On today's episode of Gathering the Kings. If you don't have delegation, you're gonna overwork yourself. You're gonna be burned out And whether you think that it's okay to delegate, I promise you. If you don't delegate it, you're gonna be burned out and you're gonna quit and you're gonna fail. 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 successful business today. We dissect the good and bad decisions they've made along the way that give a true and accurate 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, gathering the king's nation today? My guest, I'm bringing to you a Hello, Queen. I say this every time I bring a queen to the show because gathering the Kings is not about masculine. It is about a mindset and Heather Linton Oh my goodness. She is a king, call it a queen.
She is a ruler in the business. That is for sure. She's in the pool industry. And, has her own podcast, of course, a incredible pool company. And just all over the place, she brings so much energy to this show. I cannot wait for you to listen. Make sure you write quickly. Take your notes quick as she brings it fast and hard, and here it comes. Alright, guys. Gathering the Kings. Chaz Wolf. Heather. Welcome to the stage. How are you today? Hi, Chaz. I'm wonderful. How are you? I'm wonderful.
Heather Linton. Right? Am I saying that right? Yes. Linton. That's correct. Linton. Okay. Well, so I just we were just having a blast before we hit the record button here. But your energy is gonna be make for an incredible show. What industry or what business do you have? So I own a swimming pool construction and remodel business out of Dallas named swim care free, and we build and remodel swimming pools. That's what I do. I love it. Love it. What a great area too. I mean, Dallas. Just hot.
Perfect for a pool. Oh my god. This weather today is, like, 70 tomorrow's 90. Yeah. You can freeze one day and be scorching hot the next day. That's true. That's true. I'm in Kansas City, so I'm not too far away from you, but Not it's not 80 yet here. Oh, man. Not not good enough for a pool quite yet. No. No. That water is still freezing. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. So, obviously, you're you're, like, what we'd like to call a king in the business, king not masculine, but mindset.
But but you're you're bringing the queen vibes today. So I still appreciate you. Yeah. Uh-uh, boss lady. And so At this level in the game, I'm curious, Heather. We you you run a podcast. You obviously have a an extremely successful company with your husband. And so what keeps you guys pushing at this stage in the game? Of course. So for me, I love what I do. You have to have motivation behind what you do. So first and most definitely motivation.
And I love being in a man's field in a woman because it intimidates a lot of the men, so I love that for me. Yeah. And to my kids, you know, I wanna teach my kids how to be successful that you don't need college to be a success in life. That's right. Everybody pushes college and college is not for everyone. Hell, I have a degree, and I don't even use it. You know? Literally. Yeah. It's that's kinda what motivates me, and that's what makes me keep thriving. Why is it so important to you?
And I and it's so interesting, for folks that I interview that have kids just to talk about legacy and whether they wanna hand off their kids. But for you, it wasn't to hand them wealth or to hand them. No. Something to stand on. It it was I want to show them, yeah, I want to show them away. That's possible. So I will never hand my kid things. They ain't gonna learn to get it just like I did. You're not you don't get handed things in life. I know. I know.
So so but tell us, like, why do you feel that Like, why do you think that's so important that they realize that? Because if mom and dad or grandparents whomever hand things in life, Let's say they pass away and they don't put it in their will, they're screwed. They don't know how to make a living. They don't know how to take care of themselves. They don't know how to take care of their family when they get older. They don't know how to become their own individual without realizing, hey.
If I don't work for this, I'm not gonna be able to succeed this. And if I'm happy with where I'm at, You're never gonna move forward because they are their own pushers. They need to understand that mom and dad are not gonna be around forever to to push them. You know? Yeah. They have to find that motivation, and it's our Chaz as parents to make them understand Chaz, not to hand them on a silver platter and grow up be spooled as threats. Yeah. 100%.
So I've had this conversation with several parents, but my dad specifically, I didn't know my dad growing up. We met 10 years ago, almost 11 now. He didn't know I existed, and I thought somebody else was my dad. Crazy story, but I've asked him this question because, you know, he's an entrepreneur, has multiple businesses, And my my question has been, how do you balance this?
I have a successful business or sometimes multiple businesses but I want my kids to work for it or earn it and and know what it's like. And so I've I've gotten his answer. I'd be curious to hear what yours is before I share you his. Yeah. So for me, it's he can see and model what we do. With that, he's able to take that in consideration of how to model his Like, I model for my dad. My dad owned his own business. He does well. He's now retired. RVing. He's my little RV, you know, dad.
That's awesome. Yeah. Sold everything. Bought an RV and is traveling the world now. So Good for him. I I grabbed my work ethic from him, and hubby and I, we argue this all the time because my work drive is very high. And I have to learn to balance life with husband, life with kids, life with work, because we own multiple businesses. So we have to juggle all of that.
And my son sees how much we work and how far we're going, like, He's seven years old, my youngest is, and then we have a twenty three year old. So my seven year old, we've taken him to places most people don't get to go in their life. And he asked me, mom, how can we afford this? You know, because I teach him about budgeting and balancing. And I'm like, baby, do you see how hard we work? He's like, yeah.
I'm like, you're able to go to places that most people can't go in their life because of this. You have to learn. And, like, right now, he lost his tablet for his lack of, verbiage coming out of his mouth. And, So he has to earn it back. And I told him I said, you have 2 ways to earn this back. You can do jobs with the neighbors or, you know, anybody that we know and earn money, and you can buy it yourself. Because you lost it.
Or 2, you can start doing things around the house or or do more good things. You know? You can't just have it handed it to you. You lose it. You don't get it back without earning it back. Yeah. No. I love that. And and it's real situational things. Which are the exact things you were saying that you get people like you and I that we we had to do, whether we it was modeled for us or not. And so to pick up where you left off.
My dad's answer was, look, again, I wasn't there as a kid, so my my brother and my sisters got to experience this. He's like, but I would take your sisters and your brother out to a field. And we would we would cut musk thistle. And eventually, they learned when they got older that that you could spray that stuff. And it's a whole lot easier and a way more than taking a show. The hard way. Gotta learn the hard way.
Yeah. Hey. Look. As long as you know Chaz you can work all day long, not be afraid to sweat, put out a little hard work, that you can at least survive and take care of yourself, that's what I owe you. Mhmm. And it sounds like you you agree not only for your for your kids, but then also that's how you guys live. It sounds like you're just, Constantly shoveling. Yep. Yeah. My dad made me learn that at a young age, and I think that's why I do that now because I was raised on a farm.
And by doing that, I took care of all the animals. He was gone for weeks at a time and left me with, quote, unquote, a sitter that didn't thing. So it was just me. And I had to learn how to how to manage a farm at a young age and learn that ethic. Yeah. Love that. Okay. So let's go back a little bit, Heather. K? So, you've obviously, like you said, you have multiple businesses, but you haven't always been where you are now.
And so if we go back, more of the, like, the scaling, the grinding, most of the folks listening today, guys, and or cows, are hearing you going, oh, I just wanna get to that 7 figure plus mark. Mhmm. And so my question for you is this, in the process of of growing that business or when you started it, was it this business? The the pool business that got the bug of entrepreneurs and started for or was it before that? So it was it was this. The my husband got me into the pool industry.
I didn't know Jack crap about swimming pools. I was working at a automobile shop being a service advisor, and I get a call from my husband one day, like, hey. Quit your job. I'm like, what? I can't just up and quit. We need money. He goes, I'm quitting my job. We're gonna start our own business. I'm like, of what? I don't know anything about swimming pools. He's like, well, I'm gonna teach you. Let me tell you. That K. Was a whirlwind.
And he taught me everything, you know, from the ground up, and we're still learning to just say, I mean, we've been in this industry for 20 years now. And, you know, I gotta the seminars we teach, we podcast. You know, we do a lot of different things. Right. And to this day, it's just been wonderful. It's just been hard. You have to have that dedication. You've gotta have push. I mean, for me, it was hard because I didn't have that dedication at the beginning because I was scared.
I was like, okay. We're stopping our actual money making. I'm stopping what I know, which is automotive to go into an industry. I don't know anything about. And hubby's like, you got this. We could do this. I'm in the business side, but I didn't know how to you know, do the platform side and actually execute. Sure. Execute. Yeah. So that was a whole idea. What what led to that place where he made the phone call. Was it frustration of where you were, or was it like Oh. Like, what was it?
No. Okay. So funny story. I'm not gonna name Nate because the still in the Metroplex. He was working at a particular pool company here in the Metroplex, and we're a Christian based company. So we believe in morals. We have ethics. You know? And This particular company sent him out to the job. It was double booked. We didn't know that right now, we, but he he didn't know that. Yeah. The client was there. He popped open the filter and inside the filter.
You can tell if the maintenance Chaz been done on that filter because the de inside of it was white. So he bought it open and was like, hey. He calls the office. This filter was just done. I'm not gonna clean it. I'm gonna put it back together. I'm going to the next job. The home is right there. He's got him on speaker phone. And the office was like, hey. We're gonna double build them. Just clean it anyways. It was a scheduling mishap. We've already spent money sending him out there.
Just clean it anyways. We'll double bill them. My husband looks at them or, like, on the phone, they're like, no. That's not ethical. This was just done, and he goes back in the notes. It was done, like, 2 days ago. Right. He's like, I'm not doing that. I'm putting him back together. He goes, well, if you don't do it, you're fired. He goes, better yet. I quit. And the homeowner grabs the phone at that moment. It was like, by the way, he has you on speaker phone. You are fired.
He is now my pool guy, and I'm gonna refer everybody. And that client was a big client for them. Wow. And so that's kinda what took over. And then after that, He called me up and told me to quit, and I give it 2 weeks. You know, don't ever people don't ever quit a job. Give it 2 weeks notice. Sure. Sure. Some people will fire you. Some people won't, but Whatever. So that's kinda what started this whole situation, and here we are today.
Wow. Okay. So I'm I'm just enthralled with stories, but How many minutes from him? Like, I'm I'm done. I quit to I just got promoted to my own pool guy at this guy. He's gonna refer me to it. I called you, or he called you. Like, how many minutes are we talking? I Wolfe, honestly, I don't know. I've never asked for that. Are you still on the job site? Right there, Colin? Still on the job site. He was. And I was like, Shit. What? I don't know how to do this.
Yeah. Well, so here's here's what I'm hearing. Heather, here's what I'm hearing is not only I mean, this would have been, like, the moment to be, like, holy smokes, right, of work. Of course, he was excited, right, because Uh-huh. To quit and got the first client. Who's gonna refer him? But but he didn't have fear around it, but then more than that, he called you and wanted you to quit. I know. He was, like, in for nothing. Yeah. So yeah. And it's him having to rescue me. Leaving you guys.
Oh, god. Him having to rescue me all these times too. He had to pull off a job where he was in Fort Worth, who was Dallas Fort Worth where I was at. It was a good hour drive. Wow. First filter clean I did by myself. Oh god. I was there all day. I was cussing up a storm. I was so mad. I was throwing things. Yeah. Gets there, doesn't 5 minutes, doesn't say a word to me. It's there in 5 minutes and completes the job and drives off. And I Never talk and never talk about it again. Never.
No. No. I was living. I'm so mad. So okay. Alright. So here you are, you you you Chaz you know, nothing about pools. Nope. Your husband quits his job and starts a business within minutes gets you to quit within 2 weeks. And now you're cleaning filters that you have no idea what you're doing. So Yeah. Some somewhere in between here, you started to grow. So talk talk to us about some good decisions other than the fact that you quit, you ended up following.
Yeah. That was a good decision back in looking back. It was. It was. I mean, yes and no. You kinda hand off, you know, stress owning business is very stressful. We a lot of stress. So to get to there, you gotta take hard work. You gotta take leaps. You know, and the way that we view this is You can't be successful without making challenges. Nobody succeeds on the first time, 90% of the time.
Don't be scared to take challenges and take leaps Like, we're investing in a a software that we're about to possibly do, and that's a lot of money we're about to look at and hubby and I had a conversation. Hey. If we do this, this is a very a lot amount of money, but this would be business number 3, you know, so on and so forth.
So don't be afraid to take those leaps because Chaz long as you have backup, whether it's equity in your house, it's assets, whatever it may be, you Chaz always get out of a pickle, but you're never gonna learn and grow without taking that first step. Don't be afraid. You'd like me. I mean, I went jumped right in. I didn't know anything about it. Whatever. Worked for us. So Exactly. Exactly. For everybody, but you've gotta do your own research. You gotta learn. You gotta network.
You can't be somebody that's very shy either to to start a new business that you know nothing about because guess you're gonna learn from. You're gonna learn for those people that've done those businesses. You're gonna learn Yeah. From people that allow you to mentor. Like, I've mentored 3 to 4 different businesses in the Metroplex to help them. And I don't you know, for me, they're smaller, and I'm helping them grow. So you gotta learn fast. I love that.
Take action is what I'm hearing, so I'm giving the listeners some bullet points here. Take action. And and then don't be afraid. Like, they're going to be afraid. They're they're going to have the feeling of of scarcity or or fear, but you're saying put it put it down, put it to the side. Jump anyway. Hands down. Yes. Yes. I love I love the clarity of message there.
Let's flip the coin here, and let's talk about something along the way here Chaz you were building some figures Chaz was just a total disaster, bad decision, you, or maybe hubby. Yeah. So bad decision number 1. I'll start with mine because, yeah, mine's worse than hobbies. We were having a slow month and, well, a slow few weeks. And this is when we're first starting out, and I'm like, okay. I didn't realize that you were supposed to play employee quarterly taxes. You're 9.40 ones. Yeah. Bummer.
Yeah. Well, that got me in a lot of financial trouble. So I'm like, I don't need that. I don't need to bail out. I got this. You know, I looked at our bills. I'm like, well, we're kinda screwed. So what I did was I was like, I started googling, you know, business lines of credit and stuff like that. So I went and pulled out a merchant advanced. Yeah. K. No. No. K. People don't do this, but a merchant advance does is they charge you out the ass for the interest. Right?
You're paying almost half, if not, oh, may you're a little less. But and then they take money out every day. Every single day from your credit cards that come in, and we were having we we did a lot of credit card runs. Yep. So that kinda got us in a people for a little bit. And, of course, I, you know, we were able to get out of it, but that was mistake number 1 for me. It's definitely don't do those.
Make sure you balance your money because you a lot of people in construction don't know how to balance their money very well. Well, I didn't have to balance money, but I just didn't know the business aspect yet because we were still learning that size. So I didn't know that you saw to pay 9.41 monthly. So I pay my 941s weekly now after that. I'm like, it's done. Yep. And then I just run the report weekly. Check it out. Yep. I follow what call what's called profit first in our industry.
If if you're in construction, there's one called construction profit first or first for construction, something like that. Yeah. Yeah. You take you take your accounts and you divide it to how you need to. I'm not gonna go into that. It's a long overspill. Yeah. But learn with money. Make sure you don't ever spend. You don't borrow from jobs because that's a big no no. We did that at the beginning, and then we I quickly learned that's a big no no. Yeah.
So that's that's that was my big no no. Hubby's big no no, I guess, would be overbooking because he thinks he's super he can get everything done and not allowing time to run across issues on jobs because in construction, you run across issues. You know, you have clients that wanna talk to you while you're there. So you don't take into effect. How he's like, okay. It's just a check stub. I can be done in 15 minutes.
Well, 45 minutes later, he still there because the clients want to pull schools, wanna learn how to do all this. So make sure your time management is there because that is huge in communication. Yeah. We got so many better views at the beginning because we lacked communication. So then we started over communicating. Yeah. So by over communicating was causing issues as well. So now we found kind of a happy medium with the whole communication thing.
So those are kind of our big points of what not to do. So much value there. And just to just to kinda recap, I mean, the the money management piece is huge. Obviously, to you, it was 9.41 taxes, but there's there's there's so many different angles of, I wouldn't say hidden things in business, but you don't learn these things growing up unless you're inside of a business, and you definitely don't learn them in school. And so, sitting down and actually trying to become legit.
In your business is is huge. No way you Chaz get some figures without running some sort of a clear basic operation around finance. Like, that has to be squared away. One thing that you said in there, and it isn't always just applied to construction guys, but there's a lot of, I'm sure, construction guys that listen here, but then other service industry. Maybe they're not building something, but Mhmm. When you borrow from 1 to the next, to fund the next, You're robbing Peter to pay Paul.
You're always that even is gonna just add to the stress of everything. Oh, yes. I mean, jeez. And so so maybe maybe you have to go a smidge you know, slower during that time frame, or maybe you have to go get other funding in other places. Mhmm. But but to know where the line is between this this money is for this project or coming in here, and then this money's over here. I'm not taking from this to to pay for this. Mhmm. And that's where the profit first comes in.
Yeah. That's definitely where the profit first comes in because with the profit first, you have, like, 6 bank accounts. So you can see exactly where's what and what where your money is because I'm a visual person when it comes to that sort of stuff. So I use QuickBooks right now for my profit, but it doesn't really do it sucks on project management for that.
So by utilizing that profit first, it helps utilize, okay, we've got this much money here, this much here, even though I allocated inside of QuickBooks, like it's supposed to with this project, I just don't like the way it does it. So Right. Yeah. Exactly. Incredible. And then as far as the, the overbooking, I think that that's just another great you know, it's not so much the overbooking. It's the time management piece. Like you said, it's the overbooking for the management skill level.
I'm sure your husband's grown in that area. And then, of course, you grow your team. Right? So if if if you're overbooking, a lot of times, maybe you need to grow. On the on the team side. So that Or you need to train 1 of the 2? Oh, yeah. Mhmm. That's right. If if you've got a weak link, that's right. To to the point of of 30 minutes in that example of your husband losing 30 minutes. It can happen because you show up. You're trying to be cordial, respectful, Yeah.
And 30 minutes seem to go just like that. So Oh, yeah. We've had to cut clients off before. Like, I'm sorry. We gotta go. Sorry. Gotta go. Today is a busy one, Mister Johnson. Yep. Yep. Been there. Done that several times. Yeah. Yeah. And and and just for half a second, because I think it's applicable. I I can think of employees of mine, team members of mine, that I've had to say, hey.
So when you come into this type of circumstance with Mister Johnson, Here's how you need to manage that time and verbally with the communication. But there's also owners, like you just said, your husband who kinda fall into the same thing where they they wanna they they wanna be that relationship. They wanna it. Yeah. Yeah. So so how do you balance this, especially if you're telling a team member in this moment? How do you do that?
So if you're a team person, my husband versus a team member, I totally do different. Right? Right. Right. I'll start I'll start with my team here like Cassandra. I love her to death. She is my office manager, and she loves to talk so much on the phone. Like, I had to pull a recording yesterday because my one of my cell guy's like, hey. This is, like, the 3rd time that I've been sent to the wrong address. And this is getting it's costing us time and it's costing us money.
Yep. So I'm pulling these recordings, and she's just yacking about, you know, this guy's history. And it's an interesting one because play for the Oilers. And so he's talking all about the football and NFL, you know, and all Chaz, but she's, like, feeding into it. And so Yeah. In the midst of it, she doesn't verify the address that we have on file that he entered when the customer entered a UPS address instead of his home address. Yep. Oops. And so my sales team is going to this UPS address.
Yep. So I'm like build a very big pool there? No. So I'm like Cassandra. Look. You're costing us time. You're costing us money by not verifying because we have flow sheets in our office. We have processes and procedures. You have it on your desk. You've been doing you've been my assistant for going on 10 years. So you know these. You know you're supposed to verify. By lack of verifying, you're costing us money because that bottom dollar, that gas, that time, it all cost us as business owners.
Yep. And you have reports that you've gotta check into. So I'm like, hey. Cassandra, I understand you love to talk, but I don't mind you talking because no phones are ringing. You've got some time. But you're not doing the simple things and verifying your processes. And so we need to take it back and notch. We need to slow down. If it becomes an issue at that point, then I write. I I've never had to write her up, but she's been very good.
But my other some of my other ones, yeah, where I'm, like, I give you 3 chances. And if it's not done, we're we're we're done. Yeah. So I you just have a conversation. You know, don't get irate. Don't yell. Some of these business owners want to feel like they're higher than them. And you gotta understand that your team follows your energy. Your team also follows the leadership. I learned that a hard way as well. So I had to let go of a GM because I was gone. I had to do IVF to have a baby.
So we were gone for a month. And doing the IVF. And when I came home, and my husband told her, but I don't call her. Don't message her because he knows me. I like to, like, I I can't not work. It freaks me out. So he's like, don't do that. And when I came home, I had 3 employees quit when I came back. And that's a big turnover. Right? We've never had that. So and it's because of the way that they were talking to him because he was having some issues with them.
Chaz a leadership, you have to understand that there's an appropriate way to approach certain things. Don't be hostile. Don't yell. Bring it down to the level and then also shoot a recap. Like, Chaz. As a reminder, you know, we had this conversation, but always email just as a recap they can say, oh, I don't remember what you said. It's your job as a management and owner to make sure that they understand fully Chaz conversation that you're having and those expectations Yeah. 100%.
Yeah. Yeah. So you so the conversation with her was you can still talk. Right? We won't we want the relationship as a small business, but Let's let's number 1, let's make sure we're doing the right things. Let's get let's get the address verified. Yeah. But then there like you said, you've she fed into it. So some of that that time management pieces So if the phone's ringing over here, I now I can't get to it because I spent extra time Yep.
Learning about his NFL history when I could have asked a couple questions, built the same general rapport, and and moved on. So but what about hubby? What what if hubby is out there? You know? Oh, boy. Relationship building, you know, Oh, in other words. Yeah. So, hubby. Oh gosh. So, Huck and I, okay, what I love about us is a lot of our clients don't know that where the husband and wife were the owners. I love that. I kinda keep that from them because when it finds out, it's shocking.
So in Hubby's side, and and more so, I'm I'm not I'm gonna flip this around instead of Hubby. I mean, it's gonna be me. Okay. Because they like to talk to me. I'm a I'm a yacker. I Sure. I try to distract the homeowners while hubby's fixing it. That's kinda how we bombard Chaz. Got it. If we're together Sure. If you're not together and, like, he's running behind, I'm like, hey. You're supposed to be at this job. Why aren't you there? I flip. Right? So I have to learn to not be that. Right?
I have to be like, okay. Because the way I present my question to him and the way I talked to him is not always the greatest because I'm like, go go go. Yeah. Yeah. Chaz a wife, I have to recognize that, hey. That needs to stop. Right? That's not okay. Because I talked down to him sometimes, and I shouldn't. As we all do, you know, we're when we've been married for 12, 14, I don't know. I lose track. You're comfortable. Yeah. So and, you know, and that upsets him Chaz it should.
You know, we shouldn't talk to each other that way. And, like, yesterday, he were on a job, and I'm I'm my go go again and this poor client, his gun night is completely destroyed. And I'm like, okay. We're gonna have to do this, but it's gonna cost you this blah blah blah. And, like, this client's eyes are just, like, Yeah. He's he's super stressed by me telling this because he's already spent 15,000. I'm telling him you basically have to rebuild a whole new pool.
Yeah. And hubby's like, nudging me, like, shut up. And Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He sees it, but I don't because I'm just go go go. So yeah. And so hubby heavy is real subtle at giving me cues where I've learned to kinda listen to it. And and you and you recognize them. Yeah. Yes. I've learned to recognize and because we we're very open in in our marriage as far as, like, communication and what's bothering each other because you have to be.
You have to run it, and you have to learn to separate your business from your marriage. When you're doing both. Yeah. And we've we do it together. And everybody's like, I don't know how you do it because I'd kill my wife or I'd kill my husband. And I'm like, I don't know. We it just works for us because I'm a high d, and he's an SC you're familiar with this profiling, look it up. Be and if it's perfect. So Yep. Yep. He's loyal and consistent and steady.
Yes. Yes. And I am the firecracker go go go. So Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna say crazy. You said it better. You know, firecracker. Hope you would agree with that statement. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Well, good. Okay. So I I think that you gave us so much there and serious from, like, a super practical standpoint, not only just the marriage side, because I I think there's a lot of a lot of couples that do it. Sometimes out of necessity, Sometimes they're not in the right seats.
And and so it it it's maybe a little bit more of a Oh, yeah. Of a head butt, but it sounds like you guys have found your seats. You gotta learn that a long way. So that's why we do this profiling on every new hire. If I hire you, you're getting a dis profiling because I'm not gonna waste time on a salesman that doesn't have personality when you should when you should be in customer service. You know? Because salesman personality versus customer service is totally different.
And you've got to learn to recognize that in your employees. And if you have somebody in the wrong seat and you keep having issues, just profile them. It'll tell you very fast, what their personality is, and where it fits best inside of your business. And you will find some people don't fit well in your business, and that's okay. You know, is okay. 100%. And and they might fit to your point, but just in a different seat. Right.
Yep. And so that that that's, that high eye profile, but what but if they have no d, then then they're just gonna talk, and they're not gonna get any closed deals. So Yep. That's for Cassandra's. She's And that's why she runs the office and not Yes. And not the sales team. Yes. Yes. That's awesome. She keeps me in check too, though. So I gotta I was gonna say it sounds like you guys are cut from the same clock. I know. We are. Which makes it fun. Right?
I mean, if if businesses, you know, didn't have you know, people like you and Cassandra, then then we would all just be boring. You know? Yeah. Hands down. And we separate ourselves from that. My wife would recognize me. Yeah. And you and people learn you because when clients call in and they can't remember my name because, like, my pearl necklace, I know it's viewers.
I don't know if you're doing video or not, but the viewers, can't see it, but, you know, they're like, the girl with the pearl necklace, that's how they identify me when they call Cassandra. And they're like, okay. That's Heather. Even though I'm not a girl in my industry, like, in my company, Right? Yeah. Interesting that they Wolfe, identify you like that and not the fiery red hair or personality. I know. Or the one that talks a lot. This talks a lot. We know it's Cassandra. Alright.
Well, that's it. I mean, if I'm if I'm not talking to the one that talks a lot, I I mean, Wow. Cassandra's she's she's got a lot of words in there. She does. She does. That's awesome. Okay. So, one question on on, making decisions. We've kinda talked about good and bad. I'm curious to know, especially with you and and how being involved in the business and then being opposites on the profiles scale.
Is there a process or a discipline that individually you have or together around making, you know, decisions? Because, obviously, the goal is to try to make good decisions. We learn from that one. Course, but how do you try to make good decisions? Yeah. So that's a great question, especially if you work with your husband. It took us a long time to actually figure that out that works for us because it used to be where I was making all the decisions. No matter what, it was all me.
All of my employees came to me. All the contractors came to me. Huby was kind of doing the whole backside running that side. Yep. So everything came to me. Well, it came to a point where I was getting way overwhelmed. I was running the business. I was mom. I was wife. I was trying to run 15 employees. I was trying to keep everything together. I was running 6 office staff. You know, it was just too much for me.
So I was like, honey, we need to have a conversation because I can't keep doing this all myself. I need you to step up. I need you to help in this aspect. So we kinda sat down and we, you know, I'm one of those business owners that don't have a business plan even though I should. Just because I've been doing this for so long. But so I just wrote down. I'm like, okay. This is where I need help. What can you take away so we can start structuring where we need to be?
Yeah. And so he took away probably 60% of it, and that helped me so much. And then when we restructured our business and got out of the cleaning and the repair, Chaz just relieves a good 80 percent of my stress and everything going on because we sold off that business to focus on what we wanted to focus on. Yeah. And by doing that, that helps.
So now every decision codes between the both of us, whether it's buying a piece of equipment for the business, or giving an employee a raise or it's assigning somebody else or but, like, we had a transmission that just went out in our truck yesterday on our fleet guys. So I'm like, okay. Are we gonna buy a new truck now? Because it's just a it's a 2011 ranger. So it's not like it's fancy, Spansy. It's been there. Yeah. So I was like, what are we gonna do?
It's 5000 to replace the transmission or buy a new one for 30,000. Right. And so, you know, we make these decisions together as business owner. And it helps so much to understand that you're in this together. Make sure you understand. And if you choose to do stuff separately just to make sure that you know 100% what your decisions are versus your spouse because let me tell you, it's gonna cause black glass if you make a decision and it was spouses and you didn't communicate.
Yeah. Yeah. The communication there is obviously the the missing piece. Yeah. And and then you guys even had that, right, where you you said, hey. I need help with this. Like, you gotta be willing to say that, but then he obviously then stepped up and and helped in that area. It's funny. You said you said something whether you meant it or not.
It's something that a lot of owners struggle with, specifically trying to get to the 7 figure mark because you don't run a 7 figure plus business with just you and Hubby. And so because of that, you had to start giving things away, but you're One of the things that you just said is that you created a a simple list. So number 1, most business owners don't write down their thoughts, their business plan, to your point, tasks that they're doing.
If they were to write down those tasks, then you would identify what should I be doing of these and which of these shouldn't I be doing? Now you, in this case, you had, a husband on the backing with different skill sets that could take some of those things away for entrepreneurs out there that don't have a house involved, what do they have to do, or what? Oh, I mean, they don't have a husband to help them. Delegate. Learn to delegate. Yeah. Buddy. I had the oh my god.
Let me tell you, being a high d, like, my disc profile is 98% d. Like, let me tell you Chaz 2% of me is, like, buried. Right? So I had the hardest time delegating. But once I didn't, that's where I hired Cassandra. Once I saw that, Cassandra came in that was 10 years ago for us Oh, god. It took so much work to delegate, but Yeah. Her and I just hit it off very easily on the interview. At that time, I worked out of my house. I in my apartment, we didn't even have a house at the time.
It was a little two story apartment. All of my interviews were coming there. We hit it off and I started learning to delegate. If you don't have delegation, you're gonna overwork yourself. You're gonna be burned out And whether you think that it's okay to delegate, I promise you. If you don't delegate it, you're gonna be burned out and you're gonna quit and you're gonna fail.
So to eliminate that, start hiring for the minute tasks every day that you don't wanna deal with, whether it's accounting, whether it's customer service, whether it's billing, whether it's keeping track of your technicians or whatever that task may be for you and start writing down your stuff every day. Like, our system, we have tasks every day that we have to do. You've gotta go through and check off, and they're prioritized by what's most important and what can be pushed.
So that way, you're not overwhelmed. And that way you understand that it can it can be pushed the next day, but then guess what? That next day task now moves up to priority number 1. You don't start with tomorrow's priority. You start with what you moved over. So just learn to delegate and learn not to be overwhelmed. Yeah. What do you think the hardest part? Especially, I mean, most entrepreneurs are gonna have, a certain percentage of that that high d profile that you're referring to.
That ambition. I wanna drive for more, especially if they're listening to a show like this where they're trying to get to 7 figures. But oftentimes, it's the very ambitious nature that they have that then, like you said, puts them to work puts their head down as opposed to looking up, building a team. So what do you think is, like, the the hinge point in there. Obviously, you said you had to you got overwhelmed.
You started looking to peep for people to hire, but, like, is there a mindset shift in there? Was it was it that you went somewhere and someone told you this, like, how did you get to that place, though? So for me, it was a help in my business coach. So I have a business coach named Jason, who is phenomenal. He runs a multimillion dollar tile tile grout cleaning company and window cleaning company. In order to help you get to that level that we're at, you've gotta have somebody mentoring you.
You've gotta have somebody help you because if you do it all on your own, it's gonna, a, take you forever and b, you're gonna make so many mistakes that we have already dealt with that you don't have to deal with. You know? And so we sat down our coach and we're like, hey. These are this is a problem we're having. Like, example, I have a, a seven thousand square foot office with warehouse and all Chaz. And, I like to coupon. I first off, how did these I'm so curious.
I have a seven thousand square foot warehouse office And then I liked a coupon Chaz the back half of that sentence. I'm I'm mixed in. I'm I'm on my edge of my seat here. Mixed in with my business coach. So my business coach lives in Florida, and we're in Texas. So he flies in. Wolfe. My husband immediately says, Jason, before you look at this, I'm not telling you nothing. I want your honest opinion. Okay. So we walk in my office. We go to the back warehouse, and I've got wrecked.
I've got, like, 6 racks lined up. I have nothing but my couponing stuff. And I'm not talking about, like, hair stuff like, my household couponing. I mean, I do that too, but just for the house, but I'm not like a hoarder couponing. I have that for that. But I coupon for pool stuff. For both sides. I've got floats. I've got a shit ton. So many floats just lined up and just just pull stuff in general because I get it from, like, Academy when they do, like, 70, 80% off, 90% off. I take 2 trucks.
We load up, and we go ahead. They they are. They're like, they're like, Heather, I knew you were coming. You know, I know, you know, swim carefree. They've got the name already written down, and they they literally already have it on a pallet for me. And then I just I go. Jason was like, Heather, I love you, but you understand this does not help your business whatsoever. Yes. It does.
He's like, give me he's like, give me your argument because I buy, like, $500 worth of stuff, and it ends up being, like, few $1000 worth of it. Yeah. I was like, hear me hear me out, Jason. He's like, okay. Let's hear it. So this is when we're in that transition time of, like, we're in limbo. We're either gonna grow or we're gonna either, like, scale back. And this was the time that we were having shoes. Yeah. And he's like, how how does this help for business? I'm like, yeah.
Well, first off, it it helps my heart because I can save money. And true. It give I give it as a thank you to my clients for for being my client. So it doesn't cost me much money, and but and they get it a couple float for there's some season when we open and pull it. Well, we don't close schools, but, like, in the springtime or as a thank you, when they do a large bill, I give them a thank you gift, and that's what it's for. He's like, okay. I can understand that.
He goes, but you see all these seven six seven shelves that are completely full? I'm like, yeah? He goes. Instead of taking that $500 as thank you, while you got a good deal, how fast is that inventory moving? Oh, Oh, Hope. Well, well, Jason, do you want the honest truth, or do you want me to lie to you? Right. Don't have to lie to me, Heather. He goes, I can see it because the boxes still sitting there. I can see them.
So we ended up ended up taking just a bunch of them, and I just dumped them off with a bunch. And I had a couple of pool guys come and get a lot, and some I still and some I still have. So you just weren't actually giving them and or or the business wasn't growing enough? Like, what why, like, why weren't they moving? Curious. A little a little of both. So we were at that stage where we were kinda stopped, and I I kinda stopped taking on clients because we were maxed out.
And I didn't know I didn't know what to do at that point. I was like, okay. I can't hire anybody else. And then in our industry, to hire for pool cleaning, most people are, you know, to make a living, you've gotta be able to staying them with Chaz. But then I'm like, okay. That doesn't make sense to to give somebody a $40,000 living and only do half a day, 5 days. You know? So we were like, Jason, what what do we do?
I I wanna grow, but I don't wanna give somebody $40,000 a year where how can I make up the difference, you know, of that salary? And so he kinda helped us brainstorm and go through that where once we started doing that, we rearranged some of our business and kind of he made me do a business plan. God, I hate that. But we made us sit down and do a business planning to understand that, okay, if we move this around and we change this, we can have you and Chris do the route.
So we don't have to do that. And once you reach this amount, you're making up that so you're not losing it. We can start shifting this inventory up. So he helped us understand that once we get to these growing pains Chaz we call them Yep. Growing pains are either good or they're bad, but it's not going to be where it's a mindset as to, okay, let's take it back. I don't wanna grow. If you have that mindset, you might as well just forget it and leave it alone. You're gonna go through going pains.
And so for us, it was that point of Okay. I can't take on any more clients. And if I can't take on any more clients, I can't grow. So that was my tipping point. Long story short. I know I'm breath winded, but That's that's my long story short about my growing pain. Yeah. No. I I I think that the perspective there, especially tying all Chaz, I think, like, three topics to go back to good and bad decision making somewhere in there. Just so much value.
And and and from a, like, an actual perspective, like, you And that's kinda why I just let you go because I hope I hope that the listener is has been writing purposely. With their pen. And if not, they need to go back and listen because you've given them a ton. Some of the cup just a recap here before we move on to speed round, You said you got a business coach, which is great. You you thought more beyond yourself of of what you're capable of.
Business coach made you do a couple of things that really allowed you to actually grow. Growing pains can be either good or bad, but when you press in, usually it just means that you need to, like, readjust or shift thinking and or business model. And to your point, you niche down. Once you niche down, you're able to grow. And you you coupon for the sake of your heart, not for the sake of the business. That's what we just like. I did. I did. And we let me tell you. How about you?
So, man, like, because it's so much because I load up the bed of the truck, and then I have a q X Fifty Six. It's a 2010, so it's an older one, but it's kinda tall in a room. Yep. And you just fill it. Yep. I do. So so you've limited your couponing over to the personal side. Or are you still coupon? Oh, that was very hesitant. Yes. I know. I have been cut off for the business side. Okay. So you so what that means is that you still have one rack that you fill.
Yes. Yeah. Just for personal, just for personal. Now I the only way that I can coupon for the business is if if it has my logo and it has part of my promotion, like, when you build a pool with me, you get these big ass towels. They're literally called big ass towels. And it has our logo information because you're spending a lot of money. So you get a little gift basket with some whys, personalized towels, and a little toad. And Yep. And Yeah. It's experience. I don't get to coupon for it.
No. Nope. You gotta buy a full price. I know, but it's still I still me giving back to my client. So that's all I care about. Yeah. 100%. That was another hidden nugget in there. Alright. Heather, you ready for the speed round? Ready. Fire away. First question is this. If you could only pick 1 metric out of all the things that you track in your business to only pick 1 to track forever and ever, what would it be? Numbers. Numbers, what numbers, though? What what numbers? Your p and l. Oh, okay.
What on the p and l? Come on. I'm gonna narrow it down down here. Yep. You wanna make sure your profit, you're not losing money because if you are, you either need to increase cost or readjustify how you're doing your your estimating without numbers. You can't make money. Have to make money. You have to make money. I know. It sucks. Right? Why can't things just be for free? Right. Well, then we'd all be a coupon. Yeah. That's right. That's right. Okay. So track your profit.
Make sure that you're profitable. What book should a 6 figure owner read that's trying to get to the 7 figure mark? Oh, BS marketing. I love that one. That's my favorite one. No BS marketing. Little red book of sales is really good as well because in order to get to that, you to sell. You have to you have to sell you. Yep. So those are my 2 favorite ones. Love it. And and both marketing and sales, in that angle tying together, you have to get good at both in order to get some figures for sure.
Yes. Okay. Next question is, do you intentionally mastermind or network with other entrepreneurs? I do. Hands down. Hands down. My group that I'm in only is for people of our level because you wanna grow, you know, you you don't want somebody that's less than you trying to help you because they're they're not. They're you've done everything mostly than them. So all of ours are a 1,000,000 plus businesses. Some are even at, like, 5 to 10,000,000.
And Yep. The things that come out of their mouth, I'm just in all end. I'm like, oh, didn't think about that. Okay. Yep. Exactly. I love that. Okay. And last question. If you lost it all, There was no more pool building. Mhmm. What would you do? I would move to Florida and I would buy a boat and start a charging business. Wow. You've thought about this. Yes. We have. You gotta have a backup plan. You always gotta have a backup plan. And also real estate too.
We're actually starting into the real estate because you want to actually get where you're at as well. You wanna have passive income. You wanna have assets. So one thing, if once you get, you know, to the 7 figure incomes, you you've gotta learn how to make your money work for you. You've gotta invest. Don't put it in a 401 k people. 401 k is not is not good.
You wanna get I'm I've got, like, a whole list of things Chaz I invested, and you've got to start learning to make your money work for you. Without that, you're gonna be stuck where you're at. You're never gonna grow. So invest with passive income. Invest where your money grows while you're sleeping. Yep. That's huge. I love that. And and, of course, I'm in total agreement on that. Not only as a serial entrepreneur, but as a real estate investor in many different areas, could not agree more.
In fact, the passive income for me is, like, where the game is. Like, the building of the business, fine. Sure. Like, I've got several of them bought sold, you know, you name it. But when it comes to the passive income and building up that and then buying stuff out of that, that's, like, King status right there. Yeah. Because you've gotta use a asset to be able to to grow your money. Right? I mean, look at most people nowadays, multi $1,000,000,000 companies have mounds and mounds of debt.
Debt's good Chaz long as it's asset based driven good. Yeah. Debt is bad if it's credit card debt and debt that doesn't build over time. Yeah. I need I need a I need a NASA who's paying for it. Yep. And so great. Okay. Heather, you have been incredible Thank you. It's for having me. Yes. Thank you for coming. How can someone connect with you? Yeah. So if you want to talk to me about helping you with your business. I'm more than happy to do that. I do that a lot.
You can reach out reach out to me on my business, which is swim care free. Out of Dallas, Texas. And our number is 214-780-1940, and our Email is services with an s@swimcarefree.com. So that'll get you to my assistant she handles all that and she can get you in touch with me. Or listen to my podcast, if you want as well, it's called Talking Pools podcast on Spotify and Apple. My my podcast, though, Taylor to the to the pool industry. But you could see me on video there.
I do video podcasts and voice. It just depends on what I feel like doing that day. That's awesome. And so and if you and if they get your assistant, they know to keep the conversation short. Yes. Don't let her ramble or actually do, and let's test it. Let's pull it. Test it. See how far she'll go. That's awesome. Well, you've been incredible again, and, we wish you nothing but success in in in almost what it sounds like potentially a third business.
And so but the pool industry and the other things you got going on, you're rocking and rolling. We so appreciate you. Of course. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me. Absolutely. Have a great day. You too. Bye, Tas. Thanks for listening to Gathering the Kings. We hope you get ton of value today and learn a thing or 2 about taking your business to 7 figures and beyond.
If you desire more and want a community around you to help you get there, I want you to go to gathering the king's dot com. That's gathering the king's dot com, and I want you to apply for our next becoming a king 90 day intensive. Are extremely exclusive by nature as a group. What that means that we're really wanting only the entrepreneurs who take their business and targets super serious to apply.
So if that's you, you think out what it takes to level up your business, I want you to go to gatheringthekings.com and apply. And we will see you on the other side.