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September 11, 2024 14 mins

Navigating the overwhelming landscape of tools and services as contractors can be daunting. With so much information available, it’s crucial to discern what truly serves our best interests versus what merely drives sales for others. Understanding when to say no is vital in scaling our businesses effectively.

Focusing on generating revenue while leveraging strengths allows us to delegate tasks that don’t align with our core competencies. Establishing a solid sales process is essential; after all, more leads mean little without an effective strategy to convert them. Join us as we explore these foundational elements critical for hitting $1M per year.

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Episode Transcript

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Jim Johnson (00:00):
The thing that's most confusing to most of us is,
um, contractors or reallyanybody growing a business.
Is there's so much informationavailable out there so much
knowledge available out there Somany tools that are available so
many services that areavailable.
We get really confused Becausewe have to really look at this

(00:20):
person that's selling the toolor this person that's selling
the service Are they in my bestinterest for me to do the right
thing at the right time todaybased on who I am as a
contractor?
Or are they more focused on themand making a sale and not really
asking you the questions of, isthis the right thing for you to
do today?
This was actually something thatreally, um, created this

(00:43):
opportunity to scale my businessfaster is learning what to say
no to based on what stage I wasin as a contractor.
So early on your biggest focusis, How do I generate revenue
and focus on the thing I do bestand then leverage the other
things that are out there thattake care of the things you

(01:06):
don't do?
Well, for example, maybe you'renot a production superstar
fulfillment person that actuallydoes the work.
You might be more on the salesside of things.
So for example, Who could youput in place that would allow
you to scale that side of yourwork because you're not having
to do it.
We get suckered into all thesedifferent things that are like,

(01:27):
Hey, get more leads today.
But if you got more leads, canyou actually sell them?
Do you have a sales processthat's great and closes at least
35 percent and hopefully closerto 50 percent of the people that
you talk to?
And so what you'll usually find.
is that the smaller of acontractor that you are, there's

(01:48):
more foundational type work thatyou need to do.
And some of that work is on youand who you are as a leader.
And as far as a person thatperforms at a high level, most
of us are not in any type ofroutine.
We walk around this planet inreactionary mode all the time.

(02:08):
Uh, we, we have the next sale.
We have the next job to build.
We have the next person to makehappy.
We have the next piece ofinformation to learn.
And we're just reacting all thetime without having a real
roadmap to go, Hey, I should bedoing this now so that I can do
that later.
And it was one of the biggestthings that kept me from growing
early on in my companies was Iwanted to be this thing way over

(02:31):
there.
Like I, Hey, I knew I was goingto be 30, 40, 50 million
business.
Yeah.
And I was trying to do all thethings that a 30, 40, 50 million
dollar business does because Iwas trying to emulate them.
I wanted to be exactly likethem.
But what I really needed to dois go back and look at what
their path was.

(02:51):
How did they get to there?
What were the first things thatthey did, especially if I'm
doing something less than amillion dollars?
And so I started to look intothat.
I started to do some, some of myown observation, ask some
questions of people, got my owncoaches and things like that.
And what I learned is that thevery first thing that most of
them do Is they get a routine,they know when they're going to

(03:14):
do the work that's necessary todo the work that's necessary at
the right time.
So they tend to enforce sometime blocking and what that
means is they section offportions of their day and then
their week.
And then their quarter and thentheir year to accomplish the
things that they want, whichmost of us that are business

(03:35):
owners, entrepreneurs, juststarting out, isn't natural for
us.
It's actually the opposite ofnatural natural is just to run
around like a chicken with ourhead cut off.
Most of the time, it's unnaturalto be regimented and disciplined
and consistent.
But what we found is that if wecan put that in place and be
really consistent with oureffort on a daily basis, And the

(03:56):
little things, those big thingsjust naturally happen.
They're actually an outcome ofthe effort that you do today.
Uh, one of the best things Iever got taught, um, John
Maxwell shared with me, he goes,Hey man, your future self is
going to thank your current selffor the amount of discipline and
routine that you put into yourworld.

(04:16):
And so there were certain thingsthat I had to get, I had to do a
lot of personal growth side ofthings, learning how to be a
better person.
Uh, be better at sales, bebetter at marketing, be better
as a leader, be better as anentrepreneur.
These things that I had to do tostart to bring value to my
company.
And if I don't know those thingsand I'm not good at those
things, I'm kind of at rookiestage.
Think of it as like, Hey, I'mjust beginning.

(04:37):
I'm starting to figure thingsout and I've got to get this
information.
Some of the information Ilearned early on was this idea
of making the best use of doingthe right, most important thing
at the right time each day.
So I wanted to go look into whatthat looked like.
I found this idea of timeblocking.

(04:58):
And so I started to block outthe times of my day when I was
going to do certain things.
Like I wasn't going to go outand try to get new jobs on a
Monday morning between eight andnoon.
That doesn't work.
It just doesn't work out realwell.
Everybody else is kind ofgetting their work underway.
So why shouldn't I take thattime to get my work underway?
That's when I would useplanning.

(05:18):
I'd be meetings with my team.
It would be getting paperworkdone.
It'd be all that stuff that Ididn't need to be outgoing and
need to be ingoing on thebusiness at hand.
And so I would.
Block out a section of time todo all my paperwork and all
those things that were kind ofbusiness oriented and I actually
didn't even go and sell onMondays, Mondays and people have

(05:39):
bad attitudes.
I've had a rough day at thebeginning of the week, all that
other good stuff.
So I started to block my time todo the things like marketing,
um, the various aspects ofbuilding out a process, all the
things that need to get workdone, uh, internal work that was
necessary.
On Mondays and Tuesdays, I wouldget a little bit more about
marketing and some of theefforts that I would put in

(06:00):
there, maybe even going out andbeing a part of a networking
group and starting to set intimes.
The key part of that is it's ageneral effort during a specific
amount of time.
So, for example, I didn't say Iwas going to go meet Mrs.
Jones, I would say I'm runningappointments during these times.

(06:21):
Or I didn't say I'm going towork on this specific marketing
thing, I would say I'm workingon marketing to residential in
these times.
And I worked really hard to pickthe right times to do that so
that I could be very effectivein the times when I was in front
of people.
And so this idea of timeblocking became very important.

(06:42):
But it was all the stuff, right?
The general stuff that needed tobe done.
And I wasn't sure that I wasworking on the next most
important thing.
Like, how do I determine whatthat was?
And that's where the concept ofan action matrix came in.
It's this idea.
That we have a lot of things todo.
There's a big, long list ofthem.
Most of us have.

(07:03):
And the idea is to get them allwritten down.
And then give them a scorethat's purely judgmental on the
amount of effort that it wouldtake to do that thing.
And the amount of impact thatthing would have on a scale of 1
to 10.
So if it was something hard andbig, it might be a 7 or an 8 on
an effort score.
Maybe I'm building out my salesprocess.

(07:25):
So that's going to take me somereal effort, education,
learning, uh, to get done.
And, uh, so that might be reallyhigh on the effort score.
But the impact score was evenhigher, like a nine or a 10.
Like if I nail that salesprocess, it's going to have the
biggest impact on what's goingto happen for my business.
And so that particular thingwould go into what I would call

(07:47):
major projects.
It wasn't the thing I could doright away, but I could knock
off little pieces of it to getthat thing done.
Then there were things like, um,a networking.
Uh, situation like I've got anetworking opportunities, just
one.
It's not a whole bunch.
I've got this task to maybe godo a, um, a home show as a

(08:07):
contractor, or maybe it's anetworking of, uh, gathering.
And I've got to say effort onthat.
Uh, it could be a little bitsmaller, maybe a three or four.
I don't have a whole lot of haveto do with that, depending on
how you go about doing it,especially if you've done one
before.
But the impact could be a sevenor eight that would go into
quick wins.
So I'm scoring everything to go,Hey, over here is quick wins,

(08:31):
kind of top left.
If you're thinking of a matrix,those are the things I can knock
out right away and have animpact on my business, where if
it was a bit bigger, that'd bemajor.
And that would be on the top,right?
The other things that scoredlower.
Okay.
So maybe it scored lower andeffort.
And low in impact, I was lookingat delegating that thing,

(08:53):
whatever that was, oreliminating it, finding some
other way to either get it doneor get rid of it that wasn't me.
I had to get into that box sothat I understood that this
would be kind of the eliminationbox and then the ones that would
have low effort and kind ofmedium impact.
Yeah.
Um, those would go into what wascalled fill ins.

(09:15):
Those are the things that we'rekind of doing on a daily basis
all the time.
But it started to prioritizelike, hey, what's the most
important thing for me to bedoing?
I also created another littlething that was really important,
which was what's the mostimportant thing of the day?
One thing, do one big thing eachand every week.
And so these are the types ofthings that we go through from a

(09:36):
foundational aspect withcontractors to get the base in.
If we get the base in reallywell, The rest of it, all the
other stuff gets really easy.
But if we try to do all thatbig, huge stuff that doesn't
actually have an immediateimpact on the results of our
business, we're going tostruggle for quite some time

(09:56):
until we can actually scale in.
Most of the time we're kind ofguessing, is that the right
thing for my business?
So that's a little idea ofgetting a bit of control on
saying what to say no to, youknow, all of these offerings
that are out there They're allvery good at enticing you and
tempting you to say this isgoing to be the magic pillar the

(10:16):
easy button That allows you tosolve all the world's problems
and you're going to be this Hugescale giant big business with
tons of money and boats andplanes and hot girls and parties
You The reality is that it's thesmall, little things that are
prioritized in order of theimpact that are going to
generate an outcome of thelifestyle that you want to live.

(10:39):
And so be very cautious of whatyou hear.
Listen well, listen, like, Hey,yeah, you can get me 30 more
leads.
But run it through the filter.
Do I have a process to handleall of those leads?
Do I have the sales process toconvert all of those leads?
Do I have the staff to handleall of those leads?

(11:02):
Do I have the culture that Iwant people to be involved in
whenever we do get those leads?
Or are you going to just pissaway money?
That's the reality of it.
You're going to spend a wholebunch of money getting a whole
bunch of leads that just getburnt because some marketing
company convinced you thatmarketing was the biggest thing
that you need to do.

(11:23):
And early on when you're lessthan a million dollars, That
heavy duty, high expensemarketing stuff is something to
avoid.
There are other ways.
We teach a lot of these all starmarketing tactics that allow you
to generate well over a milliondollars without a massive
expense.
And it's one of those thingsthat like opens people's eyes
whenever we're coaching them.

(11:43):
They're like, wow, I didn'trealize that that was something
I could do.
I actually have a little storyabout that.
Um, I did a event in Birmingham,Alabama about eight years ago
and uh, it was standing roomonly, which was shocking.
I was like Birmingham wasstarving for information on how
to be a great contractor.
As a matter of fact, firemarshal came in and said, Hey,

(12:04):
no more people in here.
We had people standing allaround the outside.
And then I talked about some ofthese various tactics.
And one of the things I talkedabout was this, Um, highly
customized, very well thoughtout strategic letter that you
would send to specificneighborhoods, markets,
situations, and put that thingtogether, walked everybody

(12:25):
through it.
It's actually part of ourplatform to this day.
So go through that whole thing.
Everybody thought it was cool.
I come back to Birmingham, uh,seven years later.
So last year I come back toBirmingham and I'm talking about
something completely different.
Working with one of our partnersand this guy comes up to me
during a break.
And he's like walking towards meand I kind of stick my hand out

(12:47):
to shake his hand.
He puts both arms out and justputs a big, huge hug on me.
And I'm like, what's up man?
I didn't even know who he was.
He's like, I'm so and so with soand so company and I just wanted
to thank you for that letter.
That letter is our totalmarketing effort.
That's all we do.
It doesn't cost us anything butsome envelopes and stamps and a

(13:08):
little bit of time.
And it generates about 8 milliona year for us.
You changed my life.
You changed the lives of oursalespeople.
You also helped us with how wehave created a client
experience.
So you've changed the life ofour clients.
I just want to thank you forhelping me build this business
that I was after.
Man, that's the stuff thatreally makes me happy to see

(13:31):
people take the thing that wehave and do it at the right time
and implement it and have greatsuccess with it.
So really think about what is itthat I needed to be doing right
now that's realistic, low cost,high impact to get me to above a
million dollars.
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