Contractor Success Forum
Tips and advice to run a successful construction business from two long-term industry professionals: Wade Carpenter, a construction CPA, and Stephen Brown, a construction bond agent. Each host has unique, but complementary views and advice from each of their 30+ years in the contracting industry. Their goal is to promote healthy, thought-provoking discussions and tips for running a better, more profitable, and successful company. Subscribe for new insights and discussion every week. Visit ContractorSuccessForum.com to view all episodes and find out more.
Contractor Success Forum
Master Contractor Leverage: Stop Struggling, Build a Stronger Business
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ℹ ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Are you working harder than ever but still hitting a wall?
In this episode, Wade Carpenter and Stephen Brown break down why brute force alone won't scale your construction business — and what will.
You'll learn how to identify the bottlenecks holding your company back, buy back your time as an owner, use financial leverage to stop taking bad contracts, build systems that run without you, and harness AI the right way.
Real leverage combines people, process, cash flow, and technology. This episode shows you how.
⌚️ Key moments in this episode:
- 00:00 The Stuck Lug Nut Lesson
- 01:04 Hard Work Ceiling
- 04:56 Find the Bottleneck
- 07:14 Buy Back Time
- 08:24 Delegate and Outsource
- 10:44 Cash Flow Leverage
- 13:10 Systems and Processes
- 15:52 AI for Automation
- 17:54 Humans vs AI
- 20:26 Combine Leverage Flywheel
- 22:27 Wrap Up and Next Steps
The Contractor Profit Blueprint is a complete guide that breaks down exactly how to identify where your money's going and start keeping more of it. This isn't theory. It's the same framework I use with contractors I work with every single day.
Head to profitfirstconstruction.com/blueprint to download your free copy.
Stop working for free. Let's get you keeping what you've earned.
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Wade Carpenter, CPA, CGMA | CarpenterCPAs.com
Stephen Brown, Bonding Expert | SuretyAnswers.com
[00:00:00]
Wade Carpenter: Have you ever had a lug nut that absolutely would not move? When I was younger, I was trying to [00:00:05] change a tire, and somebody had apparently tightened those lug nuts with the strength of [00:00:10] an angry gorilla.
I pulled, I pushed, I bounced on the tire iron, and [00:00:15] nothing. Then I slid a piece of pipe over the handle, made it longer, and the nut [00:00:20] broke loose almost effortlessly. I didn't get stronger, I got [00:00:25] leverage, and that may be exactly what your company is missing.
This is the Contractor [00:00:30] Success Forum. I'm Wade Carpenter with Carpenter Company CPAs, alongside Stephen Brown with McDaniel-Whitley [00:00:35] Bonding and Insurance.
And Stephen, I know many of our listeners are some of the hardest-working [00:00:40] people on the planet, yet sometimes it seems they just can't break that [00:00:45] glass ceiling that keeps holding them back.
Do you ever see that in business?
Stephen Brown: I [00:00:50] think your analogy to leverage and using that leverage to get that lug I mean, did you heat [00:00:55] that nut up with a blowtorch first? Slipping that pipe at the end and giving yourself extra [00:01:00] leverage, how many people haven't done that on a stuck water main valve, at their house?
[00:01:05] Leverage is a great concept for us to talk about, because here we're talking about [00:01:10] construction company growth, right?
How you gonna use leverage in describing that?
Wade Carpenter: [00:01:15] Yeah. I see so many contractors start off as a one-man band. Maybe they work [00:01:20] for a great company and they know construction inside and out, and they had the infrastructure behind [00:01:25] them, and they jump out in business and they're having to wear all the hats.
They're on the job all [00:01:30] day and doing paperwork all night, estimates and bids and trying to keep up with accounting, and [00:01:35] they run themselves ragged and they never feel like they're getting anywhere. So that's what I'm [00:01:40] talking about.
Stephen Brown: It's a fact of life. You want to start a new construction company and you're gonna [00:01:45] be wearing a lot of hats before you start generating the profits to afford the extra [00:01:50] support you need.
Wade Carpenter: Yeah. And, like I said, it's not just when you start up, it's a progression. I look [00:01:55] at my own self, I started off like 26 years ago, and even though I knew what I [00:02:00] was doing and I knew how to run all these different hats, I didn't actually think about [00:02:05] okay, how do I get leverage?
This is some of the problems I've seen in contractors [00:02:10] as well, is it's taken me a while to like, you know, I don't want to turn loose of payroll. I don't [00:02:15] want them seeing the books or stuff like that.
And for a contractor, being that [00:02:20] one-man band gets in the way of your growth.
That's where I'm wanting to go with this. How do we get [00:02:25] that leverage so we can move beyond this one-man band, basically that [00:02:30] cycle that we're in sometimes?
Stephen Brown: You know, It's interesting you say that. On a side note about [00:02:35] payroll, I read yesterday about a lot of younger folks are going out there on social media and advertising [00:02:40] what they're getting paid. I know that's a big no-no in a lot of organizations.
You start [00:02:45] comparing salaries, you're gonna get fired. Anyway, I didn't mean to take us off [00:02:50] track. Go ahead, Wade.
Wade Carpenter: It's just a trap. A contractor, they land some more [00:02:55] work, and what they they feel like, " Okay, I gotta get to this point." They work harder [00:03:00] and instead of feeling like they're getting successful, they spend their nights and evenings and [00:03:05] they think that just brute force, just like that, just keep pounding on that tire [00:03:10] is gonna eventually break it free.
It's a tough thing to do. And so, you know, when you're [00:03:15] trying to wear all these hats, it seems like you can't ever get flowing. So--
Stephen Brown: [00:03:20] In your analogy, the nut is the business that you're trying to grow, and the [00:03:25] person putting the force on the nut with the lever is the construction [00:03:30] company owner. And you can do it the hard way or you can do it the easy way with some [00:03:35] leverage.
Wade Carpenter: The problem is, as I said in the intro, contractors are some of the hardest working people I've [00:03:40] ever met. Maybe you increase your revenue, but you're still killing [00:03:45] yourself. And, hard work may get you started, but it does not scale if you don't [00:03:50] look at ways to get leverage.
And that's my point is, there's a lot of different [00:03:55] ways to talk about leverage. It may be essential that you're bootstrapping everything and you're [00:04:00] just working nights and weekends and all that stuff, but it can't be sustainable.
A lot of [00:04:05] the owners are the most important people, and if you can't take a vacation, if you can't [00:04:10] stop and your business stops, that's a problem.
There is some kind of ceiling on how much [00:04:15] one person can do. A lot of times growth will compound some of that stuff. We talk about it all [00:04:20] the time, the cash flow issues and, more debt and all that stuff. If you're on a job site, you try to [00:04:25] carry bricks one by one and you don't have a wheelbarrow, that's gonna take a lot more trips.
Stephen Brown: [00:04:30] And a lot of times with a new construction company owner, you can't see the forest through the trees. You're so tired [00:04:35] and you're working so hard, you're wearing so many hats. I would definitely say, why not [00:04:40] just start thinking about who you need and what you need from a leverage standpoint [00:04:45] before you get started?
And are you taking the time to do that now?
Wade Carpenter: Yeah, I think a lot of people [00:04:50] don't. I guess to get beyond that, how do we start finding the time? [00:04:55] The leverage? I guess what I would say is, first you gotta figure out, identify those [00:05:00] things, the constraints that are holding a business owner back. I know I preach constraint theory all the [00:05:05] time, but I truly believe in it.
So every company, no [00:05:10] matter what level they're at, they have something limiting that next stage of growth [00:05:15] and finding that is the first step, I would say.
Stephen Brown: Okay.
Wade Carpenter: Whether it is the cash flow or [00:05:20] estimating or, maybe you're doing all the project management yourself, the [00:05:25] administrative capacity... The accounting side, we put that on the back burner and we wish we had [00:05:30] better job costing, but we don't really take the time to do that, or we don't have the [00:05:35] capacity in place to do it. We don't have the funds to go hire some [00:05:40] $150,000 CFO.
That's why, a lot of times we come in where we can [00:05:45] do that 30 to 50% cheaper, give you a proper back office and give you some [00:05:50] leverage. I know that sounds self-serving, but it's just one example of, what [00:05:55] is the point that you need to work on to move forward? So I think it's finding [00:06:00] that bottleneck first.
Stephen Brown: Finding that bottleneck, I guess is kinda hard if you are that [00:06:05] bottleneck. Trying to figure out what it is that's slowing down your growth and speeding up your [00:06:10] growth, what's causing you the most stress. One thing I see contractors all the time they can't [00:06:15] define stress, because each person's level of stress is different, and how [00:06:20] they control that stress.
But to me, stress is not worrying [00:06:25] about things that you shouldn't be controlling. It's using leverage [00:06:30] to get through the situation in a better way, a smarter way.
You know in that expression that [00:06:35] you can work harder or you can work smarter. Are you working smarter? Are you working the [00:06:40] smartest way you can work?
Who can tell you that besides maybe your accountant, your bonding [00:06:45] agent, your other financial board of directors? Who would you trust to tell you that? Your spouse? Your [00:06:50] partner, if you have a partner, of course.
Wade Carpenter: Yeah. I see it all the time. A contractor has run [00:06:55] several multimillion-dollar jobs when they had their team behind them. And it's just like a garden [00:07:00] hose. You could have all capacity and water pressure, but you got a kink in the line, only so [00:07:05] much can flow through that hose when you got the kink.
And that's where, how do we get [00:07:10] past those constraints that are holding them back?
Stephen Brown: How do we?
Wade Carpenter: Where [00:07:15] I started going with this was, can we buy back the owner's time? If they could be running bigger jobs or [00:07:20] know how do we buy that time back?
There's a lot of ways we can do that. It's not just [00:07:25] hiring people. I want to maybe think about some of those things that we're talking about [00:07:30] here. Maybe it's hiring the right person or, we just did one on joint [00:07:35] ventures. Maybe we are doing parts of a job we shouldn't be doing. And, [00:07:40] maybe that's a joint venture with somebody.
Maybe the owner is really good at reconciling their [00:07:45] own bank account, but maybe they shouldn't be reconciling their bank account. So that's where I [00:07:50] talk to a lot of times what could you do with another couple of hours? If we recover this [00:07:55] time, could you reinvest in sales?
Could you reinvest in leadership and teaching [00:08:00] your project managers to run a project like you would run it? Make some sense?
Stephen Brown: [00:08:05] Absolutely.
Wade Carpenter: A lot of times we all forget, yeah, we're the owner of the team, but [00:08:10] they should be the quarterback and they should be calling the plays. They shouldn't be the one just [00:08:15] saying, "I'm gonna run the ball myself all the time." They gotta remember they got somebody to [00:08:20] pass to, they got somebody to hand off to.
Anyway, some other examples. If you got the [00:08:25] owner chasing down receipts or entering bills, running their payroll, reconciling. How can [00:08:30] we delegate some of these tasks? Maybe they didn't want anybody seeing their credit card bill, [00:08:35] whatever. I see that kind of stuff.
How can we delegate stuff like that to get [00:08:40] relief? Delegating responsibility, maybe you really wanted to make sure that invoice [00:08:45] was right, but are you the one that has to send it out the door?
Stephen Brown: Now, if that makes sense. [00:08:50] What about, say you've got a contract you're considering and you want to send it to your attorney. [00:08:55] Why not, if you subscribe to a closed AI system, couldn't you scan that [00:09:00] contract and let AI look for certain things that you tell it to look for? For example, [00:09:05] pay provisions and hold harmless language.
And then you fine-tune that [00:09:10] before you send it to your attorney, so your attorney you're using AI to do some [00:09:15] heavy lifting for you and save you some money.
Also the educational curve. What a [00:09:20] great curve you have on education by having AI specifically look for [00:09:25] the things that you have questions about.
But when you're talking about delegating, and you [00:09:30] need people and you need resources, first thing that popped into my mind too, is utilizing, [00:09:35] say, Carpenter and Company CPAs to help get your books in order and help you do the accounting on [00:09:40] this particular project that's killing you. Help you automate it. Sometimes you need an [00:09:45] expert to advise you on how to do that.
Wade Carpenter: We talked about that with the expertise, whether it's accounting, [00:09:50] but I've also seen people like, okay, they've spent a whole bunch of time figuring out how to do [00:09:55] contractor licensing in multiple states, when there are actually specialists out there that will [00:10:00] walk you through the process and take care of a lot of the points there and making sure you... I've seen [00:10:05] outsourced project management, stuff like that.
As you pointed out, getting expertise [00:10:10] or leverage can be, whether it's you're hiring labor or we're gonna get [00:10:15] to it in a minute, AI. I think AI is another great way of getting [00:10:20] leverage.
You don't build your own power plant because you need electricity.
How do we [00:10:25] use some of that other capacity? Somebody outsourcing the payroll, a payroll [00:10:30] company, that kind of stuff.
So again, real leverage is not just somebody that does the [00:10:35] bookkeeping, it's really more about, stop being the back office, stop holding [00:10:40] everybody up and you have to be there every Friday to cut checks and sign checks and do all that.
[00:10:45] And then let's think about financial leverage. What does that mean to you? I know I'm putting you on the [00:10:50] spot here, one of the things that holds people back we talk about all the time is cash flow. What does financial [00:10:55] leverage mean to you?
Stephen Brown: Negotiating the best terms for getting paid in a [00:11:00] way that minimizes your risk and helps you make the most money.
Wade Carpenter: Yeah, and like I said, I [00:11:05] still go back to cash flow and finding the right jobs and that kind of stuff, but we [00:11:10] recently did that episode, which I think we called it Cash Flow as a Weapon. Do we have to [00:11:15] accept the terms, or can we manip- I don't wanna say manipulate, but can we [00:11:20] negotiate?
Stephen Brown: Negotiate.
Wade Carpenter: Something?
Yeah. Sorry, wrong choice of terms, but, if you don't have the [00:11:25] cash, maybe you're not at the point of like being able to go get a line of credit or whatever it [00:11:30] is. Or maybe you should be taking extra time to see if maybe you're three years in business, [00:11:35] maybe the bank will start talking to you now about that.
That's just a sort of a rule of thumb that--
Stephen Brown: There were [00:11:40] some great ideas on that podcast, Wade about how to go back and [00:11:45] negotiate terms. If you're stressed and you're currently in a situation that's not working for [00:11:50] you, what could you go back to the owner to negotiate in order to take some of that [00:11:55] stress off?
Wade Carpenter: I enjoyed that episode actually myself. It's like stop letting it happen to you [00:12:00] and, thinking outside the box. But, cash is that, I guess I'd say call it shock [00:12:05] absorber. It's like, okay, if you have a downturn, whatever. It's not just people, it's [00:12:10] having the leverage on the cash to do what you need.
I hate to say having the cash to go [00:12:15] buy another excavator. That's not the point, but, when you do have extra [00:12:20] cash in reserve, I preach Profit First all the time, but, when you have [00:12:25] extra cash, you can sometimes negotiate better terms, where okay, we'll pay you [00:12:30] within 15 days if you will cut us a break on the prices, those kind of [00:12:35] things.
But turn that around, there's a contractor that doesn't have cash leverage, they have to [00:12:40] accept these poor contract terms. Heaven forbid they get in one of these like pay by the week [00:12:45] things that can kill a contractor.
But they end up taking low margin work because [00:12:50] they have to keep the cash flowing and they'll just keep going and it's a cycle. And then there's [00:12:55] things like make rushed hiring decisions at the last minute when they need somebody and they just [00:13:00] have to do it because they don't have the cash to get somebody onboarded properly to [00:13:05] do the project management or take the estimating, all that on.
Stephen Brown: Great points, Wade.
Wade Carpenter: All [00:13:10] right. Here's some other ideas, and some of these go into AI and that kind of stuff. Back when I started my [00:13:15] business, the E-Myth Revisited, Michael Gerber, it still resonates in my mind. But when you [00:13:20] got a process and systematize things, it makes the wheels turn so much easier.
If [00:13:25] there is something that you do all the time, that is a process that you can leverage. That's [00:13:30] another way to get leverage. A lot of times, they lose time by basically solving these [00:13:35] recurring problems as if they were new.
Maybe you do it every few months but you never [00:13:40] wrote it down, and then you have to relearn it, those kind of things.
If you have these processes, [00:13:45] it reduces the number of decisions you have to make. It allows you to be able to pass this off [00:13:50] to somebody else.
The goal is consistency, not you being a [00:13:55] bureaucrat. The goal is okay, you don't wanna turn this loose because you're the only one that can do [00:14:00] it. That's the only way you start to build that.
Obviously, if you've got it [00:14:05] documented, whether you're handing it to a person or AI or whatever that's another part of [00:14:10] leverage.
Stephen Brown: Yeah. I certainly understand, if I share with everybody what I know [00:14:15] and how I do it, I'm losing power, my power to make money because I'm [00:14:20] better than someone else. And at the same time, you're saying I got to give up some of [00:14:25] that control. I've got to give it up to move forward and how you manage it. Are you even thinking [00:14:30] that way right now?
Wade Carpenter: That's some things I'm actually doing right now in my business.
But, the standard [00:14:35] job kickoff for a contractor is exactly like something that we're trying to refine when [00:14:40] we have a new client come on board. We've got a process, but a lot of times I [00:14:45] was the one steering that process and I got to know the prospect and that kind of stuff.
But, [00:14:50] for the team to take that off my plate, what we did was actually split the team into five different [00:14:55] pods and said, "Okay, this is part one, part two, part three." Because our [00:15:00] onboarding is a lot more involved than say, a bookkeeper. But, for me to get out of that, I had to say, [00:15:05] "Okay, this is what I do," but also wanted the team to say, " What are the parts that you run [00:15:10] into?"
So I actually stepped out of that and I assigned everybody on the team to be on one of [00:15:15] these pods and say, "Okay, you walk through all this stuff without me," and I'm finding [00:15:20] blind spots that, it's second nature to me, but they didn't know.
Whether it's your [00:15:25] standard job kickoff or your change orders or however you do weekly billing [00:15:30] or onboarding a new employee, those kind of things.
Stephen Brown: Well, you're making your [00:15:35] organization stronger, Wade, because you're not that kink in the hose, and the [00:15:40] stress involved with onboarding, for example, a new employee. As others are seeing, as [00:15:45] they're educating and they're learning more about the way you think, the whole [00:15:50] organization's running better, isn't it?
Wade Carpenter: Yeah, absolutely. And, I think that is one of the great [00:15:55] steps to using technology and AI. That's where I wanted to take this. Yeah, you can [00:16:00] hire somebody, but if you got these processes in place, whether you can train a person [00:16:05] or, AI can do some amazing things now to reduce your work, and replicate what you [00:16:10] do.
A lot of people are still playing with AI and thinking ChatGPT, and I [00:16:15] just put something in ChatGPT and answer a question. That doesn't move the ball forward.
For years [00:16:20] I've studied, how do I automate things? There's Zapier, and then there's robotic process [00:16:25] automation and, then make.com and n8n. And now it's almost stupid simple [00:16:30] to say, ChatGPT or Claude, "This is what I do. How can you help me do that?"
[00:16:35] I do the same thing with the processes. I will sit there and dictate, "This is my [00:16:40] processes," and have ChatGPT just say, "Ask me some questions. How do I do a [00:16:45] bid? And, if I'm not clear, just continually grill me on this so that this is [00:16:50] my estimation process.
This is how I bid and look up prices.
And [00:16:55] so that's the kind of thing that I think a contractor, that's how they get the leverage to start [00:17:00] moving beyond themselves and moving beyond the promise of AI doing all this stuff and [00:17:05] thinking ChatGPT isn't really doing anything more than it ever did.
It's just answering [00:17:10] my questions a little faster.
Stephen Brown: I think that's great. When you're talking about how you're using [00:17:15] AI to push you to define your steps, how you do things, you're [00:17:20] using it as a source to refine what you're thinking in your process. I think [00:17:25] about, you could use AI also as a customer relationship management tool, [00:17:30] because how many times are you afraid to really survey your customers to see what they [00:17:35] really think about you and your team?
You could use AI, the same source, by pushing those [00:17:40] questions and trying to make it better before you start really getting into wanting to know [00:17:45] how your customers think you're handling their business.
Wade Carpenter: Oh, I think that's a great point, honestly. AI [00:17:50] is great like you said, capturing the knowledge, eliminating some of the repetitive things we do. [00:17:55] It definitely can help a smaller team, but, this just perfect example of what AI can't [00:18:00] really do is the human element.
And that's where I keep preaching to my team like, "Well, yeah, you can [00:18:05] use AI all day long, and maybe it's transactional stuff," but, if we're using AI to [00:18:10] say, "Okay, we need to follow up. We need to make sure things are done right."
And [00:18:15] so to the extent you can, like project management taking this to the construction world, we're [00:18:20] trying to say, "How can we give better service?" And that kind of stuff.
For our contractors okay, did [00:18:25] we follow up with the sub? Those kind of things. And some of that probably could be [00:18:30] done. Does the material supplier care if a bot sent out an email saying, "What's the status of [00:18:35] this order?" I don't think so.
Stephen Brown: No. But I tell you what really ticks people off [00:18:40] and ticks me off too, is when AI pretends to be human. As a human, I think we'll fight that [00:18:45] forever. What a horrible business model it is to get a phone call that said, "Hey Stephen, I'm your [00:18:50] AI assistant. Hey my name's Alice, how you doing? Hey, listen, I'm glad I caught you. How are [00:18:55] things going? Oh, I'm an AI assistant."
And then I'm just hanging up and I'm like, "Gosh they tried to [00:19:00] sucker me again."
Wade Carpenter: Oh, no I totally agree, and that's precisely why I said, the [00:19:05] human element is what we're preaching, and we are not gonna be doing bots replying to our [00:19:10] clients. But it's one thing that--
Stephen Brown: You cannot solve a problem in the field with [00:19:15] AI. It's experience that's gonna get the job done. Who knows? AI might help. It might [00:19:20] have a solution, just like YouTube, right?
I'll never forget the first time I [00:19:25] changed a fuel pump on my car that was located behind my backseat from a YouTube video. [00:19:30] Did not tell me to depressurize the system before I unhooked the... And it [00:19:35] shot gas all inside the car and in my face, and I was like, okay. Then I looked at another [00:19:40] YouTube later, and it was like, " Hey, by the way, don't forget to depressurize the..." Okay. So first of [00:19:45] all, there's experience involved.
But I like your points about leverage and using AI, Wade, and it [00:19:50] seems so important to me. And I tell the folks in my office, "No matter how hard you work or whatever you [00:19:55] do, you can do something better. You can do something more efficiently, and you can provide more [00:20:00] service to your customers." That's what you can do better than AI. That's what humans can [00:20:05] always do better than AI, because we have that divine spark that allows us to do [00:20:10] things that AI can't do.
Wade Carpenter: As we said, AI is a great power tool, but [00:20:15] it's only useful when you know what you're building. We could do a whole episode on this obviously: [00:20:20] leveraging it beyond just asking it questions. But, how do we get [00:20:25] beyond that kind of stuff?
I think the point of this was how do we get leverage in our business? How do we get [00:20:30] beyond ourselves? Because so many people have been chasing, AI came out like November [00:20:35] '22, when ChatGPT started rolling out and, maybe you've been searching for that [00:20:40] forever, but you're still at this problem of you don't have leverage.
And to [00:20:45] get there, I think it's not one particular thing. You gotta combine all this leverage we're [00:20:50] talking about because there's people on the YouTube saying all the time that it's like, "Okay I've got a [00:20:55] one-man business. AI does everything."
I think a lot of that is hype, and unless you're selling [00:21:00] something on Etsy or something, I'm not sure that works in construction. But, you [00:21:05] know, the point is no single form of leverage is enough.
You've got teams [00:21:10] without systems, you got technology without clean process to go with it. You got [00:21:15] growth without cash, you got cash without good management.
The strongest [00:21:20] businesses really combine all these things together. The piece of people, the processes, the technology, the [00:21:25] expertise, the financial strength. That's how that flywheel starts turning. Basically, [00:21:30] it may not happen overnight, but the more you leverage you get, the more it frees [00:21:35] you up, the more that flywheel can turn a little faster.
That's my point.
Stephen Brown: [00:21:40] Great point. Great point.
Wade Carpenter: Like I said, I know this one's getting a little longer and there was a couple [00:21:45] other points I was gonna make, but I think, you may find some things that [00:21:50] fits and starts and, you may just like in the E-Myth, I keep going back to that [00:21:55] book, and the stories. The owner of the business hired somebody and then that person left. They [00:22:00] became so dependent on a person who left.
The point was they didn't have all the systems [00:22:05] in place to do it. You gotta combine all these things, and it may be fits and starts, [00:22:10] and, set backs along the way. But getting beyond you, as the [00:22:15] owner that's the point.
If you're ever gonna scale this thing, you're ever gonna take home the [00:22:20] money you deserve, that's where I want you to take this to heart maybe and start thinking about [00:22:25] getting leverage in the business. That was my point.
What are your thoughts, takeaways?
Stephen Brown: Exactly yours. We [00:22:30] want all our listeners to work smarter not harder, and have some peace and [00:22:35] joy in operating their business, to have a sense of accomplishment of doing more [00:22:40] than you thought you could do on your own with the help of others and other resources.
These [00:22:45] are great points, Wade. I hope our listeners enjoyed this, and I'm glad they took the time to [00:22:50] listen.
Wade Carpenter: Yeah, if you're still with us, we certainly appreciate it, and I know I felt like I could keep going. I'm [00:22:55] sorry if this one went a little longer than normal. But I just, I get passionate about talking about this, [00:23:00] because I see so many contractors that when they finally get past one hurdle, it's [00:23:05] nice to see some of them take off and see how they did it. Somebody that studies business I love to see [00:23:10] that in a contractor.
So if you're still with us, we appreciate you hanging out with us for a little while, [00:23:15] and we do this every single week. We would appreciate it if you would like, share, [00:23:20] subscribe, and share this with a contractor.
If you have some thoughts about what we talked about, [00:23:25] getting leverage, where you're struggling, what's holding you back, put them down in the comments below.
We'd love to see your [00:23:30] comments. We do this every single week. We will see you on the next show.
Thanks.