Today's Guest

Al Levi spent more than 25 years working in every facet of his family's plumbing, heating, cooling (and now electrical) business before exiting the business and launching his coaching career. According to him, “I made every mistake you can make” and “realized one day I was going to be a rich dead guy.” Al explained that he was able to overcome and learn from his mistakes to find success – and he has captured those learnings so you can find success too. Importantly, he says it doesn’t matter what type of business you run. The key, he says, is developing systems or what he calls “operating manuals” so you can give your team clear guidelines showing them what and how you want things done so you can avoid reinventing the wheel every day.

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Episode Summary

I was able to help scale and exit our family contractor business before venturing into my coaching career that has become my passion for the past 19 years. As with any success, there is a bit of a backstory. My father was a serial entrepreneur and by the time I was old enough to walk into a meeting, as a young teenager, my dad had me and my brothers in those meetings. The rule was we couldn’t ask any questions but we had to take notes and then he would debrief with us afterward. Despite this experience, I still made about every mistake you could make along the way. The only credit I would give myself is after falling into every hole I would get back up and tell myself let’s not do that again. 

We were raised on the idea of hurry up and do something, it worked to get things done but it was also exhausting. I came to realize that I would end up a young rich dead guy which was not my goal. I realized I had to change my habits, instead of putting out fires every day I needed to focus on fire prevention. The other big turning point was when I made the connection that we had been sabotaging productivity by either not having systems in place or having broken systems. So we switched from a people business to a systems business. This isn’t meant to sound cold but great people are sabotaged from achieving their best results when they are not supported with good systems. 

Most business owners are so busy that the last thing they think about is planning. Imagine you live in New York and you want to drive to LA, it would be nice to have a map or a GPS would be even better. Without a plan, you are at the mercy of wherever the road is taking you. Most of us business owners are so focused on solving the problems of today that we don’t stop to consult a plan. I’m not a fan of 10-year plans but I do believe having a 3 to 5-year plan is critical. That is why I created The 7-Power Contractor platform with videos, books, a podcast, and more to give business owners the tools to create better plans for their business. 

Resources Shared

• The 7‑Power Contractor by Al Levi
• The 7-Power Contractor Radio
• Thryv

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