On today's episode of Gathering the Kings. Talk to your employees. You'll find out everything you need to know about your business from them. And facilitate a culture in which they're okay to talking to you. You are listening to Gathering the Kings with Chaz Wolfe, featuring fellow 78 and even 9 figure business owners who have real battle scars from business and life, but have prevailed as the team that they are designed to be.
We welcome high performing entrepreneurs to the stage in order to reveal the reel of the reel, on what it takes to build a successful business today. Success and how you too can get there. Through this dialogue, you will learn the value of growing your network and surrounding yourself with power players and keys like today's guest. Grab your pen and notebook because we're about to dive in. What's up, everybody? I'm Chaz Wolfe gathering the Kings podcast.
Today, I've got William Boakas here on the King stage. My brother, how are you? I'm doing fantastic, man. Bro, how how how did I butcher that last name on that? No. You actually got it perfect, man. Just had a wonderful glass of Culligan water start the day, of course. And, some some coffee made with, Culligan water, you know, so promoting the brand. Jay Wesley? Excited to have you here, man.
I just realized right right when I hit the record button that I hadn't asked you about your name, and it's it's always the ones that I don't have ahead of time where I'm like, oh, no. But you're saying I did it. So that's great. I'm excited to hear your business story, man. I'm excited to get to know you here. You obviously have already kinda hinted at what kind of business that you're in, but for clarity's sake, what kind of business do you own, brother? Oh, yeah.
So I own a Culligan Water dealership here in Chico, California. We serve, a huge area. If you're if you're familiar with California, so we go down almost to Sacramento, then all the way up to the Oregon border. So huge track of land, helping people with their water, helping people with their problems, That's what I say we do, man. You've got a water problem. We have a water solution. So whether that that water smells wrong, it has the wrong color to it.
It's got hard minerals in it, and it ruins all the things in your house. You know, what we do is we've we know all these problems. We've dedicated to solving these problems and so we can walk to someone's house and give them a fantastic solution, solve all these problems, and make their life better. So we're a problem solver. Yeah. I love that Chaz, as all business owners are.
And, so that's why you and I are gonna we're gonna unwind a few things that you've done over the years that, hopefully, can help the listener. Before we get started in your journey though, I wanna know, you're a young guy. We've talked with we both got young kids, and we've talked business. We've talked family. We've talked energy, but, like, why are you doing this, man? Why why why do you push as hard as you do? What's what's the bigger play for you? Because it's fine.
It's enjoyable, you know, building and growing and doing all these things. And, to me, it's about success. A couple different factors. You know, I didn't grow up with the most stuff Chaz I said. And so for me, you know, I think selfishly kind in the beginning was like, I need to build this so my kids can have more opportunity than I did, which is a story. And, I mean, I think a lot of business owners have. You know, you wanna wanna build that success so my kids can have that success as well.
And it kinda actually morphed too into a thing of I want that same success for my employees. Yes. And I wanna build a culture, and I wanna build a place where everyone loves coming to work every day, which is really, really hard to do because there's gonna be bad days at work. There's bad days no matter who you are, no matter what do know how much you love in your job. So That's right. You know, throwing that out kind of out the window, but I wanted to build a place that I love to come to work.
Right? Because that's one of the great things you can do as a business owner is you can make the culture whatever you want it to be. Right. So why not make it the best culture out there? Right. Make it the place everybody wants to work at. Make it the place where people come into work. Gosh. You know, we we have a guy. We call him a singing salesman because he every time he came into work, he's saying, I got a guy.
You know, I got some texts and stuff that come in, and they just light up your life, the customer's life, the other employee's life, because they love being here. K? Yeah. They're like, I can't tell him what time to come in the morning because if I don't, he's here sooner than that, because he just can't wait get to work. And so you embrace that mentality. And so for me, what I can do, an opportunity I've been given is I can turn and give them success as well.
Yeah. And so it's all about teaching them, getting them to grow, be better, push themselves you know, when they're in uncomfortable situations, how do we deal with that? Be comfortable with being uncomfortable. That's always a fun one. Right? So, what I wanna do is just pass on what I've learned, what I'm learning still, Yeah. And to be able to help people also be more successful. And so to me, Chaz it translated from not just my family alone, but to my employees.
And so That's the number 2 reason. Probably number 3 is the one that helped my community. Water treatment isn't easy. It I've been in an industry 15 years, and I'm still learning. And, it's just a, really difficult market. There's tons of things on the internet. You know, that's true. Not true. This that company is trying to sell you stuff. And I don't wanna sell anybody anything. You know, I'm on education. That's our primary focus is educating our customer, and so that's what we do.
We educate them, and then they can make an Do they wanna be a Culligan customer, or do they wanna go somewhere else? Chaz they go somewhere else, I'll still help them because I'm about building relationships. That's number 3. I wanna build relationships with people, my customers, and, Take care of the community. Money is the money is the last thing. If you do, I think, if you do these things first, the money will come. The success will come.
But if you're more focused on on the numbers as opposed to what the culture and what the feeling and what the and community environments telling you. Sometimes it gets lost. Yeah. A 100%. And I I agree completely. And it's like you took a took the play or the playbook, right, right, from a a page in in, gathering the kings because we talk about this transition from warrior to king, warrior being obviously selfish and and you Chaz you have to survive the literal battle. That's okay.
There's a period of time where you have to do that in order to grow the business. But at some point, there has to be a bigger perspective, and it's about buying your time back for your family. It's about pouring into your team. It's about pouring into your community because that's the perspective of a king. Right? It's it's the weight of the crown, if you will.
It's the it's the all this stuff happening all at the same time all the way around me, and it's okay that all these people are counting on me because this is kinda what we're made for. And when you said it's fun, I get to go after it. It doesn't mean necessarily that they're challenges. Right? We're gonna get into some of those, but it's what you're designed for. You've you've water bottles or no water bottles. You're you're designed for this, man.
And so I think that, we had a little bit of fun talking about that before we hit the record button, but it it's it's it's who we are. We would be doing this no matter the widget. And so I appreciate you sharing. I wanna get into your storage just a little bit. How did you how did you get into the water treatment business? How did you even become a business owner? Give us a little bit of the the beginnings. Okay. Yeah. For sure.
So, I didn't start into this business even thinking or knowing about owning what have you. I got into it just by I was working 2 jobs. I was kinda going on in off school. I didn't really I I knew what I wanted to do, didn't know what I wanted to do. Sure. And then, it's perks of Grapevine from some friends that they're hiring over coal again for a rapidly driver. So I was a manager to Subway, you know, do it make baking bread, making sandwiches, doing this, Chaz, the other thing.
And it's like, hey. We're looking for a wrap delivery drive which is delivering £40 back to salt, driving a big F Five Fifty around, very different job. And so I was like, well, there's nowhere to go in the food industry. So I took a pay cut, you know, to come take this job, started off delivering salt, doing Chaz, And I did that for a couple of years.
WorkmoF became a service technician so that way I could work on work on treatment equipment, residential, commercial, fixed water softeners, and water filters, and Wolfe house systems, and commercial things. So I learned how to fix stuff and problem solve Yeah. And, from there, learned installation. So I got involved in installation department. I got involved in the warehouse. So I was kind of working, working, working, but I still had this Education's important.
Yeah. I think I got that kinda from my mom. And so I was going to night classes. I was doing this. And then certainly was just like, what if I just commit to something? Like, I'll commit to school. I'll commit to this. I'm gonna commit to, these things. And so, I worked for a guy, one of our customers, actually, and doing agriculture. Okay. So a Com a complete left turn? Compl. Yeah. So while I'm working at Culligan, right, one of the guys working here was working weekends for him.
And he came and talked to me, and he's like, hey, man. This I'm doing this for this guy's weekend. It's really hard work. I'm working out in the fields. I'm doing this. And I'm like, that sounds like fun. Can you give me his number? I like to up and see if I can get a job. So I called them up, negotiated a a career, a job, and I started working for this guy. And what was so cool about this is I saw he didn't have to he had an amateur orchard, which we call ammons. It's what we call around here.
Yeah. But he worked at the Ammon Orchard and, so I ended up helping him with that. We did a bunch of different projects around, but this dude loved going to work. Every day. He didn't have to. He didn't have to go work out in the orchards and do this. But he wanted to. I looked at Chaz, and I was like, I want something here. I want this. And I thought it was an agriculture. So Got it.
With so I was like, I'm going back to school, getting a good degree, ag business and, you know, that's what I wanna do. Something in agriculture. That fire lit me up that I could see somebody have. So I can't I'm working a Culligan at the same time, and so I started going to more night classes, but now I have a direction. I wanna transfer the university here, get a 4 year degree, And, so I took, 2 accounting classes at the same time. And I did special permission. No one's ever done it.
Teachers told me pick 1, you gotta fail it. No one could pass both at the same time. Right? I have the highest grade in both classes. Wow. That's because you vote yourself. To it. No regrets. I don't wanna look back and go, what if I did a little bit better? What if I Wolfe a little bit harder? You don't wanna lose Put it all out on the field as say? Exactly. So I was Braggadocious, the owners of the time that, hey. I've did this thing. I passed both glasses and they're like, interesting.
Our accounts receivable person Just quit. I'll come work in the office and do, like, accounting stuff, and I'm like, well, sure. And at that time, we didn't have anybody with any tech knowledge in the office. So we couldn't offer a tech support line. Well, here you go. This guy that's, you know, been working the company for all these years. Now I'm in the office, and I can I haven't yet had to figure out how to use the phone and the software and all stuff, but now I was thrust into this, hey?
I can answer people's questions because I've worked on it. I don't Got it, though. Fixed it. I can advise people that walk in the door. I now became an expert in this. So fast forward, again, I'm getting my degree. I took 25 units my last semester. Because I'm Chaz. 4.0, top of my class, you know, you you gotta do it. You do it. Right? You gotta do it right. Do it. You gotta do it. So, I had 2 job opportunities. One was here at Wolfe again. As the operations manager. I had a second one for USDA.
Okay. They wanted me for a couple different things. So my mom and her she's like, you gotta go for USDA. It's a guaranteed job. Gonna have great benefits, but rest and that kind of thing. But if Culligan came a caveat Okay. That if I stayed on and I helped them build their business and then pay off their debts, I get first shot at buying that business. And that was, like, the crossroads in your life. Right?
Do you take the easy road, the USDA government safe job and have the white picket fence and the, you know, it's simple. Or do you dive into that chaos on the other side? And so I was like, I'm going for it. I'm going I'm going for the chaos, man. You know, I to me, it just seemed more fun. And I didn't wanna leave something on the table because USDA was always there as a backup. So I jumped in the call again. Became the operations manager, then, had to become the sales manager.
So I had to learn about sales. You've been in every department, row. Oh, yeah. Like, I've walked in, and this is the thing for me Chaz I walked in, you know, with a degree in business, thinking I knew what I was doing, I would talk about mistakes. Here's the biggest mistake ever. And so I did things the way you're supposed to do it the way I thought things were the way the management class told you to do it. It didn't work. It did it failed.
And so what I decided was, like, what if you do everything, the exact opposite of what everybody else is doing? Like, the exact opposite. Yes. Do it. Don't do it the same. Do it the other way. And do you know what happened? Ding. Success. Start a lot. So so tell us, give give us some give us some practicals here. We're we're all on the edge of our seat going, okay. Yeah. What does that mean? Yeah. Okay. Perfect. So, we talk about motivation, motivating people. Right?
Most companies, most you know, you have that mid level manager who hands out write ups, hands out disciplinary, you know, shuts people down. K. And when you shut people down that way, there's scared to go be successful because they're scared of the repercussions. Sure. But what if you ignore all those, basically, right? There's some things you have to talk to people on. Yeah. But what if you celebrate the success.
Just look at the positive, build on the positive, give them tools to be more positive, give them the things they need to be. Instead of you know, harping on someone for being late every day, find out why they're late, see if you can help them, see if you can help and build a trend to be more successful. Yeah. Let them needs to give them the tools. Right? I say, you know, life, you have a tool belt, and you're given tools. And you can choose to put in your tool belt.
You can choose to throw it on the ground. But if you've got it in your tool belt, you can use it again. And again, and you can build, and you can make better tools on your tool belt so you can go and be more successful. Sure. And I think That's when things started to change. Also, like like I said before, always be the dumbest person in the room. Just learn just whatever. Everyone's out there There's some fantastic resources. Just listen, learn. Don't be too committed to one of your own ideas.
Yeah. That's good. You know? For for us, we have a bunch of different departments. Right? We've got a service department that's working on stuff. We've got installation department. We've got a route department. We've got, you know, people in the office answering phones. Well, if I'm gonna change something for my route deliveries driver or driver's job. Right? Yeah. I better bring him in on it. And I better let him think it's a good idea because if I just tell him, hey. I need to do x, y, z now.
Right. Right. They're only gonna do it because they have to. Yeah. But if you say, hey. And then it'll only go so go for so long. Here's what yeah. Exact here's what we're seeing. How do you think we should make this better? How can we fix it? How can we improve it? And get them involved because if they give you an idea, And they said, hey. What if I was to do this instead? Boom. Dynamite. Let's do that. Let's try it. And check back in. Hey. Is that new thing we're trying to work in?
Well, sort of, but here's the okay. Cool. Here's some here's something I've done. Right? Cause I've done their job, and that's why I'm in a unique, excuse me, situation here, is that I've done all these kind of jobs. So I've seen it, and the guys respect me for it because I know I'll be out there. We've been in the shop or building equipment or doing this or doing that. And so, But, yeah, involving people in the decision making process is huge because you're affecting their everyday life.
You might say, well, we need to hit this metric, this number in your business, right, that's how we kinda look at things. And you go, well, what if I talk to them about it? How can we make this better? How can we improve this? How can and they know because they're doing the job every day. They're the ones talking to the customers. They're the ones that interacting. So Exactly. Yeah. Well, you've given us you've given us already a shot in the arm of energy.
I hope the listener's paying close attention because, man, you're moving fast, and I love it. Usually usually people have to tell me that I'm the shot of energy and that I need to slow down. I'm I'm, I'm loving the pace that we're in right now. So, Yeah. Keep going. We we've got we've got you you on this employee track, and it all comes to a culmination of actually solidify, be the employee kind of forever and ever, or go go to the route of chaos, potentially be able to buy in.
Obviously, you did. It's your business now. You've you've got all these opportunities, to be able to build your team. Would you say that that's been, like, you know, my question of your best decision or your or your quality decision that you can look back on that we can learn from, is that this in the process of building a team give people a level of autonomy and care and and focus on the positives, or did you wanna add something different?
Yeah. I I think I think it's a fantastic takeaway as far as a great decision. Of course, one of them is, you know, don't don't leave anything behind. Sure. You know? You know, don't be scared to jump in. Both feet. You know, life presents you with all these doors, and you can choose to jump on through. Or if you want, You can close it. It's up to you. And so I've just been jumping through open doors, man, and just learning from everybody I can and just talking to people.
Having them last doing it. Oh, it's so much fun. It's what I love. I love sharing knowledge. I love talking to people. You know, I've devoted 15 years of my life to water treatment. And if I can't talk to you about it for 5, 10 minutes, gosh, what am I doing, man? You know, I like to joke and say, hey. If you could find a question about water, water treatment that I can't answer. I'll buy you lunch. And I tell all my employees that, you know, people are into. It's like, oh, I'll buy you lunch.
If you Chaz find something, you'll get them looking. Get them intrigued. Get them to find out because what I love about water treatment is that you never know everything. Ever. It's every day you can learn. And so if they're receptive to learning, maybe that's the other thing. Right? Being receptive to learning. It's just and learn how you learn. That's something that took me a long time to find out is Chaz, how do you learn? Do you learn by listening to something?
Do you learn by writing it down? Do you learn by typing it? Do you learn by saying it out loud or whatever? You know, how how do you learn by moving while you're talking? Right. You know? So That's why I think I've been able to have a lot of successes. I realized how I learned. Sure. And I can implement that tool to make myself more successful. So I can Yeah. There's there's a Exactly. Yeah. The psychological piece of not only just remembering it, but it becoming a discipline or a habit. Right?
Like, Tomic Habics talking about just changing your identity eventually. Right? So you've not only embodied the the identity of what it means to know water treatment, but you your identity is one of jumping through doors. Like, you just said it casually, but that is genuinely what you believe, and it's also your identity, which I think every entrepreneur agrees with, to a degree. We've all jumped through at least one set of doors.
And, and I think that the the takeaway, like you said, is like, look, it's okay. Keep jumping. It's an there's another one, and then there's another one, and there's another one. And potentially, there's some downs in that, but, through the process, there there's more to have. I wanna flip the coin on you though, William, because you've you've given me a lot of positivity. A lot of a lot of, you know, a lot of things we've worked out because of this y, x, y, z. What hasn't worked?
What was the bad decision that you can think of that we can learn from? Yeah. Believing I knew what I was doing. And we talked about it in the beginning, you know, making kind of those mistakes of getting in sometimes like, oh, I I know what this is, right, instead of taking the steps that are normally there and going, hey. Do I really know? You know, I've made a tremendous amount of mistakes, but I think The mistakes are gifts. Sure. Because they always come with a lesson.
Yeah. You always learn something. And so like, you know, thinking about this question, the mistakes made. It's like, well, gosh, if I didn't make that mistake, I wouldn't have gotten better. So was it a mistake? Right? Or is it just the nature of growing? Step in the process. Exactly. Yeah. Learned a tremendous amount about California sales tax rules. Not because of one of my mistakes, but because somebody else's mistakes. And it presented itself, you know, with object now.
I know a lot about it, and so it's great. Yeah. I think one of the things the biggest lesson is in business, there's only hard lessons. Yeah. There's you know, that's that's pretty much what it is. You and you can learn from it, or you don't. But there's you you know, you gotta really know. You gotta kinda be the on a little bit of everything or know somebody. You know? Right. Get a good CPA. Get a good landlord.
Get a good these things because you can admire yourself in those details of, like, reading a contract or something, or you have a guy who you trust, happy who you trust to be able to help. Yeah. And that's one of the things. A mistake is I thought, you know, I gotta read everything. I gotta do all these things. I gotta protect my business. Right? I gotta hold on to it. And if I give it to somebody else, well, what if they make a mistake? Well, find good people.
And if you do a a good job, could people seemingly come out that would work and you find them? And now you can trust them, and now you can, you know, move some of those eggs out of your basket knowing Chaz guy's got your best interest, or that girl's got your best interest. Are those people have your best interest? So, yeah, trying to do anything, man.
Yeah. Well, I'm it it as as Chaz as in encompassing as that is, obviously, I love the the escape goat there, which is you have to be good at everything, or you know somebody who is that you trust. And so, I think that those are two steps phase 1 and phase 2, if you even if you Wolfe, of, you know, we all think at the beginning, we have we have to be good at it ourselves.
That's what's overwhelming, and we're wearing too many hats, and and things are confusing, and we're working, you know, night and day. And, until you can get to that place where you're like, okay. I I actually I'm gonna die. Or I'm I I I so I need to I need to hand some this off, or I need to hire some key people, or I need to find a CPA that I can trust, or whatever it is. It's just a different layer of thinking.
Obviously, you know, STEM is very sim similar to, to Henry Ford, you know, when he was under persecution and all that fun stuff of, like, yeah, I can just hit a button on any part of my desk and, summon the right person with the right answer, It is not necessarily about knowing the information. It's about knowing how to get the information and some of that's in our brain. And so you're 100% right.
I think that the, the idea or the notion of being excellent is something that the listener should take away from you as well because you had the chance to go through all these different categories. Or divisions in your business. Maybe not necessarily every business owner has had that where they didn't have, you know, multiple years kinda work on someone else's dime to kinda figure all this stuff out, but the reality is still the same is that you still gotta do it with excellence.
And so you either get in there and learn it and do it with excellence, or you hire it out. Like, that's you you've given us a a very clear roadmap on that. What about now? Like, okay. So you're successful. You got the the the great mustache, you know, for the listeners and listening on Apple or Spotify you can't see this guy's rocking mustache, but in all seriousness, you you have a certain level of success. Now what does a decision look like coming across your desk now.
You mentioned earlier, including people, especially your team members. Is there a certain process that you go through? Is there anything else you wanna add to Yeah. Okay. So important decisions. The interest you bring this up. So I think this is learning about yourself. Right? I think the best when I'm doing something monotonous. Right? Yep. Is what I learned about my brain. Right? When I'm sweeping the floors in my shop or I'm doing this or doing this, that's That's just your body's doing it.
You don't have to think about what you're doing. You're getting something accomplished. Right? And so I love accomplishing something simple, but it allows me to silence. No podcast. No music. No sound. No one's talking. Right? The boss is working. So you get a little bit of, like, quiet, right, because, like, what he's doing something out here in the shop or whatever it is. Right? Right. That's when we can think when we turn everything off Yeah. And you're stuck with your own thoughts.
And I love that. And so I I purposely try and give that to myself every day. So we're talking about decisions. That's the thinking time. So I can think about it. I can come up with stuff. I can what do I like? What do I not like? Where do I foresee this going? Right? Yeah. And then it becomes, you know, we could start jokingly call throwing things against the wall. We'll just sit down and talk. Talk it out. So we have something going on.
We both know that there's whatever we're gonna make a decision on. He thinks differently than I did, which is why we're great. So great together. And so he'll think I'll think we come in and meet together, and we just throw things against the wall. Just throw them rapid fire, know, what if we did this? What about that? What about this? And then, you know, then what we do is we just shoot each other down. Here's what's wrong. Here's why it won't work. Here's why it's bad.
Here's why it's not good. You know, Here's here's all the things that, like, all the negative. We wanna get all the negative out. Yep. So then we can go instead. Okay. What's left? Yep. And then of these, what's gonna be the best? Can we make it work? Our business. Yeah. How can we make this work? And so that's kind of our decision make the process that we've kinda come up with.
And, whether it takes an hour or takes 4 hours, you know, it it doesn't matter as long as you get to the right seemingly the right answer. And then don't fall in love with your answer at the end of it. If you fall in love, and this is the only way we can do this. Well, now you're stuck and committed, but be adaptable. Be pliable. You know? Yeah. Really, really good feedback. Yeah. Exactly.
Yeah. You've gotta be able to commit to getting the answer, but knowing that at the end of the day, it can it can change with the wind. And and it should, actually, that, you know, March of 2020 came and changed a lot for a lot of people. You know? So, if we don't have that just identity of being pliable, like you're talking about, it just you're just not gonna you can make it for a little while. Yeah. But it's just it's just not gonna be, something that, turns into longevity.
You brought us over to, to our speed round here. You're you're, you've been in all these different departments. In your business, and lots of things to track, I'm sure. But if you could only pick one thing to track forever and ever, what would that one thing be? If we're talking without a metric behind it, Right? I think the one thing I would track is the success of my employees and have to talk to them. Sure. The culture.
Right. Track the culture because I think that's how that's the most important thing. Because if the the people if your guys and gals and stuff working for you aren't happy, Chaz means your company's out there not doing things right. That way that means they're running to people who maybe aren't so happy with our company. Right. Or maybe pad issues or maybe, you know, get somebody on the phone or whatever the thing may be. So to me, you know, that's what I would say. Talk to your employees.
You'll find out everything you need to know about your business from them and facilitate a culture in which they're okay talking to you. Love that. It's gotta be a two way street, a partnership, if you Wolfe, even folks that, don't have actual partnership, you know, there's gotta be that that, that give and take. And also too, you mentioned it earlier, just the autonomy.
It when you give someone the ability to think for themselves or even in a situation with you, it it it makes them come alive in a different way, but it also it brings solutions that maybe you aren't aware of because you're not sitting in that seat every single day. So I think that that's a a huge piece of the culture, as well. What book, would you recommend, William, to a 6 figure business owner trying to grow their business? Okay. I thought long and hard about this, and I narrowed it down to 2.
Alright? So one, just because it was the most influential book in my life, and I still use it. So Yeah. So precursing this when I became the sales man when I was I know. Sorry. I wanna take a sales class at college. And I talked to our salesperson here and said, hey. Do you have because I had to read a book for the class and write about it. He's like, do you have a book you'd recommend? He gave me a book and he said, I had he's, like, I know nothing about sales. I never had sold in my life.
This is how he got in the water treatment. He got a job working for a competitor called Rainsoft. And he read this book, and he said, I became the number one salesperson in the country. I'm like, that sounds like a good sales book. So I bought it, and I've been reading it. For 10 years now, if not longer. How to master the art of selling by Tom Hopkins? Oh, love it. Okay? Yeah. What's your what's your one takeaway? Obviously, it's it's it's served you well.
You keep reading it over and over, but what's what what do you walk away with from that book? Because I don't read it over and over again. What I did is I cheated, and I made myself a cheat sheet. So every time I read this book, and this is almost full, whole notepad full. And what I do is I shrapolate things every time I just try to random pages and start reading the book. Whenever it comes to me, I write it down. And this just gives me pearls of wisdom.
So instead of having to go back to this book and go, what page was that on? What was this thing? I can find it, and I still use it. And it's golf. Notebook. Exactly. You know? Yeah. Someone still takes this and it's the key to success. So, you know, for our business, a lot of what we're doing is sales based. And, of course, you know, in in about 4 years, we tripled revenues. We were the fastest growing Culligan by dollars. The only ever single Culligan dealership to do so in 1 year.
Most people increase revenues by buying other Culligan. We beat people buying other dealerships, other plumbing companies, just on organic growth. And how we did that was just doing things differently, pushing, finding the right people, doing all these things. So that's book number 1. I absolutely love this book, because it's just it's been with me. You know, it's been on my it's literally sits on my bedside table. I sleep next to it every night. My wife's not on one side. And my Tahoe. Right?
The other one, because it changed the way I thought, was extreme ownership by Jacob Wilk. Great. But it made me realize what it means to be a leader and what it means to be an owner and what it means to be somebody that people are looking up to and what it means in your business. Right? If something's not done, it's not their fault. It's mine. Right. If we screw something up, it's not their fault. It's mine. It's my fault.
Yep. So And Chaz, right, in the beginning, that can kinda be daunting because you're like, oh gosh. Everything's my fault. Like, I'm sure especially when you don't think it is. Right. Right. Right. And and and so it's it's highly just but I love about that idea. It morphs into so many things, and it is so many things for you. And he's once you take that line, Chuck, my set of like, oh, this is my business. This is my this is my things. And then Right? What I love to do is extrapolate them.
No. This is not my business anymore. It's our business. It's mine and my employees. We take ownership of all this stuff. And if you have a mindset, that's the thing, man. Mindset is can spread. Right? And we've all worked somewhere where there's that toxic person. Right? It's that fun or cloud that comes in, And, Jess, you're like, oh, great. This guy's here. What's he gonna complain about? Right? Yeah. Here it comes. And it drags everybody down. 100%.
So for me, attitude's so important because if you get good attitude, it brings everybody up. And you can put that same thing that's just the hamper stuff Chaz also work the opposite. And you can facilitate it and then it brings everybody up with it and brings positivity. The group. So Yeah. The ownership piece of that is the foundation. The negativity or positivity or attitude is obviously the reflection of what they actually believe whether they have ownership or not.
And so I love I love the the picture that you painted there. I've done I've done strategy coaching, sales coaching, entrepreneurship coaching for for years, And it's like the one thing I just do not tolerate. I'm a pretty flexible person. As a leader, I think that you have to be. I think that you have to mold yourself in order to communicate well to other people. It's not their responsibility to mold. It's my responsibility to mold. But I'll tell you what.
The one thing I just do not tolerate ever is what you're talking about. Negativity or lack of ownership. It's just like Chaz they just the cloud that you just referred to, it just it's it can spread way faster than you realize and, it does nobody any good, including the person that's delivering it. And so, I think that you're spot on with Chaz, especially for the listener right now. They're trying to grow their business. Trying to get momentum.
0 chance you get momentum if you have some or or elite, if even one person on your team that or you, you as the entrepreneur, you may not have full ownership in your mindset, which leads to negativity and just this cloud. Like, don't don't be the person, then, of course, don't don't allow that person, in and around, you, your family, your business, your your team members, your community, everything. Like, excommunicate the negative. Oh, I'm upset.
There's a, a little quote from an automotive YouTuber, and it's my my my passion is on the go to stop. And, I got TJ Hunt, and he always says, keep moving forward. Yeah. Keep moving forward. Yeah. That's what it's about because once you start that forward trajectory and you get that momentum and that positivity, that success, and you have all the people moving forward too, It's a it's a force. You can't stop it. Yep. And and it it just starts unlocking things.
You know, for us, it was just growth. We just grew and grew and grew. And how do we grow? Because we were focused on building relationships with our customers. And why? Because All the competitors just wanna sell you something. Yeah. And then be done. But that's not us. We're here to take care of you. We're we have service department. We have our route. We have this. We have all these things. You can call my company, hit the button for tech support, and my telephone rings.
Yeah. You know, you can get somebody My business partner, he's the one that does our in home consoles. You know? And and why? Because we both enjoy those aspects of the business, we both happen to be good at But it's it's it's so important to, to generate that success. Yeah. Love it. It's to be kind of involved. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I got 2 last questions here for you. What what do you intentionally or what do you think about intentionally networking or masterminding with other entrepreneurs?
Oh, I love it. I I yeah. It's something that, we're we're working more and more on every day. K. Because there's so much information you can learn from these people. They've been through the situations before. You might be struggling to find the answer to some question. And you you you, hey, you know, this whatever who it is that someone you know, you give them a phone call up, you know, and you talk to them and go, hey. Have you ever seen this before? And they go, hey, you know what?
Yeah. You're probably thinking about doing this. And you're like, yeah, that's what we're thinking. Like, don't do that. It's the worst thing you can do. Yeah. Do this instead. So it's just you're you don't always have to have the answer. You don't have to always be the expert. You have to know if you'll be able to find it. And that's just being a huge key. It's like, just knowing where to find it because I don't know everything. I can't know everything. It's impossible.
Yeah. But if I know somebody else who's good and somebody else is good and somebody else is good, now it's our communal knowledge. Now it's everything we have. You know, to make ourselves better. Like, I tell my employees, I want one day where I'm asking you questions and you're answering them because I don't know the answer. That's when I get success. When you're better than me. Yeah. That's our goal. I want you better than me.
Don't you know, you're calling me now looking for answers on stuff or have this or have Chaz. But let's reverse these roles at some point in our relationship. Yeah. Yeah. And and like you said, whether that's with, team members because I felt the same way about several of my teams where it's like, man, I don't know the answer to this, or I don't know where this is located.
And you have to ask, And, you know, someone new inevitably is standing there and they scratch their head and away saying, no, aren't you the owner? Yes. But that's okay. Like, it's okay to have strong people around you, including the other business owners, I love your perspective of being able to reach into their experiences and network. I think that that's the that's the leveraging power of, of a situation like that. Last question for you, William. Alright. You're a pretty young guy.
So maybe I don't know. Being able to kinda navigate this, but it's still the same question. If you could whisper in the younger William's ear, What would you say? It'll all be okay. Don't sweat the small stuff. You know? Being somebody who likes things to be perfect all the time Got it. You'll find that's not gonna be the case. And you there's there's things that are out of your control.
And you can make the best of bad situations and make, you know, the the the people I bought the business from. He had a parting words of wisdom. Right? He said and whether it's wisdom or not, I don't know. He said, have a drink every day. At the end of the day, to either celebrate your victories or to the pain of defeat. Sure. Because that's every day. Every day is a new day.
Yeah. And there's no There's so much stress in running a business and owning a business and employees and whether equipment's getting here on time or whatever the things are. There's all these things thrown at you. Especially from, you know, this thing. Yeah. Sure. And it's like to be able to turn that off. You know? And, be able to go, hey. That was today. I'm gonna solve the problem. I'm gonna make it better. We're gonna fix it.
You know, don't sweat it because there there's an answer out there somewhere. And, you know, you can You persevere. Tomorrow is gonna be another day for to be able to be successful. That's right. That's right. And so and I think that's, yeah, that's part. Just don't Don't stress it. But our time is finite. We only have so much. Right? All the other things we have is there's not a finite amount, but time is.
Yeah. So we have to use every minute wisely because every minute Chaz goes by, it's lost forever. It's lost to the ether. We're never getting it back. So you Chaz, you know, that's It applies a lot of things, spending managing between work and and home life. You know?
Yeah. And one of the things that I found the busier I get, the more I value my time, the more I value time, the more I value time with my kids, with my wife, with my family, doing these things, you know, being ever present for all the things that we do. So, Yeah. Makes gonna be okay. Yeah. I I appreciate the the humility there, but but also just the perspective because makes me think of when I go elk hunting in the fall.
And, you know, you walked 8 or 10 or 12 miles and you carried a big pack and And whether you had an opportunity to shoot or or not, you're sitting down at the end. It's it's been a full day. You're absolutely exhausted. Maybe you're on day 3, 4, 5, or 6, or 10. Of just this repeated beating of of the physical body and mind. And you eat some food and and you think to yourself, Wolfe, Tomorrow, we'll do it again. And and that's really what it is. It's like, what I I it's done.
Like, I I'm out of the woods. The sun set like, there's no more today in this situation. The only thing I can do at this point is get some rest and go out tomorrow and see what opportunities present themselves. And, so I think that that just highlights everything you just said, and and the mindset that you carry.
I wanna know if if someone listening today wants to connect with you, obviously, they're in your area and they need to get set up with some water treatment, of course, but but, yeah, what do they just wanna reach out and find you? How can they how can they connect with you? Indeed. I'm on Indeed. Yeah. That's the best place. Not really on any other social stuff. I'm working towards Chaz, but, yeah, I'm I'm on there. Oh, sorry. Not Indeed. LinkedIn. LinkedIn. Okay. Okay. Linkedin.
I'm like, man, I'm I'm I'm missing out here. Is there a platform here on Indeed that didn't know about it? Goodness. I I just realized, like, the puzzled looked on your face. Yeah. I'm LinkedIn. I I was where you go then. I'm going, man, I'm missing something here. What? I'm gonna ask him here in a second. How that's going? Yeah. If, yes, go ahead at, you know, LinkedIn. Yeah. Look at me there. If you got any kind of weird water stuff, water treatment stuff, then where are you in the country?
And I that's what I love, and I'm a big part of, and And, if anyone's kinda in the industry, I just ran into a plumber who works in another state and we gave him to the conference and information because he's like, when I set up this and this, I have no idea what I'm doing. And I'm like, well, call me. I'll help you. And, like, you know, and it's just one of those things where, I love helping people.
I love, you know, being able to use my knowledge for good in the world and, and Wolfe these problems. And if that means that somebody out there can make some money. Awesome. Let's do that. Let's let's make money on this. So Yeah. That's a that's a king mindset, man. You're you're exuding you're exuding a lot of what what we want right here on the show. You've been incredible with just sharing and and your energy man is infectious.
I can only imagine what it what it's like in your office to to to pound every day, which is which is incredible. That's what that's what it should be. I hope that my my folks feel that way about me, and I hope I hope that, the listener taken, that simple one thing. I mean, there's been so many things you've dropped here today, but if they can take, how they feel personally right now, if you're listening to you away going, okay. How can they deliver that to their team?
I think that they'll have learned probably one of the biggest things, there is in in, the business journey. So Wayne, we just so appreciate you. You're you're an entrepreneur making moves, man. It's been fun to get to know you. I look forward to continuing the relationship blessings to your family, to your business, to your team, the whole deal. Thank you for being here. Oh, man. It's been my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on.
It's been great experience, you know, learning from you talking to you, getting to know you a bit. And, yeah, it's a this moment, I will treasure forever. So thank you for it. Absolutely. Thanks for listening to Gathering the Kings. We hope you got a ton of value today and learned a thing or 2 about taking your business to 7 figures and beyond. If you desire more and want a community around you to help you get there, but want you to go to gathering the king's dot com.
That's gathering the king's dot com and I want you to apply for our next becoming a king 90 day intensive. We are extremely exclusive by nature as a group. What that means that we're really wanting only the entrepreneurs who take their business and targets super serious to apply. So if that's you, you think you got what it takes. To level up your business, I want you to go to gatheringthekings.com and apply. And we will see you on the other side.