Transcript:
0:08
everyone welcome to this very first very first time ever the simple growth
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business podcast I’m Dan Ralphs this is Aaron suttonfield and we’re kicking
off something that we have no idea if anyone
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is ever going to watch or pay attention to but we’re doing it anyway
because we
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care about a small business across the country especially service business
uh businesses across the country and we’re
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really curious about how we might be able to help them um so Aaron welcome
welcome to our very
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first inaugural edition of the simple growth business podcast we I don’t
even
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know if we’re 100 decided on the name that’s what we’re calling it right
now sounds great I’m excited
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so um I wanted just to introduce it this way so we
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um I don’t know how long ago it was Aaron you and I are sitting in a a
beach house in Wilmington North Carolina
1:01
and we were talking about our experience because you’ve been coaching small
business lawn care companies for a
1:08
long time because you’ve run and been very successful in the lawn care
space you have a small company in Charlotte
1:15
and and we were talking about like some of the clients that you bump into
that
1:21
are like these service based companies these lawn care companies are like a
three hundred thousand four hundred thousand five hundred thousand and
1:27
they’re just kind of a mess a little bit is that fair to say yeah yeah yeah
so we uh at simple growth
1:35
uh systems I was helping companies build out
1:40
um their rate Matrix and their services and helping them uh use a software
to to
1:47
manage your business better um and we kept seeing that that when we were
kind of done helping them with sort
1:53
of some basic functions or some processes that they they really wanted to
talk more about their businesses they
1:59
really were you know lost to entrepreneurs and we we talk a lot about
entrepreneurship being a lonely place
2:07
um because typically it’s just the owner or maybe there’s a partner but
they’re they’re kind of lonely
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um and I just could sense that as we were working with these companies they
they wanted more they wanted they wanted
2:21
just it is super lonely to be a business owner like you were doing you have
to tell the story you have to tell them
2:26
about the time when you you’re like maybe we shouldn’t say this public but
we don’t don’t you’re like I don’t even
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go to certain parties unless there’s another business owner there like I
need someone I need another business or else I can’t
2:38
have fun at a party because I don’t know how to talk to normal people right
I feel that way sometimes too I’m like
2:44
people are like so what do you do and I’m like well I’m a business coach
and I help companies and and they kind of
2:49
glaze over as if being an entrepreneur is the most boring confusing world
right it’s like we live
2:55
on another Prime almost I I know I know that I have to kind of watch myself
in Social settings to not get really
3:02
excited about business and talking about business um most most people that
are you know
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mid-level managers or managing a little division in a large corporation
I’ve got a great friend of mine
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um who is he runs a pretty nice little group at Wells Fargo in Charlotte
and he’s a CPA and he’s like man I wish I
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could get as excited about my spreadsheets as you do it and he’s someone
that for seriously 27 years he
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has one friend that has always been he just loves talking to me about my
business and he genuinely does is
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interested but they’re few and far between and I guess most people don’t
and so that’s what one of the reasons
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why we’re here we recognize that most people aren’t as nerdy about business
as
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we are like literally Aaron and I are sitting at a Charlotte Hornets game
and we just basically talk business during
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the entire game wasn’t a very good game but uh we were sitting there
talking like the entire game we had good seats
3:59
we were just sitting there chatting business because we’re nerds for
business like we absolutely love it it’s all we want to think about it’s
all we
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want to talk about so what better way to do that than starting a podcast
where we actually can give you some really sound business advice and so we
were sitting
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there in North Carolina we were at this beach house and we were asking
ourselves the question question what are the fundamental steps what are the
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fundamental like elements that if we were to meet any business owner and we
were to say how do we get that business
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owner from 300 000 more or less the reason 300 000 because that’s like
right when you’re something you’re not a real
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business before that but that’s like like when you’re finally got at your
first employee or two
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and you’re you’re finally starting to get your head out of being just a
solopreneur and you’re starting to
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really run a business somewhere around that 200 300 000 Mark where you’re
like
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yeah that’s okay that point when you’re like I can’t really take venmo
anymore I
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need you to like I need totally I need to take a credit card I I you know
cash
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is fine but you know like I need to start reporting more things I got to
pay payroll taxes I gotta you know I gotta
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do workers comp and all these things that that are real business things you
know I have to get like business
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insurance and it it becomes less of a side hustle and more of the hustle
right
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that’s from that’s the right where we get up like the transition from side
hustle to a main hustle is where we want
5:24
to talk to you and so if you’re that spot or anywhere beyond that probably
anything past 10 million we won’t have a
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lot of good wise things to say to you but anywhere between like all right
it’s finally become my main hustle maybe we
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should call this the main hustle podcast right where it’s like this is but
like when we finally got to our main hustle
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and now it’s like all right we’re gonna try to grow it and we ask ourselves
the question what are the fundamental steps of how to go from from barely
becoming
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our main Hustle to it being a million dollar company and that’s what the
primary that’s what
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we’re gonna be talking about throughout this podcast and it’s going to be
the major theme of all of the different things we talk about is how do we
make
6:05
the main our main Hustle how do we turn that into a million dollar company
or
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better and and we’ll we won’t talk too much about once we get to a million
plus we’re going to spend most of our time on
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a simple growth business podcast I don’t know Maine hustle podcast might be
better but we’re going to spend most of
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our time talking about that growth from point A to point B and and we
literally got together in a room and we asked
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ourselves the question if we were trying to outline it what the steps would
be and we came up with five fundamental
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steps five fundamental steps so I thought Aaron today on the podcast would
be cool
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if we just talked through those five fundamental steps so starting at step
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one so Aaron if you want to introduce step one of our five fundamental
steps again if you’re if you’re in that
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category where it’s like it’s my it’s my main hustle now but I do not know
how to
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grow this to a million like what what Where Do We Begin what’s step one yeah
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so step one is just finding four hours each week each week find four hours
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where you can you know separate yourself from your company from your you
know phone goes off you
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treat this like you are unavailable so detached from you know social media
phones uh from the company you need to
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have four hours dedicated to work on the business and I think it’s
important to kind of Define what is on the business
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mean I’ll tell you what on the business is not really quickly it’s not
selling something it’s not producing something
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and it’s not solving problems that come up from producing or selling so you
know
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there would be things like reconciling your books or you know I I’ve
coached a lot of companies on the very first
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couple of calls they’ll say I’m cash poor and I look and they have an
invoice for work right
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um and so accounts receivable invoicing um hiring what’s your strategy for
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hiring probably hiring is the number one thing we’ve heard about since 2019
2020
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um you know how are you going to what’s your process for that what’s the
strategy all of that that stuff right
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it’s all of the budgeting all of the stuff that isn’t selling and
fulfilling it’s all the stuff that isn’t selling
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and fulfilling and and the truth is we all have we all have four hours
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we every person in the history of the planet has four hours a week and I
like to say you know you have four hours a
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week because if your tire went flat you would fix it you have four hours
and so what what’s
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funny and I don’t know why this is Aaron maybe it’s like the question pops
the Mind why
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don’t we I think every business owner that I’ve ever talked to if I said
hey should you be spending at least four
8:54
hours a week working on your resume not in your business they would all say
yeah yeah I definitely should be and yet yeah
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for the most part if I ask how many actually are devoted committed
four-hour period it’s not as many as
9:08
like so why don’t we why don’t we yeah four hours a week because we’re very
9:15
much yeah we’re we’re we’re technicians like most of us got into this
because you know we like from a lawn care
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perspective right we’re talking mainly Lawn Care here now so you know I
probably started in this business either
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because in my case uh it became a summer job that became a career
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um out of necessity if you don’t uh do well in college you got to find
another Avenue so you know or maybe there was
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someone who really excelled at a lawn care company or a landscape company
and they became a leader in that company and
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they’re like you know what I can do this I can I can do this on my own and
so so we kind of get here in two different
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ways both of which require us to be really good in the field right we we
don’t
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start lawn care companies rarely without knowing something about the
technical side of lawn care right whether it’s how
10:08
to stripe a lawn really well or how to fertilize a lawn or how to landscape
or or they love plants yeah it stays your
10:15
side hustle if you never figure it out it never becomes your main hustle if
you can’t figure those things out yeah and
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so we we all are most comfortable in that and and and I can kind of tell the
10:27
the maturity of the lawn care business owner based on the things they talk
about most
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um nothing wrong with this but you know they tend to talk about what type
of mower are you purchasing or you know
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some of the you know less mature businesses what we’ll focus on man what
kind of blades are you running or or
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some of the things that are honestly in the scheme of things aren’t going
to scale your company I think you’re right
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I think because we because we start in the technical detail of the business
10:59
when it comes time for us to actually take our side hustle make it our main
hustle and then make our main hustle
11:05
like a legitimate business uh that’s a million dollar company like I think
sometimes we don’t even
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know what to spend our time on it’s like I don’t know how to do that and it
reminds me I don’t know I’m sharing the
11:19
story but it reminds me of a buddy of mine who is playing tennis with his
wife and his wife kind of like said oh you
11:26
know I don’t really like tennis and his response was do you know why you
don’t like tennis because you suck at it
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which which for the record is not the right thing to say to your wife when
she’s trying to we’re trying to
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introduce her to a new hobby but there’s sort of some truth to that right
like the reason we don’t want to spend the
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four hours the reason we don’t like discipline ourselves is to like get in
front of a computer screen and build
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systems or whatever that four hours might need us to do is because we suck
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at it like we just don’t know we’re just not very good at it do you think
that could be it right I mean I spend our
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time there and yeah I mean I remember the days when I was starting a
company and and I was making a little bit of
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money I didn’t know what a p l statement was I didn’t know what the balance
sheet was I mean I knew they were accounting
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things but I didn’t really know like when I was looking at it it was you
know like like a monkey doing a math problem
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like what what is this stuff and so I didn’t spend a lot of time looking at
it I certainly wasn’t concerned about
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balancing my books every month or you know uh those types of things I
didn’t know how to look at those things and
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project you know if my pricing was correct or not you know and so
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um you know hiring like you know I have a job here’s how much I pay you
want to
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come work for me you know like so those are all things and time that we
have to spend on those processes like a sales
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process um you know I wouldn’t even know where to start with that stuff so
again early days step one step one is for us to go
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we got four hours and I’m gonna I’m gonna sit down in front of a screen
even if I don’t know what to do even even if
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I’m not good at it even if I suck at it I’m gonna sit down for four hours
and I’m gonna start working on things to
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make my business better four hours a week and if and if if it’s like I
don’t know what to do Step One is
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figure out what to do all right if you like and we’ll talk about what the
other steps are and what you should be
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spending your time on but just the fact of the matter is we can’t like that
there are two core resources required
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for us to grow a business and the first one is time like one of the reasons
we stayed treading water and we stayed pretty much
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where we are is because we spend no time improving
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um and making our business better like we just don’t spend the time there
I’ll I’ll tell you something Dan that makes
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me think about this that I think is relevant here is um
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sometime maybe about 11 12 years ago um I was a huge Sports fanatic I mean I
13:58
I watch sports I’ve invested a ton of energy into that you had the Dream
Team
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be right behind you right yeah yeah I mean I I and I still love sports okay
but there was a point at which the the
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Carolina Panthers owner at the time was gonna basically give away the year
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because he was in charge of renegotiating the player’s cut of the of
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the revenue share and he knew that they were going to be in a position to
be a more favorable share for the owners and
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he basically gave away a season he didn’t sign any players he waited to
sign players till the next year and I
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remember thinking you know that’s pretty smart number one on his part but
as a fan if he doesn’t care about this year
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why do I need to watch this and it’s kind of done them it’s like by the way
I really don’t make any money my family
14:46
doesn’t become better because at the time I invest in sports you know if I
really invested this time of the things
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that were made me a better person or a better company or you know were
invested
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in something that would actually pay me back later like how much better
would my would my life be
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um and you know I think that we all invest our time in something we all have
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the same 24 hours a day and I think successful people um my son is a really
accomplished
15:15
guitar player he plays guitar three or four hours a day I mean they’re
really they’re literally I mean that may
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be on the on the low end um and he also just started teaching some younger
kids how to play guitar and
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he said they just don’t want to practice you know and and and you know so
we have to use our time wisely and business
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owners don’t have enough hours in the day I used to tell my wife she’s a
teacher and I’d say you know you might
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be able to accomplish some of the things that you’re supposed to at your
job today I have no chance of accomplishing most of what I need to in my
job today
15:47
and so I think successful business owners are very careful with their time
but they also prioritize their time
15:55
correctly yeah they work on the biggest things and good business owners
learn
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how to delegate the things that they can pay someone to do you know we used
to talk about I
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remember back in the day talking about you know work on thousand dollar an
hour ideas if you’re the owner and and
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delegate those 20 an hour yeah the ten dollar an hour nobody you can’t
delegate ten dollars an hour anymore yeah it used
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to be ten dollars an hour right so so step one step one is like go go cut
out
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four hours of your week and sit down and if you honestly don’t move on to
step two until you figure that out until you
16:31
figure out how to discipline yourself in that way um because the truth is
you’re never gonna make to be a million dollar
16:36
company if you haven’t disappointed if you haven’t learned to discipline
yourself in the area of time and it really is a requirement I I’ve seen it
16:43
done a bunch of times I remember one woman she said Hey listen I just I
just told my husband I’m out of commission
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from 6 p.m to 10 p.m on Wednesday nights I just do not have
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just don’t plan on me being around from 6 p.m we’re not saying four hours
17:00
at one time it could be one hour four days I recommend at least a two hour
17:06
break it up I recommend at least into our blood because it can be hard
right to get
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uh to do get a project significantly underway just like if you’re doing like
17:16
20-minute Sprints but but four hours that’s all we’re asking and it can’t
like I know another business owner who
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he literally would like send everyone home from his business uh on Friday
afternoons at 3 P.M he called early
17:30
release Fridays and that way he could finally be alone and work on stuff so
whatever it looks like for you it
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doesn’t need to be fancy special but we just need four hours so Step One is
the four hour rule you have to put in at
17:40
least four hours a week if you want to grow business that’s not fulfilling
or sales or the basic operations of your
17:46
business you need four hours a week step number two so once you have time
the first the next thing we’re going to
17:53
focus on is money so the next thing we’re going to focus on is money so
once you have some time to get your ducks in
18:00
order the first place we’re going to focus is on your money and that step
number two is we have to get our personal
18:06
and Business Financial house in order and it doesn’t mean our business and
18:12
personal house has to be a a nice house it just has to be an orderly one so
that
18:17
we can actually know what’s going on in our business because at the end of
the day our business our ability to build our business is really dependent
on cash
18:24
it’s the it’s the lifeblood of your business and so if we don’t have clean
arteries uh for us to pump our blood
18:31
around we’re going to have a business heart attack some people you know
have had business
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heart attacks where literally I was chatting with a guy the other day who
said I’m having a business he didn’t say
18:42
this but he was having a business heart attack why was he having business
heart attack because he owed 250 000 in taxes
18:49
that he and they were unpaid and the IRS was showing up uh you may have a
business heart attack didn’t you have
18:55
one the other day that was having a business heart attack because he uh
hadn’t paid his what was the story
19:01
well yeah I mean you know it’s just you know when we’re small or you know
we’re running a business we might have you
19:07
know we might put guys on a 1099 you know and at some point they become
employees and and uh so yeah we’re
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working through a situation where we we’ve got to figure out you know how
do we overcome a a situation we’re a pretty
19:20
large business running a lot of 1099 labor and the Department of Labor in
his
19:25
state is auditing his company and we call that a business heart attack right
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it’s like holy cow business emergency and uh you know they’ve they’ve done
an
19:37
awesome job with this business and and we’re hoping that this situation is
something they can work through we’ll see we’ll find out
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um but yeah you know understanding and having a good understanding uh of
your
19:50
of the finances of your business and of of you know just your break even
number like what is it you know Dan we were
19:56
talking at a conference in Wilmington uh site one invited us invited me to
speak there and and uh you know I show hands
20:04
who knows their Breakeven number I mean you know no one no one knows to
break even and they’ll say well we kind
20:10
of knew like what what it cost what our labor is per hour it’s like no no
like what does it cost your company per hour
20:18
um and and then you know it’s it’s pretty easy to figure that out um
doesn’t take long but then we got to
20:24
go to that other sheet that balance sheet we got to understand well how
much debt do you have yeah very few of the
20:31
companies we’re coaching are debt free um some have gone into some form of
debt so we need a ballot you know we need to
20:37
pull that number over um you know no one very very few that we
20:43
coach I shouldn’t say none but very few that we coach have a budget you
know what what are they what is their goal
20:49
for for this month in spending and and so at the beginning is just getting
all of those pieces in a row getting all
20:55
your ducks in a row financially now we could and we will spend a lot of
time talking about uh what the details of
21:03
your not a nice healthy profit loss look like what the details of a nice
healthy personal budget look like business
21:09
budget looks like how do we account for debt and all those things but if I
have my four hours and I’m I’m breaking away
21:16
on a Saturday afternoon and I’m just hiding up in a in a coffee shop
somewhere and I begin I begin by opening
21:23
up my my books and I make sure that we’re healthy and clean now sometimes
this means that we have some hard
21:30
decisions like right away we might start to discover things within our in
our family live or within our business life
21:36
that are hard because at the end of the day a small business can afford an
21:42
extravagant CEO they just can’t you can’t afford to be
21:47
an extravagant CEO at the level of a small business and if you’re living an
extravagant personal lifestyle
21:53
like you got to cut it because we we need that 300 you’re spending on your
jet skis a month we need that in your
22:00
marketing budget we need that 680 car payment you’re paying for that nice
22:06
truck we need 480 of that in your marketing budget we need so like
22:11
sometimes the reason our business is handcuffed is because our personal
finances aren’t in order and so at least
22:19
for a little while we have to like cinch up the belt personally and
professionally so that then we can go uh
22:26
you know spend extravagantly yeah what is it Dave Ramsey says like live
maybe like no one else so later you can
22:32
live like no one else or if you live like no one else today you’re probably
gonna live like no one else later
22:38
because you know if if you if you’re doing wrong things today you’re gonna
have pain later if you do right things
22:44
today you’re not you’re gonna avoid the pain so yeah you’re gonna you’re
gonna have pain or sacrifice at some point
22:52
um and I think you know we we talk about you know the personal finance I
think it’s important to talk about this for a
22:58
second you know a lot of times I’ll I’ll coach someone and I’ll say you know
23:03
um they want to make a big change or they make a pretty aggressive change
in their business and it a lot of times that means reducing revenue for a
period
23:10
of time to build revenue somewhere else right like we we we learn it we’ll
talk
23:15
about a little bit more of this in step three but I think the reason it’s
important to understand personally where
23:21
you stand is you know are you the breadwinner of this family are you the
23:26
person who needs who makes the majority of the money for this family off of
your business well then if you’re going to
23:32
make a big change in that we’ve got to be careful we’ve got to make that
slowly we’ve gotta you know it’s almost like a
23:39
business break even and then there’s a personal break even it’s like hey
what is our personal break even number
23:44
meaning how much money does my family need to pay all the bills and live
and eat and survive and and once I figure out that kind of
23:51
personal break even then I I know what my business I know the flexibility I
have now to build my business up or down
23:58
or remove that division add this product take on this debt but until we know
24:04
those numbers that like little personal break even number we don’t know how
to kind of move forward
24:09
yeah we don’t know how to coach you and then you know I’ve had clients who
say you know my wife makes three times what
24:15
I do and you know I’m thinking well why are you working you know no but uh
you
24:20
know she makes three times what I do so I can rip this Band-Aid really
quickly and we can transition really quickly to
24:28
this other you know model that we want to run which we know has the ability
to scale faster scale better you know have
24:34
a lot of advantages there the other thing I’ll tell you too is like you
know I’m 27 years in business and and I own
24:42
and operate a lawn fertilization Company in Charlotte North Carolina but I
haven’t always owned and operated
24:47
a lawn fertilization company for the first 15 years of my company’s
existence we we were kind of that we were a mess
24:54
you know we we did everything in the industry wait wait wait don’t scan now
three yet don’t skip to step three yeah I’m not I’m not I’m not but but the
25:02
reason I know how why I would sacrifice so much more than I did to
transition to
25:10
a healthy scalable business because I’m kind of living the scalable
business life now and I know what that looks like
25:16
and so I I would have been even more aggressive
25:21
um and so the cool thing is we’re going to give you the steps and
strategies to really that are tried and true right
25:26
these are things that a lot of our coaches are either doing or have done
25:32
um and and so knowing what we know I would have been I would have
sacrificed even more and so we talk about Dave
25:38
Ramsey someone here and you know why do people sell the truck or why do
people sell the car because they know their
25:45
debt snowball they know like why they’re doing these things and they get so
excited about they’re like yeah I want
25:51
that more than I want this other thing um and so um you know when we get
your house in
25:57
order in step two uh we’re gonna we’re gonna give you that that Financial
26:02
Freedom to go and invest in the things that that we know are the most
important
26:08
so you want to talk about step three so it’s step step one
26:13
get your time right have time step two get your get your head above
26:18
water once we have these two things accurate meaning all right I can pay my
bills
26:24
and I can and I have time to work on the business now we can really start
building the business but until we have
26:30
those that’s like that’s like the water line and before we’re there like
we’re underwater and and we just got to get
26:36
our head above water so we can breathe so that’s priority number one and
some of you are in a position and you know if
26:41
if you’re that person right where where you your head isn’t even about
water enough to breathe but once we do get our
26:47
head above water and once we can breathe once we know that our bills can
get paid well now what do we spend our next
26:54
amount of time on and that is we we need to build a simple business we need
to
27:00
build a business craft a business model that will actually work and that
will be simple and scalable
27:07
over time there’s a reason why companies like apple or Verizon or the like
the go
27:15
across the board of the biggest companies in the world why for the most
part they get really good at one thing
27:21
they get really good at just one doing one thing and crafting a business
model it’s a very simple
27:28
um and scalable and so our we always the you know it was my assertion Aaron
you
27:33
can tell me if I’m wrong but um it’s my assertion that far too often
business owners build a business a
27:40
little bit like um I I spent some time in Africa and sometimes it felt like
their homes were
27:46
just bolted on like when they got a little extra money they built this room
and then it feels like our businesses
27:52
are just kind of like a hodgepodge of different eras and moments in our
27:57
business but it’s not a elegant simple business and as a result we find
28:02
ourselves with our fingers in all kinds of different pies trying to make
money in all kinds of different ways and we
28:08
become just the center pin of that business and we can’t really grow and
scale it and so like
28:14
I I think to myself what can we do to build a simple business but the
simple business really should be the goal right
28:21
Aaron like simple yeah yeah I mean you it’s like your example
28:26
is like you would never build a house without a plan right like you and
when you do build something without a plan
28:32
what does it look like when you’re finished well yeah I mean maybe you get
lucky it’s kind of a mess yeah that’s
28:38
what it looks like yeah it’s like you get lucky sometimes yeah um yeah I
mean I I think
28:45
it’s it’s doing one thing really well and being really good at that
28:51
um when when I’m coaching companies um and and we bring them in for the
28:56
first call or a couple calls I’ll I just had one the other day and and the
guy said you know I’m right at 900 000 in
29:03
revenue and I was like man that’s that’s really awesome uh you know we’re
gonna get you to a million quick right that’s
29:09
what I’m thinking and as I dug in a little bit and we do we dig into the to
the company a little bit we find out he
29:16
really has three three hundred thousand dollar companies right he’s got a
maintenance division he had a tree
29:23
service Division and then he had a um and he had like a little small project
29:29
Division and each one of those made up about 300 000 in revenue and I said
so
29:36
awesome this is great we’ve got three strong little companies right um
under one umbrella
29:43
um are you ready to go hire three managers for those three small companies
29:48
and and hey do you have about a half million bucks in the bank to do this
and
29:54
and he goes heck no I’m cash poor right now I was like well we really don’t
have a simple business now and we certainly
30:01
don’t yeah we can maybe put your name on one of those divisions but we
can’t put your name on all three and scale that to
30:07
three million dollars because basically I look at the 3x you have to 3x
your work in a lot of those areas right you
30:14
have to have a great marketing campaign for tree and you have to have a
great marketing campaign first your projects
30:20
and you have to have a great marketing campaign and then you have to have a
great system for selling and estimating
30:25
trees and then you have to Great system for selling and estimating so every
one of those has to be like 3x and it’s hard
30:32
enough to grow one business much less trying to go three at the same time
so let’s go back to what our first two
30:39
steps so you you have to find you know 12 hours yeah 12 hours a week of
course
30:44
you know you have to find the money for three businesses and you said
marketing
30:50
campaigns like it’s it’s one thing to find the time to design all the
systems and things we need for three divisions
30:58
but now we gotta fund three divisions right and and a half million dollars
31:03
might not be enough right and and sometimes sometimes I think we do this
because we look at the other big company
31:10
in our neighborhood who’s like got 50 million and they’re and they do all
of the services and we think to ourselves
31:16
well that’s the model that’s what we should pattern ourselves after but at
the end of the day you can do that when
31:24
you have five great leaders in five different divisions that that works at
31:30
that stage in the game but early on the simpler really the better and by
the way
31:35
when I say simpler I mean means simpler across the board the simplest way
to service the simplest way to mow a lawn
31:42
the simplest way to write all of these little details of Simplicity add up
to
31:48
me creating room and space to grow even if we’re talking about a lawn
maintenance company we need to be very
31:54
simple in that are we going to be a residential company or are we going to
be a commercial company because you know those are two
32:02
different you know this is two different sales models right two different
trucks
32:08
yeah right and so yeah we need to simplify all the way
32:15
down like yeah to what we sell and how we do it it’s exactly right and and
when
32:22
you see it done right like the companies who do emerge as the million
dollar companies the ones who make it out uh my
32:28
buddy Mike Callahan who many of you might know but uh Mike Mike was showing
me he got all nerd at nerded out he’s
32:34
like do you know how simple we got like when we would pull up to the yard
we knew which side of the yard we wanted
32:42
the truck on because it was simpler for our guys to get the job done so I
mean we want to build a very so step three is
32:49
to build the simple business model build a business model is simple build
one that can scale
32:55
um because we want something simple because we want we want a business we
33:01
want to sell a product that’s simple we want to have fulfillment be simple
we want to have the sale be simple because
33:06
we’re gonna we want to do it uh thousands of more times
33:15
so like you there you’re talking sorry step three is kind of two parts right
33:21
you got three a which is we need to decide like where are we going to focus
33:27
our time what do we love what what do we like doing in the business we’re
not going to direct you into one space we’re
33:34
not going to transition everybody to a lawn mowing company or everybody to
a lawn fertilization company we’re gonna
33:40
let you choose that but we’re gonna push you to pick like what do you what
do you feel you can scale the best
33:46
um and that’s kind of 3A but 3B is is all these things you’re talking about
now which is like the systems and and
33:52
how do we hire people and what is the organizational structure look like
for this model
33:58
um you know what do our truck setups look like at this model um but
probably the most important part
34:04
of this this 3B is the cells and systems I mean the systems and processes so
34:11
sales processes hiring processes lead you know how do we make when we’re in
34:17
that same meeting remember this meeting we we were chatting you had a
competitor in the
34:22
room essentially a smaller guy and he go and you said how long does it take
you to get an estimate out
34:30
and his process from start to finish what did he say three days four days
so there were two guys they were
34:36
actually direct competitors to us they were wanting the same exact client
that my company
34:41
um goes after in the same market and they set one guy said I was about
three to four days for me to get to get back
34:47
to a car the other one was very honest and I appreciated him being honest
because he said I’ll be honest with you
34:54
I’m at least a week and he goes there’s times where my voicemail is full
and and he said this word for he said my
35:00
voicemail is full and they can’t even leave me a message yet and so here
were two guys and and one might not get back
35:07
to him at all One’s Gonna Get Back in two three days but if we want to go
sell that product a
35:14
thousand times and it takes in two to three days to get back to that client
35:20
you realize how many compounded days that is so so the spirit of this step
35:26
three is as we’re spending our four hours a day a week whereas a day that’d
be great four hours a week working on
35:33
the business we’re gonna start to look for ways we can make sure we have a
simple business model and look for ways
35:40
we can simplify the work that we’re doing because each time we simplify it
so in the same way when I go sell a
35:46
product and I I make a hundred dollars a month every time I go MO
35:52
I I’m I’m storing and and putting in the bank dollars I want us to think of
35:59
simplifying as a way of storing and putting in the bank hours so every time
I can simplify a portion
36:06
of my business I I’m I’m becoming time richer and we need in order for us
to get out
36:12
of the rat race of the business in order for us to finally be free of the
business and own it and not have it own
36:18
us is we have to store time and so I want you to think about each
36:24
time you’re doing something if it takes you 45 minutes to create an
estimate if
36:29
you can do that same estimate in 25 minutes or 20 or eight
36:36
like all of a sudden you’re gaining and storing in your book in your log I
have 40 more minutes than my competitor
36:43
and that 40 40 more minutes times a thousand that’s like years of your life
right
36:50
that you’re getting back each time you can simplify so the third step one
get four hours step two uh get your personal
36:58
and business house in order so we at least know what’s going on and we get
our head above water so we can pay our
37:04
bills and then step three is let’s start to go about the business of
crafting a business a simple business model with
37:11
simple Business Systems is step three then step four we’ll go through the
last two quickly because most of you need to
37:19
be working on one through three but step four is then we figure out and we
start
37:24
pouring fuel on by creating and and designing an awesome acquisition model
so how do we acquire new business how do
37:31
we do it at a price point that works within our business model and how do
we do it in a way that we can do it over and over and over and over again
uh so
37:39
that we can really start to put gas on the rocket right gas not on the
rocket in the rocket uh yeah we can really
37:45
start growing this thing yeah I mean I I was you know I always look at
steps one through three as kind of building the
37:52
rocket like yeah you know if you were NASA you know they’re not worried
about Rocket Fuel and pouring it on the launch
37:58
pad until there’s a rocket out there right yeah and so we need to really
build something that that one can handle
38:05
like imagine like you know and we’ve seen it tragically you know where
rockets explode
38:12
um and you know we want to make sure that when we build this model that it
38:17
can handle the pressure of a heavy marketing campaign right a marketing
38:22
campaign that is geared towards you know generating thousands of leads and
you
38:28
know hundreds and hopefully thousands of new clients every year and the
process of of just flowing that through your
38:36
business and you know the bad part about Lawn Care is you know it’s really
all
38:41
about February through May that’s when we get to get new clients and so
we’re
38:46
really even stress testing testing the business even more because we’ve got
like a four month window to really do
38:53
our sales well um sure we pick up clients in other months we all we all do
but I can tell
38:59
you as we’ve looked at you know you know 60 different businesses and look
at their scorecards that we compile with
39:06
them all the sales come in a really short period of time and so you know the
39:12
worst thing we could do is start marketing your business when it’s not
ready it would it would fail
39:18
um and uh and also we know that small businesses and if it doesn’t fail
you’re
39:23
gonna you’re gonna have the same pain like what’s the number one complaint
of clients in this industry is they’re
39:30
saying I can’t get a hold of anybody I tried to call that company I
couldn’t get a hold of them well why is that because they’ve marketed
they’ve out
39:36
their marketing’s outpace their systems but Aaron if anybody calls your
company is there ever a time where they can’t
39:41
get a hold of you live every day and and so we have to
39:48
build that system first and then we start really putting putting the gas in
the marketing this is the weirdest
39:53
industry in the world because I’ve coached companies from all the kinds of
different Industries this is one of the few places in lawn care and Lawn
Care
40:00
Services where the major issue isn’t lead volume it’s not not an issue but
40:06
it’s like most companies like man if we can figure out how to sell stuff
and here it’s like man we have plenty of
40:11
business opportunity if I just pick up the phone right the guy who’s like
man my voicemail box fills up so step four
40:20
is once we do have the system and it’s ready to roll now we can start to
really answer all of those phone calls then we
40:26
can start really connecting with all of those clients but we need a great
acquisition model that’s the four step
40:32
five it’s simply that now we scale up now we put start putting into place
the
40:37
other healthy systems that a business has we start putting in place are a
great hiring model we start adjusting
40:44
pricing on a nice Rhythm we start just pruning and caring for the business
that
40:49
we’ve now built and and Aaron you’re still working on systems you’re still
working on simplifying you’re doing it
40:56
the other day you’re making a simple form for your for your staff yeah you
you know step five is kind of just that
41:02
healthy stage right we just want to keep you know it’s like Steps one
through four are kind of the big weight loss and
41:08
then you’ve lost all the weight now you keep it off how do you you know and
that’s that’s staying healthy and and and healthy
41:17
businesses scale um I think too like we talk about steps
41:22
one and two are things we need to fix and we kind of they’re one-time fixes
probably step three we kind of go back
41:29
to step three a good bit we’re always refining step three and maybe you
know maybe you grow one of your you know your
41:36
services up to a million and a half dollars a year and you’re like you know
what we’re ready to take on X and so
41:42
we’re gonna add a service and we’re gonna you know we’re gonna hire the
manager for that and so and by the way like the the healthy step five right
is
41:49
you’re really revisiting all of these steps you’re constantly improving the
amount of time that you’re spending on
41:55
the business you’re constantly improving your understanding of the finance
your financial situation and your your debt
42:01
position all that you’re constantly refining the quality of your business
and then finally you’re constantly refining and improving your your ability
42:07
to go acquire customers so stage five is really like the keep it off stage
where
42:13
you’re saying how do we how do we get better the truth is if you do stages
one through four correctly you’re you’re
42:19
going to have all the tools you need to get to be at that million dollar
company and more importantly we want you not
42:25
just to be a million dollar company because I’ve met plenty of Million
Dollar business owners who are miserable because they’re buried they may
have a
42:32
lot of money but they’re very short on time and so we want you not just to
be a million dollar business owner we want to
42:38
have you to have a simple Million Dollar business and that simple Million
Dollar business means that you it allows you to
42:45
have not only a bunch of money but it also means you have time to spend it
time to use it uh in your life and so
42:52
Aaron I know this is like showing like a big diamond ring where that
doesn’t make anybody feel good about themselves when
42:58
someone has a big diamond ring but um but how much how much time do you
spend in your business you you know
43:05
million plus Dollar business um it depends on the week but I mean on
average I would think uh eight hours or
43:12
less um a week you know um that that is what we want we want to
43:17
get to a point where you have a really really successful business and you
haven’t just been storing money
43:23
but through building a simple business you’ve also been storing time and as
you
43:28
start to store time in your bank account in your in your calendar account I
don’t know what we call it but you start
43:34
storing time all of a sudden now I have a lot of time and a lot of money
and that’s where real Freedom comes comes in
43:40
where you get to do what you love you get to do it with who you love and
that’s what a true like that’s the dream
43:46
of at least most of the entrepreneurs I meet is I want the dream of not
only having the money but the time to use it
43:52
yeah and and Dan I mean I think as somebody who’s built a very simple
business and and uh it it is it I get to
44:00
spend time where I like it you know like that’s the important thing like
there were times where I really didn’t like my
44:06
business over the last 27 years um and and I think you know now
44:12
there’s things that we do that I don’t want to have to do in fairness um
and I don’t I I you know those those
44:19
responsibilities do fall to someone else they get taken care of we don’t
ignore anything but I get to spend my time in
44:25
the areas one where I’m where I’m the strongest um and I think in a lot of
ways
44:31
um my time spent in the business today is probably better than maybe when I
was full-time for the for the business right
44:38
the people that that work with me and that we work with um probably get
better time for me at
44:44
this point even though it’s less technically less time my time is better
spent and it and it’s for me it’s on
44:51
things that I like doing doing I love doing and I’m strong at doing um so
that’s the beauty that’s the dream
44:57
that’s the dream that we want to that we want to share here on the simple
growth business podcast
45:02
um because we want to help as many people as we possibly can genuinely like
Aaron and I are both in a position where
45:09
we don’t have to do this like our families are taken care of we we have
businesses that are that are successful
45:15
uh but the reason we do it is because we actually legitimately feel bad for
those
45:21
of you who are out there just grinding away in businesses that are complex
and convoluted whose heads are just above
45:26
water we and it’s not that we pity you you’re just fine you’ll be all right
but we do want to help if we can and so
45:34
that’s why we are doing this that’s why we and as you can tell we’re not
Pros we
45:39
kind of suck at it a little bit but we’re gonna try we’re gonna try to do
it in a way that will be really helpful and
45:45
because we want to see more and more of these companies thousands and
thousands of these companies get out of that day-to-day Rat Race in the
business get
45:52
out of business debt where it feels like your time and money are already
all spent before you even get them and give you the freedom that you were
45:59
looking for when you started the business in the first place that’s our
goal and so stick with us we’re going to keep recording we’re going to keep
46:05
talking whether or not anyone’s listening to be honest and uh but we hope
that it’s helpful uh so thank you
46:10
for being with us on this simple growth business podcast thanks sir thanks