On today's episode of Gathering the Kings, you catch a lot of heat from the customers, and and I just have kept a mantra for a lot of years This has been from when I was small and just coming up even to now. I I my saying is I'll keep showing up every day until you tell me not. I'll keep showing up until you tell me not.
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 real successful business today. Success and how you too can get there.
Through this dialogue, you will learn the value of growing your network and surrounding yourself with power players and keys like today's guest. Grab your pen and notebook because we're about to dive in. Alright, everybody. I'm Chaz Wolfe. I'm your host, gathering the Kings. I have a guest for you today. Malcolm Campbell. Dude, thanks for coming come in and being on the on the King stage today. I really appreciate it. Thanks for being here. Yeah. You bet.
So, obviously, you're a king in the business, and I wanna know about, you know, some of the things along the way. But you are you have just in our interactions so far, you have been just a fresh breath of air.
I I I know I didn't tell you this before, But I was actually just I was telling my team here right before we we hit the go button Chaz that I was just I was I had a really good it was just a couple minutes with you the last time we talked, It was just such a a fresh breath of air because I could tell you were you were a regular guy like me. And and you cared for your folks, and I'm really interested to get into some of that here today.
But I know you're in the tile industry, but tell us tell us, like, tell us about your business. Tell us about what you do. Give us give us a little lay of the land here. Well, I'm in I'm in the Thailand Street out of Northwest Ohio. I do residential and commercial. We are a $1,000,000 plus business, and that's only been after the last couple of years. 75% of it is is commercial. 25% residential. We keep the residential really close to home because it's just that kind of business it has to be.
You have to be able to be close. Yep. Gotta be tight. The commercial work, we do branded work for grocery stores and fast food restaurants, a little bit of this, a little bit of that, but the majority of it is repetitive. Work for, like, grocery stores and fast food throughout the Great Lakes Midwest all the way to Chicago. All the way down to Kentucky and halfway into Pennsylvania, all of, Michigan, the lower peninsula. Yeah. Indiana. You know, we travel. In hotels.
It's kinda like the music is like it's a performance. We have to deliver on time, but it's a different performance. We don't play music. I I love that analogy because I I think you you've obviously thought about that before, and you've probably even said it to your team Wolfe be my guess. But that probably that that travel lifestyle Chaz, like, show up. You you do the show, and then you're out again, you know, Yeah. There's gotta be some excitement to that.
Probably a little bit of a drag, but but but also some excitement. Would you agree? Yeah. In 2012, we were doing it quite a bit. My kids were younger. I was gone the entire summer. I missed out a lot. Sure. I didn't like that. My kids are both in college now. One's gonna graduate next year. The other one's just starting. Yeah. And especially with COVID, and we kept going during COVID. The grocery stores were open. They were tiling their bathrooms. We were doing it.
Food restaurants proposed through dining rooms. They were redoing dining rooms. We were jamming. And we were on the road a lot, and and this time, it was not a big deal. Yeah. Yeah. But acquired a group of guys that they prefer that that that kind of thing. A lot of hours, you know, the fellowship on the road. So it's like a it's like a rock band. I I just love it. I it it really brings me some joy when I think about it.
That rock band feel especially when your guys are on the same page, it's not like you're dragging them around. They wanna go. They they want they they like that lifestyle, which is I'm curious to see how you've built that. So I'm gonna I'm gonna give you some questions around that. This group, yeah, but it's been a lot of iron and firing people to get to the right. Oh, I'm sure.
As as all entrepreneurs go through, right, to find the right tribe, if you will, of of of team members, but you have a you have a even more unique scenario where you kinda just you're not looking just for the right attitude and and for someone with a good skill set. Like, they've gotta have those things plus wanna have a little bit of a unique lifestyle. Yeah. It's true. Yeah. I I said it lightly. It sounds like from your lap, so that's good. People asked me, like, when COVID hit, on the forums.
A lot of guys that I know out on the Facebook forums, yeah, the detail, they're really good at residential. They're independence, but then when COVID came, all their contracts got canceled. I mean, everybody was calling in and just commenting in their I just lost 3 months of business, which was all their business backlog, you know, which is a good backlog for residential. Yeah. And all of a sudden, they started asking me, how do I get into commercial?
And and I tell him, well, well, listen to that. If you know your ACDC, the old ACDC, long way to the top if you wanna rock Wolfe. There you go. Chaz song because it's like Chaz. Since since 2008, you know, the market crashed and everything got real small, and then we started to grow. Out of the ashes of Chaz. Again, the path has been like that. You know, there's a lot of sacrifice. There's a lot of get sold for cheap secondhand. Getting beat up, get tools stolen, stolen from.
Yeah. Listen to that song. It sounds like we're gonna have a lot for you to be able to relate with. Especially guys who are in the trades, but before before we get into some of the the the difficulties that you were kinda just giving, why why do you still do it? Why do you push hard now you've had more success in the last couple of years, it sounds like, than than ever before. But why why are you you're you're you're sitting in the truck right now? Why are you still pushing?
It's the position I I'm in. I'm I'm thinking about taking the next step and delegating off some things that I'm doing. Like, it would be better to have a I would like to hire a production manager that's putting in the miles and sticking the steering wheel and the guys back out on the jobs. Yeah. So because there's a lot I could be very useful in the office taking the step. We're about two and a half bill right now, but we could do 25 if we had some administration around. Do you follow me? 100%.
I think that every entrepreneur out there ever has asked themselves the same question of if I have help doing these things here, how much bigger could we be? And I think that part of the reason why you are in the position that you are is because you've hell. You've you've grabbed on to some of that. Right? Like, you're not doing everything yourself. You've gotten out of your way a little bit, and now you're gonna continue to press into that, which I love. So Let's jump in.
Now we're starting to get exposed to projects that I dreamed about being Yeah. Involved with 10 years ago. So it's really exciting. There's still stuff to look forward to. Like, right now is the first job that we're on where we're working with the really large panels. These things come in at ten foot by five foot. This is a tile. 10 foot That's a 5. Yes. That's huge. And forever and ever, when I since I've been in Thailand, I and the reason I'm in it, I love doing tile.
I you can't feed your family with the feedback that you get from people, but they say, you do beautiful work. And if you think about anything in a built environment, there's no no substitute for the beauty and the just the the thing that tile can do on a built space. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I'm doing it. Yeah. You're so right. I feel the same way about our home that we just finished up, the the tile in the master bathroom, when you walk in, you're like, woah. And and it and it literally is.
I was a pup. They were little. Right. 4 inch by 4 inch tiles, like in your mid century houses. And if it was on a floor, it was a little bit bigger and it was red or gray. And ever since then, the ladies have been saying, oh, I love tile, but I hate grout. Can you make the tiles bigger? Can you make the grout joint baller. And now we have ten foot by five foot tiles. That's crazy. Okay. So Tell me tell me how did you get started in business?
Like, you just have such a unique already approach, even just in this conversation. How did you get started? I'm I'm first born. So I think I come with some sort of things. Stubbornness. So it's an agitation. You get Chaz on your shoulder. I do have a fire. I do have a fire in my belly. They talk about it in I got the fire. And sometimes it cuts both ways. I mean, I cut people with it, and I'm always working on Chaz. It'd be a better me. You know what I'm saying?
If there are entrepreneurs out there that are that are hard drivers, especially when they're young and energetic when they're ambitious, they can tend to run over people. I know I did. That's a mistake that I made in the past that helped me to retain people later on. You know? Yeah. Yeah. That's huge. I think that I can relate to you for sure on Chaz.
But I think every high performer, you know, really what it comes down to is that you you wanna win and you have such a high standard of what excellence looks like is that you just don't you just don't really you don't really plan to excuse as Wolfe. So therefore, that that, you know, runs over folks that just don't see things the way that you do. So I think there's lots to to to encapsulate in that.
So tell us is is the way that you think because you're first born, or did you have, like, was your family was in business, or were you exposed to it in the way that you got the way that you raised, anything like that? No. I would say maybe it skipped a generation. My grandpa on my mom's side was a salesman. Okay. Yeah. My grandpa on my dad's side was a was a engineer. And Chaz I started out in tile.
I went to university, and I got a a bachelor's of science in civil Engineering, which is kinda like getting a doctorate in cement. So it it's relatable to tile. Sure. And we have some really high-tech cements. And so when I work with cement and stuff like that, it's coming from that perspective. Sort of like a jazz player just takes an instrument and improvs with it.
And I just take the array of materials that you mix with water and I'm just taking advantage of all the features and characteristics of these for the particular situation, whether we're going on for whether we're going on walls or whether we're going on ceilings, indoor, outdoor telling me. Yeah. Yeah. I love I love the intellectual aspect that you just gave to. It's not just Let's cut some stuff and throw it on a wall.
It's, you know, there's a whole science to this to making it look beautiful like you described at the Indeed. At the beginning. So tile is a commodity business at the entry level. It's very easy to get into for anybody. So if you have an interest in getting into a business, even if tile isn't your final thing, I mean, you you could jump into it. The learning curve is real steep and it will punish people, to get up to the to the artisan level.
Right out of high school, we had we We had a guy that ran the youth group at church, and he had a he had a union tile company of about 30 craft workers right here in Toledo, Ohio. And I went to work with him I was sold on it from them from the fellowship with the workers sitting around in the lunch buckets, the routine every day, and we worked closer to home because we were we were union, so it was really structured. But as I was low guy on the totem pole, we got put on all the crap.
We were sent up into Detroit to do 72 a Wendy's remodels where we just redid the dining room floor for a general contractor every night or a couple of nights is a different restaurant. It was wintertime. The Olympics were going on. It was a change for figure skating, like, never been seen before, and we used to watch the Olympics on the TV of the truck driving up there. And I just I just loved it. You know?
That's awesome. And I love I love the little things that that take us back to those the smells, the things we're watching on the TV, you know, just those things that take us back to that moment. You can tell that and he showed me how to do it. Exactly. Do you think that you'd be where you are today if you didn't have that influence? I didn't if I didn't have his influence, And then after college, we eventually ended up in Virginia, and I worked for a homebuilder.
So he was another small business person, but in sort of a lateral You know, it was a broader scope for for tile business, but he he was a small business person, and he encouraged everybody to just be books on tape. You get, like, a subscription, and he just circulating around the office Wolfe improvement stuff. Yeah. You know, like, probably podcasts now.
And I and he would take us to a professional development like the National Home Builders Convention, and they have a bunch educational breakouts on the sides, and I just gobbled up all of that, especially the financial stuff, the business side stuff, the marketing stuff, all of it.
Yeah. Yeah. Do you looking back to that moment where you were saying, you know, like, eating up the self development and now, like, you know, potentially like podcasts that you're on, giving, you know, business advice. Did you ever picture yourself here today in this environment here, like, you know, kinda giving back, if you will, because you've been successful?
Yeah. It would be those guys that came before me showed me, both the business mentors, the owners of the business, and also, like, the installers that impressed upon me about, like, how to be. You know, I I took time to inventory each of the especially when I was working at the union company, I had the opportunity to work with quite a few mechanics, and they all had different habits. Some good. Some bad. Take the best lead rest. You know? Some of them are my mentors. You know?
So Yeah. That approach of take the best lead I think is great because there's so much information out there, especially today. Some that's helpful even. I even have guys that aren't at the 7 figure level yet Chaz you know, kinda wanna do things inside their business, you know, to grow it faster, but they have to master the the little things before they can get to there. And so some of the information, even though it's good information. It's not applicable for today.
And so you kinda gotta quiet the noise and some of those. I love that. Take the best. Leave the rest. I I wanna I wanna ask you some questions about your, like, good decisions, bad decisions, because that's really where I feel like we can learn a bunch about your history. So speaking kind of about some of these things along the lines that you're remembering, What what was something that you remember doing or or deciding on that was a good decision?
Something that you can look back and go, this moment, you know, changed everything for me. When I invited Adrian, who's my estimator, and now project manager, and he could very well take over the business someday. He was over here on a student visa working with a group of Romanian tile centers that I know up in And he latched on to me. He was about 19. It just graduated engineering school in Romania was over here on tourist visa working with his girlfriends again.
Okay. I'm doing my work up there, and and and it slowed down for a minute. And I said, hey. Because he was in the engineering, and I was kinda selling on the idea of what It was like for me when my my tile business owner mentor brought me in and showed me how to estimate. I said, why don't you come to my office in Toledo now that we're slow, and I'll show you, I'll unpack and show you how we go about getting these jobs. Yeah. And that turned out to be a really good decision.
He really latched on to it. K. And he he he took it to the next level. And now if you talk to the person that signs the checks, she says he's the highest paid employee that I should make more money. He got Okay. So the best decision I made, right, was to give him a cut of the sales. Right? Yeah. So he's in the business on the as a salesman. Tell me.
And then we got he got us still busy, and I used to be in charge of, ordering materials, you know, project management, project engineering, inbound logistics. Yeah. And, he got us so busy, and I was so running all over the place driving Chaz I would never stop. To open up the blueprints on these contracts that he got us to do the detail stuff that's necessary because when you write a purchase order for a couple 1000 square feet of tile. Better be right.
Better not be too much than it better not be too little. That's right. So you wanna get it right. You know? So I eventually delegated that to him, and I doubled his percentage because now he's taking on project management. Yeah. Yeah. So he's totally grown. I was gonna say, before you said I'm proud of him, I was getting ready to ask, do you feel like it was a good decision? Obviously, it's been a good decision for the business.
But are you as excited looking back at that decision for him as you as you are now for, like, what the impact has been on the business? Well, just good you ask that. I mean, if you ask me, like, next year, year prior, but right now, I would say we're we're experiencing burnout. We're we just feel like we've been over allocated for too long. Yeah. And there's just not capacity out there.
I don't get really aggressive with trying to hire people because I kinda know where we are in the business cycle and anybody that's not good responsible, caring, conscientious type of tile person. If they're Chaz kind of person, they're busy. And they're over allocated, and they're probably just making bank too. And I couldn't give them a reason to jump off of what they're doing to come over and do it with us. Meanwhile, folks that are available are coming with a host of problems. Issues.
Yeah. I can list it for you. Like, So so is the strategy there just to kinda bear down for a period of time and and kinda make it through or or Yeah. You can do that. Key roles around it. Yeah. Yeah. You put it on your back. Just sort of like circle the wagons and just say a couple of things. You say, I can do bad all by myself because you know if you hire one of those bad guys, so just mess mess things up, and you'll be even slower and less profitable.
And then the other thing is you catch a lot of heat from the customers, And and I just have kept the mantra for a lot of years. This Chaz been from when I was small and just coming up even to now. I I my saying is I'll keep showing up every day until you tell me not. I'll keep showing up until you tell me not, but we catch a lot of heat from people Can't you get more people? Can't you get here sooner? Can't you hop skip jump? And it's just difficult. But, yeah, so I would say we're on burnout.
And we work we work a 24 hour schedule. Like, today, we're working today, but we're gonna flip tonight's shift because we've got We're on a residential doing this large panel, but a couple of guys that are working today are gonna go up in it's a light night, a couple hours, We're gonna drive 3 hours to get there to do the gig, and then those guys are gonna be on that thing. So I'll be working until about I'll probably get home around midnight tonight. I'll be back out here at the lake.
We'll be leaving at 7 in the morning to come out here at the lake. And then I've hired a new crew. So we have hired a new crew, found a crew, But the strategy that I do for hiring is I usually wait till people ask me for a job. So this crew ask me for a job, and we're putting them on some other night grocery store works start tomorrow night. So I'll be probably exhausted on Wednesday. Oh, I'm sure.
Yeah. And which which you already said, you know, it's funny at the beginning is that you already have identified some of those things you need to start off boarding so that you can grow even more. And it's, like, this tug pull that every entrepreneur, especially at a high level thinks about is that Okay. Like, I got too much on my plate, but I know we can do more.
I know I can add more to it, but, obviously, the magic formula there of you know, growing your team and then even key roles inside of the team are what's gonna allow you to do that most likely systems. So, okay, so that was a good decision. You hired you hired well. You've trained and mentored, a very key role inside the business. Yeah. What about a bad decision? What'd you do along the way that we should stay stay away from? Well, given I I think giving people too much rope is one of them.
I would say that's a quick one referring back to Chaz ACDC song. It just getting used beat up, sold secondhand. I've had a lot of temporary employees with personal problems that have cost me a lot of money. I actually, one time, did an inventory of how much money did they cost me and and and just called that. The the the unit cost of employee acquisition. Chaz number was up around $7000 at one point. Yeah. Yeah. I had I had to get better on hiring people.
And we I did implement a thing few years back that has actually been a good barrier and a good Good measuring stick. K. Or once you because you have to experience people in the craft to see how they work, see what their habits are. See if they actually have the knowledge and stuff like that. Right. K. It do you do you mind sharing what that measuring stick is? Yeah. I call it the fundamental 5.
They're the 5. There's 55 fundamentals that I grade people on in the tile business, and I and I give them each hashtags. One of them is Groutman. So Kyle, Rau, right? Yep. The other one is cut, man, making cuts. The other one is mix, man, mix, and mud. And then the other 2 are sort of logistical. One of them relates to care and acquisition of tools.
We call that 1 quartermaster, and then the other one is basically everything Chaz when you get to the job actually, when before you get to the job, you're at the shop and you make preparations by making sure the right kit is in the is in the truck, right, in the trailer. You get to the job. It's all the the unpacking of that stuff in a logical order. Arrangement around the job site.
We have some standard stuff like the saw location, the mixed location, and then actually where the work is happening. Yeah. So measure people on those 55 different dimensions. So like a baseball player, you know, they probably run hits, you know, whatever. So I Yeah. I grade people on the fundamental 5 whether they're never done tile before, but can read a tape measure.
To Sure. Really solid help to transitioning Chaz we call improver to what I call a premise, which is actually starting to handle the tile. But you you always have to have a journeyman explainer over top of you to keep an eye on stuff while it's still wet so we can unwind things while it's still wet because really easy to change life and tile when it's still wet, but once it gets set in concrete, it's ten times hard. That's right. That's right.
Whether they're helper level or even journeymen or even I self evaluate myself, like, when you say to yourself, hey. I need to get organized. So, you know, you know, you're talking about the fundamentals. You know? Yeah. I think every great, especially athlete, right, like, always refers back to the fundamentals. And for you, it's those five areas. If you can do these five areas as well, then you're most, like, as well as, maybe outside of Chaz.
Like, you've got you're probably checking out an attitude, work ethic, speed or or quality, like other things that you're checking to look at, but those are the five areas. I love how you've broken it down. I also love the name slash hashtag that you give in each one because it gamifies it. It makes it plausible. It makes it fun, especially since you've already kinda described your crew as kind of like a you know, a band.
And and I'm sure everybody kinda gives everybody, you know, the the chance to see what they can do in those in those titles, which is great. And then we made a companion to the fundamental 5 called Tayo Wisdom, which is sort of like the 10 commandments of Tayo. I love it. What are they? Well, One of them everybody in the tile business knows is called god grout and grab. So or it might be Newton Chaz a thing at rest tends to stay at rest.
But it's not like it's hollow underneath, so it's not bonded. But it's gonna stay there because gravity Yeah. The ground around it And, hopefully, it stays there because the guy, the 3 gs of tiles. And so everybody knows that one. So they get buying the tile wisdom when they see that one. But another one is one that my original mentor that taught me the tile business taught me how to estimate.
He brought me in, and he says, He says the guy with the pen can make the biggest mistake bigger than any one of these tile guys out there. You just miss a 0 or something like that. So in here, in this office, There's only a's and f's. So we have tile wisdoms. There's only a's and f's. No customers too. Do you just do f work? A is get paid. F's get. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Wow. I mean, it's so straightforward. And and, I mean, if you if you have a problem one of those.
It's you're probably not a good fit. It's really what it comes down to. We had high standards operated at a high level. We we We've done the certifications to become in the exclusive club in the trade association 5 star of the Quality Labor Union. Quality labor movement, which is a really good marketing positioning for anybody in the tile business to be in.
The quality labor movement is it's all about standards and methods, and the industry has a book that architects and engineers and the courts rely on for what it is for tile. And they have a section in there that describes quality labor movement is that because tile is handmade, it's only as good as the people that lay the tile And because it's a permanent installation, it's not something you change like a paint color. Although McDonald's and Wendy's and Kroger and Aldi, they seem to change it.
Like paint. But because it's a permanent install, it's often better to select your service provider, not based on the lowest price, but who is most qualified? Yeah. Yeah. You think that uh-oh, yeah. I think everybody in the trades would agree. I think even outside of that, like, when you're thinking of you know, a marketing company or a, like, retail franchise or even in real estate, like, you there's always the different levels. Right?
You can go with the cheap and you can go with the most expensive or the most valuable dependent upon on how you're looking at it. And I do the same thing even with, you know, for years with my staff and teams inside of edible arrangements, the retail franchise Chaz that I still own several locations of. And because if if people wanted fruit, like, just like a a fruit tray, they would go to the grocery store. They don't come to edible arrangements for a fruit tray.
They come to edible arrangements be able to deliver wow to someone, right, or or love or or sympathy or something. They're trying to deliver a feeling through fruit and chocolate covered fruit. And so it's the same thing. Right? Like, if you have that different perspective of what the end result can look for, or what the value of the end result brings that person, then Yeah. That's when you look at the certification. You go, okay.
Well, this is either a person's either certified or they're not or they're an artisan or they're not. And what am I looking for? You know? Yeah. Yeah. So I love that perspective, especially with you being in the commercial side, because Chaz I think a lot of times the commercial in the flow of things kinda just gets thought of as just like big, bulky, not very artistic or quality. It's just kinda like you know, is really.
I'll I'll tell you as being a road warrior, you have to have a certain common sense standard, even though it's commercial work, people it's not their home. People are more forgiving on quality issues, but you don't wanna stick a quality issue into a job just because it would take 20 minutes more to to buff it. You know what I mean? Right.
We would rather take the 20 minutes out here on a road, we have a mentality where we will take the 20 minutes to buff a thing if we especially if we're, like, 3 hours from home. Yeah. Take the 20 minutes to buff the thing is better than to get a phone call when you wanna be 3 hours the other way, but now you gotta do a 6 hour 1 way trip to go fix the thing in 6 hours back to a job. Yeah. So that 20 minutes that you don't compromise. You don't settle for quality issues out on a road.
Yeah. And I think that that's acceptable for the industry, but I love I love the standard of excellence that you've described because that's really what brings back you know, future business. Also, it's not just not having to go back and fix it. It's if you can provide an experience for them that was replicable, duplicatable, and high quality, they're gonna call you for the next Wendy's or the next whatever they're they're building. And so then that now we're talking about future business.
Chaz smart business. The repeat business that we have is is strong, and I'm I'm grateful for that. Also, the nature of it is once you get your regular journeyman people show them a bathroom for a Kroger or show show them finishes quality's doing or even Burger King. Once they see the one unit, then we can go to the next job. It's the same thing. They can self manage themselves and have good success. And we can I can manage the job remotely by phone call? You know?
And we pull the materials off of the job bring them back to the shop and sure order the next unit, you know, so we get efficiency of being a, you know, not throwing away extra materials, which is notorious. Totally. Yep. I love it. Okay. I wanna hop over to the speed round here with you. I got some questions. I'm gonna hit you. Hopefully, right right in the forehead. With, but I want one word answers, if possible. If not, I'll dig in a little bit more. The first question is this. Malcolm.
If you could only choose one metric to track inside of the business forever and ever going forward. What would you track? Profit per mandate. Love the breakdown of that. Tell me why that's important to you. Because when I was taught to estimate our tile work, we do labor. We sell labor. We sell skilled labor. We sell it one day at a time, and the market will allow you a reasonable profit for what it is that you sell, whether it's widgets or a skilled and so we do it based on profit for mandate.
It's been fairly consistent even since the time that my mentor was a pup in the early seventies. And so it it kind of fluctuates in a range. Just sales 101. Right? And if the economy is getting difficult. You need to bid your jobs with lower profit per mandate, which involves discounting and expanding your range that you're willing to travel to do them. Right. Yeah. Yeah. There's different indicators along the way that you can move the needle.
And then I oftentimes will get phone calls where people will say my tile guys up and left, and I try and analyze the fundamentals of the of the deal. And, Mandays require the the budget that they have and see if the profit for Manday is in there. If it's If it's above a certain number, it it makes better business as opposed to if it's below a certain. So this is how I make a lot of decisions as you profit permit. I love it. I love it.
Okay. What book would you recommend that, 6 figure owner read? Well, I like the memoirs of just liver more the the memoirs of a stock operator. K. That's a really good, especially for people that are in sales or analyzing the market. You know, trading, docs is just marketing, right, analyze the market. I like that one. That's a good book. I recommend that one. Good. Next question. Do you intentionally network or mastermind with other entrepreneurs? Yes. K. And why?
Well, it feeds a certain need for social connection with like minded people. The Facebook groups have been very, very useful where that's concerned. And I do have a group of associates through throughout the country and some overseas, you know, so each of them exists a possible pathway, and some of them have been pathways that we begun to walk together.
You know, like, I have an associate that has he's running probably under a $1,000,000, but probably around $800,000 a year in South Florida, and we're we're tight. Sometimes I think about just selling everything that I have up here and just moved down to Florida. And then he can be that guy out in the field. Like, I see we're both that guy. Right? And then I Yeah. He says he Chaz be that guy in the office. Plus, we want to build a slab shop. Oh, boy. Another slab shop.
But, no, we're tile guys trying to get the tech involved with not doing countertops, but doing slab showers because the ladies want to slam showers. Yeah. You know, a little big that it makes sense to do it, you know, like, they do countertop. They come out laser measure and then send the data back to the shop and they cut it with a water jet and all, you know Right. And Yeah. Exactly.
Yeah. We just my wife and I just built our home, so we went through that process with the countertops, but that's so interesting that because that's what that's what Master Mining has been for me a lot. Whether guys friends of mine or even clients over the years is that it it sometimes turns into business deals.
Like, whether you go do a business together or we invest in something a project together at the same time, but it's like you're you're creating this like mindedness and trust relationship community, like you said, where we can do additional things together out of even just going back and forth on like, hey. Would would you would you do that worked? Here, what what would you do that didn't work? You know, like, just the basics of of Master Money. So that's great. Last question for you. Ready?
Yeah. If you only had 1 hour each day to run your business. How would you do it? An hour to run my business? That's it. That's all you get. What's the what's the end of the question? If I have 1 How would you do it? How would you do it? Yep. I wouldn't look at email because I don't look at email. I got email bankruptcy. That's right. How would I run it? Well, I would probably look.
My business seems to be somewhat cyclical on the month, the biz the business of running like the back office business. I mean, if it were if it were weak, what? I would focus on did you say 1 day, 1 hour a day? 1 hour a day. The 1st week, that hour Wolfe be dedicated to recapping change orders from the prior prior month and sending those out to the customer, staying on top of those. Week 2 is all about receivables.
Week 3 is is, I Chaz see that Moving money out the door because the the 2nd week, you catch money. Yeah. So we Week 3 would be moving money to your vendors and the tax man and credit cards. Week 4 is is billings. There you go. Well, you've you've heard it here, folks. Honestly, Malcolm, what I got from you, just a real quick recap for for the listener. I I try to do this sometimes. Just to pull out some nuggets. But I I hear passion for your industry.
Every time that you've given an answer, I hear passion for the industry. I hear excitement for what's yet to come for the industry, for your guys, for the projects that you have going on. I just there's a level of energy and optimism that you carry. That is is contagious, honestly. And and then through that, I think that you've you've just been really nimble, really flexible.
I mean, obviously, the way that you run their business right now with a traveling, you know, music band, basically, that that's a that's a very unique lifestyle and flexible. And so you've you've bent the needs of, basically, you and your team to fit probably more of what you're looking like, the end result for you and both your your team. And so I just love your flexibility Chaz well as just your your standard to excellence.
I think that If I was walking away today trying to implement something that you have shared, it would be make sure I'm passionate and excited about what I'm doing. Make sure that there's flexibility in the day to day and how I treat my people. And then make sure that there's, like, an experience that I'm delivering for my client Chaz is unforgettable and and a standard of excellence. That's like no another. Did I did I recap it well enough? Yeah. That sounds like Alex. Thank you.
That's awesome, brother. Wolfe, we also appreciate you being. How how does someone connect with you? You've mentioned Facebook groups. You've mentioned, you know, different ways to connect. How how would someone heard you today and they wanted to connect with you on online or or or another way, how would they find you? I'm on Facebook at Malcolm Campbell, the Malcolm Campbell out of Toledo, Ohio. Home of the mud hens. There might be a lot of tilers from Toledo, but there's only one Tyler.
Oh, the mud hens are affectionately called the mud dux. And there's only one tile guy out of Toledo that has a handle on Twitter at mudduck, mudduk. There you go. There's your guy in my deck. Or any of those other things. That's alright. You can find him on Facebook or you can find him on Twitter. I just so appreciate you coming, man. I know you're you're in between jobs. You got the mobile office there today. I appreciate the value that you've given to not only just myself, but the listeners.
We wish you we wish you nothing but success, but but just thank you for your time. We really appreciate it. Well, thank you, Chaz, for championing this, I think, is useful, and and it's I found myself listening to, you know, I wanted to binge on your podcast. So Yeah. You're with this this space of interviewing doers that have broken through that level. And that's awesome. Yep. I appreciate that, man. Thank you. Thanks for finding me. Yeah. Absolutely.
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