From Burnout to Business Coach: How Brad Huebner Helps Contractors Thrive

Quinton Comino: Welcome to Builder Buzz by Home Nation, where we bring in builders, developers, and everyday investors to talk about one of America's biggest opportunities, affordable housing. We'll talk about real costs, explosive growth, big mistakes, and tough lessons you won't learn anywhere else. Whether you're building homes, buying land, or just building big ideas, this podcast is for you.

Quinton Comino: Today, we have a different guest than we typically do. It's Brad with Hammer and Grind. He's a contractor that has turned into a contractor coach. And pretty well what he does, to summarize it simply, is he makes contractors profitable. He helps them free up the time that they need to be able to spend with their family or living the life that they want. He helps them make the money that they need to be sustainable, where if they're not gonna burn out, they're not gonna shut down in five, ten years, however long. He makes legacy businesses that last for a long time. So it's gonna be a fantastic interview. He's got a lot of experience that has put him into the position that he's in now. So let's tune in to hear what Brad has to say. So, yeah, just Brad, you wanna let us know what made you start your business and, kinda what your background is there. It sounds like it was not your typical start to, contracting and moving into what you did. So I'd love to hear some of that origin story.

Brad Huebner: Long story, after high school, I went into the Marine Corps, did four years there, realized it wasn't a long term, but I didn't wanna do a career out of it. So I got out, and I spent some time doing a bunch of different jobs. I was a cable installer. I was a salesman for the cable company. I did, mortgages for a short while. I mean, I was just really trying to figure out what it is I wanted to do. In high school, I thought I wanted to be an architect. So I took architectural drawing classes. We had t and I classes that were, like, three credit hour classes. My junior senior year, I took architectural drawing, thought I wanted to be an architect. Turns out you gotta have pretty good grades to be an architect and get into school. Right? So I kinda shot myself in the foot there. But, it came into play. I'm telling you that because it's gonna come into play later on.

Brad Huebner: After I tried different jobs, I was a, cell phone, you know, salesman. I was trying a bunch of different stuff, trying to figure out what I wanna do. And, I had an opportunity to go be a superintendent for a local developer, small developer. And, basically, I was willing to get paid less than most people to take this job and had enough, you know, enough ability to do it. And so I was a superintendent, and this is where the architectural drawing stuff came in because I was able to, you know, look at plans, understood building, how they go together. I mean, I understood all of that stuff. And then within a quick short period, I was the construction manager. Like, within one year, I became the construction manager. So I'm 27 years old. I'm running jobs. It was me and the owner. The owner was a civil engineer, and he was doing these local developments for himself. So we would build a strip mall. He would lease it up and then sell it. Right? We would build a home, sell it. We would do, small office building, build it up, sell it. So, like, we he was building his own stuff. And I got a lot of exposure there. We were doing high end custom homes, strip malls, retail rentals.

Quinton Comino: Residential. Yeah.

Brad Huebner: Commercial, residential offices, you know, commercial remodeling. We, you know, took old buildings, converted them into apartments. I mean, we were doing a little bit of everything, and, he got into some financial troubles. And so I ended up going and working for our finished carpenter who, worked for us. I was kind of his boss as the GC, you know, and then I went to go work for him, learned to finish carpentry side, and then, after a couple years of working for him, I decided to start my own business. So then I started out as a handyman because it was the easiest thing to get started, and then quickly started doing remodeling. And that's kinda where I focused on, was doing mostly remodeling. Still did some handyman stuff, but that's I kind of started out backwards. I kind of started out as a management. I found myself all the way down to the laborer. So, that's the general gist of my like, how I got into this. It's kind of unique.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. That's good. So you're contracting for a while and but, eventually, you move out of contracting, and you move into what you're doing today. That's not a not your traditional path. Right? So how do you go about that?

Brad Huebner: So, nine years into my business, I was still struggling. You know, I'm still paying the bills and still staying, you know, still growing each year, but nothing crazy and, you know, definitely not worth the amount of effort and time and stress. And so I'm like, something's I'm doing something wrong. And so I went out and got coaching. I hired some a business coach, a couple different business coaches and programs. And I learned about, you know, the more of the business side of it. And through that process of getting a coach, I kind of fell in love with the idea of coaching. And I always knew my, in my head, like when I'm 65 or retired, you know, I might be a consultant or go, you know, maybe go teach at the community college or something like that. But it was an opportunity to start and long story, but it was kind of, didn't set out to start a coaching business at that point in my life. It just kind of fell in my lap with another guy. I had a business partner and, you know, a long story, it just it turned into a year later, I had the opportunity to start doing coaching full time and I kind of had to make a decision because that whole year I was running my construction business and doing coaching and it was a lot. You know, divided attention basically.

Quinton Comino: Yeah.

Brad Huebner: And I kind of had to make a decision. And so I decided to try out for three months to do coaching full time. You know, I kind of put my business on pause for three months and then I was gonna try the coaching. And I started the coaching in, like, January 2021, and I never, never went back to my construction business.

Quinton Comino: No way. Yeah.

Brad Huebner: It's basically never went back to it.

Quinton Comino: Wow. So what does coaching look like then?

Brad Huebner: What does it look like?

Quinton Comino: Yeah.

Brad Huebner: Most of it is online. So I don't have really any local clients. It's all online with the you know, obviously, technology has improved over the years. And so it's all we have, you know, weekly coaching calls, and I have training, you know, things on different, trainings for contractors to help them out. They can just go online and watch it like an online academy. And then, like I said, we have the, weekly coaching calls, group calls, and then there's also some Facebook group, you know, private group, and some WhatsApp chats and stuff. So it's kind of a community. It's a combination of some one on one coaching, some group coaching, some training, and community.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. So what is it that when someone comes to you and they need coaching, what do they need? Do they need to know how to hire people? Do they need to know how to do better at remodeling? Do they what is it that they're coming to you for?

Brad Huebner: The number one thing that I would tell you almost all contractors need help with is how to be profitable. And that seems kinda silly, but most contractors and I've done surveys, like, I've surveyed hundreds of contractors. You would be surprised, and I think your audience would be surprised that most contractors are not profitable. And that's one of the main reasons they go out of business. You know? So according to the labor bureau statistics, ninety six percent of contractors will go out of business within ten years. I mean, ninety six. I forget the stat, but within five years, it's like seventy eight percent.

Quinton Comino: Just drop out. Yeah. They can't make it. And so you're seeing, I imagine, some of the holes in the ship, so to say. Of of, like, yeah. Then you're not gonna make it if you're if you're going this way.

Brad Huebner: Yeah. I mean, there's two reasons they go out of business. One, they burn out because they're just working all the time. Right? And two, financially, they either they go bankrupt, you know, one client doesn't pay them on a $30,000 job and they have to sue them or whatever and that just puts them out of business, or they just run out of money because they don't know how to market themselves and they have, you know, two months of not selling new jobs. And so it's usually financial. And but the second part of that is the burnout. So some guys are making good money, but they're working seven days a week.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. It's not sustainable.

Brad Huebner: It's not sustainable. And so the lifestyle that they have is really not sustainable long term.

Quinton Comino: So when someone comes to you, what's the first thing that you're assessing? I'm sure you have, like, a method to it, or there's some indicators that probably pop up right away. When a new customer client comes to you, contractor, what do you look at right away?

Brad Huebner: I ask them some basic questions about their finances, like what's your revenue, you know, what's your profit margins and stuff just to get an idea. But, really, I'm assessing what is the pain in their business.

Quinton Comino: Mhmm.

Brad Huebner: Right? Because not everybody is equal. And so I'm really trying to assess, like, where where is where is the business failing? Is it failing because you're just simply not charging enough? Is it failing because you're not, you don't know how to do sales or you don't know how to do marketing? You don't have good systems in place. You don't have good talent working for you. You know, what I'm obsessing, like, where is the main pain point in your business.

Quinton Comino: And what do you find that to be?

Brad Huebner: It's usually not charging enough, like, straight up.

Quinton Comino: Really?

Brad Huebner: Yeah. Most contractors don't charge enough. I would say, like, over 90% of contractors do not charge enough to be able to have a sustainable business. Why don't they charge enough? They don't think they can. It's that simple.

Quinton Comino: They think they're gonna lose the job to someone else? They think...

Brad Huebner: They think it's just competition. You know? It's like, well, I tried to charge one time. I tried to charge and then, you know, the guy down the street who's, you know, doesn't have a license or insurance or he's illegal or whatever. Like, he just kinda affects me and I lose all the work. There's a lot of, most of the problems are mindset problems.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. Okay.

Brad Huebner: For the contractors. So they're limiting beliefs on what they think is capable within their business, what they think they can do. That's the root problem. The problem within the business, the result of that is they don't make enough money.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. But they seek money.

Brad Huebner: You know, I didn't mean to cut you off.

Quinton Comino: You know this, like, if you don't make enough profit in your business, then you can't pay for good labor.

Brad Huebner: Yeah.

Quinton Comino: Because you can't afford to pay them, right?

Brad Huebner: And if you can't afford good labor, what happens to your quality?

Quinton Comino: It goes way down.

Brad Huebner: It goes way down and so, like, you have to charge more so that you can market your business because you got to spend money on marketing. You have to charge more so that you can pay people more money to attract higher talent. You got to make more money so that you can invest in equipment, you know, tools break, vehicles get old. And so at the end of the day, like you have to have a profitable business in order to continue in that business.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. So the contractors that you're working with, are they mostly one man show or, Hey, I've got a crew. I've got three crews. I got 30 guys. Who are you working with primarily?

Brad Huebner: Yeah. Most most of them are, like, sub 1,000,000 in revenue, and they're gonna be between, you know, solo to five employees.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. And so you're so they're not only the contractor, but they're really also the salesperson. And a lot of contractors, they're not necessarily they don't come across the salespeople.

Brad Huebner: No. They don't.

Quinton Comino: So you're doing a little you're doing business development, and probably one of the biggest things is sales. Just because you can't you can't just you can't just charge more. The answer can't be, oh, yeah. You'll just, you know, put another zero on that invoice and you're good.

Brad Huebner: Surprisingly, you can do that for some situations. But, yes, you're right. Like, in order to consistently charge more, you do have to have better sales. You do have to be better at sales. And so, yes. So I would say about 70% of, you know, the value of what I do for contractors is sales related Because it's not, it's not really just sales, it's actually effective communication. Like, so once you learn how to communicate effectively, that, that spills over into how you build your team, right? How you interact with your spouse, your kids, Everyone in life, like, once you learn how to communicate, that benefits every area of your life.

Quinton Comino: So, do you find yourself being somewhat of a life coach as well?

Brad Huebner: Sometimes. Yes. Yep.

Quinton Comino: Do contractors realize they have these inefficiencies when they come in? Do they come to me, Brad, I know the problem, but I just don't know how to solve it?

Brad Huebner: Sometimes. Yeah. Usually, what they think is the problem though is not the problem. Most of us in I mean, this is not just contractors. Most of us don't wanna look in the mirror and be like, you're the you're you're what's wrong. You're the problem. Right? Most of us don't wanna do that. Our ego protects us from that. And so there's a lot of contractors that have and you've seen them, like, super egotistical, you know, it's all about me and look how awesome I am. I usually don't work with those people. It's usually the ones that come to me are actually humble enough to, like, they're like, okay. I've been doing this for a short period of time and I don't know how to do it. Like, clearly I'm the problem, but I don't know how to fix it. Those are the ones that actually I can help the most. The ones that are like, oh, I just need to learn how to sail, but I don't wanna look at myself and I don't wanna, you know, figure out anything wrong with me. I just need to learn how to sail. Those usually don't work out very well.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. So because they you got a contractor come to you. How well did they receive when you tell them, hey, man. This is what the problem is, and it's not what they think the problem is.

Brad Huebner: It's funny because I can't it's there's a saying in coaching. It's like, sell them what they want and then give them what they need. Right? And so there's a not to manipulate people or lie to people, but it's like, they come in like, hey. I really need to I really need help selling. It's like, cool. I wanna teach you how to sell.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. Yeah.

Brad Huebner: But the problem is you got some personal issues you gotta deal with. Right? Like, you got some limiting beliefs. Because here's the thing, like, I can tell you to sell more. I mean, charge more. I can tell you to charge more all day.

Quinton Comino: Mhmm.

Brad Huebner: But if you don't believe it's possible, you're never gonna be able to sell that to a customer.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. What are some of those self limiting beliefs?

Brad Huebner: It's just people won't pay that much. You know, contractors are limited to, price objections. And in reality, and you probably know this, like, for most people, price is two or three on the list of concerns. I'm not saying you can, you know, if someone can only afford 200,000, it's all they have in a million. But if someone can afford 200,000, they can probably also afford 220,000. You know? And that extra 20,000 can be all the difference between getting a contractor who's struggling who's, you know, not gonna show up to your job site every day working versus one who has it together and knows what his value is, and he's gonna deliver an excellent product or service.

Quinton Comino: Absolutely. So when you're doing any sort of, like, assessments with your, contractors that come to you? Any sort of sales assessments or personality assessments, anything like that?

Brad Huebner: I don't do it as an onboarding tool, but we do it within the program. So we're I use I like to use the DISC profile, personality profiles. It helps to know that, you know, who you're talking to. A lot of guys will do that themselves to figure out how they communicate. There's some other ones that we kind of but we don't I don't get too much into, like, assessments of personality.

Quinton Comino: What about for sales?

Brad Huebner: We do sales training and we do role plays. So like we have a sales call every week where we'll actually do role plays. And so we're like in real time assessing them. And it's nerve wracking when you have like twenty, thirty people watching you live.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. I know. You gotta role play that.

Brad Huebner: Yeah. But it's the absolute best way to learn. Really? You will learn so much in that environment because it's a high stress environment, and so you really see your weaknesses.

Quinton Comino: Totally. Yeah. Like you say, you know, it's like when you're on the job, that's a high stress environment too. Like, you're doing an estimate right there. You're looking at everything, taking in all the information. You're standing in that customer's front yard, looking at the porch that you're gonna put there or whatever. And you gotta come up with the price and, like, yeah, you have to hold it all together and know what you're doing and quote it right. That can be that's a high stress environment.

Brad Huebner: Yeah. I mean and then we add it's even difficult because with our sales process, like, we actually give ballparks over the phone. And so we actually, I'm a big advocate and some of your listeners, they may not like this, but I'm a big advocate for charging for estimates, for charging for consultations. So not to take advantage of people whatsoever, but there are a lot of people and again, it's just how it is, but there's a lot of people who have, you know, champagne tastes on a beer budget, and they will gladly waste two or three, four hours of your time on a pre estimate. And then only to find out that they thought they could do a bathroom remodel for, you know, dollars 10,000 when in reality, it's 30,000.

Quinton Comino: Yeah.

Brad Huebner: And so we we kind of eliminate some of that stuff in the sales process by throwing out some ballparks, you know, getting an idea. You know, if I told you, hey, this project is gonna be somewhere between, you know, 40,000 on the high end and maybe 20,000 on the low end. Does that fit your budget? And you're like, heck no. I only wanna spend 10,000. Well, then we're not aligned there.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. Yeah. You're just moving on. So what are some of the success stories you'd say you've had with, clients?

Brad Huebner: That's kind of subjective because it depends on if it's, like, we talking financial success, we talking time savings success, are we talking literally just not losing your mind anymore success. But, I mean, I've had some clients that have, you know, they've increased their gross, you know, revenue by $2,300,000 in one year. You know, a lot of guys will end up getting, you know, making 50 to a 100,000 more in profit per year, you know, over a twelve month period, like, actual profit.

Quinton Comino: Yeah.

Brad Huebner: But there's it's a combination. So I really like the smaller guys that you know, usually, the perfect client for me is someone who's doing like $400,000 to $600,000 in revenue and they have two or three guys, you know, on the tools and themselves. Because those guys are they're bouncing in between the job and sales and I can really save them a ton of time with the sales process. They're saving ten to fifteen hours a week in the sales process because they're not going out and meeting with 10 people a week doing free estimates and only winning, you know, 30% of them. And so we save them a ton of time and then we make them a lot of money and then we help them with systems so that so really, you know, they're going from working seventy, eighty hours a week down to fifty, sixty hours a week and they're adding, you know, 50 to a $100,000 a year in profit while putting systems together so that their team is more effective and they're able to do jobs more profitably.

Quinton Comino: That's really good. That's fantastic. Yeah. And how so how many people do you work with in, you know, at any given time?

Brad Huebner: It's kinda people come and go. So the way my program is set up is you can pay you kinda pay once and then you just, you know, show up when you want kind of thing. And so some people come in for six months and then they kinda disappear. Some people come in, they're in for two years or, like, they show up every week on a call because they like it, you know. So it's kinda hard, but on average, I have about 15 to 20, like, active people.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. Participating. So would you ever with the knowledge that you have now, right, because you got out of the contracting and you're like, hi. Let me try this for three months doing this trainings, coaching, and then it takes off. Right? Twenty twenty one. Now you know a lot more than you did back then. Would you ever say, I'm gonna go back to contracting and I'm gonna kill it?

Brad Huebner: I think about that all the time. I mean, I really do. I'm like, I'll wake up, like, I think I'm gonna start doing custom home building. I think that'd be fun. You know? But it and I'm it's not I'm not throwing it off the table. Like, it's still a possibility, but I have to realize, like, you know, I can't do multiple things. Like, I really I'm still growing the coaching business. By no means is it, like, you know, peaked in where I wanted to be. There's a lot of things I haven't even done yet that I wanna do.

Quinton Comino: Mhmm.

Brad Huebner: So, really, it's just a distraction if I start doing it.

Quinton Comino: Really? Really. So you have some goals you want to, you want to hit before?

Brad Huebner: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. You know, include like TV shows and like all kinds of stuff.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. Custom home building though. I mean, you would do so good. You would yeah.

Brad Huebner: I think so. Now I meant I am in a smaller market, so it's a little bit different than if you live in, like, you know, Chicago or some big city. But I do think there's a ton of opportunity for sure.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. So with the contractors that you work with, who who are what trades do you find are the most successful? Are there any that these guys, they just have way better margins than say the plumbers or the plumbers do better than the electricians or, you know, what comes to mind?

Brad Huebner: This is an, this is a really interesting question. And I've, I've spent a lot of time kind of trying to figure this out and it, every trade has its pros and cons, right? So in my, in my experience and in my belief, the super niche ones actually are the most profitable and I mean like super niche. And so there's a, there's actually a company in Florida that's called I Hate My Sink and the website is ihatemysink.com and all they do is replace kitchen sinks. That's it. And so most of them are, you know, granite or some kind of solid surface slabs. They got an older sink and they want to swap it out for something else. So they're one day projects, they come in, they put up their stuff, they install the sink, they're out, They're making $2,000 to $3,000 per sink, you know, per project. That's an easily scalable business because now it's like all I need is a vehicle and two guys. You know, one semi skilled guy, one helper. And every time I add a vehicle and a crew, you know, I'm producing $200,000 in revenue. Remodeling is one of the most difficult things to do because there's so many different elements to it. But I have lots of remodeling clients that are doing extremely well.

Quinton Comino: And that well, that's what you hard. That's what you started doing. It sounds that was the way you first went on your own. Right?

Brad Huebner: Yep.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. Remodeling. So you know how difficult it can be.

Brad Huebner: Yeah. I think if I was gonna start a business in a trade, I would pick one of the mechanicals. I would either pick electrical plumbing or heating and air. I would probably pick one of those three because those are ones that are gonna always be needed and always around, and they're still you know, but even within that, like, if I was gonna be a start an electrical company, I would still niche down even more and be like, all I'm gonna do all we're doing is service panel change outs. Like, we're just gonna upgrade from 60 to 100 amps and that's it. We're not gonna do anything else.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna say, so would you you have residential or commercial or what find a specific and that's what you do?

Brad Huebner: Yeah. Just find a specific niche and be the best at it. There's a local company here, plumber, and the name of his company is Water Heaters and More, which is genius in my opinion. Now, they do full plumbing, but who do you think gets all the water heater jobs? Right? So they focus on that and you know, most of those water heaters you can swap out within a few hours. They could probably do two or three a day, you know, good margins on them. So like, that's what I mean by like niching down until like with even within a specific industry.

Quinton Comino: Yeah.

Brad Huebner: The worst thing you can do, and I just recorded a podcast yesterday about this, but the worst thing you can do is be the one call does it all guy. You know, where you just do everything. That is that is the worst thing you can do as a contractor. So, you know, even as a homeowner, you know, yes, I can call a general contractor who, you know, they have subs and people that can do the work. Sure. But if I'm calling someone that says we can do it all, I don't think you can do all of it very good.

Quinton Comino: No. No. No. Yeah.

Brad Huebner: You might be able to do two or three pretty good, but then you start dwindling down on what you're really good at, you know. So I don't wanna call one call does it all guide a poor driveway. I wanna call a concrete company, you know, a professional concrete pour driveways in and out who only does concrete. That's who I want. And I only wanna call a roofing company to come do my roof.

Quinton Comino: Yeah.

Brad Huebner: You know?

Quinton Comino: That's so good. That's true. And that's what I find with the contractors that I bring on here. Now the best ones, they just focus, and this is what they do. And they don't do anything else.

Brad Huebner: Well, it makes sense too because think about it. One call does it all guy. Right? He's like, he's got a market, his marketing doesn't target anything specific. So his marketing is general, which really doesn't land with most people, but let's say you do, let's say you do roofing, siding, windows and decks, just four things. That's four different trades that you have to market for. So I have to have a marketing budget for roofing, I have to have a marketing budget for siding, fit, you know, all that. Then I have to have all the tools for each one of those trades and then I have to have all the skill sets to do those things. Like, if I'm doing an employee model, like, if I'm hiring employees, now I have to hire employees that either can do all four of those, which again we know most people can't do. Or I gotta have a crew that does roofing. I gotta have a crew that does siding. I gotta have a and now I have project managers. And then the estimating is totally different for each one of those. So all you're doing is you're adding levels of complexity to your business for every trade that you do services for.

Quinton Comino: Very quickly too. Very quickly.

Brad Huebner: Oh, yeah.

Quinton Comino: Do you ever have contractors where you say, look, you guys need to maybe limit your offering here?

Brad Huebner: I've had at least four that completely rebrand my business. I've had several that have niched down or are in the process of niching down because they start to see the power of the community within, you know, within the contracting is that you can talk to other contractors and see what's working and not working. Right? And none of them compete with each other. So they're gonna share all the beans. Right? Spill the beans. So they can see another contractor. One of my he was a guest on my podcast a few episodes ago, Chris. He went from, you know, his last name was, Chris Blauch. Blauch Building Services where they did everything to Blue Mountain bathrooms. And he's killing it with bathrooms.

Quinton Comino: I love it, man.

Brad Huebner: He's in an area called Blue Mountain, Pennsylvania. You know, that area is real big in Yetis, you know, Sasquatches. And so his mascot is a Sasquatch. Yep. Right? Which kind of looks like him. And so, like, he he's just destroying it with bathrooms. Like, now people are seeking him out to do bathroom remodels, where before he was trying to do everything and couldn't get people to call him.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. He just it's like yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. It's crazy. You it's like fishing. You're gonna you wanna fish for something specific. Or otherwise, you're like, yeah. Good luck. Who knows what you're gonna get? You might get nothing.

Brad Huebner: I use the fishing analogy actually a lot. And, you know, if I wanna fish for bass, I have to know, like, I gotta, you know, troll the banks and I gotta look for structure and I gotta use certain worms and I gotta fish certain times of the day if I wanna catch bass. If I just throw a net in the water, I may catch 10 fish, but, you know, I wanna catch crappie and bluegill and catfish and that's not what I want. I'm looking for bass. And so you really have to you really have to figure out your customer avatar or who you're going after. And then all of your marketing is very specific to that person.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. Absolutely. That's fantastic. But I have, after the podcast, I'm curious some of the sales training stuff. I'd love to hear some more about that. I've got, because we do we do, we're mostly a sales company. You know, that's what we provide. We're selling homes. And so just finding that right customer is so important. And not every I think everyone can sell, and some will sell better than others. But having the right training to be able to, because what you're talking about there, honing in on a specific thing, like, that that's kind of a sales approach. Like, this we have this specific solution that we're providing, and that's what we're doing. And so I need to find a customer who has that pain. That's the customer I need to find. I don't need to try to also alongside bathrooms. I'm gonna do window replacements, and I'm also gonna do tile. Like, you're just not gonna be as successful that way. So, yeah, I'd love to I've got some interesting things that we've found to be really successful for sales, that I'd be curious to hear how you do with your contractors that come to you.

Brad Huebner: Yeah. The interesting thing about sales is, it's completely emotional. Right? And what's one of the things that we do in our role plays let's say I have one of one of my clients is he owns a flooring company, Oregon floor works, Ben, he's out in Oregon. All he does is flooring, you know, tile, carpet, laminate, right? He's just more of a subcontractor or specialty contractor. Right? Well, we'll do a role play, and one of the things that we do to really, train people and get them out of their comfort zone, we will role play a completely different trade. So Ben will role play as a painter. Okay. And the reason we do that is because our natural disposition as a contractor is to go technical.

Quinton Comino: Yes. It is.

Brad Huebner: That's where we live.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. Going technical, you can start to lose yeah. You lose the customer because they don't they don't know.

Brad Huebner: Well, it's if I'm talking to you and let's say I'm a, a carpenter and you're at and you want custom cabinets built in your living room. Right? And then, you know, and you're like, well, what's the best kind of wood to use? I'm like, bingo. I know this answer. You know, sign me up. Well, there's there's so many choices. You know, we can do maple and oak and blah blah blah. And I can just puke all over you with knowledge because we think that translates into, oh, this guy really knows his stuff. I need to hire him because he's so smart. And that doesn't translate at all.

Quinton Comino: No. You just lose it.

Brad Huebner: I always say, like, you know, don't puke all over your customers, like, with, you know, with your knowledge. Like, you're, you know, look at me. Look at me. Puke, puke, puke. And so it's really, we do the role play with a different customer, a different trade because now you can't rely on knowledge. Now it's really about relying on specific, emotional connections, like questions that are emotionally connected.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. You know?

Brad Huebner: Because if it's something you don't know anything about, then you have to rely on it.

Quinton Comino: That's really good. No. I love that. That's really good technique because people, they make decisions emotionally, and then they justify them logistically.

Brad Huebner: Logically. Yeah. Logistically, logically. Yeah. That's right.

Quinton Comino: Then they say, okay. Yeah. This is why I'm gonna do it. But it was completely an emotional thing. That's why it's amazing with emotions. You can feel something before you even can put it to words, or you can say what it is. You feel something. And sometimes it happens so fast you don't realize it. Sometimes it's like, why am I upset today? Oh, this is what it is.

Brad Huebner: Think about any anytime you buy something, every time you go to a restaurant or you go to the gas station or anything, you go to Target. I don't care what it is. You're gonna go make a purchase. Right? And then you come across a salesman or associate or the cashier, like within the first five seconds of how they integrate you and talk to you, it's gonna like put you in one way or the other. Like you're gonna have an emotional reaction to that. And so, like, it could be negative or positive, but most people are completely unaware that they are actually creating emotions with other people in the way that they talk. So, you know, it's we talk about tonality. We talk about, you know, cadence, how fast you talk. We talk about the spirit of the conversation. Like, you know, there's so many elements to it.

Quinton Comino: Absolutely. That's good. Well, we'll wrap it up here, Brad. But, we're gonna have a lot of customers that are looking for homes that will listen to this, but we're also gonna have contractors, because they're cruising our website either a, because they're they are looking for home themselves or they're looking to provide their services. So, people will hear this. And if you just wanna provide a little bit of info on if someone's interested in some of your coaching, what do they do? How do they start with that?

Brad Huebner: Yeah. I mean, you can go to my website. You can go to hammerandgrind.com. My podcast named the same hammer and grind. That's on, you know, all the Spotify, iTunes, all those. Any of my social media handles are at hammer and grind podcast. So you can go to TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, whatever. If you just search for hammer and grind, you'll pretty much find me, because that's I'm the only one that really has that handle. So, but the website, if you wanna learn some more information about some of the coaching and more about me and what we do, that would probably be the where I would start is hammerandgrind.com.

Quinton Comino: Awesome. Great. Well, thank you so much, Brad. Really have appreciated having you on. Thank you very much.

Brad Huebner: Yeah. Thank you for having me on here. Appreciate it.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. Take care.

Quinton Comino: Hello everyone... etc.