Daryl Kelly

The question I have for you, what were some of the paradigm shifts that transformed you from where you started to who you are today in your business?

Who are you asking these questions to?

So was your transition into finding coaches, was there an experience or was there like a... 2017, second podcast I've done, The Home Service Expert.

What were you before? How much of a change was there? What? Your margins.

So let me let me ask you, Chris, obviously, I know your story. But like, what was that paradigm shift? What was the transition? Or how did you level up?

I think what you saw in Todd is like, dude, this guy's a visionary and this is how visionaries operate. And so you started to realize like I needed to operate.

Mm-hmm.

Dude, you said prompted. I've actually never thought of that as a concept before. But if you think of all relationships, the quality of your relationship with people is based off your prompting.

And it's just like Chad GBT. If you ask a bad question, you get a bad answer.

I would say, I think a big piece too, is we always were thinking ahead. We always had a vision. We're always sharing the vision. So anybody who came into our business wasn't there for that opportunity. They were always there for what was coming. And I think that was what built our culture. I think that's what brought in the right partners.

I think that's what also gave us buy-in from employees because there was so much craziness. I mean, when we were in the garage and we had, what, 50? 53 employees. 53 employees.

You had to buy in to what we were doing because it was just smashed in there. And obviously, we were building a building at the time. And so people understood what was going on. But chasing that dream was always... Everyone was bought into that. Yeah. And if they weren't, they didn't last long.

Here's something interesting though. When I grew up, it was common to say, be a man of your word. Yeah. I realized like as a visionary, you can't be a man of your word. You got to be a man of your vision, right? Because if you're a man of your word, like you got to know how to fulfill on what you're saying. And as a visionary, you don't. You're just like, we're going into this darkness.

And at the end of it, I'll tell you what's there.

Because I don't know how many businesses, they start growing and they realize they have no money. Yeah.

And so I think being able to scale with margin allowed us to continue to grow. We had 300% growth year over year, two years in a row. If we didn't have the margins we had, there'd be no way.

Yeah. Well, I was just going to say, and it was really important for us to make sure our employees understood that because they'd be up competing with people that were charging a lot less. Give it away.

that's stressful another truth you spoke was um problems right i remember thinking i'm not good at business because i can't get rid of these problems and then i went to a tony robbins business mastery event and one of the biggest takeaways was you always have a new set of problems as you grow new set of opportunities new set of problems and those are always changing once i understood that it changed everything for me did your outlook yeah

So I appreciate your view on your employees, but I guarantee it didn't start that way. Yeah. So like, how did that transition happen? Or how did you... COVID.

I'll go to work. One of the things you brought up, and I think this was also contributed to our success, was the homegrown salespeople. And technicians. And technicians. And I think, Chris, you should talk about this because we decided we didn't want industry people in our business. We wanted to create them.

You just got to understand though, Tri-Cities is a small town. Right. So it's like there's no sales force. There's not a big sales force out there to pull from.

I think to echo some of the sentiment, like one of the things you got to realize is like you do lose control when you have a partner like a PE. I mean, they come in with a completely different set of motives. And so like the idea that things are going to operate, continue how they are. I mean, they will until they need to change things.

Yes.

And most people are going, Oh, this, this, you don't understand this. One of the things, so firing is hard. I remember when we first had to fire people, like I hated it because I feel like I was, I'm not good at it to this day. Well, I feel like I was doing something wrong to these people. I was putting them in a bad situation. And then the paradigm shift was like, I'm not firing them for me.

I'm firing them for everyone else who's there working for me, right? And so that helped a little bit. It helped a lot, actually.

One of the traps though, and we had to learn this when we had to cut some people, was if you're overpaying someone, they're the hardest people to cut because you're basically putting them in a bad situation because they'll never be able to replace the pay. Because you overpaid them.

The people that you're paying them what they're worth, you should never worry about laying them off or firing them because they'll go get a job for the same or more.

Instagram, Daryl C. Kelly. Kind of.

D-A-R-Y-L. D-A-R-Y-L. And then it's C? C, Kelly. Kelly.

Yeah.

It's interesting you say that. So my recommendation is... I'm going to just throw something out there that probably business... Dr. Seuss? No. It could be. But Becoming Supernatural by Joe Dispenza. So this is, yeah, so Joe Dispenza, he teaches meditation. And when I first got involved in his work, it was kind of woo-woo type stuff. He helps break it down so you can understand it.

But one of the powerful things is understanding how your body thinks and how your mind thinks. And what that means is like, there's times where we react, we create an emotion to a situation. And it's just purely a memorized reaction that our body gives us. A good example would be like, you could come home and your wife says something and your reaction is like... Triggered.

Triggered for whatever reason. Right. And what meditation is, is it's removing that programming in your body so that you can actually think and use your mind to actually... Be cognizant of your decisions. Yeah.

It's really fascinating. It's a very different way to look at what's going on in the world.

Quite a while later.

So I'm looking at myself 10 years ago, 20 years ago, what I would tell myself. Ooh, I like that. And I think the one thing that I'm learning today that I wish I would have understood better then... is we experience this world in our body. And our body is impacted by food and exercise. Also, many other things. But just don't wait to take care of your health. Make your health part of who you are.

I was in the camp where I was skinny. Even be considered skinny fat. I wouldn't eat really much food.

Didn't work out a lot. And so then this year, I feel like I've gone through this big transformation from a lot of different aspects from business, spiritually, financially, and the physical aspect just wasn't a priority. So I've gained 25 pounds this year. And I've been eating a lot better. I've been very diligent in what I don't eat. And it just seems foolish that we don't take that serious.

I think that initially, for me, what attracted me to Chris was I was super ambitious and I would talk about things. And then all of a sudden, Chris was talking about things in a bigger way. And I'm like, wait, let's talk about it even bigger. And it was like this flow.

And I know you've recently... You just mentioned you've been...

I think the challenge too is we're taught don't be vain. Yeah. But I think that's taken out of context. I think... being able to be in love with your image is important.

Yeah.

And I think on the other side too, I think you'll manage stress better, right? We go through a lot of stressful things as business owners.

Oh, yeah.

And I mean, stress is just an emotion your body produces, chemical, right? And your body can go through quite a bit, but you have so much opportunity to control that in a better way. And I think it starts with diet and exercise and being consistent on those two things. Because I know if I wake up and I work out, I'm going to eat right. My mind's going to be right.

Like so many other things start to... It's the old habit stack, right?

Yeah, about two years. And I think, and looking back, it was just a maturity thing. We didn't know how to communicate our differences. We didn't know how to like work through it. So we just, that's what we did.

I think, I think what's good is, is like work with people like you. It's like, you guys are very extreme. And like that, it's like an edge that you get from someone like you guys. Right.

And so for me, like, I feel like I have a lot of ambition, a lot of drive, a lot of vision, but I feel like with Chris, it gives me like that edge, that little bit more craziness that you just don't get from anyone else. And I think that's what I've been able to benefit from is like keeping Chris in a position where he's always like a little crazy in his thoughts and his ideas. Oh, the dreams.

Right. I think what's also funny is just the kind of damage control, right? Chris comes in with a ton of energy and it throws people off. And sometimes people can misinterpret things so quickly.

Oh, yeah.

And so I feel like a lot of times I'm like, no, no, no, no. Or the other part of it is like, I'll institute or I'll put in a place, a new policy, right? And because Chris is such a loud voice, everyone thinks Chris is the one behind everything. And so he always gets like the blame.

It's a great position for me to be in. I'm never wrong.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

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