Lighting for Profits - Episode 197

Meet Joshua Latimer — a first-generation entrepreneur who went from humble beginnings to building and exiting 4 companies, launching a million-download podcast, and founding the FRAP Challenge. Discover how he helps business owners double their profit without spending a dime on ads.

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Episode Transcript

Welcome to Lighting for Profits 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. What is up? What is up? welcome to the number one landscape lighting show in Texas. Denton, Texas. That's right. I'm Ryan Lee, your host of Lighting for Profits powered by Emory Allen. And, it's going to be a great show, guys. If you're looking to start or grow a landscape lighting business, heck, if you're looking to start or grow any, home service business, you're in the right place. Although I do have a passion, a, love for landscape lighting. It's my jam. So we're here to educate, we're here to motivate, to help you dominate. Guys, thank you so much for your support. It is a pleasure, it's a privilege. I'm just so grateful that I get to do this show every single week. Today we got an awesome show lined up. We got the one, the only, Mr. Joshua Latimer with War Plan coming on. Josh has, he's, he's a mentor, he's a coach of mine, he's a friend of mine. He's, just awesome dude. And, he came and spoke at, Light It Up Expo, and everyone was like, what? This guy's amazing. I want more of him in my life. So we're like, okay, we'll bring him onto the podcast. So, we're gonna be talking about not just marketing. Okay, he's known for this phrase, everything is marketing. Marketing is everything. I might have said that the wrong order. Maybe it's marketing is everything and everything is marketing. It's one of those. But, he. It's, it's, it's much more than that, guys. So if you're wanting to not just generate more leads for your business, but generate more profit, this is a profit center today. Lighting for Profits is truly gonna be about profits today. So excited to have him on in, just a couple minutes. Thank you guys for your support. Still begging, pleading for those five star reviews on Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen to the show. That'd be cool. I'd appreciate it. so anyway, guys, we got Josh Latimer coming on in just a few minutes before we have him on. If it's okay.

Success is not perfect, right? And discipline is not perfection either

I just want to share, I want to share something. I've been, I've been thinking about this lately because, you know, like, I, I'm a pretty optimistic person. I don't share a lot of, like, the negative stuff that happens in my life and I think it's because, like, I don't like negativity. Like, it doesn't help me. Like, I want to be optimistic, so I'm optimistic, and I choose to be happy. Even on sad days, I'm like, I'm just gonna be happy doing it. Come on. Like, punch myself in the face till I'm happy. but honestly, like, being successful in, in anything. We're talking about business today. but relationships, like, everything. Success is messy. It's far from perfect. And, I know, you know, on Instagram and stuff, I only just post the motivational quotes and the. The cool things I'm doing with my family. We're not like, hey, you know what? Let's go live right in the middle of a family fight. and same with business. Like, it's not always easy. Like, there's hard conversations that have to happen, right? And holding people accountable and stuff like that. But honestly, most people don't get to experience their full potential and their full success because they're waiting for things to be perfect. success is not perfect. And you know what the real killer of success is waiting for things to be perfect before you start. And I just see this trend. It's like, it's becoming very popular in the business world. Maybe it's been popular forever, but I'm just noticing a lot, with. Within the landscape lighting industry, right? and I look back just over the past five years, if I would have waited until I had this figured out, like, when I started a podcast, I didn't know how to start a podcast. When I started Landscape Lighting Secrets, I. I didn't know how to do landscape lighting secrets, okay? If I. If I would have waited for the things to be perfect, like, none of this would exist. And I'm like, holy cow. Like, I can't believe I took action. It's crazy. I don't know if I have the ability to take action like that now. It's crazy, right? So I would have missed the chance to help hundreds, literally hundreds, maybe thousands, of lighting business owners at this point, double or even triple their profits. So, even looking what. I'm like, I'm really, really focused on fitness right now. And you look at my fitness routine, I'm training for my second and third Spartan race. My, My goal this year is to do something big. And I'm, I'm doing the. The trifecta. The trifecta is when you. When you complete three Spartan races in one year, and I've already. I've done one next month. I've got the second one. And then in July, here in Utah, I'm doing the 21k, which is freaking nuts. I'm not even ready for it. It's gonna be crazy. But the thing is, I miss days. I skip workouts. I'm tired, I'm sore. Like, I get busy. And some. Some weeks it's three workouts. Some week, it's some weeks, it's five. Some weeks I don't do anything. Like, I was sick for like, an entire week. But I'll tell you this, I'm in way better shape now than I was before, even with the sloppiness of my. Of my routine, right? And why am I in better shape? Well, because I stopped aiming for perfection. I used to be like, no, you got to do this, and you got to be disciplined, right? And you do have to be disciplined. But discipline is not perfection either.

Some of you are stuck because you're afraid to try something new

And some of you are stuck because you're afraid to try something new. So maybe you're stuck in business because you're afraid of, like, well, what if I hire someone, it doesn't work out? What if they're not the right person? What if I try this new marketing campaign and it doesn't work? And you keep asking the what if? On the wrong side of the equation. Instead of asking, what if it doesn't work, what if? You start asking, what if it does work? What if you hire that all star employee that becomes a team member that's irreplaceable and takes you to the next level? What if the marketing campaign that you do does work? What if the new script that you implement into your sales process does work and allows you to gain one extra client a month? 2 extra clients a month? What if these things work, right? And flip the script, guys. Like, there's no rules to this game. You get to make it up.

At some point, you've got to fork off the path you're on

So what if you become the one in your family, the one in your family to change everything? What if you are the one that changes the trajectory of your entire family legacy, like, for generations? They're talking about you because you were the one that dared to take the risk that no one else was willing to. And the truth is, it might not work the first time, and in a lot of cases, it doesn't. Like, almost everything I try the first time doesn't work, and it's a lot easier to be like, yeah, doesn't work. Just give up. That's easy, right? But I'd rather fail once, twice, maybe even three times than never try at all, okay? Because the path that you're currently on, you Know if it was going to get you where you wanted to be, you'd probably already be there. And at some point, you've got to fork off the path you're on and try something new. So I want to share with you guys my fork off framework, okay? I'm Mormon, okay? We make funny swear jokes that are not swear words, but we make them sound like swear words. That's what we do. Because the reality is this what got you here will not get you there. And, you know, you could celebrate it, be grateful, like, dude, I'm glad I got where I've got. But at some point, it's time to force fork off, okay? The path you're on is going to keep taking you down this road that you're on. And it's like, guess what? You already know what that looks like. You know what the end looks like. It's probably a dead end. It's time to fork off. So I want to share with you my. My fork. I gotta be careful. this is a family friendly show here. My fork off framework. So the fork framework, because at some point you do have to fork off, right? Fork off the old path and choose new growth. So F stands for face the fear, Acknowledge the fear, face it and take action anyway, okay? This is where you need to develop courage. This is why I jump in cold water, guys, because I don't want to jump in cold water. It hurts. It doesn't. It's not cool. Like, it's not comfortable. But I train my brain to do hard things, and so it doesn't mean that when you face the fear that you're fearless. Guys, I have fear. I'm like, crap, I gotta hit record. What if I screw up on this live show? Like, anything I say can and will be used against me. I told Josh, he's waiting behind the scenes. I told him, anything you say can we use against you. He probably had a little bit of fear, like, what if I mess up, right? But it's courage over fear, okay? So take action despite the fear. So that's the F in fork. The O is own the imperfection, okay? Stop waiting for perfect progress beats perfection every single time. Success is sloppy, and that's okay. Like you look at these major, major businesses, these billion dollar companies, you might think from the outside that they got it all together. They don't. It's sloppy. So own the imperfection and just be okay. Just accept it's okay because progress is greater than perfection. Now, the or the R in the fork is repeat the process. This is this is. This is gold. When you build discipline through repetition, you get good things. And it's not about motivation here, because sometimes we're not motivated. I'm actually rarely motivated to do a lot of things. I'm like, I'd rather be comfortable. I'd rather just be comfortable. Right. that's the human nature in us. And that's okay. But if we want, if we have this, like, ideal vision, this bigger vision of ourselves, then we're gonna have to fork off and we're gonna have to use this Repetition. Repetition makes the master. And guess what? It gets easier. Have you ever, like, if you. If you haven't run a mile, go run a mile today, and it's gonna suck. It just sucks. Like, if you. If you've never done push ups, go do like 50 push ups. It sucks. But guess what? The next time you do it, it doesn't suck as bad. It still sucks, just not as bad. And it's the same thing with everything. Whether you're talking about improving your sales process, hiring, delegating, training, creating SOPs, like all this boring stuff that I hate to do. Like, it gets easier over time. Right, Right. having conversations with adults. Like, it's hard, but it gets easier over time. So that's the R and then the K. Probably my favorite one. I started saying this phrase. I don't even know where I heard it years ago, but it's awesome. Keep moving forward. So even when you miss a day, which I do, I miss days on. On. On. Things I'm supposed to do with work, things I'm supposed to do with my relationships, things I'm supposed to do with my personal health, this training I've got for these races. you mess up, you feel stuck. It's okay.

The key is to do not quit. And it's the fork framework

The key is to do not quit. Okay. I want to write two books. I think later on I want to write like 46 books, but one of them is going to be do not try. Because it's like, do not try. and then another one's called do not quit. But don't quit, guys. Do not quit. Keep moving forward. And it honestly breaks my heart, you guys, because I meet so many people and I'm like, dude, this. This person has so much potential. Right? And too many people are giving up because it didn't work the first time. And they're at this fork in the road. They can keep doing what they're doing or they can fork off, and all of a sudden they let the resistance win and they just stay down the comfort zone and they walk away from their full potential, and they never get to experience what they could have gotten right. Their family's never going to experience what could have been. Their community, their team members, like the people that work for them. everybody is missing out because you gave into resistance, because you gave in to that fear of failure. So don't let that be your story. Your future is waiting. But you've got to fork off that path that's holding you back. So let's go. Let's face the fear, own the imperfection, repeat the process, and keep moving forward. And it's the fork framework. Don't rob the world of what you could have become just because it's the, it's not the perfect time. Like, that's okay. Just because it didn't go right the first time. You can still do this.

Today I challenge you to pick one thing that could change your life

So today what I want to do is challenge you. I want you to just pick one thing. Don't get overwhelmed here. I want you to pick one thing that's been holding you back, one thing that you know you should do, one thing that you've been putting off, one thing that, that could change everything. And most of us know what this is because we continually do the things that we want to do and that are comfortable and easy for us, but we know there's something that we've got to do. So I want you to spend some time. It might take 10 minutes, it might take 20 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever it is, spend some time figuring out what one thing is. Don't get overwhelmed. Just pick one, okay? And apply the fork framework. Face the fear, own the imperfection, repeat the process, keep moving forward. And this will work, guys. This works. It allows you to be free. It allows you to keep moving forward, and it allows you to start this new path and accept that it's not going to be perfect. And that's okay, because progress is greater than perfection. So, and if you're. If you really want to be one of those people that just like an All Star, and you're like, you know what? I'm not going to just listen to this, I'm going to actually implement, then I want to also extend a challenge to you to reach out to me. Just email me. I, just want to hear, like, what you're doing one thing was, and what's been holding you back, and what's the one thing that you're going to take action on today, even though it's probably not going to be perfect? Email me. I want to hear from you. Supportyanleacoaching. com. okay, I will see that email and I will reply to it. I want to hear what your thing is. So if you're really fed up, you know you're not getting what you deserve, then accept this challenge. Email me, @supportionleighcoaching. com and tell me what fork you are choosing today.

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We've got Josh Latimer on the show tonight. I'm excited, guys

all right, guys, I think it's time. that's enough about me. I'm excited, guys. We've got a, great show lined up for you. We've got Josh coming on, so let me get our guest intro music coming on. Let's get him in the studio. Should we? What is up? What is up? Mr. Josh Latimer.

What's up, my friend? How are we?

Oh, man, I'm excited to chill. I just. I've just been jonesing. I've just been missing. I need some Latimer time. So I'm like, let's get him on the show.

No, I love you more, Mr. Ryan Lee. No, you hang up first.

Yeah, exactly. Oh, dude, I love hanging out with you. You always just bring such a positive vibe to my life. self confidence. You just make me feel good, and then you teach me all these cool things, and I'm, like, cool. Like, I'm a better person today. So thanks for coming and hanging out.

Oh, my pleasure, man. You're. You're helping a lot of people. I don't think I understood how epic what you're doing is until I went to Florida and saw your event. It was crazy. I mean, the amount of people there, the energy there. And then, on the side, I'm just talking to People. It was like person after person after person. Like, I hit a million dollars, I hit $3 million, I hit $4 million. It was like person after person. Because of your program, it made it more real, you know, because like, the Internet doesn't feel real. You know, it looks like little thumbnails walking around, but then you see it, you're like, I saw your thumbnail before. But you're a human. You're a real human. And there's hundreds of people there all impacted by this thing you decided to do, which I think is amazing.

It's crazy. I still am like, this is crazy. Like, I get to do this. This is so fun.

It's awesome. Yeah. And you got a great program. And, you know, it's cool because when you have a brand new program, like, probably when you were starting out, you're like, I, promise this is totally awesome. And they're like, I don't know about this guy, you know, but now you have like a stack of irrefutable proof, which makes it really easy. It's like, okay, you can just look at the stack if you want or not do it, that's fine, you know, but you, you just have so much proof of what you're doing. And, it works and it's awesome. I'm a believer in it. I'm a believer in just high ticket offers in general for home service. I think a lot of people, like, I don't know if you've noticed, but you need like a home equity loan to buy bacon now. Like, the cost of stuff is crazy. And I don't know, everything's so expensive or young people trying to buy a house. I like it when like the boomers, you know, or like my grandparents generation, like, you need to buy a house, you just got to work hard. It's like, yeah, Your house costs $22,000. It's not the same thing. Like, the market's different, the economy is different. A, lot of opportunity, especially if you know things others don't know.

Yeah, well, I've learned so many things from you. You've really helped me adjust my mindset. And what's crazy is like, I look at where I am now and I look back, I'm like, wow, I've come so far. But then I still suffer with this gap, you know, the gap in the gain mentality. I'm like, yeah, but I want to be here. But you, you really taught me that. And, and you, you shared a quote at Lighted Up Expo about like, you'll make a Lot more money with your brain than your back or something like that. Yeah, something like. Is that right? Is that close?

Yeah, I mean, I started out very poor and I was a pizza delivery driver. I married my high school sweetheart and we lived in a trailer park. So, like, that was where we started. Right.

And that's like a perfect origin story.

Yeah, it's.

Did you do this on purpose?

You're like, that's all a strategy. if I suffer for like 12 years straight, then I can tell people that and it maybe will be good.

We.

You can take the slave out of Egypt, but you can't take the Egypt out of the slave. You know, if you don't, you can take the girl out of the trailer park. Can't take the trailer park out of the world. Sometimes, even though your circumstance change your heart, your mindsets, your beliefs, and your agreements remain the same, you know, it's. There's a lag a little bit sometimes. I have a lot of friends that have sold businesses or, you know, had things go well, and they came into a lot of money really fast. There's one particular gentleman, it was like a life changing amount of money, like, doesn't have to work again. And he came to Texas and we just talked about that, because when he looked at his bank account, it just had this giant number in it. And he had worked and grinded for years, and it wasn't like that. And then all of a sudden, Tuesday, now it's like this, and. And it's like your brain. So he asked me, he's like, what should I do? I think I'm gonna buy, like, commercial real estate.

The way to be successful is just through hard work, not luck

I'm gonna do. And I was like, you know what you should do? You should do nothing. You should do absolutely nothing, like, for at least six months, probably a year. And you need to, like, eat your toast and drink your coffee, or maybe not coffee if you're Mormon, but you, you eat your toast and then you look at your bank account and just let it settle in. Right? Because your. His identity has to catch up with his new reality. This is why, like, 81 of lottery winners go bankrupt within five years, is because there's a huge, mismatch between their bank account and who they believe that they are. And so there's just a lot of psychology, and I think with, with local home service businesses too, we take a technician's mindset into our business, you know, because a lot of people, maybe half of them, they start their business because they worked at a job doing that thing. They hated their Boss. And they said, screw you. I can do this on my own. Which is fine, right? Because doing it on your own is way better than working for, you know, Joe. Joe's a jerk. Right? But we bring in, like, this limited thinking, and this, The way to be successful is just through hard work. And it's not actually true. And even really wealthy people, they might be a little smarter than the average person, but not as much as you think. It's not that they're sweating more sweat, it's that they have more leverage. And one of the ways you get more leverage is by knowing things other people don't know. So you can do things other people don't. Can't do. Ultimately, you can have things other people can't have.

I love it, man. And that's. That's what I. I, Like, if you look up leverage, there's just a picture of you. Just Google it. It's like Josh Latimer. You. You. I don't know. Like, if you don't feel stressed because you always put off this, like, oh.

No, I feel stressed.

Okay.

Actually, I've struggled my whole life with anxiety.

Really?

Yeah. And, I'm not trying to, like, be fake on the Internet or whatever. I am an optimistic person, but I'm also a high creative. So if anybody's watching this. And, like, I have highs and lows, right? So, like, I can get very motivated, but there's a downside to that too. And, like, there's times I'll have anxiety when there's no logical reason at all. It's just, like, complete pressure. And so, like, the last two years have come a long ways with that. And there's a lot of things. I mean, it could be a whole podcast just about that. but that's been.

What are some things that you did to just help subdue it or work with it?

Oh, man, this is risky.

This is risky.

Josh Goldsmith: Anxiety cripples business, it's evil

We were gonna talk marketing, and now we're talking anxiety.

Well, I think the first thing to understand is that the Internet's not real. You know, start calling Facebook fake book. Okay? Because like you said in your intro, you're like, you're not gonna go live and post the video of your family fighting when you're. And you're in peak being horrible to each other mode. You know, you don't share that on fake book. You put the hardware. Right.

Exactly.

And you're not bad. Like, it'd be weird if you did that. Right. But what happens is we get this idea of you're scrolling instagram you're doom scrolling all these things. And you see the guy with the rented Lamborghini and you see the guy doing the ice bath saying you're a fat loser and you need to do that. And there's just all these voices telling you stuff, you know, and then it seems like everybody's crushing it. You know, there's people at Disney and you're like, and then you're like, yeah, I can go to Disney. And then you actually search it out and you're like, oh, it's like $24,000 to go to Disney, right? It's like so expensive.

Entire profits for the last two years.

All your money to the rich mouse, you know. And so I don't know, I think the reality of business is hard, but anxiety is a, it's evil and it cripples. Like it's really, it's a really bad deception. I'll tell you my story. It's hard for me to tell this without talking about Jesus, so I gotta at least talk about it. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, whatever you want to do.

But the reality is Jesus friendly show here the where.

The way I built a lot of my businesses and learned a lot of stuff was through self reliance. And you know, have you ever heard the quote, if it's meant to be, it's up to me. Or you got to work hard to get ahead, right? Or time is money. These are little isms. Myron golden calls them truisms. And they're things that people say that sound really good, but they're actually not true. But you think that they're true. And so what I really did most of my career was I would suffer and kill myself on the altar of my business to get a result. And the thing is, is it works. If you're willing to do that, you will win, you'll get a result. But at what cost, right? Because I didn't have peace and like joy as I was doing it. So I basically take my piece, put it on the altar, sacrifice it to the self reliance gods to like get a solution or in my own intellect solve the problem. What I've, what I've come to realize the last few years is like, like I was made on purpose, for a purpose. I have a mission, mandate and destiny. I'm always in the right place at the right time because my footsteps are ordered. I'm the child of a king, I can't fail. And everything that's happening to me is happening for me, not to me. And like if you actually believe that even though it sounds like woo woo nonsense, if you can become delusional enough to actually believe you're okay, and you don't, it's not if it's meant to be, it's up to me. You know, you're going to co create with God, like he, he will go with you. You're basically business partners with the one who knows all the things and he likes to talk to you like if you can actually still get the result and you grow even faster and you have peace while you do it. Which is like mind blowing to me at least because I never had that for years, for decade, for like 15 years. so I don't know that.

Dude, this is. You've some of these things you've taught me, like you've said these things like directly, like teach me other things. I don't know if you taught me by example or just through like the spirit or what, I don't know. But like literally you're speaking to me because these, the last couple years, that's like before that I was stressed all the time, the anxiety and all this stuff. And now like you've, you've helped me like just uncomplicate myself to just give it up to God.

And like all business owners are really good at taking something simple and making it complicated. You know, it's like, me too. I have like a master's degree in that. Like, but it, it doesn't have to be as hard as we think. Myron golden is one of like my favorite people to learn from and he told me, he's like, Josh, people, they got to stop trying to succeed and they have to start letting themselves succeed. The first time he told me that was like years ago. And I'm like, that's dumb. That doesn't make sense. I mean it sounds like a fancy thing, but it's like kind of dumb. What are you talking about? Like, but it's actually really profound and because what happens is we have like one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake at the same time. We're trying to drive the little car of our business across the success finish line and we're like, we have trauma and all this stuff and, and when you actually dig into it with people, including yourself, you'll realize it's like agreements, beliefs, doubts and fears, things from your childhood kind of controls the game for most people in like a big way. And so people start to actually succeed and they'll self sabotage, they'll find a way to screw themselves over and not Even know that they're doing it. It's really painful to watch. but it can be fixed by actually simplifying stuff. It's like, God's real. He's not mad at you. And serve the people you're called to serve. Do the right thing over a long enough time horizon. Read books and educate, but don't, like, you know, you know, toil yourself to death trying to do everything perfect, like really good things happen and you can take your foot off the brake, you know? So when he says stop trying to succeed seed and start letting yourself succeed, what he's really saying is just take your foot off the brake and just let what, what was supposed to be happening the whole time happen. Easier said than done, but always.

Yeah, but I mean, just hearing it and hearing you talk through it and stuff like that is super helpful. So, I mean, I, I'm, I'm guilty of all this stuff. You've helped me, you know that. And like, there's days where I'm like, self sabotaging, like, what, what the heck? Why?

Why?

And you, you remind me like, no, I really have helped a lot of people. I can do hard things. Like, what's the matter with me?

Good hearted small business owners are so hard on themselves

So, yeah, we also like, guilt, shame and condemnation is another problem with small businesses, especially good people. Good hearted small business owners are so hard on themselves. It's crazy. Bill. So you're a perfect example because you're literally like hilarious. You love your family. Like, no one's perfect, but you're, you're awesome. And, but you think that you totally suck, right? It's like, don't tell anyone. Everyone kind of totally sucks a little.

But that was between you and me, right?

It's like, no, you actually don't. You know, and it's like, we think that, you know, we, we have like this very accurate book that we keep records of every mistake we've made. And it's in 4K and we reference it and we remind ourselves of it, but we don't even write the stuff in the other book of the good things that we've done. And so it gets this, this lopsided, distorted view of reality because the truth is you've literally quantifiably, just pure logic helped hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people make tens of millions of dollars to create more profit, create more margin, to create more freed more space so they can do their dreams. Like, that's a fact. So even if you're like, oh, shucks, don't say that, that's just a fact. That's a true thing that happens. So not being able to acknowledge the true things that happened that point to you being pretty cool doesn't make logical sense. But that's what we do. We don't read that book. We only read that I'm a piece of crap book, which all of us have I'm a piece of crap book. Mine's like, I, I had to add an addendum for like 10 extra bonus chapters to my I'm a piece of crap book. But there is another book too.

Love it, man. That's awesome.

Every time I talk to you, I go in with intention that

Well, every time I talk to you, I go in with intention that we're going to talk about this and then we always talk about something else.

No, let's do it. Let's talk about profit and frap and all the cool things.

But here's what I love about it. And it works. It always works out perfect. It's not that like you derail it. It's not like it's a bad thing. It literally just because you always remind me that there's a foundation. There's always like a step one before the step one. And profit is the thing. In my opinion. You and I, we're preaching it all day, every day in our sleep. You know, we're sleep walking in the kitchen, throwing stuff. Profit, profit. Like we love it because it's the thing that holds everyone back. But these other things get in the way. Right?

Let's talk about leverage. How do we increase profits in our business

So let's talk about profit. Let's talk about leverage. You mentioned leverage. How do we, how do we increase profits in our business?

What we talked about before is actually a perfect setup to this because people feel guilty for being too profitable.

Like good hearted people. Not everybody, but. But like oftentimes people feel bad when they make more with less effort. It's like we've trained ourselves that it's supposed to be really hard so that we can barely make it. And a lot of people, you know.

It'S awesome and true.

We do that though. And then a lot of people, you know, if I heard, I heard someone, I don't remember, or I give credit, but they're talking about how profit in a business is actually an unnatural outcome. Profit doesn't naturally occur in the wild. It has to be forced. Right. Profit has to be something you fixate on because it doesn't just happen, you know, like Mike Michalowitz with, profit first. It's like that's a good system or model to like force some more profit. Because if you don't do that, you'll spend everything so somewhere and then there's nothing left. Right. So whatever you focus on, you find whatever is measured can be managed. Right. And, and these are just true things. But, but the reason I liked our intro is because it's really a mindset thing. And the reality is like I, I did a, a free workshop a couple weeks ago and I had everybody write down their top three dreams and then quantify their dreams. This is actually really powerful. So what people did, they're like, well, I want to pay off my house. I'm like, well exactly how much is that in dollars? Like oh, it's $263,000. Okay, cool. What's your second dream? I want to go on vacation. Where? Italy. For how long? A month. How much does that cost? 31,000. Got it. Add that to the house. And what's your third dream? Well, I want to save 100,000 cash because I've never had 100,000 in the bank. Okay, Add that to. So, so now I have this quantified number and I'm like, I want you to calculate how many years it's going to take you just to achieve your top three dreams with the extra profit you currently have access to. And this isn't like your vacation fund money, that's part of your budget. It's not like the, your transmission is going to go out in six months. It's definitely going to happen. You're going to have to pay for that. But like on top of your salary, your personal burn rate, what it costs you to live, what can you take out of your business to put towards the stream and just do the math on it. And so everybody did the math on it and the average amount of years for the average was 33.41 years. just for their top three dreams. Right. And it's kind of depressing, but it's also empowering because we, we, you know, the difference between a dream and a goal is a plan essentially. And you know, you can have dreams. The graveyard is full of dreams. But if you, we say things, I want to be generous, I want to build orphanages, I want to travel more, I want a second home, I want to pay off my debt, I want to pay cash for my kids college. We have all these ideas. I'm going to buy my mom a house, I'm going to buy my kid a house, I'm going to set up this. But we just say it, but there's no plan and we don't do the math on it. And the reality is, is you can only spend profit on your dreams. You can't spend your revenue on your dreams. You can't spend your paycheck on your dream. You spend the profit. The above and beyond abundant chunk after everything else is accounted for is what does that. And so, so hopefully that motivates people and why this matters. Otherwise you're just gonna, your life will be like Groundhog's Day. You'll work hard, which is honorable, and then you'll get old and die. But nothing will have really happened in terms of your legacy or significance. Your, your family tree being pivoted, you know, so it's not evil to make profit. Number one, you're not a bad person for making profit because profit isn't just for jet skis and hot tubs, although I love both of those things.

It is for that a little bit.

It's like, how do you pay your employees a little bit above market rate so that your job is stickier?

Absolutely.

How do you invest in the latest technology and the best CRMs and the best automations? You know, how can people join your program so they can add a high ticket back end offer to their existing service company? Which by the way changes everything. For a typical service company to have an expensive thing to sell, for example, like landscape, lighting, like they need money to invest in these things and there's no meat on the bone. And then if you think marketing feels like gambling, the reason why is because there's not enough meat on the bone for you to even market. Dan Kennedy says whoever can spend the most to acquire a customer wins. What does that mean? Well, most small business owners are trying to say, how do I advertise cheaper? How do I make my marketing costs go down? All the people that are rich, killing it, everybody that's built something huge is saying, how can I spend even more to acquire a customer? The only way to do that is to make your customer more valuable. Right. And so it's like this inverted way of thinking. It's not complicated, but, but people don't think of it like this because they're programmed to make money with their muscles instead of their mind. And that's why I say we make more money with our brain than we do with our back.

So good. Well, and it's true, like everyone does feel guilty. They're like, wait a minute, like if, well if I, if I'm going to charge that much, should I take, should I take longer? Should I, you know, somehow like everyone wants to be tired, tied to this hourly rate and it's like, no how are you going to over deliver for your client? Like, how can you. What if you could do a surprise gift for them when you're done? Like, you.

One of the principles you can do to make more profit is actually to start selling speed

Right now, you can't afford it because you have zero profits right now.

And we're not our customer. Right. Like, oftentimes we. I, When I started cleaning windows, it was so confusing to me that people gave me any amount of money to squeegee the dirt on their glass that immediately got more dirt on the glass. It was like the dumbest thing ever. I'm like, why would. Why do people pay for this? But they, you know, I didn't understand my customer. And. And I'll give you an example. So what I usually do now, because we travel a lot and we're busy. Like, I have. Our barber comes to our studio and does. Cuts my hair. And it costs way more money to do that, but it's actually amazing. Like, I pay them and, pay them the more money and give them a huge tip and say thank you all at the same time. Because I don't want to get in my car and drive in Dallas traffic and park and sit in the lobby and wait 10 minutes. I don't want to do that. I value my time at this stage of my life more than the dollars in my pocket. But if I go to a normal hairstylist, like I did because my barber was out of town, he couldn't come here, so I had to just go to someone else and I had to suffer through driving. And so I go to this lady, and it, like, broke her mind. Like, she was charging, like, nothing. I pay 100 bucks for a haircut, minimum. If I go somewhere, I just pay it. Because my mom was a hairstylist, I come from the service industry. Like, it's just. But it was like the clouds parted and like, I gave her a million dollars. It's like, she cut my hair. She's like, it's 25. I'm like, here's a hundred. She's like, why would you do that? I'm like, because I highly. I value my haircut to 100. I think you're just undervaluing yourself. So whether you charge me 80 or you charge me 20, I'm giving you 100. And she's like, I don't know, her brain shut off and it started malfunctioning, and then I left. Right. But. But affluent, customers value time a lot, and it's hard for us to comprehend it. So do you have to work longer on the job? No, they just Want the result, and they want you to go away. And you can charge a premium price for that. I mean, one of the principles you can do to make more profit is actually to start selling speed in your offerings. Not the drug. Right. But you sell speed, you know, have a fast pass. Disney, that rich mouse we were talking about, they let you give them more money and then you can skip the line. That's great. Affluent people love that. They're like, oh, no, of course. How much more? 800 more. Sure. Here you go. I don't want to do the line. That takes time. But service companies don't even think about that. Right. Because they wouldn't buy that.

Yep.

You know, there's a friend of mine, Brian Hagerty, I don't know if you know him. he's doing great. Crushes it. But during the summer they do 3, 400,000, I think more than 400,000amonth pressure cleaning in New Jersey. And one of the ways, one of the reasons they're killing it is because he built his schedule out in a really unique way. It's very challenging to where they're basically, quote, selling and doing jobs within 24 to 48 hours. So what's happening is because he can do it so fast, he has a higher average ticket, his price is higher, and he has a higher close rate. And all of his competitors aren't even calling him back to give the quote by the time he's on site doing the expensive job. And it causes confusion. And so the little guy is like, oh, I know what I should do. I should lower my price even more. Right. Not understanding that all of the opportunity and the money is then catering to those value buyers and selling speed, for example.

Very cool, Very cool.

Frap is how you apply leverage in your business

Well, talk to us about, frap. you just did your FRAP challenge a couple weeks ago. you've taught me about it. I'm in love with it. Let's talk about. Because that's really how you teach people how to apply leverage in their business, right?

Yeah. So I did invent the phrase frap. We trademarked it. It's a thing. So I'm writing a book called the Frat Formula. And so I did this free challenge where I was kind of teaching it because I'm practicing how I articulate these things for my book anyway. But it's not something I really invented. It's something I discovered. And when I. My first company, I sold it to a small private equity and I noticed what they did to my business after I sold it. And they did A lot of bad things, but they did a lot of genius things too. And what I noticed was they create a lot of money and margin really fast when they acquire companies. Companies, right. Like whoever's watching this, if PE buys your company, like they're going to raise your prices the next day after you close in the business. Like, it's just going to happen. And what's ironic is, is you've already decided, well, it's impossible. I'm already the highest price of my market. There's no room, there's no, there's no more room to raise the price. You're just wrong. You're. That's just a belief. You just told your own self and okay, go ahead. But as soon as they buy it, boom, they start testing price elasticity and they're testing the edges.

You can massively increase your take home personal profit by thinking about frap

There's four different distinct ways you can manipulate your pricing. I can explain what those are, but FRAP is an acronym for frequency, Referrals, Average ticket and pricing. And what's cool is for $0, you can massively increase your take home personal profit by thinking about frap. How do I use my brain and creativity to get people to buy from me more often? Frequency, give me more referrals and free deal flow referrals. How do I bump m my average ticket up? Through cross selling and upselling, decoy offers and choreography. There's like these things. And then how do I manipulate my pricing so that I'm maximizing my profitability? And when you do this, you just make more money. A lot, a lot more money. It depends on the business. But it's actually common for people to double or, or more their take home profit for free just by understanding these frat principles. And they work. It's not just a home service thing like General Motors can use frap. A guy selling snow cones off the back of a bicycle in Costa rica can use frat. Because think about it. He sells $3 snow cones and then he meets Josh Latimer. And I'm like, bro, do you hate money? Are you allergic to profit? Do you want to fail? Is this a nonprofit? Oh, it's accidentally a nonprofit. Okay, let me help you fix it, right? It's like, it's not just about, it's not about price gouging people, right? It's about empowering your staff, giving yourself choices, being able to advertise a market and make a mistake without something horrible happening. It's about preparing for the future. Or if you have a small company, you have to have more profit now or you can't even scale. Like you shouldn't act your age when it comes to your business because the 5 million dollar version of your company has costs that you're not realizing right now. With a half a million dollar version of your company, we need to build in these prices now so that we can support the weight of real benefits programs and a big fancy office and all these things that you'll have as expenses in the future. So I go to the snow cone guy and it's like, okay, you have $3 snow cones now they're $4.99, but we're going to put them in a fancier paper cup, okay. And maybe we sell a little bit less, but we're actually making money. And then we're going to have multiple sizes of snow cones, right? And we're going to use creativity to name them. Cool things like, you know, Tiger's blood snow cones. It's like a famous one. Everybody likes you know, having a proprietary name for your snow cone, right? So the large one. Then I would figure out a way to have like a 12 snow cone that most people would never buy because it's insane, right? But I'd have a unique proprietary name and a different type of package that it came in. And when people bought it, maybe I burst out a confetti cannon or something and make a big deal about it. The, the point is, is I'm increasing the average ticket through choice architecture and like the way we name packages and things. And then the expensive one acts as a decoy. It's called a decoy offer. And so when you have an expensive $12 snow cone, the $4.99 snow cone feels like a better deal. Right? That's why your landscape lighting secrets is such a big deal for like a a window cleaner or something, right? It's like if he has an expensive thing to sell, it raises his whole average ticket. Even if only 1 out of 30 people buy it. Or if someone already has a lighting business and you have ten thousand dollar lighting packages, we still want to have a thirty thousand dollar version to present people so that they freak out. And then we walk it down to your ten thousand dollar version and they're pleasantly surprised. And so it's thinking like this that moves the economics of your business up. And it doesn't cost anything, it just costs creativity. But because we have technical mindsets, we don't identify ourselves as like, I'm a marketer person or I'm, a creative. Well, you better become one if you want to make money because that's where all the money is. You even see people like Tommy Mello. He's a marketer, and he's a CEO and he's a leader, and he's a lot of things, but his core competency. He knows his numbers by the back of his hand, and he can generate a lead. Right now, if I called him on his cell phone, was like, tommy, what was your CPL this week? He would just know it. And the way they run ads, they're a marketer first. And you're just a marketer that happens to power wash houses or install lights. If you think of it that way, you understand frap. Really good things will happen.

That's so good, man. And it's. The thing I love about it is it really doesn't require any more work. Literally, just. Just the raising the price thing. That's where we always start people in our program.

Yeah.

Like, you just have free money, and it pays you out at a higher amount. Like if you're. If your company. Most Companies aren't making 20% net, but they think they are. So let's say they were making.

They pay themselves $11,000 salary. They have a 20%.

On a good day, they think they're making 20%. Well, because everything was already covered. Like, you're not, like, even hiring me. You're not doing anything. All you're doing is just raising your price. That next deal pays out at like, 65%, right? 20% because everything's covered. It's like.

Yeah, it's disproportionate pricing. When we implement frap, we do it backwards. So it's frap, but the first thing we do is P. But we don't like saying parf's weird. That's, weird. So we say P is first because it's not even really something to implement. It's more of something you just decide to do. It takes courage. It's scary, but you can test it and roll it out in small batches. But, you know, there's.

A 20% price increase equals a 100% profit increase, right

There's like four different ways to manipulate prices, too, that people don't think about. but there's a disproportionate result to your personal profit. Because if. If you do a hundred thousand in a month and you keep 20 grand, okay, you made a 20% net. Right. Well, if you would have raised your prices 20%, it would have been 120,000 in revenue, but you would have kept 40 grand. So what that means is a 20% price increase equals a 100% profit increase. Right. Or like you said, they don't even make 20%. They only make 10%. Right? So they're only keeping 10 grand off that. A hundred thousand in revenue. Well, if they raise the prices 20% now, they're making 30 grand instead of 10 grand, which is a 300% profit increase.

Crazy.

And so, and so, so, so pricing has to be addressed, and we have to stay on it because, like I said, prices are going up. Health care, food, travel, energy, everything. Real estate, everything. Like, if you're just pacing with inflation, you're still losing because the future version of your company has more expenses waiting for you that you didn't even consider yet. so it needs to be fat. We need to make a lot, especially when we're small. and you're. You're better off having less customers. But they're all profitable anyway. I mean, would you rather work like a dog for a million in revenue and you make 100 grand, or would you rather have a $775,000 business with a 42% net and you're doing less total work? Right? So instead of 60 hours a week, you're working 40 hours a week, and you're making three times as much anyway with less total revenue. Right? So it's, It's. I think it's overlooked all the marketers, all these agencies promising you we're going to get you more leads. Oh, we're gonna get. I mean, we're all. It's insane. Is it just me? There's like 23 times more marketing agencies now than there was five years ago. It's in. It's out of control, it's exponential, and it's. It doesn't even make sense. I would actually tell people watching this to fire your marketing agency. Most people should just fire them right now because they just keep telling you, oh, and just got to wait three to six months. It's going to be great. We just got to season it three. They just want your retainer for three more months, pal. But here's the thing. Even if they did get you leads, it still doesn't make sense because your business isn't frappy enough. We want to run a customer through a frappified business where we have all the strategies in place to cross sell and upsell and anchor and decoy where the choreography is correct, you know, and where we have, referral systems and frequency systems to pull them back in. Once all that's built, then you open up the lead flow and let them come in. Because now a customer is not worth a Thousand dollars to you, they're worth. They're not worth a thousand dollars at a 10% net. After FRAP, they might be worth 2,000 at a 27% net. And that's not the same thing, right?

No, it's not. Every, everybody right now wants more leads. I'm like, no, you don't, because you haven't optimized your frappiness. Like, it's, it's so true.

Crappy with it. It's like getting.

Talk about, uh, supply and demand. What does price elasticity mean

Talk about, supply and demand. Because a lot of people are like, oh, no, I. I got my prices set.

Yeah.

And I'll do it. You know, we'll see. We'll see what the tariffs do. We'll probably have to raise them because of the tariffs. But, what does supply and demand mean? What does price elasticity mean? Talk to us about that.

Sure. I mean, there are limits on pricing. You know, like, imagine you go to do, you know, Payless Shoes. You ever heard of them?

Are they still around? That's where we used to go.

I don't know if they are, but they're a huge chain and they sell a $25 shoes. And if you walked in to Payless Shoes and they just said, no, they're 650 now. Like, that wouldn't work. Like, it just wouldn't work. And, and that's not to say that people don't pay 650 for shoes, because they do. But they're not paying 650 for Payless shoes. Right. Because you can't have a steakhouse price with a Waffle House vibe. Okay? That's rule number one. and by the way, I love Waffle House, but I'm not paying $83 for a steak at Waffle House. It breaks the frame. And so, so price raises have to also parallel the perceived value and what it feels like to interact with your business. And so from the phone call to your email signature to the thickness of your literature, to the scripting to the anchor, like, the way you handle the process is what justifies the high price. You actually want people to be so impressed with your process that they're scared to even get your price. And then they're pleasantly surprised you're only 200 bucks more than the other company. That's like the perfect outcome. Right? So Payless Shoes did this social experiment years ago. You can go on YouTube and watch it. And they took their store and they rebranded it to Pelosi, okay? And they put in like this fancy gold lion statue, and they, and they just raised all the prices on their normal shoes to like 650 bucks. Then they hired all these Instagram fashion influencers to come in there and like did this news story and everybody dressed fancy and had this little flute champagne things and they're doing. And people are buying real shoes. They have video of these people paying 650 for shoes and they're like, describe the purchase you bought. Well, it's literally elegant. The styling, if you notice here, they're saying all this stuff, right?

Awesome. And it's like 25 shoe for 650.

Yeah. But price is more elastic than people think. So even though, yes, there are limits because even Pelosi isn't going to sell their shoe for $600,000. Right, there's. But the limits are way beyond what most business owners think. And they never test the edges. They're too scared. They're living in fear. And when you make all your decisions in fear, bad things happen to you. it's not like fear is always bad. And if you're getting chased by a saber toothed tiger, then you should have fear. But if you're going to raise your prices on the next 10 customers to actually do some, some experimentation, there's nothing to be scared of. It doesn't matter if you lose three of them because you could do the math, you realize it's still worth it. And that experiment was a success, right? Supply and demand pricing has to do with, well, restaurants call it surge pricing and it's really effective. But you got to be smart. You gotta, you gotta roll it out carefully. Right? But you know, you might be booked out a month during May, June and July, for example, like we were back in the day in Michigan. And my price should not be the same for my stuff in May, June and July as it is in January. It doesn't make sense. And so by floating, like, you should all raise your prices across the board forward. That's called a static price raise. In addition to that and above and beyond that, we bolt on a supply and demand surge, pray. And there's no limit to it. You're just making sure that your schedule stays full as you're going. And if, then you pull it back down if it's, if you're, you know, your schedule is getting open. And by doing that, sometimes, Ryan, I don't want to do a bunch of math on here because people will like their brain will leak out of their ear. You just have to take my word for it. But it's actually not uncommon at all for people to double their Take home profit just from supply and demand pricing. Right. Because they make so much more money during those 90 days that it, like changes the entire game for them. and again, this is like 1/100th of what FRAP is, but it's, it's powerful. It's just a way of thinking.

Yeah. And, and I like how you teach too, that, okay, there are people. Just because they say no to your premium price now doesn't mean they went with someone else. If you can circle back around to them when you're, when you're, you know, you're caught up, when you're surging, not surging as much.

Right.

Also, you have room to lower your price, but you're back to where you should be anyway.

Right? Exactly.

Marketing does work. It's still a fact out there that marketing is everything

Like, like, discounts are amazing, but they can't actually be a discount. It can. So the hundred thousand dollar example where the guy has a 20 margin, you can't give a 20 off coupon. What are you doing? Right, right. So, so stores like Kohl's, my wife likes to shop at Kohl's, and their shoes are like always 40% off. And I started noticing this. I'm like, how come every single time their shoes are 40 off, literally every single time? This is not. Well, I mean, you can even know that people are doing it and it's not real and it still works. Right? Because people come in, they want to use their Kohl's cash, and they're doing the 40% off and it ends on Saturday and they got to hurry up. And so small businesses don't tap into this human nature enough. but yeah, you can circle back, you test it. You know, it takes some experimentation. But at the end of the day, when you look at your bank account, it hits your bank account in a very different way. Right? Because you're only keeping that little bit that's left at the end of the month. You know, it's like you're paying all the bills, you're paying this, your transmission broke, you're doing this, you're paying your agency retainer and hope to God you got, a little bit for you. You start doing this stuff and you got a whole bunch for you. It'll get you real excited real fast.

I, I really hope and pray that people are listening and taking notes and not just like taking notes, but are going to implement, because you said it earlier is like, we're, we are not our customer. And I know people are like, well, yeah, those 40 things are dumb. I don't respond to direct mail. I don't read those emails. I, I know they're marking it up 40 to give me the discount. Like, that doesn't matter. It's still a fact out there that marketing is everything. Marketing does work. Like, just because you say you don't, you don't respond to marketing.

The people that think that they're immune to this stuff are, are the most susceptible to it. Yes, they, they like, you think you're logical. Logical people are just as irrational as emotional people, but they don't think that they are. Like, your level of self awareness is bad if you don't think this stuff has an effect on you. It cracks me up because I could see YouTube comments like, they'll never work on me. And then I look in the background and they have, you know, their six hundred dollar, you know, Dungeons and Dragons memorabilia or something. It's like everybody buys things irrationally. The problem is, is we have different categories of things that we value irrationally. Like, I went to a professional golfer's house and his wife called to get a quote for window cleaning years ago, and he didn't even want it. He didn't want to spend the money on it. And this is like a McMansion with a 200, 000 boat in the driveway. The guy's a PGA golfer. The, he's got money, right? He lives on a golf course in this nice neighborhood. And I quote him like 500 bucks to do whatever. And the guy's standing in his front yard with me. He's like, how about 300? That's what he says to me, right? It's like so disrespectful. And I'm like, yeah, no, sorry, you know, we're professional company and blah, blah. And then he's like, super arrogant and he's mean to me. And I leave, I'm talking to a friend of mine later about this, and he goes, josh, you do realize, right, that that same guy, the next day will spend five grand on a single golf club. And I'm, like, you're right. And so the lesson in that is that that guy just didn't care about my stuff that I was selling. Just like, I don't care about certain stuff, but there's other things. So when we're marketing, we're trying to find the people that have a little bit of that extra irrational emotional charge around the services that we do, right? And so landscape lighting, for example, I'm assuming we haven't talked about this, but like, let's say that, ah, a mom hears that one of Their neighbors got broken into by a burglar. Okay? Like, the. The price elastic city goes out this much because it's not about the illumination of her landscaping as much as is the protection of her children. And so tapping into this stuff, it's not about tricking and manipulating people, but understanding that people will happily trade the money in their pocket for solution that you provide. But you. You have. They're not going to pay you more than you ask for or have you ever, when you were running your company, a lot of small companies, they'll do a quote and the customer goes, oh, that's it? Yeah. That's great. Has that ever happened to you? You're like. You're like, dang it, in the early years, right? We all have been there. And we're like, seriously? I was scared to tell you a thousand. And you're like, oh, I thought for sure this would be 3,000. Yeah, sign me up for a thousand. You're like, no, no, 2000. You know, it's. It's because there's this disconnect between how much that prospect values our thing versus how much we think they should value our thing. And because we're not our customer, we get real confused.

I had a bid like that one time. I was there putting a design together. Both decision makers were there, super nice people.

And he.

I could tell he was, like, nervous. And he even said it because I was like, you know, what about this area? Would you guys like this? He goes, well, I mean, how much is this going to be? And I go, well, how much do you think it's going to be? He goes, I ain't telling you my number. Like, I know how this works. I'm like, okay, how about this? You write down your number and I'll write down mine, and then we, like, reveal them at the same time. So he wrote down his number, and I come up with a quote and the proposal. It was a backyard only. And I tell him, I go, all right, mine's $12,000. He goes, dude, mine was 16.

We need to focus on profit instead of just busy work and survival

You left four grand on the table. And I go, no, that's fine. We're doing your front yard, too. So, that way you have some money to spend in the front. But, yeah, like, we don't know, like, what people's perceptions are. So.

Yeah, and the main point is we need to focus on profit instead of just busy work and survival, because that's what's going to pay for your dreams. It's what's going to give you leverage when you hire people. It's the whole key to everything. You ever heard of what a skeleton key is? A skeleton key is like a mythological key that can unlock any lock, right? And it's like, if you had that, that'd be pretty valuable, right? But profit is like a skeleton key, right? Because people say, well, I want to be generous. I want to travel. I want to do like, you can pick anything that you tell me that you want. It's all only one thing. It's more money. Specifically profit. It just feels dirty to say that for some reason. And so, like, well, I don't want money. I just want to be able to give away millions. It's like, okay, okay, well, no, I don't want. I don't want money. Ew, gross. No, I. I just want to be able to. I just want to be debt free. It's like, what are you. Earth to you. What are you talking about? You want money? I just want to travel more. It's freaking expensive to travel. So all of those dreams people have is one thing, and it's profit. You need profit. You need margin, you need oxygen. The Small Business administration says that 81% of small business owners are two weeks away from overdrafting their business checking account. And these are good people. They are smart people. They are not dumb. They don't understand frap. They don't understand the mindset that's. That's sabotaging their own success. They feel guilty for succeeding. They feel guilty for not suffering and all these things, right? And you can fix it. You can choose to do it today. But it starts with pricing, manipulating your average ticket, opening up more free deal flow. That's a whole thing. I mean, we could, We don't have time to go to everything, but there's money everywhere inside of what FRAP is.

Yeah. And honestly, like, I think it does start. It really is. It goes back to intention. Like, I like that you had those pe. Your people, like, identify what. What are your three dreams? Like, what. What do you really want? Because most people say one thing and do another, and if you reverse engineer the problem because this is just a giant math problem, then your clients truly can finance whatever you want. Like, if that is your dream, why wait 30. What was it? 31 years? 35 years?

The average was 33.41 years.

That's crazy.

Yeah, but the average that just applying FRAP this way of thinking to any business reduces that by like 85%. Because it's different for every business. But it's dramatic, Ryan. Like, it's insane. Like, I took 35 business owners for 10 weeks through like this frapp thing thing, and I had. I had $5 million companies down to $100,000 companies. It was a mix. It was like 13 different industries, and we found an average of $13,000 a month in profit average across 13 industries of these 35 businesses. Just by. By thinking different and manipulating frat for free. Like, it doesn't. Like it's just math. And these weren't numbers that I calculated. These were their own numbers that they self reported back to me.

Yeah.

Based on their own conservative estimations. So it's. It's kind of insane, actually. I don't think anybody be mad if I Venmo'd them 13 grand a month the next year. I think they'd be like, thank you. This Josh guy's pretty nice, right? I'll. I'll even laugh at his stupid jokes, you know, it's a big deal.

You gave an amazing speech on marketing at Light It Up Expo

I loved having you at Light It Up Expo. You gave an amazing speech. Definitely. I mean, everyone's favorite. And then you came into like an encore. Like, I was like, josh, can you get up here? Right? And I can't remember I wanted to watch that.

I never. I don't know if you guys sent over the recording.

okay, I'm sorry, we need to send it to you. But nothing against you. My favorite part was this video you shared of your daughter at the end. She goes, she said you're. You're like, quote, you're saying. She goes, marketing is everything, and everything is marketing. And then she's like, dad, can we go get ice cream now?

Yeah. That was Judah. She's seven. that, that video I recorded when she was like five, she didn't want to make it, and she was like, just going through the motions.

But I could tell.

Ice cream is way better than a dumb business video. But we say everything is marketing, and marketing is everything because it literally is the way that you date, the way that you communicate to your spouse, the way you talk to yourself in the morning, the way that you parent, you know, marketing. Alex Rosi's definition of marketing I like best. He says marketing is to make known. And you're not going to find that in like, you know, dictionary. com. but that is the best practical definition I've heard. Marketing isn't advertised.

It's.

It's. How do you transfer a thought, an idea, a value, a principle, a belief into another person? Like, how do you do that? And it's through choreographed communication. You know, Red Bull isn't even a drink company, they spend almost 50% of their revenue on marketing. It costs about 5 to 8 cents to make a can of Red Bull. Did you know that? They sell it for like $3.49. And it's because they understand that they're a marketing company that just happens to sell a drink. There's a lot of psychology with Red Bull too. Like the fact that comes in a tiny can, it's really expensive and it tastes funny. Their catchphrase that gives you wings is a trick on your subconscious that it's medicinal or it's a form of medicine, which is why it has the word weird taste. And all these counterintuitive things are why it works and why it was the, the biggest threat to Coca Cola in like a hundred years. It took a lot of market share, from Coca Cola. But the point is, is a small local business owner needs to understand that you're a marketer that just happens to squeegee windows or install lights. And when you get this and you understand the way that you're doing, all the things you're already doing can be up leveled a lot so that you can have a steakhouse vibe and a steakhouse price.

That's so good, dude. And that's actually a perfect example because can you imagine, like one of these small business owners, they're like, well, it only costs 8 cents, so let's just, we just want what, 20%?

They don't understand, like they have a global brand that sells billions of cans a year. Like you have to charge $3 and 49 cents. That's how much you have to charge. But, but you see, when it's just you with a trunk full of Red Bulls trying to start out, you're charging the 20 and you're like, yeah, the economy, man, it's, you know, it's just not working. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. Like you're confused. Like you don't understand pricing. you know, Mike Dalkey calls dollars certificates of good deeds. And I've always liked that because the dollars you have in your pocket are not evidence of you hurting someone. They're evidence of you helping someone. Someone. And, but you got to start looking at it that way because first of all, it's true. And second of all, what are you going to do with the extra dollars? You're not going to transform into some monster because your business is profitable. You're going to be more of the thing that you are, which is, you know, probably self sacrificial. You Actually love your staff, your family. You're going to pay off some debt. Oh, you monster. You actually paid off debt. You monster. You selfish. No, I won't say that.

you gave everyone a bonus at the end of the year. Wow.

Right? It gives you choices, it gives you flexibility. And, and, but if you don't focus on it, it will not happen. It will not automatically magically happen. And it also won't happen just by charging expensive prices. It won't work. You can actually really screw things up by just jacking your prices up and not considering the other stuff we talked about. There's a story of Netflix. Over a Decade ago, they lost 800, 000 subscribers and their stock fell by like 80% in like a 90 day window because they, they did like this tone deaf price raise, all cocky and everybody was like, nope, nope, right? Everything crumbled. They had to issue a public apology. Like, the way that you do, it has to be nuanced, you know, and.

there's like how you said you were talking, like it ties into your branding and your process and your experience. And then all of a, sudden someone will pay $5 for a red Bull, so.

Exactly. And that's what we, that's what we try to do when we, when we teach frap is like, we teach each element of frap, but we also have a danger zone section of like, careful, if you do this part wrong, really bad things are gonna happen. But like, at the same time, like, here's how to do. Do it, you know, the right way. because you got to know both parts.

Ryan, thank you so much for talking with us. I appreciate everything you've taught me

All right, man, that was awesome. I can't thank you enough. I can't tell you how much I appreciate, everything you've taught me. You continue to teach me. I sitting there taking notes on my own podcast. so many gold nugget nuggets. Thank you so much. if people want to get a hold of you, do you have another challenge? Like, how do. How do people get a hold of you? War plan? Like all the stuff they, they don't. They didn't know who you were, or maybe they knew who you were, but now they're like, holy cow, this guy's amazing. Sure, stay engaged.

Well, send me a handwritten letter with a quill pen to. No, I'm just kidding. I have a podcast called the War Plan Podcast. I'd love to have you on my podcast too, Ryan. So we'll connect about that. Just search for the war plan podcast. we do run frap trainings. It's called the FRAP Challenge. It takes like four days to really break it down. It's about 60 to 90 minutes a day. And there's a workbook and stuff. It's free. You go to frapchallenge. com. we run them every couple weeks. There's one starting next week. but if you miss it and you see this later, we'll run more. so that's how you can learn more about FRAP if you want. Just more content and learn how to think different, make more money with your mind instead of your back. Then search for the war Plan podcast.

Love it, man. Dude, thank you so much. I really appreciate you.

My pleasure, my brother. Thanks for having me.

You should definitely reach out to Josh. I did years ago

All right, guys, that was just a tease of the frapp formula. I highly recommend reaching out to Josh. I did years ago. I went and approached him and he didn't know who I was and changed my life. So thanks so much, Josh. All right. See everybody.