The Huddle - Episode 184. The Difference Between Being Busy & Being Profitable

This week on The Huddle, Paul, Daniel, and Jose dig into one of the most common (and costly) traps in the flooring industry: confusing busyness with profitability. Long hours, full schedules, and nonstop work don’t matter if your margins are thin and your stress is high. This episode breaks down what actually moves the needle and how flooring pros can shift from grinding nonstop to building a business that works for them.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Why being busy can still leave you broke

• The habits and pricing mistakes that kill profit

• How to identify work that’s worth saying yes to

• What profitable flooring businesses do differently

• How to work smarter without sacrificing quality

If you’ve ever wondered why the money doesn’t match the effort, this conversation is one you don’t want to miss.

Why This Episode Matters: At The Huddle Podcast, we’re focused on Forward Progress — helping installers and business owners build sustainable, profitable businesses instead of just surviving the grind.

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What is up guys? Welcome back to the huddle, the number one podcast in flooring. We are here every week to help

you guys gain forward progress in your career. As I say every week, we are here to help you guys win. For all our new

viewers, welcome to the team. With me as always, Mr. Daniel and Jose

Gonzalez. What's up, my man? How are you guys? What's going on, brother? Doing all

right. We are trying to stay warm. We are We are post new year couple of

weeks. Everything getting started off well. We've had better better beginnings to

the year. That's for sure. Yeah. Yeah. It's a little slow around us right now.

Yeah. What ended up happening is it was like full throttle and then it went

only, you know, there's a hurry up and get to that point of waiting.

Yeah. You know, the the the uh that tends to happen around here pretty

pretty almost every year. I mean, to some degree where we we get pretty slow about this

time of year and we're just it just seems like it's like gh, you know, I like to use these times. I I right

before I got on here, I was talking to my one of our estimators and uh called a

couple clients. Like I'm just beating the bushes and uh trying to like beat

the bushes, see what what jobs we bid last year that are going to kick loose

and give us some opportunity this year. Uh you know, if they got anything else, what kind of big deals are out there?

You know, got a big national account. I'm working on and seeing how that's

going. You know, it's just time to other people are pretty slow, too, if you are. I mean, your clients, so it's a good

time to call and reconnect with them and just have have dude conversations or

chick conversations or dude to chick conversations. Just some time to, you know, spend some

time with your client, have some some uh, you know, a little bit less

stressful. You know how it is when you call a customer and they're busy. They're just kind of, you could just tell they're not listening to you. They

don't care what you're asking. It's just like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah." We've been getting a couple phone calls a day, too, just from other installers asking for work.

That's the telltale sign of a slowdown for we get more than two installers a

month in here, which is that's probably about average. Um,

if it gets much more than that, I mean, we've had three, four, five, six come in in a week and you're like, "Oh, either

the residential market is falling through the" And just ask them what what have you been working on, you know,

before we tell them to go get their profile. Um, uh, you know, you ask them what they've

been working on and if they're in residential, we just know that retail space is kind of slowing down a little bit. It's funny how the the installer

kind of community can tell you a lot. You know what I mean? Yep.

Well, it's it's a trend, right? Every year it's about the same thing that it goes w

and like every year you're going to get surprised pretty soon about this deal, that deal, some other deal. You know,

I've quit worrying about the slow times and just started executing because it's one of those deals where um worrying

about it doesn't do nothing. And it always, you know, we've been around long enough, you guys been around long

enough, it just turns around. People want to work with you. They just ain't got the stuff right this minute. You know,

you're right. And um some of the the places that we do labor uh labor only

for, you know, you I'll make phone calls. Hey, just let you guys know we have availability coming up and you know and I'll try to

this was try not to be in scramble mode and they're like oh yeah we're slow

right now too and this and that and then all of a sudden it's like they all call at the same time and it's just like

yeah why couldn't you just trickle in? That's just not our business. Why can't schedule around what we need?

Yeah. What's the deal? I mean we have needs too.

Uh yeah. So today's topic is the difference between being busy and being profitable. I'd I'd probably replace

profitable with productive. And I gotta be uh I got to be honest. I

I love this topic. This is one of those uh items that I've read a lot of books

about, been to a lot of uh coaching. Um

a lot of my mentors have talked about, we talked about mentorship not too long ago. Uh this is one of those things um

it is a much deeper subject than what just the topic will will make you feel

or make you think. Um so I mean

mainly or mostly because I am I am subject to falling into this like busy

busy work. You know what I'm talking about guys? Well, when you just

you're just doing some busy work, you just stuff that you should either delegate

or not be touching. Yeah. The issue with us is they're the

two people that de delegate to stuff to is are on this podcast.

Yeah. Well, you guys have to I I think this year should be a year that you guys just uh

were kind of uh talking live on a podcast about uh uh you know, business

growth all the time. I I think this time this is the your year to hire somebody.

I I mean, right now what what I'm doing is I'm trying to systematize stuff so that way we can do it. So, I'm going through um

the way that we do the books and the way that things are organized to be able to

be like, okay, like almost like um kind of programming, right? If this

trying to put your SOPs together. Yeah. So, if you do this, everything up.

Yeah. I mean, having systems is key, but I I've been doing it for 25

years. 26 almost been in the business like operating as a flooring contractor.

I'll tell you what, I still am building new systems today. It will never stop because the world never stops.

Technology never stops. Stuff that I put together a long time ago has to be turned into some digital format. Now it

has to be kind of AI enhanced or, you know, a lot of it I can just have AI do.

So you'll never stop. So I would not uh I would not hesitate if you have the

capability to start to hire is go ahead and open your mind to to start hiring

sooner than you think is uh feels comfortable. And also

I the way that I wish I would have done it. You know, you wish you could go back sometimes and redo things. Um is clearly

identify what I am great at and then hire for the stuff I'm not good at. I just hired for stuff I thought would,

you know, somebody would would uh you know, bring more business or whatever

that is. If I was back then we did manual takeoffs. Do you

guys remember those? You know what that is? Do you know what a scale ruler is? This dude didn't want to switch away

from that for the longest time. He didn't trust technology. Now he uses technology more than I do sometimes.

I was so mad that Daniel's like, "We have to learn how to use these measure programs." Like, dude, I can use this

ruler. I can do this. Like, let's race, right? And when he didn't know how to use it, I would have beat him. But now

that I know how to use it and he does is you cannot there's no there's no there is

you cannot get that time back. The the amount of variations I can do on a large project and do a an alternate

one through 20 if I want. Right. And that's what people don't realize, right? Because there's still a lot of guys that are on the groups and

they're like nope uh uh pen and uh paper or right to to do everything. And then

it's like they don't realize that once you're done with your takeoff, it's okay. Now I have to switch something.

Drag and drop. Done. Yep. Plus, I found shortcuts on me square to

help out. At the end of the the the day here, the

you're always going to be systematizing and uh like we are getting ready to one

of our positions. So, if anybody out there wants to uh wants to consider coming to work for me, I am looking for

a preconstruction coordinator. And that person will be in charge of of

evaluating our bid invites, running it through our uh formula to determine

whether or not we should bid it. We don't make those decisions by just looking at it. We have a formula we

built and we just You have a formula, huh? You Yeah, I can send it to you. Huh? Yeah.

You know they're coming out with um AI that does that for you. So does bid what? Bid evaluations on

invites. Yeah. I'm I'm writing one right now. I already have it if you want me to send

it to you. Oh my god. We've been operating in it for for a long time. And it it gives us a result

of should bid, must or must bid, should bid, and estimators discretion.

That's essentially uh what we do. And so after we've run it through the formula, so no one has to decide that. In fact,

my assistant will run 99% of our bid invites through this formula. Tells us

whether or not tells our estimating staff whether or not we should be bidding this job or not. And once that's

done, then this position pre-construction coordinator would basically support all things

uh estimating, manage our bid invites, make

sure that our bid calendars are up to date. Uh I've broken it a week

and two days a week and we and then one day of one to two days of following. So

the hunting is when you get out and with new clients

or looking for new business from new client. Farming is when we have our

current client list and we're just what's up trying to get some more uh estimates checking you know see work

with them on and then of course followup is just following up on our bids. So I am hiring a pre-construction

coordinator. um uh good good salary uh

with a great profit sharing program here. So if you know anybody, please

send them my way. paul stewartandassociates.com all spelled out s tu rt.

That is my plug for myself. But that being said, th a lot of that

little busy work is what I try I systematized out, right? And then now I'm going to delegate that even the the

management so to speak of all of our estimators.

So any estimator will um will have to you know be accountable to this person.

But the tricky part is this person's not their boss. So the accountability part

is um this person would create a weekly report uh or fill out a weekly report

and turn it into me and our COO and uh that's the accountability piece is uh

how many bids we get out you know how many we were supposed to get out that kind of stuff. So just systematizing and

getting rid of that busy work. That's a lot of what

um both our topic and what I was just telling you Daniel is and and you don't

have to the key is I always try to hire the high the the highest part of my company. Like my first hire in business

was a vice president as far as in my office.

I just thought, you know, if I had somebody that could do more, do a bunch of stuff

uh and get more business when in fact I was good at estimating. And that's when I brought up manual. I'm not as good at

measure square. Uh mainly because I don't do much estimating uh takeoffs

anymore, but back when I did all the takeoffs, I was really fast and efficient and and uh thorough with my

manual takeoffs. Had Id had somebody at a lower uh a lower level just to support

me back then, a I would have formed better habits and b I would have probably gotten a lot more work. So, you

know, the this trap of kind of staying busy and you feel like you're being

productive because you're busy, but you're not

uh productive really. You know, it in fact, this is one of the biggest retardants to a person's professional

success that there is is this getting trapped into busy work.

You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. I know exactly what you're saying because it happened to me yesterday.

Well, it happens to me probably a lot to be honest with you, but it's just I asked the guys to do something, you

know, a little slow. So, we're cleaning the vans, organizing, trying to mirror the van so everything's identical. I'm

like, "Hey, I need you guys to start recording some videos on the tools and like you're training, like you're

teaching someone who has never seen it before." Then I watched some of the videos. I'm

like, "Yeah, I can't use that video." Like, okay. So, I ended up shifting

gears and writing a script and then doing how to, you know, like an entire

script on what to do for the tools and how it's expected and then how to upload it to the right part of Teams uh to

create the the library so that way we can go back and edit later on. And

yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's more system building. That's not bad. I mean, when I But that's my distraction. I I I I was

distracted from what I was supposed to be doing. Yeah, I look at you delegate things to people that don't

know how to do it, right? And then you end up being like, "Okay, well, now I got to spend more time writing

everything down instead of just having people that will be like, oh, I know what you need."

Yeah. Well, I'm reading a book right now called The Courage to be Disliked, and it talks about this. Adler, one of the

early psychologists with Freud and and all them, uh, back in the 18 late 1800s,

uh, I believe, you know, he says, "We we hired those people." He would say, "We

hired that person because we wanted an excuse to to do the busy work. We wanted

the problem so that we could fall back into a familiar cycle. It's like creating your own problem so

that you can fix it. It's like it's it's it's um interesting thought. I mean, you

know, if we're honest with ourselves, we all love that dopamine hit of getting something done. And when you're working

uh when you're doing like deep work or you're doing system building or you're doing things that are gonna you know

really hard either if you're in a physical job the really

hard part of that or the really uh hard part in business world a lot of times is

that deep thinking and the results aren't you know like that a lot of times

and so we love that dopamine hit of getting something done. That's why we love checklists and getting, you know,

checking something off the box. We'll put I'll I used to write down, you know, after I sent the e like did something,

I'd write it down and check it off because right that visual satisfaction. Oh my

god, dude. I I do that right now. Like yeah, it's insane. But I have my things here like in in here so

I can do it, but like I my daily thing I have to write it down even though I have it there. So that way I can always just

look at it like, "Oh, got that done. Got that done." And you're like, "Well, one of the problems with this

like doing that that qu that lowlevel kind of low frequency kind of work is

that it a lot of times then leads to uh bad

habits in scroll doom scrolling and social media stuff and I have fallen

victim to all of it. So no judgment. I'm just I'm working on um improving myself

every single day. And um it's one of those deals where you you you look back

at a topic like this and you're like, "Yeah, I used to do that a ton." And it's one of the things I used to do all

the time. I still have a problem um where I'll I I want to do something

that's feels more immediate. We just love that instant gratification.

But really the key at least as I see it so far uh is to understand the

difference and to even recognize when we fall prey to this kind of low-level busy

work is that we got to have a north star. You know either a purpose or goals

like a that's that's the only time you can really ask you know that question

yourself. Is this activity actually moving me closer to my purpose or my goal? And is it moving the needle? Well,

if you don't have goals or purpose, then you don't you don't have that thing to look forward to and see if you're if

you're going in that direction. You know what I mean? And then it's even easier to fall into this simple kind of busy

work. You know what? I'm gonna write down some notes on that one because you just made me think.

I don't know if you shared this all right already, but team Ortega is never slow.

It's It doesn't even say Ortega. Or sorry,

Ora. Jimmy, true. Chicago right now. So, he said we're

live in Chicago. Yeah, boy. He says, "Uh, get a pencil." Windy City.

Get up, Windy City. Make a list.

What's that? Nate says, "Get a get pencil, get paper, make lists. Three things checked off."

You know, making lists is uh critical like to-do list to kind of stay up on it. I I use a method called the D6 or a

daily six. I've talked about it on this podcast before. kind of have a master list of stuff and then I just pull stuff

off of there and put it on the D6 for the day to try to get done.

And um the key is still making sure that those

items are not busy work, you know, um emails, that kind of stuff, man, they'll

eat your day up. Yeah. I I I find myself checking my emails more like if I'm uh in the office

with the porcelain office and sitting there reading and scrolling and deleting emails while I'm sitting there doing

doing that until my leg goes numb, you know, until you can't feel your foot. I can't feel my face.

Rollins having a good start to the year. He said it's the best year uh start to the year he's had since he opened. Two

churches and three big big houses booking into March already. Congrats on that.

Congrats on that. I wish wish I could say the same. We

actually started last year off really good and then things just kind of uh that's when I it wasn't really this I

guess it was the start of it where projects were just like pause pause pause.

Yeah. Then you have dead spots and then you got to then you scramble to to fill the schedule and then you're not because

because Daniel and I, right, we don't have that team that we're talking about needing to build. You got to kind of

revert and you got to put on that other hat for if you put if Daniel puts on

that other hat for two weeks, that's two weeks of not doing what we need to do in

the office of another hat not being worn. That's all there is to it. Right. Yeah. And it's just it's hard to

explain that to to to the guys. But well, if you

um if you think back I I don't know if

you're still in this zone or if uh if you have to think back about it. But as

I think back, I remember times going in and stalling up till, you know, 3:30, 4:00 and then I'd go to the office and

do takeoffs till midnight. I mean, like that's what a lot of people don't see when you're when you're building a

business is just all that type of of time. But there again, until you start hiring

teams that and and forming and kind of building out your team, you're going to

have to continue to do that that busy work that somebody else could do. I I

had it turned around for me. It's been a few years ago. I had a customer or a uh

a consultant come in and I would give them a uh not probably the highest rate

in overall consultant uh activity uh and advice but the one thing they did give

me which like anything there's usually a nugget in there uh one of the big

nuggets that I took away from that and that I started several years ago working

on is Stop, like I said at the beginning, stop trying to hire somebody

to do something like uh Dan um what's his name? Not Dan Sullivan. Uh

Buy Back Your Time. I forget the name of his name, but he bought he's the author of the book Buack Your Time.

I read that book not long uh not long well not long a Dan Martell not long

after it came out and it's about hire a damn assistant. Have an assistant. It's a it's a fairly cheap role in the scheme

of things and that assistant should manage your inbox, manage your calendar,

manage all the busy busy work that you're used to doing as a business owner and get that off your plate first. It

should have been one of my first hires. Instead, my first hire was someone who's going to create more work for me as

opposed to taking some work off of my shoulders and allowing me to do the magic that I

feel like I can do. That that that is the scary part. And you said the assistant for the the inbox

and I think uh we've thought about that too. Like it's

always a thought, but then all you need is one assistant manage they can manage both your inboxes. Mhm.

both of your calendars, making sure that you're never double booked, you're never, you know, have a daily stand up

with them, which I've got, you know, that's one part I have failed on with my assistant is uh daily a daily kind of uh

uh uh gathering, but at least a weekly kind of uh sync up with your assistant.

Other than that, all you should see is a couple of inboxes that are only things that need your attention.

Jose's inbox. All the other stuff is out. You don't go to your regular inbox.

You go to Jose's inbox. You go to Daniel's inbox. Your calendar's always up to date. You

use Teams for instant messaging in her office. I I'm assuming. Do you use like a Yeah. So,

have him or her, you know, shoot you a quick Teams message. Hey, take a look at

your calendar. there's been some changes on the 13th or on the 15th or whatever the deal is.

And then I add stuff on. It's probably the plight of my assistant is when

somebody schedules a meeting with me directly and she's in the background trying to schedule something else and I

take up a spot that she was considering. So, uh, I've yet to get, uh, to the

point where I'm like, "Call my assistant because I feel like I'm pushing a customer off or something." And I don't

I still don't know that I can do that. Uh, I don't know. You know, if they want a meeting with me, I'm going to schedule

the meeting and my assistant can work around it. She's never complained to me, not one time, about it, but it is uh, it

is uh, I I am sure somewhat frustrating when you're trying to schedule me for something else and I'm over here

scheduling myself. Um but it has taken an immense there's days I'm like man all

I you know have to do today is these big

these big deals like I don't have any small deals I have nothing small to work on

like they're all major things that will either impact the business move me closer to one of my goals or

like it's like all big stuff and uh that can frankly be a little unsettling.

because you're used to being busy because that's what makes us feel valuable sometimes. You're you're absolutely right.

If I sleep in like like when I was sick, I was sleeping in and then when I woke

up, it's like 9:00 my my day is gone. My

whole day is gone. It's nine o'clock. Like I feel like I haven't accomplished

anything. You're sick. So I still got to look at emails. Like people are still on their schedule.

trying to read an email on my phone while I'm falling asleep is isn't uh

probably doesn't look very very professional, but well the the

it that would be one hire that you can get

like you know frankly my my assistants in the Philippines her name's Abby. It does not

have to be there in your office. uh you have teams, you can meet with them anytime you want.

It's not a a role that needs to be right there in your office necessarily um until you feel like it should be. And

she's done a wonderful job for me, affordable. Um I'm doing her, she loves

working. She makes more money than she could ever make in the Philippines. And it's a win-win. And uh so anyway,

that's that's the assistant, you know, and I and frankly, I wish I would have hired an assistant many many years ago.

Uh but that did come out of my consultant. She was like, "You need to get an assistant." She actually hired my

first assistant. She was an inoff assistant. Later that didn't work out. I

ended up going and uh interviewing a bunch and uh hiring Abby. But the that's

been real helpful even on things that you don't think of personal stuff that I forget about like she doesn't let me

forget about you know any not that honey I would ever

forget our anniversary but anniversaries or or any of that stuff you know like it's

not going to get forgotten. It's on my calendar. Um, and uh, it's real helpful

and it keeps me from, you know, back on our topic, it keeps me from,

uh, you know, getting into that trap of doing a bunch of of real busy busy kind

of work and it and you know, the more highlevel work we're doing,

um, and that book that Dan Martell wrote, right? uh uh buy back your time.

He's literally saying hire an assistant, pay money to get back time because it's

going to save you more time than you can ever imagine. Um

but in that book, he talks about, you know, um it's not just about hiring an

assistant like by itself. It's it's talking about

when you're working on highlevel stuff and you got to frame it this way. What

is done in my business that only I can do?

Those are the only things you should be doing. I'm not there yet. I'll tell you that right now.

But what in your business can are you the only one that could do it? And then

that's what you should be doing. Like I'm the only one that can sign checks. I got to sign checks.

Financially, there's certain things only I can do. I've got to do those things

by design. I don't have to go through my email. I'm not the only one that can go through my email. And and you it's not a comparison

of your current staffing. It's it otherwise you'd say, "Well, I am the only one that could do it because I'm

the only one here." You got to think if I had perfect people underneath me,

uh, underneath me, that's probably a bad way to put it, working with me, but you know, my employees that are productive

employees and I have a great team. What then

would I still be the only one that could do that task? And that's all you should be doing. visionary integration of

systems, building systems out, improving your reputation in the

marketplace, you know, key accounts, that kind of stuff.

Sorry, getting over that call. Sorry, guys. Oh, you're all good.

Yeah. Then that's where um you know I reading the books and stuff that I do or

listening to them rather it it talks about that and it's just one of those things where um

people try and plan out for everything when we always talk about you know when are when are you ready? You're never

really ready unless you jump into it and then you just have to navigate through it right everything's going to have

growing pains. You got to adjust. And that's the um

that's always the hard part is adjusting. But uh you had said something

earlier about um you hired a you know a vice president and it gave you more

work. I think that that is literally the fear right there is given more work

because now you now you in essence you feel responsible for another person and

to bring make sure that you're putting them in a position of success along with everybody else that I can see where that

is the back of mind type process for us here. Well, I forget what book it it was

in that I read, but it um it says

it'll come to me, but essentially it says you will not grow into pain. Uh it

reference that we have this like pain silly like there's only so much pain we're willing to endure and you will not

grow into known pain. And so the fear and the

things that you think are going to happen uh by hiring somebody if there's

fear and doubt and pain associated with it you will not grow into pain like we

physically don't that's the adjustment you were talking about. So essentially what's that tell us is that we have to

adjust ahead of time. we have to adjust our mindset and our our framing of the situation ahead of time and then the

pain and the fear is removed and we make positive steps towards towards our goal.

You know, you know, it's funny is you know my son wrestles, my nephew wrestles and and I tell them all the time um stop

being afraid that it's going to hurt. It's going to hurt. Sometimes you have to let it hurt. It's going to hurt you.

But that's temporary, right? like they got you in a good spot and you you got to flip over, you got to do something.

It's going to hurt. Then you have to accept that, but you got to you got to go full force. I tell them that all the

time and I don't even listen to that. What you just said is like I'm not even listening to it right now. Well, often times we, you know, I I'm

the guiltiest of giving uh out advice where I myself am am guilty of. I I I

really try hard to uh call myself out on it or at least be like, "Hey, I got the

same problem, but here's what I'm recognizing kind of thing." Um because I'm not a some business, you know,

degree with some, you know, I learned everything by doing and hiring coaches

and and and you know, I I got my degree on the streets, so to speak, and messing up everything.

Messing up plenty. When your first your first office hire as a vice president of

three people, I mean, come on, man.

when you say it like that. Yeah. I had one other person that worked for me and I was like outside of our

installers and uh I was like we need vice presidents. what we

looking back it's super funny but that's what I did you know and it just all it

did was like I said earlier it just created this this overload of work that

I then because I had to make sure that he I didn't have anything in place for a

highle employee to be working for me anyway I had no systems I had no like mission statement I just I was in this

business to make money and because I figured, you know, I could make more money than installing alone. That's all

I that's the only that was my only reason for starting the company. I had no grand, you know, uh, Dolly Lama kind

of purpose like, oh, I want to be a positive influence on the world and and

hire employees and gainfully improve their life. Today, I have more of that purpose. Back then, I cared nothing

about that. I just wanted to make more money than I was making then. That is that is uh that was a great

delivery by the way. The the uh the voice impression there as I saw you

hovering a little bit when you said it. Um yeah, I don't think that's really anybody's goal, right? Like

maybe it was do people hire um to vice presidents of two of in a company

of two? Yeah, just a few. Is it is it is it to in inadvertently have someone hold

you accountable? Is that what it is? Or or maybe someone who can say, "Hey, you're missing this, you're missing that. Let's build it." And then Yeah.

Honestly, if I was to dissect it, it was probably fear that I did not think I had what it took to grow the company and be

the owner, a sole kind of guy for a company and wanted someone else to have

some of the responsibility that that it would take to grow the company.

Gotcha. If if you know that's probably the the biggest thing. Um,

also the dumbest thing, you know, because at the end if you if

you evaluate like really high quality businesses, they they the owner always

like delegates as much as much look whatever I did to go from zero to our

first year in business, we did like $385,000 and that was a part partial year because

I started the business in uh April of 99 and that the second year we did 1.4

million that's 3x growth then we went from 1.4 to 2.3 or 2.4 four something

like that almost another almost doubled again and then I bought my partner out

that year and then the very next year we did four million bucks

you know so we grew fast um whatever I I was

doing whatever the the sauce was there you want more of that that's how you

grow you know you 3x your company almost every year is by relieving yourself of

all the this the new busy work that comes up as you grow and getting that off of your desk. Really good operators

will try to get that stuff off of their desk, delegate it, put a new system in

place or a new process in place where someone else handles that and they're back in their magic. They're back doing

whatever Dan Sullivan would call your unique ability. I was a uh I was

mentored in strategic coach for about four or five years and Dan Sullivan

uh and I went to the Chicago office. That's where I was uh uh went for strategic

coach. And that's one of the things is like find your unique ability and find make sure that you are always protecting

that like you're always trying to spend as much time in whatever that is your

unique ability something you're uniquely good at or uniquely better than most at

shameful to say that I didn't listen very well. You know what I'm saying? Like it took I'm kind of that guy that

you got to take a sledgehammer and a nail to the head to get it through. You know, it takes some uh it's like the

perfect timing for it to click in my head. But it is one of those deals where

if you can operate in your unique ability. If you think back when you installed, that's exactly what I did. I

was the the the the guy that could cut and put the seams together the best on

my crew as the lead. Yeah. I didn't I didn't glue very much. I didn't go cut carpet. I measured,

put our cut sheet together, and I'm obviously talking back in the broad loom days, boys. Back when we actually

installed commercial broad loom. Uh, but I had my helpers go make the cuts, carry

them up, lay the stuff out, cut I'm cutting seams, they're gluing up, I'm

putting seams together, they're, you know, we do that. I did that in in my my

installation efforts, but um, a lot of times I well, most times I didn't do that in business. I didn't really

translate that over. But, you know, I'm kind of what they call slow. So, if I

can do it, guys, anybody can do it. And that it's one of those things where it's um it sounds

simple, right? But it's not on just to implement something like that. And that's what we've been finding

out because we've tried to hire people to take stuff off of our plate and then like you said, it just adds more stuff

onto your plate. Yeah. you get firing wrong is

well that or your your the stuff you're trying to get off your plate is not low enough down on the totem pole

like low enough where somebody entry level could actually do

it you know or you're trying to hire you're obviously you could be hiring

wrong uh or there there's multiple you know

reasons to that that person might not fit that that skill or have that skill set.

But if you hire um start with an assistant, that is my best advice if you

guys would just take the leap 2 or 3,000 4,000 bucks a month tops

tops uh for an assistant. couple grand a month uh for a remote assistant and your

inbox and your calendar is handled your travel. If you uh once you get

somebody who's really trustworthy and you give them a credit card, they can handle your travel. They can handle your

your you know your stuff. Um so like all

of that off your table is probably would just by itself be a big relief. No more

deleting stuff or reporting to spam or whatever. That's all handled by somebody else. No, no time in your inbox except

things you need to take action on. I try to uh this is going to sound

weird, but whenever I I start going through my emails, I try to put a timer

on and limit myself because I'll get lost in there and and deleting and moving and trying to organize. Um

do you know what that's called? you become you start doing that busy work. That's what it is. It's like you you get psych cuz like I I'm going to always go

back to we all have ADD whether we'd like to admit it or not, right? And it's e really easy to hyperfocus on

something. Yes. Even when it's not productive.

Easier when it's not productive even. Yeah, it really is easy. you know. Yeah. So, um you know, Daniel, you just said

that and um so these headphones, I'm finding that when I put these headphones on, it blocks out the rest of the world.

And then I do and then I I do put them on when I do want to hyperfocus

on something. But then I lose track of time and next thing you know, it's 11 p.m. and I've

been working on things for like seven hours. I'll tell you a trap that is

after you start figuring this out that I've fallen into and that I've got to be careful of. I'm mindful of it. Um is

death by meetings. Like every day I have two or three hours of

meetings. Not every day, but a lot of days. And so I'm mindful of it.

I'm right now I'm maybe giving I'm I might

be confessing right on the podcast uh that I might be um giving myself my

own excuse, but I I feel like a lot of the stuff that I'm doing is necessary because of the trade tap and VTI and

training hub launch uh stuff and getting ready for TIC and all that. And so there's a lot of meetings surrounding

that stuff, you know, and obviously we we do the podcast together, so we have planning for this that we do. And so all

this stuff, man, you can then end up in nothing but meetings. So

yeah, I I tried to admit unless you're unless you're Jorge and you have a job rubbing Diddy down with

baby oil, apparently he gots experience.

Goodness. I don't even that was out of left field is that you also need these meetings

right because in um the EOS system right in traction I it's one of those things

that I'd listen to every now and then just to you know you got to refresh right it's always trying to to get

better and they say you know when things are

running smoothly a lot of the times you're like oh we don't need this anymore but you still need to do it

because that's why things are running smoothly. Yeah, it teaches that productive

meeting and the meetings are we we practice the US system and have for

several years uh to a to the degree that we

you know do do we follow it by the letter of the law? No. But we do have

weekly leadership meetings and quarterly strategy meetings and annual strategy

meetings. Uh we But I'll tell you what,

when you put your uh you use those meetings, right? And you put like

um goals in front of other people, you know? So your vision, you got a

visionary and an integrator and and even that in its very nature is about

delegating and making sure the visionary his unique ability is is that and you

have to protect that. Who's your visionary? Who's your integrator? And what what if the visionaries visions

are about three years four years ahead of the financial abilities?

Well, there's there's uh there's always a anchor of some sort on everything.

Otherwise, we'd all be billionaires. Uh you know, there's there's um

but it's the integrator's job to find a way to make it happen if if every if

your team believes in that and can go towards that vision. You know what I mean? Like but the EOS system their

their deal with meetings is like being intentional during the meeting

and then when you invite this guy over here to meetings then tangents happen every time you talk about anything.

Yeah. That's where you got to, you know, he he either has to re recognize and

reign himself in or someone's got to have the at least in the US, someone has

to have the courage to say, "Knock it off. Let's get back on track." Boom. Back into the

to the deal, you know? But that's where your visionaries do. They just come up with this in their

and you know, stop it. A lot of good ideas come from that.

No, that that that's that's what happens. And it's and it's not just me, right? Like it's the meetings are

open concept and everybody's talking is is what it is. And then it like kind of like the podcast. You start talking

about one thing and it starts spinning spinning spinning and that's where Daniel's like uh break. We got to get

back. Yeah. This is our weekly outlet to just go crazy right here.

We get on topics and we end up in other topics and fireside. There's like few

guys sitting around a a fire uh smoking a cigar and and uh having a beer and

chatting about something that they feel is important to them at that moment, you know, and it often goes off the rails.

And that's okay. That's what this podcast is for is to allow our cl our our audience to to chat it up. We we do

pretty good staying on subject, but a lot of times we fall off and uh so we

could look at this like like hey this is our weekly like release.

It is and it's crazy how much I like I'm one of the hosts and how much I learn

every week. I'm with you especially when our audience is really engaged. Uh it

doesn't always happen. This is one of the, you know, uh, you know, we can see

when people are on and when they're not. And it may not be the the highest attended live, although we did hit some

decent numbers early on mid podcast here. The truth is this is one of the better ones that I or one of the ones

I've enjoyed mainly because the topic and we can and we all have our our our

piece to to contribute and then we all get to learn from one another. That's what I love about it.

I leave here and learn every week and go implement my business.

Boom. Boom. For everybody out there, you go. It's the truth. And it it goes back to

what what we talked about a few weeks ago. Like don't listen to people who haven't done what you want to do. this

podcast. If you want to build a business in the flooring business, you got three guys that have done everything from

install floors all the way up to selling, you know, seven figure projects

and working on, you know, mega jobs in our areas. So, oh

yeah, thank you Daniel for bringing up the power hour live coming up uh you

know on the 26th of January in Las Vegas. We'll be live with the Wi-Fi

team. Great panelist. Uh we're going to be talking about confidence as a strategy as you can see. It's I'm

looking forward to that a lot. I think it's going to be a really fun uh live uh live in two weeks.

Yep. It's coming right down the pipe. Crazy how fast it's coming.

Yeah. Before you know it, we're going to be in Vegas being like, I can't believe that it's already the end of January, dude. Um, as a note and just a a fun

little tidbit, uh, the book I'm reading right now says, uh, if you, the science

of scaling is, well, I just finished it, but it talks about, uh, you want to slow

time down, put impossible goals out in front of you and with impossible

timelines, and that will you'll get so much accomplished in such a short amount of

time that you'll feel like your cheating time like it slows time down for you. Uh

I'll let you know how that goes at the end of this year because I'm certainly on it. Robin, I will get you a coffee.

I'm joining you, brother. I will bring a coffee from um the press

room. Nice. Nice. So, so no one has to pay for it. I mean,

someone pays for it, just not me. Yeah, we got your back. So, yeah, join us live on the podcast. Uh that is a

Monday, just remember that. And so we won't have a Tuesday podcast on that week. Uh we'll be shooting live with the

Wi-Fi from Las Vegas. We'll be on stage for sure, right? But we may end up doing

some uh some overtime episodes at some point.

But we want to make sure that that week focused on this big event

right here. Yeah, I'm sure we're going to do some uh some

overtimes. I mean, those are fun, too. Just to walk around and talk to people, little bit of media action. Uh get the

the the the vibration of the room, you know, the how the show's going.

It'll be uh Yeah, it's going to be fun. So, make sure to join us on uh the 26th

for that. you. I'm telling you what, the panelists are are

you know top-notch and you guys I know I'm going to learn something because I'm going in with the mindset to learn

something new and uh you know we we are in a business that's uh dominated by

men. We all know that. And these women are brave and out there. And you know, I

think of Crystal every time I I look at the Wi-Fi. And it's it's incredible to

have the opportunity to talk to these ladies. So, looking for it. Be there. Be

square. Yeah, baby. All right. Well, we have come to the end

of the podcast. Uh I do um want to mention again that uh the come visit us

uh at the at the uh CFI booth. We're going to be working with the CFI at the

at the uh TIC event uh releasing their new training hub. It's going really well

and you're if you have the training hub is putting all the industry trainings

right at your fingertips as an installer. No, you don't have to search. You go to your account, you log in,

single sign on, go to your training hub, check it out, look at uh look at what

events are coming up to to get training events are coming up. You can request training. There's going to be all kinds

of cool stuff for the installer to make sure that you're advancing your career. So, be be there and uh come see us, come

say hi, and uh you know, get your VTI. The VTI will be live uh at that point as

well. And uh we'll be have we'll have all of the go career stuff out and trade

tap and all the trade tap stuff in for uh like I said the the training hub and

the VTI are the two main parts that we're releasing this month. So we're

excited about that. Come see us at the booth and uh don't forget to check out the installer uh competition. That's

gonna that's always fun. Go check that out. Jimmy this morning, he was like, "Yeah, I'm gonna be competing." I was like,

"Oh, yeah. Not even out all day." Yep. Jimmy won't be hanging out. Jimmy's

going to be busy. Good luck, Jimmy. One of one of our five hammer guys in the old hammer rating algorithm uh with

the new VTI. Jimmy's still way up there. And uh we'll we'll get to we'll get to

um reveal some of those rankings on the index. But uh yeah, go check out the the

website right now. The website here that you see up on your screen is um uh our

coming soon page. Our full website release is again really close to TY time

frame. So we we kind of have everything uh releasing about the same time. So we look forward to seeing everybody out

there. If you're catching us on one of our social medias or on YouTube, please give us a like and subscribe. Follow our

stuff. Please don't forget we're getting we're we're creating content for you guys and we'd love to hear from you for

for what you want to hear from us. Uh we want to get more experts on every year.

We increase that. We want to do more of that in 26. But we need topics, things

that matter to you as the installer and share this thing. get installers uh that

are get in your phone, you know, send the link,

you know, invite everybody that you know that's an installer to our to our uh podcast. Let's let's increase our

community this year. We are the number one podcast in flooring. Let's keep that number one stat and uh keep growing this

together. So, it's because you guys and these two gentlemen that this thing works. Uh, shout out to our to our uh

backend manager that keeps us all in line, Ashlin. Uh, she does a fantastic job of keeping us rained in. And

she gets really angry when you're not at things like 15 minutes early. So, dude, we got we got we got a we got a

Yay. I see you guys both already. Yeah, we got on early today and she was happy about that. So, thank goodness.

Also, Rin asked what time um the Power Hour live is, and it's at 2:00 p.m.

Pacific, so 11 Eastern, but he's going to be there, too. So, you may be busy at

the same time, but I mean, you stay pretty busy while you're there, too. Yeah. Yeah. Well, if you

come join us. If you can make it, come join us. It's going to be a blast. So, until next week, guys, uh we're

going to sign off. Thanks you everybody. And uh again like and subscribe.