On today's episode of Gathering The Kings. One thing that I would tell I would advise business owners to do is The the storm if you weren't prepared for it. And then when things are booming again next time, don't buy boats and 4 wheelers and big houses. You buy those in the down market. Be preparing for that down market during the good market.
Stack away and be ready You are listening to Gathering the Kings with Chaz Wolfe Gathering fellow 78 and even 9 figure business owners who have real battle scars. From business and life, but have prevailed as the king that they are designed to be. We welcome high performing entrepreneurs to the stage in order to reveal the real of the real on what it takes to build a successful business today.
We dissect the good and bad decisions they've made along the way Chaz giving true and accurate picture of the journey 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? I'm Chaz Wolfe Gathering the Kings podcast. Today, you can hear my voice is crackling. But to lose it. But today, I'm pushing through. I've got Ryan Lucia here on the Kings stage. My brother, how we Kings? I'm great, bro.
I'm great. I was I was on the couch cheering for my Georgia Bulldog to pull off the the SEC east and it sounds like you were cheering on Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday. So That's right. Yeah. We were both doing a little cheering as we can. Doing a little cheering. You know, it's it's funny because you asked me about Chaz, and and I'm not a big football guy. You know, I'll watch a game. You know, you were here in Kansas City. What else do we have? Right? You know?
You're we got Patty. Patty Mahomes. He he's here. That's who we cheer for. But man, by the The? He is. He is good solid dude. He he represents Kansas City well, but I got to the pleasure of telling you about just briefly our mastermind weekend that we had here, and we were cheering a bunch. Not like cheering, but you know, some great business sessions and good relationships.
Lots of communicating and and Kings back and forth, did a cold plunge with some guys I just started doing those, like, last year or this year. Okay. I've done 2 or 3 of them already. Yeah. So I enjoy. Guys are like, do it right on a regular The guy is like, yeah. I usually sit in there for 20 minutes. So I got I I think you might be certified crazy.
Yeah. Well, it's it's one of those things I think you eventually grow some, like, I don't know if immunity is the word or tolerance to it a little bit. And we're actually doing an event in December for a garage door business owners. Where we're bringing in a guy to teach a class on what's called unbreakable, how to how to address the high highs and low lows of being an entrepreneur Yeah. I love that.
Oh, he teaches on Fuka, which is I don't I can't even explain it nearly as well as he is, but basically, you're just a a tough ass dude and you need a woman and, you need a rise above the high highs and low lows The stay consistent. And then He uses The cold plunge as as a, like, a metaphor. So after he teaches, we all do an ice bath.
Yeah. That's actually really cool because it's very symbolic to, like, starting a business or whatever where you build it up ahead of time and you're like, oh, man, what am I doing? How's this gonna feel? What's it gonna be like? And then you get in and all that goes out the window. Right? Because you're like, oh, I'm in it now. You're barely trying to hold on to your thoughts.
Yeah. And and, like, I tell the story about how when I got in the ice pack for the first time, I was it took my breath away. Yeah. It took me, like, 2 or 3 seconds to kinda get that back. And then my chest started Kings, like, pulsating a little bit. Took me a couple seconds to get that back. Then my chin started, like, shivering. And so I, like, did some focus breathing and I got that back. And then, like, 40 seconds in, it was like, boom. And I looked up and all these people are around me.
And I'm like, I think I'm good. And they were like, what? Awesome. Yeah. You know, and they're cheering. But it's crazy because your body after 40 seconds, my body said, Okay. I'm adjusted. Yeah. The the freeze, the pain. None of that changed, but we we adjusted. And Chaz an entrepreneur, you have to become so resilient that we adjust to our our environments. And the ice bath, I think, is a is a great example of that. Yeah. And and to take your 42nd time frame, you had 39 other seconds to quit.
Oh, yeah. Lots of choices, lots of times, lots of moments, seconds, if you will, in this example, to to say, you know what? I'm I'm getting out. I'm I'm nope. I can't do it. I'm up. Bold, you know, throwing the towel, whatever you wanna say. Corn and raised Atlanta. Yeah. I mean, we don't people call us hotline for a reason. Don't like the cold, bro. Like, I've grown up in 90 to a 100 degree weather. My Wolfe life So it's, yeah, getting in that was was a game changer, but it was very symbolic.
And it also anchored me in a way where when things come up, you know, Jose teaches breath work and how to control your emotions through breath work and stuff. Yep. And and that's been, like, it it helps because now when something pops up, I think breathe now. Exactly. Like, panic or, you know, get elevate my emotions, things like that. So it's really cool. Yep. Dial in and control. Well, Ryan, before we get too further in, what kind of business or business is, in this case, do you have?
Yeah. So I've got Aaron over head doors. I started that 7 years ago. I left the tech industry. I was executive sales for a company that got acquired by a publicly traded company. I I really enjoyed it. I was a little bit different than most salespeople because I understood the tech side. I understood the support side. I understood the sales and marketing side. So I could be in all departments. I could Kings bring those together, and that was super helpful. And I was the 9th employee there.
And that that was a pretty wild and fun Chaz ride. Yeah. When I got out of that, I wanna do something completely different and I had never owned tools before. I had never fixed anything in my life for the most part, like, I was I was a, you know, I was a salesman. I wore nice shoes, slacks, you know, college my whole life. Yep. I wanted to be in a truck. I wanted to get dirty. And one of my boys owns Aaron overhead doors in California. And he was like, fly out here. I'll train you, you do doors.
You know business, marketing, sales, He's like, I just need to teach you the technical flu out there four and a half days of training, which is not enough The support you. Coming back here, launch the company, and it was there are many of days where I doubted, but I was all in. And so there was no no option for failure.
Now 7 years later, we got 18 employees, and we're one of the highest regarded garage door companies in the state of Georgia. 3 years ago, I got frustrated with a couple Gathering agencies that I had tried to hire to outsourcing marketing because I got overpromised during the sales process and under delivered on the back end. And then, you know, reports were manipulated in communication and all The stuff. So I was just like, you know what? I know what I'm doing.
I was like, I'm gonna hire a marketing person. My accounting person says, no, you're not. You don't have the money. So I was like, fine. I'm gonna start a marketing agency. And she's like, okay. Fine. So I started a marketing agency. The idea was to just hire two people and bring on, like, 3 or 4 clients to offset the fit so I could use those people from our business. And then we didn't do any marketing or advertising, and here we are 3 years later.
We've got about 10 or 12 We're about to hit 7 figures in this business as well. So super exciting stuff there. Started a podcast for the garage door industry, which has been phenomenal opened up doors. I could never imagine. I'm sure you understand The. Yeah. For real. And then I started Gdu, which is a, like, a mastermind group for garage door business owners. We got about 30 something people in there. Love it. That's been great.
Not only for me, but my whole team, I got my general manager in there as well for my door company. So Yeah. I got my hands in quite a few Kings, and then Q1 of next year. We're about to launch another company. So I can't fully announce that one yet because it's not finalized. But Well, we did. I mean, thank you for being here of just the with the hit quick brief history that you gave to us, we're gonna get into some awesome conversation. You're obviously moving and shaking.
Loved the transition of forget all these marketing agencies who promise the world and and don't do anything. Yeah. Because that's about how it goes and take it into your own hands. Sort of Kings does. I love that. Okay. So you gave us a little bit of the backdrop. But before I get into more of that, Why are you doing all of this? That's my big question. I start with every time you're pressing hard, man. You just want to start start another company on all of this. Why?
I'm a builder. Like, I I genuinely believe god created me to build, and I love building businesses, but naturally and as much of a pain in Chaz ass. It may be. I love these people, but I love building people too. Right? So, you know, when I'm interviewing someone, if they're hungry and compassion hungry and passionate about wanting to work here, I can work with that. And I love taking, you know, a 20 something or 30 something year old who's new in their career.
Wants to do something great and being able to Kings of mentor them and guide them through a process. So I'm a builder and and that's That's what drives me. To say my wife, like, you know, I came I came up very poor. My mom and I, she worked at Pigley Wiggley, I grew up in a, you know, 7, 800 Square Foot house in Macon, Georgia, which probably no one knows where that's at. It's The that line. You'll know if you go there, you'll know what I'm talking about. I'm driven by it.
Yeah. Yeah. So it's, you know, for me, I I have worked excessive amounts of time since I was probably eighteen, nineteen years old trying to accomplish one goal, and that was to to make enough money to where I didn't have to be a slave to business with my debt anymore. Yeah. And then something dramatic happened in 2001. My girlfriend at the time was brutally attacked and almost died.
And that shifted my focus from from really wanting to be financially set to really having a passion for people and just helping the world. And so my wife shifted quite a few times in my life. As we mature and we we gain wisdom and understanding. I think it has to, but, you know, I'm also a man of faith and try to spread the good word as well. Yeah. I love what you've what you've done there. A lot of people don't a lot of people didn't catch what you just said.
And so I wanna try to split it up just for second because you and me both use a similar language. And our stories, you don't know this yet, but our stories are, like, pretty aligned. Kings crazy wise. But what you said when I asked you about your why or, like, why are you doing this? You first answered with your identity. You didn't answer with your why. Answered with I'm a builder. This is the way god designed me.
And this once you when you grab a hold of that, you can walk in confidence, right, in with whatever you're doing. And, yes, there's reasons that we're pushing and and then you went on to give maybe more of, like, how you came out of poverty and maybe less than and you know, there's The things that maybe just didn't have a bunch. And so there's always a push for more, but really it's tied to how god made you.
And and so I'm I'm encouraging a listener right now as they listen to you to differentiate those because we can have a push. We and the y changes sometimes it grows. It maybe changes from just wanting to pay bills to to maybe building a business, building a business, to maybe hiring somebody, hiring somebody to hiring a team. To impacting people to maybe maybe upgrading your lifestyle.
Like, there's lots of different things that can come into that, but it all is, like, the foundation of it's all built on Who are you? Yeah. And so did you did you already did you always know that, or was there, like, something that happened in your life to help you build that identity of a builder? No. I mean, I learned that probably in my early thirties late twenties, early thirties. And in the 1st 5 years, I felt guilty just because I could I can't stop. Like, It's almost like an addiction.
You know, like, I It is. Dream about it. I wake up with ideas and, you know, some people would look at me and be like, you know, Hey, bro. You're Kings too hard, man. You gotta slow down. And, you know, I'm one of those people that I genuinely believe when I retire, I gotta keep moving or else I'm gonna die, you know, just who I am. So when when I stopped being apologetic, for who I was and I embraced it. And then I surrounded myself with people who appreciated it.
Like, my wife, she doesn't love it all the time, but she she encourages me and backs me and gives me support and understands and then also calls me out when I need to pull back or when I when I need to spend time with family more. Chaz that's when I think I really started to fully step into my calling was when I started realizing The is who I am. This is what god created me to I'm a work horse. Right?
Like, and and I like to build, and I like to create jobs for people, and I like to I like to this is my art. So That's how that's how I handle it. Yeah. It's good stuff, man. Alright. Tell me a little bit more.
You kinda transitioned into this beginning of the garage door company and you wanted to get dirty and I just I think that either relates to the listener from, like, exactly what they felt, or they just were already in the industry and they took over a business or maybe started something on their own.
I wanna know a little bit just about, like, those 1st couple of years, maybe in the garage door company, or even in the last couple of years in the marketing agency, because it's in the same realm, right, that same Kings build stage. I wanna know if a good decision that you made. That's super practical that the listener, no matter what industry they're listening in, they can go apply to their business.
I'll give you 2 just because they're very The they are very different The first one was Aaron overhead doors was to hire myself out of the primary role and and not try to control everything myself. Chaz was probably the single biggest decision I made over there. That's what that means. Say what that means. So I felt the weight of the world over there and I I I wanted to be the sales guy because I'm had more sales experience than anybody, but I hired somebody for sales.
I wanted to be the face of the company in the garage, helping customers, because it's my baby, and I wanna put my stamp on it. But I knew I couldn't be in ten garages at once. And in order scale and get to where we wanted to be. I had to hire somebody for that role. So and then, you know, the phones, I was the I I thought I would be the best person for the phones. So I hard for me to give that up. So I ended up hiring to give that up.
And what what ended up happening is is that I realized quickly no matter how good I am at these Kings. I'm not good at them combined because I'm pulled in so many different directions. So if I'm running at 25 or 50% efficiency and all of The, It's better for me to hire somebody who might be 60 or 70% as good as I am in those areas, but their whole focus is in that direction.
Yeah. So so hire myself out out of out of those jobs, I think, was probably the single best decision that I made over there. And I've got a general manager over there. It runs the day to day now. So it's not dependent on The. And, you know, I spend a lot of time with the vision He and I just went up to Lake Hartwell for 3 days, Wednesday through Friday and got a lake house.
And, you know, we just hit the big sticky notes, and we're you know, visionary and planning and talking about processes and breakdowns and scalability and all this stuff where we wanna be in the next couple of years. So that's great because he's an integrator, and he can take my vision and make it happen. So where I used to be someone else's integrator. Now I'm the visionary and I got someone else doing that for me over there.
As far as the marketing agency, you know, based on the way that we started, the idea was not to grow the company. So When we started to grow, I created a mantra that I would say is, what was it? No expectations and no limitations. And so for me, that's very difficult because I'm used to taking every business and trying to explode it as fast as you can. Yeah. Now it was probably the best decision that I ever made with my marketing agency. It was just to have that. No expectations. No limitations.
Just let it be. And and it grew organically so well. And now, like, we're growing so fast that it's almost difficult to keep up with. Yeah. So hiring a bunch and trying to train and get everybody ready. So so but in the beginning, that was critical. Yeah. So Chaz no expectations, no limitations. I I relate to that because there's been multiple businesses that I've started. And usually, you get to a certain place financially, personally, where you've got poise.
And so you Chaz make a decision where there's no expectation. Mhmm. But also no limitation. Yeah. So for the listener right now, they're in their first business probably. They haven't hit that 7 figure mark. You know? They're wearing all those hats like you talked about. They're stressed out constantly because we know how that feels for sure.
They don't necessarily have that poise where they can feel to themselves no expectations, no limitations because the next customer, the next client, the next job, the next deal, the next project is how they feed their family. Yeah. How does that person get to the poise that you had of no expectations, no limitations so that they can grow organically, and it can be real?
Yeah. Chaz is a that is a really tough process, but, you know, as I mentioned earlier, I think the number one thing that really helped me motivate me to push to get out of the job of my business was I knew I wanted to do other things And so when you think about it like Chaz, and that's not your only baby, right, Kings of feel this relief of Oh, man. Like, this is nice. Like, I got multiple incomes or, you know, I got people doing my thing for me.
And there's there's a massive amount of stress relief that comes with that. And I think we get so honed into the idea that this is my baby, and I'm gonna grow it Chaz we almost sometimes create these unrealistic boundaries of expectations that we have to where we don't trust anyone else to accomplish those things. Kings then that stifles your growth. And it's interesting because, you know, I've hired I I've missed on some hires at my door company, and we've hired people that weren't great.
But guess what? Like, we have my Google listing over here at this location. I got 2 locations for this for my door company. Still got 5 star reviews. You know? It's weird. I I was fascinated at, you know, you're saying that I can go in a garage myself as the owner. And give Wow customer service. And then I can send some Jack leg that I missed on, and he can go in there and get 5 star reviews. What's the difference?
I know there's a huge difference because I know what I deliver and very few people in my opinion can deliver The. Especially as a business owner. I can tell my story. I can connect with people super quickly. And then I've got a guy who I realized wasn't Kings up. Shirt was all messed up, not irons. You know, he's just not not trimmed, not did a good job, didn't follow the process. Right. Crappy. And he leaves, and we still get a 5 star review. I'm like, what's the difference? Right. You know?
And so my standard is so high that it's hard to work for me, but at the same time, we had to go through that experience for me to understand that I don't have to be the 1, but if I can get somebody who's good, maybe not great with good and then coach them to great, that that made my life a lot easier, and then I could feel comfortable letting go. And then also understanding that I had a vision when I started Gathering over at doors, to have 5 lines of revenue in 5 years.
And it took me 7, but at the same time, that was extremely important to me And so that wasn't my only thing. And so I tell a lot of the guys in my group is that, you know, if you think about your business as an investment, it's a different mindset completely instead of a job or a business something that you do for work. Correct. You know, you said a couple of things that I've said myself over the years in different ways.
I wanna highlight them to the listener because if if it's how you think and I think and and it's almost identical, I really think it's probably important for them to take note of. Number 1, you mentioned earlier, and this is a lot of this being able to allow someone good to go in Chaz maybe isn't exactly like you. Years ago, I was interviewed for an executive life magazine, and we talked about this where it's like, had to find somebody. First off, I had to stop looking for me. Right. Period.
Awesome. Number 2, I had to be okay with their 100% Kings different than my 100%. That doesn't mean that I've lowered the standard. It just means that I'm allowing them to be The. And even though from a percentage perspective, maybe it's only 80% or 70% of my 100%. It's The 100%. Yep. And I had to be okay with that. Yep. What you said, which I love, is the same Kings, but you said if if I'm doing it all, I'm actually only 25 or 50%.
So you think that you're good at all these things and you are, but if you're doing all of them like the listener probably is, There's zero chance that the 70% guy can't do it better than you anyway. Yep. Even though individually you may be better at that one task, If you're spread thin, you're not doing any of them well.
And so you might as well go ahead and find somebody who's only, quote unquote, maybe 70% of you because that 70% is a whole lot better than your than your 40% that you're giving right now. And you don't realize that you're giving 40. Right? Yep. Yeah. You think talking to the customer, you're the best at it. You're the best at booking a job. You're the best at Right. Going to the house. You're the best at selling the job.
You're the best at invoice in the jobs because you know it's gonna be right. I mean, when you get that mentality, you're stuck. Yeah. And the last you said there, I wanna point out to listeners. It's not about necessarily having multiple locations per se because not every business is designed for that per se. But it is about thinking like an investor is what you just said. Yep. Not a business owner. So I, you know, a lot of these guys are stuck in technician.
Haven't even elevated the business owner yet, but there's one beyond Chaz, which is investor. Yeah. And it's just I just strictly give input, money, and it and I'm not involved in the daily at all. And so the listener might be, like, mind blowing right now how 2 guys are talking about how, you know, how is it just an investment? But it's a mindset first.
If you can think of it just as an investment first, then you force yourself to make The decisions like an investor, not like an owner, or even Wolfe, a technician. Technician is gonna take care of it themselves. We're already talking about that. Get rid of the 40% that you're putting out. Find someone else Chaz gets you out of the technician Wolfe.
But even that, elevating yourself above that to think like an investor, you're making money to decisions, not necessarily operations decisions, although there's important, and you gotta do the strategic planning with your guy, like you just said. But there's that there's that you know, that stair step elevation for you. And then that allows you to eventually then be able to actually have multiple investments. It's not The serial entrepreneur, and I'm going all these different directions.
It's like, no. No. I'm an investor. People look at me. It's like, you're in franchising. You're in real estate. Several different sections of real estate. And you have a mastermind group, and you got a podcast, and you got, like, how do you keep it all straight? Like, no. No. I'm an investor. Yep. You know? 100%.
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. 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 keys like today's guest. Grab your pen and notebook because we're about to dive in. What would you say to the guy that's like, scratching his head right now. And he's he wants to get there. It's exciting to him, but it's far away. What would you say to him? I would say map out the steps.
Like, if you don't have if you don't have a strategy and a map, The, like, a goal destination and what it's gonna take to get there, then you're just gonna be spinning your wheels. So I'm a big believer in planning, you know, 13, 5, 10, and those are the years out that you're you're kind of trying to get to. And even if you fall short, I mean, dream big. Right?
Like, I I'm I probably have failed at every single one of my 13, 5, 10 goals, but they're so big that people are still like, holy cow, bro, you're killing it. And I'm like, really? I'm not. Like, I felt comparison to what I was like. Yeah. So, you know, for me, it's it's also keeps me humble too because I know that I'm missing my goals and I'm not achieving everything that I wanna achieve. And and then it's also humbling in the fact that you understand that it it takes a team.
And then in my case, multiple teams to accomplish our goals. And so with that, I feel like it's, you know, now now I'm completely dependent on all these people and my other investments. But what's great is is that I've built good teams that care and wanna do great. And then, you know, I'm I'm now to a point where if one falls, which I don't think it would, but if one were to fall, I'm still okay. Right?
Like and and there are periods of time where I've had to pull back on my income from one position and I could increase from another position. And I don't have to take a decrease in pay, right, because I'm I'm able to balance that out. And there's tons of tax benefits and being able to manage your businesses and assets this way as well. Yeah. Love it. Let's flip the script here. Right? I want you to tell me about a bad decision that you've made that didn't work out so good, but we can learn from.
Bad decision. I can think of probably way more than I should. I'm a I'm a big time risk taker. And, I would say that the worst decision that I think I made when starting my door company, which I'm not sure how this is gonna help people, but hopefully it will, is I went into it like I was trying to grow the software company. K. And I was like, man, I'm gonna do I wanna get to 5,000,000 in annual revenue in 5 years.
And I came into the industry, and I was up every dollar went straight back into the business. And the problem I could text her up. Yeah. Treat it like a tech startup. That's what I knew. That's where I came from. Right? So you can do that in tech and it scales really well because margins are great. And there's no shortage of people in the industry. Excuse me. And they're all online. So you can market that job online and find people pretty quickly. Right? Sure. LinkedIn. They're all on LinkedIn.
So I'm gonna go to LinkedIn, find those people. Where when I started, Erin, overhead doors, here I go. Right? 1st year, I do $700,000. On almost my back alone. I hired an installer and an office person. It was really just us 3. I was doing service and door sales. I hired somebody to do installs, and then I had a person answering phone doing books. Well, 2017 comes around. We're full force. Market slows a little bit and I wasn't prepared for The, and I also was having trouble finding people.
So I needed people and it was slowing. And anytime you're at that growth rate, any slowdown is Yeah. Not good. Right? Hurts you financially. Yeah. So I ended up the 1st and only time in any of my businesses. I took out a line of credit. Thank you, Synovus Bank, by the way. Little plug for those guys to make payroll.
And and so I also couldn't get a truck loan at the time because it was such an early business that wanted to give me, like, Wells Fargo only wanted to give me, like, some type of equipment loan or something. Sure. So I used $10 of that 50 line to buy a truck and pay payroll and hit give me a little bit of a cushion because I knew I was gonna need it. So Yep. That was probably the worst decision I tried to scale it like a tech company and go super fast.
And my cash flow dried up a little bit in the beginning of 2017. So if you were if you were back in that same spot now, rather than trying to go 5,000,005 years, would the target be different, or would the strategy be different, both? If I was trying to scale that fast again, I would I would probably spend more time recruiting out of the gate in which we do a pretty good job of now. I feel like not enough business owners make that a priority.
Yeah. Like, we we're willing to spend money to get customers but we're not willing to spend money to get employees. Yeah. It's backwards. Because we think we think they that's an expense. Yeah. So we would look at it as an expense and and, you know, in the tech industry or most other industries, if you hire a headhunter or an agency, they're gonna charge you 25, 30 percent of the annual income of that person. So if they're an $80,000 employee, you're gonna pay them 20% That's a lot of money.
So I look at it as if I'm spending if I'm spending a $1000 in ads every month to recruit people and get them in my funnel, so that when I do need people, I can plug them in. I'm trying to find people before positions come open. Right? And and that I think and I I wouldn't have known that had that not happened. So that is a good lesson. I think more businesses need to invest in recruiting and hiring and building relationships.
I'll recruit people sometimes like my general manager recruiting for almost a year, before he made a decision to come on board. You know, multiple dinners, you know, conversations through text, all that stuff. Right? So eventually something happened at his employer where they Kings shifted the culture and you know, wasn't as great as it was. And he called me and was like, hey, man. I think I'm ready. Let's sit down and talk about all the details.
And, you know, I had been working them from us a year. So I was static. Right? So I think if we have that mentality and we pick some of the best players in the game and just look at it as, hey. I'm gonna recruit this guy for the next 1 to 3 years, 5 years, whatever it takes and build that relationship. And, you know, it doesn't always work out, but I'm usually get about 60, 70% of the people that I target like that. Yeah. So good. What what process around decision making do you have now?
Like, 7 years in, multiple businesses, multiple 7 figures. The decision comes across your desk because they're, you know, four step Is there a mindset that you have? Like, what do you think about decisions now? That's a good question. I would say that I probably shamelessly don't have a 4 step process. I am I'm very much a make decisions as quickly as possible. There you go. That's the stuff. And like, just from experience, I'm I'm blessed to to probably make the right decision most of the time.
60, 70%. And then the others, like, I evaluate the risk. And if the risk isn't, like, horrible. I'll make the best decision, and then we just rock with it. Yep. Move on. If we find out it was the wrong one, you know, I apologize to my team, and we make you know, make it right and keep moving. Yeah. I think that the freedom really is what you described of look. I'm gonna I I got my history.
Based on the goods and bads that we just even heard you talk about, I've built a little bit of a of a, you know, transaction history with myself. I I feel pretty good. I love how you said I love I make pretty good decisions most of the time, and then you threw out 60, 70%. And I think that most listeners, if you hadn't given the percentage, if you had said most of the time, maybe they were Kings, you know, 80, 90, 95%.
And you're being honest in saying, I feel confident that I make good most most of the time. Over 50%. So Exactly. But I'm the the reality is is that it's not perfect. Yeah. Doesn't have to be, but at the same time, when you look back, you've made more good ones than bad ones, and you continue to get better and better and better. That's the point. That's the biggest issue I see with business owners right now.
You know, I do consulting and perfectionism is the enemy of growth and it's the enemy of of culture. It's the enemy of financial success. I mean, it is the enemy of everything you're working towards you literally cannot be a perfectionist and grow a company at scale super fast. There's no way Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of, well, you get stuck. You get stuck in the detail. You get stuck in the weed.
You get stuck in the splitting of the hair or whatever whatever analogy you wanna I wanna switch over to speed round. My first question, the speed round is around KPIs. Which should give me both, but I want it to be the same answer. So think marketing agency, think Doorhead company, or tried for a company. The most important KPI, the if you Chaz only pick The metric to track forever and ever, what would it be? I would definitely say website conversion. Love it.
K. Because with The from a marketing guy. Yeah. I love it. That tells me I I've learned everything around Chaz. So I can I can manipulate a lot of things based on that number? Yeah. And that's really the the purpose of the question is what's what's the one thing that you know, like, the rest of it? I can calculate as long as I know this one thing. Yep. So you're you you're about traffic. If I can get traffic to the website and it can convert, The re I can figure out the rest.
Yep. Because I can get x amount of phone calls. I can get x amount of leads from the phones phone calls. We're closing at a x amount of conversion rate or, you know, close rate on sales, which results in x amount per job, which results in x amount gross profit, which net profit. So to me, I think that's probably my number The KPI is traffic and k in in conversion. And if I Chaz throttle that based on my needs, the rest trickle down based on previous history. Yeah. So good.
What book would you recommend Ryan for a business owner trying to scale? Good to great. Wolfe you take away from that? Yeah. It's a great book.
That leadership matters and that, you know, there there were times where I would wanna check out and that book helped me realize that I needed to stay focused and that great leaders are willing to take risk and empower their people to do great things and The the great companies did great things in bad times where other companies would pull back and Right. The companies typically aren't around anymore. So those are some of the things I look into.
Well, you you it's all stems back to the leadership, which you said at the beginning. Yeah. You know, the the leader is the ones that, you know, put the right people in the right seat on the bus. The leaders are the ones that make the moves when everyone else is contracting. Right? It all comes down to that leader or leadership team. And so I just think that you're right. It now is a phenomenal book, but for the listener, you're paying attention right now.
I'm not talking to you listening right now, so it's like you're you're trying to get to the next level, which is building a team. Yeah. That's exactly what it is. 6 to 7 figures is building a team, growing sales and marketing. And so I'd like to address something real quick too. So, you know, I say I say invest. I say investor in downtimes, but but if you if you weren't preparing for the downtime during the good time, It's probably not a good time to invest in the downtime. So there's cycles.
Right? And so one thing that I learned, early in my life, and I was blessed to have some some wise people in my life teaching me about finances that everything happens in cycles and typically around 10 years catastrophic event will happen, and this is history. And we've learned this. And so you if you The good times are when consumers spend money and make the intelligent rich. Right?
So if you save during the good times and you spend during the downtimes, you're you're making yourself rich because you have a mindset of I'm not being a consumer, but when I am being a consumer, I'm buying a discount because everybody else is pulling back, but you're trying to buy assets during the downtime. In that way, when the good times come up, then you're a seller. So you're a seller in the good times.
You're a buyer in the bad times, but you have to prepare during the good times for the bad times in order to be able to equip yourself. What I see right now and this is common. I've seen it my entire life. Businesses don't prepare for the bad times. Things have slowed down a little bit in the market. Phone calls have slowed down a little bit for some people. And they're panicking because they are throwing cash at AdWords trying to fix the problem and that's not the solution.
That is not the solution. So everybody knows. And one thing that I would tell, I would advise business owners to do is weather the storm if you weren't prepared for it. And then when things are booming again next time, don't buy boats and 4 wheelers and big houses. You buy those in the down market and be prepare be preparing for that down market during the good market. Stack away and be ready.
And and that's the mindset of of wealthy people, and I'm trying to get that to that point where I have that mindset and and I've transitioned and continued to transition over the last couple downturns. And I was able to level up during COVID. No, that sounds horrible, but I was planning for it. For the last 5 years, prior to COVID, I was waiting for a market crash. Yep. When it happened, I seized the moment.
And now I'm I'm in a position where I can take advantage of certain opportunities more so than a lot of people. So I would say it's a long game, and we have to get out of the micro and focus on the macro and as business owners. You can't do that if you're answering the phone in the garage, in attic, you know, putting on the roof yourself, whatever. It doesn't matter. Like, you have to get out so that you can see the big picture. Yeah. Yeah. Do what you set as far as operating in the micro.
If you operate in the micro, you can't think in the macro. You have to you have to be in both. And I love what you just said as far as being prepared and even just the the advice of hunkering down. If you're not prepared, don't don't try to overexert or over extend in our event this past weekend. Got a guy that's probably gonna do, I don't know, 4 or 500,000,000 this year in business.
Nice. And, he we did a little q and a session with him and He we asked him if he could talk to his younger self, basically, or or would if you could give with just one last piece of advice. He said, I would I would be more frugally personally. If I could go back, I'd be more frugal, I mean, pretty frugal individual. He he flew to my house on a commercial flight. Please. Own a jet. You know? Yeah. That would be more frugal personally, more ambitious in my business. It's like, okay.
Do you even think that those are different? You know, like, right now Chaz a listener, are you really even seeing those as different? Because the frugal personal is what you're talking about as far as preparing. Preparing. Yeah. Preparing. Preparing. Ambicious is okay. What time frame is it? What season are we in? Yep. Let's make the move. Yep. Love that. My next question is about intentionally networking or master mining.
Obviously, you have a mastermind, so I would love for you to tell me the difference between networking and Master Mining, the value of each, and then tell us a little bit about specifically your Mastermind. I suck at networking. Personally, I believe I am I am much better in an environment where we have a focused conversation, and I create, think of networking, like, going to BNI or whatever. Is that what you're asking? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's value there. Right?
Yeah. It's networking for business, referrals, Right. Right. Right. We're match numbers, stuff like that. I'm just not good at those, to be honest with you. Like, I I really just shell up in those environments. A lot of times. And I because I feel pressured, like, I'm supposed to like, I'm on a blind date and we're supposed to get married one day, and and it's just too pressure for me. Like, so the the mastermind, in my opinion, is just very different.
The mastermind community, regardless of industry, I love masterminds because for us, especially it's like super niche. You got garage door owners who are meeting with other garage door owners. And we're discussing challenges that we have. And through those challenges, we're teaching each other and then also providing answers from each other on how we could view it differently or things that could have been done differently or Chaz be done differently.
And the education, like, I was telling somebody this the other day, like, I dropped out of high school. Right? Yeah. But I will pay $10 to someone who has the information that I need and still be 100 of $1000 cheaper The if I would have paid for college and no offense to college. College is great, but I I didn't even know how to learn or what I wanted to learn. Now that I'm a business owner and I know really what information that I wanna learn, I'm willing to pay for it.
And education, especially I think a lot of people are catching on to this is if you can pay a couple grand a month or whatever and get an education from other business owners who are at or, you know, at where you're at or at where you wanna be. Still worth it. Right? And that's why I started that to make that affordable for for all different levels of businesses and be able to contribute you know, you might have a guy who's, you know, 5,000,000.
You might have a guy who's 1,000,000, but the $1,000,000 guy has a different background. The will give a different perspective helps a $5,000,000 guy. It's it's so different and unique, and I think that's the beauty of it. And I really enjoy masterminds for that reason.
Yeah. You know, I find what you just said that that benefit of, you know, maybe we're at different stages, maybe Chaz we're working on different parts of our business, but the experience, the connections that that person has that I don't know that that person has until I present the thing I'm working on and he says or she says, hey. I know a guy. You need to talk to Ryan. He needs to do he needs to do your your your marketing or whatever. Right?
Yep. The the know it all versus learn it all mentality, I think, is, you know, what keeps people from those environments, but when you get into those environments, it's the 5,000,000 a $500,000,000 guy who, just this weekend, was like, no, look, guys. I wanna learn something from you this weekend. Yeah. You know? And there's something The learn from both, though, too. Right?
Because, like, I love you know, I I I told my pastor one time I was like, You know, the greatest thing that I learned from new Christians? And he's like, what? And I'm like, my zeal is gone. My my my my hunger The reason why has faded. Right? And The same thing with business. You see these young cats coming into the The, and they're dreaming big and they're like, man, I'm gonna kill it. I'm gonna be this. I'm gonna do that. And and it's naive as some of that may sound.
It's exciting Kings the energy is there. And for me, I'm like, dude, I need I I need to hang out with this cat because loves energy. And Although I'm I'm older in a different place in my business, I still love that energy. I I love I love passion. Yeah. I'm a builder. Yeah. I'm gonna take it and run with it. It's mortar. It's mortar for the building. Right? It's it's it's The glue. Good stuff. Okay. I got one last question here for you, Ryan. And we'll wrap up. I wanna know. Same question.
I just kinda told you that we asked this other guy, but if you could whisper in the younger Ryan's ear, What would you tell him? How young is he? The younger Ryan. I don't know. Man. This could go so bad. I would say that As hard as you work, you're gonna be successful. Just enjoy the moment. Enjoy the process. Enjoy the journey. Don't be so focused on the end results because It's the journey. It's the missed opportunities during the journey. You'll regret the most is probably what I would say.
Yeah. Misopportunities with family, with The team. Family, personal life, team, you know, not just being so headstrong and focused on on the end result. It can't be all about the end game. It needs to be about about the journey. You need to be present. You know, I think that relationships, I value them more now than I ever have before. That's right. At all different stages, all all relationships that I have in my life are very different.
And I wish I would have embraced that sooner And then, you know, I've made a lot of mistakes in my life. And I would also say, like, another one would be, you know, don't regret it. Just learn from it. Yeah. Because, you know, you go through stages when I was, like, 17, I drop out, start selling drugs. And a lot of people got hurt through that whole process, and my best friend was murdered and all kinds of stuff.
And you can live in that regret and have that have that hold you back and hold you down and and cause mental anguish and emotional stress, or you can use that to drive you. And I think I think I used it mostly to drive me, which which also played a role in me not being present because it was a way for me to escape the pain. Yeah. So The 2 tie tie in together for me. Yeah. Huge. Probably we could have a whole another show just on that. Ryan, you've been incredible. How can a listener find you?
I wanna just highlight a couple things. They might be, you know, listening in the service industry and need marketing services. They might be a garage door company specifically. Maybe wanting to join your mastermind. Maybe they're just an entrepreneur. They wanna connect to you. How can they find you guys? Maybe they're not maybe they're in your area and they need their garage door Yeah. Can they buy it? No. No. I would love that. So we are I'm everywhere.
So Ryan Lucia, Facebook, probably where I'm most active, to be honest with you. Put a lot of YouTube videos on such and such media, Aaron Overhead Doors. So you can follow us in all those areas. If you wanna check out my mastermind, you can go garage door u.com. We also have a summit that we're doing in December in Dallas. If you wanna check that out, that's also on groceryu.com.
We're gonna be doing a workshop, basically, on how to how to do projections, planning for 2023, 2024, 2025, which is mindset, things like that, how to how to overcome the slowdown in the market, how to manage of cash flow, etcetera, etcetera. So, The those are gonna be that's gonna be a cool event. So if you are in the door industry, your business owner, or general manager, or whatever you wanna come to gonna be really good. You can find that at garage dooru.com.
And then Ryan Lucia, Facebook, I'm pretty active there. I respond to all messages. So if you hit me up, it may not be immediate, but I'll get to you. And I love I love talking to people and just learning and I I prefer relationships that are mutually beneficial. So there's also relationships where I know you might be at different stage in early and I enjoy pouring into people as well to help them out. Yeah. Love that. Wolfe, you've been you've been incredible here today.
You've given so much of value, not just in your time and being here, but sharing your experience. I just really, really appreciate that selfishly. I'm glad that I met you. I think that this is the beginning of something pretty cool. I can't wait for a you and I to line up our stories are are Kings weirdly aligned, and so I can't wait to spend some more time with you. Thanks for being here. Blessings on you, your family, your business, your teams, the whole deal. Thank you so much.
Yes. Thank you for having me, bro. Thank you for listening to Gathering the The today. I hope that you were able to pull out a few nuggets to go apply into your business right away. More importantly, though, I hope that you're realizing that it takes more to be successful than just being by yourself doing it all on your own, carrying the weight all by yourself.
What I have realized not only in my own journey from multiple business in multiple different industries and now interviewing over 2 or 300 The very successful 7, 8, and 9 figure business owners is Chaz 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, Chaz it ignites within us the responsibility to govern power and forge a lasting legacy. So if that relates and and resonates with you, and you know that you need people around you, sharp, qualified other very successful business owners. I want you to go to 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.