Why Most Builders Stay Stuck at $2M with Paul Atherton

Paul Atherton shares why most builders stall until they make an identity shift—from “in-the-field” carpenter to business owner—and how to use return on time vs. return on capital to scale. He breaks down hiring that first PM, simple systems, the five levels to a self-managed company, branding that actually works, the Four C’s (coaching, community, content, capital), and setting anti-goals so growth doesn’t cost your life.

https://www.highspire.com

Show Notes:
Introduction and Background of Paul Atherton (0:00)
The Importance of Self-Managed Companies (1:44)
Challenges in Transitioning to Business Leadership (6:20)
Building a Strong Brand and Marketing Strategy (11:25)
The Role of Coaching, Community, Content, and Capital (26:44)
The Importance of Anti-Goals (33:32)
The Journey to Building High Spire (36:23)
The Role of Identity in Business Success (37:57)
The High Spire Event in Mexico (42:57)
Final Thoughts and Contact Information (44:32)

Find Our Hosts:
Reece Barnes
Matt Calvano

Podcast Produced By:
Motif Media

Transcript

0:00

Wealth is going to come. There's no mysterious force out there keeping you from doing this. It's a foregone conclusion. Just follow the process. You're going to get there. While you're doing that, though, set up anti goals for yourself, and what those are is negative outcomes that you want to avoid in pursuit of your financial goals. Welcome to builders budgets and beers. I'm Rhys Barnes and I started this podcast to have real conversations about money in the building industry, the wins, the mistakes and everything in between. I believe builders deserve to feel confident about their finances, and that starts by hearing from others who've been through it too. This industry can be slow to change, but the right stories and the right tools can make profitability feel possible. Let's get into it. Do alrighty, mics are hot. We're rolling. Paul, thanks for coming on, dude. Thanks for joining the pod. Thanks for having me. Of course, of course. Um at you know, just per usual, just so the listeners know who they're going to be hearing from today. Give give the listeners a little background on yourself and what you're all about over high Spire, sure. Yeah. So my name is Paul. I have the privilege of running an organization called high spire coaching and capital. Later on in the conversation here, I'm sure we'll get into why this is called coaching and capital, but yeah, so what we do is we work with builders to in commercial and residential construction to build wealth. We do that two ways. We help them build self managed companies, and then when it makes sense, we help them deploy their free cash into very, very successful real estate projects. Love it. Love it, self managed companies. You could also call them ATMs at that point, just printing cash, and then you help them deploy it. Go ahead, yeah, yeah, I think so. I mean, see the the whole let's see businesses exist to if you're doing it right and you have the right focus. A business exists to improve the lives of you know yourself, your family, the staff and the various vendor partners and people that work with you and the community around you, and one of the commonalities we see with companies that are on a strong trajectory to becoming self managed is that they do that very, very well. Yeah, pinching cash is part of it, but I think another a better way to describe it, as you create an ecosystem that is just there to improve what improve lives. Wealth is a part of it, but there's other factors that come into play, of course. Okay, well, I think this is like already like a great topic. So when, when you're let me tell take a step back. I want 100% agree that it should be the intention of the business should be to strengthen your family, your your personal situation, the people that you employ, the people that you do business with, the consumers that that consume your product or service. That's 100% the case. But that's like, almost too obvious. Like, where do you see businesses not doing that well, and what is the outcome of those businesses? I guess, like, or I guess, why do people not just operate under that mentality? Oh, wow. Okay, there's a lot of threads to pull on there. To reframe the question a little bit. I think you're saying, what are the commonalities of businesses that can sustain excellence and continue to advance to becoming self managed, and what are the commonalities of organizations that can't do that, or can't seem to punch through those ceilings. So maybe I'll answer the latter. Did that correct? Yeah, so I think it is, and I think really what I'm getting at is, you know, it sounds great, and I think a lot of people get, like, start business for those reasons totally, but not everyone is able to build a self sustaining business. No, most, most can't, exactly. So it's like, that sounds great and all, but where do they typically fail? Which is what you reframed it as, yeah, okay, well, that's a great question. And we can be real. We can be real. I think the listeners like, I think that's what people from this episode primarily would be just stoked to hear, like it's like a reality, self awareness, check, getting back on path. Okay, all right, we'll be real. Yeah, do. One of the if you put, see, we have a lot of big, beautiful organizations in high Spire, okay, if you put those owners all in a room, they're all open to learning, and they are probably their biggest self critics, but they still appreciate, you know, they have, like, a lot of gratitude in life, but they're their biggest self credits, and they're always open to learning, and they're just, they just thirst for knowledge, and they're always seeking to improve, or not to, I shouldn't say, improve, but like, change their identity and who they are as their business grows interesting. Oh, here's this is not going to make sense to a lot of people, and we'll get into tactical reasons why businesses can't grow because I think that resonates with people more. But we've been doing this for a very, very long time. It's an identity it's an identity problem. Okay? Because most construction companies, most of them start off like this. You have a carpenter. He sees the owners charging him out at 80 bucks an hour. He's getting paid 35 and he goes, maybe I'm just going to try and do some side projects on my own. And then, you know, pretty soon, he does a good job. He does some good backyard spaces, some bathroom models, et cetera. And he starts getting some referrals, and now he has a business nailed it and but the problem is at some point, right up to the point where he gets to, like, a million dollars a year, maybe two, still a carpenter. But to move past that, you have to become a business person, and that's a whole different set of skills that you have to adopt. You have to be adept at managing your financial controls, which is why I'm I was so excited when I found out about your guys's product. Totally, it's a huge part of business. Money, huge everything. It drives and dictates your strategy, your decision making, everything you have to be you have to recognize that you're a leader now. So that means you are taking your skill set and translating that onto others and creating a system in place so that you can trust that they're going to be doing things at a level that's acceptable to you when you're not there to bird dog the situation all week long, multiple sites going at once. That shift is a really, really difficult gap to cross for a lot of people, they try, and then they get frustrated, and the business just kind of bounces off three, four, maybe $6 million a year, and there's a lot of friction, and they go, Wow, I'm making more money back at $2 million a year. Yep, I'm doing this. And then all sudden, they realize 35 years have gone by, and they got some trucks and, you know, maybe a shop, maybe in some rusty tools, and now they're retiring. Meanwhile, there's somebody else, and after six years, they've got a leadership team buckled into place. They got a brand, website, strong controls, training systems set up. They have sales division that's in its infancy, but they're starting to sell jobs without being there 100% of the time. And like, what's the difference? It's an identity piece. It's just them waking up in the morning and saying, Okay, now I don't have to be a leader. I'm a business person. I'm a Marketing I'm an advocate for marketing my company. I'm a salesperson. Like, they're taking on a different identity than someone that is just super good at at carpentry. Totally okay. And that's and like, even just tying that back into like, like a lot of really successful businesses at high Spire, like the people that are the most successful they they are their biggest self critic, but they're also just, like, yearning to learn and like, constantly shift and shape who they are as that, in that identity and within their business. Now you're 100% nailed it. Of like, the story is as old as time trades. Person sees what the owner is doing. Might have some friction internally, because they could be a part of a business that's off the rails, no processes, no procedures, no expectations, right? They're motivated to go out and start their own business. And you can certainly like, do these like lifestyle businesses to where you're making your 80 bucks an hour direct to you, and you're doing a million bucks a year in revenue, and life is good, but now you need to scale right. If you're not growing, you're dying, right? You're suggesting that a lot of this is like, truly a mindset shift, like today is the day that we are going to start, or the individual is going to start building a sustainable business. Now, God damn it, these lights. I need to figure out my new podcast. The lights is turned off, and I got to move to turn them back on. Okay, we're back. Point being is like, like, like, tactically. Okay, so that makes all the sense in the world. But for someone sitting here is, it's like, okay, it's not just like, waking up one day and saying, I want to be a major league baseball player, right? It's not like, just like one day saying it, or is it? And then it's having the control and the in the the accountability to actually, like, follow up on the marketing. Can you go deeper on that than just, like, the wake up one day and like decide that you're a business owner, or is that it two questions to answer, what's my return on capital? What's my return on time? Every business owner needs to ask those questions every single day. What's my return on capital? What's my return on time? When you wake when you start a company, how much time do you have? Lots, right? I want to say all the none, but all the time in the world, yeah. Well, you have, like, a lot of time. How much capital Do you have? None, none, yeah, after you've been operating for a while, those two equations start to balance out. You don't you have some capital and you have some time. Now, the reason why some organizations are able to advance and grow is the leadership is much better at leveraging those two equations. So for example, they're okay to sit there and say, I'm gonna, I just hired somebody to be a site superintendent. I'm gonna focus the next two months on making sure they're being onboarded properly into my company. Or in our case, they're saying, I'm gonna spend, I'm just saying, like, get coaching guys, like, come to us. Or, yes, one company has dozens of iterations of success working with construction companies. That's really important, by the way, because construction is a very unique field, you have to work with somebody who has, like, tons of experience working directly in our industry, yep, and just figure out what's the best way to move my business forward? Right? Totally. Well, I think solving a problem for someone, you have to train them. What about and here's another one. What's my return on capital? As far as marketing I go, we see people all the time with crappy brands. It looks brutal like it's if there's nothing there, it's just it. There's nothing that separates that brand from the other brands in the in their in their city, yeah. And this is what one of the things I love about working with construction companies is most of them suck at marketing, yeah. Being honest, and if you find a company that's willing to invest in building out a good marketing system, they're going to see massive gains relative to the other organizations that are competing with is you can bet that those people are not investing in marketing, and that's how you get visibility, and that creates the market wind, and that creates more leads. That makes sales easier. You have more options. It's also easier to hire. When you have a good brand out there, right? You get more staff that want to come work for you. Totally like that. Return on capital. Go build a marketing program is invaluable, sure, like, okay, totally well. And I think that, like, return on time, return on capital is, like, a super interesting one. Not like, even just like to break that down, like to digest and you can, like, you can, you can just plug high spire at any point when you're just, like, giving away, like, free consulting advice. Okay, so like, if I'm starting to ask questions where you're like, Nah, like, they just need to sign up for the course, let me know. But point being, is the like, constantly obsessively thinking about return on time, return on capital. I'm thinking about it even from, like, an adaptive standpoint, right? Software company, we run out, you go raise big seed round, big series, a What does that mean? You raised a bunch of capital. You got a bunch of cash sitting in the bank. You've got all the capital in the world. But the alternative is, is like you don't have all the time in a competitive space like software that you might have if you were, like, say a bootstrapped company, not say that a bootstrap company, no capital is gonna, like, has all the time in the world, is like walking through a field of daisies. But the point is, is, like, you get all this capital, so then you can accelerate through, right? And you can, like, run faster than other companies can, because you have that resource. When you're thinking about organizing from the early days, talk about like, the million, $2 million a year builder, and they have all the time in the world, no capital. What are some of the most like, basic things? What are the things that they should be prioritizing in those days when they have the time, or when they're emphasizing their return on time, or am I thinking about this wrong? Well, I so I think, sorry, if somebody has been running a good business and they're doing one or 2 million a year, they probably have quite a lot of capital that point, because those businesses can be quite. Profitable if they haven't been living above their means, they actually have some good capital to go and make the jump up to 5 million through a couple of key hires and building out a brand, which is what, as soon as a company has enough money in OpEx, go hire a good project manager to get you out of the field and then start building an effective brand. And an effective brand needs to communicate like people make. Let's just go going on this path for a second most construction company brands communicate. This is their messages, oh, on budget, on schedule, and we built some houses, and that's it. And then another thing I always hear from guys is the phone just always rings, and I always get work. So I don't need a brand. It's like, well, if you want to grow you got to get more fishing lures in the water, and they got to look pretty flashy. Yeah. Now an effective brand communicates that there's a community aspect to what you do. There's a luxury aspect to what you do, it's going to solve a customer's pain, right? It's going to make them more money because you're investing in property, right? It's going to make their life easier. Most brands don't communicate those five things, but a good one does, and if you do it, you'll get immediate visibility in the marketplace. Now, how you deploy that brand is another strategy altogether, but it's not, it's not that expensive, and it doesn't take that much time to do it. Now, with AI and vas, and there's a lot of good companies out there that can help you do that for pretty cheap, yeah, for sure, for sure. Well, and I think that's like, that's the tactical takeaway, right? Is like, as soon as you have enough OPEX, which I assume is operational expenditure, or expenses, like, you have, like, enough above the working capital that you need to run your operation. Yeah, correct. So you have enough like, go hire the good project manager that again, you can spend time with the train up to the level and the quality that you're selling and you want to be known for in the market. And then that's when you can start actually, like, leaning in and taking the time of like, okay, it's me and a project manager. Might have an office manager involved, right? Some type of administrator, someone like, taking away a lot of the stuff that takes a lot of time. Now you can be really intentional, to sit down and start thinking about your brand, right? And thinking about it from a from a bigger, bigger lens than just, I have a website, it's like, no, what is this doing? This is now going to be funneling and fueling and beginning the early days of what a sales motion is going to look like at this organization. For sure. Yeah, I wouldn't say thinking about it. I would recommend that if anyone's going to go build a brand, they need to hire an expert that just does this for a living. Yeah, they'll build it for you. They will ask you questions to really understand what it is that you're doing and what the unique differentiators you are, you have. And then they will create that brand messaging, because they're the experts. So don't, don't go try and do this with AI yourself. Yeah, what's that? Unless you're just starting out, then you don't have a choice. But, yeah, exactly. Do you know Charlotte mustard by chance? What an amazing name. I don't it's an amazing name. She's an amazing gal. She started a company called im W group, and this is like all they do. So if you don't know her, I'm sure you have people in your network of like, people that help build brands, but I need to intro you, because Charlotte is kick ass, and I'm actually working with her as I build my brand. So I'm taking your advice Paul, also hiring someone that knows, and it's not I'd love to, I'd love to meet her, and it's not just about finding someone to help with brand, but when you're training that project manager, because you got to, by the way, the biggest role in any construction company, the biggest role, the most critical role, is hiring that person that can keep you out of the field, or promoting that person in your company to a position to keep you out of the field. Why because that time that most owners are spending in the field can be 2030, 4050, hours a week, and then as soon as they're out of the field, all the other activities necessary to build up like a $30 million a year Juggernaut is actually quite adaptable. And what I mean by adaptable is like, if you realize, okay, like, I just hired, you know, this person keep he or she to keep me out of operations. Now I have 30 hours a week where I can focus on marketing and sales and then managing the person who's running my financial controls and running ops. But I've 30 hours a week to focus on marketing and sales. You can leverage 30 hours a week in very powerful way. Just doing marketing and sales like one person can be very effective in those in those areas. Another thing I'll say though, the management of operations and the management of financial controls must be done with simple, clear systems. In today's age of AI, you can go download hundreds of documents and SOPs that are just going to confuse your team. So one of the things that we stress is the 8020 rule. When people come into our system, they just get simple, clear procedures and accountability systems that have been stress tested against super high performing companies that have already done this. We're not here to show everyone how smart we are and give them boatloads of information that we got off chat. GPT, just simple, clear, concise systems that have already worked. Doesn't worked dozens of times with great companies, hundreds of actually, if you want to count, yeah. Okay, so that's really important if you're going to train people make sure you're you have systems that are putting up strong boundaries around how they're managing their day to day activities. Yes. And the reason I wanted to ask you the why is because that's tying back into your comment earlier about the carpenter starts a business bags on, as we call it, right? They're performing the work. They're doing the thing. And then it's a out of bed next morning. Business hat on right. I'm getting the I'm developing the business skills. I'm developing the finance acumen, I'm developing the marketing the sales acumen, the brand acumen, the process acumen, the management acumen, all of those things. That is what business skill means, and that's why you need to open up more of your time. So then you can now say, Okay, I know how to do the skill. I know how to install the cabinets. I know how to do the trim. I know how to do the tile, the plumbing, the this or that the other, that's all stuff that I can get a team doing. And now I pull my time over and I look at my return on time from building my business skills. Yeah, fair, yep, yep. It's a full circle moment that's exactly and as soon as you get yourself out of operations, it's a clear shot up to level five, self managed company, yeah. First level, chuck in the truck. Second level, you're, you're wearing all the hats. Most businesses never get through that level. By the way, nothing wrong with that. Most businesses never punch through. That's where the owner's managing finance, marketing, sales ops. Third Level, those were the owners only managing sales, sales and marketing. Fourth. Fourth level is where the owner has a leadership team running sales, marketing, operations and finance. And the fifth level is where the owner has a general manager, managing the leadership team, and that's a true self managed company. And at that point, at that point, that's when the companies really take off, because it's usually about that. It's usually at that level where they're rolling out like a little bit of equity ownership to their leadership team and their general manager, and then those people are all incentivized themselves to continue growing the organization beyond its current state of its doing, 20 million a year. You'll see it'll jump to 30 million. And then they'll start talking about different revenue streams, etc, maybe operating in a different area, because they're all motivated to continue growing the organization beyond your capabilities, and frankly, they're going to be better at their job than you at that point, because all they focus on is operations, or all they focus on is financial controls, which is great, and that's one of the hallmarks of a great leaders. They're able to train people under them to execute at a higher level than they can, love it, love it. And that's, I think that's like the dream, right? Like you can, just like the like the people that are listening are like, God, like, how do I do that? Why do people and we this might be redundant, but why is it level two that always is like the biggest roadblock, the biggest hurdle. They just can't. I think I might be wrong, but I mean, I could. I'd love to chat with you about this further offline, but I think it's the identity piece. Guys just can't. They just, they just can't get themselves out of being a foreman that manages a job site. Yeah, have to get themselves out of operations. And, I mean, we could do it offline if you wanted to, but I think that, like, frankly, like, I guess this is how I've just ran builders budgets and beers. It's like very authentic conversation is, is, I think the conversation is good from a self awareness standpoint, because I think, like, you need to have like, takeaways in a podcast and like, people push structure, which I could probably get better at, but I'm just like, so off the cuff. I think when you're when you're thinking about the guys that can't get out of the way of being a former Do you think that it's because, like, you. That's where they've seen the most success, and that's where they like internally, place the most value on themselves, like it's a comfort thing, right? 100% yeah, there's a has. Actually, I had a conversation with a doctor friend of mine about this a couple months ago, and he goes, Ah, that's being in what's called the zone of proximal development. That's a medical term. You can Google it. He said, people who are consistently advancing their life, they're always in the zone of proximal development. What that is, is that's a place in life where you need help. You're always in a place where you need help. You're not comfortable. You need coaching, you need mentorship. You need to be in a community of people that are working with you as you roll up your sleeves, tell everyone, hey, I'm inadequate at what I'm doing here, and I need help. Yeah, and you're right where you need to be, okay. But what you're talking about is a situation where someone shows up in the day and goes, I am so good at building houses. I am so good at organizing the sub trades. Yeah, and, but if somebody sees a vision of their life as doing that at scale, like having 6789, 10 job sites running at once, where that's happening, you have to have people that you're employing who are waking up in the morning and saying that, yeah, and you're saying I am so good at training this team to run 10 sites at once. Yeah, we are so good at communicating our brand message to the marketplace. I'm so good at building a sales division. Yeah, right, yeah. Okay, so that's, that's the like, and it's, huh, that's the difference, yeah, and that's, that's where, when that's the it's not as much of, like, the just wake up out of bed and, like, decided it comes with action. But it really is. It's, like, own, own the identity that you're currently trying to get to, own, the identity that you're Yeah, because, like, effectively, it's like, you might not be the best at building a division of project managers that are managing 6789, 10, but if you're seeking that mentorship and that advice, and you're constantly getting better, that's where you start to, like, mold into that next identity. Is that getting too fluffy, or is that what you're no the then those small successes that you see create more action, just compounding. It's just compounds. You wake up in the morning and you say, look, okay, I'm just going to take this step. I'm going to hire or I'm going to promote this form into being a site superintendent, and then eventually a project manager. And then you watch it work. One year, you're spending 30 hours in the field, I'm just saying probably more, but you're and then the next year, you're spending 50% less time because they're more capable at their job. And when you see that start to work, and you start building, building the blocks. It's, there's four buckets, though, of areas to really focus your your energy, and that's what we focus on. So we call it four C's, you got to have good coaching in your life. So you got to have people like, it's like sports. You got to have somebody who knows how to take your existing like the resources, your capacity, and leverage it to create more skill. Okay, so you gotta have good coaching. You gotta have a good community around you, like you got to be in a room with people that are smarter than you, and you also have to be in a room with people that are asking you for advice so you can reframe whatever paradigm you believe you got to have good content, like you have to, like, a lot of times, guys are saying, Oh, how do I hold accountability with my team? Well, you know what? That's actually a process for that, and we just copy what we've seen work with other companies have already done that. And then you have capital coaching, community, content, capital. Capital is a whole another. What's your relationship with lenders? What's your tax strategy as you build your organization? How do you translate your organization's equity onto a leadership team one day? How do you go and buy an office and do it properly? How do you like investors come in and they want to maybe work build a spec home with you in a really wealthy part of your city, how do you structure that deal? That's capital, yeah, which is actually when people are becoming more advanced in business, that's where they get most of their value is knowing how to do that well, because it's it can be millions of dollars one way or the other. Yeah, four C's, coaching, community, content and capital. Love it. Love it, okay? And that's like, again, this is just to, like, boil it down. That's where you, that's where you just, you have to start being intentional and, and, God, what was it? What was the term living in the what zone of proximal development? The zone of proximal development, knowing. Thing actually a medical term. I know. I'm gonna look it up. I'm gonna look into the zone of proximal development, which I think is like, it's great because, like, No, you're no one. No, you're not. If you want to build a 40 million, $50 million construction company, you're not going to be that CEO. One morning when you wake up and say, I'm going to be that person, but you start thinking on that path, and seeking the coaching, seeking the community build, getting the content, getting the capital, and doing those things and moving in that direction. I gotta ask. I mean, where did you how did you start high Spire, what was, what was the drive? What was how did you start it? Well, I was just having a morning coffee. Okay, let's hear it. I want to hear it. I needed a change in life, and this is a little over two years ago. I needed a change in life, and I we, I've been working with a lot of construction companies and and I just thought to myself, Okay, what do these businesses actually need? They don't need lots of systems. Okay, go lots of people out there offering systems they don't need. What they need is a way to truly build wealth to reach that financial escape velocity that is going to help, like we said, their companies, their communities, etc, what do they need? And I thought back to all the people I'd worked with, and the people who had built beautiful organizations, had built self managed companies, and they use their companies to develop their own real estate. So they became their own customers. They built once, and they got paid for and they set themselves up to being paid for decades. And then I thought, Okay, I'm just gonna go build a company that does that for the construction industry. These are good people. Man, totally. Anyone who's built a construction company that I've met, that's my own anecdotal experience. They're good people. 100 not be a good person if you're able to go out and build these execute on these complex projects and have people work for you and sell these jobs like these people all deserve to run big, awesome companies that produce a lot of wealth and make people's lives better, and that's what our whole whole company is built around. I love it. So was your was your background in construction? Yeah, so I worked for a number of years in commercial construction. I worked all through the states. I'm Canadian, but you know, I've worked in Wisconsin and Texas and Utah and Seattle, and I just worked in China for a while. Do you mind me asking who? What was the commercial contractor you worked with? Oh, gosh, oh, I worked a whole bunch of them worked for a company in the US called it would be no one that you'd recognize. Yeah, okay, okay, it is fine. Like they're just big holding companies for, for, for, like, large national bakeries and cogen plants and mines and yeah like that. Yeah. Okay. I got married in 2016 and my wife said, Hey, why don't you start business coaching, or what? No, she said, Don't travel so much. I need you here. And so I thought, Okay, well, that sounds good. And then I got into a little bit of business coaching and worked for another organization for a while, and then when I knew I had to leave it, this was something that I thought would be a next step for me, and that was it, dude. I love it. Okay, so the motivation of the spouse just a classic, a tale as old as time. It's now saying, hey, I need you at home. And then you're like, all right, damn, I'm gonna go out and build it. Totally, yeah, yeah. One of the things we always tell people is, set up good anti goals for yourself. There's one thing to tell, okay, because what can happen is we tell these people to go build these companies, build wealth, build self managed companies, yeah, grow to 30 million, and we're going to show you the path to get there, yeah, like they get all excited about building wealth. But the other thing that we say is, hey, look, wealth is going to come. It's there's no mysterious force out there keeping you from doing this. It's a foregone conclusion. Just follow the process. You're going to get there while you're doing that, though, set up anti goals for yourself, and what those are is negative outcomes that you want to avoid in pursuit of your financial goals and your business goals. Okay? Yeah, say, hey, look, I am not going to build my company if it means that I can't take my wife on a date once a week. I'm not going to build my company if it means that I can't be home to have dinner with my children, or that I can't drive my kids to school three times a week, or I'm not going to be able to work out or. You know, go to wing nights with my with my buddies once a week, or whatever it is, the things that give you fulfillment and happiness starts with family and looking after yourself. By the way, you're not going to sacrifice those things in pursuit of your goals. The business is there to support your fulfillment, happiness and your quality of life. Totally super important, man, dude, the anti goal, that's great. And I think that even too is like, when you think about this just again to map it back into the conversation, it's like, like, again, you're the smaller, you're the business guy. This is like, to your point, you someone could listen to this podcast and they'd be like, I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna I'm gonna talk to Paul, I'm gonna build this huge company, I'm gonna do all this stuff. But it's like, where do I start? It's like, well, maybe you start by like, defining what do you want your company to look like? What do you want your company to provide for you? Yeah, and it's like, it's dude. I don't think it needs to be any rocket science, but I also think people can lose sight of what they want the company to be in the day to day, right? It's like, I've got the project, I've got the job. I need to finish the job. I've got the next job coming up. Like, I need to get prepped for that job. And I think just with all the busyness, you can lose sight on the anti goals, right? And it just slowly starts to creep in. How? What's your take on that? How do you how do you advise people to stay true to their anti goals. It's an identity piece. It goes back to the identity and here's actually one of the things, because fortunately, we have a lot of very, very high performing organizations in high Spire, and so when people come in, and they might be maybe five years back from reaching those levels of success, we can say, Look, listen to us. Set up anti goals. Follow this path to you know, build up the company that you want that reflects these other people that you can tangibly see in our in our program and in our community. But go talk to them, and they will tell them the exact same thing. They'll say, Look, your brain like this is from someone who's already built up a beautiful company from nothing. They will always say, hey, look, your brain is going to be healthier and you're going to attract more high value, high performance people into your sphere of influence if you are fulfilled and happy, so if you are just folk, they can tell that you are a person that is putting themselves first. I mean that in a very, very direct and clear way, like everybody I know who has built up beautiful organizations, they recognize they have to put themselves first before they can pour out and be that good husband, that good father, that good friend, that good boss, they're always like gaging their own ability to operate at a high level. Yeah, totally, dude. I love it. I love it. I think just like on a on a parting note here, I mean, we've talked a lot about identity, which, like, that was really like the recurring theme, and I like fully, I think maybe just like a direct response. Do you think that it's as simple as somebody waking up one morning and saying, I'm going to do this and they're going to shift their identity. Do you think it's that simple? It is, but they have to put themselves in a room with people that have already done this as well, because the motivation will disappear. You will run into challenges. You have to understand what the rhythms of success look like and what that path looks like, and put yourself on that path so that when you wake up in the morning and you're not feeling motivated, and you find out that a job's going south, and your top person quit, and you know, maybe you know you you know you're you and your spouse got in a fight or something, and it's just not the best day, and it's raining outside, and you're one of your people just crashed your truck like a bad day, right? Right? Your your business and your execution is not relying on your own motivation to become that person. Because you are going to as you are in the zone of proximal development. You are going to you're going to experience these days where you feel this imposter syndrome, you feel like you don't belong, and you feel like you can't do it, but your business and your life has to be following a process that is going to result in hitting, hitting your goals, and it's going to result in that growth that we're talking about, for Sure. So, and that just goes back to like the C and community, right? It's like being a part of that community is massive, and getting advice from people that have already done this, it's that return on capital, return on time. How do I manage those two equations? There's people out there that can give you the answer. Uh, we'll give you the answer. Like, check out our website. Well, and that's what I was gonna say, like, dude, like, shameless plug, like, because you, like, that's like, a lot of what you guys are doing. And even if you just want to give like, a quick, like, elevator on, like, what high spire is doing and how people can find you, that'd be great. Who's a good fit, who's a bad fit, right? What do you need in order to be a good fit, that type of thing. Oh yeah, yeah. Www, high Spire, calm, H, I, G, H, s, p, i, r, e.com, run Instagram, LinkedIn. I'm active on very active on LinkedIn, so you can message me too. Yeah, good fit, bad fit. We have people in the organization that are doing 80 100 million a year. And we also have companies have companies in our organization that are doing a million a year. But it's all about just patience. Another thing that I say is we talk about building wealth, and everyone thinks that we're trying to get people to hit a home run. Building wealth is about just getting people on base again and again and again, yep, just slow, incremental jumps, and then after five years, if you've done it correctly, you realize that the wealth trajectory of your grandkids is probably going to change now, and that can happen in as little as five years. But you look back and you don't see these massive grand slam home runs. You just see you've just been a consistent Moneyball player like that. Brad Pitt movie always use that analogy, like just you're getting people on base, yeah? So, okay, so good fits are one to 100 million. If you're a builder doing this and you're like, you're sitting here banging your head against the wall, what do I do to go to the next level? Give Paul a call. Yeah, yeah. Love to, love to chat. Yeah. No. This is great. This is great. And I think just even, I think probably the most positive thing from this is, like there were certainly, like, some really strong tactical takeaways. But I think just like your your positive conviction that this is very doable for nearly every business out there, just takes the individual who's running it to be willing to to claim that identity. And dude, I keep missing it. What is it that? What is it the state of, what zone of proximal development? It's about just getting those little, tiny wins, those little wins. You get a little win a bunch. See a really successful friend of mine. He said success is built on the back end of a series of very small but correct decisions. Very small but correct decisions. Yeah. So you got to be in a good community, have good coaching. You have to have to have good systems that have been benchmarked against people that have built companies that have already done this. And you have to be in because eventually, when your business starts seeing success, capital is another very key component that most people wait until way too late start thinking about the earlier the better. Earlier the better. Okay, no, well, I think this was, this was killer dude, dude, I'm stoked to see you in Mexico, and also you. And actually, yeah, another plug. Um, yeah, give him a plug on, on my Coba. Oh, yeah, yeah. We have a we have an event we're running in January. It's five days long, and we have experts coming in from all around North America, like top sales consultant in the construction industry in North America is coming, two of the top tax strategists that were partners and top accounting firms working directly with construction and real estate development companies. We got aI experts coming in to work with us. The top builder in America is coming to teach people about how he grew from nothing to running a$50 million company operating five different locations. The reason why this is a five day event is because we only work in the mornings and then in the afternoon. We just give everyone a chance to go out into the resort and hang out with each other and talk and connect, because we're all builders and we're all and we're all and there's a lot of experts in this area, and you can get a lot of value just sitting by the pool chatting with somebody, too. And it's also in a five star. It's also in one of the nicest resorts in North America, too, Fairmont Maya Cove. I look it up. It's pretty, pretty Ballen. Yeah, great, too. So it's got to not super expensive. Yeah, no, this is, this is definitely one to think of if you just go to high spire.com backslash, HX, hyphen, Maya, Coba, hyphen, 2026, I'm sure there's an easy way to find it. You can probably get to it from the high spire website. But no, I think this is great. I can't wait to hang out with you guys. More super solid episode. I appreciate you jumping on, Paul, yeah, this is fun. Good seeing you. Reese as always, yes, likewise, well, we'll chat soon. All right, man, take care.