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Scaling Up Success Podcast
Scaling Up Success is a podcast designed to inspire and educate entrepreneurs and business leaders on their journey to growth and development. Through in-depth conversations with successful small business owners and C-suite executives, we delve into the strategies, challenges, and triumphs that have propelled these businesses to new heights.
Discover the secrets behind scaling your business, from building a strong foundation to navigating complex market dynamics. Learn from those who have been there, gain actionable insights, and unlock your business's full potential. Join us as we explore the stories of innovation, resilience, and unwavering determination that define success in the ever-evolving business landscape.
Scaling Up Success Podcast
The Lion's Mindset: Building an Eight-Figure Business with Tom Reber
Tom Reber pulls no punches when it comes to business. “You have a glorified job with overhead and a shitty boss,” he says, if you can’t get out of your own way.
As the founder of The Contractor Fight and Simplify Painting, Tom sits down with host Ryan Van Ornum to unpack the mindset shifts that separate business owners who stay stuck from those who scale with purpose and success.
He shares the real story behind growing Simplify Painting to a million-dollar run rate in just 10 months. The key? Hiring top talent and resisting the urge to be the hero. This gave him the freedom to work fewer hours while leading multiple crews and keeping clients happy.
Tom also reveals a powerful sales mindset, one that helped a client go from $12/hour to creating $43,000/hour in effective value. He breaks down how the foundation of business success lies in roughly 60 intentional decisions made daily. His perspective is simple but powerful: Don’t chase a million for the money, chase it for the person you’ll become along the way.
Inside his company, discipline drives results. A team-wide alert system activates if no sales are made by noon, reinforcing urgency and action. With over 1,100 straight days of sales, Tom’s team proves that consistency and culture matter.
For any entrepreneur serious about growth, leadership, and transformation, Tom’s message is a bold reminder: success is inconvenient, and that’s exactly the point.
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what's up everybody? This Ryan Van Orn back with another edition of scaling up success, powered by synergist. Today I have a good friend of mine, tom Reber. He has many businesses the contractor, fight, simplified painting and published author. I got his book right here Sell unafraid. It's a good read. You got to get it. Tom the man, the myth, the legend. So glad to have you on the podcast today, my friend.
Speaker 2:Glad to be here, man. How you doing.
Speaker 1:Oh man, if I was any better, I'd be you, bro, like you're killing the game.
Speaker 2:Oh well, I appreciate that it's it is good to be me. I have a pretty good life, yeah, you do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you do. So, man, tell, tell the audience. I know you got your start back in in the Midwest on some stuff you know you had, you had some, you had some companies out there. But I mean, tell us a little bit about what the contractor fight's.
Speaker 2:All about my friend. Yeah, cool. So you know, like, like you said, I'm originally from town called wheaton, illinois. It's about an hour west of chicago. I grew up in the painting trade, uh, with an uncle and a grandfather. My dad was a tile guy and he was always crabby and he was hunched over his whole life and he actually shrunk as he got older and had these big knots on his knees from being a tile guy. So I'm like I'm going to do what my uncle does. So I worked for my uncle and we started working from when I was like 15. And then, when I got out of the Marines, I worked for him and, fast forward, I ended up starting my own painting business and then I sold that and then a few years later, somebody or about a year later after I sold it, somebody tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to speak at an event for helping businesses grow. And that's kind of how I got into coaching and I it was originally coaching all types of small business owners, entrepreneurs and then I guess it was a mid 2017, we just rebranded and because most of the people we were working with are in the home improvement space. I still speak to all different types of groups and things like that.
Speaker 2:But you know, the main gist of the contractor fight is the home improvement space. And so fast forward. We've got, you know, over 1000 episodes of our podcast, a couple thousand YouTube videos. You know we got literally home improvement contractors all over the world that we help. You know, one of the things we talk about is we want to help bring dignity and respect back to the trades, and that starts with working on the individual.
Speaker 2:And one of the things I'm always after these guys about is you got to build a business so you can stop stealing from your family. You know, as an entrepreneur, it's really easy to just undervalue yourself and not put the processes and systems in place that you need. And the net ROI on that is you steal time, money and memories from the people that you're working your ass off for. You know, so it's so yeah, I mean I could go on for days super proud of our community.
Speaker 2:We have an amazing coaching team we serve I don't know, probably a little over 2000 contractors a year are, you know, in and out of our world and and we love it. And then about a not even a year ago I I woke up one day and I said I'm going to start another painting company here in Colorado Springs and it's going to be the ultimate case study of everything that we coach in the contractor fight. So I'm running it part-time, my hours are part-time, but I have, you know, four crews out there. I've got a great salesperson, a great project manager, admin, assistant, all that stuff, and so we're just implementing everything that we teach in our programs and our company called Simplify Painting and it's been a good first. Nine first, uh, nine or 10 months, whatever it's been as if you didn't have enough on your plate.
Speaker 1:But here's the thing that that a lot of business owners may not get and you do definitely is understanding the leverage piece. So, like I mean, once you get to a certain level of being able to to implement certain things, it may not be like that 60 hours a week. Right, like tell, tell people how you've done that with, with, with, simplify so quickly.
Speaker 2:Well, it doesn't hurt that I had several thousand projects under my belt and I've been in that trade growing up, right? So that's I guess that that was my cheat code, right? You want to call it that where it just gave me the, gave me an edge because I had made all the mistakes already. You know I'm I learned years ago and I wasn't always this way, but years and years and years ago I learned how to get my ego out of the way and realize that your business will never grow if you're the smartest person in your company. Oh goodness, I have 30 years experience in the painting trade or whatever it is right, 25, 30 years. I know a lot, but my project manager there's not too many things he doesn't know. There's not too many things he doesn't know, you know. So I just, I just believe in hire people that are, that are amazing at what they do and the knowledge set and the skill set that they have, and and paint a vision for what we're building together and how they're a part of it, and then my job is to support them and it's not to be the hero. You know, in the early days it was all about me. You know, it was being the hero. I'm the business owner and everything has to run through me and that's just exhausting and that's why so many businesses are stuck and they don't grow. I mean, I don't care what kind of business it is, you know. And then I and I, and then I just hired a sales guy, probably about two months ago. He's doing amazing. He had zero industry experience but he knows how to roll the red carpet for people. He comes from the restaurant industry. He was the general manager of a few really nice restaurants and he was just tired of the restaurant life and my wife and I we had dined at his place a few times got to know him and then we ran into him one day and I'm like you know how's things over there? And he's like I'm not there anymore and I'm like what's up? And he's like I'm trying to figure out my next thing. And I said, well, let's get together and have a conversation. And now he actually works for Simplify Painting and he works for the contractor fight. So he works for both companies and typically I mean I'm simplifies such a new company that you generally don't go out and hire a salesperson this soon.
Speaker 2:But coming back to the vision for the company and my goal of why I started it. I'm not eating from it. You know what I mean. So I'm building a machine that's going to, that, that's serving people at a high level, and I know that that machine will never mature and grow if I'm the one doing all the sales Number one I don't have time. So so you, you know the was it years ago.
Speaker 2:Somebody said, like you can hustle your way to a million dollar business. You can hustle your way and you know you're you're still involved with everything, but you want to start. So you know, get into that. What seven figure business you want to get to like an eight figure business? Um, it's so much not about you, it's about people you bring on.
Speaker 2:And so I just intentionally went into this new venture last year with the mindset that my number one role is to support the team and to build the team. And I know when I hire good people, good character, we hope we have high standards, a lot of accountability, having each other's backs and those different things. I know it'll grow, because that's what happens, right? You know, you put, put a seed in the ground and you get it sunlight. You weed it and you put water on it. The shit grows. Same with a business. So yeah, man, it's.
Speaker 2:And there, you know, I'm like everybody. There's times where I see something come through and I'm like, oh, I got to go handle that, right. And then I always have to stop and just go wait a minute. You can't come to the rescue here and you have to be when you hire people. A lot of, I know I'm kind of all over, but a lot of people are nervous to hire people because those people are going to make mistakes that cost you money. But you have to rewind to when you first started. How many mistakes did you make that cost you money? But you didn't have necessarily a boss to report to or to be accountable to. You still made the mistakes, and those mistakes they compound in a good way to give you wisdom. So you have to be willing to invest in people, and that means their mistakes as well.
Speaker 1:That, by all the way, our audience that'll be $795 just for watching this. Guys, because those are some learning, learning tips and trades and nuggets right there from Tom himself, golden, my friend, golden, so man, and and and kind of going along those, those routes. And I was thinking about this while you were talking. It's like there's what I call the learning tax. It's like you pay the learning tax as you go along as a business owner and then one of the things that you've been able to build out simplify because of the other things that you've done. It's like when you build, like when I took one business and it may have taken me five years to get to a certain point and it could have been at. I know it's in a different genre, but the business that I've built now is, you know, six months after launching, is now exponentially farther ahead because of what I learned in that other business. Do you see that all also?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I mean my first year in business as a painting contractor, way, way, way way back 20 something years ago. My first year, our top line sales were $86,000. Right, yeah. And I want to say my second year, I did like 160. Then we jumped to like three and then it was five and so on.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, we're at a run rate and I'm what 10 months in, and I literally took two months off because I had so much travel and speaking in the wintertime with the contractor fight that I didn't do a dang thing at all for Simplify. I got too much crap going on with the contractor fight that I didn't do a dang thing at all for simplify, I just was, I got too much crap going on. And so if you take that in eight months, you know we're um, we're about a month away, month and a half, call it two months by our year year anniversary, we'll be at a million dollar run rate. Man, that's awesome, you know. So it's, you know this.
Speaker 2:This month, what are we? May 30th, we got a couple on the hook right now that we're trying to push over the finish line today or Saturday Emilio, my sales guy or, yeah, sales guy and I. So we're, you know, I want to say in. Was it April? Yeah, april, we hit, uh, about 75 grand and, um, this month we're, we're knocking on the door of I think, as of right now I looked this morning we're only at 62 and most of that's come in. The last week it was a slow start to the month, um, and so I I would say by June we'll be, we'll be at a solid pace to to hit that million dollar run rate. So, man, that's awesome, but it's because I got out of the way, ryan.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Out of the way. Like you know, I, I, I, I picked up a brush one time with this new company and I did it when I hired my first painter and we went, we actually I called a friend of ours and I said hey, I know you need your basement painted. I got a guy I got to try out. I got I need to know if he knows what the hell he's doing, right, yeah, and I think we'll come paint it. You just pay for the paint and it's on me and give me a great review. And so it was great. And so one day I picked up a brush and just to work with them and make sure, and he's now my. His name is JC, he's now my project manager and great guy. But that that's the thing I said earlier.
Speaker 2:So many of us as business owners, we don't get out of the way. We got it, we keep doing the thing. And as long as you're doing the thing, whatever the thing is, it's going to limit, you know, your growth. Now, if you love doing the thing, I have no judgment on that, but don't fool yourself and think that you're going to build, build like an eight figure business. Right, because you can't. If you're going to do the thing all the time, right?
Speaker 1:One of the things that I, that I kind of reiterate to a lot of business owners I come across and I talk to with uh, what we do is like, if you, if you are handling some of those tasks that uh are that you can have somebody do for $15 an hour, $20 an hour, whatever, it is right Um, you, you basically hired yourself as your own assistant and you probably suck at that job. So, like you know, you rewrite your damn job description. You know, get yourself out of the way is exactly what you've been saying. So, uh, you know, I love that, I love that mantra because it's like to me, I want to be valued at you know X amount of dollars, 300, 400, 500, a thousand dollars an hour, whatever it is. That's where I'd need to be and play at that level and then be able to have others be able to empower them up. So then they're, they're leading in those roles that they're in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Well, the thing is, if you don't get out of the way, let me back up. We call it the contractor fight, because the fight's between your ears. It's the way you think. Okay, yeah, just kind of a blanket context there you bring and how you're spending your time and we want to big, big concepts we talk about I talk about in the, in the book and stuff is that you know people need to audition for my time.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah, I love that land on my calendar, it has to make a case for why it needs to be there. Well, if you don't do that and you, you're, you're doing all these 15, $20 an hour tasks and stuff you end up having a business, you have a glorified job with overhead and a shitty boss. It's like the trifecta, right. So you know it's, you know you talk about those, those tasks. We just did a training thing I think it was last week for our group and I I gave an example. We had this guy come to us who was and guys, I again, I don't care what the industry is, these concepts, they're universal, right, a hundred percent. Yeah, he came to us and I want to say at the time my notes aren't here with it because I'm just thinking of it now he was doing about 600 grand a year in top line sales. He'd been in business for like eight years, right, hamster wheel, same year, you know, same results, different year every year. And whatever we did the math of the hours he was putting in, because he wouldn't get out of the way of the hours he was putting in, because he wouldn't get out of the way, literally, he was working so much and what he was paying himself was peanuts because he wasn't charging enough. Long story short, he was making like $12 an hour. If you did that as a business owner. What's funny is we helped him identify like what's your sweet spot in the business and for him it's sales. But his sales time was getting eaten up because he was in the thick of everything else and so he wasn't present, he wasn't following up, he wasn't prospecting and doing all those different things. Fast forward, a year later he was doing about 1.8 or 2 million. Fast forward, a year later he was doing about $1.8 or $2 million, paying himself about a quarter million a year, $300,000 a year within a year. And he was making under $100,000 that first year.
Speaker 2:And when he came to us, we tracked this thing in the contractor fight. We call it your effective sales rate. So if you take I got a calculator here If you take, if you go out this week and sell $25,000 worth of whatever your thing is and you divide that by the time you spent doing sales tasks. So for home improvement contractors like drive time, meeting with the client, typing crap up, revisions, you know all this other garbage right, which is why you got to pre-qualify, so you don't waste time with you. Don't live on what we call Hope Island, but anyway, say it took me 30 hours to sell that 25 grand. I have an effective sales rate of 833 bucks an hour, so that's the value I'm bringing to my company that week. So we track it with all our salespeople.
Speaker 2:Well, this one guy he went from spending his time doing 12, 20, $30 an hour tasks. Within a year, his effective sales rate was 43,000 bucks. Nice, that's awesome. And this year, in 2025, he sold I want to say in the first six weeks of the year, because he had taken things off of his plate. He just worked in his sweet spot. Like 80% of his time is just sales stuff because he's got the team in place. He did around 570 in sales in six weeks. He spent 13 hours. Wow, he only spent 13 hours on sales tasks, which was about 43 grand, yeah, but effective sales, right. So so, everybody listening, you're all salespeople, you sell your stuff. I encourage, I encourage you to do that math Right and and so and part of the reason he got there. Like he put in the work.
Speaker 2:I give him all the credit in the world, but you know, he implemented stuff that I talk about in the book, okay, called sell unafraid and and sales. You know the subtitle is unleash sales success through personal discipline. Sales is a discipline game, right, it's not a numbers game and all this other crap people are going to tell you. It's about are you controlling the things that you have control over each and every day, yes or no? That's it.
Speaker 2:And what I find, um, the I've done. I do not just in the home improvement space, but like I train other things. Now I find I've done. I do not just in the home improvement space, but I train other things now. I mean, we pitched in the home improvement, but then it just kind of people are always going, hey, can you come speak or do a workshop, right. So what I found from doing all these workshops coaching thousands of people a year and all this stuff is the average salesperson has what I call two mediocre sales days a week. A mediocre sales day is defined as not whether you sold something or not today, because you really don't have control over that, right? But did I do the things that lead to a sale prospecting, follow-ups, we, we.
Speaker 2:There's a thing we called UITs unexpected intentional touches, where literally it's just a text to a past client, we, we. There's a thing we called UITs unexpected intentional touches where literally it's just a text to a past client because there's, there's money in your database, guys, people that have already paid you, they'd pay you again, right, but you fall off the radar because you're too busy chasing new leads all the time. And so I I mean I just sent a UIT the other day woman we did a $16,000 painting project for, and literally I think it was last what's today, friday, it was last Wednesday I sent her a UIT I send three a day, by the way, okay, every day to pass clients and I go hey, you know her name. I said Tom just wanted to see how things are looking. Hit me back when you get a minute, that's it, that's a UIT.
Speaker 2:Okay, if you, if you were a mortgage person and you help somebody buy a home, you know, send them a couple UITs once a quarter or whatever it is, and just go. Hey, I was just going through my files, saw your name and I was just curious. You know how's the how's the new home working out that files saw your name and I was just curious. You know how's the how's the new home working out? That's all it is. The goal is not to sell something, it's to stay on their radar. But anyway that that UIT turned into about $30,000 more work that she wants done between June and July, just because I reached out. So I have control over that as the point.
Speaker 2:So, anyway, back to the mediocre sales days. I'm a data guy. So there's about what? 264 working days a year, right, give or take, if you have two average sales days a week, that's 104 days that you're not controlling. What you have control over, which is about 39% of your available sales days. Think about that, right, think about that. So now this is where it gets crazy. So say you got a $2 million sales goal and there's 264 working days, that means you're selling about 75, 75 a day. Now, I know you don't close a $7,500 job every day, right, but the concept works. That means you take that average times the 104 days, you're leaving $790,000 on the table, woo, wow. Because you didn't choose to get off your butt and do the things that you know move relationships for it. And this is things like role-playing, like right now. Like I heard a stat the other day, less than 5% of all sales professionals role-play every week. My goodness, my goodness, they need me.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Our whole team role plays every morning.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we role play every day. Yeah, Inside our, our main group coaching program it's called battleground and the contractor fight. Every weekday at 10 o'clock mountain time, we have live sales tray role play calls. Role play calls where our our members get on and they role play with our coaches or each other and they get coached on the fly and this and that they bring scenarios to the table. Man, I ran into this the other day Because if you're not role playing, you guys, you're practicing on your customers. Oh yeah, and that's like going to this, it'd be an nfl team not doing shit during the week, showing up on sunday and trying to work it out exactly, that's called the jacksonville jaguars.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or the bears. I'm sadly a bears, fan.
Speaker 1:Fair, fair man you do it been dropping knowledge this whole episode, my friend, I appreciate it. One little piece, what would be a little piece of advice, a little nugget for someone that's starting their own journey, starting their own business?
Speaker 2:Yeah, starting their own business. Yeah, I think this is just opinion from my own experience, okay, and who I've helped and what I've seen Um, I know there's outliers to this. I think one of the biggest mistakes and I'm talking to small business owners here right, like yeah, don't bother with all that mission and vision shit early on. I see so many people they don't. I mean, guys, you don't have a business until you sell something, right? And so I just think the the first couple of years there's seasons of business, just like you know seasons in life. You know you're a toddler and then the preteen and all that other crap, right, this is the stage of your business where you got to prove that anyone, that people want what you have and that you have a little bit of game to develop and that you can. I think it's proof of concept to you the most, and so I encourage people from day one you need to get fanatical about marketing and sales, because you can't sell if you don't have leads, and you don't have, you know, if you don't have leads, you got nothing and um, and so this is building your brand, your personal brand, it's creating content, it's going live on video, it's doing what you're doing here with the podcast Like this? Is it guys? It's like, yeah, the first thing I did when I started the contractor fight was I started a podcast because I knew, like, if nobody knows we exist, then there's never going to be a business. And I was probably a hundred episodes in before I even made any money from it. No one ever reached out to me. So I just see I see too much focus on when I say this people, people don't think I think it's important. Systems are incredibly important, but I see so many people get bogged down in creating processes and systems when they haven't even proven they can sell Right, right. So you know, for me and that's how I'm wired, like, even when I coached high school football, I was an offensive coordinator and I'm all about scoring points. Right, we've got to score the points. Yes, special teams and defense are super important, but life's a lot easier when the cash register is ringing every day. So we have a mantra here in the fight and in simplify that you know we, we sell shit every day, period. Some are ringing the cash register. So in the contractor fight very different than painting, cause I don't, we don't sell a project every single day for painting we sell, you know, might be a day or two between or whatever. Sometimes we go on a streak, just like everybody, right? But in the fight, you know we're, we do a lot online, we do, you know, group coaching and all this other stuff, and then we'll put on workshops, we sell swag, online courses to help contractors, all these different things. And I forget exactly where in the book it is, but I and the streak is still going. But at the time of the writing of the book I'll just make up a number we were like a thousand days or whatever, 1100 days, 980 days, somewhere in there in a row where the cash register rang in the contractor fight and the streak is still going. Let's go, baby. And so what's fun? Back to the day.
Speaker 2:One thing you need to create a culture where we sell shit. Yeah, this is a culture where you carry your own water. Right, you need help. We're good teammates, but everybody in the company is responsible to help bring the cash reader. So we have a Zoom or not a Zoom, a Slack channel that need to hold this. See, look at that, there's another sale. So we got what do we got? We got one, two, three, four sales today for our main program, which is about 8 000 bucks that came in today. Um, since 8 30 am. Now it's a damn good day in this channel. Uh, where is it? It's under the general. I'll show you here because it just happened. We had, so I gotta, I gotta, find these. I need these now. I'm 55.
Speaker 2:May 26th, whatever day that was Tuesday, something like that yeah, monday, tuesday, yeah, tuesday, I think At 11 am we didn't have any sales yet that day, like on our online CRM with CRM with people buying courses or whatever. And whenever we hit around midday and there's no sales, everyone in the company sees that and it says no sales today. And everyone's phone dings and you'll see if you scroll down. My guy, neil, who's our CEO in the contractor fight he's a great guy. That message was at a what did I say? 11 AM.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And at 12, 16 AM, neil goes got one. Okay, so now, and that day was literally only like 300 bucks, right, right, which was like hang me type results. But the point is, is everyone, everyone on the team? We have a sales culture where, when everyone gets that, you'll see, like our coaches, our admin people, our marketing people, everyone starts posting shit all over online and our facebook groups and stuff. They're like hey, have you bought tom's new book yet? Hey, have you, you know? Um, uh, you know, here's, here's a, here's a cool t-shirt that we have, or whatever it is. I don't don't care what it is.
Speaker 2:The point is it's like I was just talking to one of my kids the other day. We have five kids and she's like she's 20. She's got like 16 grand in her bank account, like she's killing it Right, goes to school full time, works all this other stuff. I said, honey, I need to connect you with my guy, you need to start investing. And she's like I don't have enough money to invest. I said, well, first you have 16 grand in the bank. I said, but every month you need to put a couple hundred bucks. She's like well, what if I can't do a couple hundred? And I said then do five bucks. And it's kind of the same concept here. The amount doesn't matter, it's the habit, yeah, it's the mindset.
Speaker 2:We've built the habit here in the fight that it is just non-negotiable to have a day that we don't sell something, right, and and it's been what? Three years in a row now where we've not had a day without a sale. And every time I say that to somebody or whatever, I'm like oh my God, I hope today's not the day. So but that goes back to the, the things that we have control over. Yeah, you know, I just know, and you know this from what you do.
Speaker 2:You're mega, you're a baller man. You know that, like, if you don't like, whatever you do or don't do is going to compound, oh yeah, what comes down to them. I mean, you've been, you've been losing all this weight and working out and shit, and you're doing that because you're controlling what you can control. You're controlling what you put in your mouth and you control what you do with your body. Yep, pretty much the game plan right there. So with with sales, with business, leading your team, anything, there's always things that we have control over that I think it's really easy for us to get knocked off course and not pay attention to those things, because we get distracted by the shiny objects and the things that we think are really urgent, that aren't really that important and so forth.
Speaker 1:It's one of the things that I started changing in my mind is like I don't need motivation, I need discipline. God so true, you know, when you hit that level of just like, you know what, screw it. I need discipline. God, so true, you know when, when you hit that level of just like, you know what, screw it, I'm going to go anyway. Like it was like, like was it?
Speaker 1:Yesterday I went to the gym but I forgot my headphones halfway through. I was like, oh, this sucks this, this is going to be his poor. And then you know what I still did? I still went and lifted and got my fat ass off the couch and did it like that, like you, just, you just make it happen. Like it's all that mindset behind it of like I'm not, I'm not going to stop. Like, like you know, I, I have to get this thing done, and that's that's what I'm trying to teach, whether it's everybody that that's in our company or it's my kids. It's like you're teaching grit, you're teaching determination, you're teaching discipline, perseverance, resiliency. All of those things come with that. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:Oh, a hundred percent. I mean one of the things I talk about and I I keep going in the book book, because it's sitting in front of me and I'm seeing the tape Right here. Baby, remembering shit, right, one of the things I talk about in the book is there's the old saying that everyone wants to be a lion until it's time to do lion shit.
Speaker 2:Yes yes, everyone wants to be a baller, an entrepreneur and you know, have a million bucks and you know whatever it is until. But then if you have a conversation with their mindset, their discipline and their actions over the last 30 days, you usually find that they're full of crap because it doesn't support what they say they want. And one of the things I talk about a lot is that success is inconvenient. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't care if you slept well last night, you still need to get to the gym. It doesn't care if you have a argument with your significant other, you still have to do your job Right. You still have.
Speaker 2:Like every single one of us the most mega successful people in the world, down to the biggest losers on the planet, we all have shit happening in our lives. Yeah, that that are that are just not fun. They're inconvenient. We don't want to do whatever. And I always talk about everybody says win the day, and I get that, but I'm like, well, how do you win the day? You got to win the moments throughout the day, right. And there's, there was a years ago. There was like some brain study. All these smart people put together this study that was all about there's the average. This? This blew my mind. The average person has something like 10 or 15,000 decisions a day they make. Oh my goodness, 95% of them, or more, are insignificant. Like you, made the choice to pick your nose right.
Speaker 2:That's a choice, you, you, you changed lanes when you're driving you made a decision to change, like those are insignificant, but like, when it comes down to like significant decisions for your career, your business. There's around 60. Okay, but they, they say so if you just take that 60, so for me, um, create content, content today or don't create content today. That's a decision.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Role play, don't role play. Eat the donut, eat the apple, work out, don't work out. Whatever they are, we all have these things. So say you got 60. If you want to win the day in your building, your empire, wouldn't it make sense that you're going like 58 and two?
Speaker 2:yeah, exactly, exactly like 10, and 50, right, right, and that's I mean. When you said it's about discipline and habits. That's what made me think of that. Because, yeah, that's all it is you guys like, because every time you know, I see ed, my let's book, behind you there.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I know Ed and spent time with him. He's a great dude. I love him and Ed is. I just lost my train of thought.
Speaker 1:This happens to me all the time, man, I saw you meet him, it was like in Vegas, like about a year ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we hung out in Vegas, we hung out in Florida a few years ago One of the nicest guys, but anyway, ed, oh yeah, ed talks about. People are like how do I develop, how do I grow my confidence? You grow your confidence by honoring the commitments that you make to yourself first. So if you say you're going to get up at 5.30, then that means you don't hit the snooze, you get up. That's why I don't say what time I'm going to get in the barn. I get up when I want to get up Anyway, which is usually between 6.30 and 7. But anyway, we usually don't set an alarm. So you know why, brian? Because I have a team and I don't have to be anywhere right away. So that's some leverage stuff right there, baby.
Speaker 2:But, guys, if you want to build your confidence in whatever it is you're doing, honor the commitments on, you know, choose the right thing in the moment. I call it winning the moments and we have, you know, 60 to whatever moments. A day of significance. That if you, if you have a winning record each day with those moments, like and it could be as simple as you have an employee that's underperforming and you think to yourself, I need to talk to him. And then you have that other voice in your mind go. I don't know if I have time or I'm going to ride it out a little longer and see how he's doing. You know, I mean I've done this, we've all done this Right. But if you're going to win the moment, when you think of it, you go hey, ryan, you got a minute. Now it doesn't mean you're like you're jumping in their face, like when I have somebody that's underperforming because I'm from the Marine Corps, dude, it's like we know how to get in people's faces and I had to calm down for a while after I got out of the Corps and then I became a better leader for my company after I calmed down from the Marine Corps way of things.
Speaker 2:But anyway, one of the phrases that I learned to use with underperforming people usually and it's usually people that are like kicking ass and then they're not right, I'll pull you aside privately and I'll just go. I'll pull you aside privately and I'll just go. Hey, you, okay. And they usually go. What do you mean? And I go.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, the last couple of days, you know I was looking at the call log here and the sits that were set up and the appointments that are set or whatever it is Right. And, uh, last couple of days and this is key, guys, you got to jump on this shit early. You can't wait two months, right? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, but like, cause, you decided two months ago not to win that moment, by the way, so I'll be like you don't seem yourself the last couple of days. What's going on? That's? That's one of my word tracks that I use when I want to address something with somebody who's underperforming. You know, so we've got. If you want to win the day, you gotta, you gotta win the decisions and those moments throughout the day, and when you do that, you're going to move closer to that version of yourself that you want to be. It's that simple and that's also how your confidence grows. And that's why, ryan, I used to think so funny, so many, so much stuff's coming out right now.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, that's great. I remember when I was a total loser, had no money, I was a shit show man and I used to look at guys that were mega successful. We just talked about Ed Milet. I'd look at a guy like an Ed Milet, right, I'd look at a guy like an Ed Milet and I used to think things like God, he's cocky or arrogant, or oh, that typical wealthy person, right, typical person making money. You, they, they probably stepped on somebody's back to get it. And I tell myself all these stories what I've learned? And I know you know this, cause you're, you're like I said, you're a baller man. That's why we get along.
Speaker 2:It's, it's a confidence that is so rare. You think it's arrogance, because you know deep down the price you have paid for your success. Oh yeah, I think it was Jim Rohn who said don't seek to make a million bucks for the sake of the million bucks. Seek to make a million because of who you have to become to make the million Right. Seek to make a million because of who you have to become to make the million Right. And so every level that we have, you guys, in our life, our business, our relationships, if I'm here and I want to get to here, I actually have to put to death the previous version of myself, push it aside and become someone else. And that's the stack. And that's why we're hitting this confidence thing.
Speaker 2:So many business owners and salespeople and entrepreneurs they lack confidence. Well, they lack confidence because they're not consistently paying the price of honoring those commitments to themselves and controlling the shit they have control over. I promise you, when you do that, two huge things are going to happen. Number one you're going to be invincible. Oh yeah, yeah. Walk in the room with an air about you that nobody has. And the second thing is you're make a lot more money because 98% of the people that you are competing against even if it's other salespeople in your own office that you're competing against, whatever it is they're not showing up that way. They're just not.
Speaker 1:So and the thing that I get is like, like, don't compare your insides to somebody else's outsides, because everybody's a shit show. They just don't show it as much as you think they do.
Speaker 2:Well, dude I'll tell you, I made that mistake probably about eight or nine years ago yeah there was a guy that approached me um, details aren't important, but he wanted to be a part of what I'm doing With the contractor fight. He had another company and we served the same people and he's like can we work out some affiliate deal or whatever? To my fault and detriment, I kind of blew him off. Fault and detriment. I kind of blew him off because he wasn't where I thought he needed to be for me to do some sort of partnership with him. So I was looking at the outsides.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I was looking at the. This is the stupid excuse. It wasn't really this bad, but like it'd be. Like, oh, he's only got a hundred Instagram followers or or whatever, and he's such a new business and this and that. Had I taken the time to get to understand them and know them a little bit and not make that judgment and really really dug deep, it would have been a great partnership. And I blew it because I made a judgment based on the outside man. So and I thank God people didn't make judgments on me based on my outside because I mean, yeah, I made millions, I lost it all and went bankrupt and all this other stuff, and I remember trying to grind and scrape back to the top. Yeah, and I mean, I did a $500 speaking gig. I had to drive six hours one way, so it was 12 hours round trip speak for an hour, and I had to pay for my own hotel that night, oh my goodness, I made no money Right.
Speaker 2:Nothing I lost. It was negative for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And but nobody knew what was going the fire I had inside, yeah, and so I'm glad you brought that up because it reminded me like we got to be careful on making assumptions about people and this and that that's why you know what that taught me is be slow to develop an opinion about somebody before you get to know them and see how they show up and their discipline and their habits and consistency and those things.
Speaker 1:So man, I could talk to you for days and days, man, every time we get together it's like, it's like the we haven't skipped a beat. You know. You know what I'm saying and I just absolutely love talking to you, man, but I I know your time is very valuable. I I really appreciate you coming on, man, and uh, um, if there, if people are interested in the contractor fight or simplify painting, how can they get a hold of you, man, like, you know, like, and then you know what, what else you got going on?
Speaker 2:yeah, you know, contractor fight. It ain't anywhere online. Just type in the Contractor Fight and you'll find us Simplify Painting. It's Simplify with a Y Painting. In Colorado Springs we're mainly residential and light commercial property managers, designers, remodelers, stuff like that that we work with homeowners, whatever. We have a lot going on, man, I'm in the season now of just training up my team. We're building our sales, adding to our sales team in the contractor fight, so I'm full on, like literally you guys, developing teams. That's how I'm spending my time and I'm personally interviewing people and once they get past me, then they go to my team and that's where they usually get shot down, cause I like everybody and you fall in love with everybody first right.
Speaker 2:But you know, like I said earlier, you know the book came out a couple of weeks ago. It hit bestseller within a couple of days, which was awesome. But yeah, regardless of your, of your industry, I think there's some good stuff in here, concepts that are universal for people, and you can grab it on Amazon, and I think in a few months we'll have an audio version coming out. We haven't recorded it yet and and that that's that's on the on that implementation list, few notches down right now, but that implementation list a few notches down right now, but I love it, man.
Speaker 1:Uh, I, I'm halfway through it myself. I laugh in in pieces of that book because I know you as a, as a friend, I know I know your family, and it cracks me up, man. So, uh, did you get to the part about Albert yet? Not, not yet. But uh, I'm going to have to check that I'm, I'm, I'm working on that one man, but every time I can actually hear your voice when I'm reading that book. So I love it, man. So thanks again for coming on Scaling Up Success, my friend, it's always a pleasure and best of luck with everything you got going on. You know you got a fan in me. My friend Appreciate you man.
Speaker 1:Awesome, all right, once again, that's Ryan Van Arm Scaling Up Success podcast, powered by Synergist. Thank you so much for tuning in, guys, take care.
