Make It Extraordinary in the Trades with Jacob Lawson

00:00From offshore oil rigs to laying floors on his days off

Jacob Lawson: I call that my Home Depot card and a prayer moment, because that’s about all I had. And, just as you said, I had saved up all my money, bought my first house, I had a brand new vehicle, I had a fiance, had a kid on the way and jumped off into starting my flooring business with no steady work, no steady stream of income lined up, just knowing that you know to take a key from your show with a lot of grit, I can make a little bit of profit, and that’s what I had to do.

Narrator: Welcome to Profit and Grit with Tyler, where blue collar owners and insiders spill the real story behind their hustle, building businesses that thrive through sweat and smarts. We’ll dig into their journeys, from scaling chaos to growing the bottom line, with lessons and grit that pay off big.

Narrator: Here’s your host, the blue collar CFO, tyler Martin.

Tyler Martin: Hey, welcome back to another episode of Profit and Grit. This is Tyler Martin. I’m your host and I wanted to talk about today’s guest. He isn’t just creating extraordinary floors. He’s building an extraordinary life and business from the ground up. His name is Jacob Lawson.

Tyler Martin: He transformed from an offshore oil worker to a founder of a thriving commercial flooring enterprise, and he’s doing it all while developing a legacy brand around making life extraordinary. In this episode, we break down Jacob’s journey, from starting with a Home Depot card and a prayer, as he says it, to scaling a multi-million dollar operation, how he made the strategic pivot from residential to commercial work, and why knowing your numbers is the key difference between a business that simply survives and one that truly thrives.

Tyler Martin: If you’re trying to build something extraordinary in the trades while maintaining your sanity through inevitable growing pains, this conversation is packed with hard-earned wisdom you won’t want to miss. Hey, jacob, welcome to Profit and Grit Show. How are you doing today? I’m doing extraordinary, tyler.

Tyler Martin: I love having you here. Man. Hey, I want to start out learning a little bit about you.

Jacob Lawson: What do you do professionally, my primary portfolio is my extraordinary flooring company. My primary portfolio is my extraordinary flooring company, which we are polished, concrete and resonance coatings, epoxy coating specialists, predominantly in the commercial and industrial space, but we also have a residential division as well.

Jacob Lawson: What’s that mix, residential to commercial? Right now it’s like 90-10. Commercial, yeah commercial.

Tyler Martin: Wow, we’re going to talk about that more because you made a big decision at some point in your evolution to change that mix over to commercial. But before I get there because I always jump ahead I want to learn something about you personally Anything maybe people don’t know a lot about, or just something about you personally.

Jacob Lawson: Well, my personal brand, my personal legacy brand, is kind of the newest thing that I’ve been on the past couple of years and what has changed.

03:08The four pillars behind his make it extraordinary brand

Jacob Lawson: From a business model of make it extraordinary, it’s now my life model and it is going to be my legacy play of inspiring individuals to find what that extraordinary feeling is inside of them and that extraordinary life is for them inside of them and that extraordinary life is for them?

Tyler Martin: What created that motivation to turn this into a brand and the way you live and being part of your legacy? Is there something that triggered that?

Jacob Lawson: Yeah, I call it my four pillars of life, an extraordinary life, which would be health, wealth, relationships and purpose. And while I’ve had one out of three or two out of three and sometimes three out of four, right when I tied in that fourth one, that’s when the purpose came.

Jacob Lawson: Or I would say when I tied in the third one, which came back into health, wealth and relationships, and then that led to my purpose and that’s where everything started clicking for me and I just felt extraordinary all the way throughout and it just became like all right, well, if I can be doing okay over here and I can be doing okay over there, but when I tie it all in, it’s extraordinary, it’s a game changer, and so that’s really what evolved it and started getting to me, where I know that I want to help people feel what this feels like.

Tyler Martin: That’s really cool. Have you noticed? You said this started, I think, a few years ago. Have you noticed you’re evolving in this extraordinary world, where it’s even getting stronger in terms of your vision of what you want it to be and what it’s coming to be?

Tyler Martin: It is coming to fruition, it is coming to fruition.

Jacob Lawson: It is all coming into play. I call it God’s divine timing. I’m in no particular rush. I’ve got so many balls juggling in the air that I know, as long as I just stay focused and keep putting one foot in front of the next and keep trying to make myself better in every aspect that I can, that all of this stuff is just going to continue going and guys to find time and guys to find way, and it’s going to lead up to some extraordinary things.

Tyler Martin: I love it. I really love it. Okay, I want to start to learn your story and about you more. So you went from working offshore rigs to starting your flooring business, which is now obviously extraordinary flooring, and I want to just talk about, like, the early days.

Tyler Martin: We’re going quite a ways back. What made you decide to go from really tough job to being self-employed?

Jacob Lawson: You know, when I was working offshore and overseas it was a great living. At the time I was in my early twenties I really, you know, enjoyed it. You know I worked. I always enjoy working hard. I always enjoy making money and that that job provided both.

Jacob Lawson: You make good money out there. You got to work hard but you get a lot of. You get a good amount of play time as well. You know you may go off for, you know, three or four weeks and come back and get seven or 14 days off to do whatever you want, and back and get seven or 14 days off to do whatever you want.

Jacob Lawson: And while there definitely included some partying and play time in that time, I also love to work and I had a neighbor slash big brother, slash mentor who owned his flooring company and anytime I was in from offshore like, hey, you want to come make some money, let’s come lay some floors.

Jacob Lawson: And so I’d go lay floors with him on my off time and so that gave me that, that hobby, and eventually I started feeling, feeling a change and knowing that if, if I didn’t make a change soon enough, I was going to start getting those golden handcuffs and be stuck making more money than than I could afford to leave Right.

Jacob Lawson: So I knew, you know, my dad raised me in an oil field career as well. So that was, that was one thing that you know, although didn’t notice anything when I was a kid, that’s just. That was just life and he was, you know, when he was gone.

Jacob Lawson: He was gone. We talked every night when he was home. He was home and we celebrated when fishing, play baseball, do whatever we did Right, it was just life Right. Play baseball, do whatever we did, right, it was just life right.

07:02Home Depot card and a prayer with a kid on the way

Jacob Lawson: But as I started living that career I knew that, like all right, well, I don’t want to raise my kids from an old field, you know, platform telephone, you know. So I knew I wanted to make that change and so, before I got too stuck into the life, that’s when I jumped off and made that decision.

Tyler Martin: Yeah, and when you jumped off I think you had a kid on the way you had just bought a home and so your cash. You know you didn’t have the savings you had prior to buying the home. What was your first year like?

Tyler Martin: Because I mean, that’s a lot of stress, in addition to just starting a business by itself.

Jacob Lawson: I call that my Home Depot card and a prayer moment, because that’s about all I had. And, just as you said, I had saved up all my money, bought my first house, I had a brand new vehicle, I had a fiance, had a kid on the way and jumped off into into starting my foreign business with no steady work no, no steady stream of income lined up, just knowing that you know to take a key from your show with a lot of grit I can make a little bit of profit.

Jacob Lawson: And that’s what I had to do. So we had to jump off and just had faith and had faith in it and really never even questioned it. You know like it’s going to work itself out. You know, burn the ships back against the wall.

Jacob Lawson: Let’s go and just work hard and make your way through it.

Tyler Martin: And obviously it worked and you mentioned you had a friend I think you said mentor and friend who also had a flooring business. How much were you leaning on that individual in terms of this new business venture that you were getting into?

Jacob Lawson: I was definitely leaning on him at first. You know, the very first thing I went worked directly for him. Actually, you know, that’s the first thing I did. But very soon I knew, and he knew, that he wasn’t going to be able to pay me as much as I needed to make, right, I already had over overcompensated in bills and and, like it wasn’t even wasn’t even a question, I didn’t even want to ask him or try to force his hand into that.

Jacob Lawson: It’s like you know, hey, I know I need to make a lot more money than this. There’s no way. I’m not even asking you to pay it to me. So I got to make my jump and and I made the jump and he still gave me that opportunity to, when times were slow, come back and make some, make some side money with him.

Jacob Lawson: And, uh, you know I’ll never forget him and always pay homage to him. He’s still my big brother to this day and Jeremy LeBlanc, jl’s flooring. He’s always been my big brother. He’s always had my back and I’ll always have his for it, and so has he.

Tyler Martin: he was definitely a mentor in that phase. Has he continued to be a mentor to you, or what does that? Is he more of just a hangout type of guy with you, or what’s that relationship evolved like?

Jacob Lawson: he’s still my big brother. You know, uh, he’s still my big brother. Things will never change. You know, we still keep in touch. We of course it didn’t the same as was 25 years ago, but you know, that’ll never change. He’s always my big brother.

Jacob Lawson: He’s always got my back. I’ve always got his back. Somebody asked me one time time if you had to be stuck in a foxhole, who would you want to be with? And it’d be that guy right there. You know so. You can’t change that.

Jacob Lawson: When you have that kind of relationship, you can go away for however long and pick it right back up where it was left off. You know.

Tyler Martin: Yeah, that’s very cool, very cool off. Yeah, that’s very cool, very cool. Hey, so another big decision you made in your business. So you’re rolling along. You were mostly, I believe, in residential at the time, doing residential service, and then you decided, hey, I’m going to focus in this commercial world and you essentially turned your back on this residential opportunity, or at least the vast majority of it.

Tyler Martin: Kind of take me through that story.

10:42Why he dropped residential to specialize in polished concrete

Tyler Martin: What was the decision making? What was the stress level of doing something like that? Was this like another Home Depot and prayer type moment, or what were you thinking?

Jacob Lawson: No, not as stressful. You know, this is probably 15 years into the business and we had a good mix of probably, you know, 30% commercial, 30% residential tile, 30%, you know uh, residential decorative concrete, uh, and a little bit of industrial mix in there.

Jacob Lawson: So we had a good mix and, um, I knew that if I continued to stay focused on all of the aspects, I would kind of be a Jack of all trades and a master of none. Uh, so, you know, I looked, looked real deeply into what was, what was my niche, what was going to make extraordinary something different, what was going to make extraordinary a standout team above all of the rest of the flooring companies?

Jacob Lawson: And I knew the one answer was to be the extraordinary specialist in decorative concrete, polished concrete, epoxy coatings. I knew, right, there was my lane. And then I also knew that if I wanted to get the big projects that I wanted, I like you know we’ll do artsy stuff, but I’d rather do a million feet of gray floors, you know like, give me big jobs, right.

Jacob Lawson: And so I knew, in order for me to get those, I had to turn my focus into commercial, and that’s what I did, and I kept a handful of my, my loyal clients that I’ve been working with for years that are easy to deal with, right, and I got rid of all of the headaches and all of the one off residential clients.

Jacob Lawson: It just I knew I had to turn my focus into the commercial, to grow that division and get it to where I needed to be as a leader in our area. And so that’s what I did. I just laid off of all of the residential other than my go-to, just easy dealing clients and let the rest of it slide.

Tyler Martin: That sales process to commercial is quite a bit different. How did you learn that, or what was your sales strategy to penetrate into those accounts?

Jacob Lawson: Yeah, I mean sales processes is a bit different in commercial.

12:49Bidding public work and bankrolling 60 to 90 day pay

Jacob Lawson: You got to do a lot more numbers. You know there’s a lot of public work to bid. There’s a lot of contract work to bid. Where you’re bidding to, you know, could be bidding to, 20 different contractors on one project, right? So you’re, you know a lot of that stuff you’re dealing.

Jacob Lawson: It’s a numbers game, a it’s. You got to put out a lot of numbers of bids and a lot of bids. You’re only a number, right. So it’s definitely a different game there versus when you actually get a client relationship or you’re direct dealing directly.

Jacob Lawson: You know B2B, business to business, direct with a client, right, you know there know there’s that mix, right, it’s always better if you’ve got that direct relationship with the client. You’re going to get your money faster, you’re going to deal with it faster, you’ve typically got less competition.

Jacob Lawson: But then you know the vast majority of commercial work is public bid, you know, and you’re dealing bidding with multiple or many contractors and multiple or many contractors have multiple subcontractors that are putting in bids as well. So it’s definitely a numbers game, you know.

Jacob Lawson: Then I would call it the next biggest thing to know when you’re jumping into that that commercial realm is. It’s a money game. You’ve got to be able to bankroll your projects for you know, in most cases, you know, 60 to 90 days is our average pay, right, you know.

Jacob Lawson: So you’ve got to be at a bankroll. So the most work, as much work as you’re doing every month, you got to have that amount of money times three typically to keep the ball rolling right. So that’s definitely a stress factor in the beginning and it breaks a lot of people that try to break into that.

Jacob Lawson: You know. So it’s definitely one of the toughest things. But if you’re prepared for it and you know your numbers and you got a little bit tucked away, you can handle it.

Tyler Martin: So that brings up a question. Just you know, obviously, me being a finance guy how did you get to that point? Were you borrowing money originally to be able to make that 60 to 90 day turn? Or had you already saved up for this type of thing?

Tyler Martin: Or how did you make that change where that cash flow had such a big impact in these different types of accounts?

Jacob Lawson: yeah, I mean, you know, each time you level up, it get you repeat the process again. It doesn’t stop. You know, unfortunately, right, the thing that changes is the balance owed to you, the receivables, right. So you know when, when you’re just getting started, you know, you’re like, you’re looking at it like, oh, they owe me a hundred grand, that’s why I’m broke, you know.

Jacob Lawson: And then it’s like, oh, they owe me 300 grand, that’s why I’m broke. And then now it’s oh, they owe me a million, that’s why I’m broke, you know. So it just keeps leveling up. It is a money game in residential is I mean in commercial as well as there’s a 10% retainers that’s held typically between one and two years, right?

Jacob Lawson: So if you’re doing, you know, a couple million a year, there’s 10% of that money that’s going to be held up at all times. You know, good part is, once you get rolling, there’s always that retainers. That starts running through residually, right? But you’re still holding those balances for up to two years in many cases, right?

Jacob Lawson: So it’s a game, man, it’s a revolving door.

Tyler Martin: Yeah, and as you’re growing? I mean there’s that common saying you know, growth eats cash. As you’re growing, like you said, once it all catches up, you’re good, but if you’re just on an up cycle until you flatten man, you’re not really feeling that cash isn’t flowing yet.

Jacob Lawson: There’s a reason they call it growing pains, baby.

Tyler Martin: I love it. What would be your advice? Because a lot of times you’ll hear getting into commercial and trades is the holy grail, it’s like the way to go. What’s your thoughts around that? Because there’s people out in the audience, I guarantee you right now they’re doing mostly home stuff, whether it be HVAC, flooring, whatever, and they’re going man, I need to get into commercial.

Tyler Martin: What are your thoughts around that?

Jacob Lawson: Same thing in business is the same thing in life. You have to know what you want in life, right, you got to know what your lane is. You got to know what your access to pain is, what your threshold to pain is and what you’re really wanting to achieve.

16:41Whether commercial is worth the stress tolerance it demands

Jacob Lawson: I know people that have a two-man, that have plenty money in the bank, go vacations wherever they want, you know, have the things that they want and live a stress free life. And then I know people with teams of 50 or a hundred that have 10 times the money but 20 times the stress you know.

Jacob Lawson: So you got to figure out what your stress tolerance is. You got to figure out what your pain tolerance know. You got to figure out what your pain tolerance is and you got to figure out what your goals are that you want to achieve and that you’re willing to to fight for and strive for. So you got to figure out what your stress tolerance is.

Jacob Lawson: You know big business isn’t easy. Now, of course, the top. You get everything worked out and all the irons kinked out and all, and yeah, it’s a great life, right, but there’s plenty of pain going through it and you got it. There’s always a problem, there’s always things that need solving Right.

Jacob Lawson: So you got to choose what you want in life, right, it ain’t. You know the growth isn’t easy and and most aspects right You’re going to have growing pains, you’re going to break things that need to be fixed. So if you don’t want to deal with stuff like that, you know, stay in your comfort zone where you’re comfortable at Right.

Jacob Lawson: Or, you know, if you ain’t comfortable there and you got to grow.

Tyler Martin: Yeah, that’s good stuff, would you say, though I mean Obviously there’s more wrinkles to it from a cash flow standpoint, probably needing more staff. One thing that you brought up that really kind of made me appreciate your own thought process is you said hey, man, I don’t need the pretty work, I’m happy doing a whole bunch of gray floors because that’s what you thrive off of getting the big project done and making the money off it.

Tyler Martin: People think commercial. I guess that’s another thing they have to think about is the aesthetics of it may not be as a big deal, or it may not be. If that’s something that you know makes them excited and proud of their work, going into commercial may not be feeding their soul, so to speak.

Tyler Martin: So it’s things like that that I guess someone has to consider, right?

Jacob Lawson: Without a doubt. You know, I’ve got great associates, friends of mine, that are just way more artistic than me, and they’re that’s, that’s their bread and butter, and what they do is art, and and they’re artists, and I don’t know if anybody knows the difference between artists and businessmen.

Tyler Martin: But there’s typically some differences.

Jacob Lawson: There’s a lot of differences, right, and the way that they do business is different than somebody that does a ton of big business. But they’re an artist, right, and so if I get that big artistic project, I hire the artist to come help me.

Jacob Lawson: But, uh, I like doing big business. You know, that’s my, that’s what I thrive off of. I get excited off a big business, right, and um, you know, and I like a pretty floor, just as anybody else. And uh, but yeah, there is a big difference.

Jacob Lawson: You know, there are very big artistic commercial projects, right, and if it’s super artistic, I will bring in a specialist to come help me, right, it’s not how, but it’s who. You know who can help you, right, but you know there is a difference between pickiness levels and things of that nature from.

Jacob Lawson: You know, if you deal, if you do a 300, 400, 1000 foot job for a homeowner, they’re going to notice the speck on the floor. You know the speck, the one spot you know that’s never in a closet, it’s always in front of the fireplace or somewhere you know, never, never in the best spot to have the defect, but it’s always going to be somewhere Right.

Jacob Lawson: So, and in a commercial, you have a little bit less magnifying glass on every single inch.

20:00Trusting your gut on problem clients before you bid

Jacob Lawson: You know they’re still expecting a good product and they’re still expecting it to be, you know, especially in my case, extraordinary right. So you know. But there is less of a magnifying glass, there’s less of a pickiness, you know, than a lot of your residential type.

Tyler Martin: Work for sure Brings back memories my mom growing up as a kid we’d have work done around the house. I’ll never forget this one. She had the sink, the counter sinks done and there was a chip underneath the sink Like you couldn’t even see it it was.

Tyler Martin: It comes out about two inches and it was underneath and I never forget the contractor’s look on his face Like that bothers you. And she was hardcore man she was. I felt bad for whoever ended up working with with her because she was just.

Jacob Lawson: It was impossible to please her basically I bet you any amount of money that your mom gave off that inkling before he started the job. Oh yeah, oh yeah. You always know your instincts will tell you. So anybody out there, that is just getting started.

Jacob Lawson: I haven’t got your feet all the way wet. Your instincts are always going to tell you the problem clients. Now, if you’re like me, you’re glutton for punishment. You think so. I’m so good that I can please anybody, because we’re going to do the best and we’re going to stand behind our work and even if we have a defect, we’re going to fix it.

Jacob Lawson: But trust your instincts. Your instincts will never fail you. If your gut is telling you this client is going to give me a problem, that client is going to give you a problem. So if you’re smart, walk away, you know. Or if you like money, you’re going to be glutton for punishment and you’re going to just be prepared to deal with it.

Jacob Lawson: But my instincts have never been wrong. I always smell it when I’m going to have a problem and it’s always going to happen.

Tyler Martin: Yeah, that’s wise. And I wouldn’t even say walk, I’d say run. I mean, there’s just some business. I don’t care what industry you’re in when you get those vibes. It’s hard because sometimes if you’re starting out you want to just take anything that’s come to you, but usually the ones that suck you dry, they just take years off your life, money out of your account.

Tyler Martin: And it’s so much better when you just avoid those.

Jacob Lawson: If you have that spider sense, I’m with you. I say run, trust them. They’ve never failed me. Unfortunately, I rarely listen. They never failed me.

Tyler Martin: That’s a different story. Okay, another question that I wanted to go into you’ve gone from one helper to I believe you have a staff of 19, now a team of 19. I want to talk about your own leadership evolution, like where did that?

Tyler Martin: How have you evolved as a leader? And when you’re talking to 19 people, you’re hiring people.

22:35Growing to 23 people and leading by example after COVID

Tyler Martin: How do you work around retention? How do you know? How have you worked around hiring the right people? I know that’s a lot of questions, so I’ll refresh you as you get into this, but give me your thoughts around these. Yeah, I mean we’re constantly growing.

Jacob Lawson: I think we’re probably at 23 right now. We’re in a growth mode again. We’re running wide open and hiring is never easy. This blue collar work that we’re doing is. It’s not a question that we have less people in the trades than we had before.

Jacob Lawson: So you know, it takes quite a few individuals to find some really good talent, you know. But they’re out there, they need to be trained and you just need to. You know, keep working at it, keep finding. And you know we kind of we do like a three week kind of onboarding type deal where we’re doing some training and checking out and feeling out and we tell people, hey, you know, like within three weeks we’re typically going to know and it’s usually a lot faster than that if you’re right for us and if we’re right for you.

Jacob Lawson: Right, so you know, growing as a leader, I really had to make some changes and it really happened around COVID. I got a lot about that in my book. I was juggling many businesses at the time. I was building a restaurant. I was building a lot of houses, I was selling spec houses.

Jacob Lawson: I was doing extraordinary flooring at the same time. At that time I had let extraordinary flooring go on autop time and at that time I had kind of let extraordinary flooring kind of go on autopilot for a while. And I’ve, I’ve got my right hand and one of my best friends, uh, shannon has been with me for about for well over 10, 12 years now and you know it’ll eventually be partnering the business and, um, you know, so he was, you know, keeping things afloat, but we weren’t really growing.

Jacob Lawson: And I started looking and I was like, ok, well, you know we’re doing business, but there’s no, there’s no morale, there’s no core, we’re not growing into anything. And I had to look into myself and I was like, well, you’re not really being a leader.

Jacob Lawson: You’re lining up some work, but you’re not being a leader to anybody and you’re kind of leaning on your manager to lead and which you know. In turn, he has grown so much in those positions from day one to where he is now.

Jacob Lawson: He is a great leader and I’m so blessed to have him as part of the team and to be as bought into the businesses as myself. There’s nobody else as bought in as he is and we’ll reap the rewards together as we grow this thing.

Jacob Lawson: But I knew I had to grow as a leader in order to take this business to something special, to something extraordinary, to take it to those next levels. And so that’s when I started investing in myself big time and books and courses and masterminds and business trips, and just really trying to divulge in all things personal improvement.

Tyler Martin: In terms of being a leader. Is there anything that stands out that you’ve changed or improved on? Is it how you fire people? How you help people improve? Is there anything that stands out?

Jacob Lawson: The biggest thing that stands out to me is leading by example, setting an example that people want to follow, or setting an example that somebody would be proud to follow, or setting an example of somebody that you know is somebody that can, that can look up to, somebody that works hard, somebody that treats people fair, treats people nice, takes care of himself, takes care of his family, takes care of his team, and just just set that example and be somebody like, if you’re not that example, who wants to really work for you, right?

Jacob Lawson: Who wants to help? Yeah, they want a paycheck, but do they want anything more? Do they want to just show up and get paid or do they want, you know, in their body and their being and their soul, like you know, want to do something more than just ordinary effort, right?

Jacob Lawson: So you know, if you’re not all of those characteristics, then you know who’s going to be motivated to do anything more than bare minimum that they need to do.

Tyler Martin: Yeah, I remember many years ago I had a client and he was about a $15 million a year company. He wholesaled various components and him and his wife were just the complete biggest jerks you’ve ever met. They treated their staff like absolute dog crap.

Tyler Martin: They paid them really well but they just treated them really bad. And I’ll never forget he always had people leaving and starting their own business and leaving without notice and just doing all these things. That really reflected on the way he treated them and I learned that really early in my career.

Tyler Martin: Like you know, if you treat people really bad, it comes back to haunt you and I don’t care how much you pay them. You can pay people a lot of money, but if you don’t treat them well, it’s going to bite you.

Jacob Lawson: Yeah, I mean, I just heard something recently If you’ve been in business 10 or 20 years, but the tenure of most of your employees is one to three years, then you’re doing something wrong. And we’ve still got a huge amount of core team that have been with us 15, 20 years.

Jacob Lawson: Some of the guys have been with me from the beginning, right, and they’re still here. So when I heard that, I was like all right, jake, you know you are, you’re definitely doing something right. You know we’ve got. We’ve got them throughout the spectrum.

Jacob Lawson: You know some some 20 year vets, some 15, some 10, you know, and some that keep growing. These days you get a lot of the revolving door ones. I find that if they last six months they’ll stay. If they don’t make it six months, then it’s a temporary gig for them.

Tyler Martin: Yeah, I imagine having that stability though of staff that’s been around, that probably, especially with your leadership, that probably can help as new people come in. They have a solid foundation they’re coming into rather than, you know, just kind of a chaotic situation, which is a lot of times the way businesses are when they have high turnover.

Tyler Martin: So I’m sure that helps too.

Jacob Lawson: Without a doubt. I mean, there’s no other way to do it. You know, especially at scale. You know, like, if you don’t have people to show the new guys the way, like, how are they going to learn? You know, like, if you don’t have people to show the new guys the way, like, how are they going to learn?

Jacob Lawson: You know, it’s just, you know and you can go through whatever training you want in the, in the warehouse or pre watching this, or, you know, studying that. But it’s funny now that my uncle Steve, one time, the first time I went snow skiing I was, I was on the bunny slopes and I thought I was doing something.

Jacob Lawson: And then, uh, and I was doing a little ski class and I skied down to him and I thought I was, I thought I had it. He’s like, it’s like you finished your little school. I said yeah. I said, all right, now it’s time to go to real school, let’s go.

Jacob Lawson: He took me up to the top of that mountain and there’s no training, that’s gonna, that’s gonna get that. And you know, in business, how many times I’ve taken a training to learn a new product right in the, in the manufacturer’s warehouse, and oh, look how easy it is.

Jacob Lawson: It just rolls like this and then now you’re certified, you’re a certified installer. Don’t do that thing in the field and tell me it lays down the right way, the same way it never does. You know that’s that in the field. And tell me it lays down the right way, the same way it never does.

Jacob Lawson: You know that’s, that’s the real deal. You know it’s like you can go to school all you want, but until you get your hands dirty in the real field, you won’t. You won’t know what it really means, right? So it’s that in the field, training that, that really makes people seasoned.

Tyler Martin: Yeah, that’s good stuff. Hey, your book make it extraordinary has season. Yeah, that’s good stuff.

30:01Pay yourself first and price off your own cost of living

Tyler Martin: Hey, your book Make it Extraordinary has 27 life lessons in it. If you had to pick one for the listenership out there businesses, which one stands out in terms of business success? If you could just pick one and I know there’s a lot that are important in there if not all 27, but just one that stands out.

Jacob Lawson: Yeah, so it’s my 27 life-changing lessons, right? So it’s all the lessons that actually made a change in my life that I put them down right. Obviously, all of us have more than 27 lessons we’ve learned, but it’s the ones that changed my life.

Jacob Lawson: And since this is a business podcast, I’m going to say that the number one lesson is in the chapter. It’s called Pay Yourself First. The book, and the mentor that taught me that is profit first, mike mccallowitz, and the person who taught me that way, before I even knew how to read, was my grandpa, gramp and his.

Jacob Lawson: The reason why it’s titled pay yourself first is because that’s what he always told me and, uh, for the longest time I couldn’t understand him, especially growing a business, because when you’re growing your business, you get get paid last, and that is for sure.

Jacob Lawson: You are paying yourself last. You’re paying yourself with whatever’s left over. Guys got to get paid, bills got to get paid, vendors got to get paid right. But if you know your numbers and from the jump, you know what it costs you to live, you know what it costs you to operate, and not just wise, but also personal wise you got to know those real numbers.

Jacob Lawson: If you know what those really are, then you can price your jobs properly. So many people make the mistake of trying to price their jobs on the going rate or their competitors price. Well, your competitor might be living off a top ramen in an apartment and you might have a brand new f-450, a house and three kids.

Jacob Lawson: You can’t price the same way he does, you know, business-wise or personal wise, because it costs you more to live. So you’re going to sit there and be doing jobs negatively. So you need to know your cost of living, you need to know your cost of business and then you need to know the profit margin that you need to be looking to make.

Jacob Lawson: And if you don’t get some jobs just because you didn’t try to price into you know your competitors pricing, then guess what? You didn’t lose any money on that job, right. But if you price the other ones correctly now, you’ve made probably twice the profit off of that one job, right?

Jacob Lawson: So, coming up, I made many lessons on what I call my picture jobs, because they were. They were extraordinary jobs that I really wanted to do and, and you know I thought they were, you know they were big, and so I priced them very aggressively to make sure I won them and at the end of the day, after you fought through getting that beautiful, extraordinary job done, the only thing you had to show for it was a picture Right?

Jacob Lawson: So make sure you’re pricing your projects right. Make sure you know your numbers, your personal numbers, your business numbers. That’s how you know how to price that job. You know we get some. I’ve had some guys break off on their own. They ask me you know, how do I price this, how do I price that?

Jacob Lawson: I said you can’t price like I price. So you got to price how you need to price. You know you need to know what you need to live off of. If you could only do two jobs a week, that means you can only do eight jobs a month.

Jacob Lawson: How much money do you need to pay for those materials? How much money do you need to pay for all your bills? How’s the profit you need to make on those jobs right? So knowing your numbers is the most crucial thing and obviously a finance guy you’re speaking to the choir.

Tyler Martin: You know you’re not kidding either. I didn’t. Schweizer, he was in my third episode of Profiting Grant and he started a restoration company and when he started him and his team literally lived off cup of noodles. They literally I don’t remember how long, but when they started they would go and buy for the whole month cup of noodles and that’s all they’d eat.

Tyler Martin: And so when you say it really resonated with me the way you said it is you kind of got to match your pricing around your lifestyle, because so many times I hear people say, well, I can’t charge more because my competitor is only charging this or only charging that.

Tyler Martin: But if you think about your lifestyle and then you think about Ida needing his cup of noodles, they’re just different worlds. You got to figure something out then.

Jacob Lawson: And everybody’s different. Every business is different. And same thing as we grow, our overhead grows. So I don’t have the same numbers as somebody with with a pickup truck and a trailer, right, and I got a big business, I got a lot of overhead right.

Jacob Lawson: So I can’t price it like that. And if that guy gets the job, he gets the job. What good that? You know the old wise men will tell you hey, I could be broke at home. You know, I don’t need to go to work to not make money.

Jacob Lawson: If I’m going to work I’m going to make some money. Make sure you’re making the work. If you’re too aggressively, you’ll get too much work. You get too much work. Now you’re hiring that much more people. Now you got that much more headache.

Jacob Lawson: And then you’re sitting here and you’re paying everybody and you wonder, like there’s nothing left. Where’s the money at? Versus, you know you price it properly. Maybe you get less work, but you’re making more profit on every job and now there’s a lot of money left Right.

Jacob Lawson: So there’s. You know that was a huge lesson for me. I was always good at getting to work and I always, you know I’d price aggressively and to make profit and obviously, but you know, not enough at the end of the day is some of these days.

Jacob Lawson: You know, what’s left at the end of the day is really what matters, right? Not not. The gross revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, right, so you?

Tyler Martin: want to be cash flows. Gross revenue is vanity. Profit is sanity right and cash flow is king.

Jacob Lawson: Cash flow is king.

Tyler Martin: You know, there’s nothing worse that will make a business owner feel bitter when they’re paying their staff, they’re paying their bills but they’re not getting paid. And sadly, I’ve been through that so many times where clients will come to me and they’re not able to pay themselves at the point when we first start out, and they’re not able to pay themselves at the point, you know, when we first start out and they’re just bitter, they’re frustrated.

Tyler Martin: You’re working hard, you’re worrying about everything and then you can’t pay yourself.

Jacob Lawson: Yeah, no, I mean I can deal with a lot of stress.

35:58Taking the weight of stress off and the $20 million goal

Jacob Lawson: The number one stress is cashflow. When you don’t have the cashflow, that is the worst stress there is. I can deal with problems, you can deal with fires. You can deal with all kinds of stuff.

Tyler Martin: Throw that cash flow one in there. That’s the one that hurts, that’s the one that burns. I love it. I love the profit first method too. I’ll be sure to put a link in there, and that’s just a wonderful program. Hey, two things before I wrap up here doing some research about your industry, I read some statistics that said your industry will probably grow to over $30 billion by 2032.

Tyler Martin: So it’s a growing industry.

Jacob Lawson: What do you kind of see in your future in terms of where you’re taking the company and what your next steps are for the next, say, five, 10 years out? You know we definitely got a goal to get it to $20 million within the next five to 10 years.

Jacob Lawson: There’s, you know, from there I’m going to make, I’m going to judge the temperature and see if you know it’s time to sell at that time and go on to new ventures or continue doing the business that I love and that I started Right.

Jacob Lawson: So there’s, you know I’m not setting it into concrete. I’m going to be prepared for either one. And we’re lined up and pivoting for growth and we’re primed for it and we’re in the right position for it and everything seems to be going in the right momentum for us.

Jacob Lawson: So I’m gonna keep keep riding this wave and and I’ll be prepared either way. But, uh, we definitely definitely got some 20 million dollar a year goals and targets on on the horizon what a cool goal.

Tyler Martin: That’s great one, hey. And to wrap up, I always like to end with a couple tips, two or three tips, if you have them, for entrepreneurs, something that you’ve faced and conquered in your own entrepreneurial journey. Is there anything that comes to mind as far as something that we can apply in the audience to what you’ve learned from?

Jacob Lawson: I’ll say my two biggest ones. My two biggest ones would be to just quickly recap what we talked about knowing your profit margins, making sure you’re making it right. There’s no sense in doing $20 million in business if it costs you $19,500. So make sure you’re making the right money.

Jacob Lawson: The second one and I call this my superpower when you are an entrepreneur and you are growing, you are going to go through stress. There’s no doubt. Whether it’s money stress, whether it’s people stress, whether it’s bills, whether it’s problems, whatever that stress is, you’re going to go through it.

Jacob Lawson: And I tell people you’re always going to still have that stress up here. It’s very hard to turn it off, but the difference in still having it up here and wearing it like a wet, heavy blanket on your body is all the difference in the world.

Jacob Lawson: So I used, when I first started my business and I had that stress, I would wear it and it would feel like armor, heavy, wet blanket just smothering me and you would wear it and it would physically drain you. And I learned how to just kind of take that weight of the stress off.

Jacob Lawson: It’s still up here but you take the weight of the stress off. And one model that I’ve always had when it’s time to go to sleep. Turn your damn brain off, go to sleep. You cannot do anything stressing. You’re not going to fix anything stressing.

Jacob Lawson: You just need to go to sleep. Wake up, hit the ground running and do the best that you can do, and that’s all that you can do. So I’ve seen so many people just let the stress just completely eat them up In the business game.

Jacob Lawson: There’s always going to be stress. If you can learn how to take the weight of the stress off and just know that I’m going to do everything humanly possible that I can today, tomorrow and the next day to improve these situations, you’ll be that much further.

Jacob Lawson: So I call that my superpower of being able to take the weight of the stress off, even though it’s still up here, and I try to teach that to young entrepreneurs. And if you can learn that, that’s a game changer, because you’re going to go through stress tests in business, you know, and so that that one right there is is a game changer.

Jacob Lawson: If you can learn how to hit that switch, that’s a good one.

Tyler Martin: Yeah, no doubt You’re going to definitely get it with stress and if you know how to manage it, that is a game changer. I love that one. Okay, so your website, or where I’m going to have people go, I’m going to put links.

Tyler Martin: There’ll be links for your LinkedIn, your Instagram, your Facebook, your personal branding page and then your business page. I’ll put those all in the show notes at profitinggritcom. Your main one, I think, that you want people to go to, is Instagram, and that’s the handle is make it, underscore it extraordinary.

Tyler Martin: So make underscore it extraordinary Anywhere else you want people to go, or is that the best spot?

Jacob Lawson: That’s the main one. I’ll put out a daily motivational video every morning. You know it’s got business advice, it’s got life advice and it’s all about finding out what that extraordinary feeling is to you. Finding out what that extraordinary life is to you, defining it and then chasing after it, like your life depends on it.

Jacob Lawson: You have so many qualities in your body and your ability and when you are hitting all of those to the fullest of your potential, it’s an extraordinary feeling and very hard to wipe the smile off your face. When you’re doing it, Love it.

Tyler Martin: Man, good stuff. Not only did you share a lot of wisdom about building and growing a business, I love your motivation in terms of just making it extraordinary. I mean, that is such a cool. It’s a cool moniker, but it’s also a cool way to live life.

Jacob Lawson: It’s my legacy play and I want to make as many people as I can feel this feeling and build that for their life and whatever that is to them. You can have it.

Tyler Martin: You just got to work for it. Thanks, jacob. Hey, thanks for being on the show. Hope to talk with you again in the future. Yeah, man, I appreciate it. This was fun, thank you. I really love this conversation with Jacob and here’s my big takeaway Growth is about more than just revenue.

Tyler Martin: It’s about making deliberate choices that align with your vision and your lifestyle. Whether you’re just starting out or you’re scaling to the next level, jacob’s journey demonstrates that success comes from knowing your numbers, pricing for profit and learning to carry the stress of entrepreneurship without being crushed by it.

Tyler Martin: Carry the stress of entrepreneurship without being crushed by it. Now, if you’re listening to this and feeling the pressure, maybe cash flow is tight, your pricing isn’t leaving enough margin or you’re wearing that wet, heavy blanket of stress that Jacob described. That’s where I come in.

Tyler Martin: Visit ProfitandGritcom to connect with me. We’ll dig into your numbers, build a plan to make your business not just bigger, but better and more profitable. Thanks so much for listening to Profiting Grit, the show where blue collar wisdom meets strategic financial thinking. Be sure to follow and share with someone who’s working to make their business extraordinary.

Tyler Martin: Thanks a lot.

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Tyler Martin works with owners on the numbers behind these stories: home services accountant and fractional CFO for home service contractors.