Navigating Entrepreneurial Productivity: Josh Crouch's Path in Digital Marketing and Delegation

Wayne Herring00:00:00 - 00:00:55
Today, we have Josh Krausch, the founder of Relentless Digital. Relentless Digital serves HVAC contractors, electricians, and plumbers who are working in the residential market. Relentless helps them to get found online, on Google Maps, their website, and he also helps them stay in touch via text and email with their past customer base. Josh started this company about 4 years ago when he started posting in an industry group about the work that he was doing with the contractor that he was employed by at that time. And people started reaching out saying, hey great info but could you actually implement this for me? So he started doing that. Now 4 years later he's got about 30 employees, has just over a 100 clients that he's serving, and he's got a lot of experience. One of the things I loved about the things we talked about was he talked about his VA in the Philippines, the first one he had. Now he has other people that are working there.
Wayne Herring00:00:55 - 00:01:33
And this particular gentleman took, Josh's project management software and created the systems for it. And I was like, wow, Josh. Most people think of BAs, EAs as being people that you give tasks to, but you gave him the freedom to go ahead and create this system. And he was like, yeah, we did. So it's clearly a superpower of Josh's to let people experiment, break things, try things, give them suggestions, and that's both with his US based staff and with his staff that is based in the Philippines. So I really like that. The other thing we talked about was some entrepreneurial productivity tips that he has. We talked about how he lays out his ideal day.
Wayne Herring00:01:33 - 00:01:44
We talked about work blocks that he schedules on a Saturday or Sunday, but also talked about how that's offset by the fact that he gets to take a walk with his wife at 2 o'clock most days when he's starting to
Wayne Herring00:01:44 - 00:01:46
get a little bit frazzled and a
Wayne Herring00:01:46 - 00:02:08
little bit full of his work. Josh went through a health transformation and has hired a health coach and he's worked that into his schedule. He talked about taking notes and an old school yellow legal pad and how he uses that to track his ideas and implement things, and we even talked a little bit about sleep aids for middle aged entrepreneurs. I think you're gonna love this episode, so let's get after it.
Wayne Herring00:02:08 - 00:02:18
Hey. Welcome to the Business Put Away podcast. I'm joined by Josh Crouch today. Josh is the founder of Relentless Digital. Josh, it's good to have you here with us today.
Josh Crouch00:02:18 - 00:02:20
Yeah, Wayne. Thanks for having me.
Wayne Herring00:02:20 - 00:02:57
Josh is definitely a business builder. And before we got started, I was saying to Josh, I saw that you you made a post that said 4 years ago, I started this company, and you had some reflections and thoughts, which we'll get into that. But because I know now that it's been about 4 years as of that post in March, Tell tell us a bit about what came before relentless digital, and what was the calling? What was the kind of thing that caused you to take the first step in the direction of building this business? And that that'll give us a little bit of hearing your story, and then I'll pick up after you finish with that.
Josh Crouch00:02:58 - 00:03:31
I would say a lot of hard lessons were learned before, I started relentless. Looking back on it, I've had the fortune of learning those lessons while I was not the business owner. And I say that because the 3 HVAC companies I worked at so going back to, like, 2013, I was in accounting. I always loved numbers, data, statistics, and and analysis, things like that. I actually was the kid, like even though, you know, on TV, on Sunday, when the Packer I'm a big Packers fan. They would give the stats on the screen. I would actually every time there was a running play, I would, like, mark down if they had a carry, how many yards they got. I would do that for the quarterback.
Josh Crouch00:03:31 - 00:03:42
Like, it was that level. I got a notebook. I don't have it still. I wish I did, but I love numbers and statistics that much. Like, I've always been a big sports person, so that's probably where the love of that stuff comes in.
Wayne Herring00:03:42 - 00:03:43
Mhmm.
Josh Crouch00:03:43 - 00:04:15
So, obviously, fast forward to being an adult, and I love the numbers. I thought maybe accounting was gonna be my play, but I'll be honest, I wasn't a great accountant. And I also did not love the monotony of doing the same thing over and over again every single month. I I like having the freedom to go to this thing, go to that. Like, maybe it's a little bit of, you know, like, adult ADHD or whatever. I I didn't like doing the same thing over and over again every month, and I think a lot of people can relate to that. Don't get me wrong. I love our bookkeeper.
Josh Crouch00:04:15 - 00:04:32
She can do that, and she's amazing. So there's definitely people that there's definitely a lot of value in people that can do that stuff, but I couldn't. So I I got hired as an accountant at an HVAC company. It's a long story to get to. Gotcha. Yeah. Ending there. Very quickly, within, like, 2 months, I was, like, literally running the office.
Josh Crouch00:04:33 - 00:05:12
Because I did have I grew up in a a small family business my whole life. It was in martial arts, Taekwondo. So when I was a teenager and and young twenties, I I helped operate a couple schools. I mean, there was it was a small business, like, enough to the point where once once I started having kids, I wasn't gonna be able to pay for my life. So it it was still something that I did into my late twenties, but it was I had to get a couple jobs. So but the company that I started at, I didn't know this when I walked in. It was it was a mess. I I walked in in in a March, and for some reason, March seems to be, like, when I change the direction of my life.
Josh Crouch00:05:12 - 00:05:36
I don't know why is March always seems to be the month. But we had 20 technicians. I remember this because we were getting new cell phones. Like, the 1st day I walked in, I'm, an older guy's like, what the hell are you doing here? That's literally what he asked me. He was, like, 60 years old, and I think there's probably some issues with the company I didn't know about, but there's 20 techs. We got all new cell phones. Come to find out is because we didn't pay the last provider the bill, so they shut off the phones. Sure.
Josh Crouch00:05:37 - 00:06:04
By September that year, we had 3 technicians left because we couldn't pay them on time. Their checks would bounce. Wow. I was constantly having to pick up vans on Friday afternoons because you guys would cash their check and be like, hey. Come pick up your van. It's sitting in the Walmart parking lot. So I learned a lot of really valuable, hard lessons, and it wasn't because we were I was doing anything where I just didn't know any better. So Okay.
Josh Crouch00:06:04 - 00:06:28
Owner was burned out. The general manager was his wife was burnt out. I ended up running this company for about three and a half years. We got it turned around, learned a lot of great lessons in what not to do very early. Then I had an opportunity to move into a territory sales management position. Did that for about a year. Was not my cup of tea. Just I felt myself getting lazy.
Josh Crouch00:06:29 - 00:07:02
Like, you really have to be self motivated in a position like that because contractors or your clients, whatever field you're doing, territory sales, you gotta be able to push yourself on that. And I wasn't at that stage in my life. So one of my clients that I got along with wanted to open a branch about an hour away. So we got along really well. I realized I missed the contractor side, got back into that. So a branch from nothing. I grew that to about a1000000 in sales in the 1st 10 months. Biggest problem there is and just another lesson learned is when you get into these types of, and I wasn't an owner.
Josh Crouch00:07:02 - 00:07:32
I'm gonna say partnership because I was literally running the branch by myself. He came up very infrequently. So most of it was just through text message or phone call. So I was running the that branch by myself, and he worked on he loved the volume game. So low margin, high volume, loved to, like Mhmm. Multifamily type product like that. He wanted to keep growing that way, and I was always high value, high service. And so we had a difference of opinion and a difference of vision.
Josh Crouch00:07:33 - 00:08:04
So it ended up not working out. I just butted heads too much with where I wanted to go versus where he wanted to go. And, obviously, he was the boss, so I Yeah. It didn't work out. But another one of my clients at the territory sales management position was looking to grow and was looking for the same thing that I was looking for and quickly hired me there to focus on their marketing and sales. So joined them in 20, and we we quickly started growing there. And I was able to really focus on the marketing side of things. To that point, I had some focus on marketing, then it was the field.
Josh Crouch00:08:04 - 00:08:35
And, you know, I was kind of just like running a business, you had to focus on everything, but I really got to focus and hone in on marketing at the last place I was at. Started getting really good at the local stuff, started figuring out what kind of content and things like that to post to get local people engaged in the content, understanding that we were different than the other contractors in the area, and we started going really fast without spending anything on marketing and which is rare for contracting. It's which rare for businesses in general.
Wayne Herring00:08:35 - 00:08:35
Sure.
Josh Crouch00:08:36 - 00:09:08
So it grew really quickly. But then I started posting that helpful content that I was creating for professional services in a business coaching group on Facebook, And that led to people wanting to, hey. Can you do this for me? Or, hey. Can you help me? And it was kinda like a sort of be like a side thing, and I'm like Mhmm. I've always wanted to own my own business. I just didn't know what it was going to be. I thought maybe at some point, I could get equity in a company or do something like that, but I think I always held myself back on that because I'm not handy. I'm not Tersh.
Josh Crouch00:09:08 - 00:09:16
If any of you know Tersh through Wayne, Tersh is a very handy guy. I am the complete opposite. The I
Wayne Herring00:09:16 - 00:09:20
thought you just wore shiny shoes, by the way. I didn't realize who was very handy.
Josh Crouch00:09:21 - 00:09:33
No. The see, the sign right here Yeah. I did not put that up. That's not me. I've been fired from hanging anything on any walls in any place that I live because the holes were too big and too frequent.
Wayne Herring00:09:33 - 00:09:34
Mhmm.
Josh Crouch00:09:34 - 00:09:41
So I've been fired from that, but I realized that the business, the marketing, that that side is the content side. That's that's me.
Wayne Herring00:09:41 - 00:09:41
Yeah. So
Josh Crouch00:09:41 - 00:10:11
I really lean into that. And but it's always because, you know, so the opportunity to start relentless came out of just helping other people. It wasn't, okay. I'm gonna open the doors, and I'm gonna figure this out because I think I'm I'm ready. It was people started reaching out wanting help, and I just decided to see if we could replicate those results. And that was 4 years ago. So the for the 1st year of this company, I worked full time. Had an hour drive to and from work every day.
Josh Crouch00:10:11 - 00:10:46
I was pretty much on the phone nonstop between getting there, coming home, lunch breaks, and just trying to run relentless digital that way. And then a year later, which also, like I said, was March, fully went full time. So it's been about 3 years full time with relentless. We're about a 100 100 and a 102 clients. We got between US based team members and offshore. And, actually, we have a couple US based team members traveling abroad right now, like in Spain and England and all kinds of stuff. So we got a very global team. We have about 30 team members right now.
Wayne Herring00:10:47 - 00:11:04
Awesome. Awesome. So you you started it by but you you're offering advice to people, and they would have been able to DIY it, but they didn't want that. They They wanted most of the time, we actually want somebody to do it for us. We'd see a concept, but it'd be great if so.
Josh Crouch00:11:04 - 00:11:44
I think we like to know just a little bit, like, just enough, or we like to know enough to know that we don't wanna do it. And I think that's the important thing. And once I realized that, we had several conversations at that 3rd HVAC company I worked at with my boss just to giving tips. Like, I I was literally shooting videos at my home about things to do to prepare your furnace for heating season, things to do to prepare your AC, things to do before calling or before we come out for service. We actually when we would book appointments, I had a YouTube video with 4 things to check before we came out. Check the switch on the side of your furnace. Check your breaker. Check your filter.
Josh Crouch00:11:44 - 00:11:53
There's one other one I can't even remember at this point, but it saved people certain. They would call back and say, hey. Thank you. My grandson was playing down there and must have turned the switch off.
Wayne Herring00:11:54 - 00:11:54
Right.
Josh Crouch00:11:54 - 00:11:59
And for us, coming out and doing a $99 diagnostic for someone, it was like, nope.
Wayne Herring00:12:00 - 00:12:01
Not good for anybody.
Josh Crouch00:12:01 - 00:12:19
You know? Yes. Could we do the whole sales yes. We could. And but the value given to that person, that person then is like, wow. These guys don't just care about taking my money. They actually care about what's in it for me. Mhmm. Helped us grow, helped us get a name where people would recommend us.
Josh Crouch00:12:19 - 00:12:42
That bleeds from Facebook into I'm sorry, from Google into local Facebook groups. Local Facebook groups are incredibly powerful. That is literally like your neighborhood today. I moved down to Arizona about 2 years ago. Like, I still don't know some of the neighbors because I actually know people better through Facebook groups than I do here. People just don't know. It's not the same. I mean, it's not the same as it was 15, 20, 30 years ago when
Wayne Herring00:12:42 - 00:12:43
you
Josh Crouch00:12:43 - 00:12:49
knew all of your neighbors by name, what they like, you hung out with them. It's not like that anymore.
Wayne Herring00:12:49 - 00:13:01
So you start relentless and you had and you went to, like, okay. Now we have these, like, about 30 employees and a 102 clients that we're serving in there. All HVAC, mostly h
Josh Crouch00:13:01 - 00:13:02
Oh, HVAC Plumbing.
Wayne Herring00:13:02 - 00:13:06
So that's who you serve, is contractors doing both residential, commercial?
Josh Crouch00:13:07 - 00:13:18
No. Commercial contracting doesn't really work well for what we do on the digital marketing side. We typically give them some tips, and then there's not really anyone to refer to. It's a whole different ballgame on the commercial side.
Wayne Herring00:13:18 - 00:13:56
So a 102 contractors working residential throughout the United States, and they you just mentioned that I and I know I like your tips. So if anybody is here, you don't even have to be in HVAC. If you're in some kind of other residential service business, you can see what Josh posts and, like, those local Facebook groups. I I know you've shared about that, and so you gotta be there. You gotta be doing that. You gotta be interacting. And same thing, like, serving people for free and helping them. Right? So what is it that you do at Relentless Digital? I mean, we would just say marketing, but how can you or or could you just describe that a little bit more?
Josh Crouch00:13:56 - 00:14:36
Yeah. Marketing. And even if we break that down to into digital is a very vast wide ranging thing. So we build and maintain websites. We help contractors on showing up on Google Google Business Profiles, Google Maps. We help them manage local service ads, and then we also help them stay engaged with their existing customer database through text message and email marketing. And those are really where we stop, which is also unique in the fact that we don't do anything on the paid ad side. Most digital marketing companies will do more like a full suite where they do the Google Ads.
Josh Crouch00:14:36 - 00:15:27
They do the Facebook Ads, they'll do other types of advertising in other places. But those four things that I mentioned were literally the 4 things I did on the contractor side, so I know them extremely well because I've done them, tested them. I know that they work. And we only do that stuff for the HVAC plumbing electrical residential contractors. So we're really niched down within a niche, which I think has really helped us focus and become the company that people look for when they need help on the things that weed can do. I think that's really helped us position ourselves that way. It wasn't by design, but as we learn lessons and we reflect on things, we learn that being really great at, like, 1 or 2 things is much better than being pretty good at, like, 7 things. Right.
Josh Crouch00:15:27 - 00:15:47
You know? And I'm sure that you're very familiar with that as coaching other business owners because we we all wanna do everything. It's like, oh, I wanna add that thing and add it. It's just shiny object syndrome. And for us, we've just been really great at a couple things, and that's really so. People know, like, if someone says, hey. SEO or website. We get recommended a lot because of that.
Wayne Herring00:15:47 - 00:15:57
Do you have, so if I if I'm working with you and I wanna do paid Facebook ads, do you send me to somebody you know and trust, or do you give me advice on how to find somebody, or how do you handle that?
Josh Crouch00:15:57 - 00:16:32
If if we have someone, we do on the Google Ads sign and we do on the Facebook social media content and Facebook ad side. But that's taken some time to get to because there's a lot of it's really easy to just come up with a referral system and pay each other for referrals and stuff like that. And that's fine if people wanna do that. We don't really participate in the whole referral payment system. It's never been something I really like. Even if we don't get anything, if if someone's really great at something and they don't do what we do, it reflects on us by giving that referral because then they're gonna go like
Wayne Herring00:16:32 - 00:16:33
handle things too.
Josh Crouch00:16:33 - 00:16:57
I I I literally have this one client. He talks to me all the time, crate guy in Florida. He's like, whatever your recommendation is, every recommendation you've ever made to me is gold, so I will listen to whatever you say. And that that to me, it means more than almost anything because having a reputation of making sure, like, I'm not gonna give you a referral if I don't trust that the person's gonna take care of you.
Wayne Herring00:16:57 - 00:16:57
Right.
Josh Crouch00:16:57 - 00:17:13
Because not every account's gonna work with everybody. So if they they screw up or something happens, are they gonna take care of you? Do they have ethics? Do they have values? And then, of course, do they really know what they're doing, or are they just kinda, like, watched a couple videos and they're gonna kinda do it as well to make a little bit more money?
Wayne Herring00:17:13 - 00:17:13
Right.
Josh Crouch00:17:13 - 00:17:42
So for me, it's important. And we do the same thing with our podcast. Like, all of our partners that we work with are people that we wanted to work with, not that came to us and are flashing money in front of our face because we wanted it's just important. 1, we wanna work with people we like, and 2, work with people we trust because that it's so hard to find in today's world is businesses that will do what they say they're going to do Right. And not back down on that when someone throws money at them.
Wayne Herring00:17:42 - 00:18:18
Right. One of the things I was thinking, so 30 ish people and the 102 clients. So so a 102 clients, 30 people. And the world you're in, there there are things that change all the time. So when they get building a highly effective website or getting found on on the map, so on and so forth, things change. How how do you do, you know, automakers have r and d. Right? They have research and development. Have you developed a system for research and development and client results so that you're constantly innovating and staying ahead? What does that look like in your company?
Josh Crouch00:18:19 - 00:19:06
So as a smaller agency growing into probably more of like like a small to midsize, we're not quite even, I will consider, like, a midsize, but that's been tough. So, one, I choose who I follow very carefully and stay in front of newsletter because there are a lot of people in the marketing space. That's what they do is they test stuff. They test all kinds of crazy things that most people would never know about just to see what happens. Because the algorithms we work with, whether it's on Facebook, TikTok, it's all you have to test. There's no way to know. They put so many signals in there and different pieces of the algorithm so nobody can game and scam the algorithm. Because if as soon as people figure it out, everybody's gonna do it, and then they they have to change it.
Josh Crouch00:19:06 - 00:19:52
So that that's constantly evolving. Like, we're literally, at the time of this recording, coming off the longest, biggest Google update in probably about I think it's almost 10 years. Maybe it's a little less than that. I can't remember exactly the time frame because I wasn't in the space at that point, but this update's been going on for, like, 45 days. It's a huge update because of all of the AI content that is being just flooded, like, 100 of thousands of AI just regurgitated pages so people can try to rank for all these keywords. And Google has to do something. Otherwise, the Internet's literally their their processors and resources are gonna be filled trying to index all these pages. So it's been a very you have to stay on top of the stuff.
Josh Crouch00:19:52 - 00:20:15
So it's literally reading newsletters, watching videos, and then, of course, we do have our team members. If there's a test that I think is viable for us, I will assign, hey. Let's go test this. And this one looks like it has some ability for us maybe to add something to our clients, to the work we do that and some work, some don't. But we do try to pick that because we don't have quite the resources that some people do.
Wayne Herring00:20:15 - 00:20:23
That's good. You're in a business where there is r and d going on by other people that you're able to attach yourself through.
Josh Crouch00:20:24 - 00:20:32
So The digital marketing community, we're all on the same boat. We're all trying to fight Google. Like, it's a great group of people that try to help each other.
Wayne Herring00:20:32 - 00:21:01
Fight and work with them at the same time. Sure. Mhmm. So so you did, see this post that I mentioned. Hey. It's been 4 years, and I never had an idea that I was gonna have this many clients, this many team members. And you was really good of you, I think, to sit down, like, very, again, very giving and helpful to other people, certainly, helpful to our business builder community to go through and say, these are 12 things that you came up with. And so I'll have the post.
Wayne Herring00:21:01 - 00:21:19
I just I pulled it up on the screen for anybody who would be watching the video, but I will link it in our our show notes. And so there's 12 things there. Could you pick which of these let's pick 1 or 2 of these and pull on it a little bit, tease out some more detail about why and how this works for you.
Josh Crouch00:21:20 - 00:21:48
Yeah. I mean, some of these are related. You know, delegation and hiring a a VAEA, which is number 1 or 2. And a v virtual assistant or executive assistant, they're a little different in their skill sets. But for me, one of the first so I was about 2 months after leaving the HVAC side, trying to figure out, you know, the next steps and stuff. And I I did hire a VA. It was through a third party service. He ended up I I liked having him so much, and he was doing such a good job.
Josh Crouch00:21:48 - 00:22:12
I figured out a way to hire him and just be exclusively our contractor. He's over in the Philippines. He's actually paid well enough to leave the country, a third world country, and move to Australia this week. So he's known this for 3 years. Really cool story. He he's bought his mom a house. Like, he's done some really cool things because we've taken care of him, and he's just been such a great asset to us. But that was one of the first things I did because
Wayne Herring00:22:12 - 00:22:13
Love that.
Josh Crouch00:22:13 - 00:22:48
Study. Setting up things like a project management tool like ClickUp. We use ClickUp. There's other ones like Monday Asana. It's all the kind of the same thing. But having someone that wasn't me to set those things up that are very, very, very time consuming freed me up immediately to focus on sales and marketing and social media content and creating videos and doing those sorts of things, the the grow the business type of stuff when it's literally it was 2 people. You know, somebody has to handle that other stuff. And if that stuff doesn't get done, you don't have SOPs.
Josh Crouch00:22:48 - 00:22:51
You don't have repeatable, scalable processes.
Wayne Herring00:22:52 - 00:23:28
So that's pretty inspiring. I would just wanna, like, stop I mean, first of all, it's inspiring. It's great that he was able to be very proactive in his life with the house for his mom and move because he wanted to. That part is really cool when we have somebody who's providing all kinds of value for the business, and then in turn, they're compensated well. They do those things. I I love that you love that. Also, though, when I hear you say that he went and innovated with ClickUp and helped create the system, I don't think a lot of people would they think of delegation or they think of hiring an EAVA. They wouldn't necessarily think of giving somebody a shot in that way to say, hey.
Wayne Herring00:23:28 - 00:23:39
Could you develop this kind of critical system for managing our business? So how did that happen? How did that come out that you're like, I think you could do this, or was he proactive? How did that happen?
Josh Crouch00:23:40 - 00:24:17
So when you hire offshore talent, I'll use the Philippines as an example because that's where our offshore talent is. They have a very obedient culture. It's just how they raise their very tight knit family. I liken them almost to, like like, the 19 fifties, 19 sixties in the US where everything was very family oriented. We stayed together. Know, you you didn't move across. You do all these different things. Very obedient where and some of it, I think, the way US companies and thing and I'm I'm talking big companies, treat people overseas as not very good.
Josh Crouch00:24:18 - 00:24:56
They don't let them have an opinion. They don't let them have a voice. But the thing is that they're way smarter and way better trained and educated than we give them credit for. And, honestly, a lot of the skills that they get trained on are the stuff that CEOs and people with big visions and stuff like that are not good at. They're great at spreadsheets. Like, now we have a a team that I hand them something. They literally are excited to build these dashboards and these systems and these they love it. And so for me, letting go of that stuff, it is hard at first because you kinda you do wanna check and make sure that they're doing what they're supposed to be doing.
Josh Crouch00:24:56 - 00:25:12
But looking back, like, we would have never gotten to where we are without putting trust and faith in someone to to do those things and to let them use their brain. Don't do that. Because as soon as you start standing over their shoulder
Wayne Herring00:25:12 - 00:25:13
Sure.
Josh Crouch00:25:13 - 00:25:16
I'm using that as a metaphor. It's, like, 15 hour time. It's no difference.
Wayne Herring00:25:16 - 00:25:18
Like, I can't look over their shoulder. Right.
Josh Crouch00:25:19 - 00:25:36
They they'll start second guessing themselves. They won't try new ideas. They won't bring up new suggestions. And some of that, we still have to coax it out of the team in the Philippines. Like, it's okay. I want you to tell me what you think. You're not less than us. We're equals.
Josh Crouch00:25:36 - 00:26:01
We're and that's been huge. So they bring ideas now pretty regularly, and they know that it's okay to speak up and ask for things and stuff like that, which for them is different. So it's Mhmm. Like retraining their brain, but it's been great. So some people that have trouble hiring people offshore, they struggle with it, but for us, it's been we love it. Like, we absolutely love our team over there.
Wayne Herring00:26:01 - 00:26:11
There's something about you and how you approach it that makes that different. And when you say we, is that I don't wanna assume. When you say we love them.
Josh Crouch00:26:11 - 00:26:47
Our leadership team, my wife and I, I don't see pretty much anyone in the US, and I think it's how we include them on the success of the business, the failure, the everything. They're they're not just in their corner taking care of their 1 or 2 things. Like, we include them. We do have all hands meetings once a month where we update everybody in the company, including our contractors that are overseas, because they've been a part of it. And we celebrate their wins in a Slack channel. Like, obviously, there's certain laws. We have to keep certain things, contractor versus employee, but we can still celebrate them. Nothing's stopping us from celebrating them and and making them a part of the family.
Wayne Herring00:26:48 - 00:27:25
Nice. So all that about your business is great. I I wanna dive a little bit into, like, the kind of the the rest of of life and and how you integrate your business and your life. And and and the specific thing that's it's on my mind, I've just I've been reading a bit of Cal Newport. Cal was the author of deep work, digital minimalism. It's a sort of book called slow productivity, which is about sustainability. He works a lot on getting thinking time to create within your business. And so the thought I have in my mind is something I've been working on is we're in this busy world.
Wayne Herring00:27:25 - 00:27:48
As you said, it's not like it was years ago. You moved in this neighborhood. You don't necessarily know your neighbors. People are on Facebook. You know so many people on Facebook, and and you're relentless digital. What kind of digital boundaries do you have, or how do you handle e email crowding into personal time? What does life look like and and having boundaries around that?
Josh Crouch00:27:48 - 00:28:26
That's a great question because that is probably always a constant battle. I anyone that says they've got, like, this amazing system. I mean, we all bend the rules for certain things. It depends on what comes through. But we actually had someone on our podcast almost 2 years ago, company called InboxDone. And they are an outsourced company for your inbox, and they'll do other VA tasks and stuff for you. So you get assigned 2 VAs, to manage your inbox, and they train you you essentially just keep training them on what you wanna see with this or what you wanna do with this email or this type of email. And eventually, they just keep handling it, and they kind of give you an update on important things.
Josh Crouch00:28:26 - 00:29:13
Now in the inbox is an extremely difficult area for us to completely hand off. Like Fair. It is tough here because Mhmm. I I have 3 screens in front of me, and my inbox is always open on this screen over here. Yeah. But in starting to delegate that and trains and taking the time to train someone, I do rely on it last. And if I know if I'm getting into that zone where I'm just, like, constantly in my email, I will literally close the tab, especially when I know I need to focus on stuff or I need to get through my to do list that I write out because it it's a time suck. And you can't focus on the business when you're constantly just worried about client said this or a vendor said this or whatever's oh oh, email's in.
Josh Crouch00:29:13 - 00:29:48
You know, especially if you get the notification. Oh, gotta look at my email. I mean, there's times I'll literally take my phone and I'll put it 1 on silent and 2 in another room. Especially if I need a chart, I'm just gonna go put it in another room, and it's amazing when I do that. I don't do it often enough, but when I do it, it's crazy how focused we can be. When it's not vibrating, it's not dinging, making whatever noise it makes, it's insane what you can get done. Like, I have made posts about this as well. I honestly prefer working on, like, a Saturday or Sunday for, like, 3 or 4 hours because my team's off.
Josh Crouch00:29:48 - 00:29:59
Clients don't really message us. There's not a whole lot going. Something social media is usually pretty quiet. There's just not a lot going on. People are out doing whatever the I get so much done in a 3 or 4 hour workday
Wayne Herring00:29:59 - 00:29:59
Right.
Josh Crouch00:29:59 - 00:30:27
Because I have no distractions. Mhmm. During the week I I mean, right now, I'm sitting. I'm looking at 25 Slack messages that I have to look at and review. So Yeah. It like, during the week, it's very hard to get that focus time. So finding whatever your circadian rhythm is, whether it's early in the morning, you get that quiet time, midday, night, weekend Yeah. Find the time that is quiet and use that as your focus time, whatever that looks like.
Josh Crouch00:30:27 - 00:30:29
Everyone's is different.
Wayne Herring00:30:30 - 00:31:17
So in that book, slow productivity that I mentioned, he has 3 major principles that he digs into. The first one is do less, like, have less missions. It doesn't necessarily mean, like, work less or, like, you're gonna be lazy sitting around on an, you know, a couch or something, eating grapes or whatever. But it means have less things that you're really concerned about, which partially that's you'd delegate, so then you have less things that you're concerned about. The third thing in the list is obsess over quality. And then the second thing is exactly what you just said about rhythm. And he and he's saying work in accordance with more natural rhythms. So working 3 3 or 4 hours in a on a weekend because you get less distractions, that would be an example of that working in accordance with natural rhythms.
Wayne Herring00:31:17 - 00:31:30
And then perhaps it doesn't have to be this way, but perhaps during the week when other people are working, sometimes entrepreneurs, we can sneak out of the office and go do something that's more, personal. Right?
Josh Crouch00:31:31 - 00:31:50
Yeah. And that like I said, it's different for everybody. So what I found, and we'll probably get into this next, but, one, I really wanted to about you know, every year, my wife and I would always we'd start back at the gym. This is the year, and we'd 3 or 4 weeks, we'd go pretty well. And then it would start people out.
Wayne Herring00:31:50 - 00:31:52
Resolution kind of thing. Yeah.
Josh Crouch00:31:52 - 00:32:33
Some Some of that time, we were in Wisconsin, and then January February are just not ideal times to do anything because that's the last thing you wanna do when it's loud. But so January of 2023, we made that commitment. This year was different. We we hired a trainer, and we committed to setting up recurring scheduled appointments with our trainer 3 days a week, every single week, and we blocked it off in our calendar. We do not there's unless there's a health emergency or, you know, something like that, we we can't we don't move it. So it's Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and that's that's been big. So, typically, we start working at, like, 6:30 in the morning. We get up early.
Josh Crouch00:32:33 - 00:32:50
We work that way. Work for a little bit, and then we take a break. And that break is our our gym time. It allows us to refresh ourselves. We're not working 10, 12 hours straight on all this stuff. Come back. We eat our breakfast, and then it's okay. Now it's work time again for the next couple hours.
Josh Crouch00:32:50 - 00:33:08
And personally, for me, by, like, 2 in the afternoon, I'm ready to take a break. If we're honest with ourselves, you start feeling these things at certain times. You can't focus. And as soon as that happens, you need to take a break. Go take a walk. That's another thing that my wife and I have implemented. We take walks. Now I am lucky.
Josh Crouch00:33:09 - 00:33:27
I'm very lucky and blessed and fortunate enough to work with my wife who we get along very well. So for us, taking a walk is a great break. It's great for our relationship. It's great for the business. It's great for our own personal mental health. But taking those breaks when don't just don't grind through it. Like
Wayne Herring00:33:28 - 00:33:29
Yeah. Good tip.
Josh Crouch00:33:29 - 00:33:47
Take take a break. The work is still gonna be there. Come back when you're refreshed or it's quiet and you can focus, and I promise you the work the quality of the work you get done will be so much better. And that's those just those couple things have really helped us tremendously over the last 16 months. So
Wayne Herring00:33:48 - 00:34:13
That's good. I was with a guy this morning that owns a roofing company. We were talking about kind of his ideal day, and he's done really good up until about 10 AM. So he's been working on his ideal day. And up until 10 AM, he's been really good at establishing rituals. From 10 AM on, he said, I don't know, like, a 2 out of 10. However, if if you get to the point where you're doing that up until 10 AM, that's progress. Right? Like so then it's a matter of let's
Josh Crouch00:34:14 - 00:34:50
Well, you put your most important work Yeah. At that point in time. If you understand yourself and how you operate, you can change anything. I mean, one thing that I've done And it it isn't because of business or anything like that. Just as of getting getting older, sleeping through the night has just been like, you get up to use the restroom once more often than you used to when you were younger. And then once once that happens, you're out of that deep sleep, and it's usually, like, 1 o'clock, 1:30 for me. And then I'm out of this deep sleep, and I can't toss it and turn and toss it and turn. And so I'm just constantly looking for answers on how to be better.
Josh Crouch00:34:50 - 00:35:13
So I I reached out to someone for, like, a a natural solution and found some CBD gummies, and they work fabulous. Like, I sleep so much better, so much deeper. And that's probably the whole Yeah. Mantra behind the relentless name. Like, just because something didn't work doesn't mean we're gonna stop. We're just gonna we're gonna keep finding the solution. We're gonna find the next thing. And if that doesn't work, we're gonna find something else.
Josh Crouch00:35:13 - 00:35:19
If that doesn't work, we're gonna find something else. And we're just gonna go until we get the answer to whatever the the issue is.
Wayne Herring00:35:20 - 00:35:36
I'm gonna work to kinda lay on the plane and wrap us up here, but the I I wanna just finish and go back. 2 o'clock, you often go for a walk because you're like, okay. That's enough. When when roughly is the end of your workday? What does that look like to finish it up?
Josh Crouch00:35:36 - 00:36:10
It's different. I mean, because we used to have both kids play club sports and stuff. Our 16 year old doesn't do that as much. Well, he doesn't play any sports anymore, but now he's driving, and we've had to take him to jobs and stuff like that as he started working. Our 13 year old plays soccer, like, almost every day of the week on a club team and a school team. So that break comes. And sometimes if Britney's driving, when it's she's gone, Addie's gone, Caden's gone, and it's quiet, I'll get back to work. Other times, it's just we're going to soccer, and it's a nice break.
Josh Crouch00:36:10 - 00:36:25
And then, honestly, that work will wait until the morning. I used to always be the one that like, I gotta get back to the the sickness in a way. I I'm positive that people listening to this or yeah. I know exactly what that feels like. It's all like, you just gotta get to the next thing. You always gotta get to the next thing, and you're never satisfied.
Wayne Herring00:36:25 - 00:36:27
Absolutely. Yep.
Josh Crouch00:36:27 - 00:37:19
But that work is it unless it's, you know, someone's you know, something in your business is on fire, it can wait. It it's not going to end your business. You're still gonna have a paycheck, hopefully. But, you know, the these things aren't gonna it's never as bad as we think it's going to be, But taking that mental break, whatever that looks like for you is probably one of the absolute biggest things you can do for yourself. Because, like, we take these walks, and I'll be mad about something or whatever our clients have said about some. So I'm just I got this energy inside of me, and and it worked that whatever it does with the chemicals in the brain when you get out in outside in nature and you walk and you just do something physical, it just, like, changes your perception. It it calms you down, and then you're ready to get to work on the problem versus all the emotion that's pent up inside of you.
Wayne Herring00:37:19 - 00:37:33
Yeah. Without a doubt. Yeah. I I've decided that I don't wanna look at email after 6 o'clock at night after many years of often having intervals of getting my phone out or even the laptop. You know?
Josh Crouch00:37:33 - 00:37:37
Do you have something to turn off notifications at that time, or how do you manage?
Wayne Herring00:37:37 - 00:38:27
I I have pretty much all notifications turned off on my phone. But but, again, I don't deal with I'm not in Slack. I don't have a team in the Philippines that has different work hours for me that were maybe our fringes of work time overlap. Being a being a coach, I think, makes it a little bit easier that my best work is when I'm in conversation with people. I my best work is either conversations and creating space for business owners or the time I spend thinking about them and processing through notes and then constructing well thought out emails to them that help them move forward. So it's that deeper work that is the more valuable work that I do, not the, like, you know, emails. As you said, those those things, what I've realized is they'll just always wait. They they will always wait.
Wayne Herring00:38:27 - 00:39:01
A a Voxer message from a client, they know, like, I I'm gonna take some time to get back to him. Those will wait till the following day. But as soon as I pay attention to one of them, like, it's off to the races. Next thing, my brain is now spinning that way instead of going for a walk with my daughter last night around the perimeter of the farm here. So, yeah, I think it's something we all have to pay attention to, and it's good for us to actually talk about this, for business owners to talk about this openly. Because as you said, we would like to act like, oh, we're good at that or whatever, but, no, it takes work.
Josh Crouch00:39:02 - 00:39:43
It it takes consistent work. And one of the best things I've ever done is put put stuff on my calendar. And, like, even on Sunday and to to your point, could you you mentioned, something about all the different missions. And Right. With I feel where I'm at in this business, there's a lot of partnership opportunities and just different things. Sure. But when I know either the team is at capacity or there's just issues that need to be resolved like, on Sunday, I have a I think it's, like, 7 PM when we're I know we're just gonna be kinda relaxing is to look at my calendar for the week. And then based on what I know, I am not hesitant to cancel meetings, move and I'd reach out to the VIP like, hey.
Josh Crouch00:39:43 - 00:40:02
Please move this on. Please cancel this. We're not ready for this. Because there's times when there's, like, the CEO vision. You're like, go after the new idea. Go find the new service, the new offering. There's other times you get you really gotta be honest with yourself. If you continue going down that path when you have other problems, like big problems, operational problems, that is not the time to do it.
Josh Crouch00:40:02 - 00:40:13
You gotta focus on what's important and constantly be reevaluating your calendar. Don't just be don't feel like you have to be nice. And just because you made a meeting, keep it. Because
Wayne Herring00:40:14 - 00:40:15
I'm so glad you're here today.
Josh Crouch00:40:16 - 00:40:21
Yeah. I I do it a lot, and, I mean, I don't try to do it. I I mean, there's meetings I wanna keep.
Wayne Herring00:40:21 - 00:40:21
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Josh Crouch00:40:21 - 00:40:30
Sometimes it's just the timing just it's like, I set this meeting 2 weeks ago, and by the time I get to my it's not as important as what's in front of me, and that can wait.
Wayne Herring00:40:30 - 00:40:43
Yeah. And that's a whole another so and sometimes I get, like, nice guy nice guy and wanna, like, be helpful, and there's good about that too. Like, most things, there's a light side of that and the dark side of that. But, yeah, that this will be, like, really
Josh Crouch00:40:43 - 00:40:58
enjoy it. Like, I enjoy helping people tie other digital marketing companies' contract. I'll jump on calls or, you know, go back and forth on Voxer or whatever. But doing some of that stuff does help help actually help you remember your why, remember Yeah. The enjoyment.
Wayne Herring00:40:58 - 00:41:02
Or maybe you innovate while you're talking to other people and while you're helping. That's Well,
Josh Crouch00:41:02 - 00:41:42
one thing I was gonna mention because I know you've been taking notes is this has been actually a more recent change for me. I've I've struggled with the digital side of, like, where to keep notes. I've tried notepad on the computer. I've tried like, there's ClickUp notes. There's sending myself emails, which all, of course, just clogs everything up. Literally, it's like this most simple basic tip. As soon as I get an idea, a thought, a content idea, of idea for a future service or something I wanna train the team on, I write it down on a piece of legal pad paper and then regularly review the pad. Because, like, literally this week, I haven't been able to get to my to dos and everything else.
Josh Crouch00:41:42 - 00:41:59
So this morning, knowing that I haven't done that in a couple days, I went back through with a different color pen. And as soon as I did it, crossed it off. Did it, crossed it off. Or I I moved it to the next step, whatever the next step was. Right. Pen and paper, I swear, it's something very soothing about like, you just don't forget anything.
Wayne Herring00:41:59 - 00:42:01
Totally. It still works. I don't I
Josh Crouch00:42:01 - 00:42:02
think it will always work.
Wayne Herring00:42:02 - 00:42:06
So Yeah. So what I have gone to I have a remarkable,
Josh Crouch00:42:06 - 00:42:08
Oh, you got one of them fancy tablets?
Wayne Herring00:42:09 - 00:42:11
Yes. And
Josh Crouch00:42:11 - 00:42:15
But that that, like, syncs are driving, and it does a whole bunch of other stuff.
Wayne Herring00:42:15 - 00:42:58
Well, it it does a lot less than, like, an iPad, though. You know, there's a lot less distraction. But the thing is I was I was with this guy this morning, and we were talking about best practices for using this and really the what you just described about an old school tablet. Cause my kids don't, if I say tablet, they think something different than what you just talked about. Not yellow legal pad, But with this remarkable or with your legal pad, I think what's important is our process of how we go back and review and then purge. So with this particular thing, what I do is I take all my notes in one particular folder for so I'll have a note for you right now. Yeah. I've I've written a bunch of things down as you pointed out.
Wayne Herring00:42:58 - 00:43:36
It's just yeah. It's how I do things. And but I also have in that same notebook the things I did with Charlie this morning, and I will then go back, schedule time to read this thing, and I I pull things out and refile it. And it's that mental going back through it again. Because as a coach, one of the important tools that still works for me is, like, head and heart. I always say it's my brain and my, you know, emotions, spirituality, but I have to go back and, like, reprocess through it. I can't just write it down on this thing or nothing nothing good happens with it. So I like what you're, yeah, what you're doing with the little yellow tab.
Josh Crouch00:43:36 - 00:44:07
It helps you know, we talk about creating we I don't think we did, but one of the we talked about the creating content and how that's helped from the HVAC side to actually starting my business and now continuing on with this. I think it, it was Alex Hermozzi or something. It was something about how he literally always has something with him that he puts stuff. Like, he'll he'll think of a content idea that's like, boom. It's a brilliant idea, but we all do this. Right. It's a brilliant idea that we don't do anything with. And guess what? When when like, man, what was that thing? Like, what Sure.
Josh Crouch00:44:07 - 00:44:27
What was the thing that I was trying to remember? And we just can't get back to it. But Right. Putting it down somewhere. And for me, it's Yeah. This pad and paper thing is it's only been, like, probably about 6 weeks I've been back to this because I'm like, I just it's not working digitally. I can't the digital Mhmm. I don't have it remarkable. That probably could work.
Josh Crouch00:44:27 - 00:44:50
But writing it down, crossing it off has been awesome. I literally will carry this from my desk. And if I go if before bed, if I wanna sit down and think through it, I'll literally carry it around with me throughout the house with Mhmm. A red pen and a red black pen. So black is the idea is red's just like we're back in grade school. Just nope. Cross it off. It's done.
Josh Crouch00:44:50 - 00:44:54
And it's been really great for me. It's been very helpful in keeping organized.
Wayne Herring00:44:54 - 00:45:13
Well, that's a great tip too. Last question. This thing about you're not a pharmacist, you're not a doctor, but the CBD gummy thing, it's interesting. We we're on our business builder hog hunt back in February, and I was surprised because the guys in the group are pretty cons in that group were, like, pretty conservative traditional fellows. And everybody had
Wayne Herring00:45:13 - 00:45:16
some sort of, like, CBD or
Wayne Herring00:45:17 - 00:45:26
maybe even mushrooms or some something kind of story. Right? So it's of interest. The gummy thing, is that before you go to bed or if you when you wake up at 1 or 2 in the morning?
Josh Crouch00:45:26 - 00:45:42
Before before I go to bed. Gotcha. Honestly, it was a recommendation. I used to work with someone at professional services who she's on my bookkeeper now because she's just great. I kinda actually pushed her to be like, you're great at this. You really should do this. The market really needs remote virtual bookkeepers. And she used to grow hemp.
Josh Crouch00:45:42 - 00:45:44
So she knew, like, the production
Wayne Herring00:45:44 - 00:45:45
Right.
Josh Crouch00:45:45 - 00:45:59
Which ones have good ingredients, which ones are, like, yeah. Maybe stay away from that one. So she gave me a recommendation for that, which has been, like, literally, like, one out of 1. She knew how hit it out of the park because it's been great since I got it. So there's
Wayne Herring00:45:59 - 00:46:31
Sleeping yeah. Sleeping for entrepreneurs can be a challenge. Like you said, midlife, we wake up without a doubt in the middle of the night, and then your brain starts going and quieting it can be a challenge. So that's a good tip. Josh, it's been really great to, hear more of your story, and I wanna make sure people can find you. I know it's not that hard in today's world, Josh Crouch, but you also have you have the podcast that you do with Terrence Blissett Service Business Mastery Podcast. So everybody should check that out. But how else should people, get in touch with you or find the things that you're posting and creating?
Josh Crouch00:46:32 - 00:47:01
Yeah. I mean, I think the easiest place and most of the stuff I take I I usually post first in Facebook on my personal wall, and then I'll take it. And I'll use some AI to rewrite it for a LinkedIn post or whatever just so I don't have to rewrite the whole thing. But that's probably the best place and where the most interaction happens. But LinkedIn is definitely probably second most as far as an engagement and stuff, which I know is a great platform to really go through, like, professional ideas and stuff like that. Those are probably the 2 best ways to get in touch.
Wayne Herring00:47:01 - 00:47:05
That's great. Well, Josh, thanks again for showing up for the Business Builder way. We appreciate you.
Josh Crouch00:47:06 - 00:47:07
Yeah. Thanks, Wayne. Appreciate it.

00:00 Josh Krausch founded Relentless Digital to serve contractors in residential market, offering online visibility and customer communication.

04:33 Business background in martial arts, life shift.

08:36 Posted helpful content led to unexpected business.

11:04 Emphasizing importance of knowing enough for decision-making.

14:36 Specialized in HVAC advertising, tested and effective.

18:19 Navigating marketing space, testing to stay innovative.

22:52 Inspiring story of proactive innovation and success.

24:18 They're smarter and have valuable skills.

28:26 Struggling to delegate inbox, must prioritize focus.

30:30 Book advocates productivity through less missions and quality.

34:14 Understanding self, change, and seeking improvement.

36:27 Take a mental break to manage stress.

42:15 Compared to iPad, less distraction; notes process.

42:58 Reprocessing thoughts, emotions, and actions for productivity.

46:32 Use Facebook for personal, LinkedIn for professional.

1. How has the use of virtual assistants impacted Josh Crouch's business and personal life? What are the benefits and challenges of managing a team that includes an offshore workforce?

2. In what ways has Josh Crouch leveraged digital marketing strategies to grow his business, Relentless Digital? How does his approach cater to the HVAC and plumbing sectors?

3. What are the key productivity tips shared by Josh Crouch and Wayne Herring in this episode? How can entrepreneurs implement these strategies into their own work routines?

4. What insights does Josh Crouch provide regarding staying updated and adaptive in the digital marketing landscape? How important is it for businesses to evolve alongside algorithm changes and updates from major platforms like Google?

5. How does the conversation about notes and organization tools shed light on the different preferences and approaches entrepreneurs have when it comes to staying organized and managing ideas?

6. What can entrepreneurs learn from the discussion surrounding mental breaks, physical activity, and the impact of family dynamics on work-life balance?

7. How does the episode emphasize the significance of managing digital boundaries and handling emails? What tools and strategies are recommended for maintaining a healthy work-life balance in a digital environment?

8. In what ways is trust and ethics highlighted in the conversation, particularly in business partnerships and referrals? How does this tie into maintaining a positive reputation and fostering strong connections within the digital marketing community?

9. What role does relentless pursuit play in Josh Crouch’s journey, from initially helping others replicate his results to establishing and evolving Relentless Digital?

10. How does the episode emphasize the value of deeper work and making honest evaluations in time management and work commitments? How can entrepreneurs navigate the balance between depth and breadth in their work approaches?