77. Starting and Scaling a Home Repair Business with Rodney Adams

Brock Briggs  0:00 

Hello and welcome to the Scuttlebutt podcast, the show for current and former service members looking to make better decisions, think deeper and earn more money. My name is Brock Briggs. And each week, I do that by bringing you a conversation with a badass veteran at the top of their craft. Today, you're hearing my conversation with Rodney Adams.

Rodney is a former Marine Corps infantry, both enlisted and officer and is now the CEO and founder of Mr. Home Repair of Tulsa. We get into why the title of veteran means different things to different people and the good and bad application of it in the workplace. We talk about his journey from his time working at Goldman Sachs Investment Management arm to becoming an entrepreneur. We also get into what it takes to succeed operating a small and medium business and some very potent advice for young men pursuing a similar path. Don't forget, you can always check out these episodes, transcripts, the YouTube channel and newsletter where I dive deeper on each episode every week, all at scuttlebuttpodcast.co. Please enjoy this conversation with Rodney Adams.

Brock Briggs

One of the things that you were just saying was that you think that the veteran space is played out? What exactly do you mean by that?

Rodney Adams  1:27 

Yeah, I mean, I think I have maybe a little bit of a different approach than what you might see online or kind of in the public, but I just, I kind of get nauseated by all of the veterans stuff that's out there. You know, there's a big number of us that just wanted to serve and do our part. And, you know, do good work with good guys. And, you know, in the days after even the initial invasion, it's like, every initiative in the world started popping up to support veterans. And I think that's a good thing. I've lived in a country that was not that way. I lived in Western Europe for a couple of years as one of my assignments and the country I lived in, the general idea was that you were a military service member if you couldn't get a better job.

And so I'm really grateful to live in a country that supports you know, warfighters. But I will say that I've never really been into the whole like, what's the craziest experience you've ever had kind of thing? I hate, I can't stand going to a party with, you know, non veterans or anybody for that matter. And kind of like, have you ever killed anybody? Or what's the craziest thing you've ever done? Like, I just don't like that. I don't, not because I had a terrible experience or I'm bitter about my service or anything for that matter. There's literally nothing about my service that keeps me awake at night. I'm very grateful and fortunate in that regard. But I am still only talking about it. I think there's far more interesting stuff out there.

And I think, similar to maybe the World War ll guys coming home, you know, now we've seen over decades of them living their lives afterward. There's a lot of value that they added to just being vets to just being business owners to being, you know, leaders in their church, whatever it may be. And so to me, how someone who has had a formative unique experience in their life goes about living the normal parts that everybody else has to deal with is interesting to me. That's more fascinating than, you know, what's the craziest thing you ever saw in wherever. So, anyway, I realize it's maybe an odd approach. But I think the whole veterans deal can be a little bit of a corporate virtue signal from time to time as well. It's not much different than a lot of these, you know, affinity groups that corporate America tries to shove down their employees throats. They do it because they want attention.

And they do it because they want to seem like a good company or the right kind of place. And they've put veterans on a pedestal that they themselves benefit from. And so I'm not bitter about it, but after a while, you just kind of get tired of talking about it. I like meeting other guys that have had experiences similar to mine. I'm very proud of my service. I had a great time in the Marine Corps and love all the dudes that I'm still in contact with. But I also have a life that is normal, like everybody else's. And I like my life. And it's interesting as well.

Brock Briggs  4:45 

What do you think that that brings that on? Like you mentioned that there's maybe some virtue signaling from corporations and maybe you're referring there to like, hey, we hire vets and do this. Is that what you're referring to? And then maybe on an individual level, what do you think spurs people's desire to be obsessed with that? I'm not exactly sure what other way to put that.

Rodney Adams  5:13 

Yeah, I don't totally know. I mean, I think, particularly in corporate America, I think we're always trying to align ourselves with things or people that seem good or that the public broadly supports or we're always trying to associate our image with images that are broadly accepted by the culture. And so, you know, look back to the Wounded Warrior stuff, back when they kind of had their little heyday. Obviously, by the end of it, they were squandering money and just doing ridiculous things, but, you know, co branding with all these consumer products and putting their little symbol on all this stuff, like, I mean, that absolutely benefited, you know, all these consumer packaged groups to have veteran stuff, like on their products during a time of war. They were absolutely benefiting from there.

And I think that, that doesn't bother me, it doesn't make me bitter or anything. I think let's all just be honest about the fact that there are supporting veterans and supporting all these other groups that society has sort of boxed together and supports, you know, from a social perspective, is not a bad thing. I think a lot of people do it with a good heart in mind. But it is profitable too. Let's not pretend it's not, like it is profitable to be aligned with groups and brands and people and images that the public broadly supports. And so the second that, you know, well, now that we're talking about it, I'd be interesting to go back and see during, like Vietnam like how many corporate corporations put, you know, veteran related things on their packages because the war was not so popular and the veterans themselves were not so popular. And I'm curious, I'd be curious to know how much signaling was being done by corporate America selling, you know, goods during that time and I truly don't know. I could be totally wrong.

But let's just be honest about the fact that I'm proud of my service. I love the guys that I've met. And I have no problem with people hiring vets because they’re vets. I think that's our great hires for the most part because no matter how high, you've climbed in the ranks, you have been trained well, you've been led, you've had to lead and you've had to learn to follow, like all things that are really important to being a productive member of society. And so trust me, like, if you apply for a job with my company and you're a veteran, like my ears are gonna perk up because there's a good chance that you and I speak the same language. And there's some common understanding of just discipline and good work. And so I have no problem with it. But let's also not pretend that it's not a big virtue signal for a lot of corporations to just put veteran stuff on their packages. It's profitable. And that's part of it, too.

Brock Briggs  8:33 

I'd never heard that pitch before. But I think you make a good point. And I would also be curious to know about the branding during different periods of war and what that look like. If I were to kind of speculate on what it looks like now, it seems like that there has been some sort of line drawn there between we support the troops and the people. Nobody wants to be seen as somebody who doesn't for exactly some of the reasons that you just listed. But on the flip side, some of those same organizations are very vocal in damning of like the war in Iraq and what we've been doing for the last 20 years, rightfully or wrongfully. So I'm not sure.

Rodney Adams  9:12 

Yeah, totally. I mean, again, but you see it all over, right? Like, let's not divide the groups from each other. You've got various initiatives in corporate America. You might have you know, you see it with women's, you know, rights issues, you see it with racial stuff, you see it with sexual orientation stuff, that with the veteran thing is  all the same thing, right? Like the people are not the same. The issues are not the same, but I think there are good hearted people that are behind some of these brands that do want to extend a hand or align themselves with these communities and in a good way, like a good natured way and that's okay.

But let's also not purchase and like, if any one of these communities fell out of public favor, that they would just keep on branding them. It's not profitable to align your company with an unpopular social initiative. And so that to me and I'm not trying to make this a bigger deal than it is. But to me, I just think that there's a little bit of acknowledgement that can be made there, particularly young people like us. I mean, we're veterans, let's not, you know, let's not pretend that it was good for Goldman Sachs to hire me. Not because of my big brain, but because I was a veteran during a time when they were running veterans initiatives. But that benefited me too. Because I got a job at a place I probably wouldn't have got a job at.

Brock Briggs  10:44 

You might be selling yourself short there. And that is interesting, though. And I have gone through this same kind of journey of trying to understand like what exactly this means. And there are a lot of this is a conversation, a mental conversation that everybody I think goes through after service. And this is what they don't talk about, is like, how hard do you want to lean into it? Because on one side of the coin, you can really lean in and kind of take advantage of because as you said that there's abundant resources. And there's all of these things out there. And you can really suck a lot of those systems dry. Or you can go the complete opposite side of the coin and basically never acknowledge your service and say, yeah, that happened and never bring it up. And I don't know, probably the perfect balance might be somewhere in between.

Rodney Adams  11:37 

Yeah, maybe. I mean, I think as far as the service member goes, it's kind of on them. They can live the life that they want to live, if they don't wanna box up all their stuff and put it in the attic and never talk about it again. That's their prerogative. And that's totally fine. I think for me, I would, not that it's any of my business. But if I were talking to somebody like that, I just want to make sure that they were healthy and okay and had, you know, had the outlets that they needed to talk about stuff and they're not just completely suppressing, you know, some dark stuff, but as long as they're fine with it and they just don't really want to deal with, you know, they just don't really want to deal in the public with their time of service. They'd rather move on, then fine. That's up to them.

Brock Briggs  12:23 

You were talking a few minutes ago about vets being good hires generally. You said that they make good leaders, they make good followers. You had a really poignant point in another interview I listened that you did and you said something to the effect of that the military teaches us a lot about leadership, but light in the way of kind of soft or like the tangible skill that you need to do a job. So like somebody that at 18 goes to off to university and gets a degree. They're going to graduate with some actual kind of skills in a particular area and then grow the leadership experience over time. Whereas somebody in the military might not have that skill at the end of the four years or at least that's tangible to the job that they get. But they have that leadership experience with people and you know, they're a little bit more rounded and their kind of leadership development, I guess you might say.

Rodney Adams  13:23 

Yeah

Brock Briggs

Would you agree with that?

Rodney Adams

Yeah, I would say, as far as the veteran hiring thing, I would say if your resume has a time of service on it, then I'm probably going to automatically move you to the interview stage just because you at least have shown that you can raise your hand and take responsibility. And you've gone through hard things and you've developed a common language that I probably understand. Now, then I'm probably going to be more hard on you in the interview phase because I also know that there's a lot of waste and deadweight in the military. If you like you can coast in the military. Like there's a lot of coasting middle management that make full 20 year careers that never intended to be productive. They just get orders, the duty station to duty station and you know their middle performers because they can be because the system rewards mediocrity in a lot of ways.

There's a lot of exceptional warfighters out there for sure. But you're not automatically punching your ticket to being a high capacity individual just because you join the military but it will get you an interview for me anyway. I don't know how that people feel. But then after that, I'm gonna go through your resume and I want to know, I know how to read a resume. And I know when you're just telling me what your job description was versus what you actually produced while you were there. And so I want to see someone who showed up to their duty station and actually outperformed. As opposed to, you know, anybody can put on how much money and equipment you're responsible for or you know, the worst lieutenants I've ever met, we're still responsible for the same number of guys I was. So if you put that on a resume, that doesn't mean that you're great. It just means that you have a bigger responsibility.

And so that's sort of how I feel about hiring. As far as the skills thing goes, for me there is a big tension here because the military is not a community service organization. And the number one responsibility of our fighting force is readiness, mission readiness, winning battles, that's what we do. So it's not really their job to make sure that I know how to value real estate or weld or you know, do what I do some other tasks in order to set me up for success outside of the military. But the flip side of that coin is, being in the military, you're making a sacrifice by taking yourself off the field, off of the hiring pool, out of normal society in concentrating in an area that isn't useful in most places. I was an infantry man. Almost nothing I did has any value in civil society. I have to translate everything, right? Like everything has to be filtered and translated. And not everybody has the ability to do that or the time. I've been fortunate enough to, you know, I got a job pretty much right out of my service. And they hired me knowing that I was not coming in as the best investment banker or investment manager. I had to learn, but they gave me that chance.

And so I had to bust my tail to kind of get up the curve. So I don't know what the responsibility of the military is in order to get those people those skills. I would say, going back to our earlier conversation, if you're all about hiring vets, hire vets and then, you know, there's companies out there, GE is one of them. There's other ones, there's a bunch of them probably by now that have built pipelines specifically for veterans, where they hire you knowing that you're made of the kind of stuff that they want you to be made of and then they'll train you to do the other stuff. And you usually have a two or three year period where you're kind of learning the ropes. I think that's a fantastic way to hire veterans, takes the burden off the military to have to kind of train you to get you to fly the nest. But then also, you know, you've got like two years to underperform. And sink or swim, ultimately, learn what you need to learn to be successful or don't but at least you had a chance. And I think those are great programs for companies that do it.

Brock Briggs  18:13 

Your earlier point about there being people that close to 20, that's probably one of my hot takes. There was this funny Twitter thing circulating around and it was like what's your hot take about the military that will get everybody riled up on here and mine was that it feels as if there are more kind of mediocre performers in the military than there is comparatively to the rest of the community because you're relatively shielded from real negative outcomes. And as you pointed out, the incentives are just not there. It's, you know, we've got this carrot at the end of the stick. And if you can just make it to 20, then you've got this waiting for you. Do you have a comment about that?

Rodney Adams  19:00 

I mean, I agree with it. There's absolutely high performers in the military. But they're usually the ones that have a sense of duty. And to the degree that they know they could be doing something else, but they choose the limitations of being in the military, the pay, the structure, whatever that may be because it's what they want to do, but they could totally be somewhere else doing other things. Absolutely I've met a bunch of them. They're totally a bunch of high performers out there. That said, the promotion and retention system rewards mediocrity. It doesn't reward the top 5%. It rewards the middle band, however big that is.

And so I think just as you increase in ranks, you know, the top performers start to sort of off board and head out to the civilian life and the mediocre performers sort of keep getting promoted, they keep getting more money, they get a new duty station. Whatever mistakes they made or laziness that manifested in one assignment completely goes away and then get the start over and a completely different assignment. And before you know it, you've done 20 years. And so I do not mean to say that everybody who does 20 years is mediocre at all. On the flip side, particularly in the officer ranks, I'd have to think a little bit about the enlisted ranks. I was enlisted before I was an officer, but not for long.

But for the officer side, once you kind of hit the rank of Major, I don't know what that is in the Air Force and the Navy. I guess it'd be a lieutenant commander in the Navy. A major in the army in the Marine Corps, at least, the O-4 level, you kind of start getting to the point where you're not super marketable in the civilian world, at a high professional level. Like you kind of get yourself to a place where defense contracting, doing something in the National Capital Region is probably where you're going to end up. And so I feel for those guys because they might end up being high performers. But you know, when you're 45 and looking for your first real job outside of the military, that's a hard sell for a lot of companies.

You know, the young officers are great Junior military officers, I think JMO is what they used to call them. The lieutenant's and the young captains, it's a great time to transition. O-4, O-5, O-6 is probably a lot harder if you want to do something outside of defense contracting or something like that. So anyway, I agree with you, the system rewards mediocrity. But I also tend to think that over time, even the high performers once you make it long enough, it doesn't make sense to try to leave before you do your 20. Like, once you've done 17, why not do 20? You know what I mean?

Brock Briggs  22:19 

There certainly is the cut off and even earlier on that discussion is being had, you know, people, people make that justification after four years and less than you know. They're like, well, you know, I'm a quarter of the way there, you know, it's happening from very early on even.

Rodney Adams  22:35 

And by the way, I used to have an issue with sort of people kind of staying just for the benefits. But as I've gotten older and I've been out for a while, I don't really care anymore. Like, you know, like, if you're particularly in the enlisted ranks or in the guys who might not have opportunities elsewhere, like two good jobs, stay and get your retirement. And like, you know, I met a lot of folks who their parents didn't make a lot of money, their grandparents didn't make a lot of money. The prospect of them staying in and being an E-7 or an E-8 with a nice retirement and you know, a stable house for their family.

It's great, man, keep going after. It’s a good deal. And then you got your little retirement and you can start a side hustle or a different job when you get out, buy a couple houses or whatever. I mean, I'm pretty loose when it comes to what I think individuals should do. My attacks are really more on systematic things and whether retention and promotion really makes sense if the military wants to retain high performers. But as far as individual decisions, I don't really care. Do what's good for you and your family, man.

Brock Briggs  23:50 

I agree. I think that that's well put. If you had to take kind of what you've learned about promotion and obviously you're self employed now. So you've kind of like worked yourself out of all of that type of conversation. But let's say that you were to step back into the Marine Corps tomorrow. How do you think that you would incentivize high performers to stay in? Let's just say that budget and whatever is no object. Maybe money isn't even part of it. But what do you think about incentivizing people?

Rodney Adams  24:23 

Yeah, that's a good question. I haven't really thought about this in a long time. What I will say is that, like, I think the way that we do performance reviews and performance evaluations, at least when I was in, so just for context, I was in from 05 to 13. I was an officer from 07 to 13, got out as a captain, one tour in Iraq, one on the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, so I was on ship for seven months. And mostly hung around the Middle East. And then my last two years, I was an exchange officer to the Dutch Marines, which was kind of, I don't know what you call it, but it was one of those jobs that was competitive. And there was only one guy that got it every couple of years. And so I was fortunate to be able to go over there and really serve as an Operations Officer for an infantry battalion over there.

So I had to learn Dutch, function in a very different environment, heavy NATO environment. I didn't live on a base. I lived with just me and my wife out in town and no Americans around really, so pretty cool experience. So my point is, I want to offer some context about my path. So if any of your listeners take issue with what I think about retention and promotion because I don't know anything, well, then that's fine. Maybe I just don't know enough. But what I saw was, I really, honestly, I kind of felt like the insecurities of the senior level officers that were over me, really caused more burden, more downward burden than the system itself. And I know those are individual issues, but sort of at the time, we were trying to, quote, do more with less like the Marine Corps was growing, taking on tons of different responsibilities, you know, in different theaters and basically, training for every possible scenario that could have come up, you know, we're constantly gone, everybody's away from home all the time.

And, you know, good ideas and innovation where we're not rewarded but punished, taking care of the guys, you know, silly things like our guys. Some of our guys lived in some pretty bad squad bays. While we were working out for deployment, that just wasn't enough space to put all the Marines. You know, when I joined, we were at 185,000. And we got up to over 200,000 within a few years because we're fighting wars on a couple of fronts. Well, that means that somebody has to live in barracks that were condemned five years before because we gotta make room for everybody that sucks. It's fine. Marines are okay with it. But, you know, when, when someone's gear gets stolen or some, you know, weird things always happen, you know, and on base.

And you try to take care of the guys, you're also trying to come up with innovative solutions for how we can make them feel safe in their barracks, whether that be cameras or whatever. And the good idea, the good idea, you know, machine gets smashed and this is the way we've always done it kind of stuff, it just zaps your morale and makes you not want to work hard to come up with innovative solutions, which makes you not want to stay in very long. I never expected for high performers to make more money. It's just not how the military works. It'd be awesome if it were that way. But it's just not how the military works. We had a performance evaluation cycle that came through. And at the time, the leadership that was sort of running ours, stack ranked every junior officer in the battalion, which, on one hand, is transparent. And I appreciate that type of leadership, like everybody knows where they stand.

But on the other hand, when you're competing for competitive billets in between deploying in between deploying billets if you, everybody wants to be number one guy, right? Everybody wants the top guy to get selected for their individual billet. Well, if you got stack ranked as number two because the number one guy had more seniority, well, then you just became the number two guy and it hurts your ability to compete for competitive billets throughout the system that we all want number one guys, right? So it's just an odd way to reward high performance. I just think there needs to be a reworking of how promotions and retention is, I guess, arranged. Now, I will tell you, I've been out longer than I was in at this point.

So somebody in your listener probably has a better handle on what exactly should be done. And probably some things have been done since then. But you can go back and look at a lot of the Marine Corps Gazette articles back from say 2010, 2008, 2008 to 2015. It's like every other month, somebody's writing about how the top performers are being punished and the mediocre ones are being rewarded. So there's a lot of good stuff back there from that time period.

Brock Briggs  30:02 

I wanna hear about the time with the Dutch Army or Dutch, I guess what branch of it?

Rodney Adams

Dutch Marines

Brock Briggs

Dutch Marines, okay. So they actually have their own specific Marine Corps as well. Yeah, that sounds really unique. And if you can share, I'd love to hear all about how that was, how it compared, what was like maybe the big takeaway from that time over there?

Rodney Adams  30:27 

Yeah, I really enjoyed it. As far as I understand, back after World War ll, a lot of the allied countries kind of got together and said, you know, what can we do to make sure that we don't go through this again,in terms of being fighting on the same front with a bunch of guys who we don't understand their language, their tactics, you know, those sorts of things. I can only imagine, it's hard enough to communicate during wartime. I can only imagine what must have been like, when you're side by side with former foreign guys. So again, as I understand the story, these allied countries, you know, the UK, Australia, you know, the Dutch, bunch of other countries formed, these exchanges were kind of like you give us a guy, we'll give you a guy for a couple years.

And it's purely, it's not a liaison position in the sense that there's no state department level, you know, tasks or any sort of. There's nothing going on other than, you know, your guy comes and works for us, our guy goes and works for you. And they just sort of click in with whatever you're doing at the time and they just go to work. So it was supposed to be a little bit of a gentleman's tour. In that you get over there and you kind of train with the guys, you lead a little bit, but not a ton of expectation in terms of actual producing work. It's really hard to do high level military work in a foreign language. But the Dutch Marine Corps had personnel issues. And within a few months, I became the S3 of an infantry battalion, the operations officer. And so I had real responsibility for you know, 800 Marines and planning, training and some counter piracy stuff and really cool. The Dutch military sometimes will board and secure, you know, civilian cargo ships, you know, around the world, so they have some cool stuff going on there.

So anyway, yeah, basically, I was just an infantry S3 for a Dutch infantry battalion for two years, went to the Defense Language Institute for six months before I left in Washington, DC and learned Dutch. So my wife and I were married in 2009. And then I was pretty much gone training all the time. And then immediately deployed. And as soon as I got back from my deployment, I think we'd spent probably four months together married, even though we'd been married for a year and a half. We immediately went to the Defense Language Institute in Washington and they let her take the language training, too. So we went from never seeing each other to sitting side by side, learning Dutch together every single day for like, six months is brutal. It was brutal.

They were legitimately warning us on the front end and like, we've seen divorces happen over this. So just be careful. My wife and I fortunately, have had and do have a great relationship. But we have very different learning styles. And it's a very different environment. You've got one teacher and three people sitting in a classroom for five hours learning Dutch. And it's just, it can be absolutely brutal. There were times where she had to have a different teacher than me because her learning style is more like osmosis. Like just watch and read and talk and do as much as you can. Whereas me, I want to know the language structure, like tell me where the verbs are, the subjects are. I'm gonna master the structure of this. And anyway, that's how we spent the majority of our time and our early married years was learning Duth together and then we moved overseas was pretty cool.

Brock Briggs  34:25 

That sounds really unique and cool. Quick question about the Defense Language Institute. I got to ask, so do they segregate you that's part of like the curriculum is getting you in a learning environment that is more specific to how you learn?

Rodney Adams  34:42 

Yeah, kind of. So for us, there were 1, 2, 3 at least three, maybe four Dutch teachers at the LI east. So the Defense Language Institute has a big presence in Monterey, California and then a small presence in DC and at least the ones in DC. They're all contractors. They're all, you know, native Dutch speakers. And they really did a good job. It was amazing training. I know there's a lot to complain about with the military. But it's a big complex machine that has figured out how to distill down and process really good training and a lot of ways. And this was another example. I mean, we firehose Dutch for six months and like, got to a working proficiency. Like I could read the newspaper, you know, listen to the radio, converse with a native Dutch person. I mean, it was wild, like it was truly crazy.

But yeah, so there were different teachers with different teaching styles. Some were more kind of structured and disciplined, which is what I needed. I needed to be able to break the language down into its parts and rebuild it, you know, whereas my wife was more I say, osmosis, but just more experiential. She could listen and learn and talk and converse. And the more she heard it, the more she picked up and so there were a couple of months where she had a different teacher than me because it was just better for our learning to have a different style of instruction. And it's, again, hats off to the DOD and whoever it takes to put all this together because you don't get that opportunity very much to have tailored one on one or one on three training that's fit for you for a specific purpose. Pretty cool.

Brock Briggs  36:43 

Yeah, very, it's cool that they have it so tailored. And I'd imagine like you said, if you could walk out of there and five or six months and be fluent, you know, you're really pounding the pavement on learning quickly.

Rodney Adams  36:56 

Yeah. Yeah, it's exhausting. I mean, just, I just came off a deployment. So I've done a lot of hard stuff, wasn’t in pretty good shape. And the first two or three weeks, I just went home and fell asleep at like four o'clock in the afternoon. I was brutal on your mind, like trying to absorb a completely new language five hours a day is wild. But it was cool, good training.

Brock Briggs  37:20 

So after the Marine Corps, you at a point after that, I'm assuming you went and got your MBA and also worked at Goldman for a while. You talked about maybe it being fortuitous that they were running a Veteran Program and that may have assisted you. What was the initial, I guess, desire to go and work there and maybe talk about how that did or didn't lead you to where you are today?

Rodney Adams  37:49 

Yeah, I kind of Forrest Gump my way into Goldman. When we were living in Holland, so I didn't, I grew up in a blue collar family, great parents and always didn't have a lot of extras. Sometimes it did. But there were also times where we were pretty, you know, we had what we needed, but not much else. And I'm really grateful for that. Like I had a really good upbringing. But about 2010-2011, we had just gotten to Holland and I'm a captain in the Marine Corps,and I'm trying to figure out what my next move is going to be. And the one thing I knew for sure is, I don't know much about money. I just don't know anything about money like whether I get out of the Marine Corps or stay in and grow in rank and responsibility, money and contracts and just the currencies and languages and how the world actually works, I know almost nothing about.

And so I just put my head down and said, okay, it's time for me to learn about money. And I know that sounds really basic, but I just didn't know anything. And so I looked for some distance MBA programs. I found the Kelley School at Indiana University. And their program was the most competitive program I could find that fit with what I was looking for in a schedule. And so I applied, I got in and I basically got an MBA to learn about money. I knew almost nothing, going into school. After about a year and trying to figure out what I'm actually going to do with this degree, there was another student who was older than me, who was an Army Reservist and was working at Blackrock as a portfolio manager at the time. And I had sent him a note and I just said, hey, what do I do with all this?

Like, how do I get into finance or consulting or whatever like that seemed to be what people did. And so that's the road I went down like, well, how do I do this? And he's like, well, you need to look into these things and do all this kind of stuff. And then about two weeks later, he sent me a note that said, hey, you should look into this. And it was the second year that Goldman was running what they called the VIP program, the veterans Integration Program. It was an off cycle internship, only for veterans to basically expose veterans to the world of high finance with the intention that there would be a seat available for any of them that qualified for a job, right? Like, it wasn't just a dog and pony show. They had to actually put you in a seat that had the potential for long term employment, if it worked out. Not everybody got full time jobs but they at least needed to have the potential. So I thought, okay, so I applied.

And then I did some interviews and I flew to New York and talked to some different folks. And this is towards me getting out and being done with my time. And I got the internship. So I told my wife like, well, if Goldman offers you an internship, then you have to say yes, so that's what I'm gonna do. And so I did that. And I started off in a real estate private equity group and worked with them for a few months. And by the end of it, I had met some folks in the private wealth management group, which was kind of under their investment management division. And the firm made a mistake. I don't think they're supposed to offer like one person two full time jobs, like somehow they've gotten their wires crossed in the real estate guys offered me a job. And the investment management guys offered me a job.

And I took the one that paid the most upfront. And, again, when Goldman Sachs offers you a full time job, getting out of the military, and you don't really know what you're going to do with your life, you just say yes, and so. So I did. And I learned a ton and I met a lot of good people. And I got let go and 2016 as part of a downsize, which was also I was totally fine with that. It was not the environment that I wanted to be in for the long term. But I totally enjoyed it in the short term, really grateful for the opportunity that they gave me. But yeah, I sort of just kind of stumbled into it. Doors kept opening, I kept walking through them and ended up working there for about four years.

Brock Briggs  42:41 

You said when Goldman offers you a job, you take it. I couldn't echo that any harder. I did my undergrad in finance. And that's like, our school had like a somewhat a relationship with Goldman at least the location out in Salt Lake and that was what everybody in the entire class was vying for. And it is a very prestigious thing to go on and do that. It sounds like you there downsizing was a good thing. What was the environment like that wasn't for you, as you say?

Rodney Adams  43:19 

Yeah, I think for me, it was probably premature. I think if I were there now, it would be different. But again, I didn't come from money. And I didn't come from a family that spent a lot of time thinking and talking about money in the sense that, you know, we weren't business owners. We didn't have real estate investment portfolios. We never talked about investing in the markets like we didn't. It just wasn't part of our conversations. And so I had no idea like I knew how to balance a checkbook and manage my personal finances even though I didn't do a good job of it. At least knew how but as far as like, how money works and how business and commerce occurs, I had no idea and I mean, I knew nothing.

And so you know, then you join the Marine Corps, which basically ensures that you know nothing about money because you spend all your time thinking about warfighting and budget even though there are budget somewhere out there in the ether. They're never a consideration. You just get stuff, right? If you need ammo, you get it. If you need trucks, you get it. If you need knee pads, you get it, especially during wartime and so you're never conscious of budget at all. Somebody is but I wasn't. And then transitioning from the ultimate team environment to the ultimate selfish environment was a hard transition to make. I think on the investment banking teams, you probably have some camaraderie where guys are staying up late all pulling for the same goal, like trying to get deals done and trying to get decks finished trying to get, you know, whatever.

But private wealth, particularly as a new private wealth adviser, there's nobody on your team, like they don't want you to get fired. They don't want you to do a bad job. But like, you're pretty much on your own, like your job is to go find rich people and make them clients of Goldman Sachs like that's it. And you don't really have a team that is as aligned with your growth as you are. And so, in fact, you might have folks that if you were to get a fish close to the boat, might try to take the fish off your line. And so I have no, I have no bitterness toward it at all. But I just had a real hard time with, again, the striking contrast between the ultimate team environment where you would literally die for the people that you're working with. And the opposite, when you're kind of on your own.

And people would probably rather you die so they can get the stuff that you've been working on. And I met good people there. But it was probably premature. I'm still learning finance, like I'm, again, two years prior, I knew literally nothing about money. And my education in money was an MBA, which is all theoretical, and abstract. And then you get into, like real money with working for Goldman. Like, I had a hard transition. I met great people, I did fine. And I wasn't bad at my job, particularly. But it absolutely was like, what am I doing here? Like, why am I here? Why did I choose to be here? Do I really want to be here? Is this what God made me for? Or, like, what am I even doing here? Like there's a lot of that going on.

Brock Briggs  47:12 

Yeah, it would seem to me that the kind of solo act that you had of like kind of being responsible for yourself and you're on your own. It must not have been like too off putting to you. And I'm curious maybe how your thoughts about that have changed because now you're like a small business owner and like you're the one bringing home the bacon, so to speak for yourself. And if you're not working, then that's not good. Do you think that that being like, personally responsible and accountable for that week to week, is that good for you and good for people maybe in general?

Rodney Adams  47:58 

That's a good question. From me, there are times that I like it. I like the autonomy. I like shouldering the burden of providing for my family. But at the same time, I'm 41. I'm about to be 42. I've got three kids. And my wife and I are committed to her not working and being with the kids while they're in their early formative years. And so that brings about a different set of risk factors when it comes to what is good employment. So in December, my wife got really sick for a few weeks. And I couldn't work. I had to pick up some slack at home. I mean, she was really sick. So no, like, put a movie on for the kids. And I'll just kind of make it I mean, she was like, down and out. So I didn't work. I didn’t make any money. And that really freaked me out in a way because the same can be true for me. Like if I'm our sole breadwinner and I'm the one that's actually fixing stuff in people's homes, I have a home repair handyman business.

Well, if I don't work, we don't eat. And so it did sort of there's two directions that I could take my company. I could hire a bunch of guys and try to grow the business, take on trucks and guides and insurance and you know, try to kind of grow out this kind of typical home services business or you can make a pretty fair amount of money just being a solo handyman and driving around fixing people stuff. That's actually better than most people would think. But again, what's the Rodney gets hit by a bus plan? Like what happens when like my wife is taking risks. She's putting all her chips in the center of the table that I'm going to provide and that she's going to be with the kids while something happens, what is she going to do then? And so I think that's a risk I’m less willing to take at my age and particularly with the way that our family works.

And so I'm kind of at a crossroads when it comes to how do I want to grow out in the business. I've got other opportunities that are kind of floating around out there as well that are not home repair related. They're sort of more related to my corporate experience. Is there some combination of a corporate role and running this on the side or hiring a GM and sort of having a semi passive income stream out there that's growing because it is an asset that I built that has some value to it? So those are, you know, I don't know. I spend a fair amount of time on Twitter. I'm a little bit on a break right now. But for your listeners, I wonder how many people hear about actual day to day business ownership career decisions? You know, there's a lot of theories out there. And a lot of, you know, I only want to work for myself, well, that's fine. But my primary responsibility is not my autonomy. It's my family's provision. And so, you know, my family's provision is bigger than me and bigger than my autonomy and bigger than what I think living the good life is in terms of my profession. The good life is there provided for and you know, I don't have to worry.

Brock Briggs  51:40 

Yeah. You hear all these stories of entrepreneurship and people taking these wild risks and it somehow like always comes to this story of, you know, I'm thinking of one in particular, like, he quit his job to like, start working on his own. And he had a year's worth of savings to kind of figure it out. And it wasn't until there was three months left of savings. So really, like, that's what it took to turn on the gas and actually start doing something and making money and with a family to provide for and it's really like, sexy to hear those things.

And it is really enticing to be like, yeah, like, I want to be responsible for it. But like you said, when you've got a family that's relying on you, I know for myself, I've got my firstborn on the way and like, as soon as that happened, it was like, oh, that's this just turned on a switch of thinking about this in a much different way. It's not, you know, just me and my wife who has a full time job anymore. It's like, oh, no, there's other people that are relying on it. And I really liked what you said about how, yeah, I maybe want this sort of autonomy, but my family and providing for them ranks above that still.

Rodney Adams  52:58 

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if I were single, I can live out of a bag. I mean, I did for like a decade of my life. Like, who cares? You know what I mean. Like I'd probably put all my chips in multiple times. And when I lose them all, I'll be camping for a while until I build them back up again. But I can't do that anymore. You know, my wife has less of a pain tolerance than I am when it comes to living under a bridge. And so we've got to, it's just irresponsible for me to. I mean, part of manhood is being willing to take responsibility for someone else for your wife and children, which means self sacrifice, it always, always, always means self denial in some way. And so when you try to marry, getting everything that I want and giving everything that she wants, there's always going to be a conflict.

And I don't view that conflict as reducing my dignity as a person. Like the greatest men I know are marked by the sacrifices they made for their country, for their family, for their kids, whatever it may be, for their employees. And so I don't want to live. I'm not limiting myself by sacrificing for my family, is just not in the cards for me to take big risks. No, we're not not risk takers. But at the same time putting all your chips in for a business idea, where if we're honest with ourselves has more to do with our own autonomy than it does the idea itself. Like that's just a risk I'm not willing to take right now. I'm not trading my family's provision for my own autonomy.

So my point is I have a lot of leadership experience, the corporate options that may be on the table are in leadership areas. And so it's not like, you know, it's not like I'm going to be limited. Like, I'm going to have the ability to go do good work still. But, you know, this whole online argument about whether you're an entrepreneur or have a W-2, like, who cares man, like, go get your W-2 and provide for your family, it's not a big deal, you know or if your idea is working and your family is all on board that you're gonna go for it, well, then go for it. Who cares? Like do that, too.

Brock Briggs  55:38 

I've certainly found myself in that debate and thinking about it for myself. And maybe it is one of those weird kind of mental masturbation things like you're talking through something. And it's more just like the obsession with the idea rather than just thinking about like, hey, like, what actually is the most important thing?

Rodney Adams  55:58 

Yeah, well, I'll tell you this. For you, this might be hard because you're kind of building an online presence. But the healthiest thing that I've done is get offline. Like, if I need to make a decision about something big in my life and it requires clarity and focus, I get offline. Like I completely unplug for a month to make sure that I'm actually seeing things correctly, that the competing voices and all the I'm a pretty independent guy, but none of us are immune to desiring other people's approval and aligning with certain voices online, trying to build your brand, whatever it is, like I do it too. But ultimately, those people don't care about me. And they don't care about my family as much as I do.

And so I unplug and make sure that I'm making the decisions using the actual information that is right in front of me as opposed to just the talking nonsense of the Twittersphere. And there's a lot of great people I've met on there. But none of them can provide clarity about what I'm supposed to do about my family or my future. It's just a lot of opinions that's just flying around into the ether. And by the way, they're all filtered, right? Like, they're all giving you the thing that they have carefully crafted to put online. They have not given you the whole story. And so when you see 100 of them or 1000 of them a day, there's just no way for you to use that information to your benefit when you're trying to make a big decision for your family. So I've found when I need to make a decision I get offline. I usually find quite a bit of focus and peace and clarity.

Brock Briggs  58:05 

How do you think about finding peers and building relationships now? We were talking a little bit about this before we started recording about meeting in person and things like that. And I know, over the last couple of years, my entrance into doing kind of a social media thing, but then also trying to connect with other vets amidst, you know, the pandemic. And like just not living near people that you're friends with is really forced me into spending time online. And I've gained a lot of satisfaction and just made so many great connections and stuff on Twitter and all these other places.

And I think it's been to fill that gap of not having kind of that close group anymore. And so it's hard for me to think about giving it up even though I believe that everything that you're saying is accurate. What do you do and how do you think about bringing and getting in the vicinity of other smart people in terms of accountability, your work, maybe other men in terms of kind of just friends that are also family men or having similar issues on that. Not issues, but talking through things that you're going through? What do you do for that?

Rodney Adams  59:27 

First of all, it's not intentional, really. But it is. So I have a pretty small close circle of friends. I don't have 100 friends or even 25. I mean, when I say friends, I mean the type of community that you're sort of talking about, like a like a peer group that that holds you accountable, you can share with your kind of, you know, whatever your rider dies, like the ones who who are going to be there, regardless of what your address is, your career path, whatever, a very small group of those people. For me, I think you have to decide what's most important in your life and anchor your peer group from that idea. For me, it's my faith. It governs not only everything that I do, but it governs the way the world works. And I believe it wholeheartedly.

So, my peers, my closest peers are the ones who share my convictions about the way the world works through our faith. And they may not be in home repair, they may not be wealthy, they may not be online, they may not be, you know, whatever. But if my life changes, they're going to be there, right? Like if you've formed a peer group of real estate professionals because you're going after a real estate career and then you don't, well, then what happens? Like what happens to your group of peers? So I think the first thing is you really need to distill down to what is the singular thing that my entire existence rests on and who else feels that way? And where are they? How do I find them? For me, it's obviously in the church. And that doesn't mean that every church you go to, they're going to be there.

But I've been fortunate enough, over the past few years to have met folks like this and you know, my wife and I, our family, we have, I mean, a very small handful of people that are, regardless of what they're up to, what we're up to, that are gonna be there. And so that's actually my peer group and my accountability group. They probably have nothing to say about my home repair business or what I should do or how I should be thinking about my company, but I don't care. Like I can figure that out, you know. I'm not short on ideas and I know where to get them, if I need them. What you really need is support. And what you really need is to know that, like your existence has value and they're going to see that in you and reinforce that, regardless of whether you're high or low on any particular day or month.

And so, you know, if you're not into church, I'm not totally sure where you would go, but like, probably something in your something in your community, something that you know, in your neighborhood or whatever, that has anchored a bunch of people together for the same reasons. I'm skeptical of the online stuff. I mean, I think I don't, it's just gonna be really difficult to build long term authentic community online. I think a lot of guys out there have said they have and I don't doubt it. I've met good people online. I've met people online, who I know I'll know in 20 years, totally fine. But they don't live our lives. And if a tornado hits my city, they're not going to be here. That you know what I mean, there if and that's okay, I wouldn't expect them to. If, you know, something tragic happens in my family. They're not going to be here. They're, they're going to send thoughts and prayers.

And I think they're probably authentic and doing it, but they're not going to be here. I'm a big I think we're meant to be in authentic in person, community with other humans. Regardless of how advanced we get technologically. It's no secret that we're as connected as ever in human history and also just as lonely. By like, we are a lonely society that has more ways of connecting than ever any other time in human history. And I don't think that that's a coincidence like that. The online thing has a lot of benefits and I've benefited greatly from it. But deep authentic human connection is an area where it'll fall short. Ultimately, I know that might be a hot take, but I think I think I think we're you don't have to look far to see that play itself out in our society. And so anybody who has an online presence who's also feeling lonely at the same time, I would still implore them to get offline for a little bit. You know, even if you're not a believer, man, just go to your local church. Somebody there'll be kind enough to hang with you for a little bit and just try to meet folks locally.

Brock Briggs  1:05:08 

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I think that you are starting to see it play out in online thing where people are like, oh, you know, we need to, there's a reason why some of the most top performing companies work in person and are calling their people back to the office. They need that kind of camaraderie. And I know we're a little bit partial to the camaraderie properly that the military gave us. And I don't think that we're going to have an online military anytime soon. So I think that there is something to that.

Rodney Adams

Cool. Yeah.

Brock Briggs

I would love to talk about your home repair business. Why get going into this?

Rodney Adams  1:05:47 

So I was leaving Dallas and moving to Tulsa. Kind of to your story earlier, I had some income and about a year's worth of provision that I knew I had a little bit of runway to kind of not have to try to find a job or whatever, right away. When I left the military in 2013, we rented but then we bought our first house, excuse me, in 2015. And immediately upon becoming a homeowner, I started looking for people to fix my house. I needed a new back door. I needed a patio cover just, you know, basic things. I could not get people to come do work. It was driving me crazy. I had to beg these companies to come build me a patio. And they just wouldn't do it. Like they would no show they wouldn't like I couldn't get people to come give estimates. I try to pay them a fee, like, hey, just tell me how much it costs just to get you to come over here. I'm totally fine paying it.

And they would just no show or you know, Barney's electrical would come over and he stinks. And he's like, can't talk and you're like, what is going on here? Like, why am I begging these terrible companies for me to give them money? Why is it so hard? And at the time, I was still working for Goldman, but I told my wife, I said, look, if I ever had the opportunity to be in residential services, I'm gonna kill it. And all I'm gonna do is do what I say I'm going to do and speak like a normal human and have a clean and neat appearance. And it's going to be awesome. This is 2015. So this was several years ago. Well, I finally had, you know, I've been fixing my own stuff for a long time. I'm a big, big, big DIY proponent. I just think we need to be able to fix our own stuff.

I mean, you know, I don't know how we've gotten to this place where we feel entitled to a safe and comfortable existence when we don't know how to provide any of our own food or shelter at all. Think about that, like, we have no idea how to grow our own food, we have no idea how to provide our own shelter. I mean, we're like house cats, like we would die in the wild for the most part. And so it's just always been a part of what I want to do is just to know how to provide for myself, both monetarily, but also physically. So anyway, I had some time and I got here in Tulsa. And I just said, I'm doing it. I'm gonna rip it. I'm gonna start fixing stuff for money and just see what happens. So I went out and got on next door and all these different sites and threw my hat in the ring, told a few people what I was doing and started working.

And I made a few $1,000. And then I started doing a little bit more and a little bit more and then I branded it. And I just kind of wanted to see if I have a neat, clean brand that communicates itself well. And I show up with a neat appearance. And I tell people what I can and can't do and I do it on time. And I charge a fair but high price, like I priced myself at the top of the market. Could I have a business? And so I backed into what I wanted to make per year if I had to do it by myself. And I found a price that way. Like basically if I had to lower my prices to do this job, I would just do something else. I don't want to. There's a certain amount of money I want to make. And so this is the price I'm gonna charge and if people stop paying me that I'll just go do something else.

And it worked. A year later here we are, we're still doing it and and you know, the business is growing and the underlying sort of idea is that I think our country is coming into awareness that we are woefully short on tradespeople. People who can fix things for money. And I just, I refuse to acknowledge that, I don't want to look up where I'm 80 and there's nobody to fix my air conditioner. And I didn't do anything about it. And so I'm sort of partially going after young men and trying to offer them a career path that is maybe different than what they've been hearing for the past five years, like, like, you can make money learning to fix stuff. In fact, you can do pretty well if you learn to fix stuff. And so not only am I just trying to fix stuff for money and make a living for my family, but I'm also trying to build a business that can provide opportunities for young men to go and work with their hands. Not everybody should go to college. It’s not the value proposition isn't there for everybody. And so that's kind of what I'm up to.

Brock Briggs  1:11:05 

What do you think have been the most significant hurdles to you starting this? We were talking a bit before we started recording about what competition looks like. And you kind of have alluded to the fact that the current operators in the market where you're living are not braid and that's probably representative of where it is or what it's like everywhere. What do you think have been your biggest challenges?

Rodney Adams  1:11:35 

I would say bootstrapping a company like this and going from zero to one. I know that's a little bit of a buzzy word in the corporate America. But it's true. Like, this time last year, there was not a thing, like my business didn't exist. And now it's a thing. And going from zero to like a side hustle. Like you kind of go from nothing to a hobby to a side hustle to like a real job to a company. Bootstrapping this type of business to a real company is very, very hard, like very hard in the sense that you know you need revenue and cash flow coming in, in order to afford growth, like to buy trucks to buy tools to buy more insurance to pay more guys. But in order to get that revenue, I have to be doing work. So I have to be fixing toilets and building decks and patching, you know, drywall in order to generate the cash flow needed to grow. But then I have to be doing the thinking and the strategic work that can build growth, right?

And so doing both is unbelievably difficult. I mean, I consider myself a fairly high capacity guy. And it's probably the hardest thing I've tried to do, which is bootstrap this company into something that is an actual growth engine. I think there's a lot of merits to buying a business that already exists, like a lot of merits. I think bootstrapping a home repair business without taking on debt or equity. I just just, it's not that it's impossible. I just don't know if it makes a lot of sense. It's really difficult to do it the way that I'm doing it. But, again, to your point with the competition thing. There are a lot of great guys out there that do what I do. And even though there are some and I know some of them, none of us compete with each other at all. I mean, there's so much demand.

And so little supply, that if you want to get into the handyman home repair game, now's the time, like there's no better time because you will not compete with anybody. And everything that you need to know how to do is on YouTube. So if you are, you know, you can't know everything. And so I spent an ungodly amount of hours on youtube I used to I'm a little less so now but like, you know, learning different techniques, learning different learning about different materials, learning about different types of tape or caulking or paint or whatever, so that you can do a good job, but it's all there. It's all there for free. You can find anything you want on the internet. And if you have a home, then you can go in your garage and you can punch a hole in your own drywall and you can patch it until it looks right. And now you're a drywaller like now you can do it. And for guys who don't know what they want to do and they really like tools and know their way around tools, it's a pretty good opportunity to get out there and just start fixing stuff for money. If not for anything, then do it for a side hustle, do it on Saturdays, you know?

Brock Briggs  1:15:15 

When I found entrepreneurship, I kind of went back to my dad who used to be an HVAC guy before he kind of started off on his main career and he still kind of does HVAC work on the side. And I asked him, I said, why didn't you, you know, you're obviously really good at this, like, why not run with this and like, kind of grow it up and build it up. And he said, you know, the thing about this type of work is, if you're going to do it, you got to, it's either just going to be you or you need a lot of people. Because when you're the one doing the work, you have nobody out looking for the next job. And when you finish that, you know, you need to have something else that's lined up. What do you think about the size of businesses that are relevant in your space? Like, is it really just a single guy operation or you need to be kind of the next scale and there's kind of a gray or like a dead zone in between there?

Rodney Adams  1:16:13 

Yeah, that's really good. I'm glad you said that. I've said this on another podcast and I think this is totally true. You're either solo or you need like five guys. And when I say five, I mean five trucks, you know, five vans in the community doing work. Because when you're solo, you can structure your company really simply, insurance is really cheap. You know, you can run a pretty lean organization. I hired a guy recently that now I had to let go already after six weeks and he was a good guy. But unfortunately, there were some things he kind of represented that he could do that he couldn't totally do. And I don't think he was being dishonest. I think he just had a different interpretation of the standard than I did. That's okay. So it just didn't work.

But one guy now has a full salary. Now he needs a truck and you got to brand that truck. And you know how your insurance now goes up. You've got general liability. I carry insurance for my tools and equipment. And then workers comp, you know, you have to add that, all these different things. Now all of a sudden, you're paying payroll taxes to the state. You're reporting all this stuff. So the risk and the work and the financial input increases disproportionate to the level of revenue that one guy can generate. So you really need to try to get to five guys quickly or stay solo, I think and is it four? Is it five? Is it six? Is it three? I don't know. But it's definitely more than one extra guy like you need to and you need to do it quickly. Because you know, this one guy like one mistake and all of a sudden, you've now unwound three or four days worth of revenue that he could provide for you, right?

So there's really no room for this one guy to make a lot of mistakes. Whereas if you have four or five guys out there, one guy makes a mistake, you're still making enough money. You can absorb that you can train them, you can take them off the field, you know, train him for a little bit and put him back out. So I think your dad is totally right. You either need to work solo, which comes with its own risks, like I talked about earlier or you need to ramp up quickly. And the challenge to ramping up quickly is you need good guys.. You're now the opportunity that presented itself when you first started the company. Hey, there's nobody out there doing this work really well. I'm going to throw my hat in the ring. Well, when you need to hire five guys, guess what? There's nobody out there doing this work really well. And it's hard to hire five guys. So yeah, that's the challenge that I face right now.

Brock Briggs  1:19:18 

Would you put yourself in the bucket of trying to decide which way you're going to go?

Rodney Adams

Totally

Brock Briggs 

And you kind of made up your mind?

Rodney Adams  1:19:26 

I've made up my mind that I'm not going to do this solo based on what I said earlier. I mean, you know, what happens if I break my arm? Like my wife doesn't work. She's with our kids all day. And I need to generate income every day. If I break my arm, if I cut my hand with a saw, if we get some crazy, three weeks of rain or something that I can't do outside jobs, like there's a lot of risk in the early stages of being a solo handyman. And we don't have an expensive lifestyle, but we are trying to save money and we just bought some property. And could I make 25% less than what I'm trying to make right now? Yeah, I could but I don't want to. So the solo thing is probably not the option I'm going to go with. So what I'm really trying to decide is do I take some of the more corporate opportunities that have presented themselves that are more in my leadership executive sort of skill set and then run this on the side, hire a GM? Or do I shut it down?

I'm just not totally sure. I think I'm gonna try to keep it if I can. But again, I've talked with some guys about equity. And do we raise money and borrow money and just throw the kitchen sink at it and try to grow this thing as quickly as possible? Or do I just keep it as a side hustle, run some part time guys out there? We do work when we can and clip a few 1000 bucks a month, in addition to what I'm doing in the corporate world. I don't know, I haven't fully figured that out. I'm literally working that out as we speak, which is why I'm offline right now.

Brock Briggs  1:21:14 

I was going to ask why you were on your Twitter hiatus. But that's a good reason to be. There are a couple of people pinging you on Twitter asking where you were. And I was like, I'm talking to him this week. So I'll have to ask him. What's your opposition to the kitchen sink strategy? I'd love to just kind of pick your brain as you're working through it, maybe talking through it out loud with somebody might be helpful. What is your thoughts and/or feelings about raising money and doing that way?

Rodney Adams  1:21:50 

I don't have an opposition to it, per se. It's more just kind of the return on headache. Like is this what I want to do? Like is it, you know, every new hire comes with new training, new processes, you know, undoing mistakes, you know, vans, branding, workers comp, just stuff. I mean, it's hard, right? Like, look at any of the operators that are. I mean, our community that we met in was sort of the Twitter, the Small Business Twitter group, you know, look at some of these guys that are actual operators and not searchers. But operators of local service companies, plumbing, HVAC, whatever, they're going to tell you that it's hard. Like it's really hard.

And I would argue that it's much harder to excuse me grow a mature company quickly than it is to buy a company that already exists and turn it around, you know. Yes, you are under, you have taken a lot of financial risk by putting yourself under a, you know, personal guarantee with an SBA loan or whatever. But you're ultimately stepping into a company that functions, right? Like it functions. It has processes in place, you know, you're doing a few million dollars a year in revenue, there are earnings for which you can make your debt payments, you can pay yourself a little bit, you can make some problems go away. That's a very different equation than creating something, building something. And building and creating sounds attractive.

I think we've overplayed that in our cultural obsession with Silicon Valley types like, building stuff sucks like flat out. Like it really sucks. It's really hard to keep pushing the rock up the hill. And I'm enjoying it. I'm not opposed to doing sucky things at all. But, again, all these sort of never W-2 entrepreneur Maxxis are like, I just don't align with that. Like when you're in the stage of business that I'm in where everything is hard, nothing comes easy. And taking on money means taking on partners, taking on scrutiny, taking on having to defend your ideas every day when it comes to what you're going to do about growth. Whereas right now, I don't defend my ideas to anybody. Taking all that on.

I'm 41. I've got three kids and a wife that doesn't work by design or a corporate job that pays more than what I'm going to make in the next five years, right? Like, what's really the back to our earlier conversation like what am I really doing when it comes to choosing entrepreneurship over that environment? A challenging and stable income string, like, pride, wanting to say that I did it. I think every man probably has something inside of him that he wants to know that he can make the grade, that he can measure up when the time comes, when the time counts, whatever. I think we feel that in entrepreneurship, like, we just want to be able to say that we did it. We want to be able to put an idea that's in our head into practice. And it actually works like that's a very, I’m not saying women don't do it because they do. But that's a very manly thing to want like to be able to bring an idea to fruition. And it actually works. And I feel that too.

But again, I have to put my desires aside at least to some extent and make sure that I'm providing for my family. And one of the measures of that is what's the return on hassle. And what's the risk reward when you're holding, you know, massive amounts of pain getting this thing up the curve and certainly challenges but sort of a more corporate opportunity. I mean, that's just, it's literally what I'm trying to figure out right now. I don't totally know. And nothing is set in stone. My company could die tomorrow. So could some of these opportunities. So there's a little bit of time to where you're just trying to figure out, okay, what's the next step? What doors are open, what doors are closed and we're never going to have perfect information. And then ultimately, at the end of the day, it's just what I want to do. And there may not be any justification for other than just think this is what I want to do. This is the thing that's going to get me out of bed and producing every day for my family.

Brock Briggs  1:26:51 

I really like your approach to it. And I think it's very different than a lot of people talk about it. And you've even yourself highlighted that it's maybe not what the mainstream consensus idea about entrepreneurship is, but it is very personal. There is no end all be all answer on some of these things. And even if there is, the idea of just your own self selection and what you think might be fun, kind of can sway that very quickly.

Rodney Adams  1:27:22 

Yeah, I have a supportive wife and she wants me to go after what I want to do, you know. It's hard to be productive when you don't want to get out of bed and do the thing that you're supposed to do that day. So it's not like I'm completely giving up autonomy and choice, like I want to do. I want to go after what I want to go after. But within reason, like, I don't play golf every day. I don't go hunting on hunting trips. I don't just jack around, you know, I like work, but I still need to have energy for the work that I put my hand to. Otherwise, it'll be miserable. And I probably won't be super productive. So I like everything that's in front of me. I'm certainly fortunate to have options. I know there's a lot of people that don't have choices. So that's not lost on me. I'm really grateful for it. What I decide to do and what form it takes. I'm not totally sure. I'm going to keep Mr. Home Repair no matter what. I mean, it's just to what level of scale and involvement in my own day to day. That's kind of what I have to figure out.

Brock Briggs  1:28:39 

The last thing that I want to talk about with Mr. Home Repair is this offer that you have up on Gumroad. You have a free download for like how to outfit like trucks and like everything that you would need to basically start a home repair business tomorrow if you wanted to. Why put this up?

Rodney Adams  1:29:03 

Because I don't even know if anybody's even downloaded it. Maybe you did. I don't know. I think partially because in my little Twitter sphere, one of the angles that I'm going after is well let me backup. I joined Twitter and started using it actively for my own education. So I use Twitter to train myself to write better copy, to get ideas in my head onto paper in concise bits that work well on the side of a truck or on a mailer or on a website or in emails to employees, whatever it may be. It's my own way of training myself to write better and more concise copy. But in order to do that you sort of need an angle or something. And so basically I write about the home repair business, but particularly from the entrepreneur side.

And what has popped out of it is a bunch of guys who, you know, probably have smaller Twitter accounts or whatever, but they're in different cities and they're interested in maybe starting their own home repair business or having a handyman thing on the side or I get DMS all the time, how should I get started? So part of my reason for putting that on Gumroad is because I think people would want it. Two, I don't know how to use Gumroad. And so if I ever want to monetize what I know, whether that be playbooks processes, the home repair business, helping people start their own, whatever, I need a channel, a distribution channel. And so I just sort of tested Gumroad to see if I could throw something out there that people would find helpful. And the van loadout is just something that I was already working on. I have to do it anyway for my business.

And so because of this guy I hired and buying a new van, I just forced myself to put together a loadout. And while I had it, I thought, well, let's just throw it up. And let's just see if anybody wants it. And then I kind of didn't really advertise it. So I'm a little surprised you found it. I just sort of put it on my profile. But yeah, I just, I'm a tinkerer. I like messing with stuff. I'm always looking for different ways to monetize things that are in my head that have taken me time to come by that might have value to someone else. I didn't put a price on that. I just figured I would see if I can exercise the muscle of putting something onto paper that someone might want to download themselves. And then I've got other stuff that I can add later and charge for it maybe, who knows?

Brock Briggs  1:32:06 

No, that's great. And that's exactly kind of was what I was anticipating. And I'm glad that you did that. I think that that represents kind of another level of thinking in terms of like, why we do what we do. And I think it also serves as a good reminder that many of the things that we do seem obvious, but you don't know how many people are in need of what you know. And like, that's one of the reasons why I keep coming back to Twitter. It's just a lot of people that are willing to give their knowledge and share and to teach. So I appreciate you doing that. I think that that's really cool. And I'm excited to see what you continue to put out there.

Rodney Adams

Cool!

Brock Briggs

My final question for you would be what is it that we can learn from you that we could implement in our lives today?

Rodney Adams  1:33:05 

So this is gonna be a road that is completely different than everything we've gone down today. But I've spent a lot of time outside the military talking to guys who, you know, have struggled when they got out. I'm constantly talking to guys who are having a hard time with their marriage or work, with whatever. The one thing that I've noticed in particularly with American men, is there's this tension that they sit in with wanting their life to be one way and it's turning out a different way. And they don't love it in terms of they wish they had a different job. They wish they had more money. They don't love their marriage. They you know, life just isn't giving them what they were promised or how they thought it would be, particularly with married men.

Like and that's I'm only saying this because it's been on my mind. I've talked to a few guys the last few days that are in this bucket. Guys need to understand that like if you're married, you should put everything you have into having a healthy marriage because a healthy marriage supports and blesses and accelerates every other part of your life. It's the best thing that you can offer your kids. The best thing that you can offer your children for the entirety of their lives is your healthy marriage. Hands down, nothing will have a bigger impact on your kids' lives. The best thing you can offer your community whether it's your neighbors, your church, your gym, whatever it is, is your own healthy marriage. I know that sounds bizarre but I'm just telling you, you're going to have one listener that the light bulb comes on.

And guess what I'm talking about, like subordinating everything to a healthy marriage will cause everything to flourish, hands down. And so if guys are trying to figure out what's the next step, what do I do with me? What am I going to do with my company? What am I going to do about these other opportunities? What am I going to do about this? What is my responsibility to my marriage and what decision puts that most at risk, that decision is off the field, flat out. Like the most attractive option I have is driving around in my truck and fixing people's stuff. I'm only responsible for myself. And my day to day is pretty easy. Like, I just take customer calls. I drive over there, fix our stuff and I go home. It's very simple and I can make a decent living at it.

But it's the decision that puts my family most at risk when it comes to providing for them because I'm the only one generating income. And if I don't fix something that day, we don't eat. And so I can't do it, even though it's actually the most attractive option I have. I would just say, what can your audience learn from me that maybe they're not hearing anywhere else? I'm just telling you, if you're a married dude, put all your chips in the center of the table on your marriage and it will pay you back 100 fold, without question.

Brock Briggs  1:36:54 

I appreciate you saying that. Honestly, I might have been the person that needed to hear that. So I appreciate it. Thank you. My last thing, what can myself and/or the listeners do to be useful to you, anywhere you want to send them, anybody in Tulsa that might be in need of some home repair? What can we do for you?

Rodney Adams  1:37:20 

Oh, man, I appreciate that. I would just say, I'm gonna keep writing. I'm gonna keep doing stuff on Twitter. I just don't know what yet. Obviously, I've got an account. And I'll keep writing about home repair stuff. But I'm generally just interested in business, leadership, interpersonal stuff, stuff like what I just talked about. So send everybody to my Twitter account @rodrepairs and we'll work it out from there.

Brock Briggs  1:37:49 

Fantastic. I'll have that link in the show notes as well. Rodney, I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much.

Rodney Adams  1:37:55 

Yeah, I really appreciate it. Thanks, Brock!