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Moving from Survival to Significance
Episode 117 • 4th November 2024 • The Home Inspector Marketing Podcast • Mike Crow
00:00:00 00:20:21

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In this episode, Mike talks about survival, stability, success, and significance — detailing each stage and their importance in the journey towards impactful leadership and business growth.

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Who is Mike Crow?

Mike Crow is a Marketing and Business Expert who has built and managed multiple 7-figure businesses, including two 7-figure inspection firms.

For the past 15 years, he's coached thousands of other inspection business owners and has personally helped 100+ companies grow to $1,000,000+ in annual revenue. He has also helped multiple single-inspector operations earn 6-figure annual revenues (some surpassing $300,000).

Mike can teach any entrepreneur how to systematize and market their business to achieve their personal and professional goals.

Transcripts

Speaker:

Hi, this is Mike Crowe, and I run a home

inspection business.

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In fact, I've run a couple of home

inspection businesses.

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You know, true joy for me,

though, has been helping literally

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thousands of home inspectors Build really

solid home inspection business as well.

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We can help a single man operation

be able to do over $300,000 a year,

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maybe all the way up to $400,000 a year

as a single inspector operation.

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Even better for me is the 80

plus companies that we have helped

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be able to build million dollar home

inspection businesses

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I would like to help you

be able to do the same thing.

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I'm going to go over

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what I consider

to be probably one of the most important,

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and one that I repeat on a regular basis.

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One of the,

the pieces of being successful,

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one of the steps in knowing

that you have to go through

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to, to be able

to get to where you want to go.

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I often I run across people that are

either what I would call short sighted or

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and I suffer from this one sometimes

is taking a look at things too far out.

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So, for instance,

I will tell you that at one point I used

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to see a year out and then three years out

and then five years out,

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and then I started telling people

for the longest time I saw 20 years out.

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And then just within the last

several years,

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I've started telling people

I see a hundred years out

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and of course people will go,

you won't be here in 100 years.

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And I go, you're absolutely correct.

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But if I'm lucky, hopefully my kids

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and grandkids and great grandkids

and other people

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you know, from my lineage,

hopefully will be here in 100 years.

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What do I want their lives?

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How do I want their lives to be

maybe impacted by what I'm doing today?

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The challenge with that, of course,

is that if you're always looking that

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far out, that you could literally fall

into the manhole cover.

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You know that's missing.

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Fall into the manhole

where the covers missing.

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Right now, on the way to that

and of course, break a leg and

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and never, never,

of course, even get close to that.

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One of the things that I've discovered

is that, though being too short sighted,

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as you stand there looking at the manhole

with the manhole cover missing,

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and you panic about that,

and you see that, and you look at that

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and and you focus way too much on that.

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And while you're focusing on that,

along comes a bus

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and just whacks you

out of the whole process altogether.

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You've got to learn to be able

to balance out this short term

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vision versus this long term vision.

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And one of the things that I tell people

is it really comes down to one

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simple phrase striving

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for progress, but not perfection.

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I've got to be looking at where

I want to go, but not necessarily

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all the way, all the time.

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Now I've got to look at that,

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and I've got to put that on paper,

and I got a plan for it, but

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I don't want to be looking

at just next week.

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In fact,

this is one of the biggest mistakes

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I used to watch in the corporate world

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as a manager would come in

and to make himself look good,

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he would run all the machinery

24 hours a day.

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And I mean, he would be making

all kinds of great progress,

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but then machines would start breaking

and things would start failing

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because there was no maintenance.

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There was no there was no, process

for replacing that stuff.

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The other

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challenge, of course, is that

this guy sees this, out here,

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and he doesn't take advantage

of the short term either.

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So I'm going to tell you

a couple of things.

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Striving for progress, not perfection.

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It's kind of funny.

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When I was a young man,

I used to have my car, and,

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I don't know if it was my dad

that got in or somebody else that got in,

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and they got in and the floorboards

was just full of, you know, fast food,

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bags, you know, McDonald's and Burger King

and Taco Bell and all that great stuff.

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And I said, oh, don't worry about it,

you know, and and they're gone.

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I'm not worried about

it. I'm worried about me.

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And one of the things I

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realized was

that I was not doing very good at that.

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And, and of course, taking time to clean

my whole car

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would have taken half a day at that point

because it was such a mess.

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Right?

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Well, one of the things I discovered was

somebody

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taught me something simple

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a bag a day.

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Hey, Mike, every time you get fast

food, get rid of two bags.

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Every time you get some gas,

get rid of two bags.

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Okay, so you got one.

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You now get rid of two.

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And before I knew it, within

just a week or two,

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my whole car was all cleaned out

and everything.

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And now when I get gas,

I turn it on, I tell it to pump,

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and I, you know, I wash the windshield.

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I look through, see if there's anything

I need to throw away, and get rid of it.

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So in that case,

it was a bag a day recently.

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And I say recently, within the last five,

ten years,

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when you get my age, everything's reset.

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By the way.

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But,

recently, I was working with somebody,

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and they didn't have

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the time to get totally moved in.

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We moved from our old office

to this office,

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and their office was just full of boxes.

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And I said, here's the thing.

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Is a box a day?

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Could you get rid of one box a day?

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Well, yeah,

I can get rid of one box today.

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Great. And tomorrow get rid of one box.

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And within 30 days, all of a sudden, most,

if not all the boxes were gone.

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Their office was looking great.

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And honestly,

I did the same thing to my office.

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Same kind of thing is with the trash.

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Making that progress can be very,

very powerful.

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And I will tell you, it's so powerful

because some days you finish the day

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and you just realize

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you're not getting done

what you want to get done out here.

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And one of the things

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I like to say at the end of the day is

we made progress today.

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I try to make sure at the end of every day

we made progress today.

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And and if I can't say that, I go,

what's the one thing?

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What's one thing I could do today?

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One box, one bag, one what?

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What's one thing I could do today?

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One phone call so that I can say

I'm making progress today.

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And what I want you to think about

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is striving for progress, not perfection.

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Because honestly,

you're never going to be perfect.

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It just isn't going to happen.

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And if you're trying to be perfect,

you're never going to get there

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because you won't make the progress

you need to.

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On a daily basis.

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So at the end of the day,

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hopefully you can say, hey,

I'm making some progress today.

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Hey, we made progress today

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and especially like those days

where everything seems to go wrong.

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Everything seems to want to fall apart.

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Everybody wants to piece of me, okay,

at the end of the day, if I.

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If I get home and I'm looking at Susan

and she goes, how was your day?

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And I said, well, we made progress today,

you know, and that's a big part of it.

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So striving for progress, not perfection.

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My son has this great t shirt

and it's this guy coloring this word,

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and he's making it absolutely perfect.

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And the word is perfection.

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And the P is perfect

and the E is perfect and the R is perfect.

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And then he's sitting on a stool dead

skeleton.

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Because he died.

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Because he never finished the process.

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So progress.

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Not perfection.

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Now, once you understand that,

we can move on to

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some of the other pieces,

because a lot of times, what we run into

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is that people do not understand

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that there are different levels

that you have to go through.

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I actually created in the business,

when I'm teaching people

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to be a home inspector,

or I'm teaching people to be a coach,

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or I'm teaching people

how to, build their family, right?

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You, your family, your business,

an inspector, everybody, a speaker,

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all goes through what I like to call the

W, and we can talk about that more later.

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But there's four pieces right now

that I kind of

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want to go through

that are more like stackable.

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Because when you first start in business,

man, you're just trying to survive.

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So I call this one moving from

survival to significance,

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moving from survival to significance.

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And when we're new in the business,

we're all in survival mode.

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And then it's significance at that level.

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We are motivated

and we're able to help others.

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In fact, you've heard me

talk about be where the 95% in the 95%,

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they're almost always in survival mode.

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And the 1%, they're almost always helping

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other people be successful as well.

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It's a such an incredible good feeling

when you know, when you're in that 1%,

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when you're in significance,

when you're at that point of excellence,

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that you can help

other people be successful as well.

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So I want to go through

each level, though,

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because I haven't talked

about the two middle levels.

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So there's survival.

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Survival means

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getting up every day

and doing what you have to do,

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even when you don't want to do it.

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By the way, that's the difference

between amateurs and professionals.

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Amateurs.

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Well, they, you know, they,

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decide

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not to do things some days

because it just doesn't feel right.

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It just doesn't feel good.

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It just, you know, it

just isn't going to make them any money.

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Whatever excuse they want to make.

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Nationals, on the other hand, do it

even when they're sick,

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even when it hurts, even when it cost them

money, even when it doesn't feel good.

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But they know it's the right thing.

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All right.

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So amateurs, professionals, survival

to significance.

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And in survival mode,

one of the things that I try to tell

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people is that, for instance,

when you're starting the business,

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you have two jobs, not one.

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You have two jobs.

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So if you were working for somebody else,

you have one job, you do that job

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and then you do it really well,

and then you go home and you're done.

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But people

that work with me, for instance,

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I try to teach them that they have

two jobs, they have this job.

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And then the question is,

how do we take our company

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and move it to the next level?

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What are we doing extra?

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And it's kind of like that other part

where you're striving for progress,

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not perfection,

but you get the progress done.

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And if you don't have the real progress

done, what's one thing

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you can do to move

towards that perfection?

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So you're in survival mode?

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What are you going to do to move

towards the next level and the next level?

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Up, by the way, is stability.

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Stability so that when you wake up

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you're not worried about somebody

taking your car away.

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You're not worried about somebody

taking your house away.

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You're not worried about losing your wife.

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You're not worried about the phone

ringing in your business.

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So in survival mode,

like I said, you really have two parts.

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The one is doing the job.

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If you're a home inspector

is doing the home inspection.

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If you're a speaker,

it's doing the speaking.

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If you're a coach, it's coaching, okay.

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And trying to help somebody else.

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But the second part of that job

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that nobody talks about is booking home

inspections, making sure the phone rings,

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making sure that somebody

wants to use you a second time.

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So not only are you doing the inspections,

but you're also doing

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what makes that possible.

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You're not only doing speaking,

but you've got the time on the phone

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where you're calling or letters or emails

or a podcast or something you're doing

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that makes it so that other people

want you for your basic service.

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And so it's an incredibly important

part in that.

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And once you get those two pieces

together, they start.

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They actually start blending together, and

you get to a point where you're stable.

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You know, when you get up that day,

the phone is going to ring,

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you know it's going to ring

because you've done the marketing,

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because you've done the pieces.

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And now all you have to do

is answer the phone book the inspection

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or book the speaking, or book

the appointment with your next client.

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That's stability.

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And at the point where you really start

understanding that every day,

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every year,

that that's pretty much a given.

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Now you've really kind of moved up to that

next level, which is success.

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And by the way, you know,

you've had success a lot of times

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when people ask you to speak

about what you've done and how you did it,

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every conference I go to, it never fails.

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And the last conference

I went to was no exception.

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Somebody pulled me aside, said, Mike,

I just want you to know I am successful

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because I followed your advice on this

and this and this and this and this,

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and now I'm here.

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And now I don't worry about anything

because I'm in this level of success

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in my world.

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You know, I have this

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wonderful opportunity

where I go see my dad on a regular basis.

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By the time you hear this,

my dad might not be with us anymore.

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That's okay.

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But one of the things that I,

we talked about with my dad

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was it recently was

how are we going to finish strong?

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We're going to make sure

that we finish strong.

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And that's the same as going from that,

you know,

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striving for progress

and then to perfection.

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And right honestly, now my dad is

at that level of perfection in his life.

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He didn't have to worry about money.

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He's stable.

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He didn't have to worry

about being successful.

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He's already been there.

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And now, honestly,

what me and my dad talk about

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is how we are going to be significant,

not only just for,

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you know, the next year or three years

or five years, not even the next,

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just the next 20 years, which most people

never even think that far out.

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But the next hundred years and me

and my dad

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have those conversations

every single day right now.

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What are we doing right now?

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So that 100 years from now, our family

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won't have to go through the survival mode

as tough as we did?

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Now, here's the fun part

is, as you're raising kids or grandkids,

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you want them to go through survival

mode on something,

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whether it's mowing the yard

or whether it's homework

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or whether it's, being in the band

or on the football team or, or something.

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Robotics. I don't care what it is.

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They need to go through something

that creates that survival instinct.

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Because when

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they create that,

then they can go to stability.

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And then once they understand

that this created the platform

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for stability,

then they can go to success.

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My youngest son came to me at one point

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and he went through survival mode

pretty tough.

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And then he got to stability

and he came back.

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At one point he said, dad,

I just want to tell you, thank you.

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Because what you taught me in survival

mode helped me get to stability.

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And now I'm at success

because I have all these skill sets

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that I learned from

you here to be able to get to that.

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And the fun thing is, right now, he's

now helping other people.

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And so he's

now playing in that role of significance.

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Okay, so what are you going to do

to make sure that you're in survival mode?

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Like I said earlier, you've got two jobs.

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One is figuring out how to do

a great inspection if you're an inspector,

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how to be a great speaker or a coach,

if that's what you do.

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But if you're a dentist,

it's the same thing.

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How are you going

to become a great dentist?

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And we're going to write all that,

but that's just survival mode.

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And then working towards stability

is making sure that the marketing

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and making sure that the, the management

and all those parts are there as well,

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and you start blending those two, you have

two jobs, not just being a dentist,

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not just being an inspector,

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not just being whatever it is that you do

a speaker or whatever, okay?

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You've got to make sure that you take it

and move it to that next level

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by supporting it

with the pieces over here,

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the marketing, the management, the

the standards of practice,

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the SOPs, as people like to call them,

okay, the systems.

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That's what creates stability.

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And then once you have the survival

or the service down

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or the product down,

then you move into getting stability.

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Then once that is in place

and you've got your SOPs

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and you understand

what's going to happen there every day.

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And by the way, here's

the cool thing is you get to hire

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people at a certain point

because your company is doing well.

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You get to hire people

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to create that stability

and make sure that it stays in place.

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Then you move towards success

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and basically you hire someone else

and they go

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do all this stuff that's already written

down, already there for them,

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and they understand

what is expected of them in that process.

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And then as you're sitting there,

I'll still remember the day that

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me and my mom and dad

were sitting at a Mexican food restaurant,

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and I was just kind of staring out

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through the window,

and it was pouring down rain.

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It was pouring down rain.

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And my dad said, he said,

what are you thinking about?

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And I said,

I was just thinking how blessed we are

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because we worked through survival.

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We worked through stability.

We're we're at success.

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But honestly, right now we're sitting here

able to enjoy lunch because we have six

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inspectors out there who we have help them

also go through survival, stability.

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And now they're being successful.

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But honestly they're out there today.

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You know, even though it's raining,

taking care of the business.

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And I get to sit here today

with my mom and dad, okay.

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And have a great Mexican lunch.

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Significance can give you

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so many

blessings, gave you so many opportunities.

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That significance, though, comes

when you help other people

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go through the survival and the stability

to success, get to success, and then

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hopefully, maybe you could help them

to get to significance as well.

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Even as our company is growing

and we're now multi-million dollar

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company, we're having other people

that are managers in the company

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and they are playing

at that level of significance

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so they can help other people

go to that next level as well.

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So those are

some of the most important parts.

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You know, a couple of those major things

that I want to make sure

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that you understand.

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And again, one was the, you know, making

progress, make make progress every day

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and, and try or strive for progress

every day instead of perfection.

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Because perfection, you know,

you're not ever going to get there.

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What you can get to

though is significance.

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And you going

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have to go through survival,

stability, success to get to significance.

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Well, I hope that helps.

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And, feel free to ask questions on that,

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because I love talking

about these subjects specifically

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because they make such a huge difference

in how you do everything,

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how you plan everything

so that you can get to their thanks.

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So I'll talk to you again soon.

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