Building Business Empires with Brent Knott

Meet Brent Knott, an operations and CRM maven who's boldly reinvented his life and business in recent years. Brace yourself as Brent unfurls tales of his audacious adventures, including a one-way trip to Mexico to test his business's autonomy. He candidly discusses his decade-long entrepreneurial journey, his transformation to an employee-owned modus operandi, and, his knack for building efficient systems and processes.

In this episode, Brent captivates with his commitment to helping service industry small business owners improve their communication skills. From foot soldier to commander, he shares invaluable advice from mentors and accomplished CEOs. Brent reveals how his team secured lucrative five-figure gigs and the pressures that come with them. He emphasizes the importance of a clear, collective vision of success.

Brent navigates training challenges in the service industry, using data-driven methods & bonus structures for success. From tech to business owner, he shares growth, tenacity, and location independence, creating opportunities for others. Tune in for wisdom & inspiration! 

NOTABLE QUOTES
"If you improve your public speaking craft, you’d be a better communicator and be more influential for your team to better understand the story, the vision that you’re trying to build with them." – Brent
"A to B is irrelevant as long as the end result is the same." – Brent
"I’m very stubborn and it requires a little bit of an extreme for me to change." – Brent
"When you delegate, you start to lose control. You need to have a system in place where you can just look at [if it’s a good job or not.]" – Brent
"Those fundamentals are the things that are the most important and we often overlook those." – Philip
"We have all these things we want to do and some of them work out great, some of them don’t, and we have to have those tough conversations and really persevere through all of that." – Philip
“No matter how much pain you’re in, it ends. No matter how much joy you’re in, it ends. Life isn’t what we think it is. I think the 10% good times are really what we live for." – Brent
"What you’re focusing on is a great way to help you persevere and get through." – Philip
"Don’t do things for the sake of money. Don’t wait on people for the sake of waiting on people. You can’t change people’s lives. All you can do is create opportunities for people and they either come or they don’t." – Brent

RESOURCES
Brent
Website: www.torqcrm.com  | www.designitwraps.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamknottbrent
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brent-knott-2ab66269
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brent.knott.7

Philip
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamphilipsessions/?hl=en
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@philipsessions
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philip-sessions-b2986563
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/therealphilipsessions

Transcript

Philip Sessions: 0:16

What's going on, guys? This is Philip Sessions, your public speaking and presentations coach. I'm here today with Brent Knot, and this is a man I've been watching for quite a while. He's an operations guru, crm guru. This dude has persevered through so many different things. I mean, you talk about a guy that's changed his life tremendously over the last year or two, challenging himself. One day he just said, hey, I'm going to go run a marathon. Another day is like, I'm just going to run 50 miles. This dude just tries crazy things. Right now we're recording because he wants to see if his business can run without him, and he is in Mexico right now as we record bought a one-way ticket. You never know what he's going to go back. He's just waiting to see how the business is going to work. So Brent is one of those guys that just goes all in and I'm excited to talk with him today. But, brent, tell us a little bit more about yourself.

Brent Knott: 1:07

Yeah, I've been in business now for about 10 years, 34 years old, and you know, definitely didn't start here as far as doing crazy stuff. I usually sought out comfort, which was doing all the easy things that I thought were hard, and I actually created a whole persona around working hard and grinding. And so, yeah, I mean I have a vehicle wrap business. That's what that was my main thing. That's slowly becoming my, you know. Moving on to the new thing, I'm not killing my baby, I'm just creating opportunities in a different way where we're shifting to kind of like an employee-owned model. And my whole goal with the wrap business was to coach and mentor my team, the way that I had a mentor come into my life and coach and mentor me.

Brent Knott: 1:55

And it's an industry that's very easy to start. It's very hard to scale and it can make really good money if you're the technician. It can make a lot of money too if you're not the technician. But it really requires a huge mindset shift because most people really start off with a speedy hand. And then we took the systems and processes from that company that we developed over the last probably six months, eight months, and we just got really good at building systems and actually putting them in software, because softwares are a system. You can use any software, but there are certain ones that are better than others, but the best one is the one that you actually use. So you know, we just got pretty good at helping other people with their software stack and now we created a whole business out of that now and we've got I think we're up to 24 users right now and it's going really well.

Philip Sessions: 2:46

Nice, and so with that, like your focus just on the wrap group, right, if you will like the wrap niche, or is anybody?

Brent Knott: 2:55

that's how it started. But we had a guy that was just like hey, I would like something like this. So we built a hard scapes one, and so we're helping him with that. And really, once we did that one and we did, what was the other guy? We have like some kind of printing service that's not related to raps, but it's a copy papers in there, and and then we also have a metal fabricator, and and so there's three totally different businesses and yet really, the flow of the system itself is very similar, with some vocabulary changes, and once we got an idea of what their workflow was like, it was easy.

Philip Sessions: 3:35

Yeah, and that's the funny thing with what I hear with business and everything, once you start figuring it out, it's all just a system, it's all just a process, and business is business, as everybody likes to say. It's just you change the name, you change the verbiage a little bit. This kind of works in this flow versus another flow and everything. And so we're going to dive into your background here in a second, but I want to ask you the first question I always like to ask, and that is what is your definition of public speaking?

Brent Knott: 4:02

So I've always looked at public speaking a little different, because I never aspired to be like an onstage speaker and I think it was one of the first things that I kind of talked with you about, like because we were talking about you know, you were really just like kicking off. We met quite a while ago and I was like man, you should really go after small business owners like me that have trouble communicating with their team, and so I just think public speaking in general is like the hardest thing you can do as far as being a good communicator or a great communicator brother, and so that's kind of how I've utilized it more than anything, because it didn't fit into my goals yet. It doesn't mean it won't, but that's the way I look at it is. If you improved your public speaking craft, I think you'd be a better communicator and be more influential for your team to better understand the story that you're trying and vision that you're trying to build with them.

Philip Sessions: 4:55

Yeah, I agree there, and there's definitely not just speaking on stage what most people think about when it comes to public speaking, but that communication, communicating with your team. And I really did take that. I think it was about a year and a half ago. We actually got on that call and started talking and really from there, that did inspire me and I'm still focused on the small business owners really in the service-based industry, helping them be able to get better at communicating, presenting in front of clients, in front of customers and for the business owner, in front of their team as well, because that's such an important thing, especially as somebody like you.

Philip Sessions: 5:29

You're starting, you're delegating your I mean you're being hands off. How do you go and make sure that you communicate properly with your team so they understand that and everything? Because right now, a lot of your team could probably be thinking seriously Brent's just over here owning the company, he's doing nothing, he's just chilling out. In Mexico, everybody usually thinks of what the business owner is doing. It's kind of ironic that you're doing that, but you have to go communicate like why you're doing this. And so what did that communication look like for you? To talk about you coming to Mexico to get away. So that way the business you can see the business was running on its own or not.

Brent Knott: 6:09

Yeah, I mean we were briefly talking about it before we came on to the podcast, but basically, I am such a technician mentally, and have been for so long, that I was a worker bee. Even my mentor told me that whenever he picked me up and put me under his wing, he's like you're just a worker bee. We have to change that, and a lot of people don't get taught the skills to not be a worker bee, though, and that's the problem, and I think we're naturally trained to be the worker bee. Nobody is trained to run a budget, run a team and all those things, and so I could remove myself from the business, but I'd sit in my office and I was close, and so my team would come and hey, so this thing happened and I need to fix it, and every time, my answer is just take care of it, let me know what the result was. And that way I heard that from a CEO of Black Knight Financial and Dunham Bradstreet. Actually, he's the CEO of two major entities, two major financial firms, and he was very calm and peaceful, and I was at his house and I was like man, how are you so calm Because I'm running a little small business that I am not calm and he said that he would ask his management team.

Brent Knott: 7:29

Can I rely on you to own the outcome of the task that I'm giving you, or will you only report on it? Because if you're just going to give me the report of this happen, like you're trying to get me to make the decision then I'll just hire my daughter, and I was like that's actually pretty dope. So I'm I like to go to extremes because I will relapse me sitting in the office. It was an opportunity for me to hop back in the back and go. You know, teach them something. Sure, I'm teaching them something, but they were also being taught not to think for themselves. And so now I have two of my guys who have three times this month, flown somewhere in the country and wrapped a five figure job. Normally that wouldn't happen. So I mean it's just created some cool opportunities, me removing myself. It did put a lot of pressure on my team. I will give it that, and that's one thing that's probably overlooked is the amount of pressure that me not being there put on them when they're used to that.

Philip Sessions: 8:27

And how did you go about handling that pressure with them? Like, did you have conversation with them or what did that look like?

Brent Knott: 8:32

So, fortunately, my story is not very hard or my vision isn't very hard to spend One. I'm not very selfish, I live pretty conservatively, but there isn't a story that you're aware of that is real. And that mentor is one row down the road and he comes in the shop all the time and they know that there is an opportunity, if we can get to a certain level, for them to have their own place. And then I'm not greedy with equity. I already have another location in which we do have sweat equity in place for an employee that started as an employee and he's working to become his own business owner and he's literally running an entire shop on his own.

Brent Knott: 10:04

So we already have proof. So there's social proof that what I'm trying to do is real, and so that's the biggest thing, and we just focus on that. Like you know, if you want to, you know these are the pressures that you're going to deal with as a business owner. That's what I just tell them. Yeah.

Philip Sessions: 10:18

And that makes a lot of sense. It's definitely tough to think about when you've been that technician and I've definitely been there and still am there. Sometimes, especially with my nine to five, I try and pull myself out as much as I can, but I'm always getting pulled back in and then kind of the role I'm in, I kind of have to be in it. I don't really have the choice because I'm not the business owner there, but it is. It is difficult because there's a lot of times too where I'm like, well, I just go ahead and get it done, I just figured out and I have to step back. And I have to step back and then take that time to really educate the person that I know can do it, who I can delegate that work to, and just take that time to train them up a little bit and sit there and watch them.

Philip Sessions: 11:00

And that's probably the hardest thing is sitting there watching them. And you know, ok, if you just did this, it would be that it would be maybe milliseconds or a couple of seconds quicker, but that adds up and compounds over time and you just had to sit there and watch and then afterwards you ask them like, hey, why did you go about it this way and there's always little things that you can do. So I'm curious for you, because obviously they're there with the squeegee, they're doing all this other stuff, putting on these clear brawls and other wraps on these cars, and you're watching them and I've seen these videos, as you've done having them, and you're training them as you're doing those videos or videoing them doing it, and I'm sure you're wanting to cringe on the inside, but how do you go about communicating that to help them understand that they can do it in a better way? Or maybe they messed up on something?

Brent Knott: 11:45

So what's interesting about that is I try not to do that too much, because A to B is relevant as long as the end result is the same. And that was very hard for me because, for example, we use Adobe Illustrator. Adobe literally came out and said, like back in like 2015, that the system is so vast that no two people operate at the same period. Like and that was even speaking about their engineers like how they, how they get from A to B, it's never the same and so stylistically, everybody's a little bit different, and so I train, but we also track. So we've we haven't fully got implemented yet, but we try to have employees clock in on the job, even though they're paid commission on the installer side, and they clock in on the job so we can actually build a dashboard that shows them their average time spent per job. We can try to bonus and reward structure based on how many jobs per month they kicked out. It also shows them goals. It'll show them that we have a dashboard that will show how much money they made this year and what their goal was and where they're at on their metrics, so like they're only failing themselves if they miss it as long as we're plugging in the data.

Brent Knott: 13:03

So you know, I've gotten pretty past that. I used to be pretty big on it, like no, you have to do this exactly like this. But I installed different than how I was even trained. So I was just like don't be a hypocrite, you know. Let them just kind of flow with what makes sense. And then I do show them my way and I tell them just adopt the part out of it that makes sense for you. And you continue figuring out your own thing Because it just might not feel right for you and it just doesn't. Sometimes it could be because I'm stronger. Like with wraps you're stretching film and stuff. I don't use a lot of heat and I'm able to like pull the film a little differently than some people because I'm a little larger and stronger, whereas Hannah is a hundred pounds and you know she ain't going to be able to do what I do, you know. But she gets there and that's all that matters. So I fortunately got over that part. It was a struggle, though.

Philip Sessions: 13:57

Oh, yeah, yeah, I mean that's a great point. Yeah, there's little things that really don't matter. That's what you need to not worry about, and just there's the quality right at the end Is it done. Or maybe if somebody's using like twice the amount of material because they're not stretching it to really get it place right, that might be a different story. But if they use a little bit more, they take a little bit more time. They don't have the experience like you. They don't know all the little nuances that you've learned over 10 years, and that is a difficult thing as a business owner.

Philip Sessions: 14:25

But I want to go back, because now you've kind of talked a little bit about the fact that you've got these people in place here out of the country. You're having people fly all over. You've you built a couple of locations, which is three specifically, one is somebody that's becoming that business owner of that location, which is really cool concept that you have. So probably circle back to that here later. But I want to talk about how you got here. Let's let's talk about that story real quick, because I think that's a powerful story that a lot of business owners need to hear about.

Brent Knott: 14:55

So I was like 22, 23 years old and I was working for a guy and he wasn't really a great person and started to notice he was doing things you know maxing out his credit cards, trying to cheat on his wife, stuff like that. I was just like this guy's going to mess me over if I stay with him, and he had the opportunity to. So I just decided to leave and I had like printing equipment and everything in my apartment and I had a Miata so there was no way I could get it to him. So I had to like take videos of my thing. I had to give him the video and say that I have videos and timestamp and I've even said your name in the video that you're picking up equipment out of my house. Do not vandalize this apartment. You know, we'll start with that thing. And so I gave myself a good paper trail. Fortunately I did. I moved down to Florida. I didn't move, I actually went to Tennessee first. No, alabama dropped off all my belongings at my mom's house and because I didn't know where I was going to stay, and I went down to Florida to just wrap two portions. And I wrapped the two portions and the guy gave me like four more. They weren't his.

Brent Knott: 16:06

Come to find out he owned a racing series that ran with HSR, is called international GT and there's portions of Ferrari's that run in it. And they kept bringing me Kamens and I was like man, this is cool. So kept wrapping Kamens and the whole time he's like asking me weird questions, like psychological, like what would you do with this, what would you do with that? And he was basically disc profiling me without me realizing it. So finally him and I went into business and like he, let me set the company up. He's like if we went into business, what would it split the I don't know 70, 30s, which way? I was like you 70, me 30, and which is horrible, the salary. He's like what do you need to live? And I took the question very literally like I wasn't, like I knew that there was not a dollar on the planet I could do to change his lifestyle and so, like when he says, what do you need, not want me? I was like I need $16,000 lift and that's all I got. So, because I was living with his crew chief, I paid $500 a month for rent and that paid for all the utilities and everything, and so I didn't need a lot and I worked my butt off, like he would tell me to go home. He's like you're going to hurt yourself, you're going to burn out, and I'm like, no, like I didn't.

Brent Knott: 17:20

Again, it wasn't the right thing. It's just what I knew to do, which was throw more work at things, and so I didn't really get any real traction in that company until maybe year five, even though we did really good. I mean, we were doing year two and three. We were doing like $304,000, which is awesome for a 20 something year old, but I had a mentor that did, you know, 40 million in sales on year three in 1989. So you know, like he didn't just give me the playbook either, I had to earn it.

Brent Knott: 17:55

Like he would give me little hints and I couldn't comprehend what the thing he was telling me, because he's at that level to where I'm only now really just understanding the lessons. It's crazy. Luckily I have a decent memory with his talks, but I'm literally only now just starting to crack that open. It's crazy and like no out of boys in seven years maybe two good jobs and he's a tough cookie. He's very Bobby Castro, like Mike, basically Real fundamental. He's made every mistake in the book. He's had everything happen from, you know, casual issues to having an employee run into somebody and killing somebody in traffic and go into court over that. He's had literally everything happen to him.

Brent Knott: 18:41

So him and I ended up separating at about seven years, not in a bad way, just like he was working on bigger, better things, doing some big real estate stuff and frankly, the point of it, like, looking back, he was trying to get me in a buyer's amount in year three, year, four year, five year like literally he never gave me anything. He made me have that conversation and who knows how much money I lost because I didn't add a 70, 30 split. But it didn't matter because the way I saw it was, I was comfortable. Basically I was in the birds nest. I had his credit card. You know, I could have unlimited working capital as long as I followed his rules on the credit card and I could do whatever I wanted. It was great. So it was safe, right. And so finally I had to get my credit up to the point that I could do it on my own. And then it got stressful. That first month when it was on my own credit card was stressful.

Philip Sessions: 19:42

I bet, I bet, yeah, that would be a huge change. It's funny how, when it's our money, it's totally different than when it's somebody else's money, and it makes sense, because you don't feel that pain or the stress that, oh, I may not have enough, which this guy clearly seemed to have enough for what you were trying to do, because what you were doing was beans compared to what he's over here doing to buy in all this real estate and everything. But still that, I mean that is scary. And so what you? I've heard this a little bit before, but I know there was a point within you, like buying him out, that he was wanting you to have those conversations and then part of those rules as well. So there was a rule I think that you missed or something, and he would ask you like randomly about, like you know where are your numbers at, or whatever.

Brent Knott: 20:28

So tell us about that. So my rules were I can use your credit card, but I had to revolve it every 45 days and so if it was a big project it was mandatory that I didn't start it till the first if possible, and it let him know if it wasn't so that I got a longer extension on the cash right For all the materials. So I had to receive payment terms on. Completion period was not an option, if at all possible, and if not I had to let him know. And then I had to do a spreadsheet on every single job to show what my analysis of the products were versus time, to show the gross profit per project. And he randomly spot checked me on, like this $40,000 sales the largest sale I had made at the time was for the Jacksonville Tea Party and he was supporting them and apparently he was paying for it and I didn't know that. I thought he just referred the job to me and so here I am the happiest can be.

Brent Knott: 21:31

We wrapped this huge project and he wanted to know what the margins were on it so that he could figure out what portion he wanted to donate from the business and what portion he wanted to donate out of cash, and so I did not have the spreadsheet and at the time I knew my raps numbers very, very, very well.

Brent Knott: 21:47

That happened to come out to $10 square foot, so it was very easy to keep my labor at 25%, because that's where I paid the installers to and a half dollars square foot. So 10 was just an easy number, right, and so I was like I don't need to do a spreadsheet for this and I felt like it was time wasted. Well, when he audited me, he literally sat me down in an office and he slammed Bruce's fist on the table and he doesn't really yell much, but he gets. Actually it's a bulldog and he's like this is literally bigger than any school that you could ever get. He goes like you don't even realize what I'm teaching you, and if you're not going to take this seriously, then I might as well dissolve the business and let you run your own business.

Philip Sessions: 22:29

And how many years was this in, by the way? Like five.

Brent Knott: 22:33

Yeah, five and a half, so I was finally starting to make some money. Yeah, I'm about to lose it all.

Philip Sessions: 22:38

Man yeah, and he was already wanting you out, like you to buy him out and all this stuff anyways.

Brent Knott: 22:43

Yeah.

Philip Sessions: 22:44

You've been persevering through this whole time and then you make this one little mistake. He's like, hey, I'm cutting this, and clearly he still gave you some time because you said it was about seven years in.

Brent Knott: 22:54

I mean, he just knew my personality type I'm very stubborn, very stubborn, and it requires a little bit of an extreme. I think that's why I do what I do, though it requires a little bit of an extreme for me to change. And that was enough shock. I was like, yes, daddy, no problem, and I went and did my spreadsheets. So now we do it. It's funny being on the other end of it and he told me why.

Brent Knott: 23:17

He says you have to be extremely proficient at this, to where, when you do scale and you get a sales guy, you need to be able to look at a glance on the sheet and see if it's a good job or not. And you need to be proficient enough at it to where it's like yes or no. Like you missed this. And that was the point. It wasn't just because I needed to do it over and over and over and over and over for the sake of just doing it. It was because, when you delegate it out, you start to lose that control. You need to have a system in place where you can just look at it. And that's where he asked me that's how you ran his whole business. He would just. He actually ran a profit and loss in his company every day and he compared it to yesterday. I know very big business owners that do not do that.

Philip Sessions: 23:58

Yeah, they look like if it's quarterly.

Brent Knott: 24:02

Dude. He literally ran it every day and what he would do that was the first thing he got every day. He said his executive administrator would bring it in, set it on his desk every day and he walked in that's the first thing he'd looked at and he would comb through his profit and loss and he wouldn't even accept good members Meaning why is our profit margin up 13% compared to yesterday on this, when normally we trend five? Like that's a huge spike on that one line item? Go look into it and somebody would put something in wrong. So he wouldn't even accept the good trends. So he's a fundamental business monster.

Philip Sessions: 24:43

Yeah, it's funny, those fundamentals are the things that are most important and we often overlook those. We want to do these crazy I don't know 360 spin, jump, shot, something. We want to do all these crazy things that are the Hail Marys that we think are going to get us everything we want, when really it's the fundamentals that will get us every single thing that we want. It's the boring thing, unfortunately it is. It is, yeah, it's not the sexy shiny things, but it's the things that get us there, that keep us with where we're at right now. It really builds up that base for us Because, yeah, you could build a ladder and you're just trying to climb up the ladder. Maybe you make it up a few rungs, but if you actually had a base of four points on the ground instead of two points, you're going to be able to climb up a lot further. So having that good foundation is so important and that's what those fundamentals do for you.

Philip Sessions: 25:35

And so you spent seven years with this guy, and so I guess you've had how many years past him have you been in the business? Three, three, that's the thing about three then. So, yeah, three. So seven of those years you're with him, you kind of had your daddy's credit card, if you will. Now you've been three years on your own. Clearly, some tremendous changes since then. Now you're not only just on your own, but now you're having the team do all of that. I mean, what's been going through your mind Because I really want to pull this out, that is, I know there's been so many things going on. We've had a lot of conversations offline and everything that you're you're working through this, you're working through that. You're investing here, you're investing there. You're really relying on that team. So what's what's been going through your mind over those past three years leading up to Brent today?

Brent Knott: 26:25

I mean a lot, I mean it's been very rapid. You get to that point where you just get fed up Like it's like the route that I was on, like I was doing all the work, I made good money. I mean I pay off my home by 30 years old. Like you know, it's a horrible investment move as far as you know the interest rates and stuff at the time. But the quality, like you know, bill told me to pay off my house. It was during COVID and he literally told me he's like this is the worst financial advice I'll ever give you a pay off your house. And he goes because you can't put an ROI on the quality of life that you're about to receive. And I really think that that one thing is actually what made it a lot less stressful because I was able to make some ballsy moves and not have to worry about losing my home. And his reasoning was if I was to get hurt at the time, I wouldn't be able to operate my business to a high level because I was still the primary skill and I didn't know how to run it without being the primary skill. So made sense.

Brent Knott: 27:22

So we yeah, we went through some major changes we bought. We didn't buy. We moved into a very large facility. It bled me for about a year because it was too large, but there's no more space like it in our area. Like since the day that I started leasing that building there hasn't been a single building that's come up for rent in my area that is similar to it and it's only 6,000 square feet. It's just. I live on an island with no commercial space, so we got into that and then we started growing our team and we went through COVID and COVID was a really good year for us.

Brent Knott: 27:59

You know we're in the signage and graphics business. So all the four stickers that do six foot apart, all that stuff, like I didn't really believe in the fear mongering side of COVID so I didn't advertise any of the COVID signage just because I just morally didn't feel right about it. I felt like it was an unfortunate expense for people. Obviously I should have, possibly maybe because the amount of money that I would have made it probably been significant. But it just did align and so I would take the orders when I would get them. But we sold some very large COVID packages. You know, one of those was to the school district for the school partitions and we basically turned our entire shop for two weeks into a acrylic cut and shop, basically like we were cut and feel like crazy. And so the team was growing Like we actually grew I think two or three employees during COVID. But the problem was we were still doing signs, so like we were doing electrical signs as well. So now you've got wraps, standard signs, electrical signs it's like geez, you do all these things. You can't have really good staff for that. Like it's just too divided.

Brent Knott: 29:08

And I had one of my employees, james, who had been with me for nine years that was the main thing that was keeping him on the team and his personality type didn't really align Not that that's a bad thing, it's just I was very growth minded, he had his plan for his life and what he wanted to do, and so he was kind of just on this chill pace. So finally one day I sat him down and was like hey, I think that I got to let you go, not because you're doing a bad job now, it's just because we're doing like this and I don't want it to become toxic. I respect you enough. I've been in my mind I'm not on this team in two years and I can't steal life from you, so I'm going to let you go. Well, that was a very hard decision for me because, a I'm loyal to people to a fault and he'd been with me for like nine years. B you know, he's got a family and stuff. Like he's got a kid, he's got yeah, he's got a little girl. And like I was like what is this guy going to do? And I was like too too high to do anything. And so this was probably the biggest single change that I made in my company during this time. It was probably one of the best.

Brent Knott: 30:19

He ended up starting his own sign business. I quit doing signs, we cut about $400,000 revenue out of the business and stopped doing signs and I passed it all to him and then we cherry pick which sign jobs we want to do. So now he started his own business. He got uncomfortable and he's doing exactly what he wants to do. He's able to make his own schedule, hang out with his little girl and actually all worked out for the desk. He seems to be a lot happier now having that control.

Brent Knott: 30:46

And then we got to focus more on cars, like auto basically, and that's when we got into the tenting. I had always said I would never do 10 thing because it's like a $350 job. I don't like low ticket stuff. You know wraps are for $5,000 tickets. I'm like man, I really don't want to do $350. Like cars coming in and out, people waiting and all that stuff. But it really worked. Like we're in Florida, everybody gets a tent.

Brent Knott: 31:18

The wrap is a very complex sale. So, yeah, sure it's big chunks, but there's also big chunks in your timeline that are missing and if you don't have enough volume, and so the tent allowed for a lot more cash flow and it also kind of paid for the overhead in a different way. And so I got to thinking I was like man, this would be really cool because now I can open up a shop and not worry about having to have machinery in there. You only need a cutter. So it's like maybe a $5,000 expense.

Brent Knott: 31:49

I could get a shop, put the insurance and all that stuff on that shop, pay a guy commission to float to that shop whenever I have sales. And now I have another location on Google Maps for my wraps too, and so we literally cut Jacksonville right in half. I have three Google Maps listings all with, like you know, almost 100 Google reviews. So depending on where you search in Jacksonville I'll show up twice on the map for wraps. But we're using tent to do that Because tent tents paying for the overhead it really created this whole satellite model was the thing that I said that I would never do, but I was like willing to try it Cause one of my employees was like I want to take cars and I was like okay, so we gave him a shot. He's no longer with me, but I can credit him for that.

Philip Sessions: 32:38

Yeah, hey, sometimes it's that catalyst that, as far as you do that, just like that guy that, hey, let's do it, you said, okay, fine, we'll do it, and he left.

Philip Sessions: 32:46

It was the catalyst that's keeping you going with it still and, just like the other employee that you had to go through that and say, hey, this isn't working out, I'm sorry he. You were the catalyst for him to get him to the life that he wants now as well, as you get rid of a lot of the stuff that you didn't want to do anyways, it was distracting for you. And that's a lot of what happens with business owners. We have all these things we want to do and some of them work out great, some of them don't, and we have to have those tough conversations and really persevere through all of that. So just to kind of summarize, like there's all, I mean, dude, you've persevered through so much, so many changes over the last 10 years for you within business. If you could kind of like summarize and really almost motivate somebody or inspire somebody to push through and keep persevering, what would you say?

Brent Knott: 33:33

Well, I would say that I would. I probably got this from the 50 mile run. Whatever your goal is or like the play is like, and we were talking about doing the boring thing I actually ran the 50 miles injured A lot of people don't know that and so I had a uh, a irritable IT band syndrome. So basically my the, the, the tendon that connects your hip to your knee. It flexes every time you bend your knee. It has like a dagger that goes into your knee every time you bend your knee. So I ran 50 miles which is who knows how many steps with the dagger in my knee and it hurt immediately, a mile one and and had walked for the last month trying to heal it and maintain my condition to run the 50 miler. So not only did I go into it, not as conditioned as I wanted to be, so it wasn't ideal, circumstance Right. I immediately started with pain, whether it be cash flow, employee issues, whatever and I just was like I've gone six months for the training to to just quit like metal. So, and I also wanted to make a Trevor, a video for Trevor, at 39 miles, say, and I beat him, um, so I had at least get the 39 miles, right? Oh yeah, I knew if I got the 39, I'd make it to 50.

Brent Knott: 34:51

But I basically made a play. That play was I was going to walk for a quarter mile, I was going to run a three quarter mile and the whole goal is just to get to the next walk. And I did that 50 times. That's really not all that bad. But I didn't look at anything. I I people were trying to talk to me. I didn't talk to anybody. People like man, are you okay? And I just wouldn't talk to anybody. I was just like I was trying so hard to not give pain of voice in my knee and I basically just ran the play. Like if you looked at the data on that that run, it was literally perfect splits Quarter mile, three quarter quarter, three quarter, like literally the whole 50. I actually ran the last 10 miles faster than around, ran the whole thing, man, because I started seeing people. I was last place the whole time. I mean that's a big psychological hit, right, like you're in the last place and there's a minimum time threshold too, so like there's this thing that's creeping up on me, and I basically just kept. I stayed true to that and then I ended up passing like 12 people, which is crazy, right. So I'm injured and I'm seeing people and I start. One of my, the guy who's running the doctor's shop, ran with me and he was cramping about and he saw that I saw people and he's like dude go, and I was freaking salted and I was running like 10 minute miles at mile 40, which was crazy. That is crazy, and I just got a crazy adrenaline rush.

Brent Knott: 36:11

But basically, no matter how much pain you're in, it ends Like life isn't what we think it is. I think the 10% good times are really what we live for and that's what a lot of people. They all seek the pleasure, but they don't realize that it really is a balance of both to create some form of crazy harmony which doesn't make sense, but it has to be. We wouldn't have joy without pain. So you know, just keep going. I mean this two shall pass is basically the quote. Like that, like you know, you're in the next place. So like that, like you know, goggins will say, and it really is true, no matter how much pain I had, it never got worse than where it was at the whole time. So my first goal was to make something else hurt more than that, which is crazy, but it's a goal at least, right yeah?

Philip Sessions: 37:03

Yeah, right, yeah, but I'll keep you distracted from that too, rather than focusing in on that pain and oh, this pain, oh, it's so bad, it's so bad, it's so bad. And eventually you build this up so much in your mind. Instead you're like, hey, I'm going to focus on, can I make?

Brent Knott: 37:16

something else hurt more.

Philip Sessions: 37:18

Because you focused on yeah, exactly yeah, and your mind focused on something else and therefore that pain wasn't quite as bad, because you're waiting for something else to get worse, which is not necessarily a great thing from a business perspective. Like, oh, my cash flow is bad, let me see if I can make sure that my employees get worse too. Like we don't want to focus on a negative necessarily. It may.

Brent Knott: 37:38

Yeah, yeah.

Philip Sessions: 37:40

But definitely focusing on something else hopefully a positive is. What you're focusing on is a great way to help you persevere and get through that. But let's go ahead and get to our last question. Brent, I appreciate you coming on and all the stuff that you shared here has been awesome to hear. But if you could only share one message for the rest of your life, what would that message be? Don't do stuff you don't want to. All right, you got care to elaborate at all.

Brent Knott: 38:02

Yeah, I mean I won't share why because it's a personal thing, but I heard that from a friend of mine and so I learned a lesson from him. And basically he was dissolving a business not dissolving, he was either going to get bought out or he was going to buy out a partner just over a small thing and he had a situation that occurred and like it changed his mindset on everything. I'm like we were at a meetup and he said that was just, basically, I don't do things that I don't want to do anymore and so, like, don't do things just for the sake of money signage, don't you know, wait on people for the sake of waiting on people, because you can't change other people's lives. All you can do is create opportunities for people and they either come or they don't. But you pretty much cannot live life and do things that you don't want to do, and so I now, basically, am running my entire life to where I want to learn how to, every move and every business decision I make.

Brent Knott: 39:06

Moving forward is going to require me to be able to work remote To where I'm. If I want to live in Florida, I can live in Florida. If I want to move anywhere I want to. I can move anywhere. I want to be geographically free.

Philip Sessions: 39:19

I like it. That seems like the dream of a lot of business owners, but I love that you're actually doing that and literally living that out right now, a little bit, being there in Mexico and everything. And so, brent, I appreciate you coming on and sharing so much value. I think your story is a one that's impactful, that's inspirational, and if people want to follow you or reach out and just have a conversation with you, where's the best place for them to do that?

Brent Knott: 39:42

I'm probably most active on Facebook. My name is Brent Knot, I'm Instagram, it's at, I am not Brent and it's K-N-O-T-T-B-R-E-N-C, and then you know, you can always just reach out in those two places. I'm pretty active at responding to people whenever I do a couple of cross new people.

Philip Sessions: 40:01

Awesome. Well, yeah, y'all make sure to go to follow Brent at those locations. We'll have it in the show notes as well, so we can make sure to tag him and everything but Brent. I appreciate you coming on. This has been a blast getting to talk with you and catch up as well. Yeah, it's been great man.