Episode 458: What To Do When Your Construction Business Finally Runs Without You

00:00
What if the real crisis in your construction business isn’t being too busy, but it’s having too much time, right? So imagine this, you’ve spent years grinding long days, job sites to job sites, solving problems, putting out fires, then you finally do it. You finally have your business running like a machine. You’ve got a solid team in place. It’s systematized. The projects run without you. The phone’s not blowing up like it used to.

00:27
And suddenly you’re staring at your calendar asking, now what? You may be asking, who are you if you’re not the guy or gal holding this whole thing together? What do you do now that the business runs without you? Well, on today’s episode of the Construction Leading Edge podcast from constructionleadingedge.com, we’re going to tackle a problem that most people don’t even believe is real until they hit it. It’s how to move from being the operator

00:56
of your construction business to being the owner without losing your identity, your sense of purpose, or quietly sabotaging all the freedom you’ve created. Basically, we’re going to ask the question, what do you do when it works? This is a conversation with Manish Cartier, who leads our CEO Alliance member team and has helped hundreds of builders, remodelers, and general contractors make this exact shift. And he actually did it with his own business as well.

01:25
Here’s what you’re to get out of this episode. We talk about the hidden fears and the head trash that keeps you glued to the business even after systems are in place. Why your business should not be your main source of intellectual stimulation and what to replace it with. We also talk about some of the problems that come up if your business is the main source of intellectual stimulation. We talk about how owners accidentally become

01:52
The firefighter who turns into the arsonist creating problems just so they feel needed. We go over the, this really interesting federal prison thought experiment that we used with our clients that instantly exposes how dependent your business still is on you. We talk about some real stories of real life construction business owners who now travel for weeks at a time. They run their companies remotely or they just pour their extra time into family.

02:22
racing, missions work, coaching their kids team while their business keeps supporting their ideal lifestyle and generating profits in the background. So if you’ve ever thought, I want my company to run without me, but deep down, you’re not sure what you do with yourself, if it actually did, this conversation is going to hit home. So by the end, you’ll have a clear picture of what you really want your life to look like. And some of the concrete pieces.

02:50
that need to be in place so your business can support that life without swallowing you whole or without you ending up in a depressed funk. So without further ado, let’s get into it. Manish, welcome back onto the podcast. It’s been a little bit since you’ve been on here. There’s a problem that our successful clients have come to you with and it goes something like this. They systematize their business.

03:20
They had the business running the way they wanted. And the question is something like, what do I do with all this time that I have now, but I didn’t have before. In other words, how do I switch from business operator to business owner? And this sounds like, like, why would that be a problem? But it’s actually a real problem that people have once, once it works.

03:48
once their business actually will run without them. So we’re going to talk about that today, but I want to, I want to go back a couple of spots, zoom out a little bit and talk about this question. are people who want to get out of their business. They, they, they would say, I want the business to run without me. I want to be the business owner instead of the operator, but they just won’t let go. So what actually, in your experience, what actually keeps people stuck?

04:18
It keeps them from letting go of their business. In other words, how are they keeping themselves stuck in the business, either consciously or subconsciously? Let’s talk about that a little bit. So what do you think? I’ve been through this myself in the past. And the biggest problem usually is that you’re just in the thick of it and it’s very hard to see things from a bird’s eye view. So you’re kind of running life like a punch list. You just going, what’s the next thing? What’s the next thing? What’s the next thing?

04:48
There’s hundreds of things to do and it’s very hard to make strategic decisions when you’re stuck doing that. You so you haven’t hired the right people. haven’t set up your people correctly even, and the business is basically running in your head itself. There’s no documentation. There’s no processes. There’s no systems. It’s very hard when you’re in it and you’re literally working in the business to have time to work on the business as well and make those systemic shifts.

05:18
so that you can eventually wind yourself out of it. When it comes to construction, know, lot of people think of it as a product business, but we’re in the service business. And as an owner, you feel it is up to you to actually provide that service to the clients, to the employees, to the trade partners, everyone, all at once. You just feel that you have to be the person responsible for it. And being stuck in that makes it very hard to kind of look at it and go, well, I’m actually spending too much time procrastinating.

05:48
switching tasks and doing just what barely needs to be done and not spending enough time on setting up a business that I can kind of walk away from. You know, if you were to compare it to another investment, let’s say a rental property, a house that you build, and then you let someone else come in, live in and pay your rent, it’s very different, right? Once you build it, you walk away and the thing keeps giving you cashflow. Whereas most people don’t think of the business in that sense.

06:16
Cause they are the business. We went through an interesting exercise at our most recent live meetup. were in Cancun and spending two days with our CEO Alliance members. And there was one exercise where the, the folks in the room came up with a list of internal constraints and external constraints. And I know you’re working with some of the CEO Alliance members on internal constraints.

06:44
Can you talk about what are some of those internal constraints that keep people stuck that maybe aren’t so obvious? A lot of it is actually fear and it manifests itself as procrastination. And it’s not obvious because people are, you know, just to be completely transparent about what we’ve come up with is people are afraid of estimating because they’re really afraid of rejection or losing the bid. People are afraid of hiring people because they don’t want to

07:13
fire people, they don’t want to manage people that they don’t think they can manage. And people are genuinely afraid to grow their business because, they hit a ceiling at some point because they’re the bottleneck and they don’t want to grow because that just means I have to work more. So I don’t want to. And a lot of those fears, unfortunately, hold the business back and they don’t let the business turn into this vehicle of, you know, hopefully passive income at some point.

07:43
And instead you’re trapped in it, owning a job. This is a something that’s come up several times and even specifically in live meetups, fears of, uh, like you mentioned hiring people, estimating some of the things, some other fears that have popped up with the, when people were being honest, they would say fear of success. Question is, what if it works? What if I hire somebody and they, they’re better than me? What if my business can actually run without me?

08:13
What if they, it does better without me that that’s kind of a, a hits to the ego. And I think what you just said is a good way to frame this. One of the questions we come talking about is what is the question we’re trying to answer with this? And it’s how can you, how can you turn your business into a passive income source? How can you get your business to run without you? How can you run your business remotely?

08:41
We’re going to talk about some people who’ve taken extended trips and run their business. But let’s, let’s talk about the head trash because that’s what’s really holding people back. think a lot of people look out there and they think, I could never run my business remotely because of my team or the customers, my business is like a snowflake or my subcontractors or my competition or something. What, what’s some other mental malware?

09:10
Some things that people believe to be true that are actually keeping them stuck in their business. What do you think? Again, it’s an ego thing, but they think they’re the best person at the job that they’re doing. They have this fear of hiring someone and they’re not going to be good enough. They want to be actually worse than them. And then they’re going to have to micromanage them. They might have to fire them and all that sort of stuff. But it’s really just procrastination. They’re just afraid of hiring. They’re afraid of making the wrong hire.

09:41
And sometimes it’s worth asking the question, so what? So what if you ain’t going high? Just go back to square one and try again. In terms of, guess, mental malware as well, people, when you mentioned the fear of success, they are also stuck in this mindset that if I do become successful, then what? What do I do with my time? Who am I? What’s my identity? We’ve had at a recent live event again, when we were talking about certain things to, to again, reduce your time.

10:11
by delegating to your integrator or to your team. One of the questions asked was like, well, but I like my job as the owner of the business, everything I’m doing and how can I get fulfillment if I’m not doing this every single day? Right. And my response to that was you can still do the things you like and enjoy them. You just don’t have to be a bottle. But more importantly, you need to find a hobby, right? You need to get fulfillment out of another activity. One of the things that is keeping people stuck in their business is that they’re getting

10:42
some things out of their business that they’re afraid they won’t get somewhere else or that they need to get somewhere else. Like identity, right? For people that been in this business, bootstrapped their business 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 40 years ago, their identity is their business. So deep down they’re wondering, who am I without this business? So they get their identity, we get their purpose from the business. They’re wondering, what am I going to do? What problem am I going to solve?

11:12
If I don’t have a business to run, what purpose do I have? Is someone just going to take me out? Should they just take me out and shoot me once I get out of my business? I heard something interesting a few months ago that stuck with me. Your business should not be your source of intellectual stimulation. It should not satisfy your curiosity. So that’s not the purpose of the business. The purpose of a business is to serve customers and to support your employees. One of the problems is how do you find another source?

11:41
to replace the things that you’re currently getting from your business. And one of those is time. Businesses occupy a lot of time and energy. How do you fill that void? We worked with a lot of people who’ve gone through our program and they have created a business that runs without them. Can you share a couple of examples of what that looks like to have a business?

12:08
that runs without the owner. have some of your clients been able to do once their business runs without them? I’ve been doing this for four years now. We’ve had hundreds of people go through our program. And one of the things we do is set 12 month outcomes to people and always mentions them. I was like, what are you going to do once this happens? Once this comes to fruition. Cause a lot of them, they do mention that they’d like to have more time and things like that. Most people don’t have an answer to it. And the reference of using the past is the movie

12:38
Shawshank Redemption, where you’ve been in it for so long that you’re effectively institutionalized. You don’t know what to do yourself once you’ve got the freedom. And so we have discussed about needs like, you know, again, fulfillment, achievement, personal growth, satisfaction, socializing, and all those sort of things, and how to get them from outside the business. Because so far,

13:06
We completely get it to get yourself from A to B. All that came from the business and you have to be that person to get the business to the point of success. Right. It wouldn’t have happened if you didn’t have that. If you weren’t pursuing all those needs from the business itself. What happens is with a lot of my clients, depending on what their personal needs are, we talk about what they should look forward to doing instead. And a lot of them have done, they’ve done a lot of charity activities. There’s people like Nate Milky, who’s on behalf of his church, he’s going to Africa.

13:36
and he’s helping farming communities out there. We’ve got people that are getting involved in their kids, baseball, basketball, soccer, whatever, and try to run those organizations. And to me, I watched this happen. I’m like, you’re just getting out of one chaotic organization into another one. Maybe you’re just addicted to doing that. And we’ve also had people like Josh and Mary Fravel who took, I believe it was a six or seven week road trip.

14:04
all the way from Pennsylvania to British Columbia and did a whole bunch of hiking and things like that with their kids because the kids were 12 and 15 and they only had a couple more years until it’s not cool to hang out with mom and dad anymore and throw down these trips and their business ran in their absence. There was Michael Thorpe who’s really into racing. He races Porsche’s and he decided to take some time off and go attend a racing camp and he loved it.

14:35
All these things started happening once people realized that they had the time and the ability to go and do these things. Whereas previously they just weren’t an option. So they weren’t on a lot of people’s radar. I myself, I’ve been traveling. We left our home in June last year. And so it’s been just over a year. I’ve been traveling for quite some time and I’ve met a lot of people, lot of Americans especially, that are remote business owners. And this is everything ranging from

15:03
people that have small businesses like printing t-shirts, real estate photography, to extremely large businesses where there was one guy who owned a manufacturing business with about 400 people in the States. There’s private equity people, there’s all sorts of people, right? But they’re going away traveling, they’re spending three months somewhere in Europe with their family and they’re doing a little bit of work during their day, but mostly enjoying life overseas. And again, with their kids being a certain age.

15:34
This stuff can be replicated in construction too, in my opinion. And we’ve seen that happen with our clients as well. And most people that are currently stuck, stuck in construction businesses don’t see this as a possibility. So it’s not even on their radar, right? They’re just trying to, like I said, they’re living the punchless life, just trying to get to the next thing and the next thing and next thing, but they’re not living an intentional life and planning for the future and planning for trips away if people aren’t traveling.

16:04
or whatever hobbyist people might be into as well. It’s just not even a possibility. This may sound crazy if you’re stuck in the day to day, working 60 hours a week, just putting out fires all day. But if you ever want your business to run without you, one of the things you need to figure out is how are you going to fill that void? And I’ve worked with somebody, one of our clients, he actually really struggled with this. was…

16:31
stuck in the business for several years. We helped him put the right processes and systems in place or it without him. He hires and he actually kind of floundered for a while because he wasn’t prepared. He didn’t have something else to fill that void. And one thing to be careful about is you don’t want to be the firefighter who becomes the arsonist. They get so used to being the firefighter, the problem solver.

17:01
They will either let problems become fires or maybe they will go set little fires unconsciously. So you need to have a plan. What are you going to occupy that time with hobby, non-profit, travel, family, another business, venture, something. So that’s one of the…

17:27
big takeaways from this is if you want to systematize your business and you want it to run about you, start solving that problem first and you’re ready. So now let’s talk about some, some practical strategies. There are some internal constraints that keep people stuck, which we talked about fear, procrastination, some of that head trash, but there are also external constraints. are things that need to be put in place so that somebody can

17:57
have freedom from their business so that they can turn their business into a passive income source where they can run their business remotely while they travel. Like the people you mentioned, we’ve had other folks who’ve spent two weeks in Europe in the summer and they’re able to step away from business. So in your opinion, what are the big, the big rocks, so to speak here of the, the strategies that need to be in place to be able to run your business?

18:27
remotely or passively? What do you think are some of the big ones? The first one has to be you’ve got to have the right team on board, the right people on the bus in the right seats and with clearly defined roles. If you’re currently wearing multiple hats in the business, that’s clearly not going to work. If you’re trying to do sales as well as project management, as well as estimate, you’re just doing a bit too much. And ideally, if you want to

18:57
spend your time somewhere else, all you’re doing is checking in with the team. And so you need feedback from the team in the form of, you’ve got software in place like JobTread or BuildTrend or any one of those that shows a dashboard of everything that’s happening. And it’s correctly filled out by your team as well going on. The last one would be, and a major one would be, the financial side of things.

19:25
and making sure that again, you’ve got a financial dashboard in additions, QuickBooks, like we go through with our clients and we call it the revenue maximizer, but basically something that allows you to project the next 12 months at least of the business and looking at what projects you’ve got, what sales need to be converted and what you’re over at Crosser like, do you cost a good sold is like and what decisions need to be made again to hire people, to minimize costs and so forth. Those are big strategic moves.

19:54
that you need to make as the owner of the business. But the day to day can always be delegated to someone else. Hey Todd here in a quick break to tell you about something. If you’re a construction business owner and you’re still the answer key for every important decision in your business and you want your team to own more, maybe all of the day to day, this is for you. We’re hosting the Construction Leadership Advance in Nashville, Tennessee, October 22nd and 23rd.

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2026, it’s a two-day live in-person curated experience designed to do one thing for you. Turn you and your key people into a real leadership team that owns the day-to-day so you can focus on strategy, key relationships, high leverage decisions, and actually being the CEO of your business. Over two days together, you’re going to get clear on who’s accountable for what, how decisions can get made without you, and how to delegate results.

20:48
So work actually gets done without micromanaging. And maybe the best part is you’ll be doing that work in a small room full of like-minded construction business owners and leaders just like you from all over the US and Canada who are dealing with the exact same stuff you are. Not a local home builders association breakfast full of competitors who keep all their best ideas to themselves. Frankly, the relationships you’ll walk away from this event with could be worth

21:18
price of admission. Here’s the deal. Registration closes September 22nd. We only have a few seats left. By the time you listen to this, we may not have any seats. So if you want your leadership team to carry more of the weight and take over the day to day, go get your seat for the construction leadership advance at constructionleadingedge.com forward slash live L I V E.

21:44
or go click the link of the show notes to get the details and grab your seat and a seat for your key leaders. We’ll see you in Nashville. One thing I would add to that would be a big piece is to have documented processes on how things will be done. So you could take what’s in your head and get it out of your head and make it more accessible because you can’t run your business remotely.

22:11
You can’t be a passive business owner. The only source of information is you. So getting it out of your head into a playbook or documented process is crucial. You led us through an interesting exercise at our Nashville meetup. And it had something to do with going to federal prison. It was pretty popular, pretty thought provoking. Can you talk about what that thought exercise was?

22:39
It was quite interesting and you know, people laughed at it at the beginning, but it forced them to think quite creatively. And in fact, a lot of our members went back to their business and did the exercise, the whole business count through. But basically our event was at the end of October last year. And I said, all right, what happens if you’ve committed, committed some grave crimes and you’re going to federal prison as of the 1st of January, 2020, you know, at the start of this year. I said, what would you do?

23:08
What would you set up in place to make sure that your business still runs? And I think if I recall correctly, you were allowed one collect call with one key individual from your business every week and maybe two emergency calls or something like that. And it was quite interesting because people had not thought of them being that far removed from the business. They’d always thought that, you know, I’m always going to be within reach. Whatever happens, I can just resolve it.

23:37
The idea of being placed behind bars and hoping that the business still runs without them forced them to think a lot more creatively and especially how they would structure things like meetings even between their team. You know, having the right agenda, having people following a certain process instead of either not having meetings or showing up to a meeting with information that’s completely useless to the other team members and then how it’s actually reported back to them.

24:07
as well. We had a few businesses where there are a husband and wife or there’s two partners that are owners of the business and things like that. And when they’ve gone home and they’ve done the prison exercise with their team, the team has just said, all right, well, when the husband goes to prison, the wife’s going to run the business, which the wife wasn’t prepared for. so, you know, going forward, they realize that, all right, that’s what’s actually going to happen. If something does happen to the key individual that’s the business owner.

24:36
everything’s going to fall back on their spouse who, you know, may not actually necessarily want that. But unfortunately that may be the only source of income that the family has to. And so that got them thinking, right. It’s not just about me getting out of business. It’s also setting up a business that in my absence, it runs itself. It’s not just falling onto my next, next of kin. Yeah. There was a question about conjugal visits that came up. don’t know if we actually solved that or not. There’s a spectrum of

25:04
of options here, we started off talking about how do you set your business up so it provides freedom for you? So you can travel, run it remotely, turn it into a passive income source. Then there was the exercise of what if you go to federal prison? And I think somebody mentioned, maybe you said this like, look, there’s 40 or 50 of you in here. There’s pretty good chance one of you is going to go to prison at some point. That’s a real possibility. But then on the other end of the spectrum is

25:33
From a business continuity standpoint, what if something happens to the owner?

25:39
I had a call with a guy a couple of years ago and he owned a construction business and a good friend of his who owned a different construction business died in a car wreck a few weeks before and just left the business in a complete mess. I remember one of our members saying, and when we were talking about making plans for the business to run without them, he like had this light bulb moments and his name was Jerry. And he said, we have a moral obligation to do this.

26:08
because if something happens to me as the business owner and it’s all in my hand, the business is designed to fail without me, then the business just crumbles and that falls on my family. And my wife’s going to have to deal with all of that or my husband’s going to have to deal with all of that while trying to grieve the loss of me. And the business can’t operate because it’s so dependent on me. So whether you want freedom, whether you want to

26:36
set up a contingency plan for federal prison, or you just want to take care of your family. The answer is really the same is to put the right systems in place so that it can run without you. That’s, that’s the ultimate answer to business continuity is I worked with one of our groups. We spent a lot of time talking about business continuity. It just kept pointing back to the business has to run without the owner. That’s the single.

27:05
single point of failure in so many businesses is the owner and it’s overly dependent on the owner. And as I said, I’ll say it again, most construction businesses, especially small businesses are designed to fail without the owner. And if you take the owner out, just crumbles. In those cases, it’s because the owner is the business.

27:31
Everything is run through them or bought. So it’s very hard for the business to kind of run its own without that becomes one of the issues is its identity. Their identity and their their business are like conjoined to twins. There was a really bad Matt Damon movie called Stuck on You, I think, where he and Greg Kinnear were conjoined twins. Really strange movie.

27:56
But it made me think a lot of business owners had that kind of relationship with their businesses. Like their identity is like a conjoined twin. You can’t separate their identity from the business. And that causes a lot of problems. What advice would you give to someone who’s saying, yeah, like my identity is wrapped up and intertwined with my business? I think the awareness is probably the biggest change. It’s about looking at

28:26
how much of your identity is wrapped up with the business and what needs is the business fulfilling for you? And it may be a scary question, but asking yourself, who are you without your business? What’s the meaning of the rest of your life? Right? Because most construction businesses that are working 40, 50, 60 hours a week, whatever the case might be, that is their life. There’s not much more to it. Right? We hear this quite often too from our clients that

28:55
They’re like, well, I just know that if I just, if there’s an issue with the business, whatever, I can just work hard and work through it and get it done myself. I just not, I just know that I can solve everything and get to the next problem next week, next week, which is fine. But, you know, it just feels like a need that you should be satisfying somewhere else. There should be multiple people involved in the business that are solving the problems of the business. should not just be one individual itself. And you need to scratch that it’s somewhere else.

29:24
Basically. like we were saying earlier, find a hobby or find something else that actually brings you joy, gives you pleasure and satisfies needs like personal growth, socializing, et cetera. It can’t just be the business all the time because in doing so, as we said, in terms of continuity, you’re letting the business get stuck on you. I think there are people listening to this who are saying, yep, I need to fix this myself. And the truth is they’re going to really struggle to fix it themselves.

29:55
We’ve seen great results with our CEO Alliance members who are part of a small group who really get to know each other and who are transparent with each other. What’s, what are some of the biggest benefits that you’ve seen from our CEO Alliance members and maybe even in your own life from being part of a peer group working through these things? think a lot of people, a lot of construction business owners again, feel like

30:25
They’re unique and they probably feel alone due to that. But everyone that comes through our program recognizes that everyone else that’s in it is effectively the same person. has the same mindset, the same mentality and therefore the same problems in their business too. And a lot of people, especially when we have lot of events, they’ll come out and they won’t want to leave each other’s company. They want to stay out and…

30:53
continue their conversation as late as possible, right through till Saturday morning when we end up having to leave. And I think the comradery and the bond that they form with these other business owners is probably the most important part. I’ve seen people that have that bond hold each other accountable, both as construction business owners, and they both are able to achieve their goals simply because there’s someone else trying to achieve the same thing that you are.

31:22
We see a lot of, you know, group therapy for lack of a better word, but everyone talking about things like procrastination, what’s holding them back and how to get through it. And everyone’s supporting each other to get through it as well. I find a lot of fulfillment in what we do here. Because you get to see people make these changes and we get to see people actually come out of their shell and recognize that, you know what? I’ve been the problem and I need to fix myself so that I can fix my business. And it’s…

31:51
It’s awesome that we can actually facilitate that. Yeah. I’m reminded of one of the things that I’ve heard several times at live meetups is we’ll go around the room at the end and ask people, what was one of your biggest takeaways? And a guy named Mark answered very quickly. one of my biggest takeaways was these are my people. And this was one of the first times he’d ever been in an environment surrounded by

32:19
other construction entrepreneurs with exactly the same problems that as he did, even though his business was fairly unique, he was like, these people get it. These are my people. And it’s incredibly powerful to be part of that. And then it, the nature of a blind spot is you can’t see your own blind spots and you need somebody else to help you point out your blind spot. Or maybe when they point out bears, might say, you know what?

32:49
I also have that blind spot. And then as you mentioned, that extra layer of accountability, for some reason, we’re much more likely to let ourselves down and not follow through on commitments we make to ourselves. But if we make a commitment in front of somebody else, we’re much more likely to follow through with that. Just having that, we don’t want to let the team down. We don’t want to drop the team GPA, so to speak, and just having that.

33:19
is so powerful. A lot of people, if they’re really being honest, they’ll say, you know what, my number one problem is isolation. I don’t have anybody to talk to who understands what I’m dealing with. It doesn’t have to be that way. So there are groups available. You don’t have to go through it alone. You don’t have to figure it all out yourself. You don’t have to read the wheel. Our CEO Alliance is one way to do that. You’ve heard us, if listening still, you’ve heard us talk about live events. We’re having another

33:49
live meetup in Nashville in October, 2026. It’s all about how to create leaders who take over the day to day leadership as a force multiplier. So it’s going to be a great event. We’ll have some more details in the show notes for that. For people who are interested in running their business remotely or traveling extensively, you’re part of a program that currently that is all about that. Can you talk a little bit about, uh,

34:17
the program you’re part of and what that’s like. And if people are interested in how might they go find, maybe the question is what’s available out there. So for people who want this kind of lifestyle, they don’t want to have to reinvent the wheel on their own. First of all, I’m not affiliated with this program. I’ve got nothing to sell or anything like that, but you know, just so people can understand what else is available. It’s called boundless life and

34:46
Me and my wife used to travel extensively before we had kids. And as you understand, that gets a lot harder to do with kids. So I’ve currently got a four and a half year old and my second son will be two in two months. So, you know, we started traveling with him when he was about nine months old and we did six months of just traveling on our own. went through Canada, the U S Greece, Cyprus, and it was quite hard. You’ve got to keep the kids preoccupied all the time.

35:15
You know, you don’t really get that much time to yourself. And we found this program that’s effectively a three month cohort. It’s an American company. They’re usually, you know, American people that you go on these on these trips with, which may be good and bad at the same time. But we went to a couple of locations. We spent three months in Tuscany and Italy. We spent three months in Greece on an island. And we’ll head to Bali in Indonesia shortly. But you basically you sign up.

35:43
for a three month cohort and there’ll be a bunch of other families there with you. You know, we had, I think 40 other families on the last one and you do the entire three months with these other families as a community. But the boundless life provides you with accommodation, the co-working space and lots of people do work and most importantly, education for your kids. So your kids can go to school five days a week in these locations and it’s like a Montessori or Finnish style.

36:12
education facility and that allows people like me and my wife to, you know, hang out other adults during the day, other like-minded adults, I should say, and basically do what we like to do in a foreign country, but with our kids in tow as well. And lots of people that were on this co-op with us, a lot of them had their own businesses and this is actually how they were able to get away and not spend as much time working. There were also people that had full-time jobs that had, you know, had some remote working arrangements done and

36:42
they were working odd hours in the middle of the night on Eastern time and, you know, partying during the day or whatever else they wanted to do. But there’s options like this. So it’s not just Boundless Life. I think there’s plenty of others. we had, again, as I mentioned, Josh and Mary Fravel, our clients, they bought a motor home and just started touring themselves and they were homeschooling their kids through there as well. And there’s people that are doing charitable work, going and working overseas too. it’s worth looking at what does inspire you.

37:12
and what you would like to do, how you would actually like to spend these next few years, feel like, instead of just working all the time. I feel like a construction business especially isn’t something that’s sort of just done. If you turn 40 and you now have to just keep working till you’re 65 or whatever, I do believe that you do need income, passive income through that business, but it doesn’t have to be your job.

37:41
There’s a book called I Would Zero by an author named Bill Perkins and he talks about the utility of time, the utility of money. The problem is when you’re 40, you’re able to do certain things physically, right? Which you may not be able to do when you’re 60, 65 at all. And so this idea of that, I’m just going to keep working until I’ve saved up enough to then go and do all these things that I want to do. And it might not be travel, it might be something completely different, could be.

38:09
something like hunting and fishing as well, which could be quite physical depending on what you’re doing. But you’re just unable to do it because you’re just not as healthy, as fit, as active as you used to be. And so it’s worth looking at these segments of your life. know, how do you want to spend your time in your 20s, in your 30s, in your 40s, in your 50s and so forth, instead of just saying, all right, I’m just going to work, work, work, work, work. And then one day I will have saved up enough or I don’t need the business anymore. And then I can go and do all these other things.

38:39
It’s possible to have a hybrid approach and do, but at same time, there’s plenty of other people doing it in the world. The traditional American approach of the deferred retirement, which is the work until 65 save up some enough money, which sort of undetermined and then suddenly shut it off and then retire. But then the reality is you don’t know how good you’re going to feel. you going to be physically able to enjoy it? Are you going to be alive?

39:08
I’m a fan of the distributed retirement, which is travel a lot, do the things you want to do while you’re young, while your kids are young. I wish I traveled more when my kids were young. Um, we’ve recently started traveling quite a bit and the message I would, I would want to share with people is you get to pick your lifestyle. Okay. You get to choose somebody’s going to choose your lifestyle. It might as well be you.

39:38
can be your company, your competition, your customers, they, this mysterious they, that’s all powerful. My advice is you decide, what do you want your lifestyle to look like? If you like to travel, get clear on what you want. If you like to hunt, fish, golf, ski, mountain climb, climb Mount Everest, whatever the case may be, just decide what you want and then work backwards and

40:07
What I’m here to tell you is you can design a business that will support your ideal lifestyle, but it starts with you deciding what you want. Don’t just take what life gives you. Enjoy the ride while you can. You don’t have to put all the good stuff off until after retirement. And frankly, a lot of those problems we talked about, like identity, purpose, and filling the void, you’re going to deal with those at retirement. So you might as well figure that stuff out now.

40:35
and start working through that. So it’s possible, but it all starts with getting clear on what you want. And then as an entrepreneur, the real beauty is you get to design this business to create the results you want. You don’t have to mistake what life gives. We call this right to left thinking. Go out to the right side of the page, decide what you want. Work from right to left, work backwards to design the business the way you want it. Set goals, work toward it.

41:05
that we’ve seen a lot of people change their business and change their life. That’s actually why most people start their business in the first place, because they just want to live life on their own terms. They don’t want to have a job and work with someone else and, know, punch in and punch out things like that. And what has happened over time though, is they just got lost amongst, like I said, living a punchless life and just, you know, getting things done for the business as they arise, because there’s so many of them.

41:33
Instead of intentionally planning their goals and what they want the future to look like. That word intentional is really important. A lot of people are just passive, just taking what comes, but see intentional is important. I’m a big fan of what our, where our clients like they’re more along the lines of let’s, let’s decide what we want and then compel events to meet the plan. Let’s compel events to meet the plan. Let’s make our business what we want it to be.

42:02
and get in the driver’s seat of the business. So great stuff. Well, Manish, thanks, man, for the work you do with our CEO Alliance and the impact you’ve had with our folks. Thanks for taking the time to be on here today. And I look forward to hearing more about your upcoming travels. Hey, before you hit stop and skip on to the next episode, let me ask you something. If you’re building custom homes or big renovations and you’re starting jobs before scope, subs and selections are completely dialed in,

42:32
How long can you keep scaling like that before something cracks? That’s exactly what we’ll unpack on your free business evaluation call. In about 45 minutes, my team will help you do a few things. Grade your current handoff from office to field. Put some real numbers to the hidden profit bleeds that could be in your business. There could be hidden profits in your business. Sketch out what a repeatable operating system would look like in your business from sales to pre-construction through completion.

43:01
And if it looks like we can help, we’ll book a follow-up call to talk about the right implementation program for you. If it’s not, you’ll still leave with clarity and next steps. We will leave you better than we found you. So to book your call and be sure that you qualify for that call, go to constructionleadingedge.com forward slash apply, A-P-P-L-Y, or click the show notes. There’s a link in the show notes and book your business evaluation call.