On today's episode of Gathering the Kings. In construction, those are gonna be your 2 biggest thing. You gotta be profitable, and customers have to be happy. If you're not gonna have happy numbers, then you you might as well go forward for somebody else. You are listening to Gathering the Kings with Chaz Wolf 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 today. We dissect the good and bad decisions they've made along 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 kings like today's guest. Grab your pen and notebook because we're about to dive in. What's up, everybody?
Chaz gathering the Kings podcast, Got a special one here today. I've got Max and Schulock. Am I saying the last name right, Max? Close enough. You're you're I I don't blame you. Juliac is how it goes. Schuliac. It's interesting. I've asked some of my guests with the most simple John Smith names Hey. This is how I say your name. Right? And then I always forget with the guy that I actually should have asked, but, Max, we've been having a good time already.
We're just now hitting button just for the listener's sake here, I'm gonna give just a little bit of a background. Max pops up on the screen here today, and I'm holding my my six week old infant. My my Wolfe, we have other kids, and she got caught downstairs. And, baby wakes up, and she can't get to it. I'm in between calls and Here I am holding baby feeding her. And Max and I realized that we had a baby 10 days apart. We're both sleep deprived, running businesses, trying to hold down a family.
And so, Max, thank you for being here, but tell us what kind of business that you got, and we'll get this thing launched off. So I'm in a contracting business construct Basically, we do everything. I've there's so many businesses out there that do either specific trades. I open business to purposely be able to provide a customer a one one stop experience for everything. So whether it's small, big, commercial, you name it. We'll take care of it kind of thing. Yeah. Love it.
Okay. And so my question to every guest at the very beginning is You've obviously been a certain level of success. Otherwise, we wouldn't have invited John. Why have you been building is the first part of the question. The second part is why are you still building? Because you've obviously already reached a certain level of success. And you're a young guy too, man. A lot of young guys wanna build it and then retire. What are you doing, man? Why are you still at it? I call what you're saying.
A lot of young guys Chaz they get get to a certain level and they stop. I call that the philosophers. They come philosophers. I'll I'll tell you a million ways to become a millionaire that will make maybe a couple 100,000 in the bag. Sweet. I bought fancy car, I can show that I, you know, a guru who are successful. I just have them and tell you that, you know, it's never enough.
With your family aspect, your spiritual aspect, you're always trying to strive to grow and keep eating better and better. Saying that you're perfect just shows that you're prideful and you're not perfect, kinda, thing. The reason I keep going is because first off, you know, family, you wanna make a better life for them and to impact people. You. That's a million reasons that I probably do, but I'd say those are probably the top few.
If you're able to be a good example for other people of how business should be run of how client interaction should be, then, you know, why not be able to spread something that will actually benefit the rest? Yeah. It's pretty pretty mature mindset that you're speaking from in inside gathering the king's mastermind. We talk about kingship or the mindset of a king and how it's more outwardly focused and obviously at a certain level in life, certain level in business that you're taking care of.
Of course, your family, your team, the community that you're involved with. It's just more about others as opposed to just you. There has to be just you for a period of time. We call it the warrior stage, but at twenty four years old, man, you're talking like a king. Tell me how. What has happened? What's transpired in in your life and your career to where you can be at twenty four years old, have a a an Uber successful business and be thinking and saying the things that you are right now.
So I'd say most of that would go to just my upbringing how I was I was raised more than a conservative family. We immigrated here. I was one year old, so I've been in America for 23 years, basically my whole life. Could still speak the language fluently and read and write Chaz kind of thing. But when we grew up, my dad was working three jobs, when we first came to this, there's already 3 of us.
I come from a family of 6, and he was working hard providing for the family He had a masonry company that I started working in, helped him grow that. And then he went into the trucking industry in about age seventeen. That's when I opened my business. And ever since I was a kid, I never I always gravitated towards adults, towards older people because it just for some reason, like, playing video games, it didn't, like, that was not something I was attracted to.
Me and my brother once bought a PS 4. And we literally played a lot of it for 1 month and we got bored of it and we literally just tossed it. Like, we didn't even bother selling. We just toss it. Like, this is boring, but that's just, like, the the mentality of it. We wanna do something more than just what everybody else is doing.
And that's how being around the older people and I was Chaz sixteen, seventeen year old kid, and I was meeting people that are way more successful and people that have their lives figured out. And that kinda just led me to just be more mature in the values and things that go with. And then I think a big part of it is, you know, my spiritual life and god guides me to be a good Christian person and, like, it correlates into the business and everything.
So I don't that's where the good morals and the standards come from as well. Yeah. Obviously, you're talking about, legacy of your parents, not only just work ethic, but just a standard of living, right, or just this is the way that the family does things where it sounds like they're about excellence. Sounds like you're about you even mentioned the experience of the customer.
Like, I I don't know too many twenty four year olds, let alone twenty four year old business owners talking about experience and how to have the best experience for your clients, But the reality of it is that you've been doing this for darn near 10 years, and you've put in the work. You put in some hours. You put in you put in some decisions as we'll get to. And then that's what's led you to where you are. Anything else you wanna say there about just upbringing?
I just, obviously, such a unique perspective from a culture per perspective Chaz well as just being in Nebraska compared to where your parents are from is obviously just very different. Anything else you wanna add there? Yeah. No. Upgrading wise. Yeah. Conservative family.
It's more of you need to do these things to be successful, this and this, and it doesn't your parents want you to be successful, but they're them wanting you to be successful does not directly correlate to you actually being successful. That's where it comes down to being persistent. You have to have that self drive, like, why are you doing it? I started and be like, you can't do this. You're not gonna have success. This and this.
And it's like, you have to build the skin, which that's not gonna be handed to you from your parents. Your parents can only give you advice. They're not gonna force you to do anything. They'll give you the advice and the ball's in your court to are you gonna be successful or you're just gonna be like every other person there.
In a sense, I guess, as a kid, I probably maybe thought I was a little bit better than some of the other people, but then that mentality really quickly changed when, you know, business and just life humbles you really quick. And it doesn't matter if you make $10,000,000 or if you make a $100,000, you're they're both equal people. Like, you're the same person. Yeah. Still a human perspective. Exactly.
One thing that you set off air before we hit the record button is you were talking about, obviously, being young and people doubting you and not that it's necessarily been a main driver say, I'll show you. But, obviously, there's a, like you said, you shelf it. You put it in the backdrop of let me go ahead and get this done to be able to prove wrong on that level for just a half second. I'm sure we've got plenty of listeners that are still in their twenties or even thirties.
Super young from a, like, business perspective. A lot of years ahead of them, Yeah. What would you say from, like, a youth getting it done perspective? Getting it done. Like, you gotta find what your true motivator is. Like, your true motivator cannot be I'm gonna show you or I'm gonna show them because chances are you're gonna lead the business in more of that kind of mentality which is not gonna really lead to success.
If you're gonna just do it just to show them, then you're gonna start showing off. You're gonna start splurging too much. And that you're just gonna lead lead your business down, like, in a downfall.
Just having you're always gonna no matter what business you run, you're always gonna have people that are gonna doubt you that you're gonna they're gonna say, you know, you're not gonna succeed, but then until you actually succeed, even when I was successful and say maybe I bought a nicer thing or I was able to afford something nice because that's in the reality. That's how people picture you if you come with a nice car or something like, oh, this dude actually make made it.
But then even at then Chaz point, they still doubt you. So to have that be the main factor of I'm gonna prove them, it's a very dumb, I think, decision because It doesn't matter if you buy a Lamborghini and then it rolls Royce and you keep going. They're still gonna doubt you and think you didn't buy that. Somebody else bought that for you. I get a common thing of Oh, your dad gave you the business. Your dad helps you out.
Yeah. My dad's taught me a lot, but as far as, like, opening the business, this wasn't his masonry company that was handed to me. I didn't get his clientele. Right. It was a completely different thing. So Yeah. Yeah. That's just it's just mentality to, like, do not put that as, like, your main thing because it's probably not gonna lead you to success. Yeah. You're so right. Hateers are gonna hate.
And we all know that, but along the way, it looks like doubt, it looks like I can remember being 24. I was at your age. I was signing, I was buying a $500,000 business and assigning a lease for 5 plus $1000 a month, and they were concerned that I would be able to pay for it because I was 24. And nothing business. Yeah. It's to us, it's okay. We're signing this, and it feels normal, but to any other say, mortgage officer, they're probably like, what is this dude doing?
Am I taking a gamble that it's gonna go backwards for me? Or if that kind of thing, it happens. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. You've been doing this for a minute, and so maybe we have to go back into some of the earlier years, but I wanna know of a good decision that you made on the way to the first 1,000,000, if you will, where it was just like you think back. It's a moment in time. You know exactly what the decision was. Share it with us so that we can go repeat it, please.
So the decision that really put me is into the next earning level, selecting clientele. Like, you you have to really do a good job of vetting your clients. Like, you don't wanna be so desperate to the point that, like, yeah, you're starting your business. It's like, you're just you won't work. You're grabbing things as they come. I ended up losing probably a 100,000 for my first 2 years, like, consecutively, both years lost that money.
And that was actually jobs I completed that I should have gotten paid for, but it was people that saw an opportunity that they were able to take advantage of me. Young guy didn't have the necessary contracts in place, things like that. You're only seventeen eighteen years old. You shouldn't be making this kind of money. When I was a 17 or whatever, I was only making this kind of money. So here's some money get lost. Well, you're already trying to make ends meet at the 1st couple of years.
So it's like hiring an attorney or lord, you're it's not really worth it. It's still chasing that money. Yeah. So it's once I made the decision, you know, it would and at times, it's literally certain culture groups. If you're Russian, you probably wanna steer clear from those kind of people because they're gonna be like, oh, this is my friend, this, and this, and they're gonna treat you more as like a friend, versus okay. This is actually a business deal.
This is not the client chooses what they do. It's like, no. Everything's set in stone, which now I wouldn't probably even though I have, like, contracts and stuff in place now, I still would steer clear from that customer because it's the amount of headache and the amount of time you're gonna you're never gonna find a perfect customer, but you still should be checking your customers. Like, if a customer's shopping around for me, I'm usually, like, I'm probably not the best fit.
If you're gathering estimates from a bunch of people, you're probably looking for the cheapest price. I'm not gonna be your cheapest price at all, but I'm gonna be your best work. So if you want best work, it's not gonna be cheap. But if you want it fast and cheap, it's not gonna be good. That kind of thing. So Right. Chaz when I changed that mentality of, okay, these customers, I'm not gonna do work for or friends and family. Yeah. I've actually just bit the same. What's that saying goes?
I mean, Russian, it's a little different, but it's, I just stepped on the same break. Kind of, you know, he stepped on the rake. And it's like I said, I would never help. I not that I would never help, but I I would steer clear from helping out friends this kind of. Here I am. I did it again, and now I regret everything all over again. So it's that's probably what changed when I started doing customers that were more legitimate customers that were Yeah.
You tell them this is how it goes and they respect your advice. They're not trying to teach you how to run the business. With other customers, you'll get them and it's I want this, but I'm gonna show you how to do this. Yeah. I'm first and you hired, you want to do it. So you tell me how you want it done, you know, what you want done, and I'll do it how it should be done kind of thing. But that was probably the biggest Yeah. Decision. Yeah. Double edge sword for you.
And I think for the listener, they're gonna have to decipher for themselves, but for you, obviously, doing projects as a young man. And then on top of that, doing projects inside of your own cultural community for you, Russian, it didn't give you the built in authority. Right? It's like in the Bible, the cities where Jesus was most or where he grew up is where he got kicked out of. You know, it's like, you're not welcoming your own home. Type of a thing.
And I actually experienced the same thing. When I had already had multiple, I think, where I had 7 or 8 companies at this point, I was in real estate, lots of franchising, and I decided to create a sales course. And, I had been top sales guy in a organization of 3000 plus salespeople, and so you would think that naturally, Chaz is a a pool of people who'd be like, I would pay to know the secrets of the top guy who the average person's making 50 to 80,000, and he was making 500.
Like, Yeah. I would wanna know that. Oh, oh, it's just Chaz. I I wouldn't pay for that. I was like, wait. What? What? It's a double standard almost. It's crazy, but it's true. And so your solution to that was, okay. Let me obviously get some contracts in place. Be legitimate myself. But then now go and seek not not that the other customers weren't legitimate, but go seek clients who want real projects done that are looking for an expert, which that's what you are able to demi time.
Value your time. Exactly. Yep. They value your time versus just, oh, sorry, you're just another contract that shows up. Which should see off of free estimates for but then at at times, it's like, that's where you wanna be super attentive to your time because you could go 365 days in the year and do 500 estimates, and you only got one of them. That's probably not a good statistic. You wasted so much more time that you could have been making money.
But I mean, so it's it's an important thing of being a people person. It comes over time. You can kinda sense when somebody's gonna be a good fit or somebody's, you know, not gonna be a good fit. So if I come up to a customer and this customer's telling me, like, this is what I need done. I need it done this way.
This that's probably not a customer you wanna work with because they're gonna be standing over your shoulder telling you how it should be done when you are the one with experience knowing how it should be done. When you come to a customer that says, here's a $50,000 check, go do the job. I trust. That's the customer that you wanna be striving for and going for. Yeah. It's funny. I saw a meme a couple years ago, but it it brings me up.
It's like, the $500 client responds with what what are the next expectations? When are we meeting next? And all the questions. And then the 5 or the 50,000 is money sent. See it. See you next week. Or that's all it is. Yeah. Yeah. Oftentimes, like, I'll get customers that really they'll write me a check and they'll be like, just let me know when you're ready to start, get these materials ordered.
That kinda And sometimes, like, right now, the huge issue with all the material shortages is, like, we have one job. Lady wrote me a $25,000 check. I bought the materials we've been waiting 3 months now, and I still can't get her materials. And it's like, it sucks, but it's that's the the world we live in. So Yeah. Yeah. It is what it is. And good communication I'm sure with her showing her receipts of the product being purchased and the update on the order.
All that's probably She's not even that kind of person. Like, she trusts. She I could show her the receipts if she wanted that, but She trusts. I've gotten partial of that order in, and it's just the the small details, which I don't wanna tear up her yard in her house. And then it's like you're short, those little things. And then it's you leave her in a mess. I wanna be able to come in, get it done in one go, and get out kind of thing, a calmer for the customer. Yeah. Exactly. Love that.
K. What about a bad choice? Something that you did along the way that your smirking's already know there's a story. Please share. There's plenty of Chaz choices, to say at least. Plenty of choices, whether it's hiring people, whether it's losing money to find the one that was, I guess, heck, to this day, I make bad choices. Like, you're never gonna be a perfect business owner to say the least. You might not follow your books too close and you paid something that you probably should have paid.
You paid something you paid yourself first before paying what you should have paid, it happens like your business owner. You have a lot of things going on. Things like that are gonna happen. Don't beat yourself up about it. But I'd say the worst decision I've probably ever made was going back to those customers and losing $200,000 in the 1st couple years of the business. But then it's like, you know, any other person would probably, like, through this, I'm out of this business.
I can get a 9 to 5 any day of the week. People like you and I, we can go to any company, and they'll give us a 9 to 5, but it's like, we have way more potential than 9 to 5. Why would we accept something that mediocre kind of thing? Yeah. I'm trying to think to see if there's anything Chaz was awesome. There's been a, I mean, obviously, there's a lot of little ones along the way. The one I'm hearing you say is obviously just the choosing the clients wisely because you didn't.
And so you talked there for a half second. You said, at a desperation, really. You were new. You were young. You're hungry. And Definitely have grow facial hair to all agree. Grow the facial hair, even if it's a little patch, grow it out. Customers Wolfe add you 5 years automatically there. So I had at least I had a little bit of facial hair going for me at age seven 18. Yeah. That's funny. But super practical, you're right. It's funny.
The beard does the same thing for me, but I think that the sharing piece here is don't be so desperate. Where you're making bad choices. Exactly. It'll cost you more in the long run. Yeah. Maybe you won't have work for 2 months out of the year, but that's better than being x amount of dollar in the hole because you made that bad decision. Yeah. Patients on, honestly, nothing happens overnight, and most business owners know that. But if you don't know that, it's not gonna happen overnight.
Unless it's like the lottery and you're handed a bunch of money overnight, but Right. The outcome of something like that statistics lottery winners are usually not doing too well. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. What sort of discipline or maybe even process principles do you live by now when it comes to decision making? So discipline, 1st and foremost, if it's a really important decision, I'll ask my wife, keep her in the loop, we'll pray about it. We're spiritual family.
We believe in god, Christian family. So that's probably the biggest thing is, you know, and if you're not a Christian person. I would say be patient on making all the decisions. Don't rush into everything because the worst thing you can do is say Yeah. This works or I'll do it or sign that contract, and then you have some kind of regret. So it's like you sign a lease typically and you're stuck for a year with that lease. Same thing in business.
If you sign something, it's usually hard, very hard to get out of it. And most of the times, maybe you could get out of it, but you would look very unprofessional. On your side to renege on the deal. That kind of thing. The discipline wise before decisions is first think about it. I've caught myself so many times I give an answer right away. And then it's shoot.
Like, I just totally underbid that job because I gave him a verbal estimate, or I just totally just butchered what it actually should have been. And now, you know, and at that point, you man up and you you do what you said you were gonna do, even if it caused you a loss. So we just whatever just give it at least a day or overnight think on it. If somebody's trying to pressure you into an answer, hey. I need an answer now.
Yes or no. You just tell the person most people are very understanding, so I just need a day to think about this. I need to go sit down. Way all the options, look at the pluses and minuses, the benefits before I can make a decision. And any educated person will let you do that and agree with you and be supported of it. Any person that doesn't agree with something like that's probably not somebody you really would wanna work with too because that whole deal is gonna be a nightmare for you.
He needs just everything, like, snap of the fingers kind of thing. Right. Yeah. No. What I'm hearing you say is poise. So the ability to process information And what what I'm not hearing you say is delay or procrastinate. I'm hearing you say have poise. And so whether that's 3 minutes or an overnight, take the time necessary to process whatever type of decision that is in a thoughtful and intentional way. Would you add anything to that? I think you you basically summed it up very well.
Just you don't make a decision to get married or overnight. Like, it's, boom, she's the one I'm getting made or older. Yeah. There's one off instances of Chaz. But just think about any other decision you've made in your life. When have you ever just said, I'm gonna go buy a $1,000,000 business It doesn't happen overnight unless you're already a serial entrepreneur, then that kind of stuff is just like, boom. You're like, which next business am I going to?
Being a business owner looks very attractive to all the other world, but in reality, it's not really that attractive because I've helped multiple people open businesses all their paperwork, all that kind of stuff. And they're like, man, I didn't think it was gonna be this hard. And I tried to explain it to you, man. I haven't even gotten to you marketing or yet. It's like you haven't even gotten to there.
Just wait till, you know, what happens in the future, then you'll really realize what what it means to be a business owner. So if people think it's easy and then they say, oh, it's I thought this would be easier. So it's not. Yeah. And then you offer them a job and sometimes, like, I'm coming. Well, so now we're just talking about the difference between an entrepreneur and an entrepreneur.
I think every good entrepreneur is gonna be able to locate or attract or find the entrepreneur who they wanna run they have autonomy. I've got several key roles inside of different businesses that I have. Where it's you wanna be an owner, but the role is inside the business. It's not like me where it's, like, visionary working on the business. It's, you know, you got a task. You got a role. Great. They wanna have autonomy. They wanna be able to run something. Great. That's a good partnership.
That's a good way to hone their skill and hone yours. Exactly. Obviously, for those folks, not the quote unquote 9 to 5. It's of them being able to have the autonomy and freedom of what entrepreneurialism looks like but inside almost like a little bit of a safety net of someone else's risk taking stick my neck out there. On company dollar. That's right. And there's value in Chaz. Both sides. I think that a lot of elite entrepreneurs know that.
If you're listening here today, and that's the first time you've heard that, there are people out there who would love to run their own business, but they are stuck in the angle of risk taking or they don't have money or even if they had the money, they're not gonna spend it, but they'll spend yours. Exactly. And business owners don't just because you're a business owner, I mean, you got a bunch of money. Like, being a business owner does not mean you got loads.
Like, once you get, you know, things established and you're getting built, even then, once you get stuff built, you're always looking to spend that money onto a new business. When you're a true entrepreneur, you're not gonna sit on I got one business. You get bored and say, I'm trying to get the next business going next to next one. So it's you're always moving, you're innovating. You're trying to move forward. You're not complacent. And good with just where you are. That's right. 100%.
K. I wanna switch the focus here of the questions a little different from angle. I want to ask you a question about metrics. I want you to dwindle the entire construction business that you have down into one trackable metric. If you can only pick one metric to track forever and ever, What would the one metric be? Profit. K. Why? Because if you're not profitable, there's no point of you having the business. That's probably the biggest thing.
And so many business owners that I know don't even know how much profit they're making on a job. So it's, yeah, you do all this volume. You have a nice truck. You have a nice car, but it's like, how much are you really make? If you're making a 5% profit and you're doing 10 10 jobs a year, you're not doing it the right way. If I'm doing if I was only doing 10 jobs a year, I'd need at least 50 plus percent profit to make it worth my while.
As the smaller the profit, the more volume you have to have, the larger the profit, the less volume you can get away with. Profit is that's one thing that I it really taught me because it was, like, making great money, but where's all this money going? And then wise. I'm not charging enough. Like, I'm the kind of person that I will do 20 extra steps than the contractor next to me. If I'm building a deck and code passes this, I'm gonna do 20 extra steps.
Like, if that customer on the deck has some can lights that arrested the ceiling fans looking droopy, I will pay out of pocket, go buy a $200 ceiling fan and $20 can lights, and I'll replace those while I'm there because that is literally the it just makes a night and day difference. And nobody else is gonna do Chaz. So, therefore, my profit has to be more than everybody else's.
Yeah. That's probably just the biggest metric for construction to track because you're if you're not tracking your profit, you can get it can really get away from because material costs are very high before it used to be, you know, materials and then labor labor was two times what materials are. Well, now a a basic deck could not basic that in a nicer deck Wolfe run you $20,000 just for the composite material and the railing. So it's that'd probably be the metric.
I'd wanna make sure just all business owners track very well. Otherwise, you'll get yourself in a lot of trouble, and I've been there multiple times. It's not in the world. You just gotta you cut your personal spending, you figure out the business, and you keep moving. So That's right.
And what you just said, but cut to personal expenses and you focus on the business, it goes back to even the beginning of why profits important is because for the guy that has the nice truck that has maybe his phone paid for and and he's living what appears to be a decent life, but he has no idea what the profit margin on the business is because he's not treating the business as a separate entity a thing. He just he and the business are the same, and I lived in that world for a long time.
And so if they're not separate, meaning that the business has to be profitable on its own after you get paid. Now pay yourself a reasonable deal. It doesn't have to be super high, but after you, then the business is tracked on its own. And and if it doesn't stand on its own, then you have nothing of value. You have your you have yourself a job. Yeah. Basically, yeah. So if you can't step away from the business and I could make you 6 figures all year long being in the business.
But will your business make you 6 figures once you leave? So you took a year off from the business. Would you still be making that same income? And then that's really the thing. I'm it's really hit me because I'm realizing, Kaye, like, I could probably get this thing running for x amount of money. But the the goal is to get itself independent. Let's keep that let's keep that vein. I'm gonna skip ahead a couple of questions here.
My question to you is If you only had 1 hour each week to run your business, how would you successfully do that and still be able to obviously run the business? 1 hour each week from the business. What do you do inside that hour? Yeah. You would definitely have to have people in place that would be able to do everything else. You'd have to have estimator project managers, people that could do all everything else.
And then you would basically be a consultant of the business and hour would be you would check the books. You don't need to check them in detail. Your your main thing would be your profit. If that thing business is eraking in a profit, you got your business in the right hands. And then just maybe I'd probably be checking up on 1 or 2 customers, just customer experience. Call me and be like, how was your experience? Anything we need to improve on? That kind of thing.
In construction, those are gonna be your 2 biggest thing. You gotta be profitable and customers have to be happy. If you're not gonna have happy customers, you know, then you you might as well go forward for somebody else. Yeah. Love love the mindset there. And you're right. You eventually as you say, become a consultant for the business, which means that you've delegated or you've entrusted every actual role. You become an investor. Trusting people is not as as hard.
But for me, especially, because I I am, like, a micromanager like Chaz. Like, I have to be ins and outs of everything. So being able to just let go and let people do things. Yeah. Even simple things like before or sometimes I'll still do some installs and just even the simple thing of letting one of the guys do some silicone in the shower Yeah. That stuff has to be perfect because I, like, you walk in the shower.
That's what and it's something I I know I can do it perfectly, but is this guy gonna do it? You'll never know until you let him. That's what I have to tell myself a lot of times. I do you're not gonna know if this person is capable unless you let him try. And if you don't let him try it, you'll be the you'll always be the one putting it in. Yeah. And I hate doing silicone. So I'm good. So you gotta empower somebody else. What book would you recommend, Max, for a six figure business owner?
For books, I personally, since I'm so on the go, I don't really have I like more podcasts. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. We'll direct them. So my favorite podcast most of the podcasts I listened to are more like builder podcasts like Rising Or Build. He's in Texas, and he builds. He's a person that I followed because the stuff he puts in his houses Chaz higher end finishes. Sure. Like, the technical stuff of the house, like, the bones, the the guts of the house are very good.
And it kinda just talks about different kind of ways to leverage different things. Want to have more time to do more books and that kind of thing, but I'm hearing you say is get into the industry. Learn. Like, you gotta know the industry. You gotta know what's up on the industry. You gotta always be innovative. So I've read a bunch of books. I'm honestly, I go based off lists of other entrepreneurs.
So whoever, you know, say, these are ten books, I recommend to read and I'll throw them an audio book and just kinda listen to it. I'm also the kind of person that if I'm doing million things at once, I'm probably not gonna retain any of that information. But if I'm doing a podcast and people are talking in the background, that kind of stuff I can remember Whereas, like, a straight up book. I'm the kind of person if I'm reading the book. I wanna jot notes, that kind of thing.
So I can get value out of it. So I I need to start getting more onto the book side that's one thing I gotta work on. So there's some good ones out there. Hey. But that hey. That's okay. And all seriousness, what I took away from all that is we all have different learning styles. Right? Where I have never been big on podcasts until recently. Right? Of course, there are several good ones, thousands of them, actually, But the reality of it is that for me, a book, an audible book is fantastic.
Of course, I've got plenty of books, and I've read 100, like, in paper form, sat down, But but audible is a great because I because that's the thing I can do while I'm working out. If I'm working out and I'm listening to a book, I'm I retain it. If I'm doing anything else, my mind is thinking about business and all these other things Chaz I can't retain it. Well, it's just too much going on. But when I'm working out, I that's I'm focus. I got one thing on my mind. Squeeze. A lift and squeeze.
Yeah. Exactly. And so then they're they're for the book works. Anyway, I so appreciate that perspective. And it's not a matter of how many books have we read order to be successful, it's are we pressing into development, really? Exactly. Yep. Okay. What do you think about networking and or master mining with other entrepreneurs? I think it's great.
It's very necessary, actually, because it like, here in Lincoln, Nebraska, especially, like, everybody knows what who does and what it's a bigger town. We have about 280,000 people here, but it's It's thousand people's a lot, but Yeah. It's not that much. Like, it's word travels fast quick. And so it's knowing different kind of people meeting different kind of people. Like Yeah. I the new business venture that I wanted to partake in, probably wouldn't have happened if I wasn't networking.
We're gonna be partnering with this guy on this deal, and it's and it doesn't even need to be related to the industry that you're in. That's so it's And if you were if I Chaz it network, just going out and talk to other people, then I'd the opportunity you will never find the opportunities Chaz are out there. They're even waiting for you there until you actually go out there and try to grab those opportunities. Because they think opportunities can come in different shapes and forms.
Like, it come through a person. It can come through your computer. It it there's just so many different opportunities all over, and it's just it's up for you to go out and grab them. Yeah. Sometimes they come through a computer with a beard. Exactly. Okay. Yes. That's right. But in all seriousness, I love what you said there about doing another business. I haven't actually had too many guests refer to networking or master mining as something to be able to propel opportunity.
Obviously, there's tons of ways or reasons to get around other people, ideas, and accountability, and, relationships, all this incredible stuff that you can do inside of a networking event and or more more probably importantly, a mastermind. But what you just talked about as far as, like, connecting with specific people to be able to grow new opportunities. That is a whole another level.
In fact, it just for just a half second here, I'm gonna give, like, a little plug on Gathering and the Kings, because inside that was not my intention. When I started gathering the King's mastermind, I did not intend to put people in a room so that we could do business together. It was Hey. I wanna know what you've been through struggles and vice versa so we can help each other and, like, actually mastermind. Yeah. Grow our businesses through the benefit of the table. Right?
But I'll tell you what, man, in the group right now, there's 6 new businesses being formed and or partnerships happening because it's dude, that thing that you just started. That's really idea. I'll jump in on that with you. And it's like, where do you find somebody who's, yeah, I'll put up money for Chaz. Or, hey. I know a guy who can run that for us or whatever.
You're talking about, like, just another level of business mindset and business interaction, communication, relationships, all this stuff. You're like, dude, We've been successful in our own businesses. Yeah. I bet you if we came together on this one's gonna be successful too. Exactly. And it doesn't mean, like, the people think off sometimes Chaz you have to be a 7 or 8 figure business owner to start a new business. No. You don't. It's really just the mindset of never having enough.
There's no as an entrepreneur, there should never be, like, an epitome of success. There's different markers that will show you, okay, I'm on the right path. I'm doing Wolfe, but you're never doing great. You should never be doing great as an entrepreneur because there's always more greatness waiting for you up ahead. Kind of thing. So Yeah. I had a client a couple years ago say that the when I was asking, hey. What'd you get out of this?
What'd you get out of the relationship with me, my team, and so forth? And he was like, honestly, you introduced me to the person I was meant to be. And it's like, when you think about what you just said, as far as feeling pretty good about the trajectory I'm on. But, man, the guy the Chaz 10 years from now, he's still in the works. I wanna meet that guy. That's why so many businesses fail is because they're they're they're it's so narrow thinking.
Like, they're like, I have one business, and I just need to keep that one float and that's it. So, no, I have one business. I need to make that stable to where I don't have to touch it. I'm on to the next business and then on to the next. And then the next thing you know, you got full revenue streams coming from all these businesses, and then you're able to do the sky's limit when it comes down to financial. You're able to help people. You're able to open to more businesses.
It's just Yep. Avenue of opportunity. It is a unique way of thinking of things and call it serial entrepreneurship because they're even myself. It's not a there's a lot of people that want to think like that, but there's what I have found is that we, you, and me, because you just identified yourself as one of me. People think we're crazy, bro, and we kind of are. And that's okay. I'm okay with that. I realize that starting the next thing on to the next thing.
It's not like you do seven things at once. But you do what you're saying. You build one thing and you build system, and then you can move on. So I think there's obviously like a, like, there's a process to Chaz, but when you're never satisfied and you're hungry for the next project. You can be labeled a little cray cray. Okay. I got one more question for you, Max. Are you ready? Yeah. If you lost it all, What would you do? I don't even gotta think about that. It started all over again.
Whether it's heck. I'd even start in the same industry just to show myself that I can actually do it. I Chaz say I've I've lost everything twice. 1st 2 years of business, I've lost I've lost a 100 k and then I lost another one. And it's like Funny didn't even have, actually. I didn't even have the money to begin with to lose it. So I lost it all. Did I'd start it right back up again.
It's being I think you Chaz a person just have to know that, you know, even if you fail, like, failure to me is not even if I start a new business, just in case we fail no. There's you shouldn't have that thought process. Like, it shouldn't even be like that afterthought in the back of the Like, this isn't it's not gonna fail regardless because I'm gonna find the people I need Chaz have enough experience to make this work. And I'm gonna work as hard as any.
If I have to work 30 hour days only if there's only 24 hour days kind of thing, and that's where it really depends on how you who you are as a person. Love the mindset. How can the listener connect with you, brother? The listener Chaz connect with me however they want, man. I'm I'm an easy person to find and live in Lincoln, Nebraska. K. 4025809548. Call me. Text me anytime. I'm usually not sleeping. Just like Chaz, we got 2 kids. So I'm usually up and about.
I'm usually sitting here in this office. Most of the day anyway. There you go. Facebook page, prime built construction, Google page. We're working on doing some more marketing, that kind of thing, but honestly, we're so far out that I get so many people calling to do advertising. I'm like, dude, that's tough. I don't even wanna advertise because it's hard to making construction and tractable industries very hard. It's not every kid's do. I wanna be a construction worker now.
You gotta do a lot more to get somebody to stay in construction, that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. The mindset's been incredible. I appreciate you giving me the flexibility at the beginning of our time here to feed my baby girl. And and yours, just 10 days older, I hope that you get some sleep. And we're gonna continue this conversation. We the crazies have found each other and that we're gonna it alive somehow some way. So appreciate you being here.
We wish you nothing but blessing on your family and your businesses. Thank you. Same to you, man. 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 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 and 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. That 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, toxin.