Keynote speech - your mouth makes you your money. 1/4 . 4k video

and I want to teach you something a little inside trick a nugget doing commercial work is a really fast way to go bro okay the profit margins aren't there the scale of the job is there so a small commercial job you guys is about fifty to a hundred thousand dollars all right guys today is part of our listen while you work series and this is designed to let guys put on a pair of headphones while they're at work where they don't necessarily have to see the video to be able to understand what's happening and to be able to follow along now I call this one your mouth makes your money and I worked with dropper too big thanks goes on to those guys now the overall success of this video series really depends on you guys interacting with the video so if you could hit the like button and make any kind of comment I don't care what the comment is you could say anything it's a squirrel there you go I'm raising baby squirrels say squirrel anything helps you guys because what that does is that tells YouTube's algorithm that this is a good enough video to get a response out of you and instead of burying it in the sandbox it'll help promote it so other guys can see it as well and without wasting any more time let's get into today's video I got a question for you guys because anybody can anybody here guess about how many landscape companies there are in the United States that have between 3 & 6 employees nope keep going higher million in two thousand ninety to a hundred thousand companies with between three and six employees now look around this room you guys we don't have ninety to a hundred thousand people here doing so you guys have a very clear and distinct advantage at this point because you aren't reinvesting into your education which is giving you a one-up on every single one of those companies that's not willing to go and do the same thing that you guys are willing to do they're not willing to and they think they not have all the answers but what they're doing is they're limiting their resources okay because all of their answers come from one place right here you guys the most powerful thing that we have is each other that really is the absolute most impactful thing that I want you guys to pull out of this is the fact that you have a very wide pool of people that you can bounce ideas off from so I have I've got a little bit of experience in construction excavating landscaping I've been doing this since I was 18 years old and I'm 48 years old so I've been literally boots in the field for 30-plus years okay it took me about six years to get a two-year college degree schooling was not what my strength was okay now let's fast-forward I'm in Augsburg I'm in st. Thomas College private school I'm paying my way through college and I go to my professor and I say look I'm actually running a business while I'm paying for school and going to school and occasionally I have to take a phone call I have to step out of the classroom so I I kind of let them know ahead of time so that they're not like hey why is this kid walking out of my class all the time so they were all very cool with that very helpful right so my phone goes off and I'm like excuse me professor I'm gonna go out as I'm walking out the professor says well now there goes a real businessman and it stopped me dead in my tracks because I never considered myself to be a real businessman I just considered myself to be somebody that was hardworking driven and willing to go a little bit further than the other person so I ended up dropping out of college because why wouldn't what a great thought I'm so awesome I can just do this without college right smart move no but I did it doesn't make a difference now let's just talk about what happened right after I did that I started to do landscaping jobs I started to do retaining walls I started to do grading work I started to polish buildings pretty soon I'm not just a mall a shed I'm demolishing an entire mall pretty soon I'm not digging like a trench for a French drain of digging a Bernard superstore all of a sudden I'm like holy crap I'm getting bigger and bigger and I'm doing more and more let me ask you something did college teach me how to do any of that no no we're wait where do you guys think I learned how to do ok but how did a trial trial and error that's one way what else I ask questions I ask questions so when I was learning how to drive a dump truck it taught myself how to drive a dump truck I would literally jump up on the sill of all their drivers trucks Steve my head in their window go what does that button do on your dash and they would tell me what that button dip I bought a dump truck and the only way I could drive it is if I had the mechanic show me how to drive it because I couldn't take it off from the lot ok this is these are all real true stories so asking questions has been the most powerful and impactful thing that I've ever done if you guys are hearing my message what I want you guys to do is if there's any questions that pop up I don't want you to wait ok if we're talking today and a question comes into your mind ask it otherwise you're not going to learn right we can only as people take in about 20 minutes of information before it's like them I call it a bowl of cherries you guys so you have a bowl of cherries and it's plum full and we got another really good piece of information and we set it on that bowl of cherries and what happens to it rolls off you don't get anything so Phil's tucked Kathleen's on the job our crew has taught I'm talking I'm worried that you're not getting all of this okay and really if you have a question I'm going to stop it I'm going to answer it so then we can move on because the questions that you guys have are going to be something that somebody else might have as well and if you don't ask it am I losing anything am I cat hell no you are so ask a question don't stop okay so we have we talked earlier about nuggets who here likes to get wisdom nuggets everybody loves wisdom guys you surround yourself with good people if people are hard to find that's one of the things we're going to talk about today I'm gonna give you only five nuggets not gonna overwhelm you with Nuggets I'm not gonna dive deep because a nugget to me nugget to you and a deep dive could be two completely different things but I want you to do is I want your brain to start turning I want your wheels to start spinning I want you all to get out of your comfort zone and to start to do things and when you work outside of your comfort zone you expand when you unexpectedly stopped by somebody's house like Barrett did at my house right yeah I I've always really looked up to you and I really want to be happy too and I've never worked so I'm very down yeah I wonder find Sam - Eddie's anywhere so I went up to website and there was I stopped buying CDs me too me too I really like that dude a there's a few people that really look up what am i you find us right in show us around give us a soda three because that's how you learn you guys that's how you learn you get outside of your comfort zone in you pass now you have a pool of people in your local area okay how many of you guys regularly meet with your competition very few of you so far but for the guys that had their hands near how's Josh how's that working out for you you meet with your competition men guys I learned how to drive a bulldozer because my competition Rock going off on my site felt sorry for this 18 year old kid trying to work his way through college you know thinking a basement that's 25 feet deep a hundred foot across and 80 feet one other way was a tractor loader backhoe of all things been up there for weeks in the heat he's dropped driving by it's like here just take my dozer beautiful case a they was a case 850 I drove that thing for two weeks I'm like I'm buying dozer I'm buying a dozer this thing is awesome but if my competition hadn't reached out to me I would have lost that opportunity to learn what how much of an impact of bulldozer would have but that goes so much further you guys you've got to start reaching out and networking and you may have to be the catalyst you may have to be the first person in your area that says hey because they're not gonna look at you they're gonna look at you with mistrust most of them right I mean are you guys relating with me right now they're probably gonna look like what are you talking about I'm just like hey you know what you know we got similar sized businesses I would just love to just shoot ideas fantasy I don't care how you approach it I don't care what you do but when you take that first step you may get shot out of the saddle but who cares there's the loser right they're the ones that aren't taken up what you're putting down so then you do it again and you do it again you do to get into the certifying a pool of people that's willing to work with you that's willing to take it to the next step and you're going to be able to bounce ideas off from each other and your growth is going to explode right that's what dirty lucky University was founded on from was having all of this wealth of knowledge you know you see these businesses that talk about their pool of people and how many years of experience they have okay they talk about how many years like this collective pool of people 200 years of experience it's like yeah that's amazing but you guys can all have that right and it can be for free you can just start to communicate with the people in your local area and you're gonna be able to grow and do things that you could never do before well I want to get a little bit specific okay now this might I don't want to die too deep on this one but I want to talk about something inside of our actually letting you guys are in landscaping take dirt working blue-collar what I want to call this right how many guys understand pretty good the difference is between commercial and residential work okay that's a very small fraction how many guys would like to understand the differences between commercial and residential work okay so let's talk about that right now right so when I first started I started out doing residential work and then I seen all these companies and they had all the little equipment you guys they had all the things I want all the toys that I wanted but they were commercial and I thought it's gotta be commercial I've gotta do commercial work right so I taught myself how to big commercial work i sat down for one afternoon had one afternoon with a guy that was willing to teach me how to fit a commercial retaining wall and he sat down just like Joel sitting here right now because here's this this this this this he spent an hour with me and it was one hours what changed my life because I sucked every moment of that hour in and I learned how to bid commercial retaining walls and so then I went on became this competition and then I went out and I started to dominate the Midwest area bidding and doing installing commercial retaining walls and I grew from a small company of 1/2 crews to five crews and I was King of the Ring I mean I was doing a half million dollar retaining walls I had those big big numbers behind me but I didn't have the most important thing that Phil talked about earlier that's the profits ok my numbers were tight you guys I know my numbers were tight because I befriended one of the developers and he sat down at lunch with me knee pulls out my competitors bid and he pulls out my bid and he put some side-by-side and he goes what's wrong with you guys and I said what are you talking about and he said you and your competitor are one penny apart on a half a million dollar job how am I supposed to choose between the two of you that's how tight our numbers were we had these things down there was five of us that had these numbers dialed so tight that we knew where everybody else was I could look at a number and go you're losing money I'm gaining money oh I might not make money okay so we're talking about I knew what was going on with commercial versus residential and I want to teach you something a little insight trick a nugget doing commercial work is a really fast way to go bro okay the profit margins aren't there the scale of the job is there so a small commercial job you guys is about fifty to a hundred thousand dollars in that within dirt working in retaining wall commercial retaining walls the things that I was tryin tempting to dominate that's a tiny guy now in residential is that a pretty big job okay so in commercial world our profit margins were also ten fifteen percent that means if it rains that day or if a contractors not too happy with us guess who's losing we are right and a residential job our profit margins were thirty five forty percent so I did this for years I got up to five crews we were doing millions of dollars every single year I would just jump around I would go to the Minnesota Zoo and I would see my crew working and thousands of people would walk by and see all my equipment and I'm just like thinking I'm doing the right thing and I'm doing everything wrong because I'm not growing my profits I'm growing for just the sake of growth and so in 2007 I stopped and I evaluated where we're at and I said I don't want to work just to work I want to make a crap ton of money you guys that's my goal and so I said to my top to your people we're gonna cut the business in half I was totally lucky alright you guys this is the end of part 1 of your mouth makes your money now I'm going to actually put the next video up right away so that you guys don't have to go searching for it and remember if you guys could comment anything that you could comment on this video helps out at all and come back tomorrow because the second part will be up right away god bless go get them and I hope this tennis stuff helps you guys out