Last Chance to Register | The Trades Event That Builds Your $10M+ Plan | May 5-7

Last Chance to Register | Climb to $10M+ | May 5-7 | Houston, Texas

Are you a trades business owner stuck under $10M? This is the event that changes that. 

Join host Jennifer Bagley alongside Chuck & Dana Staszkiewicz, Craig Wendel, Crystal Williams, Lindsey Beckstrom, and Paul Childers — six industry experts covering every cogwheel of your trades business — for a 3-day war room style workshop designed to find the holes, fix the gaps, and build your real plan to climb to $10M and beyond.

This is NOT another conference. No PowerPoints. No stages. Just hands-on, in-the-weeds work on YOUR business.

📍 REGISTER NOW → https://climbtoriches.ciwebgroup.com/ 📅 May 5-7 | Houston, Texas | Limited Seats

🛠️ WHAT HAPPENS AT THIS EVENT:

• Hot seat sessions where experts dig into YOUR specific business problems
• VIP Day with M&A advisor Craig Wendel (VIP day only — don't miss it)
• Hands-on war room workshops — you leave with your actual plan built
• Branding & digital strategy deep dives with Crystal Williams
• HR, recruiting & onboarding breakthroughs with Lindsey Beckstrom
• Capital, credit & lending clarity with Paul Childers
• M&A, deal structure & exit strategy with Craig Wendel
• Business operations & growth strategy with Chuck & Dana Staszkiewicz
• A 356-data-point entity platform — released for the FIRST TIME at this event
• Optional hog hunt on Day 3 for networking and adventure
• Small intimate setting — real conversations, real results

💡 WHO THIS IS FOR:
✅ Trades business owners doing $500K–$50M+ in revenue
✅ HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing, pest control & more
✅ Owners who are stuck in the day-to-day and can't break through
✅ Anyone who wants to sell, scale, or future-proof their business
✅ One ticket = 3 people can attend (bring your GM or manager!)

⚠️ TOP PROBLEMS WE SOLVE AT THIS EVENT:

• Cash flow & budgeting issues
• Owner dependency & key man risk
• Recruiting & hiring in today's market
• Predatory lending & bad deal structures
• Branding & marketing that actually moves the needle
• SOPs, KPIs & financial visibility
• Exit planning & M&A preparation
• Not knowing what you don't know

🎯 WHAT MAKES THIS DIFFERENT: Most conferences leave you with a notebook full of ideas you never use. This event leaves you with a plan you built yourself, surrounded by experts who helped you build it. Small pockets. Real conversations. Actual application.

"Walk in stuck. Leave climbing to $10M+"

📲 CONNECT WITH OUR EXPERTS:
🔹 Jennifer Bagley
🔹 Chuck & Dana Staszkiewicz
🔹 Craig Wendel
🔹 Crystal Williams
🔹 Lindsey Beckstrom
🔹 Paul Childers

📌 REGISTER BEFORE SEATS CLOSE → https://climbtoriches.ciwebgroup.com/

Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to "The Catalyst for Trades" on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred platform. Share this episode with aspiring and established leaders, and stay tuned for more insights on driving business success and personal leadership growth.

Transcript

Jennifer Bagley [00:00:00]:
Welcome, everyone. Welcome to Catalyst for the trades. I have my amazing co host, Chuck Staszkiewicz.

Chuck Staszkiewicz [00:00:08]:
Thanks, Jenn. Two of them on here today.

Jennifer Bagley [00:00:12]:
Yes. And I have his beautiful and amazing sister, Ms. Dana. Thank you so much for joining you guys. This. This meeting has an intent and a purpose. And this is different from our normal podcast. We have brought on some of the most amazing experts in the industry that are joining us for an event we are having very, very, very soon.

Jennifer Bagley [00:00:34]:
So we wanted to give you guys a brief intro. We're gonna start off with the event. Chuck, give me the. Give me the deets. Dates, time, location.

Chuck Staszkiewicz [00:00:44]:
What's May 5th through 7th? Houston, Texas. It is in Jen's house partly. And in that area where. Where is it exactly, Jen? Your area?

Jennifer Bagley [00:00:57]:
Dude, I just fly in, pack, and fly out. Where do I live? It's 20 minutes from the airport. So in Houston, 20 minutes from the airport. Crystal, is there more than that?

Crystal Williams  [00:01:10]:
No, I'm like, it's Houston. It's close to the airport line. Y' all just need to come on to Texas.

Chuck Staszkiewicz [00:01:15]:
There you go. There you go. Yeah. Yep. And we'll be doing, you know, on the third day, we'll be doing the adventure. You have a choice whether you want to stay behind and work on your business more or do you want to go on the adventure and chat about what you learned day one and day two and get out in nature and shoot some pigs. We're going on a hog hunt. It's going to be a blast.

Jennifer Bagley [00:01:37]:
Literally, I'm excited about. Okay, what are the dates?

Chuck Staszkiewicz [00:01:40]:
May 5th through 7th.

Jennifer Bagley [00:01:42]:
May 5th through the 7th. Mark your calendars. It's in Houston. Three day event. Dana, tell us about the first day. VIP day. Yeah.

Dana Staszkiewicz  [00:01:51]:
So VIP day. We're not divulging everything because we want to make it exciting. Exciting. It is going to be a smaller, intimate group, so we'll be doing some hot seats. So if you've never been a part of that, that means that you come up, you talk about what your number one problem going on in your business. You talk about what your business is, the revenue, all of that. That's something we did in our previous event in January. People love it.

Dana Staszkiewicz  [00:02:14]:
And it's an opportunity for all the business people in the room to be able to help and give feedback and all of that. And then we'll have some different things. We'll have some time with some of the experts at that time. So that's really like sitting in an intimate setting, having the ability to ask questions. If you're wanting to sell your business, you can have some questions with Craig on that. So each expert has their area of expertise and then of course we have some diving in deep to the business type of things that we'll be doing and definitely some surprises along the way

Jennifer Bagley [00:02:46]:
too for that day.

Chuck Staszkiewicz [00:02:48]:
Yeah. And VIP day is the only day that Craig is going to be there specifically. We brought him in for that reason. And he's, you know, you'll hear what Craig's specialties is here in a minute when he introduces himself. It is something that we feel is a very, very good bonus for the VIP people that will be coming in.

Jennifer Bagley [00:03:09]:
Well, let's, let's go into that. Craig, I guess you're up first, baby.

Craig Wendel [00:03:13]:
Yeah, thanks. Thank you. Thanks. Pleasure to be on here and looking forward to the event. It is going to be, to Chuck's point, an exceptional event, particularly that VIP day. And we're, we're Black Trident Capital Advisor and the managing partner of it. We're an M and A focused advisor to lower middle market companies and particularly associated with trade based businesses. We've done a little bit over $6 billion in aggregate over the last, a little bit over 15 years.

Craig Wendel [00:03:37]:
We only focus on entrepreneurs and family owned businesses. We don't focus on going after the private equity backed platforms. And you know, again we're focused on the lower middle market, entrepreneur and family owned businesses and associated particularly with the trades. And I'll jump into a quick story here in a moment that actually was associated with, with Chuck the host. But I'll let everybody else introduce them and themselves first.

Jennifer Bagley [00:04:02]:
Let's. All right, sweet. Who's next? Crystal.

Crystal Williams  [00:04:10]:
I knew she was going to pick me. So Crystal Williams come from the industry? My family owns and operates a heating and air conditioning and plumbing company here in rural East Texas. And now there's about 13 locations across the south, if you will. My family owns a pest control company and my husband and I own part of a roofing company as well. So we live our life in the trades. Started Lemon seed marketing back 2020, you know, right about a great time to start anything. And we are fractional CMOs and branding strategists for the trades.

Jennifer Bagley [00:04:45]:
Sweet. I'm excited to have you. All right, who's up?

Dana Staszkiewicz  [00:04:52]:
I think it's Lindsay.

Jennifer Bagley [00:04:53]:
I can go.

Lindsey Beckstrom [00:04:55]:
I am Lindsey Beckstrom. I opened up Pine Canyon HR. I did grow up in the trades. My dad's been a plumber my entire life. Owned his own business. But I also had the pleasure of doing HR for all hours for Dana and Chuck. So yeah, that's what I do.

Jennifer Bagley [00:05:12]:
All right, fantastic. Go for it, Paul.

Paul Childers [00:05:18]:
Oh, sorry, I didn't hear that. My bad. Paul Childers. I own Blue Sky Biz Solutions. We are a capital readiness and asset protection company in the lending and credit space. Like most of you guys, I have a background in trades, most with trade owners. From my time in automotive doing ein only fleet management, fleet financing. We have a very old process of helping owners separate out personal credit from their business.

Paul Childers [00:05:48]:
Driving a wedge in between that and creating true liquidity and leverage through how you show up as an owner in a business.

Jennifer Bagley [00:05:57]:
Sweet. I love it. And you guys know Dana and Chuck and I, you guys, real quick, I want to dive in a little bit deeper. So this event was specifically organized with the intent to be more of a war room style event, less of, I think everybody's PowerPointed out by the time we get to May. We've seen lots of PowerPoints, lots of stuff from the stage. This specific event, when Chuck and Dana sat down with me, we're all on the same page that we wanted this to be down and dirty. Get into the grind, get into the nuts and bolts of what's going on in your business so we can really add value and identify where some gaps and efficiencies, duplicate processes or areas of opportunity you have within your business. So I'm curious from all of Yalls experience in really getting into this deep of a conversation, do you have one story or one scenario that would give the contractors who are thinking about registering what possibly could come out of it? What are some of the things that you have uncovered? What was the result for the company that you worked with? Like brass tacks, this style of event.

Jennifer Bagley [00:07:08]:
Smaller, more intimate, more in the weeds. Crystal, I'll start with you.

Crystal Williams  [00:07:13]:
So I think a lot of times with just good conversation, like listening to how you approach business in general, a lot of us on this call are able to probably immediately help with tweaks of that. So sometimes you just get in your own head, you know, about your own business, you know, you're jaded to maybe some things that have happened in the past or with maybe the current situation that you're in or maybe you're just like ready to have someone really kick you in the pants. But me personally being a brand and strategy expert, thanks to. Thanks for calling me that. Well, I can listen a lot of times to like who you are as a company and it sounds kind of corny to a lot of people, but you know, right now, branding as a whole. So I'm not talking about your logo and your Truck wrap, right? So I want to know, like, who you are as a company, how your market interprets you, what you're doing in the market, other than your digital strategy and other than just a billboard strategy. Like, I want to see the cohesive things all together, because when we can put together a real good story, it tends to lift everything in your business on the. On the marketing side.

Crystal Williams  [00:08:25]:
But I think when you're in a group full of people that are asking challenging things and you're hearing their answers, you're able to apply all of that to your business. I think you walk away with motivation, inspiration, but also, like, tactical application. So, like, what. What can I literally take back and do? So unlike, you know, conferences, Listen, I'm a conference girl. I'm there all the time. We listen, listen, listen, take away a few nuggets, but we have to go apply ourselves. This is literal application conversations, sitting around, talking with each other. And I just learned so much from listening to how you helped them solve their problem.

Crystal Williams  [00:09:06]:
I'm like, I didn't even realize that was a problem, you know, that I have. And so I'm really excited to experience that. For people that haven't gotten to do an event like this before because you kind of get obsessed with them. Why would I go to any other conference? Again? Because I want the intimacy of smaller events. So just my two cents. And the time I had this happen was@lemon se does our own conference, and we had a. A little section where we were sitting at tables working together. And this contractor said, I have never thought about structuring my payroll, my pay, my technician commission structure around this.

Crystal Williams  [00:09:49]:
And the reward factor, like wording it as rewarding. I mean, I was like watching light bulbs go off as they realized a new way to implement a commission structure. Nothing to do with marketing at the moment, but the commission structure, light bulb was going off. So it's really a cool place to see interactions.

Jennifer Bagley [00:10:09]:
I love that. So let me throw this out there to put a little bit of weight on this. Crystal doesn't even know I'm doing this with her at this event yet. So no pressure, girl. So there was a recent algorithm update. This is May of 2027. Google just launched the largest core algorithm update with the biggest impact in history. And I'm going to throw this out here right now.

Jennifer Bagley [00:10:31]:
I'm about to publish a page on this. But the number one hit groups of websites were first aggregator websites who have notoriously owned page one top three listings. HomeAdvisor, Angie List, any aggregator website. Those websites were Just deprioritized was that that what does that do? Creates new opportunity. The second thing that was deprioritized and this is rolling out. You're starting to see this right now in every search engine across the entire planet is any website that has chunky code that is it's expensive for the agents to crawl and thin content regardless of industry. So all of those smaller companies or those older WordPress websites and stuff, they're all getting hit really really hard. Anything that's a comparison site or traditional backlinking engines, if it's not a first party reference, those websites are all getting devalued including you guys.

Jennifer Bagley [00:11:34]:
This will surprise you. Google just deranked YouTube. YouTube content. You're going to start seeing it fall off of the first page of Google and I'm starting to see major, major shifts right out of the gate. What that did was it opened up the opportunity for direct the authority in the market on the niche topic business owner websites now have bigger opportunities. Another aggregator site that just got hit is ZipRecruiter job recruiting site. So notoriously you haven't had the ability to recruit new customers because the first page of Google is filled with all these aggregator websites. The zip recruiters and job boards and job sites, they all just got hit.

Jennifer Bagley [00:12:18]:
You're talking 60% of them just fell off the place of the planet. What does that do? It opens up you to utilize your own entity website with strong content. What Crystal is just saying job descriptions and entity information. So right now branding has always lived as a design function. We have just built a 356 data point entity platform which is a central intelligence engine. We're an expert at understanding the data points. Crystal is an expert at helping a contractor be able to pull together what their value propositions are, their pricing strategy. I know we have pricing strategies experts on here as well.

Jennifer Bagley [00:12:59]:
The history of your company, your mission statement, your vision statement, your what you

Crystal Williams  [00:13:06]:
see identity as a whole and identity.

Jennifer Bagley [00:13:09]:
Yes, we now have that file is ready. This will be the first event we release that on at. Release that at. Everyone that attends this event is going to get whether you're our client or not, any of our clients. One, you're going to have that file system available and two, you're going to have all these experts that are able to help you plug in these 356 data points that will help you immediately take opportunity in the search engines and on AI search right out of the gate. We just finished it and I just saw it this morning. So that's A big, big highlight, but you're going to need these experts. Okay, I'm going to pause on that.

Chuck Staszkiewicz [00:13:46]:
Yeah. I'm going to break down what Jen just said. Okay. For everybody. You ready? You ready? Here's one thing I know about events. If I'm the smartest person in the room, and I always feel not the smartest person in the room when I'm in a room with Jen. So everybody should come to this event because it's going to be amazing, and there's a lot of smart people there that can help your business.

Jennifer Bagley [00:14:14]:
This is really timely. Like, this little window is so timely. It's such a huge opportunity, and I'm gonna need everyone on here's help filling out this. This file that you guys are gonna leave with. All right, Craig, talk to me. Tell me a little bit about. You said you had a story. You were going to tell us a little bit about what you've seen as well.

Craig Wendel [00:14:32]:
Yeah, yeah. Particularly in the. In the trade space market, there's a lot of. There's a lot of these private equity buyers and platforms out there just throwing around Lois and, you know, trying to get contractors and. And businesses of varying sizes to just sign an LOI and get them under contract exclusivity and then dwindle down their overall purchase price and structure and due diligence. Recently, a couple years ago, we had the privilege to be Chuck's advisor when he traded his business. And Chuck, knowing Chuck, he's a go getter, and he thought he could do it on his own and be his own advisor, which, to his credit, he did an exceptional job of getting to a certain point where he did get multiple Lois on the table, and they kept going higher and higher and higher. But when we came in and looked at them and looked at the structure of the deal, we're like, whoa, we got to tweak this, that and everything almost in here.

Craig Wendel [00:15:26]:
And you shouldn't be signing up for this. That's kind of an overreach. All these different things that. That we see in a deal, in a deal structure that are completely different when you have an advisor on your side versus, you know, going at it alone. So we were, like I said, I had the privilege to have Chuck engage us, and probably, I think it was 10 or 14 days, we increased his value by over 30% of the transaction amount and more importantly, tweaked the deal structure. So he got accelerated payments and there was smaller escrows. Some of the reps and warranties were different. So really just came in and Gave him the forensic view and renegotiating and restructuring of, of the transaction.

Craig Wendel [00:16:11]:
And you know, Chuck's one of, you know, hundreds of clients that we've had over the years. Obviously one of my favorites. But you know, we see this every day, all day. We live and breathe deals. And you know, like I said before, we're only focused on family owned and founder owned businesses. And so, you know, we are your biggest advocates. We don't get paid by buyers or private equity firms. You know, we get paid directly from our clients.

Craig Wendel [00:16:34]:
So we're in it and incentivized to be able to, you know, optimize deal structure and value. And I look forward to being able to present that and some more use cases and actually what goes into dictating value. You know, one of the things that Crystal said is the application and some of these smaller conferences you have the ability to, you know, sidebar conversations with experts like you have here on the call on the podcast. And you know, I really encourage people to take advantage of that. Chuck and I were at an event last year, I spoke at it and it's similar to, to what, you know, this event's going to be. And the amount of people that came up, you know, during breaks or afterwards and said, you know, what can I do to, to really create value in my business? You know, I look at it from, from the high level view of like, hey, this is, this is what it would look like, what a deal would look like right now for you in market. But if you go, you know, you have Chuck and Dana help you or you have Crystal help you, this is what it could be and it could derive, you know, 5, 10, 15, $20 million more so and take advantage of that. You know, these are, these are really cool events and that's where that's where we find to be the most helpful is really, you know, hands on, bespoke advice.

Craig Wendel [00:17:45]:
And it's not just a big stage where somebody's speaking, you actually can get some, some serious juicy nuggets out of it.

Jennifer Bagley [00:17:50]:
Wouldn't be great if we had all this information before we started our businesses.

Chuck Staszkiewicz [00:17:55]:
Let me, let me chime in here real quick, Jen. So this is a, this is a huge problem. And you may be saying to yourself, well, I'm never going to sell my business. That's fine. And I say this a lot. You're going to exit your business one of three ways. Someday you're either going to leave it to family, you're going to pass away and it's going to dissolve or you're going to sell it, so why not structure it now for one of those events? That's number one, I want to tell you. Number two is the, the thing the most.

Chuck Staszkiewicz [00:18:23]:
And Craig is being very nice because he's in the space. But the, the mergers and acquisitions, the private equity, it is such a sharky crappy that just like there are so many people out there taking advantage of owners that have put their life and everything that they can into these businesses, and they're being taken advantage of every single day. I, I see this more often than not. And it, it's, there's nobody really talking about this. Right? And, and look, I get it. It's a business, right? These mer, these PE firms, they're in business to make money. I, I completely understand that. What I don't appreciate is the lack of knowledge that the, the consumer or the business owners have.

Chuck Staszkiewicz [00:19:13]:
And I, I, I just, I feel it's my duty. Having gone through the situation myself and seeing the sharks in the water and I was the blood and they were circling and, and feeling what I felt in that situation and being smart enough to go out and do my own due diligence, ask the right questions, seek out the right professionals, it, I feel it's my duty to bring that to every other business owner, whatever their, whatever their goal is with their business, whether they're, whatever three of the three things they're going to do with their business. Right. And more people need to be educated and hear about this because I've had conversations with people that have done deals about to do deals, and a lot of them have fallen apart. There's people that have major regrets that left millions of dollars on the table that were taken advantage of because they didn't know any better. So it's a huge problem in the, in all industries and people aren't educating themselves and talking about it enough. That's one reason why I brought Craig in as an expert for this event.

Jennifer Bagley [00:20:26]:
I love it. You guys gotta come. We're gonna remove some major blind spots. Lindsay, tell me about your business and some of the clients you've been able to work with. What have you guys been able to uncover?

Lindsey Beckstrom [00:20:36]:
Yeah, so HR gets a bad rap, right? We always get the people don't like hr. I am very different. I'm very relationship driven. And I will always hire based off of culture because skills can be taught. I want to make sure that the right person is in the right seat. The biggest thing that I've done and that I continue to do is create onboarding programs because when you, Whoever it is, whether it's a technician, an office employee, whoever it is coming in, they're going to know from that very second that they step in whether they're going to stay with you forever or if you're just a stopping point. And so I create onboarding programs that are not only just training you on the office background of it, but also your technician roles as well. So that when you're thrown into a truck, you know what you're doing, so you're not being set up to fail, that you're set up for success.

Lindsey Beckstrom [00:21:31]:
We did this very heavily at all hours. We created an onboarding program that really focused on getting our techs and our office staff trained, but also building up that culture. Right. We want our technicians to know what our office employees are going through, and vice versa. We want our office to know what our technicians are going through so that they can understand when the tech calls in and they're extremely frustrated that everybody could be having a bad day. So I focus very heavily on onboarding, but also recruiting the right people for

Dana Staszkiewicz  [00:22:00]:
the right spots and everything in between. Just to be clear, like, if there's crazy going on, which there's always crazy going on in the trades, Lindsey's great navigating all of those types of things as well.

Jennifer Bagley [00:22:14]:
There's.

Dana Staszkiewicz  [00:22:14]:
There's a lot that she's leaving out that she did for us at all hours as well as she. We have some of the same clients, so I know what she's dealing with day in and day out.

Jennifer Bagley [00:22:24]:
Right.

Lindsey Beckstrom [00:22:24]:
I mean, in my HR career, and I've done everything working, scaling a boutique to working in healthcare to trades, and now my own business with a variety of clients that I have. I just recently experienced a death. I had an employee die. And so. And how do you navigate that? I mean, you have the emotions of your employees who are attached to this person, but then you also have the family unit, and then like, so how do you navigate that? So, yeah, there's a lot

Jennifer Bagley [00:22:57]:
I think you're going to have. I mean, there's obviously a tremendous amount, but I think there's a. There's a new piece to this, which these guys are having a really hard time recruiting and hiring right now. And you have this little window that just opened that didn't exist as of 30 days ago. So if you've ever felt like in your business that it's. That recruiting has been difficult, one, you're going to get insights from everyone on here. The things that you can now include in your strategy, your Strategic plan for recruiting higher level and better team members, making decisions faster. And then two, you actually have a little bit more control as of right now.

Jennifer Bagley [00:23:40]:
Your digital presence can actually help you assist in getting new people in the door, which that's notoriously been something that's been owned by these aggregator sites that are out there. So I think we combine both of those. That's going to be huge. All right, Miss Dana Queen.

Dana Staszkiewicz  [00:23:57]:
Okay, so where. Where would you like me to focus? You want me to talk? Well, we probably talked all hours, a ton. So I can give you a client that we've worked with that's success stories. Is that kind of what you're thinking, Jen?

Jennifer Bagley [00:24:10]:
Yeah. Just what are some of the things that these have came out of these kind of sessions we've done before out

Dana Staszkiewicz  [00:24:18]:
of like the workshops and stuff that we've done and what we're doing? Absolutely, absolutely. So we listened. We decided for our January event that we were going to do some things in a different way. You know, you learn as you go and you have to always be able to pivot based on things. And so Chuck and I decided we're going to do some different things in January. When we were there at the end of the week, we asked everyone for feedback and we received tremendous feedback based on what we were doing. They love the smaller, intimate setting. I think we had sold out.

Dana Staszkiewicz  [00:24:51]:
I think we were at 40 people, if I remember right, for the January event. And Crystal, when you were talking earlier about like getting in, digging in and like the workshop aspect of it, we had, you know, those big, large white 3M papers. We had the room covered in those. We had people working together and separate and we were all walking around like it was super hands on. Those are the types of things we're going to be doing this time. And if you were with us in January, I know we have some people coming back. It will be different things this time as well. So.

Dana Staszkiewicz  [00:25:24]:
So that'll be Wednesday is Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday for those who are hunting, we have planned again, I don't want to give everything away, but I can tell you as part of that, it's going to be digging into your stuff and you will leave with your plan firsthand. So I, like we've talked about before, a lot of times you're like, oh, I have all these things that I have to do. How do I prioritize? How do I focus all of that? We're going to get into all of that. Like, this is my jam. I love doing stuff like that. And so that's what it's looking like. And actually just to go back on that, some of the other things that our participants told us that attended because of the small setting, they gained all of these friendships. And Lindsay was there as well, and she can attest to that.

Dana Staszkiewicz  [00:26:17]:
We had the craziest conversations going on and then getting together at night. We'll be at your house, Jen, for that. That's where some of the best stuff comes out of when you're sitting around one on one or with five people or whatever. You know, people just love having those conversations when they're relaxed and talking about the day and what was impactful for them and it can spur even more information. That's my favorite stuff too.

Chuck Staszkiewicz [00:26:46]:
Yeah, yeah. And there's one big thing that we wanted to do with this event that we didn't do in January and we learned from is it is a business adventure workshop. And so we want everybody that's gonna, that's coming to the event to have the adventure side too, whether they go on the hunt or not. So we've got some activities planned that will absolutely be mindset, impactful and an adventure for you. Right. So we have some really, really fun things planned that are gonna stretch you and you're gonna leave that feeling like you went on an adventure no matter what you choose.

Dana Staszkiewicz  [00:27:22]:
And one other thing I know I had someone reach out to me talking about like, okay, what about revenue wise right now, based on who we have coming, we have from under a million into triple digit million. And so odds are you will be welcome. Well, you will for sure be welcome. But no matter what range of revenue you are, we'll have it covered.

Jennifer Bagley [00:27:45]:
Yeah, I agree. Paul, tell me a little bit about some of the things you guys have uncovered and what some of those success stories are look like for events like this.

Paul Childers [00:27:55]:
Yeah. So, you know, it's having Craig on here, having Chuck on here in the lending and credit space. I share a lot of the same values, you know, Chuck and Craig do where, you know, business brokers. Business lending tends to be an extremely creditory filled space. Right. We've got a ton of businesses. I can tell you right now. I talked to probably 30 to 40 business owners every ranging from 500, 000 up to 25 million.

Paul Childers [00:28:26]:
And eight out of 10 of those conversations, these are high interest daily, weekly, you know, capital loans that they're just stuck in a hamster wheeling and they got sold a bill of goods from that had no interest in anything but benefiting themselves and sending their kids to college, which, you know, naturally isn't necessarily wrong, but when it's on your dime and you thought you didn't get, that's a problem. And so Blue sky came about, in fact, where it's not so much a client testimonial as so much like, I've dealt with 260 over about three and a half years. And I really got tired of the same message that was going around of like, Paul, I thought that I could go do this, this broker, this loan. And it didn't come back being what it was. When I went to go refinance these trucks, I found out that I paid interest all up. My value of this loan is three times what my vehicle's worth. How do I get out of this? I told, I was told I was going to get put into this line and now I feel like I have to increase my sales by 150% to even feel like I'm above water because these loans are killing me. And that really drove me to go, like, why is this happening? And it's happening because owners give way too much and talk to a lender or broker.

Paul Childers [00:29:42]:
I mean, let's be honest, if you've ever applied for money, the speed of which you give them your finance jump up and down when you get that first approval that comes across is a problem. And we've all faced that. And what, look, if you know how you show up, you separate out yourself properly, you build the commercial credit, what's showing up on your credit profiles, you know how your financials look and your position, right? And your business, by the way, marketing and going to branding and shows up professionally and, and properly. When lenders underwrite you, guess what? You get this thing called control. And when you match that with cash access and a need to not necessarily take capital, you hold all the cards. That's really what we educate owners on, is like, look, let's put the control back in your hands. Let's give you back the helm of the ship and we're going to show you how to by pulling all of these different pieces together, making sure that it points in the right direction. And the really cool part about that is ein only financing is super easy to get to.

Paul Childers [00:30:47]:
It's not as expensive as people think it is, and it's actually super beneficial because it also drives enterprise doing a stock sale versus asset sale. It gives you options, right? I am a big believer of flexibility and options because when you have flexibility, you control the game, right? And so that's what we always strive for. Not only that, on average, across the 79 clients successfully put through our program last year. We saved them, on average, about $150,000 a year in fees and interest that they would have been paying otherwise. So that's ultimately what we're doing.

Jennifer Bagley [00:31:24]:
That's exciting, you guys. We're going to do a hot seat real quick. From all of your vantage points, if you had to list the top three issues, Rapid fire. Top three issues that you hear from contractors that they are dealing with right now from each of your different perspectives, top three problems we will start with. I'm giving you time to think. You only get three, and we got to go. Rapid fire. Top three problems that you guys hear directly from your contractors that we all will commit to attempt to solve jointly as a team of experts.

Jennifer Bagley [00:32:07]:
Dana, I'll start with you because, you know, I'm ready.

Dana Staszkiewicz  [00:32:11]:
Number one, cash flow. Cash flow is always a huge issue. Slash budgeting. Two owners are two in the day to day. They don't know how to get out of that. And three, they are used to putting out fires versus thinking strategically, which will solve all of these problems.

Jennifer Bagley [00:32:31]:
Love it, Lindsay.

Lindsey Beckstrom [00:32:34]:
Mine are accountability, communication, and financial visibility

Jennifer Bagley [00:32:41]:
there. I hear that often. Chat.

Chuck Staszkiewicz [00:32:44]:
Yeah, Mine are definitely focus and distraction. Right. Is. Is one in together that I see every single. Every single time. The other is financials. Right. Like, people just, you know, contractors are really good at doing the work.

Chuck Staszkiewicz [00:33:02]:
They're not really good at running the business yet. Right. So that's one big thing that I see. And then, you know, just the ability to remain humble and know that they don't know it all and they're not alone. Right. To actually get a network and get involved with people and that have done it before them and ask the right questions. Right. Like, I remember the first event that I went to and the last event that I went to recently.

Chuck Staszkiewicz [00:33:32]:
Right. And the difference in my mindset and my focus around those events. So I think people are really like, whether they've been to events before or this is their first one is how to really capture an roi. Building a network and community that they can rely on. That's another big one that I see.

Jennifer Bagley [00:33:54]:
All right, good deal, Craig.

Craig Wendel [00:33:56]:
Yeah, those are all. Those are all good ones. The three that we. That we typically get from the contractor space is labor. You know, somebody made a mention of labor on. On the call earlier, and that's. That's a huge piece, right? Because at the end of the day, the contractors and contracting businesses, a lot of times that that revenue is being procured by your hands. Like, there's.

Craig Wendel [00:34:13]:
There's Not a, not really AI, that's going to, you know, replace a duct system in an attic.

Paul Childers [00:34:17]:
Right.

Craig Wendel [00:34:18]:
So, you know, labor is a key piece because that's how you're really generating your revenue. The second would be key man risk. We see a lot of contractors and these, in these smaller, lower to middle market businesses have too much reliance on the owner. The owner's doing too much, there's too much risk involved with that owner. You've got, everybody gets hit by a bus. But that's a key thing that partners or buyers look at is key man risk. And then tangentially associated with that is standard operating procedures and KPIs. If you have those in place and you're running those and you're as an owner looking at your KPI dashboard, key performance indicator, dashboard daily, that's just going to give you all the things you need necessary, all the tools necessary to be able to tweak and hone your business and really, you know, position it and build the overall value of the business.

Craig Wendel [00:35:04]:
So those, Those are the three labor, key man, and standard operating procedures and KPIs.

Jennifer Bagley [00:35:09]:
Yeah. 100 agree. Paul, Paul, Paul, Paul, sorry.

Paul Childers [00:35:18]:
There, there's a little. I apologize. I don't know if it's my Internet or what. We got a storm going through.

Jennifer Bagley [00:35:22]:
So.

Paul Childers [00:35:24]:
So the three biggest things that we kind of come across are gonna be cash flow, right? And a lot of that is stem from they think that they need a loan. And really in reality, when I go in and look and this us not being incentivized to put people in debt is a benefit is a lot of times I go, you need to go a cfo, you need to go talk to a coach. You have problems in your sales process forever, right? So cash flow always comes up. But I think it's always thought and a fill, right? The other thing is they can't access capital to write tied to them personally. And they almost always at that 1 to 4, 1 to 3 million hit a wall where their bank goes, nope, we can't approve you. You can't go get more vehicles. And it's like, no, actually we can go do this. You're just, you're tied up wrong.

Paul Childers [00:36:11]:
And then they don't understand because like I think several people said they don't know their financials, they don't understand how they show up and they're going to the wrong lender, wrong brokers. Right? So those are the three biggest things that we always come across.

Jennifer Bagley [00:36:26]:
Yeah, yeah. Great. Crystal from your perspective.

Crystal Williams  [00:36:30]:
Absolutely. So tracking performance of what they're currently doing in marketing, they can't really decipher what's working, what's really moving the needle. So I would say tracking number two, they're trying to figure out how to stand out and sometimes a very crowded market and sometimes a very rural, price conscious market. Either way, they need a strategy for standing out as a brand as a whole. And then last but not least, definitely KPIs that are affecting their marketing performance. So where, where's the ball being dropped from the phone ringing to the technician in the home? Like are we optimizing every single lead that we have an opportunity to and how the better we become operationally, the lower our marketing cost actually become. So those are the three biggest things that we talk through and overcome all the time.

Jennifer Bagley [00:37:20]:
Yeah, I would agree. I'm going to throw out a couple more. So I think right now one of the largest ones is I don't even know what I don't know. So I don't even know. I don't know.

Crystal Williams  [00:37:32]:
Yes,

Jennifer Bagley [00:37:34]:
the second major one is you're living in a time where consumers are evolving and modify how they find companies like yours and you haven't caught up with them. And so it's causing all of the trickle down effect in your lead volume, your sales process, your closing process, your branding process, your financials, your recruiting process and all of these other things. And I think the next one is living in a place of how do I plan for now and the future at the same time and it's a future you can't see yet. And I think our ability as owners to be able to live in the what do I need to accomplish today and the change management that is necessary in order to future proof our business for tomorrow. I think those, those are not the things that are brought to our attention. What I see is the, I see the bumps and bruises and a lot of times those result from not knowing where to go with those three things and they show up in all these other areas of the business. So you guys, I think that hopefully everybody that is watching, what you can see is you have a group of people who a truly care and have deep SME. Let me not acronym it.

Jennifer Bagley [00:38:53]:
Deep subject matter knowledge of each one of the physical components or cogwheels of a business. And I wish I could say that any one of the six of us, ten of us that are going to be there, these subject matter experts could independently solve everything. The reality is we can't. We can't because a business is an engine and there are Multiple pieces to the engine. And if any cogwheel in an engine is malfunctioning, it shows up in all the other areas of the business. And that's why I think this event specifically is so powerful. Because we've put a lot of time into identifying the subject matter experts that have the same care, concern, knowledge, expertise and data to be able to dive in and start tearing apart the engine. If you've ever had a kid that was a really one of my cousins who now is an employee, he was the kid that went into the house, you'd be going to make your toast in the morning and notice the freaking toaster is gone.

Jennifer Bagley [00:39:53]:
It's gone from the kitchen. I don't know where the toaster is. And later you would find him in some bedroom and the kid had ripped apart the entire toaster trying to build something different with it. And I think that's what has to happen in a business to be able to understand what are all the working parts of the system, where are all the mechanics that are causing problems, what is the interdependencies and interoperability of each of those parts and how do we put this shit back together? Excuse my French again. So it's working better, so it's producing a better result. And it's not one area of the business. In fact, typically improving a single area of the business cost causes additional problems that are a ripple effect throughout the rest of the organization, I. E.

Jennifer Bagley [00:40:37]:
You get great marketing and great branding and your lead volume increases, you're going to start finding problems that you have sales and conversion problems. We solve the booking issue and we get to start having issues that we're figuring out. We're bleeding, we're not following up on sales. We solve the sales problem, we start closing more business and we start realizing we're not pricing well enough so we're bleeding cash flow. We don't have our data down. Everything is interconnected. I would love to make this an easy button. But there is no entrepreneur that is successful that will tell you that running a business is easy.

Jennifer Bagley [00:41:14]:
The reality is it's frickin hard. And it is impossible for us to come out of the gate being able to do it on our own without subject matter experts that can help us uncover our blind spots, get us out of the binoculars and the fire that we're living in, running the business, pull ourselves out and be able to look at it from a different perspective. Hope everyone has seen that. You really have an amazing group of people here. Any other final thoughts before we wrap up? Chris, So I can hear you thinking.

Crystal Williams  [00:41:41]:
I know. Well, I just want to say, and I know Chuck wants to follow this up, but I just want to say this, this is an operator, conference grouping, mastermind, whatever you want to call this is for operators. And I say this every day. And I run a marketing agency. Marketing is not what moves the needle. It is not what even. No matter what you're wanting to do, however you're going to exit, when people look at your company, it will not be, man, that is a well marketed company. They're going to say, that is a well ran company.

Crystal Williams  [00:42:12]:
And I can honestly, I am hindered by operators. And so if we can get more operators to understand this is the full scope of how you become an overall better marketer. I'm sorry, better operator. Then these other pieces just start naturally performing better. I wish I could make everybody go through this first and then be like, okay, now you can work with, now

Jennifer Bagley [00:42:37]:
we'll work with you.

Crystal Williams  [00:42:37]:
But it's just so much opportunity here to like, you're gonna find a hole in your ability as an operator and someone here is going to be able to fill it. So there might be great marketers in the room that are operators that are already doing great marketing, but their hole is cash flow. That was mentioned several times over here. It may be like you're doing a lot of good things operationally, you have a marketing problem. Like, and so all of us together is what it's going to be like a little secret sauce that most contractors aren't willing to invest in the full gamut of what they need. It's kind of a little secret. Little secret.

Dana Staszkiewicz  [00:43:12]:
And along those lines, it's why we're doing the tickets. You buy one ticket, three people can come. Because our hope is that the owner is going to come and if they're large enough, they have a general manager or if there's a manager of some sort, like bring them with. We would love that.

Chuck Staszkiewicz [00:43:30]:
Yeah, one last thing, like, look at the value that was delivered here in the last 45 minutes. And this is not everybody that's going to be there. This is not all the experts that are going to be there. We got someone coming for financials, right. To deep dive into what's going on in your business. Are you set up correctly? Right. And we've got other experts that aren't on this call that will be there as well. And again, going back to, we strategically brought these people into for a reason because we know that having these experts in one room and a lot longer than 45 minutes.

Chuck Staszkiewicz [00:44:09]:
Like, there's something for every piece of your business. Like, who couldn't use more help with HR and hiring? Who couldn't use advice on Brandy? And you know, am I like, when I go to look at a loan, like, what should I be looking for? Or like, is my business set up to. For success to leave it to someone or whatever it may be? Right. That's why this is designed that way. And if you've listened to this whole podcast in 45 minutes and you see the value here, imagine what it's going to be like over three days or two days, if that's all you're coming in for.

Jennifer Bagley [00:44:45]:
Right.

Chuck Staszkiewicz [00:44:45]:
The value is going to be tremendous. And that's the biggest part that we've learned about events, is like going to an event that doesn't have a workshop or war room style. As Jen was saying, you're not able to capture as much. And that's the difference that we're going to do.

Jennifer Bagley [00:45:05]:
Yeah, you guys, our goal was one to five small pocket, literally. I have a little cigar area over there. That's a campfire you can sit at. I have a fireplace over here you can sit at. I have an under the patio, little living area you can sit at. I have five different pockets in the home that you'll have the ability to just sit down and really get into the brass tax that's going to create change, which this is like a huge conference where you say, the only thing I really got out of it was the hour I spent at the bar with someone. We're just at the bar with someone and saying, the whole event is going to be the hour at the bar with somebody. I think the last piece of it is, is we are all strong independently, but as experts, we are stronger together.

Jennifer Bagley [00:45:51]:
Like, even here, you're going to see Crystal come in and take something I'm doing and she's going to check me and say, but if you did it this way, Jen, you would also get X, Y and Z. I'll be able to bring in. Hey, if you're going through an analysis, let me show you how to get it done. Five seconds faster or five hours faster with AI. Like, we all have the ability to also complement each other and you'll see a lot of that happening at the at the event as well.

Crystal Williams  [00:46:16]:
So

Jennifer Bagley [00:46:18]:
good stuff, guys. Love it. Thank you to all of our experts for taking time to be with us. We really look forward to seeing you guys. So if you are on this and you need help, you can reach out to any one of us independently. You can shoot us a message on social media. You can send us a text. We're all easy.

Jennifer Bagley [00:46:36]:
The link. Ms. Rose, can we throw up the link for them to be able to register? Perfect. So it's May 5th through the 7th. Climb to the richest co is the landing page. We threw it up real quick for Opus and Gold's group. You guys can register right there. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us.

Jennifer Bagley [00:46:53]:
You guys block the dates, get registered. Like we said, we're keeping this small. You're going to be in my house, so this isn't going to get big. Just be careful here. It will cut off.

Chuck Staszkiewicz [00:47:05]:
Yeah.

Lindsey Beckstrom [00:47:06]:
All right.

Jennifer Bagley [00:47:06]:
Love everybody very much. Thank you so much. We look forward to seeing you at the event.

Chuck Staszkiewicz [00:47:10]:
Thanks, everyone.