Hi there 👋🏼 I'm Price.

I’m building a roofing company from scratch in my mid-30s and documenting the whole process.

Watch me succeed or fail.

First off, sorry I missed last week. I got to go skiing in Canada (the "last hurrah" from Issue #6) and it was incredible to get in the mountains with some amazing conditions. That's my happy place, and my brain was fried so it was a needed refresh. But I'm back, and there's something I've been thinking about the last few weeks that I want to get into.

Today's not a build update, tool, or tactic. It's something that sits underneath all of that stuff. The more I think about it, it's kind of the backbone of how I'm going about building this business the way I am.

Not only that, but I think it's one of the most important skills anyone can have, in business…or honestly in life. If you really think about it, and I’m not going to go super deep here, but I think many of the world's largest problems come from a lack of….

Self-awareness.

I know, maybe not what you expected? It does kind of sound like what a life coach would say or what would be on a poster in a therapy center... But stay with me here because I genuinely think this is an underrated life skill that is so important in business, how we interact with people, problem solving, etc. And it’s what I’m leaning on for how I'm going about building my business, including administrative vs operations, automations and the AI stuff, how I structure my days, and all the rest.

I'm not that bright….lol. And I'm self-aware enough to admit that.

I should be clear… I'm not dumb. I can think through things and probably get deeper than most, if given enough time. But I'm not super quick, and I'm not witty. That's a skill I might be most envious of actually.

I'm the guy who comes up with the perfect comeback three hours later in the shower. I have an internal voice that won't shut up and I'm always running through scenarios of what I think will happen in a conversation or interaction in the future. In truth, I'm not the best at thinking on my feet…which is probably why I enjoy writing so much.

I'm not trying to be hard on myself. I actually think it's really healthy to understand yourself and how your brain works; to recognize your strengths and weaknesses, and act accordingly.

I also know that I have a high risk tolerance in every aspect of my life except for socially, where I tend to be quite conservative and care what others think about me. I like to think I have high emotional intelligence (but my wife can correct me on that one).

What I am good at is problem solving, linking and connecting ideas in creative ways, and spotting trends early. In the past I’ve had a tendency to see where things are headed before most people are paying attention. I could tell you lots of examples if I cared to.

But one example; when ChatGPT dropped a couple years ago, it seemed obvious to me that a lot of the marketing and agency work I was doing would get replaced. It took a few years, but with AI agents blowing up recently, it's now happening. Partly because of that, there's this whole resurgence in trades and home services, and people are starting to realize that skilled, physical work is one of the last things AI will touch.

This week there was a study published by @karpathy that ranked different careers being disrupted by AI:

So I picked a good niche! And although I tried to get going in the roofing industry back then…things happened differently than expected (and has taken longer than I thought it would). I'm glad though because the AI tools and automations are now at a point where I can build with them from day one instead of trying to bolt them onto an existing operation.

That's a huge edge in this space that most people aren't thinking about yet.

While we're being honest, I'm also pretty ADD (Technically ADHD now to be pc but I'm not hyperactive). Anyone who looks at my career path could probably diagnose that from across the room. Commercial RE, marketing, E-commerce, Amazon, Bitcoin mining, crypto/NFTs, agency work, solar, roofing. It's... a lot of pivots.

But…BUT….What I'm stoked about is that this business is actually perfect for how my brain works.

With this business I'm outside, I'm talking to people, and every project's a little different. Jobs start and finish in days, not months, which is great when you need variety and visible progress or you'll get bored. And then on the back end, I get to creatively problem-solve with AI automations and operations stuff. I can do a bunch of different things while still pointing at one goal.

See, one of my superpowers is that when I focus on something I can hyper-focus and deep dive for HOURS. My kryptonite is that if I get distracted, it's really tough for me to get back into that focus-mode or switch to something else. This is tough these days with 3 kids and mostly working from home.

But I’ve realized the trick isn't fixing the ADHD. That’s been an uphill battle for a while. Instead it's building a business that works with it. And with a few tweaks I made this week I think I've just cracked the code.

One thing I set up this week (with Claude's help), is a themed daily schedule. This is not a rigid hour-by-hour plan because I don't do well with that, but a framework where each day has a focus. For my business over the next month or two it looks like this:

Monday: Sales and systems

Tuesday: Marketing and digital

Wednesday: Follow up, relationships and vendors

Thursday: Content and newsletter

Friday: Keeping score — review, KPIs, planning, back office stuff

Saturday: Personal projects, housework, yard work

Sunday: Church & Family

Here's why this matters for me specifically. My typical day used to be me bouncing between fifteen different things with no rhyme or reason. And the thing that absolutely wrecks me is task switching. Once I'm locked into something I can go deep…. stupid deep. I spent days a few weeks ago, like full days locked into learning about and building my openclaw bot to do everything from analyze google keyword trends in roofing in my market, to scraping the emails/phone numbers for the top 50 RE brokers in my service area and then email them to connect on free roof inspections. I hit so many walls and got so frustrated but once I was locked in, I just wanted to keep going.

My problem is getting back into a focused state after distractions. If I'm deep into setting up a CRM template and then I have to pivot to answer an email about insurance, it takes me forever to get back to where I was. Themed days fix this because everything I'm doing on a given day is at least in the same mental neighborhood.

Couple things that made a huge difference this week:

Screen limits. I set 30-minute daily caps for social media on my phone (using Screen Limits and an app called ScreenZen) and I don't have access to anything but messages and emails before 10:30 AM. This was massive for me. I noticed that when I scroll first thing in the morning it basically torpedoes my whole day. I get sucked in, and before I know it my focus is shot before I've done a single productive thing. Not only was I losing time but my focus was spent for later on. On my computer there's a Chrome extension called StayFocusd that does the same thing. Both have been awesome after only a few days.

The biggest breakthrough this week: Cody and Todoist. This might be one of the best hacks I've ever implemented.

I connected my AI agent Cody (through OpenClaw) to Todoist and Google Calendar. Now instead of manually opening my calendar, typing stuff in, setting reminders, organizing tasks (which sounds simple but has always been just enough friction that I never keep up with it ), I just text (or tell) Cody.

That's it! I send something like: "Schedule a roof inspection tomorrow with Mark at 123 West Street at 1 PM, and remind me to send a proposal by end of the day."

Done. Calendar updated. To-do list updated. Reminder set.

There's an idea in Atomic Habits by James Clear — if you want to build a habit, make it easy. I've tried Todoist before. I've relentlessly tried to be good at using my calendar. The friction of inputting stuff always killed it after a week. Regardless, I open my calendar ten times a day but it's mostly empty. I never actually put anything in because adding events felt like a chore.

Now it's as easy as sending a text. I can dictate a grocery list, a reminder to call someone, a follow-up on a job. There's also an app called Wispr Flow that makes voice-to-text even smoother.

To top it off, Cody will check in with me throughout the day via text, asking me if I’m staying on course, and asking what I’ve gotten done. He’s an accountability partner!

I wouldn't really know but I imagine it's just like having an executive assistant, except it costs almost nothing, doesn't need sleep, and won't judge me for texting "remind me to take out the trash tomorrow" at 11 PM.

So here's where this all connects.

My (hopefully aware) self-awareness tells me my strengths: creative problem solving, trend spotting, people skills. It also told me my weaknesses: I'm not quick, I get distracted easily, and traditional organizational systems just don't stick for me, they never have.

So instead of forcing myself into someone else's framework, I'm building everything around how I actually operate. Themed days so I can stay in deep focus. AI handling the organizational friction I've always been bad at. A business that rewards variety and people skills and lets me automate the stuff I suck at.

Next is doing the same thing for optimizing and automating operations that are boring and tasks that I usually drop.

So, THAT'S the whole play. Know yourself, then build around it.

I think a lot of people (myself included), for years, try to fix their weaknesses instead of routing around them. But my ADHD isn't going away. As much as I would like it to, my mid IQ …again lol…isn't going to spike overnight. What I can do is put myself somewhere my strengths are the thing that matters, and everything else has a system or tool handling it.

License: Approved to take my exam! Still studying for the exam, waiting to schedule.

Pipeline: 3 jobs lined up for when I'm ready. Goal is to hit the ground running.

Website: Done. Putting finishing touches and will reveal next week.

Local newsletter: Also launched by next week (hopefully).

Don't try to fix how your brain works. Build systems that work with it. The best productivity setup isn't the most popular one — it's the one you'll actually use.

I'm going to reveal the website and also start documenting how Cody is evolving as I add more automations!

If you deal with ADHD, or even if you just struggle with task switching and staying organized, I'd love to hear what's working for you. Hit reply. I read everything.

Talk soon.

— Price

P.S. — New here? Issue #1 has the full backstory. Fair warning: crypto collapse, emergency C-section, lots of figuring out life.