From Burnout to Balance as a Business Owner

Kyle Hunt: Thanks for tuning into the Remodelers on the Rise show. Whether you're listening or watching, I appreciate you being here. If this was helpful, make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss the next one. We're putting out new episodes every single week focused on helping you build a better remodeling business with real stories, practical ideas, and things you can actually take and use. If you're on YouTube, hit that like button and turn on notifications so you know when new episodes drop. Hey remodelers, before we dive into today's episode, I wanted to give a quick shout out to our friends at builder funnel. I've personally known Spencer and his team for over a decade and they are the marketing agency for remodelers who are serious about growth. They've developed something called the remodeler and builder growth framework, which covers all five key pillars. need to scale attract, convert, nurture, close and measure. Welcome to the Remodeler's Own the Rise show. I have my new friend, Chris Sherian. See, I practiced it. Did I nail it the second time too? Yes, yes, very good, very good. ⁓ That was, mean, that's usually the hardest part. You just got to, you got to get the train on the tracks. You got to get it going in the right direction and then we're off and rolling.

Chris Shurian: Yeah, you did a good job. Nice work. Yeah. Good job.

Kyle Hunt: In other words, it's not just marketing. It's a complete system to help you grow your revenue and your team. And the results speak for themselves. Builder funnel has helped clients generate millions in tracked revenue, including 4 million for a San Antonio remodeler scaling to Delaware remodeler to nearly 10 million and generating over 2 million for a Kansas city remodeler. If you're tired of inconsistent referrals and want a proven system to drive predictable. If you're listening on a podcast app, a five-star review goes a long way and helps more remodelers find the show. We've got great links below or in the show notes where you can connect with us, check out our remodelers community and learn more about our coaching and resources. Appreciate you very much. See you on the next episode.

Chris Shurian: And we can't all have a name like Kyle Hunt, you know what mean? I mean, that's a doozy.

Kyle Hunt: Yes, very simple, very clean. ⁓ My wife a few years ago said, ⁓ you know your name? I said, yeah, I know my name. It's kind of whiny, Kyle, Kyle. And my wife's least favorite trait is whininess. ⁓ nothing's nothing, nothing annoys her more than whininess. And so it is what it is. My middle name is Ryance, R-Y-E-N-C-E, which is kind of a... ⁓

Chris Shurian: ⁓

Kyle Hunt: high quality leads and the, and to actually turn them into booked projects, head over to builder funnel.com forward slash R O T R to learn more. That's builder funnel.com forward slash R O T.

Chris Shurian: Right.

Kyle Hunt: It's named after a King Ryan from back in somewhere in Europe back in the day. So that feels feels stronger.

Chris Shurian: All right. Yeah. That's, that's way less whiny. That's like manly is what that is. I like it. Yeah.

Kyle Hunt: Yes, maybe, maybe I'm going to flip things and maybe I should just be Ryan's hunt. I should just embrace it. That is my grandfather's name. Ryan's hunt. ⁓ we'll see. We'll try it. ⁓ but I'm talking to Chris today, bootstraps and battle scars is kind of his, his current, his current, ⁓ small business coaching brand and everything that you're doing. ⁓ but I was looking up Chris on LinkedIn and I'm going, ⁓ this man has done a few things. Just a quick break here to spotlight our friends at Builder Funnel, the agency that's proven over and over they know how to generate serious revenue for remodelers. And when I say revenue, I mean real numbers you can measure. 6.3 million for a remodeler in Atlanta, 1.2 million for a remodeler in Salt Lake City, even 746,000 for a deck builder in Jacksonville. And that's just a handful. Remodeler builder for a good number of years. That's what, that's what connected us at first. He had reached out just saying, Hey, I'm, doing some different podcasts. And I was part of less Cunningham, which was an early kind of peer group model in our industry. And ⁓ so as the remodeling side, and then also just has the entrepreneurial side. I was looking at your description, small business operations coach, eight times founder, four times exit mentor, advisor, podcast host master of ceremonies. my. The truth is most marketing agencies talk about impressions and clicks. Builder Funnel talks about projects sold and revenue added. They've built a system that takes the guesswork out of marketing so you know your investment is working. If you're serious about growth and want your marketing to finally perform at the level your craftsmanship does, Builder Funnel is the partner you want. So if you're ready for a marketing system that actually helps grow your business, public speaker, moderator, and customer service junkie.

Chris Shurian: Yeah, that's a good one. like that. I like that. It does. Yeah, it's just I was gonna say thanks for the intro, but you know, that's what I have on my LinkedIn because it is, you know? Yeah.

Kyle Hunt: Head over to builderfunnel.com slash ROTR to learn more builderfunnel.com slash ROTR. I mean, that's what that's it was your it's your LinkedIn. Did you write it? Yes. Yes. So today we're going to talk about customer service. We're going to talk about mindset. We're going to talk about the entrepreneurial side. Sometimes I use the podcast just to get to know new people. It's kind of kill two birds with one stone. And I've got somebody as a guest today that I kind of picked up on pretty quick. He's been, he's been through a lot of business experience, a lot of entrepreneurial experience. And I think there's some wisdom that we're going to glean from you today. So that's our goal. is to give the people listening to this some wisdom. I will also add, I, on my titles of all the different titles, I have Auctioneer, Live Auctioneer as one of my titles. You need to add that one, sir.

Chris Shurian: No kidding. That is so awesome. I'm gonna have to practice that. Cause I sit there and watch auctioneers and I just think it's the coolest thing ever. I wish I could do that. I'm gonna have to practice that.

Kyle Hunt: Okay, now I must confess, because I just don't want it to be built up or for me to get an offer to another gig. There's a nonprofit that I'm a board of director on and we have this live auction thing. So I'm the live auctioneer, but I actually don't sound like a live auctioneer. But I do need to practice it because this is year three or four that I'm to be doing it. And I feel like I need to come and really get the rhythm of them. ⁓

Chris Shurian: Yeah, yeah.

Kyle Hunt: Please add that to your list of things to do. That would be amazing to have that mixed in with those other ones. Chris, us a little backstory. Give us a little bit of who you are, what you're about, and then we'll get into these different topics.

Chris Shurian: Yeah, yeah, know, Kyle, you know, some people say they're a serial entrepreneur. I started using the term, entrepreneur is probably more accurate for my career. you know, I started in construction remodeling specifically had a great run, had great success, really, really enjoyed that industry. You know, and then I ran into some challenges. ran to 08, 09, you know, and, and I think a lot of people remember those days and, and I was a little lever, I was a little extended. overextended as an entrepreneur, you know, I'm very optimistic, very persistent, you know, and when people say, Hey, the economy is getting kind of weird, man, I double down. just keep going because you know, when you have a positive mindset and you're just out there to win, ⁓ you kind of sometimes have blinders on and you miss some of those signs, but so yeah, that kind of beat me up a little bit. And then, ⁓ you know, after that, I had an opportunity to roll into some other ideas, you know, ideas and opportunities and And I've had some success. I've had my teeth kicked in a few times. I've been up, I've been down. And, ⁓ you know, my, my new platform, bootstraps and battle scars is exactly that, you know, any serial entrepreneur totally understands what that means. ⁓ you know, we've bootstrapped, we've started with nothing and built up, and then we have some battle scars to show for it. And which, you know, once again, being Mr. Optimistic here, you know, for me, bootstraps are learning opportunities, lessons I've learned along the way. And so, ⁓ You know, I had a little exit last year from the restaurant business. I'm very proud of the idea that I actually exited from the restaurant business. It's a very difficult business. Anybody who is having success in the restaurant business, I admire their special, their special humans because it is tough. And, ⁓ you know, I decided at this point to, to spend more time helping others be successful. So I do a lot of one-on-one coaching. have my own little, ⁓ mastermind that I put together for owners and entrepreneurs. And, ⁓ and I enjoy public speaking. think I'm gonna look into this auctioneer situation and see what that looks like. You my dad might.

Kyle Hunt: And I just gave you your next 10 years right there. You're just going to look back on this moment and think, that's where that idea came from.

Chris Shurian: I am, I'm gonna give you credit for that. Kyle Ryan's hunt was my inspiration to become an auctioneer. Yeah, so that's who I am and you know, I enjoy serving others, you know, so it says on my LinkedIn profile, I'm a customer service fanatic. mean, every business I was ever involved in, probably except for one, was very heavily involved in providing that customer experience and providing more, you know, under promise, over deliver type thing. And so now,

Kyle Hunt: Thank you.

Chris Shurian: I have the opportunity to serve my clients. I have clients that are in all different industries. I have a few in the construction remodeling world that I just, like I said, I love that industry and even other industries. So it's great for me to sit down and meet with them and help them work through some of their challenges. And I'm not gonna lie, there are days when I suffer from imposter syndrome and I look in the mirror and think, who am I? ⁓ But man, I've had a lot of experience and most, if not all of my coaching ⁓ comes is based on my personal experience. I have an experience somewhere in my brain that applies to whatever problems some of their business owners dealing with. And I enjoy helping them out a lot.

Kyle Hunt: Yeah, I can just hear it. if you have the heart that starts with, want to serve this person. And then you sit in front of a screen like this, or you sit in front of a business owner and you say, what kind of challenges are you having? What kind of problems are you having? ⁓ Welcome to coaching. Now it takes skill to coach well, takes skill to make sure that we're encouraging them correctly and giving them the right advice and creating action steps and making sure things are being followed through on and setting priorities and understanding them and how they tick. There's a lot that goes into it, but you know, from a, I'm here to serve and I'm here to help them solve problems is a good, is a good place to start. Frankly, even from a, from a leadership standpoint, you sit in front of your, your team members and say, you know, what, challenges are you having? How can I make your life easier? It's an amazing place to coach quote unquote, ⁓ from there. ⁓ I w do want to. touch on the 08, the 09, not to relive that too much, but you mentioned, you know, I miss some of the signs, I miss some of the signs. As you reflect back on that period of time, and as we're in, ⁓ I don't know how you would describe the period of time we are here now, but there's some ups and downs, there's a little angst out there, there's a little, hmm, what's the next year going to look like? What are some of those signs that you look back on that you kind of learned from that jump audio?

Chris Shurian: You know, Kyle, I, was a, there was a lot of things I did right. Um, I was very, uh, there's a of things I did right. That helped me survive, uh, that downfall. Um, you know, for example, um, you know, when you're doing well and you're having financial success at the time, I had four different companies going and operating and, and we were doing well and we were making money. Um, and, know, at that point you're allowed to have luxuries, luxury items. You know, I had a boat, I had a houseboat. You know, I had a cabin, we had cars, had motorcycles. And so one thing I did right that I would, that I, that I teach people is that I paid cash for all that. ⁓ and, so the fact that I've paid cash means that maybe I didn't have the nicest newest model of boat, but my boat was great. And it was a few years older, but I paid cash. So when, when the economy started to tank and the jobs shriveled up and banks were going out of business and I'm trying to figure out how to pay for a, you know, $1.3 million piece of land that I just bought for a subdivision. I could sell the boat. And even though I maybe sold the boat for less than it was worth, I didn't have a loan to pay off. It was like a savings account. So I have to say there were a few things like that I did right. But then I probably got a little big for my britches. When you're having success, sometimes you get a little, the ego steps in and says, wow, look at me, I'm doing great. I'm always gonna make money. So I'm not gonna plan for the future right now. I'm gonna roll the dice and just, I'm all in. So if I'm making money, I'm putting it back into another project. If I make money, I'm building a spec home and putting it in the parade. You know, I'm making money, I'm gonna go buy some land. You know, I'm gonna put a bunch of money down, the bank's gonna come in, we're gonna do this little subdivision. And so I was probably a a little cocky of sorts. And that's where I got in trouble. You know, that's where I got in trouble. So for me, if I was to go back, now, now Kyle, you'll learn.

Kyle Hunt: Mm.

Chris Shurian: about me because we're going to become fast friends and we're going to spend time together. ⁓ being a very optimistic human, ⁓ little ⁓ aggressive, ⁓ I just lost my train of thought. Totally lost my train of thought. I got sidetracked.

Kyle Hunt: Well, you started dreaming about, I wonder if Kyle does like me. Maybe I'm trying to speak this into existence that we're going to be fast friends. And then you started, you had this picture in your head of, of, know, us riding tandem motorcyle. I don't know what you started going down. ⁓

Chris Shurian: See, I was kidding. It was like I was dreaming about us riding our bikes down the road, just having a good time laughing and you know, the whole thing. But, but yeah, so, uh, you know, I was a little bit, uh, you know, big for my britches and, and extended myself a little too much. So what I was going to say is I don't live in regret. I certainly don't live in regret, but if I was to go back and do things differently, I probably would have slowed my role a little bit. I've been a little more conservative. I would have spent a little more time on my rainy day fund. Uh, and I would have taken like, you know,

Kyle Hunt: Yeah. Yeah. Hmm

Chris Shurian: If you make a million dollars and you put a million dollars back into a project, maybe I would make a million dollars and put, you know, 500,000 in a project and go, you know, stash the 500, you know, under the mattress or something. So, uh, that's probably the one lesson I would have learned and would have done a little differently. Um, because, know, like I said, you get a little big for your britches. You think, and you know, back then, Kyle, I mean, you're a young whippersnapper, so I'm not sure where you were at in 08, 09. Uh, but you know, you could buy a piece of dirt, especially here in Utah.

Kyle Hunt: Yeah.

Chris Shurian: I could buy a piece of land today, I could flip it tomorrow, I could double my money and do a simultaneous close. I was talking to old friend of mine the other day about the days when you can walk into the title company, you walk into one room, you close on the purchase, you walk in the other room, you close on the sale and you make money. mean, that was pretty crazy back then. ⁓

Kyle Hunt: Hmm. So I'm a little, I'm a little whippersnappery, you know, but ⁓ wait, I had this great idea said, Hey, honey, I'm going to quit my job. And we got no money in the bank to fall back on. And I want to start my own business. That was ⁓ wait for me. And what was interesting is my first handful of clients were business owners who had built up their rainy day, who had saved money who go, wow, the phone just got real quiet. And I need to work on our marketing and sales and that side of things.

Chris Shurian: There you go.

Kyle Hunt: And as I look back on it, I'm like, those were my first batch of clients are people who thought through that. So I think in the here and now, what you heard there was, hey, debt, don't get all caught up in your little reel that says, you wanna make money, you better go up to debt to your eyeballs and da da da and leverage, leverage, leverage. Is there some wisdom in some of that? Perhaps. But like paying cash for your luxury goods, paying cash for vehicles, trying to be debt free. is a great goal. And then even what you're saying there, business is about risk. It's about like how much risk do you want to take? And I think there's some wisdom that maybe some people listening to this needed to hear of going, careful, you don't need to be super aggressive. Maybe you need to make that happen over a little slower time period so that you take a chunk and put it into something a little safer, get a really strong nest egg going. And yes, you're still an entrepreneur. You're still going to invest in things. But think there's some good wisdom in there for all of us. Cash is still king. What are you talking about, Kyle? Inflate, okay. I get it, I get it. But right, cash is still king and being ⁓ safe and conservative and solid with your financial plan is important. Be careful with the risks and overextending yourself. I mean, also, hmm, yeah. I think as my business has grown, I think my ego, I've been needing to check my ego a lot more. I think there is a little bit when success comes where we've got to be careful not to get cocky, where we've got not to get too confident. At the same time, confidence is also a skill. It's a gift. It's a good thing. But that's also a reminder for us is to let's have a little mirror time. Let's reflect on that and make sure that whatever that looks like that we're keeping that in check. Let's actually kind of segue that into mindset. ⁓ You think about mindset. You mentioned kind of positive mindset. You've talked about, you know what? That's not a loss, that's a learning opportunity. think before we click the record button, you were talking about some glass half full side of things. How do you view mindset? You're talking to remodeling business owners on this. What comes to your mind for the mindset side of things?

Chris Shurian: You know, ⁓ I love that topic. And when I first ventured into, ⁓ the adult world and I was providing for a family, I was doing sales and, ⁓ and I would, and I would listen to cassette tapes, cassette tapes. Okay. ⁓ back in the day and I could, any cassette tape I can get my hand on, ⁓ you know, Tony Robbins back when he first started Zig Ziglar, you know, all those guys, I just, I really programmed my brain to think positively and, ⁓ And that served me so well over the years. had a mentor once, a boss, a manager of mine who was just the most positive guy you could ever meet. And it was real. Like you could never catch him saying anything negative, even when it was just for fun. He just didn't, it wasn't programmed that way. So that positive mindset, in my opinion, is key to being successful. You know, we all have our moments, we all have our challenges. Well, you know, in 08, 09, when things were pretty hairy, I mean, my brain was kind of like, okay, well, this is temporary, right? I'm going to get through this. I'm going to survive this. I'm going to provide, you know, I'm going to sell the boat, sell the Corvettes, do this. I got the cash. My family never went without. And it was hard. But, you know, just having the thought that, hey, this is temporary. I'm going to get through it. I'm going to push through it I'm going to make it happen serves me well. And it's served a lot of people I've seen well.

Kyle Hunt: Hmm.

Chris Shurian: And especially when you're building a business, you know, not everything goes perfect. You know, you have your moments, you know, I mean, I have a client right now that just had the perfect storm of two really bad clients, you know, like two multimillion dollar remodels and both his clients were just nightmares. And I'm sure everyone listening to this knows about those clients and, um, and it hit him hard and there's days when we get on the phone and, and I'm just, you know, building them up and helping them feel good about himself and telling them that, David, just cause you have two right now that are really bad. You know, think about the good stuff that's happened up to this point. You're a great contractor. You do a great job and it's just a moment. And let's just take this and learn from it. Let's improve our processes, improve our systems, you know, maybe help, you know, sniff these bad clients out before we sign them and, and move on. And then you're going to have another good client and it's already happening. Like even when the, in the last four or five weeks that we've been talking about these couple of clients, he's already got new great clients just stepping up and stepping in. And so, yeah, I think the mindset is key.

Kyle Hunt: Did you have a pretty positive mindset already or when you got into sales, when you got into business, when you started to listen to the Ziggs and the Brian Tracy's and all those guys, is that, did that kind of flip for you from what it was before to help it grow or?

Chris Shurian: to navigating this entrepreneurial journey. ⁓ you know, that's a good question. ⁓ you know, as a, as a teenager, I don't know what I was like as a teenager. think I was, my dad was, would always tell me, you know, you can be whatever you want to be. You can do whatever you want to do. And, know, as a kid, you're like, yeah, okay, that cool. But, ⁓ so I don't know. I probably was, I was probably pretty optimistic kid. I was pretty happy. I think, ⁓ yeah.

Kyle Hunt: Would you say that somebody that is fairly pessimistic or glass half empty can train themselves to flip that more into a positive mindset?

Chris Shurian: ⁓ yeah, absolutely. And sometimes it takes work. Sometimes you have to remind yourself that that's what you're going to do. And sometimes it takes another person to point it out. Like, I mean, we all know people that are super pessimistic and, know, the sky is falling that sometimes don't know they're doing that. And so, you know, if you're surround yourself with good people and surround yourself with people that, are, are that way and positive, it gets contagious. If you ask me. ⁓ and, and like I said, thousands and thousands of hours of cassette tapes.

Kyle Hunt: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Chris Shurian: and listening and reading books. Yeah, I totally program my brain to be this way. Absolutely.

Kyle Hunt: Yeah, I think I think that's good for us to hear. ⁓ Especially as you grow, Frank, frankly, as you know, Matt, even if you're a solopreneur, but as you grow your business, you quickly realize that more of your time and effort is going to be put towards leadership. When you're starting this remotely business, you're just trying to help the client and serve the client and figuring out trade partners and team members and ⁓ crap, I got to figure out the financial side and I got to figure out the marketing and the sales side. And then as you get things established, you realize that, ⁓ this is a leadership game. This is so much of this is about the team around me and making it a great place to work and a great culture. And so much of it becomes leadership. And you can be somebody that maybe has a little bit of that natural pessimistic approach. And frankly, that could be a good character trait. But if you want to grow as a leader and be somebody that can motivate and encourage and that... people want to work for and hitch their wagon to long-term, training your mind to be positive, training your mind to look at a setback as a learning opportunity, it might feel a little bit like you're faking it, but over time it starts to become more of who you truly are and who you're becoming. ⁓ It's just an interesting concept and I appreciate that you said, like, you can absolutely go from negative. I... I wholeheartedly believe that what you focus on grows. And if you are focusing on everything around you that's negative, the negativity will absolutely grow. And if you focus on the positives around you, and I'm not saying ignoring the negatives, but spend more time focusing on the positives, the positives will grow.

Chris Shurian: You know, was years ago, I think it was Wayne Dyer. I read a book or watched a video or something. ⁓ And he even talks about how, you know, this paradox where you can even look at the negative stuff that happens and you can turn it into positive, you know, like, you know, I live in Utah and we can have some pretty good winters, right? I'm sure in Michigan, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Well, I have zero problem with snow, with rain, with the storms, because you know what? I know that that snowstorm, that rainstorm, is gonna make for a beautiful spring, it's gonna make for a beautiful summer. And that was something I learned from Wayne Dyer, that you can even look at the negative stuff. Look at the stuff that some people are complaining about and you can spin it. There's always something good that comes out of everything that happens in your life. And that's part of that conditioning.

Kyle Hunt: Hmm. Yeah, even you didn't even realize you did this Chris, but you know, we have, have some pretty good winners that even sounded positive, but what you meant was we have some horrible crappy overwhelming this sucks winters, but you even already spun it there. And, and what you're describing there of, of spinning it spinning might be a good word, although it immediately brings to mind politicians, which does not make us feel very positive. But another way of saying that is you're looking at the story from this angle. consider looking at the story from this angle. It's still the same story. It's still, you're not making anything up, but by looking at the story from a different angle, it totally changes the way that you're seeing it and thinking about it. Mindset, mindset, be a student of mindset, be a student of being more positive. Look up, there's still cassette tapes out there, but guess what? They're also on YouTube. Look up old school Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy. Look up Tony Robbins and fill more of your mind. You might even just listen to more Kyle Hunt and Chris Shurian, who knows? Couple positive guys there. But if this isn't Achilles heel for you, you've got to work on it and you can absolutely work on it.

Chris Shurian: And there could be some good stuff there, there could be.

Kyle Hunt: Let's kind of shift from that. That was some good stuff right there. ⁓ shift over kind of just the customer service. Kind of a cold word, cold phrase, customer service. ⁓ But I believe we are talking the way ⁓ that we take our clients. through the process, through the experience, what is their story? And how do we really make sure that we are not crummy when it comes to customer service? What comes to your mind as some of your top things in that topic?

Chris Shurian: Well, when I decided to get into the remodeling world, ⁓ I had spent several years in sales and was taught a very professional way of treating customers. When you're professional salesman, you're taught how to treat the customer and listen to the customer and serve their needs. And so when I came into the remodeling world, I thought to myself, if I could bring a level of professionalism into the construction world that... The reputation sometimes isn't that great. I think it's a lot better now, but back when I was doing it, know, contractors relate. They never showed up on time. They never followed a budget. They never got done. They said they're going to get done. And so my whole philosophy was, Hey, if I can bring a level of professionalism into this industry, I might have something. And so I did that. And I'll tell you what customers were just, you know, like flabbergasted. That's a big word. know, but don't ask me to spell it, but you know,

Kyle Hunt: Mm-hmm.

Chris Shurian: You know, if I knew I was going to be five minutes late to an appointment, I would call him ahead of time and say, Hey, I'm running five minutes behind. And sometimes you have this little moment of silence on the other line. Like you're really calling me to tell me you're going to be late. Like they expect me to be late. And so for me, that was important. And let's go back to the whole reading and studying, you know, Walt Disney. I'm a huge fan of Walt Disney and Disney world and Disneyland and what he's done there. And I've read many books about the whole. Disney experience when you walk in the park. And you know, that was Walt Disney. You he had this vision for how he wanted people to perceive his amusement park compared to everyone else's. And man, he worked it. He would sit there and watch people coming in out of the park. He would study them. And he knew what their natural traits were. know, he studied people and realized that a person will walk like 26 steps with a piece of trash in their hand before they start getting fidgety. So guess what? You go to Disneyland and guess what's everywhere in Disneyland are trash cans, right? And he also figured that people don't want to look at trash. So he invented the lids for trash cans so you can put your trash in there. And so I love studying about the customer experience. And I would apply that to every business I was in, especially the remodeling and construction world. And I'll tell you what, there's people that love that, people that responded to that. And they knew that we did things differently. Even my subcontractors still today. I have a couple subs that were on my podcast just recently who have gone on to have great success. I've had great exits actually in the service professional world. And a lot of it goes back to how they treated the customer and what they learned from me on how to treat a customer's home. Clean up after yourself every day. Whether you're coming back or not, you're cleaning up after yourself. You're wiping your feet. You're treating their home with respect.

Kyle Hunt: Hmm.

Chris Shurian: And yeah, I think ⁓ there's an important play there.

Kyle Hunt: What do you think the key to getting that stuff integrated into your team is?

Chris Shurian: ⁓ yeah, it's just a talking about it, training about it, talking about it, talking about it, talking about it. And then when you think they get it, you keep talking about it. ⁓ Another thing that was important for me is I would show up on every job site. I mean, I got to a point where we were pretty big and I, you know, I had 50 employees and we had people going in every other direction. I sometimes I didn't even know what jobs we had going on, but, you know, I'd make it a habit to go show up on job sites and do a little walkthrough. I, and I call it, you know, inspect what you expect. And like I said, once you think you got it and you think they've heard it, you keep talking about it and you just have to pound it into their brain that this is how we do things and talk about all the time.

Kyle Hunt: I mean, that's and I kind of if I would have said, all right, 100 bucks on what was Chris going to say, then that that's pretty much what I would what I would think that you were going to say about that, which is reassuring to anybody listening to this, you want to be you want to give a better client experience, you know what to do. Start having start holding the state, get clear with your standards, and then just start holding it to it. Yes, a lot of us have heard that phrase inspect what you expect. But I just heard it again, they kind of hit me a little different way of going well, duh. but let's get clear with the expect and let's not tire from reminding them and let's not go, all let me take the foot off the gas. Business is super fickle. There's another big word for you, fickle. Flabbergasted fickle, ⁓ fidgety, you talked about fidgety there a second ago too. ⁓ It's fickle. You start taking your foot off the gas a little bit. It is amazing how quickly the movement that you've made forward in your business can go back to where it was two years before.

Chris Shurian: I like it. Slabbergast is sickle.

Kyle Hunt: It's amazing how, so we got to keep that going. A couple of things based on what you said. One, flabbergasted. Don't make you spell it. You want to be stressed out. Go to your eighth grade son's spelling bee. I was there a week and a half ago. They could have put me up there in front of that microphone and said, your word is boy. And I would have been like, I've spoken in front of lot of people, but man was it high intensity. He made it, he got, he got.

Chris Shurian: Yeah, yeah, flabbergasted, ⁓ he did. That's pretty good, actually. Pretty good.

Kyle Hunt: He got fourth place. He pretty good. He did pretty good. And then when you were talking about Disney, I happened to be on my phone at 7 a.m. because my sweet Annie, who's our youngest, she's 12, she informed my wife and I a few months ago, you know, mom and dad, you took Thomas, Piper and Calvin on an individual trip. And I have not had my individual trip with my parents. And we thought, well, welcome to being the fourth kid, kid. We're not, you know, we're not.

Chris Shurian: boy. Yeah.

Kyle Hunt: We don't remember these things. So it determined that we were going to take a long weekend to Disney world. So I was on my little app this morning, securing my lightning lanes and whatnot. I must say I took care of business this morning. But as you were talking about the Disney world thing, it's interesting in a world of podcasts and AI and chat GPT and, the way that we can quickly summarize things. You do not understand really the reason that you were able to articulate that Disney world thing.

Chris Shurian: next round.

Kyle Hunt: ⁓ deeper is because you've actually spent time truly reading and truly studying Walt Disney. You actually like read the book and like I've read that book and you know, it's probably 10 pages to tell that story about the trash cans and whatnot. You can't shortcut really spending time studying something. I'm into baseball cards right now and Detroit Tigers history, baseball history, and my kind of downtime reading. I've been doing it kind of, I've been doing it more and I do it on my phone on the Kindle app. But it's kind of been my routine for 20, 30 minutes before I go to sleep as I'm reading a biography on Ty Cobb and ⁓ super interesting. He's it's a book called Beautiful, A Terrible Beauty. Ty Cobb's got quite the quite the story, quite the ⁓ he was feisty. He was a fighter. There's just a lot of stuff that went on with him, but he was an excellent ⁓ ballplayer. And I think he's this author is making the case that he might be getting the short end of the stick a little bit. And my parents came up the other day. My mom actually made some Easter baskets for the kids. And, ⁓ my dad and I were talking baseball and I said, I'm reading this Ty Cobb biography. And it was interesting because, because I'm slowly reading this book, my recollection of the stories and who he is and, and, and the environment of what 1909 baseball was like, my story had a lot of color to it and a lot of detail to it that watching a quick video. or reading a quick social media post wouldn't have had. In other words, Chris is talking about Disney. He's actually read the book here in 2026, lest we not get away from actually spending time reading and really watching things in depth, because that's what's really gonna saturate us and help us to lead better and it's gonna really impact us. So I wanted to get that in there.

Chris Shurian: That was good. Yeah. And you some big words too. I was, I was impressed like yibbity yabbity. I'm not sure how you spell that either. We're to have our own spelling bee and see what happens here. Yibbity yabbity. Yeah. Is that a word? Yada yada. Well, and, and, and, and you're totally right there, Kyle, the, the reading thing is huge. I still read books. I'm still kind of weird that way. In fact, uh, you know, that's just a thing. In fact, so my coaching clients.

Kyle Hunt: Hmm. Did I say yibbity yabbity? Yeah, yada yada. Yeah, that's a Seinfeld thing.

Chris Shurian: You know, I bring a book and they kind of look at it like, what's that? It's a book. Yeah. There's pages in it. And I've got the books, pages, dog-eared and underlined. And sometimes I flip back through there, but you're absolutely right. You got to keep learning and you got to just, you got to keep doing. Absolutely.

Kyle Hunt: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And people learn in different ways. So take what I said, but the substance part, like we can't take the Cliff Notes version of this stuff. We can't take the little snippet of this. The more we really dig in, the more impactful it will be. ⁓ when I hear it, when I hear one of my clients, or even when I think about it and they're like, you know what? I read that, I read that book that made a big impact on me five years ago. And it's the fourth time I've read it. And I've heard that advice so often. And as I, every year I get older, I'm like, there's wisdom there. you know, just keep reading stuff that really makes an impact that reminds you of customer service that reminds you of whatever that topic is. So we talked about mindset. We talked about kind of the customer service side of things. Give me two more little tidbits on the customer service. And then we're going to go into the third, the third area of things.

Chris Shurian: Yeah, my philosophy, and this was my motto back in the construction day, was what I called the barefoot principle.

Kyle Hunt: What's a motto? Hang on, I was trying to quote a movie. What's a motto? You know what? Nothing, what's a motto with you? It's from The Lion King. I don't know a lot of movie quotes, but that one's a good one. I think it's Timba and Pumbaa. But you said a motto, what's a motto? Your motto, go ahead.

Chris Shurian: I don't, I don't. ⁓ yeah, there you go. That's flying. That's a good one. I liked it. ⁓ The barefoot principle. So for example, if we were doing a remodel, a room addition, a remodel, whatever, my philosophy was that when we're off the job, we've left for the day, the client comes home at night, they should be able to walk through the job site barefoot and not have to worry about stepping on nails, stepping on sharp objects. And we even parlayed that into the new construction. Like we did things differently, you know, and what happened is all of our trades were, were taught that this is how we do it. Uh, I mentioned my podcast and having one of my, my old trade contractors on there. And he told, he tells that story about, know, I showed up on a job site. This is when we were pretty young and, he was done for the day. And I said, uh, well, you're going to like clean up, right? And he's like, well, yeah, but we're going to be back tomorrow morning. So I figured I could just leave my stuff out. And I just said, no, that's not how we operate. you know, it's the barefoot principle. I want this customer to be able to walk out here tonight. You know, they're excited about it. They want to see what's going on and you know, what's the chance of them actually walking off their barefoot? Probably not likely, but just the idea that they, they could, and that we clean up the job site in that manner was important. And it, and it stuck, you know, I've, still cross paths with guys that worked for us and worked on our jobs and, they still, you know, some follow that philosophy. Quite frankly, there's a lot that don't, you know, there's some guys that just don't see that as a priority, but, ⁓ you know, that was that. That's not my company, but if I have a company, then that's what we're going to do. And that's how we're going do it. And like you said, you can't take your foot off the gas when it comes to stuff like that. You have to be consistent. And another, another quote from, from Walt Disney was you have to be consistent and unrelenting and getting that principle and those concepts to people. And that's key. Consistence and unrelenting. You just can't stop. It's always, it's always something you have to have at the forefront.

Kyle Hunt: Yeah, that's good. Mm-hmm. Good. So the other, the other thing that we tossed out there when we were, we were doing a little prep for this prep five P proper preparation prevents poor performance. Had a little, little five P little prep cone was you said the entrepreneurial grind and how to manage it, the entrepreneurial grind and how to manage it. us about.

Chris Shurian: Well, I, ⁓ okay. I read a book. I read a book years ago and, ⁓ and in this book, they talked about, you know, the, idea of, know, you work really hard until you're 65 and you retire and enjoy life. But in that same book, he talks about what a, what a, ⁓ what a fallacy that is. I mean, what if you get to 65 and you don't have health or if you're not even alive or you don't have your spouse, your partner, your kids are all grown. So. The takeaway for me reading that book was life balance. Being an entrepreneur, being a business owner, it is a grind. It's a lot of work. It's hard work. But you have to have balance in your life. So you have to spend time on yourself. You have to spend time with your family. You have to go on vacation. You have to take time off. mean, there was a season when I'm coaching my kids in sports. And that was a priority for me. And if I had to leave the office at 3 p.m. to get to practice and do what I did it, because that was my priority. So in my opinion, especially when you're the owner, a lot of owners think that the business won't run without them. Well, maybe that's the case, but in my opinion, that's not a very good business. So you wanna build a business that works around what your schedule is. And if your schedule is, I'm gonna work four days a week and the rest I'm not, then do it. The business will adapt to that. If you say, hey, I'm gonna take a month and do a vacation every summer, you know what? Your business will adapt to that. So for me, it's that life balance which helps offset the grind. That's something that I practiced. I had pretty good luck with it. I've enjoyed life along the way. I've done a lot of things. My wife and I, we enjoy, we have a Harley. Maybe I look like a Harley guy, I don't know, but we take off and we go for a ride.

Kyle Hunt: I think if the people are watching on the video and they look at you and they look at me, they're probably going, well, Kyle's a Harley guy, obviously. But tilt your head a little bit. Tilt your head. ⁓ see, now they see the little long hair and they're like, ⁓ that is a Harley guy.

Chris Shurian: No. Obviously. I'm trying. Yeah. And then, you know, we got all kinds of stuff going on. Yeah. So I'm a Harley guy. We love going on road trips. We have a motor home. We like to go places. we, ⁓ we have a house in Mexico. We like to go down there and, it's just a priority. It's just a priority. So life balance is, is absolutely doable and that helps soften up that grind.

Kyle Hunt: Got a couple tats. Hmm. The you know, the there's there's I like to think of the people listening to this and some go even when he threw out the one month off in the summer and they're and like, ⁓ okay, Chris. Yeah, that makes sense. And maybe it right now in the season of your business that that obviously would make no sense to you. ⁓ But maybe you want to build a business that would allow you to do that. Maybe you need to just even think about that and go, What would that take? And if you start thinking about it, you'll start to recognize team members. You'll start to recognize there's probably need to be some growth in your business. You'd recognize the roles that you would have to take off your primary plate and hand off to others. it, I think some of us who have been in business for a certain number of years, we fall into this trap. That's like, well, I started this with the thought that this was going to enable me to really enjoy life and to have balance and to really help us thrive financially, et cetera. And sometimes we get into a little bit of a rut where we think some of those things aren't possible anymore. At that point, wrap up this job thing, wrap up this business thing, go get a job and go enjoy your life a little bit more. Cause five o'clock rolls around and you don't have 14 things on your mind. If that's not the case, then it's time to maybe revive some of your thought process around what is the life that I want to be living and how can I build this business to support it? It is absolutely doable, especially if you get really clear and passionate about wanting that. And you're talking about several different aspects of this. You've got to take your time off. I think there's some head trash I hear like, I can't leave at three o'clock. My employees work till four 30. When I hear that, I just want to smack people. I'm like, think for a second of the amount of stress and time and effort that you have put into this business. You absolutely deserve that as total head trash for you to think that you leaving the business early. Or if you think that and you think your team's gonna fall apart because of it, we got a whole nother thing we need to work on. Work-life balance. I've been grappling with this a little bit lately where I'm going, I've done it over the years, but it's like, all right, hang on. Is this business and this iteration of the business, is this what I want? Is this supporting what I'm looking to do? Do I want, know, one of the things last year, one of the goals was I wanna work out two times a week during my work day. because I don't want to work out at 6 a.m. because then I wouldn't take the kids to school and then I wouldn't have that time with them and my wife wouldn't get to sleep in and my wife seems to love me more when I let her sleep in in the morning. I don't want to work out at 5.30 p.m. and screw that up or 8 p.m. It's just family time. I don't want to. So like that was one little thing of I want to build a business that allows me to do that twice a week. I was in a pretty good groove with that. I've kind of fallen back on that. Interesting.

Chris Shurian: Yeah.

Kyle Hunt: Get really clear with what your work-life integration, work-life balance looks like, and let's start working on taking that more serious. Hmm, what else would you add onto that? Yeah.

Chris Shurian: You know, one more book, of the first books I ever read as a business owner was the E-Myth by Michael Gerber. Okay, that's an oldie, an oldie. And his whole idea is, look, you need to spend time working on the business versus working in the business. We've heard that a hundred times. But, you know, build your business so that it can do one of three things. It allows you to be away from the business and it still operates. You can franchise it and expand it, or you exit, which means you sell the business. And it's kind the same idea to build your business in a certain manner that any one of those three things can happen. And I learned that lesson early on and ⁓ I think that's an important lesson. So like you just said, which I think was, is perfect is yeah, you need to, if you're not, if you're not able to do that, you gotta get that out your head and change some things or go get a job. mean, how many people do we know that have really great jobs? They get paid time off, they get sick pay vacation pay, they get all these things, you know, they get a great retirement, works for them, right? I mean, that's not how I'm programmed, but you know, it's good for some people. So yeah, it's possible.

Kyle Hunt: Yeah. Yeah, it's whenever that that advice comes out of my coaching mouth. Over the years, I'd say dozens of times at this point, I've gone timeout, like, especially if I'm talking to a prospect or model who's been listening to podcasts, and they're just kind of reaching out to inquire about coaching, I'm hearing their story and, and or get to know some people I'm like, you know, maybe If you ever even thought about like just kind of wrapping this thing up and just going to get a nice project manager gig at 95 K plus benefits and this and that. And, know, there's been times over the years where it's exactly what somebody needed to hear. Um, there's other times and they needed to do that. There's more often than not what it turns into is no, I would hate that. I would, I would feel like I'm letting myself down. I feel like a failure. I feel like, no, I've got so much interest in making this happen and desire to make this happen. Cool. And if that's the case, it's time to lock in and start doing things differently. And just like the mindset conversation earlier, it is absolutely possible to be running a fledgling, there's another F word, a fledgling, flaky, frustrating, give me another word. I don't swear on this.

Chris Shurian: freaking.

Kyle Hunt: Freaking, ⁓ Fetching business and absolutely shifted into something that actually supports you and your life. It's absolutely doable. For a lot of you listening, it means you got to start locking in on your numbers. Stop being a three out of 10 in your skill level with your numbers and get up to seven or eight or nine out of 10. Start figuring out how to put on your marketing hat.

Chris Shurian: Fetching. Fetching, that's a good Utah word, fetching.

Kyle Hunt: and really build a brand and be consistent with your marketing. Stop looking at I'm a salesperson as a negative and become a stinking amazing salesperson that has a clear process, that has an understanding of how to sell benefits and to read the client and to be a student of the psychology of the client. Like you can absolutely, and stop being a crappy leader. Some of us, some of you are crappy leaders and you can absolutely become a kick butt leader. You gotta start reading some books. You gotta start changing your crappy mindset. You gotta start. You guys start shifting this. Yeah, yeah, that was a good rant.

Chris Shurian: That was a great rant. That was like a sermon of a rant. I appreciate that.

Kyle Hunt: More of a homily, a homily, like a quick one. I could give a sermon, but I'll keep it little homily, a little short little hitter. Good. ⁓ Chris, if they heard nothing else in what you shared today or even around these three topics, maybe it's something that we already talked about or something else that's coming to your mind. I want you to leave them with a kind of a closing thought and then also how would they get to know you and your podcast and what you do a little bit more, where would they go?

Chris Shurian: Okay, I liked it. I was impressed. Well, Kyle, I appreciate that. My, remember one of the very first quotes I ever was, it was ever put in front of me was by Napoleon Hill. ⁓ you know, whatever the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve. And, ⁓ and that is so true. I mean, that was a quote he threw out there in the early 1900s and I still believe it's true. ⁓ and we talked about mindset quite a bit and I'm a huge fan. ⁓ whatever you can, you know, picture in your mind, you know, go make it happen, you know, and look at other people that have done it. There's so many people that have had. great success with nothing and turn it into something great. So ⁓ absolutely mindset's key. My website is bootstrapsandbattlescars.com. It's a pretty simple website. It's got to contact me and I'd love to hear from anybody that has questions. have access to our podcast, which is called Bootstraps and Battlescars. And it's just me talking to other fellow entrepreneurs and hearing their stories. And there's some good stories. I've had some pretty successful people on.

Kyle Hunt: Maybe I'll be a podcast guest someday.

Chris Shurian: You know, Kyle, there's, I mean, if if we could just jazz up the name a little bit. So we're going to have to go with Ryan's Ryan's hunt. will be our featured guest today. On bootstraps. Yeah. We did an F theme today. So let's go shift it to our theme. Yeah. I like it.

Kyle Hunt: Ryan's son with remodelers on the rise. go to our theme, our theme. Yes. Okay. It's excellent. Yeah, Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich. So it's a good initial book. It's so interesting. There's certain books that the E-Myth is one, especially if you start going into the business side and think and grow rich. ⁓ I think I'm interested in business. All right, 15 year old, read this book. There's certain books. ⁓ how to win friends and influence people. But

Chris Shurian: Yeah.

Kyle Hunt: With that said, like start paying attention to those classics. If it's a business classic that is just as relevant in 2026 as it was in 1976 or Napoleon Hill's case, twenties and thirties or whenever it came out, it must have some wisdom in there. And Chris, you got some wisdom in there too. was good meeting you. Good having you share. Appreciate you coming on the podcast. And I do think, I don't know if we're going to be Harley riding together, but I think this is not going to be our last conversation.

Chris Shurian: I like that, look forward to it, Kyle, I appreciate it.

Kyle Hunt: Thank you, appreciate it.