In episode 42 of The Kitchen Table, Ken Baden shares his gratitude for the caliber of guests he has had on the show. He reflects on the connections and network pieces that have been instrumental in the success of the podcast. He also expresses his gratitude for a few individuals who have contributed to the show's growth and impact. Ken acknowledges the blessings in his life and emphasizes the importance of learning from others and surrounding oneself with talented individuals who can help us grow professionally.
TIMESTAMPS
[00:02:34] Networking and Mentorship
[00:06:19] Building Reciprocal Relationships.
[00:08:07] Gratitude in Recovery and Business.
[00:12:29] Scaling and Finding the Right People.
[00:15:10] Staffing and Growth Challenges.
[00:17:07] Hiring the Right People.
[00:21:10] Review Your Goals.
In this episode, Ken Baden emphasizes the importance of regularly reviewing and evaluating processes, systems, and goals. He stresses the need to ensure that these processes and systems are effective and aligned with one's objectives. He also discusses the significance of goal assessment, particularly as the year draws to a close. Ken suggests reflecting on the progress made towards the goals set for the current year and setting new goals for the upcoming year, both in personal and professional realms.
Additionally, the episode touches on the importance of fiscal responsibility, especially during financially challenging times. Ken advises exploring clever ways to access finances quickly and ensure liquidity, such as evaluating different financial options or implementing effective expense management strategies.
QUOTES
SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS
Ken Baden
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheKenBaden
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bluecollarcloser/
WEBSITE:
The Kitchen Table Podcast: https://thekitchentablepodcast.net/
Intro/Outro00:03 - 00:16
Welcome to the kitchen table, a podcast about where business is done. So pull up a chair and join your host, Ken Baden.
Ken Baden00:16 - 02:56
All right. Welcome back to another episode of the kitchen table podcast. I'm your host, Ken Baden. This is where business gets done. I'm trying to power through. I guess a cold, man. I don't know. I recorded an episode earlier this week. I want to say maybe three quarters of the way through the episode, my throat started closing up and I thought maybe it was just something that I was allergic to in the podcast studio. I'm still not sure, but since then I've kind of had just a cold. I got the chills, chest, throat, aches, et cetera. So, uh, I don't have a guest. This is going to be a solo episode given the circumstances, you know, Thanksgiving week, having to record a second episode that was already started. So. We're going to make this one a very actionable but pointed podcast. Because anytime I do a solo episode, I try not to just drone on about nonsense. But I would hope I would never do that on any episode, because that wouldn't be very entertaining. But I've been really, really thankful that we've had, speaking of Thanksgiving, I've been very thankful of the caliber of guests that we've had really this whole time, man. to kind of come out the gate, start a podcast. And I'm just so thankful for my connections with guys like Ryan Steumann, Andy Elliott, and just all of the network pieces that they've introduced me to. And then my own network, the roofing strategists, Adam Champagne, John McCambridge, some of these big heavy hitters in the local markets that I'm in. I'm just very blessed to have these folks You know, I really consider myself lucky. It is not lost on me where I was just six years ago in that people of their caliber, you know, Adam, I would bet he's never been in trouble a day in his freaking life, man. I mean, could be wrong. Comes from a great family. You know, the guy worked on Capitol Hill and then left that to get into windows and now he's CEO of a top 25 remodeling company that just bought another top 25 remodeling company and then several other companies. So that man just had me in his house the other day to just go over some business stuff and talk shop. And that is really, really cool. I think maybe the theme, you know, if this episode has any is just networking and mentorship and just why it's so important. I really truly believe, you know, that's really why even doing this, this podcast, when I do these episodes, I'm doing them with people that I want to learn from. And you're getting to then hear the things that I want to know. I'm hoping by proxy, you guys are learning.
Um,
Ken Baden02:58 - 22:50
It's amazing, right? Like some of these folks are either in the same business as me or businesses I'd like to be in, or even if they're in a totally different business, there's something that I can absolutely learn from them. And it's just, it's awesome, man. Um, the connections I've made, I'm just so blessed. And I would suggest to you, if you're somebody who's new to business or sales, you know, if you're in sales, Cause you can do the entrepreneur, entrepreneur route. You know, Andy really highlighted this the other day on one of our calls. Those are your two, your two paths. And, uh, I guess he said Brad had mentioned something like, man, I really wish there was someone like me where I could have just jumped on and, and buried my head in and really helped grow this business, you know, get a piece and have all this success. Uh, but none of the risks, none of the, none of the consequences, right. Of that come along with, uh, ownership, you know, that. It's true. You know, there's a lot to be said. You know, I almost did that before I ended up going out on my own because I had a great GM, one of my good buddies. And I was like, man, we can really take this company to the top. And unfortunately, the owner at the time just couldn't get out of his own way. And he would have had two of the best, in my opinion, take his business and us to to great heights. And so whether you're seeking enter or entrepreneurship, working your way up to CEO or VP or, you know, helping build something massive, Um, and, you know, achieve your success that way or entrepreneurship sales, you know, new to sales. There's always that person that you could seek out and find and say, okay, who's doing what I want to do in my area. And flat out, ask them how they did it. You know, most people at the top of these respective areas had somebody that at one point helped them. And so most of them are really open to that idea. Some of them aren't going to be man, like some of them are probably douchebags, but some are also some of the coolest people that you would just never think, at least I didn't like, man, this guy's super humble, super awesome, super kind with his time. And, uh, I've had nothing, but those experiences more often than not really, I can't even think of, you know, one or two where I was kind of bummed out. But even then those folks still helped me. They just, you know, they weren't regularly looking to be buds. Right. And that's okay. Um, so take from whoever you can, whenever you can, uh, but also be prepared to make that relationship, not transactional, but reciprocal, right? Like I don't come in, Hey, can you tell me this, this, this, like I'm aware and I'm in, I have the emotional. And intellectual, I suppose, or relationship intelligence, enough of that to know that it's in poor taste to just be transactional. Hey, can you tell me this? Can you tell me this? Can you tell me this? That is not going to get you anywhere. So I would also say that. Be aware that you don't want to be transactional. You want to be reciprocal. So when you're working on building a relationship with somebody of that caliber, a lot of the, Hey man, how are you doing? How's your family? You know, one of their, one of their wives was sick and I would reach out to him periodically. Hey man, how's the wife? Is there anything I can do? Is there anything I can do to help? That's, that's just being a good person and building relationship. But there's something to be said there because I would bet a lot of these folks that just don't know any better are going to think, okay, well, I'll just ask somebody for help. And that's that, that's, that's transactional. That's one way. And that's not how relationships work or these good ones. Right. So I would advise that if I, sometimes I think those things don't need to be said, but I think there's a lot to be said about the art of building relationships. I really do. I think that that's probably one of my biggest strong suits and kind of where I'm at right now in my business and scaling my business and looking for the right people and looking for the people that are smarter than me in certain areas and really helping them, excuse me, really them helping me rather, you know, grow this thing and scale this thing. I don't know why that was relevant, but I brought it up. But mentorship, man, I'm telling you, I just spent some time Saturday night with Adam. Again, he's a big, big, big, big, big, big piece of the puzzle and the network around here. He belongs to the Young Presidents Club. His business here is one of the biggest in the local areas and remodeling in the local area. Top 25 in the country. And for that man to take time out of his day on Saturday night to meet with me, It's just those relationships are, I think, the key to getting from A to Z way faster than you otherwise would have with way less lessons and consequences that you don't have to learn on your own, Don. Some of them you're still going to have to learn because if you're like me, you just don't until it's you. You know, I this past year there was a couple of things that I tried and a few different mentors and some were for somewhere against. But I kind of knew where the overall theme was and they didn't think it was the smartest play. Tried it anyways, paid the consequence, right? So. Into some things we just have to learn for ourselves, but. I've been doing just so much reflecting lately, man, given that it is the holidays and I know by the time this comes out will be the Monday after Thanksgiving, so it'll have the Black Friday Thanksgiving. And we just talked about mentorship. I suppose gratitude can be thrown in there and why that's so important. And just, you know, in the sobriety world, they say a grateful addict or alcoholic will never relapse, right? And I can tell you for somebody who's in the recovery world that I measure the likelihood that someone's going to stick around mostly based on their gratitude, right? Like when they're coming back around and they're is he, will he, won't he make it that is. the first thing I look at is their gratitude. Their gratitude's in check and they're grateful for every little thing because that's what I had to have happen. And so the parallels, the reason I bring that up is the parallels to recovery in business are just astoundingly, eerily similar. Like gratitude and how important that is in playing into being successful both in business and in your personal life, right? You know, there's there's there's gratitude playing into manifesting and the law of attraction and how you visualize what it is you want. And then, you know, whether you pray for it or meditate on it and then you have the gratitude for it as if it's already happened. And that's how most folks will tell you, you know, that's how you that's how you attract that to you, whether you want to talk about it through manifestation or the law of attraction or even, you know, There's so many different books and strategies on the power of positive thinking, et cetera, et cetera. But gratitude is a huge play. So if you find yourself being ungrateful, that's probably a very good sign that you need to kind of recalibrate and maybe do yourself a little gratitude list. And make sure that you're thankful for what you do have before you expect to go getting something even more right. And then you're supposed to have gratitude in advance. having faith that those things would happen. And I'm not trying to get preachy. I'm just trying to tie it into the Thursday theme. Again, we'll be getting this on Monday, but I think it is important having it been Thanksgiving and whatever the hell that even means anymore. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know what we're supposed to be celebrating, but I could tell you for me and my family, it's just being grateful. It's a good time of year to come together with your family. And for me, I have a hell of a lot to be grateful for, you know? But that's easy for me. Damn sure should be given where I come from. But mentorship, networking, gratitude, these are just a little actionable, like, okay, what are some of the pieces that I've learned that are really, really important, that are must haves for me to continue on my path and an open mind and leveraging those relationships and mentorship to make sure they're really, really coming into play right now. For me, I've got a coaching group. I've got blue collar ballers. I've had several of these businesses. I've scaled several of these businesses to this point. So when I say scale, I want to be careful because I really do not respect the folks that are out there that have these coaching platforms and these different things that they're selling they're charging folks money for, but for my money, I've never even seen them do it themselves. You know what I mean? So for me, I try to focus on a certain niche. I can help you get from probably that one to 10 mark, whether you're in solar or roofing very, very easily, really. I can give you the whole playbook on how to get there quickly. Scaling past that into multiple offices and call centers, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That is where we're at right now. And I'm really excited to do it. But the overwhelming need is the resource that is the most pressing, which is people and the right people, which is kind of like duh, but I'm talking leadership. I can have 400 salespeople. If it all flows up to me, you got a bottleneck, right? I need, you know, regional managers, right, both in Virginia and Delaware and the capable folks that can then report back to us, which is headquarters. I mean, that's our business model and report the KPIs and be responsible enough to run people. And then it's like, where do you get them? Do you find old roofers? Probably not. People who have run sales teams before. I mean, at that level, if you haven't cultivated and grown folks within internally that are prepared to do that, then you need to look outside. And that gets to be scary, too. So I'm not a guy that hires a lot of sales folks with experience. I prefer to have green malleable individuals that we can mold and bring up ourselves. I'm not a big fan of the plug and play, but as leadership goes, some of these folks that we brought in were old solar guys that had success in running solar markets and solar offices, but the company didn't stick around or now they need to learn the nuances of the roofing industry. And I think that'll work out well. But my point is, is we're scaling and we're going into the unknown. And thank God that I have these mentors that have done that. They can say, Hey, here's what I did. Well, let me, that's what we did on Saturday with Adam, you know, like, let me see what your structure is. Let me see what you got going on. Yeah. You know, sure. You could do that, but have you considered this? Um, yeah, you could hire that role, but you know, if you think that's going to come in and just fix everything, it's probably unlikely. And these are the important things to hear because. they've been there and done that, right? And that's one guy. And I can go to John and ask him the same thing. And specifically, John's gone to the same offices or at least one state that I'm going to. And I just have a ton of really good friends and peers that I can trust to give me good advice. And I'm just very blessed, man. So I can't stress enough that if you are building a business or building a career in sales, entrepreneurship or enterpreneur interpreneurship, I suggest that you find the person who's doing the things that you want to do both in business professionally, like Adam was also captivating to me because he was a big family man. You know, he had the house on the water. I mean, he had a lot of the things that I wanted in Annapolis. You know, he's in good shape. He takes care of himself. Somehow he runs all these companies, but he finds the time to get to the gym and be present for his kids. And I know he struggles with ADHD on a massive level, and somehow he makes it all work. And most of us do, let's be honest, right? So that's not a shocker, but it's great for me to see, man. So I don't necessarily have the same options to be taking Adderall or whatever that some folks do, because it probably wouldn't end well for me. But I just can't stress the impact that these mentors, these coaches over the last year, couple of years, has just been the Ryan Stumans, Andy Elliotts. Sean Pollard, and Ryan's got me access to Todd Price, to Curt Linnington. I mean, it's just, I'm just so thankful, man. Brandon Jay, Ibrahim Hussain, so many people that have come on the show, T.W. Mock. I mean, it goes on and on and on. So I'm very, very excited for 2024. I don't know if you've started planning yet, but if you haven't, you are behind the eight ball. Right. So you need to get to it right now. We are closing out our 2023 goals, but we're already staffing and putting pieces in place as meticulously and fiscally responsibly as we possibly can for next year. Right. That in itself is also a challenge. Do you hire the people now to get to where you want to be? Probably not. I've heard some really big no-no warning signs about that. It's certainly nice to have the sales first and then require those things, but if you're going to go into a new market like one in Delaware where you're too far, you better have those people to run it. Virginia is close enough to where we could still manage it without having to staff people right away. At least we think we can, but therein lies the dilemma, right? It's chicken or the egg thing. So we're trying to be very, very smart. I mentioned this on social media. I'll drop this little Easter egg too. I'm trying to sell the vet. I mean, it's not getting bites. You know, I'm not going to just give it away. But the reason being is, I'm trying to get some liquid, man. I got a couple of watches I'm offloading, or at least I intend to. These are the reasons why having some of those luxuries are nice when you're going into winter and it's a volatile market. Look, we're going to end up, we're going to hit our goals. 20% increase year over year from just last year to this year. which is not as good as the year before, but considering we tried all these things and, you know, we learned a lot of valuable lessons and whatnot to do this year and we're still up, I'm pretty excited about that. And we got some great people and we completely cleaned house and had a complete culture shift and we're still planting those seeds. So very happy about that. Reason I bring this up is because. You know, I've had these meetings with all these high level financial people and we brought in some accountants into our team and we're really dialing in on the importance of all of these things to prep for what we want to do, which is exit. Um, whether that be a year from now or two, three years from now, we want to be ready. So they're not sharing my enthusiasm for wanting to get a couple high level. Players right now, you know, uh, they'd rather wait till spring or wait until we have, you know, we're, we're busy again. And I get that. Um, I would rather get them down and I would rather have them and know that they work out that way. When spring comes, we're, we're ready to go full tilt. So the compromise there is okay. Well, I tell you what, I'll go and liquidize this and this, and I'll take that money. I'll put it into a specific account for the, for the company. So it doesn't take anything from the company. And if I'm wrong, Hey, I'll bet on it. I'll cover it. Right. We'll find out in 90 days, I'll cover the spread for 90 days. It's not like I'm going to be spending the full 200 plus thousand for somebody like in a C suite or even, you know, on a smaller scale, if we get a couple other people. But if I'm right and they hit when they hit. Man, you know, not hiring one of those people can end up costing you millions, right? Because think of what they could possibly do if you get the right COO or somebody who's really able to offload something in its entirety and allow you to be what you're supposed to be. That could be life-changing. But rather than take that and argue with the fractional CFOs and accountants, it's just, hey, you know what? Fine. I get it. I get the timing is not ideal. So I'll put this here. We'll see. No bites yet. You know, I just figured I'd share that because I think that those are the things that nobody really talks about because it's not sexy. But I mean, it doesn't matter to me at all. I don't give a damn. It's like I'm doing it because I mean, trust and believe if we get to the point where that's going to like bail us out, we're in trouble anyhow, because that that amount is not nearly enough to save anything, you know, but it is enough to. offer an olive branch and keep some peace and make a couple moves in the offseason. So I'm happy to do that with what it could mean in the future for me. So just, you know, I want to keep everything open, you know, and really make sure you guys. Get to hear what's really going on and really what it's really like. I mean, this is all a lot of work doing podcasts. I've got two podcasts. I've got social media. I'm trying to offload that onto a. my social media manager for lack of a better word, but he was a young guy who's never really done that before, and then I have another VA who has. Now he's a great photographer and videographer, but as far as like doing all the other stuff we're trying to figure out, you know, is this going to work? Offloading that would open up a lot of time but like all the things that don't seem like big things like branding yourself and doing social media and Podcasts and all this stuff, you know, I'm in here on a Sunday to fix an episode that happened when I got sick Which is the one day of the week I a lot for doing house chores, which I've already done And now I'm sick and I'm sitting in here anyhow, but I have a commitment and losers make promises winners make commitments So I'll be here whenever I have a commitment that being said I hope you made some sense of this semi Thanksgiving Day episode, but the main theme is gratitude and mentorship and actionable steps to close out 2023 and hit 2024 off strong, meaning reviewing your finances, doing all of your tax prep, doing all of your calculations and so on with your accounts and stuff right now, because once 2023 is up, the moves you can make are way, way, way, way less. I hope you're doing all of those things now. I hope you're prepping for 2024. You have been now. I hope if you're in roofing or if you're in this door-to-door industry and you're in the Eastern, anyhow, it's slower in the winter no matter where you are, but I hope you're taking advantage of that. You're auditing SOPs and you're auditing, you know, your processes and you're making sure everything that you're doing is exactly what needs to be done the way it needs to be done and it's working, right? And you're reviewing your processes and systems. That's what we're doing and making sure that these things are all exactly what they need to be the way they need to be it. So, I hope this stuff helps guys. Find somebody who's doing what you want, ask them how, do it, right? Review your goals. It's getting close to the end of the year. Where are you at on the goals that you set for this year? And know your goals for next year, both personal and professionally, right? I write mine out every morning. Um, and then, you know, what we talked about fiscal responsibility, especially with coming into this lower time of the year and, uh, some of the ways in which if you got home, he locked different things that you could do to be clever and get liquid, meaning you can access those finances, but then 24 hours. And, uh, Yeah, I hope that this helps guys. Um, bear with me if this isn't the greatest one, but this is literally the second one that we recorded after I got sick the first time. Now with it, I've guessed, and, uh, I love you guys. And I damn sure it wasn't going to not have an episode for you guys. Our guest next week is actually, I'm really excited about. He's a local restaurant tour owner. operator of VIN 909 right here out of Annapolis. It's arguably the most popular restaurant here. Every time they open up, there are lines out the door and it has been for years. So I'm really excited to just, you know, how they've done that consistently. I can't wait to pick his brain, both marketing and just because that's just such a tough industry. So really excited to have him on. That's going to be an in-person episode. And then, of course, we've got some great heavy hitters coming up as well. But love you guys. Happy post-Thanksgiving. And I hope this was some significance for you or some help. And if nothing else, I encourage you to be on the lookout for the person that can, right? The person that is doing what you want to do. And don't be shy to ask them how. Love you guys. See you next time on the Kitchen Table.
Intro/Outro22:53 - 23:12
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