What it Takes to Build a Thriving Damage Restoration Company

they are. There we go. This is our first interview style podcast. So we have some technical difficulties but we’re here. We’re rocking and rolling. So welcome to the restoration success show in today’s episode. We have scott miller with us from the growth league. How’s it going scott? How are you? Thanks for having me doing well. Doing well well. Let’s let’s jump right into it. Um so yeah, let’s start off. You know, tell the audience a little bit more about yourself and your background and kind of how you got into the restoration world. Alright. So so I got into the restoration world by finding a broker, finding a franchise broker. I stumbled across one night when I was, I was looking to, I always knew that I wanted to have my own business. I was running a business for an absentee owner for a long time in another industry in the printing industry. And the plan was to buy it didn’t work out. So I decided I’ve got to start searching on my own. So I found a franchise broker on, I think it was entrepreneur dot com’s website and started looking at everything and anything. Uh And restoration was one of the, one of the things that came up in the search. And um, so I I had never gotten, I never had like a labor kind of background in my job. So I was always sales, marketing, uh management, a lot of management of blue collar. So 11 years in the printing industry. Uh, so I started working with this franchise broker and I really liked what I saw about restoration. I like the relatively recession proof nature of the business, I like the the possibility in terms of profitability and um I didn’t want anything having to do with food, I didn’t want to be in a mall. And so there were a lot of things that really lined up for me. And so that’s that’s how I got started. And your and you said you had no prior construction experience? No, no, I never remember when I, when I started, I was like, well I guess I need to buy a pair of work boots. I never, never had work boots before and uh I need to get some work pants. And I remember going into in, in our area of the country. So I’m in the philadelphia suburbs pretty close to Villanova University, we’ve got this chain of convenience stores and gas stations called wa wa they got pretty big now there, you know, I think up and down the east coast and so I remember walking into, I’m sure you’ve heard of imposter syndrome, right? I remember walking into wawa to get coffee in the morning and I would like look around and think these people are thinking, what is scott miller doing in work boots? And you know, like a work shirt and you know, Carhartt pants, like I felt like I was in a Halloween costume because prior to that, like my my go to clothing wear like khakis, a white brooks Brothers shirt and a blue blazer, like that was my outfit, right? So really out of my element. And when I started, I started from zero had a part time as needed helper and I think like I was driven to get off the truck, that was my, that was my primary motivator that and I had, my wife was pregnant with her third child. She was a stay at home mom. Like I had, there was no option other than success. So every free moment I had during regular business hours, I was selling face to face somebody. If I wasn’t on a job I was selling because I was just so driven to build the business and get off the truck. Yeah, no, that’s awesome. Uh so you, it sounds like you were, you were white collar down to blue collar at first, right? And then uh and then, but but you were wise about um I mean removing yourself from the business though, it sounds, it sounds like you had that in mind from the beginning, which I think is very, very wise. And I mean that kind of leads into what you do now and how you help restoration companies. So I guess elaborate a little bit more on kind of what you’re, well, let’s start out if you want to tell you exited and sold your restoration company. Um so yeah, I know a lot of um because a lot of our clients end up doing that and I’m sure there’s a lot of guys out there listening that, you know, you know, they might want to pass this down to their to their kids maybe or there or there they’re going to sell, it really would be the ideal uh exit strategies, but a lot of these guys do want to sell. So can you talk a little bit more about that process? It’s funny, I was, I was talking with uh Michelle Blevins of CnR magazine and she asked me one of the first questions she asked me as well. So you sold, when did you first start thinking about selling the business? And I said, uh, my first sewage job, you know, it was probably about six weeks business. I thought, you know, I’ve got to sell this thing. Uh so uh I do, I help clients get their, their business ready for sale and it might be, sometimes clients come to me and it’s, it’s something that is something they want to do right away. Right. And maybe it’s, they come to me as a result of they think they know what their business is worth, they talk to a broker and because of their lack of profitability, I’ll call it, it’s not worth nearly as much as they think like they think, well the top line revenue is this, so my business should be worth x. They come to find out it isn’t worth what they thought it would be and they, they end up coming to me and saying like, can you help me Get more profitable, you know, tighten up the systems and I really want to be out of this within a year or you know, maybe no longer than 18 months, then I’ve got other clients that they know they want to exit at some point, but nothing immediate, like no immediate plans or maybe it’s within the next five years. So the urgency level is a little different and you know what we’re working on is a little different, but it really comes down to, I always say, I want to help, it’s a really tough industry, right? I want to help people maximize their profitability. If you’re gonna be in this industry, you might as well be as profitable as you can be. So I wanna help you maximize profitability, reduce the chaos and then ultimately build something you can sell for a lot of money someday when you decide it’s time to move on or in some cases I do, I’ve got a couple of clients right now that are planning to pass it to the next generation in their family. And same motivation, like it’s a little bit different. They don’t want to sell, but they want to, they want to leave their Children with something that’s very profitable and that is less chaotic than it is today because they, they don’t want that for their, their son or their daughter. They want, you know, a different lifestyle. They know how hard it is to be involved in the day to day operations. So we work on creating systems and helping them get out of the mindset that they’re the only person that can do Fill in the blank whatever it is that they’re doing, however they’re spending their time. So we kind of chip away, which is what I did because I wanted to create time. I’ve been coaching, I started my business in 2005 and I’ve been coaching other owners since 2008. And aside from getting off the truck, my motivation to build systems and delegate to my team and grow my team was because I wanted to create time so that I could help other business owners. So I needed to work my way out of the day to day operations just so I could free myself to work with other restoration business owners. Okay. Yeah. I was gonna say I would imagine that the sooner, you know, owners think about this and start getting these processes and things and the higher than multiple is on on exit based on that. Like I don’t, um, I mean based on what I’ve seen some of our clients do and then friends, I have that. Um, because I personally haven’t exited any businesses yet, but a lot of friends that I’ve, you know, have done that the more the owner is removed from the company and the less they are needed to hire, the multiple point blank. Absolutely. That, and the more attractive it is to a potential buyer, even if so like the right. So the one factor is the multiple, The other factor is how, how attractive is this business to a buyer. If the owner is, say your full service restoration company and the owner is running rebuild jobs, you know, they’re the project manager on rebuild jobs and they’re, you know, doing estimates. Maybe, you know, in some cases, maybe they’re the only person that’s writing an exact image, right? So if they’re really integral to the day to day operations business might not be attractive to a potential buyer, right? Because a potential buyer probably doesn’t want to buy themselves a job. They want to buy themselves a business that’s, that’s profitable and it’s the day to day operations are happening without the need for the owner to be involved in every little thing. So you’re right, Jamie, it’s like, you’ve gotta, doesn’t happen overnight. And you should be thinking about chipping away at it and you know, what’s the end game, you want to hopefully work yourself out of the day to day operations. Uh, and you know, the other thing that, that we haven’t talked about is it’s really important is so many people aren’t paying attention to their financials, they’re not job costing, they, their, their teams that are running jobs don’t know what their target is for profitability that, you know, it’s just, it’s not discussed, It’s not managed. So it’s something else. And again, that goes back to profitability. A multiple of profitability equals what your exit prices. It’s really important. You know, the, the top line, I talked to people all the time that I talked to a guy yesterday who’s, um, it’s relatively new. He’s about 550,000 in revenue for the past couple of years and his net is well over $200,000. I also talked to people that are several million in revenue and are about that same level of income. Right? So, um, I just, I hate to see large companies that aren’t profitable, right? Because again, it’s, it’s tough. You might as well manage the numbers, understand the numbers, give your team the tools, they need to be able to hit those targets, incentivize them to do that so that they can make more money and ownership can make more money. Yeah, delivering a great product. It’s not about cutting corners. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, most restoration companies too. I mean they didn’t really get into it to run a charity, right? Like it’s, it’s a for profit business. So they might as well make sure that there’s a little bit of profit at the end of the day spade. So let’s, um, so let’s shift gears a little bit. So we’ve talked about kind of, you know, exiting and selling what I mean, as far as growing, let’s say there’s some, um, some companies listening here, they’re like, hey, we just need to, we just, we kind of, you know, 103 what and quite is, uh, we didn’t, we didn’t hit our, you know, growth kPI s, we kind of were stuck and stagnant. I mean, what are some of the, the, you know, the companies that you work with and you’ve seen like, what are some things they’re doing to, to grow and scale um, in a profitable way that you’ve seen over the years. Sure, Absolutely. So I’m a big fan of diversity. So you know what, what your company provides is absolutely critical. Uh, you know, pay per click sc oh, all that social media. Uh, but also other things like face to face sales. You know, I talked to a lot of people and you know, and clients who, when I start with them, they are not, they’re not doing anything related to sales, old fashioned picking up the phone calling people again, there’s a lot of low hanging fruit. So every job that you have, that’s an insurance job, think about, think about the people that are associated with that job, at least one adjuster, typically an agent, maybe a contractor, you know, maybe a plumber that the homeowner got out. So right there, there are three contacts that you can stay in touch with and try to build a referral relationships with. Um, most of the, you know, that that day in and day out, especially adjusters I think is the, is the low hanging fruit because we restoration companies, they’re doing jobs. A lot of them, some of them are self paid, but a lot of them are insurance jobs. And I’m sure by and large customers are happy and adjusters are probably happy, especially if the client is happy. So I always encourage people stay in touch with the adjusters in a disciplined way and you’re going to get referrals. Uh, you know, when it comes to diversity, I think, um, there’s certainly challenges with working with third party administrators. But at the end of the day, I think they’re a great part of a diverse mix of business. So agents, adjusters, contractors, like, you know, plumbers and roofers, general contractors, uh, realtors. I mean, there’s so many different verticals that you can go after property managers, building managers, facilities management companies. There’s so many, like I was encouraged people that don’t do anything related to sales To pick one. And let’s start there. Let’s put a program together where you’re routinely working on this particular vertical or maybe two. Uh, so those are, I think diversity is huge. I think staying in touch, some, depending on, you know what you’re, what you’re reading or you know what videos you’re watching. I hear from time to time, email marketing is dead and I don’t believe it. I think it’s, it’s another great think about if you’re a restoration company doing, So you do 10 jobs a week. That’s a few 100 clients every year that you’re helping. I’ve got clients who 10% or more of their business comes from past clients. Stay in touch with your past clients. It’s another another good way. Uh, an email marketing campaign to just stay in touch with agents and adjusters who have been on jobs. There’s, there’s all these different ways. I I’ve got clients that do a lot with social media also, it’s tough to say, you know, to tie a referral, you know, you can say like, did they respond because of this one social media post we’ve done. But it’s another way to, to just stay in touch with people, right? To keep your name out there. But I think, uh, if, if I under restoration business and I wasn’t doing anything related to sales and I was just relying on all things digital. That’s probably the first thing that I would look to change. Yeah, no, I agree. And I especially agree with, you know, the diversity aspect, I mean, that that is one of the biggest mistakes I see restoration companies make is like, they’re like, hey, I’m already doing paper lead and I’m like, well what else? And they’re like nothing like, well that’s why you’re, you know, stuck at 750,000 year and you get two million your goal, I agree 10,000% that I call it? You know fishing poles, right? If you’re putting fishing poles in the water, the more poles you put there, the more fish you’re gonna catch. I agree. I mean I even because we help fix and ramp up the Internet marketing piece, but I’m even to the point now where I’m having conversations like, what are you doing from offline standpoint? Because you’ve seen like what all the big boys, you know, I’m seeing 10, 15, 123 million a year. They diversify. Absolutely. Oh yeah, absolutely. Because it’s, we’re in a low volume game, right? Like there, it’s not like heating and air or plumbing where there’s like, you know, 200 calls a day. Like those are lower ticket, high volume, we’re in the low volume, high ticket world, right? So just I agree 10,000%. Here’s the other thing too, is the making the most of what, what’s coming to you, right? So you probably are recording calls for clients. Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that I encourage, like I’ll listen to calls with clients and give them feedback. And a lot of times once I get clients listening to calls, a lot of people have these call recording systems in place and don’t listen to them, don’t utilize them. Don’t use them as a coaching tool to help their teams, right? So, you know, measuring closing rate, you know, what’s your closing rate on these leads that you’re getting? Are you making the most of them are you? When you listen to the phone calls, you learn a lot now you might you might learn that what’s being said commonly is something like uh okay Jamie. So you you told me about your water damage. Did you get a plumber out to your house yet? Uh and then you say no, not yet. And then you hear the restoration companies say oh well give us a call back once you get the get the plumber out there and then we’ll come out like oh my gosh, like no go sign the job. Talk about the plumber when you get there right maybe is the main shut off? Great. We’re gonna be right out there to help you and then talk about the plumber referral plumber. But uh if if you aren’t listening to your calls, I think it’s it’s a huge opportunity. You’re gonna learn so much about what’s being said on the phone and that if you don’t get out there right away, the chance of you getting the job goes down exponentially right? That’s one little tweak that I think you can make right away start listening to calls, understand what’s being said. Um also like you know, calls that come in Friday at 4:00 PMclock depending on who’s answering that call. You know if if it’s the technician that has to go out there and they’ve got no financial incentive to go out there and sign the job. You might not get the job right because that guy or gal probably doesn’t want to start a new water job at four o’clock on a friday. So what do you have in place in terms of, I’m a big proponent of performance based compensation for field so that they’ve got an incentive to run the job profitably to get the job signed too. And when it comes to profitability, not taking too much help, right? Not taking helper to go monitor or to go pick up four pieces of equipment, right? Get them thinking about being profitable, get them thinking like they’re an owner of a small business under the umbrella of the restoration business. But yes, back to the, you know, call recordings are, it’s a such a great tool. It really is and they don’t Yeah, because we actually monitor and listen to a lot of our clients calls to for that. I mean for that reason because we see, I mean, you know everybody. Yeah, because sometimes they don’t even think to think about it. It’s like, you know, hey, I got leads coming in but like how are those? Because you know it can, I mean we’ve seen it happen to where I mean you can add an extra 2030 grand a month easy just by auditing the leads coming in and then maybe changing how you’re handling it and like the plumber thing like man, you strike that, that’s like one of my pet peeve because Yeah, I’ve listened to thousands of these calls now. So I start, you know, success leaves clues, right? Is the same goes, so you start hearing the patterns on that and yeah, the call a plumber and call me back. Like that one strikes a chord with me. I can’t 11 of our clients, he’s been doing this 30, 40 years. I mean huge. But he, I learned that from him. He’s like uh, you know, he was like, oh, tell me a little bit more about your problem. And as soon as he knew there’s any sort of, you know mitigation or you know, rebuild. If he could help them, he’s like, let me get your name and phone number, I’m gonna dispatch somebody your way in 20063 minutes. And he was like Jamie, I would call a plumber on the way or just figure it out because I would go close the job and then deal with. Um, and I think, I mean even hopefully, you know, nobody listen to that, this is handling calls that way. But if they are, you know, being strategic and then to take that a step further and you touched on this a little bit before. Like if you don’t already have a referral partnership in place with that plumber, whoever you call whatever plumber you call and he answers, it’s like, hey, I get a lot of jobs coming in like this. Like you throw, I’ll throw some jobs your way, you throw some my way turn into it, can open the door for him to get more and more jobs. If they think through it, like you said like there’s a lot of people involved in these jobs and if somebody would just take the time to like make those reach outs um absolutely communication going, I mean there’s thousands of revenue and then you know, a lot of people will also say agent marketing is dead. Agents can’t refer anymore, right? It’s a waste of time and I absolutely disagree. Is it harder than it used to be? Absolutely, but is it still worthwhile? I think so. And I think the again the low hanging fruit there is you get this job, you know, say something like we just talked about now you get out there, it’s a covered loss and you find out who their agent is. You get that homeowner who’s probably going to be really happy with your services with your technician. You get that homeowner call the agent and say, hey we had Jamie’s restoration company out here and they’re awesome. Uh then you have somebody follow up with the agent, right? If you do a survey at the end of the job, you can take it out to them, you can go out there and visit them and uh there’s just there’s so many things that you can do to help build that relationship with an agent. So next time something happens They refer you and they don’t say call the 800 number to their insured. You can talk about the reasons why it benefits them to call you directly rather than telling their insured their client to call the 800 number. We could, we could have an hour conversation about that Jamie. But yeah, it’s you know, the next time. Yeah, we’ll get you back on here and go down that rabbit hole and that. And then you know, I’ll just give you a preview that’s all about you want to as a restoration owner or marketing rep. You want to help that agent with their business. You want to help them build relationships and be more valuable than you know, the the insurance companies that they don’t have agents right where you just, the only option is to call in. So you want to help that local agent retain and get more referrals by providing a really high level of service. And that doesn’t mean when their, when their client is in need. You know, they had a fire where they had a water damage and they’ve been a client for 10 years and have never needed anything they call and they said, oh no we can’t help you with that. Just call the 218 number. That’s not a warm and fuzzy feeling right for the insurance agents clients. So uh yeah we can, we can talk more in depth about that at another time. And I mean just to summarize that, I mean, it really, it can turn into a win win for all parties involved. The insured gets taken care of by quality restoration contractor who gets worked out of it and then the insurance agent, if the restoration company takes care of them is able to keep that insured around, which helps their loss ratio. Right? So it’s a three, it’s a win for all parties involved. Everybody would just think, you know, think about that. Um, so what we kind of touched on this a little bit, but is there like, and diversity might be the, the answer to this? If I think, you know, one of the biggest mistakes I see restoration companies make is the lack of diversity um, in their business development efforts. If I had to summarize, I mean would you kind of agree to that or like what are some of the biggest because you know more and more people come to me with, I feel like all of our eggs are in one basket with and it’s a couple of different scenarios. One is, we get all of our leads from plumbers and we’re paying these plumbers, they keep asking for more and more and more. You know, we’re up to 210 2000 $220 per job. And in some markets, what’s starting to happen is plumbers are looking to get paid twice once for the lead and then again, if the company signs the job, they want to be paid just for the lead. You know, historically it’s always been, you don’t pay the plumber unless you get the job. Well now they want to get paid for the lead also. So all of our eggs are in one basket with plumbers. All of our eggs are in one basket with TPS, that’s the other. All of our eggs are in one basket with paper click. It’s all we do. We have pay per click campaign and maybe we pay a legion company and uh usually it happens because of something painful. A big plumber relationship goes away for some reason maybe restoration companies, you know next door starts paying another $210 and that plumber goes away right? Or the T. P. A suspends you and all of a sudden, you know they’re a big part of your business. And like a light switch revenue slows down. So that’s usually when somebody comes to me with, I want to work with somebody that can help me put a plan together to diversify referral sources usually because of something painful unfortunately. Um Well I think that’s where uh you know, I imagine you probably help your clients avoid that as as we do. It’s like because we we have online marketing and offline conversations with our clients just because again we don’t, you know, we care about our our guys, we wanted to crush it and I imagine you are the same and that’s where he’s kind of like sometimes bringing it into their awareness. Um you know and everybody listening right now just think about that because you do not want to, you want to like fix that problem or before it becomes a problem problem. Like it can be like a real problem. Like you said if you got one source and that source dries up like it is no bueno local competitor a long time ago and 212% of his business was from one carriers vendor program. And overnight that program went away. Mm and He lost 103% of his business luckily I didn’t go out of business but it was painful. I had to lay a lot of people off. So I think and and I heard that story and I knew this person met him shortly after I started my business and I thought oh like I never want that to happen. I’ve got to be, I’ve got to get a little bit here, a little bit here, a little bit here. Uh that’s one of the nice things. Again people, it takes time, all these things take time discipline. You’ve got to keep doing it over and over. Nothing happens overnight. But it’s one of the nice things about agent marketing because it’s just if you can get, you know the first year you do it. Maybe you have 210 or 250 agents who have referred you and then the next year, you know, maybe 220, 20. Next thing, you know, you’ve got 50 60 70 agents, they’re all giving you a couple jobs a year and it really adds up. Some of them give you one a month, right? But uh, and, and same thing with start working on property managers again. Like it’s hard and you might, when you start you might say this isn’t working right? They all have relationships with restoration companies that are bigger than me and you know, and we don’t do rebuild like you can, you can talk yourself out of just about anything, right? So people like, just keep Just keep putting the time in and things are going to happen. It’s not gonna happen overnight. But over time you’re gonna look back and say, I’m so glad I started doing this like that, but I won’t get it right. I’m not great with remembering how things go, but like the best time to plant a tree, you know, uh, was 25 years ago. The next best time is today. Yeah, absolutely. That was good. That was good. Right? Yeah, that was good. Now, I agree. And I think to anybody that hasn’t done, you know, this type of, you know, referral marketing, I think because actually when I used to work in the subcontractor world, this is kind of how we were taught and what I did to like even because you can’t just walk in somebody’s office and then assume you’re going to get an extra 102 503 100 grand. But what, what we used to do is like, I remember I had five general contractors. Now I would play golf with these guys. I would go to happy hour with these guys. But like I had five relationships and manage 5 to 6 million construction projects a year from those five people. Like, but I understood like walking in like that doesn’t even count as like doing anything. Like then, you know, month to month, like, hey, I’m grabbing beers there, you want to meet me like, and then like if you keep the consistency of doing that, if any of these guys will just consistently do, even if it’s like a year, like, alright, I’m gonna once a month for a year. I mean it could be, I think it’s a lack of consistency. I couldn’t agree more. Like I have so many as you’re telling that story. I’ve got so many thoughts. I talked to, I talked to guys that they’ll say, oh well, you know, this doesn’t work that aging marketing doesn’t work. It just doesn’t work property managers that doesn’t work and they, you know, they give me all these reasons why it doesn’t work, but it works for other people, right? Why? So why doesn’t it work for you? Well, because you went into an agent two or three times in the course of a year and then you stopped because they didn’t refer you and now you label it, agent marketing doesn’t work where you’ve called an adjuster a couple of times, Hey, do you have any have anything for me? And they don’t? So you stop because you say, well they’ve got their favorite guys, then they’re gonna just keep referring them, they’re not gonna refer me and it’s, it’s never going to work. If you stop, right? You’re never gonna get work from whoever you’re trying to get work from. If you don’t keep trying now, my mantra was always, everybody’s gonna refer us. It’s your job. Like if I’m talking to one of my sales reps, it’s your job to make that happen and figure out how to shorten the amount of time it’s gonna take to happen. But have the mindset that they’re going to refer. It’s just a matter of time and it’s my job to make it happen sooner than later. Yeah, But if you stop, if you stop trying, it’s, you would assure your, you know that it’s, it’s never going to happen. Yeah, it’s definitely not. And that’s what I’m saying. If, man, yeah, I mean there’s so I think it’s just doing the reps, doing the reps and then obviously using some people skills along the way too. Like if this person likes golf, if you take them to a couple of rounds of, you know, 18 there, it’s like the law of reciprocity or whatever it’s called, like they’re eventually gonna be like, dude, I know we normally throw it to you know, abc restoration but I’m gonna throw you a bone and not get out of the park for their and they’re like wait a minute like you know, maybe I need to get a load of these got a little bit. Yeah exactly. Yeah. Connection is getting a little spotty what like Yeah let’s let it catch up for a minute, you hear me now? Alright, well it wouldn’t be a live podcast without some some hiccups. Let’s uh let’s um Alright so let’s shift gears kind of like is there well and I feel like we’re getting ahead of ourselves. I already thought of some things before I ask this because we kind of just covered it. But is there like a certain personality trait or strength that you’ve noticed from like the restoration companies that crush it? Like you know, I mean is there like a personal character trait or skill set or you know, I mean something that you kind of notice like man, these guys are gonna crush it. I just know it. Have you been, have you seen a pattern there? Yeah, I think uh one of them is definitely discipline anyway and it’s such a, such a broad word right? But it’s it’s being really focused on what you want to make happen and and just you know, being relentless, not not giving up just continuing to to chip away and make progress and understanding that if you want to make a big shift in the business, it’s not going to happen overnight, but, you know, having that vision for what it is that you want your business to look like, and just staying the course and being really disciplined, uh, sharing. I think owners that share with their team what they want and, and aren’t see one of the segue a little bit. One of the most influential books to me has been in business has been traction by Gino Wickman. And so you and I, we’ve talked about. Yeah, yeah. So it and so back to the personality, right? And I’ll try to tie this in if if you’ve got a a system that you can follow and you can be disciplined with it, even if it’s even if it’s not traction, even if it’s say like owners that are really successful are disciplined and it might be around when they start to work with me. And even even owners that don’t work with me, maybe they don’t have a great understanding of their financials. Like I didn’t when I started, I had zero understanding of financials when I started. But the pain got so great, you know, at about two years into it that I decided I’ve got to do something about it and it was uncomfortable, you know, I was out of my element, but I just stayed the course did the research, you know, made sure that I learned, made sure that I implemented and just kept chipping away at it. So I think regardless of what it is that you want to make progress with in the business, it’s that understanding, it’s not going to happen overnight and being disciplined and just continuing to stay the course and sharing. The other thing that’s really important is sharing with your team. What is your vision for what you want the business to look like? Because if, if you’re, if you’re trying to go it alone, I just, I think it doesn’t work. So I think owners that, that I’ve worked with and that I know that I haven’t worked with just friends in the industry, they’re really good at sharing the vision and getting the team to buy in and just being persistent and not not giving up on what it is that they want for their business. Yeah. And it’s, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s tough to do, but uh, definitely worthwhile. Yeah. And I’ll, I’ll run with that for a minute because I agree. And since we brought up traction, I think we, so we run our business on traction and something that you just touched on. It was, it’s been life changing for our company and, and I’m involved in some other, some other companies as well and we, I’ll never be involved without this coming up and this being handled is looking at yourself first. Like me personally, I did this right? I’m a visionary, 10,000% if you’re a visionary, you better find you an integrator and that is where it gets dangerous in a good way, so a lot of people listening to this podcast, like there’s, I was reading an article the other day like their most more likely, probably a visionary, a lot of entrepreneurs are not, not everybody, but a lot of our visionary, so if you are a visionary, because I agree the discipline is a huge piece to this game too, but but you said something and this is something, I mean it took me a little, I’ll admit, I did not know this coming out of the Gates and like, you know, if I would have known this 20 years ago, I mean who knows, you know, but you, to help you with the discipline part and the consistency part, you need an integrator and that and what happens here is they take your vision and they make it happen and then they layer in the accountability to where there’s like, it’s not like, so now it’s like we don’t, like it’s getting done right, and then the integrator is there to make sure it gets done, so when it comes to serving our clients like, and that is, it could be now that process is not like a one day thing, like, but I think it’s been life changing for us and like I said, I will never be involved in anything without doing that And because it is just and it also takes because I’ve been studying this a lot too, is being able to set your ego aside and admit that we all have strengths and weaknesses as human beings and then like it’s okay and just to get over it, but hire out to your weaknesses, it’s like pouring rocket fuel on the engine. I mean, it is like, so I think, I mean this is that came up because that there’s some huge epiphany epiphanies I’ve had recently and people have observed and watched like, I mean, you know, nine figure, I mean, the Big boys, they think about this account. Um, I agree and I think that kind of, you know, that connects everything that, you know, we’ve kind of covered on um, just thinking about that. So what let’s, let’s, you know, it can’t, it can’t, well maybe it can be traction, but so what is, what’s one of the most impactful books you’ve read over the years? Um it can be traction. But has there been one of, so I’m a big fan of jOHn Maxwell, so one of his books is called the five levels of leadership. That that’s a great if you haven’t read that, that’s a great one. Uh another one is, and it’s not very well known. I don’t even know if it’s in print anymore. It’s called your best year yet and I think Darren Hardy has has one that’s a similar title might be best year ever. So this is your best year yet by jenny did Slur And it is um, It’s a book about how to the subtitle is 10 questions for making the next 12 months your most successful year ever. And It is a, it’s the first coaching certification that I went through. So she wrote the book and then built a coaching practice around it and then started to train and certify individuals on coaching using her methodology. And um, that was, so I read that maybe in 2006 and it was the first time that, and there’s, there’s lots of process um, process books for how to build a plan, right, How to, how to create a business plan, how to create a personal plan. And this is the first one that I was ever exposed to. And it’s just, it’s such a simple process and what what I got at the end of it was this one page plan of 10 goals that were really meaningful to me. So when I started coaching, that’s, I took every client through that process to build and it was a combination of personal and business goals that was, you know, early on. And I still, I reread it, I still create a, the best year yet plan for myself every year. So that was, that’s up there. There’s so many. I have a, I have a hard time with, like what’s your favorite movie? What’s your favorite song? What’s your most impactful book because there’s so many, it’s hard to narrow it down to one, but yeah, definitely on the short list. Yeah, it’s um we’ll have our books myself and I think it is a hard question because I think there’s certain books for certain things, right? You’re trying to learn more about certain problems you’re trying to solve. Yeah, I think so, anybody listening that doesn’t have like a quote unquote operating system that they run their business on traction can be a game changer. We’ve touched on that. I’ll tell you a lot of clients with implementing that. I’m not, you know, an official traction implementer, but if somebody’s trying to self implement, I can help them with it. I’ve been through it so many times in my own, in two of my own businesses and helping clients with it for years. Okay, awesome. Yeah. So anybody listening that wants to look into implementing us, reach out to scott for sure. Yeah, we self implemented um ourselves but my my integrator, you know, our operations manager in our company, she had experience with it. So she kind of Yeah, she she helps and uh you know, managed to run all that for us, I want to tell you uh I think we’re losing the internet again. Yeah, yeah. All right. I think we’re back, we’re back. Alright. Um because I want to I want to recommend this one to you because it’s I I joke with my team about this because I had my leadership team read it as well. It’s called Principles by Ray Dalio. Now I highly recommend you read it. And and this is gonna be this is kind of off the wall recommendation because who Ray is. I don’t know if you’ve heard them, but yeah, you heard him. Yeah. So one of the largest hedge funds in the world. Right? I know that’s not restoration. But sometimes it’s uh, that’s where we get a lot of our innovation from is you know, sometimes you gotta go look outside the normal world you’re in to bring in some stuff that’s next level. So that’s kind of what you know, I like to do, highly recommend principle. I read it reread it once a year now it’s that powerful. It is like it is just read it. Put put Principles by Ray Dalio on your list. I will. Well I always say like I just said to my daughter last night, I wish I could speed read because my my pile of unread books is growing and I’ve got so many others on my list that I haven’t bought that. I want to. So I use audible tried it when I’m in the car trying to consume some new information using audible. And and I tried to read as much as I can and uh list and I don’t, you know, I heard this from somebody. I mean this might be a little a little crazy, but this is something I do sometimes is I read it and do the audio book of the same book traction. That was a huge help. Yeah. Yeah and and again I don’t because you know you get I’m not gonna lie like back in the day like oh yeah, I read 50 bucks books a year. I’m so cool. Like and then and then now as you get a little wiser and older you’re like, dude, it doesn’t like you have to change a belief or an action to like, you know what I mean? Like so now that’s what I like to just pick five books and go deep and that’s what we’re doing on principle and it’s you know, again that’s something I wish I knew 20 years ago. So like and so now I will listen to it and read it because sometimes you’ll you’ll hear something like, oh man, I remember reading about that, but guess what? The book just plug that gap that I had and then, you know like, you know, because it’s you know, we’re always trying to improve and grow and I think that’s a little tidbit that I just thought if anybody wants to go deep on any topics, that’s a great recommendation. I thought I was the only one that did that Jamie. Yeah, no, I thought I was the only weirdo out there too. So I’m glad you. Yeah, yeah, we might be the only two, but no I think it it can definitely uh definitely help. Um Well yeah that’s I appreciate you coming on my class today. What if somebody wanted to, you know, hop on a on a call with you or learn more about, you know, scott miller and the growth league, what’s what’s the best way for them to find the online best way is just go to the growth league dot com. There’s a link to get on my calendar book a call with me. The other thing you could do is you could go to Youtube and search scott miller, the growth league and uh take a look at some of the videos I’ve posted there, talking about sales and profitability mostly. Okay, good call with me, awesome. Well, appreciate your time. Uh scott, I think I got some uh some good value out of the call and we’ll have to get you on the calendar for for a part two sometime. Sounds good. Alright, thanks for having me on your welcome. Alright, see you