Episode 031: Paul Maskill

Full Transcript

Rock Thomas: Hey everybody, and welcome today’s I am moving podcast. You know, everybody wants to grow and build their businesses.

Rock Thomas: So when you get the chance to interview somebody like my guest today a business owner and a coach focused on helping business owners crush chaos and undercover the income that can happen when they create a better path.

Rock Thomas: That maybe they knew is always possible then it’s worth listening to my guest today. Paul Maskell is an expert at systematized businesses so that the owner and probably that would be you Or you to be

Rock Thomas: Can put in an all star team so they can run the business better than they can, and I can tell you I can relate

Rock Thomas: I have many businesses and when I find the right person. They do a much better job than I do. I happen to be a visionary.

Rock Thomas: And you can’t do all the parts. Initially when you start a small business you wear several hats, but it’s really great to be able to leverage their business.

Rock Thomas: And build a life that they love. I always ask my guests for some of their favorite im statements or Paul says he’s a leader.

Rock Thomas: He is a father, a husband successful visionary and a motivator and we always encourage them to say I am, I am. I am. And that’s what he did. And one of the things that he

Rock Thomas: You know attributes, the fact that has really helped him grow his business is that the worst case scenario is never as bad as you think. And therefore, you can always get through it. Please help me welcome to today’s I am moving podcast none other than Paul Maskell. Paul, what is going on.

Paul Maskill: Rock doing well. Excited to be here. Thanks for the opportunity.

Rock Thomas: We were talking before that you got some young kids at home and that you’re getting the germs coming home and

Rock Thomas: That changes the ecosystem in the family environment. Some things coming in and it’s kind of a great metaphor for life. If you think about it, sometimes you get the opponent’s coming into your world competition.

Rock Thomas: And you’re not ready for it. We’ll talk a little bit later about how to adjust to that. But before we do that, let’s talk about where you grew up, and how it affected who you are today.

Paul Maskill: Yeah, so I grew up in Michigan very blue collar. So I was growing up there in the 80s when everybody works basically and blue collar jobs in the auto industry. My family was not in the auto industry, but

Paul Maskill: Everybody growing up told me you don’t want to be like me, you want to go to college. You want to get a good job. You want to climb the corporate ladder. Get that corner office where the suit. Do the briefcase do that whole thing so

Paul Maskill: That’s basically what I did my dad did manual labor his entire life. So he did. He installed hardwood floors and he said, Don’t be like me don’t own your own business. This is crazy.

Paul Maskill: You know there’s better things out there so

Paul Maskill: And my mom. She eventually got her college degree when she was in her 40s, but she worked her way up and she worked at the grocery store and she was a teller at a bank and worked her way up in the financial industry. So I kind of took a liking to that I always love numbers. I love money.

Paul Maskill: So I set out to conquer the finance world so got a finance degree move to Chicago got a job at a big shiny bank, and that’s what I was going to do for the next 40 years until I realized that’s not what I wanted to do for the next 40 years

Rock Thomas: So, so that’s really great. I love that everybody told you. Don’t be like me be something else.

Rock Thomas: And I talked a lot about the programming receiving we’re growing up ultimately as who you are if you grew up in China, you’d probably eat more rights than you do today.

Rock Thomas: It’s just your environment. Right. Everything I believe that you and I say we heard somewhere else in some shape, form in a book or on a podcast or a radio show TV or parents said it.

Rock Thomas: And I mean, just think about when somebody says, Hi, how are you, you say something, you heard somebody else say you don’t go Abracadabra. When somebody says that, because that’s not a normal thing.

Rock Thomas: So we’re really regurgitating what people have programmed us for so you went in a different direction. And you did exactly the opposite of what other people said wasn’t good. And then you found out that you did like it. Why, what happened.

Paul Maskill: Yeah, so I kind of look at his blessing in disguise. You know, I think everything, like you said, we go through in life, it kind of changes, who we are.

Paul Maskill: And then it’s what do we make of that and is that going to be for the positive or the negative. So I started in the finance world in 2007 so

Paul Maskill: Everything was going well, the market was at the top. Come to find out, in retrospect, I was literally the last person they hire because after that 2008 came

Paul Maskill: All these people that had been working for these bags for 1020 3040 years and their whole life was propped up on this one job they had the mortgage. They had the kids.

Paul Maskill: They had the college tuition. They had the, you know, car payments, they had the beach house.

Paul Maskill: They had all these things propped up by this one single thing that they really couldn’t control because you can only do so much in your job and then when it comes time to lay people off. They literally just look at

Paul Maskill: Who’s making the most who can do more with less. So luckily for me at least at that time I was making the least on everybody, but I saw all these people who poured their life.

Paul Maskill: Into a company that they didn’t really love a job that they didn’t really love

Paul Maskill: Watching it from afar. You watch all these people pile into these trains and into the subways and go into the city their heads down there moping it’s dark. It’s great. And

Paul Maskill: They go to work. Do something they don’t really love for 10 hours and then they do it. Go back home. And it was just like this doesn’t really make sense. And when I saw this people lose their job. It just didn’t seem like having a job was as safe as everyone says it’s going to be.

Paul Maskill: And I realized that everyone always told us a job was the most secure thing ever. You get the 401K, you get the benefits you get the health insurance, all these things.

Paul Maskill: But it’s basically like having a business, you only have one single client. And if that client fires, you, you’re out of business. So to me it didn’t make sense to do something that wasn’t really safe.

Paul Maskill: And I didn’t love it. Anyway, I liked the finance part, but that was it. I liked. I didn’t like having to do the same thing over and over and over, just be one little cog in a big machine.

Paul Maskill: So I realized that the worst case scenario, if I quit my job. I go start my own business and it doesn’t work out.

Paul Maskill: Everyone was saying I was crazy. And what are you doing that’s not safe to do that, but to me the worst case scenario, was it doesn’t work out.

Paul Maskill: But at least I tried it and then I can go back and get another job. So that’s kind of what made its which means I know I can always go sit in another cubicle, I know I can always go make

Paul Maskill: 30 to 40 grand a year and pay the bills. If I had to like I could go to Starbucks and make you know 600 bucks a week and get health insurance if I really needed in like figure it out. So that was

Rock Thomas: One of the things that you

Rock Thomas: One of the things you do go by, is that the worst case scenario was never as bad as you think.

Paul Maskill: For sure. And it never is our worst fears never come true, because we’re always wired to think that way when really

Paul Maskill: What is the upside. And what’s the downside and how does it relate to me there, there really was no downside the upside. Was I can do things that I never thought were possible. Because growing up, nobody told me, these things are possible. They just said go do this.

Rock Thomas: So, Basically, it seems like you went from one and your father said, don’t do this, everybody saying don’t do that you went and did it.

Rock Thomas: You had no fear around jumping into being an entrepreneur. And I want to hear about that. But before I do, I want to hear what are you going to start telling your children.

Paul Maskill: Yeah, that’s a good question. So

Paul Maskill: My view is totally different. And I don’t really love the

Paul Maskill: The environment that we put everybody in it’s like if you don’t pass this standardized test you’re determined to be done. And if you don’t go to school, you’re determined to be done when

Paul Maskill: I see plenty of people that are plumbers, making a lot more money and building businesses that are way more successful and empowering employees and doing all these things.

Paul Maskill: Compared to the person that has a PhD in like the history of basket weaving and they’ve got hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt.

Paul Maskill: And nothing tangible to serve this world like so I really want to, I want them to figure out what they want to do and support it as long as it’s obviously something that is legal and it’s something that they can make a career out of but

Paul Maskill: I don’t love that the environment, just puts everybody into this box and into this one path. And if you don’t follow that path society says, you’re done.

Paul Maskill: I mean, now that they do the internal testing like

Paul Maskill: Second grade. Like if you don’t pass the second grade test your kids on some sort of other plan because they couldn’t pass it basically couldn’t memorize stuff that they could look up in Google.

Rock Thomas: Well, let’s face it, they do it because it works to their benefit. The school system works. They get jobs for the teachers they collect taxes, etc.

Rock Thomas: But the world is changing so quickly today that even if you get a degree. They say that 63% of people that graduate from college. Don’t use their degree for a job.

Rock Thomas: Because the information is outdated. So the guy who’s got that PhD in history of basket weaving is driving a UPS truck.

Rock Thomas: Because he can’t find a job in that what he was taught to do unless it’s a trade like a plumber or maybe if he’s a doctor or a lawyer, dentist, etc.

Rock Thomas: So I’m with you 100% on information is available everywhere. I think the soft skills is what we need to teach people. And I think that’s what you do today how to scale businesses, how to help people grow.

Rock Thomas: How to be leaders, how to be influencers how to get themselves up and add it and act in spite of fear. So let’s talk a little bit about how you help people do that.

Paul Maskill: Yeah, so it really comes back to kind of my story and who I am. When I quit my job and started my own business. I was like, I’ll do this.

Paul Maskill: I don’t need to make a lot of money. I just want to be happy doing I’m doing at first.

Paul Maskill: Like most people start a business, they have these grand plans big ideas. Everyone’s gonna say yes. And nobody said yes. And it was like

Paul Maskill: Wait. Should I go back and get a job like was this a bad move did every everyone. Right. And I wanted to prove them wrong. So I kept going, obviously, eventually started to have success. And then I realized

Paul Maskill: I have created another job for myself, because if I stopped working and I was already working probably 60 to 80 hours a week, which I was okay with I didn’t have kids. I didn’t have anything else to do. And I loved what I did.

Paul Maskill: But I realized that if something happened to me.

Paul Maskill: My business would be gone tomorrow. And I didn’t want to put my family, my employees. Anybody in that situation where I’m propping everything else up for them.

Paul Maskill: And if something happens to me. So I wanted to build a business around that so

Paul Maskill: Eventually I did systems, processes, empowering the team building a business that could thrive without me. So then I could serve more people, whether its employees customers, my family.

Paul Maskill: So really that’s what I focus on today is taking someone’s gift. Whatever you started your business.

Paul Maskill: You provide a really good usually people start a service because it’s a little bit easier. A little bit cheaper and they’re really good at it or they love it.

Paul Maskill: Then how do we take that gift and impact more people, whatever it is, even if you’re a plumber. If you’re the best plumber.

Paul Maskill: It’s kind of selfish, not to teach anybody else how to do that because you can be creating other opportunities for people building a better business which allows you to do.

Paul Maskill: More things to achieve your personal goals. So that’s really what I like to tie in is

Paul Maskill: What is your personal vision. What do you really want to do in this world. What do you want to do with your family, your friends, your network and then how can we build a business to help you achieve all those goals. And once we get to that point.

Paul Maskill: It allows them to realize that it’s okay to give up control back to the beginning when I said the worst case scenario is never as bad as you think it’s going to be

Paul Maskill: That was my trigger to start delegating things and I realized if it doesn’t work, it’s just going to come back to me and that’s where it was anyway. So literally, there was no risk and I’m going to learn something along the way.

Rock Thomas: Cool. So just so our listeners know what you’re, you know, the genre, you’re in. What was the business you built

Paul Maskill: So we ran after school golf and tennis programs for elementary kids. So it was. I love sports. I love kids.

Paul Maskill: And we literally were able to make these sports more accessible to kids by bringing it to them. They were kind of historically thought is country club sports and you can’t afford it and all that.

Paul Maskill: So we did that. And then our goal was to turn them into lifelong players by transitioning them to the golf course to the tennis facilities.

Paul Maskill: So it was awesome. And like the people we hired that we’re delivering these programs are great. The problem was, I was doing everything else on the back end, the finance is the operations. The marketing the sales, the reporting all that so

Paul Maskill: I wanted to keep growing. I wanted to keep serving more kids wanting to keep creating opportunities, but I literally had no more time in the day because I was doing things that other people could do for me or for us or for the organization.

Rock Thomas: So how did you scale it. What did you do, because this is so good. The typical entrepreneur gets stuck wearing many hats.

Rock Thomas: There in every department, the sales the marketing administration, the financing and trying to troubleshoot the problems, customer service, all that

Rock Thomas: And they usually end up being overwhelmed and reacting to things and not building their business out for a period of time and they get stuck with a fancy job call them an entrepreneur. I get to work, whatever I want, which is all the freaking time. Right.

Paul Maskill: That is true.

Rock Thomas: And then they start losing their health and their relationships get threatened and they become bitter pissed off annoyed at life.

Rock Thomas: And they thought, the one thing that I wanted. The one thing that I thought was gonna make me happy and fulfilled. Now, I just can’t wait to get rid of it. So how did you transition Paul

Paul Maskill: Yeah, I mean that’s that’s 100% true and we always put ourselves on the back burner. We always sacrifice everything just to keep this machine running because if the machine stops running, we’re kind of stuck. So, you know, I really

Paul Maskill: I, to be honest. I had never read a book in my life like

Paul Maskill: In college I went to every class because I hated reading and then I was like, I need to figure this out. And I know other people have figured it out because I worked for a bank that figured it out. They just plug me in. And then when I left.

Paul Maskill: They plug somebody else. And so I knew it could be done and I knew

Rock Thomas: I

Paul Maskill: If they could do it. I could do it. So for me the key was first figuring out where do I want to go.

Paul Maskill: What is my vision, where do I want to take this thing and then. So before we get into the tactical stuff.

Paul Maskill: In order to know what you need to do today. You need to know where you’re going. So I had to figure out where do I actually want to go so

Paul Maskill: figuring that out on a personal side but then also a business side.

Paul Maskill: Building. What does your ideal organization chart look like when this business is rocking and rolling and it’s running without you. So

Paul Maskill: Built that out, you know, and then reached out to the people that were already out delivering the services. And hey, this is what I want to build who wants to build it with me.

Paul Maskill: And a bunch of people raised me and I love the product coach, Paul, I want to do this. Let’s get started. So they were on board. They’re also kind of my accountability partner because I was like

Paul Maskill: I’m telling these guys I’m getting an opportunity. I can’t let them down and then we really just

Paul Maskill: I took a weekend and I still remember it was took out his big sheet of paper and wrote down every single thing that I do in this business.

Paul Maskill: From the biggest task, the little tasks and then I took that and ask my wife. What else do I do because I know there’s stuff that I probably do in my sleep.

Paul Maskill: That I don’t even think of because it’s just you know it’s one of those things you just do every day. You know, you think about it. So then she gave me to

Rock Thomas: Dress good things that you do that piss her off or just the things you

Paul Maskill: Both and she knows what she knew what she knew better than me. What things really pissed me off, which then it turns pisses her up because she’s like when you have to deal with that you’re not a nice person to be around it that makes

Paul Maskill: Yes, so

Paul Maskill: Then I did the same thing with my employees, like what else do I do so literally just made this huge list documented everything

Rock Thomas: Created an operations manual what it is, so that you could plug and play with different people in the roles and say, if you’re sitting in this seat. This is the stuff that you need to handle. And here’s how you handle it.

Paul Maskill: 100% yeah and then literally just started documenting it using technology like we’re on zoom today and you hit record and you do the task.

Rock Thomas: Yep.

Paul Maskill: And then you deliver it to somebody else and I realized, once they did it. And they did it successfully. I was like, Oh my gosh, this is the best thing ever. Why did I do this before.

Paul Maskill: So then it was kind of like a drug. I just kept delegating everything until I had literally nothing left to delegate

Rock Thomas: Okay, but there’s a piece you’re missing out here that I think is crucially important is you need to find the right people.

Rock Thomas: Correct. That is a skill set and of itself. So how did you go about interviewing hiring and empowering training people to carry out these tasks.

Paul Maskill: So I basically did the opposite of what I realized corporate America did so corporate America really falls in love with

Paul Maskill: What your resume says you can do your kind of technical skills that you have. Oh, you can do this, this and this and I wanted to, I wanted to hire people

Paul Maskill: That I knew I could go and have dinner with or I could have a beer with or I could sit down and have conversations

Paul Maskill: And I knew that if they did something quote unquote wrong. I could say, hey, rock, you know, this is okay, but do you think we could have done it better.

Paul Maskill: And they don’t get really mad and offended. So really focused on that personality. Do they can I get along with them.

Paul Maskill: Because then we can build anything. So I kind of brought it back to even the sports com you know the context of sports have the best team that wins doesn’t necessarily have the best players, they have the best fitting players that get together.

Rock Thomas: Yeah.

Paul Maskill: You know if anybody who follows football. The New England Patriots very rarely have the best players but they’re always good, because they can plug in different personalities, because they know that’s how we build a team.

Rock Thomas: Yeah, and piggyback on that because that’s my team. One of the things they talked about is do your job, do your job, do your job, each person first does their job.

Rock Thomas: versus trying to overdo somebody else’s job. So it’s knowing your role and then being open to feedback and event that it doesn’t work. And I think what you’re also saying is that there was a sense of

Rock Thomas: Culture and family fit so that people were playing for the team and not for their individual awards or their individual income, but let’s make the team more important than my particular role is that makes sense as well.

Paul Maskill: Yeah, it’s funny you mentioned, do your job. So we always use Slack to communicate and I would have like this gif or me or whatever, a Bill Belichick. And I would just send it to him. Like, just do your job. Don’t worry about anything else. If you, if everyone does that

Paul Maskill: We all win. And I think the other part to tying into that culture is explaining them. Why are we doing what we’re doing right I always got so frustrated the corporate world is, why are we doing it this way. Like, I don’t know, because you know manager Joe says,

Rock Thomas: always done it that way.

Paul Maskill: Yeah, so when you explain the why it has so much more value.

Paul Maskill: To them, and there’s so much more willing to give the extra mile, because it’s like, oh, this does this and at the end is either the customer or the organization that wins, because we’re doing it this way, not just because I said so.

Rock Thomas: Yeah. So what I hear you saying is that you give it meaning and a life without meaning.

Rock Thomas: Is a life that is unfulfilled. So if a person knows this is why we’re doing it. This is the impact, it’s going to make and it’s much more fulfilling

Rock Thomas: So you’re built these teams and then you probably went on to see that that it took some certain skills. And now, what you do is you help other people build and scale their organizations. What does that look like, how does that work.

Paul Maskill: Yeah, so I mean it’s kind of started just because people have asked me, like, how did you do this. How did you do this and

Paul Maskill: It’s, you know, so really now I work with people that usually are in a service based world, because that’s what they start and it’s hard to get them out of

Paul Maskill: The mindset of I’m the best only I can do this.

Paul Maskill: And I tell them, if that was the case, you’d be making a lot more money because like people that make that statement or like brain surgeons rocket scientists like

Paul Maskill: Where if something goes wrong. A lot of people die like if you don’t turn that wrench right nobody dies, nobody actually really cares as long as you respond to it properly. So I

Rock Thomas: Run real yeah I run real estate offices and and people are like, yeah, I’m the only one. They want to deal with. And I go,

Rock Thomas: I used to sell 100 homes a year and then I stopped selling and people still move. They’ll be fine if you don’t do this, you can learn to scale by just delivering value. So I get you on that one. Go ahead.

Paul Maskill: So yeah, so that’s really you know kind of what I think the first exercise is getting them over the mental hurdle of it’s okay to give up control and

Paul Maskill: Usually what gets them to start taking action is I just plain asked them, are your daily actions getting you closer to where you want to be. And usually the answer is no, because nobody says

Paul Maskill: I can’t wait to start my business and work 20 473 65 and be burned out, we all started our business because we wanted that freedom we wanted that income that wasn’t just

Paul Maskill: You know, based on how much time are we putting into this business. So once we get over the mental hurdle that is just working with them on.

Paul Maskill: Putting a plan in place. What’s the biggest issues that they have

Paul Maskill: Is it hiring is it getting knowing your financials is huge because a lot of people don’t really know where their money is coming from what’s possible. What’s not profit. So every case is a little bit different.

Paul Maskill: But doing one thing at a time until it’s complete. I feel a lot of entrepreneurs, we have the bright shiny object syndrome. So we got like 10 things going, and nothing gets done. And then we look back a year from now, it’s like

Paul Maskill: I was really busy, but I didn’t. I wasn’t productive at all like I I was driving my car all year. But I didn’t go anywhere. So am I still in business.

Rock Thomas: So let’s talk a little bit Paul about what are some of the biggest things that hold people back from scaling.

Paul Maskill: Yeah, it’s a good question. Rock. So I would say one is the mindset. So if we

Paul Maskill: Get over

Paul Maskill: That mindset, it’s not it’s not taking the time to build a solid foundation before you do scale. So I find a lot of business owners, they might have tried to scale.

Paul Maskill: And then they realized they couldn’t handle it. So they just say, oh, there’s no good help out there. I can’t find anybody but one they didn’t have a foundation. So if you’re going to go build a really big house, you need a really nice Foundation, which takes a lot of time.

Rock Thomas: All right, I’m gonna I’m gonna chip in here a lot because you’re you’re giving such value. I don’t want people to us over it.

Rock Thomas: Was the mindset. Number one is the mindset. Number two is they get started. They haven’t built a really good foundation. So why do people start without creating a foundation

Paul Maskill: So I find it’s usually because we kind of have a scarcity mindset of we have to say yes to everything.

Paul Maskill: Because like I just got to get customers. I gotta get money in the door. I gotta say, Yes, I gotta say yes.

Paul Maskill: Which is sustainable until it’s not. And then you it’s like I need to get rid of some of these things, but it’s it’s like feeding the machine.

Paul Maskill: And now I don’t have time to build a foundation. So what am I going to do. So I learned the hard way.

Paul Maskill: So now if I go into business. It’s like, let’s let’s not go get any more customers, let’s build the foundation keep all your current customers happy.

Paul Maskill: Serve the heck out of them, but take six months or however long it takes to build this really solid foundation so then you can scale to heights that you probably didn’t think we’re possible six months ago. So that would probably be the second part of that.

Rock Thomas: So you said at the beginning, is you got to get really clear on your vision.

Rock Thomas: So people are saying yes to everything. Is it not true that they’re not clear on the perfect customer and they’re kind of saying yes to customers that are not in there for the now we’re spreading themselves wide as well.

Paul Maskill: For sure. Yeah, and I think that goes back to the scarcity mindset of I can serve anybody. I like

Rock Thomas: They just say, yes, I do that.

Paul Maskill: Yeah I know I shouldn’t do that. But I can do it. So I’m going to say yes to. And I’ll figure it out. That’s kind of the entrepreneur mindset and there’s pros to it. But then, obviously, these are the cons to it.

Paul Maskill: And then we feel if we niche down. There’s not enough people I can serve like how’s that possible, but there is, the more you niche down the, you know, the deeper you get the narrow you get

Paul Maskill: Provide a lot more value. You have a lot more a lot less things to focus on which then allows you to charge a premium price as well because you can serve those people better than anybody.

Rock Thomas: So how does the small entrepreneur run their business, in a way, and I’m guilty of this too, because I actually have a phrase I see a lot

Rock Thomas: Say yes and figure it out later, which gets me into a lot of opportunities, but it also gets me sometimes into that. Great place where I’m serving people that are not the ideal client.

Rock Thomas: And the example is a real estate agent that starts instead. Instead of saying, I’m going to work this municipality this area.

Rock Thomas: Their cousin says, hey, can you sell a house 40 miles from here and they’re like, oh yeah, I do that.

Rock Thomas: And then they drive through traffic for four hours and then they sell it and that person there goes my neighbor has a house, could you sell it.

Rock Thomas: And then before they know if they’re driving all over. Hell is half acre because they didn’t decide that they were going to build a business in one spot. So it would seem to me, Paul. That

Rock Thomas: The person corporate America is very clear through trial and error, maybe, or because they have a great leader that this is the niche. They’re going to serve.

Rock Thomas: And they create processes and procedures are routed around it and then they stick to it and it’s sometimes it’s annoying because like you said, Go. Why do we do that.

Rock Thomas: While because somebody figured out that if we bend the rules. We’re going to be all over the place.

Rock Thomas: So my question to you is, how do you help the young entrepreneur.

Rock Thomas: Who is probably saying yes to stuff they shouldn’t a little scattered doesn’t want to pay the price up front of planning and building the foundation because they want to get their

Rock Thomas: Their feet wet. They want to bring money in, they’re anxious to get started, how do you dial and back and get them to build that foundation, because I think that’s the million dollar question.

Paul Maskill: Yeah, so I think it’s being able to in your mind.

Paul Maskill: Let people down so we say yes to everything, then we have to start turning, not necessarily turning new people away, which you should probably already be doing at this point. But people you’re currently serving just saying, hey,

Paul Maskill: It’s just not a right fit anymore. And here are some other people that might be able to help you. It’s really hard to do that because we feel like we’re letting people down so I was on a call an hour ago with a client.

Paul Maskill: And she made this job. So she was transitioning to be an entrepreneur. Now she’s got a fairly successful business. But in the interim

Paul Maskill: She was consulting for somebody else. And it’s taken up a lot of time, she didn’t like it. She’s like,

Paul Maskill: I know I I know I can’t do this anymore. But I feel like I’m gonna let them down. They’re going to be upset.

Paul Maskill: And last week. She told them, I can’t do this anymore. And they were like, Oh my gosh, that’s so good. Congratulations on the success of your business. We’re happy to help you any way we can. And she’s like,

Paul Maskill: Wow, like that wasn’t really that bad because you’re still serving them because if you’re doing something you shouldn’t be doing, you’re actually doing that customer a disservice or

Paul Maskill: Whoever this person you’re dealing with, whether it’s employee customer contractor. So having the ability to say, not anymore and that’s building another muscle. I’ve had to do it.

Paul Maskill: I brought in businesses where it’s like, yeah, I can do that. And it’s like, I either. I don’t like it’s not a good fit, and having to pare back to then ramp up again is a whole nother process.

Rock Thomas: That’s really cool. I love that a lot. So, who’s your ideal client.

Paul Maskill: Yeah, so I I love working with, I would say 99% of my clients are service based businesses who serve their local community so they could be a plumber. They later that was just talking about. She owns

Paul Maskill: They do Senior Care. So they do like companion care for elderly, they’ll go into their house and just spend time with them and do fun things with them.

Paul Maskill: Take them to get their meds, whatever it might be. So I really love working with those people because they have such a passion for the service.

Paul Maskill: That if we can just duplicate that and find those people, then they can impact so many more people

Paul Maskill: I’ve tried going the physical product products used to have an e commerce store. I’ve tried to work with them. I just, it doesn’t get me as excited as building those relationships in the service based world. So that is my ideal client.

Paul Maskill: Small business owner entrepreneur providing a really good service they need help on the back end, so they can start to build a business that can thrive without them, because most small businesses can’t run for more than a week without the owner

Rock Thomas: So how can people get in touch with you follow you access, you have a conversation about what you do.

Paul Maskill: Yeah, so the ease of use. Just go to my website, it’s Paul Maskell com if you go there, there’s links to my podcasts rock you were actually on the podcast. You guys can check out that interview as well.

Paul Maskill: And if you just look up me on social media, LinkedIn, Facebook, you’ll find me.

Paul Maskill: There, Paul Maskell MS, K, L, L and they’ll be all sorts of resources on my website as well opportunity to join. Most of the people I work with us through a mastermind. So I run a mastermind called the ultimate freedom mastermind.

Paul Maskill: Where we get together every week mastermind put people on hot seats hold them accountable and get them to where they want to go.

Rock Thomas: It’s amazing. That’s great stuff.

Rock Thomas: Recommend us a book that you think is just good for people that maybe you’re reading now or plan on reading

Paul Maskill: Yeah, so the book I’m reading. Now, I recommend everybody read it. It’s called the road less stupid. It’s basically how to avoid the stupid tax and business.

Paul Maskill: Every chapters, like the book is made. So you can just open it up and read from anywhere. You don’t have to follow it in sequential order, but it’s every chapters like

Paul Maskill: Three or four pages and it gives you a bunch of stuff to think about. So obviously, tons of great books. That’s just what I’m reading now that I would recommend the road less stupid. I think it’s Keith Cunningham, I believe.

Rock Thomas: He’s a great guy. Um, how many hours a week do you work now.

Paul Maskill: So I still work a lot, I would say. Not a lot, but my schedule. Now that we have a three years, a little bit different. So I get up at four.

Paul Maskill: I’ll do about 30 to 45 minutes to kind of my personal time and then I’ll go to the gym and then I’ll come home, get her daughter ready for school. My wife takes her to school.

Paul Maskill: They’re out of the house by about seven and then I’ll work from seven to three and then I leave at three o’clock. Go pick her up from school. We’ll hang out and then

Paul Maskill: Usually I’ll probably work 30 minutes in the evening, just kind of wrapping things up. So I would say on average nine to 10 hours a day. But now that we have a three year old. I really don’t work the weekends at all.

Paul Maskill: And Friday we our daughter doesn’t go to school on Friday. So I try to be done in Friday after she wakes up from her nap.

Rock Thomas: I think people would, wouldn’t we would welcome my lifestyle like that. That’s pretty good. You work from home, mostly right

Paul Maskill: Yeah, I work from home unless I’m traveling to see a client or going to meet somebody. I work from home 100% of the time.

Rock Thomas: And your masterminds are they mostly via zoom

Paul Maskill: Yeah, so we do everything zoom virtual we have some people locally here Raleigh. But everything’s done on zoom. So anybody can join it.

Paul Maskill: That has internet connection.

Rock Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. And they’re geared mostly towards small business owners that want to scale their businesses at that Mitch that focused

Paul Maskill: Yeah, so it’s that niche. I would say most of the most of the business owners in there. They’ve probably hired people but they’re still kind of like I was, they’re still doing too much of the backend work. I would say on average revenue between 300 to 1,300,000 to a million dollars.

Rock Thomas: Okay, cool. So this is the I Am movement podcasts and I talked a lot about the words that follow. I am follow you.

Rock Thomas: And we describe ourselves in a way that we want to remain consistent with how we see ourselves. So now that you’re a father. What’s changed in your identity. Would you say the way you see yourself the way you present yourself.

Paul Maskill: Yeah, that’s a good question. I think it totally changes compared to where my life was, I would say, four years ago, so

Paul Maskill: You know, really, my focus now and my you know where I am in life. I think it’s more of thinking, longer term, I think I was so short term focus. Hey, we got to do this. We got to do this next now it’s like

Paul Maskill: What are we building what kind of legacy, am I leaving. What am I gonna leave for her. What am I going to instill in her because as you said at the beginning, we are such an environment, you know, we become basically our environment. So

Paul Maskill: The environment that I’m creating for her and my wife me my wife recruiting for her is probably a lot different that I grew up in. I’m grateful for everything. I went through it wasn’t hard. My family was successful, but to be able to just instill other

Paul Maskill: Let her know that there’s more than one path that you can go on let everybody know that you don’t have to follow what everyone’s doing, what do you like to do and

Paul Maskill: Everybody in this world you know is, is that I mean especially now, it’s such a connected world you have access to 7 billion people like and you have access to all this information that used to be behind these gated universities. Yes.

Rock Thomas: True, so I just interviewed a gentleman named Ken Wimberley who has a thing called the love legacy and created an app where you can record and document your thoughts around your children.

Rock Thomas: And it might be something for you to actually check out being a young father, where you can you can dictate, you can take pictures you can upload thoughts, you can

Rock Thomas: You read to her or something like that. She’s not going to remember that moment, but maybe you take a snapshot of that and you put it into this app and it keeps a basically a calendar of your whole

Rock Thomas: life’s experience in your relationship with your children and he’s been doing it for years.

Rock Thomas: And I think that children may never know what you were thinking about when they were two years old and they kept you up at night.

Rock Thomas: And you were working, you know, 80 hours a day and you have to get up four times in the night. So you may want to check that out. And then the other listener wanting to check that out is the love legacy by Ken Wimberley my I am movement podcast. What do you think of that concept.

Paul Maskill: Yeah, I think it’s great. Just because we get so involved in the day to day that we don’t we don’t really appreciate what we’re actually going through a lot of times, because like you said like

Paul Maskill: She gets up at three in the morning because it’s thundering and at the moment. You’re like, God, I just want to go to sleep for one more hour, but in the grand scheme of things 15 years. And I’d be like, Man, I wish she would be here.

Paul Maskill: To wake me up at three in the morning, so we can hang out some more so.

Rock Thomas: Trying to have that that thought right would be really cool for you to record and then imagine her being able to experience that. And look at that and reflect on it. Would that could possibly mean

Paul Maskill: For sure, and I think

Paul Maskill: Somebody told me, and I think it’s 100% sure building businesses and becoming apparent are probably the two biggest personal development journeys that you can go on because you can’t really plan for it. You just gotta do it every single day and you just got to keep improving

Rock Thomas: Yeah, you got to show up in that moment and see who you are in that moment, so

Rock Thomas: I really appreciate you coming on today, and I’m going to encourage people that if you have small businesses to reach out to Paul and see what he can do in order to give you an insight.

Rock Thomas: And help you maybe scale it and get out of the so called you know job that you bought instead of business that you want to operate. So you can have the, the freedom. So thanks so much for joining us, and I really appreciate your insights on that. Thanks a lot.

Paul Maskill: Thanks rock enjoyed it.