that process. And and I know that was never your intent and it was never mine. I was just doing what I needed to do to develop as a person and grow. You know, I was I was a little calk whore, if you will. I would caulk all over the West. I mean, I I sacrificed so much too, Parker. We just we just went hard, we didn't know any different. Yeah, just go, go, go, go, go. Well, you set the goal in your head and you just were chasing it relentlessly. Yep. It's it's been fun. I mean, yeah, I I I admired your studio here. And and for us, we just bought our, it's always been a goal of mine to own my own commercial space. And uh, we bought our own just last year, whatever. And that's been able to Parker, it's been so amazing. And then what I didn't rec recognize is it's almost like the old what is it, Kevin Costner movie, You Build It, They Will Come, where they build the baseball diamond. Uh so we've been Field of Dreams. Field of Dreams, excuse me. Yeah, Field of Dreams. So um we build that, and it's amazing the talent and the people that are attracted to our organization just by having that. Because it's not just a dead-end caulk company anymore, too. We've created like a career path, and so it's amazing the people that were. There's room for progression. Tons of it. If I'm gonna sit there and try to progress in my own life, damn right, so I'm gonna expect you to progress and be better too. Oh, I love it. But yeah, some people do, some people don't, brother, as you know, you know.

SPEAKER_03 53:39

So we um I actually had talked uh was it last year, maybe last May, or maybe it was two years ago. Uh I spoke at Akbar Sheik's Mastermind in Dallas and I I actually shared on that concept. Okay. Um, where you know, I had been in business since 2016. So at that point, it was like seven or eight years. Okay. And uh 100% of people who had left my organization had given us referrals for who should be hired or who should replace them. And I didn't realize how amazing like that specifically is. You think about people leaving the organization, but they're leaving on a good enough term that they would be like, hey, I w this person would be a great fit. Hey, this is my friend or my my so then you think about, okay, well, why are they leaving? And if they're the reality was we invested a lot into all of our employees to the point where we could develop them not just with, you know, the customer service skill or the sales skill. But um, for example, we got a guy who wants to do like videography and wants to be uh a graphic designer and another one that that wanted to do interior design. And so we give them projects within the company or the business that let them build their portfolio, their skill, develop in line with what they're interested in. So they get a progression path in the company that gets them to where they want to go. Because I recognize, you know, sales or customer service maybe isn't anybody's long-term goal, but we get them to a point where they're comfortable enough doing something that they can go and apply and chase the dream job. And then they're satisfied because they've developed that you've invested in them. Yep. And then they refer some like we always continue to grow, continue to invest people, give them a pathway to progression.

SPEAKER_00 55:20

Smart. How long in your business before you recognize that? Because that it took me a little while to recognize that. I've only been implementing that career path or move forward path in my business for maybe the last four years, Parker. Did you recognize it earlier than I did?

SPEAKER_03 55:34

I kind of built it in from square one and I didn't even know that I built it in. Okay. But it was the um the military has leaders essentially do uh performance counseling. Okay. On the active duty, you do it every month. On the reserves national guard, you do it quarterly. So we started doing that, um, where essentially I would just sit down one-on-one with everybody, whether that was I took them to lunch one time a month, or we would go get coffee, a roxbury smoothie, whatever. But I just sit down with them one-on-one. We'd go over what their job was, like their um, their actual roles and responsibilities were, how the performance was, and then what their personal goal were was. So, like if they needed to earn more money, okay, well, let's look at what additional responsibility can we give you to justify to earn more, right? So we would look at that. How, okay, how does what you're doing gonna drive more value back to the company? And if it is, we're gonna compensate you for that. But it it just created a uh it's almost like an after action review for each individual person on a monthly basis. But it just became a how can we help you develop in line with what you want? But having those conversations is also where people start saying, Hey, I'm going to school for computer science. What can I support you with? Or hey, I have this idea that like we have um a dude who who runs the show over there now for the most part, but he uh was going to UVU for computer science. Um he identified, hey, I could build a program that will essentially check shipping rates across all of the providers, bid them out automatically based on the computer dementia or computer computated dimensions of like these products exist in these boxes, and those boxes are all gonna fit together in a package. It's gonna look like this to ship. So let's bid out all of them and then buy the most cost-effective shipping solution and print that label automatically. So he like goes and creates this thing that saves us like 15 hours of man man hours every every week. Yeah, it's and I'm like, okay, 15 man hours a week at you know 20 bucks an hour. Right. Like, let's give him a cut of that and let's reward the the innovation. But then he takes that and starts doing, okay, well, what other things can I automate? And he starts looking for ways to build the company for us because he knows he gets rewarded when he does that. Love it.

SPEAKER_00 57:48

What a what a what a great uh thing to teach, do, and reward. Um, similar, we have a gentleman in our uh organization, kind of the similar thing. He's been implementing AI into my business, Parker. And uh yeah, he he was able to come in under budget and and do more tasks with his AI bot. And so we we've set up an amazing structure for him, and it's just so awesome to watch him take ownership of it and then do it too. And it's it's pretty cool as an owner to sit back and watch these right individuals when you give them enough, they'll really take it and run with it too. Well, I'm uh it's fun.

SPEAKER_03 58:24

I'm a fan of the Austrian School of Economics, and there's a concept that they teach there that is something to the effect of you get more of what you incentivize. Okay. So I've always just had it in my head that I should incentivize things that are beneficial to me or my company or my businesses. So anytime somebody's doing something that helps us, give them a bonus. Give them a tip. Take them out for like something, but actually invest in that relationship and the reward.

SPEAKER_00 58:49

So pro tip. Pro tip. I like it. There's a lot of pro tips flying out here. And then uh while we're talking about pro tips, it's just a thought that I'm having. One of my guys, as we were coming up, I was frustrated. I kept losing some key players to competition or whatever, just not keeping them satisfied enough. And I'm way better at that now. But early on, and then one of my mentors said, Adam, don't you think that a guy quits on Monday morning, brother? He's like, they've quit Friday night around the dinner table with their wife. He's like, they're just telling you on Monday. And I was like, man, that that's the so that really stuck with me through the years on how to keep my people happy and engaged and moving the their own personal goals and in life forward too.

SPEAKER_03 59:31

You know, that raises a thought for me. They quit on Friday with their their spouse at the dinner table. How do you build a community or a culture that keeps the spouse on board or engaged? That's a great thing. Because that actually is an investment in your business, the employee, the longevity. Correct. So one of the things that we've done, for example, is we do um in the summer, like a big employee appreciation. We go out, like rent top golf for a day or something like that. We do ours at Lagoon, yeah. Bring bring your spouse, come on out, and then it's actually my goal or mission during that. I don't um, I mean, you know, we explain, exchange pleasantries, we hang out with the employees and stuff. Of course, but really it's get to know the spouses, and get to know the wife, get to know the relationships that they have because that gives me, you know, as a leader, when I approach them, I have a stronger basis for the relationship, and I can I can be more invested in their lives and I can ask about their family, I can ask about the things that they had going on outside of work. Um, so you learn that and you can become a better relationship-based leader. Agree. But also you get buy-in from the spouse.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:35

Yeah. Oh, Dave loves his job or Dave's bitching about so-and-so. Yeah, you do. You get kind of feedback and buy-in from the spouse too. But no, that's just something that we've both obviously identified too. And and same thing, Parker, that was one thing I failed to do early on, but I didn't have a team. But as we've grown this team of uh employee appreciation, family appreciation days, sometimes early, especially early on, my team had to travel a lot. And so I identified that was really hard on marriages and relationships. You know, I'm I'm sending these kids out of town for five days, and so I'd noticed there was a threshold. If I kept so-and-so out of town for so long, it was only a matter of time before their wife drug, said, We're quitting, or Adam's got to keep you in town. So, in answer for us to retain those kind of guys, we really focused our search on just projects here in Utah. You know, we do the search surrounding states, but 90, 80% of our work's here in the state. And then, um, yeah, and then just doing those family appreciation. I I like to take uh my employees and their families up to Strawberry Reservoir. We do like a little summer fishing day, uh, and then we do uh summer party at Lagoon and then a winter party every year, too. And same thing, just take that time to get to know their kids, get to know their family, get to whoever, and we open it up to whoever. I'm like, you can bring your girlfriends, your friends, uh, 10 kids, whoever you guys want. We've got the whole pavilion, and it's been really uh critical on us retaining those really good guys, you know. They they for sure they're working their butts off for us, so well and their families do too, I'm sure. That's it. And then I'm sure you like around Christmas time and the holidays, we really try to take care of them there too. Yeah, definitely. It's very important. I mean, I grew up in that poor family where my mom was always stressed about Christmas or stressed about those things, and so it's really nice to be able to relieve some of that stress for employees. For sure.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:20

But I'm curious, you talked about building the team earlier, and that was one of the things that you wish you had done earlier. Correct. When you started hiring your first employees, how did you do that? What was good, what was bad, what would you do differently?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:35

Right. Another great question. So in in my industry, it was fairly small at the time. Uh, and a gentleman that I had worked with at a different organization sought me out and said, Hey, Adam, I'm ready to leave here. I'm kind of at a dead end job. I've been watching you for about a year. It seems like you've got a good thing going. And I was really intimidated, Parker, because I I wanted that we didn't have a ton of money at the time. It was just kind of me out there doing it. So I was really flattered, but intimidated too. But same thing, I didn't back away from the challenge. I took the challenge head on, said Derek, I can start you. And uh things I would, I I I probably would have treated that early employee better, to be honest. You know, I I took it for granted, his skill set and where he was. And I uh yeah, I probably would have taken that a little more serious too. I just thought these guys, like I could just pick and pull whichever guys I wanted, and da-da-da, and that wasn't the case. And and they, you know, so I would have I would have treated my first employee a little better, maybe too.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:34

I think that that's really important hindsight for the viewers right now. Most of the viewers um are small business owners, like really small. I mean, some are still in the solopreneur phase, others are just building their first teams. Okay. Uh handful have employees existing. I would imagine that the vast majority of people are looking at their first hire and they get overwhelmed by the responsibility or the risk associated with that. Um some that have come up in my my business and my coaching clients has been the fear of okay, well, what happens if you know the business starts to go south and now I've got somebody's livelihood who's dependent on me and there's a fear there. We've had people who are, well, if I invest in this person, my take-home pay decreases. Usually there's a mathematical equation where we can show them how it actually pays off. Um but those are real thoughts. There's fears uh associated with that. How did you work through that fear when you hired this first guy?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:37

Yeah, um, just I mean, I had all those thoughts too, honestly, Parker. You know, I was so worried that we were so small. Uh yeah, just kind of work through them and then just had enough trust too. So some people like some people have a hard time trusting people. I'm pretty good at it. That might be my second superpower, Parker. Is I'm really good at trusting people, especially if you come to me and do it. So, so Derek, and I knew I knew the gentleman had a family and all those things too, and I took that responsibility really seriously. But once he gave me the freedom to go open up, I wanted to prove to him that I was working just as hard as him in the field, too. And the way I proved that, the results were more jobs for him to go do.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:17

But but yeah, I mean, I was kind of uh like you, I'm kind of competitive. I would imagine you're pretty competitive, and I didn't want him to think that it is my top strength of Cliston Clifton's strengths. Yeah, like I didn't want him just to think that he was crushing in the field. So at that time, I had probably way more work than he could. So it wasn't really a stress of me of it slowing down. I just wanted to make sure I could keep him happy and keep him engaged, was my big struggle.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:41

But one of the things that I think is maybe important too. When you hire people, did you hire to cover your weaknesses or build on your strengths?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:53

Great. Early on to uh build on my strength. Like early on, I was just trying to find guys that were as quick and as fast as me. At the install. Okay. Now, when we hire Parker, it's where I'm weak and incompetent at. And don't be afraid of that, viewers. Like, hire your weaknesses as cliche as that is, it is so powerful. I'm a big, big believer in that. Me too constantly. The team that I have with me right now, I'm I'm not the best at a couple things inside there, and they dominated that. And then the things that I'm really good at when we're just a power, a power team now.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:27

Well, and you think about how much more overall capability that gives your organization. Huge, huge. So my one of my coaches and mentors, Mandy Keen, she shares a concept of uh she calls it the Rainmaker Triad. It's similar to the business triumvirate. But she teaches that every Uber successful organization has three key players in it.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:49

They have a rainmaker. Typically, you know, small businesses, that's the entrepreneur because no one's gonna sell better than you. The the rainmaker is the person that's out building the relationships, talking about the product, the service, they're making the sales, they're driving revenue. Correct. So you get a rainmaker. Okay. Then you get an engineer. Okay. Somebody who refines the systems, the process, the back end. They make the fulfillment, the service good. Okay. And then you get the creator. The creator is the person that makes it beautiful, the product or the service that makes it beautiful, well packaged, delivered well. Um appealing all the way around. You have to have those three key roles. And if you look at again, any Uber successful business, all three of those are filled, they're built in. So for me, I'm a rainmaker. I enjoy having the conversations, talking to people, I enjoy uh helping others, and that drives in the sales and and brings me business. I can be an engineer, like I'm passionate about building systems in the sense of that's what I coach and what I teach. And I've had a lot of success with that. But building out like computer systems, the back end, like I was talking about with with our guy who like did the shipping. Yeah, that's not me. Right. I gotta hire for those things, but that makes our company better. And then the creator side, you know, I can put on that hat and I can try to be a creative, but I'm never gonna be the guy who makes stuff beautiful because really my mindset is just if it's good enough, just it's good enough. Yeah. If I get 80% of the concept, I'm gonna send it. Yeah. So I hire for those positions, especially. Um, for example, here, you know, in the podcast studio, like I'm the brain maker. Yep. Trinity is uh, you know, we we hired her to be my executive assistant, but she's kind of like the engineer. Yep. And then I've got uh Bart. Bart is the creative and he's the creator and makes the product and the service good and refines it, does the editing and all that. So boom, we've got our three, but I have to hire for the people that I can't be consistently or good enough.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:56

Of course. And it's almost the same in ours. There's me, uh, our senior estimator, and then our project manager. And they I can't meet at the shop every morning and get the guys lined out and make sure all the products uh, you know, there's just too many guys. So we've delegated that to a guy that was way good at it, and I used to work with him, and I knew he was good at it because I used to work with him and he used to ride my ass hard. So uh he he's kind of taking that division over. And then the estimating, uh with you know, I was really good at it, Parker, when it was on the paper with the scalar and the wheel and stuff, but once they digitized it all, it kind of went over my head. Even though I'm like and so I was like, hey, this is my bottleneck now. Let's find a guy that's really good at this and just do does takeoff and reads blueprints every day. And man, there's there's a right guy for everything, let's just say.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:43

And well, so I view that as like you're the rainmaker. Yep, you've got the relationships, the people, you're taking care of it, you're driving the deals. Your uh senior estimator sounds like your engineer, where he is, you know, he's the one going through and figuring out how everything's gonna work and how it's gonna be processed. Yep, and then you've got your like person who's going on the ground, doing the work, and they're doing quality, aesthetically pleasing. Yep, that's the creator. That's it. So there you go. You've got the the Rainmaker triad built into your business.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:11

We do. And the the PM guy, yeah, he's more just making sure like the quality's there, the people are happy with their experience, all that. So, like the creator and then the engineer, our senior estimator. It's interesting how this person just wants to naturally start fixing the little issues and stuff. Yeah. And then I'm an owner too, Parker, that just lets them kind of get in there and create. I like a consultant that I work with from Denver, he's like, Adam, a lot of the owners we work with are not so willing for change like you and your wife are. He's like, I've got to give you guys some credit for that because a lot of owners are just dead stuck down a path. And he's like, You and your wife are willing to adapt and change and all that. So uh yeah, just a thought I was having there too. But yeah, it it's fun.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:55

I think that's a super important thing is the flexibility, the adaptability, because you're gonna run into obstacles, roadblocks, you're gonna have pain points. If you can't, if you're so rigid that you can't adapt to those, yeah, good luck.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:06

Then you get stuck. You bottleneck, you fail. I would agree. And even talking briefly about like trust or whatever, like uh, I was there's a lot of people in my industry for whatever reason, Parker, that just taste small. One or two guys, kind of an owner, operator, uh uh opportun, what'd you call it? An opportunity or solopreneur. Solopreneur, solopreneur, that's a nice term. But uh, so for me, it was easy to trust people. I think I was telling you earlier, that's one of my things. But uh, the quicker you can trust people and trust that they're gonna come to work and do the best they can every day, yeah. You're you're the the better off you're gonna be. I would find myself getting frustrated early on in my career, thinking, oh, maybe this guy's trying to sabotage me, or I would have done things differently. And it took a mentor to tell me, Adam, you've got to recognize this gentleman's not gonna roll out of bed and be like, I'm gonna go work for Bonneville and do a shitty job today. He's like, he's probably doing it.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:57

How do I go sink my employer today?

SPEAKER_00 1:12:00

Yeah, he's like, dude, he's probably that's the best of his ability. So you've got to just recognize people with other abilities, coach, develop that or that train, move them into a different lane. That's it. So I don't get frustrated now. I do exactly that, Parker. I pull them in if they're hitting a wall and we're like, hey, let's help you get here. Here's a training program, here's a process to get there, let's do it, implement it. We'll have a 90-day, 60-day review on it, see where you're getting.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:24

So I like you also mentioned a minute ago, um, you're the owner that's willing to be hands-off. Yes. You let your your project manager run that show. Oh, I like that. You let that that engineer could take the ownership and go find the ways to improve those things. That's a super important, I think, skill set. And it's not one that comes inherently to most people because it requires you to have that trust. I'm a big advocate of just leading with trust, start with it. Okay. And don't take it away unless they've done something to take it away. But if you give them, you know, their scope of work, their left and right limit, you let them go operate within that. Let them drive that that forward. And it sounds like you're doing a great job of practicing that right up the gate.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:04

Yeah, no, we do. We kind of like obviously we don't throw them to the wolves, uh, but we get them all trained and everything. And then yeah, we just stand back and let them. And then they just, like I told you, they report to us twice a week. And that's where we identify if something's not working or whatever. You know, I uh I used to get a little frustrated at uh that they would keep things from me. Okay. Like, like, and then I would find out a week later or whatever. And I said, you know, Adam, like if it's not a major thing and it's not costing us financial or a partnership or a relationship, then let them figure it out, you know. And they've done really well out of it. They've done really good at taking ownership on screw-ups and wins too, not just bad things. They they take ownership on the wins, and it's it's been pretty fun, Barker. That's a good sign that you've got the right people in the right place. Yeah, it is. It's been really fun. And and it's been, I wouldn't say a challenge. It's been uh kind of interesting getting these people to where they are, if you will. And and but yeah, it's there is Can we unpack that a little bit?

SPEAKER_03 1:14:00

Uh so I think that's a struggle for a lot of people is you hire, you know, and you you try to put someone into a role that they're not geared for. That's it. For example, you're a rainmaker. If we tried to make you be exclusively a uh like the engineer and actually doing the bidding and stuff now, like you said, with the digital, that's not you.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:20

No, I'd get all depressed and frustrated and wouldn't be a producer at all like me.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:25

What was the process of getting the people to the right place? How did you did you, you know, get to know them as an individual and you you identify and assess what their skills are, you put them into the right place? Did you let them develop and then in line with their skills, you're progressing them to the right place?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:39

So uh as we were hiring for these uh skills or these positions, if you will, a mentor of mine said, Adam, give them a problem. He said, I don't care if it's a problem that you're dealing with in your company right now. He said, That would be the best. And then take your top five candidates, give them that problem, and let them go stew on it, and then do them for a second interview. And the pro people that bring you the best solution to that problem, there you go. He's like, give them a interview. Isn't it a smart way to approach things? And so we started implementing that, and that's how we found our senior estimator. And then our project manager, uh Parker, I just worked side by side with him for so long that I just knew that he was a good leader, he was very good at what we do. I just needed to create a training program for him to train our guys. Awesome. That's been so fun, too. And then he's just taking great ownership of it. I tried sticking him in some positions that he wasn't comfortable, and and it didn't work for either of us. Instead of getting mad and firing him or whatever, we just said, hey, Matt, that that didn't work or whatever. Let's put you back and do this thing. And it's been so great. And I'm so thankful to my people for sure. But that's awesome. But yeah, it's kind of tailored it. And then I would recommend like maybe try that. If you're looking to hire someone to delegate your workload to, try to give them a challenge. Say, hey, we're getting 10 bids in a month or whatever, a week. Adam's not able to do them. How would you approach this problem? And that's how we found our senior estimator, and he's been just awesome. That's awesome to hear. That's a good process and a good system. I think somebody could take, they can replicate that, they can learn from it. And then you can add your own stuff to it or whatever. And it and then it, even if you don't hire those guys, you might get a free solution to your problem. Yeah. You know, I mean, don't be doing it like for that all the time, but it might give you a free solution for a problem your current team's dealing with. But and then for us too, Parker, we almost have two sets of teams because we have like our executive team, and then we built our install team too. So I've got to have a lot of faith that my PM is hiring the right people, understands my quality, all my things very clearly, so he doesn't make a wrong hire. And there was kind of a challenge of that early on, too. I'd be like, hey, uh PM, so-and-so called me for a job, and then I'd come in the next day, and that guy's got a job there. And I'm like, dude, just because I recommend someone or say he's reaching out to me, doesn't need even you need to hire him. Yeah. Maybe just keep a Rolodex of it. So it was just kind of setting those boundaries and setting that stuff. And and to the RPM's uh credit, like he had never been in that role, and I wanted it more for him, but it was just coaching him into that role. And he's done really well with it. But that's awesome. Yeah, it's fine.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:10

I think the coaching aspect is one of the most slept-on pieces of being an owner or an entrepreneur because when you, you know, go hands off, you get your your employees underneath you, you're trying to give them their lane. They need a piece of development as well, right? Uh you don't want to throw them to the wolves, like you said. Of course. Okay. We've talked about your background, we've talked about the business. Yep. Let's dive into the strategy a little bit. And the way I like to frame this, I built this podcast for me in the sense that when I started, I struggled for three years because I didn't get a mentor, I didn't ask for help, I didn't learn from other people. I locked myself in a room, I bottled necked or I I tunnel visioned on the work in front of me. And I just went and I did it. So I created this podcast largely to teach the next generation of owners, entrepreneurs, um that one, they can learn from people who are already in business, who are already doing it, who are already going through the problems, who've already learned the lessons. Right. They can shortcut the time that's then required to grow and develop. And uh that there's people out there who are able and willing to help. You dang right. That's the the premise here. So I want to ask about because your business, my business, very different businesses. Of course. There's usually some strategy that stays the same, the tactics change. But I want to know what's working for you right now when it comes to like client acquisition or lead generation. Is it referrals? Is it you go and you shake hands, you take people to lunch? Like, what's the the best strategy you see right now that someone could take and implement to grow their business?

SPEAKER_00 1:18:49

Yeah, uh, it comes back to when that company that I was doing all my work with, Parker blew up and all those guys kind of scattered everywhere. It's just those relationships and then just taking so much value in those relationships or whatever. Like, if I if anything, it's just it's the people, like the the the people, you know. Uh yeah, just as I think about it or whatever, the thing that just makes me it's it's just the people that I know. And then they they they co-sign for me, if you will. So I go, I know some guys now that are maybe VPs, if you will, Parker. And then they'll I'll take them. What really works for me is I'll take that that guy that I know in front of his management or estimating team that's maybe giving me a hard time. And this guy almost co-signs for me in front of his team, and then they're like, Oh crap, Adam and so-and-so are tight. Like, that's been really beneficial for us too. That's awesome. Yeah, identifying who that key guy is and then kind of feeding off that relationship.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:49

But so client acquisition piece, we're building the relationships. We're going out to lunch, we're shaking hands, we're kissing babies. Yep. When it comes to the actual business growth or business development strategy, then uh what are you seeing right now that's functional, that's working? How do you how would you grow your service-based industry again if you're going back and doing it five years ago?

SPEAKER_00 1:20:13

Yeah, yeah. I I would just go get out in front of more GCs and developers quicker. Like I uh like I was told you, I stayed with that one comfort company because I was kind of comfortable with them. I would get my message out a lot faster and then other other markets too. You know, up in Park City, we don't really mess up there, but now we do Parker, and then other scopes. I mean, if I was gonna do this again, and even if I lost everything tomorrow, I feel like I could get to where I am now a lot quicker. Do you uh do anything with like social media for your business? Not really. See, that that's where we're trying to get to too, is no, because most of my stuff is you go to a GC, you get on that bid list, and that's where those relationships are huge. And and being okay with failure too, you can just walk right into these GCs and say, hey, I'm so-and-so, I do this, put me on your on your list. And people don't realize that. They think there's like some C. Yeah, it's that easy. Oh, it's that easy. Like it really is. And then it's just being okay if they say no, that guy's not here. Like, and then just being tenacious enough to be like, okay, I want a meeting with him. Set me a meeting with him or give me a cell phone. For me, I just didn't take no for an answer either. But that's awesome. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:19

I'm you know, it's it's curious. I'm I'm good buddies with uh Zach Stratton. Okay. Stratton and Bratton. Of course. And I had asked him a similar question about like, what are you doing for social media? He's like, ah, we don't, yeah, we don't need it.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:30

No need. It's just we just walk in. Yeah. Yeah, we kind of use it as like a journal to to journal some of our projects that we've done in the past. Sure. But that's about it. I mean, I've had some amazing people hit me up for marketing and stuff like that. It just there's no benefit to it. If anything, my marketing would be spent on this kissing babies, lunches, shit, you know, they so-and-so's daughter graduating, send them a lu, uh, a luau or whatever. You know what I'm saying? That kind of stuff. We're rather than even a big online presence, Parker. It's not. I I kind of was uh persuaded that way a couple years ago to build a big old website or whatever. And uh every time a number calls me and I don't know who it is, I always ask them, hey, just so I can take Parker out for a stake or whatever, you know, where did you get my number? And like 95% of them are just word of mouth. Some of them are guys I don't even know. Yeah, you're like Steve with duh gave me, and I'm like, oh, tell Steve thanks. I don't even know who he is. But yeah, just that word of mouth is so big, too. That's awesome. Yeah, it's fun.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:26

I would I'd be curious because I don't have the actual answer here, um, but just the pattern that I see with with contractors and and adjacent businesses there is, you know, at what point is there an intersection between the relationship building and the social media presence that's a missed opportunity. Um, and I think that largely in the sense of, you know, could you go out and tell your story, the business story, talk about you know, what makes you unique, how you grew the company, how you have these people in these key spots, you know, all the things that we've talked about today. And somebody would say that, see that and be like, oh yeah, I really like the way that Adam's running that business, and that means that they gotta be great. And then they see, you know, on there also the different type of work that you do, the quality of work, and they're just like, maybe I'll reach out. Maybe I'll just reach out and we can because it you know, it might be uh uh managers from other contractors or or you know, construction companies or something that they need uh a partner and some guy just sees you and is like, yeah, I give them a shot.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:27

And I think more than ever, these young kids that are coming out of college lean on that. Parker, uh LinkedIn. It will continue to grow. Yeah, and LinkedIn's got me a couple jobs. We have a decent LinkedIn present uh presence, and I've got a couple jobs off of that, to be honest. Oh, right on. Um, but yeah, uh I mean maybe it is a big missed opportunity in the contracting world, you know. It very much.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:48

It just seems it's common. I mean, the response that you gave seems to be more and more common. Like I said, I got it from Zach recently too. And so I'm I'm my thought was like, man, if everybody's thinking like that, right? That's something that differentiates you then.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:03

That's just a thought. No, it's a beautiful thought. In fact, Jeeves, you know, Jeeves, don't yeah, he's he's works with a couple of his contractors and subs too, and he's he's always just kind of thought that too, and thought there's a big market there, a big opportunity that might be wasted. So we've explored a little bit of stuff down that road too. But uh yeah, it's mainly just the the foundation that we set up years ago, and we just make sure we pop in there every month or two. Like you said, those relationships take uh nurturing and time and everything too. You can't just do one job with a guy and then just hope for the next five years he's gonna use you. You have to actually nurture those relationships, put some effort into them, put some time, and and there'll be better relationships anyway if you do that. But for sure. Yeah, and and I mean, yeah, it's been it's been so fun, Parker. I just I I'm sitting here reflecting on it all and and these amazing questions. I'm like, man, how fun has it been? You know, there's it's definitely been challenging, bro. But it's been so fun too. Something I really like.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:59

You know, I've been running this show for a couple of years now. I get to sit across from awesome people. Yeah, everybody has a different, unique business. Every so I just get to learn so much from so many different people. I bet. And you you hear them share these experiences, share what they're doing, how it helps other people, I think, especially. It's just awesome. It's an awesome opportunity.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:21

No, it is. And I get really flattered when the random person off like Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn or whatever reaches out and that question you said earlier, like, what are you doing, Adam, to kill it or whatever? And like, I see that as an opportunity. I'm like, hey, bro, let's go have a coffee and talk. Yeah, it's it's so fun. And and to you people watching, like, reach out to these opportunities. If you have an uncle that's crushing it, you have a person in your ward in your community, whoever's crushing it, reach out to them. I I almost guaranteed that they would love to go to lunch with you and have you pick their brain. Yeah, but almost guaranteed.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:51

I mean, right before this um podcast, uh a guy who works at the Department of Corrections sent me a message uh, I guess just a couple weeks ago, scheduled lunch. Awesome. We just went to lunch, and he's like, Hey, I've got this business idea. This is my model. What do you can you give me some advice, some feedback pointers? I'm like, dude, I get to go and solve a puzzle that I love, like the entrepreneurship piece, I love the coaching piece. I love seeing what different people are doing and how they have different problem sets and how those like it's all just a fun puzzle for me.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:22

Nope, I love it. And and uh kind of touching on what like it made me think of what our biggest problem set is in Bonneville. And and for me, it's it's getting my message out there. So maybe a marketing campaign might be good, Parker. You know, because what happens for us is let's say we're working with contractor A. Contractor A has 10 estimators working for them, okay, because we're working with all the big dogs, and we may be working with only one or two estimators out of that whole thing. So the estimator two cubicles away may not even know that Bonneville caulking exists. So it's been trying to get that message to more people within this if we call it deepening the bench, yeah strengthening the bench.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:06

How do you build the awareness around all that?

SPEAKER_00 1:27:08

Correct. And then what we found too, Parker, is some of these customers of ours guard us like an old guard. They're like, oh, dude, if you start using Bonneville, it'll pull them away from my jobs. And I'm like, bro, pimp us out. Yeah, like pimp me out.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:21

Like, I'm we'll hire more people, we'll build a team, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:28

Oh, yeah. Hey, I will. Because in my in my industry, Parker, a lot of guys don't really build. They're just one or two guys, like I kind of said, there's there's there's a guy that kills it or whatever, that's our biggest competitor. And I like it because he's good competition. But most of them, yeah. So they they kind of guard us. They're like, hey, we don't want to you, you know, Joey to use you two doors down because then you won't be able to do my high school in Richfield or whatever. Just yeah. So that's been a challenge of ours, is trying to get our brand out there, even within the same industry or the same organization. And like I could say like Big D. We work a ton with Big D, but Big D is so big, they've got like health, industrial, educational, uh four or five different divisions, and we may be only doing tilt-ups with them and missing all their hospitals, all their schools, all their other stuff. So that's been a challenge for us is to just try to get in there and make sure all the estimators know us and they're aware of us. But yeah. Biggest problem is getting the message out there. Yes. That we own a yeah, yeah. Do you want to elaborate on it? Do you want me to go? Why do you do what you do? Ooh, that's a good question. Do you want the honest question? I'm gonna give you the honest question. Because Parker is the the thing that I'm the best at to make the most money at. And that sounds chauvinistic, if you will, but it's the reality. And we all do these things for to make money. And I identified early on that caulking and waterproofing I was really good at. And if I took it serious, that I'd be able to have a decent life from it. So that's why I do it. And now I do it because I enjoy the challenge of becoming better, and I enjoy showing my kids what a good, hardworking, like entrepreneur can be too. I kind of enjoy that.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:16

Why is it the best thing? Or why is it the thing you do the best to make the money at?

SPEAKER_00 1:29:23

Why is it? Oh man, because I put the most time into it to develop those skills early on. Uh I didn't share this earlier. I went uh to respiratory therapy school and had and I did all the academic work, passed it all, was doing my clinical rotations up with a U and had a little child die on us on our on my NIC at the NICU during my clinical rotation. And Parker, that was heavy on me, bro. I didn't realize how heavy that would be. And so I I walked away from that. And so that that's why I went down the caulking. So the why is I tried other things and it didn't feel like I was mentally strong enough to do a career 40 years of having little babies die on me. So I got out of the house.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:08

Um, you know, we just had our fourth child. Okay. Uh he spent the first couple weeks of his life in the NICU. So you know all about the RTs then. He was born with a cymbilical cord around his neck, prevented the initial breath. When he got it unwrapped and he's gasping for air, ruptured his lungs. Oh my god. Caused uh, you know, the sucking chest wounds type deal. They had to do the uh needle chest decompression on him, chest tube, seal it. Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:36

Whoof, heavy stuff. Very and that was it, Parker. At the time when I was doing my clinicals, my wife was pregnant too. And I I couldn't handle how the the parents in the hallway were doing with that, and I related with them, and that's when my professor said I made my mistake is I put myself in their situation with my beautiful little dove pregnant at home, and that just mentally screwed me up for that. And yeah, and I'm and I'm thankful now. Um, because if I would have stayed in that career, I probably wouldn't have been satisfied. I probably would have just had a career and done and probably would have been a manager of a department somewhere or something. But I'm so thankful that I took the ladder of the two and went down this call.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:13

Okay, let me unpack that though, real quick, because now there's something that doesn't line up in my mind. You just told me you're doing this uh because it's what you do the best at that you can make the most money at. Then you said, okay, but you could have a career there. Probably end up as a manager, but you'd be unsatisfied. So now there's something that is more satisfying to you about Bonneville Cock than there is about other career fields. Right. So what is it that drives the satisfaction in your opinion?

SPEAKER_00 1:31:44

Yeah, uh it's probably the the getting my ass kicked a lot, Parker. I'm a glutton for punishment, dude. Honestly, like I like that. Uh I like that. But is it the relationships then?

SPEAKER_03 1:31:54

Yeah, exactly. Is it the project managers that are that are kicking your ass?

SPEAKER_00 1:31:58

Like what's yeah, like just the challenge. I like the challenge of like because every project is unique and every uh project creates its own challenges. So what worked on project A and B isn't gonna work on C and D. And and then we're running about 15 to 20 project active projects a time, too. And so it's very challenging. And I and I'm that kind of guy that needs to be stimulated with those challenges, and and that was it. Uh, when I was doing the the respiratory therapy stuff, I just wasn't challenged. The school academics came really easy to me. I blew through all the testing and stuff, and I just was like, oh, this like, yeah, but yeah, just being stimulated, I guess, brother.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:37

Okay. You mentioned a minute ago part of your why for this, separate from the money, was that you're trying to set an example for your kids. Right. What is it about this that sets a better example for your kids than if you were to be a respiratory therapist?

SPEAKER_00 1:32:54

Yeah, it'd be great. Uh, and I don't think either of them is bad, but at least for this, they get to see a firsthand seat of a guy that's okay with failing, and it's okay. And and that I'm still liked and loved, even though I fail all the time. And it's been really cool to see my kids talk about and witness, if you will. And then my son now, he's 20, and he could do anything he wanted, Parker. And he's like, Dad, I want to come work for the company. And there's such a sense of pride in that. Um, it's pretty neat to it's flattering to have him want to do what I do. And sure. And yeah, so yeah, the the kids has been fun.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:32

Okay, so as I, you know, the reason I'm asking why so many times here is that you know, the initial thought is always that we do what we do for money. Yeah. But the reality is it's never about the money. No, it's about what the money unlocks. That's it. It's uh for I mean, for me, it's about the flexibility to spend time with my kids. Like I can take a Friday off and go camping with my son. Anything, right? Yeah, yeah. I go every every Monday, um, every Monday afternoon, I take my kid to his class tumbling class. I'm like, I can't do that if I'm working on nine to five. So there's the time piece. Yep. There's also the lifestyle piece that's different, right? So it's it allows me to have the cars and then the vacations and the things. Correct. And so there's a different lifestyle that's unlocked too. And then there's a different level and tier of relationships that are unlocked. Things that you identified. So all of this is in the scope of your biggest problem is how do you get your message out there? Yes. Well, then let's identify what the message is. And to me, as I'm asking you this stuff, it's that you enjoy the challenge, that every project is unique, there's a different puzzle that you get to solve. You enjoy the forced growth that's associated with solving these problems, learning how to do things differently and better. And then the aspect that you can learn from the business. The business is a vehicle for your education and teaching your family, your kids failure is okay, and that you can continue to grow and persevere.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:01

It's that okay more so. Yeah, I would say you nailed it spot on, brother. That's it.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:07

So then you take that, and that's the messaging that you build around. Okay. Now what I I teach here with the studio um is something called the authority engine. Okay. So I'll just give you the quick rundown because you could take it, steal it, implement it, whatever. Love it. I film long form content every week. Okay. At a minimum, one podcast like this. Okay. By the way, thanks so much for filling in. My podcast guest this morning uh that was scheduled, bailed, and I like just happenstance. Yeah. So I'm like, we're at Club Paddock. Hey, man, I need the podcast guest. Dude, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:44

No problem. Um but that even if you don't mind me interrupting, that even goes to the kind of lifestyles that we've built for ourselves. So we have these freedoms. Correct. You know, um, and and also on that kind of thought, too, is being there for our kids, you know, uh being that parent that can be to every little event, every little t ball practice, tumblings, gymnastics, and know that the income's still gonna be fine. To me, that's a huge flex, too, you know. But yeah, just having the time for not only our families, for peers and people in the community, Parker. So the community development piece. Yeah, it's huge.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:21

Okay. So I want to one, maybe challenge you to build in public. Okay. What I mean by that is share the story, share your message, right? Talk about what you do, why it's a challenge to you, why it's fun for you, why you grow from it. Because maybe if I'm like a contractor and I need somebody to come and do do our waterproofing, I'm thinking to myself, well, this is a dude that's passionate about it, that's posting about it, that's talking about it. Like, that's somebody who's like, I'll reach out to him. Somebody we can do business with. Yeah, of course. Because you want, I mean, think about this. You hire somebody. Do you want somebody who is passionate about the work, who cares about it, who wants to, you know, do their best because their name is on it and they're they take pride in what they do? Or do you want somebody who's like, I'm trying to get paid? Yeah, no, I'm just trying to get paid. Yeah, you want somebody who cares. So showcase that you care. That's the first step. Second step is you can do that in in multiple avenues. So you can do it talking about um, you know, how you run the business, how you work with the employees, you coach them, you develop them. You can also do it on the jobs or this the job specific. Talk about what makes each project unique and something that you hype up the contractors too, or the the like if it's a spec home or something like that, dude. Check out how awesome this spec home is. And this is what we're doing for it, but like this is just so cool the way they did this. Okay. So you hype those things up too. And then somebody says, Well, I know if I hire Adam, Adam's gonna make some posts about it.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:41

It's free marketing. Correct. And we've kind of implemented that. We're doing the silicone slopes right now, uh, off the point of the mountain. I don't know if you've noticed that little medical offices they're building right there. So we're doing that big job off the freeway that just was green and then turned gray. And I saw the same opportunity. I said, Hey, let's hang our Bonneville banner out on the fence and do that. Oh, yeah. But yeah, same thing, and just uh I yeah, same thing part of it.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:04

And the thing is you capture people like from my lens, the marketing uh I mean, my background is e-commerce, and now we do services and stuff like that, but you want to capture people where they're spending their time. That's it. So, how do you capture somebody, a contractor, for example, when they're not in the office? Those dudes got Facebook, Instagram, social media too. So just how do you have a presence there? Yep. And the thing is, it's not always just a contractor that you're appealing to. Of course. It's somebody like me who's gonna think it's hilarious when you get on Instagram and you've got a big red hat on that says cock king. Yeah, love it. Yeah, yeah. It's the best. No, it's the best. But then people start sharing that. So you might get a hundred views of people that are just totally not your client and they're never gonna be your client, but they might share it with somebody who will be.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:47

Correct. And and we've even had that, and then we started tagging like uh going and taking beautiful pictures, hiring some of these marketing people, having them take pictures, and then tagging the GC in it. And that's brought a ton of stuff. Oh, yeah. They're saying they're getting free marketing by us tagging a beautiful product that they're working on. So that's been something we've been working on.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:07

And I would just pull out your phone and just just share up my message. Yeah, you throw up uh an Instagram story, like this is what we're doing, it's so awesome.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:14

Yep. So we've done that on a few and it's had really good results.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:18

Here's how I'm I'm doing this right now. This is what I'm I'm coaching people on. Um, is a concept I call the authority engine. Okay. It's an engine because I like cars. Love it. Yeah. The four piston system. Okay. I know four pistons isn't as fun, but you know, it's it's what we got here. It's a live, it's it's it's hybrid assistance, right? Um so first one is omnipresence. And right, it's that recognition that we need to be everywhere that our target audience is, or where did where are they at? So for me, I'm posting on uh across all social media platforms every single day. And I got a team that's running it for me too, which is cool now. But uh I post on Instagram multiple times a day from multiple accounts. I post on uh LinkedIn, TikTok, X, Facebook, you name it, YouTube, we're there. Oh what? I know. Yeah, because I'm popping up on your phone.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:09

Oh, I try to do our thing, and I just did the real Parker McComber. It wasn't there. I did so I know that you're offloading on different I am I am getting hundreds of pieces of content out every week now. Critical or mission critical ready systems or something too, but yeah. Yeah, mission ready systems.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:24

Yeah, there you go. Yeah. We do um the omnipresence piece very well, and so we help our clients set that up and uh we even do done for you with that kind of stuff. But after the omnipresence, we do one long form piece of content every week, at least at a minimum. So actually, this morning I was in here filming uh content course material for my my community. Uh, we do a podcast, at least one every week. I'll come in and film shorts and reels separately, but we do at least one long form piece of content that's going to be informational. The beauty of this is like this podcast, for example, we've taught a lot. I mean, we've shared a ton of valuable information to the viewers. So we can then clip segments of that out of this podcast. You know, we're going on for like two plus hours here. Yeah, it's been so easy, though. It it will generate a hundred clips, real shorts, but that's content for an entire month. So then I've got a hundred posts that I can make that just generating, you know, each one of those hundred posts generates hundreds of views. Correct. So uh we take the long form, step three is we clip it, shorts, reels, and then we use that short form to drive the views back to the long form. That's important because the short form is what captures their attention on the website or on the Instagram social media. But the long form is where they actually see you solve a problem. They see how you think, they see how you help people, and that's what builds trust. So we drive those views back to the long form. And then the last piece is we use um content calendars for a consistent cadence, right? Something replicable. And that's important because social media platforms now, the way their algorithms are all structured, they reward you based on how consistently you hold people's attention. So most people have average patterns. Okay. Like I get on my phone pretty much every night at 9 p.m. and I play some chess on chess.com, right? Social media platforms track your patterns the same way. So they know that you're gonna be on your phone every day between five and seven, you know? Like that's when you're most active. So if you are consistently engaging with someone's content every day from five to seven, that platform just gets a very consistent signal as to who is engaging with your content at what times and how to best hold attention, how frequently you hold attention, all that stuff. So you get a reward. So we pair those four things together omnipresence, long form, short form to drive the views, and then the consistent cadence. And that creates a very consistent flow of at least leads for my business. Um we start implementing that with other people, they get good results, you know, millions of views in a couple of months and things like that. They get more clients, all that yada, yada, yada. The real secret is it builds trust. That's the key. The consistency builds trust, the frequency of posts builds trust, the long form builds trust, all of it builds trust. Omnipresences, they open my phone, they see me on Instagram, they see me on Facebook, they see me on LinkedIn, they know that I'm everywhere, they see people engaging with me. All of it builds trust. So you take a framework like that, okay, plug that into the unique messaging. The I like the challenge. I'm here because it's a puzzle. I enjoy the self-development piece. And you share your message and your story around that, and then you share the business story. Okay. And that's a totally unique vantage point that differentiates you from anyone else in the business. No one else is doing that. I would agree. And you lean into the goofy stuff. Okay. The cock king. Okay. Yeah. Okay. And well, I I would do, um, for example, some of my my best performing pieces of content. Like I said, I I um used to wear like a muscle suit for advertisements on Facebook. Uh, I would do a top hat. Like I would do giveaways, and I would put names into a top hat, and then I would wear another top hat. Oh, and so anytime you saw me start a video with a top hat on, you knew I was doing a giveaway. Okay. That kind of stuff drew in tons of attention, blew up my my social media. Um, but I would just lean into those kind of things. You're a totally unique individual. You're running your business in a very cool way. Yeah, thank you. I'm like, take that, lean into that messaging. When I see somebody share a message like that, I'm like, that's somebody I want to do business with. And I would assume that if I'm thinking like that, and I'm not even in your space or your niche. A lot of people probably are, yeah. That anybody who's a contractor that can say that's a stand-up dude who's doing business the right way, taking care of his people, and he's gonna take care of us as a client. I want to do business so.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:53

Why would you not? You know, on a group group.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:56

So just share that would be my my advice or my my recommendation.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:59

Oh, and I appreciate that. And and and to those people listening too, the story matters so much. So many people fail to recognize that, but the story matters, you know. Like you were asking me the why and why do we do this and and all that. The story matters, and and it's okay to share that with our customers too. You know, they they probably want to hear it.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:15

Yeah. The personal development piece. I didn't maybe give it enough credit when I was going through that with you a minute ago, but I realized when you left your father-in-law's business, yeah, it was because you needed to keep growing. Correct. So your why is so much deeper than the money.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:30

Yeah, yeah. It's like I just felt stuck. And it was actually, if you don't mind, it was my stepdad's business, not my father's. But uh, yeah, it was my stepdad. Yeah, and and that's it too, Parker. And maybe I never even realized that until just now, but I needed to keep developing as a person. I've kind of got like high-level ADHD and maybe a lot of the. I call that a superpower. Yeah, yeah. And it's I've got to stay intrigued and my mind on it and developing and going. And yeah, it's it's put me to here, and I'm so thankful it has. So that's so awesome. It's been great.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:03

Adam, man, you have provided so much value to me, to the viewers. What can I do for you and for your community?

SPEAKER_00 1:46:09

Yeah, no, uh, just keep being you, brother. You're you're awesome, and you do everything. Uh I see you with the vineyard council and all that, and you've you've just been a great person. Just keep being you, Parker. You know, that's all I can say. And I appreciate it, man. No. And I appreciate your time too. I know you think I'm taking time out of my day, but I'm learning just as much from this uh interaction too, bro. So thank you so much. Thank you, buddy. It's been great. That's it. Thank you, guys. Yeah. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, whoa, whoa. Bad.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:37

My bad, my bad. Let them know where they can find you.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:40

Oh, yeah, bonnevillecalking.com. Or uh yeah, we've got a Facebook too, uh, and uh LinkedIn. But yeah, hit us up on there. And if you guys need any of your driveways or pools and stuff like that, we'll do any job. We're not just the temples and the baseball stadiums. We'll do anything. So give us a call. Dude, thank you so much for coming. I appreciate your time today. Nice. Thank you, buddy.