A little over eleven years ago, I was flat broke and living in my best friend's basement. I was separated from my now ex wife. My kids didn't wanna talk to me. I was depressed, and I just didn't even know what I was gonna do with my life. I had to reinvent myself as a human being.

One thing I learned at that lowest point in my life more than anything else, the biggest lesson that stands out to me is there's really only one thing that I can control, is my actions. What do I get up and do with my body every every single day? Through that, you know, there's some things I learned. And I wanna pass along those lessons to anybody that's ready to listen and ready to do something different with their lives and to scale up a business. Over the last few years, we've managed to scale this company, Bartlett Roofing, up to about $50,000,000 in business.

For the last two years running, we've been there. Even in a down market last year in the roofing industry, we didn't lose any momentum. We were just as high as we were the year before. So basically, here's what I did. All right, well, welcome back.

And we're going to call this our season two of Monster Mindset. We've been off for a couple of years and, you know, I was busy building a business. What can I say? Over the last few years, we've managed to scale this company, Bartlett Roofing up to about $50,000,000 in business for the last two years running. We've been there, even in a down market last year in the roofing industry, we were still, didn't lose any momentum.

We were just as high as we were the year before. You know, I think I want to communicate here the reason why somebody might want to listen to the Monster Mindset Podcast. My intent here, you know, and hey, listen, I've got my selfish motivations too. We're gonna, at some point create seminars and stuff like that. But for right now, I'm just gonna try to tell you the keys to the kingdom here.

What's it take to become a $50,000,000 company? And so why should you listen to me? A little over eleven years ago, I was flat broke and living in my best friend's basement. I was separated from my now ex wife. My kids didn't wanna talk to me.

I was depressed, and I just didn't even know what I was gonna do with my life. I had to reinvent myself as a human being. Even contemplated suicide at one point. You know, I couldn't do that because it was a selfish decision. And those were hard, hard times.

Through that, you know, there's some things I learned. And I wanna pass along those lessons to anybody that's ready to listen and ready to do something different with their lives and to scale up a business. And that's truly my intent is to change lives. I'll tell you a little bit more about that foundation. You know, I was literally living on $900 a month.

I had wrecked my car and, know, hit some black ice one day, wrecked my car. I was driving my dad's field truck. You know, it literally had Bondo troweled onto the side. You could see the trowel marks in the Bondo and it was unpainted. It was not good.

There were mice that had been living inside of the under the seat of this truck. So every time I got in and I had to roll down the windows, just so I could breathe because it smelled like mouse shit on the inside. I was at a really bad spot. And you know, it's not easy to live on 900 Bucks a month. And that's what I did for the first six to nine months when I started this company, this Bartlett Roofing Company.

But over the last eleven years, we've managed to scale it to be a pretty huge company. I have about 200 employees now, 50,000,000 in annual business that we're doing. I've also started a software company, you'll be hearing more about in the future. And I've learned some lessons along the way. And that's why you should be here is to learn some things that maybe you've missed out on.

You know, I'll start with myself. What did I learn about myself? I learned that there was a point where I had to realize that there's one thing I can control in life. And, you know, I'm not a dumb guy. I'm a Capricorn, if that means anything to you.

You know, I work hard, but I work with intent and I try to control the factors. I try to control a lot of things around me. And that was humbling because the one thing I learned at that lowest point in my life more than anything else, the biggest lesson that stands out to me is there's really only one thing that I can control. That one thing that I can control is my actions. What do I get up and do with my body every single day?

At that time, couldn't control my emotions. I was deeply depressed. I couldn't control what my kids thought of me. I couldn't control what was then my still wife at that time thought of me. I can control anything in the world.

And I just had a realization like, hey, if I'm not going to off myself, then the thing that I can control is what do I get up and do every day? And if I get up and do the right things every day, even though I'm depressed, even though I don't even wanna move, even though I don't wanna crawl out of the basement I've been living in and be in a crying wreck in for the last several months, even though I don't want to, if I do the things, if I force myself to go through the actions, eventually the actions will trigger changes within me that will make me feel better. So basically, here's what I did. I said that I would give myself a full work day, six days a week. And by a full work day, I mean, was planning, I worked twelve hours a day, six days a week for a long time there just because it was better than sitting there being depressed.

Sandwiched in there each week, I planned to have one social activity. So I went on to meetup.com, joined Boise Social Club and started showing up to social events to make new friends. Because hey, listen, I didn't have any of the same friends I used to, they were all married. And I was now the divorce guy, which was a really disappointing thing, by the way. If you have friends who are going through a divorce, reach out to them, be a friend.

That's a hard time and people have to transition a lot in their lives. Last thing they need is to lose all of their friends. Anyway, so the things I could control is my work ethic. That would lead to financial success if I worked hard enough. The next thing I could control was some social life.

So that was the meetup.com piece where I would just go and meet some people, go to some parties, go watch movies with them, whatever it was, just to have some kind of a social life. Just one night a week, I could control what I was doing with my body. So I decided that, the endorphins would really help me if I just exercise quite a bit. So I got up every morning and I went and got on a treadmill for forty five minutes. And then every night I went back to the gym and I did some weightlifting.

And boy, that really helped a lot. I lost weight, the endorphins kicked in that that made a big difference. And then every day I would leave myself a half an hour to watch one episode of the Big Bang Theory. And that led to a breakthrough point for me is, I remember one night I was watching an episode of The Big Bang Theory and it dawned on me after I'd been doing all these things for a couple of months that I had gone like a whole two minutes without thinking about all the negative shit in my life, without thinking about the divorce, or the bad things that I was going through, or the basement that I was living in, or any of the bad stuff, right? And to me, that was a revelation that should tell you how low I was.

I was consumed by negativity. And so two minutes was a relief. And if you're in that spot, or if you're in a spot where you've started a company that you don't know how to scale up, I'm here to teach you some things and I hope that I can be impactful on your life. Now, the main intent of this podcast is to teach people about things about business. But because I am who I am, I'm gonna throw in some other things as well.

Like, maybe I'll talk about peptides from time to time because I'm on peptides now. And I like that. I have friends with the best endocrinologist in the Boise area here, and I'm gonna have him come on and talk about, things about people's bodies and managing stress and that kind of stuff at some point. I might talk about just random subjects that interest me occasionally, it's not the main intent of the podcast, but be ready for it. Because I'm gonna touch bases on a few different things from time to time.

Just when I want to, to be honest with you. Hey, it's my podcast, why not? But, you know, aside from like, the main lesson here today, I guess there's really two things I want to talk about. And that first one is I've already touched on, which is, if you can't control your mind, and you can't control your emotions, and you can't control the people around you, and you can't control what anything else, at least control your body, get up and do what you need to do. Write it down.

What's your plan? And then go do it. Even if you don't feel like it. When you wake up, turn around, put your feet on the ground and get to work. Work on your plan, and it'll change your life.

I'm living proof, dollars 50,000,000 company, 200 employees in eleven years. Have another company started. I can do anything I want. I can drive any car I want. I can go anywhere I want, whenever I want.

I've got the team that'll run the business without me. I'm still actively involved because I enjoy it. But the truth of matter is I could walk away at any time this company would continue to thrive. And if you want that for yourself, and for your company and for your family, I'm here to talk about that. A couple of things.

Number one is there's a part of me that hopes I strike a nerve, right? And what I mean by that is that I don't want to be talking to people who are just going to be a bunch of negative pussies. I want to be talking to people who have intention and are willing to follow through. I find that over and over again that people, they talk and they dream, but they don't ever put anything into action. Or maybe they started a company, but you're not willing to change because you're too afraid.

You're too afraid to turn over control and let other people make decisions. If this is you, if this is like ringing a bell with you, good, you need to listen. If it's offensive to you, because I'm saying, hey, you can change your life, you can completely change your life just based on what you do, because you don't have that belief, then get out of here. This isn't for you. Because you know what?

You need that belief. You need to believe that you can change your life. You need to believe that you can change the lives of everybody around you. But first you need to believe you can change yourself. I'm 56 years old.

I just turned 56 years old a month ago. And I have had to go through several evolutions of what it means to be a leader over the last eleven years. And I'm going through one kind of right now, the true CEO, the CEO that casts vision and just has accountability on a monthly or quarterly basis. And the CEO that communicates vision and plans for the future, and doesn't spend any time at all in implementation. That's difficult for me because I have been an implementer because I started this company as the only employee.

I was the guy that went out and knocked doors to get deals. I was the guy that set the pricing and negotiated with insurance companies when it's an insurance deal and found the crews and managed the installs and got the supplies, and paid the bills. I did all of it at first, and it didn't take me very long to figure out that I can't do all of it and grow. And so that leads into what is my next main point here? And this is the last point I'm going to talk about in this particular podcast.

That is you need as a founder, as an owner to understand your time value. Where are you best? In my case, was decent at sales, and I could start pawning off all the other jobs in the company as quickly as I could justify doing so, because I knew that I could go out and sell a job. You know, if somebody was holding a gun to one of my kid's head, and they were like, Hey, if you don't sell two jobs by the end of the day, your kid is dead. I guarantee you, I'm gonna go sell two jobs.

And in the roofing business, you know, that's $40,000 worth of work. If you got a decent profit margin, you're looking at like having, that's being worth a thousand dollars an hour. So what the heck am I doing doing books for whether I could hire somebody else to do for $20.25, $30 an hour? What the heck am I doing doing quality control when I can hire somebody for $25 an hour to do that? What I need to do is sell.

And by the way, if you can't sell, you better learn to sell if you're a founder. Hey, and if you're offended by that, suck it up and go learn to sell. Because that's the reality is that you're going have to not only sell your product, but even if you're not selling your product, you got to sell your leadership, you got to sell your systems, you got to sell your processes to everybody that you're trying to lead. So learn to sell, that's extremely important. But anyway, back to the main point, your time value.

What is your time value? Don't sit there and like break it down to, well, I'm doing a thousand hours worth of work and I'm only equivalently getting $1 an hour. If that's what you're in, maybe you're in the wrong business. Find something that you can get out there and make some real money. Something that you can go out there and be like, hey, my time's worth at least $100 an hour when it comes right down to it.

There's something I can do that generates business or creates enough income that my time can be worth at least $100 an hour. And if it's not least worth $100 an hour because you've got a way of making that true, then my honest opinion is you're in the wrong business. But if it is worth a $100 an hour or more, in my case, was like, and maybe that's ambitious, I'm saying, Hey, my time's worth $1,000 an hour. That sounds awfully egotistical, doesn't it? But the reality is, is that when it came right down to it, if the rubber met the road and my kid was gonna die over it, there's a way I can go out there and make $8,000 in a day.

And by God, I would. So understand your time value, where is it best placed, and then assess the time that you spend every day, every week and every month. And if you're spending, you know, fifty hours doing bookwork that you could have hired somebody to do basic data entry for you for $20 an hour, well, 50 times $20 an hour is $1,000. Guess what? That was only worth one hour of your time and you spent fifty hours that month doing it.

You blew yourself up for no good reason. You could have scaled in other ways that would have made you better off. If you're spending forty hours a month doing quality control, same principles apply. That's only really worth 800 to $1,000, that amount of time. Now, it doesn't matter if you have to pay somebody $4,000 for the month to do the job, find something else for them to do to fill in the blanks because your time, you go out work a little extra hard on your sales or whatever it is you've determined that you can do that's worth a 100 to $1,000 an hour.

Your time is more valuable than that. And hire faster and fire faster. So if you're trying to scale business, we'll start with hiring faster and we'll leave firing faster for another podcast. Hire faster, understand your time value, replace yourself, trust your people, train them, create systems and replace yourself. Anyway, short take on that, might talk about that more later.

Reality is today, all I wanted, the message I really want to get across is, I'm here to teach, I'm here to give you something that hopefully you can take home that you can implement in your life or in your business today, and how to make money or maybe how to be healthier in a couple of different segments in some mentally healthier, physically healthier, whatever it is. And hey, listen, I'm not a model of physical health, but I'm working on it. I'm still working on that one. I'm sixty, seventy pounds less than what I was at my peak. So I'm making progress, But I'm mentally like mega healthy comparatively and financially like mind blowing difference.

It's mind blowing how much you can do in eleven years if you just stick to it, stick to your guns and have a work ethic and make it happen. So if you're here to learn, welcome. If you're here to be offended, get out of here. Let's go out there and be successful, be healthy, be happy. And I'll see you on the next podcast.