Know Your Numbers, Not Just Your Craft

Tyler Grace shares how he shifted from over-delivering to running a lean, profitable small-shop—tracking every hour, pricing for reality, and choosing lifestyle over headcount. He breaks down T&M vs cost-plus in plain English, why “good enough” (when scoped) beats burnout, and how to design a business that actually pays you back.

http://trghomeconcepts.com

Find more of Tyler at "The Modern Craftsman" podcast: https://www.moderncraftsman.co

Show Notes: 

0:00 Good enough finally clicked
 5:00 How Tyler actually got into the trades
 22:30 The over-delivering trap (and not tracking time)
 26:00 Burnout and a hospital wake-up call
 31:50 Pivot to T&M so the hours finally pay
 37:10 T&M vs cost-plus—how he prices it
 40:10 Old houses: surprises, budgets, and change orders
 44:30 Staying small on purpose—simple tracking & cash flow
 58:30 Know your lane—match the work to the budget (don’t scale blind)
 1:03:20 Volume ≠ profit (the COVID boom lesson)
 1:05:00 The motto: work hard, get paid for your time
 1:14:00 Who he is and why—story & perspective

Find Our Hosts:
Reece Barnes
Matt Calvano

Podcast Produced By:
Motif Media

Transcript

0:00

When my clients started saying, Good enough is good enough, I realized for years I've just been giving away free work. Alrighty sir, mics are hot. Oh, that's right, I gotta admit it's weird being on the other side of this, yeah, in so many different ways, from a scheduling perspective. And then just, should I prepare? Should I not prepare? I'm so used to being the other way that I almost didn't know what to do. I still don't know what to do. Do you do you have guests prepare? Do you prepare as a host? I prepare as a host, Nick generally, wings, wings, it. We try to prep our guests with some questionnaire just to get them thinking a little bit more. So it's not just it's it's difficult in our world, because I think people want to come on the podcast and they want to market themselves, and they want to promote their brand. So sometimes it's difficult to give them enough leeway to do that while also maintaining a decent conversation. And it not just be a conversation where it's like, damn you said all the right things, perfect. Well, that's why you wanted to market your brand, right, correct? So it just winds up. Sometimes it's, I get it. I totally get it. But the goal for us is to shed light on the industry, shed light on perspective. I personally feel that everybody in life, in business, has a very unique perspective of that experience totally and I think that regardless of who you are, how long you've been doing, like how old you are, that you have unique insight to life and to business that not everyone has, and that, to me, is really interesting, rather than than just talking about saying the right things and all The buzzwords, I'd rather learn about your experience and what lessons you've learned that I may or may not ever experience in my life, but I could probably take something away from it. And sometimes it's difficult to have those conversations when you get somebody on you've never met them before, and it's awkward to have a podcast conversation, and they want to say all the right things, and they don't want to be vulnerable. So we do, we do prep guests a little bit to try and at least open the doors a little bit. But it always, it doesn't always happen, yeah, totally. Um, well, I think like to that point, like, I've really had an issue with guests like clamming up. I've definitely had guests like suggest they're nervous before, yeah, but I always, I take a similar approach to you, is like, I want to hear the unique story. I mean, you could we do a podcast on, like, construction accounting, right? So it's like talking about cost codes for so long, you know what I mean? And it's like, there's, like, a pretty traditional way of doing cost codes, but I would like to hear the stories, right? The wins, the losses. What like to your point, what unique perspectives have you gathered over a career in business and even personal has impacted how you make decisions? And I think that's like, largely what we'll do here so you don't have to be nervous. And I can see that you're nervous. Tyler, yeah, man, I'm this. Is this a lot for me? Yeah, for those of you that aren't watching this, he's sweating profusely right now. It's bad. Yeah, I was, I was trying to, I was trying to, I was trying to get out of it, but I couldn't. I couldn't reschedule twice in a row. That's right, that's right. We just follow up and just confirm, and just get, get this meeting up. Maybe it's weird though, because I got a calendar alert that you guys changed the date of it till tomorrow for some reason, like the calendar alert got canceled and then changed, and then somebody followed up with an email and was like, I don't know what happened with the calendar. The calendar that it changed, but we're definitely on for tomorrow. So I was like, damn, wait. Are we on May? That's a Yeah, yeah, dude, builders budgets and beers is big time. Dude, hell yeah. We got somebody else coming on. No, but I think other other than the nerves, I should be good, yeah, right. You'll be fine. You'll be fine. Well, you can always edit it. Yeah, we got Doug. Doug can chop this thing up. He'll get this thing all nice and polished. Okay, but for the listeners, Tyler, give them a little background on yourself, who you are, what you're about. I mean, we like, there's gonna be a title and everything, but I think it's helpful for people to hear who you are. How in depth are we going, like couple minutes, yeah? I mean, dude, a lot, a lot of conversation pivots off of this. I'm not gonna hold a time or two, yeah, if it starts to get longer, I'll start to chop it. But so who are you, I guess, if you go back. So I'm Tyler grace. I own TRG home concept, small remodeling contractor. I am a co host of modern craftsman podcast, who am I? I have a married to my wife, Rachel. Got married in 2011 I have two daughters, and I got seen in anger management. It's like, when, yeah, when they're asking, like, who are you? And he's like, Well, I'm so and so. He's like, no, no. Who are you? Yeah. Yeah, so, so I mean it, it all plays a part, I think, in what I do and who I am, and I guess getting into the trades, if you want that background, I grew up in a relatively affluent town. It was get done high school, go to college. I didn't ever want to go to college, but that was just the next step. So I ended up trying to go to college. I was a science major. Wasn't a huge fan of college. Didn't want to become I realized shortly after, I didn't want to become a scientist. I didn't want to be a professor, so I dropped out. I'd always worked with my hands, worked in the trades, and I dropped out, and I just started working in construction full time. And then I realized I probably wanted something to fall back on, because I wasn't in love with where I was or what I was doing. I still just didn't really have a path. And I think I kind of fell into construction by proxy. And then I ended up transferring to Drexel University in Philadelphia, where I met my wife and I went to school. I went to school. I got a construction management degree, which was primarily commercial, and I absolutely hated it. It was terrible. All my internships I absolutely hated and so when I got done college, I decided that I wanted to it was probably naive and extremely foolish of me, but I would just start my own company, because I could charge 3540 bucks an hour, and that was way more than any of my friends would be making, and I would be set and, you know, a couple years into it, struggling not making money. Five years into it, still struggling seven years into it, realizing that it just wasn't a viable model. So I started switching things up and started marketing myself a little bit better. But then, you know, seven to 10 years rebranding and starting to understand business, and I think now I'm 1516, years in business, and I have I'm not from a business perspective. I'm not this amazing, incredible business. Like, I don't have all the systems in place, but I know my lane, and I stay in my lane and I'm profitable in my lane. And that's like, from a lifestyle perspective, that's what works. That's what you're running. Dude, I love it. And honestly, like, this falling into construction story is so common. And you did. You mentioned that you so you initially got like trades experience in high school. Yeah, so my, my dad, he wasn't really a contractor. He, he kind of was a contractor, but he, he would buy rental properties that were disheveled and run down, and he would renovate them, and then pull equity out of them and borrow against them and buy more rental properties. And then if things got slower, he needed cash, he would do some jobs for people. So I grew up maintaining his rental properties and working on and off in construction. But I always say my dad taught me what not to do, sure, if it was whatever my dad taught me, go 180 degrees in the opposite direction and you'd be in the vicinity of where you should be. Yeah. So that was pretty much my experience with it. It just it wasn't doing things the right way. It was a bit of a mess, and it probably just typical construction. And I knew that I didn't want that, but I did enjoy working with my hands and creating stuff and the problem solving behind it. Totally, totally. I love it. And so I So your dad was buying disheveled, rundown properties, fixing him up, adding equity point. I think they called it the method. Now he was like, basically, like a flipper before it was actually a flipper, yeah? So he hold guy, yeah, he, I mean, he would basically buy them for next to nothing. Back then you could buy a house like 2030, grand. It'd be a multi family, and they were disgusting and run down. And he'd put lipstick on them, clean them up and then borrow against the equity he had in them. Because the the equity would be based on, obviously home value, but then also rental income. So when he made them nicer, he was able to get higher rents for them, yeah, and he would, he would borrow that money. So growing up, we were very, very cash poor in a very, a pretty wealthy town, so it would, I enjoyed construction, but it definitely was looked down upon within my community. We weren't we didn't really fit in with where we lived. So even, like, we would get free lunches and shit in school, which was sick, yeah. And then, like, we were those kids and, you know, going in and getting clothes from like, Goodwill. And then when we needed new bikes, my dad would take us to the police impound and tell us that they were, like, our stolen bikes. So we'd get new bikes that were like, like, stealing stolen bikes. So that, like, it was just that my dad was just trying to survive. There's five kids. He had five that my mom and dad had five kids in six years. It it was absolute and utter chaos. I'm sure my dad was self employed. My mom was managing the numbers in the business. So, yeah, the rental property thing made money for him. He was building a ton of equity in him, in his his future, but we had no cash. He couldn't pull cash out from them, so that was just what he did. And he built a decent real estate portfolio as we grew up, and things with my mom and my dad ended up going south, and they liquidated pretty much everything when I was in high school. So it never really panned out the way that he anticipated. But, yeah, that was, that was my experience. It was going and cleaning up rental properties and fixing putting lipstick on a pig. Yeah, it, it wasn't. I didn't really enjoy it, but I did enjoy actually working hard and working with my hands. Yeah, totally well, and I, that's where I want to go, is like, what, like you mentioned earlier, like, you basically, like, take what your dad did 180 and now you're in the vicinity of, like, how you do things like, I think it's pretty obvious. I mean, that sounds like a pretty like, negative situation. It might not have been like a negative situation as a kid, right? Free lunches, going to the police impound, picking up bikes, like, like, pole is a weird thing to say the least. Yeah, exactly. And like, all, like, just completely gutting, just nasty apartments. Like, you're like, looking at that as a model, and you're like, I don't want to do this. I personally can empathize with you on that. It wasn't to that level, like my parents, they, they owned a multi family in Lincoln, Nebraska, and it wasn't like anything to write home about. But it was like, from my understanding, like from my understanding, like, a pretty solid investment. But yeah, tenants move out, and you've got, like, some just massive, like, person that can't leave their apartment, and then they they move out, and you're throwing chairs away that are just disgusting, and, like, replacing tile, and, like, just nasty. So I can empathize with you on that. But how did that? Like, like, you got back into construction because of a passion, like, to work with your hands. Or, like, because for me, I was like, I'm never going to be a contractor after that. I was like, No way. I obviously like, help contractors and software. But like, what about that still gave you an itch to get into construction. It was the only thing that so I had always my entire life. I'm gas on, gas off. I'm going 110 miles an hour, or I'm going zero miles an hour. So whatever I do, I want to do the best that I can. I didn't have that much work experience outside of that. And I also at 16 years old, 17 years old, even through graduating from college, just had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I anxiety trying to figure out who I was, what I needed to do, how I needed to get my life together, and the trajectory of my life was extremely overwhelming to me, and I didn't know what I wanted to do, and anxiety got the best of me, and I was like, I can fall back on this. I do know how to do this. And for me, it was I could work hard and I could get paid for the work that I put in place. And that was really the premise. And the foundation of starting my business was that I don't need to make a million dollars a year. I want to make a decent living. I want to work hard, and I'm going to get paid for the work that I put in place. So this, this was an outlet for me that I felt comfortable in at a time in my life that nothing really made me feel comfortable. It was the least scary thing that I could do. Sure, being 20 years old and coming into the world and trying to figure out a path, it was easier than going to work for a commercial construction company that I knew I hated. It was easier than completely starting over and going back to school for something else. It was easier than going and working at a hardware store. It just made the most amount of sense to me. So it was, it started with handyman stuff, with painting little jobs, and I just very slowly got into it and started enjoying the work and enjoying the learning. And it was a balance of being afraid of everything that I was doing because I had no idea how to do it. But then the the reward of moving forward and succeeding and learning, it was, it was very addictive to me, yeah, and I just continued to build on that and build on that, and I've always self performed so many trades, and it just gave me an opportunity to constantly learn and constantly better myself and never become bored. So I think once I started, it just really snowballed to this is this is who I am. This is what I enjoy doing, and it's a little bit different. Now, there's other things in my life that I enjoy, but at the end of the day, I always fall. Back on. I want to work with my hands, and I want to get paid for my time. I'm not asking for more than that, but I'm most certainly not asking for less than that, sure, and that's really been the foundation of my business model and what I've done now. But yeah, it was definitely by proxy. It wasn't like, I was like, I want to get into construction, right? This is what I want to do. I'm going to swing a hammer. It just, it was, sadly, the easiest path forward for me, with the least resistance. And I did fall in love with it, very, very early, totally well. And I love the bit. It was kind of like, like you fell into it by proxy. And it sounded like, you know, while you're phrasing it as it was the path to least resistance, basically, right? It was like one thing that, like, you were the most confident in doing. You're like, I know, I've developed these skills over, like, an early adult experience, right? And then you could just, you basically open up this Pandora's box of like, limitless skills that you can develop in construction, yeah. And I was able to actually do things the right way, which was also scary, because I didn't how from, like a process perspective and from a permanent perspective, and just learning how to do things the right way, because I had always been taught the quickest, fastest premiere this way. Yeah, yeah. So, like, it was very gratifying to learn to do things the right way. And for for me, again, it's gas on or gas off. I was full gas on. I'm going to learn everything that I can, everything that I've done, is almost 100% self taught. Learned on the job, learned on the fly, learned by screwing shit up. So it it, it's a very difficult path in life, but it was also very, very rewarding for me, and I think that that was slightly addicting, and I just ran with it. Dude, I love it. I mean, do you advise, like, people that are listening, that have like, similar skill sets to do that? I would, I would, I would say work for somebody first. So I like, I got done college. I was 2223 years old because the program I went into was a five year program with internships, and I dropped out for a while. So when I went back, I was a little bit older. When I graduated, about a year later than I would have been, had I just gone straight through and I started my company the debt like I didn't go to college graduation. I was working. I was working throughout college. So I would say I was too young and too immature, and I didn't know enough, and I probably cost myself a lot of money and a lot of experience. But I would tell I would I think it'd be better off in hindsight, had I worked with somebody other than just my dad and the commercial companies I work for just to learn the ropes a little bit more, I think it would have given me a lot more confidence in life and in business, because I feel I was probably a shell of who I am now, at 23 starting my business, having no clue about anything. So to me, the advice would be, go learn under somebody work besides somebody, learn on somebody else's dime while you're getting paid for it. Get paid for your mistakes, and then at that point, maybe if you want to go off on your own, you give yourself a bit of a head start. Totally. Do. Would you advise, like, more, like, learn the business side or the trade side? Because it sounds like you, like, you learned a lot of the trades on your own. Both, like, yeah, I would work for somebody else to learn the trades. But also, if you can get any insight as to business, I think that people not that it, not that it's even right, because I think a lot of contractors, what they're doing in business is wrong and they don't understand what they're doing, but it at least, if you gain some perspective of it, some insight, you have some sort of basis, and that that reference point may may not actually be the right reference point, but it's better than nothing. And you can work a couple jobs, and you can find out what's working, what seems right, but at least you're not starting off just throwing shit at the wall. I think it gives you a bit of a head start. And I think that if you're motivated to learn that there's people who are willing to teach you totally, totally well. And I think, I think, to your point, like, a lot of, like, builders do it wrong. That's what I was kind of asking, like, do you learn, like, the business side, the trade side. But I think, like, your phrase of just like, Dude get paid, learn from the mistakes on someone else's dime. And, like, pick up little nuggets of, like, what basically extrapolating what you do with your dad. Like, learn what not to do, and then, like, try and mitigate and bypass as many of those, it just goes down to experience and life. Experience isn't always ideal. It's, you know, there's not a company that you're going to work for that everything's going to be 100% on the up and up and completely dialed. But the more exp. Experience, the more dynamic your your experience of life and business can be. I think that you're you're a better person, a more well rounded person, and a more well rounded business. And I think that if you can do that while getting paid for it, rather than it just cutting into your bottom line and costing you money, that it's a really good option for you. 100% 100% you mentioned that it was kind of like a rough, like, half decade, decade of you being in business. Like, what do you largely chalk that up to, prior to finding a tiny bit of success? Like, yeah. I mean, I think I mentioned it was like a 567, year period, yeah, like, just not making money. Thought you would make your 3040, bucks an hour, and you found out that there was more to it than that. Like, what do you largely chalk those like difficult years up to? I always tell people it's around seven years. It seems as though it's around seven years before you start to hit your stride. For me, it comes down to two things, ultimately, and and I don't know, had I known these things beforehand, I think that my business and the jobs that I would have gotten probably would have been too overwhelming for me at that point, because I just wasn't ready for them. But marketing your business, understanding how to market your business, who you are, who your client is, who your customer base is, how you make money, is one thing. So branding yourself and understanding how to market yourself, I think, got me out of that, that seven year slump, and then I wasn't I wasn't doing anything right. I was relying on word of mouth. So I always say it's more of the same, right? It my clients love me. They were getting a deal. The work was great. I understood the trade aspects of things, but every referral that came from that was not, yeah, the works amazing. It was the works amazing. And the price is cheap because I wasn't capturing the time and the money that was going into these things. So I was just getting more of the same. I was relying on word of mouth referrals, because that I was brought up with the in like an old school mentality, and that was how you got work, and you didn't need to have your truck lettered. And if you did good work, you would stay busy. And though, I rested on those laurels, and it just really sustained my business. I didn't ever grow. I didn't it was more of the same, more of the same, year in and year out, and the same, unfortunately, wasn't working. I just didn't know it. And then the other thing is, the biggest difference in my business now is that I wasn't tracking costs on a daily basis. I wasn't tracking the time that was going into job, so I was over investing time that I wasn't really getting paid for, and I had I had no idea I was not tracking time. I was not ensuring that I wasn't putting too much time in a job that wasn't equitable for me. So between those two things, just not branding myself, not marketing myself to the right clients, relying relying on word of mouth referrals, and over executing projects. I think I my work was not profitable. It wasn't sustainable. I was making money and I was surviving, but it I was not getting paid for the amount of time that I was putting into it. I was working 2x to make 1x wages totally well. And, I mean, I think like, to the branding and marketing point, like, you basically had built a brand of the guy who was just going to completely over deliver and under charge, correct? And then, like, and then you also say, like, you weren't tracking costs, so, like, that's like, really, like, one in the same and you mentioned labor immediately, like, you weren't tracking your time. Were you like, Were you just like, like, I can't take another one of these projects and like, get paid 50% of what I should. And you just started writing your hours down in a notebook. Or, like, what did you do to, like, change that brand? So I initially rebranded and, like, actually rebranded, like it was Yeah, Tyler's modeling, it was TRG, or like, Yeah, I mean, I was always TRG, but I got a new logo. I got a new truck. I got the truck lettered. I got new business cards. I got a website made. You got a new business haircut. You went into the business barber and they lined you exactly. Hell yeah, dude, look, look good. Feel good. That's right, baby. It's half the battle and but sad like realistically it is if the what I did for my business from a purely esthetic marketing perspective, and the way that I was branding myself on social and telling my story I was curating this brand that it almost no I don't want to say that the work was irrelevant, but I I don't think that I had to do execute the work at the level that I was, and people would have still been happy. And I think that I. So sadly, if you look professional, and you know you have a uniform, and you show up and you're clean cut, and you can have a conversation with clients, sometimes the work isn't quite as important. That's something that I learned. I always wanted to back it up with good work, but I just wanted to be professional. So that was that was one thing that I did, and then that got me bigger jobs, but it was still the same shit. So the numbers were bigger, so the headaches were bigger, the problems were bigger. The margins never went up. It was just more at if my if I had a job that was $20,000 before it was the same headaches 2x that once it was 40,000 so it got me into a different client base and a different job base. But nothing really changed, because I didn't change anything other than just the the marketing and the branding of my business. I still didn't know how to be profitable. I didn't I didn't know what would make me money. I didn't really know my numbers. So to be completely honest, I wound up in the hospital twice. Like I would work around the clock. I would work, get up, you know, start working at six in the morning. Work till eight o'clock at night. They were closing out jobs where I realized I had exhausted my budget with employees and subcontractors before the job was over, and that I would essentially be paying to close a job out. So I would send everyone home, and then I would work late hours, till midnight, one in the morning, trying to close jobs out, just so I wasn't paying employees to do it. How many builders do you think do that? I'm sorry, but how many builders do you think do that? A lot like, I mean, I'm working at my buddy's house right now, and there's people working next door, and they're there at like, 738 o'clock at night, and I'm there because I'm going on vacation. I'm trying to help my buddy out. Like, this is not something I do anymore, but it's like, everyone they're and I was like, maybe they're trying to close the job out, but nope, they're there Monday morning, so they're there to like, eight on Friday, and it's just the only reason people are there is because they're under or they're over on budget, they don't have money left. They need to close a job out so they can go to the next job. Like, nobody's choosing to work those hours because they're getting paid for it. And like, I want to be at the point in my life where, if I'm working those hours, I'm getting paid for it. But I wasn't, and I was I was working like I would pull all nighters in my shop and get shit ready for the next day, and I just couldn't ever catch up. So I wound up crazy enough. It was a Saturday. I was working in my shop, and I was building built ins for this job. I was closing out so we could install them on Monday, and my wife was next door with the neighbors, and it was maybe six or seven on Saturday, and I come inside, and I text my wife, and I said, I just got home, what do you guys want to do for dinner? And then I felt nauseous, all of a sudden, sick to my stomach, and somewhat vulgar, but I was like, I have to go to the bathroom. Really bad. Yeah, I went into, I went in to go to the bathroom. And all of a sudden, like, I didn't have to go to the bathroom, but my throat started closing, and I started wheezing, and then I started getting hives on my whole body, and I couldn't breathe. So I called my wife, I chewed a couple of Benadryl. She got me in the car, and she rushed me to the hospital, and they put me, they gave me basically epinephrine, which is like an EpiPen, and then they gave me a bunch of liquid Benadryl, and they kept me overnight till I stabilized. And they're like, Yeah, you you went into anaphylaxis, which is an allergic reaction to something. They're like, Did you eat anything? And I hadn't eaten since lunch. They were like, Did you Was there something you were working with? No, so I, I kind of, I was like, Maybe I was allergic to the MDF I was working with. So the next day, I went out in my shop, I worked with the same crap just to see. I was like, I want to know if this is what it is. I know. I didn't eat anything. So my round tail, yeah. I was like, at least I have an EpiPen now. Like, yeah. Okay, yeah. So nothing happened. So I was like, All right, I had a weird allergic reaction to something that I don't know what it is like, okay, there's nothing I can do about it. So I was supposed to go an allergist. Never went to an allergist, and six months later, I was closing out a job again, working on godly hours, and I was out in my shop again, wrapping up this project. I came in. It was around. It was right before Christmas. I ate dinner, went to sleep, woke up like three, four hours later, with the same exact symptoms, the same thing happening. Mm. It was actually, it was two days before Christmas, and I woke up and I'm like, Damn, I'm going into anaphylactic shock again. So I have my EpiPen. I like hit myself with my EpiPen, and I didn't know that the EpiPen is supposed to buy you time to get to the hospital. I thought, like, EpiPen and you're good. That's why I, like gave myself the EpiPen, and then I went back to sleep, yeah, and I woke back up, like, 45 minutes later, going back into anaphylaxis, anaphylactic shock again. So my wife had to call the EMS. It was during covid, these EMS guys come into my house upstairs, my little kids there, because it's four or five years ago, at this time, with, like, fully suited up people apparent. They look like they're in hazmat suits. Yeah, covid and I'm passed out on the bathroom floor, going into anaphylactic shock. Again. They rushed me to the hospital. Same things get me stabilized. What did you eat? I hadn't eaten in a while, so I started looking into it more. And basically what was happening is I was working so much and like the adrenaline rush of working and grinding it out and just trying to get so much stuff done had depleted all my body's natural adrenaline. So I was having some sort of, like tiny allergic reaction to something that if I was healthy and I wasn't stress induced, I would have been fine, no issue. But because I had no natural adrenaline left in my body to fight it, my body went into anaphylactic shock. So it was basically stress induced anaphylaxis, and at that point, like my kids watching me get carted out on a stretcher by EMS. I was like, I'm done. I can't do this anymore. So at that point, I was like, I'm going from fixed cost to T and M and I'm charging everyone my time and my materials and my hours. And as soon as I started doing that, I like all of my numbers became super transparent. I didn't have to work 12 hours a day because I was making my rate in eight hours a day, right? And like, my life in my business, 100% changed, dude. Hey, that's an insane story. Yeah, fact that you went into inflamshock twice because of stress is nuts. And B, I applaud you. I admire you. That a, you like, that was the eye opening moment, albeit, like a moment that's pretty hard to ignore, right? Yeah, but still I ignored it once, exactly with Touche, but like, good for you on dude, yeah. And second, like, immediately making that pivot and basically addressing head on what you had been coming to terms with, like, I'm getting this brand recognition of the guy that over delivers, and I'm cheap, and I know what the problem is, and you just come in, was it as simple as you just saying? Like, to hell with fixed price. TNM, here we go, and everything was off to the races. Like, was it truly that simple changing your pricing model pretty much? And, like, it wasn't that I was cheap, right? When it like I was probably more expensive than other people, but I was giving them two times more than everyone else was, right? So I wasn't. I was marketing myself as I would be the expensive guy, but I was also putting way more into it than I was I should have been. So I really had to look within and I had to say, Am I doing this because I'm getting paid for this because my clients truly appreciate it, or is this my ego building to this level because this is what I fucking want to do, and ultimately it was what I wanted to do, and my clients, if they were, if they knew they were paying for it, probably wouldn't have the work done to the level that I was doing it. So I was doing it because it was what I wanted to do, but I wasn't truly getting paid for it. So when you look at my job, the numbers were good. They weren't inexpensive. There was, there was potential to be making money on them, but not when the job should have taken 100 hours and I was putting 150 into it. That's when it became really unprofitable and unsustainable for me. And I had to look in the mirror and say, I either need to execute to a lower standard. I can't sell perfection. Or if I'm going to, I need to capture all the hours that it takes to get there. So when I went to TNM, it was for clients that had hired me to do fixed costs before. I mean, this is, this is when I really realized I was on to something. I was working for a client which was the first client when I got sick the first time working for her, she was like my client, my ideal client's a pain in the ass. They're they're very particular. They want things a certain way. That's my ideal client. She was that, and she wanted to be a part of everything. Everything had to be just so it was great, because I wanted. To do it just so but I went and I did a job for her after the first job that she got, like a huge deal on, and I said, I'm going to be t and m now. So it's 150 year old house, and we're renovating a couple of bedrooms, and there's some old doors that were retrofitting and then cleaning up. And I said, Do you Do you want these to be like the doors that we did prior? If you do, they're going to cost this much. If you want us just to sand them and then prep them with some shellac based primer, they're going to be imperfect. There's character. They're going to be this much. So prior me, would have just done them to the perfection, and it would have cost a lower price. Now, when I gave her the choice, do you want it to perfection, or do you want it less, all of a sudden, she valued less other than perfection. So when she would have had to pay 2x to get it to perfection. She was like, No, I'm not interested. That's good enough, yeah. So when, when I work for her fixed cost, good enough was never good enough. It had to be perfect. But when she's paying me hourly, she could actually see that like, yeah, it might not be worth another $400 to get that door perfect. So I no longer was conceding all of that, and I was giving my clients the opportunity to say, hey, I'll do whatever you want. Here's what the budgeting looks like for both. You're just going to pay me for my time to do it. And when my clients started saying, Good enough is good enough, I realized, like, for years I've just been giving away free work totally, like, for years. So that was that, like, pretty instantly, I started getting paid for eight hours of my time in an eight hour day. And it's not that I was necessarily making more money. I was just working way less so I could work a normal amount of hours in a year and get paid for it and have nights and weekends free and not wind up in the hospital. Totally, dude. Love it. Love it. This might sound like a like a question, certainly not a sidetrack. I just want your definition of it, because when you say time and material, like, we don't hear a lot of time and material. Yeah, we heard, typically, from, like, smaller builders, which, like, you're pretty loud about, like, being like a smaller builder. But is it, like, what's the difference between time, material and cost, plus, they're pretty similar. But like, what's like, the general difference, would you say the biggest difference is that there's a lot of similarities, and there's actually a lot of similarities, like I think I could go back to fixed costs now and be profitable for me, the biggest difference between T and M I have designated markups. My markups as a TNM contractor, on subcontractors and on materials, is higher than a cost plus contractor. So most cost plus contractors are anywhere from like 12 to 20% plus, because I do so much less work. If I was working on a 12 to 20% markup, I wouldn't make no money, right? So I'm going to be in 35 40% markup on a lot of my my items that are time and material, but that's fully disclosed in the contract beforehand. And then also my labor rate is a loaded labor rate, so in in, in cost plus, you have designated rates or market rates, and then you have your plus on top of it. I don't have my plus on top of it. So when I have a contract, I have my labor rates all spelled out, but they're loaded labor rates. So if I'm saying I'm charging $150 an hour, that's all of my my labor, my labor burden, my overhead, everything's in that so I'm not having a plus on top of my own labor that I own. I'm only marking up people who don't work underneath me, and material. So that's, that's the two biggest things. And then sometimes with with TNM, you might be asked to sign a DNA or a D and E, a do not exceed because it's a bit more of an open checkbook legally than cost. Plus got it because so, like, I'm literally just billing whatever money I put out my markup and then whatever labor rate based on who's working for me and a cost plus it protects me a little bit more cost, plus, it's kind of a balance between that and managing the budget like you might still over execute, but you know that you only have so much in a budget. You can only charge that technically with me, if things go over it. It's really up to the client as to how they want I'm supposed to manage that budget, but technically and legally. Be, if it's if it's T and M and it's 2x what I thought it was going to be, I may be entitled to those funds. I don't operate that way. I try and manage the budget and let my customers choose how they want to spend their money. But on on remodels of old homes, I may budget for something that I think is going to take four days and it takes 10 because we we opened up, and it's completely different. So I don't, I'm just managing my budget every two weeks and saying, Hey, like, this is where we stand. This is what we're over. How do you want to address this moving forward? So my biggest thing is, like, again, I want to work hard. I want to get paid for my time. I don't want, I don't want to get paid for more than my time. So whatever time and resources we put into a job, you're going to reimburse me for them my markup, and I'm not looking to make more than that. Yeah, dude, I think that's that's great. Do you think that, like TNM builders, they can get into a slippery slope, which is, like, over billing, a lot of work, it's a lot of work. And what, just, like, call tracking, tracking, yeah, yeah. And it's the, I think it allowed, like I said, I could go to fixed costs now, because I understand how to track my costs and how to budget and what, what I would with the ability, what I would be able to do now is have that very explicit scope to protect me. So if it's not included in my scope, technically, I don't have to do it where it's a change order. I have access to more funds or more time, but it, I think where most people screw up is they, they assume that T and M just means an open checkbook, right where it's like, if it doesn't matter if it was in my scope or if it wasn't, if I didn't properly communicate that to my clients and then give them the options or understand like for, for example, I'm working for a friend of mine right now, and what we assumed was different than what we ran into legally, yeah, it's an open checkbook. I could just keep getting paid for it. Keep getting paid for it, but if I don't have the conversation with him, a friend or a client, hey, this is what we ran into. This is how much more it's going to be. This is what was this was not included in that, and I just keep doing it, and then I just invoice for it, whether he's my friend or a client. Yeah, I have access. I'm entitled to that money, but the person's not going to be happy. So, like, I think that's what most people do wrong, is they, they aren't managing the numbers closely enough, or they're just letting the jobs roll on and build and build and build and not reflecting back on schedule, scope and budget to ensure that all those things align, and the job just gets way out of control and costs way too much money. So yeah, you knocked it out of the park. The job is perfect, but you also spent 50% more that the client didn't realize until your final bill. So I think that that's the biggest issue, and I think a lot of cost, plus people run into that too totally. But that's been the biggest difference for me. It's given me the perspective and the insight that I know immediately when we're over budget on any item, and I can go to my clients and ask them, How do you want to proceed moving forward? You owe me in order to do this extra work, it's going to cost this much. Do you want to dip into contingency? Do you want to get more money? Do you want to spend more or do you want to reduce scope on the back end, but at the end of the day, I can't just do it for free, which I used to do for I mean, for 10 years I did it totally I mean, it just comes into conversation, right? And there's, like, certainly documentation, that's where I'm curious. Like, how you do it you mentioned, takes a lot, it takes a lot of work, but, like, it boils down to communication and transparency and and even if you are, like, a fixed price builder, I understand that, like, you're not sharing numbers and you're going off of price and everything's like, marked up and baked in. The game is to, like, execute the work at an efficient enough level you can reap higher margin, higher reward, whatever. But when it comes to tracking the stuff and documenting and being transparent, whether it's TNM or cost plus, what are you doing? Like, how are you doing it sounds like a lot of conversation, a lot of conversation with the client. But are you just, like, updating Excel sheets? Are you like, is this where we're like, I use adaptive you don't. Yeah, you don't. That's why I'm curious how you do it. That's why I stay small, because the smaller I am, the more manageable it is, the less I have to spend on software and all of these systems, and I can guarantee that I'm making money every single day. So like, I've pushed my ego aside with enough, and I just this is where I want to be. So I try. Track my costs daily, just through like it could be a spreadsheet for a job, it could be a notes folder, whatever it is. I invoice through an Excel budget, like, so my invoice so I create a budget for a project. It has all the line items for that project. I create a scope, I create a schedule, and then when I go to take a deposit for a job, or it could be a deposit to secure my spot in the schedule. But then when I go to start a job, I'm looking at my two weeks on that project that I'm going to have the most money out, and I'm securing funds to cover that, plus some wiggle room. So typically for me, that's when subs come in and it's not my work. I'm self performing. That's when I'm putting the most money out. So I'll take when I start the job. Day one I start the job. I invoice every two weeks. Day one I start that job. I'm getting a check for my two weeks of my highest exposure so that I can cover whatever happens in any two week interval. Change orders, extras aside, right? So day one, I have my deposit from securing the schedule, but then also I'm getting a check cut to me that's going to cover any two week period of my highest exposure. So if I have a sub on day two that comes in and he charges me$3,000 I cut him a check for$3,000 and that's backed out against the money that I took on day one. If I go to Home Depot and I spend $363 that just gets tracked, and that's backed out of what I got paid. So at the end of my two weeks, I'm going and I'm looking at what everything costs for that two weeks, just tracking it on an Excel spreadsheet, and that's what my invoice is for. So then it restores all of those funds from day one when I got that check. So I'm always ahead if they're extras that gets paid within that two weeks. So I'm my highest exposure is day nine workday, or day 10 workday, the second Friday where I have two weeks worth of money that's gone out, but I'm still not in the red at all because I took for my highest exposure. So all I'm doing is every two weeks, I'm just tracking who worked for me, how many hours, what I paid them, what all of my expenses were for that project. If we use stuff that was, you know, inventory that I had, how much that cost, and then subcontractors, and what I paid them, materials, what got special order, what I paid for them. And then that's what I'm invoicing for. And then that's restoring me back to day one. So, like, it's pretty simple. It just would be more complicated if I was running three four jobs, or if I was depending on other people to make sure that they were tracking their costs. It's me buying everything. It's my credit cards, that it's going on, that I have a bookkeeper. So it's pretty straightforward for me. As far as invoicing and keeping track of everything. It's just not that difficult with the amount of work that I do totally and so and so you're running one project at a time, yeah, yeah. And how many projects do you do a year? So I'm, I think I'm right now I'm like, a bit of an anomaly, because I have so much of the social side of things that it's not my full time job. But when it Yeah, like it is. But I also have other things that I'm doing that that's not the only way that I make money. But when I did, I might do three, four jobs a year, but if you think about it, if, if I'm making 40 to 45% margins, I don't need to sell that much in a year, and I because I can't, I only have so many hours that I can make. I only have so many people who can work for me that I'm making money on. So I need to guarantee that I'm getting paid for every single hour that I'm working. Because when you're when you're only selling, you know, a million dollars worth of work in a year or less, every hour that you don't capture is severely and significantly cutting into your bottom line. So that's why it's so critical for me to get paid every single penny that I put out and capture every single hour that I work. So it might have been like three, four bigger jobs in a year, and then I always have fill in work for return clients that I'm going it might be two days here, three days here, and it's the same thing. I give them a budget for a job, and then we just back out against that budget, the time that we're putting into it and the scope, and if something's different, we charge more money. Totally, totally. You're just running it lean. You're just do it lean. It's how many bills you get on a weekly basis from subs and vendors when I'm in. So I self perform so much that my subs are typically and we do mostly interior renovations. So it's not, you know, I don't have roofers ciders all the time. So typically, it's my. Electrician, HVAC and plumber. So yeah, and then like, yeah, I have some specialty subs, but we're when we're self performing everything else. I'm not cutting checks to subs and vendors that much. So it might be like, if it's a kitchen remodel, it's my my plumber and my electrician and my countertop sub cabinets, I'm a dealer for, so I'm buying and selling cabinets myself. So there's three people that I'm cutting checks to. So it might be they invoice me at rough inner template, and then they invoice me at completion. So I'm saving myself all of that time that I don't need. I don't need somebody track my costs. I don't need a secretary. I don't need somebody to cut those checks like it's all doable for me totally. And it's, it's built into my rate, so my loaded labor rate captures all of the downtime that that's required to do all of that. So another big thing that I did when I went to TNM is I said I had this realization I can't work 40 hours a week with my belt on for 52 weeks a year, like there's going to be downtime. I need to, if I if I want to be on the job 40 hours a week, I probably need to work an additional day on the back end, on Office, on scheduling, on securing materials, picking up all of that. So when I came up with my loaded labor rate for myself, I basically determined how many hours I could work in a year, which is around 2000 how much money I wanted to make, what my overhead is. And then instead of having my hourly rate be based on a 40 hour work week. I base it on a 32 hour work week. So if I only worked Monday through Thursday, and then I took Friday to do all of my paperwork stuff, I'm actually capturing the rate and getting paid for those extra eight hours, dude. So, like, my rate's inflated. It's divided by 1600 rather than 2000 Okay, well, a like, that's solid. But this goes back to knowing your overhead, right? Yeah, like, your overhead is you and, like, whatever low, right? It's low. It's insurance, like, vehicles, it. But dude, and that's even, like, when you're thinking about, like, tracking overhead, is it appropriate to put, like, weekends and holidays in there. PTO, so that's where my loaded labor rate, it's all in there, in there. I'm 100% but my point is, is, like, I think that's like, so assumed in the business world, right? When you're talking about, like, burden cost and like, what does it actually cost for an employee or someone's time? Like, it's not just the 50 bucks an hour, right? To make 100 grand a year at a 2000 hour working year, right? It's 180 grand because you've got insurance, you've got time off, you've got benefits, you've got weekends, holidays, all that stuff. And I think that's like going back to just again, applauding you for a like running a business is doing a project at a time, three to four, five a year, right? Making a sweet margin. I don't know if people are mathing out there, but 35 40% margin on a million bucks a year is pretty much 350 400 grand a year, right? That's what you want, right? That's good. And the fact that you got through all of this trial and tribulation and also considered these components, that's, I think, the story, know, your numbers. That's what you preach on your podcast at contractor coalition. Some of all this stuff is like, you've got to be thinking about not just how much time does it take for me to frame a house, right? It's how much time does it take for me to frame the house or line up the subs, procure the work, get the materials, take care of all the stuff in the back end. And, hey, I might want a weekend off. I might not want to do all this stuff. I get sick. You might get sick, you know, there might be rain. Totally, your productivity might be less than what you anticipated, totally I mean, yeah, so that's, that's what I find that most people screw up, is that they just don't understand the cost of doing business, and they think that more is is better, right? For me, my model doesn't work if I put two times that into place, because there's only one of me, and I need to assume a lot of costs, and I can't operate as lean as I am, and I have to continue to put more work in place. And the amount of jobs that I can sell at the price point that I sell would be difficult in my market to be able to substantiate that amount of work with the team. So I have to, I have to understand how I make money and what makes me money, and if I can shoot for those, those margins, at the end of the day, it doesn't make sense for me to put more work in place. It would cost me money. It would cost me time. It would cost me cost. Me lifestyle, which I'm just at this point, I'm not willing to do. So it doesn't, it doesn't make sense, and I'm not if I can do this in my market, I think a lot of people can do it, and it's not, it's not everywhere. But if you're near a major city and there's people who want things done the right way. There's there's ways that you can operate your business to make sure that you're getting paid for it, but it takes time, and it takes confidence, and it takes understanding your numbers. Like you said for years, I didn't overhead and all that, that stuff's all simple. Like for me, it's simple. It's not that hard. You can sit down and figure out what your overhead is in short time. You can figure out, you know, what your revenue potentially can be. You can figure out what your profit should be based on that. It's that, to me, is so easy to do. The harder part is make sure that what you're budgeting and what you're putting in place are the same thing, like budgeting, what do you mean? Like, what you're budgeting for a project, and then what you're actually putting into that project, as far as resources go, totally making sure that they're the same. And for me, that's where I lost all of my money. My numbers were all right, what I could get for that job was great, right? I can't charge much more than I am for those jobs, but I can put less time into them. So, like, that's how I ended up making money. It wasn't like, oh, yeah, well, if I sell a kitchen for 200 grand, I need to sell it at 250 grand. It's like, No, I have to find a way to execute that kitchen faster with reasonable results, and I can't spend the amount of hours that it would require of a $250,000 kitchen, so I had to, I had to look in the mirror and understand that, like my ego was preventing me from being profitable. That's the Mic drop. Dude. That was, um, I do you think it could get any simpler for like, the listener? Like, let's say they they tune into this episode. They want to hear how Tyler Grace runs business. Cool story. Guys, obviously doing something right? Do you think it get any simpler than that is a take the time to understand your overhead, your revenue, your net, your profit, and then make sure that what you're budgeting is actually what it's going to take to hit those numbers. Yeah, just track your costs on a daily basis. Right for me, and like, I have a ton of people who call me and they'll hop on a consulting call with me, and it's like smaller contractors. And how do you operate, and what's your business look like, and what's your model look like? And the biggest thing for me is create a very, very comprehensive budget, create a very comprehensive scope and a comprehensive schedule before you do a job. And this is why I say I could do fixed cost now that I understand how to do this. And then when you go to start that job, track your cost every single day, track the amount of time that you're putting into each one of those tasks, and make sure that if you only allocated four days for drywall, that you don't spend more than four days on drywall, right? But everyone is doing too much work and trying to grow more, and they think that more revenue is going to make them more money, and they're not realizing that they're putting six days worth of time into it, and it's it's costing them money. So you either need to charge more, you need to get a different team, or you need to build efficiencies within your process that allow you to hit those numbers. So it's as simple as creating, create that roadmap and that foundation, and then follow it when you go to do the job. And, yeah, you can't be like, Well, I only said two days. I'm just going to slap this paint if it's going to look like shit. No, if you just, if you if there was an egregious omission on your part, as far as budget, learn from it, and then make it up somewhere else on the job, like build efficiencies elsewhere on the job, so it's not costing you money. And to me, that's the simplest thing. Just have have the work and the resources that you put in place match the budget that you developed. And if there's things that you have to do for that job that are outside of your scope, your budget, your schedule. It's a change order. Yeah, to me that it's as simple as it can get. But people cannot slow down for long enough to realize that they're putting work into place that's not equitable for them or their business. Yeah, at least that was my experience, dude, I know I I completely agree. I just got, I just had another podcast with a business coach out of Canada, and we talked about this. It's like people try scaling these businesses, and they don't even know what their product is, that they're scaling like they don't know the numbers on the product they're trying to scale. They're just. At this and they're going, I did. I can do five remodels a year, and I'm gonna step out and do a spec home so I can get a new construction and I'm gonna do two new builds a year, and start like, getting rid of my remodels. Meanwhile, you probably weren't making money on your remodels. Now you're getting into a totally new beast with new construction, dropping your margin opportunity, running a much leaner margin game. And then you're like, my path to money is to do five a year, 10 a year, and you don't even know what one of them costs, let alone what the remodels were that you were doing five years ago. It's like, what? What are you if you don't know what you're scaling, why are you trying to scale? Yeah, and like, you just you have to know where you live in business. And I so I know that I can't go price a new construction house that costs $2 million at a 35% markup, because people would laugh at me, right? Those builders are operating with a much tighter margins than I am. So I understand I'm not going to be in the $500,000 job range, because those companies are built on the foundation of much smaller markups leading to much smaller margins, because they're putting much more work in a place. So I have to understand that if I put myself in that boat and I'm competing with people in that boat, that I have to be I have to drop my markups. I have to be more competitive. I have to have the optics of being in the 12 to 20% range, because most of those contractors are fixed cost or cost plus where they're living in that range. But like, I know that I don't make money in that range. So why would I jump up and try and do jobs that are$500,000 plus when they don't lead to the numbers that I need to survive? So that's what like you're saying. You might like going to spec or doing 2x the amount of work if you're not profitable right now. Why do you think 2x is going to make you more money? It's just going to make your headaches go to 2x and you're going to be losing more money, and you probably don't have the systems in place anyway. So just understanding where you live in business and what makes you money, and why your numbers are where they are, and how the more you do, you have to be more competitive, and you have to have lower markups. And if you're not doing the sales volume to support that, you're just screwing yourself totally, totally noted. That's a thank you for coming on the podcast, and that's why I wanted you here, because I think you a like, obviously have like, a very committed following with Nick on modern craftsman, as well as your own personal following. But I think your story needed highlighted because of how you view business, it is so easy for the majority of builders to look out at who the big like builders are. And I want to go and do this big luxury, and no knock to the guys that do it. It's incredible. It's incredible work, and they run hell of business on it. But it doesn't always have to be that way. It's like, correct? You need to look at like, what are we doing this for? It's to make money. If you're running a business, it's to make money. That doesn't mean you got to be money hungry. You don't get to run out there and do it. Of course. You want to deliver a quality product, and you want to stand by your work. You build a reputation, impact a reputation, impact a community, do all those things, but it's not a charity. It's a freaking business. You're here to make money at it. And if you're like, trying to idolize these big, huge construction companies, you're going to be, you're going to be a stat. Yeah, I don't know why I lost my train of thought on stat, but you're gonna be stat, there's so many builders, dude, during covid, the number of people that saw these killer interest rates just tank, and everyone was building houses, and they'd go double their top line, and they'd work at it for 1218, 24, months and come back just totally scorn, like, Dude, I just busted my ass. I did three times the work, and I made a fraction of what I made at the lower volume. There's no way I'm gonna do that again. Fire the team, cut my costs, get rid of I'm never doing this again. And it's like, well, wait a minute, like, did you ever really know what you were making on your jobs? Or did that opportunity, just like, flare up the reality that you probably weren't tracking what you needed to and you didn't have the processes and systems to sustain that type of growth, yeah, and it's some it's so much more important the smaller you are, to ensure that you're getting paid for your time, right? If, even if I were making $300,000 a year, if I weren't being honest with myself, and I was working 3000 hours like that's a much different story than me working 1600 and making even if I'm making $150,000 there's a big difference between working 1600 hours making that and working 3200 hours making that and for a long. Time, I never was honest with myself to say, yeah, it's the numbers look good. Like that's a big number for working with my hands. But when I actually realized that I was working 3000 hours to make that 4000 hours to make that, it's like, I might as well just go collect shopping carts at Home Depot, because the rate is probably better. And like, I think a lot of people just aren't honest with themselves when it comes to that, you know, with with what I experienced, and getting sick and overworking myself and just putting work in place, that was not equitable. I knew that I had to make a massive change, not only in my in my business, but in my life. And this, this, I still am living and abiding by that motto that I really, I think, developed when I first started my business that I want to work hard and I want to get paid for my time, and that's it. And for years, I didn't get paid for my time, and I still stand by that, right? I just I want to get paid for every hour I put into your job. And I don't want more than that, but I sure as hell don't want less than that anymore, totally. And that, to me, has been the secret sauce, and there's a million ways to do that, but yeah, it's for me, the simple, the simple, the simpler business, the simpler life, the better. It just leads to better things for me. And I realized that most of the contractors out there are like me. They're the size of me. They do the type of jobs that I do. I think that a lot of what people see online is a small percentage of what the actual industry has the capacity for. So I realized that I don't I shouldn't be ashamed of this. I shouldn't be ashamed that, you know, I might do a kitchen remodel and then the deck that I should be a sounding board. I should be somebody who's supporting other people who want to understand how to make money by being small and by being a contractor and wearing the belt. And when I owned that, and when I started recording my midweeks and focusing on how to create a more sustainable business model for belt on contractors. I feel like my world opened up and I just own that. And I was like, this is, this is who I am. I don't want to grow bigger than this. I don't want to be building 20,000 square foot homes. And I want to, I want to make money doing this. How can I do that? And how can I teach other people to do that? That's awesome. I love that. I love that. And you said that you found that with your midweeks, like, and because you started doing your midweeks, like, two years ago, a year and a half, yeah, I think so right around there, that's awesome, dude, just as of recently, you're like, a butterfly, yeah, the cocoon. You're just crying now you're just monarching. You're not even, you're monarching, dude, exactly. And that, that's, that's been, that's what I think, that if I, if I can hang my hat on anything, it's that I'm monarching, right? You're monarching. Dude, no, it, it's been an interesting path, and there's been so much self discovery throughout this, and I've just realized that, like, there's so many people in my position that are just killing themselves to try and make $1 and they're not getting paid for their time off. They're not getting paid for retirement, and they're like all my customers get paid for every hour they work. Why am I working for them and not doing that totally so it it has been. It's been an interesting journey the past couple years, and a lot of self discovery and just analysis and inventorying myself and my business. And then as as I come across those findings, just sharing it with other people, and I think, I think it's been super helpful for myself, and I hope helpful for other people, dude, I I think the self awareness is huge. And I would say that's one thing, like, after kind of hearing your story is like, you're pretty self aware guy, and it sounds like you have been for a while, like you've known what you wanted to do and what you haven't wanted to do, and you've stayed very true to it. That's not to say that you didn't get burned, because you certainly did, and you certainly, like, ran in the wrong direction for quite a while, but now you're just like, Dude, this is the way that it's done. This is the way that I'm doing it, and I think that there's a greater population that should feel supported in doing it, so I apologize, dude. It comes down to being confident in yourself and in your business, and I don't think, I think I was trying to convince people for a really long time that my model made sense, and I was trying to convince my clients that it made sense. And the more that I've inventoried myself, and that that that self awareness, that self discovery, has enlightened me to what actually works and what doesn't work, and understanding my numbers and understanding my business, and that has created a lot of confidence with me, where it's like, you don't have to hire me. You can absolutely hire somebody else. This is what I do well. This is what I don't do well. And I'm not trying to compete really, with anyone. I'm not trying to compete with bigger companies like this is what I offer. This is how I can serve you. And if, if I can't meet your needs, then you probably should go with somebody else. And I think that that has been critical for my success, from a business perspective, a life perspective, podcast perspective, all of those things like, I'm not going to please everyone. What I do may not be right for you, but I can share that with you, and I can share my experience with you. Yeah. Totally, totally, dude. I love it. Appreciate it. Maybe you come. You could start your own company now. Yeah, dude, why not? You know, what do they call it? Fiddler, f, i, d, l, a, r, fuck it. Dog. Life's a risk, right? Is that I never heard of that. I like that, though, fiddler, bro, fuck it. Dog, guy, I, I, I try and keep things as simple as possible. I just, I've realized that life is very short. Business is very you know, it your clients can be very fickle. I put, I put my clients before my own health before my own family. I put serving people and making people happy above all else in my life for so long that I'm just at the point where I'm like, I'm not doing that anymore. Yeah? Nice. Yeah. When I was honest with myself, and I looked myself in the mirror and said, this isn't working, how could I make a change? And when I started doing that, it just it did. It opened up the doors for a lot of opportunity, and it's been, it's been so much more enjoyable and less stressful. I have a better a better business now, a better life. I'm a better father, better husband. It just there's a lot of things that it has fixed or enhanced, that when things weren't working, like life was really stressful and really chaotic and really challenging, and there are a lot of days where I'm like, I don't want to be in this business anymore. It just doesn't make sense. And it's not like that anymore. Sure, I have my days where it's like, this sucks. I don't want to be doing this. There's a pain in the ass. But like, at the end of the day, I'm getting paid for it. Yeah, totally can't complain. It works. It's worth it, if you found a way to make it worth it. And it sounds like to, like, regain the appreciation and the excitement to what it is, yeah. Again, going back to your self awareness, like you knew what you wanted to do. You wanted to deliver a quality product you were, you were like, you've got, like, this, like, almost like Midwestern like, perspective of just like, I'm just gonna work my ass off and I'll get paid, what I get paid? Yeah, yeah. But it That to me was like, this the selling point, right? That, yeah, that was what I always wanted. And I thought that's where I could, I could provide value, but I realized that there, there's a lot of opportunities to provide value elsewhere, where, yeah, I'm still gonna get paid my rate, but I can create a lot of value for you in that rate, and I'm not gonna concede my time. Yeah, totally, I love it, dude. Well, I appreciate you jumping on, I guess, about like 20 minutes ago, again, the good old Midwestern goodbye, yeah, man, but yeah, I really do. I appreciate you. Go ahead. We're gonna say, No, I appreciate you having me. I know it took a little bit time to get on here, but did you get a lot going on? You're fine. Appreciate, I appreciate you taking the time to have me on. You know, tell my story. Who I am, dude, I love it. I think it's great. I think, I think, I think the listeners are gonna get a lot of value out of this. Have you ever done this before, like, tell, told your story from this side of the mic. It's It's funny that you say that because I just sent Nick a podcast structure or format that I want to record something with him and I separately, where it's just like, who we are, how we got here, what our path looks like. So I've done it in bits and pieces, but it's tough, because you forget where people come in during the journey. Right? We have people who have followed us from the outset, who know everything, or may have forgotten about things. There's people who follow you along the journey, and not everyone is there for the whole story. So I think it's important to circle back and to tell people who you are and why you do things and what makes you who you are. It comes down to what we were talking about at the beginning of this conversation, where I know that I have unique perspective. Perspective of life through my own lens. And I think I've gone through shit that some people have, some people haven't, but I can provide insight that's unique to me, that somebody else may be able to take something away from so whether it whether it's my story, whether it's a similarity that they are brought up, they didn't know what they wanted to do, that they struggled with figuring out what they want to do for their whole life that they struggled with capturing time, whatever it may be, I have unique insight, and it's not the best insight, it's not the only insight. I'm not telling you that you have to do things my way, but I think that there, there's value in telling your story and being honest and being open and being vulnerable about where you screwed shit up and how you weren't doing things right, and how you grew from that. So I appreciate the opportunity to do that. It's probably been done in bits and pieces and here and there, but I'm not although I host a podcast and I have a social media following, and I'm very public facing in our industry. I don't typically get on and talk about myself. Did a hell of a job. Appreciate it. It really is. It's a great story. And I guess it's a perspective that needs shared to your point. It's the I think it's more of like the identifying right people, being able they can identify with vulnerable perspectives, right? Because there's really, there's not like, any an agenda to push. There's no like, this is the way it has to be done. It's the, this is what I've found work. And there's a lot that comes with it. And I think that's where the greater community gets value. It's like, Yeah, this is just Tyler grace, like, you see, you've been listening to him for years with Nick Schiffer. You've been following on Instagram. You like this celebrity guy, which you are a celeb lab, bro, you're an influencer. Um, but dude, you're a great dude. You got it like a very real, viable story, like your old man was just running on equity in a dream. And just like trying to patch it together. And you learned, leaned into it, and you found, like, Hey, I like this. I don't like how that works. Dropped out of college, get into it. Like, get back into construction, finish your degree, lose your ass, anaphylactic shock, like, twice. Like, pull out of the trenches, start making it happen. Wife loves you. Kids love you. You love you. It's great if I can do if I can do it, anyone can do it, I promise you.