Changing Your Mindset: The Number One Strategy for Getting Off the Ladder - Part 1

Summary

Lauren Fink, owner of Apex Painting, discusses the importance of mindset in running a business and the need for continuous personal growth. She emphasizes the need for resilience and the ability to bounce back from setbacks. Lauren also highlights the importance of being a well-rounded individual and maintaining healthy relationships in business. She shares personal experiences of handling difficult situations with customers and employees, and the importance of taking ownership and doing what's right. Lauren and Branden Sewell also discuss the mindset of not letting negative moments shape the future reality of the business.

Keywords

mindset, personal growth, resilience, setbacks, well-rounded, healthy relationships, ownership, doing what's right, negative moments

Takeaways

• Mindset is crucial in running a business and requires ongoing maintenance.
• Being a successful business owner means being the most mature person in the room and maintaining a positive mindset.
• Regular communication and connection with other business owners is important for support and growth.
• Responding to negative situations with resilience and focusing on solutions is key.
• Being a well-rounded individual and maintaining healthy relationships is essential for success in business.
• Giving yourself permission to fail and learn from mistakes is necessary for growth and progress.

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Transcript

Branden Sewell (00:00.745)
Hi everybody, I am Brandon Sewell. I am the owner of Seal Pro Painting in Central Florida and now also Seal Pro Seal and Wash. I'm also the host of the Off the Ladder podcast and we exist to help home service business owners learn so that they can lead well and ultimately live life off of the ladder. Today's guest is Lauren Fink and she's an unlikely painting contractor like myself.

She was a college athlete, journalist, and editor, amateur graphic designer. She's a wife, a mom of five, and she opened Apex Painting in the summer of 2021 in Hillsdale, Michigan. It's a rural town of 8 ,000 in South Central Michigan, 15 miles from the Ohio border. In 2023, her second full year of business, Apex Painting did...

$860 ,000 in revenue, all of which Lauren sold herself. And today she has nine employees and is tracking for 1 million or just under 1 million in revenue for 2024. Her greatest happiness in business, one, the thrill of success with no former business or trades experience. Apex was an experiment like taking herself through business school.

And two, the surprising, deeply moving experience of being a job provider and changing lives through jobs at her company. Several employees have gone on to start their own businesses, something she is immensely proud of. Welcome to the show, Lauren.

Lauren (01:43.752)
Thank you so much, Brandon. Thanks for having me on. This is a perfect day. I'm getting over some sort of flu. And so you're getting me at like no makeup, not at work state. And so this is a great time to talk business because I have no distractions. And it's kind of on topic because...

I can be home today because my whole company is running without me. And so sometimes, like, you know, we're going to talk about this, but when you have a great team, you can be gone and everything keeps going.

Branden Sewell (02:09.897)
right.

Branden Sewell (02:22.154)
Yeah, that's really good. It's funny, there's a lot of things in your bio that reminded me of myself, my own business. I had no experience in the painting industry.

And a lot of people ask me, they'll be like, when did you start painting? I'm like, well, I never really started. And until I started my business, you know, there'd be like the occasional job that I would do here and there. But really from the beginning, I just sold the work and hired people to get it done. And, you know, that's changed over time. Initially, I started out with subcontractors and that's just evolved to where, you know, now I have, you know, a crew.

Lauren (02:44.232)
Thank you.

Branden Sewell (03:05.706)
of employees and so it's changed over time. But yeah, similar experience that I just kind of, I think somebody said one time to me, you don't choose painting, painting chooses you. And I was like, that sounds true. There's so many people that I talked to and have on the show even are like, it wasn't like my...

Lauren (03:24.872)
I'm sorry.

Branden Sewell (03:33.226)
you know, original plan. It wasn't really what I was seeking out to do. It just kind of came along. The opportunity presented itself and ran with it. And so that's been my story. And, you know, it's similar size businesses. And then like you, I think that it's cool that you

your second thing that you put was just the thrill of providing a business that provides jobs to people and income. And I think that's really admirable for anybody. And I think that it's unfortunate that I think some people overlook the importance of small businesses and what they do.

for local economies, local families, and just creating stability for people to have a job and something that can put food on the table. So it's admirable.

So let's jump into this. I reached out to you. There were a few things that we're going to talk about and one of them is mindset. So for you, how important is mindset in running a business? And I think more importantly on topic is how important is your mindset for running a business that doesn't revolve around you, that doesn't require you in the day to day and gives you that freedom that you have now staying at home?

Lauren (05:12.904)
Yeah, I'm a big believer that mindset is really, you know, it almost feels scary to say it, but that mindset is really everything. And we, it's easy to feel like we really value hard skills.

and even like education or experience and all these things are necessary, but without mindset they can be completely squandered. They can be almost useless. And so I think for owners mindset is really important and it's an ongoing maintenance. It's not something

you have and then you just like set and forget it. You're like, it's always there. It's kind of something you have to maintain. And I think it's interesting how challenging it is to maintain mindset over time. I think you know as an owner that your feelings about being the leader, having everything essentially on your shoulders, bearing all the risk, knowing that if everything falls apart, you are responsible.

Branden Sewell (06:29.417)
Mm -hmm.

Lauren (06:31.176)
Keeping the mindset that you need to be really successful, it kind of, I think over time you experience moments when you really need to like up your game or really realize that your mindset needs to improve. And those are hard lessons. I feel like in my time, I'm only in my third full year.

Branden Sewell (06:53.033)
Yeah.

Lauren (06:59.08)
of business, so I'm kind of a baby business owner. But I'm not a young person, so I'm not, you know, I have a lot of life experience, so I have the, I'm fortunate when you start a business at 37, you have maturity, I mean, hopefully, that kind of gives you an edge. You're not trying to prove yourself in the same way you do when you're in your, you know, say mid -20s.

Branden Sewell (07:18.281)
Mm -hmm.

Lauren (07:30.555)
And so I think you, I've definitely felt the humility of realizing what I need to bring to the table and where I need to be consistent with my own mindset. I'm trying to think of like, we should get into some details because like the idea of mindset by itself is not quite enough.

So I'm trying to think of an example. One is that I've learned that no matter how I feel, no matter what kind of day I'm having, what's going on in my family, I have to be the most mature person in the room when I'm an owner. And that's a hard thing to accept sometimes because in your own company, you don't get to be the person to whine.

and kind of let down your hair and sort of bitch about how hard things are or if that kind of makes sense. And I've learned, I didn't always do that perfectly and I'm much more consistent with that now and it's made a big difference. It's really important for leadership. And having, I'm kind of jumping to our third topic which is having regular communication and connection with other owners.

Having that as your outlet where you get support, where you can say, I'm having the worst week, that allows you to make sure that in your own company, you're always, I mean, you know, as close as possible, you're always on point. You're always the most mature person in the room that day. You're the one ready to handle anything. You're the one who is not rattled by this.

you know, new problem that's come up. And I think those things are important to know. If that makes sense. If you're prepared, you have a place where you're getting supported, especially by the owners. I mean, you can have support. My husband's my number one supporter, but he's not going to talk, like owner talk with me about the individual frustrations of like my exact situations all the time.

Lauren (09:50.76)
Other owners can really relate quickly and share wisdom. And like they're just great listeners because they feel the same pains. And then you can go back to your company each day and like kind of be ready to roll. I think when you're not aware that you need that support, it's, I think small business ownership is honestly very lonely. It's not.

Branden Sewell (10:18.698)
Mm -hmm.

Lauren (10:20.488)
And maybe being a CEO of a big company is really lonely. I don't know. But I think if you're more aware of that and you know I need to have community, I can't be an island. I think the people who are not successful are just an island. If I was an island today, my company wouldn't be running because I'm homesick. And any good business, it doesn't have to be huge, but any good business has...

that leader is not an island. It doesn't mean you can't be the guy who works out of your truck. You just have to know that if you're an island, you don't have a team to support you. You have to just be aware that that's the risk. I don't know, that's some thoughts.

Branden Sewell (11:07.466)
Yeah, that's really good. I want to go back to like one of the things that you said in the beginning of that statement was that mindset is not like a skill set that you just like obtain and you like have it. It's something that you, you know, have to continually work on. And it made me think of and you also said, I can't remember what your exact words were, but it was almost like you were alluding to like you can't just rely on your skills.

You can't just rely on what you're good at. If you don't have the right mindset, then those things can go to waste and fall to the wayside. You could find yourself at the doorstep of failure because you haven't implemented the investment into your mindset. How do I mentally carry out the capacity of everything that's on my shoulders?

I thought of a video that I saw the other day, Tom Brady was in an interview or he was giving a speech and it sounded like, I couldn't see who the audience was, but it sounded like he was talking to maybe like a high school football team or, you know, high school athletes. And the thing that he said is, you know, look, like you don't have to be the most skilled person. You don't have to be special.

He's like, what you have to be willing to do is put in the work and the dedication that nobody else wants to or is willing to do. And he was like, you know, when all your friends are sleeping in over the summer and not going and working out and, you know, getting in shape and investing in themselves and waking up at 6 a instead they're like,

sleeping in late and eating pancakes for breakfast, he's like, you're putting in the work, you're putting in the time and the effort and they might be more skilled or they might be more of a natural athlete or whatever, but because they don't have the mindset to invest in themselves, the mindset to be disciplined, well, they're not doing the things that you're going to do that are going to make you successful.

Branden Sewell (13:34.7)
You know, I think so many times, like I'll sit down and yesterday I was thinking about my own business and success and I was like, you know, really all that I have to do to set myself aside from or apart from even like my local competition and everything like that is to do the things that they're not doing. And that doesn't necessarily directly correlate to

just business, but it's like myself, personal development. And so like, am I reading books? Am I listening to podcasts? Am I working out? Am I working on my marriage? Am I working on being a great father? Am I concerned with my mental health? Am I, you know, working on all of those areas and keeping all of those areas sharp is what's going to contribute to my success overall.

and the business owner out there who is focusing on maybe some of those areas, but they're not focusing on their marriage. Well, when their marriage falls apart, that's gonna have a direct effect on their business because now they're gonna be mentally messed up and focused on like if they're going through a struggle in their marriage, that's gonna take away from the energy that they have to put towards their business. If they're...

you know health is falling apart and they're not disciplined there, well okay well now your health is going to potentially pull and take away from your business if you know you've got a problem child or you know and that you know all of those things are just it's all correlated so I think just working on yourself as a well -rounded individual is so important in you know just being able to walk out this.

whole thing that we call business ownership because it's not easy. And I love that we're having like a conversation about the mindset and like the mental side of it because I feel like for me personally, it's really more mental than anything else. The challenges that I face as a business owner are I think a lot of times just mental, you know? And you know, the more that I

Branden Sewell (15:55.403)
surround myself. I love that you brought up talking with other business owners and connecting with them because yeah, your community becomes your support system. And I think community is so important. And even I'm a big advocate for having like a coach, a business coach. Like I have a business coach and you know, we talk every week and you know, I'm able to talk to him about all the things that are going on and that's a huge help for me. So,

Just a lot of good value and a lot of things you shared that I'm really passionate about. So it's good stuff.

Lauren (16:32.223)
I love that. And I think you're right that setting yourself apart, having that discipline. One thing that reminds me of is a couple things. One is if you want to be a great leader, you're willing to keep recalibrating. I always think of it like a machine.

If you don't have something that's helping you recalibrate, you're going to get off and you're going to believe that you're fine and that you're doing your own thing and that you're not going to realize it. And calibration requires you to kind of do a measure, come up against something else. So you can do it with, I don't know, just having people in your life who are honest with you about where

you could improve.

from like you're saying from maybe on the business side, you know, where you can be smarter as a business person, where you're, you're really, you know, obviously if you've got a business for a few years, you've, you probably got something going, but the honesty to say, I need a business coach to be like, you know, honestly, this could get a lot better. Here's where you need to kind of dig in or you need to learn more about this part of running a business. Too personal, like

I have people in my life that the way you handle, let's say, a situation with other personalities and they're willing to say like, you know, you really should have handled that differently. You know, that kind of recalibration is what great people do. Great people want feedback. They want really honest feedback that sometimes hurts.

Lauren (18:22.216)
If you know that you can't handle feedback, I would really question whether you're ready to be a leader. And that sounds really harsh, but I mean, I hold myself to that. When I react badly to feedback, I really like catch myself and go, you gotta be kidding. Like you're better than that. You need the feedback. No, get over.

your pride and how that felt and realize that some of my best favorite moments in life have been when people have confronted me about where I could, hey, like good, honestly, usually good friends, like, hey, you should know, like that's kind of not good. The second thing it reminded me of is, okay, I can remember this. Got like post flu brain.

The second thing was you were talking about hard work and it reminded me also that being a leader, you need to be like you were saying, you need to holistically be a good person. You can't, I always say that business ownership uses all the muscles and like fellow athlete, I love that of it. I love that it's so multi -dimensional. You have to use everything you've got.

It's not just physical skills. It's not just numbers. It's not just people skills. It's like, it's the whole thing. And if you are not holistically a good person, I would also say, like if people don't trust you, if people don't want to work with you regularly, if you can't maintain healthy relationships, these are all like signs that

it's going to be very hard for you to be a successful business owner. And like you said, it doesn't mean don't do it. It means take that in and work on it and make yourself the person. You have to be a person that people want to believe in and follow. And that goes both for employees. It goes towards suppliers. It goes toward customers. You have to be someone who people want to work with. And, and that's very circular.

Lauren (20:38.92)
If you have healthy relationships, your, you know, I'm trying to think, some connection to your cousin, your husband, they want to work with you because there's these healthy relationships going on. If you are a community member who's giving back, those community institutions are like, we should call, you know, we should call Brandon. We know him through this. We saw him volunteer at the parade.

You know, you could do it just totally selfishly, like I'm gonna go show off and volunteer to parade. But if you're just doing that because you feel like that's what a good human does in a good community, then it will come back to you. And I think a lot of, and I'm in a small town.

It's not hard. People here have, they know about you. They know what customers have said about you. They know what employees have said about you. It's not a secret. You can't hide in a small rural community. So your integrity is on display. And I like that accountability because it's really real and you feel it. And if...

Like where I've messed up with a customer, I yelled at a customer one time in the front yard of his property, because he was, in my mind, being extremely rude to me. And I sucked up my pride and went and talked to him and apologized. Why? Because I knew it mattered. Did I think he was like in the right? No. Did I think he said things that should not be said to someone?

I just think he was out of line, but I knew that I needed to make sure, I just needed to be the bigger person there and make sure that like my reputation, which is my company's reputation, which is my family's reputation, needed to make sure that he understood like, hey, I was out of line by losing my temper and yelling at you and saying your house was a piece of shit, which I did say, I don't recommend this. This was a bad, this was a low moment.

Branden Sewell (22:53.355)
No, that's good. I think that it's valuable for people, even listeners who may listen to this podcast and they might be thinking like, wow, they're doing close to a million in revenue. There's guests on here doing more and I'm only doing like this and I'm nowhere near where they're at.

And I think that it's helpful to hear like, hey, we're facing like the same challenges. We're the same. We're human, right? It's just we're working towards becoming better. And, you know, maybe we're just a little bit further ahead in the journey and there's people who are ahead of us. And I think it's great to talk not just about like, okay, like this is everything that I'm doing that's so great, but talking about things like you're mentioning, like, hey, this was this

This was this low point that I had, but this is how I overcame it. And this is why this mindset is so important. And I had a customer, this was probably a few months ago, where I had a similar situation. I gave this customer a quote for a job and she approved the job, approved what the price was. My guys went.

They did the job. They finished this one portion of the job in a day and I sent the invoice and she calls me and she's like, I'm not paying this. Like it only took your guys a day to get that done. And this is like, this is way too much money. And I like went off. I was like, you know, cause in my head, I was like, you, I sat there at your kitchen table, explained to you the costs, explained to you, you know, why we were charging that.

and you approved it and you agreed and signed for us to do the work. And now you're trying to come back and say that I charged too much because they finished it in a day. And just I got, I was, you know, I was upset. So anyway, I ended up calling the customer back after that whole conversation. I was like, you know what? I'm sorry. I was wrong. I shouldn't have like handled myself that way. And

Lauren (25:04.616)
Yeah.

Branden Sewell (25:18.411)
you know, having that humility because you know, you realize like your reputation is more important than, you know, like a couple hundred dollars or something. And I think people lose sight of that. You know, they like, they get so short minded and they can't see beyond like one situation with a customer. It's like, okay, this customer is upset and they want, you know, like some money off for whatever it is. And

they can either eat something to do what I feel is right, like eat the cost of replacing something that you don't feel like was your fault or doing something that you don't feel like is your responsibility, but it makes the situation right with the customer. Well, now you've earned a customer for life because you went above and beyond what was expected. You took ownership of a situation of...

where maybe you felt like it wasn't your responsibility to take ownership of it and just do what's right, right? And that could turn into turning that customer into a fan of your business, really appreciating you and respecting you and then referring you. But some people might handle it differently and then it turns into a one -star review and customers mad and all they do is talk.

crap about your business and you as an owner for how you handled a situation and now you're having to fight against that, right? So I think that it's important just to do the right things and to think beyond just the moment, think big picture, and think about the opportunity cost. It's like by doing this, what are the potential positive and negatives of my actions?

Lauren (27:07.848)
Yeah.

Branden Sewell (27:08.075)
and then make a decision with some like thinking of the future, right? And how that will affect you and your business. I wanted to talk about this part of mindset. You know, negative things happen as a business owner. And I think that one of the challenges that we face is not letting those negative moments shape

our future reality. And I guess what I mean, I was just talking to another business owner because he reached out to me and he's like, hey man, like I got off the ladder, you know, I hired all these employees and you know, after a few months, they're all gone. Like I'm, I went through this struggle and now I'm like back, I feel like I'm back at square one. And he's like, and I'm not gonna hire somebody as fast and I'm just gonna have to get back on the ladder. I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

I was like, maybe you made some mistakes in hiring last time. Maybe you picked the wrong person. Maybe you had all of this negative stuff happen and now you find yourself in a situation where you have no employees. I was like, but the answer isn't not hiring again. The answer is like,

Reflecting finding out what you didn't do. Well, maybe there's something you missed in the process of hiring and looking for the right person Maybe there's something you overlooked in your interview process It's like focus on those things. Don't just rule out hiring altogether and now I'm just gonna get back on the ladder and so I think that it's easy for people to You know get caught in like this mistake is like

It's the new normal. It's not going to be any different. And so now I'm going to go backwards. And so do you have anything to speak to that? Are there any situations that or like things could you give like a specific example of like a struggle that you faced as a business owner, how you've had to overcome it and overcome those like negative feelings or emotions that you're like basically fighting against?

Lauren (29:00.552)
Yeah.

Lauren (29:29.032)
Yeah, that's a perfect example. And it's totally reasonable that when you go through something traumatic like losing all your employees, you're just like, I can't do that again. A couple of things. One, you played baseball besides surfing. I played volleyball. These are both sports of managing error. They're not, you know,

Branden Sewell (29:29.582)
to continue moving forward and like, you know, as you'd say, stay off the ladder.

Lauren (29:55.88)
If you know how baseball scoring goes and you know, think about like batting averages and volleyball is very similar. And I always tell my team.

There's always a degree of error. So some degree, some percentage of our customers are going to be nuts. They're going to surprise us and they're going to just fuck things up. Sorry for my language. They're going to be unreasonable. They're going to say, I'm not going to pay for this. They're going to say, I don't think you did two coats.

Branden Sewell (30:29.326)
song.

Lauren (30:33.384)
I'm looking at it. I think it's one code. You know, just the, all the things that we've all seen that just make you go like, you know, or they, you know, pick apart the scope and you can tell they're nickel and diming. They're not, they're not picking it apart with in good faith. They're picking it apart to say, that sentence wasn't completed just that way. So I'm not paying for this, right? I mean, the list goes on.

But if you know that degree of error is there, and then it's always gonna be there, just like your gal, she was in that margin, she was always gonna be there in some form, then you can quickly bounce back because you were prepared for it. You're going, this is not because I'm new, this is, I had a 30 year old, 30 year end painter tell me, he actually told me, just know, every year of your business, you're gonna get 20 % of it wrong.

I mean, that's a big margin, but he was just trying to say like, you're going to bid it wrong. You're going to execute it wrong in some way. You're going to think this needed this coding and it didn't. And now you got to buy more and you're going to think you got the color right. And then you got, it's not, you know, I love that because he, he was far in with a successful business and just saying, just get ready. You know, it's just, you're not going to have it right. so I love that thinking,

Branden Sewell (31:39.534)
Mm -hmm.

Lauren (32:01.)
And this is like recently I shared this with my team because like you said, I do think setbacks can feel like really harsh blows. And Roger Federer said in an interview, he was talking about the percentage of points you win to be a tennis champion. And he was talking about the percentage of matches he'd won in like whatever a season. I don't know what the, you know, timeframe was. And he was saying it's, you know, it was a lot like, you know.

90 % or something. And then he's like, but do you know how, what the percentage of points I won was? And it was 54%. And he said, do you understand that to be a champion tennis player, you're almost losing every other point? And he said, you can only do that if you can quickly forget about the last point. If you thought that the last point meant a lot.

you would never win a game. And he said the greatest athletes and I'd say the greatest leaders, he said, when you're going into the point, it's everything. It's the entire world at stake. You have to play it with all your heart. And when you lose it, you have to forget it immediately. Like it didn't happen and go to point. And I just thought like that, that's like such a great.

That's like everything you need to know about resilient mindset, right? Like that's awesome. That's really hard. And if we think of it that way, it's like we're killing it, right? So for the person who lost all their employees, about exactly a year ago, I had the really highest level leader in my company quit.

I was pretty sure that most of my employees were going to go with him. And I actually had a call the day, maybe the day it happened, with another business owner who I really admire. I think he's in Pennsylvania. Anyway, I don't know why I reached out to him. He's someone I admire who's really smart and I was just kind of grasping for like, what do I do right now?

Lauren (34:30.568)
and the craziest thing was that he had happened to, I think it was about only like a year before that day. Maybe it was two, but not very long. He had had every single employee leave his company and he's like a million and a half, $2 million companies. Not, it's not small, small and, literally every single one he had a leader leave very similar situation and literally every single painter left with him.

and he had zero employees. And he said it was the best lesson he'd had in business, that he realized that at that point that those people weren't actually following him as a leader. And he redesigned things, he hired, and he has a better company now. So I was really fortunate to get that mindset, right, that day and realized that...

This is not, I mean, this is hard. It's harsh. It's traumatic. It's not going to kill your business. It's not going to vision. You're going to do it better the second time. And maybe really, as he was saying, if I kept that guy, like I wasn't going to get where I needed to be. I needed to learn that I needed to be, everyone needed to be invested in me. I needed to be connected to all my employees and I needed someone in.

Branden Sewell (35:44.559)
right.

Lauren (35:59.72)
my as a field leader who was not sort of actually like basically sort of in competition with me on a level so I would say that those things are traumatic and then at the same time I think you always have to have the humility to say okay step back what should I be doing right now I think that I

There's a really smart person out there who decides in that moment that for their family, for themselves, they want to go be an employee for a while. I don't think there's any shame in that. But if the answer is, no, I really have good things going here, they need to have the courage to hire again and know that they're going to do it better and that those are just hard lessons. I mean, we just lose, you lose people all the time and you have, again, you've kind of got that margin.

of error where you are going to lose good people. It's not if, it's when. So you have to be, you could walk into your shop tomorrow and your best foreman could come in and say, I really gotta take this other job. I really gotta move my family out of state. Whatever it might be. So again, as a business owner, you gotta be.

You gotta be this, you have to expect the worst all the time. And it shouldn't, if it catches you by surprise, you weren't thinking honestly about what you're doing. A little business is very fragile. There's a lot of statistics that show that a business isn't really, really a stable asset till about three million. So those of us who are under about three million, in the financial world, it's not stable. So it's harder to sell.

And I think in the sense of like it, withstanding trauma, it's also not, it's honestly not the most stable thing. So you just have to be honest that you could, a hard blow could take out your business. A huge insurance claim, your guys broke a chandelier. Sorry, you can probably hear my 13 year old yelling at his brothers.

Lauren (38:26.376)
It could, you know, a hard blow could take out your business. And I think what I would say, what I tell myself is even, it isn't, even the best people shut down businesses, even the best businessman, things don't always work. So like, it's not even always you. You have to just like be resilient with what's going on and know that all you can do is your very best every day.

Branden Sewell (38:29.487)
No.

Branden Sewell (38:36.239)
Mm -hmm.

Lauren (38:55.88)
I mean, sometimes a hurricane blows down your house. You know, I mean, it's the same idea. You can't control all the factors. All you can do is react to them and make the best of them. So, you know, you can't, you gotta try not to take that stuff too personally. Sorry, I'm going on and on. What is, tell me.

Branden Sewell (39:17.84)
Yeah, no, no, it's all really good. And, you know, I think it I think something that comes to my mind with what you're just saying there is like, I read it in a book. I can't remember what it was called. I probably have it somewhere on a shelf.

see it. But, I think it's the happiness advantage, I think. But anyway, in the book, it says that life is 10 % what happens to you and 90 % how you respond to it. And so it's like, you know, like you're saying, you know, you could have employees leave and I lost

12, 13 employees all within like a span of like probably a month or two in 2022. One of the hardest things I've ever experienced as a business owner. But like, you know, that can happen. You can lose money. You can have all of these things happen, but it's like, okay, well, how am I going to respond to this? And I think maturing in business is...

You know, just for me, it's been realizing that I have to respond differently to the negative things that happen. My instinct can't be this is the end or this is where it all falls apart and I fail. And I think that we can have

You know, I can think back in my business and I've grown in this ass and that this aspect that you know early on things would happen and I would just lose sleep like I would you know, I'd be like up at night like pacing out in the living room at three in the morning just like what am I gonna do about this situation? This is the end and creating scenarios in my mind of all of these terrible things that could happen and then None of that happens

Branden Sewell (41:30.418)
You know, it's like, why was I jumping to conclusions? Why was I creating these scenarios? And just over time, I've learned to like, just take a deep breath and be like, you know what? Like, this is not the end of the world. Like, what can I do today? I can't control what happened. I can't control tomorrow, but what can I do today? What decisions can I make today? Just make the right decision today.

And I've shared this in so many other episodes and other conversations, just like making that decision. I'm just going to keep moving forward. I'm just going to pick myself up and make the best decision that I can make today and just take it step by step. And, you know, so I think just as I've grown in business, I've learned to not become so like doom and gloom about stuff that happens, if that makes sense.

And I think that can be really helpful for guys, gals who are looking to get off the ladder is give yourself the freedom to fail and give yourself the permission to make decisions that might go wrong and might end up being the wrong decision. Give yourself that permission because

Nobody reaches success or goes to the next level without making mistakes or failing. Nobody's perfect. So I think it's just you make those mistakes, you learn from them and you get better. But you have to give yourself permission to fail. You have to give yourself permission to make mistakes. You have to give yourself permission to say, okay, I blew it on that call. I did that completely wrong. But now what do I do?

you know, how do I move forward? And if you can't do that, if you can't give yourself the permission to fall down flat on your face, well then you're probably going to stay right where you're at, right on the edge of the next best thing because you've been afraid to like take that leap. And, you know, unfortunately I've talked to there, I've only had that I can think of like top of my mind out of guys that I've

Branden Sewell (43:48.785)
talk to who have wanted to get off the ladder. There's like one guy who I know who just, he was like super adamant about it and he made it happen. And I've only had my podcast since November of last year. And, you know, so there's only been like a few people who have reached out to me who, you know, want to get off the ladder and they're like asking me for my advice. But, you know, this guy, he was like, you said something.

to me, he's like, you told me I could be off the ladder tomorrow. And he's like, that hit me. And that it was just a choice that I had to make. But I think for a lot of people, like I said, they let those fears hold them back.

Lauren (44:18.856)
I would say one fear that I notice, and remember, this is not from experience. I wasn't a person who painted on my own and then got hired enough people to not do it. But I have observed, and I think it's really true, and it's still an easy problem to have when you own the company, is that releasing control is an enormous fear.

And I think a lot of guys who are the best painter at their company, it's very hard to hand over the reins to people who really aren't as good. And your name is on it, and it feels very risky.

Branden Sewell (47:21.65)
Mm -hmm.

Branden Sewell (48:13.746)
right.

Branden Sewell (50:18.515)
Yeah, for sure. And I think, I think to like as a leader, and I think really the best business owners in the world, I think they, they love people, right? And they, they know that people have great potential and they want to see those people fulfill their potential, see them use their skills and their talents and

you know, see them push themselves to grow and do great things. And like for me, that's what drives me. And, you know, I think you have to remove your ego from the equation. You have to realize, like you said, like, hey, I'm not the best at everything, right? I'm not the best admin person. I'm not going to be the best salesperson. I'm not the best painter. I'm not going to be the best person at managing everybody else. But

You know, what I want to be the absolute best at in my business is finding what other people are great at and what they love and then giving them space to thrive in that and encouraging them in it. And I think when you take that approach, well, the own like your business can only benefit from that because now you're putting these people in a place where they can they can really grow and thrive. And that's not going to if you do it the right way.

and you're doing it with like this heart to serve them and to see them thrive, well, your business is only going to get better because of that. And I think one of the hardest things that I've faced as a business owner is like trying to get my people to like feel that and see that. Like if only you knew like the conversations I have with my wife at night about how amazing I think you are.

like the potential that I think you have and the dreams that I have for your life. It's like, I want to see this person thrive and have a great marriage and great family and love work and thrive financially and be great at what they do. And then it's like, sometimes I feel like that can be a disconnect for my people to really know and understand how much I care about them. And then for them to do stuff that's like,

Branden Sewell (52:43.251)
What are you like? You know, I feel like they like maybe question like do I even care, you know, but It's funny because I feel like they it's difficult as a business owner because your employees have such a limited perspective to like the grand picture of a business, you know, like they might be thinking to themselves like man Why wasn't Brandon here today or like why hasn't Brandon come out, you know to the job site today to like

or why isn't he here every day? It's like, well, the business is, it's a little bit bigger than me just showing up to a job every day to like, you know, so it's hard to like, if that's how people receive that feeling of like, that's how he shows that he cares. It's like, I can't necessarily do that all the time. So like, how do I show them that I care without having to like be there and like,

you know, does that make sense? And, you know, I think that it's tough because as you grow that gets more challenging, right? You can't be all places at all times. You can't, you know, be all things to all people. But how can you conduct yourself in your business in such a way that everybody on the team understands and knows like, hey, Brandon cares and he cares about us and our success and, you know, our families.

our finances, our dreams, our goals, and that can be challenging. So I can't say that I have that 100 % figured out, but something that I'm working on it. And I think in the past, what I tried to do, and maybe you have a different experience with this that you could speak to, in my past, I did hire a project manager. And my goal was for them to be like that extension of myself that really

went out and showed that care so that they at least had somebody who was showing up to job sites. But when you have four or five jobs and it running every day, it's like, I can't go to every single job.

Branden Sewell (55:23.091)
Mm -hmm.

Branden Sewell (55:45.299)
Yeah, yeah.

Branden Sewell (55:53.683)
Yeah

Branden Sewell (56:41.619)
Mm -hmm.

Branden Sewell (58:06.868)
Yeah.

Branden Sewell (58:12.628)
You

Branden Sewell (58:17.652)
Yeah.

Branden Sewell (59:17.844)
Yeah, yeah, that's good. You know, it's funny, my wife and I, we talk about all the time because she's a, you know, I think we mentioned offline before the show, my wife is a regional for Orange Theory Fitness and she has a regional role and she has a lot of employees under her and obviously she has to, you know, hire and fire and all of those things and write people up and, you know, she is

She's great at that. Like, phenomenal. Like, she has no problem, like, sitting somebody down and saying, like, hey, here's the standard, you're not living up to it, and this is why you're getting written up, and by the way, this is your second one, and third time, and you're gone. And it's like, it's, she has this unique way of, like, being able to pull the emotion out of it, and, you know, be able to say, like, hey, like,

You know, I care about you as a person, but there's a standard and whereas me, I'm like the complete opposite of her. So like I tell her all the time like, man, I need to like hire you to come like just to see and I do that part of the business because I have such a deep care for the people. It's like I overlook things that I probably shouldn't at times and like make, you know, I don't want to say excuses, but it's just I, I,

The way that I look at it in my own mind is like I leave people room to like be human and make mistakes and then I just try to, you know, coach them through and, you know, kind of like, you know, we were talking about earlier is just having like a longer term mindset with some things. And I mean, there's some things that are like non -negotiables, right? Like, hey, if you do this, like you're gone and that and I can in some situations take the emotion out of those things. But it's like,

Things that I feel like are, they're important to me, but maybe they're not like, you know, deal breakers. Whereas like with my wife, it's like, it doesn't matter. Like with them, there's no, there's no gray area, right? In the corporate world, it's like, here's the standard bottom line. You live up to it or you don't. It doesn't matter if it seems like it's like a really minuscule thing or not. It's like, that's the standard and you didn't live up to it. So you're gone.

Branden Sewell (01:01:43.444)
Whereas me, I kind of feel like I'm like, well, that wasn't that big of a deal. Like I can see past that. Does that make sense? Like that's super challenging for me as a business owner. And I feel like sometimes that works against me in certain situations because like, man, I should just like be like, hey, see you later and take the emotion out of it. But definitely a struggle for me. But

Anyway, we're kind of coming to the end of our time here. So I want to find a good closing point here. And one of the things that you had also mentioned, and I just want to try to wrap this into the finish here, is we talked so much about mindset as a business owner and

you know, overcoming challenges and things like that. I have two questions that I want to ask to kind of try to bring this to a close. And I think that it'll kind of play into the finishing question is, one, you had mentioned that you were a college athlete. So I wanted to ask, like as an athlete,

Do you think that there were things that you learned as an athlete that contributed to your success? And how does that shape how you work as like a leader? You mentioned right after mindset that teamwork and people were important to you so if you could just talk about like that as your background and how that You know helped you to be a leader that you are You know talk about teamwork and people for a minute and what that means to you

Branden Sewell (01:05:55.06)
Mm -hmm.

Branden Sewell (01:06:01.876)
share.

Branden Sewell (01:06:44.116)
you

Branden Sewell (01:06:50.516)
Yeah, that's him.

Branden Sewell (01:08:30.806)
Mm -hmm.

Branden Sewell (01:09:14.294)
Yeah, that's good. I really like what you said about building morale even when things like don't seem great or don't seem good because as you're building that morale, like things can change and sorry, my dogs are like barking, but I thought of it. I'm going to make it sound like I'm like a Tom Brady fan, which I'm actually like, I'm not even like a football fan. I'm a

But I just know I'm a fan of excellence. I'm a fan of success and leadership and so I know that Tom Brady obviously has those characteristics to be like, you know one of the most winning Quarterbacks, you know ever or the most winning Quarterback ever and I

I know that one of the stats about Tom Brady is he has like a crazy comeback record for like, you know, being down in the fourth quarter, like, you know, backs against the fence and like, you know, it's certain they're going to lose and then coming back like in the fourth quarter. And, you know, it's just the amount of leadership

that I think it takes to be able to look like the, you know, you have the odds against you, it looks like failure is certain, and maybe everything doesn't look great, but being able to like in that moment see beyond, like you said, see beyond the numbers and be able to say like, okay, well, like if we have the right attitude and we put in the effort and the work, like we can still win.

You know, and I think it's like not letting those things get inside your brain, affect your morale, get you down. And then it's like, well, now you're just, you're creating that, that scenario. And it's like, you're going to play like, you're going to play that out. But if you can like, you know, pick yourself up, be optimistic and have a great attitude, like you can push through and win. So,

Branden Sewell (01:11:33.014)
Yeah, I think that's really awesome. I can tell you're obviously very passionate about your people and what you're building and it's encouraging to just hear about your quick success. And as you said, it's early on, right? But when you have the right attitude, you can just keep trucking along and next thing you know, you'll be a

a multi -million dollar company, right? Just... Yeah. Well, thank you so much for getting on here and just sharing about your experience as a business owner. And it's really cool to see how much success you've had in such a short amount of time. I think there's people who are at this for years and years and don't see that level of success. So the fact that you're...

you're doing that and making things happen is really cool and encouraging. So thank you again for being on. And if anybody wanted to reach out to you, learn more about you, your business, how might somebody reach out to you to connect?

Branden Sewell (01:14:08.214)
That's awesome. Well, I'm glad to hear that and I'm glad that we could make it happen on such short notice and I'm looking forward to the value that it'll bring to the listeners and so Thank you guys so much for tuning into this episode of the off the ladder podcast If you're watching this on YouTube, please subscribe to the channel like comment subscribe

If you are listening to this on Apple or Spotify, I would greatly appreciate it if you could write and review the show. And as always, I will see you next time on the next episode of the Off the Ladder Podcast.