Jed Richard
Jed Richard, on the job site
THE CHALLENGE
Jed Richard means business. In 2014, he started a general contracting company in his basement, and now—just eight short years later—Richard Group is on its way to topping $60MM in revenue in 2022.
But financial success was not enough—Jed had to figure out how to ditch start-up life’s 90-hour workweek and start living his best life outside of work.
“Before finding The Lion’s Pride, my biggest failure was how much of my personal life I was sacrificing in order to achieve professional success,” Jed said in a recent interview with Bill. “When you're a new entrepreneur, you kind of forget everything else.”
Recognizing that he couldn’t continue at this pace, Jed started looking for a mentor. He saw Bill’s story on social media, and could immediately relate. He scheduled a 20-minute Zoom call with Bill, and two weeks later was on a plane out to the ranch.
THE JOURNEY TO tHE 0.01%
According to Jed Richard
COMFORT ZONES ARE OVERRATED
I knew I was ready to push myself professionally. I just didn’t realize it would start by focusing on my personal life.
A little background: Construction is a driven, practical, get-to-the-grit workhorse industry. It’s filled with people who just want to get the building up at all costs. Right off the bat, The Lions Pride changed my mindset and way of thinking to go behind the building and think of all the pieces and the people that make it happen—and how to bring out the best in them.
I found that happiness at work was tied to being around great teammates—and more than that, it meant extending that ripple beyond what we do at the office and on the job site. I wanted to build a business and a team where people could go home and have the financial, emotional, and physical bandwidth to care for their families. I wanted to enhance their lives. And that started by re-evaluating what I was doing for myself.
So instead of focusing on spreadsheets, I started focusing on friends, meaningful relationships, and the critical conversations that keep them healthy. There's so much pride in folks who are trying to create their own company—it’s easy to justify hiding a lot of the emotion and struggle that comes with it.
Having The Lions Pride made it easy to talk to other members about the pitfalls and stresses of business ownership—and then find ways to do something about it.
WHY THE SYSTEM WORKS
The One Page Business Plan (OPBP) has become the cornerstone of my business planning and growth strategy. It’s really kind of perfect—this one-page document distills about 15 modules of culture, brand, strategy, and structural goals.
I like this systematic approach because I knew that for Richard Group to grow as fast as I wanted to, I had to be ultra-organized—and I knew my leadership team had to be organized for their teams as well.
I found that the OPBP helped me not only break down my goals into smaller segments, but it also gave my team something to easily rally around. We've all had a lot of business-planning experience now. We've brought in leadership and even junior folks to say, ‘Okay, we got five different departments at the company, but what three departments are we going to focus on? And what are the three major wildly important initiatives? How are we going to succeed? And then what are the key performance areas or indicators for that?’ It’s exciting to see so many different people participating in our growth.
If all else fails, the OPBP is what grounds my company. It is what I go come to if I need to put things in perspective or realign my mindset or focus the team. I can look at the short- and long-term goals and know if I’m behind or ahead. There’s nothing more powerful than a plan.
CELEBRATE ALL OF YOUR WINS
Getting on the same page professionally with my team was a big first step, but getting on the same page personally was what really solidified our momentum.
It’s one thing to make a business plan, but people want to know how they play into it. They deserve to know what the company wants to look like in five or ten years. They want to engage with organizations that align with their goals at work and at home.
I took the One Page Personal Plan, and said, ‘Okay, how do I get this implemented into our company? How do we do it in an authentic way? How can we show everyone at Richard Group that we take their personal success and happiness seriously?’
We started by having heartfelt conversations about things no one ever takes time to talk about. Things like a 25-year plan, our core values, and what we want our company legacy to be. After asking the big questions, we celebrated the heck out of all of our wins and acknowledged how all of our people contributed to those successes.
Before The Lions Pride, I didn’t have a framework to engage our employees to their top performance, and now we do, and we see the benefit of that intentional culture every day. I think every business owner wants that—to be surrounded by people who are happy, excited, and firing off creative solutions to complex issues or fearlessly trying something new to get a better result. It’s not just about finding and hiring people who naturally have those qualities—it’s about creating a culture that easily brings that out, acknowledges, and celebrates it.
Jed, hard at work during a Tactical Advance at The Ranch.
WHY I JOINED THE COHORT
Richard Group was hovering around the $5MM mark, and I knew we were on the cusp of scaling to the next level. To do that successfully, I knew I needed to figure out how I could accelerate my learning while finding a bit more work-life balance. I had been stuck in that start-up mindset for so long, I was pouring everything into the business but wasn't giving my personal life the attention it deserved. I needed a mentor to help me determine the best path forward.
While searching for an executive coach, I happened upon Bill's story online and I automatically felt a connection to him as an entrepreneur. Bill had achieved the balance I was looking for WHILE killing it in business.
I got on a Zoom call with Bill. Twenty minutes and two weeks later, I flew out to his ranch to join a quarterly Tactical Advance.
Watch Jed Richard's full interview with Bill Watkins.
“When you optimize your life away from the office, you’ll fuel the fire for everything you do at work. ”
“Jed is a very generous teacher and an incredible learner and implementer. When he comes out here to our Tactical Advances or he joins our Tuesday cohort sessions—Jed is very free in teaching the tools that he’s mastered.
It’s easy to become a badass by osmosis when Jed’s around.”
