Lighting for Profits - Episode 199

If you're tired of being the first one in, the last one out, and the only one who knows what's going on, this one's for you. Danny Kerr, co-founder of Breakthrough Academy, has helped thousands of contractors escape the daily grind and build businesses that actually run without them. In this episode, he unpacks what that transition really looks like and how to structure your company for long-term growth.

We’re talking smart org charts, clear roles, job costing that tells the truth, and KPIs that create accountability so you don't have to chase people down. Plus, Danny is giving away 8 of BTA’s most valuable tools for free. If you want more time, more control, and a business that doesn’t need you 24/7, hit play.

You don’t just have to imagine an organized business. Danny’s giving you 8 FREE TOOLS to build one. Download them here: 

https://trybta.com/LightingForProfits

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Episode Transcript

Welcome to Lighting for Profits. All Light powered by Emory Allen

Welcome to Lighting for Profits. All Light, all light. All Light powered by Emory Allen. Here is your host, Ryan Lee. A lot, A lot of light. Welcome, welcome, welcome to the number one. It's the number one landscape lighting show in British Columbia, Canada. What's up? What's up? It's kind of an honor, guys. We're going international today. So, got a great show lined up if you're looking to start or grow a landscape lighting business or, heck, any kind of, like, home service contracting business. But I love lighting, you know that, guys. But we're gonna help you guys level up. We're here to, educate, here to motivate, to help you dominate. So, let's do it together, right?

This is episode 199 of Lighting for Profits powered by Emory Allen

again, I'm Ryan Lee, your host of Lighting for Profits powered by Emory Allen. Today we got an awesome guest. We've got Danny, Kerr with Breakthrough Academy. And if you guys have not heard of Danny or Breakthrough Academy, this is your chance. And what's. Ah, cool. I guess I want you guys to stick around to the end because Danny's actually going to give away a bunch. I can't remember how many. It's like seven or eight tools, which, like, some people buy courses and stuff and they'll spend, like, thousands of dollars. What he's going to give away today is, like, better than most courses. Okay. And we were kind of joking before the show. It's like, this is enough to do for a summer or maybe even a year or two years in your business. So super excited to have Danny on. had the pleasure, to get to know him over the last couple years. And I was actually just on his podcast, that we can talk about as well, just a few weeks ago. So excited to have him on. And I just want to thank you guys for your support that keeps showing up every single day. This is episode 199. So cool. And, next week is our 200th episode. So we're going to have, some kind of secret, guests on next week, to celebrate 200 episodes. So thank you guys for, being part of the show. Not gonna lie, if there was no support and people stopped listening, I'd probably be discouraged and quit. So thank you. before I have Danny on again, we got Danny Kerr with Breakthrough Academy coming on. If you're looking to level up your business and really kind of help learn the systems, systematize and learn accountability and KPIs and get up to a million dollars, $2 million, five, $10 million. he's really really good at that. So we're going to talk about those things. But before we have him.

My son Max recently got into mountain biking, which is cool

Come on. I want to share this story real quick. recently, my son max, he is 12. He's 12? Yeah. He's turning 13 this summer. But he's recently got into mountain biking, which I'm, like, super stoked because I thought he was just going to be this gamer, like, be like, Fortnite champion of the year and just live in my basement forever. But he's got into, mountain biking, which is cool. He joined the mountain bike team at the high school, and he's, like, in the. They call it like, the junior, devo or something like that. Like, so he's on the high school team, but kind of like the junior team. And, but it's cool because he goes and practices twice a week. And, now he's, like, super excited and he kind of wants to show off to me and stuff like that. So now we have a cool activity to do, to do together. Because he's always asked me to play Fortnite. I'm like, dude, I ain't playing Fortnite. but, it's mainly because I suck. I don't like to do things that I suck at, right? And any type of shooting game, I don't even stand a chance. So it's really fun to go get some father son time. We've been riding, and the other day we went out and I was able to kind of ride behind him and observe him and see kind of his progress since he joined the team. And it's been awesome. I mean, his body positioning is better. he's standing up like full time instead of sitting down on the downhills. His cornering and body positioning, all this stuff is really, really good. And so we're coming up to this river crossing and there's a little narrow bridge. And, you know, as a, as his dad, I get super nervous because I'm, like, thinking about all the things that could go wrong. Like, and, like, if I don't say something to him and then he falls off the bridge, like, what am I gonna do? And what's his mom gonna say? And all this stuff. And the rivers are flowing right now in Utah. So as a dad, you know, I'm super nervous. So I'm like, hey, a couple things. Keep up your speed and don't look off the side. Now, I tell them these things because as you guys know, if you've ever ridden a bike, it's really hard to keep momentum and, like, Balance if you don't have momentum, right? So if you just, like, get on a bike and you just try to sit there, like you're gonna tip over. And, So. And then the other thing is, like, if you're. If you're looking somewhere, like, if you're looking off the bridge or you see, like, a rock on the path or a tree root or a stump, like, your mind, your subconscious kind of takes over. And, like, your subconscious. I've heard that it doesn't know the difference between right and wrong. It doesn't know the difference between, like, true and false. So if you're like, if Max is thinking, don't fall off that bridge. It's like saying, fall off that bridge. If he's thinking, like, don't look at that rock. Don't hit that rock. Don't hit that rock. It's like saying, hit that rock. Have you guys ever had that? Has that ever happened to you in your business? You're, like, thinking, don't do this. Don't do this. And then the very thing that you didn't want to happen comes true. It's because your subconscious doesn't know the difference between and, you know, positive and negative. And so you got to kind of switch the script on that. Instead of saying, like, don't go off the bridge. It's like, stay focused. Stay on the bridge. Because it's not like it doesn't know, don't stay on the bridge. It just knows, stay on the bridge, right? So I was just worried that he wasn't gonna have enough speed to go on this bridge. And he'd be looking off the side, and then he tumbles, and then I gotta figure that out. So, what was kind of cool is there was no problems. I was worried, you know? And, he went across the bridge and did totally fine. and, later, then we made it to, like, a downhill section. And, I was surprised to see. Cause Max is normal, if anyone's ever met him. He's, like, shy and timid and just like. He's just shy and timid, right? But we're going downhill, and he is going fast. He is flying. And obviously being on the team has helped. He's probably seen others. He's got coaches now and stuff like that. but he was doing great. Even when it got steep, even when it got rocky, even when it got loose, he was keeping his speed up. And I thought, man, this is so refreshing. Because I know, like, when I learned to. Especially when I learned to, dirt bike which was maybe only like 10 years ago. I learned the hard way that, like, if you break too much and you try to go slow downhill, it becomes like very, very difficult, for a lot of different reasons. But the faster you go, the smoother it is and actually the easier it gets. And so we're going down these hills and I'm thinking about all this and I thought, man, life in business is a lot like this. you know, first, business owners, they tend to look at the things that are immediately in front of them. So we're constantly putting out fires. Whether it's a client that's, you know, unhappy with us today or a team member who showed up late, or they're not as productive as you want. These are like the rocks, these are the tree roots, these are the stumps that are in the path. And we tend to focus on what's right in front of us. Right. Instead of seeing through these things and letting our vision dictate our path, we're getting stuck on these things. And the challenge is if you, if you hit a rock at a slow speed, you bounce off it at a fast speed, you don't even notice it, your suspension and your in, your tire takes over and you just go right over it. And what becomes a potential obstacle for someone going slow is kind of a non issue with the right speed. Okay. And yes, they're real problems. I mean, if you have customers that are upset or team members that are not as efficient as they should be or whatever, of course they're real problems.

M shares his quick momentum framework to help entrepreneurs grow bigger and faster

But they tend to take us off our course and take us off the real vision and the real mission. Because we're so focused on them, we bounce off them and it changes our trajectory. Then the second thing is most business owners, they're so worried about having everything perfect that they tend to go at slower speeds and it feels safer and it feels like we're in more control. Like, I'm not going to get out of, I'm not going to go chaos mode. M here. I'm just going to slow down and I'm not going to get a lot of speed because it feels safe. Right. And, without realizing it, without realizing it, you're making more things more difficult. Okay? So, if you've never ridden a bike, yeah. The first time you go down, you probably shouldn't go with a lot of speed. Okay. Yes, you should wear a helmet. You should do all this stuff, right? But as you get better, you'll see that, like, actually it's way easier with More speed and momentum. But you need to practice. You need to get your. Your skills set up to those. Those areas. But you'll realize that momentum is your friend, and it can actually smooth out the trail and smooth out this bumpy ride. So I want to share with you my, my quick momentum, framework, that's gonna help you guys, okay? And you can use this today. And I've got a little challenge for you. So number one, step one of the momentum method, four steps to riding faster and growing bigger. Number one is shift your mindset. So remember that speed can actually give you more control. And by the way, I start with mindset. Pretty much every framework I'm ever going to create is probably going to start with mindset. Because if you don't buy into it, like, if you're. If you're not going to shift to, like, okay, I'm going to try this. I'm going to go all in on this. And if you're just, like, shy and hesitant toward it, it's probably not going to work. Like, you have to agree that this is going to work. So you've got to convince yourself that speed is key. Okay? And if not, if not, then the rest of the few steps are probably not going to work as well as they would. Okay? So you got to trust that momentum is your friend. It's going to help you stay balanced and in control, just like on that bike. If you get on a bike today and try to stay in one spot or go really slow, you're going to complain. You're going to say, man, this is. This is not easy to do. This is not easy to ride this bike. But as you progress and get more speed, you're going to realize that balance isn't even an issue. You're not thinking about balance when you're riding a bike 15 miles an hour. You're thinking about objects to avoid or things up ahead of you.

Tom Gummer uses the momentum method to help small businesses succeed

The second step of the momentum method, is spot the resistance. So just like, Max and I spotted that bridge ahead of us, we had to identify, okay, there's something that we need to be prepared for. So you need to identify the areas in your business where you're feeling hesitant, where you're feeling stuck, where you're feeling a little bit timid, a little bit shy. Once you spot the resistance, you move to step three, which is actually pedal into it. Okay? And a lot of people, this is where you're going to struggle because it doesn't seem natural. And this is why some people succeed and some don't. Because the natural man in you is going to want to, like, tiptoe in and try things. You know, let me, let me just test the waters, right? But actually, you need to commit with speed. Whether it's raising prices, whether it's, following up more, whether it's launching something new, a new offer. Go all in and let momentum do the heavy lifting for you. Because I'm telling you, when you have this momentum with you, life becomes so much easier. And remember, this works. Whether you're going uphill or downhill, there's momentum. Even when people are going downhill and things are easy, a lot of times people break too much. So when they get to the bottom of the valley, they don't have enough speed when it gets difficult, and so they give up right then. And so a lot of people are like, oh, things are good. You know, I don't have to advertise, I don't have to invest in coaching, I don't have to do whatever, right? So they just coast. Whereas, like, no, there's times where you need more speed going downhill than you do uphill. Right? So it's not just going uphill, it can be downhill as well. and then finally, step four. Stay focused and stay off the brakes. This is where, when you're crossing that bridge, if you break and you come to a stop, you're going to tip over, you're going to fall into that river. If you're not focused on what's past the bridge, you're going to see the little things and then you're going to swerve or you're going to bounce off a rock and end up in that river. So once you're in motion, don't second guess, okay? Don't slow down too soon. Keep your eyes on the path ahead and maintain that momentum. So here's my challenge for you. That's my momentum method. But here's my challenge for you this week. Pick your hill, pick your bridge. Find instead of slowing down, I want you guys to pedal harder. I want you to resist the urge to slow down and see what happens when you stop tapping the brakes and start riding like a pro. Lean into it, approach. Apply this method and report back. Let me know how it works out for you guys. All right? Remember, in just a couple minutes, we got Danny Kurt coming on. Hey, have you ever felt like your lighting projects are missing that special touch? The Scout Pro from Emory Allen might just be what you need. This compact stone tumbled forged brass fixture is perfect for those subtle lighting applications. Perfect for small spaces Think under handrails, within, decking, or nestled in flower spots. despite its size, it packs a punch with 196 lumens and a high CRI of 92, ensuring vibrant and accurate color rendering. And with its IP68 rating, it's ready for any weather. Enhance your installations with the Scout Pro and see the difference. You can learn more by emailing tom gmeryallen. com and remember, if you mentioned lighting for profits, Tom will hook you up with that discounted contractor pricing and get your account set up. So remember, email tom gary allen. com, check out their new fixture, the Scout Pro, and see what Emory Allen can do for you today.

Ryan: Welcome to the show, Danny Kerr. What's up, Danny

All right, I think it's finally time. Are you guys ready? I know I am. let's get the show on the road. Let's get the music going. Wrong song. Let's go. Let's try this again. Where's my guest intro music? Is this it? There it is. Welcome. Welcome to the show, Mr. Danny Kerr. What's up, Danny?

Ryan. Thanks for having me, man. You've got a whole soundboard.

Eh, I know. I'm. I'm almost. I'm. I'm two. I'm 199 episodes in, and I still have errors pretty much every episode, but, yeah, I'm hanging on.

It's good. You're, you're doing the work of two men. I've got Juan in the background. Plus, Lauren actually helped me out when I read our podcast. You were. You're playing many instruments at once.

I know. I'm like, I'm trying to do this, this. Yeah, Some days I'm more prepared than others, but, yeah, maybe. You never know. Well, I'm excited to have you on, man. I've known about. Well, I knew about your business before I knew you and have admired it. Just kind of like a secret admirer, I would say. I've heard good things from people that have been in it, and then I have friends that are in it, and now. And I've. Now I've gotten to know you and stuff like that, but super excited to have you on. I feel like we share a lot of the same values, share a lot of the same desires in life to help these business owners and stuff like that. and I look up to you guys as someone who's, like, providing a roadmap and even helping me out, so I appreciate you taking time out of your day to be here.

It's been great, man. Every interaction I've ever had with you has been awesome. And I agree with you. There's probably very similar core values in life that you and I live by that has led us to where we are. And not a lot of people in North America do what we do. So whenever I meet someone that does, it's there's always lots to get into.

So if you want to just real quickly introduce yourself, I know you, you have a history of home service. You had. You started your own painting company in your yacht when you were young. But yeah, just do a quick intro for those that don't know you.

Sure, yeah. so, yeah, Danny Kerr right now in the, I guess the CRO or CRO Breakthrough Academy, but co founder as well. And spent better part of my, I guess the last 20 years of my life in contracting. So started in painting, ran a small painting franchise, became a gm. So went into corporate with that franchise for a lot of years and learned how to manage, run and train franchisees to run these painting companies and along the way had this like burning idea of how do we do this without a franchise system? And so about 10 years ago we started Breakthrough Academy, which is essentially almost like franchise level support for contractors without them having to buy a franchise. So, so all things from, you know, business coaching, strategic planning, all the sops and templates and processes that need to be like, well defined are already well defined for them. So we can insert them in the business and then a cool community which you said some of your friends are in this. Like a lot of us know each other now. Even some of. I still have my first member from 10 years ago, still a part of Breakthrough Academy. And it's community that kind of keeps a lot of people around. And yeah, we've built a lot together with everyone from our members to our staff to all of us. Like, it's just this little like club now. So we're always bringing in new people and integrating, you know, the contractor growth method and our systems into their business. But there's also a bit of a journey we go on as entrepreneurs. Even me, like just looking at what we've done together with my members, I'm like, wow, can't believe 10 years ago some of these guys I helped coach, I'm like, we're all just like growing up in business together, which is really neat.

Yeah, it is.

College Pro Painters is training young people how to run businesses

Cool. Well, what, what inspired you to start it? Originally you said you wanted to do it without the, you know, like, hey, I think we could do this without a franchise model. But what was like driving you to help These was it things that you struggled with in your own business?

I'll tell you where the idea actually came from. So we are, our CEO at the time had a, like a Dragon's Den event. And he had said, you know, what are spin off businesses we could do from this company that we have companies called College Pro Painters. And you know, people were coming with like, College Pro landscaping, College Pro, you know, gutter cleaning, College Pro, like all these different.

College Pro landscape lighting.

You got it. That one didn't come up. And it was so interesting because I was just sitting there being like, look, if I'm honest, I actually think we are not the world's greatest painting company. You know, I don't think we should pride ourselves in some of like the work that we do, although we do okay, right? But I think there's one thing that we are world class at, which is like training young people how to run businesses. And I was like, if we were to learn and lean into it, like an adopted skill from what we already currently do, I think this is the bigger opportunity. so it never went anywhere. It was just a competition that, you know, had happened. But the idea never left me. And when I really was thinking, like, what's my next move? I'd been with college pro for 10 years and I was like, what's not my next move in life? Because, you know, what am I, what am I good at? Right? And I guess I was like, well, I could start a painting company. I guess I could start a franchise business, maybe franchise some organizations. And I was like, that doesn't make me excited. Like, that just kind of like, sounds like a way to make money. But what I loved was like building my franchisees up and watching them grow. And a lot of them were younger, right? A lot of them were 18 to 25 years old. And just watching them grow and how much came out of like their journey with us. And a lot of them feedback is like four to five years of business school was nothing compared to even one summer running these small franchises. And they're like, Danny, it changed my entire life. And to this day, I'm still friends with a lot of them. And I'm kind of like, man, like, all I want to do is go through this journey with other entrepreneurs. And I happen to know some stuff I could probably teach, but I also don't want to just be their leader. I want to do it with them. I want to be in this path with a bunch of cool, awesome humans that are trying to figure this out. Because for me, like, entrepreneurship was a kind of a stumbled upon path, right? You're in school, you're learning about going to university or getting a job and what should you do next? And I'm super dyslexic, so I've always struggled with those kind of paths. And when I found entrepreneurship, it changed my life. And I was like, what better way to spend my life than just to do this with others? And so, yeah, I was like, this is my one thing, man. And so we've been doing it, doing it ever since.

That's awesome, man. I feel like even in the few years that I've known about you or known people in it and stuff like that, I feel like you guys continue to get better. and how you offer your community things and stuff like that. I've seen you guys really kind of focused on community. Is that because I think a lot of people are like, well, AI, you know, it's, you can just go Google anything now and learn like a sales process or something like that, but talk about really how important the community aspect is in, in, in relation to the information that they're going to learn and things like that.

Yeah, I mean, we have a team of 50, which is great, but we have a thousand members, 600 companies, so who knows more? Us 50 or that whole group. And I think there's, there's wealth of knowledge and in, you know, that many members, there's also just like a camaraderie. It's boring and kind of lonely to be an entrepreneur all on your own wondering, like, is everyone else dealing with this? And there's a lot of comfort, I think, of being able to get together and be like, no, no, no, we're all a bit nuts. Like, it's all good. Like, like we're, we're all the same in that way. and yeah, for me, I mean I, I grew up without a large family. It was my mom raising me and my sister. And I've always craved community. And so I, I had that in college, bro. Like, I had this peer group of pretty high level peers that I never would have met in high school. Like, they're very different types of people. And working with entrepreneurs was just a, it was a safe place for me. Maybe in a way it's like that where I felt normal. I felt like I could just be me. Didn't want to just talk about sports and just want to talk about the weather and just want to talk about like daily stuff. I want to talk about business, I wanted to talk about strategy. I want to talk about big ideas. And so I felt I had a peer group that could do that with me. And yeah, like, for I think a lot of our members, it's similar. It's like I need, I need more than just what my coach can give me. I need strategy, I need what you're doing. Give me your specifics. I want to not be alone and I want to know that, you know, I'm what I'm dealing with. Other people are too and we can kind of chat and bitch about it a bit. I want to be able to dream big and talk big and I want to have conversations that most of my peer group doesn't have. And so we've accumulated a lot of those people over the years and it's a cool place. Like I think about our sales team or our assessment team and they're like not really considered a part of the product of bta, but they are because they're the ones holding the gates on who comes in and who doesn't. And it's years of doing that and refining that process to find the ideal customer that has allowed us to have this really tight net, very like, cool community of like minded entrepreneurs.

So that's cool. Yeah.

You say you like crave the community. I, I didn't at first

It's interesting because you say you like crave the community. I, I didn't at first. I think it was because I grew up with a single mom and I know we had people that would come over from the church and just from the neighborhood and like, do you guys need anything? And I felt like, like people, everyone around me, like treated me differently and they were really nice. Like, how cool is that that people would like check in on us and like, can we, can we help you guys out with anything? But it's weird because I think I turned that into like, oh, no, I don't need help. Like, let me show you. Like, I, I can do this on my own. And I did that for a long time and I didn't, I kind of not. I didn't know about communities, so I didn't like look into them and then deny them, but I just never even searched out for it. And then five years ago when I launched this, I also got into some communities and now I'm like, addicted. I'm like, holy cow. Why would anyone, like try to prove something to the world? Like you said, like there's 50 of you or a thousand of them. It's pretty obvious, like who's going to be smarter, who's going to provide more value. And that's what I've noticed. Not only in our own community that I built, but the ones that I'm in. It's like, oh my gosh. I don't think people realize how much value there is by being part of a business community where you can dream big because you go to your regular friends and they're like going to talk you out of your dreams. They're going to be like, yeah, stupid idea. Why would you do that?

What about the risk? You know what I would say? I was like, I'm like, guys, It'll be fine. 90% of the time, it'll be fine. And the other 10 where it goes horribly wrong and I beg all over my face, it was totally worth it for the other nine times. It went well. And so that. It's just a concept that a lot of people, they can't handle. Right. They can't handle the unknown. So.

Yeah. Well, that's cool.

Most clients are under a million, most people under 500,000

So I know you guys, you said you've kind of settled in and found, found your ideal client avatar. you guys, who is that? Are you guys helping? Mostly people that reach a million up and scale from there?

Yeah, primarily a million up. We, do have service companies that are probably 500k and up. Just because there was more complexity in operating small jobs. You know, one to $500,000 jobs means you're running around with trucks doing a whole bunch of jobs all day long. So 500k and up for those guys. But, generally like our landscapers, our painters, our, you know, electricians, sub trades, a lot, a lot of them are 1 to 10 million. It's kind of like our ideal range.

So I think most people watching this, listening to this are probably under a million. I would say anywhere from like 2 to 500. There's some that are doing, you know, 3 to 5 million, but most people are under that, like sub million.

What can we talk about the different phases, the growth phases of business

What can we talk about? Kind of the different phases, the growth phases of business and maybe what they could do now to prepare to get to a million and things like that. Like, where would you, where would you start them? Sure.

Yeah, that's the operator phase. It's kind of what we call it. But, yeah, I think a lot of people get started in business with an idea. Maybe, you know, like you, you had like, I just, I want to go. Just leave me alone. Let me go prove to the world what I can do. Right. Got a bit of a chip on your shoulder.

Yeah.

And you hit the ground running and it can be very fun, it can be very stressful, it can be very exciting. You Tend to get a lot of success from, like, hard work and creative ideas. And you're so. You're problem solving all the time, and you're very used to kind of everything being on your plate, which can be good for a while, but I think for anyone who's done this for five to 10 years, it does that. That initial excitement starts to wear off. And so what becomes, I think, the next natural path? Actually, there's two paths. You can choose to be owner operator for the rest of your life, which is like, go master your craft. Go get really good at painting, Go get really good at whatever window cleaning, whatever the thing is, and go become the world's best version of that and hire two people and have a great time. And actually, for the podcast, what we're going to talk about today, you probably don't have to worry too much about it. I'll give you one tip, actually, one thing to help optimize your profitability, but don't worry too much about all these other complex business ideas, like, oh, just enjoy your craft. But for some, it gets boring and you get a little bit kind of like, what else could I do? What else? What is the next step? And so it's for the first time, you have to start to think a little differently. Because you've been an owner operator for so long, you have to realize, like, the next stage is going to be doing a completely different job than anything you've ever done. There's a whole different learning paradigm. To be an entrepreneur and a business owner running the business versus to be the person doing the work. Right. So it starts with a paradigm shift. Which. Which direction do I want to go? And being clear about that, because I sometimes work with members who are like, I really want to be on the tools. Like, I really love it, and I never want to stop doing it. We start working with them for a few months and we realize, like, what we're teaching you, although some of these things are good for you, you do need to have good job costing, good understanding of your profitability, good basic understanding of how to generate jobs and set goals. All this other stuff around people and promotions and hiring, recruiting, and it's. It's like trying to put a Porsche engine in a Honda Civic. It's like, it's just not built for it.

Exactly.

It's too much. but I do think it starts with that mindset shift and being aware of which version of entrepreneur you want to be, and that's totally fine. Like, get your ego out of the way for a Second, and actually look at your life and look at what you enjoy. I know a lot of guys, especially in service, that's like, I love the seasonality. I love the fact that I can work hard in the summer, make enough money to take the winters off, go snowboarding, go travel, come back, do it over again. Like that is the lifestyle that I want. It's like, then be careful not to grow this thing too big and too complex because you might start to build yourself, you know, a 12 month a year job. So maybe our first thought.

Yeah. So let's say someone thinks that they're like, yeah, I actually like that. But then another three years goes by and then they see us on the podcast, they see their friends, they see other people building these empires of businesses and they start to flirt with the idea, like, man, maybe there is something bigger for me. And I broke my ankle last year and you know, that caused a problem because I couldn't make money for three months. And they decide they want to go next level. What's next? For those people that choose, like, that's fine, I'm willing to do this, but they still don't know about all the stuff that you're probably going to talk about of like, well, now I have to be a manager, a recruiter, a trainer, a finance guy. Like all this stuff.

Yeah.

You need to understand your profit set centers through job costing

So before you even get into all that, here's one thing because I was thinking about this especially with you, Brian. You're more of like a sales and marketing dude I would imagine, right? From what you talk about a lot is that's your world. So that is important. That is massively important. And I'll only say one thing on that is like know your ideal customer and dial in your pricing and your strategy all around that person when it comes to marketing and sailing, sales process and so on. But what I will say for everybody is you need to really start to understand your profit set centers. And the best way to do that is through job costing. So, if you think about it, you're often on the job at the beginning quite a bit. There's a background noise. Can you hear okay or is it coming through?

Just barely. Yeah, yeah. What was it? Printer.

it's my father in law sanding.

Oh yeah, he's running the backhoe on the backyard.

He's a little shop downstairs. but it's job costing because if you don't understand how much money you're making on the jobs that you're making and you especially are providing some of the service on those jobs, you don't know how profitable you can you are for the next stage of growth. Because let's just put an example out there. People might say, you know, I do window cleaning and I make what, 60% margins, 70% margins on projects.

Yeah.

And they're like, this is amazing. It could possibly go wrong. And then you realize, like, well, wait a minute, like, I was also on a lot of these sites producing a lot of the labor, and I have no understanding of what it's like to, completely remove me from all the labor from all the sites and how much profitability I'll make.

Right.

So that's the first thing is when you start to plan the next stage, you're not going to be on sites producing labor. So until you charge yourself out as a laborer and separate that labor cost, you have no idea how viable you pulling yourself off the site actually is.

Love it. So you recommend saying, all right, well, if I'm going to pay someone 25 bucks an hour, I need to put this into the job costing. Pay myself 25 bucks an hour for this job.

Exactly. Yeah. And you as an owner of the company are very different cost. You might also manage projects, you might also do other things in the business. So that should be a salary that gets put in. Right. but you need to start to put these things in as if they were real. Because until you do, you don't know how profitable your businesses or your jobs are, which means you don't even know if you can scale. The other thing I noticed with a lot of people, because they do a lot of their own projects, they don't charge as much as they should because they don't have to. And so it's actually really easy to book a lot of work, which they're like, kind of celebrating, not realizing, hey, you actually need to charge more to grow your organization, which means what you thought you were good at. Ah, you thought you were good at sales. You actually might not be as good as you think you are. You just might be the cheapest person in the area. Right. So it forces some of these, like, it's a forcing function that like, starts to help you look at the true strengths and weaknesses of your actual business, not just the owner operator style version that you've been running for so long.

What types of projects are making you money and what are not profitable

What else, what else do you teach about job costing in terms of like, how long the job takes and those types of things?

I think profit centers is another one. What types of projects are making you money? What types of projects are not, again, especially when you're smaller, you do tend to lean towards stuff that you enjoy doing because you're often doing a lot of the work. Right. But what is actually making you the most amount of money is going to become a much more important conversation than what you enjoy doing because you won't even be doing the work anyways later. Anyway, you could always hire someone to do that. So back in the painting background, you know, like, we used to love doing stucco walls, but was that the most profitable versus, say, trim boards versus interior work versus and so we have to split up like the type of projects you do, which ones make you the best margins, and start to narrow in on those ones more than others.

This is, this is where I've kind of had a tough time in the lighting industry because, everything you're saying, I freaking love. And I decided to run my business, my, my lighting business as a business who happens to do lighting where a lot of, a lot of people in the lighting industry just fall in love with it. And they're, they're lighting designers and they're artists and they're, they're, they're amazing at what they do. But they, they literally will forego the profits to make sure that like this thing's right. And the, they'll take, you know, 20 hours to specify the right product and everything else. And they're not calculating this. And then they, they wonder where all the money is. And it's because they haven't done this activity.

This is also why I said at the beginning of this conversation, you decide which direction you want to go because it fundamentally changes the approach. Right.

So, yeah, well, and I've had people that we start working with that are like, I didn't know I was going to be in the office this much. I forgot to tell them that. Yeah, you do have to choose the approach here. Like, you're not going to be able to use the tools as much as you, as you probably want to, unless you hire someone to be the visionary and the, person running your business.

And I'll say this too, it's not an on, off switch. You're not just going to be in the office all day, every day sitting behind a computer. Although you could do that. I don't think it's actually smart too. I think it's, you know, until you're 10, 15 million a year, you're still going to be in the sites doing something. You might not be doing all the work, but you'll be working with your crews or working with your project management. Team or you know, this is, and it's such a healthy thing to do too. Like if you stop being on sites completely and you haven't been on a site in months, you start to lose touch with who you actually are as a business and the work that you actually do and the customers and the reactions and the, and it, it, it actually is not good actually for your decision making. So you don't have to completely give it up. But it just means that's not going to be your 20, 30, 40 hour week thing anymore. It might be your 5 to 7 hour, 5 to 10 hour week thing to be out on sites.

Building an organizational structure is very important for lighting companies

So what, what order do you guys tell people to start replacing themselves? up to a million dollars. Is it like what, what are, what are some of the challenges that those hiring people, Their, their challenge? Is it like hiring the fulfillment, the actual install or whatever? Or is it the office manager answering the phones and doing the admin?

Yeah, I guess it depends where they're at as a business I always say what's the high, highest time consumption stuff that's lowest skill. Right. So there's a list of things you should be listing out from your day and then you circle the stuff that's high time consumption but low skill, that becomes the next job description. So yeah, it could, it could be very well be just like washing windows for sure. Right. But then next like you said, it might be administrative. A lot of these like back end admin tasks that help you with the day to day organization of the business. After that it might be production management. Right. After that it might be sales. After that it might be GM or like a project manager to manage all your product, your jobs. And so it does go in phases and I don't have an exact rubric but I think if I was to generalize, it's like being the technician, then usually being the office admin and then usually running the production and sales is usually last because I find the owner sells their business the best and I find that they have the most passion around it and it's for not everyone, but for a lot of them that's the most fun part of what they do every day.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. that's pretty much the path that most lighting companies take. So what's after owner, operator, that's usually at what revenue mark are. Do you guys usually see this transitioning to the next phase?

It starts at a million but it continues on kind of like 1 to 5 million kind of range. So at a million what will start to Happen is you'll notice that you can't be all things to all people at all times, everywhere. You know what I mean by that? Like, you just start to get stretched. You're usually adopting, like, your old job description with your new one. And every year you're adding to that job description without it being official. Just like things are adding up and you're doing a little bit of everybody's job. And so it is time to get very clear, like, what you do and what you don't do. so this classic, like, organizational structure thing becomes a much more, like, worthwhile conversation, much more relevant conversation to have. Because if you don't do it, what happens is you as the owner, you know, we always the cliche of do you wear too many hats? But they do, right? They wear three or four hats. They wear a bit of the admin hat, a bit of the salesperson hat, a bit of the production manager hat. And there's no delineation of any of those roles. And if they are people that have those types of positions, they're kind of stepping over the owner or each other because there's no clarity on who does what and how the production flow actually happens. Like how the workflow happens from one person over to the next. And what wasn't an issue before, which was like, hey, this. We didn't have to like, dial in all these processes because it kind of just works. It becomes an issue because you start to put people into running all the production, doing all the sales, managing all the back office. And this doesn't. It's not like at a million, suddenly you have those three roles. But there's a bit of a progression between one to five where those three roles start to become very much a thing. And if you don't get ahead of those things, you start to notice how everyone's stepping over each other. So building that org structure is very important. And if you can do it at a million, where you're thinking through, okay, what are the. What is the role of my office admin, my sales lead and my production manager? You can start to think through what parts of the positions those should actually be. And they can be one person in two roles. For now, let's say you might have somebody doing sales production management for a little bit, or you might have somebody doing office admin and production coordination or something like that. But you need to start to delineate those roles. And one of the big things that can cause issues is, if all you do is delineate those roles and Then just give it to them. There's still mask and confusion. So it looks good on paper, but it doesn't actually work.

Make sure every role has a KPIs attached to it

So there's two things that we really help people with, which is like, make sure every role has a KPI attached to it. It's like a number that they're in charge of. So if I'm in sales, it's like, how much do I need to book? What's the average job size? Average I need to maintain, what's my sales ratio or closing ratio I need to maintain, and maybe even my like gross profit margin I need to be booking jobs for. But these are numbers that the salesperson should be in charge of. And those numbers should come from the actual business itself. So if it early on you did what I said around job costing, understanding profit centers, and you'll start to get to know your numbers better. Stage two of that is putting in QuickBooks in a CRM or project management software and using that reporting to start understanding, like, what your averages actually are. So you can give your staff, like real numbers that they can be in charge of, not just like pie in the sky stuff that you dreamt up on a spreadsheet on Tuesday.

That's good. I think a lot of people are like, this is where they fall off. Which is why you guys do it. Because they're like, all right, so you're going to do sales, you're going to do installs, you're going to be admin. It's like, all right, let's go. Well, yeah, you're going to answer the phone, you're going to like, you know, bury the wire, but there really is no KPI attached to it. And then, no one really wants to hold someone accountable because we don't know how to do it. So we'll just keep going with what we got going. And then it just becomes chaotic and then they give up and they go back to being owner operator, right?

Totally. I see it all the time, actually. It's people do come to us having attempted this once or twice already and are a little bit gun shy because they did it, but they did it without any infrastructure. And the interesting thing about KPIs is a lot of our members ask us, they're like, okay, so like, how do I come up with this now? And I'm like, you know what? If you haven't been really, well, like tracking any of this stuff, the first step is to just track it. And if you want to set some fun monthly goals or quarterly goals with people on your Team, that's fine. But just don't put bonuses on it year one because if you don't know what good is or what average is, you could be setting them up for like way too much success or failure. But let's just spend a year and just track it and see what comes out of it and take a look at some of these averages. Let's not put the pressure on trying to do this all at once. So at a million dollars, if you've never like set, sat down and actually looked at your reporting in your whatever your job Nimbus section or your job Nimbus CRM and you've never really like gone deep into QuickBooks beyond maybe just putting in your receipts. take a year to do to go deeper, go into the reporting and start to see what actually is. And then from that we can formulate real KPIs that are meaningful.

So that's really good advice. I think some people hear you talk about job costing and then they're like well I did job like my last job, like I can start with the last one. But that's not enough data to go off of because like maybe they did make money on that job but then they don't have work for the next three days and so they need more data to realize how much overhead to apply to each job.

Yeah, exactly.

You got to start somewhere.

Yeah. And it's okay. Like nobody's, nobody builds this stuff overnight. So good steps is to just start tracking it, apply the KPIs maybe a year later. But the role descriptions, those can start to come together fairly early. And you the nicest thing about an org chart is it's not a full on job description quite yet. It's not like multi page like description of what everybody does. Although that is important. You can't, we can't get there. It's just a delineation of who does what and who reports to who. Right. So like there will come a time when the phone from your crew doesn't ring to you anymore. It rings to the production manager. And that needs to be very clear. And if that's the case, what are the things that that person's in charge of to make sure the phone from the crew, they always ring the production manager, not you. And stopping the phone calls coming through to you all the freaking time.

Yeah. Which everyone would probably love that. Right. Right about now. What?

Can you share some KPIs that we could use to help hold people accountable

Can you share some KPIs? I feel like sales is the are the easy KPIs because we don't. You just Told us we need to have numbers. Sales is very number oriented. I think people get hung up with admin and in our world know production is like installations and service and stuff like that. Can you share a few KPIs that we could use as numbers to help hold these people accountable?

Yeah, so admin, depending on the role they do, but they couldn't be in, they can be in charge of AR accounts receivable and so you can keep the, you know, AR below X percentage at all times. So they're incentivized to make sure if AR is climbing, that they're making the follow up calls, that they're doing what needs to be done to get the bills paid because they're in the office with all that stuff anyway. So that could be like the healthiest one that actually provides a very real roi. The other thing is to provide reporting for you. So you know, basically every Monday they've got a full suite of reports ready to go for you to review. So if you're struggling to get KPIs all by yourself, your admin can often go and summarize this stuff. And if you use, maybe you do use an Excel sheet or something, they're populating that and they're making sure that all their reports and all the things that you need to know to make good decisions is available for you every single Monday. And they can get a little checkbox that they've completed it. So admin is there is a lot of like task oriented stuff, but you can outline two or three of those tasks that are massively important to help drive ROI to the company. And I do think AR can be a good one as far as like a pure number that they have control over.

Cool.

Okay then.

M. Oh shoot. A cutout. Are you there? Hello? Hello? Danny, did I lose you? All right, stand by. We are making. I think we might have lost Danny, if you can you hear me? Danny, did you lose me? Yeah. How about now?

I'm back.

Hey, we're back after that commercial break. I didn't hear what you said after the administration.

Oh, and then I was gonna say.

Quality metrics, profit metrics, and hours produced. So production is fairly obvious

And then you want to know a little bit of the production metrics?

That'd be great.

So production is fairly obvious. I mean it's dollars produced depending on what they're in charge of. But it can be dollars produced. If it's not that, it's definitely hours produced. Right. So how many hours per week, per month, per quarter? And you can pretty much figure that out by looking at your Average hourly charge rate. So how many hours were worked last year divided by how many dollars were produced. And this is only hours by your crew, the actual people working and doing the jobs. And you get an average hourly rate. So that's another one is what the average hourly rate is that they're able to kind of make for how many hours, how many, how much they're producing per hour worked, basically. Is that metrics?

Yep.

quality metrics, obviously. So if you do net promoter, and if you don't know what that is, Google it. But it's just a quality score from a customer post job that they can fill out. So it basically allows them to kind of go 9, 10, 6, 7. Like they rate you out of 10. And if you're a 9 or a 10 out of 10, then you get a point. If you're. If you're an 8, it's neutral. Or if you're a 7 or below, it's a negative 1 point. And so each crew, each production team can get their own net promoter score, which is really nice. So that gives you some quality metric to kind of go after. And then profitability. So just like the actual gross profit made on projects. Right. So if you go labor subs material over, over what you charge the customer, how much percent of profit did you make? Not dollars, but percent. And so then they can be in charge of making 32%, whatever gross profit on a job with an average net promoter score of, call it 38% and revenue, of whatever, 1 million produced by end of year. And so now they've got a quality volume and profit metrics to go after, which really helps because if it's all about profit or if it's all about quality or if it's all about revenue, then they lose sight of the other two and they get lopsided in their approach.

Yeah, exactly. Then they're like, cool, I'm going to do everything I can to squeeze out profit because I get my bonus and I don't care if I piss off the customer. Yeah.

So it's good to have a balance of the three. And that's true for all roles, is to try and have a profit. You can't always get it, but it's like some sort of, like profit driver, some sort of revenue driver, some sort of quality quality driver. It is a metric that they're directly control over, have direct control over. And if they hit, they can go into, you know, get an ROI for the company and they'll get something in return as well.

Very cool. Thanks for Sharing that.

People struggle delegating, right, and assigning new roles

you mentioned, you know, as you're building your accountability chart, you put your roles, your responsibilities in place. One person can have multiple roles. obviously you get into trouble if two people are trying to do one role because then like, who, who's doing it and all that. But what do you do when you grow and it starts to become to the point where like, okay, well now we hired this new person, they're going to take some of the roles from this person and this person. How do you start to delineate the new role and make that work, even though you're using like an older system?

I mean, like I said earlier with the org chart so often what this looks like originally is you've got the owner node at the top, you've got the production, admin and sales, and then below that you've got their teams and you are the owner yourself are actually in a lot of these nodes.

You'Ve written your name, especially in the beginning. You're the only one in all of them.

You pretty much are. Right. So if you've written it in advance and you can actually numerically work out based on a million dollars in production, how many estimates that is, how many sales that requires, how many dollars produced and hours produced, that that's required on sites, you can actually figure out how many humans a million dollars in production actually is for the whole company. And so if you draw that up and then you go, okay, my name's in all of these categories, plus I've got Johnny, who right now, who works with me, so I'll put him in one of these nodes. All you're doing is identifying, hey, next year we're going to add this, whatever, let's call it a salesperson. And that's going to cost me $80,000 a year. So put that into your budget. And then you say, okay, well now finally, what are all the things that I'm doing, sales wise, that I'm going to offload to this new hire? a job description gets formed and it's all the tasks obviously that relate to that role. And your job as the person who's currently in that node is to be ready to train and develop that person because you know it best. So if you're, if it's someone that works for you that's doing that, you might want to assist them. Obviously you're not going to leave them high and dry to go figure this out for themselves. But you want to have a, call it like an onboarding checklist of all the stuff that's in that employment agreement. So what are all the things this person does every single day? And then this becomes the onboarding checklist of which I'm still going to go do it all until you're certified or you're checked off in all those tasks. So the blend over time is the fact that I've been able to train you in this stuff. We use something called duragi. So it stands for. I've demonstrated this to you. I was, demonstrated it for you, observed it for you, or with you, redemonstrated, it and giving you some feedback, assigned a task on it, set a goal on it, and then I came back and inspected your work. And so each bullet on that, like, checklist has to have been directed. Demonstrate, observe, redemonstrate, assign task, set a goal, inspect. And so slowly. And sometimes it's weeks, mostly it's usually three or four months. I'm slowly checking that thing off, being like, you know how to do this role, and I can slowly delegate this off to you properly and step away from the role.

That's awesome, man. Yeah. I mean, obviously you guys develop this because people struggle delegating, right, and assigning new roles. And I think a lot of people think what their common sense is, is everyone's common sense. But we forget there was a time we didn't know how to do anything. We didn't know how to walk, we didn't know how to run. Like, we did have to learn at some point. So I think that's a sweet little, How do you say it was.

It's a really weird acronym.

I like it. You guys better start.

Just call it a Canadian word. Why not put it in this category?

That's definitely a Canadian word. We don't use that in the U.S. what about your U.S. clients?

You can just pronounce it differently if you want.

So, this is very good stuff. I think, honestly, most. Most lighting business owners, if I'm just kind of guessing and kind of having fun right now, a lot of them are like, man, I don't know. I kind of just like being the solo entrepreneur. I'm probably just going to hire a couple people, but there is a lot of interest because they get so fed up. They get tired of, like, man, I'm working too many hours. I'm not being the leader of my family that I want to be. I'm not present for them. I'm not the mom or dad that I want to be, not the spouse I want to be. So they do. They do really desire like they want to be this business owner but they, they lack the the path to get there, which is really cool.

Getting good at situational leadership is critical to growing your business

You're, you've outlined these things. but I think if we're saying like 5 million, I think a lot of people like 5 million. I don't know if I could ever get my business to there. But what's the next after the 1 to 5 million, what's the next phase of business?

So we call this one kind of like the leader phase. And it's not that what I'm going to talk about is not like I think everyone could use this skill, but it's getting good at what we call situational leadership. Because what I just described to you up until now is very much like manager led leadership where it's like I'm managing people and people are off doing their job and they're hitting their KPIs and it's good. the next phase is actually building into people and having people become what you are currently, which is a pretty self made, independent, you know, critical thinking, human. and so to have real leaders on your team that can manage parts of your company that are that way is pretty crucial because otherwise you can grow that big and they can still have all this responsibilities in their job description, but they won't be like, everyone will understand this. Do you ever have people you hire where like you give them things to do but you still don't trust they're fully going to make the right decisions? So you kind of watch over their shoulder and make sure that's actually. And they do constantly disappoint you and you're like, that wasn't what I was going to do. Actually let me just correct you here a little bit. So if you're babysitting even your middle management team all the time, you can't get much past 5 million. So you need to find a, find the right people that have the ability to critically think. But I find a lot of owners think that no one can critically think because of the way they manage and lead. They shut off critical thinking in people. So if you don't enable that, you can't really build a real team. And so the model that I've used for a lot of years is something called situational leadership. You can Google it, it's well known, but it forces you to think through your leadership style, not only by person that you're working with, but by skill within that person. And so I'll just give an example, but you know, it starts with like the very basic Version of situational leadership is like high direction. So when somebody's new to a skill, they know nothing about it. You're doing what I was just describing about that, that onboarding checklist. Like you're dragging with them, you're going through exactly how, you're showing them every little, element of it and you're holding their hand through the whole thing. And then there's this next stage that starts to happen where people get really good at the skill, but they're not. Like, they don't know why the thing needs to be done the way it needs to be done. And that's where the critical thinking needs to start to kick in. Like, if I'm going to go and produce this project for you, I know how to do all the things. But, do I know why we approach the project in this way? Do I know why based on the customer's needs, we did it in a certain way? Do I know based on the weather patterns coming how to approach it differently? Or do I just do like a robot what I'm told all the time? And so coaching is the next stage. You need to include them in why things are done the way they're done. And so you're still setting the direction, you're still leading them. But like, and they're not off on their own quite yet, but they're starting to understand the why. So if you think about this, in like a multiple choice test, right when you're in high school or university, people can take multiple choice tests and just basically guess their way through the whole test because they're basically just saying like, they're just memorizing answers, you know what I mean by that? Versus, you could take an entire multiple choice test that you've never even seen the syllabus for. If you understand the whole concept in and of itself. Because every question, although it might be unique, you have the ability to problem solve your way through, to determine what the right approach actually should be based on any random set of circumstances. So that's kind of coaching. And then what's very interesting is people start to get good at the skill. They understand how and why to do things, but because they're used to coming to you all the time for that kind of level of support and coaching, they don't want, they don't have the confidence to go off and do it themselves. So you'll notice this when you've got somebody who's actually fairly good, but they always come to you still just to. I just want to check. I kind of Know the answer. I just want to like, can I just check with you quick? Is that cool? Because their confidence is low. And the reason it's low is because you've spent so much time working with them so closely and so they just, they have a little bit of that motherhead syndrome with you where they're just like, yeah, it's like this, let me just. And so as a leader you can take that as like, wow, I'm pretty worthwhile. Like it feels good to be asked and you know, it gives me that sort of that extra layer of security when you come to me. But you have to learn how to wean off them off of that. Otherwise you're always going to have people coming to you asking questions. And so how you do that is you get into more supportive level leadership. And that is basically the approach where you stop giving the answer and you start asking them really good thought provoking questions to help them find the answer for themselves. And what happens is if they do that over time they start to become more and more kind of like self confident and like, hey, actually maybe I do know these answers. Maybe I do have a good path to work through this. My boss really hasn't told me anything in the last few months here. I keep coming up with the answer and so their confidence goes up. So you've got in the beginning skill going up, then you've got confidence going up. And once you've got those two things, you can finally move them to the last stage, which is delegation, which is you've got this skill, you know how to run production like nobody's business better than I do, to be honest. Take it run. And now all you're doing is reporting in with me and we're having kind of Q and A and I'm enabling you through like yes and nos and answers to some of your key questions. And I'm able to go manage the company now, bring the initiatives and the agenda of the company down to you and you can help operationalize them into the organization. But I know you know how to do this because we worked through this for so long. From high direction, more of a coaching support and finally to delegation. Where people screw this up all the time is they often, if you're lucky, will go high direction and then write to delegation and they skip the middle stuff and they don't build into their people.

Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I'm glad you shared it because I think this is where a lot of people struggle, even at the their first couple hires, you know, and Then this could be like the huge deterrent to like changing the trajectory of their life. They're like, yeah, I want to be a business owner, so I'm going to hire someone. And then they screw this part up and then they just retreat back to like owner operator again. When in reality, like if you explain the why, like this is why we're going to take the time or this is why we use extra wire here or whatever. Because sometimes people have good intention, like team members, they'll be like, oh, like why'd you cut this corner? Oh well, I wanted to save the customer money or I want to save the company time. And you're like, that's not what we're trying to do. Like thank you for that. But they didn't understand the why. So when you do explain the why and explain like your whole process, you don't have to micromanage them. You can just tell them like, this is what we need to get done. We need to get from here to here. And then when you empower them with these tools that you're sharing, they can find their own way there. That's really cool.

It is often the leader that's creating the like myopic viewed employees that constantly just do their job and don't ask questions because it's, they're, I don't know if it's dictatorship type leadership or just very directional leadership, but they, they don't inspire their people to, to think independently because they haven't taken the time to do it. And the truth is it takes time and that, that is often a big barrier for people. It's like I don't actually have, I know this stuff, I don't have the time to do it. And so it's just a hamster wheel every year of training and then holding people accountable that are a bit less good problem solvers, it's called, or less critical thinkers.

So, so this, you held this back at like the leader phase. But I mean are these principles that they can apply at the 500k?

That's what I was saying. Like this is something I think is vital to build into a leadership team. But it's like this is a skill I learned when I was running like a small two hundred thousand dollar a year painting company.

right.

So yeah, it's absolutely like there's nothing here that I would say that it's not relevant to everyone. It's just that yeah, at the leader phase, if you don't figure this out, you will not be able to get much bigger.

Danny's giving away eight of BTA's most valuable tools for free

Very cool. Hey, guys. In a couple minutes. This is cool. I actually just downloaded. I just, filled out the form myself. But Danny's, going to give away eight of BTA's most valuable tools for free, which is really cool. Thank you for doing that. So we're going to share that link here in a minute.

You put faith, family, friends, fitness in your bio

before we do that, I want to ask you, you mentioned in your. I think it was your bio or somewhere in the stuff. you said you love the F word. What, What. What are the F words that you love?

My faith. This is like my belief in God and how it levels me out and. And who I am and my ability to kind of give it up to God, I guess, in a lot of ways. my family, so my three little girls and my wife, who's been with me since I was in high school and has been through life with me. my friends. I've got friends actually, still from high school. That as much as I'm this business guy who talks online and does all this stuff, they call. They call me Danny the shit talker. They just ground me and keep me who I am. Right. In a lot of ways. my fitness, of which this year I've taken a lax basical approach, which I need to get better at. and then my finances, which is my ability to be financially secure and not be needing to work, but wanting to work, if that makes sense.

I love that. Yeah, all those are really good. I've upped my fitness. I think you fell off the fitness. I'm upping mine this year. I'm probably falling off on some of the other ones.

The weird thing is, right, I'm getting stronger. Yeah. But I'm like, getting. I think I'm getting old man strength.

That's so cool. I can't wait to get that.

It just comes. My exercise routine needs, some work. So.

Yeah, I love it. I love the order of it. You know, I think that's. I think that's intentional on your side, to put faith, family, friends, fitness, financials, really, really cool. So I appreciate you sharing that.

If you were to start a business, how would you approach things differently

I, guess before we wrap up, I want you to share your tools. but if you were to start a business, let's say you're like, you know what? I'm shutting down Breakthrough Academy. I'm gonna go start a lighting business. what would be like, how would you approach things differently? And let's just say you don't have your financials figured out.

Yeah, I was just gonna ask that question. Do I have financial. HM. Backing you?

Have. I'll say you, you. You can go to the. The bank. You don't have your own.

I don't think I would, to be honest. I actually don't think I would want to.

Okay. A bank is offering you $50,000, SBA loan.

I mean, that to me is not a high risk amount of money, but for some, it would be. let me say this. There is value in creating a business that has to make money to support itself. When you build a business where you had to use a loan, and I get it, if you've got, like, personal bills, you got to pay for three to six months and you don't have the savings to cover that. Because I think any business you might not be paying yourself for three to six months. In startup mode, sure, if you need to pay personal expenses. But I do honestly think bootstrapping an organization, which is what we did at college for Painters, what I did at Breakthrough Academy, maybe it's just a bit of how I'm my DNA, but, like, it forces you to think differently. And so, hey, I need to go out and really just like, grassroots, door to door, go get a couple clients off those clients. I need to make enough profit to be able to pay for, you know, the things in my business. And it forces you to actually, like, run a profitable business from day one. $50,000 isn't a ton of money, but if you go and get a massive loan and say, I need this for two to three years to support our company while we go through growth phases, I'm like, maybe, but you're also, potentially, you're not building it financial in a financial way that's stable. Like, how are you going to undo those overhead expenses that you're paying more than your revenue and profit are making you? Right. So since day one, I have always run a business bootstrapped. I've always run it through the profit of the company and forces me to kind of. I think in the beginning it forces a little slower growth, but it forces a little bit more. Like learning from that. now that I have a bit of money in life, I will say there is a need or want in me to build a great brand. So I would put more and more money into that than I used to. and have a lot of fun with it. I mean, I can see in my mind, like, the culture that gets created and the imagery and the community that gets to know this brand and to be there. Like, we. I live in a place called Chilliwack, but to be there For Chilliwack and to be like, let's go. And, like, we will do our own little world here. But, like, I want to drive the culture. I would love to be, like, an award of, like, the top, whatever you call it, the top cultured community in Chilliwack. Right. Stuff like that, would be really neat. But anyway, grassroots stuff. I'd bootstrap it. I'd go out there, I'd probably do door to door. I'd probably get my first few clients. Dream really well, build a bit of relationship for those.

Oh, man, we're losing Danny. I hope it's not on my end. I don't know what's going on.

It's on my end. Okay, I'm back.

We got you back.

So anyways, I don't know if I finished or whatever. I'm just basically, like, giving you my thoughts.

I love it.

Bootstrap door to door, network off clients, build business. build into the brand more than I have in the past and really, get to know the community well, become a driver of our community.

And from, like, a confidence, mindset standpoint, like, do you. Do you feel like with what you know? And that's the cool thing, like, in this little hypothetical or whatever you get, you get to keep everything, you know, you don't get to use your money. But I mean, how much faster would your success be? dropping you off in any area of the. Of North America, let's say.

Yeah, I mean, I think in a year I could do it. Probably took me three years to figure out for sure. Like, I'm probably, you know, three times faster just because there's things about who you hire that I'm just, like, black and white about these days. Whereas before it was a bit of a crapshoot, how to make money on. On jobs that I just. I feel as clear as day. How to charge properly from day one. I think so many people don't charge enough because they're just. Yeah, how to build a presence and a brand and a relationship with your customers versus seeing them just as a way to. A means to an end, like, how to really network through that properly. and yeah, like, I really do see the power of brand. Breakthrough Academy has really shown me that as we built the BTA brand up, I understand it now. it's a way of being. It's a way of influencing people around you that also resonate with that and attracting, like, minds really quickly. So.

Very cool, Very cool.

Ryan: What are some of the tools you guys are giving away

all right, well, thanks for sharing. So what Are you guys giving away? Well, I'll share the link here. what are these tools?

Yeah, there are supposed to be things that help with what we talked about today. So a job costing example for those who are kind of like trying to figure out their job costing and want to get better at it. This should help with that. a company dashboard tool. So, like, if you're just kind of thinking, how do I track KPIs where I'm like looking at my profitability or I'm looking at my sales metrics. This is just an Excel sheet that will help you do that. An org chart example. So like, we talked about organizational structure today and just what these look like with the numbers. KPIs by role. So you're asking me, like, what are different ones for different roles? It has all of them in there, which is really nice. we didn't talk about this as much, but an employment agreement tool, so it actually helps you build your own employment agreement. Gives you an example on the template to build off of situational leadership model, which I think would be great. There's a whole handout to it. So it's your read through as well. So you can look into situational leadership if you'd like to. And then we didn't talk about this today because we didn't get to it, but a painted picture, exercise to help you build the vision for your company and a one page strategic planning worksheet to help you build a strategic plan to get there. So, there's a lot in there and I think for whoever's listening, just pick one or two of these tools. You don't need to go gangbusters. It's a lot. But, yeah, we were talking about a lot of topics today, so we threw a lot in.

Dude, that's awesome, man. I really appreciate you sharing. If you're listening, we'll put it in the show notes. but it's try BTA .com lighting for profits. Try BTA. com lighting for profit. So thanks for sharing that. I just downloaded, mine, so looking forward to see those things. So, Danny, you're a class act, man. I really appreciate you coming on here and, appreciate your friendship and, yeah, thanks for being part of our show and being part of our community.

Absolutely. Ryan, that's great. Good chat. You're a good podcaster. You asked me good questions. I appreciate it.

Yeah, all good, man. This is fun. I love doing this stuff.

So. Time to go implement, guys. I would say don't get overwhelmed

So. All right, guys, we talked about a lot of good things. I would say don't get overwhelmed. I think Danny had a good advice there. Just pick one or two things because honestly, if you just picked the accountability chart or just just one of these things and got really good at it, over the next six months, your life's going to be so much better. So, the hardest part, I mean, the easy part is listening to a podcast and m be like, oh, that was cool. Danny's awesome. I'm gonna do that. That's fun. But actually implementing is the hardest part. So schedule some time. Get these downloads and, and schedule time every week to implement this stuff because this is the real thing. I don't think Danny held anything back. So really, really good stuff. Time to go implement, guys. Okay. Thanks, Danny. Appreciate you, man.

Hey, buddy. Yeah. Okay. Have, a good week.

Okay. See you all.

See you guys.