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I want to ask you something uncomfortable. You're booked out, you're busy, you're working 60 hour weeks, and you're still not making money that you thought you'd be making by now. So what's the problem? In this video, I'm going to tell you exactly what that is, and it's probably not what you think. That thing that made you good enough to start this shop is the thing that's keeping you further from the business and closer to owning just a job. And what's worse than that is quietly stealing one thing that you can never get back, your time. Stay with me because by the end of this video, you're going to know the exact specific moves that separate the wrap shops that are only doing$150,000 to$300,000 a year to the multi-seven-figure shops. You're navigating your wrap shop without a GPS. And so I fabricated this GPS framework so that you can identify what the constraints are in your business so that we know exactly what to work on, so that we're not working on the wrong things. Because if you're working on the wrong things, you're just busy and you're never actually solving your problems. So let's get to it. So here's a story that I see play out quite a bit in this industry. Guy gets sick of working for somebody else. He's working for either a dealership, another shop, or possibly even a completely different field. And he feels undervalued, underappreciated. He feels that he can be more than. And so he finally decides to take his life into his own hands. And he finally starts his own business. And it could either be straight into a lease or it could be out of their garage. It doesn't matter. The point is that they finally take their life into their hands and they become obsessed. And you care more about everything than anybody else. And you're going to show the world that you are valuable. You're going to show the world that you can do this, and you're going to prove everybody wrong. And what's interesting is at first you're doing a really great job, and clients love your service because you're giving them this VIP one-on-one service, but really you're not. You're just doing everything that you can to get this revenue in the door. And you're in the simplest phase of your business. And then what happens to some of us is we go and hire somebody, and it feels like things start to crumble, or like maybe our image is getting diminished because the employee makes a mistake, and then we hire another person and it starts to turn into some chaos, and we really don't understand what exactly is happening. And then your growth starts to slow down, and you can't figure out why your business is so much more complicated and so much harder to run as a two, a three, or even a four-man operation than it was by yourself. And some vehicle wrap shop owners make the decision that you know what, I'm gonna stay small, I'm gonna keep it all, I'm going to uh just cut back and be alone, be by myself. It's so much easier. I'd rather just earn more money, etc. But when you do this, you make the decision to build a prison. The truth that nobody told you when you got started is that the control that you felt like freedom when you were solo is now your ceiling. And that very skill made you very great in the beginning. But the problem is your ability to do everything in your business is also now your greatest liability. And I know this for a fact. I spent 10 years, even though I was growing and developing what I thought to be staff, I was basically employing people in my business for almost 10 years to watch me work to validate myself that I was the hardest worker. I did not pass off responsibility to where people were truly accountable to the task that I was delegating out to them. Instead, they would make a mistake and then I would hop in and I would fix it. I would go into the front and then they they would come and ask me to make all their decisions for them. And it's a miserable existence, it's very hard. And I don't blame some of the wrap shop owners who decide to go back to their own things, but it doesn't have to be that way. The problem is you just need to reach up and reach out to somebody that actually has done it before and actually listen to them as to what needs to be done in your business. So, because success leaves clues. So the first question that you have to ask yourself is where am I bleeding? Or what is the constraint in my business? Instead of being so proficient at installing, which is great, it got you to where you are. What we actually really need to work on before anything is identifying what currently is my problem in my business, like and be honest with yourself, because that's always the first question that I ask people when I do uh free phone calls or like hop into like a help phone call where somebody reaches out and says, Hey man, I'm struggling. I literally just say, Well, what's the constraint? And they're like, I don't know, I think it's a little bit of this, and I think it's a little bit of that. It's because you're not used to exercising and just pausing for a moment and truly identifying what is my problem. So before you change anything, you need to know exactly where you are on this GPS map. And it's essentially a diagnostic tool. So picture your business is a lot like a four-lane highway, and you're driving on the freeway, let's just call it California because there's traffic there is horrible, and you're driving on this four-lane freeway, and all of a sudden road construction happens and you go down to a two-lane. It does not matter if that was a 10-lane road or a four-lane road, you were going to be stuck in traffic. Now, in a term in our industry, you might have the capacity to install one vehicle wrap per day. But if you can't actually fulfill one vehicle wrap per day because you don't have a wrap to do, then your constraint is your sales and awareness of your business. Now, if you have one wrap per day and you're not able to fill a set, if you're not able to facilitate it because you're not getting the prints to the installer fast enough, then you might have a printer constraint or a production constraint. And then if you go on a trip on a weekend for vacation, or if you go on a vacation for two or three days and your phone is just off the hook and nobody can make decisions, then you have a system constraint because nobody in your business knows exactly what they need to do. So those are the three common constraints in most businesses that are sub-seven figures or a million dollars a year. And it's essentially your growth, which is your sales and demand, your production, which is your capacity, and your systems, which is your operational friction or drag. And many of us often work on the wrong thing, and that's what that busy work is. At sub million dollars, I know for a fact most shops have no sales. They're just order takers. And so it's a completely reactive state because nobody has a finger on the pulse as to how are we getting these jobs in this week. Instead, it's oh shit, the phone's ringing a lot. I made a bunch of sales, and then let me work for two or three weeks because I'm booked out and let me do that. Oh crap, I'm out of work and you worked yourself out of work, and then you just go back on this typewriter and you keep repeating this revolving door over and over and over where you're chasing your ass. It's not fun. You know, frankly, our industry, in regards to the sales front, the bar is really low. Even if you don't have a sales team, just you having some form of process to get back to that customer very quickly and having some form of follow-up process will most likely uh get you a much higher yield of projects for the leads that you do receive. Because if you really start asking your customers, it's like, well, why did you choose me? It's not usually because you're the best. They could care less how good you are at wrapping in many cases. They just want to know what they'll receive. And in many cases, it's well, you actually got back to me. They felt appreciated, and that built the trust that you are a good vehicle wrap installer. I've won more projects just because of the fact that I actually followed up and beat the lead up multiple times to where it's like, dang, actually, you're right. I've been waiting to get multiple quotes from somebody else and I still haven't even heard from them. What's it gonna be like when I give them dollars and I can't get a hold of them either? Because they're too busy in the back trying to fulfill all the work because they don't realize that they have a sales constraint. So if you have a sales constraint, you know, what are some of the identifiers that you need to look at? How fast are you responding to leads? How many times are you following up? You know, are you shooting DMs only or text only? Are you actually calling them? Um, because if you only text, you're you're blending in. You're not giving these customers your personality or a way to um make a better decision because you might actually be the correct solution. There might be a lot of horrible shops around you that don't hold the same standard that you do. So it's your obligation to get back to that person. And do you have a defined quoting process? You shouldn't have to push the pencil on every single job. I would dare to say that 70% of the estimates that you're sending out, if you're not able to quickly procure an estimate to somebody and be confident that you're making money at the gross profit margin that you are needing to make for your business, then you really need to dial that in. And the reason why is because one of the first hires that you need to hire is going to be an administrator. And if you don't dial in your quoting process, then you are going to forever be interrupted while you were installing by your administrative staff of, hey, uh boss, I need you to help me quote this project and so that you can give me permission to send this estimate. And you're never gonna be confident in the admin to actually do that thing if you don't sit down, slow down, and actually build out a quoting process. And by the way, if you don't know how to quote jobs and you are just giving per square foot prices, go to www.rapquotepro.com. It's a free app that I developed. You're gonna see a few people that are building apps through vibe coding. I did this like a year ago. Um, it's completely free. I have no interest in selling it. Um, but I I do have a mass interest in trying to help standardize the industry on how to arrive at what price you were quoting rather than guessing on a per square foot basis by gathering information on the forums. Now, the next constraint, which is P, is your production. Are you booked out six, eight, 10, 12 weeks? I hear this so often from really small shops. They're like, I'm booked out two months. That is not a brag. It is detrimental to your business because you're booked out for two months. You're basically admitting that you have a production issue. You have your fear of hiring somebody and sitting down and and and building out more capacity is creating this massive, like I said, four-lane road going into two lanes and it's just stuck. What happens whenever, you know, are you actually serving your customers to the highest level there? Do you are your standards actually as high as you think that they are? If you're taking four or six weeks for for you to facilitate the solution that you're providing the customer? No. I don't like to be any further than three weeks. I actually get stressed when we're four weeks out because I'm like, we need to get this time horizon down because we're losing opportunities. What about the jobs that we are getting turned down on because we're gonna take too long to get to their project? Right? More people want to use you because you are the right solution and you won't even give them the solution because you're too scared to uh increase your capacity. And frankly, a lot of those really big accounts that you're really, really wanting, they're definitely not gonna use you because speed to market is what they're going to be looking at the most. How fast can I get these vehicle units onto the road? What is it costing your customer for you not getting to that project faster as well? Which is the real problem that we solve in our industry, by the way. And then the last component is the systems in your business or the operations. So you need to ask yourself, are you the one answering every single customer's text? Do you do all the installs apart? Um or do all the installs in your shop fall apart the moment that you're not physically there? And is your shop a mess? Because I would say that if you don't have some of these components down, you could sell the dream to people that you want to hire all day, but rock stars don't want to work for a shitty shop, they don't want to work for a shitty leader, they want somebody that's attractive that they can aspire to. You cannot um motivate or inspire anybody if you yourself andor your shop is not an attractive place to be. So if you have tools missing, if you have materials everywhere, there's backliner all over the floor, um, you know, you've, you know, and and everything depends on you, then they're like, I can only grow so fast here, and I'm gonna have to play frogger and move on to somebody else. That's what's gonna happen. And that's a scenario that you see quite often is uh you'll see a lot of people say that they end up training their competition. It's only because they hit the ceiling that they felt that they can grow within your workplace. So if everything in your shop depends on you being there, then your constraint is systems. And the real problem is that you have no clear way of doing things, there's no defined process. There's no, okay, we're doing a full wrap. What do we pull off on this vehicle? Okay, are we doing vertical or horizontal seams and why? Are we doing die cut uh unit numbers and phone numbers? Or, you know, how are we placing this? So where you could literally, and some people, by the way, feel that injecting systems into their business is going to remove the soul of your business. And I would challenge you every single time. It does nothing but make the workplace better because you don't have to process mentally what it is that you're doing to do the task, instead, you can actually have fun while also being more effective. And if you don't believe me, go watch the video with my team and tell me that I don't have a shop that's highly effective that also runs greatly on systems and processes because I have not been in my shop in two years, and it is a great team, they have a soul, and a lot of it is because we dialed in our processes. Actually, in fact, our business is much happier since we started adding systems rather than being upset and chaotic, etc. So the key question is if you try to double, like if you theoretically try to double your revenue in the next 12 months, which process would break first? We can't handle any more cars. Well, then you have a production constraint, everything falls apart without me, you have a systems constraint, or we don't talk to enough people or follow up, and we're not generating the sales that we need to actually drive revenue, then you have a growth constraint. And you need to pick one of the three to work on. You don't need to work on all three at the same time. You must work on all three, but you work on each leg independently. And business is a lot like a three-legged stool. You kind of grow one, but you don't grow one so far that you topple the chair over. You grow one, you raise it up, then you grow the next, and then you and you just you kind of slowly revolve around over and over and over. And by the way, this cycle never ends. There is always a constraint in your business. So once you identify the constraint, now we need to actually um, or once we actually identify where the leak is in your business, we need to define some form of equation. And if you don't, then you're not really growing a business, you're still just kind of staying busy. And this is exactly what kept me stuck in my business for the 10 years. I basically never define a specific input of okay, this is happening, this is what we're gonna do. And what is going to be the measure in which I'm going to grade myself in on this? So, example, if I have a sales problem, okay, how many calls per day are we going to make? Right? And at first you're gonna pull a number out of your ass, but you're going to say, I'm gonna make 30 contact points a day. And I know that based over time, that's much more contact than I did before. It will then pay dividends in 90 days, basically. The equation isn't that I need to make more sales or I need better marketing or I need better staff. It needs to be clearly defined on what is it that I'm going to be doing. So, an example for sales would be I need to make 30 to 100 phone calls every single day, depending on my time, and I need to uh let people know that I exist. And a very common scenario here that I'm gonna equate to um because sales is something a lot of people avoid, is if you went to the gym for five minutes every single day, you're probably not going to grow muscle, right? But if you intentionally say, I'm gonna do 10 reps of bench press times four, I'm gonna do this other exercise based on an actual defined repetition, then over time you will see results. The problem is when it comes to the gym, you physically see the results in business. Most people can't actually define the results because they think that it's working, but they don't really know. So there's not a physical component to it that you clearly see at first until you get really good at identifying your numbers. So, for example, I had a young guy, he was 21, 22 years old, and he was operating from his house. He took a part in the Wrap Shop Academy last year, and he stuck to our sales process. He was sales constrained. And at first he was like, Well, it's because I don't have a shop, it's because of this. I was like, No, none of that matters. You just not enough people know that you exist. That is your only problem. And so he actually stuck to a thousand phone calls uh in a singular month, and we had a conversation later. He says, Hey, hey, Brett, um I made a thousand phone calls like we agreed to, but I only got four customers. And I was like, dude, you're looking at this completely wrong. You got four customers, and when you started this, you had none, you had no sales. And out of those four customers, if you crush it for them, how many of them are going to refer people to you? And then if you crush it for them as well, what is the likelihood? Was the question I asked him that somebody is going to use you again on their next unit. And he said, actually, I'm already doing a second vehicle for one of those people. I was like, Exactly. We build businesses on relationship. And then I also said, What is the likelihood that you can get a Google review? Because word of mouth nowadays is Google reviews essentially, and that's also going to affect how many more people are going to trust your business automatically, right? So we basically kind of came up with the math, and that if he was consistent on this, that over time he would be generating 11 projects per month based on 30 calls a day with zero dollars in marketing. And if he was to do that consecutively for a year, he would have 132 new customers, which means that he has 132 chances to now ask for one or two referrals from those 132 to duplicate his business, also have a chance to get 132 Google reviews and 132 chances to do repeat business with somebody. Now, obviously, not everybody's going to do repeat business, but maybe it's the next year, or maybe it's year two, or maybe year three. Look at how 30 calls a day compounded over time. And what's interesting about that is now you have an equation. If you really wanted to like pour gas on the fire and make this faster, it's it's a lot harder to sustain. That's why I said 30 calls a day and not 100, because you have other duties in the business. But like, can I figure out how to make 100 calls a day? It doesn't have to be you. That's the thing that is leverage. At first, it's you. So that's why I challenge people with 30 calls because you can do 30 calls a day. It takes one or two hours. So effectively, if you spent two hours of your 60-hour work week every single day, you're only spending 14 of those 60 hours on sales. Gives you plenty of time to do fulfillment and installation. But what you realize is you're not respecting time in itself, you're most likely kind of dicking around. So that's your growth equation, basically. If you need more sales, you must do more outputs to let more people know that you exist. And then at first it's going to be you, and eventually it turns into who, not how it gets done. And you can then hire a virtual assistant to hire an admin or whatever and get leverage on that output once it's defined. And document it while you're doing it, right? Because that's going to come later. Now, the production equation is you're booked out six to 12 weeks in the crew's. Slammed and you're turning away work, but the problem isn't necessarily leads. Now it's your capacity. So you need to define what is the standard for one unit per installer. I would I would say that most shops operate on an install factor of two business days per install, which means that you're going to get 110 units per installer per year, right? And if you're not meeting that, then if it's a three-day install, then you're losing. So if you're booked out six weeks or so, and you have an installer that's operating on a three-day turnaround, you're doing divided by three. You can only do 73 units instead of 110. So you're losing 37 units or whatever, close to 40 units, just because your installer is running a little slow. Now, it might not be their fault. That's for you to identify. It could be that they need additional training. It could be that we're setting up the panels poorly and we're not preparing the vehicles good enough. It could be that you are not receiving the vehicles and they're dirty, and your installer is actually installing in two days, but they're spending a whole day cleaning and prepping the vehicle and you're not charging for that. So there's so many things that can go into why you're not nailing this two-day constraint or this two-day turnaround on your installer, but you need to read that feedback loop of like, why am I not at two days? Now, my guys are down to one day, and they run that pretty consecutively, and they do work pretty hard, and we kind of force them to take time off every now and then. But uh Dakota and AJ are running about 10 hours per install, and they make more money because of it, they're happy, but also it gives us the ability to then install more units per week, which greatly increases our capacity. Now, for your production in your business, a really good generic number to look at is what is your revenue per employee? I see a lot of really big shops. Like uh I've seen shops that are doing like 1.6 million, you think they're crushing it. Then I asked, like, how large is their staff? And they're like, We got 13 people. I'm like, why the hell do you have 13 people for that? Like, that's less than 100k. That's like right at 100k per employee. Like, and then then I start like looking at their their pay scale, and like there's no opportunity there. Like, there's no way for the installer to make any money, there's no way to have a general manager. There's like it's it's chaos. But if you can get to$200,000 per employee, including your installers and all of your members on your team, then your business will not only be very healthy, it'll be very profitable. It's going to create opportunities for those that are working in your environment. And it's a great way for you to control things. Now, until you have figured out what your constraints are on production, do not advertise because you could be accidentally pouring gasoline or hitting the nitrous button on an engine that's already just maxed out, right? And you're just gonna eventually break something, and it's gonna end up costing you reprints, it's gonna end up costing you um delayed installs, whatever it might be, which will be then detrimental to your sales process because people are not going to refer you. People are not gonna feel happy that they did business with you because it's just chaotic and you were slow to respond on you know the errors that you made and then they showed up and you don't have the vehicle done yet, and all these other things. So you really got to kind of track down your production constraints because again, it's like that three-legged stool. If you crunch up sales really, really, really hard and your production can't keep up, then the stool is gonna fall over and topple. Back to systems equation. If you cannot leave for a day and take your girlfriend or your significant other or your daughter to a Wednesday lunch and you feel bad about it, or if you can't do a two-day trip, then you absolutely have a systems problem. Uh, especially if you're at the two to three staff member point. Like, obviously, if you're in grind hustle mode, one and one guy, like you can't take off. Like, it's impossible. But the minute that you're at three employees and you still can't take off for a day, you got problems, and we need to solve them. And I lived there, I think I worked every single single day for I legitimately was so bad. Like, this is how bad, like guys, I speak from my lens in perspective. Like, I was so bad that I would work from 7 a.m. till 10 p.m. I wouldn't even leave for lunch. Um, people would bring me dinner as well. All my staff had a version of a credit card that I would buy lunch with, and they knew my order at every single location. Actually, I think I ate Chick-fil-A. The reason why I got up at like 315 pounds was because I ate Chick-fil-A every single day for two years straight. And then my dinner would be at Domino's pizza. So I had no variety in my life, and my whole thought process at that time was I'm gonna gain that one hour on lunch to work more. But really, I was not effective with that extra one hour at all. And the reason why is because my output was good, but I had no leverage. Um, everything relied on me completely, and I was just running pegged out at the rev limiter, basically, uh, in my business. And you basically need to start recording everything you do. This is with AI where it's at right now, just to document everything you do. Um, actually, I'm going to be doing a video on this later, but uh I highly recommend getting a device like a plod P A P L A U D. And it sticks on the back of your phone, or it's like a little like note pen that you can wear on your wrist or something like that. And anytime you're talking to your staff, period, just turn it on, record the conversation because you're going to have you don't realize that you have systems, they're just all in your head, nobody else knows what they are, and they don't know what the distant the standard is, it's not defined, right? But if you could start documenting all the conversations that you're having with your staff, with your sales, as you were talking to a person, you have a process in which you were talking to that client in many cases. And you also have this common pricing system. So if you were to use the phone plot or the pin plot and you just document every single call and then let AI take that data. Like a lot of people use AI wrong. My mentor is 72 years old, and he said that, man, I wish I had AI. It's something that I basically was trying to develop back in the early 2000s, but never could. He said, People are using it wrong. AI is basically like an encyclopedia with perfect recall rate, meaning that you could put one million sales calls into this AI and then it can determine and recall that conversation or that situation or how you handled something based on all that context that you fed it and spit it right back to you. Which also means that you can summarize that data or create bullet points or checklist from that data. It's like, hey, based on the last whatever sales call context that I've put into you, can you give me a checklist of what I go over when I'm talking to a new customer? There you go. That's your onboarding process. Like it's actually that easy. It's just we don't do it because we don't think it should be that easy. We make it harder than it needs to be because that's more rewarding, because it makes us feel good about ourselves. And this is a massive leak, and it's a complete hack just to document yourself. Literally, get a video camera, record yourself, doing whatever it is that you're doing, talk out loud, and so ps are done. Like that's all you have to do. Let AI do all the work. This next section, I really want to talk about the thing that's the hardest to hear. It was for me. You started this shop because you wanted control, and you were done being at somebody else's mercy. And the moment that you started making money and doing things your way, your brain basically said, Yo, Brent, this is how we win. You do everything yourself, you're getting great feedback on this, you're getting freedom that you never had because you always had a boss. Trust no one. And the reward got cemented in your mind, and it makes sense at the time, and it really gets you somewhere, but it's not drive. You're actually being kind of dragged by it. In order to have peace in your mind or have more control on your business, you have to let go. It's very counterintuitive. It's like the opposite of what your brain wants to do. Once you start letting go, then it gives you the purpose to grow. You cannot grow like this. You have to grow by letting go of control. And so you need to identify what is it that you're best at? What is your best levered activity? Are you an amazing installer? Replace that last, but fill in the hats of everything, everything else. I want you to imagine yourself while you're going throughout your day in your business, and if you had a label on your hat that said admin, sales, um, production, installer, how many times would you have to change that hat throughout the day? No wonder why you're not productive because you you can't even get into a rhythm, right? You need to decide on which of those hats you hate the most. And that is the hat that you hire first. And then you slowly keep questioning what is going to be the best way to get you in whatever your zone of genius is more. So if it's you're the installer, then you need to hire your production and your administration positions. If it's that you're a great designer, then you need to hire the administrative and the install positions. And if you're a great salesperson, then you need to do the production and the install positions. And you need to be constantly communicating with contractors, whether it be design and install, etc. And if you are the designer, this is a little unique for the design guys, that is one of the easiest positions to remove yourself from. Like your brain, your brain's sole purpose is to keep you alive. And the feedback that you've had while you were growing this business initially is that you were winning, and so it's going to feel very not great as you start to delegate these things because people are going to make mistakes. There's a reason why you're great at it in many cases. Is one, you care a lot, but two, you've made the errors, and that's why you've improved so greatly. So don't have the expectation that these people are going to entirely replace you. The goal is not for them to at first be better than you. Now, the end goal is absolutely my team is better than me in every way right now. In many cases, my team is much better than I am. My job is no longer to be the best at those roles, my job is to make sure that I create the most opportunity for them to continue to grow. But if you can get somebody to handle 80% of what you can do and multiply that, you will finally start to gain leverage on your business. And the end goal that really stings, and this was what hurt me so much, uh, because all of my validation always came from me and my hands and the work that I produced, is getting to the point where you're not even needed anymore. And that is owning a business. Your job is not to be needed by the business. The business is a machine. The business it should be optional for you to be there to a certain extent. You must control the factors, but you have the option to not be there today. And it will still run fine. The business does not exist for you. The business exists for the customer. And we have to remember that. Our industry is so focused, it's so egocentric, it's so focused on look how good I am, look how, look at how good I can install. That doesn't matter, and that's why so many wrap shops are failing to grow. The customer is the focus. And once we can learn that, that the customer is the focus, and then we can quickly identify our constraints in our business, it is much easier. Business is hard no matter what, guys, but like it is much easier to know that I am working on the correct thing and doing it in the right way to where I will see results over time if done long enough with a high enough output. So I want to close it with this. I had a conversation with somebody in the industry that's been in the game for 25 years. Last year, for the first time in his business, he doubled it. This year he's looking to double it again. And I was talking to him, and something's clicked. Like this conversation, I got excited for because he's like, hey man, I hired I hired this rockstar admin and they're from hospitality. I don't care about like I care about how good my installs are, but like that's the standard. 2026, being a great installer is no longer the problem. The information's already there. I'm gonna make a difference being the best customer service of everybody in my block. He's like, I got like 25 shops around a 10 mile radius of me. I'm no longer gonna compete on price, I'm no longer gonna compete on quality. If you want a five-star experience, I'm your guy. And that's the only thing that we're gonna focus on for the next year. And I was just like, dude, if you implement this like the way you are talking right now, and then your whole team takes that standard and cares about the customer to that degree, that becomes your compass on how you hire, how you fire. Like everybody can get on board with that. It's no longer egocentric, it is customer focused, customer wins, that pays our bills, and we are going to win. And I think that if you want to print money in 2026, you need to identify your constraints and figure out how to serve the customer to the highest degree. So I hope this was valuable to somebody. Um, this has been on my mind for a couple weeks, and I've been really struggling to put this into words. Um, this one, this one took me a lot. But if you do these things, I promise you will grow your businesses. So we'll see you on the next one. Peace.