On today's episode of gathering the Kings. I've found that if I focus on providing as much value as possible, And then we have our pricing right within the business that things always work out. You are listening to Gathering the Kings with Chaz Wolfe, featuring fellow 78 and even 9 figure business owners who have real battle scars from business and life, but have prevailed as the king that they are designed to be.
We welcome high performing entrepreneurs to the stage in order to reveal the reel of the reel. On what it takes to build a successful business today. We dissect the good and bad decisions they've made along the way Chaz give a true and accurate picture of the journey of success and how you too can get there. Through this dialogue, you will learn the value of growing your network and surrounding yourself with power players and keys like today's guest.
Grab your pen and notebook because we're about to dive in. Alright, everybody. I'm Chaz Wolfe. Gathering the Kings is back to you. I got Mitch Smedley at the Kings table this week. Mitch, welcome, brother. How are you? I'm doing good. Thanks for having me. Yeah, brother. You know, I'm I'm excited. We were just talking off air a little bit, and and you had a little unique scenario this past weekend.
You got to, got to get around some really, you know, kind of a, a guy that we were we were dissecting a little bit. But before we do any of that, tell us kind of business that you have, and why the heck are you here at the Kings table? Yeah. So so I I own Smedley Plumbing, and we are a newer residential service and repair plumbing company in the Kansas City area. And, we opened our doors in August of 2020, right, in the middle of the pandemic.
Wow. And we have just kept our nose to the grindstone and worked and worked and worked. And we've we started with one truck. And now we're up to 5 trucks and 4 plumbers Chaz extra truck is just waiting for the 5th plumber to come on board, and and we just keep growing and growing. I love it, man. And and especially being a, you know, same city guy. We're not in the same city at the current moment, but, man, be both in Kansas City Boys. I love I being able to promote that.
And so I'm excited to hear of your success not only because of that because it it benefits the city that I'm in. So thank you. And I appreciate you pressing into the marketplace. So off air, we were just talking just real quick here about David Goggins. You got to see and and chat with him for a few hours. What was your what was your one takeaway from getting FaceTime with David Goggins?
The, you know, he he is really good about there there were a lot of people that were asking him a lot of questions, you know, trying to get him to answer things for them. And he was very, very good about saying, you know, that's for you to figure out.
Like, I can give you tips and tricks for how I dig, as you referenced earlier, the cookie jar that he references, You can give tips or tricks for how to dig deep and find that cookie jar or find those pieces of motivation, but ultimately, it comes from you doing that digging to push yourself forward. So, you know, being able to watch him go run a hundred miles doesn't mean I'm any closer to running a hundred miles. Right?
But but listening to his advice on how he digs and where he digs and what he thinks about and what he carves out of his brain It it allows them to focus on where to dig and find the the inspiration to keep going. Yeah. So this is just a perfect lead in because my first question for you, is at this level, right? Like, you've you even in a short time, bro, like, wow, incredible success, hockey stick trajectory, you know, Yeah. 0 to 4, Wolfe, 5 vans, 4 plumbers.
You, you know, you're doing amazing revenue, but but why still push? Why why are you still reaching for the next thing like David was talking about? Right. So, ultimately, I think everybody plateaus at their different level, right? They get to their certain comfort level and they decide that they, they don't want to go any farther.
My goal is to get the business to a point where it can run fairly autonomously, and it provides me a lot more freedom to spend time with my family and do the things that I wanna do. Right? So the the 1st few years has been focused on doing the things that I don't want to Chaz. I love that. Give us give us a picture. I mean, freedom, you know, can mean so many different things. You kinda mentioned time with family, doing the things that you love, but what does that freedom really look like?
What is what is is there an end, or is there like a a destination for you on that? Like, how do you know you got there? Yeah. For me, freedom has to do with it it it doesn't have to do with laziness or or being able to sit around and not do anything. For me, freedom is the ability to control and choose what your next move is instead of having that being chosen for you. So if your next move is taking some time off, then that's what it is.
If your next move is identifying and and taking advantage of an opportunity to get the business to the next level, then that's what it is. But for me, freedom has to do with being able to do all of that on my on my terms rather than on doing what I have to do. Yeah. Yeah. I think that I mean, I agree with you.
I mean, the freedom of choice, the freedom of action behind that choice, you know, which which sometimes ties into, you know, the financial peace of it Chaz Wolfe, because you can you can decide to do it every month. But if you don't have the money to do it, then you're just you're just thinking about it. You know? Right. Right. Yeah. The And and that's been so that's been kind of the challenges early on. You know, here we are just 22 months into this.
And as you mentioned, we're seeing some really respectable revenue. We've some great growth. We've got, you know, more work than we can handle on a routine basis. And so Chaz affords us the freedom to make a lot of those decisions. It helps out that I'm not a very selfish person. And so and I'm not a very greedy person. And so you know, some people would, as you mentioned earlier, where do you stop, or where do you plateau? Some people would see this level right here and say, oh, this is good.
This is a level of income I've never seen before, so I'm just gonna stop. And I'm more or less seeking, like, the positioning rather than a certain level of income. So we've been dumping all of those resources right back into the company so that it can take that hockey stick trajectory and continue to grow. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And and the motivation or, I guess, the desire stay focused on Chaz, kinda like even what David talks about for you is is that desire for the positioning.
It's if if I know if I can make these moves here, it gives me bigger picture, a bigger freedom, actually, not just the income piece, because as you as you said, you know, nice income is, you know, kind of step 1, but then you start realizing that, you know, takes a lot of money to really have freedom. You know? Oh, man. In in in today's Wolfe, too, it takes it takes a lot.
You know, the pricing of everything is and with us being a mobile service business, home to home to home, there's a lot of prices that are fluctuating like crazy and, And it it's just incredibly difficult. You know, I bought my I bought my first plumbing service van. It it was slightly used. It was a current model year Ford Transit, but I bought it 18 or, no, 22 months ago, and I I paid $35,000 for it. Wolfe, I just bought a chance now. Yeah. I just bought another plumbing van.
That's a, you know, current model year, new plumbing van. It was $69,000. And so trying to trying to stay up to speed with your pricing that you're offering your services at when everything's just going out of whack. It it'll make you pull your hair out, but it's worth it because when you stay on top of it, you see the success that comes from it. Yeah. 100%. I love that. Tell me about how I mean, you just got started, like you said, 22 months ago roughly.
Why did you start the company or Was there was there a business before that? Tell us maybe the beginning of the of entrepreneurship for you. Yeah. So I've spent the last 20 years prior to starting the company as as a plumber. And 14 of those years was in some level of management in various companies around the in the city area. Okay. And so starting the company was really it was actually a fairly easy move because I was just doing all the things that I had been doing before that worked Right.
Only now it was my capital on the line and my Right. Credibility on the line and everything else. So it wasn't as if I had to completely learn everything new. It was more or less just like an organization of, okay, going back through the the mental rolodex of things that worked and things that didn't work. And I'm just picking out only the things that work, and we applied those here. And it and it worked well. So a 20 year late start to entrepreneurship. Right?
So when I got into plumbing, I was nineteen and and so you know, I was 39 when we started the company. That that makes things a little different, but it was worth it because we I got all my a lot of my failures out of the way while working for somebody else. Through through their brand. Yeah. Yeah. And and I even had one really good opportunity. So I I had made a a business move 2 years before I started our company. I moved companies on purpose.
Because the the experience I was getting at the company I was at was not going to get me to self employment. Right? It was not gonna get me to entrepreneurship. And so I intentionally moved to a different company to grab that experience. The culture at that other company was like, horrible, like, worst ever. So I knew that I wouldn't be happy there, but if I could make it 2 years, I would learn everything I needed to I didn't quite make it the 2 years. I only made it 18 months.
And the reason I wanted to make it the 2 years was because I had need I needed 2 years to become debt free before starting our company. Got it. And so I only made it 18 months. I still had 6 months to go to be debt free, and I was wondering, like, okay, are we just gonna start this early and I'm not quite debt free or what are we gonna do?
Right. Well, I've had an opportunity land in my lap for another company that had been in business 30 plus years, they had done HVAC service repair and replacement, but they had never done any kind of any kind of plumbing. And so they brought me onboard to literally start a plumbing department from scratch for them. Wow. And here, I've got all of my maps made out. My business plans. Everything already made out. And now I got to go into somebody else's company and try my process on their dime Wow.
And, like, get a perfect trial run to make sure it would work. And I gave them 7 months. And in 7 months, we went from And they had a customer base of about 4000 customers. Sure. And so in 7 months, we took them from $0 in plumbing revenue to about 70,000 a month in plumbing revenue. And and I got them set up to where I could walk away from it, and it would run fairly smoothly for them.
And so I left them on great terms and and spent my final 2 weeks there, you know, making sure that they were in positions to just take it and run with it. And then We took a a couple of week family vacation for us because we didn't know if we'd have that opportunity again. And then the 2 days after we got back from vacation, we started our thing. That's incredible Chaz the way that just things lined up, like, almost like you as as if you had planned it.
I mean, I know you were planning some of that, but, man, just to have have those moments do you do you think Chaz, I mean, you said you got a, you know, a late start. Was that because you were you were trying to gain the experience, or were you hesitant to jump in? Like, what was the you know, the backstory to why the the delay. Yeah. So I was I was a a product of a lot of people who have the desire to maybe run their own company one day.
However, they have so many people convincing you that entrepreneurship or self employment is too risky. Right? There's a lot of people that'll convince you it's too risky. You could lose it all, and you shouldn't do it. And from that alone is what kept me working for somebody else rather than working for myself. And I can't exactly even put a finger on what it was that finally made the switch. I think it was just the ability to, like, walk into this company.
In in 7 months, take them from 0 to, high functioning. Sure. And and with no mistakes in that company and and my process worked. And if so, I'm like, okay. We're This this is just gonna happen. We've got something here. Yeah. So, you know, there's a lot of people that would say that a lot of people say, you know, do you regret starting late, do you wish you would've started earlier? And and they would they would say they do. And and I don't.
Like, I'm I'm incredibly appreciative of the 20 years of experience I had working for other people because it's allowed us to start so smoothly and, and with, with such perfection right out of the gate. Yeah. Which, you know, it's it's almost I mean, that's obviously reflective in your in your revenue, but the places that a lot of people get stuck you you just glance right over it, which kinda takes me into, you know, maybe the next section here.
I wanna ask you about some of the decisions, but, I mean, you had this such smooth process outlaid, and then you got you got to you got to try it just just to work out any further kinks. And so what either in that 7 months working for the company or in the last 22 for you, what's been by far the best choice or some one of the good decisions that you've made that just let literally allowed everything else to be smooth.
So one advantage I know I have is I'm very genuine with anybody that I encounter through all walks of And what that's allowed me to do is, at least here in the Kansas City Metro area, the the plumber community is a fairly tight knit community. They all talk to each other, and they all know each other. Well, I don't have, I don't have any bad relationships with anybody in that community. I've never burned any bridges.
I've never done anybody wrong through my years of working alongside them or managing them, having to hire them, having to fire them. All of that was done with with grace and boys is is best as I could.
And so that has allowed me the opportunity to pull some of the top talent that's out there to come work at any place that I've been at where I need to hire because, I mean, I don't wanna sound like I'm bragging, but it is just honest Chaz I have a very good name in the industry, and there's a lot of people that w just wants to come work under my management. I'm I'm very even keel with the guys. I'm very open with them. Very transparent. Probably almost too transparent from time to time.
Yep. And the guys really, really appreciate that. They're not being treated like a number. They're being treated like a family member. And once they kinda latch into that, they don't they don't typically go away. So Yeah. Yeah. I think that you know, the the actually, you've you've you've shared a couple of things here, and I wanna maybe highlight them for the for the listener as they're taking notes here.
Number 1, the name the interactions, the reputation that you have, even before you became the entrepreneur, is a reflection of just who you are. Right? And and I think that Like, that makes sense. Right?
Of course, it's who you are, but so many people, I think, miss that as they're either building their business or even just making decisions out side of the business in their family or even the years that the before that they were the business owner, just making bad choices, unfortunately, which then leads to a difficulty that they have to experience later.
And so what I'm hearing you say is that you know, for the listener now is that even if they've had maybe some some bumps along the way, but they can start fresh. They can start treating people with respect. They can start seeing even their team members as family members. But is there, like, a is there a switch somewhere? Because for you, it doesn't sound like there was. It's it just sounds like who you are.
So If somebody's not just naturally genuine, authentic, caring, maybe they're a little bit more, you know, aggressive or bruh, you know, and just and just really trying to, like, get after it and they and they kinda skip over people. Any anything specific that you would say to help that person kinda understand what it is that you've been able to accomplish? Yeah. I I look at, you know, a lot of businesses spend enormous amounts of money finding customers and finding employees, right?
You know, finding customers, all the ads and marketing and and everything else that you have to spend. Finding employees, there's still ads in marketing that you have to spend, maybe recruiters or head hunters or whatever the case may be, but then also you factor in bad hires that you're investing time and effort into, and then you're having to terminate them and then start that whole process over again.
And so what gets me rolling in the right direction is providing to both the customers and our employees as much value as possible in every decision I make is more from a value stance rather than like a profit stance or anything else. And I've found that if I focus on providing as much value as possible, and then we have our pricing right within the business, that things always work out because you don't have to go searching for customers when you're constantly providing value.
And you don't have to go searching for employees when you're constantly providing value. The and the reason is the same for both of them your customers help find other customers for you. They talk about you in a good way to make other people wanna shop with you. And your employees talk about you in a good way to other potential employees so much so that people will reach out to us and say, I know you're small, but I'd love to get on the list for, you know, the next time you're hiring.
I'd love to to have you give me a call. So You know, like, we've got 3 or 4 people that are just waiting in line to, to come on board. And it's because And I haven't reached out to these people. These people have just reached out to me, but it's it's by way of our other employees. I've focused on taking care of them so much Yeah. They go find the people for us. Yeah. It's so true.
Yeah. Yeah. And if you can flip your mind around buying customers or buying employees, to earning customers and earning employees, it makes things so much easier. Yeah. And and you would think maybe to that that that word earn, that it would maybe take longer.
But I think that you and I I I can speak from experience myself is that if you just if you're doing the right thing, especially with people, clients, and and and your people, your your your staff, your team, then it doesn't have to go slow because those those things are working underneath what you think is actually happening because you're just you're doing the right thing. And then they're referring people to you either in the work or workforce or the or the client force. Right.
So and then there have to be a slow process. Right? Clearly. 22 months. Yeah. We, like, we go into every customer's home with the goal of providing so much value that they brag about us to 2 of their friends. And we're really good about asking them for Google reviews and everything else. Well, I can pull reports any day of the week and find out that well over 60% of our customers have just been told about us from somebody else. You know? And so that that same philosophy works with our employees.
I go I go into the employees the goal of providing so much value that they brag about where they work to 2 of their plumber friends. And Chaz same philosophy allows their plumber friends to come looking at us whenever they're ready for, you know, a new position. Yeah. I I think there's just so much value in what you're talking about. I hope the listeners paying close attention. Let's flip the coin and let's talk about a bad decision that you've made.
Just something that was almost you know, catastrophic. Yeah. So I I've got 2, actually. One was having to do with vehicles. My first vehicle choice that I bought, we we run out of Ford Transits, and they come in various sizes. And I bought 1 of the not the largest one. Right? They they make an extra long one and an extra tall one, and I was buying, like, a medium length and a medium height.
And it worked well when it was just me, but as I started adding employees on, I realized that my employees operate with a lot more tools than what I do. And order for them to be successful, they need their tools, and they didn't have space on the truck for their tools. And so We stock every truck with a water heater, just so we're ready to put a water heater in. If somebody needs 1, well, they were taking their water heater off their truck. So that they could put tools in that spot.
And that was go that was allowing us to arrive to houses unprepared. So I had to make the at the end of last year, I had to make a draft decision to sell off all the vehicles we had and buy new ones. Marketing. You know, we we only own 5 vehicles right now in the company, but we've bought 8 since the company was created. And Chaz was a costly mistake. You know, we went from buying vehicles at $3540,000.
We were able to sell those and make a couple of grand on each one not not enough, but we were may, you know, positive on them. But then here, I had to go turn around, and I bought 4 of them for 70,000 bucks a piece, and that was a hard pill to swallow. If I would have made that decision early on, then I could have saved 100 of 1000 of dollars. Yeah. Yeah. Literally. Okay. What's what's the second one that you mentioned?
The second one I mentioned was I don't have poor hires often, but I recently went through a poor hire, and poor hires are gonna happen. The mistake isn't the poor hire. The mistake I made was I extended a little too much faith in the person for way too long. And I kept thinking that maybe they just aren't understanding, or they're not quite seeing what I'm needing out of them.
Yeah. And I made a substantial investment in a person that provided me virtually no return over the time that they were there. And so, you know, I had to pull the plug on that and and change directions with a with a different person. And you know, it it's one of those things that once you finally do it, you realize, and I should have done this 2, 3, 4 months ago. Yeah. And and then, you know, you're just reeling.
You're you're out of the you're out of the trees far enough to realize that you had just been in the forest and didn't even know it. Right. Right. So, you know, there's and my dad always told me, you know, higher quickly or a higher slow and fire quickly. And you know, in this case, I I didn't fire near quick enough.
So Yeah. Yeah. And and I think, you know, speaking to your good nature, which is part of the good decision that you said you had is, like, that that you care, that you're genuine, that you're trying to help that person kinda figure it out, and you wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. You wanted that you were in their corner, and I think that a lot of entrepreneurs get to that place. I can remember even in my sales career as a salesman manager, I was doing the same thing.
Like, I I I did not wanna pull the plug unless they they had gotten everything of me. You know? Like, every every trick, every every training, every coaching, every every moment that I had. But at the same time, then what the realization that you just said is that once you've given it all and it's still not working, You gotta you gotta part ways. Right. Right. Yeah. And that's that's you you hit the nail on the head.
It was, you know, I'm coming from a place if I wanna make sure that I left no stone unturned and gave this person every opportunity to succeed. And you don't realize it until it's over, but I gave him way too many opportunities. Yeah. Well, you you said that you that you learned from it. And and, obviously, now you know which vehicle types that you need and, yep, Lots of lots of, you know, we we I don't know.
I I I think that the the money that we've spent in our mistakes are, you know, our our education, our our failures are the the dues that we pay. You know? Yeah. And and so I'm I'm a person that I don't revel too much on failure. Like, I'll use that as motivation to, for 1, never make that mistake again, but also apply the things that you learned in what created Chaz. So you can avoid similar failures in different areas in the future. So, I mean, failure is exactly how we learn.
There's no entrepreneur manual. There's nobody that teaches you exactly how to do this. So if you can't learn from failure, then you're probably in for a a pretty rough ride with Chaz I say, you may not be cut out for this line. Yeah. Well, that's great, man. Okay. So in in in thinking about good and bad decisions.
And, obviously, you've made, I'm sure, plenty more on both sides, but do you have some sort of a discipline or a process that you kinda take decisions through to try to make continually good decisions usually try to sleep on stuff. If I have the opportunity to sleep on a decision, I'll usually end up making a much better decision I I also don't try to I don't try to think about it too long, right, because that gets you into this whole second guessing mode and everything else.
I try to follow my gut instinct as much as I can. Usually, my gut's correct. And if I'm a little concerned about that, that's where I'll try to sleep on So I have this, I have this weird ability to where if I I can almost I don't wanna say I can control my dreams because it's definitely not bad. However, if I go to sleep with something on my mind, I will usually wake up in the middle of the night and have some kind of an idea that works. Right?
And it's not like I'm stressing about it in my sleep. It's just I can kinda take advantage of that time. Yeah. Process it. Yeah. That I would say that that's definitely unique. I think Chaz, then the uniqueness probably isn't necessarily the fact that you're thinking or dreaming about it. It's the fact that you're not stressing over it because I think a lot of people probably would find themselves in like this. I don't know what to do, and so then, therefore, their mind goes into overdrive.
Where it sounds like you, it just you lay down and your mind just is still processing pros cons and trying to work out the puzzle pieces and you just happen to wake up with an answer, which, man, wouldn't that be nice? Yeah. Yeah. And, I mean, it helps out too to know that, you know, there are there are so few things in life that would be a catastrophic decision. Right? So Right. Like, Here, rest, you know, a while ago wrestling with the decision of what trucks, right? Are our trucks too small?
Do I need to buy the bullet and do new ones? Like, I couldn't have gone a wrong way there. I had 2 options. It's either save, you know, stick with what we have or bite the bullet and do the other Sticking with what we have, it wouldn't have been wrong. It just may not have worked out as good as the other option.
And and I think if you start looking at things from Chaz, aspect that there's not there's no real such thing as catastrophic failure, then it's just a matter of, okay, we one do I think will work the best? And then once you make that decision, you just have to move forward with it. Yeah. Yeah. I it it's so true. I want the listener to really play close attention to what you just said. I want I wanna I'm gonna ask you through kind of me telling you what I do.
Tell me if you do anything different, I guess, for me to be able to have that perspective, because that's really what it is. You're what you're talking about is perspective. And if you have perspective, then you can have this, like, almost like you just, like, like, you know, come up 30,000 feet and you're able to really look at the whole thing and you go, well, it's really not that that big of a a choice. Like, I can't really go wrong here.
I either spend the money or I don't, but some of that comes from experience. You know, our our perspective comes from our experiences. So In this case, you know, we're trying to lean on your experience to be able to grow our perspective. But in that moment, I try to realize Okay. Like, what is the worst case scenario? Like, like, legitimately, like, what is the absolute worst? And for you, it would have been why spent the extra, you know, 280,000, and I didn't need to.
Well, how long of a recoup period. If it if nothing was different, like, you didn't earn any more from the new trucks than you did from the old trucks. I'm sure the recoup period probably would have been a certain amount of months. Yeah. 12, 24, 36 months. Right? Right. And so okay. So what's the worst case scenario that you that you just you had to you delayed some some maybe personal income or some other investments in the business. Like, no one died. Right. Right. Exactly.
And that's that's just it. Like, I have a saying that I tell our guys a lot of times too, our our field plumbers that sometimes we have to work a little bit harder for our money. And and, ultimately, where that comes from, is, you know, as they're out estimating jobs, they're they're paid by the hour, right, the the task hour associated to the job.
So if they think a job should take 8 task hours and they bid it for 8 hours and it ends up taking them 12, Well, they it's not like this catastrophic failure. Right? They they had to work 12 hours to get paid for 8. It's not the end of the world. They didn't go bankrupt. Right? They just had to work a little harder for their money. Same thing with these trucks Chaz, is, you know, you make a wrong decision in the truck Wolfe.
And and if it didn't work out, sometimes I'm gonna have to work a little harder or, in this case, a little longer Yeah. To recoup from Chaz. But you're you're right. Nobody dies. The business doesn't go under because I you know, made a a poor choice in which trucks to buy. Yeah. 100%. Love the perspective. Perspective is everything. Let's let's transition to the speed round. You ready, Mitch? Yeah. Okay. First question is this.
If you could only pick 1 metric in the whole business, I know you're tracking all kinds of stuff. You said you earlier, you could pull a report on all kinds of stuff. What would be the one metric that you would that you would track? So for us, it would be task hours. Everything that we do is associated to task hour. And so our business is kinda unique in that. It's and it's not revenue. It's, you know, if if, you know, we're installing a water heater may have 3 hours associated to it.
And augering a drain line may have a half hour associated to it or whatever. But ultimately, where our profit lies is in the number of task hours sold and, and completed each week. And so I could care less what the revenue number is. The revenue number could be 20,000. It could be 50,000. I'm tracking task hours because task hours to me like, I can break it all the way down to say, we'll be able to achieve this next level in business after we sell this many task hours.
And so task hours to me is the key to my business's growth. The key thing that you said that I wanna, again, point out for the listener, I I've gotten all kinds of answers to this answer with or to this question, which is which is amazing. I think Chaz perspective again is is great. What you're saying, though, from this one piece, for you, task hours, the rest just goes, like, the the rest of the spreadsheet in your mind unfolds, from that one number.
And I think that's probably the most important thing by asking this question is what is that one thing off the top of your head? Boom. If I know this, I can control the entire business. And so for US task hour, that's that's fantastic. Yeah. There's a lot of guys that get distracted with revenue. They'll they'll say, oh, we We're trying to hit this new revenue number here, this new revenue number here.
And for me, that that I I could get lost trying to track that number because some jobs are really expensive with low task hours, and some jobs are really cheap with high task hours. So task hours equal profit. So the more task hours we have, the more growth we've we've got to work with. There you go. Love that. Okay. Second question is, what book would you recommend at a 6 figure business owner read? Emith or the Emith revisited. Right? And then and it's a very common book.
Yeah. So anybody who's read it would probably say, yeah, do it. Anybody who hasn't read it, Chaz that is the ultimate guide to giving you clarity for how to take your business being being working in the business to being able to work on the business and then eventually having the business work for you. Yeah. I love that. That's a great book. Okay. Do you intentionally network and mastermind with other entrepreneurs? That's it's kind of a loaded question.
So yes and no. K. I do on a limited basis, but I don't I don't do a lot of networking. I find that networking doesn't really help out. Like, I can I can get I can get more done in the business, and I can provide more value just by working through our customers and our team members Sure? And working with other other entrepreneurs. And And I think I think the reason why that is is because a lot of entrepreneurs are selfish.
And and when they're networking, they're looking at that network for what the network can give to them rather than what they can give to the network. So Yeah. Yeah. I I will like, if I see somebody that's where I wanna be, I will I will try to network with them a little bit to to figure out what struggles they went to and see if I can fail faster or or learn from their failures in that area. But I don't I'm not one of those consumers of masterminds necessarily.
The event of this last weekend that I was at where I got to meet David Goggins Chaz was the first ever, like, mastermind event that I've been to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that you said it right, which is network. I think I think that's even a difference in my own brain of networking and mastermind. The the networking is really the ability to ex like, express your interests onto others and and go get new business, which is something wrong with that. And then the mastermind is really like, okay.
How do I find somebody to, like, either learn their story or fail faster, or how do I run an accountability with somebody or whatever? It's just more so for the I guess, leveling up, process. So it's cool that you've even felt that same thing because that's you didn't say it exactly like that. That's that's in essence what you just said.
Yeah. Yeah. And then, like, this mastermind event that I went to last weekend, it that was my sole purpose for that was to, you know, you're you're gonna become product of who you hang out with. And so I wanted to open my circle up to some new people into that circle to see if I can level up those that I'm I'm receiving mentorship from. That's great. Okay. One question here, and then we'll go to our last one. The question is if you only had 1 hour, in the week to run your business.
What would you do within that hour to successfully run your business like you do now? I would probably do our we we have a charity program that we do through our business called the Family First Foundation. It it's not a full blown foundation yet. We're working into that, but it's family first program for right now. We do that 1 day a month. It's the most rewarding day of the month. So if I could only be involved in the business for 1 hour, Chaz I would, I would invest it in that.
The returns we get from that, not only, you know, great involvement within the community, and we're making a big difference within the community and thing else, but the, the people that we get to meet through that and the lives that our plumbers, our other plumbers get to meet through that program is is pretty nice.
Yeah. I love the perspective there that it's it's good for the business, but that you you were honing in on the community, which you know, I think that's a big reason, like, even in the language that we use on, you know, within Gathering the Kings of, like, the warrior stage, which is really the figure stage and then the king stage of 7 figure plus. It is not exactly revenue associated, but generally speaking, it's a mindset and and what you just referred to of in the business.
You're thinking now about more of your people. You're thinking about your team buying back your time with your family. You mentioned that earlier affecting your community, like, those are the things that a that a king thinks about. It's not necessarily the selfish pieces that I'm just trying to get me so that I can get to a certain level.
I think that that's a that's a huge mindset shift that that, you know, you gotta be prepared to get or even go through in order to really be granted more, more revenue, more team members, people to take care of more more family, whatever it is. Right? Like, you know, like, to to whom much is given much is required type of a thing. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. Last question. Are you ready? I'm ready. If you if you lost it all, Mitch, what would you do? That that's an easy one for me.
Being a plumber, that that's what gave me the courage to start our own company too. Being a plumber, as a plumber, you could go out and get a job today and make really good money doing you know, working for somebody else as a plumber. You can get a good job today. You can get a great job by the end of the week, and you could have an amazing job in 2 weeks just by spending some time interviewing with some companies.
So for me, it wasn't really a risk to, to start my own company because I knew I could always just you know, walk away from that and do a go get a job as a plumber again. Thankfully, plumbers are in in such great, you know, demand right now so that That helps. There's this there's this regular thing that happens to us that that keeps plumbers around. You know? Right. Right. And and if Taco Bell keeps throwing out Mexican pizzas, plumbers will stay busy. That's right.
That's right, man. Well, I I appreciate the perspective there. I think that you're right. What's the risk? You know, why not do it again? Or or why not be able just to go back to plan b or whatever it is. You know? So, Mitch, I I just so appreciate your time, man. You know, being in Kansas City, we're absolutely getting together and and doing doing some lunch and stuff here soon, but I just appreciate your time. I appreciate you being willing to give from your stories and just your your ride.
Wish you nothing but success. But if someone wanted to connect with you, how would they find you? If they wanted to, like, reach out to you, they they may be one that come work for you. I don't know. Like, how would they find you? Yeah. So I'm on Facebook. Just Mitch Smedley on Facebook, and I do that's that's probably where I do most of my social stuff. I don't do a ton on Instagram. And then, you know, our company website is call smedley.com. So you can always reach out to us there.
So Either which way is a great way to get ahold of me. That's great, man. Well, we we appreciate you being here. Thank you for dropping some nuggets on us. And we wish you nothing but success in the in the plumbing industry. Alright. Well, you too. Thanks for listening to Gathering the Kings. We hope you got a ton of value today and learned a thing or 2 about taking your business to 7 figures and beyond.
If you desire more and want a community around you to help you get there, but want you to go to gathering the king's dot com. That's gathering the king's dot com and I want you to apply for our next becoming a king 90 day intensive. We are extremely exclusive by nature as a group. What that means that we're really wanting only the entrepreneurs who take their business and targets super serious to apply. So if that's you, you think you got what it takes.
Level up your business, I want you to go to gatheringthekings.com and apply. And we will see you on the other side.