Empire State of Mind
Empire State of Mind
Building a Business with Purpose: Insights and Strategies with Mark Hummel
Do you ever feel like you're swimming in data, yet still struggling to find clarity in your business decisions? That's what we're tackling today, as we welcome back our esteemed guest, Mark Hummel, CEO of Inspection Empire Builder. We explore the intriguing concept of starting a business based on purpose rather than need, and how to avoid the common pitfalls that come along with it.
Building a business involves decisions, strategies, and execution. But it’s not just about what you do, it’s also about why you do it. Mark shares powerful insights on how to avoid the messy trial and error process and the limitations posed by the technician mindset. We also discuss the seismic shift happening in the industry, with mergers and acquisitions becoming the norm, and how that influences our approach to building a business.
Productivity, or lack thereof, is a common pain point for any entrepreneur. We dive into the impact of task-switching and decision fatigue on your energy levels and output. Mark shares practical tips on how to maximize your productivity by eliminating task-switching and dedicating consistent time each week to future-facing activities. Whether you are a one-man operation or a growing business, this conversation gives you the tools to approach your work with clarity and purpose. Listen in and get ready to take your business to the next level.
Contact IEB -
- web: www.iebcoaching.com
- email: support@iebcoaching
- social: @iebcoaching
Contact Matt -
- email: matt@dciabq.com
- IG: @the.matthew.williams
Today, on the Empire State of Mind, we have Mark Hummel and we're talking about how to build on purpose.
Intro:We believe the purpose of owning a business is funding your perfect life. Welcome to the next generation of growth and opportunity in the inspection industry. This is the Empire State of Mind. Empire State of Mind Building build companies with faster growth, higher profits and more time freedom. Finally, a podcast for the home inspection industry and beyond. This is the Empire State of Mind and this is your host, Matt Williams.
Matt Williams:Welcome to the show. Today is one of our repeat episodes. We love doing this. We have our CEO from Inspection Empire Builder, Mr Mark Hummel. This is called Hanging with Hummel. Mark, how are you doing today?
Mark Hummel:Matt, I'm doing so good, man. I love Mondays. We're recording this on a Monday, and so I'm just kind of riding the wave of energy into the week, like I love to do. I'm super excited to hang out with you too, man.
Matt Williams:Yeah, absolutely. I love that we get to do this. We connect every so often, record an episode, and every time it's super insightful. I love your perspective on business and building and coaching and teams and the inspection industry. I think so many times, even what we talk about on the Hanging with Hummel, it translates, it transfers beyond, it's bigger than just the inspection business. It's principles that can apply to really any entrepreneur in any business that's out there Today. I know we're going to be talking about building a company on purpose. I know that for myself. I started my company with the end in mind and kind of worked backwards. What do you mean when you were talking about that earlier building on purpose.
Mark Hummel:It's really a response to what we see so often in the coaching in IEB and really just small business in general, which is that people typically start to build a business based on a need instead of a desire. I need to generate revenue. I need to be my own person, I need to do these things for myself. It doesn't always give people the platform to start out with purpose or start out with clarity with what they're actually building. A lot of times people end up finding that along the way through a messy process of trial and error and wondering if you're the right person to build a business, and feeling like a failure, fraud syndrome and all the things that come at us during our entrepreneur journey. That's it, man. It's really about the start. If you've already started your business, chances are you know exactly what I'm talking about. You have to go back and figure out the purpose.
Matt Williams:Yeah, when I started mine I was like, well, I'm looking for something and I was really interested in this. I just thought, well, I'll just, you know, if I can inspect like three or four houses a week, I'll be comfortable nice little pace. And then it started growing. Then pretty soon I realized that, as my technician mindset had me in a place of the guy that does everything but shifting from like a one-man operation, which is, honestly, there's nothing wrong with that if that's what your goal is Right. But when I started shifting from there, I know so many other business owners had to shift there.
Matt Williams:I don't care if you're an HVAC or plumbing or if you're an electrician or any kind of a service type business. There's a moment where you started it because I like doing this, like I like actually installing the HVAC and tuning it, or I like running the wires and installing the circuit breakers. Then it turns into a place where you have to now be a business owner and that change and, like you're right, I think you can get so like just swept up in the growth of everything that you're not building anything on purpose, and then you have to undo stuff and rebuild stuff and it gets kind of messy.
Mark Hummel:Yeah, yeah. So true, man, at this point. You know we've got so many hours of coaching and consulting and different things under our belt in this industry, with home inspectors and their teams, and one thing that we know is the number one problem in our industry is that people start out by growing their company with being the best technician in mind, and for those listening like you may resonate with this as soon as I say it Like do business with me because I'm the best inspector in my market, I write the best reports, I do the most thorough inspections, I'm not a deal killer All the different things that we say.
Matt Williams:My thermal camera has 800 more lines of resolution than your thermal camera.
Mark Hummel:That's right yeah exactly.
Matt Williams:It's like what happens.
Mark Hummel:We put all our value on the technician side of what we do and then that becomes the reason that most inspection companies will never go beyond one to four inspectors. Because when you are the value of your company, people don't see any value in you bringing in a team. People don't see any value in other people doing the work for you, because you promised to them that you were the value right. That technician mindset can handicap you if you want to turn into a business owner.
Matt Williams:Correct. It is very common and I think I want to put a little caveat in there that I know that I've heard you myself and others inside of IABC say this is that success is is your business doing for you what you wanted to do for you? So I think that there are guys out there who are a one man operation or maybe a two or three inspector operation that are 100% happy exactly where they're at and they don't necessarily want to push beyond that. I know that I have a friend that he is in the field and he owns the company and he has two more inspectors out in the field also and he loves it and that's exactly where he wants to be, no bigger, no smaller.
Matt Williams:And so for a guy like him it's like, hey, listen, there's no judgment, we're not putting anybody down, we're not saying that, oh, that's, you're not a, you know you're not a good enough or you're settling, or there's none of that. It's like, hey, is your business doing for you which you want to do for you? But there is a point as your business grows where you have to make some decisions of like, oh, am I going to grow beyond this? And if you are, if you want to. I think that's where this conversation really speaks to the guys who are like you know. They've maybe been technicians and trying to make that change, or they're even pushing beyond that and how do you build that business in that way? Whether, whether you're at, you know one or two guys or 10 or 20 people, this conversation is something that starts to happen once you start having some success in your field.
Mark Hummel:Absolutely man. Good reminder too, by the way like absolutely no judgment for what people's vision is, and we talked to a lot of guys too. In fact, there's a lot of people in IEB, in our builder level membership, who they're perfectly happy to be a single man shop or just have a few guys and that's perfect. Like it's dependent on what your vision is for your future. Yes, and who cares? Whether it's you know to do 100 inspections a year or 100,000 inspections a year, it doesn't matter.
Mark Hummel:The thing that matters is that you're clear on what you're doing and that you're building it on purpose. Yeah, because even even those single man shops and we talked to a lot of them, like you know but even those single man shops, it get into that clarity messy state where they start to question is this what I want to do? I want to bring somebody in every once in a while. We find that they'll hire somebody and play around with it, and then they kind of scale back and then, before you know it, they become that guy who says something like, hey, I'm perfectly happy just doing a few inspections a week, and if enough time goes by, you know, the process repeats itself and then we're back to clarity. So what I always tell people at that stage is if you're happy being a single man, shop, love it. Just be clear about that. What?
Intro:does that mean?
Mark Hummel:And how does that affect your life, like the rest of your life outside of business? That's where people get into into the weeds, I think, and they just don't spend enough time kind of ironing that out.
Matt Williams:So somebody's trying to figure that out, because I think there are stages you kind of alluded to it. I think as a business owner, there are stages where you have great clarity on what you're doing, and then there's stages where things seem foggy or unclear. Right, Something changes in the business or the industry, or something in your business, or maybe not even in yours, but it happened in the real estate market, or there's. There's a constant state of flux that you have to adapt to as a business owner. So I think there's times well, I don't think I'm alone, I should say and that I have moments of clarity and I have moments where I'm not clear. So, for a guy who's maybe struggling with clarity right now, what kind of goals, like you say you know you've talked about, like you set goals or you you find clarity. How do you find that? Do you have any tips for that? Like, what are some things that you do to find clarity, maybe in your life, or how you coach other people to find it?
Mark Hummel:Yes, I've got. I'm struggling here because I've got two analogies that I use all the time. I got to pick one, so let's, let's go with this one. It's a shorter one, so it's all about thought.
Mark Hummel:Okay, so when we are consuming all kinds of information and that could be Books, podcasts, people's advice, all these different things, it also could be information about how your market is behaving, right, all these data points going into our minds, the more we have, the less clear we feel sometimes. And so where people get themselves in trouble is they try to process all of that thought in their mind, as it's all jumbled up and Mixed thoughts and and it's it's very messy. So here's the analogy as we're thinking about our business and all the other variables in life, it's like putting your dirty clothes into the washer. Okay, when we put our dirty clothes into the washer, which represents our mind, to close our thoughts, when we put the clothes into the washer, the idea is that we're going to clean them, they're gonna take them out, we're gonna put them in the dryer and then we're gonna dry them, okay, so if you're staying with me, that's our thoughts going into our mind, getting all soapy and wet and Swished around and mixed up and now they're all kind of intertwined and it's difficult to tell what's what, and they're not really useful At this point, unless you just love wearing wet clothes or another way.
Mark Hummel:Another way of putting it is you know, you've just loved the messiness of incomplete thought. Okay, so most people kind of leave their clothes in the dryer. How often do we do that in real life, by the way? We leave our clothes in the dryer too long and then they come out their wrinkly. We gotta maybe hit the dryer thing again and it's been like freshen it up a little.
Matt Williams:Yeah, yeah, a week or two yeah, that's, but maybe okay, maybe I'm just saying so.
Mark Hummel:So we do that with our thoughts too, is we leave them in our mind and they, they get. This might sound silly, but they get wrinkly right that like they, yeah.
Mark Hummel:The grade and they lose their power, uh-huh. And then at some point we try to pull one out and turn it into something useful and it's not quite as powerful or it's not quite as clear, hmm. So the whole concept here is that when you take your clothes out of the dryer, you fold them right away and you organize them and you put them in the place that they should go Right. And we need to do that with our thoughts too. Well, that's really good, especially when we're seeking clarity about business, about life, about relationships. We need to get our thoughts out of our head. We need to put them where they need to go and process them Right. A lot of times, that could be verbally processing, that could be writing things down in a journal. There's all kinds of tactics for it. But, man, when you're seeking clarity, the name of the game is get your thoughts out of your head and make them more useful.
Matt Williams:Yeah, that is so good. I use a journal and to do that with I don't know there's probably other methods to do that. I actually have one of those little hardback. It's actually right now I'm using a red IEB journal. Nice yeah, but that's actually part of my process and I do that, you know, multiple times a week where I'll sit down and and get complete clarity.
Matt Williams:I set my phone on do not disturb, I find a way to isolate myself and then I start just writing down like the thoughts that are in my head and it helps Get it out and then later on I can go back and be like, well, that was a dumb idea or that was a good idea, because sometimes there's if you're an entrepreneur and an innovator and someone who's taking steps forward and you're a bit of a visionary in your business I'm so guilty of this that every like idea that I come up with I think is pretty good, because apparently I'm a narcissist and I think every idea come up with is great or something you know, but this but I found that like, like you said, writing it out, getting it out like sometimes I'll go back later and be like that's a really dumb idea.
Matt Williams:I don't think that was great, but it helps me filter that out and get clear clarity as well. I that's something I do on a regular basis. That's really cool. I like that nice. So writing it down what else do you have? Do you use anything else to help get it out?
Mark Hummel:Yeah, absolutely, man. This is a phrase I love using in coaching. All the answers to your questions are on the other side of action. All of them right. We can't usually solve problems by sitting around and just hoping that they become solved. We've got to take a step and the truth is is we might not feel all that good or feel all that clear about the step we need to take, but when we do it, that next step will be more clear and the next one will be more clear. If we just keep doing this, eventually we'll start to understand what needs to happen and when we need to go and we'll start to eliminate noise and eliminate distractions. But it won't happen if we're just sitting still.
Matt Williams:Yeah, yeah, that's so true. And so it starts to what they kind of shift our, our mentality a little bit right, like it getting our goals out, and and I think that's the name of the game, and within the mastermind group, within IEB, is that I think Our mentality gets challenged at times and we have to like really kind of work on it. It doesn't passively happen. Yeah, so we're kind of mind shift.
Mark Hummel:Yeah, go ahead. It's a shame that they don't teach this kind of stuff in school and we're kids, right, like how to set meaningful goals, process your thoughts and Understand why you're thinking what you're thinking, why you're feeling what you're feeling, because you know the the whole near Arrology of this is that your thoughts and your emotions or feelings lead to your actions. They do, yeah, and if you're thinking or feeling unclear what's gonna happen, you're gonna have messy action that may not be all that meaningful, right? We see this, yeah, growth all the time. In business. People don't quite understand their market opportunities, they don't quite know how to nail their whole sales cycle for converting and getting new business, and so they don't know to think, they don't know how to feel about it, so their actions reflect that. They just kind of throw stuff at the wall, shotgun, blast techniques and and they get messy results. I Right, your thoughts, yeah, your feelings lead to actions. And when we're talking clarity, as we are now, you can always kind of trace it back to the root, right?
Mark Hummel:Mm-hmm so you brought up journaling and and how you journal, rather, and I Personally think that's one of the best methods for getting clear on something and getting your thoughts out of your head, because you can't write every single thought that you have. You write what comes to mind while your pen is moving, and what that does is it helps you eliminate a lot of the distracting thought, because you're only writing down so much and and that's half the battle get rid of the noise, get rid of the distractions, in other words, kind of quiet your mind and only write out the thoughts that make sense or you know they don't have to make sense all the time, but the thoughts that are meaningful to you, mm-hmm.
Matt Williams:Years ago I started this journaling. I heard this journaling technique and I and I don't do it every time, but there are times where I do and it was the the. The technique was to basically try to shut off your mind as much as possible and don't think about what you're writing, just like let it dump, you know and, and just start writing and don't like try not to analyze it or filter it. I don't do it every time, but there's times where I do that, where I'm like, really I think I use that technique more when I'm really feeling stuck and and I'll just be turn off the filter, let the words just come out and don't don't analyze, because I would over analyze before I wrote it down. I would try to filter it, like oh, this is, I should phrase it this way, should phrase it that way, and just like shut that off and just Right. And sometimes I've had some great revelation, great clarity, coming from those moments as well.
Mark Hummel:Yeah, that's great man. Yeah, and if anybody listening needs a technique to start doing this, it can be overwhelming, like. A lot of times, what I hear is yeah, journaling is not really my thing, especially for our technician-minded guy friends in the industry. Right, like, we just want to work with our tools and our hands and our mind and that's it. We don't want to use a. I've heard people jokingly, you know, respond to me and say I'm not gonna write a diary mark. What are you talking about? Like?
Matt Williams:do you put the ribbons? A little walk on it. Yeah, yeah, you're over here, diary.
Mark Hummel:Write it on a napkin and throw it away every day, if you want to, it doesn't matter. It's just a matter of writing.
Matt Williams:It is, it's, yeah, it's the act of it throw in the trash, burn it yeah so.
Mark Hummel:So the a quick technique, if somebody needs it, would be to set a time goal and Just use a small piece of paper, right? So maybe you're gonna write for two or three minutes each day and the what we've learned in habit In setting new habits and creating new habits that's what I'm trying to say. What we've learned is it's it's not really what we used to think, which is I'm gonna do it for 90 days and it will become a habit. It's not. It's not that.
Mark Hummel:What we're learning now is that when we're implementing new things, it's more about the reps how many reps can I do? And the reps are what turn it into a habit, right, it's about the neurology of it and that thing in your mind firing off a certain number of times before it creates a new Neuro pathway. And so when you're thinking about something like this, it would you know, setting that goal would be something like I'm going to write for two minutes for 10 times, right? Maybe that's five days. I'm gonna write in the morning and at night, or maybe it's 10 straight days, or maybe it's a month. You are in charge of how fast you put those reps in, or, in other words, how quickly you build a new habit, but I encourage everybody build the habit of getting your thoughts out of your head. Journaling is a good way to do that.
Matt Williams:Yeah, I love that. I love that. And so, getting the thoughts out, getting clear, you start to get a clear focus now on where you're going and what your business to go and and Building your business with like the end in mind is something that we've talked about occasionally, and and so if you get clear on what the end is, what you want out of it, it seems like you could build that on purpose. You know it's like having an architect drop the plans before you start building the house. If you don't have the architectural plans to begin with, I could imagine you're gonna be like Redoing parts of the house as you move along and have issues, so. So how do you do something like that with like building with the end in mind?
Mark Hummel:You know, this is a. This is a conversation that is picking up more and more speed in our industry Building, building with the end in mind and part of the reason is because Mergers and acquisitions are beginning to happen at a faster and faster rate in our industry. Yeah, and Depending on who you are Probably also depending on your business goals that could be really intimidating, or maybe it doesn't mean anything to you, right? But the truth is, is what the industry is doing is it's following the same path that other service-based industries have followed. It's maturing, it's becoming less fragmented, it's becoming a little more standardized, a little more standardized state-to-state, and Because of that, this represents opportunity for things like private equity, venture capital and also bigger companies to start merging and buying people up and different things like that.
Mark Hummel:And so when you say, you know, build with the end in mind, what comes to mind for me is understanding what your end game is and Building your company for that. Now, the caveat is if you build your company to sell, you'll never go wrong, even if you never sell. Yeah, right, so if you build your company to sell, you'll never go wrong, even if you don't sell, because the the things that make your company valuable also happen to be the things that make your company strong.
Matt Williams:Yes, absolutely Well, and, to be honest, like I, I'm young, I'm healthy I don't see like a need to sell my company. But what would happen if something did happen to me? Right, like if you have the company built to sell and let's, let's say God forbid. Like you know, something tragic happened to me and my wife had to try to run the company and she's not really involved in the day-to-day and maybe the best decision for our family is To sell the company to help pay for whatever needs to get paid for, you know, or take care of my own family.
Matt Williams:If it's built with that end in mind, then then I don't ever have to like you know what I mean like it's already ready to go. So it helps with that. Plus, one day guess what, none of us get out of here alive, you know one of us one day we're gonna retire. One day we're gonna want to hand this off to the next generation, whether that's actually our kids or maybe somebody outside of the company. And yeah, I think building it that way is is a great, even if you own it for 25 years. You know, at the end of 25 years, if you want to sell it, you should have it built that way. That's a great idea.
Mark Hummel:I just heard these statistics actually from another business coach and it's that I'm going off memory here, so maybe I don't have it exactly right. But ballpark 82% of small businesses never sell, even if they intend to sell.
Matt Williams:Yes.
Mark Hummel:I've heard a very similar result. Yeah, Yep, and even if your plan is succession with family, if your family business, something like 50 to 60% of companies actually never pull that off. And so the truth is is most people need an end game and most people just close the door when they're done. They don't have an end game.
Matt Williams:Yeah, it's so true and and there's a huge percentage of that happening right now even I was just doing some research on that like there's a baby boomer generation of people that own businesses for 20, 30 years and they're ready to retire and they're having a hard time finding enough people to kind of buy and acquire some of these businesses, because they aren't structured for acquisition and so it's hard to acquire a business that's not structured for it. And because then you're like well, I'm buying a job and people who are investors and businesses don't want to buy a job, they want to buy a company. So you got to think about who's the person that would buy your business, is it? You know? Maybe you're going to sell it to one of your technicians that's in your company now, maybe you know, but who else would want to buy your company? You know, if you structure it right, then that opens up that door for a whole lot more people that'd be interested in buying it.
Mark Hummel:Yeah, it's a good place to tie, to tie the clarity back in, right. So I mean, the truth is is a lot of us don't really know what we want our end game to be and if we do, for bless to have like a crystal clear plan and in play that could change. And, like you said, matt, you're young and you have no reason to sell right now. But you know what you're going to begin to shift that vision at some point as you get older. Yep, right, whether it's what you said, you get injured or taken out or something. Or if you just get distracted, right At some point you might shift what you're thinking about your business. And how great would it be if you're just ready right there in the moment. Yes, instead of now, you've got to spend two to three years building a team and systems and processes and policies and training and all the different things to go into making a company valuable.
Matt Williams:Yep, absolutely. Yeah. So set it up that way. My brother is in the process of buying a business, and they were not set up for sale until just a couple of years ago, and what happened was the current.
Matt Williams:The seller's wife got cancer, and so he had to take his focus off of the business and really focus on his wife and his family and her health, and he ended up in a place where he's like, well, I really need to sell this business, and so he had to take the time then to restructure and rehire and be able to get it to where it would be sellable, and so he took a few years to do that.
Matt Williams:But how great would have been if he would have been able to like pull that trigger originally and say, hey, my wife has cancer, I'm going to just take care of my family now. But instead he had to wait a while, and it's like nobody plans on tragedy, nobody plans on a hard times, or maybe not even a hard time, but maybe a great opportunity pops up in front of you and you're like boy, I can't do my existing business and that, and right now I'm in my heart, I want to do that, not this, I mean just being ready. Opportunity drives by all the time. Might not be prepared, in case you know.
Mark Hummel:Yeah, 100%, man. It reminds me we had a conference last year and I believe it was our Unite conference for 2022 where we had a company, some outside speakers, come in and they helped us as a group, assess our risk in our home inspection companies. Things like identifying whether you had strong financial plans and could pass those off to somebody if something happened to you. Things like, do you have policies and procedures in place so that, if you were gone, people could pick up the playbook and run your business. And they ran through all these different things, and there was something like 350 people in the room and a very small percentage of them had good scores Right. So this is not a. This is not like a small problem in our industry. It's not a small problem with people in general.
Matt Williams:This is a huge problem in every industry. This is small business, like ownership across the United States or maybe even around the world. Might just be human nature, but yeah, it just you know, at the root of it. But being able to, yeah, think ahead and plan ahead for that stuff, that's amazing. Yeah, building with the end in mind, thinking about that. I know mergers and acquisitions are happening right now in our industry, and that happens in every industry, you know, and it's new to our industry. So it's a little bit. It can be, I guess, scary if you're not sure what's happening, but I do think that it should maybe shift our mindset. Like you're saying, well, it is happening. Maybe one day I want to sell mine.
Mark Hummel:Yep, and even those people who like that's just not their plan, it's not their path, like I don't intend to sell my small business, that's okay, as long as you feel clear about it. What we don't want to see is people just kind of in the middle, frozen because they don't know how to make the decision Right. And that's where we really want to park with people who are sort of you know who you are. If you're listening to this, right, you've kind of got that right in the back of your mind. You're like well, I'm getting older and I don't want to be in the field forever, but I'm kind of happy with the way things are. I hear that all the time.
Mark Hummel:Yeah, and that's the person where I say hey, man, like you just got to get off the fence, decide what you want, because your business is there to fund your life. So let's figure out what your life needs to look like and then build the business that fits that. If that is just doing a certain number of inspections by yourself and then hanging it up, wonderful. You still have a lot of work to do because you got your personal financials, your adventure bucket, your relationships, your personal growth, all those things. But that's okay, if that's your plan. If that's not your plan, if it's anything else, well, now we start getting into some business building conversation.
Matt Williams:Yeah, that's great. So, mark, I love having you on the show and every time I like asking you this question, and it is. You know, what is the message from 10,000 inspectors? Because you and your team talk to so many inspectors all across the country all the time. And so what's the wisdom that you've learned? Or maybe something you've seen just recently? The 10,000 inspectors perspective, because, honestly, I don't talk to 10,000 inspectors, but you can do.
Mark Hummel:Yeah, and you know it's funny that where that number comes from is the ripple effect, right? So we talked to hundreds of inspection company owners a month and we know that the ripple effect is probably much greater than 10,000. But we felt like 100,000 might be stretching it.
Matt Williams:So 10,000 inspectors 10s of thousands inspectors, that's right.
Mark Hummel:Yeah, 10s of thousands, a million inspectors. Okay, so here's what I'm hearing a lot of in the last probably six months or so, and and I think where this is coming from is the downturn that most people are experiencing not everybody, I'm always quick to say that, but a lot of people in the country are experiencing a downturn in their markets, right, some of them with some pretty scary numbers, but it's uncovering a lot of gaps in their growth plans. So a lot of what I'm hearing right now is that the, the Agents there's the word the agents that they spent all their time acquiring or converting to using their business kind of disappeared. Right, they disappeared as business started to dry up and when they do some research, they realize these people are still selling houses. They're selling less Houses, but they're still selling them and they just happen to be selling the selling, the inspections to other inspectors.
Mark Hummel:Oh, so where we're finding is that without a proper retention plan or without proper follow-up, you are Reacquiring the same agents over and over and over again and is very time and cash expensive to acquire Agents to to get them to come use your business. Right, it's really not all that expensive or time intensive to keep them using your business if you've got a great retention system. So that's it, man, that like I'm hearing that so much right now. We're working through that and I think the reason that we're hearing it more and more right now Is because there was less business for a long period of time and they're starting to see the gaps in their growth plans and the gap is follow-up.
Matt Williams:Yeah, so the I think you've said it, I've heard it before the fortunes in the follow-up, that's it always.
Mark Hummel:That's it, it's the.
Matt Williams:It's the follow-up that does it.
Matt Williams:It's funny when, when things are going fast, right the last couple years in our industry Lots of volume, lots of transactions, lots of inspections and when things are moving quickly, I think it's easy to Gloss over the gaps and holes in our systems and processes because there's just so much stuff Falling into your funnel at the top level, volume wise, that, yeah, you have big gaps, but enough of it's getting through that you're still like unable at least for me it was unable to even keep my arms around the amount of work that was coming into the door Then.
Matt Williams:And now, when it slowed down a little bit, it's like, oh well, I need to fix this and you to fix that, and and seeing those gaps and and part of me is like, well, if I just work hard on the front side, maybe just like I'll get those that business come back in the front door again. But the reality is that volume isn't available because the volume of real estate transactions in my market has dropped as a whole. So, yeah, so it's like you know, if they were selling a thousand houses a month, now they're selling 500 a month. It's like, well, I'm not gonna get 700 inspections. There's literally not 700 houses being sold, so it's like getting that volume base. So, yeah, I think, I think the Volume can cover up a multitude of sins in our life and like what's happening in our businesses.
Mark Hummel:You know it's. It's so interesting because that's exactly what we saw with the larger companies in IEB is During the, the booming time of, you know, right after COVID, where everybody was just grabbing houses and things got crazy the, the growth teams, people who were doing prospecting, social media, you know, email campaigns, all the different traditional things for our industry, going to events, swinging by open houses, all that stuff. We just kind of assumed all of that was working because business was coming our way. Yeah, you think it's working and it.
Matt Williams:You come to find out, it's like no, you're the fifth inspector company I've called and nobody can get to it. You're like we're so good at marketing.
Mark Hummel:Dude, that's it, yeah, and so. So what we found is, when the volume started to decline, they were doing the same growth activities, and this was this was across the board, right, so all sizes of businesses, but we particularly studied this a bit with the bigger companies. And so what we found is, as the volume declined, they were doing the same growth activities, they had the same tactics and they were not getting the same result, even adjusted for their market opportunity.
Intro:And so it was like what's?
Mark Hummel:happening here? What is the what's the case? And the truth is is well, they probably weren't that effective at their marketing plans to begin with. The phone was just ringing because there was so much volume, wow yeah, that's so funny.
Matt Williams:I yeah, because I'd like to think that I'm everybody's first choice in my market. But maybe it's just. The other guys are so booked up. I was only one available. Yeah, you're like. Oh, now, now that everybody's like not booked up all the time, maybe that's my problem.
Mark Hummel:Yeah, yeah, maybe, maybe not. I think of you pretty pretty pretty good guy to do business with, though, matt, so I appreciate the first call.
Matt Williams:Yeah, well, to be fair, you know, we've actually been breaking records in our company. So we haven't actually felt I'm kind of teasing, mostly because Because, really, like you know, June was our biggest month ever. Previously it was May, previously it was April. So it was like April, may, june or just record breaking months for our company. So so, even in the middle of a downturn, we've been very fortunate to have some, you know, really great growth and results. But but, yeah, but, but Britain. Reality is, I don't know if my marketing techniques are really working great or if it's just like maybe I am the first phone call. I don't know, I'm not really sure.
Mark Hummel:How could you find out?
Matt Williams:I'm not sure, because I have. I'm in the position where I have so much business coming into the front door that it covers up all my sins.
Mark Hummel:Yeah, so.
Matt Williams:I'm in that. I'm in that moment. I have been for a while and it's good problems to have, I guess, but I couldn't handle more work if I got it right now. So that's kind of a. I have a new guy coming on here the next week, which is great, but but yeah, still, I don't, I don't have. Yeah. So it's, I have those same good problems right now. I had a downturn last year for a couple months, but then it turned back around for me for whatever reason.
Mark Hummel:So Right on, man I heard Take out all my.
Matt Williams:I already hit. Man took out all my competitors, so Not do that.
Mark Hummel:nobody died, yeah, right, that would fall into the growth activities, for sure.
Matt Williams:Yeah, that is my growth strategy. It's just take out everybody else. I.
Mark Hummel:Keep slashing the tires? Yeah, that's not.
Matt Williams:Yeah, I'm just tired, I'm feeling a little loopy, so, yeah, all right. So you want to build on purpose, you want to have the end in mind, fortunes in the follow-up. What do we do with all this, like, what is the action that we take with what we're talking about today?
Mark Hummel:You know what man there's? There's a mission that I'm on right now and and in my mind it's like I'm on a crusade here in my in this coaching practice and this group coaching that we call IEB, and it is to help people eliminate task switching. So a lot of times, what we do is we start throwing so many things on our schedule that it's impossible to be purposeful, it's impossible to keep our thoughts straight, and it feels very messy, and it's sometimes it makes it's perfect sense that we don't feel clear on what's most important right now While we're trying to just do so many things. So if I was going to encourage anybody to take any action based on this conversation, it would be to focus on Doing less and being more clear. Right, there's all the kinds of things we need to be doing in our business and in our personal lives, but at the end of the day and this might, this might sting some of you listening but at the end of the day, most of what you're doing is an important. It just isn't.
Mark Hummel:Okay, so the things that really move the needle for you are typically relational things, revenue generating things and things that fill you up with energy. Everything else can just kind of be swept aside, delegated or maybe Deemed as to do later. Right, and here's the pattern that I'm addressing with this whole task switching thing. It's People go from something that's important for like a 30 minute block, or maybe a couple hours, to something that's not important and then do four or five things that aren't important and then they try to get back to the thing that is and they've lost the steam, they've lost the mental energy. And what's really happening there in our mind is this thing called Decision fatigue.
Mark Hummel:Yeah, a lot of people have heard of this at this point now, but decision fatigue is a real thing. How often do we get to the end of the day? We can't even voice what we want for dinner. Right, it's because we've made so many decisions. We've drained our mental energy tank. Well, that's what happens when we have so much task switching and we're trying to process so many things. So, eliminate task switching. Wherever you can bat your time, focus on what's most important. Do less. That would be my advice.
Matt Williams:Wow, yeah, cuz I'm so guilty of that Like I'll be working on something that's super important and then that email or text message comes through and I'm like, oh shoot, I better take care of this real quick. And then I switched to something else and then by the time yeah, it's like the Urgent things that aren't as important like pop up, and then I'm like I'm like I'm them, I'm wrapping that one up on another, one hits and I'm wrapping that one up another. I can take care of this taking five minutes. Take me ten minutes. And then, sure enough, it's been a couple three hours. And then I'm like I gotta get back to the thing that was like super important and you're right, and like I've lost all the momentum on it.
Matt Williams:Wow, that's some. That's interesting. How do you? How do you avoid that? What do you do? Cuz I bet you have. I just know you and and your responsibility levels, and so I know that you probably have nonstop emails and text messages that are flowing your way that are Tempting you to get off onto things that aren't as important.
Mark Hummel:Oh my gosh every day, man how?
Matt Williams:do you do a day.
Mark Hummel:Yeah, and the truth is is some things are just not going to get done and you'll feel bad about it, right, but that has to happen so that we can stay in our strength zone. And you mentioned emails. One thing that's true in my life is I get a lot of emails from people. Yeah, and it feels very selfish of me. I feel very selfish not answering every single email because somebody took the time out of their day to send me a message. I want to send a message back, but the truth is is the the Stronger approach is to get away from emails and pick up my phone, and so what I have found is that I batched time to talk to people and Relationally, we've moved a lot of things further forward than we would have just sitting pinging each other back and forth electronically.
Mark Hummel:And so that was just one little shift, is you know? I started thinking about this one day and I thought, man, if I spend I literally mapped all this out If I spend something like three to four minutes per email, which is probably pretty low, three to four minutes per email and I'm getting a hundred emails a day like I'm, I'm, I legitimately have a part-time job here Just answering emails, wow. So instead I thought you know what? I'm gonna batch Relationship time and have a certain amount of time each week where I schedule phone calls and text messages and things where it's all relational work. So that's just. That's just one example. But there's no task switching there. I'm not going from an email to something else and then catching up on emails and something else.
Mark Hummel:Yeah, I'm batching that time so that I'm in that zone when it's time to be in that zone. And the same is true with coaching. The same is true with Studying and trying to learn new things to bring to the group. The same is true right now. We bashed some time to do some podcast. Yeah, absolutely.
Matt Williams:We set aside a couple hours to sit down and talk about this and then get it recorded and, yeah, absolutely set up some time and carved it out. Yeah, so carving out time and being like very singularly focused on one thing the things that are that are the most important.
Mark Hummel:There's really good. There's a process called the two by two, and you're familiar with this in IEB. We teach this as one of the first things you come across in IEB the two by two mindset, which is the the idea that you would spend two hours, two times per week, working on your business, doing just future-facing activities for your business not catching up on things, not doing reports, not answering the phone and not talking to your team or whoever, but doing future-facing work. And sometimes that just means getting clear on what the future-facing work is. And I'll tell you a secret most people get confused on this and they think okay, so four hours, like no, no, no, no, it's not about the four hours, it's about consistency. It's about building the habit of having batched time to work on your business, right, so it would be better to do one hour a week forever, indefinitely. Then it would be to do like two full days back-to-back in one quarter.
Matt Williams:Yeah, well, because you're I Think you know I've talked about this on another episode, or we at least talked about it was that idea of, like you do an hour on Monday, you do an hour on Wednesday and an hour on Friday. You know, well, your brain is actually processing, and it's subconscious, the stuff you were taught. Like you know what I mean, like you, you, because you're constantly like drip feeding your body, your mind, this, this idea. You start to subconsciously start to process this stuff and then, if you have that little exercise routine for your mindset, then it starts to compound itself and you have a flywheel spinning in the background now inside of your, outside of your mind, probably going to the gym. You know you can't go to the gym one one day for eight hours ain't gonna do nothing. But if you go 30 minutes a day, you know, three days a week, you'll actually have better progress doing that than then then chunking it all in a one day.
Mark Hummel:The old health coach in me wants to sink my teeth into that comment, but I'm just gonna say you're right, matt. Consistency over intensity man.
Matt Williams:Yeah, there we go. Consistency over intensity. I like that, that's good, so all right. So I think we've, man, we covered a big topic today. If somebody wants to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?
Mark Hummel:Yeah, so an easy way to get in touch with me is just to connect with me on social media, so Facebook, instagram, linkedin, whatever, whatever your jam is, if you send me a message, if you connect with me and you want to, you know, shoot me a question or just have a business conversation or something like that. You can shoot me a message there and I'll respond Super awesome and I saw something.
Matt Williams:It popped up and I didn't know what it was and I started looking at it. I loved it. It's called a sub stack and you're on sub stack. Now. What do you like about being on sub stuff? Well, maybe explain it for the people who don't know what sub stack is, because maybe it's me to them.
Mark Hummel:Sure, yeah, so this is part of my personal growth journey. You know, it's kind of thinking. A couple months ago I went on this trip and I was kind of, you know, got away from everything and just thinking what's the next iteration of mark? You know how do I? How do I keep growing and and I got some advice with this, and I started talking to people and seeing how they were doing things, and one of the things that I became really passionate about recently was this idea of impact never stopping on you or me.
Mark Hummel:Right, if you're impacted by something, we have a responsibility to just let it flow right through us to somebody else and share it. And so, for example, a lot of the things that I learned from business owners in IEB, I Pass along to other business owners and in the whole world the whole inspection world is getting better because of it. I believe that, because we're all sharing the impact that we have in the industry. So sub stack is essentially a writing platform where I'm practicing writing out my weekly downloads and Sharing the things that are impacting me in story format. So, for example, last week talked about this exact thing we were spending time on today how to find clarity, what that's like, and so, yeah, I just started it. I'm about four or five weeks into it and Would love for people to check it out and give some comments and help me improve my writing and and, at the same time, maybe pass it on if it impacts you.
Matt Williams:I love that. And then we have RGT coming up right and it's we have a live one.
Mark Hummel:We do. Yeah, that's, that's right. So we have, for the first time ever, we're gonna be in Chicago September 7th through the 9th, so two full days, one half day. It's going to be incredible. We also have a mini mastermind the day before that, which is very limited. People can learn more about that if they reach out to us, but the class is gonna be really, really fun in Chicago, I think.
Matt Williams:That's awesome, yeah, so I know we've done it in Florida, we've did it in California live Right one time, or did that one? Yeah, yeah, okay. And we've done it in Texas and a couple places and then Chicago. Now that's awesome. So if you're up in this in the upper Midwest area, it's really easy to you know that's an easy place to get to if you live in that region of the country. Going to an RGT class is it's rapid gain training. Is that right? That's right, yeah, okay, I want to make sure. I'm saying because I sometimes I've said growth, but I think it's gain. Well, it used to be growth.
Mark Hummel:But we got. We got copyright checked. Oh, shoot Everybody already had that.
Matt Williams:Yeah, yeah, rapid gain training. And did you copyright? It hit right yeah.
Mark Hummel:Nobody steal it yeah.
Matt Williams:Yeah, so that's awesome. Yeah, so rapid gain training September 7th through 9th in Chicago. You don't want to miss it mark. Thank you so much for being on the show. This is a fantastic episode, as always, hanging with Hummel. Thank you so much, man.
Mark Hummel:Thanks, matt, take care bud.
Intro:You've been listening to Empire State of Mind. For the home inspection industry and beyond, our passion is to elevate the home inspection industry with mindset, strategy and tools. We hope you've enjoyed the show. Make sure to like, rate and review for more. Follow on Instagram at IEB coaching and don't forget to hit the website at wwwiebcoachingcom. Learn about IEB at no cost and have all your questions answered on our open call Once a month on the third week of the month. We hope to see you there and we'll see you next time on the Empire State of Mind.
