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Jon Paramore:
Hey, what’s up everybody? Welcome to the liberty to contract or podcast. This is Jon Paramore. So Hey, listen, in this particular podcast we suffered a bit from some technical difficulties. So the audio that you’re going to hear is just a little bit, uh, let’s, let’s call it muffled or maybe low toned, but, uh, that the content in this podcast is amazing. We want you to pay attention and in this podcast we’re going to go through a killing the business that is stealing your life. So, thanks for hanging out with us. Hang tight. Here we go. What’s up everyone?
This is Jon Paramore and you’re listening to Liberated Contractor Podcast. I spent the last 17 years growing and scaling contracts with companies all across the United States. Now I’m on a mission, deliberate as many contractors I can by breaking them free from the chaos and by giving them a company that supports the life they want to live.
Join me, as I explained how simple shifts and strategies are freeing contractors and helping them make more money than they ever have before. Sit back and relax and welcome to the liberated contractor podcast.
Hey, what’s up everybody? Welcome to the liberated contract or podcast is Jon or hanging out with Katie Martin. As usual, we are going to jump into some, some uh, which day? What are you trying to jump in here?
Katy Martin:
What’s up? Oh, what’s up? Okay, cool.
Jon Paramore:
So, hey, we’re gonna we’re gonna. Talk about some things here towards the end of the podcast. I’m just to give you guys kind of a preface. We’re going to be switched up the model just a little bit. Periodically bring on some guests, have some conversations with some people, um, and uh, and lighten it up a little bit and also a really bring on a guest that we feel like can also amplify the value that we work so diligently to deliver. So today, uh, let’s get after it today, the thing we’re rolling through his killing the business that took your life. So that’s the title of today’s podcast.
And what I want to do is, is, uh, go through a couple things right out of the gate that, that are gonna. Set the tone for the podcast today and really give you some clarity on what we’re after here. So a lot of times, uh, I don’t care if it’s in the group chats, a social media, we hear people talk about this stuff a lot. But a lot of people that we come in contact with are working what I’ve been legal at this point, a ridiculous hours working hours nxs 12, 14 some people even 16 hours a day.
I’m getting very little sleep, very little interaction with their families, their friends, any type of social life. And we’re gonna do our best today to remove this stigma that says that business ownership, entrepreneurship, owning a contracting company on some level has to be this way.
Because I, you know, I lived in that space for a very long period of time. Um, you know, I, and I’m going to tell the story here just a little bit about, um, you know, some, some things that happened to me when I was younger and, and, you know, kind of the mold that was formed early on that led me down that path to believe that that was necessary and required.
And then we’re going to break down the stigma and the mold and show you in this podcast and tell you in this podcast a way that you can stop immediately that pattern of those long hours and how to regain control of your life. So, um, before we get rolling here, one of the things that, uh, I’m going to talk to Katie about here is why do you feel like the majority of the people working these really long hours, what do you feel like is the purpose or reason that, that they feel like they have to give up such a large portion of their life?
Um, and, and work all these hours, especially in the early part of building a business because they’re just told that’s what’s required, right? Do, do the work. That’s what’s required. It’s long hours put in, put in, you know, putting in the hours, put in the time, you’ll, you’ll benefit from it later. So I mean, in the beginning, that’s what most people are told. It’s just hustle and grind and hustle and grind.
So here are some words that we are going to slowly start to deprogram from your mindset, a words like hustle that Katy was talking about. Hustle, grind, um, you know, like we, the, the words that you are so programmed to believe when you’re younger that it’s necessary that it’s required that do you know the term, do the work.
So there is not necessarily a bad thing about doing the work, but what it’s missing is kind of the guts. So people have taken that fragment, did turn do the work and what they failed to put into, uh, the, the guts of it is what is, what, what, what work are we talking about? Right. And so the problem is like it doesn’t matter the V, the people that work through the do the work phase and a lot of people out there saying that it’s a pretty a coin phase or phrase at this point that’s pretty much all over social media and the Internet like man, you gotta you just kind of do the work. Right? So what does that. What does that mean to you?
Like when people say do the work, what’s the let’s, let’s just talk about like what are, like, what that all involves? Like what does that mean to you also? What people, what people usually they misconstrue that and then they, they think do the work as the hustle and grind aspect. But really doing the work is like, are you investing in every area of your life to where it’s not where your business and what you’re thinking as the quote unquote work isn’t completely sucking the life out of you?
Yeah. Yeah. So, so here’s what we’re talking about, right? So that the majority of the people that we come in contact with that are working those long hours when we sit down with them one thing right out of the gate that they tend to lack is the purpose for all of that work. Right?
And so they’re, they’re willing, they say things to us like I’m willing to sacrifice some time with my family and friends and hobbies and whatever the case may be to build something now that serves me later and, and, and the, and the process of doing so essentially what they’ve said is I’m willing to give up a piece of my life to serve this business, to get to the point where it will eventually serve me. And I’m going to tell you, as somebody who believed that for a really long period of time, I was way, way off, way off because the reality is that the life that you want to live.
So this is where the, the like, I mean we’re, we’re eight minutes, seven minutes into this podcast. I’m about to lay this out for you. And Black and white, cut and dry. You have to start with the life that you want to live in mine and then build the business that you want to serve that light from there.
If you try to do it backwards, you’re going to sacrifice your life for a business that may not ever show up, so you got to listen to that and hear that and really let that resonate deeply with you and understand if you’re in a position right now where every single day you’ve essentially built a prison for a business and this business is not showing up in a capacity that’s helping you get more life than it is.
It is backwards and every single day that you show up to serve that business, you’re essentially giving away a portion of your life. It’s you, that thing, uh, that, that may or may not ever result in something amazing, right?
So it doesn’t matter your age, whether you’re young and just starting out or you’re older and you’ve been in this hustle and grind and do the work phase for a long period of time. What I would recommend is you stop and take a hard look at where you are with these things and you really start to write down what is the lifestyle that I really want to live like. I think that’s gonna be incredibly important.
Katy Martin:
Right? So from your sacrifice. I’m sorry. Don’t even in. Don’t sacrifice the stuff that makes you, you write things that you enjoy, right? I mean you’re, you’re, if you have a family, like that’s very much who you are. So you know, dedicating time to them. But what are, what are some things that you did as a kid? What are some things that like that actually bring you pure joy because if your business can’t support something that’s bringing you pure joy, there’s what’s the point of doing it?
Jon Paramore:
Yeah, and one thing that really brought this home for me was us working with one of our mentors and I remember him saying to me, you know, the guy is making an incredible amount of money, but he’s doing it on his terms. And that was really hard for me to fathom. You know, like when we first started talking to him about doing work, him and working with him, uh, you know, I just, I remember asking him like how many hours a day are you putting towards the work that you’re doing?
And he’s like, well, if I’m being transparent and honest with you, I basically entered traditional sense work about three to five hours a day and now you need to understand this van is a multi multimillionaire work in about three to five hours a day and the rest of the time he spends investing in himself, investing in his family, investing in the things that bring him joy.
Investing in the things that, that, that helped him gain knowledge. And so that essentially from where you are, that what I’m about to tell you is, is probably going to be the game changer in the shift for you. The difference between working 12 hours, 14 hours, whatever it ends up being and serving the business.
Now, the difference between working five to maybe eight hours a day, having the business serve you comes down. But to your capacity and ability to learn how to become a master of what you’re doing as opposed to what you’re doing, being a master of you.
And that’s, that’s the big difference. And what that comes down to is, well, that’s great. Jon, how do you do that? I’m going to tell you, I’m going to actually tell you that. Spend more time focusing on how to master what it is that you’re doing, studying, researching, developing, building, encouraging, delegating.
Come into contact with people who already know how to do whatever it is that you’re after. And then watch, learn and grab a hold of whatever it is that they spent the time learning. Pay Them to get access to that knowledge, learn it faster and execute with precision.
That’s what it is, right? And we’ve talked about this in our podcast before. If you’re sitting behind the desk and there’s any part, let’s do so. If you were just to sit down today and you were to write down all of the parts of your business that, that you feel like don’t serve you and you were to look at it all, that, all that stuff and you were saying, well, here are your five things that I’m working to still try and figure out that something.
I’ve told you this and you know, maybe you haven’t listened. Maybe this is your first podcast. You’re listening to you. Whatever the case may be. Somebody out there already knows it like somebody knows it. Like somebody posted yesterday and I’ve seen this, this post on social media before where it’s like we’re not really like the majority of the people on this planet are not inventing something new.
They’re just recycling content. That’s what they’re doing and when you come in contact with it for the first time, you have a choice. Like you can either start from where they started to try to figure it out. Or You could come in contact with the person that already knows it and hand them some of that green stuff called cash and they can teach you. How to do it. And so it’s like, well, here’s the other question that pops up. I’ll ask you Katy.
Well, the problem is if I don’t work 10 to 12 hours a day, then I don’t have the cash, the turnaround, and invest in somebody to teach me the things that I know already know. So where’s the balance? How do I do I work less and make more so that I can learn more faster.
Katy Martin:
You have to have the people to help you do that. What does that look like? So if you’re, we’re. So if you’re the sole person that is like, let’s say on the sales side of things that’s producing revenue, you’re probably going to need some other people that can produce revenue. Um, if it’s, if it’s a matter of you’re doing, you know, physically doing certain aspects, you know, operational aspects, you’re going to need somebody that can do those specific things or somebody, certain things that you can delegate because you can’t work on it if you’re consistently doing it.
Jon Paramore:
Yeah, yeah. You can stay in that old school bootstrap method if you want, but you’re always going to be, and I use this term lightly because some people could take it and throw it derogatory term on it or whatever, but you’re always going to be held hostage or become a slave beer. There’s no way around that and the stuff that Katie was just talking about, like if you sit down and you slow down. We talked about this before to slow down to speed up. If you sit down and you slow down and you write out all the, all the parts of your business that are no longer efficient, they’re not effective.
They’re stealing hours away from new. Every single day. You have a breakdown there, a process, a person needs to go in there. There’s. There is a breakdown there that could be made more efficient and and so the only way to reverse the cycle of giving up hours inside of that thing that you can be using to hang out more with your family or push the business in a different direction or enjoy some hobbies or whatever the case may be or be able to take off without the feeling of guilt that you’re taking off is you have to, you have to write out the process that’s missing or what’s inefficient and develop a way the mastery side developed way or find somebody who knows how to make that more efficient.
That’s it. So if you feel like there’s, there’s, you know, if you really look at your day as a whole and you say, you know, I spend 10 to 12 hours a day working and you know, if you were to really do the math right, we’d. Somebody wrote this out for us and I looked at it and it was like, it was like the modern day form of slavery as it relates to business owners. I mean, it’s like it.
So let’s say that you have the same 24 hours in a day that all of us have, you spend six of it conservatively sleeping. Now you’re down to 18. Let’s say that you drive 30 minutes to your work and 30 minutes home.
Now you guys, now you’re down to 17. Let’s say that you spend. You’re in that grind of like I spent 12 hours, 13 hours, 14 hours a day working. Let’s say conservatively you spent 12 hours a day working. Now you’re down to five now and then you spend likely an hour ish, maybe more a day. Let’s say two hours eating. Now you’re down to three. So you have three hours every single day that you get to hang out with your kids that you get to talk to your wife or husband there. You get to invest in yourself and do a hop
three hours a day as all you have left. So multiply that times three outlets. And let’s just say for most of you it’s more like two hours a day times seven days a week is 14 total hours. If you live to be, I don’t know, 50, 60, 70 years old and you multiply that map, that’s, that’s like less than one quarter of your life. You actually get to spend living.
Katy Martin:
And for me, like when I, when I saw that, like that was like, I saw that in and really started to pay attention to it consciously and just said that that shit is, that that is not acceptable. That’s not acceptable. Like so every process that I look at inside of my business as I am today, if it stealing life away from me, fuck it, I’m not doing it anymore.
I will find a way to make it more efficient or I will find a way to delegate it out. Or I will find a way to ask somebody who already has the answer to the thing that I’m struggling with so that this business cannot steal my life. So that’s the same thing for you guys that I’m challenging you on today, is you have to kill the parts about your business that are stealing your life.
Jon Paramore:
And just so you know, I’m not telling you to come at this place. It’s like a victim where some of you guys driving or listening to this podcast now are looking at it and going, oh my God, man. I’m like, holy cow, like how did I, how did I get here? And your mind might be trying to take you down some dirt road or some rabbit hole or whatever the case may be. You don’t need to look at the steam from a victim standpoint. You don’t need to look at all the mistakes that you made in the past. You don’t need to look at how much time you’ve given up up until this point.
You just need to stop, like, stop, slow down, write down all the things that are making your business not efficient or not serving you or whatever the case may be.
Make the list and start to correct it right now. That’s it. I mean, so you need to understand for me, you know, and most of you guys listening to this might be contractors or contractors on some level in some regard. You need to understand, for me, I missed the entire first year of my daughter’s life focusing on my business. Jason a book, and I’m never going to be able to get that time back like there’s nothing I can do to reverse that to go get that time back, but I make sure that that all the time that I spend with her now is present. I’m engaged, I’m talking to her, we’re having conversations, unclear about her hopes and dreams. I’m working to encourage her as a dad.
You know, all that stuff that’s, that’s the best I can do from here for right. I’m always gonna have this regret and the pit of my stomach that’s like, man, I wish I wouldn’t have done that, but in reality I also couldn’t be here giving you this message how I not give that up.
Right. So everything tends to happen for a reason or a purpose or whatever the case may be. And here we are talking about it today. Right? So from just from what you know and from our clients and all the people that we work with because we’ve helped a lot of people break the cycle. What do you feel like is the, from the mental side of it, what do you feel like is the part that that tends to keep people stop? Like why?
You know, when we start to go through this stuff with our clients at the beginning, we’re always met with resistance. What do you feel like is the, is the caveat or the thing that makes them go, well, this is just not possible.
I don’t know if it’s one particular thing, but that’s the. That is the core of the resistance. Like it’s just an end. I would say most of them are, are fairly open minded, but they don’t. They don’t really know what they don’t know and the problem is is that they’re so stuck in. They’re so stuck in the day to day that somebody has to physically, and that’s kind of what we do, right? We have to physically take them and remove them and say, okay, now look at it from here, and then they go, oh shit.
Like we actually could. Like somebody else could do this thing, somebody else could do this thing. Yeah, but it’s, it’s more of this. It’s more of they, they don’t think it’s possible because they can’t see what the possibilities are on the other side. They just can’t see it. It’s there. They just can’t see it. Yeah.
And I, and, and I, I will tell you, um, you know, we do a lot of different things. We help guys with legion, we help people find really great sales reps and really great employees to put inside of their organization to fit inside of the system that they want to operate. But what are the things that Katie and I are most proud of and I’m very blessed to be able to do for a lot of people, is to walk inside of their business and find the thing or things that are killing them and destroying the business slowly and take me eroding this style of life that they would really like to live.
And we, we basically walk in and choke those things out. I mean, we just walk in and say, this is where it’s at. Fish inefficient. Here’s where all the problems are. We’re taking the shit out as up today.
And I would say, I would say nine times out of 10, that creates a tremendous amount of anxiety because the majority of you guys have lived in, in this space for so long and been told this lie for so long that you have to hustle and grind and do the work and all this stuff for so long that when somebody comes in and, and radically disrupts that way of thinking, of course going to freak out.
Majority of you guys listening to this podcast are probably like, this guy is fucking out of his mind and maybe I am, but my responsibility is done.
You know, it’s not something that we guess at. It’s not something that we don’t have proof of. Right? So it’s, it’s something that I have to bring to the surface and say, you know, it is a, it has become an epidemic where people feel like that this is what has to happen.
And I’m here to tell you it’s, it’s fucking bullshit. Like you don’t have to work 12, 14, 16 hour days to be successful. You have to learn something different, which is you got to, you got to learn and understand the, the metrics and the breakdown of how to like the old cliche term, work smarter not harder. I would even say execute better and stop giving up your life, you know, for, for this business, like this business, like none of you guys. If I asked you and I said, why did you get into business?
None of you guys are going to be like, well, so I could build a business that eventually becomes my prison. Like none of you will say that.
]You’re all going to say because I didn’t want to work for the man because I didn’t because I wanted them to have freedom to take my family on vacation because I wanted to make the amount of money that I felt like I was worth.
But then we, you get years and years and I’m guilty of this too. Right? But then you get here’s and years into it and you’re like looking around and you’re still struggling over the same shit and now you’re trapped. There’s nowhere to go and you own a business. You’re liable for it. All the stuff that happens you, you’re trapped in it and when your wife and kids are like, let’s, Hey dad, let’s break free today and go on a trip like impromptu. You’re like, I can’t, I have to work. I’ve been there.
Right. And, I’ve been there and I, you know, for all of you guys that are in that seed, I feel it man, like I totally empathize with you. Totally get Katie and I both can.
They advise with you like you, you got to understand, especially those of you guys who have kids, they only stayed in whatever age they are for like a day.
The next day they’re a little older and a little older and a little older. Right. And I, I don’t like that feeling like my kids understand and have an have accepted the fact that dad has to work, but I’d never want them to feel like that my work is the priority over them and that’s what I’m talking about. Right.
I’d rather, if they want to hang out with dad, I’ve built an environment I can bring their assets into this office and we can hang out, we can draw on whiteboards, we can, you know, Katy and I are talking about putting swings in our office and slides and whatever, and because it’s the, it’s that involvement, I’ve got to work and I get that, but I get to choose it and I get to choose how that shit goes down.
Nobody’s going to tell how long I have to stay here or how long, how much shit I got to do. Like that’s all indicative of, you know, the lifestyle I want to live is clear and the work that the company and the business that we are building and have been delaying is clear to support that shit.
Katy Martin:
Right? Yep. So what on. I want to tell you a couple of stories we’ve talked to at least. I mean, I can tell, I can tell you three people that I’ve talked to in the last week who were business owners have some level and most of them are in a room in a roofing related. You know, roofing related business, but they were a business owner and so now they’re approaching, you know, their late forties, early fifties, and you, you, you asked them to tell, tell you their story.
So I asked them, tell me your story, how did you start? And they start out very passionate about, you know, I got into a business and I was a business owner and I wanted all this freedom and now full circle, all they wish for is that they could go to work for someone else so they could go just work eight hours and, and it’s, it’s just mind boggling. It’s full circle because like you said, people go into business because they say, well I want this freedom.
I don’t want to work for somebody else. But when I hear these guys that, like I say, I haven’t taken a vacation in 13 years. Yeah.
Jon Paramore:
Yup. And we’ve Kagan. I’ve had clients that have said that to us at the very beginning. Like I just, I just want to go on vacation once a year and we’re like, fuck that. What if you went on vacation every quarter? What if you went on like long extended monthly vacations? Oh No, it’s not. It’s not possible. It’s not possible. It’s like, why not? Well, because if I did, then this place goes to hell in a handbasket. Okay, cool. Now we’re getting somewhere. Right? So what would the business have to look like to not go to hell in a hand basket to put you in?
Are these things that you want? Like you guys? Listen, there’s no fucking limits. There’s no limits on the lifestyle that you want to live. There are only limits and parameters set by how you feel or how you sound inside of your mind that says, I can only go this far. That’s true. I tell them you’d like, and this isn’t a joke to us, like if you guys reached out to us and you’re like, I’m track, I’m gonna. Like if you are willing, I would walk into your place of business and free you and I’m never fucking dates like dates,
but the problem is most people are so rooted and that this is the way it has to be mindset that they usually meet us with some level of resistance to start because they’re afraid of like what happens if he really does break me free from what has become my identity. I don’t even know if I know how to live anymore.
Katy Martin:
Yeah, that’s, that’s a, that’s a totally different issue.
Jon Paramore:
It’s a totally different issue. Right? And I’m sure we’ll have a podcast about that, but there we were. Katy and I have had to like teach people how to live again. Like you just gotta like go home and fucking hang out with your kids. What do I do when I get home? You hang out with your kids. Well, how do I do that and not be thinking about the business all the time. You shut that shit off. Well, what happens if somebody needs me? So fucking what?
I teach people how to be self reliant like that. That’s the, that’s the part that you guys, I really want you to grasp today is that wherever you’re sitting right now and whatever situation that you’re in right now, you have to own the fact that you had your hand in creating some of that shit right, and as a ray of hope and sunshine, you also have the power to break the cycle. That’s the really cool part, right? That’s the point behind the name of the podcast and killing the business that took your life. You have the power to do that.
Do you need help? We can. Do you need resources? We can show you where to go.
Do you need, you know, like, like certain people in certain parts and Blah Blah. We could show you how to do all that shit, but as of today, for those of you who are listening to this, your responsibility is if you know people that are in this position that we’re talking about, including yourself, you’ve got to get this word out to them, that living life they’ve been living and that is giving up their life for the sake of the business is a bullshit mentality and everybody that you see that post that stuff on social media, I’m out grinding. I’m work 12 to 14 hour days.
Bob, we got to feel sorry for these people because the reality is I empathize deeply, but then when I see it because I’m like, fuck man, I wasn’t you. Which basically says you’re working this. You have no life. You have no life. You can post whatever you want on social media. You can post pictures of you and your work and your kids and your family and whatever the case may be, but I get fucking to you. If I sat down with your wife and your kids or your husband and your kids and I said, tell me about this life.
They would be like, it sucks and story, know you when you worked that long. It’s not possible for your kids and your wife and your spouse or whatever to really, really know, you know, so I know that this is a challenging topic. This is one that we have a lot of conversations about with people.
It’s, there’s a lot that goes into figuring out what you want and how do you get to the end result and how do you shift the company on like a 180 degrees to where you don’t have to serve it anymore and it starts serving you.
And, I understand there’s a lot to unpack as it goes through this. I, you guys can get us, get ahold of us directly, send us messages, Follow us on Facebook. You know, direct message me, direct message Katy, get Ahold of somebody in our outfit. If this is something that you’re really interested in doing, I don’t even mind if right now you don’t have the resources to hire us, help you. I can give you a breakdown or an outline or something that at least gives you a, you know, like where do we start from, right?
Taking control of your schedule and taking control of your calendar, taking control of the things that you want and the life that you want to live is a great place to start. It’s not an easy thing. It’s simple, but it’s a lot of work.
So ultimately what it’s gonna come down to is, you know, do you want to live in the pain of having a business that just keeps taking years and years and years off your life? Or do you want to go through a little bit of pain to shift this thing to get your life back? That’s, that’s really what it comes down to. Right?
So every single time you guys jump in with us and you jump on one of these podcasts, we’re super, incredibly grateful.
This is one that we highly encourage you guys to share this shit out of it and get it out to the masses so that people can stop and break this cycle because it’s everywhere and it’s polluting what? Like the, like the beautiful part of being an entrepreneur is being polluted by this mentality and thought process that you have to hustle and grind and all these hours every single day. So I’m going to give you some resources, right? Right now you can go to thesmashco.com.
