Episode 117

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Published on:

4th Nov 2024

Moving from Survival to Significance

In this episode, Mike talks about survival, stability, success, and significance — detailing each stage and their importance in the journey towards impactful leadership and business growth.

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Who is Mike Crow?

Mike Crow is a Marketing and Business Expert who has built and managed multiple 7-figure businesses, including two 7-figure inspection firms.

For the past 15 years, he's coached thousands of other inspection business owners and has personally helped 100+ companies grow to $1,000,000+ in annual revenue. He has also helped multiple single-inspector operations earn 6-figure annual revenues (some surpassing $300,000).

Mike can teach any entrepreneur how to systematize and market their business to achieve their personal and professional goals.

Transcript
Speaker:

Hi, this is Mike Crowe, and I run a home

inspection business.

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In fact, I've run a couple of home

inspection businesses.

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You know, true joy for me,

though, has been helping literally

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thousands of home inspectors Build really

solid home inspection business as well.

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We can help a single man operation

be able to do over $300,000 a year,

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maybe all the way up to $400,000 a year

as a single inspector operation.

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Even better for me is the 80

plus companies that we have helped

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be able to build million dollar home

inspection businesses

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I would like to help you

be able to do the same thing.

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I'm going to go over

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what I consider

to be probably one of the most important,

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and one that I repeat on a regular basis.

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One of the,

the pieces of being successful,

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one of the steps in knowing

that you have to go through

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to, to be able

to get to where you want to go.

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I often I run across people that are

either what I would call short sighted or

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and I suffer from this one sometimes

is taking a look at things too far out.

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So, for instance,

I will tell you that at one point I used

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to see a year out and then three years out

and then five years out,

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and then I started telling people

for the longest time I saw 20 years out.

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And then just within the last

several years,

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I've started telling people

I see a hundred years out

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and of course people will go,

you won't be here in 100 years.

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And I go, you're absolutely correct.

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But if I'm lucky, hopefully my kids

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and grandkids and great grandkids

and other people

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you know, from my lineage,

hopefully will be here in 100 years.

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What do I want their lives?

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How do I want their lives to be

maybe impacted by what I'm doing today?

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The challenge with that, of course,

is that if you're always looking that

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far out, that you could literally fall

into the manhole cover.

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You know that's missing.

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Fall into the manhole

where the covers missing.

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Right now, on the way to that

and of course, break a leg and

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and never, never,

of course, even get close to that.

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One of the things that I've discovered

is that, though being too short sighted,

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as you stand there looking at the manhole

with the manhole cover missing,

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and you panic about that,

and you see that, and you look at that

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and and you focus way too much on that.

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And while you're focusing on that,

along comes a bus

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and just whacks you

out of the whole process altogether.

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You've got to learn to be able

to balance out this short term

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vision versus this long term vision.

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And one of the things that I tell people

is it really comes down to one

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simple phrase striving

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for progress, but not perfection.

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I've got to be looking at where

I want to go, but not necessarily

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all the way, all the time.

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Now I've got to look at that,

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and I've got to put that on paper,

and I got a plan for it, but

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I don't want to be looking

at just next week.

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In fact,

this is one of the biggest mistakes

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I used to watch in the corporate world

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as a manager would come in

and to make himself look good,

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he would run all the machinery

24 hours a day.

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And I mean, he would be making

all kinds of great progress,

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but then machines would start breaking

and things would start failing

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because there was no maintenance.

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There was no there was no, process

for replacing that stuff.

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The other

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challenge, of course, is that

this guy sees this, out here,

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and he doesn't take advantage

of the short term either.

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So I'm going to tell you

a couple of things.

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Striving for progress, not perfection.

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It's kind of funny.

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When I was a young man,

I used to have my car, and,

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I don't know if it was my dad

that got in or somebody else that got in,

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and they got in and the floorboards

was just full of, you know, fast food,

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bags, you know, McDonald's and Burger King

and Taco Bell and all that great stuff.

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And I said, oh, don't worry about it,

you know, and and they're gone.

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I'm not worried about

it. I'm worried about me.

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And one of the things I

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realized was

that I was not doing very good at that.

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And, and of course, taking time to clean

my whole car

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would have taken half a day at that point

because it was such a mess.

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Right?

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Well, one of the things I discovered was

somebody

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taught me something simple

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a bag a day.

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Hey, Mike, every time you get fast

food, get rid of two bags.

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Every time you get some gas,

get rid of two bags.

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Okay, so you got one.

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You now get rid of two.

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And before I knew it, within

just a week or two,

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my whole car was all cleaned out

and everything.

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And now when I get gas,

I turn it on, I tell it to pump,

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and I, you know, I wash the windshield.

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I look through, see if there's anything

I need to throw away, and get rid of it.

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So in that case,

it was a bag a day recently.

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And I say recently, within the last five,

ten years,

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when you get my age, everything's reset.

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By the way.

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But,

recently, I was working with somebody,

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and they didn't have

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the time to get totally moved in.

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We moved from our old office

to this office,

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and their office was just full of boxes.

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And I said, here's the thing.

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Is a box a day?

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Could you get rid of one box a day?

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Well, yeah,

I can get rid of one box today.

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Great. And tomorrow get rid of one box.

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And within 30 days, all of a sudden, most,

if not all the boxes were gone.

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Their office was looking great.

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And honestly,

I did the same thing to my office.

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Same kind of thing is with the trash.

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Making that progress can be very,

very powerful.

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And I will tell you, it's so powerful

because some days you finish the day

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and you just realize

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you're not getting done

what you want to get done out here.

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And one of the things

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I like to say at the end of the day is

we made progress today.

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I try to make sure at the end of every day

we made progress today.

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And and if I can't say that, I go,

what's the one thing?

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What's one thing I could do today?

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One box, one bag, one what?

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What's one thing I could do today?

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One phone call so that I can say

I'm making progress today.

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And what I want you to think about

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is striving for progress, not perfection.

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Because honestly,

you're never going to be perfect.

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It just isn't going to happen.

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And if you're trying to be perfect,

you're never going to get there

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because you won't make the progress

you need to.

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On a daily basis.

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So at the end of the day,

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hopefully you can say, hey,

I'm making some progress today.

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Hey, we made progress today

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and especially like those days

where everything seems to go wrong.

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Everything seems to want to fall apart.

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Everybody wants to piece of me, okay,

at the end of the day, if I.

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If I get home and I'm looking at Susan

and she goes, how was your day?

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And I said, well, we made progress today,

you know, and that's a big part of it.

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So striving for progress, not perfection.

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My son has this great t shirt

and it's this guy coloring this word,

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and he's making it absolutely perfect.

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And the word is perfection.

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And the P is perfect

and the E is perfect and the R is perfect.

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And then he's sitting on a stool dead

skeleton.

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Because he died.

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Because he never finished the process.

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So progress.

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Not perfection.

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Now, once you understand that,

we can move on to

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some of the other pieces,

because a lot of times, what we run into

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is that people do not understand

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that there are different levels

that you have to go through.

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I actually created in the business,

when I'm teaching people

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to be a home inspector,

or I'm teaching people to be a coach,

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or I'm teaching people

how to, build their family, right?

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You, your family, your business,

an inspector, everybody, a speaker,

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all goes through what I like to call the

W, and we can talk about that more later.

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But there's four pieces right now

that I kind of

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want to go through

that are more like stackable.

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Because when you first start in business,

man, you're just trying to survive.

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So I call this one moving from

survival to significance,

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moving from survival to significance.

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And when we're new in the business,

we're all in survival mode.

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And then it's significance at that level.

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We are motivated

and we're able to help others.

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In fact, you've heard me

talk about be where the 95% in the 95%,

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they're almost always in survival mode.

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And the 1%, they're almost always helping

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other people be successful as well.

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It's a such an incredible good feeling

when you know, when you're in that 1%,

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when you're in significance,

when you're at that point of excellence,

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that you can help

other people be successful as well.

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So I want to go through

each level, though,

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because I haven't talked

about the two middle levels.

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So there's survival.

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Survival means

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getting up every day

and doing what you have to do,

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even when you don't want to do it.

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By the way, that's the difference

between amateurs and professionals.

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Amateurs.

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Well, they, you know, they,

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decide

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not to do things some days

because it just doesn't feel right.

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It just doesn't feel good.

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It just, you know, it

just isn't going to make them any money.

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Whatever excuse they want to make.

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Nationals, on the other hand, do it

even when they're sick,

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even when it hurts, even when it cost them

money, even when it doesn't feel good.

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But they know it's the right thing.

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All right.

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So amateurs, professionals, survival

to significance.

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And in survival mode,

one of the things that I try to tell

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people is that, for instance,

when you're starting the business,

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you have two jobs, not one.

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You have two jobs.

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So if you were working for somebody else,

you have one job, you do that job

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and then you do it really well,

and then you go home and you're done.

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But people

that work with me, for instance,

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I try to teach them that they have

two jobs, they have this job.

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And then the question is,

how do we take our company

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and move it to the next level?

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What are we doing extra?

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And it's kind of like that other part

where you're striving for progress,

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not perfection,

but you get the progress done.

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And if you don't have the real progress

done, what's one thing

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you can do to move

towards that perfection?

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So you're in survival mode?

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What are you going to do to move

towards the next level and the next level?

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Up, by the way, is stability.

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Stability so that when you wake up

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you're not worried about somebody

taking your car away.

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You're not worried about somebody

taking your house away.

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You're not worried about losing your wife.

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You're not worried about the phone

ringing in your business.

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So in survival mode,

like I said, you really have two parts.

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The one is doing the job.

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If you're a home inspector

is doing the home inspection.

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If you're a speaker,

it's doing the speaking.

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If you're a coach, it's coaching, okay.

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And trying to help somebody else.

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But the second part of that job

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that nobody talks about is booking home

inspections, making sure the phone rings,

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making sure that somebody

wants to use you a second time.

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So not only are you doing the inspections,

but you're also doing

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what makes that possible.

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You're not only doing speaking,

but you've got the time on the phone

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where you're calling or letters or emails

or a podcast or something you're doing

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that makes it so that other people

want you for your basic service.

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And so it's an incredibly important

part in that.

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And once you get those two pieces

together, they start.

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They actually start blending together, and

you get to a point where you're stable.

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You know, when you get up that day,

the phone is going to ring,

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you know it's going to ring

because you've done the marketing,

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because you've done the pieces.

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And now all you have to do

is answer the phone book the inspection

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or book the speaking, or book

the appointment with your next client.

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That's stability.

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And at the point where you really start

understanding that every day,

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every year,

that that's pretty much a given.

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Now you've really kind of moved up to that

next level, which is success.

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And by the way, you know,

you've had success a lot of times

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when people ask you to speak

about what you've done and how you did it,

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every conference I go to, it never fails.

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And the last conference

I went to was no exception.

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Somebody pulled me aside, said, Mike,

I just want you to know I am successful

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because I followed your advice on this

and this and this and this and this,

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and now I'm here.

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And now I don't worry about anything

because I'm in this level of success

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in my world.

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You know, I have this

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wonderful opportunity

where I go see my dad on a regular basis.

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By the time you hear this,

my dad might not be with us anymore.

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That's okay.

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But one of the things that I,

we talked about with my dad

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was it recently was

how are we going to finish strong?

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We're going to make sure

that we finish strong.

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And that's the same as going from that,

you know,

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striving for progress

and then to perfection.

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And right honestly, now my dad is

at that level of perfection in his life.

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He didn't have to worry about money.

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He's stable.

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He didn't have to worry

about being successful.

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He's already been there.

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And now, honestly,

what me and my dad talk about

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is how we are going to be significant,

not only just for,

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you know, the next year or three years

or five years, not even the next,

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just the next 20 years, which most people

never even think that far out.

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But the next hundred years and me

and my dad

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have those conversations

every single day right now.

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What are we doing right now?

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So that 100 years from now, our family

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won't have to go through the survival mode

as tough as we did?

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Now, here's the fun part

is, as you're raising kids or grandkids,

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you want them to go through survival

mode on something,

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whether it's mowing the yard

or whether it's homework

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or whether it's, being in the band

or on the football team or, or something.

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Robotics. I don't care what it is.

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They need to go through something

that creates that survival instinct.

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Because when

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they create that,

then they can go to stability.

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And then once they understand

that this created the platform

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for stability,

then they can go to success.

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My youngest son came to me at one point

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and he went through survival mode

pretty tough.

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And then he got to stability

and he came back.

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At one point he said, dad,

I just want to tell you, thank you.

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Because what you taught me in survival

mode helped me get to stability.

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And now I'm at success

because I have all these skill sets

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that I learned from

you here to be able to get to that.

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And the fun thing is, right now, he's

now helping other people.

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And so he's

now playing in that role of significance.

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Okay, so what are you going to do

to make sure that you're in survival mode?

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Like I said earlier, you've got two jobs.

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One is figuring out how to do

a great inspection if you're an inspector,

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how to be a great speaker or a coach,

if that's what you do.

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But if you're a dentist,

it's the same thing.

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How are you going

to become a great dentist?

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And we're going to write all that,

but that's just survival mode.

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And then working towards stability

is making sure that the marketing

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and making sure that the, the management

and all those parts are there as well,

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and you start blending those two, you have

two jobs, not just being a dentist,

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not just being an inspector,

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not just being whatever it is that you do

a speaker or whatever, okay?

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You've got to make sure that you take it

and move it to that next level

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by supporting it

with the pieces over here,

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the marketing, the management, the

the standards of practice,

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the SOPs, as people like to call them,

okay, the systems.

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That's what creates stability.

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And then once you have the survival

or the service down

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or the product down,

then you move into getting stability.

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Then once that is in place

and you've got your SOPs

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and you understand

what's going to happen there every day.

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And by the way, here's

the cool thing is you get to hire

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people at a certain point

because your company is doing well.

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You get to hire people

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to create that stability

and make sure that it stays in place.

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Then you move towards success

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and basically you hire someone else

and they go

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do all this stuff that's already written

down, already there for them,

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and they understand

what is expected of them in that process.

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And then as you're sitting there,

I'll still remember the day that

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me and my mom and dad

were sitting at a Mexican food restaurant,

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and I was just kind of staring out

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through the window,

and it was pouring down rain.

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It was pouring down rain.

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And my dad said, he said,

what are you thinking about?

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And I said,

I was just thinking how blessed we are

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because we worked through survival.

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We worked through stability.

We're we're at success.

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But honestly, right now we're sitting here

able to enjoy lunch because we have six

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inspectors out there who we have help them

also go through survival, stability.

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And now they're being successful.

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But honestly they're out there today.

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You know, even though it's raining,

taking care of the business.

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And I get to sit here today

with my mom and dad, okay.

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And have a great Mexican lunch.

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Significance can give you

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so many

blessings, gave you so many opportunities.

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That significance, though, comes

when you help other people

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go through the survival and the stability

to success, get to success, and then

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hopefully, maybe you could help them

to get to significance as well.

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Even as our company is growing

and we're now multi-million dollar

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company, we're having other people

that are managers in the company

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and they are playing

at that level of significance

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so they can help other people

go to that next level as well.

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So those are

some of the most important parts.

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You know, a couple of those major things

that I want to make sure

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that you understand.

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And again, one was the, you know, making

progress, make make progress every day

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and, and try or strive for progress

every day instead of perfection.

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Because perfection, you know,

you're not ever going to get there.

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What you can get to

though is significance.

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And you going

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have to go through survival,

stability, success to get to significance.

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Well, I hope that helps.

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And, feel free to ask questions on that,

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because I love talking

about these subjects specifically

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because they make such a huge difference

in how you do everything,

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how you plan everything

so that you can get to their thanks.

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So I'll talk to you again soon.

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About the Podcast

The Home Inspector Marketing Podcast
Marketing and Business Building Strategies for Home Inspectors.
Join Mike Crow as he shares his insider secrets and proven strategies for building a thriving home inspection business. In each episode, Mike will cover the latest tips and best practices for growing your business and improving your inspection skills. Whether you're a seasoned inspector or just starting out, you won't want to miss this valuable advice from one of the industry's top experts. Tune in now and take your home inspection business to the next level!