Buy, Build, Scale, Impact: With California Roofing Titan

Seth Larson (00:00.951)
Hmm

Stephen S. (00:04.436)
Welcome to the show where we interviewed the nation’s leading real estate entrepreneurs. If you are joining us for the second, third or hundredth time, then you are in for an absolute treat today. I’ve got Seth Larson in the studio. Seth Larson is the owner of resilient roofing and he has been in the construction space for nearly his entire life. We have a really cool story to share today about how he got into that space.

And I’m super excited for our conversation. So just remember at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers and real estate entrepreneurs, two to five X their businesses to build the businesses that they’ve always wanted to allow them to live the lives they’ve always dreamed up. With that being said, Seth, welcome to the show. I’m excited to have you on today.

Seth Larson (00:50.658)
Right on, Stephen. No, thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

Stephen S. (00:53.394)
So you’ve got a really unique story with your business, obviously very serious entrepreneur, been in business for decades. And you’ve got a unique situation with your roofing company where this is a business that’s been around since the 60s. just for our listeners sake, give us a little bit of a background as to what got you started in construction from an early age to where you’re at today.

Seth Larson (01:16.844)
Yeah, no, the short version, because I could talk about it all day long. My dad was a custom home builder. So way back in the Midwest, he was building homes out there, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and moved out, escaped the snow, went to Arizona, then finally ended up in California. That’s where I was born. So that was years ago. And then kept doing that, building homes. Not much land left out here where we are in Southern California. So we switched to remodels.

But with remodels, wasn’t like remodeling someone’s kitchen. was adding on to, you know, expanding the house. So that’s really where I cut my teeth and then ended up in the specialty trades for a bunch of different reasons, which I won’t bore you with. But that’s where the roofing idea came from, to answer your question.

Stephen S. (02:04.424)
Yeah. And so what led you down the path of getting to where you’re at now in business? I know you, ended up buying this business from a family friend and basically had to rebuild the entire thing from scratch, putting all the S S O P’s in place and everything else there, which isn’t something like, that’s not an easy task. It’s almost harder to come into an existing business and break it down to rebuild it in the proper way than it is to even start one from scratch. So, so what, what

Seth Larson (02:17.14)
Yeah.

Stephen S. (02:32.564)
caused you to do that and then what was some of that process like to really get it going.

Seth Larson (02:37.452)
No, that’s great question. We as entrepreneurs you can relate to this. We have that what’s it called? Shiny red ball syndrome or squirrel or women in the red dress. You have whatever analogy you want to use where we see something cool and we’re like, let’s run after that well. Hide site being 2020 I probably wouldn’t have.

Stephen S. (02:46.568)
shiny object system, yeah.

Stephen S. (02:53.012)
for your shit.

Seth Larson (02:58.028)
bought the company. You know, when you think only buy a company, it runs itself. I’m just going to come and make a couple changes. That was not how it went down. The company back in the 80s was hot, man. They were, you know, they were busy. They were building all kinds of roofs. There’s always been roofing. And then basically they slowed down. Short answer, as he was getting older, started in the 60s, 1967. So we’re going on almost 60 years now when we bought it.

seven, eight years ago, it was real slow. So we were buying the idea of a company is really the best way to put it. And I don’t think I would do that again. Like you said, yeah, you had to re you not only had to create SOPs, but you had to delete old ones too, you know, bad habits. And here’s how we used to do it. So, yeah, hindsight being 20, 20, I would have definitely started from scratch, but is what it is. And the good thing is we got

an amazing reputation that we took over as well as a great client list. You know, not that everybody needs a new roof every few years. If you do a good job, you won’t see them for 20. But but also, like you mentioned, kind of cool factor, coolness factor of saying that the company, which is true, has been around for almost 60 years. So hindsight being 20, 20 wouldn’t have done it again. I wouldn’t do it again. But now that we’re here, it’s like, hey, it’s pretty cool. You know, might as well embrace it.

Stephen S. (04:21.492)
Yeah, and I mean you also have a unique setup because you’re in Southern California I think predominantly right and So being in Southern California, there’s not as many storms, right? So really building a business that’s built to last is Is possible in in your area so being able to kind of jump Jump the gun and and get in where you’re at now I mean, it’s something that you could build that would would literally last forever now at this point as long as you continued

Seth Larson (04:28.458)
Exactly. Yep.

Stephen S. (04:49.992)
down the path you’re currently going. So let me ask you this, when you first got started, bought into the business, what was like the long-term vision that you started?

Seth Larson (04:59.154)
really, where it started was trying to build something that was, what’s the word, easier to scale and duplicate than the custom home building or remodeling type of company. I feel like that type of company, even though it’s in the same service industry, construction industry, one can scale and one can’t. Roofing I see as scalable at last calculation or, know,

what do call it, industry study that I read, there were 18 roofing companies in the country that did over $100 million, which, you know, number’s just a vanity, but the point is you can scale it, you can build it, you can train, you know what I mean, and get up to that size, whereas the only construction company over that was Balfour, the restoration company, they did what, a billion something dollars last year, which is nuts, but that’s not custom design and remodeling and type of that kind of thing.

So point is, if you’re trying to grow, which that is one of our ideals, with the customer first, with the experience first, as long as you have that sort of core foundation built, then we can scale, but you have to be in the right boat. You know, can’t just grow something in some weird industry or super custom service. So long story short, to answer your question, roofing sort of was that boat, it was that vehicle in order to let us grow. And then if you want to get real philosophical,

My favorite, my wife actually too, but my favorite part of just being a business general is taking someone from, had a, what do call it, grocery bagger, you know, guy that was just making nothing at the grocery store. Another guy was a line cook in the back of a restaurant. Kind of no offense to anyone in that industry, dead in careers, you know, you’re not gonna climb up any type of ladder and you’re making very close to minimum wage and take that person and give them a marketable.

set of skills and we’ve done that tons of times. And whether they stay here, go somewhere else, we’ve turned them into, you you go from the tear off crew to the install crew, then you become a shingler, then you move up and become a foreman and then you can be superintendent, production manager. There’s so many roles that you can climb all the way up. You can move into sales. We’ve had guys go from production to sales and vice versa. Having a vehicle, which is our company that allows us to bring people in with no experience.

Seth Larson (07:23.854)
and train them up is actually really, really rewarding. So again, as we get bigger, there’ll be more and more opportunity for that. That’s what I’m really most excited about.

Stephen S. (07:32.104)
Hmm. Yeah, it sounds like you’ve hit that peak in your in your business where you’re looking at how it can serve other people than how it can serve yourself.

Seth Larson (07:42.639)
Exactly. And of course, the client also we can’t just say, hey, client, give me money so I can do all this cool stuff. No, I got to take care of them. But then after that, then OK, do I want somewhere that I come to work every day and everyone’s maybe happy, maybe not, whatever? No, dude, let’s let’s design this thing and actually make it really exciting to come to work. And I mean, you know, friends or family, they just fricking hate Mondays and hate hate going to their job. Life’s way too short for that. So.

Stephen S. (07:46.152)
Right.

Seth Larson (08:11.714)
Whatever I can do to help make it more fun to work here and or again in this industry, that’s I’m all about it.

Stephen S. (08:18.002)
Yeah, 100%. You know, it’s, funny because I’m a firm believer that people only start businesses for two reasons. they either start the business for the lifestyle that it can provide them or they start a business to sell it. what, what, what did you get into business for? Cause otherwise, like obviously business is tough. Like we’d all be better off just working the corporate ladder at McDonald’s or Walmart and making 200 grand a year as a store manager someday. like what got you into really entrepreneurship to start with?

Seth Larson (08:37.205)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Seth Larson (08:47.308)
No, that’s a great one. Really a whole family of entrepreneurs is the short answer. you know, you kind of have it in your blood. But if I had to pick between those two, because I don’t disagree with you, I’d say it’s more of the lifestyle thing. It’s not so much like how many dollars I can get out of it. And really, to prove that to you, it kind of fits closer with what I was just talking about with the team. I love the lifestyle of owning a business. Well, that’s not true. The second phase of owning a business.

The first phase is, what did I hear the analogy the other day? It’s like chewing glass and staring into the abyss. It’s like starting a bit. Dude, so many unforeseen like blows from left and right, you know? So, but anyway, once you get, and phase two is different for every company. For us, it was when we hit probably 30 employees, it became so much easier. We actually had a leadership team. had, you know, processes in place like you talking about. When you have five or 10, my gosh, you’re,

Not making any money. You’re working day and night. You work like crazy. So anyway, once we hit about 30 and we’re more than double that now, but, then it became, you could actually see the light at the end of the tunnel. And then it became to your point, that lifestyle business. And then, like I say, that’s what I desire so much for the rest of our team. That’s what I’m sort of passionate about now is building that lifestyle. If possible. There’s always something that you hate about your job, right? You know, no one has perfect daisies and roses all day long, but

the least amount of that that I can help as possible. So maybe you dislike 10 % of your day to day or week to week, but 90 % you have a ton of fun and it’s right in your wheelhouse and that’s what you love doing. That’s what I’m trying to make for the rest of our team.

Stephen S. (10:29.618)
Yeah, you got servant serving your team. Well, so what what advice would you give to a young entrepreneur that’s looking to get into a similar space as you or maybe it’s maybe it’s trades, maybe it’s construction, maybe it’s real estate. Like what advice would you give somebody that’s just getting started?

Seth Larson (10:49.262)
That’s a good one. Well, actually kind of to what you were saying, find your why. What is your why? Are you trying to cash out later and sell something? Or is it a lifestyle business? And whatever one you pick, obviously it’s right for you. But then I would say work backwards and design your business to fit your end goal. Meaning, let’s say if they want a lifestyle and it has a dollar amount tied to it.

You know, they want to make X dollars. Okay, well at what profit percentage would you have to do what volume in order to get that? You know, and that’s a quick easy math problem and then build the company to fit that then it then it’s done but don’t What we’re chasing is growth and I know for sure that is not for everybody. So I don’t want to say you know, you got to build it big That’s not for me. There’s people that be miserable if they had, know, three employees They’re happy at two or whatever happens to be stick to that. Don’t don’t try to

In fact, the argument is stay small and keep it all. There’s a great argument for a small, well-oiled machine can run circles around big chunky companies. So point is, try to figure out exactly what you want out of it. And if you are an early stage entrepreneur, you might not even know what that is, but you know what you don’t want. So you can work backwards and then just build the business to fit whatever that is that you’re looking for.

Stephen S. (12:00.936)
Right.

Stephen S. (12:15.09)
So what’s your why?

Seth Larson (12:18.124)
Really, like I say, as we, it’s changed. As we continue to grow and we’ve helped, I don’t want to forget about the customers, we obviously help customers. We get letters and reviews and stuff all day, as we help someone who was in my shoes, like I was talking about the guy that had the sort of dead end job or not having fun at work, not making any money, having kids, whatever, and give them that marketable career, that has, it’s always been a why.

that’s been the main one now because I get so much out of that, selfishly. I see them growing in their career, making more money, and building their family, building their lives, buying a house, buying cars, that kind of thing. That’s become higher dominance in my way, to answer your question.

Stephen S. (13:07.292)
Yeah. What are you really looking to accomplish in the next, let’s say, 18 months with what you’re doing?

Seth Larson (13:16.024)
We have it all planned out. It’s the like I say, it’s not about the money, but it’s also about the money. What I mean is at the end of the day, you can say how successful you are, how many employees you have. You can measure all kinds of different things, but how much you are able to prove, I guess you could say to the marketplace, how great of a company you are, what, how that really comes in. The only really KPI that matters for that is volume. You know what I mean?

Stephen S. (13:44.446)
Mm-hmm, sure.

Seth Larson (13:44.671)
Volume on an annual basis. So we’ve laid it out for the next four or five years our annual Total budget, you know income goal for the next few years So to answer that directly this probably doesn’t make sense for too many I don’t know how many different states are listening but in Florida a volume is different than in Texas I mean you can do so much more roofs, you know than we can every day Anyway, our volume goal for 18 months. I think is probably right around the 20 million a year mark

is where we, it looks like we’re on track to be, but that’s also the goal too.

Stephen S. (14:17.812)
What does that do for you and your team at 20 million?

Seth Larson (14:22.604)
Mainly just, so with each volume goal, have how that breaks down in the company layout. So it allows us to hire more people, get a bigger team, get that wheel continually moving, if that makes sense.

Stephen S. (14:28.265)
Mm-hmm.

Stephen S. (14:34.462)
Yeah, yeah, 100%. What’s been the hardest lesson? So let me frame this question better actually. Because I’ve seen a lot of people that have built roofing companies. There’s like that danger zone and there’s levels to it, right? Yeah, yeah, for sure. So you’ve got like, you know, that guy that’s doing less than a million, then once you’re starting to hit a million, kind of your next step is three.

Seth Larson (14:48.76)
There’s a bunch of levels. Yeah, and a bunch of danger zones. Yeah, I agree.

Stephen S. (14:59.924)
Five because you can see somebody do I see you see somebody do 1.5 million in the roofing business all the time and then they scale to five the next year and then two years later they’re out of business because you 100 and so and a lot of that comes down to having the right team structure systems processes, etc It’s just a matter of like you have to almost acclimate to that next level make sure they’re the right people because the people you build a million dollar business with usually aren’t the same ones you build a hundred million dollar business with

Seth Larson (14:59.938)
Yep, you’re exactly right.

Seth Larson (15:09.311)
Yeah, and they don’t make any money at five million. Yeah, it’s crazy. Yep

Seth Larson (15:23.074)
Yep.

Seth Larson (15:29.218)
Dude, you nailed it. Yeah. Your question has the answer in it. And really what the only thing I would add to that, because you’re exactly right, is instead of acclimate, really what I found the hard way is you almost have to tear the whole thing down, dude. And like start over. like, so yeah, from one, from one million, again, depending on your market, you can do almost everything yourself at a million bucks.

Stephen S. (15:30.452)
And so.

Stephen S. (15:45.384)
Yeah

Seth Larson (15:56.653)
Besides the install, you still gotta sub that out or hire your own guys or whatever. But if you were your own salesman, you did your own admin, you answered all the calls, you scheduled the appointment, you can do, in my opinion, pretty much everything. I mean, a good salesman can sell two million, three million, so you have to be an okay salesman to sell a million. And if you’re the owner, the client’s gonna appreciate that more, you’ll sell more of them, then you can supervise, can collect the payments, you can do the accounting, because it’s not a lot of moving parts. Point is, you can do a lot of million bucks.

Then as soon as, you nailed it right on the head. Three million probably, everything breaks. So you gotta tear the whole thing apart. You have to get out of accounting, you have to get out of production, you have to get out of one of them, whatever your weakness is, right? And then again, I don’t wanna put a number on it, but I’d say it breaks again at about the $6 million mark. Then again, probably at the 10, 11, $12 million mark. And then I just answered your question about 18 months from now, we’re…

planning on and assuming to be at 20 million, I’m guessing it’s gonna break again. But what does that look like? I don’t know yet, I haven’t been there. But I’m sure it’s gonna break again.

Stephen S. (17:01.68)
Right. So what do you do to prepare for those growing pains?

Seth Larson (17:09.836)
No, I actually have a really good plan for that. So the more I’ll say it differently. What’s my value in the company now that we have, you know, about 70 employees, it’s not installing shingles, right? That was long ago. It’s not selling the job. It’s not running the jobs. It’s not collecting payment. It’s none of those things because then I would be just getting in the way of those other team members. So I’ve found over last few years.

the biggest value I can bring besides recruiting new teammates, which is kind you had mentioned that in your last question, but really it’s seeing that next step and then eliminating any roadblocks that I can see. like the journey from one of those, you know, income levels to the next, which breaks everything that has to be my focus is, okay, is it a person problem or is it just a operations, you know, SOP problem that I need to flip?

Break and hire somebody can we do with our current staff? Are they capable? What training do they need that literally and I don’t know the answer to any of those questions like I say as we approach that 20 million mark, but That is my job is how can I focus on the next level and see what’s coming so that I can? Either rearrange our team hire somebody new hire somebody better. Unfortunately, if that means, you know Either letting someone go or putting them in a different role all those kind of things are beat that becomes my job. Otherwise

If no one’s looking at it and I’m stuck doing any one particular role, well then the whole company just kind of stagnates and we stay wherever it is that we’re going.

Stephen S. (18:45.716)
It almost sounds like you’re in a phase of, instead of building a business, you’re in the phase of realizing that you’ve got to build the people that’ll build the business. I can’t remember which billionaire coach said that.

Seth Larson (19:00.22)
big time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve heard something similar to that, but no, you said it exactly right. And I don’t even think we’re at that phase yet. Yeah, someone kind of reminded me of this analogy, like if you leave for a month, there’s like three phases of business from this test. One phase is you leave for a month, everything falls apart. Okay, we all know what that looks like. The other phase, which I feel like we are at now.

is if you leave for a month, everything would stay fine, you know? And that seems like a success, like right on, you you made it. I would say we’re there now. I could leave for a month, but phase three is the best, is you leave for a month and things continue to grow and get better. We are not there because I’m holding that title. So to your point, like, as we get busier, I don’t wanna say busier, higher volume, well then, with higher volume comes higher

Stephen S. (19:45.502)
continue to

Seth Larson (19:59.491)
dollar amounts to put forth, so we could hire a CGO, which would be a chief growth officer. That’s kind of my role now. Then with that, or a CEO that can strategically see those sort of future gaps, then I could leave for a month and we would grow. But for now anyway, we’re at that phase two for that analogy.

Stephen S. (20:06.1)
Mm-hmm.

Stephen S. (20:21.372)
Right. At what point does it make sense? Do you think because you’re obviously building a big business. At what point do you think whether you actually hire them to do it or you just do it yourself through the tools and studies that you’ve you have access to. At what point should you should an entrepreneur start implementing EOS into their business.

Seth Larson (20:39.96)
I’m a fan of EOS. We haven’t done all of it. I don’t think you go wrong doing it when you’re just a solopreneur, you know, and it’s just you like that million dollar analogy we were just talking about. There’s no reason not to hold yourself accountable. Hold those level 10 meetings like they talk about, you know, all those kind of things. Why don’t you do it when you’re just an army of one and then change is hard, especially the bigger you get. Imagine if I tried flipping something and going, hey, we’re doing a new process. man, the whole world would. So so it’s kind of like.

Stephen S. (21:08.02)
Yeah.

Seth Larson (21:10.326)
Really, I’ll go all the way back to your question about your opinion, which I agree with. There’s sort of two reasons to start it. One is lifestyle, one is to sell it, cash out. I suggest that you build your business for, embrace that. Like let’s say if you were gonna sell it, there’s that book, John Warlow, think, Built to Sell. You ever heard of that one? Dude, it’s solid gold because it talks about exactly what you’re saying, which is.

Let’s say the ultimate goal is to sell a business for X dollars. Okay. Well, that means you have to be doing this EBITDA at this multiple, which is industry standard. Okay. So now I have a framework. I’m going to build it all the way up to that and then sell it. If you have that game plan, that roadmap from the very beginning, dude, it makes it so much easier instead of, I’m just going to work my butt off for five years and then see where we’re at. That’s, that’s not very smart either. know? So anyhow, I think, no, I think there’s no bad time.

to start EOS because exactly what I just said, the longer you wait, dude, the harder it would be to implement.

Stephen S. (22:16.434)
Right. Well, and you know, to your point there too, I think one of the things that we miss a lot as entrepreneurs is just how simple things actually are and we overcomplicate the process. And it’s one of those things like, okay, let’s say you are just a solo partner and you have these systems and you have these processes in place, but your goal is to build a big team. Well, like maybe it is to sell it someday.

Do you think your life’s gonna be easier or harder if you have all of that in place regardless of what you do with it? You know what mean? Because like so many people build a business for 30 years, they don’t have a retirement plan because as an entrepreneur, our retirement is our business basically in our heads, right? And so, and then people get there and they, you know, we’re seeing this right now with this huge transfer of wealth that’s happening where you’ve got these 55, 60, 65, 70 year old owners of especially home service companies.

Seth Larson (22:46.284)
Yeah, exactly. Agree. 100%.

Seth Larson (22:54.775)
Yeah.

Stephen S. (23:07.838)
that are wanting to retire and then they don’t even have their books in order for the last three years. So their business is worth nothing.

Seth Larson (23:12.346)
dude. Shoe boxes and yeah, exactly. Geez. Yeah. No, that’s the thing is as the sooner you can get started on it, it’s only going to be better. then. Spoiler alert for anyone who has not read the book that I was just talking about the built to sell, he seriously contemplates I won’t give it away. I’ll leave it open. He seriously contemplates at the end of building his business to sell it, which was his original goal in the story.

I won’t say if he did or not, but he has a real tough challenge at the end, is, okay, now that I built this business to sell it, it’s kind of nice. I’m not needed every day. It’s making money and I can count on it and it’s a machine now. And you know what I mean? People are happy and everything’s good. Kind of like, you know, we get the call all the time, people, they’re gonna sell their house so they wanna redo the roof. And then while…

We’re there, there’s painters there, there’s landscapers, they’re redoing the kitchen flooring, whatever. And then you already know where I’m going with the story. They set back and the photographer comes over to take pictures and they’re like, wait, wait, this is actually really nice. We want to keep the house now. So it’s kind of like that. you build up your processes, your people. It’s a well-oiled machine in your company. And then it’s like, why the heck would I sell it if it’s running so smooth? Keep it, keep it forever if you can.

Anyhow, no exactly, I know what you’re saying.

Stephen S. (24:37.672)
Yeah. So Seth, let me ask you this, because you came on the team, tell me if I’m wrong here, but you came on the team in 2006, correct?

Seth Larson (24:47.982)
That was for a different company. So that was for our design, remodeling company. Yeah, we started that in 2006. Roofing, resilient roofing was 2017, if I remember right.

Stephen S. (24:49.534)
for different company. Okay. Okay.

Stephen S. (25:00.39)
So almost a decade regardless with your current position. So let me ask you this. If you were able to go back to the beginning there in 2017, but you were able to take all of the lessons that you’ve gathered, the experiences, the wins, the losses, et cetera, over the last almost decade, what would you do different and what would you do the same if you could do it all over?

Seth Larson (25:03.308)
Yeah, yeah.

Seth Larson (25:22.824)
man, that’s a good one. It’s hard. I’m not a regretful type of person, so I don’t have any regrets, but the way you framed it is nice, which is of course I would do things different really just to make it easy. No specific examples, because there’s so many, but like structurally speaking with the company, we had kind of touched on this earlier. I probably wouldn’t have bought.

that little old company because it didn’t really give us anything in the end. Probably would started from scratch. The other thing is easy to say is I possibly would have considered buying a bigger company that did have processes. So just with a couple changes, we could make it the way we want. But I can’t say that because that would cost millions of dollars. We didn’t have that sitting around, you know, so so really.

Stephen S. (25:54.419)
Hmm.

Stephen S. (26:07.572)
Mm.

Seth Larson (26:18.114)
There’s no big regrets like dang, I wish I would have done this, but what I’ve done things different, of course, and it just would have been little tweaks along the way, you but again, it’s knowing what we know now. I didn’t know that back then. So here we are.

Stephen S. (26:30.46)
Right. What would you have done the same?

Seth Larson (26:33.262)
Focused on people because really you can’t We have a good respect and really love for our team and that’s always been there and not a lot of Business owners, you know have that that a lot of my talk to they’re just like hey, that’s my employee I’ll fire him if I need to it’s like man. We’re not just easy You know, you can’t just get away with anything But point is your respect for your team your reliance on your team hiring the right people getting them on the right seat You know on the bus for that analogy

I have every plan to keep doing that and to answer your question I wouldn’t have changed a thing regarding our team from the beginning.

Stephen S. (27:14.334)
Well, man, I really appreciate you being on the show, Seth. If people want to learn more about you or what you’re working on, where should they go for that?

Seth Larson (27:22.286)
Our website we actually keep pretty up to date trying to catch up with the new SEO rules from Google, the Google monster. So the site’s good, LinkedIn people can reach out. I’m pretty easy to find on there. And then the regular social media channels are always great too.

Stephen S. (27:29.972)
for sure.

Stephen S. (27:40.86)
awesome. And if you could leave anything, just one last word for our listeners, what would be the last thing that you would leave us with? Something that maybe we haven’t covered yet that you’d like to say.

Seth Larson (27:50.947)
No, I think it’s similar to sort of the vein that we were talking about trying to help. I don’t even want to say newer entrepreneurs, but entrepreneurs who perhaps are frustrated at where they are don’t think that you’re in it alone. Every time I think like, man, how am I going to solve this issue or problem or whatever? I just go talk to people, you know? And you’d be quickly surprised how many people have been through exactly that.

or know someone who has, you know? So talking to people like you, mean, heck, you and I have a lot in common. Just open up and say, hey, here’s this issue. Do you know anyone that would be able to handle it? Or, you know, give me advice at least. And there’s so much knowledge out there. You’re not the first, I guess the point is, you’re not the first to go through what you’re going through. So just reach out and ask other people and you’ll get great advice.

Stephen S. (28:42.836)
And that’s another thing to touch on that note. I think a lot of people miss is you want to pay to be in rooms with people that actually are going through the same things. You know, that’s a big one that I think a lot of us miss. We think we can shortcut, you know, certain things and it’s almost like there’s not really any shortcuts, but there are ways to make the pain less painful, right? And the higher you pay to…

Seth Larson (28:52.588)
Yep, absolutely.

Seth Larson (29:04.868)
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Stephen S. (29:09.184)
The higher you pay the better quality of the people that are typically in the room with you that are actually gonna help you get over those humps You know what I mean? I remember there’s a story of a guy who built a still has a pretty large construction company. I’ll keep his name Private for the time being but he he mentioned one time when he was early on in business first decade and he Was a million in the hole at one point and he went to his mentor and he’s like dude I think I’m like legitimately gonna go bankrupt

Seth Larson (29:12.642)
Yeah, exactly.

Stephen S. (29:37.714)
and the guy slapped him on the shoulder and goes, son, if you don’t think you’re gonna go bankrupt at least once every four years, you ain’t doing nothing anyways. So, and it’s like being in those rooms, that sigh of relief to have someone that’s 10X ahead of where you’re at to be able to say, yeah, you’re fine.

Seth Larson (29:45.23)
That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Dude, that’s, yeah, very true.

Seth Larson (29:56.172)
Yeah, and has been through exactly what you’re going through. Yeah, exactly. That’s awesome.

Stephen S. (30:02.324)
Well, thanks so much for being here everyone if you got as much value out of this conversation and this show as I did I know you’ll be off to the races so thanks again for being here We’ll make sure to see y’all on the next episode