Lighting for Profits - Episode #209

Join Guinness World Record holder and “Systems Nerd” Brandon Vaughn as he unpacks the secrets of scaling businesses without the burnout. From growing a $2M/month company while working less than 5 hours a week, to helping 20,000+ business owners build world-class teams with AI, Brandon shares real strategies to help you work less, grow more, and escape the grind.

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Episode Transcript

Welcome to Lighting for Profits. All light, All Light. Powered by EmeryAllen

Welcome to Lighting for Profits.

All light, All Light. All light. Powered by EmeryAllen.

Here is your host, Ryan Lee.

Today we have Brandon Vaughn coming on to talk about scaling your landscape lighting business

All light, all light, all light. Welcome, welcome, welcome to the number one. It's the number one landscape lighting show in Woodland, Washington. That's right. We are going worldwide. If you're looking to start or grow a landscape lighting business, and be honest with you, if you're looking to start or grow any business, then you're in the right place. Today we got an epic show lined up for you. It's been a long time in the making, but Today we got Mr. Brandon Vaughn coming on the show. I've been following him for years and got to meet him a couple times, but this guy is the real deal if you're looking to really scale your business. so many things, so many times. We were just talking before, I'm like, well, we could talk about this or this or this. Like he's, he's, you know, he hasn't seen it all, but he's seen most of it. So excited, to have Brandon on. In just a few minutes, we're going to be talking about all the things in scaling your, your home, service business, your landscape lighting business. And it's, going to be a great show, that's for sure.

Secret Summit is coming up next month in West Palm Beach, Florida

So, before we have him on, I want to remind you of a couple things. So next month, this is like the party of the year in the landscape lighting industry. And it's free. So it's in West Palm Beach, Florida, September 27th. what we're doing is we're sponsoring luxury illumination. It's their ten year anniversary party. If you haven't been to Greg Matthews, showroom in West Palm beach, you need to come experience this. The party's free. We're going to have a live band. The Flyers, they're epic in person. We've got, food trucks, we've got, a guy that's like handcrafting cigars. I don't smoke cigars, but it looks cool. It makes me want to smoke cigars. you can like customize your cigar and all this stuff. We're gonna have a vendor fair and so that's free. If you're already coming to Secret Summit, then there's nothing you need to do. All right. Because that's, that's like our third day. but if you're not, if you're like, you know what? I'm anti coaching. I'm anti landscape lighting secrets. It's okay. You're still invited to this epic party. We want to see you guys there. There's a vendor fair. It's going to be awesome. if you need information on that, just send me a DM or you can email me supportionlee coaching dot com. And we're sending out emails, we're on social media, all that stuff. And if you're looking to be part of Secret Summit, then, reach out. Because, if you're already in the program, it's, free for most members. And if it's, something that, you want to be a part of, then reach out@landscape lightingsecrets. com and we can get you hooked up. So excited, excited for that. That's coming up just next month, four weeks from, from right now. So excited for that. thank you guys so much for your support. We keep getting reviews on Apple and it's like one at a time. That's okay. I really, really do appreciate it. This is the funnest thing to do. I get to hang out with other, industry leaders, entrepreneurs, talk about the wins, talk about the losses, and, it's so, so cool. So thank you guys so much for your support.

Brandon Vaughn is the CEO of Hire Bus. He is a Guinness World Record holder

and again, in just a few minutes, we're gonna have Mr. Brandon Vaughn. He's the CEO of Hire Bus. He's, he's got a lot, he's done a lot. So I'm gonna let him introduce himself because I'm like, how do I introduce this guy? He's done so many things. So I'm gonna see how he introduces himself. but I was reading his bio and I didn't know this. He is a Guinness World Record holder. And of what I don't know. So we're gonna, we're gonna ask him, we're gonna find out because I don't, as far as I know, I don't own any Guinness World Record holder. Like, I don't do that. So we excited.

I once talked about the danger of going halfway in your business

So we're going to find out, before we have Brandon on, I want to share something. So two years ago, guys, and I bring this up because Secret Summit's coming up. two years ago I walked into the room, we had our. It was our second annual Secret Summit, which is our members only meetup. We do once a year. I walk into the room, I'm like five or six minutes late, and everyone's in the room in anticipation. What's this going to be like? What are we going to talk about? What are we going to do? And I'm late. I, walk into the Room late. My team's going, we don't know where Ryan is. And I, walk into the room, half my beard was shaved off. So imagine me with just clean shaved, half beard. One side of my face. One side looked normal. Well, as normal as I could look. Right. The other side looked like I lost a bet. Okay? But here's the thing I did on purpose, and it became probably one of the most memorable lessons that I've ever taught about business. And, I really talked about the danger of going halfway. And the theme of our secret summit was really going all in on your business. fast forward to about a month ago. I was invited to go speak at Jimmy Tompkins Light it Up event. And wouldn't you know, the theme was the same all in. And it seems like this lesson kind of keeps chasing me down. Right? And so again, at our secret summit event, I shaved half my beard, and I get into that room. Everyone was stunned. And, you know, that was the point. listen, halfway looks awkward. It looks ridiculous. And I said something that probably offended some, but I was like, listen, some of your businesses look as ridiculous as my face does right now. And that's because you're not going all in. It doesn't mean that you're not good. It doesn't mean you don't have the skill set, the ability to. It's just that you're not focused. You're not going all in. And so whether it's in your beard or in your business, you're just not going to get the results that you need or want by going halfway. It's all about going all in. And so we say, you know, we want growth, but then we only really kind of go halfway in with our marketing. We say we want more freedom, but then we don't really train our teams this. This the way that they need, right? We don't really work on culture. Like, we. We're not really trying to become better leaders. We just expect people to conform to. To how we lead, right? we say we want profit, but then we only commit to our pricing. Halfway. Like, I'll. I'll try to raise my price. I'm like, try? What does that even mean? Halfway, just doesn't work. And so last month, when Jimmy asked me to speak at his Line it Up event, and told me the theme was all in, I'm like, of course it is. Like, this lesson is everywhere. And the reason it keeps coming up is because it's the thing that separates winners from the strugglers, right? And the people who are halfway in and halfway out. They're always stressed, they're always struggling. And how do I know this? Because I used to be one of them. And at times, I still am one of them. There's. I still succumb to the temptation of the shiny object syndrome. Oh, what about this? What about that? Right? And it's like, yeah, I don't feel like it. Like, excuses, excuses, excuses. And then you have the ones who decide to go all in, and they're the ones who seem to always have more time. They get the freedom, they get the profits, they get the growth. And it's not easy, but it is simple. All in wins.

Every single month someone asks me how the landscape lighting market is doing

And so, pretty much, I would say literally every single month, and sometimes multiple m times a month, someone will ask me, hey, what does it look like out there? It's kind of like, you know, like everyone's in their own city, in their own silo, and they're wondering what the real world looks like. They're like, you know, and it's like, I think it's because I have connections with people, like, all over the US and so they're like, they want me to give a pulse on the market. Like, how's everyone doing? Is it slow right now, or am I the only one that's slow? Or is everyone doing good right now? And, it's kind of funny because when I get asked this question, I do this review exercise, I go, well, you know what, let me think about that for a second. The people that come to my mind that are killing it or, you know, doing well, it doesn't really have to do with their location. It doesn't really have to do with the economy or, like, what the news says. it always comes down to whether they are all in or not. And same thing with the people that are struggling. Like, it. It doesn't have to do with the economy. It doesn't have to do with where they're located. It really has to do with, like, are they all in? Are they, are they showing up? Are they, implementing the things that they learn? Like, the same people could go to a conference, they could go to Light It Up Expo, or they could go to Secret Summit and walk away with completely different results. Because someone who's going to implement and go all in is going to get a lot more out of it versus someone who's like, man, those were some really good ideas. I'll have to. Have to do that one day, right? And so, and it doesn't mean that, like, the person that's going all in doesn't mean you're perfect. It doesn't mean that you're even good at executing it. It just means that you're executing it. Right? And, I've just seen that trend over and over and over. It doesn't matter. What if the. If the economy, like, traditionally, like, the end of, like right now, the end of August is like, the hardest time in the landscape lighting industry because, you know, people are going back to school, finishing vacations, and, like, that's just been the thing, like, when I started my business in 2007. So that's 18 years ago. It's been the same story ever since. Right. And so the people that are still, like, actually not just maintaining flat, but actually growing right now, they're not making excuses. They're continually going on in their business, and they're actually not slower right now. Right.

I encourage you guys to go all in on your business

so I want to encourage you guys to go all in on your business. And here's a question for you, you know, that you guys can consider. I always like to give you guys, like, a takeaway. But where. Identify the areas and maybe spend 30 minutes, I mean, maybe an hour on this. But where are you still halfway in your business? And you probably know them in the back of your mind right now. do you need to go all in more on your marketing? Do you need to go all in on training your team? Are you. Maybe you just need to get to halfway training your team. You know, it starts with baby, steps here. But are you all in on becoming a better leader? Are you all in on developing your teams? Right? Because going halfway is costing you way more than going all in ever will. So this week, my challenge. Pick one area of your business, just one, and make the decision to go all in. So whatever it is, raise your prices, Hire the person, invest in the training time. Block your owner time, time. Block your referral, partner time. Commit fully instead of going halfway. Because if you don't get intentional, if you continue the path you're on, your business is going to continue running you. You've got to call a timeout, pause, get intentional, and that's going to be the difference for you. So just remember, halfway is the slowest. It's the most painful path that you can choose. so all that being said, I learned a lot with a half beard. I actually kept that half beard. Everyone's like, you're going to go shave that at lunch, right? I'm like, I was, but now I'm not going to. And then they're like, you're going to go shave that before we go out to dinner, right? Well, I was, but now I'm not going to. So I went out Nashville at night. And what's crazy in Nashville? It wasn't weird. People thought it was cool. That's how weird Nashville is. But, people did ask me. They're like, what? Oh, I can't wait to hear the story. What bet did you lose? Right. Like, I'm a business coach, and I was teaching a lesson. So, But I was reminded of it at Jimmy's event. I reinforced it when I had the half beard, and now I'm passing it on to you. The fastest way to look foolish in business or in life is to go halfway. And the fastest way to win is to go all in. So I'm on your team. I'm on your side. I want to be here to support you. If you guys have questions, you get hung up. Just reach out. The community is strong. We have our free Facebook group, Landscape Lighting Secrets. Don't forget to, connect there.

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Ryan: Welcome to the show, Mr. Brandon Vaughn

All right, now the time that you all came for, the time this is where I showed up. let's get to our guest. You guys ready? I know I am. Let's get that intro music coming. Huh? Huh? Welcome to the show, Mr. Brandon Vaughn. What's up, Brandon?

What's up, Ryan? How you doing, man?

Oh, I'm doing great. I'm excited to have you on the show and talk shop and hopefully help a lot of people buy back their time, make some money and get the freedom they're chasing.

Man. I m was. I was loving listening to your intro and talking about that time and how we should be focusing and spending it, not go halfway all the way through and just sending it. So I loved it. I love the message that you're preaching. It was awesome.

I appreciate it. Full send. Maybe that maybe I should.

You just said I just gotta send it.

Well, I'm excited to talk about your journey. I, know I bet you if I was to like, open up my Rolodex, I'll bet you 50 of the people not, only know who you are, but are like raving fans. And then there's the other 50 of the people that are like Brandon, who.

Yeah, it's probably, I think you're being generous that 50% know who I am, but I, I do appreciate that,

I think it's cool.

Do just if you would introduce yourself for those that, that don't know you

Do just if you would introduce yourself for those that, that don't know who you are.

Well, I've been in home services my whole life. I have been on 100 commission, only pay since I was 18 years old and got my first business license the day I turned 18 and have been running that entrepreneurial path ever since. Made every mistake I feel like someone could make along the way. So I have lots of, you know, abuse stories and hard lessons learned and all the classic entrepreneurial tales, but have had some cool successes along the way and just still feel like I'm an ever long lifelong learner. I love to learn. I love to, just be involved in any trade that's blue collar. I think blue collar entrepreneurs are just the coolest people on the planet and have really enjoyed kind of trying to figure out how to solve problems both for them and as well as just for, you know, the businesses that I run. I love to solve problems. I think that's probably my most favorite thing to do is try to put the, put on the creative hat and try to solve them.

That's cool. Yeah.

In 2020, I got the Guinness World Record for hosting the largest virtual conference

I guess before, before I start, I want to go down this journey with you, but I was reading your bio and it said Guinness World Record holder. Is this true?

This is true. So in 2020, I got the Guinness World Record for hosting the world's largest virtual business conference. This was the Home Service Super Summit and we had over 21,000 home service business owners and attendees that attended our online event. We had a Guinness adjudicator that was there that validated and verif every Single person that came through the platform and still to this day hold that record. We haven't been shaken off of it yet. and I think it was just a. I mean, like a crazy timed perfect thing that we kind of took advantage of when all these events were getting shut down. And it was a blast. It's cool. Feather in my cap. That doesn't mean much, but it's. It's fun to say.

Yeah, dude, it's. It's an award. I mean, I. I have to make up my own awards because I don't qualify for real ones. So I'm like, I'm the. Of the number one landscape lighting podcast in the world. And then I tell people it's the only landscape lighting podcast.

I don't believe that. I don't believe it's the only one. But I. I think I. I can see why you're number one. This is. You host very, very well, and I love your content. I like the guests that you bring on. I'm honestly, genuinely honored to be here too. I'm excited to chat with you.

That's awesome, man. I appreciate it.

Brandon Vaughn says the feeling of not knowing what you're doing never goes away

well, I. I was like, I. I came up with all these questions, and then I go, you know what? I actually just have one, like, what's the secret? Like, oh, how do I become Brandon Vaughn when I grow up? Just answer that in, like, 45 seconds or less. Give us the blueprint.

Yeah, let me think about a serious answer to that question, because there's some depth to it that I want to not necessarily dive too deep in the emotional spectrum of things. I. I will say that the biggest lesson that I wish I could go back and kind of tell younger Brandon is that the feeling of not knowing what the heck you're doing never goes away. M. Like, you just. You. You learn how to do the next thing, and then you immediately come against the next thing that you don't know how to do. And falling in love with that feeling, falling in love with. And at least at a minimum, getting comfortable with that feeling of being massively uncomfortable. And to recognize that as not you suck and that you're an imposter and that you're a failure. But to recognize that as this actually means I'm growing and to get somewhere I've never been means doing things I've never done. And the fact that I'm doing all this stuff that I've never done before, and that is growth. And I'd say that if there's any thing that I feel like has unlocked my ability to be Able to just not quit, not give up and keep tackling the next thing. Tackling the next thing. It's just recognizing that it's just growth and to fall in love with that process and just realize that it's painful and it's okay. It's supposed to be painful. And if there's any secret to say, it's not even like a unique secret because all successful people, I feel like, have kind of talked about this, but it's one that I feel more now, later on in my life.

Yeah, well said. I think, I've kind of been discovering, this more and more and I, the more I study, like, you know, we're building this landscape lighting community and I see the, the trends and the, the traits of those people. Like, well, they're hearing the same information. Why are they excelling and why is this group like just falling off? Right. And I, I think it really relates to that. It's like they, they, they learn the new tactic, they do the new strategy, they hire the new person. And of course it feels uncomfortable. And of course you feel like you're an imposter because you're like, dude, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm not a leader. Like, I've never done this. And so the, the human, like we're humans, like we're creatures of comfort. Like that's a real thing. So the natural man in us just wants to resort back and be like, you know what? I'm just going to do it on my own. It's easier to do it on my own than try to teach someone else. And it is, you know, for a period of time at least.

Yeah. Once you realize that you can't do it all on your own and then you have that feeling of, I'm constantly in a state of stress, I'm constantly in a state of fight or flight, always overwhelmed, never enough time in the day. And I think understanding that the next breakthrough moment that you are going to have is going to be in your ability to be able to out delegate people, not just outwork people, out working and working harder than them and hustling and doing all the things like that is a skill set that kind of gets you to the place where you're at in a certain stage of business. But then to really kind of break through those next growth ceilings, you have to master the art of training and development and leadership and knowing how to talk to people and how to motivate them and how to make sure that they don't get so discouraged. And you have to encourage them. And there's a lot of parenting principles that I found apply directly to managing and leading people as well. Not to say that your employees are a bunch of kids, but in a lot of ways, we're all a bunch of kids still at heart. And a lot of those things kind of pass through. And to be able to coach and teach and train, is one of the most valuable skill sets that I think I've been trying to cultivate more and with that has led to more success without me having to be as involved. But I'm not perfect at it yet. Still a work in progress.

What would you say to the person? I feel like I've met a lot of people that would hear what you just said and be like, yeah, I get that. And then they get to that point and they're like, but, man, I kind of just miss being the technician. Like, I, I don't want to go work for someone. I, I, I want a bigger dream. I, I've got to, I want to leave a legacy. I want to start this business, but I'm just not, I'm just not good at it, at leadership. I'm just not good at those things. And I don't even know. I don't want to be in the office. I don't want to do all this stuff. I kind of just like being in the field.

The first and foremost, that's rooted in fear. And if you have a space in front of you that's unknown and you have a place that's behind you that's known. And back here, yeah, it was uncomfortable. You know, there's, there's reasons why you don't want to necessarily go back there. Hard on your body. You know, all the things you start to forget all those reasons, though, and instead you are faced with this. I can move forward into a place of unknown. I don't have this skill set. I haven't had this skill set before to be able to lead people, train people, find good people, delegate properly. But back here, I was good at that. I could put on my earphones and I could just work and put my head down, and it was very, very comfortable. And I missed that. And just yearning for the safe space, the comfortable spot. I think that's all part of human nature. I think that's all part of the reason why we kind of look back at the good old days when things were simpler and things were this. It's not necessarily that things were simpler. It's just that we possessed all the skills needed to be able to function in that environment. And we're trying to move into an environment where we're lacking a bunch of skills. And that's hard and that's scary, and it requires a lot of work. It requires different kind of work. It requires a different approach. And I think that understanding that that's a place of fear, but it's literally the place of growth. I think that can be a good source of, the push that's maybe needed to enter that territory.

Art says everything that you desire is on the other side of being terrified

Yeah, well said. I think, as you're talking here, I'm like, a lot of us have heard, like, we kind of know what we're supposed to do. We've either read the book, heard the speaker, listen to the podcast, but it's like putting all those pieces together.

Yeah.

And, like, when I hear you talk, it's like, I think that's the importance of, like, knowing your why. Because it's like. It's like, oh, you got to know your why. Like, do you like, yeah. Because if you don't, like, if you don't have a reason to move forward, then you'll just retreat back into the darkness. You know, it's like you really have to understand, like, okay, is this worth the pain? If it is, then, yeah, you better. You better work. Work your way through and learn the new thing.

There was this cool thing that I heard the other day that just kind of hit me. You know, every once in a while when you hear something, it's like, man, why? It just. It was so well said that that really hit home for me. It was talking about how everything that you desire is on the other side of the opposite of that. If you desire courage, it's on the other side of being terrified. You have to face your fear, and then you obtain courage. If you have the desire to be strong, you have to go into the gym and feel very weak and push yourself to failure and experience how weak you are. Then you become strong. And if you want to be rich, you have to experience poor. You have to, you know, invest all your money and live on very, very little and be frugal and, you know, make these changes where you're like, I can't afford to do anything. I can't afford to go to the movies or eat out or, I can't do all this because I'm, you know, I'm taking my money and I'm investing it in a new way that makes me feel very, very poor. Like, rich poor is a very real feeling where you're building Long term wealth, but you're, you're sacrificing that short term dopamine hit of being able to have things, whether it's a brand new truck or whatever. So all of those feelings are on the opposite side. If you want to be able to have a business that runs without you, you have to really work hard on that business and you have to focus on setting up systems and processes and playbooks and SOPs and you have to get good at hiring. You actually have to work harder and more intently and more strategically on things in order to then experience that feeling of, okay, I have a business that runs without me. So, it gets worse before it gets better. In any aspect of life where you're trying to achieve some kind of a result and it always comes on the other side of that feeling that you dread and the feeling that you're trying to avoid. So that whole feeling of like leaning in to it when it's hard, you know, that that is again kind of going back to that secret thing is identifying that as, okay, this is actually the right thing I need to be doing. I need to be leaning into this. and then you hopefully get out on the other side not too scathed where you, you don't want to, you don't want to continue on and you just give up. I think that's the, that's the real part is you, maybe you could shine some light on that. The secret, you know, the secret to that is just not feeling so, you know, m not allowing it to feel you so hard when you kind of go through that, those growth stages.

I know it was, I think it was the, the book, the War of Art. I always get it wrong. It's either the Art of War or the War of Art. I think it's the War of Art. He talks about the resistance and like that's how he gauges his life. Like if you feel that resistance, you're like, okay, I'm onto something.

You know, there's actually two books. There's the Art of War, which is a very famous book. But then actually my wife did buy a book that was called the War of Art and it was actually about an artist and kind of overcoming some of that was like a play on words. But yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah, you have to overcome that resistance for sure.

Brian M. credits the treadmill for helping him lose 45 pounds

Well, what I want to do is kind of fast forward to just now. Normally I kind of like build the story, but I'm like just, I kind of want to catch up personally. It's like dude, tell me what's going on. You got hire bus, you got wise coatings. I know that blew up. I'd like to get an update on that. But tell me kind of what, what, what's your. Yeah, tell me what you're involved with right now and then we can kind of go back and figure out how you got here.

Start with where I'm at now and work backwards.

Yeah, let's just like, who is Brian? What are you doing right now? I know you're walking on a treadmill, which by the way, we should tell like, you should tell people like what's happening right now so they're not like, is he moving? Is his camera? What's going on?

I'm a crazy person and have decided to get rid of the, the, the chair in my office and just have a standing desk and then put a treadmill there. I didn't, I never imagined I would be the walking person. I've tried standing desks before. They hurt my back. I was locking one leg, but then my coach actually suggested, hey, to get in more steps, try a treadmill under your desk. And so I did it. And I lost like 45 pounds in M. Like 3 1/2, 4 months and 15% body fat. Like I went down to single digit body fat, which I've never been in, I don't think in my life. Except for maybe when I was like a scrawny teenager or something. But it's, it's been game changing. So if you see me swaying and bouncing around, I'm not just super hyper and just like to. Well, actually I am. I am that. Actually. You are?

Yeah. Ah.

Oh, wait, no, that's what the H stands for. An adhd. That's right. Though I am, my wife always laughs at me because whenever I get on a phone call with someone, I'm always pacing out in the front yard, back and forth, back and forth. She set up time lapse videos to make fun of me. How ridiculous I look like a caged animal walking back and forth.

I think you've inspired many to do the treadmill and you might inspire me because I told you I'm like tired of sitting. And I like, when I'm on the phone, I like to walk around. So I was like, why don't I just do my meetings while I'm walking? So we'll see.

Check out some articles where it says sitting is the new smoking and it will really wreck your brain. As far as what happens with your hip mobility, your ql, your, Hip flexors and your back and just all the crazy crap that it does. We're not designed to be sitting for eight hours a day. So it, it has made me, it has made such a massive impact not only to my resting heart rate, my blood pressure, it's, it just, you know, you kind of get that constant state of feeling of momentum and, and then you just get used to it, you know, Like I, I don't know what it's like. I don't hardly remember what it's like to sit all day long because I'm just so used to it now. It feels weird when the treadmill's not going.

That's awesome.

It's a good show.

Your primary focus right now is hire bus Wise coatings

Well, tell us where you're at now with hire bus Wise coatings and again like what other, what other businesses you got rolling right now?

Yeah, so I, I have a portfolio of companies. it's about, about 12 right now and they're in a variety of different sectors. I'm an owner investor in the vast majority of them. Wise coatings. We have 39 locations across the country and we franchise it about four years ago and have locations that we own as well as franchisees. I have a CEO, Whitney that runs that company. In the day to day we have a manufacturing company. My primary focus right now though is hirebus. That's where I wear the CEO hat and I spend full time in helping to build one of the coolest platforms for recruiting employees in a business. And we've built AI agents to automatically take care of everything from posting to interviewing to screening to behavioral assessments to analyzing and scoring and then eventually teeing up the top 3%. Just autopilot, you know, recruiting 365 days a year. It's been amazing. Like the journey into AI has been incredible. I also bought a electrical company in Tucson, Arizona at the beginning of the year and we're kind of documenting turning that company around. It's been pretty flatline for the last, you know, 40 years. Pretty small. We bought it and I say we myself and ah, a business partner of mine, we went in, rebranded, new website, new systems, new Playbooks and we're basically going to document how we've scaled that company up. And that's going to be like a video series.

Very cool.

I'm really excited to kind of launch in the next three to six months. so it's been, yeah, that's mostly where I kind of focus though is hire bus right now.

Okay, very cool.

You go from working for someone to then being self employed to entrepreneur

So one thing that prompted me to think is like Man, I saw this. I don't know if it was a framework or whatever. I remember seeing something. It's like you go from working for someone to then being self employed to then entrepreneur and then I think investor is the top one. You know what I'm talking about?

Yeah. Actually I just gave a session called Oasis, the five Stages of Hypergrowth, a presentation at the huge convention just in Nashville. Yeah, we talked about that. We kind of showed an org chart, you know, kind of higher by hire of a, you know, exactly kind of how you grow a, service business. And it kind of looked like this, you know, where you go and you add on team members and eventually you get off the truck and like what your pain points are and you know, what point do you hire office managers or production managers or salespeople or directors? You know, there's. It was, it was a pretty cool session, but it just kind of breaks apart, you know, where all those little break points where you need a key individual on your team to kind of get you to the next level and should you promote that up or should you hire that outside? those are usually the first questions that people kind of ask around that we dove into that topic.

Now that you've done it the hard way, now you're CEO and investor

Very cool. Yeah, I mean I feel like most, well, majority of businesses get started not because they have a rich uncle, it's just because it's like, well, I'm good at landscape lighting and I want to go do this or whatever. You know, they're just kind of good at the thing. They're an electrician. They're not necessarily taught how to run a business. So we get started that way. Now that you've done it the hard way, now you've kind of reached this level of like CEO and investor. what are some of the differences? Like you know, when you go into this electrical company, for example, what are the things that you're doing now that are different because you're like the investor level versus Brandon Vaughn, the entrepreneur who's just going to out hustle everybody.

I think some of the things that I've learned, first of all, I've had some really, really incredible coaches that have, I've paid a lot of money to, to help me learn this skill set. More on acquisition, on creative deal making, you know, finding a pipeline full of deals, how to do due diligence and work through the entire process. It's really fascinating because it does leverage more debt, but it can be debt that is financed by the seller. And there's a lot of seller finance deals, whether that's on an annuity plan or basis. A lot more of the skill set comes in coming up with a really creative deal that solves their motivation, their urgency, and you know, how they can end up exiting that business in a way that's good for them, but it's also good for us. And then past that point, it's really very programmatic in nature as far as here's our project management board and all the things that we need to kind of score in the business, find out what we need to improve, optimize understanding our marketing, auditing the team, and then ultimately finding a really, really good operator or operating team to be able to run that business. And there's a lot of companies you can go out and buy where the cash flow outweighs whatever debt payments you have to purchase that business by like a 2X. And that's kind of like a, you know, a good buy that we kind of go for is if we can buy a business and the payment on that is less than half what the free cash flow is in the business. You can buy these assets and they can free cash flow from day one and then you can just focus on tweaking some things rather than starting something up from scratch. And the larger the business you buy, obviously the less you have to do in it. You know, in theory, if it's, especially if it's good and profitable, the smaller ones you have to, you know, there's, there's more risk there, which is usually why they're not worth as much. So going through that process has just been a, lot of fun. And because I have been a serial startup individual and I've been enjoying this new season of thinking a little more like an owner investor instead of a operator.

Yeah, that's cool.

Brandon is big on systems and processes and how to scale your business

So let's talk about, I know you're big on systems and processes and building these playbooks and SOPs and that's kind of the only way you can scale. But how did you go from that stage of. Well, actually, what was your first business that you started?

The first one that I started was a cleaning business. The day I turned 18 I went out and got my own business license to follow in the footsteps of my dad, have a little window cleaning business and kind of pressure wash, gutter cleaning, just any type of thing that I could do. It was called Shiny Night Property Maintenance and I had a little hand drawn like night that I made. It was super cheesy and that was like my first business ever. And then it transitioned into a full blown construction remodeling business, which we had called cutting edge interiors. And that was, I'd say, you know, my next kind of level up in, in. In a business setting was was that, eventually, you know, later on, went back to the cleaning space, scaled my cleaning company up to 70 employees. And that's really where I learned, like, how to actually run a business. All the other previous times was just more as an owner operator.

Yeah. So what was the difference? How'd you go from just owner operator? You know, most people can figure out enough to pay the bills, but still, high level of stress, a lot of hours involved. How'd you go from that to 70 employees?

This is going to sound terrible, but it's the truth. I am, very adhd, and I hate the feeling of being a bottleneck to something happening. There's a lot of people when you're the owner that needs you to make the final call, you to decide on something, you to tell them how to do it, you to instruct them on how to do it. And I found myself in this constant loop of repetition where I was telling people the same thing over and over again. They would quit, I'd bring in another person, or I would tell them I would take care of it, and then I would forget, and then they'd be upset. And just that constant feeling of, man, everyone, everyone needs me for this. And my laziness. I'm probably going to just label it as that, because I think it's probably the label that fits. Was a big motivator for me to start creating systems because I didn't want to work full time in the business every day. I had a why that was involved in why I started a business in the first place, which was more time freedom. And I just found that that was the big problem. And that was the biggest bottleneck in my business. Growing was me and my presence. And I realized that when I sat down in front of my computer and I created checklists or tools or systems or I documented things or I recorded videos and I put together a class or a training flow, people stopped coming to me for questions. And then I started to train them to make those as well. And then things really started kind of operating a lot more smoothly. And that was kind of my big aha moment. Like, okay, this is what it means to work on your business is to document this stuff.

Did someone, like, tell you to do that, or do you literally just got fed up? You're like, no, I don't, I don't want to do this anymore.

Oh, Man, I had lots of people tell me this. I'd say that the first person to tell me this was Michael Gerber in the book the E. Myth and why Most Businesses Fail and what to Do About It. And that book was transformational for me. I read that in 2013, which is when I was like, oh, my gosh, you know, work on the business. This revolutionary concept.

Can't believe this.

Yeah. I can't believe people do this like this. Oh, this makes sense. Yeah. And the cool thing was, was that, yes, people told me, hey, you know, it's all about systems. But it was. It didn't mean anything to me. I didn't know what systems meant. I didn't really kind of know how to define it or qualify it. The best definition I've liked is a system is a documented process on how to do something important in your business. But that. That keyword is, is documented, whether it's in written form, video form, audio form, checklist, you know, some type of. Some type of repeatable, documentation that someone can follow and do the thing. And the more that I kind of focused on just serving people on my team and helping them be successful in their jobs, the more they enjoyed their jobs and the less they came to me wondering, what should I do next, Brandon? And it was very freeing. It was freeing for all of us. I mean, it was the ultimate win, win. And. And for me, that was kind of like, okay, now what else can I systemize and document? And that was where the scorecard came up and where we started documenting this, which eventually led to conquer, and all kinds of fun stuff.

Very cool.

One of the biggest indicators for success is speed of execution

Is there something. I mean, you've coached hundreds of business owners at this point. Are there trends that you see or characteristics, or attitudes? Like, why is it that some people are going to listen to what you're saying now and do nothing, and others are going to be like, you know what? He's right. I've felt that before. I've tried it before. I know I retreated. But I'm going to schedule Mondays. Monday is going to be my CEO day. I'm going to work on the business. Is there, Have you identified anything like why someone stays stuck versus why someone decides to change their life?

Yeah, for sure. I'd say one of the biggest indicators for success that I see is speed of execution. And the people that have struggled with coaching, the people that feel stuck, they hear the same thing. They've been told it. They've gone to X number of, you know, conferences. They've listened to X number of podcasts. And they've known what to do for a long time, but they're still waiting. They're still waiting for something. It's on their to do list. And the to do list might as well be the to die list. Like, it's just. It's never. It's never going to happen. And the people that are most successful. And I'll remember when I spoke, in a room where Tommy Mello was sitting in the audience, like, that dude was taking notes. He was. I'd put a book on. On the screen, he would take a picture of it, he would order it. I'd, you know, show something. He'd take a picture of it. He'd be like, slacking it and texting it to his team, saying, hey, teams, we need to do this. And he just. The most successful people that I've seen, they constantly execute. They're extremely humble. They never feel like they know it all, because they don't. And they also leverage people extremely well, and they are good at delegating. And I think that was the big kind of mind breaker for me, too, is, you know, when you think about it, there's only so many hours we have in the week to be able to dedicate towards anything. You get infinitely more hours to dedicate towards building something, growing something. If you have more people, the problem is, can you have those people be effective in doing something and to come in and know what to do so they aren't stepping on each other's feet and they're not, you know, causing even more chaos in your business? And that's, I'd say the other big trait of people that are successful is they not only get that, but then they work so specifically to create those things so that more people can work effectively without them sitting around wondering, what should I do next?

Very cool. I'm taking notes myself. how does someone know when they're ready? Because, you know, I'm hearing like, yeah, okay, I want to do what Brandon's saying. I'm going to execute. I'm going to hire him and do whatever. But then I'm like, I can't hire someone. Like, I don't have systems. I don't have documented stuff. I'm going to hire someone who's really qualified, and then I'm going to ruin them because I don't have my together.

Right. Yeah, well, there's. There's, a. There's one really cool scorecard that I put together. I shared this at the huge convention, and I can. I Can share, it here too, because, I mean, people want to check it out. They can. This is a scorecard. It basically has five different stages of the business. Oh, is it show up?

Okay. Yeah, I'm trying to make, it so it's larger.

Oh, okay. I gotcha.

I don't know how to.

The scorecard helps you identify what's most important in your business

This is, this is like the, the scorecard here. It's, it's pretty small in general, and you don't necessarily have to see anything that's here. But the, the scorecard has, okay, operations, administration, sales and marketing infrastructure and strategy. And there's eight questions to kind of ask yourself and score yourself. And then this color coding shows what's the most important areas that you should be systemizing in your business to kind of get started. And this is, this is a QR code. If people want to go here, they can go check that out. but what it does is it, it's just a little type form. It asks you 40 questions and it emails you a PDF and it gives you kind of some clarity on what's my, what's my next most important system that I should be working on in my business. Because there, there is a, there is a progression of when should you hire an operations manager, when should you hire an office manager? What should you be doing in your business? And the general kind of area that I talk about to kind of simplify business is a teeter totter. So you have like, on one side, let's say over here, you have all of your sales and marketing efforts. So you know, you have, your ability to be able to get leads, your ability to close those leads, turn those into paying customers. And on the other side of the teeter totter, you have your production, and this is technicians, vehicles, equipment, inventory. You know, the ability to be able to actually deliver what it is that you just sold. And usually one of the first questions I ask people is, where are you stuck right now? Which side? You know, are you booked out for, eight weeks if you only had more people? You know, you have just so much demand. Okay, well, you're, you're heavy over on the sales and marketing, but you don't have enough people, or we got no work on the schedule for tomorrow. there's not enough sales and marketing to kind of focus on. And so just getting into that habit of when I add another crew, put more vehicles on, hire more people. I'm also increasing my marketing efforts and my sales efforts. And then the part in the middle is just basically your team, your processes to make sure. That everything doesn't fall all off, you know, the rails. so usually that's kind of the first question I ask people is to say, okay, where's your pain right now? And then depending on where that is. Okay, let's focus on getting that system set up to where that's not a pain as much anymore. And it's just a nice, easy, quick way to just identify. Is it a sales and marketing problem? If so, let's dive in. Is it a people problem? If so, let's dive in and see where that is.

Yeah, very cool. I appreciate you sharing that. help me understand this because where I see a lot of people depending on when you ask them that question, you know, like, right in like, you know, may, dude, I'm booked out. Let's go. And so then they'll hire all the people, but then by August they're like, dude, I don't know, man. It's the economy. There's, it's just everything's dried up. I had to lay everyone off and it's just this never ending up and down this teeter totter back and forth. What are, what are some tips you can give to help them smooth that out?

I'd say, obviously it depends on what kind of industry they're in. And it also depends on the seasonality that you just bluntly deal with in your market. If it's, massive amounts of snow and ice and you, most of your work is outside and it's just not conducive to be able to conduct revenue. Is there any other ways that you could fill in revenue for interior work or work that's not as weather dependent? can you go focus on marketing efforts? Whether that's prospecting, building relationships, joining associations that open up more opportunities for that type of work. or do you need to hibernate and lay people off and kind of adjust your season so that people know when it's coming and then you have your systems for hiring and, you know, kind of working around that seasonality so you're not keeping people on payroll and losing all your cash while you wait for it to pick back up again. and then I'd say that the other side of that coin is making sure that when you do bring more people on to catch up with your backlog, you still increase your marketing because your marketing got you kind of to here, but it's not going to get you to there. So you have to always keep that kind of foot down on the pedal to, work with that new weight. That you put on the other side of your teeter totter. And a lot of people don't do that. You know, they're booked out, they get another truck, and they forget, oh, I also need to increase my marketing budget by six grand a month. And then all of a sudden, they catch up, and then they're behind the ball, and now they're trying to, you know, figure out, like, oh, you know, now what do I do? So it's that. It's that, that balancing act to focus on both sides.

Love it.

Hire Bus helps business owners find good people quickly and easily

I want to talk about Hire Bus for a second. I, you know, I'm watching your journey just from an outside perspective. You. You said it yourself, too. You're a problem solver. so there's a reason you're not, like, you know, I should just start this company called Hire Bus. There's a reason. And I, And I think I know why. But what. What prompted you to start Hire Bus? Like, what. What was. What were you seeing, in the marketplace?

Well, at the time, I owned Conquer, which I've since sold. And with Conquer, we helped tens of thousands of business owners kind of go through our coaching programs and our online courses. And the number one biggest problem that they talked about was, I just can't find good people. And a lot of business owners would blame the economy. They blame Gen Z, Gen Y, gen A, like anybody else, except for their own, you know, practices. And one of the things that I've always done in my businesses is that I like to never turn my hiring ads off. So I build a bench, I build a waiting list, I build a talent pool. It's just fundamentally very difficult to do that from a logistics perspective because you have to have a staff member m. Someone on the team that takes all those interviews 365 days a year, which is not very conducive. It's expensive to do that. it's expensive to maintain that list. I know, because that's what we did with All Clean. And then when the season came, we'd hire 25 people in 30 days, like to gear up for our busy season. But it's because we had been recruiting for months and months and months and months the whole rest of the year. so it's just matter of sending out a text blast or an email blast. So all those things kind of combined together to say, hey, how can we use this new cool AI technology to have it do it on autopilot so that it doesn't take human capital to do this very mundane task of following up and texting and emailing and giving assessments and you know, analyzing resumes, you know, running everything, every single resume through chat, GPT, giving them behavioral scores, interviewing them. And we designed a way to be able to handle that through our software platform while still keeping that human in the loop human process of, you know, vetting people and ensuring they're good. And we packaged it up into hirebus. So it's been, it's been fun, it's been wild because AI is like the wild west right now and there's a lot of good AI products and horrible AI products. And the, the key difference is that the human component, the human creativity that gives it that, you know, that, that secret sauce, so to speak.

So I mean, what, what, what's kind of the main problem you're helping them with? Because like you said, most people are like, oh, it's just the economy, Gen Z, all that stuff. How do you, how do you shift the business owner's mindset to be like, actually it's not that there's a little bit of you in the problem here.

Well, here's, here's the typical scenario. Business owner has John, that just turned in his two weeks notice. Business owner now goes out and scrambles and posts a job add up to try to replace John. that's if you get a two weeks notice. Usually it's not necessarily.

That sounds like a lot of notice.

Yeah. Wow. John's a real nice guy.

Yeah.

you know, but it's like, it's, it's very reactive. So business owner goes out, posted a job ad on, indeed, blasts out, is asking anybody, and at this point he's just looking for someone with a pulse because he knows that when that person's not a button seat to do production, you're losing a thousand, sixteen hundred, you know, two thousand dollars a day in lost revenue because you don't have someone to go deliver the, you know, services that you're selling. And so what ends up happening is, is when you're hiring inside of this very narrow window of a couple weeks, whoever just so happens to be looking at that moment in time is the pool that you're getting.

Yep.

And it represents a very small sliver. And you know, even worse, if you don't put much spend behind it and you're not spending a ton of money to get a lot of people, you're like, okay, should I go with the guy that didn't, you know, that ghosted us, the guy who has a dui, or should I go with the Person, you know, that like, kind of did. Okay. But said a few questions in a really weird, sketchy way.

Okay.

I'm going with that guy because he can go out and I'll have him work with Michael and Michael will, you know, show him the ropes and then we all know what happens.

Without a high performance team, your business dies

Hidden camera in my business or something.

This is the hidden camera experience of every business owner that, we talked to and conquer. We had to spend so much time in just the training and onboarding and teaching them that recruiting is a marketing problem to solve and how you write your job ads and how fast you respond to them and how you don't just wait till you have no work on the schedule tomorrow for you to start putting marketing dollars and marketing campaigns out there. Like, that's business suic. Well, external customers, internal customers, they're the same. Internal customers are your employees. And without that, your business also dies. So having a budget, having a pipeline where you're constantly taking the highest performers and you're swapping them out for the lowest performers, eventually you just get this incredible team and a waiting list of people that are also very well qualified and you just stop worrying about the problem. You know, if someone's performing low, you're not like, oh my gosh, I can't fire them because it's going to take me so long to replace them. You just swap them out with someone that's on the waiting list, because it's, at the end of the day, a high performance team and that's how you have to view your business. So it's, it empowers a lot. It fixes a lot of problems for business owners once they get a full team on deck that are all highly scored and highly proficient and highly suited for the roles that they're in, whether that's sales or text or office or any type of management role.

Yeah, I love it. One, thing that changed my perspective on this was Dan, Plata. He, he brought this up one time. I, I'm so focused on sales. I love sales. I love, love revenue, profit. And I do forget about the team member. Like, I'm like, I do forget. Right, right. And it's total internal customer stuff like that. But it's like, what's the, what's the average lifetime value of a landscape? Like, like a homeowner, you know, and like, I don't know what that number is. Everyone's number's different. But like, if you, if, let's say you do their job and it's like $20,000 and then let's say they spend another 20 with you, and then maybe they refer another 20. Like, it could be as high as, like, 80,000, maybe a hundred thousand. Like, that's. That's very aggressive. Like, it's probably not that high. But then you look at the lifetime value of, like, a team member, and, like, the average revenue is, like, it could be at least a hundred, if not two, three, four hundred thousand dollars per team member. And that just totally shifted it for me to be like, oh, yeah, duh. Like, why would we not spend money to recruit them? Why would we not spend money to train them and build culture and retain them? There's so many things that I think most business owners just forget about because we just think everyone thinks, like, us.

Like, right.

Why would anyone think, like, they're the owner, they're not the owner?

Well, I mean, for wise coatings, we have commission only salespeople, and in one part of the country might have a mediocre salesperson that only sells, you know, $400,000 a year, $500,000 a year, 600,000 maybe. But then in another part of the country, we have a Salesperson that sells $1.5 million. Like, what? Why wouldn't you put forth the extra effort and ad spend and interview effort to get someone that can sell a fricking million dollars more a year worth of your services? And, like, to me, the sales side of it is completely a massively missed opportunity at being able to grow your business if you have salespeople. You know, even a 10% increase in performance represents hundreds of thousands of dollars for a business. And those really can be found in qualifying really good people and having that sales funnel. Okay, great. So you have to spend, you know, 600, 800 bucks a month over the course of the entire year. You're spending, you know, eight grand, you know, a year to make sure that you have the best sales people that are capable of selling 500 to a million dollars more. 500 grand to a million dollars more per year. Like, why. Why wouldn't you invest that expense to be able to make sure you have the best sales people and just cycle out the ones that aren't cutting it.

Um, I love this. I love that you brought this up because. Can we go a few minutes long? Of course. You get.

I love this. I love that you brought this up because. And I hope. I hope. Can we go a few minutes long?

Of course. Yeah.

You get.

You can hire 100% commission salespeople to help grow your business

Okay, so here's the deal. Most. Most of the people that I coach, most people that I talk to and associate with, like, the sales is, like, the last thing, because they're like, well, I'm not. I'M not gonna, you know, I'm not gonna install the light. So they hire installers, and then they go admin. They're like, I'm not gonna answer the phones. And then. And they're like, no one can sell as good as me. No one's as passionate, whatever. And I'm like, now you're talking about 100 commission salespeople that you could hire to help grow your business. And that also relieves so much stress on, like. Well, now I actually do have time to work on my business because I'm not out selling and I'm not out, installing and, like, it's all coming together. So what, what is the secret here? What's, what's the tip? Like, how does someone get to that point? And how do you, how do you hire 100% commission salespeople on demand like that?

Well, the, the tip part of it, the strategy part of it is you. You want to put together a really good compensation package. Package. You want to sell the vision of what is possible. And a lot of business owners get stuck in their mind that, you know, well, I have to think of it in terms of, like, how much this person is going to cost me each year. So, okay, you, Ryan, you're going to go out and hire someone, you're going to pay them a million dollars a year. Can your business afford that?

No, that's.

It's crazy expensive.

That would be my answer. Yeah.

Yeah. It's like, no, of course not. But now let me just reframe that question and say, what if he sold in one year, $12 million worth of services that year and, like, closed he. And that million dollars he made was on all commission. It wasn't a guaranteed salary. Would you have problems. Do you have a problem writing him a million dollars?

I pay him more.

So there's a, there's a gentleman in H Vac who literally makes a million dollars a year. And he's a. I've heard some of his podcasts and some of his interviews, and he sells $12 million in H vac, in a given year. There's roofers that make 500 grand. You know, roofing sales people, 500 grand. There's people out there that can make 250,000, $300,000. It's just a mindset block that some owners have that a salesperson is going to cost them something. It's not. It's an investment. And that's the beauty about hiring people that are on commission, is that if they're good, they'll bet on themselves and they'll ask questions when you interview them like hey, what's, is there a cap on commission? What's my earning potential? And then we've designed models that show them how they can earn the income that they desire on. Here's how many calls you need to do, here's how many estimates you have to bring in on your own through your prospecting, through your door knocking. You have to be at a 75, 25% ratio. Here's our pricing tier for self generated leads. Here's our pricing tier for company generated leads. What we pay out on commission and then we have a very, very small draw that's draw against commission. So at the end of the day they're making 100 commission. You know, it's not like a guaranteed salary and if they can't outsell their base, something's horribly wrong.

And they don't want to be making that little either. You know, 5k a month is not at all appetizing for a good salesperson. So they're highly incentivized to go out and sell. So as long as you have a good comp package, you sell the vision. But then you also show the plan on. Here's the activities you need to do that will generate the estimates that you need that will get you the sales that you're looking for. Here's your KPIs on your closing ratios. And then once they understand that clear path, then it's a matter of training them on the process, walking them through tell show watch and getting them set up for success. Not just say okay great, you're a salesperson, now go, go get it. Go get them tiger. Like your job's still not done. and then, and then you can build a phenomenal sales team that can go out and just crush it for you. but it takes effort, it takes work and it doesn't come easily. You have to interview a lot of potential salespeople to find some really good ones. We typically find that numbers around 100. in order to get one really good salesperson, you have to have at least 100 applicants coming through to get one great one.

And you said what? they, they, they are responsible for generating some of their own leads as well. Is it, was it 25 or 75?

25. So with wise coatings we have a 75, 25. And we track these on a big you know, leaderboard on our TVs that say how many company generated leads they were given and then how many self Generated leads they were given or I'm sorry, they brought in. And then we ratio those as a percentage and if they're behind, like guess what we're talking about on our sales huddles is okay, what activities are you going to do to get those numbers up? You know, are you knocking on doors? What does it look like? Let's role play. You know, more training, more feedback and you know, inspecting. What you expect are most, where are.

Most of those self generated? Is it just from, you know, clovering the houses around them or are they going to events? Are they, is it, is it a mix?

It's a mix. Door knocking. At every estimate they're doing talking to all the neighbors, not just putting door hangers, but actually knocking on doors and having those conversations that can be a fantastic, low hanging fruit yard signs out front, you know, door hangers, cold calling, door knocking, chamber of commerce meetings, BNI groups. And then we will generate big lists of companies such as landscaping companies, painting companies, you know, auto detail shops, you know, automotive repair shops. And we will get those leads and kind of assign them out to our salespeople and they're responsible for also calling down, building relationships, going out and talking to those individuals. So we tee them up with lead lists that are cold, that they have to call and then we track their activities, who they call, how many calls they doing, how many appointments are they setting, how many in person visits are they doing. I just have to track their activities rather than just hope that they bring in their own leads.

That's awesome man.

Dude, I could talk to you for like three days straight

Dude, I could talk to you for like three days straight. I've got, I've got so many more questions I want to ask you, but I want to be respectful of your time. I, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you coming on here. I've, I've personally learned a lot. I, I selfishly love doing this podcast because I probably learned more than anyone. I, I really, really appreciate you. You also are willing to give. I'm going to share a link here. What, what are you going to share with the listeners of Lighting?

Hiring companies often don't give written job descriptions for various roles

for profits.

So one of the things that a lot of people end up getting hung up on is, you know, they don't give written job descriptions for the roles that they have in their business. So when you onboard someone, you know, it's different than like a job ad. You want to have really detailed descriptions on what their KPIs are, what their daily activities, weekly activities, etc. If you go to this link, it will take you to a little form you can put in your industry there as holiday lighting, or exterior cleaning or you know, any other depending on whatever your business is that you want to get them for. And we have a folder full of editable templates called roll blueprints for every position inside of a $20 million service company. So if you want a rehash agent, which is a really good low hanging fruit, especially for landscape lighting, to recapture some of those sales or you know, commission only salesperson, outside salesperson, or production manager or you know, technician, installer, you can have a good starting point. You can delete the header on them, delete the logo, make them your own. And then if you want to help hire in any of these roles, it's more affordable than you think. And it's certainly the ROI of the caliber of individuals. You can bring in installers that can install more in less time, salespeople that can sell more, production managers that help you run more efficiently and operate more profitably. we can, we offer guaranteed hire programs. We can help you guaranteed get someone that's a great fit for you and would love to talk to you more about that. Anyone's interested, there's little links on those role blueprints to schedule a time.

Okay, so it's on that link, it's bitly slash lighting, roll blueprints. I put the link in the thing, we'll put it in the show notes too. But if people are like, no, I just, I just want it all, then they go to like hirebus.c om or what's the website?

Yeah, hirebus. com.

Okay. Yep.

Hop on, hop on there. And there's a little scheduled demo call. We basically start off all of our conversations with people from a value add perspective of let's figure out what your recruiting strategy needs to look like for you to hit your growth goals. What are you looking to grow to next year? How many people does that equate to? What people do you feel very confident being able to bring in on your own which of those positions that maybe you're like, I've never hired this kind of person before that we can kind of offer additional assistance. And then we just put together a custom package for our, you know, people and then we install a team of recruiters, both AI based and human based, to just kind of take off all that heavy lifting. And it's, it's cheaper than even going out and finding a VA to do this kind of stuff. And it's all software which is the coolest part of it.

Dude, that is epic.

I met you at the huge convention where I launched Landscape Lighting Secrets

Well, I look back, I, met you. I don't know if you remember, I met you at the huge convention. The first time I ever went to the huge convention, I saw this company called Conquer. It said business coaching, and I had just launched Landscape Lighting Secrets. I'm like, oh, what did I do? And I'm like, is, this my competition? What do I do? Came up and introduced myself to you. And I was like, this is what I'm doing. And I felt, honestly, in the moment, I was like, man, I wish I would have done my research. I probably would have just joined their team. I mean, they seem like they got all this stuff figured out. It could have been a lighting guy, but at the same time, I'm. I'm grateful that I didn't because I've got to kind of do my own journey. But I've always appreciated, like, the content that you put out, the, the willingness to share. You're such a great speaker. Just all the stuff. So, it's been a great episode. I'm looking forward to seeing the, the electrical Company turnaround and the, the series on that. Just so many good things.

Oh, man. And hey, I wanna. I wanna chat with you too, more about that. Because, you know, one of the, One of the reasons why, I think we formed a good cooperative relationship, even way back when when we met, was because we don't profess to be the expert on the technical application and how to, you know, put those training things together. And we talk to business owners all the time and say, hey, you need to have a really good training program for your, your technicians and your salespeople. We don't offer that. Like, we can't, you know, give you the actual lms. But your program's so incredible. You've done such a good job for it. And I've, You have a phenomenal reputation, in the industry too. And I just think it's really special what you've created to, to get business owners the opportunity to buy back their time. And I want to be talking to you about getting some landscape lighting stuff going on for, our electrical company, because the tech. At this point, yeah, we can't. I'm kind of calling my shot here, aren't I? So I guess it's. Now it's really gonna happen.

Dude, I love it. That sounds good.

Ryan McNair: Thanks so much for coming on the show

All right, well, thanks so much. And again, guys, reach out to brandonirebus. com I'll share the link in the show notes for his, the. The free, job blueprints. And, just really appreciate it, man. Thanks so much for coming on.

Likewise. Thanks for having me, Ryan. See you guys.

All right, everyone. Now the hard part. Just go implement. Guys, it is hard, but it's also simple

All right, everyone. Now the hard part. Just go implement. So it is hard, but it's also simple. Just dedicate time and go do it one thing at a time. Brandon doesn't hold anything back. Just go do it. Guys, it.