EPISODE OVERVIEW

Duration: Approximately 45 minutes

Best For: Trapped entrepreneurs who built their service business from nothing and now feel like they cannot take a single day off

Key Outcome: Listeners will discover how to build recurring revenue, delegate without losing quality, and use AI as a personal assistant to reclaim their time and sanity

He had a newborn in the NICU, an hour drive each way, and a business that needed him every single day.

THE BOTTOM LINE

You know that feeling. The one where you built something from nothing, and now that something owns you completely. Spencer Hill spent nine years growing a mole trapping company from a Honda Civic with 40 traps in the boot to a team, a recurring revenue model, and a business that actually runs when he steps away. The thing is, he nearly lost himself getting there. When his son spent 17 days in intensive care, Spencer had no choice. He had to trust his team. He had to let go. And the business kept running. This episode is for every trapped entrepreneur who believes nobody can do it as well as them. Because that belief is costing you your health, your family, and possibly your marriage. Spencer shares exactly how he made the shift from reactive chaos to proactive systems, how AI became his personal assistant when human assistants could not keep up with his scattered brain, and why burning the boats might be the only way forward.

WHY THIS EPISODE MATTERS TO YOU

You will learn how to transform one-off customers into predictable recurring revenue, so you stop wondering where next month's income will come from

You will discover why the phrase "nobody can do it as well as me" is the exact thought keeping you trapped, and what to do instead

You will hear how a man with zero coding ability built apps and websites using AI, proving the barrier to entry has completely disappeared

You will understand the real cost of keeping all four burners on full, and why something has to give before your health does it for you

KEY INSIGHTS YOU CAN IMPLEMENT TODAY

Recurring revenue changes everything. Spencer went from feast and famine seasons to predictable monthly income by offering year-round service instead of per-job pricing. His customers stopped calling three times a year at higher rates and started paying monthly for continuous protection. The stability this creates allows you to plan, hire, and breathe.

Trust is built through freedom, not micromanagement. Spencer discovered that the more he micromanaged his team, the more pushback he received. When he started telling people what to do without dictating exactly how to do it, they stepped up. This is how you stop being the bottleneck.

AI is not about replacement, it is about leverage. Spencer went from conspiracy theorist concerns about AI to building apps, creating websites, and developing 130 recipes for his health condition. The key shift was learning to talk to AI like you would speak to a specialist. Tell it who you need advice from, and suddenly you have a thousand experts at your fingertips for 20 pounds a month.

The four burner theory demands a choice. Family, friends, health, business. To be successful, you might need to turn one off. To be ultra successful, you might need to turn two off. Most trapped entrepreneurs have turned off health and family without making a conscious choice. This episode helps you choose deliberately.

Burning the boats removes the escape route. Spencer's advice is stark. If you give yourself an easy way out, you will take it. The businesses that succeed are run by people who have no backup plan. The commitment itself creates the conditions for success.

GOLDEN QUOTES WORTH REMEMBERING

"You can't run a business unless you can run yourself." - Roy Castleman

"No one can do this as well as I can, nobody cares about my business the way I care about it. Then you start to realise people do care to do a good job." - Spencer Hill

"If you give yourself an easy way out, then you're just going to quit. Burn the boats, you can only go forward." - Spencer Hill

"There's no such thing as job security. No matter what you do, if you work for somebody else, you're never going to be the last one out the door." - Spencer Hill

"The more freedom I give my employees, the better they perform. The more I micromanage, the more pushback I get." - Spencer Hill

QUICK NAVIGATION FOR BUSY LEADERS

00:00 - Introduction: Meeting Spencer Hill, the veteran entrepreneur who traps moles and builds race cars

03:45 - Military to Machinist: How Spencer's army experience shaped his work ethic and why job security is a myth

08:30 - Starting With Nothing: From a stolen sandwich board to a legitimate pressure washing business

14:20 - The Recurring Revenue Shift: Why moving from per-job to monthly service changed everything

22:15 - The Four Burner Theory: Family, friends, health, business, and why something has to give

28:40 - Learning to Delegate: The moment Spencer realised micromanagement was destroying his team

34:10 - AI as Personal Assistant: From Terminator fears to building apps with zero coding ability

40:30 - The NICU Test: How 17 days of crisis proved his business could run without him

44:00 - Conclusion: Burn the boats, there is no backup plan

GUEST SPOTLIGHT

Name: Spencer Hill

Bio: Spencer is the founder of Got Moles, a veteran-owned mole control company serving the greater Puget Sound area. What started in 2017 as a solution to his own backyard problem has grown into a thriving business with a team and a reputation for getting the job done right. A veteran of the 82nd Airborne, husband, and new father, Spencer brings the same systematic approach to business that he brings to building 800HP race cars. Measure twice, execute once, and never cut corners.

Connect with Spencer:

Website: www.got-moles.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/spencer-hill-2132b92ab/

Instagram: instagram.com/MethodicalMayhem/

Facebook: facebook.com/gotmolesnw

YOUR NEXT ACTIONS

This Week: Identify three tasks you currently do that someone else could do at 80% of your quality. Delegate one of them. Watch what happens when you stop being the bottleneck for that one thing.

This Month: Analyse your customer base and identify repeat buyers. Create a simple recurring service offer for them. Even converting 10 customers to monthly billing changes your cash flow completely.

This Quarter: Pick one area of your business that overwhelms you, whether that is marketing, customer service, or operations. Spend dedicated time with AI learning how it could assist. Start with one problem, get one solution, then build from there.

EPISODE RESOURCES

No additional resources for this episode.

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READY TO ESCAPE THE TRAP?

Take the Freedom Score Quiz: https://scoreapp.atpbos.com/

Discover how trapped you are in your business and get your personalised roadmap to freedom in under 5 minutes.

Book a Free Strategy Session: https://www.atpbos.com/contact

Let's discuss how to build a business that works WITHOUT you.

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CONNECT WITH YOUR HOST, ROY CASTLEMAN

Roy is the founder of All The Power Limited and creator of Elevate360, a business coaching system for entrepreneurs ready to scale without burnout. As a certified Wim Hof Method Instructor and the UK's first certified BOS UP coach, Roy combines AI automation, wellness practices, and business operating systems to help trapped entrepreneurs reclaim their freedom.

Website: www.atpbos.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roycastleman/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@allthepowerltd

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Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are in

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the world. I'm here with Spencer Hill. You can see

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the skull on his table there. He hunts, he races

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and builds cars and he catches moles. So let's have

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an interesting conversation with Spencer. Spencer can have some really

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strange conversations. So Spencer, tell the people a bit about

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yourself. Yeah, Roy introduced me. I'm a bit of a

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oddball. I'm out there doing everything. I, I'm into race

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cars. We're building a couple of race cars, one of

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to advertise for my company. I'm into hunting, living outdoors,

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doing all kinds of stuff. And yeah, so I own

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a mole trapping company as well here in the Pacific

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Northwest. And we're growing and we're working through the

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growing pains. And that's how I met you, is through

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that. Being a burnt out business owner, trying to get

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my life back together. Or maybe, maybe it was never

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together. Maybe we can just enjoy today. That's the way

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to go. Yeah, I'm having fun doing it all. Yeah.

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Amazing. You had quite a cool story how you got

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into the trapping moles. But go back a little bit

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and tell us a little bit about. Yeah, I think

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you're probably one of the many of us entrepreneurs that

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are unemployable. Right. So the mole thing has just been

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like a bane of my existence forever. And when I

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was a kid, I grew up on. My dad has

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a large piece of property and he hates the moles.

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And he was like, he put in this nice lawn

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and every day he'd wake up and there'd be new

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molehills in the yard. And we were trying everything. We

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did like every gimmick that doesn't work. We tried it.

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So we tried all the powders and chemicals and poisons

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and it got to the point where we bought this

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thing. It looks like a flamethrower and you're like putting

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it in the holes and you're pumping it full of

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like oxy acetylene and. And you're blowing up the yard.

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So it was like a war zone at my dad's

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house. And I'm sure the neighbors were like, what the

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hell are these people doing? The Beverly Hillbillies out there

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just blowing up the yard. But anyways, my kind of

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chore with that became catching the moles. And so once

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we figured out how to catch the moles, that was

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what I ended up doing. And I never expected it

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to be what I do for a living. I had

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other aspirations and I don't know, it just kind of

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this is the one that stuck. So here we are.

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You went into the military for all. Oh yeah, I

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was in the army. I just did one term, just

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under four years. I was in the 82nd Airborne. I

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jumped out of airplanes and shot machine guns and did

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all this stuff that as a kid, the way I

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sold myself on how. Why I was joining the military

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was what did you want to be as a kid?

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And nobody said I want to be a mole catcher

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or I'm going to be a life coach or whatever.

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It was like, I'm going to be a freaking paratrooper,

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right? Or a police officer or one of these things.

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And so I was like, I'm just chasing childhood dreams,

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man. So I went and did that and it was

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a, it was an experience, some positive, some negative. But

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yeah. And you came out of there and you decided

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right at some point you went into some work and

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did that. I got out, I. My dad had retired

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at the time and I. He called me and said,

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I need help. So he bought this farm. I went

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over and lived on his farm. And funny story, my

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dad's, he's an interesting guy. He told me, oh yeah,

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we got a place for you to stay and we'll

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feed you and all this stuff, we'll pay you and

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it'll be a good situation for everybody. And so I'm

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like, this sounds great. I had everything that I owned

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in a bag in those green military duffel bags. And

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I got out of the army and I left and

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I was driving and I sold my reliable truck to

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drive. I like these little race cars. And so I

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had this shitty little race car, a 1992 Nissan

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240 SX, I think it was, maybe it was a

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96 Nissan 240 SX. But I'm driving. I leave North

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Carolina, I get to Georgia, the car catches on fire

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and burns the ground. I grab my bag out of

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the thing, I got no money, I got nothing. I

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just have everything in this bag. And I'm like, what

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the hell am I gonna do now? So I had

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a buddy that lived close by and I stayed with

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him until I had a couple more paychecks coming from

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when I got out of the military. I waited for

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my paycheck to come and I got a plane ticket

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and I flew to my grandparents house first in Arizona.

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And I stayed with them for a couple weeks, spent

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some time with them and then I decided like, all

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right, it's probably time to fly back to my dad's

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and get to work. And so when I got to

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my dad's, he picks me up from the airport and

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drives me over. It's about maybe two and a half,

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three hour drive. I hadn't seen my dad for years.

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Pretty much the whole time I was in the military,

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maybe I saw him once or twice, but. So we

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did some catching up on the drive and we get

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there, it's freezing freaking cold. And he's. Oh yeah, here's.

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This is where you can stay. And it's, it's a

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shack. There's no power, there's no water, there's no nothing.

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Dude, it's a 12 by 12, like rodeo announcement shack.

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And I'm like, I don't have anything else going on

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in the military, so you've had some rough days, I'm

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sure. So I went and did that for a while.

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And then through that, my dad ended up coming out

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of retirement, getting his business back over here on the

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west side, and I went to work in the machine

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shop again. So I grew up in machine shops and

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yeah, that's where the knowledge of the cars and what

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to do there comes from. I have one memory of

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when I was a kid, my dad had a Corvette,

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like a 98 Corvette. And I don't know how fast

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we went because I was just a little kid, but

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I remembered like that car just seeming so fast. And

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like the one time that we really went in, it

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just, that was like the addiction to speed. Never looked

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back. You spent a few pounds, a few dollars on

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that, right? Oh my gosh. I don't want to know

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how much I've spent on it. Yeah, but that's life,

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right? If you can do the things you love doing,

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that's all we can ask for. Yeah, I could be

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spending my money on a lot dumber stuff. It's just

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we gotta have hobbies and sometimes we have too many

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hobbies. You gotta purge some hobbies. And you, you go

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hunting as well. I know you go hunting. So tell

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us a bit about that. Successful. I have my friend

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that is a hunting guide, calls it adult onset hunting

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disorder or something like that. And because I didn't start

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doing it when I was a kid, some of these

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guys grew up out in the woods and they know

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everything about it. And that's not me. I'm fumbling through

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this on my own. I like a challenge, I like

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to do extreme everything. So I started with the archery

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hunting, which is probably the backwards way of doing things.

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But I was like, ah, if we're gonna do this,

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we're gonna do it I want to be up close,

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I want to be personal. And like my first year

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hunting, I had extreme, like we had a lot of

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success, guys. We didn't get an animal, but I called

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in all these elk and I had no idea what

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I was doing. And so that kind of ruined me.

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I was like, dude, I can do this. And then

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every year after that has been increasingly more difficult and

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increasingly more difficult. I shot my first deer last year.

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That's the one on the table there. So it took

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me five years to actually harvest something. I don't know.

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I like it, I enjoy it. I'm not like a

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full on like hunting addict, but I enjoy the clean

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meat and knowing where my food came from and the

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adventure. That's what this is all about, right? Is just

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being out there and doing something that I'll go out

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in the woods with a buddy and we won't see

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anybody for a week. It's cool. That's awesome. Yeah. Just

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reconnecting with nature and actually getting back to yourself and

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breathing that fresh air must be awesome. And where you

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stay is just amazing as well. The whole area is

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so beautiful. It's one of my favorite places in the

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world. Yeah. Tough to be rain, but then, yeah, you

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have to have the rain to have the good rain,

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right. I don't know, some of us, like there's a

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term, a pluvial file. I think that's someone who's in

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love with the rain or whatever. You have to in

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love with the rain here a little bit and it

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makes you tough. You're not going to walk around in

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Washington, maybe in Seattle, but most people, you're never going

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to see an umbrella or anything like that. People just

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deal with the rain. Blow away, dude. Yeah.

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So now you go and you decide to go and

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get into a mold company. Tell us the beginning story

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of that. I just started doing it on the side

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for like beer money. And like we just. I don't

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know, it just became a thing. And then I started

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out when I realized I actually didn't start the mole

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business first. I started the pressure washing business first. I

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bought like a. I think I got my first pressure

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washing job. I don't know. I borrowed my mom's pressure

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washer. One of her neighbors wanted something pressure washed. So

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I did like their driveway and their patio. And I

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was like, I can make money doing this on the

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side. Like I have. I had a job and it

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was a good job. And pro probably would have been

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a good career, but I wanted more. So I went

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out I did the pressure washing thing. So I figured

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out, oh man, this is going to work. I can

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make money doing this, so this is bad. But those

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sandwich boards that you see that are advertising houses or

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new housing developments, I stole one of those and then

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I painted it all white. And then I. With a

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giant marker, I just wrote pressure washing and my phone

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number. And I set it out on like the main

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highway. And then people would call me and I'd go

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and I'd pressure wash driveways or whatever. I bought a

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big pressure washer and anyways, then. Then we started. I

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started doing the mole thing as well. I started just

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trapping the moles and that kind of took off the

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same way, except for I didn't steal anything this time.

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I got a bunch of those white signs and I

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wrote got moles on all of them. And I put

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them up all over the place. And I just started

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getting phone calls. And so I started out small. It

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was me in a Honda Civic, like a 98 Honda

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Civic. And I had maybe 30 or 40 traps in

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the trunk. And I just go on a Friday because

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I worked four tens back then. So I worked Monday

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through Thursday and then Fridays and I just started really

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small in my local community and I just started doing

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it there. And then we started pushing it out, growing.

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I got it to, well, Covid. Covid hit and I

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got laid off from my machinist job. And I just

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decided then, fuck it. I think one of the things

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that I love about how you've gone through the journey

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is you've actually picked up a couple of different elements

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that have really worked for you. Yeah, your recurring revenue

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piece. A business isn't a business unless you have recurring

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revenue. Otherwise it's just a sales job. You never know

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when the next paycheck's coming. And you've done that very

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well. You initially, before we met, you already had a

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recurring revenue stream coming in. Tell us a bit of

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a story about that now. That's going to change. I

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didn't in the beginning. I just. I would just. I

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started out like everybody else and I did a per

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mole thing every per. I'd charge people a setup fee

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or something. And then we'd come out per mole. We'd

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catch per mole. But it was so seasonal and we.

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I would get to the point where it was like,

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I'd have a great summer, I'd make money all summer,

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and then all winter I was like working one or

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two days a week. And then the other thing is,

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like the. With the reoccurring thing is, I didn't realize

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that it was even a thing until I made friends

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with the owner of a pest control company. And I

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explained, we went out to lunch and I told him

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like, man, it's really hit or miss. It's really like

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I have some huge months and then I have some

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months where like I'm barely making ends meet. And so

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yeah, you really gotta save money, prepare for the winter.

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And he was like, have you ever thought about doing

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it as like a reoccurring service? I said, no, I

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don't. I've never done anything like that. So we talked

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about it a little bit. And then the more I

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thought about it, I was like, I know that this

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way works because I've done the year round trapping thing

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at my dad's place and at a few other people's

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houses. And I know I'm getting these return customers all

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the time. They're calling me three, four, five times a

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year. So we started looking into that at this point.

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When I did this, I had Corey with me, working

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with me, so it wasn't just me anymore. So we

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fooled around with it and, and on the customers that

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were calling me all the time, we just said, hey,

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instead of paying us 3, 400 bucks every time that

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we're coming out here, why don't you just keep us

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out here for the whole year? We'll charge you. I

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think we started at 75 bucks or something like that.

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75 bucks a month. We'll stay out here the whole

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year. And then with that, we had a ton of

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success because we caught all the moles that were the

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problem. This is a very visual thing, right? You walk

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out in your yard, you spent $10,000 putting in this

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nice lawn and all this beautiful landscaping and, and this

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is like your place, your happy place. You go out

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there and you feel at peace and you wake up

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in the morning and there's a molehill in your beautiful

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new lawn. You know, you're pissed. So I don't want

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people to deal with that, live without that. Enjoy your

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freedom, your time, your space with your family. Do your

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thing and forget about the moles. So we started catching

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the moles that were right around that area where you're

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the pain point. And then we started pushing out to

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the perimeter and, and catching them before they ever got

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into the problem areas. And we've had a lot of

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luck doing it that way. I don't think that there's

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a better way at this point if, if we can

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act proactively instead of Reactively, we can solve the whole

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problem before it ever becomes an issue. The spirit of

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the entrepreneur right there. We see a problem in the

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world and we feel the people's pain. You grew up

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with moles and you grew up knowing what that pain

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was. Yeah. You fed off of your fathers of rage

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about the moles. Rage against the moles. Rage against the

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moles. Yeah. So that stayed with you. And then you

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saw the problem and you went out and you're like,

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you know what? I can fix this problem. And it's

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been a journey from there. How long you been doing

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this now? I've been in business. I think this is

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my ninth year in business. Eighth or ninth year. Yeah,

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yeah. And yeah, you go out in the world and

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you're like, okay. And then you kind of get a

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bit stuck, don't you? So you're gonna kind of get

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stuck into your business, becomes everything. Because you have to

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be there all the time. And it's not even about

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being there all the time. You can never turn off.

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Turning off, turning it off is difficult. And giving up

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control of things in your business is difficult. And because

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you created it all right, who knows your business better

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than you? Right. And like it. I think a lot

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of business owners live by that. If you want something

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done right, do it yourself. And I think that's a

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real problem for small business. You have to be able

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to rely on other people. You have to be able

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to delegate and trust that the people in your organization

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can help you do these things. Otherwise you're going to

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burn out. Which is where you and I met. I

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was ready to just. Man, I was so stressed. Look

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at. I had hair before. Yeah. And that's it, right?

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I guess there's that piece of being coachable as well.

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At some points you're not coachable. You're just not. I

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wasn't coachable in the beginning. I was like, no, I

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can do this, I can do this. And you see

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somebody else doing it, right? You're like, why can they

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do it? So you end up having this kind of

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almost guilt thing that you should be better and you

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should. You should be able to do this. It's easier.

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There's all these people making all this money. Why can't

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I just do it? And then you get to a

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point of actually, you know what, if I want to

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go and learn how to drive a car properly, if

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I want to go and learn how to skydive or

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far, I get a coach to teach me, why is

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the business any different? And yeah, and yeah, we met

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and we've had some good times and we'll talk about

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that a bit. I want to just before we go

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there, how many businesses have you started do you think?

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Oh man, I don't know how many I've started but

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I remember my first business that I started and I

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got in trouble for it actually. When I think I

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was in maybe like sixth grade, I found this website

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that was selling fake Oakley sunglasses for super cheap and

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I borrowed my parents credit card and I bought, I

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don't know, two dozen pairs of these Oakleys and I

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started selling them at school and my brother and I

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made business cards and it said Hill Bros. Shades. And

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yeah, they ended up busting me. I got in trouble.

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I wasn't, I mean that because we didn't have a

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business license or anything like that and but yeah, that

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was. I think I must have been about 11 or

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12 years old when I did that. I don't know.

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I've started and just dissolved probably four

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or five businesses. And then I have to keep the

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blinders on and go through life like this. Like what

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is important here? Because I see things all the time

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and I'm like, you've seen it happen with me already.

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Oh, I see. This is the new shiny thing over

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here. And I started wandering off in this direction of

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in my brain. I'm like, this is a billion dollar

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idea. And how many people say that to you? Yeah,

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when they know you're a business owner, they come to

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you and they're like, I've got this great idea, you

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can just do this. It used to be all the

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time, I think with where I'm at in life now

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with three kids and everything that's going on, the business

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and whatever, I just don't get out around other people

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that often, other business owners or other like my friends.

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And so I hear about this stuff a lot less

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now than I used to. But yeah, I still get

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phone calls all the time of people like, how hard

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is it for me to start a business? Or what

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do I have to do to get an llc? Or

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hey, I got this idea and I want to run

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it by you because you got, you own a business

361

and I entertain that stuff sometimes. And yeah, it's exciting

362

looking through other people's eyes. And I think there's 1%

363

of people in the world start a new business every

364

year. Like over time there's only 7% of people that

365

will start a business in the lockdown. So it's a

366

pretty unique group because there's that step you have to

367

take, you have to leave some level of comfort that

368

you built up for yourself. Yeah, I think, and I

369

think I've told you this before, but I have a

370

friend who. He's very successful business owner. He took his

371

family's business over and, like, it wasn't a very successful

372

thing at the time. And, dude, he just. He turned

373

it into something amazing. And so him and I were

374

talking and when I was like, really nervous about going

375

out on my own and I didn't have a plan

376

or anything like that, he told me there's no such

377

thing as job security. And so that kind of stuck

378

with me. No matter what you do, if you work

379

for somebody else, you're never going to be the last

380

one out the door. Because I have to take care

381

of me and you have to take care of you.

382

If it's your business and everything starts failing, like, the

383

last person, the captain, goes down with the ship and

384

there's that thing, right? It's. As you're going through this

385

process, what walls have you built for yourself that aren't

386

really there? I just want to have two months worth

387

of salary saved up. I just want to have this.

388

I just want to have that. And. Yeah, and I

389

guess that leads me to, yeah, AI, we're

390

just in such a different space in the world right

391

now. It's insane. And I think the introduction you had

392

to AI was interesting when I open it, but boy,

393

man, have you run with it. I think I was

394

like, I'm a conspiracy theorist, man. So you start talking

395

about AI and I start thinking about like, the Terminator

396

and the Matrix and all these things that we've seen

397

along the way. Right? Yeah, they're for entertainment or whatever,

398

but so I just was like, ah, I don't like

399

that. I don't AI thing. I never thought of it

400

in the same way as I do now. I just.

401

It was there and I didn't want to give it

402

any information about me because when they come for us,

403

man, they were going to know everything about me. Right,

404

but they know everything from your Alexa anyway, right? I

405

don't have Alexa. I didn't use when you and I

406

got together the first time. I don't think I had

407

used. I think I had used chat GPT very

408

little for some really novelty stuff like made some pictures

409

or something of cars maybe, but I don't think I'd

410

done anything. Now. You called me up there a couple

411

of weeks ago. Yeah, I built an app. Yeah, I'm

412

building a whole new Website. That's

413

one of the things that is so formative in this.

414

What's the problem you actually need to fix? Yeah, and

415

that's the thing. The blinders applies to the AI as

416

well. Because, like, I'll get. My wife gets pissed because

417

I'll just be on Claude and just doing something. And

418

she's like, what are you doing last night? Prime example.

419

So I've been dealing with this acid reflux stuff, and

420

Claude and I have been running through what it is

421

that's causing this. And it's food and it's some sleep

422

habits that I have. And I'm on a CPAP machine,

423

which I don't think I need anymore because I've lost

424

all this weight and I'm healthier and I don't think

425

I'm having the issues. I looked at the Claude and

426

I looked through the data and I'm like, man, I'm

427

not having these sleep apnea issues anymore. But I also

428

don't want to quit without getting another sleep study. But

429

I decided, dude, finding foods that I could eat with

430

this problem has been a challenge. And through this process

431

of the last five, six months, I've been going to

432

Claude and we've been like, developing recipes or whatever. Well,

433

last night we put it all together, man. 130 recipes,

434

cookbooks with instructions. This whole, like, this is like a

435

marketable thing. I'm like, here we go, down the rabbit

436

hole. I've got a cookbook now. That's all. I actually

437

have somebody that might be able to sell it for

438

you. Let's go.

439

Remind me to tell you about him, Joseph. But yeah,

440

so, yeah, there's this thing that we. That really drives

441

me at the moment. Yeah. And there's always something we

442

don't need to know, the stuff we need to know.

443

How many times have you gone into your cars when

444

you're working on your cars and you're like, okay, just

445

help me with this. Oh, yeah, okay. Like you say,

446

recipes. I'll go up to my fridge and I take

447

a picture. I'm like, make me a Michelin star recipe

448

that I can easily do. And then walk me through

449

it. I'll go on holiday. I'm like, okay, where do

450

I go here? And it's just, we don't need to.

451

We don't need to go to that expert anymore. There's

452

a thousand experts right at our fingertips, and that's where

453

the power comes from. How do we think about AI

454

and. But it's a journey, right? It's such a journey.

455

And this is what I keep on telling people, is

456

you can't do it overnight. Tell us a little bit

457

about how your journey evolved on that. Oh, man. I

458

started just tinkering with. With the chat GPT or whatever

459

it was. I had no idea what I could do,

460

and I didn't have any idea how to ask or

461

talk to the AI to get what I wanted out

462

of it. I was just. I think we start out

463

and you put it really into perspective for me is

464

like you. You throw out an idea or something into

465

a room full of a thousand experts, and you're getting

466

answers from just anybody. But if you're really selective of

467

who you're asking. So, like the cars thing, if I

468

say I'm trying to get advice from an ASE master

469

certified technician working on my 1991 Toyota Mr.2, I'm

470

having these wiring issues. The headlights aren't working and the

471

tail lights flicker or whatever. I don't know what the

472

problem is. Ask me some questions about how I can

473

find this problem. You put that out there and then

474

it knows exactly, you know, who you need advice from

475

or to help you. And they start. I've done that

476

and that, almost that same situation. And it started giving

477

me wiring schematics and telling me like, okay, start here.

478

Let's check at the taillight harness and let's look for

479

loose grounds or check these bulbs. And then I told

480

the. Oh, yeah, I put LED bulbs and they're like,

481

oh, that could be. There's a different power here and

482

stuff that I never would have thought of. And so

483

we just. It'll help you work through some of these

484

problems if you know how to talk to it or

485

ask for the advice that you need or whatever. And

486

that pushing back, right? As well. You got to keep

487

on pushing back. You got to hold the ownership of

488

the problem, because otherwise you go down some rabbit holes,

489

right? Way down some rabbit holes. And then it starts

490

to learn you as well, which is pretty impressive. If

491

I open up my cloud right now and I told

492

it like, hey, I want to start a new business.

493

I want to do a car detailing business. I want

494

to be in this area. It kind of looks at

495

me and is, all right, buddy, that's not like a

496

great idea. You've got a lot going on with your

497

mobile business. You've got all these things going on with

498

the kids. Maybe rethink this. Here's a real life example.

499

I've been looking at my marketing play and how do

500

we get more leads? So I've told Claude what it

501

is that I'm doing and what's working and what's not

502

working. And we don't have all the data because I

503

haven't really figured that part out yet. And so I'm

504

looking at cold calling and door knocking and all these

505

things, these direct mailers. And so I put all this

506

information that I'm looking at into Claude, and Claude comes

507

back and says, have you exhausted this Google Ads thing

508

yet? And I'm like, no, not really, I haven't. Let's

509

start there. That's already working. How come? We're trying to

510

reinvent the wheel and it's so much better at that,

511

right? Yeah. Six months ago, when you started, you ask

512

it a question and it's just. Yeah, that's awesome. It's

513

a great idea. Yeah. Setting soap on the side of

514

the road. Yeah, it was perfect. Everybody should have a

515

business. Yeah, Right. But then when you ask it the

516

right way, tell me what I'm missing about this or

517

any obvious things that I could do differently. And then

518

comes back and says, There's 10 people on the road

519

selling soap. Right? Yeah. But it's got so much better

520

at that. And I love that context you put in

521

there, because when it does know you better, you're right.

522

It's now starting to say, actually, you've got more things

523

on your plate you want to think about. I don't

524

know, you've had your wife helping in the business and

525

yeah, she's done an awesome job. And that I'm sure

526

caused some tensions, but this is like having a personal

527

assistant. If you get it right. It's like having a

528

personal assistant that can just keep up. And yeah, I've

529

lost a few personal assistants because I've just. My brain's

530

too scattered, Ron. Yeah. 10 things at once and then

531

I'm just right. I can't keep up with what you're

532

trying to think about. That's the entrepreneur in us, Right?

533

That is what. That's your superpower, is that maybe it's

534

ADHD or whatever it is, but that causes us to

535

be going all these different directions all the time. And

536

trying to harness that, man, is if you can harness

537

that, then notion else should not

538

tell you. I know, I'm working on it. I'm working

539

on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what's the future look

540

like? When we met you, I think you said to

541

me, if I could sell this business now, I would.

542

Yeah, what's the future look like? No, I don't want

543

to sell. I want to grow and if there's places

544

with moles, like, I want to open a branch there,

545

the goal is to continue to grow and. And just

546

I'm having fun with it now and I want to

547

keep having fun with it. And I don't know, I

548

think if I don't see any reason to sell it,

549

there's no. And it's that piece. I'm coming around to

550

this piece of the wellness side of it. Right. We

551

don't respect ourselves enough as entrepreneurs to look after ourselves.

552

Right. Because everything else is more important. This baby that

553

we're birthed, the stand that we birthed, we have to

554

put all our energy in there because we're helping our

555

families and we're providing for them. And this is the

556

rhetoric that I told myself. And then the health starts

557

going and you start putting on weight and then suddenly

558

everything's aching a bit more and then the blood pressure

559

goes up and. Yeah, you can't run a business unless

560

you can run yourself. We've done some cool stuff. You're

561

now in ice baths. Yeah. Breath work, a little bit

562

of meditation. But when you start looking after that stuff

563

yourself, how many aches and pains have gone away? Right.

564

Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, on that. Have you ever heard

565

of the four burner theory? So the theory is that

566

like your life has four burners as an entrepreneur, as

567

a business owner. And so the burners are like family,

568

friends, health and business. And if you want to be

569

successful, again, this is just a theory. If you want

570

to be successful, you have to turn one of those

571

burners off. Right. So then you got three. So you

572

pick three. And if you want to be ultra successful,

573

then you got to turn two of those burners off.

574

I think a lot of entrepreneurs or business owners or

575

people in general kind of live like that. If you

576

want your business to be successful, you do have to

577

put in a ton of effort into it. Right. It

578

takes a lot of your life, but it doesn't have

579

to take all of it. Right. There has to be

580

time for your family and there has to be time

581

for your health. And if it's important to you, then

582

you should have time for some friends. There's got to

583

be a healthy B. I like that. But I also

584

bring back to it this new world we're living in.

585

The people aren't realizing the power of that yet. I

586

think as we go through the next six months, you

587

start doing your automations and you're starting your Claude code

588

and you start doing, you know, understanding that knowledge is

589

now essentially free. Yeah. 20 bucks a month and you

590

can have any knowledge you want. 20 bucks a month

591

doesn't get you very far. On Claude. On Claude code

592

for sure. That lasted you about two minutes. Yeah.

593

But yeah, that information would have to go out and

594

get before or pay for or. Yeah, it's there now.

595

So yeah, oh, I have that. You saw what I

596

did. I've now created like two apps and a

597

website. So yeah, a website and two apps that function

598

and I have a zero coding, you know, ability or

599

skill. I type like this. Yeah. Talk to text, it's

600

the best thing in the world. Oh yeah, the talk

601

to text is life changing. But yeah, it's insane what

602

you can do with the AI now. It's just, and

603

it's just that piece of overwhelm trying not to do

604

because we end up, we're like, look at all the

605

things we can do. So we do 10 more rather

606

than doing one more properly. And this is again the

607

entrepreneur, overwhelming. Let me go out and fix all the

608

problems. Yeah. But no, just one at a time. Yeah.

609

So we'll touch base again in a few months because

610

I think you've got a goal this year of getting

611

to a thousand of your recurring revenue clients. And I

612

think when we met you had I don't know how

613

many admins six months ago. Oh, I don't know, 300,

614

maybe 250, something like that. So yeah, now you're on

615

450 almost, I would have thought. Yeah. So it's double

616

your recurring revenue. That by itself massively increases the value

617

of your company because somebody coming along and looks at

618

it. And then finally I just wanted to really touch

619

base on. You had a baby. Yeah. And

620

before you had the baby, when we first started working,

621

it was like, okay, yeah, I'm working, I'm out trapping

622

moles, I'm doing all these things. And then you had

623

what, a few weeks off? 4 or 5 weeks that

624

you didn't touch? I think My son was in the

625

NICU for 17 days. I was an hour drive to

626

the hospital every day and an hour drive home. So

627

during that hour drive I was doing the phone calls.

628

If the phone rang, I was answering it, I was

629

calling people back or whatever I had to do to

630

keep the business alive because my wife up to that

631

point had been answering the phones. Right. So that was

632

a huge transition for us and I had to trust

633

that my guys could do what they needed to do.

634

And luckily for me, I have Corey and he stepped

635

up and was able to just handle that. That's the

636

big thing, the people we bring, we surround ourselves with.

637

We have to give them trust. Right. And know that

638

they can do it and let them fail as well.

639

Yeah, I think we sit there and think, no one

640

can do this as well as we. Yeah,

641

nobody can do this as well as I can. Nobody

642

cares about my business the way that I care about

643

my business. But then at the end of the day,

644

like, you start to realize that people do care to

645

do a good job. And when they start to get

646

positive reinforcement from you as a business owner and from

647

customers and whatever, then they double down on that and

648

they just start doing. They do great. The more kind

649

of freedom that I give these guys, the more I

650

micromanage them, the more pushback I get, but the more

651

freedom I feel that I give my employees. I tell

652

them what to do, but I don't exactly tell them

653

how to do it. And we have standards and guidelines

654

and stuff to keep them in the lanes, but for

655

the most part, they're on their own and they get

656

to make the decisions on their own of how they

657

go about their day to day. To me, when I

658

was working for other people, that's how I wanted to

659

be treated. Just tell me what you want me to

660

do and then leave me alone to do it. And

661

I will, I'll do it. But most places, most organizations

662

don't work like that. You got a manager that's like

663

when I was a machinist, I was very methodical and

664

I wanted to do things the right way every time,

665

which is the way to do this. You're making precision

666

parts sometimes within like half of a tenth of a

667

thousandth. So extreme tight tolerances. And so for me, that's

668

slow and methodical. And you go through each process to

669

make this part perfect. Managers want you to get now,

670

like, we gotta, we've got production, we gotta hit this

671

number, whatever. And so you got a guy breathing down

672

your throat every 30 minutes, he's walking by your machine

673

and saying, are you gonna retire on this part? And

674

like, that just makes you want to go slower, right?

675

I mean, you can only do what you can do.

676

So, yeah, we'll come back up in a few months

677

time. What's the end of the year? Maybe. And we'll

678

just see did we get well, when we get the

679

thousand in, we'll have a thousand party and we'll talk

680

about it. What's one bit of advice you'd give people?

681

Out of all the stuff we've done together out of

682

the business world, what's one bit of advice you'd give

683

people running a business. Burn the boats. Don't have a

684

backup plan. If you give yourself a way out, then

685

you're going to take it. If you give yourself an

686

easy way out, then you're just going to quit. So

687

I think you burn the boats and you can only

688

go forward. So that would be my only piece of

689

advice, I think. Thank you very much for joining us,

690

and we'll see you again soon. You, too. Thank you.