On today's episode of Gathering the Kings. If I knew what I knew now, I would go back and I would really get started earlier. 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 king that they are designed to be. We welcome high performing entrepreneurs to the stage in order to reveal the real of the real on what it takes to build a successful business today.
We dissect good and bad decisions they've made along the way Chaz give a true and accurate picture of the journey of success and how you too can get the Through this dialogue, you will learn the value of growing your network and surrounding yourself with power players and kings 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. I've got Eric Summerfeld on the King stage today, my brother.
How you doing? I'm good. Thanks. How you doing? Thanks for having me, Shasta. Dude, I I appreciate you being here. This is gonna be a fun one. You have a business like no other that I've interviewed. And so I'm excited for the uniqueness, the creativeness that you are bringing to to this conversation. Tell us in general what kind of business that you So what we do, we like to call it an online general contractor.
So it gives homeowners the ability to order their subcontractors, trades people, project pros through us, and then we manage the whole process through and through both on behalf of the homeowner and the contractor. We handle the payment. We handle the whole process. Price things like that. So each side knows their expectation, and we serve as an online platform through which they can transact the safety of both parties is guaranteed this way in all senses of the transaction. Awesome, man.
I appreciate that just a little bit of explanation there. I wanna get into the business, the detail of how all that work. Because Chaz you can imagine, there's some questions I can imagine from the listener going on online contractor or online general contractor. But before we do any of that, you have a certain level of success. That's why you're here, and I wanna know at this level, why are you still pushing hard? Why are you still trying to go to the next level?
For me and my stage of my life, I'm having a family. I just got married last month, really. And then, Thank you. And we have a baby coming just this late October. So for me, really, I'm just at the very beginning of my journey. And the business, which I set out to to build. I knew it was a very long term commitment. So we're only just scratching the surface of the things we can do and the things we know we wanna do. There's so many metrics we don't even track that we know we're gonna be helpful.
And there's just so much that's left undone. Chaz to keep him pushing is not really. Yeah. It's not even a question at the age we are now. We do what we have to do and keep him moving. Yeah. It it's such a simple answer, but what I took from that is if my target or my the perspective of how big I think this thing is is this x. And I've only gotten 2 ticks down the road. I'm not even thinking about stopping.
It doesn't matter that I've achieved a certain level of, quote unquote, success or revenue. We got this much bigger thing. We're still going to go get it started. Right? Yeah. Exactly, man. I think that a lot of just the simplicity of that mindset is what I just I'm, like, stuck on. I was just like, yes. Yes. I've never heard anybody say it quite like that. I've a lot of entrepreneurs are like, yeah, I'm it's in my DNA.
I wanna keep going, but, bro, I'm at this stage, call it success, but I'm only 2 ticks down the 20 tick road or whatever. I love the energy that brings. It it should put some more gas in the tank to let you know that, hey. We still gotta We still got a ways to go, Chaz. Got some more work to do. That's exactly right. And you also wanna think about it. My mind is always stuck in the future and life and what's in store.
So especially now getting into the starting of family much like yourself from what I can see. Yeah. You just you it's not even that you really do it for you. It's obviously, I have an obligation here. That obligation is to do what I can and add the value that I can in the time that I have the luxury of being able to do it. Yeah. So, you know, it's just once you boil it down to that, like you said, it is very simple. One day at a time, but you keep the feature in line with you. Yeah. I love that.
Okay. So let's go back in your journey a little bit, and let's talk about either how this business started or how did you get into being an entrepreneur, give us the beginnings. So from the time I was growing up, just as a very young man getting jobs at your local stores, like, a Shawarma shop, I think, when I was sixteen and then a Canadian tire when I was maybe 17.
And neither time, I worked there, you know, Chaz a very impressionable mind the time, and I could tell immediately what like, I felt sure I'm here because you're giving me ten bucks and because my parents say it's a good idea, but beyond that, like, there was no point or benefit it. Right? So, like, I didn't last too long at either one.
And then the first opportunities I got even when I was a little kid, I would go cutting the neighbor's grass or We go to my neighbors that I knew liked our family, and I would say, hey, buddy. Can I Shelby your driveway for 10 bucks? You'd be like, sure. Kit, here's the 10 bucks. That's right. And then So I I always wanted to work more than anything on my own sort of time.
I didn't want work to be a more powerful force in my life than certain things that were actually important to you in the sense of building good relationships or spending time with your family and things like that. And then so when I was when I was in my 1st year university, I had no money. So I said, how am I gonna make a couple bucks? And then we started going around. I'd go home on the weekends, meet up with my friends, and we'd start painting houses together. Okay. So I said, okay.
Wolfe making 50 bucks an hour or whatever. We kept doing it. And after doing a handful of these jobs, the 2 of us, I got really frustrated. He was going through it quite nicely, but I got really frustrated. And I said, we have to work so hard. And the only way we're gonna make more money is either managing this crew of guys or which is hard enough, or we're gonna have to keep working and be there first thing in the morning and be out of home. And I wanted to work from home. Right?
Like, I wanted to just worry only about the business and the things. And then so I gave up on actually running a trade outfit I it was just so difficult. And I said, there's so many problems with that transaction. There's just an endless amount of things that go wrong. Miscommunication is really a lack of structure. To the whole thing. So I it was probably 4 or 5 years ago. I thought to myself, I said, there's gotta be a better way.
And then immediately upon even thinking about that, I thought that's, like, huge project. What do you have in mind? And I would talk to people about it. They'd say, oh, buddy, you need a half a $1,000,000 if you wanna even start this type of online platform. And I'm like, that's true. But so I found a team where I said to them, I said, look.
I can't pay you a ton right now, but I'm gonna keep generating revenue as I go because what I got good at was selling a job on the phone, hiring a guy in that area to go and do that job, because I had so many guys in the area that I was from that I could just call him up. And I thought to myself, it's really bad for me to go get personally involved. Like, the more time I spend actually on the in person interactions, the farther I get from what it is I'm trying to achieve. So I said, okay.
We'll go do some traveling. So I lived out of the country for almost 2 years. I went to you know, different places in Europe, a couple Greek islands, Istanbul. So I lived in unique and interesting places, and I would just have my phone and I would take the calls anytime a day. Usually, they're a little bit different time zones. So I would around 3 o'clock in the afternoon, the morning calls would start And I would just take them, and I got really good.
And I had some great months just selling and selling. And I would detailed quotations, detailed explanations to the trades, and everything was going smoothly. And I thought to myself, okay, so if I can do that here, I maybe let me try advertising it on the other side of Canada over in Vancouver. Because we don't have too many big cities. We're not like you guys. You guys have a lot of big cities in America. Yeah. Canada, we have, like, 5 or so big cities. The major one is Toronto.
It's pretty much our major center of commerce. Everything's happening in Toronto. Your number 2 is Vancouver. And then other than that, we don't have oh, there's, like, smaller ones, but compared to some of the city. Yeah. A lot of wilderness. So compared to the plethora of different cities you guys have, Each of them is so unique, and there's a lot of commerce in each one. Right. We're pretty limited. So I tried in a few other places. I was selling jobs there too.
And the next thing that frustrated me was the amount of interaction I was having with people now, like the amount of phone calls, the amount of you trades people who I had to talk to. And so I thought to myself, now that's not gonna be sustainable because what am I gonna up that number? I'll talk to a thousand people a day. Or Right. How am I possibly gonna scale this? And the first thing I did, I tried teaching it to a few other people.
I could sit there with them during the day, sell this project, hire this guy, like, ABC, and then nobody could get it. This was like, they couldn't resist. They said, no. I have to go there. I have to go look at the job in person. I said, then you're breaking your principles. You're not a plat anymore. We wanna be applied for them. We don't wanna have that hard asset overhead to go somewhere. We wanna be able to open up in a new city and managing their projects like that.
So I tried to teach people how to do it each time. It wouldn't work out next time. I really and the whole time I was getting started on a software platform, and I was maybe 2, 3 years in of actually building out the code and stuff like that. So we're on probably year 4 right now, and we're now we have a pretty hot software output per month leading up to this. It was pretty small. I just I didn't really know how to do it myself. Of being the guy directing what they're doing.
It's like if you make a spelling mistake, they'll make a spelling mistake. So they don't offer any engineering value. It's purely code output. So then that was a skill that took me years to build because you gotta understand the structure of how they're doing it, how what part of the program talks to what and all these kinds of unique details. So, finally, now I'm pretty good at it. And we had a really strong year this year, much more so than our previous years.
But as a self practitioner, I was capped at, like, the 300, 350 per year, a 100,000. Right? Just because I had a personal tolerance of what I was willing to go through. Sure. And then so I said, well, how am I gonna automate and you start thinking, okay. It's a simple pairing system, like, whatever. And you make that pairing system, and then you're like, this is actually 1% of a platform that would actually run a job this complicated. So you give yourself a pat on the back.
You think, oh, I made a little. I can download a little you get a little widget and whatever. Right? Yep. Yep. Do you think to yourself, okay. We got a platform. Like, let's go sign people up and get it going And then you realize there's all this nuance and what if to that equation? Like, okay. There like you said, there's a whole million questions about how you're gonna do that. So then you pick the first 100, a hundred details that you could think of, and you're working down that list.
By the time you're halfway down that list, You think to yourself. There's another there's a much longer list now. Right? And they get smaller and smaller, but more important and more important because it's only a matter times the whole transactions hung up on that one detail. And it'll happen right away. Dude, the everything that you just shared, I mean, that first off, thank you for giving us that, like, the road, the history.
What I heard you say time and time again was I did the thing, and then I thought, okay. There's a problem. There's a bottleneck. There's a breakpoint. How do I scale it? How do I get someone else to do it? How do I create automation? Like, your mind was okay, I've been given this opportunity. Let me figure this out. Okay. Great. I'm at the point. Now I need a new solution. And so that's just what it looked like for me. As you were talking, it was stair step stares stair step.
I think that that every entrepreneur relates to that to a degree. It's just in those moments of where I am currently. If, like you said, if I know that my my dream or my vision is just so much bigger, then I know that I wanna continue to push or I wanna continue to solve problems. Rather than when I got to the next level, you'd be like, oh, okay. Great. Like, I'm good. Like, you're buddy. I'm good with the $50 an hour, and we could have just we just stay right here.
But you knew it was much bigger than that. So that forced you to go, okay. We're gonna have to figure out another solution. He wasn't cool with the $50 an hour either. He was just but he did a great job building Wolfe, that trades business. So right now, he's pumping a lot of work, so I gotta give him the credit where it's due. A 100%.
Yeah. And I'm sure you guys are still good buddies, especially if you guys don't work together, but the reality that you went thinking systems business, and it just that was just a it was a different mindset. That's all. Okay. So let's transition a little bit here. You gave us how you got to where you are. I wanna know in that same little journey there, I wanna know a good decision that you made that you can look back on and go, in that moment, boom, I'll do that one again and You know, what?
For me, I was thinking about this, right, reading through some of that outline. And then there was the question about also a bad decision. And for me, was that one day at a time micro decisions. Every day, there's small ones you have to make. And anytime you make a decision, just go into it knowing that with what I know and with what I have at the time, I'm gonna do what I think is best and what I think is right. So there's hundreds along the way that weren't correct.
In the sense where they were very regrettable where it was like a major blunder or one thing that led to incredible outcomes or whatever, it was all predicated on 100 of tiny little decisions. And I don't think that there was any one thing that was really good or really bad decision wise. I think that if I knew what I knew now, I would go back and I would really get started earlier. I would always try to be more fair, honest, and communicative where I could have been better at that.
So it's mostly certain shortcomings, and there's times where I think I'm really proud of myself for doing it that way because I was really honest about how it went about solving that problem. Even if it meant a lesser outcome for me, But, really, if there was one thing that was really important, it was deciding to get started on something that you really believe can work and not being too worried about, oh, getting started is gonna be hard, or I can't do it.
Just look, have the courage get started in a very small way. Make your first dollar at something. Like, when you make your first dollar from a customer, you make the business real is how it works. You could spend a $1,000,000 setting up a shop, but if you haven't sold anything, as far as I'm concerned, you're not in business. Once you sold something, you're actually in business. Right? So it was really just having, I wanna call it the naive courage to just start and not ask too many questions.
Yeah. Chaz would be the one thing. I think first off, it's so good. It's a building block to everybody who's listening. They took that step originally and said, I'm leaving my job or I'm gonna do my own thing or whatever that was. That moment where they took that step, they took that courage. But I want what I want them to hear of what you just said, that you re sign up for that. That that's not just a one time decision.
No. Yeah. That moment in time for you, you can remember when you thought, okay. I need to go do these things. And without creating all these systems, I'm gonna go get my first client and then I'll put some systems together. And we've all done that. But what I heard you say was that's a decision that you have to repeatedly make, which is Don't overthink. Take action. You're gonna probably stumble across some things that maybe don't fully understand Chaz aren't perfect systems yet.
You don't have the perfect app yet. You haven't thought about the whole list of if thens, but it's okay. You will. Just take the action. Is that what I you wanna you wanna add anything to that? Just take the first step, really. And even though step 100 is the way beyond your capacity to even think about doing right now, just do the first one, make it mean something, and then, I don't know, just take it into the smallest steps you can, actually. Yeah. Yeah. I love that.
Super practical and meaningful, but yet mindset. It's really what it is mindset. And also be thoughtful about everything you do. One one decision you make, if you make the wrong decision, can culminate to really cause you a problem. Like, one simple directional change at the beginning, you might go the wrong way with this business and 5 years, 10 years later. You're over because of that. So be really thoughtful about everything you do.
It's not all about for me, it was never about that maximum productivity in that moment. It was always about be at at peace enough where you can think about it and do the right correct decision. It's not always an ethical choice of business decisions and whatever, but the more level headed calm and collected you are, the more you're gonna be able to really think through that decision and make the right So if you go make 10 decisions because you think, oh, I gotta stay busy.
I gotta look like I'm really hustling or whatever. That's good. But if you can make one decision when it matters and do it well, it that beats a 1000 other things you went and did that day. Just because that one really counted so much. So be thoughtful. I I couldn't agree with you more. There's obviously bad decisions that we're gonna make. We're gonna yours here in a second, but and that's not gonna ever stop. Like, I'm gonna continue to make bad decisions.
I'm gonna make a bad decision this week, probably. With my eight companies and all the deals and stuff that we got going on, I'm gonna make them wrong move. But going back to your point already is that I'm not gonna not take action because I'm concerned about it, but to your second point, I wanna be as as thoughtful Chaz an intentional as I can be because what I know is this. What you're saying is when I look back, why I am here is because of all the good decisions I've made.
Now bad decisions too because you learn from them, but it's this track record. Like, you don't make a bunch of bad choices and end up successful? No. No. You don't. You'd have to have at least some good decisions in there. That's right. That's right. So let's flip the coin. Tell me about that bad choice that comes to mind where you're like, oh, it's it hurts me to share it. You know what? A lot of the things I did, it was mostly my choice in people that would get me in trouble.
I'm fairly expressive, and I find it hard to relate to a lot people. So when I meet other people who are a little more expressive and unique, we become drawn to each other, but sometimes when you're a young man trying to find a partner, whatever it is, you can be drawn to those people who they have this energy about them. That's great, but they're also very troublesome. And this can derail you for a long period of time. It was mostly my choice of people.
I would say, and sometimes the choice in the dating world and things like that, you'd be very naive about it. People could tell you they'd say, you know, that's not gonna go well you, buddy. Well, you'd be like, no. This is gonna be really cool, and you think you can change people and all that kind of stuff. So I always when I look back, I have a lot of confidence in the decisions I made, but because I thought I believed in it at that time, so it was still okay.
Like, I could have saved myself a lot time, a lot of error, a lot of misfortune, money, and hardship. Yeah. But all also, without these things, I don't know if I would be as thoughtful as I today to on a lot of issues that I faced. To, yeah, to go back and get rid of anything I did, I don't think I would I'd probably just keep it. Probably there's some rude things I've said to people I shouldn't have said those things in moments of frustration.
Sure. Or I should have spent time more time with loved ones who aren't here anymore and things like that. If I could go back, it would be mostly dealing with the more spiritual matters, really, more so than business things. I think business is on its course. I'm fairly young. I'm twenty nine years old now. So sometimes I forget. I'm like, in my 30 or my 28. Yeah. I don't even keep track. I usually don't know what day of the week it is.
Yeah. There's a freedom in that, honestly, that I'm hearing you speak from. But to even what you're saying, letting it run its course, But going back to the steps that you've already shared, think there's this unique balance that you have that you're describing of creating a vision. I know I had this big thing I wanna go do. Therefore, I'm still pushing. And then but I'm I'm not gonna overthink it. I'm gonna take action. Don't be worried.
Don't have all the details in place, but I need to be thoughtful about it. And I learned to be thoughtful from the mistakes that I made. The good decisions are really gonna get me there. And I think what you're saying is an incredible like, it is a 100% right, but you can see the conundrum of going wait a second.
A big vision helps me get what I want, but then it tells me to keep going, but then the freedom of, like, just businesses on its course, how did you arrive to the confidence that you have now of being able to say 2 things at once, which I have I agree with you. It is both at once. I'm not contradicting you at all. In fact, I'm strengthening what you have to say. I wanna know how you got there. Yeah. That that's a really good question, actually. With that, it was the fundamental of it.
I can explain my train of thought here, and then we'll see if we can delve into where it came from. So the fundamental of it is that when I would try to push too hard, if you have a good idea and you're the right person for the job, you'll know this sometimes. And you'll see, I think that, like, some of the features that we're working on right now, obviously, nobody else created a unique feature in this manner for this purpose at this time.
So it's not Chaz, oh, I'm so confident I'm gonna succeed or anything like that. It's just more of the understanding that if I go get too busy with it and I start panicking or putting myself on a timeline or anything like that, it's gonna build this sort of anxiousness in me. And then I won't be as creative, and I won't be able to solve problems and simplify them. To the degree of which I would normally be capable. So it almost comes as a prerequisite. Your state of mind has to be a 100% relaxed.
If it's not, any decisions I make will be liable for to have to be corrected later or Chaz lead to liabilities or anything like this. As soon as I have too much going on, I get sometimes a little frustrated. Arrogance goes up, ignorance, and things like this, and you start Careless. Right? Like, for example, we had some projects, and we didn't have the workers signed up to do them. And I was a lot more lacks about the due diligence of it.
And then each of the projects that would became a big headache, and I had to go back and sort it out. And I thought to myself, if I wasn't frustrated about working myself into a spiral because it's easy to say, oh, I told myself I'll be a millionaire at 30 or whatever you told yourself. Right? If you put yourself on this timeline, I think you're actually liable to make more stupid decisions than you would have otherwise because you think, oh, I'm going for gold. Let's take a risk.
Or let's do something unnecessary. And then you start doing tasks that you never needed to personally do anyway. You could automate Chaz if you thought about it harder and worked on it. So it was more that if I pushed too hard, it's gonna lead closer to failure. Whereas I just keep a really balanced mindset, make the especially when you're building a program and the way that it so when you start a software, It starts from, like, a heart core. And then you start you build one layer out.
And then on that next layer, there's way more connections, and it becomes exponential. So especially the earlier you're in it, the more mistakes you make, the more likely you're gonna have to rewrite and rebuild your whole program tomorrow anyway. So it's more Chaz one bad decision is gonna cost you a lot more than a 100 okay ones. So don't get too busy. Don't put pressure on yourself.
Just know you're doing your best and take some solace in that and think I'm gonna continue to do what I think is right. Be myself. Try to succeed. Do everything in my power. And whether it works out or not, maybe it's up to me. Maybe it isn't, but don't give yourself that anxiety, that stretch, that pressure. Just focus on relaxing, and then you have a better chance now. The Wolfe, some of these things can be hard enough.
So if you're all frustrated and worked up, the odds of your success go way down. If you add peace, you got a chance at this now. Sort of the way I see it. Oh, it's so good. It's it's such a mature way of looking at thinking and time usage. The one thing that you said that really stuck out to me, especially guys that are like me where we're just, like, hit the phone, hit the pavement, do a d like, just let's go because that's my natural tendency. Of course, I'm a high level thinker.
I like to try to do both. But I'm I'll be the first one to say, you know what? I'll pick up the phone. But what you said is don't be so quick to take action to where if you just thought a little bit longer. Maybe that could have been automated. And instead of making a 100 calls a day, now all of a sudden, automatically, you can make a 1000 calls a day. And it literally exponentially changes the trajectory because you took an extra 2 minutes, 2 days, 2 months.
I don't think either one of us are trying to convince the listener to delay or to you. No. That's true. Not take action. What you've said time and time again through this information that you're giving is to be thoughtful or intentional is the word that I love. Then I use a ton. It's the same thing. Do it with purpose. If I'm gonna do this action, is it the best way that I can do it?
Now if I can be doing it and then give myself some thinking time to be able to think on the actions that I'm actually taking, I think that then now you get best of both worlds that are exponential in here. That's right. Yes. Sometimes you can't afford that time off that you need some time to work it out. So you have to keep doing that task yourself to make some money as I automate it or as I build the system around that. So it's just your ticket because you need working capital.
You need to pay your bills. You gotta keep it moving. And you wanna grow as a person. So the the further along you come, the more you start, the more your overhead just forms around you, more obligations, more bills, more everything. Right? So that's right. Now the bigger it gets. Okay. So you've given us a good and bad decision, but you've also given us quite a bit of mindset around, I would say, clarity, thinking time, peace. You told me how you got there even and how you establish that.
I think that if we ended the podcast here, like, the listener walks away going, okay. I need to spend some very intentional time being purposeful or intentional. So philosophy. Yeah. Yeah. A 100%. Like, I I think that if a lot of guys, especially who k. Who's listening right now? 6 figure business owner. They're not at the 7 figure mark yet. It doesn't mean necessarily that they don't have this ability to think like you're thinking.
It just means that they probably are busy being busy wearing too many hats. They're doing too many things themselves. They're not automated. They're not hiring. They're all the things that you just said that, well, they're taking action. They're just they're just not slowing down enough in order to then speed up. And so I think it's like a perfect message. It's gonna clash a little bit with some of these guys that like to take action. But if they grow their mind, that's where it'll go.
Things work for different people too. Right? Some people are just built a different way. They can handle all that interaction. And some they get pumped on this too. So me, it's like I get from more than anything. It's about doing the things you want to do in your business. It's, you know, if the just if that's what you wanna do, you wanna be the salesman. You wanna get out there, then build a role where you can do that. So it all depends.
Do the things you wanna do, and it's the things you don't wanna do that burn you out. Yeah. So whatever those bad things are, you get those ones out of there, and everyone's So for the things that are where in my case where what they were in other people's case, it's gonna be some completely different that's holding them back. Or, you know? Yeah. 100%. I love it. Alright. We're gonna transition to the speed round. I got some different angled questions coming at you.
I wanna know if you dwindled your entire business down to one trackable metric. What is that metric? I would say the amount of people contacted and the amount of people serving on both sides of our transaction. Yeah. Because you've got you've got both sides of your contractors and and how many contract is we have on board and how many customers we've served that are 7 to 8 out of 10 you're greater. Yeah. Yeah. It's good. What book would you recommend, Eric, for a 6 figure business owner to read?
Books as far as business books go, I gotta confess. I don't I don't read most of them too thoroughly. I kind of skim through their main talking points and get through it. The books that I've read that are really intently are all about historical characters. Other people who have the great people of the business world or the finance world or Yeah. The people who impacted history greatly.
So I just try to read auto biographies of characters that I think are really influential and interesting because it fascinates me. So just read something that might sound kinda cliche, but I read this documentary biography about John Davis and Rockefeller. And just some of the details about when he was growing up in those early things and perspectives that he took and how self assured he was and things like this. So that was my personal. It was, like, really big.
It was, like, a book like this, and I was, you know, enthused by it. And then also, I read a little bit more nonfiction in the sense of, like, books about the world and where it's going. There's this one book by the UN Secretary General, I think. And he wrote a book called The Age of Sustainable Development. And then so Chaz was she knows the that guy's one of his advisors. Name was Jeffrey Sachs, really smart guy wrote this book.
And it was 3, 400 pages long, but it went through detail by detail. What's going on with illnesses, what's going on with poverty and what are the ways that we know possible to Wolfe? That's one of the ways we don't. And it just gives you a really good map of the challenges we face as a community. And stuff like that. So I thought it was really insightful. I love your perspective. You're a different thinker, which makes sense in your book recommendations as well. I'll tell you.
I downloaded that autobiography on on Rockefeller on Audible. And Was it Titan? The name was Titan? Yeah. That was a good one. Bro, when I so I listened to Audible on usually on 2 speed, but it takes it's it you gotta warm up to that. You gotta go one speed and then 1.25 and 115 won't but but my brain now loves the 2 speed. Even with the 2 speed, I think it was, like, 15 hours, on audible. That book that you're talking about. Like, it was Yeah. It was lost. Forever. But Yeah. Oh, yeah.
The story, man, like you're saying, just the grit that he had, I think everybody in the 1800s had a level grit that we don't have today. We don't understand. Yeah. No. We don't get it. I know. It's survival, grit, that we don't that we don't have, but Great recommendations. Appreciate that. And the next question is, do you intentionally network and or mastermind with other entrepreneurs? So a lot of the early experience and education I got had a wonderful mentor.
He was a heritage commercial real estate developer. Nice. So I would just from the time I was maybe 18 to 20 4 at work. He didn't have employees, but I would work there, like, helping him just coordinate more business and do more stuff. And he'd have me meeting the tenants, leasing the buildings, finding creative ways to use parts of the building that weren't generating any money and maybe go look at more properties, go over there, look at properties, And I do that.
I I had a great experience having had that. I was very fortunate to have the interactions I did. Yeah. Most of the friends that I keep today, they're on entrepreneurs in their own respect, but I don't think I have any friends I see regularly that are corporate world employees or anything like that. They're all entrepreneurs with different stages of their journey. Yeah. Some of them with the conversations are better than others.
Yeah. When I go out in the community, I'm always attracted to people that I find are more interesting and experienced and have those kinds of things. So I think it's something we instinct instinctually we seek out, but, no, I don't really have a community of people that I talk to today. That are way above and beyond me that I can learn from. And that's something that I have. My father is pretty good, and I talked to him about some more complicated things.
But beyond that, always the more networking you can do with people that you can learn from. Yeah. From their unique experience is the better off you're gonna be. Yep. I agree. I agree. Good stuff. Okay. Last question for you. You ready? I'm ready. If you lost at all, what would you do? You know what? I feel like most of my career, I felt like I didn't really have much in the sense.
Like, I was renting a home of a little bit of furniture and also most of my career, I was at any moment, give or take. I could it didn't really matter. That's like I never had anything anyway. Yep. I would just do the same thing I did, but I would do it no what I know now and do a much better job of it, really. Yeah. I would say, yeah, I would just start everything I've started again, but I would probably be able to do it in 1 20th of the time. And, you know, I always say this to my wife. I see.
If you took an e commerce billionaire and you put him to 0, he's gonna pass me in 5 seconds. Because he knows it's gonna be, like, wham bam, thank you, ma'am, like, in and out because he knows, and he's just gonna do. He's just snapped his fingers. He's finished. And I say it's all about knowing where to go and it's all learning experience. So if I started again right now, I'd be feeling great about it next week. So Yeah. Do the same thing.
Same thing, John. The last thing that you just said there, if I had to start all over again today, I'd be feeling great about it next week. I relate to that because of the confidence But I also what you said in there too is that there would be a week of, who? Did you gotta pick up a piece? Yeah. Yep. If I had no think I'd say sweetie, you'll be paying the bills for the next 30 days, if that's okay. Yeah. Exactly. Hey. And, a good partnership should be like, alright, Bet. I don't Oh, yeah.
She she needs to know that she tells her she doesn't. Yeah. Exactly. Depending on the details, we'll spare her the things she doesn't need to know and and turn a lot of the rest. Exactly. That's how. My wife, she's at this point, at least. I think early on, she wanted to know a lot of detail. She's at this point, you're crazy. Just Yeah. Let me know. Let me know from a high level. Has been incredible to have you here, Eric.
How can someone connect with you, especially if they're a contractor in one of your areas and they can maybe use your service or maybe their home, like, How can they find you? They can find me. You can run a quick Google search. Our business name is Meinhaus. It's mindhouse.ca. You can find us. You can register as pro or as a customer, you can go on and fill a submission form, get a price. We give all our quotations immediately virtually.
We probably have some of the fast, to create a point where you can actually purchase a complicated job from us, I would think that we have an absolutely unmatched time period. So you could reach out to us about a bathroom project that you wanna do right now. And we can have a detailed estimate in your hands itemized where you can purchase any of the trades you'd like on your credit card right now for the day you'd like the most.
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That's right. It's an ever ending journey. All you can do is just keep getting better and tiny little steps. That's right. That's good. You're the man for the job. We wish you nothing, but success and blessing for your family, your business, all that good stuff. Love it. You too, Chaz. Thanks. Thanks. Thank you for listening to gathering the Kings today. I hope that you were able to pull out few nuggets to go apply into your business right away.
More importantly, though, I hope that you're realizing that it takes more to be successful than just being by yourself, doing it all on your own, carrying the weight all by yourself. What I have realized, not only in my own journey from multiple businesses in multiple different industries and now interviewing literally over 2 or 300 other very successful 7, 8, and 9 figure business owners is Chaz It's tough to do it alone.
And so gathering the Kings literally exists to bring together successful entrepreneurs. In fact, we are putting together 1000 kings, specifically who are grateful, but not done. We're intentionally assembling kings who fight tooth and nail for their business, family, and communities, and here's what we believe Chaz in the pursuit of excellence in those areas, that it ignites within us the responsibility to govern power and forge a lasting legacy. So if that relates and and resonates with you.
And you know that you need people around you, sharp, qualified other very successful business owners. I want you to go to gatheringthekings.com. I want you to take a look at what we're doing and see if it makes sense for you to be part of our pursuit. To 1000 kings. Talk soon.