Prepare to unwrap the gift of growth and strategy with our Christmas special, featuring the insightful Tim Brown! Together, we're toasting to the past year's transformations and setting our sights on the horizon of the new year with a blend of personal anecdotes and professional milestones. Our festive episode is a must-listen for anyone ready to expand their toolkit for success, from learning about the surprising essentials of entrepreneurship, like billboard insurance, to embracing early planning and 'helper systems' for achieving your wildest goals.
Tim Brown joins us under the mistletoe of ambition as we explore the power of aggressive goal-setting inspired by thought leaders who dare us to dream bigger. We dissect the art of marketing budgets, revealing how strategic investments can lead to business growth and fostering a robust referral network. You won't want to miss the wisdom we share on navigating the delicate dance of quarterly goals and the transformative impact of viewing your business through a marketing-first lens.
As the sleigh bells of work-life balance jingle in the background, we share our personal strategies for curating a harmonious work-life blend, ensuring our professional endeavors complement rather than consume our personal joy. Get cozy with us as we discuss the refreshing energy of setting New Year's intentions and the importance of reflection and strategic planning. Whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur or a budding business owner, this episode of "Behind the Tool Belt" is the perfect companion to guide you into a prosperous and balanced new year.
Prepare to unwrap the gift of growth and strategy with our Christmas special, featuring the insightful Tim Brown! Together, we're toasting to the past year's transformations and setting our sights on the horizon of the new year with a blend of personal anecdotes and professional milestones. Our festive episode is a must-listen for anyone ready to expand their toolkit for success, from learning about the surprising essentials of entrepreneurship, like billboard insurance, to embracing early planning and 'helper systems' for achieving your wildest goals.
Tim Brown joins us under the mistletoe of ambition as we explore the power of aggressive goal-setting inspired by thought leaders who dare us to dream bigger. We dissect the art of marketing budgets, revealing how strategic investments can lead to business growth and fostering a robust referral network. You won't want to miss the wisdom we share on navigating the delicate dance of quarterly goals and the transformative impact of viewing your business through a marketing-first lens.
As the sleigh bells of work-life balance jingle in the background, we share our personal strategies for curating a harmonious work-life blend, ensuring our professional endeavors complement rather than consume our personal joy. Get cozy with us as we discuss the refreshing energy of setting New Year's intentions and the importance of reflection and strategic planning. Whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur or a budding business owner, this episode of "Behind the Tool Belt" is the perfect companion to guide you into a prosperous and balanced new year.
Welcome back everybody to episode 208. I am Ty Backer, your host of Behind the Toolbelt. Stay tuned. Welcome back everybody to our what is this? Our Christmas special with Tim Brown, my good friend Tim Brown, and we're trying something a little bit different today. We're going to try to start doing them at noon, I believe for multiple reasons, and some of them may be discussed later. With some of the changes that we do personally and professionally through the course of our life, I guess, but most importantly, I guess, with the topic of today, which I'm sure we're going to talk about, like the new year, the new me and the new goals and all those things that we plan on doing for 2024. But, tim Brown, my friend, how the hell are you?
Tim Brown:Doing really good man. Thank you for having me. I always appreciate being on and I love your show.
Ty Backer:Thank you. Thank you. We love the fact that you have been a loyal, not just listener and subscriber, but also are one of our main sponsors. So we thank you for that and all the support and love and likes and follows and shares that you've continuously, over the past four years, have helped us with. So thank you for the growth of Behind the Scenes.
Tim Brown:Absolutely. And I mean like quick for you, real quick behind the scenes here. How do you find time to do all this content? You run a ridiculously successful construction business that's well respected in the industry and you help a lot of homeowners and families with their stuff. How do you find time to also do this? I know that like it's a hack if you just work at six but you're in the middle of the business day right now. I'm guessing like there's a couple fires going on there always is. As a business owner, how do you do this?
Ty Backer:I'm a good juggler. I've learned how to juggle at a very young age. I actually used to travel with a circus. No, I'm just kidding. No, that's a great question and kind of.
Ty Backer:Why we're doing it now at 12 o'clock Eastern Standard Time, 11 am over Central Time is because of the workflow. We feel like it's going to fit in better to the workflow. Our Wednesdays have been held hostage for four straight years, like every single night Wednesday evening was behind the tool belt. So not only has my personal and professional life struggled because of it not really struggled because we've enjoyed it but our families right. Like our families' lives have been put on hold every single Wednesday night, or high water, and religiously I mean on our honeymoon today that we got married vacations, funerals, all of that stuff. The show must go on. So we kind of thought it would be better. Because, in first and foremost, is the bandwidth right, like we only have so many calories to burn in a day, in a week and a month's time right, and it's like by the time I catch my fifth win, 7 pm Eastern Standard Time on Wednesday evenings. I'm not saying it's become monotonous or redundant, it takes a toll on a human, but it's kind of like I want to be fresh, we want to kick out better content, like you mentioned content, how do we find time? Well, we schedule it, we put it on our calendar every week at what time that we're going to do it, and I know for me personally when I need to shut things down and change gears over here. And that's played a big, huge, crucial role in producing content week after week after week after week. But not just that.
Ty Backer:Most importantly, I think about three years ago, Vic came on and had found a love and passion. He's a musician by trade. Not only that, but also security systems and alarms and stuff like that. It was his forte in his background, so he's very tech savvy. So he found his niche within TC Backer family of kind of just hey, man, what are you guys doing on Wednesday nights?
Ty Backer:So he started hanging out and then we started to get more equipment and stuff and as the equipment came in, he would do his due diligence to figure out how to master that equipment, whether it's Roadcaster Pro, whether it's Macbooks, whether it's ATEM, whether it's Blackmagic cameras, sony cameras, lumix cameras like he has become a little more than just dangerous. He's become starting to master it. But then on top of that he's been able to master kicking out the content before, whether it's advertising the show hey, 7pm Eastern Standard Time, and or who's coming on the show but then also kicking out content and reels and stuff after the show. So that's become his full time job. So we've called him our AB engineer. He's director of AB. So that's really old.
Tim Brown:No, totally. But like isn't it crazy how content creation can it is it is a job right. Like it is crazy, Like it is funny. You know people make fun of podcasts a little bit these days, like there's so many of them and stuff like that, but if they're done well and done right, it is like there's a lot of work that goes into making these things good and the best ones. There's more work, right, but your guys is one is very well produced and very well done.
Tim Brown:I just to kind of like throw this in here, sorry. Sometimes I host podcasts, I like sometimes have to be the whatever, but we're talking about new year planning and I want to talk about that one because I also wanted to like brush up on it and I'd love to hear your takes on it, ty, because I'm not I'm you know I'm trying to, I'm trying to be like you one day. I want to, I want to learn from you. You've done a ton of stuff and I know that because you're in the middle of the middle of work day and you are creating content. But you also have this, you, you keep on shaking your head like, but it's a successful construction company, so you get struggling things. You clearly are doing some things really well that you get to have the freedom in your day to do this.
Tim Brown:So I just want to talk about what is your structure? And I want to share my structure for setting goals in the new year and what I do to make it more likely that I'll actually hit them. And I want to start with this quote, which is by James Clear you do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. So as I was making notes for this, I was thinking it's not just it's like set good goals, but, like in the new year, it should also be like our, our, it should be important to how am I going to like make sure those goals legitimately get hit? So like I'm not just going to go, I'm thinking what, how can I make systems around this big? Like I want to grow 50% next year, which is a lot. I think it gets. You know, it's like the bigger you get, 50% is actually like kind of crazy. So I'm excited to grow 50% this next year.
Ty Backer:What are you? What are you? What is?
Tim Brown:your big goal for this next year. If you haven't said it yet, what's time?
Ty Backer:Yeah, no, that's the great, great question. And and it's something you know, because time is something that we can't purchase, right, it's something that we can't buy back, it's something that will once it's gone. It's gone, you know, and there's there's a lot of acronyms for for the word time. You know things, I must earn, things that I, that I must endure, right, so. So one of the things that that I've tried to do, and believe me, this is this just like any processor system that you put in place, it always needs a tweak, right, but without it you can't find the two, the two driving factors.
Ty Backer:You know if it's a personnel thing personally or personnel or if it's a system issue, right, so it identifies and that's one of the importance of having a system in process put in place or checks and balances right, so you can measure. You know what, what, what can be documented, what is documented can be, can be measured, and what can be measured can be scaled right. And I think that's been one of our. Our biggest things is is putting systems and processes in place, and somebody that's listening right now may think man, these guys are so far advanced and I don't know what my system and processes. There's always a system and process. Whether you intentionally put it in place or not, it's in there by default because how, whatever your routine is is, is your system.
Tim Brown:What do you track your numbers with? What do you use in the back end? Like I'm using 90.io and we track our numbers there. Do you just use spreadsheets? And I would say, like it's not even that crazy to think that if you have habits or goals for 2024, that you could track personal goals in a spreadsheet as well. It's I know it's kind of wild, but you're gonna be a high performer, you might do things a little bit differently than other people do them. How do you guys track your goals and you're your match?
Ty Backer:Okay, so so our, our finances and stuff. We use QuickBooks and as time evolved and as QuickBooks evolved, we kept up with that and the level, the commercial version of QuickBooks that we have. Unfortunately, no CRM will integrate with it because it's not. It's beyond desktop, it's beyond mobile app With the amount of users that we have in it. But what's cool about it is that we can see who is in it. Everybody has their own password to get in so we know who's doing what, when they did it or if they screwed it up and what time they did it and how we can fix it Right. So, as things evolved, we've been able to keep up with things, and that's probably the biggest thing is keeping up with the times and continuous, continuous growth.
Ty Backer:You have to Remain teachable, first and foremost.
Ty Backer:It's like if you bring somebody on right that you think is going to be a good fit and they're bringing something to the table Right, your company is going to excel only as far as their capabilities.
Ty Backer:If they are, if they're willing, if they are not willing to continue to keep growing and to educate themselves Professionally and personally, you're going to run into what's called the law of the lid and you can apply the law of the lid to any aspect, whether, whether it's a system or a process the growth of the company on a micro or macro level Right, you're going to run into either a bottleneck or the law of the lid, and the company is only good as as its leadership is willing to grow and learn.
Ty Backer:Right. The moment that you stop growing, in the moment that you stop learning, that, the company or personally is going to stop growing. Right. So you have to continuously absorb good, positive, first and foremost good and positive content. Right, if you're listening to Fox News or CNN or whatever news outlet on those micro news outlets, that's at most times that's not pretty productive or or positive information that you're consuming, right. So what I tend to do is listen to more of a micro news outlet, and that could be a social media, that could be podcast, that could be any form of of Social commerce, that that I choose to listen to today, and absorb that content and take, take the information that I'm absorbing from that and apply it into my life today.
Tim Brown:But it's people that right that you want to be like, you like think about and that's tough, like the other thing about content creation, and you know this and I know they let anyone do this. What the heck.
Ty Backer:I know it's crazy, and that's the beautiful thing about this. Nobody said that I couldn't go buy a truck, put a ladder rack on it and call myself a roofing company 17 years ago yeah, and thank God for that.
Tim Brown:And no one said I could like I ever once I've said that like what about small business? Like Apparently there's no rules because they let me do it, and then I just went and started doing it and it is wild? They're like. They're like you have to have an LLC supposedly, but technically you can take money from somebody and then, like, provide a service and there's very little rules. That feels like once you start doing it. It's crazy. You're like shouldn't I allow to do this? You know, this is wild when you start a small business, how that feels sometimes.
Ty Backer:It is. It is wild and there's a lot to learn and a lot to be said for that to do. The willingness to step outside your comfort zone, right, the the willingness to suit up and show up every single day and the willingness to put yourself out there and provide a service what it doesn't matter what the services, but to provide a service for somebody. And then the learning lessons Along the way, whether it be the LLC portions of the S corp's, the insurance is workers compensation, general liability, and with that, who knew that we would need Insurance on our billboards?
Ty Backer:Right, and you're probably thinking yourself why would you need insurance on your billboards? Well, how, is explained to me, is what if one of those billboards, even though we don't own it, falls over and hits a car and just because our names on it, we could be drug into a lawsuit. And it's like, why never thought of anything like that before? And it's like, but we have those. Insurance is in, and through trial and error and experiences, you find these little weird things out and unless you're in business for a long enough period of time, you probably won't experience weird shit like that. But that's why it's called insurance and that's why you have it, so you don't ever have to see a courtroom.
Tim Brown:That is crazy. Yeah, my, my dad who, by the way, he didn't feed me with a silver spoon, but he is successful. When I was younger he was. He worked for a corporation and then he went out of his own when I was like 1617 or whatever. But they have a twenty million dollar company now. So I sometimes get to like listen to what he says. He seems to be somewhat smart. He gets all the insurances like he like whatever insurance is. He's like very into it.
Tim Brown:I want to throw in some a couple of my new year, new year planning schedule stuff and I hope this is useful to business owners and two individuals. The first one thing I want to say here is be okay, making your goal aggressive. I like the book the 10 X rule by Grant Cardone. There's another really good book out right now if you like that book and you've already read it. There's a book called 10 X is easier than 2 X by Dan Sullivan and Dan Sullivan you know we we think of all these very good business coaches out there. A lot of them were coached by a guy that was coached by Dan Sullivan, so it's kind of crazy. He's like an executive coach guy and he's very, very smart. He wrote gap in the game and who, not how, which are both really good management books. And then you this one 10 X is easier than 2 X will challenge you and help you break down. Like what, how can I really 10 X my life or 10 X my company? And really really good. And I think one thing that has to go along with that traction, which is a, which is like a business operating system EOS Talks about how it's okay that you hit 80%.
Tim Brown:You set big goals that are uncomfortable and then you do everything you possibly can to hit that. You take massive action, but then you're okay with hitting 80%. Now, hey, tim, I was an A student. Well, that's your problem. No, you really want to be able to challenge yourself enough that you're not hitting every single goal. So I'm just my first principle of Planning your new year goal and I want you guys to set one during this podcast, listening to it what is your real new year goal if your 2024 goal, and be okay, setting something that makes you uncomfortable? That's my first principle.
Ty Backer:Yeah, now, I love that too. The only thing, the only thing I would poke a hole in is, you know, setting that big all day, just Harry goal, right, that that be had, but making it realistic. But I think it's a cop out, like if I'm shooting for $10 million this year, but it but I'd be okay with seven I think you're gonna end up with probably five If you're not all in and you don't have your team all in, like, look, this is the mark where, no, no exceptions. No, no cutting corners, no complacency. No, no comfort ability. This is gonna be super freaking uncomfortable.
Ty Backer:We're going for 10 mil, but this you also have to have a roadmap Right, being proactive, have a roadmap on how are we gonna meet this. Okay, so our budgeting, our marketing budget, is up. We need to hire two more sales people. We gotta get two more trucks on the road. We need to hire Chuck toky to come in and train these guys. Like whatever, whatever, whatever that mission is, whatever that goal is, you gotta make it, yes, it realistic, right, but you also have to be all in on it. Don't have like that cop out where it's like I'm gonna set this Fifty million dollar goal and it's like your third year in business.
Tim Brown:Well, I would say this like, if you look at it like backwards, you look at the last two years and let's say it's a personal goal and you found that you didn't, you only did 50% of the goal, or like, basically, I think measuring backwards is good here, where it's like last year we did 50% growth, in the year before that we did 50% growth, and to continue 50% growth would be really uncomfortable. But let's set it is actually like 70% and then it was 60% and we're gonna try to hit 50, which is crazy. That is kind of what I'm saying like, yeah, measure backwards, look at what your real growth was the year before that and then last year. And then I want to say my number two Suggestion here is identify new I'm gonna call them helper systems.
Tim Brown:So things like like exactly what ties talking about who do I have to hire? Calendar invites, like calendar invites counts as a helper system. If you have like it. We're gonna have a weekly rhythm of meetings about this 10x goal or whatever it happens to be New initiatives, like we. I'm thinking like realistically, ty, when did you start your new year planning?
Ty Backer:It was before the fourth quarter began. That's what I'm saying we actually had a fourth quarter kickoff party for the company and set a speech, set a couple of goals for the entire company. Obviously, I had some personal goals and then leadership goals and stuff like that, but I want to circle back to something that you were talking about like 10-axing year over year.
Ty Backer:Ty and I are months before the new year starting, oh yeah for sure you have to, because there's things that you have to put in place before January 1. If you want to be proactive on it and if you want to start having it implemented by then, you should actually already have most of them implemented before then. And, like I'm going to say, marketing and SEOs If you haven't done SEOs yet and you're planning on doing a whole new website designed for January 1, you've better have started that back in the second quarter for it to be ready by January 1.
Tim Brown:Most contractors do not. They're going to all start now.
Ty Backer:Honestly probably why I'm thinking about it.
Tim Brown:But ultimately next year it's kind of noting, like every year and it's crazy, but every year your new year planning should kind of get earlier, because I'm realizing I have to set goals soon enough, my personal goals so that they can be within the company goals. So, like for me it's November and then December I need to be able to have the pre-meeting to the meeting with our coach so that we kind of define what we want and then we have the coach one and then we have the other leaders meeting and then we have the full team kickoff. So there's like a meeting before the meeting, before the meeting, before the meeting. And that sounds crazy and kind of annoying and corporatey, but really what it comes out to is I wanted to find where I'm going and so if I have a pre-meeting to the pre-meeting, to the pre-meeting, to make sure I am setting my intention, and sometimes the pre-pre-pre-pre-meeting is just me.
Tim Brown:And then I just add, like my executive leaders and then the other leaders.
Ty Backer:No, I love that because, first and foremost, where a lot of businesses struggle with communication, first and foremost, so by you having meetings is a form of communication. The other thing is, too, it takes someone seven times before they really start to believe what you're saying or for to absorb Right, like the first three times are kind of like yeah, we kind of heard this before. By the fourth time they're like oh, okay, I think he might be serious. By like the fifth, you know, sixth and seventh time, sometimes you don't quite articulate that message right the first four times, or it doesn't quite start making sense. So you have to be in me and for me, and I'm saying this and why this is so important, because sometimes I'm afraid that I repeat myself, especially in our meetings, but it's kind of like once, once I've heard when I heard that it's kind of like and I can see sometimes, like sometimes the light bulb goes off early here. There's early adopters, there's late adopters, there's you know, the whole bell curve that they talk about, right. So it's like you have to, especially if, if you have more than you know, five people in that meeting, if it's a group of 25 people, you're going to have early adopters. You got late adopters and then there's people that just that probably aren't even adopting anything, right, but but over time you can kind of sift those, sift those kind of people out. But but the communication and having meetings and and and having different meetings with different groups of of departments, or we call them, we're going to call them silos here, this, this, this coming years, because we have big growth, expansions too. But but having said that, I want to go back to where you're talking about 10, x and year over year over year over year. This is the thing.
Ty Backer:After you're in business for a while, you have to go through what I call correction year. Right, when you, when you're in continuous expansion and growth mode and you're moving 100 miles an hour, you tend to just kind of run around and put band-aids on stuff because you don't necessarily know who needs to be on the seat. You know in the seat on the bus and who do we need to hire? Do we have too many people? Do we have enough tools? Do they have the proper tools? That, where they properly educated, of all of these things, right, it's, it's, it's called expenditures. You, you, you acquire all of these expenditures and not really I'm not saying that that they're not paying attention to the net profit, but a lot of people don't know that you can do 10 million dollars in business and have the same amount of people to make it to 15 without having any stress, any more worry or stress on their business. Okay, as long as they are led correctly and and that message has been articulated in a good way that they know exactly what their job is in the mission that they're trying to accomplish.
Ty Backer:But to get back to the correction year, it's okay to have a correction year and focus more on net profit and not just revenue that comes in the door. I would be the big flex, the big flex right, like that. Let's have the flex year where we have the correction right, where we can look back at before January 1st you know at the beginning, at the end, at the middle of the third quarter and be like, okay, this year was kind of a shit show, but we are. Our our gross revenue looks extremely well, but our net profit isn't where it should be. Why did I only make a million dollars on 10 million dollars? And you're like man, that was a lot of work for that Right, and it's because you went through the growth. You went through the expansions, which is great, because that's the American dream. That's the beautiful thing about America is that we can. We talked about it earlier.
Tim Brown:I do think that, like as much as you can make this, I like when thinking about gross profit a lot lately because I think for some reason it's almost easier to control gross profits, like I mean in our business. Excuse me, I'm focused on trying to get better with gross profit.
Tim Brown:And I know that profit is really good. I just you kind of got to know all the leading. The net that's actually my next one is leading and lagging indicators. Yeah, a leading indicator in my situation would be gross profit. If gross profit is healthy, you know, of course it has to be.
Ty Backer:Of course gross profit has to be healthy. But gross profit should be your cost of goods. Those are your fixed expenses, for the most part Every single month. We have labor cost and we have material cost and that's what creates basically our gross profit. But then everything underneath it is where the meat and potatoes really are. I call that the gray area, where a lot of people don't pay attention to that much. And that's the ink in the printers, that's the electric bills, that's workers comp, that's all your insurances, that's your fuel, that's everything else that actually choose up that gross profit that with a tweak here and there, can make a huge difference on your bottom line. And there's so much fluff in there.
Tim Brown:I'm starting to get, so I'm getting a president in place in my company. That's not me, basically, and do you have somebody like that? Are you kind of the like you are always CEO president guy, are you?
Ty Backer:I'm trying to get searching. We're actually searching for a COO. We've been looking for somebody. They got to be a good fit for the company, but I do have a financial controller and a CFO.
Tim Brown:I'm trying to get that person like incentivized against gross profit, because my thing is is and you're probably this way too I like spending on marketing and stuff like fun stuff, and like I also feel like to grow the company you have to have this experimental like you kind of have to have a loose. To grow a company you have to have a loose attachment to net profit. It's kind of like that's how it feels to me sometimes at least it feels like if I got like really into it and I wanted seven and like 10 instead of seven net profit or whatever, that I would have to like kind of cut some of my like big gross plans. And that's how it feels sometimes. I'm curious how it feels to you.
Ty Backer:I mean not yes and no, yes and no. Where we can make a lot of ground up is in our cost of goods. We can make up a lot of ground there and make sure that our gross profit is healthy, which then in turn gives us more to play with on our marketing budget. But I found what has helped because we've done the fishnet approach with marketing, where really I didn't set a limit. I mean I kept an eye on it to make sure that it never exceeded 5% to 10% of our gross profit, not net profit.
Tim Brown:It represents a lot of our production company. Yeah, it really is.
Ty Backer:Right, yeah. And when you get to a certain point, I mean, what's $10 million worth of marketing going to do for you? I mean you can actually start over marketing yourself, which may be a good problem in most people, but like I've never heard of such thing.
Ty Backer:Well trust me. Trust me, the five mile famous yes, it could be 5,000 mile famous when you start to look at different demographics and footprints and stuff like that. And of course, your budget will grow when you grow, you grow and so there's two ways that you can look at this especially. It's like, okay, so we can spend 5% on last year's numbers, or we can spend 5% on our projected numbers, and that's something that the CEO or the CFO or the owner of the company can make that projection. If we want to do $10 million in revenue next year, then our budget's going to be $1 million. But that's one thing. To come up with that number, what are you going to spend it on? Where you can get your best ROI? I think that's probably the biggest more. If it's not, it should be the biggest question that an entrepreneur or a marketing or director or whatever within the organization, that should be their biggest question. How much do we have to spend? But what are we going to spend it on to get the biggest bang for our buck?
Tim Brown:Yeah, because there's things where you can spend. Like, for instance, I was just talking to a marketing manager yesterday and she was talking about and they're commercial, so it's like who cares? You know what I mean? Like no offense, but marketing is kind of soft for commercial construction companies and so it's basically business development. They're trying to get in as many conversations with the right people, many dinners, gifting, all this, events.
Tim Brown:But the event side is where you can spend. It's easy to spend. They're at like 150 million or something. It's kind of easy to spend 10% or 5% of that if you just do all the events and take the premium sponsor. This is the big one where it's kind of easy because they'll just. It's like different industries, they'll be like 20K for this, whatever, and it's like dang dude. I can start to spend kind of quickly if you're going that route Absolutely. But yeah, I agree, 100% making sure, and I like the word scrappy or scrappy in a lot of things. I know that you guys have a big production and stuff like that, but there's other things that you can do that are scrappy. I'm trying to take up as much attention as I possibly can within my limited resources and realistically they're not that limited. At this point I spend 10% of what I believe I want to grow to this next year a reasonable aggressive goal.
Tim Brown:I spend 10% of that and I think construction companies should spend 5% of that on average Like that's what I think, but I think you should set it based on the growth where you're going. I want to say one more of my three principles on goal setting. We talked about leading and lagging indicators, habits and systems to hit the goals. If you've ever read the 12-week year, it's so good I'm going to have to.
Tim Brown:You get the goal out on paper and you write the thing that if you did it every single week, you'd hit that goal, and then you track.
Tim Brown:Like you hit it or not. So the leading indicator is the weekly habit and then the lagging indicator is the quarterly goal. He likes quarters and if you're an individual, not a company, I still believe quarters. Like basically, that's the whole premise of the book. You don't even have to read it if you just understand this. Setting quarterly goals for yourself as an individual will speed up your goals instead of thinking this year.
Tim Brown:So I'm literally not going to say, yeah, okay, fine, I said a big yearly goal, but most of my goals are going to be quarterly goals and I'm going to set them like what if it was a year? Like I'm going to try to get a year's worth of stuff done in one quarter and that's why I'm going to beat you. No, I'm saying to the competitor watching me, that's why I'm going to beat you, because I'm going to get a year's worth of stuff done in one quarter, and I mean that like as an individual. That can be a really compelling way to think to get more done. And then also, a year is too long, it's too long of a period. No offense, if you set big goals, all your goals are yearly. You're going to trail off around month five and you're not going to like really hit them, so do three month goals and make it all about a three month kind of like digestible chunk.
Ty Backer:Well, it makes 100% sense, because I don't like waiting too long either to get any data or information or feedback. I don't want to wait too long either to look for the results in anything. So I think you're 100% accurate. The leading, first foremost. I got to say this real quick this has probably been one of the easiest podcasts I've ever did, because, tim, you're just you're kind of asking questions and then answering them yourself, so I don't. I'm just kind of.
Tim Brown:I'm just kind of like I'm just this is great, I love it. We're only like got 20 minutes left, so I'm trying to make sure I hit.
Ty Backer:I apologize, I love it. No, no, no, I love it. I know you're starting to learn this stuff.
Tim Brown:I just like, definitely. I was like I'm making sure that I brought value to both the business owner and the individuals.
Ty Backer:Yeah, so listen, one of my goals, especially for this podcast, is is the talk less, listen, listen better and ask better questions. So I don't have to talk that much. So, and I think that's what an interview should be Not that we won't have conversation, but it's not about me. This is about you and what you're bringing to it, because you're the expertise in your area. I'm not. I'm not a marketing director, I'm not a website design guy. I'm not a marketing or branding guy. Do I know enough to be dangerous for all those things? Yeah, do I love marketing? Of course I do.
Ty Backer:I think we're no longer a roofing business that that does marketing. We are a marketing company that does roofing Right, and that's the mindset you need to have going into 2024. Right, I love it, because that's what it is. You need to market yourself. Your team needs to be your brand. They're the ones that need to be out there screaming from the rooftops that I love working for this place, that we provide a lot of value for homeowners and those things. And that's where this starts.
Ty Backer:Right, and that's one of the things that I've learned over the years. Right, yes, marketing is great, branding is great, but, most importantly, if you're starting out in business. Start focusing on what relationships you can build with people, whether it be distribution, manufacturing, but, most importantly, relationships from clients. Right, it's like realtors, real estate offices, investors. Those people are who we are, have become today because of their network, because of that partnership and that network that I've created with real estate firms, with investors and people like that, and then them referring us to their network of people. Right and we've talked about this before Our best form of marketing can be providing value. Trustworthiness and transparency has been our best marketing when it comes to referral base due to creating the network has then become our net worth today. Yeah, yes, I love that.
Ty Backer:I love those things that we do is just another feather in the cap and another touch point and brand awareness.
Tim Brown:I feel like you're saying a very big, important marketing principle. I'm just going to restate it a different way your market for referrals, and I think that that's a really good clarification. One you are a no matter what if you're a roofing company or whatever you are you are a marketing company and acquisition is pretty much goal number one. It's got to be up there at least, right Customer acquisition. And then, two, if you could start marketing for referrals instead of individual leads, your marketing will go farther. So, like every time you put something out that's going to positively affect your and social media is great for this your realtor is more likely to refer you. There's 10 people, there's 20 people listening to this that I can see just on Facebook. What's up? David Bruno, laura Herschelin, deandra Nicole from Roofle what's up? She just said I just started a whole roadmap for 2024 personal and work goals. She also said somebody said that we should definitely do it on noon on Wednesday. So I think it's fun.
Tim Brown:I do think you're going to get a different audience. I think it's going to be sweet. I think that when you market in such a way that other people want to refer your business and social media can be a huge piece of that. Your marketing is going to go so much further. I see so many roofing companies.
Tim Brown:I'm just going to give one mistake, big mistake that I see You're pitching every time. You're posting something and saying hire us, here's our phone number. If you find yourself putting your phone number in your Facebook post, I'm not saying that that's terrible, but are you pitching more than once a week? It's really like it's the jab, jab, jab, right hook strategy from Gary Vee, who just says give value, give value, give value, and then you can ask everyone once in a while. But the point is is like how can you market in such a way that other people want to refer you and then you can ask your agent's, realtors, et cetera is a really good one for roofers. I'm going to sneak one of my New Year planning tips in here. Well, it's high as texting Four.
Ty Backer:No, I was taking notes, okay.
Tim Brown:Get your spouse on board. So, on your goals, get your spouse on board, or your partner or whoever. Make sure everyone on your team is bought in as early as possible. So, who is your executive team? And if you're a small, small business, maybe you don't think that way yet, but who is your executive team? Who's the one person on your team that really needs to be bought in to make this happen? Who do you need to be all? Who is going to be the biggest people that are going to make this make or break this goal? Get them on board.
Tim Brown:I think, on personal goals, that's spouse. It might be your boss, it might be somebody that you're trying to bring up. Hey, this is what I'm trying to do. If I hit these goals in 2024, would I be able to get this whatever bonus or whatever happens to be? You can try to work with them. If you tap into what they want and this goes for spouse too if you tap into what they want and then you set the goals with them, you're much more likely to hit it. Because if our spouse is kind of like against our goal or doesn't understand why we're working on a Tuesday night or whatever it happens, wednesday nights. Hopefully we got those back now, maybe, and if they're bought in, though, she was cool with it, right? Your partner was cool with you doing this every Wednesday night because she knew there was a bigger purpose and she was part of probably some of the goals that you were trying to set. So to me, it's about getting everybody on board, whether that's your team or your spouse 100% such a great topic there, too.
Ty Backer:It definitely makes life a lot easier if your significant other is bought in and you sold them on the idea or whatever they're more encouraging of whatever that is. Vic and I recently had a conversation about the work-life blend and things like that and making sure that you are emotionally present when you need to be emotionally present. How are we going to do that and how can we kill three birds with one stone? Sometimes, in some instances, and that could be going for a walk with your significant other, getting your work out and taking the dogs with you, picking nights of the week and sharing a calendar with them, like date nights. Tuesday night for Janna and I, come hell or high water one time.
Ty Backer:I've missed it in the past couple of months that we started back to this, because years ago our date night used to be Wednesday nights and unfortunately, behind the tool belt has held my family, myself and our company hostage Wednesday nights Vic's family, chris Baker and then whoever else has helped us along the way. It might be you know what I mean. So now and that's part of the reason why we decided to do it during the normal business hours, because one I'm fresh, I don't have to catch my fifth wind, not get home till 9.30. You know what I mean. And then get in bed and kiss Janna on the forehead and go to bed and then feel like shit on Thursdays and we've done that. We have done that for four straight solid years and it's like, okay, we've gained enough audience and our purpose is different. Today, too, things change, things evolve, things grow, things shrink, expansion, contraction, whatever the case might be, but including your spouse is very, very important, right.
Tim Brown:And you're talking about kissing Janna on the cheek or whatever Like. If you have her on board, there's more emotion involved, there's more like. So part of yours is better work-life balance or whatever Like it's good to have both right. We've got the revenue. Let's do crazy revenue stuff, and then we've got like, I need better work-life balance. How could I delegate some of this If you have a motion in it and one of the ways this is my last one so I've got it all.
Tim Brown:I've set all my points, which is to make it visual and put it on the wall, and I think there's a simplification like you don't want to like. I've had 20 goals for the new year before. I've got three that I've got up on my wall next to my Peloton. So when I go down there work out, hey, we've got, I've got. I've got posters. I'll share them with you if I can remember them. One's a new bathroom remodel and so I have a. I've got something from Pinterest to put it up on the wall. That's like the bathroom I want.
Tim Brown:I got one that's me speaking at a high school with the client about the trades, because I want to get out the word about how important the trades are and that they're anchored and you don't have to go in crazy college debt to join the trades. So I want to speak there. So I made a picture of me and this person. I photoshopped my face onto somebody speaking in front of a high school or whatever, and I want to speak with the client sometime in 2024. And then what is my last one? Oh my God, I totally forgot. I'm a five person sales and marketing team, so that one goes to support my revenue goal. You know so I, but I like this idea. How could you print out more stuff and put it on the wall both at your job? How can we get the, the, the goal, up on the wall? Maybe it's that thermometer or the wrong with the classic thermometer goal up on the?
Ty Backer:whiteboard right.
Tim Brown:And then how can I get like the personal vision? I dare you, I'm going to dare the audience to take three of their biggest personal goals, come up with a visual for them and print them gigantic at FedEx and put them up on the wall at your house or in your closet to remind you of time for 2024. These are the three big things I'm going to try to do and I just I just got mine done for 20, for 2023. So I'm excited and and it just reminds you visually of what you're trying to accomplish. So put it up.
Ty Backer:I love that, I love that, I love that, and a lot of it's just, you know. Going back to the work life blend, I call it work life blend. I. You know. The balance thing kind of scares me, you know, when you use the word balance, right?
Tim Brown:Like I'm just. I'm just it could be one of yours.
Ty Backer:I don't actually have it, so I'm not saying work, life blend, and that's kind of what I meant by like, like killing three birds with one stone, like Jana used to ride around with me to go look at houses, right, and someone needed a roof or they needed windows and stuff like that. I mean there's a way that you can blend it together. You know, work life blend, right, take your kids to work to whatever, whatever the case, but there there are times that need to be set aside for that intentional, you know, emotionally there moments, especially when it comes to your family and or at work, right, sometimes you just need to close the door and and that's where time blocks come into play and living in your calendar, not just personal, not just professionally, but also personally, sharing your calendar with your spouse or significant other, right, so they can kind of see what your day is like. Because if they're not in the now, like where you're at, because then if they see I had 10 meetings today, they're already going to know that I'm going to be shot when I get home, they know what to expect when I walk in the door, right. But if I also have them included on the calendar, like date night or dentist appointments, hair cuts, you know, whatever, vacations, things like that, sitting down with your spouse and making goals of like okay, mondays, wednesdays and Thursdays, we're going to walk and we're going to take the dogs with us, right? So now you're killing three birds with one stone, right, you're getting the dogs out of the house, you're exercising and you're spending quality time with your significant other, right? And if the dogs are up all night long and I'm saying this for on behalf of us, jen and I should probably do this too, because, penny, when I get home, penny is off. We got this miniature Boston terrier it's about this bigger name, penny and we should probably start taking her for a walk at night because she would be tired. So then I would get a better night's sleep. I would get a better night's sleep not just because that, but because I went out and got some fresh air, I exercised and all of those things you know. So if we can think not maybe so selfishly, but think more with togetherness of our spouses, our families, I intentionally get up.
Ty Backer:Rocket goes to school earlier today. I don't know how many over the years, how many basketball games I've missed. First days of school, teacher, parent conferences, all of them, every single one of them, for entire school years, okay. So most recently this school year Rocket was accepted into Votek, which was pretty cool. He's the first one to be picked up on the bus, which means that at 6.15, his school bus is picking him up.
Ty Backer:Well, typically I was walking out the door at 4.30 in the morning because I was of the mentality that I need to be the first one at the office and the last one to leave. That was great for the first 10 years you know what I'm saying. But that bled into the first 12 years, the first 13 years. It's like, okay, I set the example. Now people are getting there a quarter after four and I am not going to get up any earlier because I just I don't have to anymore because I've surrounded myself around the right people Okay, smarter than me in a whole lot of areas.
Ty Backer:So what I've done was I decided, you know, I'm going to change up my morning routine. Now I read two books in the morning. I spent a little time at the house. I drink my one cup of coffee before I leave the house and I see Rocket before he goes to school, and I've never done that. But if I don't do anything else in the morning, I don't care. If I don't read my two books, I don't care if I drink that one cup of coffee, as long as I get to see him leave that, leave out the door and catch the school bus.
Ty Backer:Mission completed, victory game over. You know what I mean. But I count all kinds and I stack all kinds of wins in the morning. Some of them might be very simple is me opening my eyes? Is is victory number one? Me putting my feet on the floor and sucking another sober breath and thanking him? Right, there is like three wins, right there. I walk over to the bathroom, I do my business, I start my cup of coffee, I read my two books. Two more victories. I got to talk with Rocket, even if it was just. Hey, I love you, have a great day. I'll see you in a few hours.
Tim Brown:Right, I'm letting him know that Win stacking is a victory stacking. I like that a lot, because what I'm doing is is I'm armoring myself.
Ty Backer:I don't even look at my phone anymore in the morning. Fuck the emails, screw text messages. All that stuff can wait till I get here, there's enough people in place and if it's an emergency, call 911. Okay. So if I can't stay away from my phone for that long, okay.
Ty Backer:And I do fail at times when especially when it comes to the phone thing, but all of those other things that I mentioned up until picking my phone up, I do a hundred percent every single day. I'm arming and I'm preparing myself mentally and physically, preparing myself across all my T's dotted, all my eyes. Now I can go out into the world, right, and do whatever it is that I need to do lead to people, take on adversity, create new budgets, come up with a new plan, do all of these things because I got everything squared away at home. I spend that intentional time with Jana, her dad's up, so I get to see him in the morning until he goes back to Florida. Right, I'm going to read my rounds. I'm emotionally here. You know what I mean. Did my thing right and now I can go off to work and feel whole. When I walk out the door in the morning, it's like mission accomplished. Dude, I just stacked 10 wins. Let's go. Let's go, stack 20 more.
Tim Brown:This is so good. I love see. This is even though I wanted to get through my five points, which I did. Now I obviously I want to hear about what you're doing because you're just. I appreciate your wisdom and it's just a business and entrepreneur any entrepreneur that can stay in business. How long have you guys been in?
Ty Backer:business July 17th 2008.
Tim Brown:So we're talking 20, it's almost 20, sorry, 16 years or something.
Ty Backer:Yeah, almost 16 years. Yeah, we just celebrated this, yeah.
Tim Brown:It's crazy. I mean anybody that can stay in business longer than 10 years and then, you know, make DeSer Avenue. It's just. I want to learn. I want to learn from wisdom. I want to learn from the wisdom of other. I'm just going to say men like men in the industry. I want to learn from women too, but like the point is like we have our own unique battles, just like you have your own unique battles, like I. Just I look up to and I want to hear and I want to try to soak up the wisdom. So excuse me if I talked a little bit too much to this one.
Ty Backer:No, no, no, no. I loved it. This was the best podcast ever because I didn't have to come up with any questions. Thank you for that. Thank you.
Ty Backer:You came prepared. You were the best prepared guest, or should I say co-host, I don't even know, but it was awesome. You know what I mean. No, it's always great, tim same here. That's the thing.
Ty Backer:There is nothing that I. I don't know everything, and I know that, and I remain teachable on a daily basis. Right? So I hear things, I pick things up. Everything that I mentioned two minutes ago. I wish I would have came up myself. I had to hear it someplace else. I had to try it.
Ty Backer:There's a lot of failures. I've had more failures than successes in my life, whether it be in relationships, whether it be businesses, whether it be whatever. Right, you know what I mean. But what I have done is is I've learned that this didn't happen to me. It's happened for me, and if I can think about what good is going to come out of this situation or how can we improve ourselves from this situation, no matter how horrible it is, there is always something that is going to come out of it that is positive. So I try not to get hemmed up in the shit. That's not going to affect me five days from now. I'm not going to waste five minutes on it Now.
Ty Backer:Am I perfect to that? No, not all the time Am I perfect to that, but it comes with time, because I am a neurotic mess. I am a very high driven person. I am very competitive. Do I need to be put in check? Of course I do. But that's where Jana comes into play. That's where that's where mentoring comes into play. That's where my coach comes into play. When I, when I bounce this big, hairy, audacious goal for him, he's like dude, that is fucking crazy. And it's like tell me, I can't do it Please.
Tim Brown:And once you start whacking wins, man, that's what is live. Once you start stacking wins, I mean it's kind of like it's crazy what you've done. You know what I mean? Like look back, Just look back. Don't just look forward to this next year. Look back, how crazy is it this last three years what you've done? How crazy is it. Write down those things that's not that's going to be my last little call to the actual best Write down how crazy is it that you did these things and make a list of your wins from this, the biggest wins from this last three years, and then maybe that will help you set bigger and better goals, because look what you've done already. It's kind of crazy. Look how far you've come. I think that that's a good vibe going to the new year too.
Ty Backer:Love that. That's a great way to end this podcast. I mean, don't forget to go back and review and patch yourself on the back, even though you feel like you haven't made it that far in the past 12, 24, 36 months. Unfortunately, you're where the last ones to see it, but everyone else around us has seen the exponential growth in us, whether it be personally, financially, professionally, whatever the case might be. Just know that keep, don't quit five minutes before the miracle happens. And if you have a goal, you have dreams, you have aspirations. Man, don't forget to ask for help and stop thinking about how am I going to do all of this and find the who Just like you talked about earlier, tim.
Tim Brown:Not how baby. And hey, thank you for having me on. I love I'll secret. I love a new year vibes for some reason. I just love them. I just really get such a good, such a good feeling to set new stuff and even if I'm looking back and I didn't hit a goal or something or whatever, like just analyze what was why, why didn't I hit a goal, and it's just fun to just try to set better goals for the next year and this next quarter. So that's the other one three month goals.
Ty Backer:All right, thank you, man, thanks for having me. Thank you, thank you everyone for watching. Don't forget to like, love, subscribe. We are on all of your favorite listening or watching platforms. Thank you, guys. We will see you next week for episode 209 of behind the tool belt. Have a great day.