Are You a Vehicle Wrap Business Owner, Or Just an Installer?

https://wrapshopacademy.com/printingprofit

Are you actually running a business or just working a really expensive job? In this video, we break down the Wrap Trap: the cycle that keeps even the most talented installers stuck, burned out, and one injury away from losing everything.

If you're ready to stop being owned by your business and start building something that works without you, this one's for you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I've got a quick question for all of you. Are you just an installer or did you open up a vehicle wrap business? And there is a massive difference between the two. Most people in our industry do not realize this until it's too late. Myself included. I spent 10 years thinking that I was growing a vehicle wrap shop business, but in fact, all I had was a glorified job. And my business basically owned me. It did not care how many hours I put in. I was just busy. I was working on all the wrong things. And so today we're going to be breaking down what I'm calling the wrap trap and why some of the best installers in our industry are just getting eaten alive by this industry and what we can do about it to become better business owners. So the wrap trap is real, it's seductive. Our industry is really interesting. Um, you know, that squeegee, that little piece of plastic that you you pick up and put in your hand, it can generate you a lot of opportunity. And for many of us, it actually generates more opportunity than we've ever been offered by other people. I think in many cases, especially uh the people who go and start their own business, you know, for a while entrepreneurship was cool, still kind of is. But uh you just want to be seen, heard, and appreciated, right? Like, like I know that me, myself, I would give my bosses everything that when I would work for them. And it always was unappreciated, I felt. Um, and I always always uh seeking that validation. And then finally I picked up a squeegee for myself and started and had an opportunity and I took it and ran with it. And it wasn't very long or short after that, you know, I started making some really good income. And for many of us, we end up creating like golden handcuffs for ourselves because it doesn't take but a few years, and you could be making six-figure salary easy, easily could be making six-figure earnings. You know, we're presented with like really complex challenges with these installs in many cases, you know, conquering a bumper, doing a one-piece XYZ piece, you know, wrapping door jams at first, like we get really excited, we're gonna be the best, right? And you keep working on your skills, and you you start getting a lot more attention, you start seeing a lot of followers on social media. Um, your uh people that come and do business with you. It's it, they they're like, I don't know how that I don't know how you can do what you do. It must take so much patience. Like, there's just so many drivers in what we do that goes to our ego that it's just like, damn right, you're right. This is really hard. This is uh uh an art, this is something that's like a craft that that needs to be mastered. I'm that guy. And what I think a lot of people don't realize is like in life we explore and we exploit. So our whole life we've been trying to find out what are we gonna do with ourselves? What is our career path going to be? And then finally that squeegee just starts taking off and giving you and rewarding you and creating opportunities for you. And what we fail to realize in that process is we stopped being a little bit curious. Now, don't be distracted, but we stopped being a little bit curious as to what else can I improve? And there's a ceiling to how much you can install, you can only get so efficient, you can only get so good, and you can only charge so much. There is a hard ceiling to being an installer, and I was met with that. I was making probably at my highest year, like$330,000 worth of earnings. Um, usually average around$200,000,$250. I was working like a dog. I was basically like all my staff had my credit card in their in their wallet. And if they went to lunch somewhere, they knew my order at the fast food restaurant, I would chow it down in five seconds and I would get back to work. Um, I would work till midnight every night. Uh I just I had no self-respect for myself, but I had very high standards for my work and for all of my customers. And it grinds at you. And I I really liken it to if you've ever had a fast car, the first time that you you floor that throttle, it's just a huge shot of adrenaline. You can't believe how fast this thing is, and then after about 20-30 pulls of that, it's like, okay, this car is pretty normal now. I kind of feel like that's what it's like in earning with wrapping, it just becomes like this droning, and it pays well enough that effectively it puts golden handcuffs on many people. It's like, man, this little piece of this piece of plastic with this banana buffer makes me so much money, but I'm scared to death to relinquish control and pass it to another person because they're gonna mess up. But you forget, you messed up, everybody's going to mess up, and and so you kind of have this like balancing act of do I allow others to mess up because I've already passed that? But then if I don't allow other people to mess up, then over time, if I take the easy route, by the way, which is not hiring anybody, um, if I take the easy route and I never hire help and I just just hold on to that squeegee. What happens if you get arthritis? What happens if you have an injury? What if you what career over? Anything, if you hurt yourself at all, you have a massive liability. And now maybe you're a bachelor, you're single right now. But what happens when you have a family? You should really be considering that liability in the back of your head. Everybody's relying on you. You're the breadwinner in the family, you're the one making you're you're you're making it rain, you're bringing in the money. That's the reason why you're not relinquishing in control, is because there's so much opportunity with that piece of plastic. And you really don't realize just how easy it is for you to lose it all. And I've seen it happen with several people. I've seen really good installers where they get sick, or they have an accident, or something in life changes, and you put all your marbles in that basket, it's a liability, and it can happen to you. I don't wish that on anybody, but I have seen it happen on good people, people that it shouldn't know completely undeserving of the event that occurred to them. So I challenge everybody to start treating, even if you're an installer, start treating your business like a business. Now you can have an install business, you can have a full manufacturing wrap shop. There are several ways to go about this journey, and that is the beauty of this and why I push on this so hard. I feel that so many people misunderstand me when I say become a business owner. You can be a business owner and a wrap installer, you can build a team around you. Look at Austin Cook. Austin Cook with the Tens Institute literally spends every single day in the install bay teaching. He hired everybody in the front end and all the other positions around him to allow him to do what his favorite part is. So if installing is your favorite part, then at least hire around you and then create contingency plans so that it's not a liability. And what I mean by contingency plans is at least have a series of like three to five installers on a backlog that you can contract to where if anything happens, you get a call from mom, dad, brother, sister, have a kid, uh, whatever emergency happens in your life, your business can continue to operate without you. Because that's what it's there to do. Your business is an asset, not a liability, but you need to start treating it like one. Now we'll get right back to this episode, but I wanted to let everybody know that we have a printing profits workshop happening July 18th and 19th. This event is exclusive for working on your business. I guarantee you will work on your business during this workshop, then you probably have your entire business journey. We had massive success and feedback from our last printing profits event in Salt Lake City, Utah, and we are bringing it back and we aim to change the trajectory of businesses in the vehicle wrap space. So if you are looking to grow and scale your vehicle wrap shop, I highly recommend at least clicking the link below and/or shooting me a DM and let's talk about it. Now, when I first started coming into this realization, I at first was doing the hey, let me network with a bunch of installers and try to grow my rap business. And I quickly realized that there wasn't really much opportunity. I started visiting um very high-end people that we could consider celebrities in our industry. And I realized very quickly that for the most part, for me, uh, with this realization that I didn't want to be the installer anymore, or that I wanted the option to install, there wasn't many people that I observed that I really wanted to mirror my business after. Um and there were certain people that I had really, really looked up to, and then I like I showed up and I saw the reality of what the shop was. And again, crazy talent. And I admired them on the installer aspect, skill-wise, the artistic side of things. But from the lens of a business owner, there just wasn't anything there. And so I started looking outside of our industry and I found masterminds for uh you know, tradesmen or just groups of highly successful business owners, and I started associating myself in those circles, and I entered into all of that with one question. Why is it that it feels that our industry is so hard? Why is it that it feels so much harder than what you know, all these people that we're servicing, we see these HVAC companies, we see all these other companies, and I'm not a huge comparison person, but it really did feel like there was just so much support, there's so much more resources, so much more opportunity in these other businesses at first. This is what I was feeling. And I quickly realized it was the people I was associating myself with that there were no like the really high-level people in the rap industry, they're not on Facebook and Instagram. There's people that I meet to this day, I can't find their business on their personal profiles, and they're doing five million dollars a year. Savages. I see very little posting from those businesses in many cases. Um, and so they're kind of hidden gems right now, and in a lot of it's because our industry is still very, very young, and things are changing, by the way. But at the time, this is like 2015 to 2018, 2019, like basically right at COVID time. Uh I just realized that there wasn't any resources for us, and so I had to go to you know, trades events and then like cross-reference or extract the golden nuggets to come over there. That's where I started to realize that so much shit is gatekeeped in our industry. Uh, almost like a particular group of people decided that we're gonna be the the the cool kids club in a way, and everything else is beneath us, and and and we're the shit. But but then everybody like looks at that as like the pinnacle. So that's what we're striving for, and that's why nobody grows, is because they think that's the ceiling when actually there's there's eight-figure wrap shops that are just print massive print houses that are killing it, and there's a few of really crappy one of those, too. But like there are massive, amazing companies with massive, amazing opportunities, and we have to distinguish where do we want to be in that mix because not everything is for everybody, and so the question we have to start asking ourselves is what do we really want? What does that look like? And how are we gonna get there? And most people can't answer that question. Most people have no real vision, they're just doing every day. We're almost like robotic about our lives, and it's because we don't respect ourselves enough to spend time with where we're headed. You know, we use a GPS to go somewhere, but we don't even have a roadmap to what our goals are this year and what our outputs and inputs are going to be to strive to get to that thing. And so that's kind of why I've put together this idea that you know, our industry has this rap trap. And effectively, every rap I challenge, like I have a personal goal to help a hundred wrap shops hit seven figures. And my reason for that is you're the architect of your business. A lot of people will say, Well, I don't want to grow a business without a soul, and I don't want to do this, or people are hard, and people, you know, odds are you're difficult to deal with, but everybody there's there there's always a pro and a con to everything, and yes, people are difficult, and hiring really does suck, and and letting go people sucks, but I go to sleep at night knowing that one I went for it, and two, that my business, the larger it gets, the less of a liability it is, as long as I operate within certain parameters and I and I pay attention to it. Um but if I ignore all the context clues, then it of course is a liability. And you know, this is the part that a lot of people don't realize is that you know the business game is built on infinite levels, and you know, you didn't become a great installer in just a single year. It took you time. Um, I think we get really good in short time, you know, a couple months we're pretty damn dangerous. A year later, we've been put into several scenarios where we're pretty darn good. Five, six, seven, eight years later, you're still learning. Like there's so much to learn in all these different situations, cars are changing, um, etc. But the same applies to your business. You're going to have wrong conversations, you're going to let people down, you're going to hire the wrong person, you're going to mismanage uh your money and put yourself in a hole. You're going to grow too fast, you're going to grow too small, you're going to lose customers, you're going to create customers. And so, really, that's the cost of admission is that you have to go through these new experiences. A lot of us, we get really good at installing, and back to those golden handcuffs. We're terrified that if we let go of some control, then we're going to lose it all. But you're also going to lose it all if you hurt yourself or you have some some kind of anything. One curveball in your life, and you can lose a lot. The reason why I challenge so many people to to strive to hit at least a million dollars is, you know, I want every shop to have, I want every business owner that runs a business to have the opportunity to experience what it's like to force multiply. I think that people bring you your greatest joys and your greatest miseries. But it is really fun seeing people have the opportunities that you've had and being able to be the repairman, if you will, for all of those opportunities or all of those jobs that you had where you wished somebody saw you. That's what's really cool, is you could be that person for somebody else. You know, the the most of us started our businesses because we were let down by a shitty leader. And andor we were driven to do something. But seeing somebody else also be driven within your dream is something that I can't express to any of you guys. It's something that you have to experience. It's an unlearnable lesson. You can't learn the lesson until you try it for yourself. And it's your duty as an entrepreneur to serve yourself, serve your family, serve your employees, serve your community, and you can also be greatly rewarded for all of that service by growing and expanding your business. So if you are an installer and you love installing, at least grow a business around installing. This video is not a how-to, this video is a challenge. I challenge all of you guys in the rap industry to start challenging your beliefs. Start challenging where you want to go, where you're headed, how are you gonna get there and why. Start realizing just how big this industry really is and how much opportunity is out there. Like, guys, it's enormous. Uh, I find shops almost weekly at this point that are way bigger than I ever anticipated, and they're quiet, and they're killers. So the real thing that you need to challenge yourself to do is find somebody who has what you want. Model it. It already exists, there's nothing new under the sun. That's what I did. My first in the rap industry coach was John Duver. He was one of the few trainers that I saw at the time where I wanted his business. So find somebody that is living how you want. That is why I choose to live the way that I do. It's a bit extreme, but I'm trying to create proof that you can operate an entire rap business and not even be in your own shop. That is the whole premise as to why I do it. It's not entirely, it was more of a science experiment that I was like, how long can I be away? And at this point, it's like, geez, my team's awesome, you know? So you don't know until you try. And so I'll leave you with this. I heard this the other day, and it was in order to go to sleep, you have to act like you're sleeping. Which is to lay in bed with the lights off and sit there until you actually become asleep. And most everybody needs to, at the very least, start acting like a business owner, even if it's for one hour a day. One hour of looking at your profit and loss and being curious as to what the hell you don't understand of what that looks like. Or looking at your sales ledger and saying, I don't know how many leads I came in this week. I should probably answer that. Or talking to your CPAs and league and professional services more often, or talking to your marketing agencies as to why does it feel truly that I don't, I'm not, I don't feel that I'm getting a return on investment. And answering some of these feedback loops of what's missing in your business, many of us just ignore it and go and go be busy. Go get busier. But if you pull on the right levers, before you know it, you turn around and you've climbed a freaking mountain. And if you start shooting for higher goals, then even if you fail, at least you arrived at something that most people wouldn't even try to do. I recently failed a hundred mile run um by choice, and during that event, I basically was walking with a guy. And at one point, I I I was down bad. I basically um I had no food or water for 10 miles. I made a mistake. I was uh confused and I thought my next aid station was three miles away. And he looked at his watch and he looked at me and said, My wife just died. And we stopped and I gave him a hug and I said, I'm so sorry. And I didn't dig any more questions. I didn't ask him anything. And we walked in silence for about three hours. I chose to drop out that event and I failed. But I chose to drop out because I wanted to be with my girlfriend. And I wanted to spend time with her because I knew that that guy would never be able to spend time with his wife ever again. And just that quickly, everything changed for him. And it really put things into perspective for me at that moment. And even with that failure, I still achieved something that most people would never do, which was I still made it almost 70 miles, I made it right at 70 miles. So shoot for some bigger goals. Raise your standards. And I'll see you on the next video.