On today's episode of gathering the Kings. I was done. I wanted to get out with them. Felt feeling defeated, but once you get one yes, wants to get one one customer that's, you know what? You seem like a nice guy. I'll give you a chance Chaz he get excited. Then we're on top of the world, then we close the next 6. You know? That's 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 the king 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 picture of the journey of success and how you too can get there.
Through this dialogue, you will learn the value of growing your network and surrounding yourself with power players and keys like today's guest. Grab your pen and notebook because We're about to dive in. What's up, everybody? Chaz Wolfe, Gathering the Kings podcast. Today, I've got Corey Jay. On the King stage. My man, how you doing? Doing great. Thanks for having me on today. You know, of course. I'm excited for this conversation.
I'm excited for all of conversations, but you've got a couple unique things happening and you are not new or a spring chicken when it comes to business or turning says around, and so we're gonna have lots of fun things to talk about here today. I wanna know what kind of business or businesses do you have, Jay or Corey? So I've got a couple of businesses. Our our primary business is the gutter company. So I own advantage seamless gutter We've got 7 locations for that across 3 states.
And then I've got a roofing company called Newman Construction that we acquired A little over a year ago, and I have a barbecue store that we started. That's got a couple locations. The barbecue store is fun. So my accountant says I can't say hobby business because then it's not a real business. But I would say two locations. It's not a hobby at this point. So it's a fun business. I love barbecue. So that one was a fun one to have it, that'd be a part of.
And then I'm I'm partners in a few other little things, but nothing super notable. I just got involved in something called roof max. Fun fun stuff, but my my passion is business. I found out that it doesn't really matter what I'm doing as long as I'm running a business. So it's Yeah. Whether it's barbecue roofing, gutters. Yeah. I could probably make pens or something I love that. So it's the it's about the game for you then. Is that what you're saying? It is.
It's I honestly think it's more about the the development people than it is about the what I'm doing. That's the challenge for me is how to develop somebody else into being a leader. And that's the fun part for me. If I'm being honest, like, I thought it was about running a business, but it's about figuring out how to teach other people to run businesses that makes it super exciting. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, another level of challenge, really, because if you can go do it yourself, great.
But to be able to get somebody else to do it, who has a different personality, a different bringing a different background, different way of thinking to get them to be able to successfully operate as a whole another challenge. Is that why my first question is always associated around the why? Is that is that your why? Is it the bigger picture for you? Is that why you're still doing this? Because at this point, geez, with all these businesses, I'm sure you could probably sail off into the sunset.
Why haven't you done that? Why are you still doing this? Chaz, as a Chaz an income level, it's what makes somebody successful. Right? Like, that piece just goes away because, honestly, I can make 20 bucks an hour and still be happy. It it doesn't that part doesn't completely matter to me. It's about the development of people and bringing other people with me. I I don't need the extra money. It's fun. Like, money's a byproduct, and it buys you options. But it doesn't. That's not what drives me.
You could ask any of my management team around me. They in the beginning, they all would say that I was foolish in the money is what drives me, but it's 100% not. And now they every one of them, if you had the same station they would say is definitely not about the money. He just wants to succeed and win and bring people with. Yeah. That's cool. Has that been something that developed for you over time, or was that even back in the day when you were just getting things cranking?
I think it's always been a piece of it. I think it's gotten a lot stronger. As I've grown, but at the end of the day, I had a financial adviser of mine one day. He said, Corey, what are you gonna do with all your money whenever you become successful? Said, what do you mean? I said, I'll spend it on something. He's, no, you won't. He said, your lifestyle will not change. I know that about you. What are you gonna do with the money? It doesn't You he's I can tell you're not driven by the money.
So why, like, why are you working so hard? I mean, I'm not sure. But I that's interesting. Really developing people and developing the businesses. But So if it was basically an incognito thing before, obviously, okay. Let's just Let's make it clear to the listener. If your business doesn't make money, it's not a business. We obviously need money to live. Like, we all we're not up here toading that you shouldn't be after money. Okay. Okay. Fine. We've gotten that out of the way.
Now the fact that you've got this incognito thing about other things outside of money, how then did you maybe discover that it was about other people for you, or was there a moment in time, or were it, like, clicked for you finally? I think it's been just being around other business owners and realizing the way that they they operate. Why?
I know I had a good friend of mine that's a big business owner recommend a few books to me, and it started to kinda hone in on maybe I'm not doing this for the money anymore. Maybe I'm not driving so hard because I wanna be the biggest or the best or whatever. It's however you start to realize it's not about Chaz. I think it becomes a lot easier. Book that he recommended to me. I don't know if Tommy Mellow at all. He recommended he he recommended the Go Giver was Oh.
And it was I'm like, man, this is the way it this is truly the way I feel, and it it changed everything. You can be way more successful if you're helping other people get what they want. Yeah. It is true. It is true.
And it's cliche, at least to the ones that maybe haven't experienced it yet, to your point, when your talks at a certain level become around bringing other people with you or helping your people hit financial targets or things in their life that they've never been able to do, then it gets really fun. For sure. I agree. Okay. Let's go back. Let's go back into your history. Why business ownership? How did it start for you? I because I don't get along with other people.
Nope. You didn't play nice in the sandbox. My my first business. I've been a business owner almost my entire life, so I I started my first business when I was 12. And I've had other jobs since then. I I went to work for other people, learned some trades, learned new things, I'm how do you say it without sounding like an asshole? But I'm a I think I'm a natural born leader, and I wanna be in front. And No. That that's a personality thing. That's not a that's not an asshole thing.
It's a personality. So I didn't get along well with most of my bosses. And and then as you move on and become a manager, a leader, a boss, you're like, I was a I was a jackass to that. I wasn't nice. He, like, this guy was just trying to do his job, and I made it difficult for him. This ownership for me has always been what I've wanted to do. No matter what. And I've done I think I steered towards it because I would rather make my own decisions, not have somebody making them for me.
That's right. That's right. Okay. Early on, twelve years old, you're starting a business. Can you give us a little bit of the trajectory as it? What was that business? How did it get rolling? Give us a little bit of the earlier start? Yeah. So I my first business, I think a lot of people was a lawn care business. I started with my dad Made me buy a push mower from him. So he had his push mower.
I made enough money with that push mower to buy a riding mower, to buy a trailer, to buy the stuff to go on the trailer. And my dad is he's been my biggest cheerleader, biggest fan all along, and he's always pushed me to succeed, but he's always helped me get to where I'm going. So it's Wolfe he didn't give me any of the stuff, he helped me have the means to get that stuff. It's Yeah. It helps figure it out. A payment plan.
Whether it be a payment paying plan for the push mower or giving me a ride. Like, my dad would I'd actually work from the closest job to the furthest job, and he would come pick me up at the furthest job with the trailer. We'd I had the trailer custom built to fit the riding mower so that we could put the riding mower on the trailer, load up all the rest of the equipment, and come back. So I left at 6 in the morning to start mowing, and I would come home at about 9:30 at night.
Than Chaz twelve years old, and I had just worked my way away from home dad would come get me, bring me back home, do it all over again the next day. By the time I got rid of that. I sold the sold off all the equipment, sold the accounts to a friend of mine and went into my next career choice. I I really wanted to learn construction, and I had a opportunity to join a cabinet shop that I Actually, the guy was installing cabinets at my dad's house and asked if I wanted a job. I said, yeah.
Absolutely. I wanna learn something new. And, yep, that kinda started the journey into construction. Like, I've always had the drive to work, but it started from my dad pushing me to go out and do something. And it was a lot of fun. I enjoyed cutting lawns, but it it definitely gave me that drive, and I it made me realize I wanna work outside. I struggle sitting in offices every day. That's right.
Yeah. I think a lot of entrepreneurs, whether they sit in an office, or not for their current business. I think we all struggle a little bit. That's why I've got a standing desk. I can sit here and I can fidget my feet. I can lose I can any one of those, like, walking treadmills. You're like, I guess, like, be walking while standing and Yeah. I think we all try to do, like, 17 things at once. It's an it's it's an incredible and distraction all in the same moment.
So I wanna I wanna go to those 1st few years, especially in the gutter business. Is that your that your, like you said, in your main squeeze here, Why don't you take me back to, like, year 1, 2, 3? If if we could, like, get back to the start of that, like, it's A gutter business is something that nobody ever pictures themselves being in. I think Yeah. I've met a lot of gutter owner gutter company owners around the country, and it's it's not the glamour of sexy job.
Like, even being a roofer is if people look at that as a higher regard than a gutter company, I was actually doing roofing at the time. I was was doing a storm damage restoration. I was working all over. I don't know if you remember, 0808 was a little rough. So I lost everything. I Wow. I had no money left. In the gutter company? Nope. So this is this is as a roofing company. So I was a roofing and siding guy and was doing pretty good.
I was with another girl at the time that we run out together anymore. She whatever made decisions left. And and at the time, I I had basically no money left. And it oh, it hit and I had to figure out a way to go make money. So I took my last two hundred bucks that I had, and it printed as many business cards and flyers as I could on black and white paper, and they were super cheesy, not great. And I went out and started door knocking and trying to figure out how I was gonna make a living.
So I had started in a big hailstorm that was in my hometown that Chaz hit and was able to go go out and get a few jobs. The 1st week of me door knocking, I'm not I'm not the door knocking type usually. Like, I get along with people. I can make conversation. It's fine, but whenever you're invading somebody's personal space, it's a little different, and that's really what you're doing when you're sitting at a door.
So it was, I had more doors slammed in my face for that 1st week, and The guy, well, I was done. I wanted to get out. I'm feeling defeated, but once you get 1, yes. Once you get 1, one customer that's, you know what? You seem like a nice guy. I'll give you a Chaz. Yeah. You get excited. You're standing on top of the world. Then we close the next six. You know? That's right. But so I had I was doing roofing and siding at that time. 8 was a crusher for me, but I came out of it. Great.
I was able to pay off after a few years of doing that. I paid off every ounce of debt. I bought my first gutter machine for cash. I drove to Kansas City to dry to, you know, pick up a gutter machine. And the reason that I got a gutter machine is because I couldn't find a gutter guy to do any of my gutters. Wow. And I went and bought it. Did my first gutter job. It was horrendous. It took me like, 3 days to do it. I made no money. I'm like, this is ridiculous. Why would anybody be a gutter guy?
Now you know why you couldn't find one. Yeah. And the problem that we always had with the roofing company whenever we were hiring a gutter company is that you'd call a gutter guy. He's up either on Monday. Take care of it for you. The problem was he didn't realize he meant 3 Mondays for now or 2 Monday. Like, he they were never reliable. They'd show up when they wanted to show up. They'd do whatever they wanted to do.
And that the piece of a construction project that holds up the most cash is the gutters. So if you've got a any of your big storm rest creation guys, any of your big roofing companies can tell you that it's that's usually what's holding up their final check. So they're waiting on the gutter guy to get there and do the job, and that was our case. We had a $1000 get our job that was preventing us from getting a $50,000 check. And it was extremely frustrating. So we got the gutter machine.
Got it to where we could get our own jobs done, close things out. I actually ended up meeting another gutter company that was extremely fast and did great work. And we did end up working with them for another 2 years, and I didn't do any gutters. I just had the gutter machine in the truck then. And I but I was intrigued by what they were doing because I like I told you, my first job took me 3 days to do. And then the first job I watched them do, it took them, like, an hour a half.
Yeah. Exactly. And I'm like, this is incredible. I and I would just just in awe, I would sit there and watch them. And I learned I picked up on a lot of the stuff they were doing, and I'm like, I think I could do this. And I met my current wife somewhere in the midst of all of this, and I was traveling back and forth from whether it be Kansas, whether it be Missouri.
I was all over the place doing storm restoration, and I would have to drive home every 3 days to be on a date with this girl that I had met. My man was was getting tiring, you know, driving all over the country right to try to have a relationship. And That's right. We ended up. She traveled down and seen me quite a bit, and I I Chaz, but come to Jesus moment with her. And I said, what do you wanna do with your life? What where should we live? And I said, we're doing well enough.
We buy a nice motor home right now. We could live in a trailer down by the river. And There's quite a proposal there, of course. Because that's That's romantic. I said, I know. I'm a hopeless romantic, but so I As long as you put rose petals in the trailer down by river, then we're good to go. Wasn't a fan. Right? Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. But but I said, what do you wanna do? Should we move back? Should we try to figure something out? I said, the economy wasn't great yet.
Weren't we weren't doing amazing things back in in our town of Braynard where we were both living at the time and was living. I was living in hotels mostly. And we made the decision. Hey. Let's move back home and try to figure out how to do stuff. So I said, I got this gutter machine. And I think I could be fast at it. So I'll do gutters, and I'll figure out odds and ends. And I was, like, the 1st year of me coming back to hang gutters, I've did one gutter job a week. It was terrible.
And I was doing bathroom remodels. I was doing roofing job, siding jobs, I Yeah. I'd I'd scrub your toilet if you wanted. I just wanted to be home and start a family and be a good family man at that point. So Fast forward, we did, we did a gutter project. I got it. I was in the middle of a big siding job. We got this gutter project for a townhome complex. Massive. Got our job at the time for me. Now we've done little jobs like that.
And I went there and I just presented myself it's not that I was the best gutter guy in town by any means, but the other gutter guy that was there was I shouldn't say a complete but he gave us bad. It, like, the way that he was going about it was terrible. And I don't think he would have done a good job for him. Anyway, but we presented, well, told my plan, said, you know what? I think in 3 days, we can get this whole job done. At the time, mind you, I have no employees. It was just me.
Yeah. And so you're a little bit freaking out. You're hoping you get it, but you're a little bit freaking out. Yeah. I'm like, I 3 days. Yeah. I'm looking around this giant complex. I'm like, in 3 days, I can do this. And they're like, oh my. The other guy said it'd be 3 weeks. Bye bye. Maybe he's right. Like, maybe he knows more of me. I don't know. I might go now. 3 days. 2 days. We can totally do it. We ended up when we did the job in 3 days. So we we I got as many of my friends together.
People I knew that were able to come work for a few hours here, a few hours there. And I was the only guy that knew anything about putting gutters on. Yep. And but it would I had 6 guys on the job site with me, and I gave them all very clear direction on what I needed them to do. You are only screwing it off the gutters. You are only putting on miters. You are only silicone and cars.
So we started to get a system built And by doing that, I I figured out how to make a system that took inexperienced guys, like, one experienced guy, 6 inexperienced guys, and we were fast. And we were super methodical about it. And every job, like, they went perfect. 1, 2, 3, get them in 3 days. The job site was perfectly clean. And from there, she recommended us to everybody she knew in the area that these are the guys that you want.
And then I found out that I had a niche in our speed to get things done. So we went back and all of the people that I had met while I was storm chasing and doing all of the hail damage restoration. I started talking with them. A lot of those guys were out of troll in bigger city areas. And I said, what do you guys need help with some projects? And they're like, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So we traveled and we realized we were the ones holding up the check.
So we had a little bit of a stronghold on it. I knew exactly what they were getting paid. Because of my experience in storm restoration, I knew how the process worked. I said, here's the deal. We're gonna charge what you're getting paid. Know it probably doesn't make sense to you, but I know we're holding up your final check and we're fast, and we'll get you that check. Yeah. Then it was we would go in and it was a no bullshit story. We were able to go in and do what we said we were gonna do.
And we made amazing relationships over it. And that's You provided a solution to a problem that they didn't really and they knew that they had it, obviously, but it's this black eye. That's just kinda hanging out there. Nobody's solving the problem. But you were So it was that was what got us into the gutter business. Now to where we're at now. We don't do a lot of townhome complexes anymore. We do them once in a while. The last really big one we did was last February.
And I went out and helped her on that job, and it was fun for me. It was a it was an early season install. We got to hammer out a bunch of gutters. We actually took I think we had 10 crews or something like that on the job site, and it was the same type of deal we did. Like, it was, like, 15 city blocks worth of houses that we did in 3 days. And it was 3 days. That's your number. You like 3 days? It is 3 days. However many guys I need, I'll get it. We're gonna get it done in 3 days.
I have the attention span of a goldfish. Yeah. 3 days to get in and out really quick. 3 days is it. I love it. The only the the entire time is you're talking about building this gutter system. I couldn't help to think about with my first businesses, with edible arrangements, it's what we do on the holidays, Valentine's Day, mother's day. It's like, I can take anybody. I don't need them to have any experience whatsoever. Cover, and I need you over here to sort the strawberries.
I need you here to skewer the strawberries. I need you over here to wash and dry the strawberries. And you at the end dip and then you over here put the topping, and then you over here put it in the cooler. And then you over here take it from the cool like, it's just, and otherwise, I don't know how we would do it because we just get demolished on Valentine's Day. And same thing Chaz you're saying here that you how did you do a 3 day job when the other guys had 3 weeks?
You leveraged system and people and be able to clear direction, clear instructions. I don't think you said it Chaz, like, a huge point there, but I wanna point it out for the listener. Is that not only did he have the system. And even if it was just in his head, fine. No big deal. I'm sure eventually you wrote it down. But even in that first moment, he was the only one He gave clear instructions, clear direction.
And I'm sure he probably empowered some folks because you can't be doing everything the entire 3 days. Am I right on that? Absolutely. And that's that goes a lot. And some of my struggles in learning to be a business owner is realizing that you should empower people a lot quicker Yeah. I was back to what you said as far as the very beginning, building leaders, right, and helping other people be successful. You you you can't do that if you're doing it for it. Yeah. 100%.
So I wanna know somewhere along the line here, you give us just an incredible story so far. I want you to continue, but I want you to tell me about a good decision, specifically, in that time frame or even now with your newer roofing company. Just give me something that that that was super practical, good decision that you've made Chaz you can look back on, share with a listener today that it's helped you be successful.
I don't know of the 1, like, any one good decision, but I think the best decision that I've made in any of the businesses is letting people make their own mistakes and and then working through those mistakes. So it's you can empower people all you want, but if you belittle them and beat them up and micromanage them so much, they're not gonna grow and they're not gonna wanna win and take things on.
I guess the the best decision I made was marrying my current wife and moving back brainerd and said I could start a gutter company. Yeah. No. I'd agree with you that that's a pretty life pivot of a moment for sure. Tell us a story around the empowering somebody. But in in the inside of that, it's, obviously, they're gonna make a mistake. Well, that's Chaz you said. You have to allow people to make mistakes. And then work through them. What does that look like?
You know, having having it so people can go out and do something and make a choice, whether it be making a gutter. I remember the first guy that we had that led for us He had worked for me, like, maybe 2, 3 weeks and had never loaded a gutter machine. And I said, I want you to go out and do this job by yourself. And I said, you've installed with me. You know how to do the gutter portion of it. And I said, here's the truck. Here's the extra guy. Go do it.
And it was there was no time constraints on it. I knew we weren't gonna any money on the job, but I let him go do it. He calls me when he gets to the first job. He's like, how do I put the gutter coil in the machine? I'm like, man, I did not make you, like, I didn't make this easy for you to succeed at all, but I said it goes in the back. It comes out the front. Like, I I gave him a few talking points, then he he did it. He did the job.
That one, he ended up making the downspouts and putting him on the wrong end, and we had to redo a few of the gutters but it was he succeeded. He won. He was able to do the job on his own, and we went back and fixed the problems with it. And then it taught him how to read the plans and know what he was doing. That individual ended up managing the company for a while and moved through the ranks rather quickly and took on a lot more responsibility.
But it was that I was always willing to give him a chance to try things. You know, it whenever whenever I hired him, he was, gas station attendant who was going to engineering school, and it was fantastic to be able to take somebody with no experience and make them a really good person at their job and then have them have the ability to move on and run other companies.
Yeah. I think that the two pieces there that I hope that the listener was that they caught is that you allowed somebody who didn't fully know. You weren't there to give it to him, but you were available. Give him some talking points. This wasn't like you just said, Hey. Here you go. Figure it out. I don't I think there's a big difference between letting someone just sink or swim versus giving them autonomy. And that's what you did.
You get you gifted him the ability to run his own job, but to have the security of, hey, ring ring. Can I get some help here? And and the impact of that, what you then said later was they end up running the company.
If the listener would just stop for a half second and realize what you just said is that it probably during that period of time, and who knows how long that took, but you could probably fill us in while he was running the company or anybody someone else was running the company, you were then doing other things. And so I think that that's that right now, the listener, specifically a 6 figure business owner, They're on probably every job site.
Their hands are in every single gutter cut and measurement or whatever their job whatever their business is. And they're not doing this exact thing that you just said, which is giving someone else a chance, even if they're gonna make a mistake, and you gotta go back and fix the downspouts. Okay. Fine. But now he knows how to do Wolfe you add any more of this?
So, like, the biggest thing that I've had, whether it be managers, whether it be other owners that I've talked to, the biggest struggle that people have is that they're like, well, I'm gonna lose money. I'm gonna lose money on this one day. I'm not gonna make anything. I'm not invoicing enough to hire somebody to help me with this.
But if you never hire that person, you'll never have that drive to go get them something to do, or you'll never free up enough time to go out and do anything else to grow your whether it be a mini business, whether you're you're a manager, if you're if you're just running a department or you're running a big company, you have to free up time and to free up time, it costs you money. Like, if you have to spend the money to do it, and I I didn't make any money on him on a long time.
Like, I I made a lot of sack vice and didn't pay myself a lot of money to make sure that I could get people that were in front of this, able to run with the business. And that's what's it made it so we can grow is because we're okay taking a few steps back to take twenty steps forward. Yeah. That's okay. I think Chaz people need to understand that it's alright not to make a ton of money for a little Wolfe. As long as you know that it's getting you to the end game.
Yeah. I think that the false the false idea or the false of, okay. Well, now I'm the business owner, and I need to drive a fancy truck or a brand new Mercedes and buy a big home and go on all these vacations, like, and only work 4 hours. Yeah. I think there's there's this thing, especially in the younger generation, and it's okay. In order to be successful, this is what it looks like.
And, actually, What I hope the listener hears you say, because I wouldn't, a 100% agree, and this is the same thing that I did as well, is that you understand the timeline. It didn't have to be forever. And then it Chaz to be forever. We could talk a teen months. We can talk about 10 years. Like, for me, when I bought my first company, I was 24 turn turning 25, and I thought to myself, okay. I have a 10 year SBA loan. I'll be thirty five years old. It'll be paid for.
Along the way, I'll make a little bit of money worst case scenario, nothing ever happens in the next 10 years, and nothing else. I've got this one business. It's paid for, and it's making me this. I've built a team, hopefully, and I can do whatever I want at that point. It was my hope at a 20 and, of course, a ton of things have happened since then, but the reality is that it was just 10 years. And 10 years goes by. Fast. So I want you to hear the delayed gratification.
I want you to hear the strategy that, Corey's talking about here because that's really what it is. And now parlaid you into all kinds of other businesses where you've now taken this concept of buying your time so that you can be high level on a lot of different things at once. But before we go to more of that mindset, I want you to tell me about a bad choice. I wanna flip the coin on the decision making. I want you to tell us about the time where it wasn't so pretty.
Oddly enough, it's that same employee that we're talking about. I gave him too much responsibility and didn't divide out what he was doing. So, ultimately, I pushed him too hard. I had it I had it in my mind that he was driven the same way I was. He wanted to just grind it out and work in 16 hour days, not have a family life. And Make no money. A family. Yeah. So Chaz was something like that. This guy's got it. He's got the drive. He had the drive, but burnt him out.
And what happened was he was a sales manager, He was an ops manager. He was a general manager. He was an office manager. He, like, he was doing everything. Like, he was grabbing all of stuff. He was in the field running jobs once in a while. He was Wow. Scheduling jobs ordering jobs. And The man needed an assistance. He'd he needed some help.
But the problem was is that, and it and it has a business owner, I still find myself doing this, but you push people until they they say they can't take it. Most people won't tell you they can't take it. So just leave. Then they just pack up and leave and find something else to do because they figure they're letting you down.
And that's what it got to with him and I. And the good thing for me at that point and some people Chaz, like, you, if you bought a if you bought a business, and you'd know nothing about running it, and you're gonna hire people to run it. You don't have that choice to step back into the operations then that's where I see a lot of businesses fail is that they don't know how to do everything they have other people doing. So then if something happens, they're screwed.
They can't get back in front of it. I luckily knew how to do all of the jobs he was doing. I had just been pushing him. I was growing the company. I was rapidly adding work to his plate, but it was 5 years ago, something like that. And I I had pushed him too far. He quit. It was a cooler day. It was, like, in January, February, and He sat down in my office with me and said, I I've gone as far as I can go. I'm I'm leaving the company. Yeah. And I instantly, my world was turned upside down.
Yep. And I had to sit back in the ops room and run all the jobs and run everything figure out how to get the sales team motivated. And it was Chaz side of it wasn't bad because I've always been the driver on the sales side. Sure. I've just never been the guy that pulls all the reports and takes care of getting all the information ready and all of a sudden, here I am with a team of five guys at the time.
I think running all of their sales appointments, helping them get that set up tracking, all that, running all of our install crews. I think it was, like, 5 crews or something at that point too. And We had I we ended up coming out better at the end of it. So it was there was a huge mistake that I pushed him so hard, but it made me realize that I can't put so much weight on one position. Yeah. Because it it's extremely hard to pivot, and it will set you back.
And so you need to lay it out in a way that you can have success if one person leaves. Like, it's the old saying it's the one person on the bus, if one person on the bus gets hit or gets off and the bus can't come to a screeching halt, you need the driver still. Yeah. 100%. I think it's I think it's relatable to know, okay, so the listener today, they might have a small team. They're probably more so in the first piece that you gave there of. They need to get out of their own way.
They need to be able to give things away. But I love how you follow all that so quickly with as you start to give things away, if you give it all and quickly to the same person, basically trying to make them the new owner without the benefits of being the owner, then it's difficult. Gary Vee always said, how can you expect them? How dare you ask them to run as hard as you? It's not their business. And I think every high driver like you and I the I think we've all made them this mistake.
I think we've probably made this mistake a couple of times, but the reality of it is is I think for guys like you and I, again, Corey, it it's surred us now into. Okay. I'm, like, completely aware of people, and not also so much balance, but I I don't know if you and I know what balance is, but establishing a system so that the people at all different levels can offer inside, and we know that we need each individual piece inside the system. They don't have to be exactly like us, a k a crazy.
Yeah. It's, like, nobody's ever gonna be same as you. My my current general manager reminds me constantly that I'm driven differently than everybody. He has to bring me back here once in a while. And it's hard to understand for me. I figure everybody should be wired the same way. They're not. They said, Corey, most of us are here. We work to Lynn. He's every one of that's here works to live. We work so that we can have a good lifestyle. And he's you're the opposite. You live to work.
That's all you wanna do. 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, you're okay thinking about work. We're not all driven that way. You need to remember that. Yep. And it's good to have somebody who can speak up, not against you, but to give you that perspective. It'll be strong willed enough to be able to remind you of that. I have a few of those as well. Okay. I wanna go speed round questions here with you.
Corey, divide out all these businesses that you're in, and I want you to dwindle or dwindle them down. Don't divide them out. Dwindle them down to one trackable metric. The barbecue store, the roofing, the guttering, anything else you get your hand into. What is the one thing that you would track forever and ever and ever? If I could figure out how to track it every day, all day, I would figure out how to track employee satisfaction. K. What do you guys do now to try to do that?
I know that's difficult. Especially, but give us some of your insight. Yeah. We we spend a lot of time asking questions seeing what they're doing. We do we have monthly meetings where we get everybody together. I have fun ever roundtable conversation about what things are doing, how things are going. And we do have daily meetings with managers, try to keep somewhat of a pulse on it.
But it's happy employees treat your customers so well so that you don't have to worry about what's happening in the field. And I had a I had an employee quick for me And he was he just quit because he wasn't happy with the job. It wasn't because he wasn't happy with where he worked. He I remember him saying, and he was the the angriest guy ever. And he went out on a customer service job. He had to go out and do a service call for us. And the customer was yelling at him.
He's like, I don't know why you're so mad. But this company, no matter what, we'll do the right thing. We always take care of it, so quit being such an asshole. And then he's telling me this later. I'm like, I don't think you handled quite better. But for this angry employee to still get it Chaz we were gonna do everything right, and he was there to do everything, right, to make it right by him. It just made me realize that's the part that matters.
And no matter what, if they know you've got their back, like, they they will always fight to do the right thing. That's right. That's right. And even in that moment where maybe he didn't handle it the best way, he still was fighting for the right things, which is, ultimately, the actual the client. They were gonna he's gonna take good care of him. So I appreciate that. What book would you recommend, Corey, that a 6 figure business owner read?
So the Go Giver the Go Giver series is a full list of book Chaz I would recommend. Go give her leader. Go give her your salesman. So they it's a really good philosophy on how to treat people and how to treat customers and your employees to make sure that everything happens. Right? And then I'm reading a current book right now that I really like. It's that there's tons of them right out there, but the one is making money is killing your business. And it's a good book.
It's along the same lines as everything. Like, you have to have the systems and have time frames in line for what you're trying to do. It just it puts a lot more emphasis on the time frame to get to where you're going. So Love that. Love that. We'll put both of those in the show notes or, I guess, the series and then that one in the show notes. What's what do you think about networking and or master mining with other entrepreneurs? I think it gets you out of your mindset. I love it.
It's I try to meet with business owners. The guy I was talking about the Tommy Melo that I went and met with. It was I was listening to his podcast, actually. And I said, I really wanna meet this guy. He sounds like a good guy. I wanna meet him. So I sent an email. I sent a phone call. Like, I'm trying to get ahold of this guy. He's He owns a huge garage door company in Arizona.
And I end up finally, his personal assistant reaches out to me, sets up a meeting we talk on the phone for what's supposed to be 10 minutes. It ends up being, I don't know, hour a half, 2 hours. And we're just b s and then we became friends. And he said, you know what? Should fly out to Arizona, and we should hang out. You should meet me. Like, alright. When works? He's like, how about next Tuesday? I said, sweet. I said, I'll be there. Yep. I'll come up.
I talked to my office staff that was helping me out with all this. And I said, can you book me a flight to Phoenix next Tuesday? And they're like, why? I said, because I'm going to meet a guy. You're gonna meet again. You're like, you met somebody on the Internet, and you're gonna fly halfway across the country to go meet him. You're gonna end up dead in the alley. No. I'm not. Yeah. The fast forward, I'm meeting him Chaz made it.
So I meet a lot of different people that are a lot bigger business owners and get me in a different mindset. Myself personally, I get in my own way a little bit and get stuck in my head whenever you're in a smaller town. And you feel like you're one of the biggest businesses. You get a little bit complacent and getting around other bigger business owners. Gets you out of that mindset. You're like, man, I am small potatoes. Like, I I need to think about this differently. I am not the biggest.
I am not. I'm not the best company out there. There's people that are doing things way better than me. And networking is my 100% favorite thing to do now in learning about other businesses. I just the perspective that you gave there of big fish or small fish big pond or big fish small pond, you're right. A 100% it makes a difference in brain. And I think that as soon as you feel that, hey. I'm the big dog or the big fish. It's get a new pond, bro.
Get a new pond because then that's the moment, the very moment that your brain your mindset starts to shift and change because there are plenty of people doing it better, bigger, stronger, more system, more efficient, You name it. Just gotta find them, which is incredible. Alright. Yep. You never wanna be the biggest company owner in the room. Like, it's you you need to try to figure out how to be the smallest the get you're right.
And the guys that I've had, even on this show, I've had some multiple nine figures, like ginormous revenue. And unless I told you Chaz was the revenue, you wouldn't have known. They hit these couple of two folks I was I'm thinking of would have walked in in the room, and probably taking the most notes or probably set a kind word to more people in the room than anybody else. And it's even when you are, the biggest fish. You can't tote around the name tag that says, I'm the biggest fish.
There's just a mindset there that just you know what? No. I guess you could. And I I think probably some online influencers probably do, but it's like, you know what? Then it goes back to values, mission, what you stand for, all those things. And so I think that we're saying the same thing here. So I got one last question here for you, Corey, before we end off, I wanna know if you lost it all. There's no more barbecue to be had. No more gutters, no more roofs.
No more no more what you're currently know as business. What would you do? I would definitely start another business. It would 100% be starting in a different way. I would actually make some systems really fast. I I love what I do. I love the team that I've built around me because I didn't put a few of the systems in place in the beginning, it makes it so that you fight to get any of those systems put in place. I'm not a planner. I've never been a planner. So I'm a doer.
I if you took it all from me today, if you took every ounce of money I have, every ounce of money I've ever made, you can't take my drive and you can't take my of what I've learned along the way, and I'll use that to be back on top no matter what. I would start another business. I it doesn't matter. You could take everything away, give me $1 and I'll figure out how to get it all It's Yeah. Just I think it's just how people are driven, and I do feel that I'm very driven.
Yeah. Yeah. The the attack of I I wouldn't know what I wouldn't know how to not attack. It's just like built inside. And if the attack angle has to change or whatnot, love what you said that I wanna point that out for the listener is that he immediately said whatever business it would be, I would create some systems, which would probably include people, would be be my guess.
The system's not only around efficiencies, but also around a team and and being able to have those things in place so that a business can can be right back to where it probably is within a few How can the listener find you? How can they connect with you? How can they find you? They can come have lunch with you like you did with old Tommy in Arizona. Yeah. Email me is a great way. I actually do have an assistant that helps me. She's fantastic, and she makes sure I respond to stuff.
Because I'm terrible. I'm getting somewhere around 202. Nah. Pretty maybe 300 emails a day right now. So at koriat advantageseamlessgutters.com. Longest email, known to man. When I whenever you started a company a long time ago, long like, that name seemed fantastic. Now I realize I'm not very smart. Now you get to now you get to talk about it, though. Yeah. Corey at advantage seamless gutters.com. Like, I I get really used to saying it.
So and then Facebook, if you look me up on Facebook, it's actually Michael Cory. You found me on books. It must work a little bit, but most be up on Facebook. And, otherwise, any of the businesses, you can reach out to us on either the smoke stack or Newman construction or an inch seamless gutters, and I'd love to get back to you. Love that. Thank you so much just for being willing to serve here Chaz, as well as just for folks to reach out. But what would you leave? Well, final comments here.
What would you leave, Ultipul, incredible businesses, and somebody who's they're listening today. They're frustrated. They're wearing too many hats. So they're wondering if they've even wanna continue. What do you say to that person as your final thought here?
Don't give up and realize that you need to find somebody that is willing to take some of that journey with you and work and get them trained in to do some of the stuff, delegate even when you don't think you should and realize that you need to get somebody else that's taking care of some of the operation so you can drive it. It's the hardest thing to realize is that you should delegate and it's don't dump.
Don't just dump it on them, but delegate and work through some stuff with them and need somebody that's got good personality that cares as much as you do or at least a a fraction of as much as you do, but delegate sooner than you think you should. Yeah. Love that. Corey, you've been incredible. We wish you nothing but success and blessing, on your business and your family and and all that you put your hand to, my brother. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much.
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 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 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 1 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.