How to Stop Being the Bottleneck in Your Own Business with Kurt Uhlir

How to Stop Being the Bottleneck in Your Own Business

[00:00:00]

Greg: Kurt, it’s great to have you on the podcast. Appreciate you joining us.

Kurt: Hey, thanks for having me.

Greg: Awesome. So, Kurt, whereabouts are you in the world?

Kurt: I’m just north of Atlanta, Georgia in the state.

Greg: Awesome. Okay, fantastic. Yeah, so I’m over here in Sydney and most of our listeners will be well, they’ll be all over the world, but most of our listeners are actually from the uk few in Australia and some of the US as well.

Greg: So Kurt, let’s today we’re talking about builders to stop being the bottleneck in their business and common frustration for builders. They you know, want to scale. They’re trying to do all the stuff. They’re working super hard, but they just find they’re hitting this sort of glass ceiling and can’t break through it.

Greg: So we’re gonna really dive into, you know, why that might be the case and how they can break that. Kurt, you’ve obviously got a lot of experience of scaling businesses and exiting. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and some of the things you’ve achieved, just so our listeners can know that they should be listening to you?

Kurt: Yeah we’ll kind of hit this in three things very quick. So, I started my first business when I was. 14. I actually had to form two LLCs, corporations ’cause I had enough people. I started a lawn care business.

 

 

[00:01:00]

But by the time three months of selling, I ended up having 12 people working for me full time, and two of them were dads of my friends.

Kurt: And so I, I learned that hustle culture kind of getting over the inflection point where it’s not just you performing stuff very quickly, but I got thrust into corporate America technology. And so I’ve now been part of more than 60 exits, funding rounds, companies that have gone, public, companies that have raised 50 million, a hundred million dollars have scaled from 2 million to $200 million in sales, more than 60 of those.

Kurt: And so the third thing is. Because of that success, and I’m still running businesses today. I work for, in the real estate and kind of construction home services industry, a conglomerate. But I’ve been able to come into conferences and speak to, in this point, tens of thousands of business owners across different industries, including construction and home services, and give them that little bit that’s Hey, if you need to change something today, there’s an inflection point that could happen.

Kurt: And it does start with making a decision today or hearing something you go back and reflect on.

Greg: Yeah that’s so true. This is why I love these podcasts because we get to pick the brains of people that have been there and done it, and they’ve experienced it.

 

 

[00:02:00]

So yeah, really look, looking forward to jumping into that.

Greg: So tell us, you know, when you know, your specialty, Kurt what would you say your specialty is? On, on what you talk on? What’s the big thing that you focus on?

Kurt: For me, I think kind of think there’s two things and they’re very ethereal sounding. One is, I think in terms of systems just you know, plumbing is related to electricals.

Kurt: All these things are related to things in a house, but they’re also very different. But you have to tackle ’em individually. I separate every part of a business or in my brain, or my wife and I have two large large compounds here in the us. All of those things are individual systems, and you break them apart so that they can run without you.

Kurt: That doesn’t mean that you never touch them, but they’re running independently without me having to be involved all the time. So that’s the first thing. I just, by nature think that way. And the second thing is I usually I, I don’t always get this right. I failed so many times. Most people would crawl on the table and die.

Kurt: But I know that there’s at least three things I’m wrong about in my business today, no matter what. I’ve been successful before. And because of that, I’m looking for.

 

 

[00:03:00]

What I could be wrong about, what I could improve. For people that I’m coaching for, I’m helping them think the same way and create an environment so the people in your company will come to you with thoughts so that you could discover something 18 to before, otherwise you would have to wait and stumble upon it.

Kurt: That’s the key is figuring things out instead of waiting two years, figuring out in six months.

Greg: Yeah that’s really key. I think a lot of us have blind spots, don’t we? We can’t, you know, we think we’re doing great in a certain area and then if there’s not a culture of people being open and being willing to share that with us, you know, how are we ever gonna know?

Greg: So, and that’s the beauty of a coach coming in potentially to businesses. ’cause they’re, you know, they’re looking for those blind spots, aren’t they? And looking for those things that you are not seeing when they’re outta the box. So, yeah, a hundred percent agree with that. So, today we’re talking about leadership, though, Kurt, we wanted to really focus on leadership in a business.

Greg: You’ve obviously led, you know, many businesses and advise on that. So, tell us about leadership and your thoughts around that and why being the right type of leader is so important in a business.

 

 

[00:04:00]

Kurt: Leadership at the end of the day comes down to, it’s like whether or not your company’s going to continue to growing or are you gonna burn out, or is your team gonna burn out and then you’re gonna lose ground that you fought so hard for.

Kurt: And I say that in terms of at the end of the day your company is never gonna be able to outgrow the skills of what the people on your team are. Now you can hire people with different skills and hire things, but that doesn’t mean you, you shouldn’t be coaching them and leading them and really.

Kurt: I have a big problem with the whole leadership industry because there are thousands of books with thousands of different terms for leadership, and I think it’s too complicated. I think that there’s only two styles of leadership, and for me, there’s an authoritative leader, and so I hired you to do a specific task the way that I set it in the time get the results that I want, or you’re fired.

Kurt: Or there’s the boss that says. And then we’ll take this down to construction. I’m not hiring, like I don’t hire you to come into my kitchen and read and do a full renovation in my kitchen to give me a new kitchen.

 

 

[00:05:00]

I come in to have you change the experience of my family interacting around that kitchen and what do I want that to be a livable, like that’s a different thing as the same thing as the people on my team.

Kurt: I’m hiring for outcomes. I’m telling you what I’m expecting for both the business outcomes and how your individual role, of which I’m gonna be very specific of here’s what I expect, the outcomes from your role and how they’re gonna help me reach my business outcomes. When you take that frame of approach, it shifts then everything from forgetting what you’re authoritative or you’re nice, it shifts it to.

Kurt: I’m looking for ways to serve you as the person to help me reach my business outcomes, which may mean, Hey you’re doing something very different than me. I like amateur woodworking, and I learn so much by somebody who’s 10 years further than me coming in saying, this is how I do she differently than you do.

Kurt: Watch how I join these things together. Well, that’s shoulder to shoulder time. Some cases, somebody’s just not gonna figure it out. But the servant leader says, look. I have all these disparate systems. I’m treating it like that. And the best thing I could do for the business today is to step in and coach you shoulder to shoulder time on this job that you’re doing.

 

 

[00:06:00]

Kurt: That’s a different approach for leadership. And when you do that, growth happens by nature and people want to stay there. There’s a bunch more we can talk about, but that’s my fundamental approach to leadership.

Greg: Okay. So, no, that, that makes complete sense and that simplifies it in a big way. So how do people work out who they are? You know, what do you think most construction business owners are like if you, if, are they the, you know, the authoritative type, or are they the servant? What do you normally see?

Kurt: Most are the authoritative type and at least in the states and some, I’ve worked with some Austin and stuff as well, only a little bit in in the uk, but it’s, I find those of faith will often call, say that they’re a servant leader.

Kurt: They’re nice that people like them, but if you go look at how they’re interacting, how they’re giving instructions what their team at elect’s they’re really an authoritative leader. They’re just a nice person. They’re not taking that approach. It says. Hey, I wanna, I’m looking for outcomes from you, not just on this project, but especially there are always subs and people that you bring in that, that have a short-term impact.

Kurt: But usually you have the same subs you work with over time, and so, or if they’re your full-time project managers, the servant leader.

 

 

[00:07:00]

Which isn’t often in construction, to your point is saying, I want the most productivity out of you over the next two, three years, six projects that you’re working with me on and therefore, I understand things might come up either in work or personal, that could impact the short-term efficiency on there.

Kurt: That’s usually not most construction. Because at the end of the day, if we don’t hit a deadline, the cost numbers you, it’s really easy to step back into triage mode, which puts you in authoritative right away.

Greg: Yeah. So do you think it’s possible for a leader to switch between the two? Or is there a need to switch between the two types?

Greg: Or can you just stay as a servant leader? Because I’m just thinking that, you know, in business the CEO of a business needs control. You know, they need to stay in control. Especially thinking of the businesses that might be listening to this podcast, if they’re somewhere between the one to 10 million mark, is, do you think there’s a certain type of revenue where someone needs to switch over or do you think you need to switch roles between the two?

Kurt: Great question.

 

 

[00:08:00]

I find too many servant leaders actually do not shift over to the authoritative or that triage bot when they need to. Hey, you lost a big client, you lost a big project.

Kurt: You’re having to figure out, do you fire people or not? You’re ha or costs have shifted, like they have so much with what’s going on in parts of the world right now. I spoke to somebody the other day in Australia working in construction. He said his costs right now are up 25 to 35% right now. And so he has, he, you know, i’ve firm bid projects that I can’t go back. The only choice is do I not deliver on the contract and they sue me. But I will lose 20% of this project if I move forward.

Greg: Yeah,

Kurt: that’s a triage bid. Now you can still approach that in a way with your team and say, here’s where we’re at.

Kurt: And so, and bring them in. But you do have to step in and then day decisions have to be made. But I do find that you, so you should be able to switch back and forth and be agile in that. But it’s also a good thing to think about in terms of there’s not a revenue number for me because the earlier people start shifting to servant leader, start getting people that are working for you, not just for outcomes, but I want people that are committed to me, they’re not just compliant.

 

 

[00:09:00]

Kurt: And so compliant is. Hang this drywall, do this plaster the exact way that I say, or you’re fired, as opposed to, here’s what we’re trying to reach from a business outcome, which might mean, hey, we had to do the lowest bid because that’s what we need for this client, which means we can’t do it As well as you would like to expressing the business outcomes and letting the person know, I’m with you on this and I want to keep you on board.

Kurt: On board with us. That shifts things to, that person’s gonna show up for you. They’re gonna be committed to you and your business, as opposed to just being compliant and being like, well, I’m gonna do this, but that’s not what you want. You want the person that’s if there’s a major family thing that happens for them, an illness, they get thrust into elder care that it’s a sub.

Kurt: They call you and say, Hey my spouse knows this. You need to know this next, because I wanna keep working for you for the next two years. It might just impact the next 30 days.

Greg: Yeah, that’s interesting. Yeah. So do you think that it applies to all layers in the business? So in other words, obviously the CEO wants to be a servant leader.

 

 

[00:10:00]

Greg: The project manager may wanna be a servant leader, but say like you had the, you know, the onsite supervisor that’s talking to the trades. Does he also want to be a servant leader? Or is he, does he need to be more author and say, actually, look, I just need to get this done and this is how you gotta do it.

Greg: What, where, what do you think it works across all layers or not?

Kurt: I do think it works across all layers. I mean, I have a friend in the industry and he’s of the firm belief that, of the hourly people on their teams, like he, and he’s clear if you don’t ex, if you don’t yell at ’em, if you don’t use expletives, they’re not gonna do what you want.

Kurt: And I’m like, I can only imagine the quality of your team’s work. And how difficult you guys churn through things. Servant leadership does not mean that you’re not holding people accountable. I view the things as the authoritative leader. You’re trying to hold somebody accountable from a servant leader, or that’s an authoritative from a servant leadership perspective, I’m telling you the business outcomes, I’m being very clear about what I expect and you’re being, it’s actually much, I see much more accountability on the teams because people get to self-select as well.

 

 

[00:11:00]

Kurt: If I’m very clear on what I’m expecting on the results, quality, timing, all of that, you get to choose, do you wanna stay on this team or not? Now it’s also very clear what’s going to happen if you’re not gonna be here. So there’s not a loss of accountability there. The other part of it is I do just find that, it’s not like it’s the individual contributors, not just the, like the site manager of there. Lawn care, I like, I have two homes in my neighborhood that I know how they picked up business. And so the thing about this, most lawn care businesses everywhere in the country, you hire people very quickly.

Kurt: You’re not mowing your, you’re not mowing those lawn, you’re not doing the edging, so you’re sending out hourly people to do it. This person, how did he grow his business to the point he got to start hiring people He knew. Hey, you see balloons on outside a door. The baby just showed up. You see people delivering food, there’s probably been a death in the family or sickness.

Kurt: So he would, when he was the O owner operator, he was knocking on the door and saying, Hey, here’s my card. I see you guys just had a baby. I know it’s a difficult time. I’m not trying to sell you. I will mow your property for free anytime in the next 60 days. Just call me and tell me when.

 

 

[00:12:00]

So he knew that cost about a half a gallon of gas, you know, liter and a half a gas, and it cost him like 15 to 17 minutes for the average property and where I live right now.

Kurt: Well quickly when he start and he got referrals from it, and people would pick that up. Not everybody, but he’d at least get good reviews. So he compensates now his team so that when he sends out the teams, they’re looking for those signs. And so come back and show him and tell me the information. ’cause we’ll put ’em in our CRM.

Kurt: We may want to call ’em and follow up, make sure they get their free stuff. But I will reward you for doing that. Healthy confrontation of going up and knocking on the door and a little bit of selling. ’cause he did that as the operator and now he’s empowering. I mean the individual that’s going out with the rider to do this at somebody’s house, no lawn care people to two houses in my neighborhood, that’s how they got their regular business like and from this per,

Greg: yeah.

Greg: That’s fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what a great, yeah, what a great well, way of one sorting the culture out of your business, you know, having that everyone, you know, looking out for the community that I think that’s amazing, but yeah, great way to grow the business, for sure.

 

 

[00:13:00]

So let’s imagine someone’s listening to this now.

Greg: They’re they’re running their construction business. They don’t know whether they’re a servant leader or an authoritative leader. What would be the, what would be the symptoms of. What an authoritative leader will look like and maybe what are the symptoms that they now need to grow as a person and become that servant leader?

Greg: What things will they start seeing?

Kurt: Can they write out without having to go think about, I mean, without thinking about it can they write out the one to no more than three business outcomes they’re wanting to reach with their business this year? Could they then go could I step in and ask the people that work for them, whether they pro team leaders, site leaders, or individual contributors, and ask them.

Kurt: What do you think he or she wants your, wants, the business outcome from what you’re doing today and how, ’cause that could be different than the business ones. And how does that tie to the business outcomes that he wants? That means that the individual person, the plumber that’s working out, you know, sub could know both what the business outcomes that I’m wanting from that person, as well as how that ties to my business outcomes.

 

 

[00:14:00]

Kurt: Is this a low cost project? Is this a high cost project? Are we, do we want referral? There’s a whole bunch of different business outcomes from there. Like they’re construction. You’re trying to go from two to 5 million 5 million. You know what referrals happen really well for that. I’ve got a friend that’s his sweet spot here, right?

Kurt: In the states right now. Like he grew through that by for one year. He focused everything on the business, no matter what level of project. What the margin was is we are going to leave this project and we want to average two to three referrals in the next 12 months for everybody. We finish a project on.

Kurt: Yeah. That fundamentally changed how everybody showed up on the job site.

Greg: Yeah. And that has to filter through to every level, doesn’t it? If you’re gonna get referrals, you know, that has to go right through. Right. Yeah. That’s interesting. Okay, so, so that’s one way, that’s one way of analyzing what type of leader are you is do the team actually know what your outcomes are as well?

Greg: That’s yeah. Then what your goals are. Okay.

Kurt: Absolutely. The only other thing I would say is you mentioned control before.

 

 

[00:15:00]

Yeah, the authoritative leader, like what you wanna hear about if you’re a servant leader, you want to hear about problems that happened on projects that were solved before they came to you and or that the client told you about, God, I’m so thankful the way that this worked out and you had no idea that it happened.

Kurt: And I say that of terms of the authoritative leader. This is so much in construction, so many industries like it. You think that you’re making all of these decisions, but if we actually look at all of the individual decisions that impact a single project getting closed. You have maybe seen one 10th of a percent of the o total things that impact.

Kurt: And so it’s you know, home inspections. Yeah. I hear, you know, hear so much. You’re like, if it’s a new home, if I don’t get to come in and see before the drywall, before the paneling goes up, anything could be going on behind there. So what you think that, you know, that’s a decision that’s taking place before you have insights into it.

Kurt: So these decisions are taking place by everybody on your team, by your site line, a site manager, and you don’t know it.

 

 

[00:16:00]

You think you’re being the authoritative, you’re in a micromanaging. And just be clear. ’cause I used to be this person. You don’t know what you want is either things being solved without you or people coming to you about problems that you didn’t know about, asking for your input.

Kurt: Hey. This is going on. Here’s two potential solutions or three potential options. I need some wisdom and input about how we should handle that. That’s not a micromanagement thing that’s giving you insight and data. That’s how you get real control as opposed to thinking you have control.

Greg: Hey, can I just ask a quick favor? We are constantly trying to bring on the best guests on this podcast so we can deliver as much value as possible, but the only way we can do that is if we get more subscribers, more likes, more comments, and more reviews. So subscribe to this channel and click notifications so you know, every time we’ve got a new video coming up, give us a review if you’re getting any value from it, and give us a thumbs up.

Greg: We’d really appreciate that.

Greg: Yeah. No, that’s really interesting.

 

[00:17:00]

Greg: Okay, so, thinking about a business owner then the problem is, I think with all business owners is they start becoming the bottleneck of a business, don’t they? When, especially when they’re scaling from that, that one to 10 million. So let’s just talk about that a little bit. How how the business owner stops becoming the bottleneck of a business.

Greg: What should they be focusing on? Where would you go with that? If you’re into a business now and that’s the first thing that the builder says, look I feel like I’m a bottleneck. What should I be doing? Where should I be looking? Where would you go with that?

Kurt: I’ll give you my general answer and I’ll give you a little bit more of a construction home services kind of, you know, answer as well. The, my general answer, and this does still apply, is you have to develop your leaders. And that, that, that means shifting into that place where like we all here, it’s like we’re working on the business as opposed to in it.

Kurt: When you’re able, part of that is you still, you may be doing more actually hands-on stuff as you’re kind of going from that two to 5 million timeframe you may actually be doing more hands-on, but it should be coaching. You don’t own the project. You’re stepping in to go shoulder to shoulder and show somebody how to do, you’re to take the, you hire somebody new to take calls with clients.

 

 

[00:18:00]

Kurt: If things aren’t going well. You take calls for him or her, you show them how to do it, how you intend to respond, you watch them do it. You do a couple of days of that, and then you go to another part of the business and then you’re stepping into it to make the whole part B better. That’s, that applies everywhere.

Kurt: The, what I find unique in many parts of the world, and there may be some countries or parts different, is like my buddy, the biggest thing that holds him back is. He is a project manager. A site manager that starts getting that, that starts growing and is doing really well. It’s hard to get quality people and they started leaving.

Kurt: And so it’s Hey I feel like I’ve earned as much as I can. You’re telling me I’ve earned as much as I can. So they step out to start becoming a general contractor themselves. And so on the side, they’re studying for things. Well, what happens is we know most people don’t like the admin and operation, so the chance that they’re gonna fail is pretty high.

Kurt: My buddy loses a big project thing.

 

 

[00:19:00]

So when he stepped into saying, look, I’m gonna start figuring out a pro a profit sharing a business relationship, that work that will keep you here long term. And not just giving you a part of the business, but rewarding you as this business continues to grow and I can hand off more and more of the business to you, he was able to start keeping those quality people because then they’re now going.

Kurt: While the failure rates over there, a couple of those have still got their GC license, which has allowed him to start stepping out of other parts of the business as well. And now he’s going to start other companies as well. But he’s started a reward perspective to make sure that hey, don’t get, don’t think you wanna be your own boss.

Kurt: I’ll point out all the ways of being your own boss sucks and you don’t want to do that. And people usually go. Okay. Like I could see the upside, but there’s a lot of messy middle. And you’re telling me I can go from this to that. That sounds really good. I’ll stay for a few more years.

Greg: Yeah. So that takes a lot of thought, doesn’t it?

Greg: A lot of planning beforehand to, you know, sometimes. I think we can be a little bit reactive and we get a little bit lazy with staff and then all of a sudden we only address it when they’re about to hand their notice in and you’re like, oh man I’ve I’ve now gotta think of a way of keeping them, but it’s probably too late by then, isn’t it?

 

 

[00:20:00]

Kurt: It’s in my mind, it’s through it. If you’re being reactive, you need to let that person go. In the corporate world, I can tell you if somebody comes and says, Hey, I have another offer from another company, they’re gonna pay me 30% more, 40% more. What do you have a counter? You should always let that person go.

Kurt: ’cause the DA data says usually in three to six months, they’re gone by themselves almost a hundred percent within 12 months, because in that person’s mind is. You could have been paying me more this whole time and you chose not to. So that’s the same thing in any industry, like we’re talking about the moment I’ve weighed through, and especially if I have a spouse and we’ve talked about there’s risk and you say, well, now we could bring in profit sharing.

Kurt: Now I could bump your pay. You could have had that conversation before. And so to your point, if keeping, if you’ve been having in your business, every time you start getting a site manager, you’ve been seeing these people churn out, they should go start starting their own business. It’s hard to get people that aren’t addicted to things that don’t have problems for other ways, and it’s like you have a good person, think through it ahead of time.

 

 

[00:21:00]

Kurt: What happens if they leave and decide? And it’s usually gonna be industry specific, but bringing somebody like you that says, you’ve done this, you’ve seen inside a hundred other businesses that have tried this good and bad. Walk me through that. Like you would be able to help somebody much more in that, in, in construction than I could.

Kurt: I can talk about it figuratively, but you’re gonna have the details that’s gonna work specific. It might be different in, you know, Sydney versus London versus here.

Greg: Yeah. Yeah. That’s interesting. No, I think that’s a really good point about you know, just getting ahead of that and really thinking through it, because that’s probably something I don’t think everyone really does.

Greg: I think probably the, one of the reasons I’m just thinking out loud now, when I was in construction years back and what some of the worries were is that you think, well, problem is you can’t offer everyone profit share in things and you know, and you have some great people in the business. And then how do you.

Greg: You know, do you offer one of your project manager’s profit sharing, but the other one isn’t as good, so you don’t offer profit sharing for him? There’s a lot of thought to go around. It isn’t there to try and get those models right

 

 

[00:22:00]

Kurt: there, there is, and I would just talk about you can actually offer profit sharing to everybody.

Kurt: Like I look about this in terms of marketing agencies in there. Well, you still have the things as not that everybody has to be rewarded the same. Especially in terms of yours, and a lot of times it is retroactive for things but you could consider that if you’re a $2 million construction business right now and you’d like to become an $8 million business, well, how do you bridge that gap?

Kurt: Well, get, like carving off 5% that you allocate to everybody of that additional 6 million growth. That money doesn’t exist right now if the only way to get through there or to get through it faster is to share a little bit with everybody. Here. I don’t, here’s a SA sandwich. You don’t have the sandwich yet.

Kurt: If I give you the sandwich, would you give a half of it to him? You sh The answer should be yes. And so I think that’s the way for people to look for it. Now, that doesn’t mean that everybody gets the same. I mean, it’s the same thing if I’ve been a lot of tech companies, most startups that have, you know, venture backed capital invested in them, they have a thing called options.

 

 

[00:23:00]

Kurt: It’s like a coupon to buy a steak for 50 cents. Well. Everybody gets options. I come in as your cmo, I might get options that are worth 5% of the company. The office manager, she might get enough that’s it’s not that high. And so I started to give things like, well, if this company does the 200 million exit, she’s gonna get a new car.

Kurt: I’m gonna buy a mountain. So it is different. And so I think that’s part of also bringing in an outside person that can walk you through that.

Greg: Yeah. That’s great. Yeah, I think that’s that’s really valuable. Okay. So, let’s. Someone’s listening to this. Now let’s imagine they’re thinking, right?

Greg: I’m thinking of the future of my business. I wanna grow. I want to become a better leader, become this servant leader rather than some authoritative, think about my staff, think about how I can retain them. That’s all, you know, some good stuff there. Let’s talk about, how you then shift to going beyond yourself and then creating something quite significant.

Greg: You’ve obviously scaled, I mean, well just tell us some of the businesses you’ve scaled yourself. We’re talking, you know, way beyond 10 million. So how do you, like from your mindset, Kurt, how did you go from, you know, the, you know, potentially 1 million to where you scaled to how do you make that mindset shift?

 

 

[00:24:00]

Greg: ’cause that’s, there’s something quite significant there.

Kurt: You try things that you think are gonna be impossible but you also I, I think at is the end of the day for me it’s controlled risk. And so I’m not gonna, you know, if I, if I stepped into a construction company, today’s doing 5 million, you know, pounds a year, I’m, I like, there’s a lot of things I could probably change, but I’m also looking at the families that we’re providing for.

Kurt: And so there’s part of. How do you make sure that this part of the business, the main part of the business, keeps growing and we set up something else and we are specific in either dollar value or time that we mad scientists something new. One, you know, another one of my buddies is a general contractor, so he thought about adding on, you know, other things that weren’t just full remodels, full bills, giant things.

Kurt: And so he’s so. When he started looking at it, and he had set up certain parts of that, that the main GC business to run, he wanted to start doing siding.

 

 

[00:25:00]

He intentionally set that up as a separate business, still under his main umbrella but running that over there and hiring somebody into it. So he knew that all the dollars were set aside and he also knew on his calendar he blocked out.

Kurt: Here’s the time that I am going to allocate for my time. Away from the main business to that, that he had to do that physically to make sure he didn’t chase the new and shiny. ’cause the problem is I’m wanting to grow and you go new and shiny and you forget about the meat and potatoes here. And so I find that’s a big part for people is by all means, think about it in terms of controlled risk.

Kurt: I mean, you hear, I hear too often in business of all sizes, 1 million and a hundred million, there’s no plan B seriously, even if you’re single, are you really okay with living out of your car under a bridge? Imagine going home to your wife if you’ve got a $2 million construction business and going, Hey, I had, I didn’t think through this at all.

Kurt: I just, we have a great business.

 

 

[00:26:00]

We have a great life, and I just risked everything that we might be bankrupt in six months. No, there’s a plan B. The people that work for you have a plan B. So think through that. Doesn’t mean that you can’t take risks, it just makes sure you’re taking intentional ones.

Greg: Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. That’s a good point. I like what you said earlier about, you know, just being careful not to chase a shiny new thing. ’cause I think as entrepreneurs that’s one of the dangers, isn’t it? That you know, we look over here and see someone doing amazing over there and think, actually, yeah.

Greg: Let me I want a piece of that pie. So when do you think it’s the right time for a business owner to, you know, because there there’s. Th we hear two different stories, don’t we? You get one that’s let really concentrate on growing one thing and just do the one thing. And then what you’ve just said is also true.

Greg: You know, there’s offer opportunities out there where, you know, you keep your core thing and then there’s a way of growing something else. So, you know, when is it the right time to actually look at building something else, to actually, lemme just concentrate on the core thing and grow this to a certain size.

 

 

[00:27:00]

Kurt: Great thing. I will tell you that most companies fail not just in their expansion, but their existing business by starting something completely new. I see this so often in software where a company has hit a really good. Level for something they’re doing 10, 15, $20 million a year, and they have an idea for something new and it’s not an upsell, it’s a new product.

Kurt: And from the outside I’m looking at it and said, that would’ve become a hundred million dollars business in five years, and instead it’s gonna become a $2 million business instead of a $10 million business, or it’s gonna go bankrupt and you’re gonna sell it for pennies. The same thing happens in construction and somewhat similar industries.

Kurt: And so I would look at it as. There is a level like, I don’t know what it is in construction, maybe it’s a hundred million dollars a year, but I would approach encourage people to approach it as saying the only way that you expand off of the core thing is into things that are either additional sell sales to the same customers that your core businesses or they’re great they’re great for the funnel to bring people into that.

 

 

[00:28:00]

Kurt: And so the example I think about would go back to, I’m 14 years old. I found out very quickly, literally my first week of going and selling lawn care business in a small town in north Alabama. I have sold like three times the amount of homes that I could mow myself. Shit, what do I do? Well, after I got through that problem and I’ve hired people and people are doing this and I’ve got the operations going, what was a great add-on business to that?

Kurt: Hey, we can do pressure washing. It’s the same homes. I could add that on. Or you could sell pressure washing. That point I was making like 40, $50. I mean, this was 25 years ago. 40, $50 for pressure washing stuff took 12 to 30 minutes to your driveway, by the way, you do lawn care as well. Like that, that, so it worked both as an upsell and a, and an intro into it.

Kurt: Those are great ways for the businesses that are like. You know, one, five, even 10 million. So if you’re gonna, if you wanna chase something shiny, chase something completely related to what you’re doing and not something just different.

Greg: Yeah, I like

 

 

[00:29:00]

Kurt: that. If you’re doing construction, don’t go start a lawn care business.

Kurt: Like it’s different.

Greg: Yeah. No, that’s great. Great advice there. Okay. So. Going back to your personal experience of, you know, hypers scaling businesses how personally have you avoided burnout, Kurt? Because you obviously and this is gonna be valuable for anyone listening to this because some people feel they’re on the edge of burnout at 5 million or 10 million.

Greg: But you know, when you go well beyond that you know what how do you avoid that? What do you, what do you do? What sort of things do you put in place?

Kurt: I haven’t avoided it a lot in the past. To back to my statement about I’ve failed so many times. Most people would call on a table and die.

Kurt: So many, like we took a company public, so many of these exits that have happened, you could also watch my body fat and my body composition and my body fat goes up and my running times go down. And then, you know, we have this massive exit and it’s like I get back in shape. So one of the things for me is like I, I’ll be at the gym, but I wish my gym would open at 4:00 AM I keep arguing can we go from five 15 to 4:00 AM.

Kurt: So that’s part of it.

 

 

[00:30:00]

I do know I need physical intensity, even if I’m doing that on my job, but I need that anger at the gym to get it out. But the other real car two things for me is one, shifting to the servant leader has been way more relaxing for me because problems come to me as opposed to me feeling like I need to control it.

Kurt: And then really the other part of that is. I look at it and I go I realize that like I have goals that I want personally, spiritually, business wise, and my spouse is not the person to hold me accountable for that. And so I had to force create a group of similar. People in it from a business perspective, business owners, executives, people were that same level.

Kurt: My buddy mentioned as a general contractor. He used to be that before he decided eight years ago to start a GC business, but still we’re good friends. But he knew at that time and now he knew what it was like in the business level that I was at, the struggles he knew what he knew what I wanted spiritually, what I wanted on my family life.

Kurt: And so. Like it actually kind of broke our friendship a little bit because I gave them all permission and they gave me permission to ask those questions.

 

 

[00:31:00]

That said, you’ve told me you want this at two years, five years, 10 years, and your actions are taking you the other direction. You can’t travel west and east at the same time.

Kurt: Your spouse, your partner cannot do that for you. Do not expect them to, if your spouse brings it up. You are past burnout for your relationship, even if you haven’t approached it yourself yet. So for me, that third part is how do you get that group around you and you force it to happen?

Greg: Yeah. I love that.

Greg: I think a group is so important, especially at the moment in the age of ai. And I think a lot of us working from home and, you know, running businesses from home and large businesses from home, sometimes you can get quite disconnected from people and and you know, if you’ve only talking to your spouse about the problems and that, that’s right.

Greg: Not a great place to be, is it? So I think, yeah. Having a mastermind or whatever it is around you or, you know, a high quality group of people that can. Sort of hold you accountable and just ask those difficult questions. I think that’s important.

Kurt: Yeah. I, and I, and I think they said they need to be people that are somewhat peers from business perspective.

 

 

[00:32:00]

Kurt: Probably not competitive, you know, like in, in your exact thing. But they need to know, like for your audience, the other, the people you need around you, they need to know what it feels like to have a payroll that, like if you don’t get your deposits if the client’s not hitting milestone payments, how do you continue to pay your vendors?

Kurt: You need to know feel that have other people that have felt that pressure because that’s a real pressure like. Like somebody that’s an individual contributor as a marketer just would not be a great peer for me because they don’t know that like just the way I approach things. I do realize I’m providing not just for my family but for yours if you work for me.

Kurt: And that doesn’t mean I won’t fire you. That just means I’m aware of that. And so well, that means I need people that know what payroll feels like and also feel for that other side versus like I do have some friends that are like, well, you didn’t deliver for me from a marketing perspective this week.

Kurt: Thursday’s tomorrow. Great. That’s your last day. That just wouldn’t, they couldn’t hold me accountable in the same way.

Greg: Yeah. Yeah. Completely really valuable stuff.

 

 

[00:33:00]

We’ve we’ve gone through today, Kurt, I really appreciate all your time here. So, if there was any sort of lasting words of advice you were gonna give any builders, contractors that are listening to this and, you know, looking to scale, thinking about their leadership roles what what last bits would you tell them that you haven’t really covered yet?

Greg: Or want to reiterate?

Kurt: Make sure that you’re being intentional. I find all problems really come down to people. Not avoiding the pain of thinking through what’s holding me back, what’s holding the company back, what’s my own part from it, and what do I actually want in the long term? It’s difficult to do.

Kurt: Most people won’t do that work, but when you do that and you’re intentional about taking the time for it, have some stare out the window time to process that. I don’t care whether you write it on note cards or in a Google Doc or you talk to ai, that means to get out of your head. That will change your business.

Greg: Yeah. That’s great. Yeah, really appreciate that, Kurt. Really awesome conversation. Thank you so much for imparting those words of wisdom.

 

 

[00:34:00]

If people wanted to learn a little bit more about you, Kurt and follow you at all where’s the best place they can go? We’ll put it in the show notes as well.

Kurt: My personal website, Kurt Eller LI r.com is the best place and you can always just ask for Curt servant leadership from almost any LLM, and it’ll send it to me as well.

Greg: Perfect. Love it Kurt. Thanks. Thanks again for your time. Really appreciate it and wish your business success. Take care, mate.