S2 EP 23 The Business Builder Blueprint: Systems, Scale, and the $5 Trillion Opportunity with Ken Goodrich

WEBVTT - S2 EP 23 The Business Builder Blueprint: Systems, Scale, and the $5 Trillion Opportunity with Ken Goodrich Welcome to Building Billions. Building a 10 million, 100 million, billion, or multibillion dollar business is actually based on three things consistency, velocity, and results. I built, scaled and exited and rebuilt many businesses in my career. If you're serious about creating something that has real enterprise value, stay tuned.

This is building billions with Brandon Dawson. Can what excites you and I to get to work together? I mean, the fact is, I've wanted to work with you now for the last seven years. I was following your story because of my relationship with Gerber and E-myth going back to 2010, I watched you innovate the Hvac space and now multiple other businesses.

Why would two guys like you and I work together? Well, I got to tell you, I, I have over the years, uh, you know, built a number of companies. And I early on, I struggled. And then I figured out that my role was not selling or leading an Hvac company.

It was leading a team to build a business system. And I learned that through the E-myth book, right? The system is the solution. And so I started setting my sights on I'm the business builder.

I'm not the contractor. Mhm. And so over the years, I had built my ad hoc system of how I do things. And, uh, you know, I mean, I had resources, but limited resources, uh, much like you.

I had all the books, you know, I had the John Maxwell books and I had the, the Michael Gerber books and all the Zig Ziglar books, all the stuff. But when you're building it up, I had some and I had industry specific things, and then I. So I built my own Frankenstein system. Yep.

Okay. And it served me well. I mean, I've turned around a lot of businesses. I've put businesses together.

I've sold six of them. Now on to number seven, all using my system of of business building. Yep. But then I come and I meet you and I started poking around with what you're doing here.

And I look at the, the depth and the caliber of the system that you built. And I'm like, wow. Of course, if I had, if I had what you what you give to your clients, I'd be a multi-billionaire from Hvac. Yep.

Which I always go back at some point and go, I was so close to partnering with Gerber in 2010. You and I could have been partners starting in 2000, what, 13, 14, 15 when you did your deal with them and how exciting that would have been. We went on different journeys, but once we peeled the onion back, you and I almost had the same experiences working in a family business, having to do everything, learning responsibility early. I think that's one thing that people miss with their kids today is they don't give them enough responsibility and then celebrate them when they do something good.

But I'm super excited because now you and I are helping impact entrepreneurs. And I get you've heard people, you've directly heard people say to you, what does that guy know about Hvac? What does that guy know about this? What does that guy know about that?

When you hear that, though, the same way when I hear someone say, well, what's Ken going to help me with in my medical business? It demonstrates that most people just don't understand what it means to actually build a business. Because once you build a business and you know what things to look at, what things to look for, what kind of people to have, what kind of people not to have, making hard choices, being disciplined, setting targets, getting results, putting process in place, putting data in place, systematizing things, inspiring and leading people when they're challenged.

That's all the shit that you and I are experts at, and it doesn't really matter what we're doing, it matters what's being done at that moment. Yeah, I think what people miss is the most is that we figured out that everything that you just mentioned and, and a lot more is goes into the cake batter to make the cake, right? You have to have all these things to make this cake, to make a business. And if you want the business to go to a certain scale, you have to have more ingredients to get there.

And you understood. I need to figure out what the ingredients are. I need to figure out the standard processes that work for most every business. Then I want to find out the niche processes that need to go for specific industries or types of business.

And now you put it together. Now you just have a your own business building machine. It's pretty remarkable. I got to tell you, you know, I how long have we been friends?

Six. Seven years. Yeah, seven years now. Okay.

So seven years I, you know, I just sat back and watched, spent some time. I spoke for you here and there and and and but once I watched your operation, your people, how they execute just the just the, the energy in the room. And it's not like high sales energy. It's just competent energy.

Uh, everybody looks good. Everybody's got their plan. Everybody knows their role. I mean, you literally talk the talk and walk the walk.

And by the way, let me tell you this. I can't believe how many industry trainers there are in our space that, you know, that, you know, once you peel back the onion, we're really like failures at it. And all they've done is picked up what every other guy said and packaged it up and do a half ass format, and they're selling that to the contractors. You know, I got in trouble early on in business and I figured it out and I then I started to implant myself in the industry more going to the industry meetings, uh, the conventions and learning more about the industry.

I decided I'm going to be the best. And I, and I showed up everywhere I could go, but to get access to people and their ideas, I started sharing. And I think most people in the Hvac, plumbing, electrical industry know that I'm happy to share. And I, and I help people out.

They can give me a call and bounce ideas off me and such. Um, which has been part of my, a lot of, a lot of my capital that I'm able to go in and, and create such good relationships in the space. And I just for good karma and give back. This is why I've been doing it all these years.

You know, I speak at all the events, I have an open phone for anybody who wants to call me, I talk to a lot of guys. That said. What what I never wanted to do was put my name on, uh, or be part of one of these organizations when I didn't believe in the criteria, the curriculum where I thought, yeah, this will get them this far, but what happens after that? You know, I certainly didn't want to be part of the charlatans.

Mhm. And then the other ones, they all had their limits. And don't get me wrong, I learned a lot from a lot of those best practices. But at that point, then I outgrew them.

And, you know, I would champion for them a little bit, but I just didn't want to be have my personal brand tied to that. But then when I dug into your stuff and I really first, what really got me is how your team executes, how this place works. If, if you could invite your customers in just for a tour, uh, you know, I believe your conversions would go way up just to see how the room feels. But that said, the caliber of the materials is what I saw.

Because, you know, the the Hvac groups, the plumbing groups, the electrical groups, the home service groups that I see, they got, you know, they, what do they call it? The law of the lid. Right. The lid is the creator of the that business, if you will, and his lid is his particular experience.

You just have taken that once you understood the details of how to be a business builder and how. What are the ingredients for this size, this size, this size, this size. Now you've built an unlimited growth business model. Yeah.

And look, look, it doesn't even require it. Really. You don't really have to be that smart. You just have to show up and do the work.

Right? Well, I. Mean. Yeah, let's let's be clear.

I am not that smart. I barely got out of high school. I wasn't an overachiever. But what I did do is realize if I wanted to be successful, I had to learn from successful people.

And what I did do then is study my mentors, the books and the Maxwell's and the Sharon Lectures and Three Feet from Gold. In fact, I read Three Feet from Gold in January of 2009, and I was trying to figure out how can you figure out the crystal ball to build a business? And I read that book and I was like, aha! I picked up the phone in February.

I called FTI out of Chicago, billion dollar consulting firm. I said, I want to do a multi year study, and I made a list of everything I could think of that I would want to know from somebody who was successful. And for three years I hired 12 kids and all we did was call thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands to find the few that did it over and over and over. And then they just told me.

And if you think about that, and then I engineered it and then built concepts around all that stuff, which then in 2013, I announced as the transformational growth platform with Jim Collins, with Michael, or with, uh, with Jim Collins, with John Maxwell, with Sharon Lechter, with Story Musgrave, the only astronaut to fly, fly, fly. So then I introduced it in 2013 with 150 business owners, with John Maxwell on leadership, Jim Collins on operational effectiveness, uh, Sharon Lechter on the power of belief and the process of generating wealth.

Story Musgrave, the only astronaut that flew all five space shuttles designed, deployed, and fixed. Hubble taught me the operating system we use today. That was the that was the key. When story went into a room with me for ten hours and let me ask them any question and I just grilled them on.

How does NASA pick a mission? What do they do to plan around it? Who's in charge of it? How do they deploy it?

How do they pick the equipment? How do they do this? And he methodically walked me through how a mission originates, executes, and returns safely. And he said at the end of that, if you could replicate that for the small business owner, you'll build $1 trillion company.

And I'll never forget at the end, he says, but you have one problem. And I go, what's that story? He said, astronauts are trained to only do things when they're told to do it. You're going to be hard pressed to find an entrepreneur who will only do something when they're told to do it.

It's just nature of being an entrepreneur. And he laughed. But that has been the rate limiting factor, and that's why we've created a system where we run $1.5 billion of business owners through here, and you've seen the machine every single month to find people who are forward thinking, right?

Thinking can swallow a little bit of pride despite how much success they've had. They're hungry to still grow, scale, create more value. They want to bring people along with them like you did. And like I did in our businesses in order to share the success with them, which means you get better people with a bigger vision.

And now you and I get to do this together, which is a huge pleasure and joy for me because you are an outstanding, successful, uh, example of entrepreneur founder who turned into an entrepreneur, not a founder who became a failing founder or quitting founder, uh, a serial entrepreneur, successful founder. And, you know, they're, you know, it's codified. And the thing that you and I get to do is teach all these people how to codify the success so they can just do what you and I have both done and we keep doing now over and over and over helping other people.

Yeah. Well, I, I'm very honored to, you know, speak to your clients and, and, uh, share my experiences and represent The quality work that you've done in building this business. I mean, like I keep saying, I don't know of any business I've seen run this well of any type ever. How well executed this thing works.

So my hat's off to you. Yeah. Thank you. You've inspired me.

And, um, you know, I'm proud to be involved. Yeah. Well, and thank you, because you're helping me with the leadership programs. We have hundreds of business owners wanting to learn to become better leaders.

You're helping talk about how to set targets and execute your coaching, your teaching, and you're making yourself available to the people that come see us. And I just think that's a huge give back to the community. And I would just say, if you're in any business, the truth is, it doesn't matter. I get it's hard for people to wrap their mind around it.

Your advice to a lawyer is going to be as consistent and as same as it is to an Hvac person. They just don't know that. And they don't believe it because it's so hard to build a business, but I want to tell you how much I appreciate you coming in and adding so much value to our group, being available for the calls, the coaching, the speaking, and just being an inspiration of what's possible in the marketplace. And if I happen to be somebody in the home services space, especially with the news that came out in the last week about AI and what the news shows is that all these people that went to colleges and got big degrees in technology and legal and finance and research, their jobs are going to go away because AI can do it bigger, better, faster, and a lot cheaper.

And the jobs that are going to explode and national infrastructure is a security issue. So they're going to pour a bunch of money is all the things the people you and I work with in the blue collar side food services, ground maintenance, personal care sales office and admin. Agriculture. construction, installation and repair, production, transportation.

Those categories are going to go through explosive growth. And there's $5 trillion of business owners that are baby boomers that are going to give up. And you and I know we can buy those businesses very cheap. And for us, for those not for us, but for the business owners that learn how to do it.

And what we're going to teach them is how to find these things, how to run a successful business, and how to go do your own acquisitions and do your own stuff. If you want to, or just get big enough that you can exit at a value where you never have to worry about working again and help the little guy just succeed. Yeah. Which I really enjoy doing because I know what it's like.

You know what it's like. We know what it's like when it's not working and we don't know where to get the answers right. But the most interesting thing about this whole thing, I think is, um, what they call the silver tsunami. You know, you mentioned all these baby boomers, and they're retiring, and most of them are just shutting their businesses down.

There's a lot of opportunity. AI, you know, the advent of AI is actually causing these smaller, I will call them Main Street type businesses to be much more valuable in the future. And a really, you know, some, some really smart and smart and aggressive young people right now. This is the this is the modern day gold rush, right?

Yep. Right now is if they would come here, first thing they would do is say, I'm going through all the programs. I'm going to become a business builder. I'm going to learn the business builder mindset before I define what I'm going to do.

Don't even cloud your mind with a customer and, you know, or some sort of business that you're attracted to. Don't even think about that. You go through this university, if you will, and you learn the process and then you become armed, where you can pick off any opportunity, any business and be successful at it, build it, scale it, scale it. But, you know, talking to what you started this whole conversation with early about, you know, what is the hearing aid guide?

Now, here's what I know. The hearing aid guide. Yeah. He cut his teeth on figuring out figuring out a business system for hearing aids.

But then he was smart enough to say, I only, I only, uh, this is the tip of the iceberg. How do I build a business builder system that we can get a nine figure deal, a ten figure deal out of in valuation, and then you put your, your experience and your tenacity on top of that and built the greatest business building program I think that's ever existed. I've never seen anything like it. But if I was a young guy and I tell every young guy I talk to, if I were you, I would quit what you're doing.

I would go there to Ten-x. I would go in the programs. I would learn how to build a business. What are the structures?

What are the process, the key processes, the key systems that need to be installed in every business? How do you discern what type of marketing system you need for what type of business and all these things? Get that education first. Arm yourself, then go through some of the other classes you teach about, like how to identify the best markets to be in, apply the business model, take the blueprint out, get a team, say, come on team, we're going to build this right here.

Here's the business, here's the process. Let's go do it. And we know there's 5 trillion of wealth transfer. Those small business owners, 34.

5 million of them generate $16 trillion a year. It's 45% of the the economy, 47% of the workforce, and 97% fail every ten years. So you cannot tell me this is not a gold rush. With $5 trillion of business owners that are doing 1 million to 10 million going, I'm just tired.

I'm worn out, I'm done. And we're seeing it every day. And the smart people are sitting back going, I'm going to learn how to build a business so I can just accumulate. We have 19 year olds, 23 year olds, 27 year olds, 32 year olds, 50 year olds that are going from like almost no business to ten, 20, 30 million within a couple of years.

We have a handful that are, that are now finally crossing the 100 million mark after five years. I've built $200 million plus companies in five years since you and I had that first conversation. Dead start, no invested capital, no debt, two entirely different businesses, one a healthcare, one, a management consulting business, both 120 million last year from dead stop, no invested capital. We own 99% of the equity.

My wife, my partner and I like if I can do it. And I came from Corvallis, Oregon. And you sold for 500 million bucks. Holding the flashlight for your dad.

Listening to the details of how to be a good person and do the right thing. If we can do that. I'm a firm believer everyone can do it. Yeah.

Now, the question for them is going to be this. Can you lower your false ideas? Can you lower your ego? Can you raise your ambition?

And can you seek knowledge and information you don't currently have and get the wisdom from the right people? And that's what I think makes you and I interesting because it'd be easy for people to discount me because they don't understand what all I've done if they're in the whole home services space, and it'd be easy for them to discount you if they're in the professional services space going, what is a Hvac guy going to teach me? Let me just tell you something. Between the two of us, we can teach anybody how to build a huge business, make a lot of money, have fun doing it and treat their teams right.

And those are the things specifically that most people don't know how to do. Well. I've been an Hvac and plumbing for many, many years. I own I have an interest in, in, uh, the last business I built and sold.

So I want to protect that interest. And I would say this, if you got in the Hvac and plumbing home service business in the Hvac and plumbing side, I would consider you the biggest threat that I've ever seen in the 40 years that I've been doing this, because I know you would come in here and you wouldn't get muck and mired up with the details of the day to day operation, this and that. You would have that all figured out before you open the door, before you talk to one customer, the process would have been documented, well trained, your people ready to execute.

And that is a dangerous man. I thank God that you just want to go, you know, help so many different industries and help people as opposed to being a competitor because, you know, the hearing aid guy would be the worst guy that I would want in Hvac. Yeah. Well, let me just let me just say that from two founders that are both hugely successful.

Between the two of us, we have billions of dollars under our belt. Um, who have the intention to help other business owners succeed. I would just make this statement, if you're sitting here listening to this and you're in home services, or you're in any business and you're like, man, I'm one of those people that want to succeed. I'm one of those people that want to ride the wave of this 5 trillion of wealth transfer, and I want to do something huge for my family.

I want to know what it's like to both of us, to have my own jet and fly around and do deals, sit in big tall towers and write checks or receive checks for hundreds of millions of dollars. These are all the things you and I have done. And what I can tell anybody listening to this is if you're like, man, I want to just know what I need to do to put myself in that position. You should come to one of our events and hear from the both of us.

All we're doing is sharing our real life stories and our real life results, and then you get to hear it from the people we're working with. And so for that, I thank you for taking the time to talk to this community, add value to the next community. And based on all the things you could be doing with your time around this world, thank you for committing to to annexing people's lives. Well, thank you for letting me be part of it because again, I get a lot of joy.

I've always got a lot of joy out of helping my industry fellows, so I'm glad that I can do it with, with, um, with a curriculum and a team that is, that is, uh, uh, I'm glad I can do it with a curriculum, a team that matches my brand and that I can feel completely confident in. If you just do the work, if you just follow the plan, you're going to be successful. That's awesome. Well, here's to everybody else's success because we'll be even more successful.

The more people we help be successful. And that's our actual opportunity, is money and wealth follow success. And the more money and the more wealth that you can multiply through other people and draft behind them by helping them. The more fun it is, in my opinion, than doing it yourself.

And that's why we've committed to helping all these people. So thanks for being our partner, Grant and Elena, our static Natalie, when we sign that said, we're going to be partners and help people. They were all like, unbelievable. Because your reputation precedes you.

A legitimate, hard working, dedicated, self-made entrepreneur who knows how to bring their people along and how to do big things. So everyone watching this or listening to it, stay tuned or get active, hit the link and join us for an elite edge and hear from Ken himself.