Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Turn your Business into a Wealth Building Machine - Interview with Antonio from the Consistency Wins Podcast
87 Plays3 months ago
In this episode of The Better Contractor, host Brent Oberlink teams up with “The Professor” Travis to interview entrepreneur and financial strategist Antonio Vaglica, co-founder of GFG Solutions and host of the Consistency Wins podcast. From protecting your assets and trimming tax bills to building a sellable business that doesn’t eat up your free time, Antonio delivers the inside track on turning day-to-day contracting into a true wealth machine. If you’ve ever wondered how to maximize your business tax structure, use real estate to supercharge your profits, or ensure your company thrives without you in the driver’s seat, this conversation is your roadmap to consistent, long-term success.
#TheBetterContractor #FinancialFreedom #AssetProtection #TaxStrategies #WealthBuilding #BusinessGrowth #ContractorLife #RealEstateInvesting #Entrepreneurship #BusinessTips #ScaleYourBusiness #Entrepreneur #Entrepreneurship #TheBetterContractorPodcast
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction of Guests and Episode Overview
00:00:13
Speaker
fro Welcome back to another edition of the Better Contractor. Today, I'm joined by my co-host Travis, the professor, and also Antonio with GFG Solutions and also the Consistency Wins podcast. So today's episode is going to be fire.
00:00:29
Speaker
Antonio is quick. He's Italian. He's from New York and he will spit a lot of fire in a short amount of time. So you contractors looking to grow your business, improve your business, this is going to be your episode. but We'll get right
Antonio's Journey from Baseball to Business
00:00:39
Speaker
into it. Antonio, tell us a little bit about yourself. I know you've got a little bit of a background in sports turned into business. So I think that's kind of unique and there's definitely some lessons.
00:00:50
Speaker
that can be taken from one avenue to the other. So tell us a little bit about that. Sure. You want the long version of the longer version? just Yeah. So, so to you know, I'll take you back five, six years from now, basic, but five, six years from here, grew up in Long Island, New York.
00:01:05
Speaker
ah was the son of a you know a blue collar family. ah My dad was a general contractor, always made tons of money, but never turned that into wealth. So we always grew up super privileged, but then every year the winter would come, jobs would slow down, wouldn't manage cash flow well, and then we'd suffer ah you know the consequences of that. But I always say that my only problem is that I didn't have problems, because all he cared about was you know making sure that we were comfortable in life. And the way that I was able to get uncomfortable through my life was through experiences with baseball, because baseball was literally you know Plan A, B, and C for me. My desire was to play professional baseball. That was a real thing. I went to to boarding school for high school to play baseball, eventually came back to Long Island to finish out college sports. And right before the draft, COVID happened and made that decision for me to to not go down the the lens of professional baseball.
00:01:57
Speaker
And I got hit with a massive identity crisis at that point of not knowing who I was because I pretty much wrapped up my entire identity and that of a baseball player. Didn't really know anything else. And so with that, that sparked a massive six to eight month depression of not knowing who I was.
00:02:13
Speaker
and until I really decided to take ownership of my life and really understand that, hey, even though that this grand vision didn't end up happening, there's so much things that I learned and I'm still a valuable human and I can be a massive resource to a lot of people and maybe entrepreneurship could be that
Networking and Business Growth through Podcasting
00:02:27
Speaker
vehicle. So long story short, I got into sales, got into the world of of financial services.
00:02:32
Speaker
And in the world of financial services and sales, it sounds cool. It's not really cool at all. You're an advisor selling life insurance and investments to your friends and family and anyone that will ever listen to you. And when you're 23 years old at the time, no one wants to listen to you talk about money when you have none of it in your bank account.
00:02:48
Speaker
So initially it was very hard, but i was I was gaining a lot of traction just because I was using ah you know the law of large numbers and just getting my at bats in baseball talk. And through that, I reconnected with my business partner today who I actually went to high school with. He was in the same industry, but with different ah with a different company. And we launched a podcast, something similar to how you guys run this right now, co-hosting it interview based. And we started to leverage that podcast to get successful business owners onto the podcast because we so selfishly couldn't afford their mentorship.
00:03:17
Speaker
So we were getting using it as a way to get resourceful, to get our questions answered, but also giving it as a platform for them to for us to add value in their world to get their message out there. So it was a very mutually beneficial relationship. Long story short, over time, we started to implement all the things that they were telling us to do, and we became valuable enough to bring a value proposition to them offline.
Focusing on Consulting for Contractors
00:03:39
Speaker
That sparked into a ton of joint ventures, partnerships,
00:03:43
Speaker
ah client relationships to where we quit our jobs, started an agency, and those joint ventures were sending us so much traffic that we built a multi-seven figure business just on the backbone of that podcast.
00:03:55
Speaker
Then as financial services go, as I'm sure a lot of people listening to this, if you're in the contractor space, you may be making a ton of money, ah but you don't really fully understand how to turn that into wealth. And the first place you might go is like go to your CPA or go to your financial advisor. And all of those people are giving you advice based on what makes them money or what, how ah like the little amount of time they have to spend. And ultimately they're giving you biased advice that ultimately isn't benefiting you because your best investment is typically your business.
00:04:23
Speaker
and and putting money back into ah scale and growth on that side. So I sold off that practice because I hated the concept of having to sell specific products to get paid. And we launched a consulting company that only gives advice for the advice sake only, specifically for service-based professionals a lot in the contractor world.
00:04:41
Speaker
really helping you create an ecosystem of all of your professionals that are in alignment for the sake of you growing your business to where you only have to sit in the seat of focusing on generating more revenue and building your team while we do all the other stuff that actually translate that into the wealth. So hopefully that wasn't too long winded, but that's kind of what the story looked like over the last five, six years.
Asset Protection and Tax Strategies
00:05:00
Speaker
Yeah. No, that's awesome. Um, so you do work with quite a few contractors. It sounds like, yes, tons of service space. Yeah. Yep. So obviously you don't want to give away your stuff for free. I give them all the way for free. I'll get everything away for free today. Nope. No problem. Okay. Cool. Cool. Um, so what is, I'm just curious, what is one of the main issues that you see when a contractor comes to you? What's like one of the top or top two things that you see that they're doing wrong?
00:05:24
Speaker
Typically, a contractor, I'm sure you guys talk about all the time, is the bottleneck to their own business. ah like The founder is typically the bottleneck, but ah the founder is also the driver of most of the business because it's a big relationship game. right so if If I can find out what the largest revenue drivers are and what my magic is, what is something that I can do best that no one else can do better than me in this specific lane, and then delegate everything else to to an extent,
00:05:49
Speaker
Now I can focus on generating a lot more revenue and profitability for the company. And ultimately, your job is to create more jobs. That's your job as an entrepreneur, is to feed more families but through entrepreneurship. I'm a huge believer in that. And if you don't believe in that, maybe go work for someone else because we want to be contributable to the world. So with that,
00:06:06
Speaker
How can I sit in my zone of genius and learn that through potentially personally developing, listening to podcasts like this to really understand my zone of genius, to then hire and delegate jobs around that and scale this company into an enterprise over just a job?
00:06:20
Speaker
Okay, asset protection. What do you guys do in that regard? I'm just kind of curious. So lets yeah, asset protection, I'll keep it very ah simple toward in the contractor lens, right? So for example, my business operates, you know, super profitable. Maybe we're making millions of dollars in revenue and we're operating anybody between like 10 to 20% margins. ah We're making a lot of money and maybe we decide to file as an S Corp. And maybe now that we're growing, we're buying some equipment and we're building, you know, we're buying cars and vehicles inside of the, ah inside of the business.
00:06:50
Speaker
If a single kind like if a a contract goes awry or a lawsuit happens or a workman's comp suit happens inside of your business or something like that, all of the assets inside of that business are now liable inside of that lawsuit. So the way that I want to translate asset protection is to create a situation to where no single catastrophic event could ever take your entire net worth down. So I basically operate my business as a cash machine where Everything else that I'm building outside of it, when I turn that high income into assets, those assets then get leased back to my company so that if my company was to ever get sued, those assets cannot get me named cannot be named. So for example, if I got to buy an excavator or mowers and things like that inside of my business, I'll put it in its own equipment LLC and have a lease agreement between my operating business and that business so that what I actually need to run that business, which is the equipment, is safe inside of a lawsuit and I could start a new company if I needed to to actually fulfill my business.
00:07:44
Speaker
Okay, so you're right basically looking at two couldtu companies. One would be an operating company that actually performs the service but doesn't really have any assets. The other one would be basically all the assets simply leasing it back to that company. Do you ever recommend leasing the other companies as well or just lease solely back to your operating company? You could. If there's a market for it, yeah, 100%. If it's needed, like while your piece of equipment doesn't mean need to be met, I would rather service the debt somewhere else if if somebody else will pay for it.
00:08:11
Speaker
ah so Basically, the way that I look at it is like if you draw a line on your left side, you have your operations side of things where my operational companies that are my active revenue generating businesses, I want to optimize for profitability and tax strategy. I want to make maximum profit and I want to pay the least amount in taxes as possible. and We can do that without having to run all the tax strategy through the business.
00:08:31
Speaker
So I want to make sure that my business is profitable so I can maybe one day sell it and also not pay as much in taxes. And then when I turn all that income into wealth via assets, I want to focus on protection because those assets are a lot more passive and over time that contributes to overall net worth. So that's where I want to make sure that I'm focused on protection, real good LLCs, holding company structures, trusts, insurances, all that good stuff.
00:08:53
Speaker
Yeah. And make sure you guys listening and keep those companies is totally separate, independently ran. correct don't Do not. come treat it with Exactly. A lot of people unfortunately create them and then co-meagling them and they are almost non-existent. But I'm curious in that structure where a lot of you guys listening are very familiar as you are Antonio with section 179. So obviously it's a way to write off, uh, you know, take a, you know, super fast appreciation.
00:09:21
Speaker
How do you handle that in this situation where the operating company is the one producing probably majority of the income, that section 179 would then happen inside of the leasing company? That's the beauty of of how the US tax code works, is that all of that income is all always ultimately going to file through a file flo sorry flow through to one tax return, which is going to be your 1040 tax return to anyone, and for any of the nerds out there.
00:09:45
Speaker
ah With that, I can now take the depreciation via section 179 in that other LLC and then leverage it against the active income that flows through to my my operating company, ah that flows through from my operating company. So now I have income coming in from that operating company. I have depreciation coming in from the other company, those offset, but the company stays profitable and the depreciation happens elsewhere.
00:10:06
Speaker
So there's so many ways to go about it if we do it correctly. I go one step further and I like I'm never going to suggest people buy equipment just to get tax write offs. Here's where a large piece of some contractors may go wrong. We don't tax plan throughout the year. We call our CPA in December.
00:10:21
Speaker
And they're like, hey, last minute, you got any equipment you can buy. And a lot of times we take on debt to finance that equipment. Great, you got a large ah large tax deduction, but you probably didn't actually need that equipment as a true investment into your company. So it's not adding max value. Those payments to your debt service are no longer deductible in the second year. So now you're just losing cashflow, even though you got a tax deduction in year one.
00:10:42
Speaker
What I do is flip Section 179 out its head. and I create leasing structures with equipment and with equipment companies to where if I could finance equipment, I can still leverage Section 179 to get the massive deductions, but now I can create more of like an Airbnb or real estate effect where I'm getting rental income for that. Now I get the best of both worlds where I only have to put a small amount down.
00:11:04
Speaker
It's typically commercial debt, so it doesn't show up on my debt to income or my my credit report. I get the massive depreciation and I still get rental income, so I'm no longer servicing the debt myself. and If I need the equipment, I have it if I need it. that That's you know something to where we start to leverage that.
00:11:18
Speaker
I like that because a lot of contractors do exactly what you said at the beginning where they're tax planning at your end, they go and buy a bunch of equipment. Like you said, they may or may not need, um which hurts there. But then even if you go to a bank and ask for a loan, but your debt service is too high, obviously it's going to hurt you later when maybe you do need that loan. So that's a great point. Travis, what kind of questions you got, man?
00:11:42
Speaker
i'm absorbing ah so Where do the trusts come in, in the strategy? Sure. so trust This is ah one of the most common misconceptions in the world of like financial planning, finance, all that type of stuff. you'll like You'll hear it on
Cash Flow and Resourcefulness Strategies
00:12:00
Speaker
TikTok and Instagram, like, oh, put the money in the trust and you'll never have to pay taxes or things like that. Anyone that tries to tell you that you don't pay taxes by putting money in a trust is likely committing fraud.
00:12:09
Speaker
Now, you can get away with it if you don't get audited and you technically, you know you did the right thing. ah But if you want to go through tried and true tested things, trusts are typically for asset protection structure. And that gets involved as we continuously go up the chain and graduate into something that justifies bringing the trust. I typically say if you're going to bring an irrevocable trust into the picture,
00:12:31
Speaker
minimum one to two million of exposed equity, whether that's equity in real estate, cash, brokerage accounts, things like that, because the trust is going to cost you 20, 30 grand to set up, as well as a couple grand a year in in ah upkeep. I'd rather optimize initially at like the initial base LLC level and the insurance and contract level, then graduate towards more like a holding company structure, and then graduate towards towards the trust effect over time.
00:12:56
Speaker
That's good. That's good. That's something a lot of people don't look at is trust at all, especially in the and contract world. So what, um, I mean, it kind of ties into to one of the the first questions, but, um, what's the most overlooked or or unique strategy here for the last couple of years? And then I guess two questions, um, what are contractors, what are business business owners leaving on the table, uh, as far as what should they be focusing on creative ways? But then two is,
00:13:24
Speaker
We did have just that we did have an election interest rates and everything that are are being looked at as potentially coming down. A lot of volatility. People think it's the end of the world. People think it's a dawn of a new world. Any advice going into the next year with such uncertainty and then setting that up for subsequent years.
00:13:46
Speaker
Sure. So i'm I'm assuming I'm talking to to founders that are listening to this podcast, owners of the company. Resourcefulness is recession proof. You investing in yourself and gaining skills that are tried and true is recession proof and will last any type of administration, whether it was Trump or Kamala, all those types of things. It didn't matter because if you're resourceful enough, you'll be able to pivot.
00:14:08
Speaker
And that's where what we've seen over the last couple of years. The market was consolidating and weeding out people that thought business was easy. Because during COVID, interest rates were virtually zero. People got started businesses, and everyone made millions of dollars out of thin air. And then all of it the music stopped. And then people were struggling. But the people that were actually good were doubling down, and rather, whether the storm or thrive through that time. So a couple of things that are tried and true. And if you're listening to this, write these three things down. Because these are these are true in any economy.
00:14:35
Speaker
ah One, we want to make sure that we're investing. and This is how you invest in in yourself and your business to be your best rate of return, which i'm in my opinion, it should be your best rate of return and most predictable. That doesn't mean that you know the markets don't have their play their place and stuff. But one,
00:14:49
Speaker
ah Build liquidity. Stack up liquidity. Saving cash is so overlooked now because everyone's like, oh, I got to get money in the market. I got to invest in this. Saving money is so over underrated. Just save money, and then eventually we'll get that to work to make sure that you're earning yields on that cash and all those types of things. But the person that has cash, especially in an environment where credit's still tight and banks are still pretty tight, you're going to be able to buy market share at a discount because advertising's becoming a little bit cheaper now that the election's over.
00:15:19
Speaker
ah Your competitors may not have built built liquidity over the years and there might be going out of business. So now you can buy out their book of business, pretty cheap as well. You can hire more people, you can hire their employees. All those types of things happen when you have a war chest built up. And over time we can get really you know cool and crafty around where you build up those liquidity sources. It could come in the form of lines and credit, all that cool stuff.
00:15:40
Speaker
Two, reduce your fixed operating expenses as much as you can. Get very lean on how your business operates fixed, because it's very easy to stop variable cost. I can stop going out to dinner. I can stop you know ah cutting at advertising spend, things like that. But I can't get out of a Ferrari payment or a mortgage payment that quickly.
00:15:59
Speaker
right So those types of things, you need to make sure that you're looking at it with a two to three year outlook. Because if you're going to finance for five, 10, 20, 30 years, you need to make sure that you're you know your scale's built in for that so you can weather storms. Because where most people go wrong is that they've inflated their lifestyle on the fixed side so deeply. And then the business takes a little bit of a short term dip. And now they're making business decisions because of their short term cashflow crunch personally. I want to separate myself from the business because I want my business to be an asset, not my baby over time.
00:16:28
Speaker
Three, avoid shiny objects. Right now is not the time to be buying things or investing in things that you don't know about. Double down on what you're good at because the market is going to reward you for doubling down on the things that you are an expert at. Focus on vertical integration inside of your company. How can I scale inside of it? Because over time, the floodgates are going to start opening to where people are going to want to buy your enterprises, especially in the world of home services. So that's my threefold approach that I think could work in any industry. I'm curious, when you mentioned cash flow earlier,
00:16:58
Speaker
How many contractors do you think that is their number one issue financially?
00:17:04
Speaker
i don't think like I think cashflow is more of the symptom and not the real issue. it's more of it a I tread more towards like an emotional side as an entrepreneur. I think it's a lot more of a like a scarcity to money and like almost a worthiness issue, which is crazy, but we all have it. It's like this level of imposter syndrome because as you start to grow, you don't feel like you're worthy of this cashflow, so you feel like you have to spend it or you just simply just stay ignorant to it.
00:17:28
Speaker
Because there's no point of like like, hey, I don't have to attend to this situation if i if I don't look at my numbers. But ultimately, your cash flow is the lifeblood of your business. So from a tactical lens, yes, your your cash flow is the number one most important thing in your business. Because if you don't have oxygen, you stop breathing and you die. And your cash flow in business is that oxygen.
00:17:47
Speaker
That's why I love ah you know home services, things like landscaping and and a lot of people that listen to the show, because there's a lot of repeat customers and repeat business. If I can predict my cashflow for years on end over a longer sales cycle, I can predictably invest back into my company. And ultimately, I get a larger multiple if I were to ever exit down the road as well. Yeah. No, that's good. um Earlier when you talked about cash on hand, it made me wonder, I had a conversation with a banker not too long ago And he was basically kind of saying that he thought the market, obviously, if you guys have been in business for a while, you you're you're familiar with lending 10 years ago, was a little bit easier than it is today. It was a little bit easier to get, you know, alone or whatever. He thinks it's going to continue to get even stricter. I was just curious your take on that. If you think it'll continue to tighten, or if you think that'll loosen some.
00:18:34
Speaker
I think it'll continue to tighten for those that try and like cut corners. You know, that this is where if we can create the most optimal strategy where my business can show the most profit, I can show the most income but still pay the least amount in taxes, really good tax returns are things banks love. High levels of liquidity, good debt to income. So like if I'm investing in assets, those are going to go in LLC. So it's not going to impact my my personal debt to income because that's commercial debt, even if I'm personally guaranteeing it.
00:19:04
Speaker
I can leverage keeping my business super profitable and not writing off my entire lifestyle through the business, but then leverage my tax strategies outside of the business that still impact my taxable situation. So now I'm showing all the income, but also paying the least amount of taxes at the same time. The beautiful thing about home services, ah you know contracting world, all those types of things, if we're using depreciation a lot, depreciation can get added back to your income for the purposes of getting debt.
00:19:31
Speaker
So now I can show a bunch of income. Let's say I made a million dollars, but then I depreciated a million dollars through real estate equipment, whatever that looks like. I still made a million dollars in the lens of a banker, but I didn't pay any taxes on that money.
Advice for New Entrepreneurs
00:19:43
Speaker
So now I'm getting the best of both worlds in that exact situation. I love saving money in taxes. Cause now if I take the government out as a silent 40% partner in my business, that's 40% more in cashflow that I have to grow my business and hire more people. No, that's beautiful. Real estate.
00:19:59
Speaker
when you brought that up, it made me wonder, um, how much do you like? So you have and a contractor that's made it to a certain level, let's say, and he's looking to grow his wealth. Do you believe in using real estate and if so, kind of how What do you normally recommend? I love a real estate. We're buying five, 10 deals a week, whether it's us or with clients. And I love the creative finance landscape because that that takes the bank's pressure away. ah Pretty much everything that I said goes out the window when we're leveraging deals like the way I'm going to tell you, especially if you're a contractor, this is so cool because you can increase your net worth while also simultaneously saving money and taxes.
00:20:35
Speaker
so Slow me down if I'm getting too tactical. I'm also an Italian guy from New York, so slow me down just because I talk really fast regardless. Oh, it's perfect. So when you're a contractor, this is like a life hack because if you're working on residential, commercial properties, things like that, you are considered what's called a real estate professional, which means that you're working over 750 hours in the trade of real estate.
00:20:58
Speaker
Other people that consider that are like real estate brokers, those types of professionals, all those types of things. But when you're when you're in a trade like like you are as a contractor, you're participating in real estate. What that means is that if you buy real estate, even though real estate has these amazing cashflow benefits, ah you can have really good appreciation, you can potentially refinance, ah you know write off some of the mortgage interest, all that good stuff, what most people don't realize are the tax advantages that come along with buying real estate as well. Real estate technically loses money on paper in the form of depreciation for the taxes, the tax purposes.
00:21:32
Speaker
And when you're not a real estate professional and you're active and most of your money comes from income from your business, you can't leverage those losses from the the real estate against your other income because it's passive. But now that I'm a real estate professional, that unlocks the world of being able to do that no matter what. So that's the cheat code right there.
00:21:50
Speaker
so let's say Let's use an example. Let's say you bought a home for $1.2 million dollars and the the value of that land was $200,000. We're going to take the value of the land because land doesn't lose value. It it it doesn't depreciate. so What's called your tax basis is a million dollars. Even though you expect that property to go up in value, real estate historically goes up in value, that property technically loses value for the purposes of a tax return over 27.5 years.
00:22:19
Speaker
Divide 1 million by 27 and a half, you get around $36,000. That's what you can take as a loss against your other income for the purposes of taxes over the next 27 and a half years. But what we can do is accelerate that a little bit further and do what's called a cost segregation study.
00:22:36
Speaker
which allows us to go into the the property and identify pieces of that real estate that can get accelerated from a depreciation standpoint. So for example, like the rugs, the the carpets, the ah the tables, the the refrigerators, all those types of things, those go on five and 15 year schedules.
00:22:54
Speaker
About 30% of the value of the property goes on those five and 15 year property, and the rest stays on that 27 and a half. Anything under 20 years, you can actually take as a bonus in year one. So now, what was a $36,000 deduction in the first year became a $300,000 deduction in my first year.
00:23:14
Speaker
When I look at the value of my money over time, a tax deduction today is significantly more valuable than spreading it out over that that amount of time. That allows me to leverage against my other business income, still keep my business profitable, still keep me very bankable, and then also be able to to get the deduction. That allows me to buy more real estate, invest in more people because I don't have a tax bill looming in April.
00:23:37
Speaker
We do it creatively by taking the banks out of it because I find seller finance deals all the time. And seller finance is simply that the owner of that property owns the property outright. He becomes the bank. And so now this year we've been leveraging properties at 5% to 10% down payments in 4% to 5% interest rates as opposed to 20% to 25% down payments in 7% to 8% interest rates. Your deals underwrite so much better. Your tax value is the same exact in that example. But my cash out of pocket is so significantly less and my cash flows a lot better.
00:24:08
Speaker
So it's just all about getting creative and that's what we do because your job as a And this is not a like ah a plug to us or anything like that That's what but this is why I exist because your job as a home service professional and a contractor is To just focus on what you're good at and then let the other teams and let the nerds be the nerds and do it all For you so that you can just go focus on making money at what you're good at while other people make sure that it translates to wealth Somebody just jumping into the game ah whether it's a lateral move career pivot and they're starting a Entrepreneurship day one um versus you somebody younger coming out of college or high school starting their business. Obviously, number one on on their plate is to generate revenue, but are there things, strategies, things they should be thinking about now setting themselves up for success, strategies over the next one, three, five years that they should be implementing now as goals or
00:25:06
Speaker
structuring things that would help them. I would get a very like decent level understanding of accounting, just as an entrepreneur in general. Really understanding how how the numbers work in business. Know how to read your profit and loss statement. Know how to do your books. That doesn't mean that you're always going to be doing the books. You should outsource that stuff over time. But understanding how those those ah economics work. And then understanding what we call your unit level economics.
00:25:32
Speaker
if it's not going to work on a small scale in terms of like what I'm charging based on how much it costs me to deliver it and how much I want to make, it's not going to work on a larger scale. It's actually only going to lose you money even larger if you try and scale too quickly. So a lot of people, you know especially young guys that are trying to get into the business, they're just going based off what what they see on Instagram and TikTok and everyone's so successful and everyone's making a lot of money until you realize that if you're a contractor,
00:25:57
Speaker
you make a million dollars, you're only making a good contractor making 15, 20%. You're still fighting. You're still in the game. like like You need to get to really high revenue levels. You need to make sure that your jobs are estimated properly, your cost of goods sold or baked in there, and then ultimately what it costs for you to fulfill on a fixed expense aligns with your desired profit margin.
00:26:17
Speaker
So if I could go back and look at this, I'm 28 right now. I got into business when I was 23. If I knew how to understand a profit first approach first, I would be significantly more ahead than where I'm at right now to where you know right now we own a portfolio of eight companies. And now I now i run it this way where every single business we run based off of our desired profit margin first. So when I'm looking at a business, I bake in the desired profit margin that I want to have. I look up at the industry standard. like If you're a contractor, it's very unlikely that you should operate at 70% net profit margins. That's not like a realistic standard. But go a little bit higher than the traditional 8% to 10%, so you can bake in a buffer there. And then I build my entire allowable expenses around that desired profit margin so I can never go into the red.
00:27:02
Speaker
And now I have a allowable amount that I can make sure that I'm paying myself because that's very important so that I can get rewarded for the venture that I'm in and also reallocating towards investment into the company because that's what you're going to be doing for a long time ah you know throughout the the years.
00:27:16
Speaker
and then you know from an entrepreneurship ah you know philosophical standpoint, emotional standpoint, investing in yourself, especially as a young person. If you can really focus on you being the best investment and getting radical with your personal development and your networking skills, that transcends any business, in my opinion.
00:27:33
Speaker
And so if you can radically invest in your personal development, your income is a direct reflection on how much you're willing to invest in yourself. So the more I invest in myself, the more awesome things happen to where I meet this guy, and then they introduce me to Travis and Brent, and then I meet this person, that person listening to the podcast, and it has this really cool spiderweb effect that you're not going to see play out for five, 10 years. But you're constantly putting different irons in the fire, and it all works out over time. So just stay in the area. I can speak to that from the you know, networking thing is some of the groups I've been in the last five years, there's people I met that I had no intention of working with when I met them, didn't have a need. And then all of a sudden, five years later, you're like, man, I met so and so at that event, I think he's probably one of the best in that field, I'm going to contact him. And we've done that multiple times over the years. um So I think that's huge. I think like what you said earlier, if if I'm a brand new contractor just starting out,
00:28:27
Speaker
A lot of people are afraid to invest like they don't want to hire an attorney or they don't want to hire a CPA or someone like yourself because I, you know, I don't have the money yet. I'm not at that level yet. Um, luckily my wife went to law school. So we, while we were starting the business, so I was in that, you know, she was constantly in my ear saying, Hey, do this, do this, do this before you get started.
00:28:50
Speaker
So we did hire you know a CPA in an accountant year one, just to make sure that we had everything kind of set up as good as we possibly could to be able to be successful later. And I think that was part of our growth in the beginning was being able to grow quickly because we had a lot of these things in process. We didn't have some of the surprise tax issues.
00:29:12
Speaker
because we already had hired the CPA and they were already handling all that stuff for us. I see a lot of business owners fail. They didn't, you know, didn't file the taxes on time. They didn't realize they had to pay this tax or whatever it is. And all of a sudden they get hit with the tax bill later and like, Oh shit, now I got to pay this. And I didn't charge the customer for it. I have to do it. So, but then kind of further your other point. And we've talked a lot about this in the podcast over time. So many contractors because contracting is this low bid mentality,
00:29:42
Speaker
We think we all have to fight against each other nonstop and below bid instead of marketing yourself, you know, running your business. Like you said, profit first. That is key because none of us, a although we love doing what we do, none of us love doing it for free or at a loss. So I think especially you new guys, especially make sure you know, your costs of goods, all your financials, understand them very, very well, and then price yourself accordingly.
00:30:10
Speaker
Yep. Competition in the middle is actually fiercest. When you're pushing to be the best in the top of your market, the competition is actually less because less people are willing to go to take a risk on truly being the best. And so everyone's fighting for a spot of being mediocre. Just commit to being the best.
00:30:25
Speaker
It's a pretty simple concept, but much harder when you're thinking it like when you're in the game thinking it through. But that's why I'm so big on the personal development side. Because if you start to um like play in the arena and actually do the work, then read the books and start to leverage mentorship and podcasts, then it starts to relate a lot more than just philosophical books that you're reading that don't actually pertain to your life if you're not doing the work.
Building a Sellable Business
00:30:49
Speaker
so ah that There was an Elon Musk quote. I don't know where it was. but He's been interviewed and yeah he said, and it was rather rather recently. He goes, i um I do almost no market research going into it and like a venture. my My mentality is I'm going to build the best possible product and service out there. And if it's the best possible product and service, it's going to attract customers. So whether that's the right mentality or not, it seems to have worked out well for him. ah but
00:31:23
Speaker
but I just thought it it's counter to what most people would be, I guess advice would be given to you, but sort of in line with what you're just saying there, like, don't don't play for the middle. like I mean, he said he does no almost no market research. He just goes out and what's the best possible thing I can build? It goes and builds it. I think he's been pretty successful. I think it's fair to say. but i think is yeah Most net worth ah of all time of any human, like,
00:31:53
Speaker
Might be something to do it. i just I'm just not a huge believer in like trying to fight to stay in the middle. It's just boring. Even if you stay afloat, like what what good is it? What contribution is it doing for the world? ah just Just go for it and and try and maximize your potential and you'll be very surprised on what you see happens. Yeah. One thing we've not talked about so far is exit strategy. That's something I know a lot of people do not even think about.
00:32:15
Speaker
um Do you guys help with like mergers and acquisitions? Tell me a little bit what you guys do as far as getting out of the business or exiting. Yeah. So I would say over the last three years, I've been a part of around like a quarter billion dollars in transactions, a lot in the contractor space. It's been really fun. ah And that's a huge misconception of contractors. They don't think that they're building a sellable business and most of them are not, right? You are the founder and you're what makes the business thrive, but you're also the biggest bottleneck to that business. And so if I start to business build my business with the be the ability to sell,
00:32:49
Speaker
Every single business you ever go, like disclaimer, star, pause this thing, take note, every business that you ever build should be built to sell. That doesn't mean you have to sell it, but if you build it with sellability in mind, it has two really key factors that are pretty cool. One, if it's attractive to sell, it's making a shit ton of money.
00:33:06
Speaker
which is awesome. And two, it doesn't require much of your time and you're relatively irrelevant to the business, which is awesome because now it's passive. And at that point, if I'm making a ton of money and it doesn't require much of my time, I own an asset and that's giving me enough passive income. It's the same thing as owning real estate and my business now an asset. Why would I sell it at that point?
00:33:24
Speaker
But then on the contractor side, if I start to build a little bit deeper and yeah I'm really focusing on maybe like the the high level relationships and bringing more clients through the door, and then I start to systemize my business, every little bit of systemization that I have starts to get me more and more multiples on my profit.
00:33:43
Speaker
Contract is a relatively lower multiple until you get to a really large you know revenue amount. Let's just say that you're your're midsize, you're doing maybe $20 million dollars in revenue and a $20 million dollars contracting business probably does about two to $3 million dollars of ah ah bottom line profit, depending on the industry.
00:34:00
Speaker
If you have a really good business, you're gonna sell that business for 10 to $12 million. dollars There's a bunch of nuances inside of there and you know there's tons of different agreements the way that's created. But if you don't and you're the bottleneck to that business and you drive all the business and you run everything, you're gonna sell it for two to $3 million. dollars that's significantly like That's a lot of money that you're leaving off the table by not actually taking the time to work on the business instead of working in it.
00:34:27
Speaker
your clients are goingnna be like Your clients are still going to be alive and still hire you even though you're not their point of contact over time. I had to get over that hurdle as well. It's very tough. But once you start to understand the economics on how like private equity works and all these types of things and and research your market and your specific industry, you realize how lucrative potentially taking some chips off the table are into the world of exiting. And the cool thing is is like with with the world of private equity,
00:34:52
Speaker
you can exit and still hold onto your business at the same time, which is really cool. Cause I've had clients exit their business like four times. They still own a piece of the business. So what I mean by that is like, there's these firms that'll come in and they're like, Hey, we're going to do what's called a rollup strategy. And we're going to buy a ton of contracting businesses in the same geographical area or so. And we're going to roll them up into one big company. The reason why they do that is because now they're sharing all of that revenue artificially through purchasing it, which gets them a much larger multiple on a big exit down the road.
00:35:22
Speaker
So let's say, for example, I buy Brent and Travis's businesses and I say, Brent and Travis, I know you guys want to take some chips off the table, so I'll give you X amount for 70% of your business, but I need you to roll 30% of your equity into my new company that we're creating.
00:35:37
Speaker
That 30% now becomes my down payment to the SBA to buy you out via a loan. You get your check, but now you stay on potentially operating the business for a couple of years. And when I sell again, you get another check. And then I sell again and you get another check. And so you're getting multiple bites of the same Apple while still being able to achieve financial freedom at the same time and play out your vision of ah you know still running your company.
00:36:01
Speaker
So those are the options that are provided to you on the table if you build a business to sell. If you don't, you're building a hamster wheel. And I've seen that firsthand. My dad's been in this business for 30 years, and it's the same hamster wheel every year. I tell him all the time, he's just got to hire me, but he doesn't he doesn't he doesn't listen. ah But yeah, that's that's the, I think the world is starting to think a lot more like that now that social media and all this information is more free and available. But yeah, that's the way that I start framing, because I i love contracting the world the home world of home services, all that type of stuff is my favorite type of business.
Personal Development with the BUILD System
00:36:34
Speaker
ah But you got to build it right in my opinion. and And I love that point. and I've heard it before. It's kind of like beginning with the end in mind, but same same principle. And I love that because a lot of people don't do it because if you do run your business that way,
00:36:46
Speaker
you are opening up lending options. You're opening up the ability to acquire, not just be acquired. So yeah there's so many more options for you there. Plus obviously you're more profitable. And if you do need to exit, whatever you can get out of it for a lot, like you said, ah a much better multiplier. So yeah, I know that's awesome. So on the personal development side, what are you doing? I'm just curious.
00:37:07
Speaker
Yeah, i'm a and so our our podcast is called The Consistency Wins Podcast. I'm a big guy in consistency. My my large ah overall vision is like when everyone when anyone ever thinks of consistency, they think of me. That's that's my goal. and like In my immediate network, that's that's true, but I want that to be a global effect.
00:37:25
Speaker
And for me, the reason why is because I had none of it growing up. And when it comes to consistency, I was always the type of guy that tried to hit the home run and won every time and achieve the one year goal in one day. And that's great. You can do a lot of activity, but then you burn out. And a lot of people might have seen this, like you do this at the gym all the time. This is at least me, like working out is such an easy, like a sports and working out is the easy way to allude to a lot of this stuff. Because there's like such a such like metaphors for it. So for me, it was like, let's say you don't work out for a year and then you try and work out like an elite athlete the first time, you're going to be so sure that you're not going to want to go back to the gym every day. But if I look at it like and look at myself as i'm I'm an elite business athlete, that's the way that I'm defining myself, now my actions start to align with that. I got to start taking small, consistent habits every single day to now provide to my subconscious that I am actually that person and give that evidence to that.
00:38:18
Speaker
And that takes a long time. And you're going to burn out if you try and win too big consistently. So now all I focus on is how can I win small every single day? So if you're struggling to get in the gym, I would say focus on showing up to go for a walk around the block. Then the next day, maybe walk a little bit longer. Then maybe start jogging. Then get in the gym and all those types of things. Because you're doing it for a lifestyle. Because there's a large chance that you're going to be alive 20 years from now. So you might as well use the compounding effect to be a positive effect as opposed to negative, which is most people are doing.
00:38:46
Speaker
So I go one deeper for those that are struggling to get into personal development. Here's like a very tactical lens to do it, to stay consistent on the micro. I i coined a system called BUILD. I'm working on ah you know trademarking it and you know selling some programs around it. ah B stands for body. What am I doing for my body? Because ultimately you need to be a well-oiled machine to have energy to go through this Excuse my language, but fucked up game of entrepreneurship. Sorry if I curse, if that's not allowed. ah But it is a definitely an effed up game. U stands for you. What is it that I want to do? Because ultimately, I'm building this whole thing around what I want to do. So I'm going to pencil in the things in my calendar that I actually wanted to do today. Go for that walk or read that book or even watch Netflix, whatever that looks like in your world. I stands for income.
00:39:29
Speaker
What am I doing today that actually is going to you know progress my income forward, whether that's sales calls I need to make or ah people I need to hire, ah flyers that need to be handed out. I know some of my landscaping clients are sending out mailers and things like that, pretty much extracting what your key performance indicators are to drive the revenue forward.
00:39:46
Speaker
L stands for love l or or relationships. How am I building deeper relationships on my network side as well as my relationship with my family, all those types of things. Relationships fuel me. And then D stands for development. What does my personal development look like? What are my inputs? What am I reading? What am I listening to? All those types of things. If I can list that out every night and say, I'm going to pick one thing in each of those subsections that I'm going to do that next day and win very small and think smaller in that scenario in terms of action right there,
00:40:15
Speaker
You logically, mathematically, and scientifically can't screw up if you do that every single day, and you're going to legit be a new person six or 12 months from now. And so that's what i've I've dialed it down to is like, you know, even when you're not feeling well and you don't want to do it, because that's most days that you're not going to feel that way, just do it anyway. And then you're going to provide that evidence to your subconscious that you truly are that person. And that's where self-confidence really starts to bake in. And that's where happiness comes from, in my opinion, because happiness equals self-confidence. And if you're an Arate guy, I learned that from Andy Vercella. So that's that's my formula. I extracted who I want to be, which is Ed Millett and Andy Vercella. And I extracted what they do in their formulas. and then i
00:40:51
Speaker
turned myself into a good copycat and built my own intellectual property from there, so. There you go. Are you in Arte now? I'm just curious. I'm not, yeah no sir. Okay, cool. um I will say there's a lot of power in what you were talking about where everybody can show up on the easy days. Like that's that's easy, you know, it's easy to go to the gym whenever you feel good. like You know what, I got an extra hour, let's go to the gym.
00:41:12
Speaker
Being on like 75 hard and stuff like that furthers the point of the the grit is developed though, whenever you show up, whenever you do not have that hour or you do not have the time. Same with business. it's you know There's some days where you're getting kicked in the nuts all day long.
00:41:29
Speaker
if you Do you still show up at the end of that day? Are you still executing? Are you still moving that ball forward? If you're not someone who can or that's too tough, you know I think that's the people who end up losing long term. But like you said, obviously consistency is big for you. There is an insane amount of power in showing up every day, winning that day and moving that ball forward.
00:41:48
Speaker
And that's really why long-term, if you think with a long enough time horizon, it's relatively easy to win, as long as you're not comparing yourself to people in the short term, because all you have to do is legit not quit. I know it sounds like cliche, but you just don't, don't like, I'll quit tomorrow. That's what I keep doing myself. Like I had more, the days that Brent just explained, I have more than less sometimes, especially in a season like this where, you know, we're pretty fried from tax planning with all these clients. It's December right before Christmas.
00:42:15
Speaker
Uh, but all I tell myself like I'll quit tomorrow and then the next day I'll quit tomorrow. And I learned that from Ed actually, it's just, you know, don't die right now and we'll, we'll be okay. okay yeah So what, what was the acronym? What were the, so body you, uh, income, love or relationships and then development build. So time-wise time management is a critical component to any of that and all of that. Um,
00:42:43
Speaker
any strategies for the time management to actually pull that off in a consistent manner? Sure. I'll roll that off to to more priority management. ah Because if it's a priority, you'll get it done. You'll build the time in. And then obviously, yes, like you're you I live by my calendar. ah But I build into the things that I want first inside of my calendar. Or else, like why would you sign up to be an entrepreneur if you can't build your life around or your business around the life that you want. And you should start that early so that you create that habit before you create a prison for yourself, because I sure as hell did. And I'm sure we can all probably attest to that at some point, where it's just you'll compromise on your non-negotiables for the sake of more sales and all those types of things. And ultimately, you start to realize once the business starts coming in, I would much prefer making sure that I have enough time allocated towards my family or the gym or whatever I want to do than just making a quick sale any day of the week.
00:43:33
Speaker
So if I could start to build that habit there, that starts to align with what my true set of core values are. So I no longer want to build my life around my business. I want to build my business around my life. So there's a couple of really key resources for that. ah Craig Balantine was a great resource for that. ah he He wrote a book called The Perfect Day Formula.
00:43:52
Speaker
So I leveraged his formula and then I just like i just tried and tested like what works well for me. like Really becoming self-aware when I'm the most energized. And when I'm the most energized is not when I'm choosing to go to the gym or things like that. When I'm the most energized is when I'm choosing to... Because I could go to the gym when I'm mid-level energy and still get a really good workout and push through it.
00:44:11
Speaker
But when I'm mid-level energy, I can't create new ideas or really tap into the spiritual world or things like that. I need to be in peak state to be able to get the most amount of growth because there's only like a three to four hour window a day that you're going to be in what's called your green zone. It's a really cool book called At Your Best. Really, really good book that really helps you identify what zones are you in energy and building your day around those energy levels and what are the highest productive activities that you can get done when you're in flow.
00:44:39
Speaker
So that's where I started to build around like, okay, cool. what um I know when I wake up, I am just not a human. So I need like 30 minutes to just like meander and just like pet my dog and just do nothing. ah And then I'll get some like light reading in and you know get my morning ritual done and then ah get a little bit of task work done, go to the gym. And then once I hit the gym, I'm energized and I got three to four hours where no one can reach me. And I'm only building intellectual property or working on my number one priority or else there's so many other day-to-day tasks that are gonna meander their way in because there's more urgent things, even though you should be working on the number one most important thing that's typically not as urgent as the other things. I like it. And Travis, there was two book recommend. Travis is a book guy, so there's two book recommendations, Travis. I see that. Yeah, I know, right? The stacks just continue to grow. So I'd never heard of it. So what was that second? So the perfect day, and then what was the other book? At Your Best. So there's two more being added. Sorry.
00:45:40
Speaker
the The time management and the urgency, area and I think it just prioritization, prioritize and execute, ah I think was the critical component in there. ah In that it's the discipline to not allow the urgent things to encroach upon the things that should be higher priority and then staying disciplined to that. Because the the urgent things, they can sound super important and and important enough And I guess there's there's a threshold. There's a dichotomy. Sometimes there are elements that 100% should take over some of the the priority. And that's where the reprioritization comes. We all know logically in our head the things that we should be doing, but we're all constantly ball at battling the dictation of the urgent things and to have the framework and then to stick with it. But I think so is, uh,
00:46:40
Speaker
Uh, Jordan Peterson self-authoring, uh, it was probably similar to like, it's who do you want to be? Uh, where do you want to go? Author your life, strategize that and then build it around. But I don't think enough of us do yeah myself included really take the time to design what's important to us yeah and really understand what that is and why it's important to us, uh, to even put that in as a priority.
00:47:10
Speaker
another amazing book that I'm going to throw out there. 10X is easier than 2X. Incredible, incredible book. ah Exactly everything that Travis was talking about there, really mapping it out and focusing on high leverage activity. Huge. And yeah, that was what I was going to say. like like There's going to be times where other tasks pop up inside of those zones and you know business calls or family calls, and that's totally fine. But what we're doing is trying to create a standard.
00:47:34
Speaker
for what most days are gonna look like. And I need to be rigorous around that standard. Because if I don't protect my time, everyone else is gonna dictate what my time looks like. And I need to be very radical about what that looks like. And ah to Brent's point, he was talking about 75 hard. so What 75 hard taught me the most was how much, before I was on 75 hard, how much I was willing to compromise on my non-negotiables.
00:47:58
Speaker
because you manage like 75 hours, not really about time management. It's really about priority management because you know, you got to get your shit done. So like the radical example that I use for priority management is like, if I told you we were getting up at three in the morning and you had to meet me at my house to go for a five mile run, you'd be like, dude, screw you. I'm sleeping. But if I told you that I had a million dollars in a suitcase and you came to my house at three more than three in the morning, you'd come and get and get that suitcase, right?
00:48:20
Speaker
So it's like it's not about the time that you have, because everyone has the same amount of time. And if we get into the quantum side of things, which I'm really interested in, time actually isn't real. But <unk>ll I'll save that one for another time. There is a version of you that went for the the run and value bucks at the same time. I love it. so so I'll riff on that all day. but ah yeah Basically, like we're all blessed with the same you know exact amount of time, so it's really about what is truly a priority to me. and Typically, the way that I find out what isn't a priority to me is actually by disrespecting my time and finding out what I don't want. so
00:48:51
Speaker
What I found in that and the lessons that I learned there is just take action and you'll find out, but you need to take action with reflection behind it or else you're just going to be kind of in this zombie mode of not really being able to analyze and become self-aware around it. So really take action and record what those actions look like so you understand how you're building something around how you feel. Because ultimately, if you're in business long-term, if you stay in business enough, you'll make enough money to be successful and everything will will pan out. But you'll start to realize that that's truly not the vision.
00:49:18
Speaker
And I'm glad that i I started to learn that at a relatively younger age so that I can start to build a lot more around what I want my life to be. And and in the in the meantime, we can make a shit ton of money as well. That that doesn't mean that you're you're you're not making a ton of profitability, but you're using it as a resource to find out more about who you are and how you can serve more people.
Consulting Services and Social Media Promotion
00:49:37
Speaker
So for working with you and your organization, is it predominantly strategy or do you guys offer like standard CPA level engagements as well. Yep. so So I'm in the process of buying an accounting firm right now. We we don't do tax returns. We don't do taxes. What we we really do is fill the gaps where most CPAs are dropping the ball, which is actually on helping you save money in taxes, not just telling you what to pay. If you're ah you know just starting out, my recommendation is like,
00:50:08
Speaker
understand like bookkeeping, CPA, and all that stuff, you're not in need of some of of a team like ours just yet. You should be focusing on making sure your business is working out, getting to the point where you're able to pay yourself well and make profit and have taxable income and pay your taxes. That's fine at that point. That's a blessing to be able to play in in the arena and earn your spot there. Over time, when you're starting to make tons of money, and I would say typically where we start to be significantly more valuable is when you're making about a million dollars in profit and above,
00:50:38
Speaker
ah which typically in the contractor world, you're seeing anywhere between like five to $10 million dollars plus of gross revenue equals that that amount. ah That's where you're starting to focus on like, okay, great. I don't need to be reinvesting all of this profit back into the business. How can I make sure that I'm bridging the gap where a lot of my wealth is tied up in this business? How can I make sure that I'm extracting it and I'm getting destroyed by the taxes? ah So how can I take out, like I call it the IRS is the silent partner we never asked for.
00:51:05
Speaker
ah So, how can I take them out of my company as a partner? Because I never asked for them, and I'm going to keep them silent at the same time, and I'm going to do it integrally by not committing tax fraud, but doing it in such a way to where I can build wealth and save taxes at the same time while not compromising my ability to get debt, which was a super important thing that we talked about today.
00:51:22
Speaker
And then ultimately, it's less important about what we save in taxes and more important about what we do with what we save in taxes. Because if I'm starting to wire my brain around tax savings being attached to business growth or net worth growth, now my brain and my subconscious is wired to find more opportunities to do so because now it's attached to a much larger vision.
00:51:40
Speaker
If I can save money in taxes, that's 40% back to my bottom line that ultimately allow me to hire more people and grow my top line revenue, which gives me more multiples on an exit. So now all I have to do is focus on that and now the exit takes care of itself. Those are the types of things that I want to reverse engineer so that it comes really simple. And that's what we do for business owners. We literally do all that so you don't have to focus on it. Because it's a lot of BS that you shouldn't be focusing on because it doesn't make you more money.
00:52:04
Speaker
You should hire a team that does all that so that you can only focus on making more money or being with your family and doing things that light you up while somebody else focuses on all the red tape BS. Dude, a lot of fire in this podcast, man. A lot of good content. I appreciate you guys having me on. You should definitely go on forever and ever. Tell us where we can find you and follow you on social.
00:52:26
Speaker
Yeah, I'm pretty active on ah on all the platforms, Instagram probably mainly, Antonio Vaglica Jr., ah LinkedIn, Facebook, ah TikTok, all that type of stuff. My my website's AntonioVaglica.com. I'm an open book. I don't have anyone answering my... my you know messages or anything like that, so I'll answer. ah Reach out to to Brent or Travis, and I'm happy to to you know connect to the email or whatever that looks like. The way that we run is very simple in a business-related sense. We give everything away for free and sell the implementation behind it, so we overwhelm people with value to the point where they're like, I can't do this alone, and that people end up just naturally hiring us to do it for them. If not, at least you you leave away with some value that you can take away for yourself. so
00:53:08
Speaker
That's how we run. Love it real quick. Name your podcast and briefly what it's about. The Consistency Wins podcast and we're basically reverse engineering what human excellence looks like. It's an interview based podcast of just the the best entrepreneurs and most interesting people in the world. ah We've been blessed to interview over 500 people at this point. some you know billionaires, all types of people across the world. like It's just really fascinating people, people that have been in ah the Black Hawk Down operation, like all walks of life, and just really trying to reverse engineer ah selfishly what lessons we can take from it. So we're asking questions from what the audience may be taking, but also from our lens as well. Because I use i use podcasting and interviewing people as a personal development tool all the time.
00:53:50
Speaker
And ah I'm sure Brent and Travis can agree with this as well. ah Funny enough, if you're growing a contracting business, it shouldn't be your main focus. But starting a podcast is one of the biggest cheat codes in life, because you can rapidly virtually network a lot quicker than just on what you can do in person. So the network that you're able to build by adding value to other people's lives, by interviewing them and giving them a platform, transcends so many cool things. And it's you don't know immediately what's going to happen. But over time, it transpires some really cool stuff. Yeah.
00:54:20
Speaker
Grab us last thoughts, man. I would agree with your statement. Love it. Fire. I think it's going to be a lot of stuff coming. I want to set it up and schedule you that we do a follow-up podcast at some point in the next several months, maybe after the first call. Yeah, I think definitely a part two would be in order, for sure. I'd be blessed. Thank you, guys. You should have been able to get lots and lots of notes and actual items to take away from this one, for sure. So Antonio, thank you. It's been a blessing, man.
00:54:47
Speaker
Thank you so much. Guys, if you like this podcast, please do share it. Um, if you didn't get anything out of this one, I don't know what to tell you, man, but guys, thank you. It's a pleasure.