Chris LoCurto: Welcome to the Chris LoCurto show where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are.
Chris LoCurto: Welcome to the show folks. We have a very special guest on today, so if you are a leader or a business owner and we know that most of you are, this is an episode where you’re gonna want to be taking notes. I absolutely love having successful leaders, successful business owners on the show that have gone from not knowing what to do or struggles or failures or whatever in their leadership to incredible success because for me, that’s a great way for everybody to see: It can be done.
You can do this. You can become successful in your leadership. You can become successful as a business owner. You already know that you can. That’s why you got into leadership, but sometimes we can get plateaued or we can get stuck or we just don’t have the answers and I can tell you there’s been so many folks that have come to us that have literally said, I don’t know what I’m doing.
Chris LoCurto: Help me, teach me. Show me what to do. Today’s guest is talking with us about his company, his leadership, where he failed, and how he got to the incredible place he is today. It took hard work, but it is work that can be replicated and learned from. So even if you’re not a business owner, if you’re a leader of any kind, doesn’t matter what you’re leading. If you’re leading your family and that’s the only leading that you’re doing, guess what, folks, this episode is for you.
So on our show today is Daniel Good. He is a husband. He is a father of four. He’s a business owner of Good’s Electric Heating and Air. He is a leader. And now drum roll please. He is part of our team as a coach, so please welcome to the show, Daniel Good. Daniel, good to have you on. Awesome and honored to be here. Chris. We got a long story. Just tell how you came to being a part of following what we do, all that fun stuff.
Daniel Good: I think it really goes back to a quite a few years ago, 2012. I met up with you at entree leadership and they said “Chris doesn’t have any time to sit down with you, but maybe you can run him down” which I did and uh, just had some great conversations in the hall and of course you had time because, and that was a huge change in trajectory from that conversation for my life and family and years to come. And then it progressed to sitting down with coffee.
Chris LoCurto: Down at frothy monkey… Was that the first place we went to?
Daniel Good: Absolutely. Frothy monkey.
Chris LoCurto: So we sat down there and had some great conversations.
Daniel Good: We continue these conversations for a little and eventually joined the program, Next-Level Mastermind and came onto the program. And it’s been an awesome journey.
Chris LoCurto: I will say I’m ahead of all of this phenomenal details that we’re going to get to about the things that, how you’ve taken your business too, from where it was your leadership from where it was to how successful it is today…that we’ve watched you become incredibly successful. We’ve watched you become incredibly successful as a leader, as a father and a husband, as a family man. We’ve watched you be a part of the program and guide other people to success and that is something that has always stood out to us. So we were super excited that we could bring you on board as a coach here in what we do. So we’re so glad about that. But let’s talk about the business because you are seeing phenomenal results. So kind of tell us what’s been going on in your business lately.
Daniel Good: Yeah, we’ve seen the business grow 40 percent in sales.
Chris LoCurto: Which is insane, but you’ve got even bigger numbers
Daniel Good: like 4,400 percent in bottom line, something like that. I don’t know. I guess it’s a number.
Chris LoCurto: How crazy is that?
Daniel Good: You know, when you, when you realize that, we’re just to be stewards of what God has given us and this is his business. This isn’t mine. And it’s my job to absolutely use the talents He’s blessed us with his honor and glory. And, and the results point directly back to him
Chris LoCurto: So let’s roll back to 2012. Would you have thought then that you had the ability to have a 40 percent growth in sales in a year? 4,400 percent growth in bottom line, was that even something you could have thought about?
Daniel Good: No, just because had a lot of issues as a leader, had a lot of things to work through, grow in and I’ve become very focused on growing myself as a leader. And that was the focus back then of 2012. It’s like, you know, what does it mean to actually have goals? What’s the definition of goals? What does that mean? And that’s where we took it from there.
Chris LoCurto: So looking back at that time, we’re seeing you have incredible success. Looking back at that time, what was blocking growth? What was blocking the business?
Daniel Good: I was, as a leader, I was not leading well, consensus leadership is not leadership, you know, I was just too busy trying to make everybody happy and that’s also where my self worth was coming from. My approval was coming from, if everybody on my team was happy, then I felt like I was being a good leader and um, it wasn’t leading people well and so when people would leave it became a real emotional time because that meant somebody was upset at me and so therefore I go spiraling downward. And so it was at a point I needed to grow me as an individual to be a better leader and to make my team successful. And so it was really a life growth for me time of starting to write personal values and goals and, you know, who am I? And that was one of the first things you helped me start working through.
Chris LoCurto: So talk about this a little bit because this is a tough one for a lot of people they don’t understand it, and we work with a lot of leaders. You just made that comment about when you lose somebody, how much it impacts you because worth tanks in a heartbeat, right? Because, oh, I must be a failure as a leader. I must not have done something correctly. And it doesn’t mean that you haven’t, I mean, that’s the things that we’ve got to learn about ourselves. But how much does that affect your leadership when something like that happens?
Daniel Good: Now we’re at a totally different place. And so back then it was, I took everything very personal. And also it was, it was my company and so I didn’t have that God perspective and the fact that the way it is now. And so, we hold everybody with an open hand, you know, God can bring in, God can take out. And that’s okay. He has greater plans for us. And so I’m realizing…
Chris LoCurto: …it doesn’t mean the business is over. It doesn’t mean your leadership sucks. It could mean that there is something, but it doesn’t mean that everything comes to a grinding halt.
Daniel Good: Absolutely. You just look at it and go, “Man, I wonder what God has for us next.” And it’s amazing how many people have moved on and God’s replaced them with somebody that’s just been phenomenal. And so it’s in his timing and, and that has been beautiful to see. And just to follow him, but making them successful doesn’t always mean making them happy.
Chris LoCurto: That’s so funny because as we were interviewing, as you were going through this process, that’s, that kind of sums up a lot of the stuff in the process of you coming in and being in the role that you’re in is like, hey, some of making you successful is actually going to hurt. So that’s something you learned on your own. Talk about that.
Daniel Good: I think one of the first things was getting people into my life that would speak truth into my life, but speak truth in love and want to help me grow. There’s a lot of people out there like to speak truth into your life but don’t really care about you. And so, you don’t necessarily need those people coaching you, but people will see where you’re at and how to get you unstuck and say, you know, have you considered this? Have you thought about this? And that’s where, it has been a blessing to have multiple coaches in my life to continually keep speaking in.
Chris LoCurto: So let’s go back to why you started Good Electric Heating and Air.
Daniel Good: So I really enjoyed business. I grew up with an entrepreneurial dad, entrepreneurial grandma and I love business. I love running a business. I did get a charge out of doing electrical work also…And so I really wanted to do that because I enjoyed working with people and just I wanted to run a company and not just twist wire nuts all day, but I enjoyed the whole aspects of business, and then back in the early days went through e myth, Michael Gerber and, and he was like, you know, running a business is a different thing than knowing how to do the work. And that was a big eye opener to me and I go, I totally agree. I need to learn how to run a business better. And that continued driving me back to books to seminars and that drove me straight to entree leadership and to you.
Chris LoCurto: Now. There was a time when we sat down where you were saying you’re at a place where you were saying, “I need to sell the business.” Where was the business a few years ago? Where were you personally at that time?
Daniel Good: So where I was at at that time is, we’ were making a family move, family change of location and, I just didn’t think it was possible to run the business from 10 hours away and so it was looking to sell it and started working through that process. And God had otherwise had other ideas in mind. And so we, after we had gone through that process almost the whole way almost had it sold, the thing fell through and we just, we saw that this is exactly what God wanted us to do.
And what was amazing was the leaders in the business at that point, I should say, the team members in the business at that point said, you know, we have better access to you now that you’re not living here than when you were living here. And so that was a wake up call for me that I realized that I’m actually starting to work on the business rather than in it. And so my job was to start making them successful and yeah, to this day still helping to run the business even though it’s 10 hours away
Chris LoCurto: Now, where was your leadership at the time?
Daniel Good: It was growing, but still not where it should be as far as focused on growing and making people successful at that point and I didn’t understand that to the depth that I do today. And so continue to follow you on podcasts and listen and just said, I want to know everything that I can possibly know in leadership because I want to be the best that I can be.
Chris LoCurto: You were talking about how your leadership was really that leadership by consensus. If it was leadership by consensus, what were you getting out of that leadership by consensus? How did that mold your leadership style?
Daniel Good: So what was, that’s where I was finding my approval in life. So if everybody on the team was happy, if they thought this was a good idea, so I would go around and make sure everybody was happy before made a decision and in all reality what that did is just really, it puts your people in a place that they aren’t designed to be. You’re supposed to be a leader, so that means you’re supposed to lead. And so it was not leading well. It was a making sort of like making your children run the household for you instead of you actually being a dad in the home and leading. But again, when they were happy then I thought I was a phenomenal human being.
Chris LoCurto: One of the things you had said is that how great you thought you considered it…like a compliment when they said if you want something done, just ask Daniel to do it.
Daniel Good: Yeah, I did because I’d have some other people and leaders in my life. And one day I heard one of them say, you know, if you want something done, just ask Daniel to do it. And I’m like, man, that just really felt good and then all sudden one morning I woke up and I was mad…This is a control tactic and that’s what it was. And so when I recognized it, it started to help me understand what was going on. And so I came to that realization that I’m just making everybody happy and doing everything that everybody wants is not a great way to live a fulfilling life.
Chris LoCurto: Especially since you know as like you pointed out as a leader, your job to make them successful. It’s your job, to get them to a place. Leadership is not telling people what to do. It’s not a title, it’s guiding people to a place that they either have not been to or they wouldn’t get you on their own. Talk about what it was like financially back then compared to what it’s like now
Daniel Good: Financially back then it would take usually to about third quarter to break even sometime in the year because we would do a ton of investing on marketing at the beginning of the year. And then we’d have our down months in the beginning of the year, so that was a challenge, you know, you’d come September, October and it’s like, Yay, we’re seeing daylight. And it became a thing that…I just accepted it. Good News. That doesn’t have to be the norm. And so now this year we have a been in the black since the beginning of the year. And that has been a huge game changer for us.
Chris LoCurto: We got a lot of that background where you were the struggles. One of the things you mentioned is that in the early days of your business you had no idea what a leader was. So here’s what I want all these folks that are out there listening to this and going, I can totally relate to where Daniel is or where he was. Or maybe I’m there right now or I’m struggling. I don’t know. I don’t know what it is to be a leader. What has changed and why has it changed?
Daniel Good: I remember back in 2008 waking up to the fact that why do I have to recreate wheel? You know, why do I gotta figure this out on my own? I don’t. And one of the great leaders of my life was my dad, you know, he was an entrepreneur and he taught me a lot about leadership, but one of the big things I was struggling with and a piece I was missing was how to relate to people you know, and how to relate to team members well they were more like called employees back then, you know, and how do you make them successful? And it was more so geared towards they need to make me successful because that’s why I hired them and they should just do their work, you know, because that’s what I’m paying him for.
Chris LoCurto: There are no other leaders or entrepreneurs that feel that way, not a one…
Daniel Good: And so when you realize that when I set up to make them extremely successful as a team member, then in turn my leadership grows and I’m also realizing that as a business owner, as a leader, one of the best thing you can do is work yourself out of a job. And when you do that, you make everybody underneath you a lot better, you know, one of the things that doing that was a coach told me one day said, “if you’re struggling with this process of handing it off to somebody, what is it that’s not on paper that they need to know to do this process for you?”
And so when thinking about getting somebody else to do a job that I was doing, I go, “what is missing that I need to write down or guide them through to accomplish that so I can start delegating and getting things off my plate?” And so I can start working on the business rather than in it.
Chris LoCurto: That’s such a struggle when we teach killing the leadership crazy cycle, which again is the first lesson we push into next level mastermind. One of the big pieces in there is what we call proper delegation. The way that most people are taught to delegate. You kind of experienced it, “hey, if you want something done, get Daniel to do it.” Wait a second, that’s not, that’s not delegation at all, right? Because when people have that mentality, our way of delegating is, “here, do this, did you get it done? Is it done? Did you. It isn’t. You didn’t do it right? okay, let me just take it back and I’ll just do it myself.”
And so in that concept of delegation, you’re bogged down, you’re the one who’s having to do a lot of the work. You’re doing work for other team members because they realize you’ll get it done. That concept of setting them up for success, you know, like we say here, it’s your job as a leader to make your team successful, not the other way around which you’re pointing to that many times. What did you start to notice when you’re writing things down? When you’re giving them the right information, what did you start to see?
Daniel Good: Well, what happens from that is they start owning it, okay? And they also have the information that they need. So while back, somebody on a podcast somewhere, some guy gave us five points to think about when or to go through with setting up your team for success. And so I went and typed it out, laminated it, and put it right in front of me.
Chris LoCurto: And I love this because people can’t see this, but you’re holding it up right now. This is something you keep with you all the time. You’ve brought it out as clients have come through for strat plan.
Daniel Good: Yeah. And because I need to look at that and have that triggers in my brain going, okay, it’s my job to make them successful. How can I do that? And you know, the first thing says, “does this make sense?” You know, what I’ve given you to do, does this even make sense? Because depends what personality are speaking to it might be deer in the headlights, you know, it’s just, they don’t know. The next one is “what questions do you have?” And just asking them, that they actually have permission to now ask you a question.
Chris LoCurto: A lot of people don’t feel like they do if you don’t ask or they don’t want to sound stupid.
Daniel Good: Yeah. And because, you know, quite frankly, they’re getting their self worth from you as a leader. And so, just saying it opens it up and that way they can ask any question they want. The third one was, “what tools do you need to pull this off?” So if you’re trying to get them to do something, I’m like, do some purchasing or check in and buy something and they have no debit card to buy whatever you’re sending them for, they’re not going to get very far.
So the fourth thing is, “is there anything you need from me?” And so, you know, they’re like, well, I just need your input on _____. Recently had someone in the company buying a monitor for computer. And so in that situation they wanted my input on which one I would buy and so sure I gave that and help them walk through that.
Daniel Good: And then “how can I make you successful?” Those are the five things. Having those notes maybe don’t always go through all of them, but pick a couple. And when you delegate somebody or give them a task to say, “any questions” that should be number one, how can you help them be successful in those are five things or five questions to ask in this situation.
Chris LoCurto: What did you start to see?
Daniel Good: So people started owning their tasks. If you’re gonna micromanage, you’re going to get micro results. And so people started owning it and running with it. And I gave them freedom. What Ronald Reagan said, trust but verify. And so that’s a continual challenge, accountability is a continual thing. It’s not a once and done but have people owning it and start running things like their business. And so when that happens, when that changes in the culture and the DNA of the culture starts changing, that is what rocked my world.
Chris LoCurto: So you go from this place of not what leadership really looks like, not knowing how to set people up for success, not knowing how to properly delegate, struggles with finances taking until September just to break even. All of this stuff is happening and you start putting in pieces, processes, things of how to lead better, how to set people up for success, how to delegate properly, all this stuff. What was the most powerful thing that you learned about leadership in that journey?
Daniel Good: Most powerful thing in that journey was owning it and taking responsibility as a leader. So it is my job. Maybe I don’t know how, but it is absolutely my responsibility to learn. I’m not gonna sit here and be a victim and say, well, my people should ask me more questions. No, it’s just, that’s ridiculous. And so learning and growing and because if you’re not learning and growing as a leader, it’s said it’s sort of like a reservoir. If you only have water going out, you’re singing get dry and crusty and you have to keep feeding you as a leader and growing through books, through podcasts, through seminars, and I just had a ferocious desire to keep learning.
Chris LoCurto: As you’re implementing this stuff, as you’re learning this stuff, what did that look like day to day?
Daniel Good: Number one was I got a good coach in my life, somebody to help me and teach me a number two was surrounding myself with people that were headed in the same direction, you know, that is huge how they say when you go run, if you run with somebody, you’ll run faster and it happens. And so surround yourself with people that are running in the same direction as you are and your leadership starts growing. And that has been huge. That’s why I joined the mastermind, one of those reasons is surrounding myself with other business leaders that are awesome and their input.
Chris LoCurto: So folks who can actually understand where you are. Yeah, it’s really difficult to have that kind of accountability in great input if they’ve never led a business or if they’ve never been a leader. So having those folks that are where you are or have been folks that know what it’s like to be in your shoes, makes it that much more powerful, doesn’t it?
Daniel Good: Absolutely. And it’s people that are doing this day in and day out. And are right there, and coming off of that, some of the things I started learning and came away from it and changed and that was number one, was culture. Just being intentional with the culture and setting up a culture that I really wanted in the business and owning it, being proactive rather than reactive. And one of the things was putting together who we are as a company.
We call it core values and one of the small things was “expect change.” You know, had people read who moved my cheese, hey, your cheese is going to get moved and it become lingo around our company. So when the cheese got moved, people go, oh, this is happening. Okay, expect change.
Daniel Good: Who’s company is this? This is God’s company and we went through that filter when making decisions in our core values in our company. What does five star look like in our company and define those things. I want people that have a self employed mentality that they own what they’re doing. And so just setting that up and that goes right into one of the next big things that we changed was our hiring process that changed drastically. It’s sort of be like, yeah, you came in, I liked you, I liked how you look. You handled yourself great, you know, a lot about electrical.
Great, we’re going to hire you. And that was about the long and short of it. And then you wonder why you have issues, because I’m most quite often hired for skill over culture and now this totally changed the other thing we already talked about and that was delegation and just start leading and delegating well, writing processes and you know, that really helped me get out of the day to day rat wheel of working in the business rather than on it and got out of that pace of things.
Chris LoCurto: What did you do for your leadership because at that point it, was it just you or did you have leaders under you?
Daniel Good: So one of the things we also did was started a leadership team, weekly and start going through, hey, here’s, here’s what we’re dealing with, here’s maybe some small issues, even all the hiring, all the big decisions that I’m bringing to the table. And that was huge for me having a leadership team because now I can make better decisions with more confidence because I had taxing some of the collective intelligence as you’d like to say, and just drawing on their brilliance and also help show up my shortcomings and have them call me out. But it was, we can make healthier and better decisions when there’s greater perspective on a situation.
Chris LoCurto: And I think for some people it can be confusing. What’s the difference between leading by consensus and taxing the collective intelligence? eading by consensus is, do we all agree that’s the thing we should do, you know, does anybody have a better idea?
Daniel Good: And if George is unhappy, oh wait a minute, we got to stop everything. We got to make George happy.
Chris LoCurto: Taxing the collective intelligence is realizing that you hired smart people and you’re getting the information out of their brain, so for me, I didn’t call it taxing the collective intelligence back in the nineties, but it’s something that I learned early on when I was started in my leadership and it was kind of failing and I started realizing I’m telling people what to do. That’s what I was taught to do, so let me change this. Let me start getting their involvement and getting their ideas and so I would just go round and go, give me your, what do you think about this?
Chris LoCurto: And I would get sometimes great input. Sometimes I wouldn’t get anything. Many times I even already knew the answer. I just wanted to get that buy in from my team members at the time and so I wanted to get that, hey, Chris actually cares about us and treats us with dignity and he cares about our opinion. The great thing is is like you said, sometimes I would learn something that I didn’t know.
We have some very creative thinkers in the building here that think outside the box and bring in a perspective that you’re like, oh my gosh, I would have never gotten there, and so being able to tax that collective intelligence, a big part of that is gaining high quality perspective. So you set this up, taxing the collective intelligence, gaining perspective, focusing on making them successful, but focusing on leadership period inside of the business. What did you see? What did that turn into?
Daniel Good: What that turned into was we started making healthier decisions and they started pushing me to greater heights and so, I say “Guys, I think we can do this. Let’s set the goals for this year.” And they would go, “That’s low.” Okay, so this is phenomenal. When you have your leaders pushing you to greater heights, to more sales, it’s like, okay, maybe you’re trying to double your revenue, or you’d say, well, I’m going to really try to go by 10 percent.
And they go, no, that’s not good enough. Let’s grow by 20 or 30 percent this year and here’s how. And they start walking you through how this is capable. And that was a really light bulb moment for me when I had a leader start pushing back on me and saying, “No, we’re capable of more.” I said, “Awesome. Show me how.” And so having that. Also realize it was an awesome moment coming off of a quarterly initiative where we would sit down and say, what are we really focusing on this quarter and what are the action items?
Daniel Good: And I had to step out of the meeting and later that day I had my leaders come to me and said, “We got your next week laid out and how you’re going to set us up for success, is if you go here and do this and get this done and have this meeting.” I said, man, this is awesome to have leaders that own it and aren’t scared to push back on you and say your greatest value in the businesses here now get the rest of this stuff off your plate and to get this done to help us grow.
And, I just on the phone talking to one of my leaders. And he said, you know, I’m your greatest customer. And I go, yeah, you’re right, my customer is not the end user, which my technicians are touching, you know, being in their home and fixing their electrical and heating and cooling. But my customers are my leaders and my team. And having that process and that vision correct I think is huge for leadership.
Chris LoCurto: So let’s get this straight. If we roll this back years ago, what we’re at is not knowing how to lead. The leading that you are doing is by consensus. The delegation processes, if you need something done, Daniel will do it. So you’re doing the heavy lifting here. No real growth concerns about needing to sell the business, not being able to lead it from where you are. Because if this is how it was going while you were there, what’s it going to be like when you’re 10 hours away? All of these processes, you make a huge shift. You start next level mastermind, the coaching.
You make the huge shift of changing the culture, being incredibly intentional on the things that you’re doing in the culture to shift the culture. So it’s no longer the way it was, this going to look different guys, setting up the leadership team, making sure that you’re taxing the collective intelligence, making sure you’re getting perspective, making sure you’re actually delegating properly, making sure that you are setting up your team for success, that when you do set them up for success, you do all the things to make sure that they are on the same page with what success looks like.
Chris LoCurto: All this stuff starts happening and next thing you know, you go from Daniel is doing, doing the heavy lifting to hear your leadership team is going, “We don’t want you to do any of this stuff. We got these things over here that if you do these, you set us up for success.” That sound about accurate?
Daniel Good: It was an awesome moment and it doesn’t just happen overnight. It takes a lot of hard work and consistency over time. For many years I did not do it well because when I would go to training, I would come back and remold the wheel.
Chris LoCurto: You wouldn’t remake it, you would just remold it
Daniel Good: Remold it, because they don’t understand it, it don’t quite work for us… And once I woke up to that and realized that I go, enough is enough. If this is what I’m being taught, I don’t need to test any of it, I just need to go get it done and do it and put it in place. And that was, that was a huge mind shift.
Chris LoCurto: Yeah. So just so that people do understand that you talk about like quarterly initiatives and stuff. What we do in our next level mastermind is we set yearly goals and then we break that down into 90 day quarterly initiatives. And, we’ve been doing this for years, not only could we accomplish a ton in 90 days, but by helping other business leaders and owners to do this, we would have folks that were coming back going, we did more in those 90 days than we did in a whole year. Did you experience that same change?
Daniel Good: Absolutely. I mean when you get focused on…what is the most important thing today? You know, it wasn’t long ago where priority used to mean “one” right? Now it’s 12 priorities and it’s just, you don’t get nothing done. And so focusing on what’s number one and how to go through that. And so yeah, absolutely. You look up and you go, oh my goodness, we just got this done in this quarter and that’s because it’s little steps, little steps.
Chris LoCurto: So many folks get so plateaued and they’re like, “Chris, we don’t know. We don’t know why we’re stuck. We don’t know how to move past where we are” and they just don’t have those tools. So folks we have created a download with Daniel as a guide to the action steps he’s covering in this episode. Now, it will include the action steps and list of questions you need to be asking if you want to set your team up for success.
You’ll be able to save it to your phone or print it off to have it at your desk. So we’ll tell you how to get to that at the end of the show. So Daniel, here’s what I’d love for you to do. Tell everybody what is the difference you put this work in, what’s the difference in the business then compared to the business now?
Daniel Good: So one of the big differences is back then I was only able to grow the business, when I had time or when I found time because I’d be in a sales role and so I’d be out meeting customers or had my toolbag on out doing the work. And so once in a while I found a little opportunity to work on the business rather than in it, you know, and now I have a team leader that has taken a lot of that over for me and is running the business, coaching the people one on one and doing a phenomenal job at it. But raising him up and pouring into him and duplicating myself. Teaching him how to coach well. Also getting him the training he needs and that was huge.
Daniel Good: We’ve been pouring a ton of training into him to help him become who he is today and so you know, it’s weird to be at the point where you realize, you know, you have a vehicle sitting in business that you never saw, you know, they bought it. You have a team member that’s on board that you’ve never met, never interviewed and realizing that it’s done well because there’s processes in place and people understand the vision and mission for the company and our core values and the people inside it are driving it. It’s no longer me having to drive it day after day, but they’re passionate about it
Chris LoCurto: and so the business hasn’t fallen apart.
Daniel Good: No, it has grown. The more I grow as a leader, the more business has grown.
Chris LoCurto: So you have somebody who is now running the business for you, essentially. You’re still very much pouring into very much mentoring, coaching, you know, the same type of stuff you’ve grown up in. The Next-Level Mastermind is what we call one of our captains. You came up in to be able to help lead other leaders and business owners and did an incredible job. You’re doing it at your business. You’ve grown so much by the stuff you’ve learned. So much of the lessons that we teach, we put on the program that you are captaining other leaders and business owners and one of those becomes and once from inside your own company that you raised up to be a phenomenal leader, so he’s becoming the energy for the business, running the business, raising up the team below him, making great business decisions, purchasing all kinds of fun stuff and everything hasn’t fallen apart?
Daniel Good: Absolutely not. That’s amazing. You know when you put these things in place and you grow other people and you get start getting the culture in place that you want repeated and start growing your people and growing your leaders and they get passionate about it and it’s amazing. They can take it to greater heights.
Chris LoCurto: So instead of it being all Daniel and being the business only grew if you had the chance to…it is way less Daniel. You’re that leader, that mentor role and the business just grew 40 percent gross, 4,400 percent bottom line. That is just insane. By doing that, you want to go back to doing it yourself?
Daniel Good: Um…put the tool bag back on. It’s just so awesome now seeing people’s lives being changed in the business and also the customers lives that we touch a day after day. But it starts with direction and leadership and it’s an awesome place to be and now I get the opportunity to continue teaching other people what I’ve learned, which is my passion.
Chris LoCurto: Yeah. So for those people that don’t know, one of the things we teach is constantly making sure that your team members, your leaders don’t get task saturated. So for me, as I’m looking over the business at the beginning of this year, I’m looking at one of our areas, Joel’s area, and saying if I don’t do something, then in a year and a half from now, he’s going to be task saturated. A lot of people listening to this might be going, why in the world are you focusing a year and a half from now? Well, that’s what successful leaders do.
That’s what smart leaders do, and so as I’m looking at his role, I’m going, we can’t go another year and a half without me solving something in his area, getting something off of his plate because if I do that A) I’m leading terribly, I’m going against the very things that I teach, but also it would keep us from growing and so at a point where we’re going through this process, I’m in prayer with God about what do I do and one of the areas we looked at is taking some of that coaching.
Chris LoCurto: There’s only so much we can do with a person, and taking some of that coaching off of Joel that he does inside of the next level mastermind group and with some of the strat plan clients and your name popped up. I mean it, it wasn’t a surprise at all. You were absolutely killing it as a leader of other leaders, you know, leadings other business owners or the leaders. So we’re at the next level leadership live event in the spring and, I was going to get on the stage and I walked by, I just put my hand on your shoulder and I said, hey, I’m praying for some things we need to talk and have some coffee after the event.
And I knew what I was thinking, is that that could be something that you would be able to step in here. I felt strongly you weren’t supposed to not own the business, but I also felt strongly that you were at a place with your leadership and the leadership below you that if this was something God was calling you to, that you had set that company up for success, that you can come on over and do this passion. What is that like? Did you ever think that that would be something that would be possible? What is it like to be here doing that?
Daniel Good: It’s an awesome opportunity and a privilege to be here, you know, I loved mentoring other people, but I’ve also gotten to the place where I was just happy where I was at and also realized that with as young as I am, you need to keep growing and learning. And so getting to that point going, I need to keep growing as a leader for my people.
And what was phenomenal was when I brought this to the table, you know, my team later that’s running the company he said, that’s incredible. That would be great. And my team was super excited about it and because they know they’re going to get better leadership, better mentoring. And so it has been an awesome journey, but it’s also been empowering for them to own their departments, own their things that they’re responsible for, the team that they’re responsible for.
Daniel Good: And also, giving them that ownership and allowing them to make decisions and go with it. And so, but also mentoring them through it. And so it’s been an, it’s been an awesome and incredible journey and I just want to continue to grow my leadership. You know, they say the highest form of learning is teaching it. So thinking back over, you know, what is it like to be here and to be at this place. I really go back to a day and this is a special day of my life. It was a one, two, three, four, five day of my life. It was that exact day that added up to those numbers.
I sat down and wrote about my life and quite a few years ago and one of the things was I’d written down when I am proactive in my life, I can better do what God has designed me to do and have to go back to something that Todd Wilson said. He was a teacher and he said, easy is not good. Choose hard. It’s not easy, but it’s good. In doing that and over years and continually choosing hard things and not going the easy route has brought it to a point where I’m able to do what I’m extremely passionate about is helping and serving others at this level now influencing the leaders that can influence their people and change lives and families.
Chris LoCurto: And I love it because it’s not that you weren’t doing the hard work in the early days. You just decided to go after the harder intentional focus on making the business great on making the team great on making the leadership great. It’s not that you weren’t passionate about that, but you’ve moved into another area that God has bolstered the passion in your life. If you could tell the leaders that are listening right now, anything you know, there’s a lot of folks out there that are stuck in the leadership crazy cycle, they’re task saturated, they’re overwhelmed, they’re stuck, they’re plateaued.
They’re trying to figure out how to to get that business, you know, like you’ve done. Take it from it being all on their shoulders or not knowing how to get past that place to a place where there’s freedom. You’re adding this to what you’re doing in life now, which most people probably aren’t going to do. They’re going to continue to lead their business to greater success, which again, you are doing it, but you have a leadership and energy in there. What would you tell these leaders right now that are sitting there going, what do I do, Daniel?
Daniel Good: Two things. There’s many more, but two things come to my mind. And that is, one is live life intentionally, not reactively. Most of us go through life just reacting to everything that comes up and live life intentionally. And the second thing is care less about impressing people and more on impacting them. And so those are two things that, I think really started many years ago… But if I could go back to a younger version of me, I would say those are two things to focus on.
Chris LoCurto: That is powerful. Focus on impacting those around you. Guys, hopefully this is helping you today. Thank you Daniel for joining us.
Daniel Good: My pleasure
Chris LoCurto: …and sharing this journey, this walk that you went through, which is again, so powerful and and because of it, it’s allowed you to be in a place where businesses successful things are going great. Things are fantastic. Doesn’t mean they’re easy. Like you said, it’s actually hard many days. So folks, again, we have put together a download for you guys.
Now we’ve created this download with Daniel. It’s a pdf that you can print off or save to your phone summarizing, you know, action steps and it’s summarizing the things that we’ve talked about today and what you can do this week to get on a path to seeing the results that Daniel has in his business. So it’s very easy to get that download.
Chris LoCurto: That is this episode and it’s free. Go to Chris LoCurto.com/298 And download that sucker and get started this week. So again, I want to thank Daniel for being on the show and sharing advice and insights on his leadership and the things that he’s learned and making his business successful. And if anyone is looking for a phenomenal company for heating, cooling, and air, where can they find you, Daniel?
Daniel Good: We’re based out of Columbia, Ohio, Youngstown area, and you can go to Goodhomecomfort.com.
Chris LoCurto: Sounds good. All right guys. Hopefully that has helped you today. As always, take this information, change your leadership, Change Your Business, change your life, and join us on the next episode.
