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Learnings and Missteps
The Learnings and Missteps Podcast is about unconventional roads to success and the life lessons learned along the way.
You will find a library of interviews packed with actionable take aways that you can apply as you progress on your career path.
Through these interviews you will learn about the buttons you can push to be a better leader, launch a business, and build your influence.
Find yourself in their stories and know that your path is still ahead of you.
Learnings and Missteps
Laying the Groundwork: Innovation with Joseph Richards
In this episode of the Learnings and Missteps podcast, host Jesse interviews Joseph Richards, the owner and chief takeoff officer at Flooring Takeoffs. Joseph discusses his unique career path, transitioning from an English teacher to a business owner, and the challenges he faced along the way. He talks about the importance of transparency, learning from mistakes, and the role of AI in the estimating world. The discussion also delves into the value of social media in growing a business, the significance of transferable skills, and the necessity of being able to delegate tasks in order to scale effectively.
00:00 Introduction and Guest Overview
02:46 Joseph Richards' Journey to Flooring Takeoffs
05:07 Challenges and Learning in the Estimating World
15:18 Starting a Business: Support and Initial Steps
20:31 Delegation and Scaling the Business
28:30 Finding the Right Clients and Staying in Your Lane
34:32 The Struggles and Cycles of Editing
36:30 Teaching vs. Creating: Finding the Balance
39:12 The Importance of Social Media Presence
47:41 Navigating AI in Estimation
56:52 Joseph Richards' Services and Insights
01:00:29 The Promise You Are Intended to Be
Design the Life You have Always Wanted: https://www.depthbuilder.com/do-the-damn-thing
Download a PDF copy of Becoming the Promise You are Intended to Be
https://www.depthbuilder.com/books
The only people that don't make mistakes are lazy people and liars, because they're either lying that they've never made a mistake or they've never tried or attempted anything of consequence in their life. What is going on? L&m family Back again with another amazing human being. He is the owner and chief takeoff officer at Flooring Takeoffs and no, we're not talking about taking off clothes. He's also a covert well, maybe not covert, but for me it seems like he's a little bit of a covert creator, podcaster. He's got podcast stuff. He's got a YouTube channel. He's posting on the LinkedIn.
Speaker 1:Mr Joseph Richards. Like I said, he is the owner of Flooring Takeoffs. We're going to get a little bit of insight on the estimating world and what that thing is and the unique flavor he brings, not just to his clients but to what appears to me, educating people in general. Maybe I'm overstepping a little bit, but we will see. He will set the record straight. And before we get to that, if this is your first time here, you are listening to the Learnings and Missteps podcast, where amazing human beings just like you are sharing their gifts and talents to lead this world better than they found it. Talents to lead this world better than they found it. I'm Jesse, your selfish servant, and we are about to get to know Mr Joseph Richards. Mr Joseph, how you doing, my friend? Hey, how are you? Oh man, can you tell I'm a little amped up.
Speaker 2:You're always amped up.
Speaker 1:man, I'm jealous of your energy, thank you. Well, let me just tell you most people, there's like a you've heard of the circadian rhythm, right, our circadian rhythm when we sleep, when we don't sleep, there's like a circadian rhythm of people's appreciation of my energy, and so six, anytime between 5am and 9am, very low appreciation for my energy. Nine to three I would say it's high, and then 3 to 6 it's like super high because people want more energy, and then after 6 pm again it drops down. Nobody really appreciated. And my problem is it's always redlining, spiking I caught you in a good.
Speaker 2:I caught you in a good window then.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you did. This is a good time where it's okay. I think people can tolerate it. I won't make you sick. So I was looking at, of course I was internet stalking you, looking at your YouTube channel, the website, your LinkedIn, and you seem to have a multitude of skills and interests, Plus you're engaging and kind of a relaxed cool dude, and interest plus you're engaging and kind of a relaxed cool dude. What's really curious to me is what is special about flooring takeoffs. How did that capture your attention?
Speaker 2:that's kind of a long story talking about before. Like, my path to construction was definitely not linear my background, so I have an english degree, so my first job out of school was teaching. I did that. I did a landman. I was a landman in streetport for a little while doing oil and gas. I worked for a chemical company for a little bit. I had various warehouse jobs all after college and then my wife and I moved to Austin and I just needed the job this flooring place was hiring. They're like the way they described it to me was it's kind of like solving puzzles, doing takeoff. I'm like I like puzzles, so I need a job.
Speaker 2:It sounds like a good fit and that was 13 years ago, wow.
Speaker 2:I've had a couple of detours, but I always just keep coming back to the takeoffs. So I finally, about two and a half years ago, just embraced it and kind of went out on my own and still trucking along and you're enjoying it Most days. Yeah, I mean it's a lot. I mean I kind of have a team around me now, but for the first basically two years it was just me, having no real business background. When they have my wife, who's a cpa and amazing and, yeah, business degree and all that and can help me. Yeah, yeah, but a lot of it's just learning on the fly and even then I think I gotta hang on things and I start like hiring people and it's like starting back from zero, because what I did when it's just me doesn't necessarily scale. So I'm constantly learning and revising and we're going through it now with our pricing, like I had a very specific structure that worked for me, because I work at a certain speed as I add more people that maybe don't work the same speed.
Speaker 2:It kind of falls apart and that's something. And plus, our business is like so niche, it's hard, there's no real models. There's some people out there and I've met a lot of people that do this. Not everyone is as open about, for obvious reasons, what, oh yeah yeah, what their setup is. I mean, it's a very competitive piece of the construction market. Yes, a lot of it's just kind of figured out on the fly.
Speaker 1:So oh man, I love that. So what was it about? Okay, so we understand, right, the path was teacher. You got a degree in english, which that's a shocker to me, but maybe not. This is kind of the your earnest way of communicating and caring yourself makes a little sense. I can smell it land man, which I'm want to. I'm definitely going to ask you more about that. And you were austin. You took the job because you like puzzles, which have been freaking awesome, I mean I didn't know.
Speaker 2:I knew zero about construction, like he mapped out.
Speaker 1:The gc will send the job out to us and then, so we do this like a whole pipeline and I'm like, okay, I don't know what, any of that means.
Speaker 2:But let's do it. So do this like a whole pipeline and I'm like, okay, I don't know what any of that means, but let's do it. So they were willing to train me and I'm like, okay, this and honestly, I need a job. It sounds interesting and I kind of took to it like it's a very specific personality. Agreed, we'll do takeoffs and stick with it, like we. We've had people I mean, I've been doing it so long but we had people like coming from the field and like, oh, I like to play video games. I can sit at a computer all day.
Speaker 1:It's not it's not the same.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're like send me back, please send me back to.
Speaker 1:So why isn't it the same?
Speaker 2:I have a gamer, but I imagine because it's not as constantly engaging, yeah, yeah, and that's it. It's not stimulating constantly, right? Oh, it's, we're going through the plans, we're digging through that part. You have to be engaged. The clicking is kind of you zone out, to be honest, when you're drawing stuff out, and that's the part that most people hate. Yes, the clicking is kind of you zone out to be honest when you're drawing stuff out, and that's the part that most people hate.
Speaker 2:So, yes, that's the labor intensive part of it, that's the part people don't like to do, and I'm kind of the same way, but I mean, it's just part of the job, so it's work for me.
Speaker 1:I could never do that work. Not because I don't know how you already we already talked about my energy Right do that work. Not because I don't know how you already. We already talked about my energy right. I don't know how to be quiet and I don't. I'm deaf to how loud and disruptive I am, like, even when I'm in my most focused zone of work. People around me have told me in the years past they're like dude, please get the help. Like you are. You're freaking monkey, chill out. What are you talking about? I'm not even aware of how noisy I am when I'm 100% focused. It's like I'm noisier than typical. Anyways, my great respect for folks that are in the takeoff estimating space is I see them as individuals who have a massive capacity for delayed gratification and an intensely thick skin in terms of recovering from rejection. How does that land with you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's fair. That's really the way you learn. I mean, like anything else, you learn by missing things in the plans. Yeah, fair or unfair is something gets missed, no matter what review steps are in place. It's who didn't take off.
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah so successful we did it.
Speaker 2:If it's not freaking us. The burning, yeah, and it just is. It just kind of is what it is. So that's part of it and you kind of accept that early on. Good or bad, it's not for me to say, but it's just part of it, and the feedback you get in construction is not even necessarily what they're saying, but how they're saying it a lot of times so, for me not coming from that background, that was a bit of an adjustment, but I mean I found that if people know that you care and that you're trying your best, you can be mad that I made a mistake, but you're not going to be mad at me for not trying.
Speaker 2:It's like a learning experience. I guess, depending on how big that mistake was, but as long as we're not missing whole buildings or whole floors or people will work with you. I mean, you're going to miss things like we do at a certain volume. It's unavoidable.
Speaker 1:Right. But I think the key point there is do you give a damn? I made a post the other day. I think it was Craig. His safety guy out of Canada made the comment dude. The only people that don't make mistakes are lazy people and liars, because they're either lying that they've never made a mistake or they've never tried or attempted anything of consequence in their life. But the important thing is that you gave it all you had and that you learned from the thing. Right, and I think that's what you're saying in terms of that you care like OK, my bad, chalk that up, this was the lesson learned, let's go do better.
Speaker 1:Kind of back to the video game thing. The thing about video games is the feedback loops in those video games is super tight, like seconds. Right, I do an action, I get an instant feedback saying I did the right thing or not, and then I can adjust it. Now, an estimate, it's not the same, because you're calculating, counting. Then you got to package it together and then you got to mark it up and then you send it to the client or whoever has the request and then they, like I don't know, help me understand this. Once they review it, they will either accept it, that's feedback. But there's days, weeks, months between all the work and the actual feedback. And if they don't accept it, I don't know, do they give you like actionable feedback in terms of why they didn't accept it, or is it just sorry, we're not taking it, we're going with somebody else?
Speaker 2:So for that, I mean we don't submit, submit the bid, so I'm not on that end of things, but I mean there's. So part of it is it's really delayed feedback anyways, because there's a lot of steps between us and it's the middle and there's a lot of extra data that's going in there.
Speaker 2:So it may not be necessarily our numbers were off. It may be, but it could be. We were priced out of their price, out of that job, got it. It didn't matter what the numbers were in the first place. You're not going to get that job. Usually, if I don't hear anything, I just assume that we're doing okay, which is the best. I would rather have something, some kind of targeted feedback.
Speaker 1:But right, if clients aren't calling, yelling at me or sending me frantic emails, then I assume we're doing okay I want to to give the LNM family member shout out to Mr Tanner Heidly, who connected with me on the Facebook. He left this review. It's my first ever review on Facebook. I was like super, super excited. He says an industry professional that has concise delivery of his message. This review is to give him my support. And Tanner I actually got to have a conversation with him. We're going to have some follow-up conversations. He's in the welding field. He's now teaching at a welding school. Super awesome guy, super prepared.
Speaker 1:Anyways, tanner, thank you so much, man, for taking the time to do that and for consuming the content, because most of that stuff is focused on forming stuff and kind of field leadership things. And finally, somebody said hey, I like this stuff. And so, folks, for the rest of you L&M family members out there, whenever you send me a DM, a message, a review, even a share, like, I love to know about it because, one, I know somebody's listening and two, it gives me the opportunity to shout you out in the future. So please do that. Yeah, so massive discipline, that's what I'm hearing. You have massive discipline because you don't have a lot of rich actionable, or you don't get a lot of rich Because you don't have a lot of rich actionable, or you don't get a lot of rich actionable feedback, and so you just, okay, we're going to do the takeoff. This is our system, this is our process, this is how we do it. Let's keep doing that. And then, based on hit ratio and returning customers, that's the indicator. And man, that ain't easy. So that trait.
Speaker 2:I'm going to call it a trait.
Speaker 1:How did you develop that?
Speaker 2:I'm just very, I'm very like, stubborn, which makes me, you know, can see this through, but maybe not the greatest employee on the other on the flip side. So that was another reason for my transition. I mean, growing up I was always into sports, pretty much all I did. I mean you kind of have to develop a certain amount of grit to get through that good.
Speaker 2:I mean, with anything really that sports, you get that instant feedback a lot of times yeah I don't know if we just I've just always been very stubborn and my my hobbies, for the most part, have been pretty detail-oriented things. Oh, like what? It's just kind of what I like. Like I've always been big into reading, like I did before we started having kids, I did stencil art. Oh, it's probably the easiest way. So it's like banksy and shepherd fairy are like the two most famous in the world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but the way that is, it's basically you print out the negative of an image and take an exacto knife and you cut it out by hand and it can be as detailed as you want, and I probably have some pictures I can send you. It's really hard to explain, kind of. But I mean, you can spend hours just like cutting it's basically just cutting holes in paper and you can hours and days and weeks just cutting one piece and then you spray paint it and you throw it away and then you move on to the next one. And it sounds ridiculous, doesn't it's like? Why would it?
Speaker 2:yeah, well it's a ridiculous hobby and I loved it. I did it for years. I just didn't have that free time anymore once we started having kids, but sure stuff like you know I'm good with delayed gratification for the most part.
Speaker 1:That's amazing, amazing man, and I'll say that's a massive superpower. Professionally, personally, I mean, I'm nowhere near the to the degree that you are, but I have increased my tolerance and the more I increase it as, oh wow, like I make better decisions and like I give things time to breathe and grow, oh shit, I could have. Why didn't I do that before? Anyways, all right, so you kind of have this makeup that the work was well suited for you. You were working for this company and then you decided to start your own business. What was the trigger?
Speaker 2:What was the signal that you saw that you said, ok, I just need to go do this on my own. So when I worked there, we actually used another service that did it and they were like super, they're still around, they're gigantic, but they were kind of really early in in that space. Ah, and we used them and it was before, like you didn't have teams, you didn't have zoom yep so it was a great concept.
Speaker 2:It made total sense. Like we couldn't find an estimator. This was probably I don't know eight years ago at this point. Yeah, we couldn't find anybody local Like there's two of us, we're overwhelmed, we're working day and night and we're not keeping up with the big calendar. And so they came in and it was great, but just the tools weren't there to make it seamless. Like it's all phone calls.
Speaker 2:We can't screens. We're doing email Well, all the things I hate. We're doing that to communicate and it's just you do the best with the tools that you have. At that point, but it was always in the back of my head because I talked to one of the guys and like this is also a problem with the market being so saturated. The startup for this is basically a problem with the market being so saturated. The startup for this is basically nothing. You have a laptop and you can afford the software. I mean, you're in. There's no, there's really no overhead. It's just always in the back of my head and I kept talking about it and talking about it if I'm out. My wife was like, well, just go do it already oh nice.
Speaker 2:So you had some work yeah, she's, yeah, I would have. Just I would have bitched about it for the rest of my life if she had not to go do it. She got tired of hearing it and it was most things. She was right. So it's working out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, ok, I love that. I mean, I think that I want to say this you don't have to be married to have support, but having support is ultra awesome, right, I think it kind of. I think you had a leg up in terms of practical, practical approach to starting your business. Cause I did, I'm like I'm going to quit my job and I didn't have a plan.
Speaker 2:Really I was like, well, really Okay, I went and told her. I was like hey, I went in and quit my job. Really, I didn't think you were going to do it today.
Speaker 1:So Was it one of those you?
Speaker 2:said yeah, it was I love it.
Speaker 2:But because I went to a small business development council here they do kind of like free advice for people starting businesses, and yeah, they were like, well, a whole list of things, like, do you have any of this? I, and yeah, they were like, well, a whole list of things, like, do you have any of this? I was like, no, I don't have any of this. I didn't know any of this that I needed to do. So there was a lot. I mean, I gave them a long notice, maybe a couple of months, because the handoffs and yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we had some people out on vacation and stuff and I was pretty generous with my notice, but there was a lot to get ready to be like legit. I got to file for my license with the state and stuff and then I have to get. I ended up getting like a registered agent to handle all the paperwork and I got to find insurance, which took me months and months because nobody knew what I was talking about. Yeah, it was the hardest thing I've done, oh, yeah, and so I called I don't know how many people and I ended up finally just calling an architect here in town because it's similar, see errors and omissions. I'm like, please tell me who you guys use so I can do this. Yeah, forever, because nobody knows what I'm talking about. So they don't call me back, which I get. They got plenty of business. This custom policy for this one person business hasn't even started yet.
Speaker 1:No, thank you Right. They don't know what the risk is, any of that.
Speaker 2:Yes, that was probably the hardest thing was figuring that out.
Speaker 1:Wow, oh man, okay, so since starting, so you've been in business. What a few years now.
Speaker 2:About two and a half yeah.
Speaker 1:Two and a half. Oh man, this is fresh.
Speaker 2:I love it. What have you learned about yourself since starting your business? That I am way more particular about how things are done than I thought.
Speaker 2:Ah I see like other people do them and not that they're wrong. Like you could be good work, but I just the way I like sounds so ridiculous. Just the way I like my materials ordered on my takeoff. I'm very particular about it. Yeah, so when I see somebody just go like alphabetically and then it's the carpet and the tile and everything's all mixed together, it drives me nuts oh, so you categorize it like all the carpets, all the tiles, when I'm going back a job like.
Speaker 2:I don't want to scroll through the whole list. I want to know this is a carpet. I need to go to this section or whatever. So I recoded our whole database, so now we can just order it all the same. Yeah, it just started with Nets, and then also, I'm not great at delegating, ooh. That is definitely something, especially as we grow. I'm having to let go of more things.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Which is kind of hard. So I like doing the estimating part, but it's also I don't scale doing that, because that's the time consuming part. Yes, I do so many takeoffs and I would love to be involved in more of them, but I just can't at a certain point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, let's. I'm going to dive there because I want to say exactly why I think people have a skewed understanding of delegating. What I've experienced is people dumping a hot bag of poo on my desk and calling it delegating. Oh shit, I'm behind here, jesse, you do it, I'm delegating to whatever. That's not delegation man, and so I think a lot of people you don't have to run a business to understand or do it wrong. Right, you can be a manager or even just a crew leader or a peer. And so when you think about delegating, how do you think about that? What, maybe criteria, or what are the signals, the signs that this should be handed off? What's the purpose? What is it in your brain when you think of delegating? What does that mean?
Speaker 2:Really the hardest part is finding out what I'm comfortable handing off and what that whole workflow looks like. So I we just started with a VA last month.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And that has been I apologize to your last week. I'm so sorry I haven't given you hardly anything to do because I'm really struggling basically figuring out what to let go of. Like I know it takes up my time during the day, but I'm also like, how critical is this to my day, cause, like at this point, it's all just a part of my day, right, it's just my. Is this something that everything's going to fall apart if I move it from my list to her list? Or is it nothing? And I should have done this six months ago. Yep, so that's where I'm at right now and that's been a struggle really just figuring out, like what, the critical parts of the workflow, because a lot of time, for the longest time it's just in my head, right, yes, it's just me, let's do it Now. There's like five of us kind of Wow.
Speaker 2:It's so I have, I have one in-house guy and then I have a couple of contractors to help us like the tracing part of it, just if we can't keep up with that right, and then I have an estimator contractor that helps with overflow. We just get hammered. Yeah, for the most part. I mean like 90 is like me and him still doing the actual takeoffs. So that's been, that's.
Speaker 1:My current struggle is, yeah, now what I can let go and being able to be okay with it oh, man, man, let's talk about this VA thing, cause I just recently acquired VA service executive assistant think we're three or four months in and I'm going to tell you like she has brought enormous relief to my life. But the reason I took me so long to make the decision, well, one, cause I'm cheap, but two is, like, how do I articulate what I need, what to hand off? Like I had an idea of what I wanted to hand off which ended up not being what I've handed off yet and I'll get to that. But how do I tell her or him at the point I didn't know it was going to be a here or she? Well, like, how do I tell her or him? At the point I didn't know it was going to be a he or a she? Well, like, how do I tell them? So this is what I did.
Speaker 1:I made a list of all the things that I did on a weekly basis, like, what are the things that I do every single week period? And when I made that list, I'm like because my biggest fear was and you said it was not keeping them busy, right, like just or maybe I shouldn't even say busy not helping them be productive, and not because of the cost but because I don't want to waste their time. And so I'm like, man, what do I give them? And one of the things that I do every single week. And I made a big old list and then I'm like, oh, there's some things in there that are easy for me to articulate the steps right and maybe map out the process which ended up being the production of the podcast, which the and that's why I say that she brought so much relief because the process is I do the interview and then I send it to dude on style, they do the editing and then at the time I would then get it, would. I was the bottleneck, because then I had to do the finishing touches and create the thumbnail and do the description and upload it into all the steps, and I always had to negotiate or make a decision Am I going to go to sleep early or am I going to process the podcast? I got a couple of flights this week. I'm probably not going to launch, release the podcast episode that I want to. So it was. I was like you know what I can build the skill of mapping out what the process is with the podcast. It's a low risk thing. It's a, it's consistent work, and so we started there and I talked her through it and it's brilliant, she's okay. Jess, can you record yourself going through all those steps, because they had to go from this to the script, to YouTube, to Buzzsprout, and I was like dude, I could record myself. She said if you do that, that would help me tremendously. I'm like no problem. So I did and boom, that was the last time we talked about it and so then it became okay, what are the other things that I do on a high frequency, that I can record myself doing, that I can give to her and then flesh that out.
Speaker 1:Now back to the idea of delegating. I think of it from two perspectives. Or attempted business owner is what are the things that only I can do right now? That's where I need to spend my time when. What are the things that other human beings can do? Those are the things I need to figure out what to delegate, to hand off to somebody else, and, of course, letting go is difficult. Now, as a manager, leader of people, I think of it a little bit differently. I think of it who do I want to build capability in? Who do I want to invest and grow so that they can grow their career, et cetera, and what are the additional responsibilities I can give to them that will help them build some more skill sets and some more capability? What do you think about that?
Speaker 2:No, that makes sense to me. It's. That's what I did this week. Actually, I we had our weekly call and I was trying to describe something to her and I'm just kind of thinking out loud and I finally just did a loom video and this is what I'm thinking, this is what is in my head. Watch this. If you have better ideas, tell me. Like I'm not married to this, this is just what I'm thinking could work.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And let's go from there. So that's, I mean I use and I don't know why I didn't do that before Like I use Loom for clients a lot, like especially our first couple of jobs. I like do a review of the job and I send it along with the deliverables. I'm like this is what I'm doing, this is why I did it, cause that's where I get in trouble, and especially stuff that's quick turnaround the first year or so, like I don't want to say no to anything.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, you get in trouble a couple of times and it's it's my fault for rushing the or skipping entirely the onboarding process and be like, oh, this is a job process. And be like, oh, this is a job, this is money. I should say yes and I do it, and then nobody's happy, like I'm not happy having to the quick turnaround and not doing my normal process. Yeah, just stuff like that. Now that makes a lot of sense. And it, yeah, it has to change, as I'm kind of transitioning more to the manager than the estimator. Yes, it's going to be a much, much harder thing for me to let go of, but at a certain point, hopefully, I mean it'd be a good. It'll be a good day, though, when that happens, because that means we're successful enough.
Speaker 1:We're busy enough that I have to focus on stuff yeah I don't know if you've read it and it's got some really good tactical things to do for entrepreneurs people that are starting their own business. That'll shift the way you think about things, just enough to take action and say, oh, I could do more of this. It's had a massive impact on me. Now you mentioned taking work that maybe wasn't optimal. We'll say that right. Or working with clients that weren't optimal, or taking work that wasn't optimal, and we also talked a little bit about scaling. What are some things people, aspiring business owners, startup folks what do they need to be thinking about or looking for when it comes to optimal clientele and this idea of scaling?
Speaker 2:I mean and I heard you say this yesterday on the webinar with Samantha Everyone will tell you to build like an ideal client profile and kind of have that in your head when somebody comes to you. But it's, you know when you're first starting it's hard. You don't have the same kind of lee that in your head. So when somebody comes to you but it's, you know when you're first starting it's hard. Like you, really you don't have the same kind of leeway to say no, like even now, like I don't want to tell people no. But you know, I've referred people to other services. I thought maybe a better fit. Or I had a client that we worked together a few months and I'm like this is not really. They were wanting stuff outside my scope. I'm like this is really just not. This is not going to end well to keep going down this road. So I referred them out to another service.
Speaker 2:So, it's hard. But yeah, you kind of got to pick your scope and kind of got to stick to it. Stick to what you're comfortable with. If you're really comfortable expanding your scope, then I say go for it. If you're doing it just because you don't want them to go somewhere else, it's probably not going to end well, but that's. It's really hard to stick to that in the first until you get some traction.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Especially that was my one regret is not like, and plus I was working in a job already where everyone's kind of in the same circle. It's a small network, so I didn't want to be like you know disrespectful about it.
Speaker 2:Hey, I'm leaving, I'm going to start my own, but at the least connected with more people on linkedin before I left, like because doing it after has been so much harder yes because they see my title and they're like I get a million of you a day in my DMs in my inbox and I don't pitch people on there, I don't cold email people, but I get it. I'm in that market and I'm lumped in whether I like it or not. So I would say doing that may help you avoid having to make those decisions or making decisions so hard early on. That's my big regret of not doing that before. I like just jumped in, like we'll figure it out. We're gonna have to dive into that.
Speaker 1:Your question at all, but that's just kind of. You know you did 100. Don't go outside your comfort zone. You know your strengths, you know the value that you bring. Avoid going outside of those boundaries. Let them be the bumpers on the bowling lane, because but in your first year that's very difficult because you got to make some money and I honestly believe it's just one of those lessons that we have to like actually live. Doing work that's way beyond our expertise and working with people that were, we got that initial gut feeling of, ooh, I don't know about this, we got to learn.
Speaker 2:Those are usually not wrong. Your first conversation with somebody is off. That usually doesn't get better, so, or it's just a personality, you just don't click. It's hard in the moment, but I mean, there's so many companies out there you can find another one.
Speaker 1:You can recover.
Speaker 2:Again, it's hard in the moment to be like this is not a great fit, it's not gonna I'll get money like this month, but it's just gonna be problems down the road. Yeah, but I mean I get it. It's hard but it's. We've been really good about staying in our scope. Like we're just division nine, we just use one software. We're very even in a very niche market, but I think that helps us. So people generally find us we're kind of exactly what they need. If they use a different software, I just send them somewhere else. I'm like this is just not, it's not a good fit. I'm not going to learn that software.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to be as good Like my people are going to be as good on that as we are with this software, and I'll refer you to somebody else. I have no problem, yeah man somewhere.
Speaker 2:So just the cost of me, like being half as good at some other software, I'm not going to be happy. Personally, not being as good with it, they're probably not going to be happy with it, so it's just not. Yeah, I decided that early on though this is our lane and, like we did some experiments with residential, I was like early on, didn't work out, it's a whole different animal from commercial, and I was like we're not doing that anymore.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, we're very much in our lane and I've been pretty protective of that for the past year, especially good, good yeah, I think if I and I haven't mapped it out, but if if I did getting clear I love the way you say it getting clear about what my lane is, getting clear about that helped me understand the characteristics of the best client for me to serve, like it wasn't the other way around. It wasn't identifying the client and then understanding the service. It was really understanding what is my lane. What do people appreciate about me the most? Where I have and provide the deepest impact or value. And then it's okay, this is it. What are all the people that are asking for that? Ah, okay, now I got it.
Speaker 2:So that helped me lean into the YouTube, especially Since that's what we focus on. I can kind of go deep on that. Yes, I've started like trying to branch out to do more general estimating, like reading plans, videos, but a lot of them are measure square, specific, that are kind of deep dives on different features. But being so focused on that kind of allows me to do that. If I'm spread across three or four platforms, I'm not really adding any value to what's already on youtube. So I feel I feel good about what I'm putting out now.
Speaker 2:And same thing like with the podcast, like I intended for that to be like a weekly thing, yeah, but then I became the bottleneck and I'm like am I going to sit and edit this and put my stupid memes in here for an hour or am I gonna go do something else and then I just so? But that's the only way I can get to. The editing is to. That's the only part that makes it fun for me is to put those in there. Yeah, yeah, because otherwise I'm like this is the only thing ever. Yeah, so definitely right.
Speaker 1:So so what's my opinion on editing? Do you like it? I don't like it, oh yeah, no, here's the way I kind of function. I like everything at first for about 30 to 60 days and then I get tired of stuff. So, like editing when I started, man, when I started the podcast, I was using Hindenburg to edit, which was only waveform and it sucks so bad. But, man, I just loved figuring it out, clicking and tinkering and stuff.
Speaker 1:Now I use the script and then it's like, oh my god, this is so awesome, it does all these things. And then I'm like, okay, I'm tired of it. Like I got it facebook ads in march I started, like I said, I decided I want to learn if I like Facebook ads and if they're a valuable resource. And, man, oh my God, it's had me consumed for about six months, which is three months longer than I planned. And now I mean just recently I'm like, okay, I'm tired of it. Yes, I want to do more of it, but I don't want to do the button clicking anymore. That sucks, let me get somebody else to do that. And so that's kind of my cycle of I want to learn something and then, once I get comfortable with it. It's okay, I want to learn something else. Somebody has to do this now.
Speaker 2:I used Audacity when I did my podcast. So this my daughter was born, so this was like eight years ago.
Speaker 1:Oh, you're an og in the podcast space yeah, I only did it for a year.
Speaker 2:I did a little of them. I did like one a month. But it was the editing was death. I hated it. It's horrible they didn't have all this cool stuff like they have now like descriptive oh man yeah but it was like very same as like the way it was very manual and I'm no, no fun, no fun.
Speaker 1:Okay, so we mentioned podcasting, youtube linkedin. So I have one question. I want to go a little deeper in terms of the business value of social media, but first I want to start with would you consider yourself a teacher or a creator when it comes to, like your, the stuff you put out on the social internet omniverse?
Speaker 2:I focus more on the teaching.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:I guess they kind of go hand in hand. But that's part of it. I mean, it's not entirely altruistic, obviously. It's like marketing for me. Sure, I also do enjoy it. I also enjoy the teaching. Like people email like hey, I can't figure this out, no-transcript, nice. Teaching him how to use the software, nice. So I actually really enjoy that. Creator, I guess. Yeah, it's all kind of lumped together at this point, but I look at it more as educational. But it is. I don't in that space, in this space, nobody else is doing that. So that was my initial thought. Yes, it's something a differentiator?
Speaker 2:hell yes, there's very, because we're all basically the same service, so there's got to be like little variations and that just puts my name out there a little bit more. I need to do a better job of the guy that emailed me, saw the videos, but he didn't know we were an actual takeoff service, so I need to do a better job of explaining that.
Speaker 2:But it's also I'm not great at selling. I have discovered so even on LinkedIn. My wife's always you gotta ask, you gotta ask for the sale, you gotta. And I just kind of feels gross, like I even but even if it's just one post a month, just needs to be, as we do.
Speaker 2:I just can't get over it. It's just like a mental thing and I just it's probably just because I see it all day and I'm like I don't want to just add to that noise, but it's also I'm probably leaving clients on the table because they're just like this guy. He's watched all my videos. He has no idea. This is what our business is.
Speaker 2:I'm like that's a. It's a massive failure on my part to have this audience, however small it may be, going through all 20, whatever videos and has no idea that this is the service we provide. He just thought I was like some random dude that really liked Metro Square. That's hilarious, but if he had never said that, I never would have. I just assume it's our name, like people are going to know what we do, but you know, that's not always the case.
Speaker 1:No, a hundred percent%. It's funny, I've had this podcast for I think five years now, since COVID, and there's personal friends that I've known since middle school that are like, do you have a podcast? And I post like crazy, right, I mean, from my perspective, I post a lot. So I completely appreciate the ooh, it feels stinky and icky and I also know that I mean hell. I post daily about the podcast and people still don't know that I have a podcast. So that gives me some comfort in terms of being more overt about whatever it is Now it's more like what's?
Speaker 2:what's that in my head? I feel like everybody sees it every day like what I post, which is not true. It is not true. That's. Another lesson I've learned is I was kind of hesitant to make all these changes. I'm like, oh it's stupid, I just did this, now I'm gonna change it. And I'm finally like nobody's really paying attention to you nope, that's true, you're not nearly as important as you think. You are on the internet.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes.
Speaker 2:That was just like a mental block. Just assume it's there and people are seeing it and they're probably not, probably have no idea that you did something totally different last week 100% and every now and then somebody does notice and that's like ultimate for me.
Speaker 1:Hey, I saw you changing. Oh man, you noticed. It's exciting because you don't get that kind of feedback Now on the idea of they're not obsessing about your content as much as you are. You think they're seeing it every single day. The reality is they're not and the value I mean you made this point earlier about you you wish you would have been more active on LinkedIn before you started the business. Why? What has LinkedIn provided you or benefited you and why would it have been different had you started sooner?
Speaker 2:I feel like you're just having that network going in accelerated things a little bit. I knew it was a crowded space, but I say this ironically underestimated how many companies are doing this and like how much noise there is to cut through and I'd always heard this. But like, referrals have been our biggest source of good clients.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And just having that, whether it's even they just see it on there, we're already connected. They say, hey, I know a guy, just having that introduction makes a huge difference. Yeah, so, and I didn't. I didn't even think about it. I didn't really use LinkedIn until I did this, which is another part. You see, somebody just hops on, they start posting all the time trying. It's kind of a red flag a little bit, but I just didn't think about it before I started. I'm like people will find me, they'll find me on the internet somehow, but it didn't work that way.
Speaker 2:So really this year I've started going to some in-person conferences.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So that I think that is kind of an advantage I need to lean into since I'm here. Yes, so I went to, I went to, I went to surfaces in vegas, oh nice, yeah, that was a little much, that was a little overwhelming, um, but I went to an in-person one earlier this year and we're going to another one next month, so nice yeah I know what I've started going into just making those connections. Then I can come back to linkedin and connect and then it's a different connection.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah definitely my similar, same right. Like, the only reason I got active on LinkedIn was because I didn't get a million downloads on my first podcast episode. And I still haven't hit a million downloads. Anyways, started the podcast and I'm a month in and it was abysmal. I'm like, so I started kind of doing YouTube research, right, oh, you got to market it. I'm like, what do you mean? You got to? Oh, okay. And back then I said, okay, here's what I'm going to do. I'm cause I was already releasing an episode twice, like every other week, which was like monumental to me. Right, that's too much in my head. It was too much. People are going to get exhausted. So what I'm going to do is I'll make a post on the off weeks when I'm not releasing like one post. So it was two posts a month and I thought that was just it seems like a lot right.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And I'm like, okay, crap, that's not working. Okay, let me do one a week. Okay, that's a little bit better. And so, little by little, because and here's if it wasn't for the guests that I was interviewing, I would not have started marketing, right, I wanted people to hear the stories of the freaking people that I'm interviewing, because they're beautiful stories and that was my motivation. So then all of a sudden I was like, oh, people started reaching out for services and I'm like, man, I got, I got a job.
Speaker 1:At the time I wasn't even thinking about that, but it happened enough times. I'm like, oh shit, okay. And so then I started using my personal profile. I started posting a little bit more, just a little bit once a week, and I still had a job After I quit. It wasn't until maybe 18 months ago where I started posting daily. It took a long time on my personal profile. All that to say that I'm with you on that. It was difficult. I should have started sooner. And so folks, l&m, family out there, if you have a little side gig or you're starting a business, I know how uncomfortable it is.
Speaker 1:Joseph agrees, but tell everybody you know, you got to let them know and you got to let them know 3000 times so that they can remember. I know it now in hindsight is, even if you're an employee and you intend to be an employee, you don't want to start your own business. You're happy with the work you do, the people you work with. Being visible on LinkedIn and the other socials as well but I favor LinkedIn, but being visible on LinkedIn will increase your stock value, like your personal stock value within your organization, within your industry or the market segment that you play in, just by simply posting, and that is not a bad thing and it sets the stage for bigger, greater opportunities that you can't even imagine. I'll give you an example. I was just oh man, I don't have it.
Speaker 1:Tadson Robert, they published a book and I'm in the book. There's one. I got a like a chapter. Never in my life did I think I would be included. I've been included in a few books, right, and I'm like I was just thinking about it because they sent me a copy of the book. And I'm like I was just thinking about it because they sent me a copy of the book and I'm like this is like I never, but it's a result of me being visible on social media. It's not because I'm some credentialed smart guy, it's just because people see me and they say, hey, this dummy might be entertaining, let's talk to him. And then they put me in the thing, which I again the total privilege that I would have missed had I not been visible on social media, that I would have missed had I not been visible on social media. And again, like you said, it will salt or chum the waters in the event you were to start your own business or start your own little side gig.
Speaker 2:You agree with that? Yeah, for sure. I mean, even I had a company reach out a few weeks ago like a software company that seen one of my videos when we set up a call and I'm like, hey, would you maybe be interested in a partnership, Like stuff like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I'm like this is ridiculous, like why wouldn't I just do this every day? Like my wife did it every day for two years. She started her business. We started about time. She's a. She's a crazy person and did it every day for two years and but I mean, it's a's a huge difference. I'm just like I just mentally I just couldn't get over it.
Speaker 1:It's tough. Get it, man, I get it, but you're doing I mean, here's the thing you are doing it you post with some regular frequency on LinkedIn. You post with the regular frequency on YouTube, like you're doing. I mean, hell, I'm sure you've heard the statistics right Less than 1% of people that have a LinkedIn account actually post content. So that dynamic of I'm scared, like whatever that is, the majority are there. It's the psychos like me that are like. That's the problem.
Speaker 2:That's the problem. It's like the construction bubble that I'm in. It's people like you and Matt that are killing it posting all the time. I'm like, okay, I'll do my one post a week, that's it right. Just start with these guys. Yeah, but yeah. So that's part of it seeing what you guys are doing.
Speaker 1:Oh man, I love it. Okay, I got one question about AI and estimating, and then we'll go into the Grand Slam question. So what do you think about AI in integrating with estimation takeoffs? Are you like for it, against it? Do you have any experience with this?
Speaker 2:Yes, I've been tracking it because it's coming. It's not there yet. Like it's, I have a subscription to one. I've had it for a year and a half. I just want it to automate the clicking. Me personally, I still want to do the takeoff. Yeah, I just don't want to click, so I don't. Some of the bigger ones like they can take off everything in 10 seconds. I don't want that personally, I want to be able to draw all the rooms. Save me that, and then I can still do my process. So I don't know how many people feel like me. And it's coming. I have no idea what the timeline is. It's, yeah, kind of just the simple things that I would like it to do.
Speaker 2:It just can't do because just the variability between pdfs apparently is a lot for them to handle um because, even so, when I do multi-family jobs, like the matrix is wrong most of the time you have to go through and count them manually.
Speaker 1:I asked one of the companies.
Speaker 2:I was like can you just do this? Can it do this? Can it go through and count the units and give me a matrix? And they're like no. And I'm like, okay, well, thank you.
Speaker 2:But thank you bye yeah, it's getting better all the time. That's part of I'm not super worried, but I also feel like takeoffs are already viewed as a commodity and they're only going to get cheaper. Adopting that so for us I'm trying to find other sources of income, get into consulting, more consulting, training, stuff like that because I see a day where the takeoffs is not going to be our main source, because I'm just not. I just won't be able to compete with those prices.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you dropping the bottom out because of whatever. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's already. Yeah, Pricing is already a. It's hard for me to compete on. And then if you just add an AI on top of that and it's usable, it's going to be tough. It's going to be tough, it's going to be a tough sell. But you know that I work with people that don't use any software at all and they're not going to make the jump to AI.
Speaker 1:Right, not this decade, hell no.
Speaker 2:There's probably still enough companies that we could just do what we're doing and maybe that caps our growth. But that's fine, I don't want to be around with it. Well, we can't do this, can't do this. And if it's not doing that, on flooring, I mean flooring like the soft good side is kind of cut and dry, but tile is really detailed, a lot of stuff to look. There's a lot of pieces to pick up, so it's not close to being able to do all that. So I still got some time but yeah, but I know it's coming.
Speaker 2:You know this probably better me from who you talk to, just the way I see people talk about it on top of how everyone talks about we don't have enough people doing this. I do wonder if that's going to keep people from getting into this. Like we're going to use ai to automate the junior test instead of teaching somebody, yeah, to do that. So part of me worries that there's just going to be a bigger shortage down the road because we're not going to invest in those people to learn that way and I don't think then learning it on ai is super helpful, like my guy. So I met, I went and talked to a high school class last year and he was one of the kids in the class ah, help with him. And finally just brought him on the summer. Hey, let's just do this five, ten hours a week, whatever you got, and I'm teaching him, like from bottom, like, how to do that. We're gonna learn how to read plans. Yeah, just go teach any other new estimator.
Speaker 2:So part of me worries like that step will be skipped If you just teach them. Well, they can review the AI takeoff, but they don't know what they're looking at. Like he's tracing the plans, but he doesn't know how to read the plans. So is this a wall? Is this a column? Do I need to go around here? What does this mean? I feel like a lot of that is going to get lost at a certain point. So I don't know what you're hearing from people and I'm just in my little closet office with my deep thoughts, so I don't know what the actual world thinks about that, but that's just one of the things that I think about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that the observation that people are going to like the transfer of experience and knowledge, like the foundational knowledge that's necessary to make like really good decisions or avoid really big problems it is being diluted because people are relying so heavily on automating whatever the hell they do which I get, I totally, because I'm trying to automate as much as I can. Also. Now, I think the problem for me and this is again a Jesse-ism, right the problem, I think, is the technology that we really need to master is listening and connecting and communicating with other human beings. Right, we suck at that and we think this digital technology is going to fix that, and it's not. I don't think it is. So I'll just say that. Now I also want to add to your point If you're on LinkedIn, of course you're going to feel anxious about not being an AI master other thing.
Speaker 1:But outside of LinkedIn, the majority of the people that I talk to that are very accomplished professionals. They could give a shit about AI, right, like the people that use it are mostly, generally speaking, are kind of just using it to answer questions faster, to do a little bit of research faster. And now we'll just look inside the construction industry the big giant, massive companies. Of course, they got R&D departments and whatever, and so they're going down that lane. But those big, gigantic behemoth companies are not the majority in our industry. The majority are $50 to $100 million a year of revenue and they have 10 to 15 people working for that of Revenant, and they have 10 to 15 people working for that. Those people very few of them are on the AI kick. So the urgency is fabricated specifically in our industry.
Speaker 1:Will it accelerate things? Absolutely? Will it develop capabilities in other people? No, but here's what I think about instead of being like poo on, it is okay if I'm not going to be building that foundational base that, like actual knowledge, experience from knowing it from the bottom up, that's going to create another opening of what is the special value, what is the thing that needs to be focused on so that we don't lose that? And so which goes back to your consulting and teaching What'll happen is people are going to be overly dependent on AI and then they're going to realize one or two generations in, and when I say generation, five years, 10 years, right, oh crap, this person has a new. They're hiring people now and they don't know how to onboard them and orient them to the work. I think at that point and when that happens, when that hits the teachers, educators, consultants are going to become more valuable, because there's very few people that have that knowledge base or ability to fill the gap that we created by over indexing. On optimization, what do you think?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I agree, and it's same thing. So I I'm in that bubble like I'm keeping up with this stuff, so I'm aware of it. But even the last flooring conference I went to so I use a Creo, it's like they're in the UK, it's an AI and nobody had heard of it. When I was talking to people, like zero people, I told 15, 20 people nobody had heard of it. So even in the industry that it's like targeted towards, there's not any. I mean, there's not. It's definitely not adoption, because there's no knowledge of it. So it's probably an unbounded fear, like just yeah, like you said, the false sense of urgency that we need to be ready for it. It's just probably in my head because I'm like so on top of it, because I know it's going to impact yes, e before maybe trickle down and impacts actual companies so, yeah, no, it's good when you're on top of.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think the key point there is you are on top of it and, for anybody listening, don't sleep on it, but also don't like getting. You're good, but learn about it, practice, tinker, like under, get an understanding of what it is, because it will be. Is it yet? Not necessarily, but I think it's coming. But I don't think it'll be. The capability and functionality I think is really there, like good adoption is not because people don't understand the capability of the thing and we're using it, we're under utilizing it and that's a matter of adoption and understanding. So we got time. It's just a big jump.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of people just even for flooring, use Bluebeam and Excel. Still they don't even use yes, it's not bad. I mean, that's successful, it works. Do it yeah.
Speaker 1:But they're not even switching to flooring specific software. So the jump that AI is, it's a big leap. So you mentioned measure square. I'm assuming that's the software that you use in the service that you provide. So, mr Joseph Richards, what service do you provide? What is it that you do for businesses out?
Speaker 2:there Sure. So we do takeoff quantity takeoffs for commercial flooring companies. So we cover basically all of division nine. So the soft goods tile is is mainly what we do.
Speaker 1:Okay, so if I'm a flooring company meaning I installed tile, carpet, these sorts of things on the floor in commercial buildings I can call you and say hey man, I need some help because my estimators are overwhelmed and we got a lot of opportunities here. Can you help us out? Can you pick up our?
Speaker 2:slack. That's mostly what it is. You just can't keep up with your bid calendar. You just need some extra help. So we have some that maybe hop on for a month just to catch up. They got, maybe they got somebody out, somebody sick, something like that. It's just temporary. I mean I've had a couple of clients that have been with me the whole time Nice. So it's really it's designed to be flexible, yeah. So, whatever capacity you need, I mean, we can handle.
Speaker 1:And you're remote. So anywhere in the country, anybody in the country, any flooring contractor in the country, you're like, you got their back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, they'll be that. And then we have one in Canada. I had one in New Zealand oh, send me something. But the metric on the plans broke my brain. I had to refer him somewhere else because I just couldn't. It was that, and then everything the materials were like called different things.
Speaker 1:So I just couldn't wrap my head around it and I'm like this sorry, I'm not the guy for you. Yeah, that is interesting, like I want to be international oh crap, I don't know how to like.
Speaker 2:It just happened he found me on youtube and just asked if I could help, and I'm like sure, and they sent me the plans. I'm like, oh no, it totally different. So I found somebody that could read that stuff. Yeah, I was like I could figure it out, but I don't really want to. So I'll help you out and find you somebody. Good though.
Speaker 1:I think that's a smart move, because what they need is speed, and if you don't know it, you're going to be slower to produce the outcome that they're looking for. You're better off saying, hey, man, man, let me give you somebody, because sure I could learn. It's going to slow you down, but it's also going to slow them, delay the delivery of the value to them, which I think is another key point that people out there need to think about. All right, so what?
Speaker 2:I was just saying having it, he would have to teach me basically, like what all this, these words mean. Yeah, I mean I can look it up, or it's going to be a lot of back and forth. There will naturally be some back and forth in the first few jobs, just to so you're on the same page, but this is like a whole different level.
Speaker 2:So just something like and like a year ago or something, I probably would just sucked it up and kept doing it. And like a year ago or something, I probably would just sucked it up and kept doing it. But at this point I've been through enough of those to know.
Speaker 1:That's just not. That's not fair to either one of us. That's it. It's not fair to either one of you. I love that, so I'll make sure we put the links for people can connect with you. Check out your website, Check out the YouTube, Check out the LinkedIn All of the things and folks when you do make sure you leave a comment for Mr Joseph and ask him to post more.
Speaker 2:Bully me into it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, bully. Yes, we're going to take the bully approach. So are you ready for the grand slam? Closing question yeah, let's do it. Okay, so you have a man. I never even asked about the landman stuff, that just sounds.
Speaker 2:Oh well, missed opportunity tell you it's just stuff like that, so that, like my english background like basically I just did title research for oil and gas all this stuff that you wouldn't think would apply to what I do perfectly applies to what I do helps me sift through plans pretty quick and just having kind of like a research background is a really transferable skill.
Speaker 2:So yes yes, not like you can learn the construction part, but if you don't have people that like that part of it, it's not ever going to be a good fit. So I will say that's how, and I really enjoyed that job too. So just kind of random stuff that I didn't think would pay off has been really helpful in this role.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, and I love that you called out transferable skills. So you've had a twisted, windy road to being a business owner a growing and thriving business because you're putting people on. Maybe didn't know at the time, but along the way you've picked up transferable skills and the ability to recognize that you can pick up transferable skills regardless of what kind of work you're doing and where you think you're headed and where you actually end up. I think that whole experience and taking the leap into starting your business and learning what that is and should be, is going to color your answer to this question in an important way. And so here's the question what is the promise you are intended to be?
Speaker 2:So there's a show that I love. It's called Halt and Catch Fire and it's about have you heard of it? I have not. It was on AMC. It follows these people kind of through the tech of the 80s and the 90s, Starts with, like personal computers kind of ends off with the internet being created and there's a guy in there that says computers aren't the thing, they're the thing that gets us to the thing. So I kind of all the different stuff that I've done, none of those were the thing. They kind of get me there. So, even if this is not my thing, it's another step towards that.
Speaker 2:So growing up we always mowed yards. Like I didn't have a real job until basically college. Wow, and that was so. We kind of always had that entrepreneur thing and I felt like I kind of ran away from it for a long time because it's scary and if I didn't have my wife to be so amazing and supportive like I probably never would have done it. So I think just embracing kind of you have that spirit, whatever that ends up being.
Speaker 2:Like the specific business, nobody grows up hey, I want to do takeoffs for a living and then I want to start a business where I do it for other people. Nobody has ever been born that wants to do this from the time they were a little boy. So it's not at this point. For me it's not so much like what the actual activity is, because I know in maybe five or 10 years it could be something totally different, Maybe it's a different business.
Speaker 2:So I think at this point it's kind of and I have people they'll message me all the time and say like hey, how did you do this, how can I do this? And so at this point it's kind of like just teaching, it's encouraging, Like I tell them exactly what I did. I mean, they could be competing with me tomorrow, but I just think that's the way to do it. So I think, if nothing else, I'm trying to convey a different attitude about running a business. Whether that's good business or not, uh, remains to be seen. But I just feel like sorry, I just feel like being super open is kind of unusual and that's kind of what I'm trying to do.
Speaker 2:And whether it ends up being this business for a long time or it ends up being the next one. I feel like that's kind of going to be my thing. And then a lot of this stuff I got from the guys over at Basecamp project management software, and they're very open about everything too, because I'd never heard of like pricing especially. So I put it on my website, just stuff like that I want. Yeah, so I put it on my website, just stuff like that. I want to be very transparent and with that, with the teaching and the youtube, I think that's kind of what I'm trying to build, more than a takeoff empire. So if this is to go back to that quote like this is not the thing, you can take what I'm building here and go to the next thing.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, no, I love that I particularly not surprised, but absolutely appreciate. And then I am in support of the transparency right. Let me just I can hold everything close to the chest, which a lot of people do, but why like? Why not help people? Why not share your experience, your knowledge, your thought, like you're three years ahead of them? Let them, you got a headstart.
Speaker 2:It's okay. Yeah, it's okay. Yeah, it's part of it. Well, I mean, I get the hesitation and it's well, there's going to copy me. I'm like, well, if somebody is copying you, they're always going to be behind you, correct? Yes, that's kind of why I just yeah, even my, my estimate. He's like, why do you share all this stuff? Is everyone's going to learn how to do this? I'm like, I don't know, it just feels I enjoy it and it just feels kind of like the right thing to do 10-4.
Speaker 1:10-4. I love that man. Did you have fun?
Speaker 2:Yes, I loved it, man, I can't believe it.
Speaker 1:It's been that long You're looking at the whole shit. Oh man, Thank you for sticking it out all the way to the end. I know you got a whole lot of stuff going on and, in appreciation for the gift of time that you have given this episode, I want to offer you a free PDF of my book Becoming the Promise You're Intended to Be. The link for that bad boy is down in the show notes. Hit it. You don't even have to give me your email address. There's a link in there. You just click that and you can download the PDF. And if you share it with somebody that you know who might feel stuck or be caught up in self-destructive behaviors, that would be the ultimate you sharing. That increases the likelihood that it's going to help one more person. And if it does help one more person, then you're contributing to me becoming the promise I am intended to be. Be kind to yourself, be cool, and we'll talk at you next time.