Kajabi Entrepreneur Stories of Inspiration with Remodeling Contractor

00:05 - I have another PBK guest, Dan bellman, who is joining us.

00:10 - Dan is part of the, I only have the postcard just right now, but our open for business book that we put together in terms of pulling back the curtain on our businesses with really candid, truthful entrepreneurial stories about what’s working now in our businesses, what wasn’t working, what we might change and things that we have learned along the way.

00:41 - So I am so glad that you are joining me today and cannot wait to introduce you to Dan.

00:51 - Dan is the founder of chief experts Academy, which is a resource packed, absolute treasure trove of information that provides ongoing support training and content for contractors and designers that are involved in the sales and development of plans for residential and light commercial buildings.

01:14 - Dan himself has more than 27 years of experience using and teaching the CAD software called chief architect.

01:21 - Plus his 20 years of experience as a remodeling contractor gives him the insights necessary to understand what it takes to run a successful design build construction company.

01:34 - Dan’s passion for helping designers and contractors maximize the compensation generated from their design services helps ensure that their designed sales become the profit center that these businesses deserve.

01:48 - Dan has had the good fortune of marrying his high school sweetheart and raising four beautiful kids.

01:54 - He takes time hanging out with his family long walks and riding his bike.

02:00 - He is always looking for ways to help those around him.

02:04 - And I can speak to that because as a PBK gold member, Dan is always so generous with sharing his experiences.

02:15 - Dan, I am so glad that you are here with us today, and I cannot wait for you to share with us like what’s working now in your business.

02:27 - So if you will give us a rundown because I know you’ve got lots of stuff going on.

02:32 - All right. Thanks. Tamson and I’m pleased to be with you too, and I’ll start out with you.

02:38 - You’re working in my business. So, so well, you know, as I said to give that quick thought, cause you know, as I’m talking to you, it’s just like we get together every week in our mastermind group with our goal call.

02:53 - And then I tend some of your other meetings every now and then I’m at your page where you have all postings and it’s like, I learned something every time I go over there.

03:01 - So it’s just, it’s been really wonderful.

03:04 - I always look forward to our Wednesday morning calls and meetings and to pick up, sometimes I pick up a ton of things, sometimes just a tidbit and then it’s always good.

03:13 - So just appreciate you being here and, and keeping everything going with what you’ve got going.

03:19 - It’s been a big help. So I think that’s been about a year now.

03:23 - I think, Yeah, There you go. That works, but you know, what are the other things that have worked for me is persistence. I mean, it’s bottom line is I’ve been, I started doing what I do a long time ago, back in 1993, when I found this software called chief architect that I fell in love with and I knew it would make a major impact on the construction industry.

03:51 - And I wanted to be part of that. So I became a dealer for the software.

03:56 - I became a trainer. I taught myself how to train people to use the software.

04:02 - I’ve always been kind of a techie guy. So that fit right in with what I like to do.

04:06 - And I was a remodeling contractor at the time I’d been doing remodeling for about 17 years and I use that software in my business for three years before I made the commitment to stop doing contracting and doing do chief architect design, I’m designing plans for others.

04:21 - I’m teaching people how to use the software.

04:23 - And at that point I was also selling the software and it’s been quite a journey ever since.

04:29 - So, you know, do the math, that’s, that’s a number of years now, 21, 21 and seven Longevity is an asset in many, many things.

04:41 - Yeah. So yeah, it’s been up and down.

04:45 - I mean, we’ve had good years, bad years, but it’s always been the coolest thing that drives me is what I see, what I teach and what, what this software can do to help people in their business and how it really, it changes the way people do business.

05:03 - I mean, it’s a simple CAD program for drawing buildings, for pizza, who would, who would, you know, give that much cred credence, but when you can use a software that draws it in 3d and now you can walk people through and show them things and talk about the, you know, how’s this gonna look and how’s this gonna look that becomes real. That’s cool.

05:21 - And so I think how much Kajabi changed our world enabled.

05:27 - I mean, I’m with ya on I’m with you on tech and change the world.

05:32 - I’m onboard with that, with that guts.

05:35 - Yeah. I’ve actually done a call like this with Kajabi to her. I was just saying how much their software has made such a big difference for my business.

05:41 - Software is a software is a big deal. And I can only imagine, especially in the construction industry where you have so many people, I just want to build with my, I just want to go build, I just want to go plan it or just sign it.

05:57 - And all of those pieces that having a way for you to teach them how to use it.

06:05 - And like you said, persistence, I find it’s easier to be persistent when stuff is easier to do so it works.

06:13 - I think they kind of blend hand in hand together.

06:17 - Yeah, that’s true. That’s true with anything.

06:19 - So it’s that Kajabi, if it didn’t work, I wouldn’t be using it.

06:21 - I mean, I’d use something else, but it works.

06:24 - Yeah. It just works. It’s easy to use and it works and you know, it solved a major pain point.

06:29 - I was going through at the time with my old membership software, which drove me nuts.

06:34 - And you know, that that 15 minute tasks that would take four hours would just literally just, I could pretty much depend on that.

06:42 - I wanted to change something. I knew I’d have to go do all sorts of crap.

06:45 - It’s all. But anyway, that’s the technology.

06:47 - It just gets better and better. So yeah.

06:51 - So That’s been cool. The other cool thing that, that has driven me to this point is in my industry, there’s a lot of people that undervalue their expertise.

07:04 - I guess it’d be a good way to put it. So you’ve got a contractor that’s been building for a long time and they, they just, they know how to do stuff.

07:12 - They don’t have to build a room. They know what needs to be done.

07:14 - What goes, where, how high it should be, what headers they should use, which floors they should use.

07:19 - And for them, it becomes second nature.

07:22 - And I think this is true for a lot of people where you just get so used to doing what you do all the time, that when someone asks you a question, you just answer it.

07:32 - Yeah, you should. Don’t, that’s a big, no big deal.

07:33 - It’s just what it is. And that’s true with doing plans for buildings and I’ve helped teach hundreds and hundreds of contractors, the value that they bring to the planning process so that what they used to be giving away or charging very little for they’ve now made a profit center in their business because they’re seeing the value that they’re bringing to the, to the projects that they work on it to their clients and what a difference it makes if they get compensated fairly for the services that they’re offering and Would be, how have you been able to help them learn that? Because I agree it, teaching people how to learning, how to value your own stuff, and then being able to pass that on, You know, consistency again, it’s just, I keep putting that meshes out there.

08:23 - Everybody I talk to I’ll ask them, how do you charge for your plans? And they say, Oh, we don’t charge much.

08:29 - And then we’ll say, well, let me tell you something.

08:33 - I’ve created a nice free handout that people can, you know, I think it’s 15 pages that can download and I’ve listed all the reasons I need to be doing it.

08:42 - That’s helped a lot of people just, again, just keeping up there, you know, I I’m on Facebook, I’m on social media.

08:49 - So I am involved in Facebook. I have Facebook group.

08:51 - I do YouTube. I do some Instagram. When I say I do it.

08:57 - I don’t necessarily do much of it. I, I do hire people that helped me with that.

09:01 - So because I’ve been able to build my business through all these years of consistency, I now have money to be able to do that.

09:08 - So that’s cool. And so that helps me get the message out.

09:12 - I started this show a one hour show once a week, which this one day I thought, well, that’d be a good idea.

09:18 - And sometimes that’s what you got to do. Just try it.

09:21 - And Oh yeah. So this, this Friday will be my 41st show.

09:31 - 41st. Yeah. So it took two. I took two weeks off.

09:34 - What kind of a show is it? It’s called the designer’s show.

09:38 - And I, I will get on there once or twice a month and just do cool things with chief architect, software, show people how it works and give them tips and pointers. Last week we just did.

09:49 - What’s called what I call it. Plan review, which I’m going to start doing every, every month where I just a client did a really nice plan. We just kind of went through it, showing people the cool things that he did in his plan.

10:01 - And then I offered all sorts of tips. Well, you should try this, this, this, and this.

10:06 - And, and it was really, it was really fun.

10:09 - So that’s really helped build my YouTube channel, my YouTube following.

10:13 - It’s gotten my hours of views up a lot. I know you’re talking about doing some YouTube things here and I’m excited to get involved with you on that.

10:20 - And so YouTube is a cool channel. I really like YouTube.

10:24 - It’s fun to get the word up. Plus I’ve posted all those shows in my blog.

10:28 - So now I’ve got content for my blog Using YouTube live for the shows.

10:32 - And how are you, how are you like filming the show? I use a program cross stream yard, excuse me, excuse me.

10:42 - Let’s call it stream yard. It’s an app that you can get and it’s, you can do it for free.

10:47 - Or I have the subscription, I think it’s 450 a year or something like that.

10:51 - And I can stream to up to eight different platforms at once. So right now I do my Facebook page, Facebook group and YouTube.

11:00 - I don’t, they don’t have Instagram and I don’t do some of the other channels that they have on there.

11:06 - So I do those three plus I have it embedded on my website.

11:09 - So when people come and watch the show, they’re actually watching it on my website.

11:13 - They can leave comments. And it’s really cool.

11:16 - It’s easy to switch between the viewers, your screen.

11:19 - It’s a neat piece of software. So stream yard is something I’d highly recommend.

11:22 - People look at if they’re wanting to do some live streaming, cause it’s so easy to use.

11:28 - It’s really cool. And that’s Saw the super bowl.

11:33 - We were flipping through some YouTube stuff when the super bowl was on and one of the live streams was stream yard.

11:39 - I was like, okay, now the whole world is going to know about stream yard. Just like they know about zoom.

11:45 - Yeah. That’s a cool story behind the COVID people.

11:48 - There are a couple of young guys developed it and after, I don’t know, three years or something like that, they’re doing quite well.

11:54 - So pretty cool. Yeah. So someone had a good idea and they said to go with it.

11:59 - So that’s, that’s the way it works in.

12:02 - And it’s just, you know, this whole internet world that we’re in, especially now in the pandemic when we’re kind of trapped at home and we’d have to do everything super zoom it’s thank God we have that so that we can at least stay in touch with people and we can see each other and we can have good conversations and continue to share and get our information, you know, get our content out there and puzzle learn from others.

12:28 - So that we’re very fortunate. I think I feel very blessed with that.

12:34 - I can’t imagine what they did. Can’t imagine what they did and that wasn’t 1908 pandemic or whatever it was when he didn’t have anything.

12:45 - Yeah. No way to connect, but also know like the immediacy of access to information about, okay, here’s, here’s what’s happening on this corner of the world and that corner of the world, which I also realized that the double-edged sword, because that’s why it became a global pandemic.

13:03 - We can get everywhere Exactly. Crazy time.

13:08 - So I’ll be, I’m looking forward to when this is over and we can start hugging people again.

13:12 - So that’s one of the things I miss the most.

13:16 - I’ve always been a big hugger. Totally agree.

13:19 - Yeah. Oh my goodness. Yes, boys. And I went out yesterday and we have been to see a few other human than I, my husband was like, can you check on something at home? I’m like, we’re actually out Isaac.

13:32 - I might, I keep tearing up. He’s like, why I go? Because the w like, I’m not going to take it for granted that I could actually walk into this store once again.

13:41 - And Nope, different things like that.

13:44 - I know. I know. Yeah. We’re, we’re pretty hunkered down here in my household too.

13:48 - We, we, you know, we go do our shopping and things like that, but no traveling, no nothing.

13:53 - I mean, I’ll hit my local coffee shop once a week, maybe because they do a really nice job of keeping things spread out and safe.

14:03 - So I’m comfortable being there, but not, not anywhere else.

14:08 - So, but yeah. You know, In terms of what’s working, I mean, we are in the middle of a pandemic.

14:14 - How did that what’s working now? How did the, how did the pandemic impact, like what you’ve done in the last year? Well, you know, I do a lot of live events where I, what I like to do is rent a big house and fill it up with clients.

14:31 - So I might rent last, last year, I was in Orlando on this week and I was looking at my date and I rented a 16 bedroom house, which in Orlando, they have lots of those because they have Disney and all of that stuff there.

14:49 - And I had all the rooms filled up with clients and we were there for four days and we, I taught chief architect classes.

14:58 - Plus we got to know each other really well.

15:00 - So it’s a really cool event that I do. And I would do those, you know, six to 12 times a year.

15:09 - Depends on what’s going on. And after that, I went to Dallas, did a conference room training.

15:16 - So those live events worked well since the pandemic hit.

15:21 - I’ve, that’s all gone. So I have nothing planned til maybe next year after the new year’s, which I really don’t have anything planned, but I’m planning to plan something.

15:32 - So that’s forced me to take everything online.

15:36 - I’ve always done a lot of online training, but now I’ve taken those live classes that I do.

15:40 - And I’d formalize them into online classes that I created.

15:45 - Four separate classes, came up with some good topics and of sales on those have gone quite well.

15:53 - So I’ve got, I’m starting my third, one of those four classes tomorrow, actually. And that that’ll be two, two times a week for three weeks.

16:02 - And then I roll into what I call mastering chief architect, which is a course that once a week for 90 minutes for 15 weeks.

16:09 - So it’s an extended course, but because it’s a software product that you’re learning slow slowest, sometimes better in that kind of a situation, because there’s so many things that get covered, that if you go too fast, too long, people can absorb that.

16:25 - So I’ve done that in the past. I did that course about seven years ago, and I’m finally redoing it, which I kept saying I was going to redo it because I was always too busy with my live events that now I’m doing it, Have nothing else to do prerecord these classes, or do you have mine? I’m the kind of guy that if I prerecord something, I get distracted real easy and I’ll never get it done.

16:55 - So I might get started on something and then I’ll go, Oh, I should do this.

16:58 - And I’ll do that. And the next thing I know the day’s gone.

17:00 - I haven’t done it yet. Put me in front of a light, just put me in front of a live audience.

17:04 - And I just go and I love it. I have fun with it.

17:08 - I interact. I know my topic extremely well because I’ve been doing it for so long.

17:14 - And that’s how I do my classes. I record those.

17:18 - Then I post them right away. So people can go back and review them right away.

17:22 - And then we take those videos and edit them.

17:24 - And we, you know, I use Camtasia and we timecode them.

17:27 - So then we go back and put the time code in with the videos.

17:30 - So, you know, we might have 50 topics in a class sometimes.

17:34 - So if you want to go to this topic, go to that time code and you’re done.

17:38 - And that works really well. So I’ve always done that with my training videos, instead of just doing something and plopping it up there, I want to make it easy for people to find things within the video.

17:49 - And so we put a lot of effort into editing those, plus it, you know, I’ll take a 90 minute class and I might cut out 15 minutes of fluff that doesn’t need to be there.

18:00 - Or often I’m kind of known for going over in my classes. I mean, I’ve taken, I’ve taken a 90 minute class and stretched it to three hours. No problem.

18:12 - And, and I will usually not get much. Drop-off I might have 100 people on in the class and I’ll have 80 when it’s done.

18:20 - So it’s, yeah, it’s a fun topic. I really enjoy teaching.

18:24 - And so that works for me. So safety that it saves you the time of having to prerecord and edit, which makes getting content out there heavy.

18:35 - You’re also aware of your strength, which is, Hey, if I prerecorded, it’s never going to get done.

18:42 - Well kind of hard to get a solution out to people if it’s still in editing.

18:47 - So Plus if you do it ahead of time, you don’t know if anybody’s going to buy it.

18:54 - Right. So, you know, my philosophy and you hear this from a lot of people that create the class and start selling it and then do it. If no one buys it well, don’t do it.

19:05 - So, yeah, Cause people, people saying, Oh, I’ll totally buy that until they enter that credit card number. I believe that you have to believe them when they put their credit card number.

19:20 - Yeah. The other thing I’m pretty excited about right now is I’m working with some other people that have great content that don’t know how to do this online stuff.

19:28 - So we’re joining forces. They’re going to come in and we’re going to create classes that they’ll do.

19:34 - I’ll help them set it up, market it, and you got to create a bit of a partnership.

19:40 - So that’s pretty exciting. You know, it’s not a formal business partnership, but it’s a collaboration.

19:45 - We’ll call it and very excited about that. So they’re excited, I’m excited and we’ll be able to bring content that I’m not very up on or, you know, knowledgeable about.

19:57 - They are, you know, kitchen and bath stuff.

19:59 - I don’t do much with that. So I’m excited about bringing that kind of content and I’m not looking for other people to, to do some different things.

20:05 - So I think we can, you know, I’ve built my platform to a spot where I can start doing that pretty easily now.

20:12 - So, so that’d be pretty cool. No, no, she’s fine to that as our businesses grow and they mature that in so many ways, we do become facilitators and connectors and organizers and beautiful, beautiful magic happens when you say, Oh, you’re, you’re excellent at this.

20:35 - I’m excellent at fit. Look at that.

20:37 - Like you put the ingredients together. And I think know The cool thing about it is I’m finding is that when we start doing that, we’re not just creating twice the amount of information or twice the value.

20:51 - We’re almost three times because you start putting people together and it’s not just a simple two times, whatever it is, you feed off of each other and you just bring more and having that exchange is really cool.

21:05 - Really valuable. Yeah. Well, is there something you would like to leave the audience with today? Gosh, you know, part of it depends on who’s watching this, but yeah.

21:18 - Just like us that are having fun, helping people online.

21:22 - Yeah. You know, keep, keep, yeah. Helping people online, find, find your sweet spot, where you’re bringing really good value to the people that you like. You know, they call it your avatar, the people that you have a lot in common with that you can help influence and help do better in their lives.

21:40 - Yeah. You know, in the information world that we’re in, people are looking for good content to help them in their personal life and their business, you know, just wherever they are with family members.

21:52 - I mean, there’s just so much going on and people are going so through so many different things that, yeah. Just find that sweet spot and go for it.

22:01 - Just put the word out. I got a friend that’s wanting to do some health training.

22:07 - He’s really a fit guy. He does a lot of cool stuff.

22:09 - He’s a wonderful online. And he’s been talking about it for years and I say, ah, Ken, well, where are you at today? You said, I just bought Camtasia.

22:21 - You got a video done yet on this weekend. I’ll check with him next week.

22:25 - And we’ll see if he’s got that first video done and says, yeah, I’m going to get 10,000 emails in my list.

22:30 - And you got that first one done yet. So anyway, I keep encouraging him.

22:35 - We’re good friends. So I can, I remember quite a bit, but he’ll get there.

22:39 - I mean, he’s done it before and he, you know, things came up and he made some changes and, but he’ll get back there, but he’s just keep got this technology thing.

22:50 - I got to get this and do this and do this and do this and just do it.

22:53 - Just like hit YouTube, live and record a video, just go do something post and post a blog video, do something, just do it and prime the pump and get it going.

23:04 - And that’s probably the biggest thing that you gotta do if you, if you’re stuck, just do that.

23:09 - And sometimes you gotta breathe deep and hard and just say, okay, I’m going to do it.

23:16 - And then you go do it. And once you push start and go, you go and that’s again, back to me with my recording and stuff.

23:23 - It put me in front of some people, one person.

23:25 - And I’ll go. So back to you asked me to do a testimony for you. I think, I don’t think I ever did it.

23:30 - So, so you put me in front of you and I’m good. There’s a testimony in the biggest sense possible.

23:39 - If anybody that’s watching, this is not part of tampons group, do you need to join now because it’s really a good, best thing you’ll ever do.

23:46 - Tamsen will take great care of you. So thanks again.

23:51 - Well, thank you so much. And it is so fun having you part of PBK and PBK gold and all the discussions that, you know, we have all the time.

24:03 - And I think every single one of us would echo what you’re saying in that, just though just start, might be messy.

24:13 - The beauty, which I like to tell, tell people there’s small, like luxury of small numbers.

24:19 - Like, yeah. It’s not like you walked in, you know, we’re on stage on the Oprah Winfrey show and you know, this horror thing happens.

24:29 - Most people aren’t going to see the first one, 10, 20, 30, but they’ll you get to practice that luxury? Just getting, When I, when I started this, when I started this in 1993, I knew that at some point I was going to get to a point where I would have lots of people and you know, I, I believed in what I was believing.

24:56 - And so I kept my everybody’s email. I started building a list.

25:01 - I started staying in touch with them one at a time, one at a time I built my list up to where it is.

25:07 - So when I look at my list, I, I recognize so many of the names on there and it’s really cool.

25:12 - And that’s why I built, I built a good following by just making all those people, friends. And it works.

25:18 - It really does. Yeah. It comes back to caring about people and Connect Exactly, exactly. And soon big hugs again.

25:28 - Yes, yes. One day soon we will get off zoom.

25:32 - I will be so thrilled. Well, we’ll never get off the zoom, but we’ll get out there and be with people too.

25:39 - We’ll do the combination Besides zoom to see people, which would be absolutely heavenly.

25:46 - Yes. Well, thank you again so much.

25:49 - And it is so generous of you to share with us.

25:54 - What’s working right now. Thanks. Tamsen thanks.

25:57 - Appreciate it. Thank you so much for joining Dan and I, I hope that you had a really great time listening to him and his story.

26:10 - Dan is such an incredible person and really likes to help wherever he possibly can and really is a true Testament to sticking with it.

26:24 - Like he mentioned, you know, persistence, consistency.

26:28 - Those really are key portions of running our businesses.

26:33 - And we have to remember not to ever undervalue those two things because you keep showing up, you care about the people that you are here to serve.

26:46 - And I have yet to witness a business that doesn’t do its very, very best and Regents goals when it is persistent, consistent and taking care of people.

27:01 - Thanks again for spending some time with me and Dan, very, very soon, there will be a book instead of a postcard and it is the open for business book.

27:12 - You can find all of the information in the links and we are thrilled to be pulling back the curtain on our businesses, sharing with you.

27:22 - What’s working now and maybe even inspiring you along the way, have a great day.

27:28 - And I will see you again next week for another interview as part of the open for business series. .