On today's episode of Gathering the Kings. Walking down the street and seeing my work, and it's not just gonna appear. It'll be there for my kids, my grandkids, my great grandkids, everything. Right? 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 they keen 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 assess 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. I'm Chaz gathering the king's podcast. Got Steven Riley on the king stage today. Man, that felt was fun to say.
Dude, welcome. Welcome. Glad you're here. Thank you. Thank you, Matthew. It was like that Riley. And they got me almost felt like a or announcer there for a second. Sure. Yeah. Exactly. Dude, tell us what kind of business that you have here. I run a concrete construction business. The difference between us, though. A lot of companies, you call these days, they focus on one one job. Right? Foundations, footings, or slabs, exterior, interior. We don't hold to one one aspect. We do everything.
If we can't do it, we have connections that can get it done for you. Yeah. So all things concrete. All things concrete. I love it, man. And we were checking out your logo before we hit the record button here. You got this awesome like, golden silhouette of a four leaf clover. I just looks premium, man. I love it. Alright, dude. So I wanna know your story. We're gonna jump into how you got started and all that fun stuff. But before we do, I wanna know what makes you tick.
Like, you've been doing this thing, and you're still doing this thing, and I wanna know why. Honestly, man, I just I had a dream when I was a kid. I mean, not a lot of people get live all their dreams. Most people growing up. Oh, I wanna be a firefighter. I wanna be a police officer. I wanna be a veterinarian. I honestly, man, I wanna do what I'm doing right now. I wanna do the concrete. So it was a no brainer for me. I had family that worked in construction and everything. I got it in the door.
I got grandfathered in a new sense. And, yeah, I just I honestly, I've seen the money Chaz was it. It was it was dollar signs, which kinda sounds stupid to some people, but when you think about it, man, anything where I'm kinda how the economy's going, there's concrete to be done. Rhodes, construction, houses, residential, commercial, industrial, there's always something. Right? So, honestly, a no brainer.
Yeah. I love the simplicity of Chaz, and it's so interesting to the way that you position that because if I ask a guy who's a firefighter or an astronaut, like, do you do this thing? Oh, man. I've had the I've been I've been wanting to be an astronaut since I was a kid. And people go, oh, that's awesome. But to the general public that you hear, oh, I've always wanted to be a concrete guy. Yeah. Like, wait a second. That doesn't make sense, but it's true. And for you, it's your lifelong deal.
I'm curious to know the layer deeper underneath that. Obviously, there's money. Obviously, it's recession proof, all of Chaz, but what makes you tick as an individual? What are you what are you pressing so hard into life. You've got a successful business, man. Like, you you haven't accidentally got into this, at least at this level. What's on the inside? What's really happening? I found my niche or niche, whatever. I can never say that word. They say they they say it all kinds of ways.
I was good at it. Some of the stuff in it. It wasn't even, like, the money or recession. It was the creativity from the guy. K. There he is. I know I said I wanna be a concrete guy, but, like, Our art's always been something that fascinated me because most people think of art and it's pictures, drawings, stuff like Chaz. And it's not business itself in art. Right? If you gotta go out of photos away, use it, great. It's always been an art, but it's expanding more photos, photography.
There's arts, what we're doing right now. There's an art to this. There's science to it. And, yeah, it's simple. I don't know. Yes. No. It's good, man. That answer is exactly what morning and walking down the street and seeing my work. And it's not just gonna disappear. It'll be there for my kids, my grandkids, my great grandkids, everything. Right? So it's nice. And you attach that that legacy thought of it being around forever and art.
It's the great Mona Lisa or all the art pieces that we all know about. That's, that's what you're doing, man. You're creating art. And then on top of that concrete lasts for a long time, like you said. So Yes. I love that perspective. I think that relates with some folks out there because even just the perspective of art or being creative, you're right. It can be done in business. It can be done here on a podcast. There's a creative flow to it for sure.
I'm a creative thinker myself, but for you, with art, like, you can tell it's an expression. It's you find a certain flow in the actual beauty of creating the product? Yes. I love that. I think that relates to a lot of, not only entrepreneurs, but tradesmen who find love and joy and the beauty of what they're actually creating, something that I've always guess, I've always thought the same thing about business. Right? Like, I haven't built a home.
I guess I I may have paid someone to build a home, but I haven't done it with my hands. I don't know how to do and but what I know how to build our businesses, teams, and so I I have the same satisfaction of the beauty of it, but it's just in a different light. So Yeah. I know. Like, it's the interface too. There's there's always something new. Right?
Yeah. Yeah. But it's interesting that you say that coming from a concrete space, like, you would think most people are gonna go, it's just concrete. What are you talking about innovation? Right? I'll talk about that for a second. I wanna, for example, like, CNCs, we have video on there. It looks like a stepping stone. K. Yep. Picture turns, merrim and Robop. So so there's the art behind the concrete. It's literally a concrete slab, both 2 feet by 2 feet roughly.
K. And to the average person, it just it looks like a piece of gray work. And then as you get into the look, it comes right out, but, like, CNCs, right, Chaz we wouldn't be able to do that without CNC technology. So laser cutting everything like that. Yeah. And even, like I said, there's most people think concrete, and it's like the residential sidewalks or the basement or stuff like that. Precast, that's a whole different ball game of concrete rates. So that's your big commercial buildings.
Right? We actually build those hundreds of miles away, piece by piece, ship them out, put it together, but they do there's hold on. Here, there's, like, the mixes, for example, like, this probably born for some people, but there's 0 lumps to 700 slumps. You know, there's different applications for every type of concrete you use. Even the steel side of concrete. We use a lot of steel, you know, reimbursement they started to come out with fiberglass instead.
So cost efficiency, everything like that, which we'll probably get into here a little later. But everything changes every day. Like, literally, every day I wake up, go online, make a phone call, something's changed in the industry. So Yeah. I love it. It's always evolving. Yeah. Yeah. What I love about what you're saying. Of course, there's always innovation, but the fact that you get fired up about it. Yeah. I love it. I love it.
My kids think I'm crazy, but I get stupid excited over concrete stuff. So if you go vacation, I'm going to the plan. Yeah. Yeah. There's always the different perspective, for sure. Tell me you gave you gave a little bit of the story of how you you got grafted in or grandfathered in Chaz you say. Yeah. Tell us about the the, like, getting started in your own business, especially if you had family was with them at first, and now you're doing your own thing, or was it handed down?
Tell us how you got started. I do owe a lot to my father, but I'll get into that in a second here. My my motivation to start literally came overnight. I woke up one day. I looked at my partner. I was with for 4 years, or we Chaz kids and everything. And then he was like, Hey, I'm quitting my job today. Right? Why? I'm like, I don't like taking orders. That was the other thing. Right? I I don't wanna work McDonald's or anything like Chaz. Right? I'm not meant to take orders.
So I literally woke up one day. I didn't honestly even have the finances at the time. Right? I literally started with nothing and just, like, screw it put my job, went to the registry, set up a proprietorship, and, yeah, I just I started up a company, round that for a while, failed, tried again, failed and third time around. Here we are kicking ass. So Awesome. I wanna talk about some of those failures sure. Early on, especially since you said you you've been to the round a couple of times.
Why do you think and I'm gonna go couple layers deep with this, but what were the biggest contributing factors? Let's say it like that to the first 2 failures before your current success. Lock knowledge. Okay. I refuse to listen to what I was being pointed towards, which I said I don't take orders. Don't always listen to what everybody has to say. I actually have people have set me up for failure. Do some studying of any times. It doesn't have to be in your industry or anything specific.
Just do some studying of business in general. Such as your credit. A lot of people don't realize your personal credit at the start affects your company. Right? So you start out with terrible credit, you're gonna have a terrible company at the start and just budgeting. Big thing. Learn your budgeting, learn your costs, Otherwise, you're not gonna make any money. You might get a job stone, but you're not going nowhere. Tell me a moment in time that's in your brain.
As you say that you're thinking of a specific situation that where you're the money ran you, then you run the money. I wanna know what happened. It was actually everybody hates this word, but see where COVID just before all that happened. We started getting price increases. And, like I said, study something, business, study some finance of any kind. As I didn't mark up my margins enough in the simple terms. Yeah. I didn't announce for the extra costs. The fuel, the time, wages, stuff like Chaz.
Right? People don't think it's all connected, but it is depending on the economy. That's gonna determine what you're paying out. Right? Yeah. Yeah. It's huge. So simple. It's a huge. Yeah. It's so simple. I yeah. I'm a pretty simple guy. So The finance piece can catch up with you for sure, especially if you're, not paying attention to the dollars hard usually for a business owner to do that just because the very thing that got them started, the I don't wanna take orders.
The I'm gonna I'm a I'm gonna jump off the cliff. I'm a risk taker. All of those qualities don't normally lead to let me track every last detail and make sure. Yeah. Exactly. I hear what you're saying. When you do it in yourself, then it becomes overwhelming. Right? Where it's gonna be all the hats you first 3 years of business. Right? So That's right. You may think you're gonna afford to hire this guy, but it might bite you in the ass later down the road.
So Take your time, do some studying, be prepared for them to sleep this night's buckled out. What would you say? Cause I mean, you were obviously brought up a key point here where for the 1st period of time, year 2, 3, sometimes more, the owner, whether either they have to or they choose to wear all the hats. I don't actually give them away, but that's where they are right now. Maybe it's someone listening in their new.
Maybe they're not new, but they're in that place of overwhelmed, too many hats. And they're hearing you say, you to be careful about the expenses, because it can bite you. But underneath that, you took risks and you took chances. And so how would you caveat? Like, you gotta take risks. You gotta hire people. You gotta make certain moves, but while you're doing that, pay attention to the finances because it because the other is scarcity.
Okay. Not gonna do that because I don't wanna run into the issue, so I'm just gonna not. And then I stay small, I stay overwhelmed, so forth and so on. What would you say to the person who's in that that limbo? Okay. He's telling me to be careful, but I'm supposed to take risks at the same time. Like, Wolfe, give some backdrop to that. Smart risks. K. Even if you know you're gonna fail at something, like, for example, you're taking on jobs over the years where I'm not gonna lie.
I knew full I was not outbidded. For the jobs, but the difference is, yeah, I may not have got the job done fully myself or whatever, but it actually allowed me to outsource some networking there, and it actually showed the dedication to the contractor that I was working for on the project. Chaz, hey, this guy was actually serious He may be small. He may not be set up, but at least he had the connections and the motivation to actually get the job done, get the budget. So we just go ahead first.
Hope you still. Yeah. Exactly. I love that guy first. Chaz high dive and just go. Don't look. Yeah. Yeah. And then when you hit the water, you realize I maybe should look this next time? Yeah. Yeah. Maybe I sure took a lesson or 2, but there you just gave yourself a lesson. Right? So Yeah. Yeah. It's both and. That's for sure. It really is.
There's this caveat here where some people lean towards, you have your ducks in order and have it all calculated out, know your margins, know your numbers, and then on the other side of its wrist. Just do it. You figure it out. Say yes. Figure out the rest later. And it really is both in business. Would you agree with Chaz? Or is everybody's different? Everybody's different. Like, you can't actually base your business model or your process off anybody else's at all. Right?
There's always gonna be you may follow 2 of the three same steps, but then it's gonna start branching off in all these different areas, and you're gonna be a thousand miles from where that guy is going, but he's still on the same track. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I'm gonna have to I'm gonna have to use that for for the guys inside my mastermind because we're all in different industries. Sharing a lot of the same stuff, but sometimes it's only a piece or 2.
Sometimes you only need that one little just a little bit. Just a little nuts. That's all you need. Right. It's good. Okay. So tell me about a bad decision Chaz you I guess you you told me about your failure. So let me actually let me start with a good You you gave me the struggle of the 1st couple of years or why the failure. So tell me why this round, it worked, or tell me what a decision that you've made that's been good.
Starting the business, man, again, honestly, got going three times because like I said, I learned from all my mistakes there even after the failures, Right? I still had the connections to the contractors, to certain clients, and they seem that, hey, this guy's back up. He's still here. So what we can do is make some professional friendships you could call. I strongly advise staying in a business with friends. But, yeah, I got those connections, and it actually helped helped me out.
So when I was back in business, I was literally back in business. So Yeah. Yeah. Best decision in my life was failing in the sense. Hey, Kings and Queens. Jazz Wolf. I wanna talk to you about something that's super important to me. We put a lot of time and effort. We, meaning myself and my team, into this podcast, into the content that goes out every single day. And if you have been getting any sort of value or insight from this, we want it to be able to reach other business owners too.
So we would love if you would like, comment, share, leave a review, post, share again, all of the things on social media, on all the different platforms, or even on the podcast mediums of Apple and Spotify, we would love to be able to get our content into more hands, more entrepreneurs so they can grow their business as quick as possible. Together, we are building a community of like minded entrepreneurs who are committed to growing their businesses to new heights. So let's do this.
Let's help each other. Let's help each other grow. Yeah. I think once you have that perspective, you don't you're not afraid to fail. Right? You just got out of that part of it. Yeah. FA failure is another former success, man. It's good. What? That's right. That's right. So since we since you quickly moved into the bad decision. I wanna know, like, give me a specific thing where you're like, dang it. I should not have done that. Partnership. I don't get into business with friends, family.
I know it works for some people. My case, I was in business with a friend of mine that we were had mutual companies for multiple years, started together, watched each other ride. We got together, did a partnership, turned out the guy wasn't paying what he should have been paying to people. We got caught up, Wolfe lack of money. I won't say a number, but it was pretty substantial. And I I almost took a big hit on that. I lost a couple of contracts over it.
I did lose my equipment because they were actually in his name. He ran the equipment side. I ran the construction, but, yeah, that was the worst decision of my life is getting in business with that because literally, I worked all the years to get where I was at that point. I had a wicked name, like, pretty much where I'm now. I didn't even have to advertise a when people were calling us, and it tarnished it. It put me back pretty much to square one, and I had to make up for it.
Yeah. I got help free and clear. Like, it didn't affect me too much, but it was the professional reputation and relationship that they caught Yeah. Which is huge. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So a lot of people realize it, but it's makes a big impact. How did you go about rebuilding that? Obviously, like, such an important part of who you are as an individual, like your personal brand and how that associates to business, your word, your integrity, all of Chaz. How did you go about rebuilding that?
Try I pretty much brought in complete transparency with your company. So now the way we operate is anybody anyone that can come up with, hey, we need to see your books when you see this, we any receipts, we show everything. Right? Everything is completely transparent. We have no hidden costs, no hidden fees, nothing like that. Everything now instead of just doing it up ourselves, getting it certified at the registries and everything like that.
We actually pay a law firm, which he represents us, and take care of all that size. So we cost us quite a bit, but it worked out for us. Yeah. The stamp. Yeah. Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid show who you actually are. Right? Like, you you're gonna have to be ignorant. Sometimes, you're gonna have to be quiet sometimes, but you gotta know when to play each part.
Yeah. Yeah. I think vulnerability for the most part, I guess I'd say almost the whole I can't think of any circumstance where it's bit me long term. It's bit me a little bit in the short term, sharing too much. But I think in the long term, it was what was supposed to happen anyway, but it actually worked out You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I think that vulnerability really is it's a new currency inside of business, inside of team building, meeting people, all of that.
Yeah. Okay. What would you say now is, like, your decision making process? Meaning, like, you got a decision that comes across your desk. You've obviously made some good ones, some bad ones in the past. Is there a discipline that you follow? Anything like that? It's gonna sound pretty terrible, but not entirely. Not the first time I've heard it. A great dive in headfirst.
We do weigh pros and cons or, like, certain projects, obviously, are out of our reach or something like for example, but, yeah, you just you gotta weigh up the closing costs. I don't I honestly didn't get into business for money, and a lot of people This is one piece of advice I give. Like, every a lot of people think that, hey, this guy's got a business. He's rich. Right? Oh, he's wearing a nice suit. He's got a nice watch. He's he's got it going on. Don't get into business.
If you're out to make money. Plain and simple. If you're out Wolfe to make the money, you're not gonna be going for it. But, yeah, you just you gotta weigh the pros and cons. Even if there is more cons to the pros on some jobs, we'll still take it just so I myself can learn from my mistakes. As well as our employees and our guys or our contractors, anybody that works with us or along us, we can all have to learn experience of some sort. So Sure. Got it. You can always have the good.
You gotta have the good. I'm glad I dug out the art piece from you at the beginning because when we started this thing, it was dollar signs, and money. And to hear you say it's not about the money, I knew that it wasn't. Right? And I'm glad you brought us to the The first two tries school for me was the money. Right. I'm like, I got kids. I got this. I'm tired of this. I've seen my Wolfe well, originally, we've got the thought going to my head.
I about 16, 15, 16. And I was working for my buddy, stepdad, and he pretty much put me in charge of the cruise at that point. Right? I've been doing been doing 17 years Wolfe people weren't real. Believe me, but I was thirteen working with dad. I'm 30 now 17 years due to math. I've seen his checks. I've seen his book Right? So I'm like, hey. It says cutting these guys at $270,000 check, and I'm getting $1500 for doing all the work. Right? So, like, through that, we're going into business. Right?
So I jumped into business. Thought all I thought about was money, bad idea. And then now I just realized, Hey. Like, we're out here to provide service. Our industry, we get a lot of bad talk and bad reputations. I don't know exactly why, but we're just paid it on So I actually started this business now. She's pretty much, providing quality products at affordable cost, Matt. Like I said, we don't even hide in and get it caught straight thing.
So we have our markups, but they're not drastic, like, guy down the guys down for over the week. So I got in a business for Freedom, but not financial free. I can choose to work 4 days of a month, really, if I want to, and we'll we're still good. Right? Yeah. K. Wanna go I wanna come at you speed round questions. A little different angle here. If you had to if you had to dwindle everything in your business down to one trackable metric. What would that be? It would get cross.
It would be my sales matched with my marketing. We do a lot of advertising lot of marketing. I, literally, anywhere we go, we're dropping cards where we're in shirts. We're putting logos up. We're putting banners. We're doing sponsorships. We're doing everything great. So that's I would pretty much be where what we're spending on the marketing, and I would encourage anybody to do this as well. Track what you're spending on your marketing, track what you're spending on your sales. Right?
Don't even worry about your costs or anything before. Just literally look at what you're spending on your marketing. Look at what you're making on your sales. Right? You don't have to break it down, anything like that. Just literally compare the 2. So And for you, that gives you the math equation to know if you're getting the jobs in from the marketing and the sales process Chaz the pricing on the back end is good. Exactly. Right?
Like, for example, we did I spent 7750 on in a week or something like that on some marketing and everything like Chaz. That actually landed us a $250,000 job drop ballpark, and we wound up subbing that job, oh, which took I took 10% of free. So I did next to nothing, made a couple bucks and made thousands. Down the road, you go. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. What book would you recommend Chaz a 6 figure business owner read? None. K. I'm not a big reader.
I never been a big reader, but it's, like I said, you can't follow anybody else's business promise. You could pay all these guys for coaching, like, grant her own ten times. The crap and it's it might get you there. Might not. It's taking a risk. It's a good risk, right, reading the books, but, honestly, I I haven't read nothing. I can honestly say I haven't really read much on on business plans or anything like that. It's where do you get your fuel? Cause you you talked about research.
You talked about knowledge. You talked about gaining from that perspective. My connections were network. I literally put myself in every possible position we can to learn anything we can from anyone. I don't wanna read a book. I wanna see firsthand how it's working for the guys. Yeah. So just your learning style is firsthand. Yeah. Hands on kinda deal.
Yeah. And I think that the stuff that you're learning in that way or through a relationship or whatever is gonna be a similar, but you're learning the same things, obviously, because success is principle. You picked it up from another guy, a different guy picked it up from a book who or from another guy who wrote a book. So I don't hate on the fact that you haven't read anything, or that's not a problem.
If you know how you learn, I think that's more important information to know than going and trying to force yourself to read a book. Maybe it's audible. Maybe it's podcast. Hey. Go figure. Like, I do a lot of the podcasts, talk, and stuff. Right? So that's honestly, I can say, I actually have lots of where I am now because of podcasts like this. So There you go. I love the it's a transition. It's a transition of education. That's all it is.
Yeah. Books books will never go away, but Man, there's lots of other ways to get educated these days as well. Yeah. Exactly. So Got one last question here for you, Steven. Yep. If you lost it all, which, I guess, for a third time, what would you do? Being that you've done it so differently, this time. If you lost it this time, what would you do? Do it again. Just like that. 4th time. Yep. No problem.
No matter what, I've seen companies that have been around 30, 40 years, multi millions, like, huge contracts. They've gone under. Right? It happens to everybody. You can't forecast it. You can't predict it. There's nothing you can do about it except living where Right? And if you did well enough, the 1st round or the last round or 5th, whatever it is for you, you should still be able to pick your feedback up and get going where you left off.
You should be able to have those connections still in some form to get you somewhere. Right? And it's like I tell everybody, put yourself in those awkward position If, you know, there's a business meeting going on for city tender and you're not at that level yet, go put yourself in there. Go sit in that meeting. You may not know what they're talking about, but guess what? You're gonna leave an impact on that. Right?
So when you show up, when you grow up, you get big, they're gonna know, Hey, this guy needs business. This guy's already been here. He knows what's going on. Yeah. Yeah. Any lectures, anything you can get to, even if you don't belong there, get in there. Yeah. If you don't feel comfortable in that suit, whatever, get in there, get it done. Right? Drop your cards up anywhere you Chaz. Do any kind of advertising you can. It doesn't have to be big commercials, anything like that.
I've been doing 17 years. I've had this company about 5 years now, and we're just starting to get the exposure, TV, and the Internet, stuff like this. Right? So it it takes time. Scott live and learn that. Good stuff. You're not gonna get any purchase crawling into a hole. Chaz well, that is the other option. Yeah. Yeah. So you can either keep going and if it makes you happy, y'all may stress you out, but it's what you want. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Great stuff, man. How can someone find you, Steven?
How can they connect with you and continue the conversation? We have our social media. We're on Facebook, Shamrock concrete services. We're on TikTok, shamrock.concrete. We have a YouTube channel that we just started up, shamrock concrete, obviously. And then we have a web page as well, shamrock.ca, which has all of our information on there as well as thanks to all of our suppliers. That's great, man. Well, I appreciate your time today.
Obviously, you've given us a perspective that comes from a level of success that you've gotten, and you've been there. You've been around the mountain a couple times. And appreciate all those experiences that you've been able to share with us today. We wish you nothing but success and blessing and in your family and your business. Sounds good, man. One more thing, our YouTube channel that we have there now, we're gonna be doing guest lectures, guest talks, everything in the industry.
So any inside information that homeowners or general contractors are looking for, we're gonna be discussing. Nice. Yeah. So definitely, we'll put the YouTube channel in the show notes below, and, that way, they can check it out. Perfect, man. Thanks for being here, Steven. Thank you. Thank you for listening to gathering the Kings today. I hope that you were able to pull out a 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 buyer self 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 that 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.