Latest / The ROI Online Podcast / [Feature Friday] Casey Grey on The Deliberate, Conscious Effort of Discerning Your Why - The ROI Online Podcast Ep. 49

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[Feature Friday] Casey Grey on The Deliberate, Conscious Effort of Discerning Your Why - The ROI Online Podcast Ep. 49 · The ROI Online Podcast

• 0:03
  Casey Grey: What's interesting is that when you become a media company first when you start to educate others, right, that's how you gain trust, is to teach people how to do things, whether they hire you or not, it's a way of giving back to the industry, whatever industry you're in, that's why I see it, we're gonna put all this content out there, most of the people who listen to our stuff will not ever spend a dime with us. And we're okay with that, because we're putting it out there. And we'll there's other ways we don't need everybody to hire us or spend money on us. That's not why we're doing it. One of the biggest takeaways that we get from it is that it forces us to be at the top of our game. So by us, putting our neck out there and telling people or teaching people, certain things about construction, interviewing people, whatever it may be, it forces us to be better. Because one, we need to find the best of the best. And we need to know what we're talking about when we're on camera. So it forces us to just be better every single day, and to stay in touch with what's happening in our industry right now.
• 1:00
  Steve Brown: Hi, everybody.
• 1:00
  Steve Brown: Welcome to the ROI online podcast where we believe you, the courageous entrepreneurs of our day, are the invisible key rows of our economy. You not only improve our world with your ideas, your grit and your passion, but you make our world better. I'm Steve Brown. And this is a place where we have great conversations with winners just like you while we laugh and learn together. Casey gray, welcome to the ROI online podcast.
• 1:35
  Casey Grey: Thanks so much for having me on the show.
• 1:37
  Steve Brown: So it's like I've had several folks with color colors for the last name on my podcast. So you know, it would make sense that we would include you as well. So welcome. And you have a podcast yourself the conscious builder show. And then your your website is the conscious builder, and then you you're coming up with an academy by the same name, kind of tell everybody a little bit my audience is we have a lot of business owners, entrepreneurs, marketing directors, etc. Just kind of give us a little bit of your backstory on on your construction business in Canada and why you chose to do it the way that you do it.
• 2:26
  Casey Grey: Yeah, so I guess we'd have to go back a little bit to about I guess, eight years ago, but you know, I started the business about 10 years been in construction 17 years at this point, but eight years ago is when my wife and I found out that we were having our first and what ended up being our only child. And around that time, we also did our first Tony Robbins event. And if you've ever I don't know if you're familiar with Tony Robbins or anything, but people will go to his events come back on like cloud nine, and they drank the Kool Aid, so to speak, right? That's the joke when you come out of it. So a lot, a lot of that stuff happened. But what happened with both of those events, or those two big events, essentially, is that our mindset started to shift. And it started to shift in a way that we started asking ourselves more questions. And, and really the question was why? Why do we do what we do. And at the time, you know, early 20s, at you know, I started the construction company, I just wanted to make some money, do good work, you know, provide a living for myself and for my fiance at the time, and wasn't really asking why other than the why was, well, I just want to make money.
• 3:34
  Casey Grey: Right? Then with those events, we started asking why if it was going to be more than that, obviously, money's important. We all need money to live and survive and so forth. But then when it really hit me is when we found out we were pregnant with our wooden beam son, we didn't know at the time. And I was thinking if I'm going to tell him that he can be and do whatever he wants, I have to do the same. I have to lead by example, as opposed to just telling him to do because what I realized is that my son's been my greatest teacher and that he does what I do, not what I say.
• 4:01
  Casey Grey: Right, so. So that's, you know, I learned that later on. But that was kind of the beginning, right? So that that was the consciousness that was brought to us, right? Hence the conscious builder. So it wasn't the conscious builder when I started the company. But my wife did, wife and I did start the conscious living podcast. And that was kind of the beginning.
• 4:23
  Casey Grey: And the conscious builder was actually the tagline for my construction company at the time. And then eventually, we turned it into the construction name, and we kind of built on that. But the word conscious does is really a state of awareness. You can make a change if you're not aware of what needs to be changed in the first place. So that's where we kind of started rebranding and really focusing on that word, and helping people raise their consciousness and in construction. Obviously, there's a million ways to do what we do.
• 4:48
  Casey Grey: We don't, we're not going to say sit in front of somebody and tell them they should do it this way or should do it that way.
• 4:55
  Casey Grey: Instead, we want to give them options so that they can make a conscious decision because we're all different. We all have different budgets, well, different needs different wants.
• 5:02
  Casey Grey: It's not us to say you should use that product or use this product, it's us, it's for us to say, here are the options, here's what we believe is best, but you choose what's best for you.
• 5:15
  Steve Brown: So, talk to us a little bit about the, the deliberate, conscious effort of discerning your why that just didn't just go, okay, we need to find a why. And then boom, it pops out. There's a bit of a process, talk to us about the process you went through to identify it and really get the words in place. Because Because you have kind of an idea, but it did some some work to get it identified, written out. And then then the Oh, the conviction, to say it and to defend it.
• 5:55
  Casey Grey: Yeah, you know, if I'm perfectly honest, I'm probably still trying to figure it out. And to some extent, it might change. I, I'm not gonna pretend I have it all figured out. But I do know what I'm good at. And every day that goes by, I do get wiser. And I get better at what I do. And what I realized is that we need to focus on our strengths and find somebody else to fill our weaknesses, especially when we're in business. And I'm good at bill, I don't swing the hammer much anymore. But I understand construction, I've gotten better at business, I'm good at communicating with people, I can get my message across. I'm I'm very trusting in the process. And in a higher power, like knowing that I can't The only thing that I can really control is myself my reaction and my action. And my thoughts.
• 6:45
  Casey Grey: I can't I actually I shouldn't say I can't really control my thoughts they come in, I just control whether or not I want to attach to those, but it's a whole other story.
• 6:54
  Steve Brown: Yeah.
• 6:56
  Casey Grey: But but but knowing that I've become, I've kind of stepped into what I feel like I'm supposed to be doing. Right.
• 7:07
  Casey Grey: And, and, and helping other businesses. You know, we do what we do on the, you know, with homeowners and helping them build better homes, but I know that we can have a big impact by continuing to show people what we do and what's possible for living in a healthy, comfortable home and efficient home by default. Right? So I've, I've kind of moved away from that a little bit, then back to it in a way and back to it. And I realized that everything keeps bringing me back to it. So it is my why like, I know that I can help people be healthier and be more conscious by talking about business and Building Better Homes.
• 7:42
  Steve Brown: You know, I think about when I was younger 20s even 30s. You know, it's like who I was then and who I am now.
• 7:49
  Steve Brown: And what was important to me then. And what's important to me now I've really changed our Well, there's some things that I wouldn't, I would I would agree that are similar, but what I was really thinking I knew and was the best dad has changed. And that's so that's interesting that you start your journey. I think we all think we know, were super smart at that age anyway.
• 8:14
  Steve Brown: But what have you learned that you don't know? Since your son has arrived? What is what's been some of the lessons that are kind of shocked you?
• 8:24
  Casey Grey: Or like I said the first one was you know, he does what I do not what I say so if he has he's if he has a bad habit, he probably got it for me not for mommy. Especially the frustration portion. The I think the biggest thing that's that's helped is understanding the importance of psychology I talk about this a lot now is I remember telling my wife because she's a by trade, like she went to school. She has a master's in clinical psychology. She was a she's not practice anymore, but she is a child and family therapist. And I remember when she was going to school for that I'm like God psychology, I don't need to know about that stuff.
• 9:01
  Casey Grey: And it's not that important. But that's that's everything that's marketing, right? That's, that has everything to do with life, right life business, it's 80% psychology, 20% mechanics. And if you don't work on yourself, you can expect other parts of your life to get better. So the number one, the number one thing that I've learned over the last eight years since I started a personal development journey, so to speak, which never really ends is that the best investment you can make is yourself. I spend way more money on mastermind groups and, and personal development books in and live programs not so much anymore than I would have spent if I went to school, right because I did. I'm a carpenter by trade. So I didn't have the university bills that a lot of people have, but I spent way more than University bills and everything else that I've done.
• 9:50
  Steve Brown: So where does that bleed over? Where did these lessons bleed over into how you manage your business now, in things epiphany that you stumbled into Where does the rubber hit the road on the business side of things? Well,
• 10:04
  Casey Grey: it comes down to people because especially in the position in the business that I'm in, it's not only do I have to manage my own state, I have to be able to manage homeowners, clients, and people change when you're working on their home. If you've whether you've either had your renovation done or build a custom home, or you're a contractor, you get it at the Manage employees. And then I have to manage subcontractors, sub trades, suppliers. And then obviously, there's the the home side of things too, right. So it all starts with myself. But that psychology aspect of it flows into everything, right? It's how I communicate, and, and it's understanding why other people react, and you know, and getting yourself in the ego out of the way, because when somebody gets upset, maybe they're not upset at you, right? It's not all about you, they could just be upset at the situation. And you just happen to be the person that's there at the time. And there's it, it bleeds everywhere. Really, right, that that's, that's what it is.
• 11:09
  Steve Brown: Yeah, I think the biggest challenge leaders face is how to communicate the vision for each aspect of where you're leading them, it's clear in your head, super clear. And even though you think you've told them, or you've shared it, or you've somehow described it, what what the picture is, in their mind, is shocking me, to me is like, really different.
• 11:36
  Steve Brown: And until you really define it, and review it in some way, whether it's writing down that vision, having a very clear scope of work, images, whatever.
• 11:44
  Steve Brown: It's, it can be a very different monster in their head.
• 11:53
  Casey Grey: Yeah, and I think, to some extent, too, we have to not get stuck on the how, right.
• 11:57
  Casey Grey: So when you have a visionary, you're aiming for a goal, a destination, whatever it may be.
• 12:03
  Casey Grey: And I recommend that you always have a new goal before you reach your first the goal that you're going after, so you don't lose momentum. But I think people a lot of times get stuck on the how so they stopped taking action, because they're trying to figure out the how, or I've never been afraid I'm more like the bull in the china shop. My partner and brother and business Chad, he's definitely more methodical. He's the engineer systems processes, which is good. So that's why we understand each other's strengths. And we can play off that right where I'm just like, Oh, I'm just gonna go and I'm gonna start running with this.
• 12:33
  Casey Grey: And he's like, well, well, we'll weigh that, right. So it's good, like, give and take push pull sort of thing. But what what that also allows me to do is I don't feel like I need to micromanage people, when I'm talking to people to your point is getting the vision out there.
• 12:49
  Casey Grey: And you say, like, Look, this is the direction we're going, this is what I want to accomplish.
• 12:51
  Casey Grey: How do we accomplish that? I have no idea. But we just need to start trying things and we need to see throwing spaghetti at the wall, we need to see what works podcasting, the YouTube channel, everything, like from a marketing perspective that those are things that we've been doing. And has it exploded? No, but we can see it going getting better and better. And, and starting to see that exponential growth on all everything that we've been doing, like you were mentioning before we started recording really is you're asking how things are going like we can't keep up now. Right? All the work that we've been doing now we're an overnight success.
• 13:24
  Casey Grey: 10 years in the making, right?
• 13:24
  Casey Grey: It's finally kind of paying off.
• 13:29
  Casey Grey: And we were at the point where we've hired since COVID has hit we've hired five people. And that's, you know, considering we were only around eight before COVID. You know, that's a significant increase in the percentage, right? So it's it's been just taking action and consistently moving in the same direction. Well, let's talk about that. you've hired five people, and but they're not construction people. One would assume that listening or even construction, you had people you hired five people to help build more homes or more walls or whatever it is that you're doing. But that's not the case.
• 14:09
  Casey Grey: No, so we did hire two construction people that are coming on, while they will be coming on. We hired two people to help actually sorry, hired three people in the office, two of them more on the marketing and content and a new kind of division that we're working on within the business with regards to doing an actual series and getting sponsors for that series. And then we just hired a salesperson today, actually, that will be starting after Labor Day weekend here. So I guess that's six people that ultimately will end up bringing on over this time, and we'll probably need more of the way things are going right but we've to some extent we know that it's slow when you bring people on it kind of adds extra work to To the plate, because you have to train them and you get to get them up to speed. But then they slowly start to take over things, assuming everything works out. And, and we have a pretty strict hiring process that we follow now that has, I think it's led us down once, but nothing like what it used to be when we just try and hire whoever was coming to us. So that's been a huge help as well.
• 15:20
  Steve Brown: So that's kind of unusual year construction company. And, you know, the folks that I usually work with it, they're, they're all over the board as far as type of industries. But one of the things I really try to coach them on as you need to change your mindset of how you see your company, your company, really, it's incumbent upon it to actually start to see your company as a multimedia publishing house, not a construction company in your case. But why what what's going on with you what convinced you?
• 15:58
  Steve Brown: And then that's a totally different set of skills and direction from where you started eight years ago?
• 16:06
  Casey Grey: Yeah, that's a good point. Like I definitely I've mentioned that to our team, too, is that we're a media company first and construction company second. And to some extent,
• 16:15
  Steve Brown: think of the statement you just said, That's, there's a big mind shift there.
• 16:19
  Steve Brown: Let's listen. So let's spend some time developing that because the folks that are listening, you know, I think they're feeling it. But maybe that conversation hasn't really gone around in some of their heads. And it'd be interesting to hear what that sounded like in yours.
• 16:40
  Casey Grey: Yeah, so it's like, I get it. So when when I heard when I started learning all this stuff, because I've done like I said, a bunch of personal developed business courses, all sorts of stuff. And then this is stuff that's taught all over the place. But it's true, like you hear you hear to hear you don't do anything with it. We started doing it pretty quick to me, it just made sense. And I just met action. I'm like, I didn't even know what a podcast was. I remember it was one of my employees. She's like, Do you listen to podcasts, I'm like, no, not really want to podcasts.
• 17:06
  Casey Grey: And just like, here's a podcast, six weeks later, we had a podcast. We just, we just made it happen. Right. And it had nothing to do with construction.
• 17:15
  Casey Grey: It was the conscious living podcast I'd mentioned earlier with my wife and I, but that was kind of the beginning of Okay, there. There's potential in this. But what, what's interesting is that when you become a media company, first when you start to educate others, right, that's how you gain trust, is to teach people how to do things, whether they hire you or not, it's a way of giving back to the industry, whatever industry you're in, that's why I see it, we're gonna put all this content out there, most of the people who listen to our stuff will not ever spend a dime with us. And we're okay with that, because we're putting it out there. And we'll there's other ways we don't need everybody to hire us or spend money on us. That's not why we're doing it. One of the biggest takeaways that we get from it is that it forces us to be at the top of our game. So by us putting our neck out there and telling people or teaching people, certain things about construction and interviewing people, whatever it may be, it forces us to be better. Because one, we need to find the best of the best. And we need to know what we're talking about when we're on camera, whether it's myself or my team. I'm the one on camera for the most part. But my team is on camera on the site as well. Right? So keeps them on top of their game, because all of a sudden, Brian shows up with the camera, and he wants them to talk about the project. And they need to know what they're talking about. So it forces us to just be better every single day, and to stay in touch with what's happening in our industry right now.
• 18:37
  Steve Brown: Sorry, so you haven't convinced me if I'm not a good, successful contracts construction company. Okay, I need to be better. But where's, where's this going to really help me grow the value of my business? That's, where's the ROI on that?
• 18:54
  Casey Grey: I guess it depends on where your business comes from. And where you plan on taking your business, right? You can there's successful companies out there that will just run it on referrals, a lot of our work still comes from referrals. If your goal is to just stay as a one or two, three man operation and just do kitchens and bathrooms, and this probably doesn't make sense, right? It but if you want to grow if you want to do something different if you want to change industry, this makes sense for me. We want to have a big impact on the industry. We want to be seen as the leader in healthy, comfortable and efficient building. That's our goal is to that that's the mission. And if and if we can by doing that, like I said we don't need to build all the houses. We like we just we can build a few houses a year and be totally fine. But if people learn from the few houses that we're building, then then perfect but as a business there's this obviously opens us up to all sorts of other ways to generate income. So if there's anything I've learned from business perspective is if you think of your business as a Parthenon, and you have all these pillars holding up your roof if you only have one pillar and you only do kitchens and bathrooms. And all of a sudden people stopped wanting to renovate kitchens and bathrooms, or maybe the economy goes crap or whenever something actually seems to have done the opposite around here. But if you lose that pillar, your whole roof is coming down. But now all of a sudden we make, we have income coming from renovations, we have income from Custom Homes, we have income from sponsorship, we have income from advertising on YouTube. So all of a sudden, we're starting to, we're starting to actually build something to not actually, that generates income as a business, which is great. But it also creates more opportunities for people within the business to move around, too, right. So one of the things I really love about being in the position that I'm in is that I can create opportunities for other people.
• 20:42
  Casey Grey: Sure, it's fun to get jobs and build million dollar houses and so forth. But I get more excitement from creating an opportunity that somebody else can take advantage of within the business.
• 20:52
  Steve Brown: All right, starting to make sense. Now. Would you agree that certain you're getting more opportunities that offer you a chance to hang out in your best where you really do your best work? There's a point when we're in survival, or just getting me to make the bills need to pay folks and we'll take, we'll take any job for a while, right. But when you start to define yourself to define what you believe, actually show your work actually set expectations that people should have a particular job, then you start to attract those people, do you not?
• 21:32
  Casey Grey: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Like we have people that want to work with us. We have people that reach out to us all the time now at this point.
• 21:36
  Casey Grey: Absolutely.
• 21:39
  Steve Brown: Yeah. And I had a conversation with James Sherman, who's the was the Chibok, Chief Operating Officer at HubSpot. He was talking about how people have changed the way they shop, live and buy, or them shopping, buying what and there's, there's some order that he says then I'm messing it up. But like, right now, people are spending time and doing their research, they're investigating, they're deciding who they're going to go with before they even talk to them. So as far as the sales process, your first touch, your first experience that you're delivering is coming from a multimedia situation, be it a podcast, a conversation where they just started you being interviewed, whether you're producing the content, that's that's where people are making the decision if they trust you, if you know what you're talking about what's unique about what you have to offer, because everybody can build a house?
• 22:39
  Steve Brown: Even an uncle, right? Mm hmm. So that's where you're starting to differentiate yourself. Give us some examples of results of this, this transition into the multimedia production of your business
• 22:56
  Casey Grey: examples and how we've done it or examples of people that found us.
• 23:01
  Steve Brown: Yeah, and what is their what has been their expectation? Are they like really difficult to work with?
• 23:06
  Steve Brown: Or like, yeah, isn't to work with?
• 23:08
  Casey Grey: They're actually way better? Yeah, that's it to your point, right, is that it's everything that's online now is the first impression, right?
• 23:15
  Casey Grey: That that's basically our for any company, the best salesperson should be the online presence, right? Then they, the salesperson that you have, or whoever's there, that's kind of the second, you just need to close the deal, essentially, at that point, figure out how to deliver what the client wants.
• 23:31
  Casey Grey: The so the the series that we have coming up, so we're doing an official series called the three day cottage on our YouTube channel, that will be released in the spring when we're done the project. And we're looking for sponsors right now for it.
• 23:45
  Casey Grey: But the homeowners who are that hired us for that project found us through our YouTube channel.
• 23:54
  Casey Grey: And she reached out to us and say, we really want to do this, do this project. And at the time, I'm like, like her budget was low and wasn't sure how to do it. But she wanted to be involved too. I said, Look, you're really enthusiastic about it. I don't know how we're gonna make this work. But let's, let's sign something. Let's just get it working. I think we can do a really cool YouTube series about it. If you're willing to work with me. It'll be the first time we've done it. But let's figure it out together. And we'll get your cottage built. And that's what we're doing, essentially, right, is we're figuring out how to make this work. And she's been great because we're working more as a team as opposed to like a client customer relationship. Yes, there's still money that needs to exchange and so forth. But we're working together because we're splitting the sponsorship so they can save some costs. And we can get paid for the time that we've had to put into it as well. And they're putting time into it. So they're get basically getting paid for their costs and working with us and creating this. So we've created that new income stream and a new opportunity for clients as well. So they've found us and like I said, they've been our best clients to work with. We also got a job for it was renovated It's gonna it's kind of like an ongoing project.
• 25:01
  Casey Grey: They keep bringing this back.
• 25:01
  Casey Grey: But they found us through it, I first I said, Look, we're too busy, we can't do it. And then we ended up having an opening.
• 25:07
  Casey Grey: So I went back to her. I said, Actually, we have an open air institution again, and she like signed the contract right there.
• 25:11
  Casey Grey: There wasn't there was no competition, right that we weren't bidding on a project, we weren't trying to convince them that we were better than the other person. They just loved what we stood for. And they liked what we had to offer. She actually ended up painting her island of her kitchen, custom paint color, the same color of my 1977 Volkswagen was valued.
• 25:33
  Casey Grey: Because she liked it so much, which I which I had no idea she was doing the laughter I saw the picture, which is kind of funny.
• 25:42
  Casey Grey: But yeah, like two examples of people just finding us through YouTube. And I'm, we're getting multiple leads every day. And they're finding us. They might say Google or something. But we're coming up in Google because we have so much content out there, right that whether it's YouTube, or blogs or podcasts like there's no way that we're not going to be found because we constantly have things going out like multiple things every week, whether I'm on somebody else's podcast, I'm interviewing somebody for a podcast, or I'm we're doing a video or we're doing a site there's there's so many things going out.
• 26:16
  Steve Brown: And you want to clarify for the American audience, that project translates into project. I want to pause here just for a moment and talk to you about a program that we have just released called the ROI quickstart Academy for authors. Every day, I talk to business owners just like you who struggle with quickly getting their fundamentals in place. We want to create a great foundation, and we want to grow our business. But the things that are in our way, our lack of knowledge about the specifics, we should put in place, what kind of technology what kind of messaging and what kind of campaigns and that problem exists for authors as well. And we just chill so good with authors because, well, I'm an author, and I understand everything that you struggle with, you have a great idea you have a great book, but what do you want to do, you want to get your book in front of more people, you want to make it easy for them to find you learn how they can schedule a time to talk with you hire you for a conference, or maybe sign up for the services that your book promotes. So what is the Quickstart Academy for authors?
• 27:26
  Steve Brown: Imagine working with a small group of like minded authors, and the experts from the ROI quickstart team, it's a great way to get your messaging clear to be confident with the technology in your marketing automation, and how to run a strategic campaign to get you more of what you want from the investment of your book. To learn more about the Quickstart Academy for authors, you can visit ROI online.com or click in the link in the show notes below. And now, back to this episode.
• 28:05
  Steve Brown: What's a three day cottage?
• 28:09
  Casey Grey: So that's going to be a netzero cottage that we're building in the Algonquin Highlands area in Ontario. And it's called the three day cottage. Because Well, it's actually a joke you got to watch. If you watch our teaser video, you'll see it. So go to our YouTube channel and watch the teaser videos on the three day cottage and you'll find out why it's called that
• 28:30
  Steve Brown: there's a good call to action. You know, some people are convinced. Everybody that comes to us they and they're convinced I think we need to redo our website and we need to show up on all these searches.
• 28:41
  Steve Brown: And they're expecting that we're going to go Oh yeah, we're experts in s e. o search engine optimization. And that's like the biggest boondoggle that you could focus all of your energies on is to try and cram these keywords to get you to show up in the top of the search when most people aren't even, they're going to swipe left when they see that your website's designed for robots and not humans. But when you talk about being on podcast, producing a podcast, creating videos, think about this. And you're not just putting text on your static website. But you're you're actually starting to show up in the video layer. People are actually spending time just watching videos and they may not be even going and Google they may be hanging out on YouTube blog on how to do a cottage.
• 29:37
  Steve Brown: Well, who knows what they're searching for audio. People are listening to podcasts and many people don't even really get on the computer very often they're listening and searching via podcast. So that's this is what I call ATL is human experience optimism. And that's really you're designing and creating content for wait for it. humans who are going to purchase from you who are have names and faces and families and desires.
• 30:13
  Steve Brown: Whereas if you're focusing all this time to please Google robots, but Google doesn't care about you, doesn't care about your business doesn't care about your future. And even if you weren't at the top of the search, maybe just decide to change the algorithms today and your disappeared, just like, just like some political activists in some country where all of a sudden, they are disappeared. Google can do that to you. But one way to avoid that is to consider all the the examples that Casey was talking about, what are some other things in Casey?
• 30:51
  Casey Grey: Other things that we're doing outside of the podcast and YouTube channel?
• 30:55
  Steve Brown: Yeah.
• 30:57
  Casey Grey: That's that's kind of our main focus. Obviously, we have social things out there.
• 30:59
  Casey Grey: But getting on other people's podcasts has been helping.
• 31:02
  Casey Grey: Actually, one thing I got to point out to continue on what you were just saying is that I love Steve, all the stuff that you've done, like how you've set up your podcast, right? And now you had these automatic emails, which made it really simple and you go do this. And here's some great content. And I've actually been forwarding your emails to my team to say, like, look what Steve's doing. He's doing some really cool stuff, we got to learn from this guy. Because he's really simple and straightforward. Right? So, so thank you for doing that.
• 31:29
  Casey Grey: Because that's, that's been helpful, too. But it's made it easy for the human side of things to point, right. So yeah, so outside of that is, I'm actually co authoring a book with Kevin Harrington. On he's from the shark tank. And so that'll be basically a glorified business card, that really just once again, gets me around the right people, creates opportunities, you never know where these things are going to go. I'm also I haven't been doing this as much like I have my own personal website, I did write over 400 blog posts, I wrote every single day for over a year, was kind of like a public Journal of things, it was actually quite, quite therapeutic to do. So I'd recommend anybody trying that that was that was really helpful. But yeah, the main focus has really been on YouTube, Facebook, live interviews, getting on other people's podcasts, and and really just getting as much content out there as possible and staying consistent. Right, so not not doing something for a month or not, it's like, No, we want one or two, at least one video out every single week, if not to our goal is to and most weeks we're doing too. And that translates into Facebook, into YouTube, also into podcasts.
• 32:53
  Steve Brown: So when I talk about businesses, there's this life cycle that a business has, you think about when you started your business, you're in that toddler stage where you just try and apply, I think I can do this, and let's get a job and this, let's complete the job.
• 33:09
  Steve Brown: And then you get some feedback that, hey, we're kind of good at this. And that you you run along and then you start to kind of get in the groove. And then hey, we're about a little bit of a name around here now and you've got people wanting to work for you. And, and, but then there's this point where you could like rest on your laurels and stay busy from now on. And that's not bad. And that's what a lot of people do. But there's this thing that starts to happen in the back of your head where it's like, Do I have a responsibility to be a mentor, or to start being a thought leader as a word? I need to start sharing my unique perspective and insights from my experience so that others can benefit even if they're a competitor. They're buddings construction person that's about to start get going.
• 34:03
  Steve Brown: Or maybe I'm someone considering to do, do my own work. Tell me so this book I this book that you mentioned, how much of that was in behind the scenes thinking and kind of convincing yourself you need to step up and write a book?
• 34:24
  Casey Grey: Well, books, like I said, they're kind of physical, like if you talk to Arthur authors, and never really make money off of it, right? It's just another way that creates that trust, right? This person knows what they're talking about. And it's beside a name that's well known, and then that it just adds to that trust factor, which is I think everything in business, right is you have two people do business with people that they like, and they trust, right? It has to be both. So if they don't like me, that's fine. Not everyone's gonna like me. But yeah, that the whole everything we do online is about trust. And the great thing that, and what the book is like, Look, it's it's proof that we're not going anywhere, like we're here to stay and look at everything we have out there, we're not going to just do a job. And then you know, to tail a warranty, you're gone. And you'll never see us again, sort of thing. It's we put ourselves out there we have a brand, we have a reputation that we want to maintain. And does that mean every job goes perfectly smooth? And everything we do is perfect? No, there's going to be bumps and things happen. But we're not going anywhere. We're going to fix them. And we're going to continue going forward. Right?
• 35:29
  Casey Grey: So that's, that's just everything, everything that I'm doing is really just solidifying that telling the person, you've made a good choice by hiring nice, because we're not going anywhere.
• 35:40
  Steve Brown: Yeah, but to go, I'm gonna write a book, there's, there's this thing that went on in the back of your head is, I'm really going to have to show that I know what I'm talking about. And Mmm, I do I really know what I'm talking about. And then. And so I want to write a great book, not just a mediocre book, just because I'm one of them tick off the task, I have a book. Talk to us about that has to bubble up from the Tony Robbins in the self improvement conversations as well. No, yeah.
• 36:17
  Casey Grey: And once again, once you when you commit to something like that, and I think a big thing is committing, like by me, writing for 400 days straight, that gave me the confidence to be able to write if you look at the very first blog post that I wrote, it's not nearly as good as the last blog post that I wrote, right? Just my grammar got better the way I was able to explain myself got better, just everything got better. So I think I made the decision after that as well, whereas my writing got better. So I think often a lot of the times it is confidence, but the only way to build confidence is to do the thing that you want to become confident in the reps.
• 36:56
  Steve Brown: So maybe the question I should be asking is, let's, let's hear the how long you you've sat and argued with yourself about committing to writing 400 blogs and 400 days that that's a bit of a that's a unusual commitment for a lot of people, especially construction.
• 37:14
  Steve Brown: house building people, right?
• 37:19
  Casey Grey: Yeah, I don't know how long I would have thought about it. I thought one of the where it came from was Seth Godin. I don't know, you're probably familiar with Seth Godin. He has a lot of books out there. So he's great. He's just, I think he's great just in the way that he speaks. And the way that he presents himself. He's like, very his marketing world, right? He's very, he's very precise and meticulous in everything that he does. And he writes a daily blog post. And I was like, You know what, that'd be really good. But I don't have time for it. Right? Then I subscribed to his blog posts.
• 37:51
  Casey Grey: And then I saw that some of them were like, two liners. I'm like, Oh, I had this vision in my mind that a blog post was like a big long, like chapter in a book, essentially. And I'm like, I don't have time to write a daily blog post. Why would I want to do that? But then I saw that I'm like, Okay, well, if a blog, kind of redefines what a blog post is, like, I can commit to two sentences a day, if that's what it turns out to. But usually what happens is that when you write one sentence, it flows into another, and then another, and then another, and then you get on a roll. And then eventually, you have a few paragraphs of something. And then you're like, Whoa, this is pretty good. And you can put it out there, right. So once again, it just came to access, I don't know how long I was thinking about it. There's a lot of things that like writing a book, you know, I've always said, I'm going to have multiple books, you just once again, have to start somewhere. And I think it's just the confidence. But also one of the thing it's timing, too, is that I have become more I guess strategic about where I put my time.
• 38:50
  Casey Grey: Whereas before I was a little bit all over the place, to some extent I still am. So that's why I have a good team to help me stay focused. But I become more strategic. And when I do things, so it's like, Yes, I will write more, I do plan on writing multiple books, who knows about what, but right now is not the right time. And I'm okay with that. So I know that it will come. But I know that the longer I wait, the longer I wait, the better I'll be, the better that book will be the wiser, I'll be the better writer, I'll be whatever it may be. And then eventually, they'll come a time where I have the time to actually put into doing the second book and the third book or whatever it may be. So yeah, I can't say how long it took me to come up with that. It's just been something that's been on my mind. And then I saw something that showed prove to me that it was possible that it was different than what I was thinking and then I just committed and usually just that thing for me like public commitments help if you just put out something that's public, this is what I'm doing and hold me accountable sort of thing.
• 39:49
  Casey Grey: It's like your subconscious mind forces you to keep doing it because you've put it out there.
• 39:52
  Casey Grey: whether or not somebody saw that is a different story, but your subconscious believes that somebody saw it.
• 40:00
  Steve Brown: So coming back to where the rubber meets the road for growing the value of your business as it impacted this, this exercise, publishing content in various forms, has an impact to the kind of people that come to you for employment.
• 40:21
  Steve Brown: Has it, you know, what, what other collateral impacts has it made that you didn't expect? Or maybe you've noticed? Yeah,
• 40:32
  Casey Grey: we definitely have people coming to us. One of the hires recently came out of the blue, she was it was somebody that we knew, but was working in another business. And she said, I actually saw this posting six months ago, but I didn't want to say anything about it, because I just started working on she's working in our meditation studio that we had. And she's been a absolutely fantastic hire. So people definitely see what we're doing. And they, the people that are resonates with, they want to be a part of that, right. Not everybody necessarily needs or wants to be the leader. A lot of people just want to be a, I don't wanna say follower, but they want to be part of that vision, right? They believe in it too. And, and they want to be a part of that story. And the thing is, is that even as a leader, if the most important person is almost a second follower, right, because then the second follower of GOD, then there's a third and the fourth, and then it kind of grows from there. So it's almost to be following or to be a part of something is just as important as leading something because that by doing that, it inspires other people to also jump on the boat or the bus or whatever you want to call it.
• 41:38
  Steve Brown: Yeah.
• 41:38
  Casey Grey: So yeah, that's definitely been one of the advantages. other advantages, like I said, we can definitely be picky and choosey with the types of jobs that we do now. We can be more creative, I enjoy my job a lot more, because I am naturally creative. I like the creative side of things like when COVID hit. And the construction slowed down a little bit, I that was probably the three of the greatest months of my business, because I was able to focus on the business as opposed to it being in the business. Right. And to some extent, part of me was waiting, not necessarily for a pandemic, and people to get sick and so forth, but waiting for something to happen, that affected the economy as a whole so that I could take advantage of all the opportunities that come with things like this.
• 42:24
  Steve Brown: I think that was a wise thing as something that I'm, I'm wanting to stress to these business owners right now, if there was one thing that you can really control in this time of chaos and uncertainty, and, and just all these things that are making us confused about what what the future holds, is that we can be really up upping our game, upping our messaging, upping our experience online while people mean that's what they're doing if they can't, Who would have ever thought that you couldn't go meet for coffee shaking and come to our show room. Let's let's bring everybody over to your house.
• 43:08
  Steve Brown: That's, that's like, who you would have laughed at me if I said, you better get your act together online, because that's going to happen and you're just trying to sell me Steve. But now it's like, this is the area you can really compete. Be show your national, your experience, you're inside you can really be up in a bigger game here. And that's, that's something that's huge right now, because this is not gonna last forever. And all of a sudden, you're going to Sykes simmer, Who let the dogs out all the economy's just going to come rushing back in. And you've leapfrog over your competitors. Because everyone's been trained to evaluate online first. Yeah,
• 43:56
  Casey Grey: absolutely. Right.
• 43:56
  Casey Grey: If you can, if you can thrive or survive during these times, even like you'll be able to thrive and the other times, right. So this is a good test for a lot of businesses, a lot of businesses have failed, a lot of businesses will fail. And because you know, they're saying that there's going to be a second wave which they're probably well if you can set yourselves up to succeed during times like these, you're going to be laughing when you know summer comes right right now we're in winter, and it's cold. It's It's It's not great.
• 44:30
  Casey Grey: Some people, some people ski and snowboard in the winter, and other people freeze. Right. So you get to choose your that was something I've done business mastery with Tony Robbins twice and a lot of the stuff that you've talked about the cycle of business, he does all that stuff. He talks about media, like it's all the same stuff that you're talking about too, is is is important, right?
• 44:48
  Casey Grey: There's a lot to think about in business. And this is just another season that's going to happen but the thing about seasons is that they always change
• 45:00
  Steve Brown: So in these interviews, you know, what's one question that you wish people would ask you that they never do?
• 45:12
  Casey Grey: That's a good question. What's one question?
• 45:14
  Casey Grey: You know, one thing that I that I keep, that I always come back to is really the importance of the psychology of the business owner of the leader. And they never they always ask me the mechanics, right? You know, it's it's always figuring out the mechanics side, but nobody ever asks or wants, I shouldn't say nobody, most people don't ask or want to know. But the psychology side, what do you do to stay calm and collected? When crap hits the fan? Right? And how did you get that? Yeah. And how did you get through the four year lawsuit? And how did you get through the pandemic? All those things, right? And, and there's mechanics, but there's psychology to all this, like, how do you run a business, grow business, deal with all that, and also be a husband and a father and a son? And do all that at the same time? Right?
• 46:03
  Casey Grey: And I think people don't ask, because they likely know and they don't want to hear it.
• 46:12
  Casey Grey: Right? They don't want to know the truth.
• 46:15
  Steve Brown: So what is it they need to hear? What's the resource they need to consider?
• 46:17
  Steve Brown: And what what what is it?
• 46:21
  Casey Grey: You just need to take the time to work on yourself? Right, your your mind is just like a muscle. If you go to the gym once and expect to be fit for the rest of your life.
• 46:34
  Casey Grey: You're lying to yourself, you know that that's not possible.
• 46:37
  Casey Grey: So why would you expect anything different for your mind, you can't just work it out once and expect to be set for life. It's consistent practice. But the thing about the mind just like muscles is that it takes it's not just about going to the gym, right? It's not just about lifting weights, you also need to do cardio, you also need to eat healthy, like there's multiple things that factor you need to make sure you surround yourself. So when it comes to the mind, those things factor into you need to take time to be in silence I meditate every morning, you need to eat healthy, right? If you're if you're not feeding the body, what it needs, your mind is not going to it's going to be foggy, it's not going to operate smoothly. If you're overweight, and that's going to go into other factors, maybe you get frustrated more easily, right.
• 47:25
  Casey Grey: So these are all things I realized, if I eat food, that's not optimal for me, I will get frustrated, I'm more tired, I can't, I can't operate on my peak performance if I'm not putting into my body, what my body needs. And I think those are things that people know. But it's so much easier to watch the news to feed your mind with garbage all the time. And then you wonder why you don't feel good to and you watch the news 24. Seven? To give you a say like standard to get your mind right, who do you surround yourself with? We often have friends that people that we call friends that are poisonous to our minds, right? That are always negative, that always have drama, that that are just dragging you down, but they're your friends. So you don't want to let them go. They might even be family members. But the hard thing, and the thing that you know you need to do is you need to cut them loose. Right? So these are all things that I've had to do, and they're not easy.
• 48:17
  Casey Grey: But the more you do them, the easier they get.
• 48:23
  Steve Brown: All right, excellent. So if some of the Canadian audience is interested in learning more about what you're doing, where can they find you?
• 48:35
  Casey Grey: The easiest places to head to KC gray calm and ca se y grey.com. And you can also the where we're putting our big push in a lot of our time right now is on the conscious builder YouTube channel.
• 48:47
  Steve Brown: All right, excellent. And as far as the international audience, what what do you have offer for them?
• 48:55
  Steve Brown: Or where's that going?
• 48:57
  Casey Grey: Well, that would be the same thing, right? A lot of the stuff. Yes, we're building in Canada. So a lot of the stuff that we talk about is building high performance buildings in Canada, but a lot of the concepts are the same.
• 49:08
  Casey Grey: Obviously, when I talk about business businesses the same in terms of operating that, the other thing that we're working on as a conscious builder Academy that will be more directed towards helping contractors and and operating their business. And you know, it's obviously going to have mechanic side to it. But we plan on putting a lot of the psychology stuff in there to to help with that side of the business and life ultimately.
• 49:32
  Steve Brown: So if someone wanted to be notified when that finally goes live, where can they sign up somewhere?
• 49:39
  Casey Grey: Yeah, conscious uilderacademy.com.
• 49:42
  Steve Brown: All right, perfect.
• 49:42
  Steve Brown: Casey, been a good guest. I appreciate you. And thank you for being on the ROI online podcast. Thanks. Thanks for listening to another fun episode of the ROI online podcast. For more be sure to check out the show notes This episode, and feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn where we can chat, and I can help direct you to the resources you're searching for.
• 50:06
  Steve Brown: To learn more about how you can grow your business better, be sure to pick up your copy of my book, The Golden toilet at surprise, the Golden toilet.com.
• 50:19
  Steve Brown: I'm Steve Brown, and we'll see you next week on another fun episode of the ROI online podcast.