Tyler Dunagin - How to Visualize and Achieve Delusional Success

In 3, 2, 1.

Welcome back to Becoming Preferred, the podcast dedicated to transforming how you build, scale and lead your business. Today we have an entrepreneur whose journey proves that massive growth isn't about working harder, it's about building smarter. Our guest is Tyler Dunnigan, a multifaceted founder, operator and inventor. His success story is a masterclass in market selection and systemization. He took a historically manual service industry and transformed it into a scalable tech enabled enterprise. Tyler doesn't just chase revenue, he builds ecosystems. He focuses on purpose driven solutions and culture first leadership. If you're an entrepreneur looking to escape the one person hustle or a business professional seeking the blueprint for achieving nearly 1000% growth through operational efficiency and an impressive long term vision, this episode is your strategic guide. Join me now for my conversation with Tyler Dunnigan. Well, hey, Tyler, welcome to the program. We're delighted to have you.

Thank you. I appreciate you taking the time. I'm excited to be here.

Yeah, me too. And I was looking forward to this because I always love talking to entrepreneurs who've done some unique things and created things in the marketplace. Products and services that make them stand out and grow. So I'm always a big fan of that. But hey, before we get into it, our listeners always like to know how you got here. Tyler, so you're currently, I believe that you're living in Ohio, Ohio's home, correct?

Yeah. Cleveland, Ohio.

Cleveland, Ohio. Good town. A good sports town too. So go Browns. And go Cavs. Let's cross your fingers that they have a good season. The Browns, they had a little bit of disaster there for the last few years, but hopefully they came up. Now you were a football guy. And let's go back to high school. So you're back in school, you're doing sports. I think you were a jock. You, you had an opportunity and I know you ended up coaching and doing that. Give our listeners just a little sense of where you came from and how you chose the path you're on.

Yeah, yeah. Football guy in high school, that was kind of my thing. It gave me some purpose and direction and I just love the training and teamwork and everything else that went into it. I was a bit of a jock, but also at the same time, I was like a weird hybrid, like combination. I was still a nerd. I still played video games all the time. I loved rock and roll and whatnot, thanks to my dad. So kind of like a modified version of one, so I fit into a lot of groups. So to say that was high school. Fast forward. I Played colle college football. I bounce around a little bit and ended up playing semi pro football after that. And at this point, like no real world experience work wise. I've always been doing things as an entrepreneur. I didn't know that's what it was called at that time, but just anything from creating a guide and trying to sell it to younger like comic books and selling those, I was always just trying to explore a little bit. Now after I played semi pro football, or I should say while I was playing it, so this is like early to mid-20s, I found out that I was going to be a dad. And I was excited, I was scared. I don't know, you know, if you've ever had that experience, there's so many emotions that go through your head immediately. The first one is preserve life and be a good dad. And so it was at that point, right away I just realized I was like, man, like this football thing's been fun, but I'm making very little money on this thing. I don't know what's next. Like the NFL dream is probably gone. And I was like, I got to make some money, I got to get this thing going. And so the only issue was like, I wasn't quite sure where to start. Like when I was in college, I did business, I took a few physical therapy classes. And I've always had an affinity towards kind of doing my own thing. And so my dad owned a building company when I was growing up and I'd always watch him and just always see him leave in the morning. He'd leave at 5 and he'd tell me the stories where he was going that day. He'd do anything from custom kitchens to additions to things like that. And he would always like anytime he had a cool customer. Like one time he did Jim to me of the Cleveland Indians kitchen. And he told me that. And that stuck out to me. I thought it was just so cool that my dad did a MLB athlete's kitchen. Well, that kind of stuck out to me and I was familiar with that space. So I leave semi pro football and I get into single family real estate. But I started off just doing handyman services. I couldn't buy anything at that point. I didn't know how to invest in it. I was just like, I hey, I don't know where this will go, but let's see. And you know, little by little, you just learn things as you go. We would do small projects at first for real estate agents. And then I got introduced to a couple investors that asked me to Do a little bit more of the scope, a little bit more work, and just kind of put two and two together. Then eventually we were buying houses with these investors and flipping them. And then I was doing my own. I was managing them, finding the assets, renovating, putting in the renters in there, refinancing, you name it. And it was a cool little gig. And for my goal of, hey, I just need to provide for my young family that's here, it did its purpose. Well, I realized that a couple years in doing this, I achieved my goal, but I was not having fun at all, because I started every single one of my days off at either the houses that we were flipping or Home Depot. And that was my life. And it was hard for me to delegate. Like, I. I was a young manager. I was trying to figure out how to delegate to other people, how to manage other people effectively create SOPs and everything like that. You know, early to mid-20s, you're learning on the fly. And I was conscious enough to know that I had to learn those things. But in the moment, it's tough to learn and do. And so I kind of got burned out doing single family houses. Even though we were doing a lot of volume, I had a lot of customers and investors and all those kind of things, and tenants. So I talked to a mentor of mine, and I said, pretty much, I said, hey, like, this is weird. I got everything I asked for, and I don't like it at all. Like, I almost feel guilty complaining about this, but, you know, something's got to give here. And he encouraged me to get into multifamily real estate. He said, hey, you really need to get in a multifamily. That's where it's at. I said that great. I want to do it, but I don't know anything about it. And fast forward, I ended up getting into a consulting gig with a multifamily manager just to learn the basics. I knew sales and marketing, so I kind of started there. And then that segued. I was still flipping houses on the side, you know, just on a minor scale. And so I got into consulting, sales, marketing, maintenance, items, things of that nature. And then next thing, you know, like, you keep on climbing that ladder. I'm naturally curious all the time, and I'm willing to probably work more than most others. And I was obsessed with it. I was like, all right, I learned everything about this, and I would work even when I was home. I'm not saying it's the most healthy thing, but I was working, trying to learn it that way I could get the next steps. And that was my introduction to property management and multifamily. And I remember I really built it up and I was learning a lot. And then this owner approached me who I was managing for. He had a third party property management company and that's technically who I was consulting with. The owner approached me, said, hey, I'm going to fire these guys. And I said, oh man. I view it as, hey, this is the end of my rope. Here I go, I got to really figure out multif family now. Let's do it. And I said, thanks for everything. And he said, no. He's like, I think you misunderstand me. I'm going to fire them and I want you to build out my management company for me. And I said, oh, okay. Like odd turn was not expecting this at all. But you know, you adapt to reality. Here we go.

Right place, right time. Yeah, yeah.

And I essentially, it's odd. I fired the management company I started working with and I built this owner his own management company. I work with his legal team, his accounting team, his family office, all these kind of things. And I built it from scratch, from filing the LLC with legal to the operating agreement, to the SOPs, the processes systems, you name it. And we achieved all of our goals. Performance went up, costs went down, things were predictable. But the thing that I kept on running into the recurring issue was everything was airtight from the reporting and the marketing and the sales and all of these things. The units were ready or growing, the rents. But I could never find the vendors at scale to do the job that I needed. And I tried anything and everything. I would go to home service conferences and I would go to national apartment associations and try to find enough vendors. What I realized is I needed about 50 or 60 different groups just to keep up with my needs. And I'm looking at this like, man, this thing is so streamlined and everything is airtight except for the vendor coordination part of it. Like, something's got to give here. So keep in mind, I'm still flipping houses on the side occasionally. Not as much as I was before, but I still have my crews. They're doing full fledged single family houses now. I know multifamily, I know how predictable it is. Just for reference, 50% of renters move every single year. So it tells you how much need there is.

A lot. A lot of movement.

Yeah.

And over.

Yeah, it's a lot. So I just looked at it, I said, hold up. So I'm talking to my crews that are doing Single family for me. I say, guys, I have a really odd curveball for you, but it might be the easiest job we've ever done. And I told them, like, I want you guys to. Instead of flipping a house for me, let's flip an apart. And they all laughed. And they said, okay, what's that look like? And I said, we're gonna do the painting, the flooring, the cleaning, the surface refinishing, and anything else that might pop up. The first two or three were very clunky, but it definitely was one of those things where I realized it's such an easier service and trade than doing anything else. Because all apartments, within reason, are a big rectangle. Same color schemes, same fixtures, same countertops, you name it. And there's 500 of these things per property, which is insane. And so I remember, like, keep in mind, at first, I made that solution just to solve my needs in property management, but then I realized it's working. Not only did we do all the needs that I had in my portfolio, which, for reference there, like, I was talking to the owner that I was working for at that time, and I said, hey, I can't find a solution. How do you feel about us in housing this or me using my other company to do it? And he said, as long as it's apples. Apples on the cost structure, I do not care what you do. Cool. That's my free pass. That's all I need. Let's scale this thing. And so we did our own units at scale. We had over 2,000 doors. I managed our around a quarter billion dollars worth of assets at that time in multifamily buildings. And it worked. And then I had buddies around the industry. We had the same issues. You know, when you're in the same space, you guys about the same things, right? You know, you share contacts and all those things. And I said, guys, I'm out of the vendor chase game. I'm just doing it on my own. And they kind of laughed, and they said, sure, let us know how that goes. I'm like, no, I'm serious. We're doing like 15 to 20 units a week right now in each market. It's working. And they said, cool, come do it for us. And I was like, all right. So now this is a bit different. I was like, let's try it out. So we scaled. We did a couple unit turnovers for them. And just so everyone knows, unit turnover, that's very common in the apartment world. That's just the simple process of taking an apartment. Somebody moves out you go in there and get it rent ready for the next person. That sounds simple, but that might be oversimplifying it because there's a lot to do in a few amount of days. So that's our business in a nutshell. I was doing it for my portfolio for some of my buddies needs and whatnot. Came to that inflection point where I said, hey, the portfolio I managed and the business I set up to manage these properties for this owner, it's great, it's performing well. Like, the costs were never lower, the rents were never higher, occupancy was never higher. And it was streamlined. We had a person to oversee each process like clockwork. There's no hiccups in it. And so I really got the itch to get back into my own game full time, even though it's kind of doing that in the management space. I went to the owner and I said, hey. I was like, all this stuff is set up, we hit our goals. I kind of want to pursue this idea. And I was so nervous to tell him this. Some reason, you have no idea. Like my heart was pounding, I felt in both sides of my throat. And he just looked at me and he said, he's what's your occupancy? And I said, It's 98. I was like, rents are never been higher. And he was like, cool. He's like, listen, go do it. If something happens, you're more than welcome to come back. I said, amazing. So I got his blessing and I jumped out of corporate America. Sadly enough, two weeks after I made that decision, that owner died. And that made me realize like, hey, I have no parachute. I have nowhere else to go. Back to this turn serve idea.

You gotta make it work. You gotta make it work.

Have to, absolutely have to. Yeah, luckily enough, yeah, yeah, luckily enough. Like that extra little motivation, not having a safety net, I took it and scaled it. I was the first employee. For the first full year, I would get friends and family to help me. I'd pay them a lot of money and feed them a lot and they would show up and it felt like an obligation. But even though I was paying them, my significant other would help me all the time. She would help me clean and at some point she told me that she would no longer work for free. So she was our second employee and we worked from sunup to sundown. Like truly, there's some nights we work to one in the morning, but in hindsight, that is the journey of how we got to this spot. And we can talk about Growth and all this kind of things, where the company's at today. But those are the steps that led me here. And it all started with the realization, okay, like. Like chasing the football game. Haven't made any money, probably won't. Reality setting in, having a kid on the way, that kind of got me in gear. And then it took me going through single family and multifamily to where we're at today to realize the opportunity.

It's interesting how life events can have an impact. You're back in school, you're playing football. You know you're doing it. It's all of those lessons. And then in school and then sports. And sports teaches you discipline, teaches you habits, the power of habits and working hard. So I think it was a good metaphor for you. You could probably come up and played for the Canadian Football League if you can't make the big show. That's where they usually go. Right. But a good place to hone your skills. But like you say, you find these opportunities and you get into management multiple properties. You start to learn new strategies, new techniques. You start to find problems. You created your own problems. But then there comes that time where it's like, hey, I can't do this. It's unsustainable. And when you got a young family, and I believe you have a young son at the time, and you just have the one boy. I believe he. How old is he now at the time?

Yes, I just had one. That's. So Trey is now 12 years old. It's kind of crazy how fast it's gone.

Yeah. And I think he's playing ball, too. Is.

He's a basketball kid, so he wants to be in football, but it's hit or miss. My goal is to keep him obsessed with basketball enough to where that occupies his full time. And maybe he won't ask me about the football game that much and protect.

His knees a little bit better. So that could be good. Yeah. Nice. Well, then you created Turn Serve. And as an entrepreneur and like I say, finding opportunities and as a fellow entrepreneur, a lot of things just fall into our lap sometimes. But you had to recognize it. You had that ability to say, hey, there's an opportunity here instead of poor meat. You made a good point. Hey, I don't have a parachute to go back to. That's great motivation, and it's one I think you have to have as an entrepreneur, is that level of commitment. But you're working with what you had and what was in front of you. And I'm sure you would Agree with this statement, I believe I see a new way to make a million dollars every week and not necessarily a million every week, maybe every two weeks. And it's just there's so much but it's. What do you want to focus on? What's going to get your MOJ going? What's going to get you up in the morning? What's going to keep you up to one in the morning and start to go and get you excited about it? And I see opportunity ever in the age of AI I see just huge opportunities and yet you see people going hey, this isn't going to work. So in your business turn serve you experience nearly 1000% growth by shifting your focus from residential real estate flipping to serving multifamily property management companies. So for the entrepreneurs that are listening, what was the first principle thinking that led you to realize B2B property management market was the true scalable opportunity there? And how can others apply that lens to their own business idea?

Yeah, I think the biggest thing was one a lack of variables being predictable. Here's why that's important. One lack of variables when you're doing an actual house for somebody that they're going to want everything custom, you know, even if it's not custom, it's a specific color.

Interesting.

You name it. Yeah, there's probably 10,000 different potential inputs that could be. It is really hard to scale a business to scale beyond one's own hands to be able to keep up with all those variables. So that was the big draw to multifamily because if you onboard one property, their flooring type, you know exactly what they need, what they expect. Now you can do 500 units every two years at that complex and you know exactly how they are and you could scale that, you could delegate all those things. And so just the lack of variables is a big one. Next is just the predictable nature of it. Right. And so when I was looking at the market and the need, I said okay, there's got to be a big trade off here, what is it? Well that's when I realized that like in management, so half of renters move every single year. I didn't want to create a cool solution for somebody or for something and it might have had the use wasn't there, it was used 10 of the time or what have you. I wanted to find something that was essential to everybody's daily life when it came into their housing situation.

Interesting.

So leaving single family to get into multi family, being predictable in the lack of variables were the biggest things because Both of those speak to operating and both those speak to sales and marketing. And so really those were the big concepts that I focused on at first when I made that shift shift. And then that segues into other things. When something's predictable and it's methodical and has lack of variables, that's when you can build systems. That's when you can train people to follow systems. That's when you can build marketing channels that scale outward. Yeah, they're not taking the owner's hands, being involved 24, 7 in order to.

Get good results at scale, lack of variables. That's interesting. Great insight. That's huge. I haven't heard that one actually. It's always refreshing when you hear a new insider, a gem they can work with. And that goes to your systemization for exponential growth. It's definitely a major theme in your success is systemization and automation to enable rapid scaling. So can you share a concrete example of an operational bottleneck, something that used to take human effort and then how you successfully automated it or systematized it so that it could unlock exponential growth?

Yeah, there's a million examples. I'll start at the fundamentals of 101. And in hindsight, it's one of those things that sounds like common sense, but in the moment, it's very hard to prep for it. And everything has to be in in order for it to work. But think back to that moment where I left multifamily corporate America and I jumped in turn servant full time. It was my friends that were using my services. At first I was selling, I was a sales rep, I was a technician, I was everybody. And one simple thing, because there's a million examples that goes with that. But I would get text messages from my buddies or my customers that needed my services. And the issue was like I would get messages at 11 o' clock at night. And when you have one or two, it's like, hey, you know, I'll make this work. But then when scale picked up, getting people to get over to an automated form where they could simply select the services and it shows the next available day, that took out the nuances of me one, waiting on a text message, hoping that I see it in time, and then responding after I do all of the homework on, okay, when could I get there, who do I have, how do I dispatch, like, what skill sets needed, so on and so forth. And so that process right there, that customer experience, but then also the operational tie in the thing. It used to take me probably 30 to 45 minutes per submission. Just to get my ducks in a row and try, try to figure out, hey, I'm going to call John at this property, when's he going to be done? Who can go here? And so just a simple thing of just finding a way to put that on our website. I would no longer take text message submissions and that was a hard line to draw with a lot of customers. But I realized that I was a massive bottleneck on just the intake side of the street. And then it would be things even if I was successful there, I would have to recall my text message, oh, he actually said red but not burnt orange or whatever it might have been. And it was a train wreck. It was cool and exciting at first.

First.

But the second I got two or three other employees beyond myself, I realized that I was taking that bottleneck and bottlenecking them with it because they're waiting on me. And it took a while. So fast forward. What we did was we made it convenient with a customer journey in mind. So our customers are on a tight timeline, they're overwhelmed, they have lack of resources, lack of team members, they are on the move. And so I looked at, okay, how do we replicate this? We don't need them to send us a full fledged email like type this out. We need a simple form to select. Here's the unit number, here's my preferred date, and here's the service that I need. And they don't have to type it. They can literally just select flooring, painting, whatever it might be and hit submit. And so a process that used to take me probably 30 minutes to 45 minutes just in the initial intake and probably hours of stress and mental bandwidth to facilitate. Now it gets done in probably 30 seconds per work order and I don't even have to think about.

You were kind of like the precursor to Angie's List. It was done again list so we could get our service, get it scheduled. And so look at that. Look what you foster.

Are you tired of chasing leads and ready to start effortlessly attracting more high value clients? Introducing Rainmaker Lead Gen, the ultimate sales, engagement and client acquisition platform that takes the stress out of outreach. With Rainmaker Lead Gen, you can easily identify, engage, educate and convert your ideal prospects into loyal clients. Our industry leading automation and email sequencing empowers you to reach more ideal clients, accelerate the sales cycle and close more business. Imagine authentically engaging with your prospects while the platform handles the heavy lifting. Say goodbye to the endless hustle and embrace a more efficient, effective approach to business development. Ready to witness the magic book? A 20 minute demo today and see how Rainmaker Lead Gen can revolutionize and level up your client acquisition game. There's nothing to lose and everything to gain. Don't miss out on this opportunity to supercharge your client acquisition process. Visit rainmakerdigitalsolutions.com or check out the link in the show notes to book your demo. Rainmaker Lead Gen Spend less time hunting for your ideal clients and more time having high value sales conversations with your ideal clients.

And now back to my conversation with Tyler Dunnigan. You talk about culture as a multiplier. So you emphasized that company culture is about psychology, not spreadsheets, which I thought was interesting. For founders who are scaling for from say small team to a medium sized company, what's the single most critical non monetary action that they can take to bake in a high growth, purpose driven culture as you've done over at Churnserve?

Yeah, I think the very first thing is you have to understand your why. And you said the word. You have to understand your purpose. Why do you do what you do? And it cannot just live, hey, let's make the owner money. It cannot be monetary at all because that is short lived. You need to understand the amount of impact that you make to those who you serve. You need to see a realization for your efforts and your team needs to see that as well. If we talk about just the walls that we paint, paint, can you imagine having a weekly meeting to where we just say, you know, paint, paint, paint, paint man, that's not very fun or exciting or captivating. Whereas if we talk about the impact, we talk about the convenience. We talk about taking a turnover reduction from 17 days to 2 days. We talk about reducing 10 hours of human input to 5 seconds of human input for our customers. And we talk about the jobs that we're scaling into and what we're creating. Those types of things resonate with people. That's how you motivate people. That's how you get people behind a movement, so to say. Don't get me wrong, the KPI's monetary, those things are a good indicator of certain things, but they're short lived. They're not the driver. So you really need to get people intertwined and incentivize them. How you're incentivized and having your clear purpose in mind of why do we do what we do? And the answer cannot just be to make money because that's going to die after about two weeks.

Yeah, yeah. If that's your only motivation, it gets old quick because I mean if you work hard and have good systems so we can make money, if that's your motivator, it doesn't have that same fulfillment capability. So it's probably great. When you saw a new system and it started to work and you free up time. I know for me it's not about the money, it's about the time. So anything we create systems, system wise or as an SOP that creates time for me because I have more of it behind me than I do ahead of me. So for me, that's my currency that I work with.

Right.

It becomes huge. You're also an inventor and you got this inventor's mindset. And in a service business that could be really interesting beyond service, as an inventor, you patented a product like Liquid liner. How do you cultivate that inventor's mindset where you're focused on developing new best in class products, you know, within a traditionally service heavy industry like property renovation.

I think it goes back to understanding your purpose and your why. If you're impact oriented and it doesn't need to be a certain way, like I mentioned before, if all you did was paint and that's your yardstick, that's going to get quite boring, quite small. So we always try to look for ways to improve our customers life and just those around us and make a larger impact. And having that mindset is what led us to be able to start our product, which is called Liquid Liner. That's a two part epoxy. And I'll give the quick little backstory of how we kind of run into that because it'll speak to the mindset, you know, in those moments. Moments. So keep in mind for our customers, there's a lot of things going on and they just need one voice of reason that they could trust. They know it's going to happen. I'll give you the quick story on this. When we were painting an apartment complex once, I had my best cruiser, my lead crew, so to say. And I got a call one day and they said, hey Ty, I can't service this unit, could you reschedule? I said, no problem at all. Say any issue like, nah, we're not really quite sure what it is, but we'll try again. I said, okay, no problem. And I re dispatched them. And then the next day say, same thing. I was like, all right, this is odd. And I asked my lead guy said, tony, what's going on man? I was like, this is a good client. You guys are the best crew. I trust you fully on this. Just give me an idea that way maybe I can mitigate. And he says, we don't know. You can't breathe up here. Like something's wrong. I said, okay. I said, what? He's like, they're spraying something. I don't know what it is. I said, let tell you what, I'm gonna come up there and see it. This is the first time I've heard of this in management or services. Let me see. So I get up there and there was somebody that was spraying over bathtub refinishing. And just for those that don't, refinishing a bathtub is truly just taking an old worn out tub and reapplying an en factory coat to it so that it prolongs the life of it and you don't have to go through the headache of replacing it and swapping out all the plumbing and whatnot. So the resident gets a brand new tub and the property manager gets this service that took hours, not days of disruption, so to say. I was looking at that process and I was like, there's got to be a better way to do this because there's air movers, hazmat suits. It was cloudy, it was loud, it was hot, and it smelled toxic. You can smell it down the hallway. I remember talking to the gentleman doing it because I was sitting there with him with a mask on. I said, what are you doing, man? Help me understand this. And he was like, yeah, I'm refinishing this tub. And he told me some of the specs. I talked his head off because I offered to help him for free and he took it. And so I talked his head off. I asked him a million questions. And then from there I just said, like, how much money did you make today? It was enough to make a viable business out of it. And then I just went started exploring ways, hey, how can we build this better? What's next? So to speak to the mindset and whatnot. I think just actively being there and showing up for your customers, being curious and trying to do something better in general, something healthier, that mindset is what led me to being curious. Be curious enough about what could be. Why is it stopped here? So that's kind of what led to the what would turn into liquid liner. Yeah, it just took 70 iterations to get there, but we got it.

Well, it's collaboration too. And like you said, it's listening, it's paying attention, it's being curious. You know, I'm reminded of a story Jeff Bezos tells where when he started his book company before precursor to Amazon, So to speak. And they're on their knees all day and they're just on their knees and he's thinking, hey guys, I got a great idea as the founder here of Amazon, let's get knee pads, let's get those, whatever the carpet layers use, use these knee pads. And one of his employees said, why don't we get tables and we set up tables. And he goes, so you don't have to have all the answers, but if you're curious enough to find it, the answers are there. So I always thought that was a great story. Well, how's technology leveraging AI and technology in a non tech space where you've operated, how have you successfully implemented any technologies like AI or automation with the very tangible hands on world of renovation? Because it's very physical. Are you using technology to assist you in that process?

Extensively. And the main things we do so what we get out of it most is convenience for the user and accuracy. So those are the two biggest things. Again, it goes back to, goes back to variables and quality of life for the team. So there's a ton of future or I'm sorry, customer focused solutions and that's great. It gives them updates, et cetera. Where we focus at first is improving our team's quality of life with it. If somebody's crunching numbers all day long, counting their fingers and toes, if that's taking them eight hours, it's like, hey, hold on a second man, we could do this in about five seconds. And just giving them back more meaningful time in their day to work on fun, productive solutions versus like these tasks that are trailing and just you can't be wrong, like it takes so long and they're going to end up inaccurate because people get tired and whatnot. So the first thing we use software for is our quality of life for our teams. And that could be something from email suggestions to lead tracking, to reminders to data entry, dispatching assistance, workflow, invoice generation, you name it. There's nothing off limits when it comes to that side of the street. So that's the first thing that we do. Then the next thing that we do is with it again. It goes back to that customer's journey with us, what's in their hand, what's in their heads during the day. If we can improve the process of them having a need to it getting done, we try to bridge that as much as possible. So that goes back to, we have a software called Turn Sense and that's where we look at the history of their building and their Move out rate and the notice to vacate dates and whatnot. And we anticipate what services they'll need on that day. And then we'll literally send them like, hey, we think that you'll need painting, flooring, whatever it might be to schedule this, simply select, select, select and hit next. And so those small things where they're looking at, wow, I didn't have to walk that unit. I'm going to confirm, don't get me wrong, but that's what videos are for, zooms are for, what have you. So we take these processes that normally take just a ton of human time with a ton of opportunity costs associated with them and we make them streamlined and just embedded. That is really what drives us. And you set up this space that is archaic. There's dinosaurs everywhere. And it's one of those analogies, hey, this is how it's always been done. It's because no one's really, really poked under the hood enough to really take a swing at things. And we're there. Like we also benefit of our customers benefit. So we're trying to make their lives as easy as humanly possible. And all of that is through AI software, similar features.

Yeah, it's disruptive in a good way and people can look at old technologies. I want to get to a question that I've been waiting to ask you. You advise entrepreneurs to keep a visible list of delusional long term visions. And I love that, I love the whole concept of that. So for our audience who tend to be, can be sometimes pragmatic, how do you balance setting those aspirational, almost unachievable and unbelievable goals with the necessary discipline of achieving your tactical weekly or yearly goals.

Yeah. So for me, I always operate better when I have something in my peripheral and I don't know if that's me specific or if that's how other people operate as well. But what I mean by that is if I have a list of things to do in front of me and if I view it as, all right, I just got to get through this list today and I'll do the same thing tomorrow then the same thing tomorrow, same thing tomorrow. It just isn't fun at all. But if I could, could also have these edge strategies to where I talk about what could be like, if I solve this like this would really improve things. So one thing that I do is I call it Three Horizons and I quantify my, I was going to say whiteboard. I actually have a blackboard with white ink just to be a little bit rebellious. And it's fun.

Right.

I have my first horizon concept and those are things I have to get done today or this week. They're urgent. They're the non really fun things that are necessary for operations. Then the second horizon I have is things that we could probably update and streamline quality of life on for certain things. And it could help reduce our bucket of to dos. And then we have our third horizon and those are things that are potentially industry altering. If we pull these things off, can you imagine what this would be like? Or hey, those stories of man, if somebody would only do this or if somebody could only figure this out, we always want to use that as a focal point. We don't want to be so far attached from reality to where they're just ideas. As you and I could probably talk ideas for a week straight.

Right.

But how do we make those things realistic for us as well? And so what I tend to do is, is I look at what we have in face value today, what it could be tomorrow and what it could be two, three, five years from now. And I want to make sure that's our compass and our guide to get there. And so when you do that, most people live in bucket one, they are in it. It's very hard for them to see beyond tomorrow. They can't see the forest of the.

Trees and that Survival, survival mode.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's where most people live. And that's okay because that's your surroundings. You can't work on what could be when you are too overwhelmed by what is.

Yeah.

And so if you intentionally carve out time to be able to focus on those incredib really far fetched feeling ideas of what could be, but you have a path to kind of get there. That's when you could really start to make improvements. So if your bucket three is a level 100 when it comes to just being good luck, your natural buckets two are going to be a little bit closer to that. And your bucket ones are also going to be a little bit on the higher end. So for me it's kind of a guiding compass and a benchmark. And that allows us to really reflect and think about how things can be versus how they always have been. Because if you again, if you're constantly in bucket one, you're going to produce results that you've always gotten that the entry always has, that they already have. Quite frankly, you add very little value to humanity at that point. If you only live in bucket one. Essential, don't get me wrong, but you got to have that guiding light of what's in two and three.

Yeah, it's hard. It's kind of like that Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You're working in the bottom tier at survival, food, shelter. Hey, it's all I can do. I get home late at night, I can barely see my kids. How do I move on and how do I evolve so I can move towards that goal of self actualization and doing creation things? Because it is tough when you are working hard. And you know what it's like when you're working. Your brain's drained, your brain power is gone. You can't compute anything. You just want to go to bed. It's a tough one. So it's finding that time, but we can make that time. And I think that time lives in the margins. It's driving from A to B. It's listening to podcasts. It's listening to podcasts like this and listening to entrepreneurs like yourself. And then taking time, lunch breaks instead of listening to music, coming home and putting on Netflix and Scrum. Imagine if that went into work.

Work.

Let's talk about defining your business's enduring purpose. Your mission is to foster well being by beautifying spaces. How did you move beyond a simple business goal, making money, renovating apartments, to crystallizing this as a deeper purpose driven mission? And how does that mission inform your daily operational decisions? I mean, it acts like a filter, I'm sure, but how would you expand on that and unpack that?

I think it goes back to the whole thing of if it's only monetary, it's short lived, lived. And I was trying to motivate and figure out ways to get people interested in working for me. And that might have been my issue. Like, that's how I viewed it. And at that time, you don't really realize what could be. And so I started changing the way I phrase things to people working with me. And that started to really accelerate and I got a little glimpse of, okay, hey, let's be collaborative, let's see where that goes. And then, yeah, there's certain levels and there's certain things you'll go through as an entrepreneur. And there's times to where you question everything. You could have the best day, then by the afternoon you could be like, oh, I gotta find a job like you're.

I go.

And I got tired of those swings. And I felt like a lot of these decisions were going through me and whatnot. And pain forced me to learn this. I started working with a coach that helped me understand as A leader. All right. What's beyond our fingertips? What are those things that are unsaid but are still felt? And I know that sounds like, so just outlandish, but there's some real power behind that. And so to make that switch from, hey, we're just providing services, here's what we do. You can probably hear in the way I even say that it's like, it's not fun at all. Yeah, it's essential and it's needed, but there's so much more to go. Like, that does not invigorate people to get behind that. So I started working with this coach, and you got to tell me why you do what you do before you ask your team to be able to resonate with that. I was like, that's a good question. And I went down this path of realization and development and things like that. And I realized that at that time, when I noticed my purpose, when I realized what I was doing, it doesn't mean I just invented it right then and there. I was doing a lot of it, but just being able to quantify it and just visualize it and put it in front of me and work on it and whatnot. When I started sharing that journey with other leaders in my team and saying, hey, guys, here's what I was doing, doing, just recognizing and landing on my core values that I care about. Why do I do what I do? Like, beyond this and as a leadership team, we started forming this shape and we're still working with that same coach. And we realized, hold on a second now. Imagine if we talk about not even our own experience, but our customers experience with us. And I don't just mean, like, how easy it is to schedule the emotional response that they get by using our services and the emotional response we get by giving it. And so we just went down this journey and that's when work stopped feeling like work. And it truly felt like purpose and it truly felt like there was more to this fold. There's a lot more to do here. And the people around me were excited.

Yeah, nice. Let's talk about a non negotiable daily habits. If you could imagine or mandate one non negotiable daily habit for every aspiring or current entrepreneur in our audience. So whether it's mental, strategic, or physical, what would it be and why has it been so vital to maintaining your growth, mindset and energy?

So I want to make sure I understand because I can go a million ways with this. Non negotiables, meaning, like as an entrepreneur, non negotiable you have to do these every single you got.

You got to do this are the habits you got to develop. Could be more than one if you got more than one great charm.

Oh yeah. I think a non negotiable is one. You have to see what could be like. You have to have that third horizon perspective. You have to be able to clearly know what your vision is because everything else follows that. Everything else is a trickle down factor of that. So non negotiable every day. You truly have to keep in frame of mind, mind of where you're going. Now that does not mean that you could step over dollars to pick up dimes. You still have to follow the process and whatnot. But you have to have to, have to understand where you're going because you're going to come to this time to where you get caught up in the nuance of doing. You get caught up in the nuance of following an SOP and you're going to feel like a robot and there's no one else to point to. You're going to get burnout. So non negotiable. You have to constantly push the envelope and thinking about what could be. Even if it feels just out of reach today, you can't quite reach, you know it's there. You absolutely have to think bigger about these things then I would say the counterpart of that. You have to come up with the steps to realistically get there. Just having high level visions and ideas are just that truly like it sounds harsh ideas are essentially worthless. There is no value in an idea and it's up to the entrepreneur. It is your duty as somebody that has and is capable of those ideas to bring those things to life. And that's realistic steps through operating steps and measuring and everything else. You have to also you have to have one toe in reality a lot of the times as well. So just having that perspective goes a long way. And then last thing, I'll share like the non negotiables with this. In order to get any of those things, you're not going to be able to think about vision when you're doing non stop and you're not going to be able to. And the opposite like you're just. If you get caught up in the moment, you're going to lay down at 11 o' clock at night, shoot, all right, I'll do it tomorrow. And you're just going to keep on just doing it, doing it. You can be the most aware about it. One thing you absolutely have to do every single day, even if it's for 10 minutes a day, you need to set a schedule where you carve out time just to unwind and reflect and breathe for a little bit. That is where realization happens. It probably is not going to happen in the moment when you're carrying the lumber across the yard. Like, it's probably not there, but then when you stop and reflect and then you realize, oh, hey, like a horse and buggy. If you flash back 1880s. Oh, horse and buggy could help here. That's a realization moment. Fast forward to today. Oh, man, I'm spending so much time on scheduling and whatnot. There's got to be a solution. Realization of, oh, hey, there is a solution. Let me explore for a little bit.

Right.

Cue in the eye. So you absolutely have to carve out time. Intentional time to turn your phone off to hear the noise and be able to live in it but not hear it. You absolutely have to be intentional about blocking off time to think deeply about these kind of things and. And pull them in. You have to manifest them into your reality.

Yeah. Reflection. No, it makes good sense. Work life, balance is always a challenge. I know. It has been for me. I'm a 5am guy, and I usually get my brain power dissipates quickly after 4pm and I try and take breaks throughout the middle of the day, go for a workout. Like, after we do our session, I go for a workout today that kind of rejuvenates me for the afternoon. I stole from Mr. Pink a concept called the napuccino. So when I get done with the workout, take a shot of espresso, lay down for 25 minutes, and kind of do that reflective period, period. And then the caffeine kicks in and I wake up refreshed for the rest of the afternoon. So I'm really not nodding off, but it's kind of a way just to keep gas in the tank. How do you manage that? Work, life, balance. So my wife and I, we raised seven and five daughters, two sons, and we've got grandkids now. So Fridays were Nana and Papa, so that's where we go hang out with our grandkids. But I still work from 5 to 9, and then off we go in the morning. That's my world, right? And how to do it? How does Tyler do it?

So props. On seven, I have three, and I'm good. For me, it's one of those things. It depends on who I talk to and it depends on the time. Sometimes somebody's best thing could be the worst thing, depending on the situation at hand and Vice versa for me. I have always just obsessed. I really struggle with this, being halfway into something. The second I'm into something, I'm all in. And so I create these like frameworks and guard rails. Okay, cool. How could I still function in humanity and my community and with my family and everything else while still being obsessed with this kind of stuff? So I had to create some rules for myself, myself. And I went down this path and I tried the traditional, hey, 501, phones off, go. I was like, all right. I tried that for a little bit. Kind of hated it. If I'm being honest with you, in 3am I'd wake up. Oh, my God. I just had to dream about something I want to write down really quick. Oh, hold on. Work life balance, you can't do that. So I really struggled with this whole concept for a little while. Then I started realizing and I picked this up from somewhere and I ran with it and I'm realizing I was doing it. I view it more as work life integration because I'm in this position of, hey, like, I'm the founder, I'm the CEO, I'm working, I'm motivated, it's my term, so to speak, say, but I don't know that. If I had a traditional 9 to 5 job and I just clocked in, clocked out, okay, listen, I could probably carve out work life balance and not care about what I'm doing. I don't care about work, I'm home. But because I enjoy what I do, like, I truly am obsessed with creating solutions at scale. There's going to be times where I have like hard outs, so to say. If my kid has basketball or whatever it might be, if it's truly like a meditation session with all my boys and we're trying to relax, I'll definitely carve out time. There needs come first. But they also have just known me and I told my significant other this when I met her. I said, hey, I am an obsessive entrepreneur. I don't live a normal life. We could have some routine with us. But at the same time, like, there's going to be times where I impulsively and just like out of the blue want to go do something. I want to drive to see it. And that's just who I am. And so I go to, to include all this. I think the work life integration is important because there's going to be times where you're at home and you know it's tickling off limits and you get some of your most meaningful work Done. I have some of my best sessions out of the blue after I put my boys to bed and it's just me and my house, house. And it's 10:30 at night, I'm watching a show or a documentary and I'm like, oh wow, I never consider this. And I have some of my most meaningful work then. And there's times during the business day, like when I'm clocked in and I have real life needs that pop up for my family that I absolutely have to go attend to for whatever reason. So for me I'm in this position of it's a give and take. I'm always going to be working on fun things, impactful things, but I'm always also going to be able to take care of myself and my family when it comes up. Finding the balance between that it's circumstantial sometimes, but also I think some golden rules that people could follow on that is if you struggle with that, try to incorporate some sort of rules at first and that that truly might mean carving out intentional time on your calendar to block off to rest for a second. And that normally will solve a lot of things. But if you need to start off exploring, put in hard deadlines, put in non negotiables for yourself, see how you respond to them. For me, I just realized I live way more in the gray than on a rigid schedule because things pop up. But it goes back down to just that purpose and just being in the moment whenever I'm at that moment.

No, it's being present. Well said, well said. It's being present, what you're doing. And I love the term work life interview integration because really that's what it is. There's times I go to bed with a problem at 3:30 in the morning. I wake up and it's there. It's like the brain's working on it and I will get up and go back and do it and then go back to sleep again an hour later if that's what it takes in order to do it. Because that's what gets you excited and then you can't wait to get up to explore it. So a lot of my ideas come from just thinking about it or hopping on a treadmill and just walking and going for a walk and listening to something. So it's that stimulus. If you got a problem, let the brain go to work, let it go, do it. And everyone's uniquely different. You know, powerful stuff here. The website is donegan collective.com and Tyler Dunnigan. They can reach out and find you there. We'll have all that information in the show. Notes Entrepreneur, operator and inventor. They can get all that key information for me there and reach out to what's next for you. Anything exciting on the horizon?

Always something. A lot of it just doubling down in my current businesses. We're going through an acquisition right now which is fun. We get to integrate their team into us and we get to provide more services for our customers. Business side, having some fun. On the personal side, I build cars with my dad and we wrapped up one of our builds and had some fun with that. Kind of have like closure on two things from the acquisition to the car being done. And it's going into holiday season with my sons and we put our tree up last night. It's early November right now, so if it shows you how holiday oriented we are, that's what's up for them.

Oh, it's the American way. All the malls are changing over now too, so it's. I get it. Hey Tyler, this was really fun. Thanks for being our guest today and sharing your insights, your wisdom and your experience. Lots of gems in there for all of us.

Thank you so much. Appreciate you taking the time and letting me be here. Thanks so much.

As you are listening to this episode, what is one idea that you've heard that has caught your attention and why does it matter so much to you? And who is one person who you can share that with? Either sharing this episode or just sharing that insight that occurred to you while you were listening? Perhaps it is learning how systemization and automation can enable rapid scaling of your business, or keeping a visible list of delusional long term visions or goals will help you balance setting those aspirational, almost unbelievable goals with the necessary discipline of achieving your tactical weekly and yearly goals. Thank you for listening, for learning, and for investing in yourself so that you can become the best version of you. If you found value in this episode, please write a review on Apple Podcasts. If you haven't subscribed yet, please do so so that you can get a new episode and start your week off right every Monday. Until next time. This podcast is created and associated with Summit Media. My Executive producer is Beth Smith and Director of Research, Tori Smith. The fee for the show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. This podcast is subject to copyright by Summit Media.

Goodbye.