On today's episode of Gathering The Kings. $500,000 a year, and and you're comfortable. God bless you. But if that's not where you wanna be and you wanna get to the next level and you're asking yourself, how do I get there? That's where it starts. You are listening to Gathering the Kings with Chaz Wolfe Gathering fellow 7, 8, 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 The and how you too can get there. Through this dialogue, you will learn the value of growing your network and surrounding yourself with power players and Kings like today's guest. Grab your pen and notebook because we're about to dive in. What's up, everybody? Chaz Wolfe. I'm your host, gathering the Kings podcast. Today, I've got Bob Mueller here on the king stage.
My brother. How are you? Yeah. I'm doing great. Hey. Labor Day, Gathering all those hard work is out The, hopefully, taken today off. I'm not honoring those hardworking guys out there today. Help build our businesses. And it's about the American dream and stays all about that. Hopefully, everybody's having a beautiful day out there. I I appreciate that. We were just talking off air briefly.
My eight and six year old, a daughter's, I was tucking them in last night, and they were asking me if I had to work because they don't have school today. And I said, Wolfe, why wouldn't I? And they were like, it's labor day. I said, well, do you know what labor means? And so, of course, I'm building into them. Necessarily just about always Kings. This afternoon, we're gonna take some time and do some family stuff together.
But the reality of it is that, like you said, as business owners, it never really stops. Especially if we've got big dreams. So that's what I'm trying to build in in my family. I would love to know, Bob. What kind of business do you have? Let's get rolling here. My business specifically is a plumbing contractor business. So I've been a service plumber for about the last 25, 30 years.
Just, realistically, just building business organically over the course of the last 25, 30 years and just trying to get this thing figured out. And it's truthfully, it is an ongoing process every single day. We battle every day with our ability to not only distinguish between the service that we're trying to provide, but how to run a business. So that's that's the dynamic that I've been through probably for about the last 5, 6 years of my journey in this.
And, hopefully, with that being said, just being a business, Chaz doesn't matter what vehicle you're in, whether it's a plumbing business or whether it's an HVAC business or whether you're just a dentist out The. Your business It's just your vehicle that you're driving and happens to be plumbing. Yeah. I love that perspective. And so first off, you you come with decades of experience I'm super jazzed to hear your story and get to pick your brain a little bit.
But to your point, just Chaz you just said, I love that about gathering the Kings, not only our podcast, but also our mastermind is specifically designed around just what you just said. It doesn't matter if you're a dentist, if you're a plumbing guy, if you're a marketing guy, if you're tech guy. If you're a transportation guy, it doesn't really matter or gal. Yeah. The reality of it is that we are in business.
And if you can understand the principles good decision making, all of the things that we're gonna talk about here today, then you can run any business. Yep. Absolutely. You can be successful wherever you wanna be. I wanna know before we dive into your Bob. You've been doing this for a long time. Here you are on labor day. Right. Why are you still pushing? What's the bigger picture for you? What's got you driving at this moment? Man, for me, innate in me. Right?
So it's like when I was born to be driven as a as an entrepreneur. I knew it from a young age. That was gonna be my life's goal was to build things was to be creative. I've always said that creative side, and I just didn't know how that was gonna eventually end up and what avenue that took. I was one of those confused kids just like everybody else going through the eighties era of high school.
I was not your hyper former coming out of that Kings of told me that, son, you're gonna be putting on the uniform, and that put me into the army. And Chaz this fuel said, bought brought me into the leadership roles that I knew that I was always meant to be in. So I was, a leader within my company in the army, and I just knew that I just love leading people. And so as soon as I got out of the army, I knew that business was gonna be my avenue, and I just didn't know which one it was gonna be.
Coming out of the army, it was started out Chaz, in into the body building Wolfe. So I wanted to open up a gym, and that was my first experience, man, and being just young and dumb and just ready to go. But I went all in on on opening up in a gym and found out pretty quickly that that was probably gonna be a tough but but, yeah, no. It led me into becoming an entrepreneur into the contracting side of it, took on, an apprenticeship as an plumbing company and learned a little bit about plumbing.
And, of course, once you learn a little bit about it, you think you got it all figured out. You can do it way better than that guy that you're working for. Of course, that's that led to my journey to to open it up my first plumbing company and just trying to get it figured out from there. When you are a contractor or into the The, and I'll specifically speak to the expiry contractors out there may be, you know, some of the guys Chaz are at a level in the contracting business right now.
Most of us get our start because We're probably your blue collar guy that just went and got a job. It's decided that you wanted to open up your own company, whatever Chaz That service businesses, again, for you, it could be HVAC. It could be electrician. It could be any of those things for me specifically is plumbing. And we learn a little bit about plumbing, and then we take it on, and we take on the the world of business. And they're 2 separate entities.
And you don't know what you don't know about business, but you take it on, and then you have to really start the grind of having a the the 2 different worlds of understanding the service that you're trying to provide and the business you're trying to run. And for we just have it back We don't go to school to learn business. We go to an apprenticeship to learn plumbing, but we teach they don't teach a business.
And so, realistically, unless you start to really dive into to the The aspect of business, which is knowledge, you're gonna have a long road ahead. And that's where I'm at. That's why I've been up for so long is that I've been seeking knowledge for a long time to get this thing figured out. And that's finally there, and I'm happy to just to share a little bit about what I know. That's an incredible journey. I wanna know first off, thank you for your service. We absolutely appreciate that.
You've used this language around, like, not knowing business, there's obviously a distinction between the widget or the service and then running a business. And I think to your point, a lot of contractors Right. They have the skill set of the widget. Right? And so then they get started in The plumbing business or, like, type trade, and then they realize, oh, hold geez. There's a whole business here that I have to run.
But that same thing happens in someone who gets good at running digital ads and they think, well, I'll just go do this on my own. Go get a couple of clients, and they realize that it's not just servicing those couple of clients with the ads. They have to also run a business. Or someone says I've been I'm gonna buy real estate. And so I'm now I'm gonna I'm gonna do a wholesale or I'm gonna fix and The, or that's the actual thing. That's the tangible widget.
Yep. But there's a whole business behind it in which the business piece, knowledge, strategy, ideas, relationships, accountability. Like, all of those things obviously are needed and but are so far from how to install a toilet or a shower or how to fix a, like, a drain clog. So how do you think and I wanna get into some of your your, like, how you got into business, but since we're on this topic here real quick. How did you, or maybe it was, like, a multiple step?
How did you come to realize without it just, like, smacking you in the face? Cause I'm sure it did at some point. To realize that there was this business Gathering, and then it was like this acknowledgment, I'm sure. It was like a moment where you're like, okay. I'm I'm a plumber. I'm a good plumber, but I gotta figure this other thing out too. When was that? Tell us about it.
Honestly, as my journey was a long one because people have to really take accountability to the first portion of it is the mindset of actually owning and operating a business because If you don't have the right people in your life at the time of when you're starting your business, it can be a long journey. So just understanding that, like, For me, my ex wife was a daughter of a plumber, which actually was my inspiration to become a plumber at the time.
And and She had a lot of baggies that came with me actually trying to open up and run my own plumbing company because she saw the struggles her dad had. So it was a different it was a difficult dynamic for me to try to grow and understand Chaz The side of business because I always had somebody in my ear telling me that but you're probably not gonna testful at this. It can be a long journey. So you gotta have the right people around you.
You gotta have you gotta know that that your partnership with business and your partnership with your family The go hand in hand. You gotta have you gotta have people around you that that really believe in you Chaz are that are encouraging you. So for me, I had a 20 year struggle to start with because of just the people I had in my life. Honestly, it's been a long journey.
And so for me, Once I was able to really just take accountability to what I am as a human being and how I wanted to take on business, I went all in, and I invested in my in in understanding business. And I didn't care Gathering about another plumbing book after I if I didn't have plumbing figured out at this point, I shouldn't be running a plumbing business. That's just my my my approach. And so I needed to learn about business. So I took on every single business book I could take on.
I took on every single mentor that I could surround myself with, and it was just a different journey for me. I it opened my eyes to the true ownership of a business. Right? And that you have to really take accountability to the culture you're creating, the responsibility you have to the people that are helping you build this culture in business. There's a lot of accountability that went along with that.
And so it's It's been a long ride for me, but I can tell you that there's a shorter path to your success if your ability want if you really wanna dive into that shorter path success, I would say that start with yourself with really smart people and dive into mentors because that's the angle you really should be starting at when you decide that that today is the day that you wanna start your business work. Today, you're struggling with your business, and you need to get it figured out.
You need to quit working on that the widget, as you would say, trying to develop, you need to work on your business. Yeah. 100%. I think that there's a lot of knowledge that you just dropped on us, and I think we could dissect it the entire pod. I'll say The, and we'll move on. But I think that it's It what you're referring to is literally the, like, opening little piece of the present or the surprise Chaz success really is.
And so if you can crawl through the little hole that you're talking about of going, oh, okay. Wow. I'm actually not running a plumbing business. Or a service company or a whatever, an edible arrangements franchise when I first started. No. It it I'm crawling through the idea of I'm running a business. And I need to know how to operate a business. And from a high level, and, of course, there's all the functions of a business, marketing, sales, client fulfillment, finance, all those Kings.
But it's so much bigger than that when you can get around people who are making it more than that. So thank you for that. Yeah. I wanna know about your story. How did you tell us the gap between military? And you you said you gotta start it as a plumber. What was that what was that moment there where you're like, I can do this better? Why did you start your business? Yeah. So, obviously, when okay. I knew early that that I wanted to be an entrepreneur, so I didn't like work people.
I always liked leading, so that was The Chaz that was the inspiration I had in my own head Chaz someday I was gonna lead somebody into something, void the aspect of not only helping people, but leading people. So that I think those are 2 pretty good, attributes of somebody that wants to be an entrepreneur. You gotta know you gotta wanna lead, and you gotta wanna help. Right?
So if you can't do those 2 things, you're probably not gonna be too successful in anything that you're that you're trying to venture into. But for me, specifically, I saw the type of paychecks that con that the guys were making in the trades at the time coming from a guy that just got out of the military, didn't have a didn't have a degree or anything like Chaz, knew I'm something to have for my family in the future. And so I knew The I had a chance to get into The plumbing trade.
And where I was from specifically at that time in Oregon, it's difficult because you actually have to go through a plumbing apprenticeship program, you gotta get you gotta get yourself into the school, and that can be a couple year wait to get in. So you're digging ditches and you're doing everything that you can to just start your journey into that. I worked my way into into the plumbing world.
I was with a guy that had been around it for a long time, an old school guy, and learned a ton for him. And I'm so grateful to that man, to this day, and I'll give him some prop So that's award Brunner from Brunner Plumbing in in Oregon over there, but he was the he was the my inspiration to to, wanting to do it better because he was that that old school guy that that I didn't think The had it all figured out, and I all and I thought I could better.
But, of course, I didn't know what I didn't know. And so I just went out and started my own Kings, and that that pushed me into this direction that I've been in fighting with for the last 20 plus years. Yeah. That's great. I think we've all come to that realization at some point. I think that story makes a lot of sense for each one of us. We've all maybe thought more highly of ourselves The we should have. But that's okay.
It gave us confidence in that moment to take the leap and to take the venture, and so then now we're forced to figure it out. So Tell us in that 1st couple of years, like, before you've, for sure, before you hit a 1,000,000, I wanna know what good decision did you make? Early on that you can think back to that makes perfect sense on why you are, where you are. Let's take it back to that's more of a recent thing than it was a pass thing. So pass, you gotta look at where I came from.
So, like, in the eighties nineties, we didn't have that world of digital marketing or Right. I'm in a different dynamic than you, younger guys, and to the people that are in the digital world today that could build a business very quickly and scale quickly. We didn't have that opportunity back in that day.
You were you were the yellow pages guy, and you had to figure out how to get yourself in the front of the yellow pages, and you had to fig figure out how to afford a yellow page ad at that time, which was very for me, I'll have to probably take you fast forward to a different era, probably mid 2000 is when I actually started figuring out that I needed to learn a little bit more about business and when we had a little bit more ability, I had to jump all in to the digital world.
I know that you got a little bit of experience with the HomeAdvisor World, but I can tell you that before them, they were service match. And that was my first experience with with the digital company. Yep. And it's one of the first guys on board with doing that type of stuff and figuring out that I can really grow this thing if I understand how to monetize in the digital space and build a online reputation. So Yes. I had to really, you know, start figuring that side of it out.
And I went all in on learning SEO website, name recognition, and all that other stuff. And that but I was totally blindsided to how important that brand was. And, of course, thinking that my name meant everything because it's just my name on the company, and I'm the one that's showing up to the The, There's no way to scale that. So I I had to really get it re figured out, and I can tell you that Chaz, that once I decided to go all in on on rebranding, and branding myself.
That's when the moment came in. It took it took the knowledge of Gathering SEO and having a brand behind it that really took me to the next level, and that's when I started enjoying success. Interesting. So what I'm hearing you say, tell me if I'm wrong, because you've given it, like, three different angles, which I just so appreciate the way that your brain works. You, number 1, realize that their business is changing. First off, you said you I had to learn business, right, to change in itself.
Then as business Chaz your learning business and the skill sets inside of a business, The of which is marketing and lead generation and sales, those things are the engine to what we call growth or scalability. And you try a lead service. You eventually SEO. That's basically creating your own lead service, your website. And then I heard you say one last Gathering, the branding piece where you switched from your name to a more of a branding piece.
And so you said that's when you started walking in success. Tell us what you mean by that. K. Until I understood the value of what a brand wasn't by my Scott, why wouldn't anytime you go into the grocery store, you don't have to look at Tony Tiger to that's frosted flakes. Right? You don't have to drive down the street and see the golden arches and understand you're gonna get a hamburger there. Right?
Not just brainwashed into us at a very young age, but as when you're running a business, you don't put the two together because you don't think of yourself as this $1,000,000,000 company, you think I need to get my name out there. Your name is your name, your business is your brand. And so once I understood that I needed to rebrand myself, that everybody's gonna know who The plumbing company that I want to be is built off the brand and and not off of my name.
And you can't scale yourself if you do it that way. So Right. I understood that The brand was the more important way to go. And, boy, You have to put your money into that, and you really need to have free contractors out there that still are driving The white truck with the three letters on the side that have your 14 different services that you provide on that van or that truck. You're doing it wrong. I'm telling you it's time to rebrand. It's time to put a a big shiny wrap on that band.
Keep it simple and make that brand all about the logo that you're trying to to create so that everybody knows who's providing the service off of that brand. Yeah. You brought up a couple things I wanna dive into him just because we've gotten into the The, and I just I love going into the tactical. You like, this branding piece, that you finally figured out eventually, right, do you agree that it's it none it doesn't necessarily bring customers day 1. Right? It's organic. That is organic.
It's gonna grow over the course of time, but what I'm hearing you say, I'm just pointing this out for the listener because they're paying attention. Right, is that you have to do it, but do it alongside of getting your name out. So, oh, I'm taking your language. I'm a put it in some different words here, but you're brand new or the listeners listening right now. They haven't hit the $1,000,000 mark. What they need to do in order to get to a 1,000,000, there's several key Kings.
But number The is you gotta market and sell. Like, Your revenue just isn't at a at a 1,000,000 yet because you probably don't have the systems or lead generation to do so. Whether it's a lead generation services, like you said, service magic, or home advisor or SEO Gathering your own leads, whatever it is, you have to get the leads, you gotta have a sales process to close the leads, and you have to grow the business that way.
Now The same time I hear you saying, don't forget that it's not just about this individual person in servicing this one individual lead, but it's about branding. It's about a logo. It's about your trucks being everywhere. It's about this culture, even inside and outside the business that perpetuated by the brand, just like you said, with the arches and just all these other examples that you gave to us. It's almost who ores in a canoe. Right? Like, you just had lead generation.
You you just you do circles, because eventually, you're running off of other people's ability to get you leads. Like, I love lead generators like The advisor, but you eventually have to go do your own thing. You eventually have to become that person. Doesn't mean that they're bad or that there's a there's not a there's not a place in the market for them. It's that branding piece that over the course of time, you start to get it yourself. Yep. Would you agree with that?
I would have 100% agree with that, and I'll touch on a few points you made on that. Lead generation to be very expensive. So organic leads, knowing because in The the space of Google, right now, I mean, everything is about Google. Right? So it's like everybody trusts Google to tell them who they need to do business with. And Google recommends only the people that they know. Google's in the business of recommending the people that they trust.
So you gotta build that brand with The reviews or your reviews are so important on making sure that you can build not only that brand so that so that you can be ranked in the Google space.
And so That's when you can get your lead generation cost down because you won't need those lead generations when you're organically ranking high on on, Google space I Chaz tell you that it really cuts into your bottom line, Chaz, as you well know, as being a multi strategist in your own businesses that you do that that your business evaluation is based on your EBITDA that your business is performing with and running at low margins because you have to you have a high cost of customer acquisition.
You're killing your business's evaluation for the person that wants to purchase it from you. That's the next strategy. Right? The next strategy is why are we doing this? Why are we killing ourselves every single day in and day out having this type of a business if you can't exit out of it with success? So not set yourself up for success. You're gonna you're just gonna be a an owner that you're gonna sell your company for The parts value of it down the road.
Yeah. I think I think just to even go to that level of how do we exit, why do we exit? Is there even anything to exit from? I think is another level of thinking. And so I if anything, I hope you've just deposited some moments into the listener because you're right. My head of guy come in June inside of our master mind and speak about building something to exit.
He's exited multi 9 figure businesses, and it's, okay, you have to build, of course, systems and teams and stuff inside But what you're doing is you're building something of value, which includes the brand, which includes the logo, this whole machine that you're handing off to somebody else, that's what they're buying. They're not buying you, They're not buying your name. That's right. They don't wanna buy your job, bro. Hey, Chaz Wolfe here.
As many of you know, I have been on an absolute mission to help entrepreneurs from all across the country in many different industries, level up their game and grow their business, and intentionally connect with other entrepreneurs. We do that obviously through the podcast, but We also have a peer to peer mastermind group specifically for 7 to 9 figure business owners.
We are bringing some of the best and most successful entrepreneurs and minds together in a regular and a super intentional way to not only grow our network, but to be able to leverage And at a certain point in business, success becomes about leverage, leveraging time, leveraging resources, leveraging key relationships, The is exactly what we're doing inside of the peer to peer mastermind group called Gathering the Kings, specifically for 7
to 9 figure business owners, So if that's you, if you're ready to level up your 7 to 9 figure business, even to the next level and get around other big hitters just like you, want you to go to gathering the Kings dot com, flood a short application, and, it'll come to an application, call with me and I wanna chat with you to see if it might be a good fit. Talk soon. Absolutely not.
And if you don't if you have a mess for somebody to try to buy, You have nothing to sell, and that's the everybody that operates at a high level knows the importance of systems, operations, people, mentors. All those things are so highly valuable to build a scalable business that that you can actually attract acquisition companies, The think about wanting your account. And I see that in today's Wolfe, and we're changing drastically every single day.
The and I'm gonna speak specifically to the service contract is out there. I know that you got a lar large platform, but for those listeners out there that are in the service, specifically service based industries, We're changing big time right now. We got a massive labor shortage out there and and guys that are trained and skilled enough.
We're losing more guys in my age category to exiting out of this industry and the delta between the new ones entering this space because technology has really pushed every kid towards the tech world and not towards the mechanical Wolfe. Have a very large labor shortage of the guys in this space typically, we're competing for the best guys out there.
And I I hear it all the time from guys in my industry, of how hard it is to hire a good qualified guy, and I keep going back to, you're not attractive. Why would some guy come and work to you? Why would some guy want work for you. Guys are gonna go to a company that has a brand that has a name that has reputation that can offer some way of advancements.
Not only are do you have to really think about, you know, where you are currently, but you gotta think about where we're going and where we're completely different. And I can tell you that you're in a really good time right now if you're just starting out because acquisition companies out there are really interested in scalable service companies because the valuation on those pretty good right. And you understand business, you start to really focus on it.
You've got yourself a golden ticket to to a comfortable lifestyle very quickly. Yeah. 100%. I agree with you. In fact, it's been in the topic of discussion with me and several others of, okay, how at the because at this point, when I left my corporate job at twenty four years old and started my first franchise, I would not have felt comfortable buying, number 1, multiple businesses, but businesses that I personally didn't know how to do the ins and outs, the the widget.
But now going making this whole thing full circle, having conversations around buying multiple $1,000,000 businesses HVAC companies, plumbing companies, whatever it is, for this exact reason, because the reality of it is that Boomers are exiting at a mass rate, and there's gonna be companies sold on pennies and the dollar because, unfortunately, not a lot of guys thought about the And and even for guys like you who are still in the game, you wanna talk about a roll up opportunity.
You already have the systems. You already got the phone number. You already people in the you just you could be collecting guys around you, like, handy. Yeah. Chaz there there's true to that. The other side of that is that there's companies that are gobbling up. There's big acquisition companies out there that are gobbling up all the small guys right now, and they're turning them in. They're keeping their names.
You just don't know that they're being run by a big acquisition company with, a lot more money than you got behind your ability to scale and these guys are not competing for your customers. Okay? These guys are competing for your talent.
And when you're telling me that you're having a hard time attracting talent out there, I'm telling you the reason why you have that problem because a slow depth to every single business is your inability to perform because you don't have talent to go send out to perform. The that's your lifeblood of the widget that you're in is the talent that you're sending out there to do in a service industry specific leagues. You have and out qualified talent.
And if you're not, the guys that that are the ones that are are winning in business. And so these guys know that they don't need to compete for your customer. You're competing for your talent, and they're gonna get have the ability to do. Yeah. And the customer will follow. Yeah. And they know that as well. Okay. Let's flip the script here. We've talked a lot about good things that you've done over the years. Just incredible insight.
What about something that you did that wasn't your greatest moment? I can tell you that goes back to just knowing your lane and knowing what you're not in debt. Right? My biggest expense that I ever had was cutting into something that I shouldn't have been cutting into, and that was not understanding the world of hydronic heating at the time. And making the mistake and flooding a multi $1,000,000 wine cellar. Just this just goes back to just knowing your lane.
And don't try to be the guy that that that know Chaz you think you know everything, stick to what you're good at. And and I know I'm a little all over the place here, but I could I'm gonna I'm gonna parlay The into looking at every single one of the the services that you're providing as the stock portfolio within your company. Right? So if For me, water heaters are my number one stocked in my company.
So I'm gonna heavily into my water heaters and to the and to advertising them and to training my techs on them and to performing at a high level in there. So that's my number one stock. My least stock is fixing people's toilets. Right? I'm not gonna I'm not gonna put a lot of money into teaching my guys in that, and I'm not gonna take a lot of jobs.
Aren't in my Yeah. In the world of service, you always want to try to help everybody in every single aspect and just I can tell you that this is where you're gonna make the biggest cost mistakes that you make in businesses just trying to perform services that either you're not good at or you're not making money yet. And so business is business. You gotta understand that.
You may upset a customer that that that you had to say no to, but say go to a customer is that's been the biggest lesson that I've learned over the years is just saying no. Yeah. What would you say with that moment for you when you realized. Obviously, it was this wine seller potential moment where you flooded in. You're like, oh my gosh. What am I doing? For the listener right now, they're doing 200,000. Maybe they're doing 8 1000.
The reality of it is that they probably are doing a lot of things. How do they approach maybe taking inventory of their stock and going, okay. Which one should I keep? Which one should I say no to? So that way, when the customer does call, not only have they thought about it ahead of time, they've decided on it, and then that way, it gives them confidence to say no, because it's scary in the moment to say no, especially when you turn around business.
Yeah. I can tell you that those guys out there that are doing $500,08100,000 a year, I and I know because I've recently It wasn't that long ago. That's who I was. I had to understand that sales is the number one thing to getting to a 1,000,000. Right? So If you can solve for sales, you can solve for scalability.
You can solve for getting to the $1,000,000 point in your business, and and it's more like Guys don't understand how important sales is in in this, right, in in the service industry specifically because they think it's all about their technical skills and I can't sell to a customer. I'm not a salesman. I'm a guy that fixes things. That mentality is gonna keep you at $500,000 $800,000.
I can tell you that If you're not out there marketing, if you're not out there building a brand and if you're not teaching sales, you will not get past a $1,000,000. I and I can tell you that and I'm not slamming on guys that are under a $1,000,000 because as Chaz, most businesses out there, and it's less than 10% of small businesses. There's, what, 32,000,000 small businesses out there less than 10% of The make a $1,000,000 a year.
So it's not like we're talking about people that are not succeeding out there. Yeah. We're Kings people that want to get there Chaz wanna get to a $1,000,000, Chaz wanna get to $5,000,000, that wanna scale their company. Yeah. The only thing you're gonna do it is Having smart people around you, mentorship, and learning sales. Because if you can't solve for sales, you cannot build a co and I don't care what company you're in. Sales is the number one driver in every single business. Yep. I agree.
I agree. Coming from a background of 20 years in sales, that's the That's a girl solves everything Chaz they say. There's obviously a lot of chaos that could be caused with that too, but I'd rather clean up a mess from chaos than to have no mess. Yeah. 100%. Okay. What sort of process or decision making discipline do you have now? Now that you've crossed the mark, you've you're part of the top 9% of businesses, What did decisions look like for you now? Now it just comes with a calm sense. Right?
So I used to be Chaz High Strung, took everything personal, just had to be in, in your face, had to attack everything with full vigor. And now it's more about Taking a deep breath. Nothing's personal, not personal. Business is just business. Take a deep breath and help have people around you that can help solve problems with you. You don't have to solve every problem. 1, you need to have people helping you solve your problems. Right?
Because The people that you have solved and your problems with you, the less problems you have to solve. Yeah. Love that. K. Speed round coming at you quick here. First question is if you take your plumbing business and dwindle it down, to one trackable metric. If you Chaz only pick 1 to track forever and ever for years to come, what would it be? Brand. K. How do you track your brand?
So through social media, just what type of people are looking for me, what type of how I'm being found organically online. Okay? And brand has a lot to do with how you're being raped through through these sites. So I can say my name, personal plumbing is how it would be important, right, but that's also my brand. So those 2 Kings go hand in hand. And so people are calling me because not because of Bob Mueller anymore. Right? People are calling the company because of the brand.
So I you don't have a brand, if you don't have something for people to to co to have a reason to call you, you're Chaz good are you? Right. Yeah. The brand really is the meat and potatoes, but, unfortunately, just so many people miss that. Wolfe you say that's why there's so many, especially in the trades Wolfe? But it's really applicable to every business. Let's just be honest. Where are they come and go? Come and go? Come and go. Come and go. Is it because there's no brand?
There's no stickability? Yeah. So most businesses start out as a either a mom and pop shop and that's the matured. Right? And most of them are either 2nd generation. They've taken over from their dad, or they've wanted to start their own company, and they know that you gotta go out. You gotta just put your name on that business because that's what's easy to get because, again, it it try getting a name in Southern California that's not already registered on the registry. Right?
Most guys just start with putting their last name on the business because that's easy. And so you're about brand at the time. You're just thinking about how can I go service my next customer? And that goes back to just my set and knowledge. So In in the book I'm trying to get written, I put knowledge as the number one attribute that you have to have in starting your business. And if you don't put knowledge first, And I can tell you that I understand that I didn't either. Okay?
These are all the mistakes I that I've made. Right? I put knowledge but knowing business in a very low priority for a long time in my life. I just knew that I had to solve how to fix water heaters, how to install this or how to get a guide from point a to point b. How I didn't understand the dynamic of building a business or building a brand, and those became the most important Kings, knowledge. Yeah. I love that. What book would you recommend, Bob, for a six figure business owner to read?
Okay. So I'm I'm a huge at my let guy, The power of 1 more believable guy or Kings bro rich. I must say it is all time Staple, but if you don't know money, rich dad, poor dad, that's the business book that everybody has to start with, at least, because you have to understand money If you don't understand money, then you will not you will not succeed in business as well because there's a holdup.
We can go on for days just the dynamic that you need to understand of leverage, right, how important it is to a business. And I'm gonna throw this out here for those $500,000 companies as well. The reason why your 500,000 or you're you're trying to break that threshold of a 1,000,000 is because you haven't borrowed 500,000 or a $1,000,000 and put it into your leverage and take that to build you $10,000,000, right, because you should be home runs off of all this money that you're borrowing it.
And if you didn't do it in this last cycle, when we were at the lowest interest rates, ever in district at that 1 and 2% rate, that's free money. And so guys are just so afraid to take leverage and put that into their business, and grow their business. I I didn't grow my business until I had a lot of debt. Yeah. Debt grooming. Huge. Yeah. I love that.
There's so many things going around circling around about that right now, but even inside of Gathering, the Kings, a mastermind we talk about leveraging. Time, resources, and key relationships.
And I think those three things encompass there's lots of levers that we can pull, and some are more valuable than others some you still do even though they're low levers, but I think the reality of it is that in our journey, as we continue to press in, whether that's growing our revenue or growing our notariety or whatever it is that you're trying to grow in, I think that you're calculating which levers gets you there or or a better return.
It's just constant influx of, okay, this one was better than that one. So that's good. But then eventually, you find it an even better one and an even better one. And it all I think even in circles back to how you started this whole conversation of always being open to learning. And he I I know you didn't mention this, but when your book comes out, it's gonna be called humble pie, you said.
And so The that mentality of the fact that I'm not done yet, I need humility to be able to continue to learn. It's it's it can it's partially selfish because you can recognize that there's gotta be a better lever. Like, this was pretty good. There's gotta be a better one. And why wouldn't you want it bigger, better? Fast or stronger, easier. This is what we're made to do is just continue to figure things out and and level up time and time again. So true. That's the key right there. Level up.
What? We've talked about networking. We've talked about mentors. You've mentioned this several times. My next question, the speed round is always, what do you think about networking and master mining? Since I know, obviously, that that you value this already, why would you tell the listener? Who maybe he hasn't figured that one out yet?
She hasn't understood the value of being around either other entrepreneurs in a mastermind or maybe hiring a coach as a mentor or something like that, what would you say to them? I would say that The number one investment that you can put in your business is your knowledge. And that investing in mentors that know business better than you do is the best investment you can make.
I can tell you that I know that you have consulting and you do things like that and plug for you, but I can say that hiring a guy like you to come in and invest price may be. Now I'm going to a, a show in Vegas. The I'm gonna spend $5000 on ticket because I guarantee you that $5 that I'm gonna spend on that one ticket is gonna rub The a shoulder with somebody that's gonna make me way more than I'm gonna spend on that ticket.
And so afraid to spend money on on people that are gonna get them to the next level. And I can tell you that anybody that would hire a guy like you to help them run their business would be making an invaluable investment and and to their company. Invest what you can what you think you can't afford because it's what's gonna get you to the next level. Yeah. That's a great way to put it. It's kinda like marketing, and thank you for the kind words. I don't wanna prompt that, but thank you.
The investing in your self, investing in your mindset, investing in your knowledge, investing in your circle, I see very much so with marketing, and I'll explain. If you put $1 in to the marketing machine and it poops out too, you don't say to yourself, oh, I got a budget of $10. No. You turn around. And you scrounge every dollar you Chaz, and you ask to borrow money to your point with leverage. And you say, look, I'll give you your dollar back plus 10¢.
Just give me the dollar, and you're collecting all these dollars because you can turn around and you put it into the marketing machine and then poops. Outcomes $2. You know that to be true, When you know that to be true, there is no budget. Now granted, I understand there's planning and budgeting, and you gotta have some concrete numbers. But the principle here that I'm discussing that you brought to the table is if it works, why would you stop?
In fact, Why are you not scrounging everything possible to put it in there? Because you should know that it's that that's gonna return. And in your case, you're going to this conference, you know that you know. The it's gonna bring a return. And I could tell you Chaz it goes right back to mindset, and it goes back to the people that you're surrounding yourself with.
And I can't I can't deny that there's people out there in relationships with their wife, with their families Chaz may be struggling, and they don't understand business the way that you understand right, if your wife or your spouse or whoever your list isn't a big part of what you're doing and understanding where you're at in your mindset, You will not get The.
And it's a huge, huge part of why guys go all in because they got somebody on the other side selling them If you spend that kind of money, we're done. So for those people out there, I would encourage you to get a mentor because A mentor can also help with that spouse aspect, right, include that that conversation, help them understand why it takes that type of leverage, why it takes that mindset in order to grow this thing. If $500,000 a year and you're comfortable God bless you.
But if that's not where you wanna be and you wanna get to the next level and you're asking yourself, how do I get The? That's where it starts. That's exactly where it starts. Is having a guy that commensurate you Chaz that helps you helps your family understands, or if you're a single guy that that isn't unsure of how to spend that money. Yeah. So put people around you that can help you do that. Yeah. Your mindset changes when you have people around you.
Not only just doing things bigger, but also then Gathering the same of you. No. I got one last question here for you, Bob, and we'll end this up here. You've built, obviously, an amazing machine, amazing team, and, you know, doing amazing things. I wanna know if you lost it all. What would you do? Man, good question. Honestly, at this stage, when I came to California, about 10 years ago. I had that exact predicament. I've gone through my divorce. I had lost it all, and I start over.
And I said, if I'm gonna lose it all, I would rather be broke on the beaches of California than be in the cold weather of Oregon. And I started it all in and went all in and went all in on my knowledge and all that other stuff. But I can tell you that I would absolutely build a relationship with somebody that understands my value. Okay? So as long as you can bring value to other people, as long as you're valuable to other people, your knowledge is your asset.
Your mindset and your knowledge is your asset. I can easily build this thing tomorrow. Because of what I know. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. It's pretty easy when you have that confidence that we've talked about when you've exposed yourself to the knowledge to g 2 other people who are doing it. It's just so hard not to have the belief that even if it fell all the way apart, that you couldn't just do it again. Yeah. No. It's pretty pretty pretty easy these days when you understand a few things.
Yeah. That's right. Bob, how can the listener find you? Maybe they're in your area. They wanna wanna connect with you, or maybe they're not in your area, and they just they really resonated with you. They wanna reach out. Yeah. So we're all over social media, and we're look us up through person plumbing and find us on LinkedIn. You can find us on Facebook. Now I'm at a Instagram, ticked for all over the social media sites. Pretty easy to find us on The.
Just by googling personal plumbing, personal plumbing, personal plumbing, san Diego dot com specifically, pretty easy to find. We're we rank pretty well over here. That's awesome. I appreciate the knowledge that you dropped on us today. Clearly, time, decades, money that you've spent on that, and you shared it freely with us. So we just so appreciate that. I hope the listener was paying close attention. We just appreciate you being here.
Wish you nothing but success and blessing course in your business and in your family. Thank you for being here. Jazz, I do appreciate it. And, happy Labor Day. Yeah. Thank you for listening to Gathering the Kings today. I hope that you were able to pull out a few nuggets to go apply into your business right away. More importantly, though, I hope that you're realizing that it takes more to be successful than just being by your self Kings it all on your own, carrying the weight all by yourself.
What I have realized, not only in my own journey from multiple businesses in multiple different industries and now interviewing over 2 or 300 other very successful 7, 8, and 9 figure business owners is that It's tough to do it alone. And so gathering the Kings exists to bring together successful entrepreneurs. In fact, we are putting together 1000 kings, specifically who are grateful, but not done.
We're intentionally assembling kings who fight tooth and nail for their business, family, and communities, and here's what we believe Chaz in the pursuit of excellence in those areas, that it ignites within us the responsibility to govern power and forge a lasting legacy. So if that relates and and resonates with you, and you know that you need people around you, sharp, qualified The very successful business owners. I want you to go to gathering the Kings dot com.
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.