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Mark Podolsky spent years in investment banking with a 45-minute commute each way, buying things he did not care about to impress people who were not thinking about him. Then he started going to tax deed auctions on the side and buying raw undeveloped land for pennies on the dollar. He never looked back.

Today Mark has done over 6,000 land deals, takes the entire month of July off every year to stress-test his team, travels globally at will, and runs what he calls a passive income machine built on three things: other people's time, software and automation, and other people's money. In this conversation with Chaz Wolfe, Mark walks through his entire land investing model step by step, explains why defaults are not actually a problem, why raw land is the most boring and least competitive niche in real estate, and why the only real mistake is stopping deal flow when you get scared.

Key Takeaways:

• Raw land is an inefficient market. There is no MLS for dirt. Value is what a buyer and seller agree to. That inefficiency is the opportunity.
• Nobody wakes up thinking this is glamorous. That is the point. No HGTV show. No big money competition. No hedge funds. You and a million other investors could all be in this niche and run out of money before running out of deal flow.
• The model in one sequence: find a motivated seller with back taxes, offer 25 cents on the dollar of the lowest comparable sale, do due diligence for $11, buy it free and clear, sell it on terms to the neighbor or a buyer pool, collect a down payment and $297 a month for 72 months at 9 percent interest. No tenants. No rehabs. No renovations. No rodents.
• Defaults are not a disaster. They are a reset. The asset stays in your name under a land contract. You keep the down payment and all prior payments, lower your cost basis, and resell it. Sometimes defaults improve your ROI.
• The biggest mistake: fear-based decision making that stops deal flow. There is a 6-week lag between sending offers and getting responses. Stopping offers while you wait to sell inventory is how people stall the machine. In 20-plus years, Mark has never been stuck with a piece of land that would not sell at the right price.
• Entrepreneurs get bored with what works and go looking for the next county, the next niche, the next idea. The county that is making you money does not need to be replaced. It needs to be worked.
• Solo economic dependency is the trap. If you stop working, you stop making money. The land model solves that. $297 a month does not care whether you are at the office or in Bali.
• Freedom is not a number. It is a ratio. Mark's definition of enough: passive income at 200 percent of fixed expenses. Once you know your number, everything is just a game you choose to play.
• The happiest people have the best relationships. Money removes the biggest source of stress in a marriage and a family. It does not buy happiness. It buys the conditions for it.
• 90 percent of the land business can be automated with inexpensive virtual assistants and software. The more automated the machine, the less valuable the owner needs to be to keep it running.

If you are a contractor business owner doing $1M+ and you feel stuck in the day-to-day, we built GTK for you.

Through peer mastermind and 1:1 coaching, we help you:

• increase profit
• install real systems
• build a team that runs the business
• get your time back

Visit www.gatheringthekings.com for information on how to apply.

Connect with Chaz Wolfe (Host):

Website

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In December 2006, John Vasquez attempted suicide. That is how he describes it. The person he was that day, a man drowning in opiate addiction and low self-worth, died. He considers it the beginning, not the end.

Fourteen years later, the COVID pandemic shut down the gym he had built using Alex Hormozi's Gym Launch program, and he found himself sleeping on his parents' couch with two kids, back in the house he grew up in, watching his parents' same patterns around money and fear play out in real time. That was the moment he drew a line in the sand.

Today Coach JV runs three seven-figure business ecosystems, has a Rockefeller Trust set up for his family for generations, and has built a massive social media following teaching financial literacy, micro and macroeconomics, and cryptocurrency education to people who were never taught any of it. In this conversation with Chaz Wolfe, Coach JV breaks down his 5-part financial framework, why Ray Dalio is the lens through which he reads the global economy, why paying yourself first is not just a strategy but a frequency shift, and how he is raising his kids to be the first generation to break the pattern for good.

Key Takeaways:

• Drawing the line in the sand is not a motivational phrase. It is a moment when you become more committed to the pain of change than to the pain of staying the same. That specific shift is what changes the trajectory.
• You have to give up something to become something. And most people are addicted to their old self. The subconscious programming laid down in childhood drives adult behavior more than most people ever acknowledge.
• Coach JV's 5-part financial framework: Foundation, meaning rewire your belief system around money and trace where it came from. Financial Literacy, meaning understand what money actually is, how banks work, and what the Federal Reserve has done to the dollar since 1913. Discipline, meaning budgeting and asking do I need this or do I want this. Income Creation. And finally, Protection, Compounding, and Growth.
• The US dollar has collapsed 99 percent in purchasing power since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913. School, job, 401(k) is a strategy of hope. You are hoping the market aligns when you retire. That is not a plan.
• Pay yourself first every single time. Before bills. Before spending. Money goes into your freedom account first. What is left is what you live on. This changes your frame of mind and eliminates frivolous spending automatically.
• America is at 120 percent debt-to-income ratio. The average middle-class American needs to earn $160,000 per year to truly be middle class now. The regional banks are in a tough position. Bond yields inverted in 2023. These are not opinions. These are Ray Dalio's documented patterns.
• Cryptocurrency is going to move significantly on the back end of this cycle. But what goes up must come down hard. Buy the rumors, sell the news. When the mainstream is telling you to get in, you should have been out days ago.
• Define your principles before anything else. For Coach JV: business principles are integrity, honesty, and uncompromising belief in God. Personal principles are peace, freedom, and family structure. If anything disrupts those three, the answer is a hard no. A $10 million contract offer that disrupts family structure is still a no.
• Ask your son when he falls: are you hurt or are you scared? Manage what is hurt. Acknowledge the fear. Then get back up and do it again together. This is the framework Coach JV uses to rewire what he never received.
• Everything happening in the global economy right now is a historical pattern. It has happened before. When you understand the waves of energy, it is the greatest time in human history to build wealth for your family if you are paying attention.

If you are a contractor business owner doing $1M+ and you feel stuck in the day-to-day, we built GTK for you.

Through peer mastermind and 1:1 coaching, we help you:

• increase profit
• install real systems
• build a team that runs the business
• get your time back

Visit www.gatheringthekings.com for information on how to apply.

Connect with Chaz Wolfe (Host):

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Share this episode with a friend and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!

Join the conversation by visiting GatheringTheKings.com and apply to connect with other high-performing entrepreneurs and their families.

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Josh Wilson started at seven years old on a cruise ship, charging his vacation friends a markup to use his grandfather's cruise card. He built a wedding DJ business at 16 and sold it at 19 for $25,000. His only W2 job was two months as a buggy boy at Winn Dixie before he got fired. Since then he has built a 25-million-dollar real estate portfolio, lost over a million dollars on a single investment, and pivoted to M&A where he is now acquiring his seventh company with a goal of 10 companies and 10 million in EBITDA before exiting to private equity.

In this conversation with Chaz Wolfe, Josh breaks down the entire M&A framework he uses: what to look for in a target company, why he only buys companies doing at least a million in cashflow, the five reasons a contractor business owner should consider selling to a holding company instead of selling on the open market, why most businesses have not raised prices since COVID, and how the multiple arbitrage game works when you roll your equity into a holding company instead of taking a 3x exit alone.

Key Takeaways:

• The first question in any acquisition: when was the last time they raised prices? Nine out of ten businesses Josh looks at have not raised prices in years. A 10 to 20 percent price increase is often the first value add after closing.
• Only buy companies doing at least one million in cashflow. Below that threshold, you cannot afford to hire the management team you need to actually run the business. You end up doing everything yourself again.
• A 3x multiple on your own is a mom-and-pop exit. Roll your equity into a holding company targeting 8 to 10x and you may triple your eventual payout for waiting a few years.
• PE companies buy cashflow, not hustle. When private equity looks at a portfolio, they want a C suite in place, a back office running, general managers in every entity, and systems that do not require the founder. Build that picture and you become attractive.
• Going wide to find your vertical is not always a mistake. Josh spent five years acquiring different industries to find where he could go deepest. He is now locking in on transportation. The path was the education.
• The mentor moment that changed everything: Josh was sitting in a hot tub during COVID, watching his real estate portfolio and wondering if his tenants were going to pay. In that moment he realized he could not keep living his entire life this way. That discomfort drove the pivot.
• If I can't do it, no one can is a guarantee that you will never scale. Josh learned it the hard way. The C suite he built is the only reason he can now focus exclusively on vision and growth.
• Pivoting is not failure. Real entrepreneurs master the art of knowing when things are heading in the wrong direction and correcting course before it costs them everything.
• $25,000 was enough to count as a real exit. The size of the deal does not determine whether the principle applied. Josh knew how to create value and find a buyer at 19 years old. The same principle runs his 7-company portfolio today.
• Build the right C suite first. CFO, COO, CEO roles need to be filled by people who love operating, not just people who are available. Josh found each one through deliberate relationships, not desperation.

If you are a contractor business owner doing $1M+ and you feel stuck in the day-to-day, we built GTK for you.

Through peer mastermind and 1:1 coaching, we help you:

• increase profit
• install real systems
• build a team that runs the business
• get your time back

Visit www.gatheringthekings.com for information on how to apply.

Connect with Chaz Wolfe (Host):

Website

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Support the show

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Share this episode with a friend and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!

Join the conversation by visiting GatheringTheKings.com and apply to connect with other high-performing entrepreneurs and their families.

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Chris Dyer ran PeopleG2, a human capital company with 4,500 employees and thousands of clients. He managed that team through the 2008 financial crisis without a single layoff. He built a culture that earned best-places-to-work awards for 15 consecutive years. And when he finally stepped away from the CEO role, he described it as an elephant getting up off his chest.

Now he speaks and consults on culture, remote work, and leadership, and his message to business owners is direct: the reason remote work is not working in your business is not remote work. It is your culture.

In this conversation with Chaz Wolfe, Chris covers what actually separates leaders who make remote work a lightning bolt for their organization versus those who burn it down. He also breaks down why accountability and tough conversations are the foundation of any culture, how to stop micromanaging and start building top performers, and why the question every leader needs to ask themselves before any difficult conversation is not what do I think but do I want to be right or do I want to be effective.

Key Takeaways:

• Remote work is not the problem. Leaders who cannot define success clearly, have tough conversations honestly, or give genuine autonomy will fail with remote teams. The same failures happen in the office. They are just easier to hide there.
• If you count keystrokes, require Teams status to always be green, and micromanage output instead of results, do not adopt remote work. You are not ready and you will blame the model instead of yourself.
• The companies pulling people back to office are not failing because of remote work. They are failing because their culture is broken. A tiny startup with remote culture is eating their lunch the same way they once ate bigger companies' lunch.
• Accountability does not disappear with friendship. Chris had 15 years of award-winning culture and still had to walk up to a 10-year friend and say: I told the client we would have this. You said you would deliver. That conversation has to happen whether or not you see each other at the holiday party.
• Do you want to be right or do you want to be effective? That question changes every leadership interaction. Winning an argument at the expense of a relationship or an outcome is not leadership. It is ego.
• Micromanagement does not fix underperformance. The answer to someone not performing is not more hands-on management. It is getting curious about why, having an honest conversation, and giving them the clarity and tools they need to succeed.
• Remote work gives employees their humanity back. Requiring someone to burn an entire vacation day for a 30-minute doctor's appointment is not a policy. It is a choice that communicates your real values.
• When you find something that works, lean into it. Stop overthinking, stop experimenting, and go hard. Chris wears white glasses because people love them. That is a business principle dressed up as an eyewear story.
• The same cash flow problem exists at 2 employees and at 4,500. The scale changes. The stress of keeping people whole does not.
• Losing 40 percent of your clients because they were all in one industry is a lesson you only pay for once. Diversify before you have to.

If you are a contractor business owner doing $1M+ and you feel stuck in the day-to-day, we built GTK for you.

Through peer mastermind and 1:1 coaching, we help you:

• increase profit
• install real systems
• build a team that runs the business
• get your time back

Visit www.gatheringthekings.com for information on how to apply.

Connect with Chaz Wolfe (Host):

Website

Facebook

Instagram

LinkedIn

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Support the show

Like what you heard?

Share this episode with a friend and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!

Join the conversation by visiting GatheringTheKings.com and apply to connect with other high-performing entrepreneurs and their families.

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Professor Tonya M. Evans graduated from Howard University School of Law, clerked in the Third Circuit, practiced at major law firms in Philadelphia, and is now a full tenured professor at Penn State with a joint appointment in data sciences. She is also a former professional tennis player who played at Northwestern on scholarship, and she is one of the most credible voices in the country on the intersection of law, finance, and emerging technology.

Her message to business owners is simple and direct: the big banks are trying to scare you out of a space they are quietly moving into themselves. JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon still calls Bitcoin garbage. JP Morgan is an authorized participant in the Bitcoin ETF. BlackRock, the most conservative investment firm in the world, was first in line to issue a Bitcoin ETF. The little guy is being scared away while institutional money gets positioned.

In this conversation with Chaz Wolfe, Prof Tonya breaks down what blockchain actually is in plain language, the three biggest crypto myths holding business owners back, why it is not early but not late, and how to start thinking about Web3 as a business owner even if you never buy a single coin.

Key Takeaways:

• Crypto comes from cryptography. Blockchain is a digital ledger. That is it. When someone starts throwing jargon at you, they are either confused themselves or they want you confused. It is a public record of transactions that no single entity controls.
• Bitcoin came on the scene January 3rd, 2009. Fewer than 8 percent of people globally hold it. If that is a fad, it is the longest fad and scam in the history of fads and scams.
• The banks are not scared of crypto because it is dangerous. They are scared because it threatens their dominance. Jamie Dimon calls it garbage while JP Morgan participates in the Bitcoin ETF. Follow the money, not the press release.
• The biggest mistake most people made in the 2021 crypto run was buying everything because the tide was rising. A rising tide lifts all boats, including the garbage ones. Holding Bitcoin through the crash and not chasing every alt coin is the lesson most people paid dearly to learn.
• Traditional wealth-building paths are not enough anymore. Max out your 403(b), buy a house, get rental property, ride it out. Prof Tonya followed that playbook as a high-income earner and found herself making all the money and all the mistakes simultaneously.
• First mover advantage is fleeting. If you are a business owner who has not thought about how blockchain and Web3 will affect your industry, start now. Not because you have to invest, but because the technology is moving with or without your awareness.
• Decentralized AI is the next frontier. The same centralized model problem that exists in banking is being replicated in artificial intelligence. The business owners who understand decentralization early will have options the others will not.
• The blockchain is public facing. The Department of Justice uses blockchain forensics regularly to recover millions in assets. It is not anonymous. It is the opposite of a dark market.
• Stable coins are going to matter more than most people think. For businesses operating globally or in any space without physical borders, a verifiable stable form of digital currency is not optional. It is coming.
• The mastermind principle applies here too. You do not have to be the expert on everything. You have to get around people who are, stay curious, and keep your saw sharpened.

If you are a contractor business owner doing $1M+ and you feel stuck in the day-to-day, we built GTK for you.

Through peer mastermind and 1:1 coaching, we help you:

• increase profit
• install real systems
• build a team that runs the business
• get your time back

Visit www.gatheringthekings.com for information on how to apply.

Connect with Chaz Wolfe (Host):

Website

Facebook

Instagram

LinkedIn

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Support the show

Like what you heard?

Share this episode with a friend and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!

Join the conversation by visiting GatheringTheKings.com and apply to connect with other high-performing entrepreneurs and their families.

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Tony Lamb grew up watching his father sell vacuum cleaners door to door and thought that was the pinnacle. He got a college degree, walked into a pharmaceutical sales interview, heard the number $36,000 a year, and drove straight back to the vacuum cleaner office to ask for the highest commission they would pay.

Then one afternoon, his kids ran to a beat-up ice cream truck in their neighborhood, paid $22 for freezer-burned ice cream from a guy fresh out of prison, and Tony saw a gap. Two years of obsession later, he launched Kona Ice. Today Kona Ice is the largest food truck company in the world with over 1,700 units, has given back over $130 million to local communities, and spawned two additional brands. Tony did it with no debt, a clear lane, and a refusal to be anything other than the absolute best at what he does.

In this conversation with Chaz Wolfe, Tony breaks down the origin story of Kona Ice, the difference between a small business owner and an entrepreneur, why pain and suffering are the best growth tools available, and what it actually takes to build a franchise that scales without you.

Key Takeaways:

• Do not try to build a better hamburger at scale. Find the open niche, stick your foot in it, and become the undisputed best at that specific thing. Tony turned down every offer to brick-and-mortar Kona Ice and stayed in his lane.
• The gap between idea and action is where most businesses die. Tony talked about Kona Ice for two years before someone told him to do it or drop it. The moment the words "I'm going to do it" came out of his mouth, he was committed.
• If you need too much money personally to survive the early years, the business will never grow. Tony kept his personal debt load at zero, lived lean, and reinvested everything. That gave him the fortitude to build through the hard seasons.
• The entrepreneur and the small business owner are two completely different animals. A great small business owner who executes consistently is incredibly valuable. An entrepreneur who cannot execute is a liability. Know which one you are.
• Brand is not optional. A clean truck, a uniformed driver, and a reasonable price changed everything about how communities received Kona Ice. The opposite of a problem is not just the absence of the problem. It is a completely different experience.
• Pain and suffering are the prerequisites for real growth. Tony said the NVIDIA CEO told Stanford graduates he hoped they would have pain and suffering. Tony agreed. He intentionally launched new brands when things got comfortable because the discomfort is where the learning is.
• College is not the answer for everyone. The question is whether the education you are paying for will service the debt you incur to get it. Tony's kids never finished college and are all doing extremely well.
• The best proof your model works is when someone who is not like you runs it successfully. When the non-salesperson in Georgia started producing results with Kona Ice, Tony knew he had a real business.
• Wisdom is not built in a classroom. It is built by consuming knowledge relentlessly, getting around smart people, attending conferences, and staying humble enough to admit what you do not know.
• Family and business are not separate departments. Tony drove his kids through neighborhoods in the Kona truck, put his youngest daughter in a car seat in the front, and built the business from within his family's daily life.

If you are a contractor business owner doing $1M+ and you feel stuck in the day-to-day, we built GTK for you.

Through peer mastermind and 1:1 coaching, we help you:

• increase profit
• install real systems
• build a team that runs the business
• get your time back

Visit www.gatheringthekings.com for information on how to apply.

Connect with Chaz Wolfe (Host):

Website

Facebook

Instagram

LinkedIn

YouTube

Support the show

Like what you heard?

Share this episode with a friend and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!

Join the conversation by visiting GatheringTheKings.com and apply to connect with other high-performing entrepreneurs and their families.

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Scott Arias built ACE Consulting into an eight-figure commercial construction consulting company with 223 employees, over 3,000 client companies, and what he claims is a 100 percent A-player team. He overcame a devastating motorcycle accident and prescription drug addiction to do it. And he has done it by building something most contractors never build: a system for identifying, hiring, and leading people across three completely different generations simultaneously.

In this conversation with Chaz Wolfe, Scott breaks down why generations are defined by historical events, not arbitrary birth year ranges, what each generation actually needs to perform at the highest level, the specific interview questions he uses to filter for A players, and why the biggest mistake most Gen X and Boomer leaders make is assuming their generation had it right.

People problems are the number one drain on every contractor doing $1M+. This episode is the framework for fixing that.

Key Takeaways:

• People issues consume more time and resources than any other problem in a small business. Every contractor owner already knows this. Scott built an entire company to solve it for his clients.
• Generations are not defined by birth year ranges. They are defined by the significant historical events that shaped their formative years. Gen X was shaped by the "me generation" of the 80s. Millennials were shaped by 9/11 and a world that demanded teamwork. Gen Z was shaped by the Great Recession and COVID.
• Gen X lived to work. Millennials and Gen Z work to live. Neither is wrong. They are a product of the world they grew up in. The leader who understands this stops fighting it and starts leading more effectively.
• Gen X values individual performance. Millennials value the team winning. Gen Z is individual-performance focused but motivated by team identity. Know which one you are leading and adjust your approach.
• No generation respects another naturally. Every generation thinks their way is the right way. The leader's job is to bridge the gap, not pick a side.
• Technology is not a generational preference. It is the reality. If your younger staff would rather text than call, that is not laziness. It is how they process information. Adapt your systems to meet them where they are.
• To get A players you have to know what an A player is, be able to identify one in an interview, and be willing to pass on everyone who is not one. Most hiring managers settle because they are behind on a project. That is how B players get in.
• Scott's interview questions are built to reveal character, not competence. Competence can be trained. Character cannot.
• The best thing a Gen X leader can do is acknowledge that the millennial or Gen Z approach might actually be better in some areas. That acknowledgment earns trust faster than any perks or pay.
• Silence is a leadership tool. Scott calls it a crucial function of leadership. The ability to sit with discomfort in a conversation rather than filling it with noise is one of the rarest skills in any generation.

If you are a contractor business owner doing $1M+ and you feel stuck in the day-to-day, we built GTK for you.

Through peer mastermind and 1:1 coaching, we help you:

• increase profit
• install real systems
• build a team that runs the business
• get your time back

Visit www.gatheringthekings.com for information on how to apply.

Connect with Chaz Wolfe (Host):

Website

Facebook

Instagram

LinkedIn

YouTube 

Support the show

Like what you heard?

Share this episode with a friend and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!

Join the conversation by visiting GatheringTheKings.com and apply to connect with other high-performing entrepreneurs and their families.

Connect With Chaz

In January 2009, Jay Conner had two houses under contract and a banker who had just told him his line of credit was closed. No warning. No grace period. The global financial crisis had arrived and Jay was not prepared.

He asked himself one question: who do I know who can help me with this problem? Nine days later he had raised $2,150,000 in private money without asking a single person for it. Since then he has never asked anyone for money. He currently has $8.5 million in private money available and has completed over $52 million in real estate transactions across more than 500 homes rehabbed.

In this conversation with Chaz Wolfe, Jay breaks down his exact private money framework: the mindset shift that separates desperate fundraising from confident education, the two-conversation rule that eliminates awkwardness entirely, the good news phone call script that funds deals without pitching, and why there is more money available right now than most people will ever access because they are asking the wrong question the wrong way.

Key Takeaways:

• The single most powerful question in business: who do you know who can help you with this problem? Not how. Who.
• Desperation has a smell. The moment you teach the program and pitch the deal in the same conversation, your potential lender smells it even when you do not intend to.
• Separate the conversations. Conversation one: teach the program. How it works, what the interest rate is, how they get their money back, the maximum loan to value. No deal mentioned. Conversation two: the good news phone call. Only happens when you have a deal ready to fund.
• The good news phone call script is four sentences. Here is a house I have under contract. Here is the after-repaired value. Here is the funding required. Here is when I need the wire. End of conversation. Do not ask if they want to fund the deal. Of course they do. They have been waiting for the call.
• There is currently $31 trillion in investment capital and retirement funds sitting on the sidelines in the United States. Most of it belongs to people who do not know what to do with it and are getting poor returns or taking stock market risk they do not want.
• Self-directed IRAs are the funding vehicle most real estate investors have never heard of and most financial advisors have never explained. They allow individuals to loan retirement funds directly to real estate investors, earning returns either tax-deferred or tax-free.
• You make the rules in private lending. You set the interest rate, the loan-to-value, the terms, the timeline. You are not begging a bank. You are offering an opportunity to someone who needs somewhere to put their money.
• There are more dollars available than there are deals. Abundance is not a mindset exercise. It is a fact. $31 trillion in idle capital says so.
• 100 percent of Jay's private lenders have been paid exactly what the promissory note said. That track record is the entire marketing strategy.
• Real estate between your ears comes before real estate on the ground. If you are not confident about what you are offering, no one will trust you enough to hand you their retirement savings.

If you are a contractor business owner doing $1M+ and you feel stuck in the day-to-day, we built GTK for you.

Through peer mastermind and 1:1 coaching, we help you:

• increase profit
• install real systems
• build a team that runs the business
• get your time back

Visit www.gatheringthekings.com for information on how to apply.

Connect with Chaz Wolfe (Host):

Website

Facebook

Instagram

LinkedIn

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Support the show

Like what you heard?

Share this episode with a friend and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!

Join the conversation by visiting GatheringTheKings.com and apply to connect with other high-performing entrepreneurs and their families.

Connect With Chaz

Somewhere between 50 and 60 percent of Americans are actively considering a new job this year. There are 2.3 open jobs in the United States for every available worker to fill them. And more than 50 percent of new hires never show up for their first day because they accepted another offer in the window between signing and starting.

Joey Coleman has spent his career teaching companies like Zappos, Whirlpool, Hyatt, and NASA how to keep the people they spent months recruiting. His book Never Lose an Employee Again applies the same eight-phase framework he built for customer retention to the employee experience. In this conversation with Chaz Wolfe, Joey walks through every phase, identifies where even the biggest companies break down, and gives contractor business owners the exact moves to make before another great employee walks out the door.

Key Takeaways:

• Phase 1, Assess: Your prospective employee is assessing you before you ever meet them. They are reading your Glassdoor reviews, checking your LinkedIn, and looking at who they know that works for you. Your employer brand exists whether you manage it or not.
• Phase 2, Accept: The moment they accept the offer, the clock starts. What happens next in the first 24 to 48 hours determines whether they actually show up on day one.
• Phase 3, Affirm: New hire remorse is scientifically proven. More than 50 percent of people who accepted a job offer in one study never showed up for their first day because they had accepted another offer. Your job is to reaffirm their decision aggressively between offer acceptance and day one.
• Phase 4, Activate: Day one is not orientation. Day one is a choreographed experience. You already know their significant other is going to ask how the first day went. Why are you not engineering that answer?
• Phase 5, Acclimate: More than 50 percent of companies spend less than two days onboarding. Only 5 percent spend more than a month. If you want them to stay longer than a month, invest more than a month getting them up to speed.
• Phase 6, Accomplish: People do not take jobs for the paycheck. They take them to grow, learn, gain flexibility, and be part of something bigger. Track each employee's actual goal and celebrate when they hit it. Not with a check. With an experience, a gift, or a meaningful acknowledgment.
• Phase 7, Adopt: Your longest tenured employees are the ones you are paying the least attention to. They are also the most dangerous to lose. The institutional knowledge and client relationships that leave with them can be catastrophic.
• Phase 8, Advocate: If your open positions are not being filled by referrals from current employees, you do not have advocates. You have adopters at best. Advocates actively recruit people into your culture because they genuinely love where they work.
• Every six months, sit down with every direct report and ask what their goal is for the next six months. Then pay for it, support it, and give them time during the work day to pursue it. When you create space for people to grow, they walk through fire for you.
• Follow your employees on social media. They are publicly broadcasting what matters to them. Use that information to show up in their real life in a way no one else does.

If you are a contractor business owner doing $1M+ and you feel stuck in the day-to-day, we built GTK for you.

Through peer mastermind and 1:1 coaching, we help you:

• increase profit
• install real systems
• build a team that runs the business
• get your time back

Visit www.gatheringthekings.com for information on how to apply.

Connect with Chaz Wolfe (Host):

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LinkedIn

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You close the deal. Your team is high-fiving. You are ready to deliver. Meanwhile, your new customer is sitting at home in an emotional hole, doubting the decision they just made, wondering if they chose the right company, and the only sound filling that doubt is their own voice.

That gap between when a customer buys and when you actually deliver is one of the most expensive moments in any contractor's business. Most companies never think about it. Joey Coleman has spent 20 years teaching companies like Zappos, Whirlpool, Hyatt, and NASA how to fix it.

In this conversation with Chaz Wolfe, Joey breaks down the six communication tools available to every business owner, all eight phases of the customer journey from first impression to raving advocate, and why most companies are only getting three or four of those phases right. This is Part 1. Part 2 applies the same framework to employee retention.

Key Takeaways:

• Every business interaction is H2H, human to human. Not B2B or B2C. When you remember the person on the other side is a human with feelings, motivations, and fears, every interaction changes.
• The six communication tools available to you: in-person, email, phone, physical mail, video, and gifts. Each one serves a different purpose at a different phase of the relationship. Deploying the right tool at the right moment is what separates average companies from memorable ones.
• Phase 1, Assess: Your prospect is already evaluating you before any conversation. Your reviews, your social media, your website, your LinkedIn, all of it is being read before they ever raise their hand.
• Phase 2, Admit: The moment they sign and hand over their money, the chemistry in their brain changes. Dopamine floods in. Joy, euphoria, excitement. This window is short. What you do in the next 24 to 48 hours either capitalizes on it or wastes it.
• Phase 3, Affirm: Buyer's remorse is real and scientifically documented. As dopamine recedes, fear, doubt, and uncertainty replace it. Most businesses are high-fiving when their customer is in an emotional hole. Close that gap aggressively with communication, reaffirmation, and reminders of why they made a smart decision.
• Phase 4, Activate: The first moment of truth. When they get the product or have the first service call. Most companies are decent at this. The problem is what happens the next day.
• Phase 5, Acclimate: Day two through weeks and months. Most companies over-index on day one and disappear after. This is where retention is built or destroyed.
• Phase 6, Accomplish: Every customer has a vision of what owning your product or using your service is going to create for them. Find out what that vision is. Track their progress. Celebrate it with them when it happens.
• Phase 7, Adopt: Your most loyal customers are the ones you take for granted. They are already sold. They are not listening to competitors. And yet most companies run promotions for new customers that make loyal customers feel punished for staying. Stop doing that.
• Phase 8, Advocate: If your growth is not driven in part by customer referrals, you do not have advocates. You have adopters at best. Advocacy is earned by getting every other phase right.
• Death by a thousand paper cuts is how you lose customers. Rarely is it one big moment. It is the small slight, the broken promise, the missed follow-up that stacks up over time until trust erodes completely.

If you are a contractor business owner doing $1M+ and you feel stuck in the day-to-day, we built GTK for you.

Through peer mastermind and 1:1 coaching, we help you:

• increase profit
• install real systems
• build a team that runs the business
• get your time back

Visit www.gatheringthekings.com for information on how to apply.

Connect with Chaz Wolfe (Host):

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Support the show

Like what you heard?

Share this episode with a friend and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!

Join the conversation by visiting GatheringTheKings.com and apply to connect with other high-performing entrepreneurs and their families.