The Four Day Workweek That Starts With Cleaning A Van with Jesse Kellogg, Grinning Possum Wood Originals

0:00Welcome to Epic Entrepreneurs. I am Cliff McRae with Action Coach Business Growth Partners. Every week, we sit down with business owners, founders, and leaders to uncover the real stories behind building a successful business. The wins, the setbacks, the lessons learned, and the strategies that help them grow. No scripts, no fluff, just honest conversations with entrepreneurs who are in the trenches every single day. Whether you are a business owner yourself, thinking about starting a business, or simply enjoy hearing how successful people think and operate, you are in the right place. Let's jump into today's episode, shall we?

0:56Hi, everyone. Welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs. I am Cliff McRae with Action Coach Business Growth Partners, where we work with local business owners to turn big ideas into real scalable growth. Today, I'm excited to be joined by Jesse Kellogg with Grinning Possum Wood Originals. Jesse, how are you doing today? I'm doing great, man. How are you? Hey, I'm doing great. I'm excited to have you. So let's go ahead and jump right into things, get right into it. Sure. All right. So for those of you who may not know it yet, you know, what is Grinning Possum Wood Originals? So Grinning Possum's Wood Originals started out as a a must for my family because I had recently quit a job, tried to get into construction.

1:41And the construction group I was trying to join decided that it was a family business. So they decided that I was just not very important, which I can relate kind of, but it was, I think in this way, it was God showing me that I just needed to start a business. It had been on my heart for a long time to begin this. And this is about five years ago, but I was never confident enough to just step out and start something on my own because that takes a lot of not only trust and knowing that I'll have the clientele to do so, but also I've never owned my own business before starting this one. And I was literally forced into doing so because they gave me zero hours after promising me 40.

2:30So I had quit my job, gave my two weeks to Publix that I was working at the time at. And then I waited around for the first week for getting any work. And they said, well, we don't have anything for you. And then the second one comes around and I'm like, I have to do something. I have to make money. So I looked at my wife and we said, well, let's just start this thing. And I started building small trinkets out of my shed just because I was thinking, well, if I can sell something, I can make some sort of money. And if I don't have a client right now, I need to make any amount of money I can in order to help my family eat and keep our house, basically.

3:10But very shortly after that, I got one of the largest jobs in my first two years, one of the first jobs I ever had it was a 56 foot roofed porch on a log cabin and I'll I'll be honest I had never built a porch in my life I had used power tools I had done done things that is amongst those ideas but I had never used my knowledge in that scale right So I build all that and I'll fast forward because there's probably intricacies we'll talk about later. But throughout that process, I got clientele after clientele by referral. I work almost exclusively off of referral because one thing I've noticed through that is not only can the client trust me more because their friends have trusted me, but I can trust the client more because their friends I have already worked for.

4:10And usually, the group of people that are good to work for all kind of are in the same flock, right? And so, throughout that process, we began to grow. I was a sole proprietor for a while. And then we switched to a partnership. Unbeknownst to me, that was the wrong move. in my mind, I thought, well, I can get the partnership with my wife so that if anything happens to me, you know, she owns the business. But I didn't know that because she's my wife, she would get the business no matter what, pretty much even if I was a sole proprietor. And so I actually disbanded the partnership, reopened as a sole proprietor again.

4:58And I decided to then pursue another business dynamic. But I won't talk about that one unless you want me to a little bit later. I'm still doing GB's Wood Originals, but I'm a lot more picky about what I do. I mostly do large-scale high-end porch building. I do high-scale kitchen remodeling and bathroom remodeling. And then everything else I have tradesmen within my area that I basically act as a broker, which is the one call crew portion of my secondary business. Okay. Okay. And who are you as a person? Who is Jesse Kellogg? Oh, Jesse is a redeemed, but still learning center that I am. I am in this process of just learning more about who God is and the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham and Isaac.

6:01And just recently I read this book called Delighting in the Trinity, and it taught me more about who God is than probably any book I've ever read, other than the Bible, of course. And so who I am is mostly who I am in Christ because I know I am redeemed by him. I still fail constantly, but I'm striving to know more about him. And so like I was saying about delighting in the Trinity, it's teaching me more about who God is and who the father is and that he created me out of love and not out of this power that we see in so many other beliefs. And so in that, it is humbling to know that I am even living and breathing.

6:48I'm a father of two children. I have a four-year-old, almost four-year-old, and a 16-month-old, and a wonderful wife that I've been married to for seven years. We live in Tennessee, of course, but we love our community. We kind of try to be as involved with the community as we can throughout each week. We do monthly board game nights and try to serve and host as much as we can because that's part of I think what we've been called to do and I found that community is one of those things that spurs me on to better things as well it's not it's not just me and my family but it's me and all the and my family and all the families surrounding us, encouraging us to do things for the glory of the Lord.

7:41And I just enjoy, I just enjoy life. I truly find joy in all things that I'm doing right now. And even in the hard things, I find myself enjoying the refining process of learning how to grow through this challenging quote-unquote life but then you look around at people that have come before me and that are in other countries right now that are suffering in my menial small problems like stubbing my toe on the corner of a counter or my kid is absolutely footloose and took off all their actually this happened this morning my child i woke up at 3 a.m my littlest she goes there's data or she's yelling from the other room mama mama and so i get up i go into her room she's sitting up in her bed and she looks at me and goes dad i had a dream my sister's face was flat and i go what what does it even mean and so i console her and it's just i i think there's there's so much in life that people miss to have joy in and i i really want more people to enjoy life That's the thing I do daily.

9:02And I think it's can be achieved through the right knowledge. Okay. Okay. So, you know, now let's get to your business a little bit. So what would you say is something about running your business that people think is amazing, but you actually think it's complete BS when you hear it? So, you know, I, I've enjoy running my business. And yes, people say, you know, you have the freedom to do whatever you want. You can always just take off time. You can move people around. You can, you know, name your price even. However, there is a dichotomy of responsibility that comes and self-discipline that comes with owning a business because you can't just sleep in and take off every day.

9:56and you have to be very purposeful with every single moment you have in order to make it something worthwhile and something that actually provides for your family. So as attractive as it is to own your own business and not have a quote unquote boss, it's probably equally or more challenging than being under someone's leadership because at least you have someone telling you this is what's next when you are an owner you have to tell yourself this is what i must do in order to continue in the work that i have and in order to propagate more work so i would say that would be one of the major things but on the flip side of that it is true i get to take off when i want to and i've been very blessed to be able to have larger jobs and sometimes i'll just look at my wife and say honey i need to take a week off because it's been so overwhelming to do this daily work yeah i think that would be the the major thing that i think people interpret maybe a little bit wrong yeah so it's like it's true but it's not it's like Like it's an extent, but it's not.

11:17Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Now, what would you say was the exact moment where you realized, you know, this business could either really work or it could completely blow up in my face and I lose everything? When I started it. Okay. I mean, really, I started it on a whim because I was forced to. So in that way, I feel like the whole beginning of the business, as it grew, I just had to rely and trust that God would provide work. And he always has. Ever since I started, there's not been a moment where I've said, well, next week we won't be able to eat, or next week we can't really pay for everything we need.

12:00my little brother worked for me in the very beginning of my work when I started the business and there were weeks where I'd pay him and have about$50 left in my bank account and be able to survive and I have just enough so probably the first two years it was this ebb and flow of trusting, getting jobs, having dry spells, and just having to rely on the unknown in a way. But it built a lot more faith and trust because of that. Because if it was all just easy and given to me, I don't think I would be quite the person I am today or the business I am today because I don't push it. I don't rely on a hundred different ads online to get me work.

13:02I just rely on people's words. And not that that works for every business. Obviously you have some business, like my very good friend of mine, he owns a pressure washing business and he needs daily jobs that flip over very quickly. And so if he didn't have, you know, a hundred jobs lined up within the next few months, then he would be out of work. But for me, because of the scale of my jobs and how long they take, it is much more freeing. And now I'm in a position where I'm very comfortable and very grateful that the times in the past have been very difficult because I can contrast that now to the blessing of having a little bit more peace financially.

13:45And it gives me the ability to have more freedom of time, which is one of the major goals I have within this business. Okay. No, I love that answer. Now, Jesse, what would you say is the most stressful moment you've ever had as a business owner? Like a, you know, how am I going to get through this type of moment? You know, stressful moments for me are very different maybe than other people, but I get stressed out when people either doubt I am doing the very best I can for them, or if I make a mistake and a customer gets upset at me in general. It has never been this huge thing where I've crashed three vehicles in one week and lost everything.

14:31It's more so been a struggle of will against having peace in the times where not everyone's happy about what I've done and being able to then stretch my, what do you even call it? Stretch my patience when people are not patient with me, be patient, being patient back to people who maybe didn't show me much patience as I work for them because really truly i'm working as unto the lord and everything that i do i want to reflect that so i don't want people to ever doubt i am doing my very best for them and it hurts my i think ego when people do doubt that or they don't think i did a good enough job and there's been very few jobs that that has happened on and i'll since they all answer the question directly this this is probably the most pertinent one to the question.

15:32There was a job where I had sourced a shelving material from a salt, a local sawmill and it was green. And the customer wanted a basically custom pantry out of this shelving. We talked about all the details, we jotted everything down. And then I told her we need to wait a few, I think over a month for it to weather enough so that the large amount of shrinking happens in the wood before installing on the wall. And so I took it upon myself to put it in my own home and do climate control on it and humidity control, purchase some dehumidifiers and try my best to do just, you know, air dry the material.

16:19and so those were sitting in our bedroom on the far side of our bed for a while and it was inconvenient but it wasn't the worst and the end of the that period of time for it to dry came to an end I could tell they were a little bit impatient at that point and so I go in to install them I do exactly what they wanted me to do and they said well I want it to be actually another they're a few inches shorter, like the actual depth of the shelf. They wanted to be shorter because they didn't like the bulkiness of what they decided, the dimension they decided on it initially. And so I took all the shelving out, I trimmed it shorter, I reinstalled it.

16:59And then I said, I'm coming back tomorrow. I'll finish it up. I'll make it look better. And just let me know if there's anything else you might want on it when I, when I do come back and I get a long, long message the next day about all the little things that they don't like and it wasn't even finished yet. And they didn't like some supports that were necessary. They didn't like this and that and they didn't even know it was mounted with a XL Craig screw. It was mounted into those studs and they thought that was an imperfection in the wood and rather it was one of the design attributes to the actual structure of it.

17:41And they actually refused the wood altogether. I took all the shelving out. So after a month process of trying to get this thing to work for them, I walked away with nothing and I paid the sawmill and I got nothing from the client. Not that big of a deal, but it was frustrating. Believe me, I was like in tears about it because it was more it was not so much the money it wasn't that at all it was the fact that i had given so much effort to something than to be to be turned on kind of deaf ears and and but i also have this era of i understand clients want something specific but i'd rather a client say hey i just don't like it don't give me a a weird excuse on why you don't want to keep it just say you don't like it i'll make it something that is better or different than for you that's what i'd much rather.

18:35Yeah. Now, have you ever thought about quitting? Thought about quitting? You know, I've had a few thoughts about working under someone else or working with someone else, but I don't think I ever want to quit. This job in particular allows me to have the freedom of time that I want. And that's what I was kind of mentioning earlier. And Dan Sullivan has a lot to say on freedom of time. And I would really encourage anyone to read his books. But that is kind of my main goal is, is to have freedom of time so that I can serve my community more. And I can't do that by just quitting. And so I, I have kind of going to probably die on this hill of working, not working the way I am right now.

19:22However, as I transfer into different forms of overseeing job sites, doing brokerage deals with other contractors in the area and just picking the jobs that make me the most money for the time that I'm there, I think I'll be able to leverage my time better so that I can serve back to my community and do a lot more service to local orphans and widows because that's pretty much my main goal right now. Within the next five years, I want to be off for half of the year just serving the community. Okay. Yeah, that sounds like a good plan. I love that. Now you're in, and you're basically take more of an operational role, I guess, kind of with your, with that six months that you'll be off.

20:07Is that kind of what you're saying? Or will you just completely remove yourself from the business? So I guess it would be a good time to talk about one call crew because one call crew is what I have started. It is, it is kind of a job oversight scene because I'm going for my general contractor's license right now. So I'll have the ability to have subs under me on larger scale jobs. But something that is unique about the business I'm starting that separates it from other contractors is I'm not just taking a crew that is a set crew to do any job. I pick professionals that are licensed within their field and that do the very best job within their field in order to accomplish specific tasks and not having a large crew to do it.

20:52So that's kind of the whole idea of one call crew. It's not a set group of people. It is other business owners that have self-determined self-discipline and responsibility to show forth good work ethic because they are doing it under their business name. But I find the right clientele for them and then pair them together in order to accomplish their goal sets and also make me money passively because I don't have to do much more than find the right client and do the relationship part of that discovery. Because I love relationships. I love discussing things with clients. I'd love solving problems and troubleshooting.

21:36I would rather though be serving with my skill set than always being on a job site. So that portion of the business will probably be that six months off. Six months on will probably still be GP's Road Originals building and doing things that I love doing there. Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. That makes sense. Now, in this next question, I'll be kind of hypothetical, but let's say if someone shadowed you for a full day or even a full week, what would you say would surprise them the most about how you operate your business? i think they'd be surprised by how i schedule my week they so i've gone through iterations of different job scheduling and i landed on this one that makes most sense to me for my dynamic and it is i take monday and i set it aside by beginning the day with working out with my family at the Y.

22:38Then we come home. I clean out my whole entire vehicle. That is my work vehicle. I have a big work van with a bunch of pullout drawers and I pull out pretty much everything that is cluttered and reorganize it. And then I strive to improve one thing about my work vehicle so that I can be more efficient throughout the week. After that, I go through everything I'm going to be doing that week and make sure that I have all my materials and I have everything ordered so that I know I'm not shopping throughout the week. Because that's one huge time kill I noticed in the beginning of my business where I'd be at the store more than my job site.

23:19And I wanted to eliminate that. And so I've dedicated all of that effort to Monday. In the afternoon, I have a time slot that allows me to do either a work order or a few consultations and I put all of my consultations to Mondays so that I'm also not sprinkling in them throughout my work week. And then that gives me Tuesday through Friday to accomplish everything I need to for my specific job that I'm on that week. This has proven to me that a four-day work week is actually super efficient if you set yourself up the day before you start with a orderly and well-supplied workflow that accomplishes what you want instead of being chaotic and trying to strive to fill in every single second with something different like consultations and other shopping necessities you know so that would surprise them the most is you know if somebody shadows you was the the mondays that you take to kind of prepare for the week yeah probably so because they'd be like, why aren't you working today?

24:31Why aren't we working today? But really, it's made me more efficient. And I feel that efficiency is everything within business, but also your time is super valuable. And if you can pick when not to work, it actually makes your work days way more successful because you can rest on those days that you've chosen in order to relax. So I've protected Saturday to do my own work. I'm remodeling a hundred year old house that I live in right now under an investor. And so that process is done mostly on Saturdays. And then Sundays I take off of work altogether. I don't talk about work. I try not to contact any clients at all.

25:16And we rest as a family and it sets me up for the next week. I appreciate that. I'm actually learning a lot from you, you know, talking about this kind of stuff. So no, it's great. I mean, you're right. Like four-day work week. And then somebody was talking about that too. I saw something, I think it was on, it was Instagram or Facebook. I forgot, but somebody was saying that, you know, what time was it? It was like 10 AM to like 2 PM is when people are doing most of the work in their day. And then those other hours, you know, cause a regular job is what, eight to five. And it's like, you're only doing work from 10, you're only doing real work from about nine o 'clock to one to about lunchtime or 10 AM to 2 PM.

25:53And they're like the rest of the time, you're kind and just pretending you're working. Yeah. And that's just, it's just, it's just annoying. It's like, why, why do I need to sit here for another couple hours when I could go home or I could be doing, being with my family or doing something else and still get paid for my time? Cause I'm not working right now. I'm not actually, I'm just pretending to work. Yeah. Just, yeah. And I just, I totally agree with that. Yeah. We're really good at lying to ourselves. I think as humans, we, we, we say that we're being efficient, but we're really fiddle farting on our phones or doing something else that is not productive while we're at work.

26:25And I think, I think that is a dichotomy of, of, or psychology of, of the mind is we can only do so much in a day anyways. And why push ourselves to do the most and then exhaust ourselves in the beginning of the week? Why don't we just set ourselves up for success by having a more fluid and more achievable work week. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Now, Jesse, what would you say actually moves the needle most in your business right now? You know, I think it's mostly referrals, but I think because of the aim I have, it is going to be larger scale clients that I can actually not to be on job site to accomplish their their work that they want done see i say that because one call crew kind of thrives on that i make roughly 20 of a job site's revenue if it's done through one call crew and and with that said if it's a twenty thousand dollar job or ten thousand dollar job, I make two grand on it and I don't have to lift a finger.

27:39So I, that I think is what is going to push the needle further right now for me, the bread and butter is large porches because they, I'm very, very good at them. Now I've been doing them since I started this business, but I've done them so much that I really know how to make a good porch. Now I just built one that has a 22 foot span opening for a garage underneath it. And it's made with pressure treated LVL beams. And, and it's, it's something I can look at and say, I'm really proud of this basically. And I can have it code inspected and they don't say, Oh, you did it wrong. So, so it's, it's a joy to do those things.

28:25I think between those two, those are the, the goal is one call crew. What, what really helps me move along right now is large scale porches. Okay. Okay. Now, you know, and what would you say is one thing you're doing today that gives you kind of an unfair advantage against your competitors? I care too much. Okay. No, I mean, this is, this is not competitive thing, but I really do. I love clients so much and I love life so much in people that I will prioritize them. And that is not something people fail to notice. They notice it very much. So whenever I work for anyone, I'm almost guaranteed to get referred to someone else.

29:13And so my unfair advantage really is something that is also sometimes harmful to me, which is I will lose money by taking care of people well, but it achieves something in the longterm that not many other businesses might be able to achieve, which is customer retention to a fault and then customer multiplication from that retention because they tell everyone else that they were, they were very well taken care of. That's one of the major things. and also I do a lot of double checking of myself. Whenever I'm in a job site, even if the client doesn't want the code inspector to come in or something like that, I check codes.

30:00I do the research in order to make sure it is not only safe, but it is done right. And even if it's behind something and no one sees it, I still make sure it's done right. So my edge, I think, is still in that realm of caring too much, quote unquote, but I don't think it is too much. I think it's caring enough to show the client that they will be well taken care of. Okay. Okay. I love that. Now, have you ever had to make a tough call, you know, like, you know, like letting a subcontractor go or maybe not doing a job or maybe, you know, quitting a job halfway, you know, because it ended up being dangerous or something of that nature that ended up being the right move long term?

30:45Yes. I was working for Clayton Homes as a subcontractor, actually. I was under them as a sub. and I had a crew of guys at that point that were working under me and they were basically all friends of mine and they were all good people and I loved all of them and there was this one guy though that could not show up and one day one day he shows up right and I leave him at a job site to paint. He was supposed to paint. Think. Hold on. Child little girl. All right. I'm ready. All right. Go ahead. So one day when he gets to a job site and we tell him, okay, we need to paint this room and this room and this room.

31:35I'll give you seven hours to do it. We're going to go and do other jobs. I'll see you back here in a bit. And so we leave and seven hours later we come back. I look and he's still painting the first wall. and the reason he was still painting the first wall is because he had not painted enough to know that the color of drying paint does not match dried paint and so he was repainting where it had dried as it dried over and over again i think he got two walls done in seven hours and I looked at him and I said brother I understand like you were you just didn't understand how to paint but just tell me that up front because I specifically asked have you paint before do you know how to paint and they said yes and so but the tough call I had to make after that is the toughest one I've ever made probably and it was I told him because he wasn't showing up on time to job site or to my, to my vehicle, because I'd drive them to job sites and I'd wait around for him.

32:46But he did two no call, no call, no shows in the morning. He'd call after he woke up because he would stay up so late at night. And, and then the, when he did this, it the second time I looked at him, I said, I will only allow you to do this one more time. and then you're fired because otherwise I am allowing you to not learn and grow because I'm basically nurturing something that is not healthy for you if I allow you to continue in this pattern. And sure enough, he asked me one day, he said, hey, some friends are coming into town. Can I take off today? And I'll be back tomorrow. I said, yeah, for sure.

33:27Go ahead and do it. I like flexibility in general. And I was glad that he was wanting to do something with his people basically and so the morning shows up after that he had stayed up late he didn't show up he showed up at the end of the day just to say hi basically and i embraced him i said you are fired and i cried with him actually because i hate that feeling like having to let someone go but i knew it was going to be the best thing for them because they needed to have a hard lesson that their actions have consequences. So I, in the end, think it was the right choice. It just was hard to do.