How to Successfully Exit Multiple Businesses | Dominic Rubino

Dominic’s journey began during high school at the Yo HO HO lighting company, followed by a transition into ownership of a painting business. He subsequently transformed into a seasoned business coach with a wealth of experience, having not only owned and operated businesses himself but also successfully exited multiple ventures. This unique background places him in the same entrepreneurial shoes as those he now advises. His philosophy revolves around achieving tangible results and maintaining high performance standards, all with the aim of empowering contractors to enhance both their business and personal lives. Did you know our amazing voices can go beyond just the microphone? Yes, we have video! Subscribe to our YouTube channel here!

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Dominic’s Links:

•  Website | https://cabinetmakerprofitsystem.com/about/ 

•  Website | https://profittoolbelt.com/ 

•  Website | https://www.bizstratplan.com/ 

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GOLD NUGGETS:

(11:53) - Business Coaching and Adding Client Value

(14:32) - Quality and Questions in Business

(19:30) - Junk Dealer to Successful Business Coach

(28:56) - Coaching’s Role in Business Growth

(40:09) - Lessons From Construction Millionaires

(43:45) - Recommendations and Customer Service Pet Peeves

(49:47) - Funny Stories From Construction Workers

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Previous guests on The Small Business Safari include Amy Lyle, Ben Alexander, Joseph Sission, Jonathan Ellis, Brad Dell, Chris Hanks, C.T. Emerson, Chad Brown, Tracy Moore, Wayne Sherger, David Raymond, Paul Redman, Gabby Meteor, Ryan Dement, Barbara Heil Sonneck, Bryan John, Tom Defore, Rusty Clifton, Duane Johns, Beth Miller, Jason Sleeman, Andy Suggs, Chris Michel, Jon Ostenson, Tommy Breedlove, Rocky Lalvani, Amanda Griffey, Spencer Powell, Joe Perrone, David Lupberger, Duane C. Barney, Dave Moerman, Jim Ryerson, Al Mishkoff, Scott Specker, Mike Claudio and more!

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If you loved this episode try these!

• Striking the Right Chords in Business | Marcus Myers Explains How Helping People Helps You Get Ahead

• Mastering Small Business Marketing: Strategies, AI, and Insights with Sarah Block

• Scaling a Moving and Junk Removal Business: A Candid Conversation with Roger Panitch

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Have any questions or comments? Connect with me here!

Thanks to our sponsor Smart Hire Solutions LLC!

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

But let's go back to the Harriet analogy, because we got deep.

Speaker 3 0:02

Yeah, we got deep here, Alan are you OK with this, because? We got deep. I just I can't. I can't stop thinking of that image.

Speaker 1 0:08

I'm thinking, singlet being actually the one that, the one that my favorite, one got an. Snl skit where the guy is the full, the full doping Olympics and he was, and he rips it up and his arms fall off.

Speaker 1 0:20

And he goes oh, they're not going to feel that now, but he's going to feel that tomorrow. That's how sometimes I feel, as a business owner too, is I get my arms just ripped off and then people are beating me over the head with them too. So welcome to the small business safari, where I help guide you to avoid those traps, pitfalls and dangers that lurk when navigating the wild world of small business ownership. I'll share those gold nuggets of information and invite guests to help accelerate your ascent to that mountaintop of success. It's a jungle out there, and I want to help you traverse through the levels of owning your own business that can get you bogged down and distract you from any of your own personal and professional goals. So strap in adventure team and let's take a ride through the safari and get you to the mountaintop. Alan, we're on, we're rocking, we're time to go. We had way too much preach at chat, and you always get pissed when I do that, but we.

Speaker 3 1:17

I'm trying to get your energy up. No, no, no. And while I'm trying to get his energy up, because this might be the very first podcast, how many have we done now?

Speaker 1 1:24

We got. We got 110 in the can yeah.

Speaker 3 1:27

Yeah, and this will be the first one you've done without a drink in your head.

Speaker 1 1:29

I know I can't drink because I got to do a medical thing tomorrow. So he's like what do you mean? You can't drink.

Speaker 3 1:35

I think you just can't drink coffee, yeah, or you just can't drink a lot.

Speaker 1 1:37

They got to knock me out and fix my teeth, which is why we have a podcast and we don't have a TV show. But you'll see us on the YouTube channel If you ever check out the Small Business Safari YouTube channel. But you'll see that I'm eating the microphone because I don't want to show you the big gap in my teeth. She's her, but why are we here? We're here to talk to Dominic Rubino from Vancouver, British Columbia. We love Canucks. We do.

Speaker 2 2:02

We are and we don't love the Canucks up here.

Speaker 3 2:05

I mean we do, but no, you don't. Let's see they get a long golf season. That was a hug.

Speaker 2 2:10

They get a long golf season.

Speaker 1 2:11

Let me just say that they have always have a long golf season. So, dom, do you go by? Dominic or Dom or?

Speaker 2 2:17

when I'm in trouble, my mom calls me Dominic, so I try to go by Dom.

Speaker 1 2:20

Dom it is Love it and we got to keep going with that. So Dom and I and Alan were kicking around quite a bit before the podcast, so we got to let you in on our little secrets of the business, which Dom has helped a number of people in the construction business with, his secrets on how to run a business. And, as we talk about that a lot of times, especially here, as of late I have been in my business a lot as I've been training Not working on your business.

Speaker 3 2:45

You just thrown the e-myth out the window. I did, I threw it right. You're making pies. Yeah, I mean wow.

Speaker 2 2:51

You guys really know the book. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 2:53

I am, I am deep in it and I am. I am up to my elbows right now and I've got to get out of it. And that's why I had to get out of here and go do this podcast and go Remember people do as I say, not as I do and I always want you to work on your business, because that's what I do. I only work four hours a week. I've read that book too. Unfortunately, I work four hours in four hours and then more four hours and four hours, and I do more.

Speaker 3 3:13

Hey, dom, don't, don't feel still fall prey to this. Ask him where he was last week for 10 days.

Speaker 2 3:19

Where were you last week for 10 days?

Speaker 1 3:21

I was in Lake Tahoe in the Napa California.

Speaker 2 3:24

Did you get lost? Were you walking? Went out I did walk a little bit.

Speaker 3 3:28

I did, I did some hiking man I know.

Speaker 1 3:30

You know, I actually had to clean my shoes. I had so much hiking on there.

Speaker 2 3:33

It's good.

Speaker 1 3:33

Yeah, but then I fixed it all I fixed and went back to myself. We went to Napa Valley and I drank my way through the valley again on wine.

Speaker 3 3:40

So he has a nice place and guess what? There's work to do and right.

Speaker 2 3:43

There's a couple of emails waiting around.

Speaker 3 3:45

Yeah, there's a payroll. It feels so bad and payroll just went today.

Speaker 1 3:48

by the way, we're, we're, we're dropping this and there you go.

Speaker 3 3:51

That'll cover it.

Speaker 1 3:52

Yeah, and I make, and I make Alan bring checks to the podcast.

Speaker 2 3:57

Just for me.

Speaker 1 3:58

That's for me, big boy. That's right, but if you want to, we can share it. So thanks for getting in this. So let's, let's back up a little bit. How the hell did you get into this business? What are you doing? What would you do in high school?

Speaker 2 4:10

Well, what did I do in high school? In high school, yeah, so many questions.

Speaker 3 4:16

Yeah, he should. You want to narrow that down, chris?

Speaker 1 4:18

All right, let's start with this one All right. You grew up in Canada.

Speaker 2 4:22

Grew up in Canada. Now I've spent the last 20 some odd years in the United States.

Speaker 1 4:26

Obviously, obviously entrepreneurial bent. So what was your first business?

Speaker 2 4:32

My first business was a Christmas Light installation company. I called it the Yohoho Light Co.

Speaker 1 4:39

Yohoho Light Co. Yeah, I installed.

Speaker 2 4:43

Christmas Light. I did it. Yeah, I did it. In high school I had to do. You remember, oh my God, marty McFly. What was? What's the movie Back?

Speaker 3 4:51

to the Future.

Speaker 2 4:52

Do you remember his very cool Toyota pickup truck with a roll bar? Yeah, with it from the factory. I had one of those. It was the Mirage edition, so it had. It was black with like brown stripes. Very cool looking back then. But I sat down and I said you know, I want to start my own business but I don't have anything. So I borrowed my dad's ladder which I still have, by the way and I just started knocking on doors and in between the end of school and doing exams, I started installing Christmas lights on people's houses in the rain in the Pacific Northwest on Cedar roofs no problem with safety at all.

Speaker 3 5:23

No problem there. No problem finding customers, because nobody in the right mind wants to get up on a Cedar. I used to. I used to live in Portland. And I spent a few hours on top of a roof once because I went up there to hang Christmas lights and it just got really slippery, and so I just made my way to the top until somebody realized I was missing. Yeah, that's that guy.

Speaker 1 5:43

That's a and to use the. To use the Hooper Canadian. That is a toboggan run and that it is a toboggan run. When you get on that Cedar roof when it's wet like that, that is just 100% you're slipping, you're getting your ass and you're falling.

Speaker 2 5:55

That's, you use couch cushions. Did you know that you use couch cushions on Cedar roofs to stop from sliding?

Speaker 3 5:59

Oh really. So we use the couch cushions down here, you put them on the ground for when you fell, or what do you mean?

Speaker 2 6:04

No that gives you traction on the roof, oh really.

Speaker 1 6:07

Yeah, I always used them on asphalt. Those are actually the best, the best way to stop yourself on asphalt shingles.

Speaker 2 6:12

I always thought yeah, they work on asphalt as well, did you say asphalt?

Speaker 3 6:15

I did Asphalt shingles. Asphalt.

Speaker 1 6:17

You need a beer. I do, and I'm seeing it with those slurrants even worse yeah. All right, let's go back to this. So hanging lights, and you went, boom. You know, mom, dad, I'm done with school. I think I've got something. I'm onto it, no.

Speaker 2 6:30

No, no, I was able to go to college. They will go to university, but, believe it or not, I was not a good student. I was there for seven or eight years. But I'm not a doctor, I just I kept starting businesses. I just always wanted to have my own company really badly, and I sucked at it. So I had a bunch of painting companies. I would open them and close them seasonally or just keep them going for a few years.

Speaker 3 6:50

Did you come from an entrepreneurial family? I mean?

Speaker 2 6:53

Not my immediate family, but my larger family. I worked for my uncle who was a framer, so I got a lot of framing background, a lot of framing experience there. And then some other family members you know they're Italians, new immigrants. They started buying houses, they didn't call themselves entrepreneurs, but now they all own a dozen houses and they're retired just fine.

Speaker 1 7:10

Yeah, right, yeah, but the bug just bit me.

Speaker 2 7:14

I don't know why I just I have always wanted to be in business, always.

Speaker 1 7:19

So you said you started painting companies. Did you ever think about I don't know about the time you were coming around, but we have a good friend who's been on the show talked about college pro painters. Did you ever think about that franchise system?

Speaker 2 7:31

Yes. So, as a matter of fact, because I was doing the yo-ho-ho light go, I realized I wasn't doing a good job, and so when I got to college, I joined something called triple a student painters they all have to have a cool name, right, right. So I didn't even know it was a franchise until the end of the training. They're like you should sign this form and it says you, we get 25%. I'm like, oh, sounds okay it sounds like a great deal.

Speaker 3 7:53

Sounds okay, right so?

Speaker 2 7:55

I. I actually became a franchisee with triple a student painters, but I I knew I knew what I was doing because I wanted their paperwork and their systems. I've always craved Systems. I crave simplicity, I hate complexity.

Speaker 3 8:08

Yeah, you're a bio. Makes that loud and clear.

Speaker 1 8:11

You are a process guy yeah, definitely process, definitely made.

Speaker 2 8:15

well, I'm super creative, but I like. I like consistent, simple systems.

Speaker 1 8:19

Yeah, I'm the complete opposite, because come look at my business. It's beautifully complex, it's as close to a beautiful, a beautiful mind as you can possibly.

Speaker 3 8:27

Super process guy to.

Speaker 1 8:28

I am, but just I created way too many, hmm. So I got to get back down and that's been a that's been over engineered. I have over engineered a few things, just a few. Just a little twinkle in your eye there, you all right so we did painting in college.

Speaker 1 8:42

You made it through your seven-year program. I love that. That's one of my buddies who went to Florida State said I said man. I said you know I should have gone to Florida State. He goes well. It took me six years to get my poly side degree. Took you four years in the middle of Michigan or the UP of Michigan to get your engineering degree. He said I think he's alright, but but you're looking around, you know like if you're gonna spend that much time he should have done somewhere warm.

Speaker 2 9:05

Well, he's doing the uber because you got to get out of there fast.

Speaker 1 9:08

Yeah, that's exactly why I got out of there. I got others. I was afraid I was gonna get snowed in, all right. So you came out, you had your degree and you went. You know, there's painting stuff that was for me just to get through it. I'm gonna completely leave everything. What would you do next?

Speaker 2 9:23

You know, I did what I think everybody tries to do after they go a bit of school I've got to get a corporate job. So when got a corporate job and I worked to telecommunications and for people who know the phone business, the telecommunications business back when I was doing it, it's like dog years. So I was in it for 49 years. Oh, that's how I do the math.

Speaker 2 9:43

Yeah, I was in it for seven years and that's where I learned to sell. That's where I learned about business. That's where I learned about, you know, deals in the boardroom and prospecting. I'm a ice cold market. I don't care, I'll knock on any door anywhere, call anybody. But I had to learn that and it was nice to learn when I had a base salary and commission right, it's nice.

Speaker 1 9:59

It's nice to learn when somebody else pays you, because when you learn as an entrepreneur, it's always you paying somebody else for that opportunity to learn and that means you lost money.

Speaker 2 10:08

You lost money, yeah, but we were we. I really look back on that now kind of fondly, even though at the time it was a bullpen, and it was a hard bullpen like we got Heavily trained and heavily managed to hit our numbers. It was all very metrics based and to make it there, you had to make it, you had to work. There's no, there's no gray area, your other in or your out. So I learned there and I moved up through the company. It was sprint. That was the phone company I worked for. Okay. Then I became a regional sales manager and then I started managing low voltage. I started managing trades that were supporting installations in far off regions. So if you think about North Dakota or Montana, think about the phone company in many berries, montana or Plentywood, montana, like yeah, it's, it's a tiny little guy, it's a guy with a van.

Speaker 1 10:56

I heard somebody in the area. Somebody once said there's more cows in Montana than there are people. So did you play people I?

Speaker 2 11:04

Didn't I just, but I helped those guys that were trying to run those little companies. You want to grow, chris. I do so. Sprint taught me to be a business coach.

Speaker 1 11:11

Nice, all right. So then did you make the leap coming out of there and completely just say I'm gonna be a business coach, or did you try to start a business?

Speaker 2 11:19

I you know what I bought a franchise. You don't have to hide the beer boys, just open it.

Speaker 1 11:23

Well, I did All right.

Speaker 3 11:23

Well, let's do it so he's trying to hide, I'm not a cop, it's not like it's not like he's Canadian.

Speaker 1 11:29

Well, I'm not a cop and you're not trying to come out of their tap in Canada.

Speaker 3 11:32

That's true, we're trying.

Speaker 2 11:33

I just, I was hiding it for myself, thank you. Do you see how he hid that? I see that, I took it. I'm freaking out, dennis.

Speaker 1 11:38

You see it, that's exactly right, I don't want my Dennis to see it, so tomorrow she's not gonna say did you drink last night?

Speaker 3 11:43

And I'm gonna go no, not at all and then she'll listen to the podcast and bust you.

Speaker 2 11:47

Yeah, there's one even go live for a little while.

Business Coaching and Adding Client Value

Speaker 1 11:50

Yeah, well, hopefully I guess I get the teeth fixed. All right, anyways, then I. Then I left court to you by.

Speaker 2 11:55

I bought a business coaching franchise, believe it or not, out of Australia and I learned to become a business coach and that's where things changed for me, because I'd always craved being better in business. That it's. You know, I was always the guy that bought books and cassettes. You guys remember cassettes?

Speaker 3 12:09

Yeah you got to rewind them with a pencil.

Speaker 1 12:11

I would love that people are putting those memes out there in social media. But you're. You're not a real cassette person, unless you held the radio, the cassette recorder, up to the radio to record your song. Oh yeah, my favorite one was stroke man, stroke man.

Speaker 3 12:26

Do you remember how the DJ would talk over the very end of it? Yeah, ruin the recording every time, every time. Yeah, so there's my mixed love tape.

Speaker 1 12:33

Yeah, that's that. I think it sounds like we're all the same age guys, sounds like we're all the same age. Yeah, yeah we're the season crew today, boys season crew I like it, I agree.

Speaker 3 12:43

All right.

Speaker 1 12:43

So you learned a business coach. Your coaching people. You had to go out and prospect. Now that's something I think is very interesting. People think, hey, you know what, I'm gonna be a business coach. I'm like. Because people say, chris, you should be a business coach. I'm like okay and then I've had a business coach say you know what you have to do. You have to prospect, you have to market, you have to do that. I'm like it's just too much damn work. I'm gonna go back to the handyman world, yeah, yeah so how did you build that book of business?

Speaker 2 13:08

I'm really using the skills that I learned at Sprint getting out there, but you know what's? What's almost more important than how you prospect is how you add value to clients, because there's no use getting clients and losing them. So if you can't add value, you're gone. My clients work with me month to month and my longest client to date is nine years.

Speaker 1 13:24

So you do have no long-term contracts. You do month to month.

Speaker 2 13:27

Man, I'm believing it, I believe, I believe myself all the time totally 100% and I'm there to get results and I understand what I'm doing, you know. Now, just the other day I let a client go, a Great guy, fantastic guy. Love you, would love this guy if he was your neighbor fantastic. But we couldn't get stuff done inside that company and so we finally had that. You remember that high school breakup?

Speaker 3 13:49

It's not you, it's me. That's the one. I've heard that a lot yeah all high school breakup. It was never me, it was them. Yeah, every time.

Speaker 1 14:00

It's. Are we supposed to admit that? That's a different? It's a whole different show, alan, about yourself, esteem and getting women dumping on you.

Speaker 3 14:07

But hey don't that's right, first my bubble. So was that something the franchise said was no long-term contracts, or did you just decide to go rogue and do that?

Quality and Questions in Business

Speaker 2 14:14

Yeah, no Well, so I left the franchise. I'm no longer doing that. I was there for five years and there's actually an interesting story how I boomeranged out of that, because I Anyways to stay on the coaching track that I learned there how to add value, because if you don't add value won't keep clients, so you can prospect till your heart's Intent, but if you can't add value to clients, they won't keep you. They will keep you. They don't pay you, and then you're always restarting your business. So you have to focus on quality beyond everything else. Deliver value.

Speaker 1 14:40

What's that? First 30 minute discussion Sound like what's what's your go-to question when you ask somebody like you know what, the hell, why is your head up your ass? I mean, what's the question?

Speaker 3 14:48

I'm sure it's a little bit more gentle, whoops.

Speaker 2 14:51

Yeah, yeah, I'll tell you the thing to remember in that, for me, is humility.

Speaker 3 14:55

Yeah. I like, I think you didn't go into coaching, chris, I think.

Speaker 2 15:02

So there's, we haven't gotten to the story yet, but I I've trained business coaches for a long time. I got a pretty wide background guys and hopefully we get there if we don't run out of time. But I I've made the mistake before of coming in and saying and you've got a handyman business right.

Speaker 1 15:14

Yes.

Speaker 2 15:15

Yes, you tell me a couple of things, I ask you a couple of key questions. I'm like here's what you need to do. That that, that that here's what you need to do. Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no. And what that does is it completely wipes out the years of pain and suffering you've had. Drive it home with your white knuckles on the steering wheel, just struggling with working as hard as you possibly can, like absolutely reaching the back corners of your mind to fix a problem, and then some clown like me sits down and goes oh, that's easy, just do this, just do that. Well, it's disrespectful on my part. It's completely disrespectful. And so if you ask for the first 30 minutes, I gotta ask great questions and shut up.

Speaker 2 15:49

Yeah there you go.

Speaker 1 15:50

I think that's the gold nugget, because that that's the thing and that's why. That's why I asked that, because, as business owners, I will take everything you say very personally and you know, the old. You know, chris, you really need to hire slowly and fire quickly and you really shouldn't be bringing in these C players. You know, shut the fuck up. I mean, I'm hiring handymen.

Speaker 2 16:12

No, I'm sure it shows up.

Speaker 1 16:14

Yeah, I mean, if he fogs a mirror I'm giving him a shot, man and her and her and him and him, and I mean, and so we do it.

Speaker 2 16:20

I just add to that for a second. Most people these success stories you hear about people who went from a million to five million to three years and they turned their business around. They got a couple of pretty good players and a whole bunch of guys that show up to punch the clock. They don't have magic employees, yeah, and it's just how you run what you do you because you're gonna get what.

Speaker 1 16:39

That's why you get the real story on this podcast, because that's where you won't see that. You won't see that in your Instagram feeds and your Facebook feeds. And if you get a little sound bite on YouTube shorts, you won't hear that. You're gonna hear. You know, when you're an A team, you attract a players and you want to attract a players. You got to be an A team and you're gonna have the A team. Dude, there's no a players out there.

Speaker 3 17:00

You get one, you get two, maybe yeah, that's always been my rule of thumb. If you have ten employees, two or superstars, two are Walking dead and the other six can either be lifted up or pulled down by the two on either end.

Speaker 2 17:12

Yeah, now I said on top of this, guys, I still have to be strong enough to say those a players are minimum standard and the rest of you? We need to act more like that. So I can't just let it go right. But this really is the difference between and I don't want to. I'm not knocking business coaches here because I am one, but I didn't just read a book and become a business coach. I've built and sold a couple of businesses from zero at a multinational and sold them, and so I've gone through the hard yards. I've done the same things we're talking about here and it's tough.

Speaker 1 17:40

I yeah, I mean, you hit on it and we talk about it, but that's the nitty gritty is that you have to be able to excel, and do? I think, ellen, you put it best. You know, you got the too bad, you got the too good, you got guys in the middle. You got to make sure that you get the most out of the majority of the team and get the. Get the other ones who are the least. You get the most out of them until you can't get any more out of.

Speaker 3 18:53

You bring up a good point there's. There's a lot of business coaches out there that I kind of get the feeling. They couldn't succeed on their own in business so they coach. Isn't that kind of go to the old saying if you can't do, teach.

Speaker 2 19:07

Yeah, it kind of does kind of this.

Speaker 3 19:11

So yeah, so that's pretty compelling when you can say yeah, this one time I had this business and then blah, blah, blah and I scaled it and I sold it. And then this other time I had this business and blah, blah, blah, I scaled it and sold it. That's pretty powerful.

Speaker 2 19:21

Yeah, and I'm still learning. I don't have the all the answers.

Speaker 1 19:24

Right. So what was one of the businesses you scaled and sold?

Junk Dealer to Successful Business Coach

Speaker 2 19:28

Well, the first one started as a little side business while I was still working for Sprint. I was selling used junk. Now, this was the early days of eBay, because I'm that old guys like Look at that head of hair, yeah look at that you got.

Speaker 1 19:42

Oh, come on, that's great.

Speaker 2 19:44

I'm made of gray hair and wrinkles.

Speaker 3 19:46

Well, we're made of no hair.

Speaker 1 19:47

You guys got solar panels.

Speaker 2 19:50

I got a wind turbine here, yeah, but I used to sell used junk on eBay and the stuff I sold was pretty crazy. It was used led calculators. Do you guys remember Coleco head to head football?

Speaker 3 20:02

Yeah little lights.

Speaker 2 20:04

Yes, those things would sell for 5060 bucks Now, remember I'm in Canada, so 60 us at a 1.5 conversion rate to Canadian, that was big money and I'd buy them for a dollar garage sale.

Speaker 1 20:15

So you go scour garage sales and then turn around and sell them on the on eBay. That is the. I think Gary Vee's doing some of that right now with the. The cool phrase now, instead of saying you're a junk dealer, is you're an NFT dealer NFTs. I'm like, wow, I had to go look that up because I thought that was like cryptocurrency. I'm like, um, I have. Well, good news is, my mother-in-law has been doing that my entire life, because when people put stuff out of the curb on the big days, you know the big ladies here in the suburbs. She was here at our house and she came back with half of my truck was full of shit from all my neighbors. I'm like, lynn, what are you doing? She goes I can't throw this stuff away. I said I have no where I do. I don't know where. You already want me to put it. I mean, we put it in. She goes, I guess we could sell it. I said, how? So yeah, you were doing it there.

Speaker 2 20:59

I love that. I was doing that stuff I was doing and it's not. You know, the problem is it's not very scalable and so I had to reinvent the business. But this is where my business coaching came in, because I was, we were doing OK, but our feedback rating on eBay was dropping. So I was in partnership with my cousin, so family business which is its own dance in a chandelier shop.

Speaker 1 21:19

There we go. Family business dancing in a chandelier shop.

Speaker 2 21:22

That's a good one, but I sat down on paper to reinvent. I said this business has to change because we're not. You know, we're our feedbacks declining, so people didn't want to buy from us. And so I came down to, at the end of the day, just on paper. I figured we had to either sell used books, used magazines or used records.

Speaker 1 21:40

And all this before Amazon, right, Because this is eBay days pre-EBay days just before Amazon and Amazon Z stores. So I decided on books.

Speaker 2 21:48

You got to this is the funny part here and I kind of got tired and been at the coffee shop which and it wasn't a great coffee shop, it was a coffee shop slash garage like gas station. It was pretty low end. But I'm sitting there at one of those tabletops and I go, ok, we're going to sell books and if we need to make money, the money we want to make we need 250,000 books in stock. Now I kind of sometimes math is not my thing, so I forgot to do the volume calculation on 250.

Speaker 3 22:19

How big of a room does that fill?

Speaker 2 22:20

Oh my God, we ended up having three warehouses, three, three thousand square foot warehouses just to store everything, because we were renting. As you know, we're growing, so you just grab a warehouse for lease, grab another one, and they were all in the same complex but we have to walk between them. It was a bit of a disaster.

Speaker 1 22:36

Now, how did you source those books? I mean, it's interesting that you're ready for a good story?

Speaker 2 22:40

Yes, ok, because this is the craziest story. So, remember, I have a background in prospecting. I can't, I don't mind knocking on any door, talking to anybody. So who's got a lot of books they want to get rid of?

Speaker 1 22:51

To get rid of libraries no.

Speaker 3 22:56

Do they ever get rid of books?

Speaker 1 22:59

I thought Paul told us that Thrift stores oh yeah, I can't sell them, yeah, they can't sell, they just sit there and they get lots.

Speaker 2 23:05

I went and just started talking to a bunch of thrift stores and as I'm talking to them I found out that their biggest variable cost is because they don't know what they're going to find in front of their door in the morning. Somebody could have dropped an entire one bedroom apartment of junk at their door, and now they're responsible for it. So they've got to call the junk removal company, like the bin company, to come and take it all away. They bear that cost. And so I learned that on the first couple of meetings and so I started going to the other thrift stores saying I'll buy your books. So I started buying books for about five cents a book. Now there were some stores who said they wouldn't sell to me, and this is where the evil part of me comes out. So I would take, I would buy all the books I could, and I had a Buick Skylark Nice, nice.

Speaker 2 23:48

Like with the couch cushions in the back it was. It was pretty sweet that was a company car Nice.

Speaker 1 23:53

And.

Speaker 2 23:54

I'd load it with books. We'd go back to the warehouse.

Speaker 1 23:56

And you had a trunk, you could fit the entire town of Vancouver in.

Speaker 2 24:01

So we'd sort all the books, but all the junk books. I didn't know what to do with them, so guess where I went and dropped them the next day.

Speaker 3 24:05

Oh, the thrift store, the wooden play ball the thrift store that wouldn't sell to me.

Speaker 2 24:09

Literally, you got to imagine me in the back of a Buick Skylark with my feet against the boxes and the other door open and I just push everything out with my feet, close the door and away I went. Then I'd get a phone call. Hi, dominic, do you still buy books?

Speaker 1 24:23

Like yeah, no, we don't buy any books, we're full Nice, Add a point.

Speaker 2 24:29

You know what you got to start hustling. You start by hustling. You know I'm anyways, but I'll tell you. What I did with that business is I converted that into a mail order pharmacy and so you guys might know it's called CanadaFarmacycom. Okay, and in four years I got that to 120 million in sales and then I sold it.

Speaker 1 24:48

Well done, so that's pretty wild.

Speaker 3 24:51

So you switch from books to pharmacy because Amazon stole your idea?

Speaker 2 24:55

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Well, amazon was a problem in a different way for us. Amazon had a limit you could only sell. At the time that we started, amazon had a limit you could only sell $10,000 worth of books a month. And when we first heard that, we're like, okay, well, that never, why would that matter? $10,000 in books sounds like a lot of books, yeah right.

Speaker 2 25:15

But then one day we hit it. There was one month. We hit it just before the end of the month and they shut us, they shut our account, and we're like, well, that's a fluke. We said to ourselves that's never going to happen again. Well, then it happened in three weeks, then it happened in two weeks. I mean, you got to remember I had about 500,000 customers buying from us, wow. So we were selling a lot of books.

Speaker 1 25:35

Now, in the pharmacy side of this, as you made that transition over. Isn't there a lot of regulations around medicines and pharmacology and all that stuff?

Speaker 2 25:44

I was a retailer. All I had to be was a licensed pharmacy, and in order to be a licensed pharmacy you have to have a pharmacist on the board. So we created a separate company, nominated a pharmacist to be on our board of directors but it was a holding company. And then I had a pharmacy we had. The call center was 120 people, I had 40 pharmacists and pharmacy technicians basically in assembly line and it was a fantastic bit like really good, really good people. We served the greatest customers. But you know, we heard really heartbreaking stories like a union had totally taken all the money from people and they had no health coverage and so they were calling us because they needed cheaper medications. Wow, and, and it's the same medications. Canadians have the same blood and oxygen as Americans. It's no big deal.

Speaker 1 26:30

Really.

Speaker 2 26:31

Same stuff, yeah, we didn't sell any of the.

Speaker 3 26:33

There we go, so why'd you sell it?

Speaker 2 26:37

Uh, remember earlier I said it was a family business.

Speaker 3 26:39

Yeah.

Speaker 1 26:40

Yeah, the cousin was still there.

Speaker 2 26:42

Yeah, he's still my cousin, it's just it wasn't going to work anymore.

Speaker 1 26:46

Well, I got, I got some of the. They're not cousins, as it were. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 26:54

So I'm also because I was a business coach and because I understand. I think I understand and I'm still learning guys, but I wasn't afraid to sell it. A lot of people are afraid to sell their business because they don't know how else they define themselves. I did not define myself as a male or a pharmacy guy or a book guy or a junk guy. I'm a businessman and so I'm not a pharmacist. But I had a $120 million pharmacy so I sold that and then I went to buy another company.

Speaker 1 27:22

Well done, all right. Wow, you just been pipping all over, you're right, you could go through a lot of shit. So right now, how many coaching clients are you working with?

Speaker 2 27:31

Myself just under 20 and I've got another coach that works for me and we just hit 11 and he'll be at 36 probably in the next couple of months.

Speaker 3 27:39

Nice and did you say most of your clients are in the US?

Speaker 2 27:42

Yeah, almost all of them. I mean there's some people that listen from Australia or the UK.

Speaker 3 27:46

Do Canadians not like to be coached?

Speaker 2 27:48

No, no no, there's some Canadians. There's some Canadians, for sure. It's just the bulk of the people who listen to the podcast, or Americans.

Speaker 1 27:54

Gotcha and your coaching is predominantly a lot of the coaches, and this is where we're going to get into it. So yeah, I'm in that home service space. You know handyman remodeling and stuff. You're working with commercial construction guys and the specific trades there. Is that your focus?

Speaker 2 28:11

Yeah, the reason I chose trades is because trades guys don't BS. They just tell you how it is. If they disagree with me, they'll just say that's not going to work, it's a dumb idea. And I can say the same to them. Nobody gets offended, Right. We've all heard tougher from builders and GCs and inspectors. So I love that market because it's what my kitchen table was growing up, it's what all the family weddings and birthdays was talking to my uncles. It's so normal for me to talk like that and so I like that market. So we yeah, we. We coach businesses in any construction trade. Now you know I've got another podcast just for cabinetry and architectural millwork.

Speaker 3 28:45

Super specific.

Coaching's Role in Business Growth

Speaker 2 28:47

Yeah, and closet people like the, lots of closet people, lots of cabinet makers, lots of architecture mill workers, and you got to be laughing at that. But that market needs the help these guys are building. You know, they start out building maybe a bed for their neighbor or kitchen for their aunt and then a couple of years later they're doing $2 million but not knowing how to run a business. Gotcha.

Speaker 1 29:09

And in the name of that podcast we'll get into the show notes, is oh cabinet maker profit system. Cabinet maker profit system. That's very, that's very super. I couldn't find anything longer.

Speaker 2 29:21

Yeah, I liked how you do that, because that is super.

Speaker 1 29:23

I said super specific, right, I didn't say wow, that's the longest fricking title ever.

Speaker 2 29:27

No, well, you know, I just checked I wasn't able to buy the domain, but left-handed vegan cabinet maker profit system is available if you wanted it.

Speaker 1 29:35

Yes, it's super specific. Shall we yeah.

Speaker 2 29:38

Yeah.

Speaker 1 29:39

This podcast. If you're listening, you must be left-handed, you must be vegan and if you are building cabinets, get in here. Let's get going.

Speaker 3 29:46

I don't think that'd be that big of an audience.

Speaker 1 29:48

Anyways, on profit tool belt, it's roofers, it's electricians, hvac, anybody in the trades, because and we don't talk about tools it's the business of the construction and contracting business, painters, you know anything, which is which is plenty difficult enough so that I mean that's, that's great that you're serving that community, as I feel like I am part of that community and the residential space and feeling the pain that we feel all the time. So you get in there, you do your first 30 minutes, then you start your coaching program. You're looking for those major pain points. That first month you're asking those questions, you're figuring that out. What would you say has been a trend in the major pain points in the trades?

Speaker 2 30:26

A trend in the major pain points in the trades Balance. I'm surprised that I even said that, but it because it's different for everybody. But usually guys of they're working so hard they can't work any harder and kind of working hard to stop working. I'm not trying to be funny with my words here, but like you can only work so hard for so long before you take a breath, usually on the toilet, and you go. I gotta do something like something's got to change.

Speaker 1 30:53

Yeah.

Speaker 2 30:54

You know something's got to change because you can't put out that level of energy. Can I just give you a picture for a second and analogy?

Speaker 1 31:00

Sure.

Speaker 2 31:01

You know, when you watch at the Olympics, there's those ridiculous weight lifters from like Uzbekistan. Guy's massive and he's wearing an awkward singlet, hair's coming out of everywhere. He walks up to this bar. It's ridiculous, right. It's got nine plates on each side. He walks up with these hands and he grabs it and then, before you know it, it's up over his head and everybody claps and he gets 19 points or however, this Okay, that's a business on every day. You created the bar, which is all of your business, and then, through your own just will, just your own absolute personal determination, work ethic, inability to compromise, compromising your family, your money, your time you lifted your own business up above your head and you're standing there and what happens after five minutes? You're like, uh guys.

Speaker 1 31:48

So what does?

Speaker 2 31:48

business coach, do I come along and I'm like you know, we should build a rack.

Speaker 1 31:53

Yeah, right.

Speaker 2 31:57

Like what's a simple system, but I want to give everybody listening to the show credit, because if they're listening to your show first, you love laughing and I love laughing on my show not as much as you guys but they're looking for inspiration, they're looking for ideas for moving forward and they're at that point where maybe that bar is over their head and they're like I can't hold this any longer. What do I do different? And that's where I come in.

Speaker 1 32:20

Yeah, that's been the break for me, I think. As I've grown over the 15 years I remember one of my inflection points was I felt like that very hairy singlet wearing person.

Speaker 3 32:32

I can't, I can't unsee that, chris. I know, it's just not.

Speaker 2 32:35

I want to see it. Actually, I think you should make a little guy running across the bottom of the screen, dominic don't, don't encourage him.

Speaker 1 32:41

Yeah, Actually I thought he on Tik Tok tomorrow? I thought his question. His answer was going to be what do coaches do when they see that they come up and shave my armpits? No, but no, I've been that guy and I had. I had a mentor break that had to break the mold for me before I was using it. I just finished with another business coach and he came up and he said dude, you're in a rut and you're you're not looking this out. You should probably join. You should join something that looks like the Vistage CEO Group, and I was.

Speaker 1 33:08

I'm now part of a CEO group, perfect. I'm like Tom I can't. I can't spend one day a week. He goes. You can't afford not to. I mean one day a month. You can't afford not to do one day a month. Oh my God, that's right, I'll go. And here I am three and a half years later and some of the best decisions I've made as a company have come because I took the time to go there, do an issue process, get through, get through some things and just get perspective. And get perspective. There's the phrase. Sometimes you got to run up to the top of that mountain and look out to see where the hell you guys are going, or find out that the mountain top is still ahead of you and you still got a long ways to go everybody and then go run back down and you can help people shrap her shit up.

Speaker 2 33:45

Yeah.

Speaker 1 33:46

Another analogy, but let's go back to the Harriet analogy because I actually, yeah, we got deep here.

Speaker 2 33:51

Alan, are you okay with this?

Speaker 3 33:52

Because we got deep. I just I can't stop thinking of that image.

Speaker 1 33:56

I'm thinking singlet Big, you know, actually the one, the one my favorite one got an SNL skit where the guy is at the full, the full doping Olympics, and he rips it up and his arms fall off and he goes oh, they're not going to feel that now, but he's going to feel that tomorrow. That's how sometimes I feel, as a business owner too is I get my arms just ripped off and then people are beating me over the head with them too. So, oh yeah, and I think that's where and we've talked about this before in the podcast when to coach and when not to coach, meaning, you know, there's times where you can't afford not to have a coach. There's times where you afford. You just can't do it. It just doesn't work with your time or your commitment, as you've talked with people and do you?

Speaker 3 34:36

agree with that, Dominic.

Speaker 1 34:38

Or do you agree with me or not?

Speaker 2 34:39

Yeah, some people aren't. Some people aren't ready for coaching. You have to be ready for coaching. You have to be more excited about change in your business than I am, and I'm pretty darn excited because it's going to. It's going to take some time and I'm going to show you some systems and you have to put them in place. But if you're not willing to do it it's a waste of time. You probably won't even get past the first phone call. You won't even make the first phone call.

Speaker 2 34:59

But the people that know they've got something on the line, like here's one of the most painful things I ever heard from a guy. I already lost one wife to this business. I don't want to lose another one. Woo, and maybe that sums up. And this guy did mold remediation and basement waterproofing. Maybe that sums up how they get to that point. And everybody's got their own path. They want their kids to take over, but the kids aren't ready. How do we get cohesiveness? How do we build a plan so that I can hop in the RV and leave and the kids can take whatever it is?

Speaker 1 35:26

I think the most painful part of that comment you just made is that he had a second wife.

Speaker 3 35:31

Well, and it makes me think of no, he's right. He was right though. Well, it's like people that end up hiring a coach is because they've got a problem. Why wouldn't you hire a coach before you get a problem, to help avoid a problem? And well, think, yeah. So I have a really good friend of mine who's on his second wife, and with the second wife they went to counseling. They just made a decision before we have any trouble, let's just have regular counseling sessions. Was that her suggestion, you know?

Speaker 1 36:03

however, however it came about, I might have been a light hint on the art, yeah.

Speaker 3 36:07

Yeah, but you know I actually thought that was a really cool move because you know it defuses things before they become a problem and sometimes I'm sure you walk into big fat Harry messes like Chris and a unit are.

Speaker 2 36:21

That would be a disturbing, but I've probably seen. Listen.

Speaker 1 36:24

Think about this weekend when you're going to watch your favorite singlet, singlet, singlet.

Speaker 2 36:29

Think about this weekend when you're going to watch your favorite team play. So you sit down, you crack cold one. You sit down, your favorite chair and the announcer comes on and says wow, and in a crazy turn of events, oregon, because you're wearing an organ shirt, is not. There's no coaching staff no-transcript.

Speaker 3 36:43

Yeah, there's been years I felt like that. Oh what would you?

Speaker 1 36:45

say there's no coach, there's no way, coaching is not remedial.

Speaker 2 36:49

Coaching is not a remedial. You know what I mean by remedial. People don't get coaches because they're in trouble. It's the high performers who say you know what I'm doing pretty well, I think I've kind of maxed out in this area in that one. What if I got somebody in here to give me perspective, like we were talking about, and just show me my blind spots? What am I missing?

Speaker 1 37:07

Yeah, I think that's the part where you can really start to change the way you look at your business and get looked at, and so we talked about it. You got to be ready for coaching. When you're ready, you got to be in that right frame of mind and you got to decide when and where it makes sense for you. We've had somebody on the podcast and I won't say who it was, but after the podcast was over and we were chit-chatting for a minute person said I spent $10,000 a month on coaching to get my business where it is, and I'm like that's a number, I mean that's a number for a lot of people that they were not ready to swallow until they're ready to go big time.

Speaker 1 37:42

Now she just out of half of us that are around us she is going big time. She's definitely doing it and it's working for her very well. Yeah, I've had coaches.

Speaker 2 37:50

throughout You've had coaches. Yeah, people who coach you, yeah because otherwise I get in my head yeah, I become, I lose my perspective, like we're talking about, and I start chasing the wrong thing because it's easy for me. You know, obviously I gravitate towards the things I like marketing and people and systems or some key numbers, it's good to have somebody there just flicking me in the air or keeping me, you know accountability.

Speaker 2 38:16

And then this maybe this is oversharing, but sometimes when I say something out loud to the coach, I'm like, well, that sounds really stupid. I should probably stop doing that.

Speaker 1 38:25

Yeah, I've done that. That's funny. I've used individual business coaches twice in my career and then in that I use my monthly group. But there's once when the coach I said something like wow, that just sounds really asinine.

Speaker 2 38:38

I mean it's just the craziest logic.

Speaker 1 38:40

That's what he's saying. I'm going to file that away. I'm hoping he didn't know he did hear that because he's telling me how stupid that was. Too Damn it.

Speaker 2 38:47

And then I still and maybe you get this too in your Vistage Group is the accountability of showing up at the next meeting going. Boys, I did it. I said I was going to do this and I did it. And here's the results. And you throw that down on the table and you're like, oh, what'd you do? And they're like, oh, we didn't do anything the last month.

Speaker 1 39:02

Yeah, all right, yeah, we've. That's where my group I use it as a personal accountability group and some of them have become some of my best friends throughout it but yeah, that's when you come in and you celebrate the successes and then you admit your failure. You're like I didn't get it done, here's why and here's what I got to do to get back on top. And they're like all right, we're going to hold you accountable for it for next month, because it's amazing when you make those little leaps throughout the month, going back to the little steps you take throughout the week and then the little itty bitty steps you take, just get out of bed every morning.

Speaker 2 39:35

Isn't it crazy, but that's the key to success. If I was to give one of these guru keys, you're not hitting triples every time, just singles. If you just hit a single in your business every week at the end of the year, you've hit 52 singles. Yeah, real good.

Lessons From Construction Millionaires

Speaker 3 39:53

You know, I have a good old friend who's just had a long career in sales and all he does is he goes. I do one thing an hour to advance my business. He goes and I do. So. That's eight things a day, smart Times, how many days he works a year, and so he goes. You know, if I want to play golf in the afternoon, I just make sure I do my eight things before I have my teeth done, and the guy's just wildly successful without a complicated system. Yeah, that wasn't a shot.

Speaker 3 40:29

That wasn't a shot it was good, yeah Well, so in your bio you talk about processes, but you also talk about secrets. You have a lot of secrets to success. Can you tell us a secret, Well?

Speaker 2 40:43

I mean, we've uncovered some of them, so I have a book. Is it was? I don't know if that was a soft one.

Speaker 3 40:46

Yeah, it's kind of a little soft. I have a book called Construction. It's a little grapefruit, I tossed your way.

Speaker 1 40:50

Nice, well done Thank you, it was good, it was good I caught it Except for now.

Speaker 3 40:55

Everybody knows that it was right. I'm gonna toss, but go ahead. You're doing fine, it's all right, we'll rewind.

Speaker 2 41:01

So I I've had the fortune to coach in many places in the world New Zealand, united States, obviously, canada, australia, brazil and most people don't get the chance to sit in boardrooms or in construction trailers in different countries and there's always some guy that walks in, usually not a very tall man. He builds towers, he builds skyscrapers and you start, or whatever they do, right Like they're civil engineer or they're a massive home builder, and it's an unassuming guy. It's not always some yelling red faced maniac, it's like it's just a regular guy. But he comes in and Did you take that personally?

Speaker 1 41:37

Chris, yeah, hey look, I'm not red faced right now, but yeah, usually no. But you have a red shirt on it. Just give the glows, yeah.

Speaker 2 41:43

Yeah, so all right, keep going. But the things that I learned are the guy in Brazil who speaks Portuguese and maybe vacations in Miami once in a while but never, really never comes to North America, still doing the same little things that a guy in Texas is doing, or a guy in, or a guy in Toronto, right, and those secrets are, you know, they train everybody the same way. They track their numbers, they stand for what they believe in. Like our company stands for something and if you're on our team, you stand for it, and it's okay if you kind of stand for it, but you don't fall outside of the gray zone, right, like you like. Showing up on time is a non-negotiable.

Speaker 1 42:21

There we go. Isn't that crazy? How about just showing up? Yeah, just showing up. Back to the traits. That's what I'm asking. What's the common trend? My guys didn't show.

Speaker 2 42:31

Yeah, that's that big one, yeah. So now I'm going to go into business coach mode. What did you do? Or what did I do when my guy didn't show up Because everybody else is? The other nine guys are watching.

Speaker 1 42:41

Right.

Speaker 2 42:42

Not accepting that one.

Speaker 1 42:44

Yeah, yeah, you got to. Well, that's what we do. We make some examples.

Speaker 2 42:49

I know that's unacceptable because Sometimes they paint the target on their own back. But I can't help you. Yeah, I shouldn't have to teach you what you were supposed to learn at your kitchen table as a kid.

Speaker 1 43:00

Oh no, that's a good one. I shouldn't have to teach you which one.

Speaker 3 43:03

I think that's a book title, Dominic, your book too.

Speaker 1 43:06

Got it, yeah, I got a couple, so we'll put the title of the book in show notes for everybody again. But just give us that title for it one more time Construction millionaire secrets.

Speaker 3 43:18

That's pretty out right in your face.

Speaker 1 43:20

I think you got it, you think we know what that book title's about, right? Yeah, exactly, there's no secret on that one. No secret pun intended. All right, Dominic, we're coming towards the end of our thing. We call it the podcast because I was trying to write down my four questions. But before we get to our famous four questions, can you let everybody know how we can find you? We'll get all this in the show notes as well.

Recommendations and Customer Service Pet Peeves

Speaker 2 43:40

Well, these days if you can't find me online, you ain't looking, it's, you know, fair enough. So if you're a cabinet maker or anything in the Finnish wood trades, go to Cabinet Maker Profits System. You know what the easiest thing is? People can just text me. The world doesn't have to be complicated. My cell phone is 315-903-7853. Just text me and say I heard you on the show. Chris and Alan said to call Like yeah, the text.

Speaker 3 44:06

The easiest way to get a hold of somebody anybody's ever given us.

Speaker 1 44:09

I love that, and that's right. That's putting it all out there. Here's simple. I put it out there. Simple systems he likes simple systems. Do you want?

Speaker 2 44:16

it again 315-903-7853. 903-7853.

Speaker 1 44:20

Now I feel like we're doing a commercials. That's right.

Speaker 3 44:22

No, I'm just saying like 903. 703. Well, because we did it, I did it fast, I did it fast. But it just text me yeah.

Speaker 1 44:28

This doesn't have to be complicated.

Speaker 2 44:29

The world is.

Speaker 1 44:30

Yeah, this has been awesome, dom. This has been a fun episode. I've really enjoyed this. So now we're going to play our final four questions. We talked about your book, but give us a book that you would recommend everybody, that you've read recently, that we should all go out there and read.

Speaker 3 44:44

This is going to be a good one, because he used to sell books. He's written a book.

Speaker 2 44:48

I mean if anybody knows books, I mean, it's Dom. So, where the book by Alex Hermosi $100 million secrets is excellent. Have you heard?

Speaker 1 44:56

of that. That's a good one. Yeah, I have heard of that one. I have not read it yet.

Speaker 3 44:59

I think Dom just likes the word secret.

Speaker 2 45:01

Yeah, right, the other one, and we were talking about this before the show guys Just lay in there, chris, yeah. The E-myth revisited oh yeah, yeah that's.

Speaker 1 45:12

I mean, that's a solid state blood.

Speaker 3 45:13

It is just so good.

Speaker 1 45:15

It's timeless and easy to read. I mean, that is one that you read through it and you're like, oh wow, that's done. Yeah, and boy, if you took the time just to absorb it, it was an easy absorb too. It's not like it was complicated math. No, I don't think it was higher math, you know like 2 plus 2, fuzzy math, yeah, like 8 times 9. All right, see, ooh, even harder. All right, here we go. Next question what is the favorite feature of your house?

Speaker 2 45:39

So my house was built in 1893. I'd have to say the entryway.

Speaker 1 45:43

Entryway to my 1893 house. I can't wait to get the last question.

Speaker 3 45:48

All right.

Speaker 1 45:50

That's right, Cause it's coming All right. So one of the things that we really pride ourselves on is we talk about customer service a lot because we're a bunch of customer service Freaks. Let's go what is a customer service pet peeve of yours when you're out there and you're getting service either out there? You're the customer you're going to do things or you're, aka, the customer.

Speaker 3 46:09

Thank you, just trying to narrow it down for you, Chris. You're the customer. Give us a customer service pet peeve.

Speaker 2 46:14

I'll tell you, the customer service pet peeve I have is and I've never thought of this until now, but when I tip somebody at the coffee shop and they just don't say anything, oh, like it's expected.

Speaker 1 46:25

That is funny, right, yeah, yeah, I think that that's a good one.

Speaker 2 46:30

Cause you just asked me. Thank you, Wouldn't you thank me back?

Speaker 3 46:34

Right. Well, I think manners have kind of gone out the window lately. Yeah, I suppose you're right.

Speaker 2 46:38

Yeah, yeah that's definitely one. But nobody think there's just no recognition of the fact that I just left you a pre-programmed 18, you know, whatever the you know, it comes up now 18, 25%, choose your tip. 18%, 25%, 39%, you're like uh.

Speaker 1 46:52

Let me double down on this pet peeve, though, cause now, with all these machines that are in front of you, it says, and the person's looking at you and you're getting takeout, okay, and they're looking at you like just put in the machine and it says no tip, 15, 18, 25. And they're looking at you like am I a cheap ass and do zero because I'm just grabbing it and leaving? And so I've been doing 15 lately.

Speaker 2 47:12

They don't say anything. Either way, if I went to that takeout place and sometimes the takeout place is, you know, if they're making sushi, there's a lot of manufacturing that goes into sushi right, it's a lot I'll tip those guys. But if you're just pulling like a can of Coke off the thing and a pre-made sandwich and handing it to me, if I'm at the stadium buying a beer and you want to tip for turning around and grabbing something and putting it on the other counter, yeah Well, I'm guilty of that.

Speaker 1 47:36

I tip there too.

Speaker 2 47:37

Cause. I mean, I'm looking right at you, I do too, but then I think, why am I tipping?

Speaker 3 47:41

I know there's a big backlash on that right now. Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 47:44

I get it.

Speaker 2 47:45

I get it. So here's what I'm asking.

Speaker 3 47:47

They're putting it there out there. Yeah, they're forcing it for stuff that traditionally does Just say thanks yeah.

Speaker 2 47:52

Just say thanks yeah. So maybe it is a pet peeve You've uncovered a wound.

Speaker 1 47:58

Oh, you know what? I think we all have to go therapy on this one now. All right. So yeah, but you guys can't go to my therapist, she's busy, all right, last one, mr. She has one client. She gets a lot of work there, which is why my coaching budget's way lower now. So give us a DIY nightmare story 1894 house. I'm talking shit, you know what?

Speaker 2 48:20

I'm in the middle of one right now. Then it's my house. Can I talk?

Speaker 3 48:24

to you about this. Yeah, please.

Speaker 2 48:26

Yeah, so we have an old, you know the chest of drawers that you put in a makeup room. It's got a mirror on it, a couple of drawers. Well, they took that in this house.

Speaker 1 48:37

So it's old, an old antique one. So it mounts to the back of your chest of drawers and the mirror comes up, and it's a really heavy piece of wood and mirror. Yes.

Speaker 2 48:45

Yeah, so the counter on that was wood as well, and so we took the counter off and had just a new piece of marble cut to go in there, right, and because it was rotting it wasn't looking good. So now we cut the sink bowl and everything and I realized that that wooden countertop was how you screwed in the backboard. And so now I've gone to sleep and I've woken up thinking how am I going to attach this thing?

Speaker 3 49:09

Liquid nails. Got some ideas, yeah, liquid.

Speaker 2 49:11

No.

Speaker 3 49:12

I think I'm going to need brackets.

Speaker 2 49:14

Yeah, hurricane brackets like framing stuff.

Speaker 1 49:16

You're going to need brackets.

Speaker 2 49:17

Yeah, I'm going to need brackets to put a fake piece of wood back there between the countertop and the cabinet. All my cabinet guys are listening to me right now shaking their heads. They're like Rubino we expected better out of you, but it just occurred to me that I don't have a mounting system now for getting that mirror back on that chest of drawers.

Speaker 1 49:35

Yeah, how do you like me now tough guy. That's right, put it out there in the podcast. We all do it in the DIY nightmare stories. I love them, although no death, no dismemberment. But he does host a podcast called Cabin Makers.

Funny Stories From Construction Workers

Speaker 3 49:46

He didn't even ship himself in the hand with a nail gun. I know which is no fun.

Speaker 1 49:49

I know God, look at those suckers. You know we used to do with a nail gun.

Speaker 3 49:53

What'd?

Speaker 1 49:53

you do with the nail gun.

Speaker 2 49:54

Is when a guy goes into the porta potty. You take the nail and you hold back the actuator and then you just shoot the porta potty with your nail gun. Yeah, you never did that.

Speaker 3 50:04

That's just. You do it from two stories up and the guy's like. I jinxed in Canada.

Speaker 1 50:08

Yeah, yeah, no. So OK, yes, I have, but he wasn't in the porta potty.

Speaker 3 50:17

Oh, he was just walking in front of your office. No, he was taking a leak out back in the neighbor's yard.

Speaker 1 50:23

So I went up and I didn't shoot at him, I just shot by him.

Speaker 3 50:27

Are they that accurate? No, whatever, yeah, ok, but I shot him.

Speaker 1 50:31

He was like, because all I could hear was those little and you can see him moving around. He's looking around. Oh, because he couldn't hear the gun going off.

Speaker 2 50:38

Yeah, I was shooting for a long ways away. But you know what a guy did to me once. We were doing a roof and I was brand new on the crew, you know, on my D1, they gave me trusses to run along the top of walls with. I had no idea what I was doing, like no idea, and he's the guy that I was with. I was his apprentice. He touched my foot at the same time as he drove a nail in with the gun and I lost my mind. I remember looking at my foot and grabbing my thigh and going my foot wasn't nailed down, but I thought it was nailed down. I was screaming.

Speaker 3 51:05

He was laughing so hard.

Speaker 1 51:07

Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah, I got trained like that too, where they come by and hit the side of your machine while you're working on it and they'd hit the lumber in your head and hit anything, so you think everything's falling. You're like just absolutely shit in your pants.

Speaker 2 51:20

Yeah.

Speaker 1 51:22

Dom, this has been a blast. You haven't learned anything on this podcast. I think you have missed out on some great opportunities. But you can always double back, check out our show notes, go out there, give us a follow, give us a subscribe. Go check this out. Tell your friends about this shit, because I don't know. Man, I think it's a lot of fun for a bunch of guys sitting in. As one guy said, these guys think they're really funny sitting in their kitchen. Ha ha, jokes on you, dude. I'm in my basement, ha ha ha. Mom, give me some lasagna. We're out of here. Cheers.