September 25, 2023 • 23 mins
Is the man keeping you down? Are you tired of working for that dumb dumb boss and believe wealth will come as an independent? #BusinessMistakes #FreelanceProfessional #IndependentContractor
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/inside-strategic-relations--3010682/support.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/inside-strategic-relations--3010682/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
If you want to grow your businessand build sustainable wealth, then pay close
attention. Too. Many organizations willgrow in an unstable way, which causes
more problems than it's worth. Infact, you can keep a company small
and be more profitable over time,and I'll explain that here shortly. I'm
just in hit with sustainable wealth secrets. So I've known a lot of people
(00:21):
over time who have started inconspicuous businessesforest mulching, landscaping, trash company,
as well as it services companies andother firms, usually starting from an expert
level of experience or a subject matterexpertise. They start either consulting or delivering
(00:42):
that service as a freelancer, andmany of them I've helped grow their business,
and many of my provided advice onhow to structure their business. And
what we found is the structure ismore valuable than some of the common mistakes
that are made, and the structureeliminates these mistakes. And so I'm going
to try to share with you someof the details about that. So let's
(01:03):
say you're driving a dump truck.Now not a lot of my listeners are
driving dump trucks, but imagine you'redriving a dump truck for the man,
and the man is telling you whatto do each day, and you're frustrated
by it. And you know thatif all you had to do is get
a dump truck, you could dothe same type of jobs because you kind
of understand how it works. Youget a job, it's scheduled, you
(01:23):
go out and perform the the youknow, drop the load, and then
you go get another job. Andthat's how you make money. And from
your perspective as a as a persondoing the work, it is very easy
to do. Excuse me. Andnow let's say you're a computer consultant or
you're a computer repair guy. Yougo out, you get a ticket,
(01:48):
you go do the job, youturn in the ticket, you get paid.
It looks like it's easy to do. Now, from the the doing
of a thing to the owning ofa business that does the thing, there's
such a large gap in knowledge thatyou will not ever understand that if you've
only done the thing. I knowa lot of folks out there you could
(02:10):
be mow and grass on the weekends, and now you've got more clients to
mow grass, and then you're mowingmore grass and you tell that boss that
you don't want to work for himanymore because you got your own business now
and you're going to compete with theboss man. In majority of the cases,
these businesses fail. So when Iwas volunteering with SCORE, which is
a part of the Small Business Administration, I saw it time and time again
(02:31):
because people were looking at the thingthat they do rather than the services they
provide. And then even worse,they didn't understand that they're not in the
business of doing the thing. They'remore importantly in the business of marketing a
thing. So it doesn't matter ifyou're driving a dump truck, if you're
fixing computers, or you are mowinggrass. The structure is exactly the same.
(02:54):
There are finance companies that will helpyou get equipment, there are organizations
that will encourage you to start thatbusiness, but very few will actually set
you down and say, let's lookat your structure. So we'll just kind
of call this a professional business.I know a lot of you guys are
thinking, you know, truck driveris a blue collar job, but no,
it's a professional business. They've gotto maintain a schedule, and they
(03:16):
maintain a certain persona or a certainprofessionalism about them, and those are factors
of success. So let's say youhave a professional business of any kind,
doctor, lawyer, truck driver,whatever, the structure is the same.
You're doing the job today, andthen you think you can do it better
than your boss, and so nowyou're going to do it on your own,
(03:37):
your freelance. What you're missing outis the contributed overhead that's required to
even have that position available. You'remissing out on the marketing necessary to get
the customers. You're missing out onthe finance necessary to get the equipment.
I've heard a lot of people say, oh, this old, crappy equipment
we're using this job. If Iwas running this business, i'd get new
equipment. Well, again, themarketplace shows you that you can get new
(04:00):
equipment, and then they would loveto sell you new equipment, and then
they'll finance at zero percent, andif you just had X number of jobs,
you're going to pay for the equipment. But that's not really how it
works in the majority of cases.So let's say you're out there doing the
work and you decide you're going torun your own show, and so you
set your prices based on your understandingof the work that you're doing. A
(04:23):
lot of folks believe that their bossesare overcharging. A lot of folks believe
the guy down the street charges toomuch, but they never once will sit
down and figure out what's the overhead, what's my insurance cost? How much
do I need to pay myself,What is going to cost me to have
a bookkeeper to do the taxes atthe end of the year. What's it
going to cost me for legal ifI have any problems with my clients or
(04:44):
the clients don't pay the bill.There's like this giant, long list of
stuff that you don't know exists becauseall you've done is the work. And
I had the same problem. WhenI started my computer consultancy. I was
out there charging fifty bucks an hour. I was eighteen years old. Get
fifty dollars an hour? Well thatwas my billing rate. Now in the
nineteen nineties, that seemed like alot of money, but that was my
(05:05):
billing rate. There are other peoplecharging eighty eight dollars an hour, and
instead of asking why are they chargingeighty eight dollars an hour, I said,
well, I'm gonna charge less andI'll get more work. It doesn't
work that way. That's simple thinking. That's the thinking of someone who's a
call and a machine, who justshows up and does their job, thinking
everything's gonna work out. Now.I don't mean to burden you, but
(05:27):
there are times when you sit downand you look at these numbers and you're
like, holy crap, I'm gonnamake more money working for someone else than
I am gonna make money working formyself, even though in the short term
the gross numbers could be higher workingfor yourself. So the sustainable wealth approach
here is actually sitting down and doingthe math. But let's say you sit
down and do the math and you'regetting a good number of customers. You're
(05:48):
filling a need in the marketplace.You're out there doing work, but it
requires heavy equipment, some kind ofequipment cost. So when I was doing
it services, we had these Flukenetwork analyzers, We had laptops, We
had a lot of equipment there.Forced Maulture is going to have a forest
multing machine. It's one hundred thousanddollars. Guy driving a dump truck,
(06:08):
it's gotta have a dump truck.Construction company, it's gonna have construction equipment.
The marketplace is going to try toget you to rent this equipment because
the market the business model of themarketplace is to get the equipment out of
the manufacturer's warehouses. Now you mightnot known about that, but I know
about it, and I've used thatto get my equipment for So for example,
when I was at Lillian Vernon,we got a multimillion dollar network attached
(06:32):
storage as sand storage attached network.We got it for like a half price
because it was the end of theyear and the company were buying it from
wanted to get it out of thewarehouse and not like a lot of people
buy that type of equipment. Sowe were able to get the equipment because
(06:54):
we can pay cash very cheap.Now, the same thing goes with excavator
and dump trucks. Of course,there's a good used market for equipment.
And because there's a good used marketfor equipment, these dealers will finance and
get you the equipment because they knowthat if you can't pay for the equipment,
they've got you under contract on thefinance to get some of their money
(07:15):
back or the majority of their moneyback. But they always get the equipment
back which has a high resale valueor a they can lease it back out
to someone else. So they canrent it back out to somebody else,
because literally, it's not a financecontract. It is a lease agreement or
a rental agreement that defaults with themgetting their equipment back. So what I'm
(07:36):
describing here is going in upfront understandingthe whole picture. Now you might get
discouraged. We don't want to bediscouraged, because it does work out well
if you do this correctly. Butdoing the numbers up front is going to
tell you, Okay, what doesit cost to run this show every day?
How many customers do I need?What is the marketing going to cost
(07:59):
me? How long is it goingto take to get a customer? Once
I have customers, how much canI charge? And should I be charging
less or should I be charging more? If you fundamentally do a better job,
there's no way for your customer toknow that until they've experienced your services,
And then, like prostitution, afteryou've experienced the services, it has
much less value when the need hasbeen met than it did before you enter
(08:26):
into agreement. I don't mean tobe crude about that, but the desire
and the anxiety about the problem ismuch stronger than after the problem is solved.
And you're moving on to something else. That's why we don't remember the
good things that happen in our livesbecause they don't have an etching of drama.
So should you be charging more,should you be charging less? Should
(08:48):
you have someone in an office doingscheduling, or can you start the business
all by yourself and do the schedulingyourself. Well, if it's an hours
for dollars business, you better notbe doing your scheduling because every time you
stop to schedule, you're not makinganother dollar. And if you are making
a dollar while you're stop just scheduling, then you're doing a disservice to your
(09:09):
customer. So one of the beststructures I've seen that works well is to
start a business on the side,or to start the business as an absentee
owner, meaning you get other peopleengaged to start the business. Even though
you can do the work. Youget other people involved and you finance other
people doing the work, and youstart building the structure of the business,
the process of the business, theframework of the business before you go into
(09:33):
it all alone. Now, whenI work with clients and we do consulting,
I don't make up frameworks. Iborrow frameworks from different industries. That's
why I can give you an example, and why I know that driving a
truck versus you know, beingny kindof freelance work, professional or otherwise is
the same model. If you're tradinghours for dollars, then you're not efficiently
(09:54):
doing things like bookkeeping, marketing,compliance, things like that. That stuff
comes to you in the long run, and as you grow. If you
just add more people to do thework rather than replacing yourself first, then
you'll be so busy doing the workitself that you won't be out there getting
new customers. And then the firsttime you have not enough customers, you
(10:15):
end up having a lot of equipmentpayments, You end up having a lot
of people that are just going toimmediately hurt your business, rather than having
a good framework for getting new customersin place, and so that when you
have these temporary disruptions, things movesmoothly. Now, if we were sitting
down and talking about your specific businessor an idea you had about a business,
we would do a comparison model andwe would say, okay, well,
(10:37):
what is it that you do today, what do you like about it?
What do you not like about it? And then what is it that
you'd like to do, would youperceive that you'd like about it or not
like about it? And the majorityof the cases, individuals are primarily replacing
the job they have. They're notbecoming entrepreneurs and scaling and building a business.
They're literally hate the job they're in. They think the boss charges too
(10:58):
much, they don't think they're gettingtreated fairly, they think they could do
a better job, and then theygo out on their own and it's nice
for a while. There's a littleeuphoria as you're an independent man of your
own self, but again things startcollapsing because as the business grows, rather
than replacing yourself, you add tothe business by adding another person does the
(11:20):
same thing you do, not understandingthat that discomfort and dissatisfaction is the exact
same thing every employee you add isgoing to have unless you're able to manage
the business differently. So it's notthat you don't like it's not that you
can do a better job or anythinglike that. It's just you don't like
the situation you're in, so youthink this new situation will be better,
and that blinds you from the maththat's necessary to produce the results that you're
(11:45):
really looking for, which is thatindependent security, that financial wealth. So
my advice most of the time iswhatever position you're in right now, go
ahead and make make yourself indispensable.Basically, solve these problems for your employer
to take notes, start structuring abetter business. And then after you've built
up a nest egg, if youdecide to go out on your own or
(12:09):
to buy into the businesses you've madebetter, then you're going to be in
a more stable situation than if youjust quit and try something new. Now,
if it's an abusive situation, youcould, yeah, you could quit
and try something new, but ultimately, do it with forethought, do it
with a written plan, and doit with a better understanding of what's required
(12:31):
at the management and ownership level ofa business. And the best case I've
seen is where somebody will go andthey'll they'll do the math, they'll build
out a business plan, they'll getsecond opinions, they'll get a line of
credit, they'll open up this newbusiness. Maybe it competes, maybe it
doesn't compete with where they work before, and then they will get the business
role and strong, but they'll havea personal assistant who's doing the scheduling,
(12:54):
who's making sure compliance is taken careof, who's keeping track of, you
know, picking up the mail andsorting all the overhead stuff that is not
very desirable to most people who doa thing, they'll have a good CPA,
they'll have a good lawyer, andthen when the time comes time to
grow the business, they make adecision to grow the business not by cookie
cuttering themselves, but by elevating themselvesinto a leadership role and then taking the
(13:18):
position they were in before and copyingit in a profitable way. So,
if you were the equipment operator andnow you have enough work that you need
two equipment operators, then you takethe leadership role and you scale everything so
that you can have two equipment operators. Now, if one of those operators
fails to be able to do theirjob, you can always step in and
(13:39):
take care of the job because youknow how to do the work. But
ultimately you're not out there working withthem, because that would be unscalable because
there is when you add the otherpeople, you now have leadership roles,
and if those leadership roles are notdone, then your people are going to
be just as upset as you were, and they'll think about going and get
their own company because there's this kindof flawed humans thinking that we can do
(14:01):
it better. It's kind of anego speak where I want you to look
at the logic. I want youto look at the structure. And then
I've even gone as far as tooverpay the people who work for me.
So I overpay them. I tellthem what the expectations are, I set
a framework for expectation. I monitorthat framework, and very often they can
do the work better than me,So they're not sixty percent of what I
(14:26):
was doing, they are one hundredand ten percent of what I was able
to do. And then I havea program to bring people into that program,
and I can end up adding seveneight people to a team in a
very short period of time and haveconsistency and deliverables. But more importantly,
I have redundancy in delivery. Soif I'm sending people out on jobs,
let's say the landscaping example, Icould have five or six jobs going at
(14:50):
the same time, and then ifthere's a problem on one job, I
can easily shift people around to makesure the customer doesn't see the problem.
Because the problem and business happen allthe time. You're going to end up
with employees they think they can doa better job, they want to be
out on their own, they thinkyou're a stupid boss, and they're not
going to be proactive and in theengagement of making that position better, and
(15:11):
they're giving you only twenty percent ofwhat they can give you, and of
course you're only paying them fifty percentof what they deserve, so you know,
everybody's losing. But the bottom line, though, is if you want
sustainable wealth, if you want tobuild a business that lasts for generations,
if you want to produce positive netcash flow, then you can't listen to
the sirens songs of the experts tosay, hey, just buy another piece
(15:33):
of equipment. You have to basicallywork the numbers out. You have to
become an expert in your business.You have to become the leader in your
industry, not in what you do, but in the marketing of what you
do, so that what enough alevel of service you can consistently deliver.
You've got ready capable and willing customers, because it's the customers who are going
(15:54):
to finance the business. Now,there will become a time we will have
enough cash, and you know youcould buy cash for a piece of equipment,
or you can finance it. That'sa different conversation. But if you
have no cash and you're already toobusy that you need more equipment, just
going out and getting the equipment inan operator isn't necessarily going to do anything.
It could make your situation worse.So if you want to sit down
(16:15):
and go over your unique business situationor your dissatisfaction with your current employer,
or your current opportunity and that dreamyou have for starting a new business,
I can help you structure it differently. Now, it's not different when you
compare it to those who've been successfulin starting a business, scaling a business,
growing a business, but it's goingto be way different than you might
(16:37):
expect when it comes to the commonknowledge about how businesses operate. Because again,
when you're working at doing something,when you're a professional as a lawyer
working in a firm, if you'rea truck driver working at a company,
if you're a carpenter working at ageneral contractor you're only seeing a very tiny
(17:02):
part of that business. Now,I've had the great fortune to see the
deep and intimate details of many,many businesses, and I kind of there's
kind of a little glaff in there, because sometimes you see, I've seen
businesses making a million dollars a monththat had nothing to show for it.
Every dollar they were making was goingto vendors, so they would make a
(17:22):
million dollars at the end of themonth, collect actually collect a million dollars
at the end of the month,and then every penny of that went to
the fancy building they're in. Itwent to the health insurance plan they never
open marketed. It's going to employeebenefits that the employees aren't even using.
It's going into nice, fancy newtrucks. So the finance company who talked
(17:44):
them into the trucks, and thenat the at the end of the month,
that owner had to confide in meand say that they don't get a
paycheck. And for a million dollarsa month, the owner's not getting a
paycheck. Everybody else is getting paidexcept for the owner. And my response
to that was is is this whatyou expected? I said, is this
what you expected? And they said, no, this is not what expected.
(18:07):
I said, great, well,let's sit down make a list of
what you do expect to happen here, and let's make that happen to What
we're able to do is that milliondollars a year. Now. He had
to give up some stuff, sowe audited the health insurance plan and found
out what people were not using andremoved it from the plan. We went
through his building and decided that hecould probably get away with So we owned
(18:30):
the space, had a mortgage onit. We could split the space up
and he could have a nice office, beautiful office, but down the street
he's going to have a big,old, ugly warehouse. And so his
little tiny office people can come intoschedule. That was his face to the
customer. And then there was asublet the rest of the building because he
(18:51):
needed cash flow. You know,there are certain things that we could do
for him, because again he wasallowing himself to be vulnerable. And I'm
not going to judge because I mademistakes and running businesses myself. But when
I go into a fortune one hundredcompany, when I go into a twenty
million dollar a year business, itreally is about helping that owner be absentee.
(19:12):
Now they don't have to be absentee, they don't have to go on
vacations all the time or go playgolf, because that sometimes makes the employees
upset. But they have to beable to step away from the business long
enough to have some clear thought aboutthe business and about where they want the
business to go and what they wantthe business to do. And whether you're
a business owner or an executive,there are personal career objectives that we have
(19:32):
to meet otherwise you'll be dissatisfied nomatter where you are. So whether you
work for the man or you workfor yourself, it doesn't matter if you're
unhappy and unable to retain the wealththat you're producing. And again we talk
about wealth beyond the financial means.If you're spending twenty hours a day working
at a job you hate, twentyhours a day running a business you hate,
(19:53):
isn't any better. There's some happymedium between the two. And again,
your employe maybe making mistakes that youcan help them solve that will gain
you value in that organization and moveyou up to partner. And then now
you have equity, because maybe it'syou didn't want to run a business,
you just want to have equity sothat you had the upside of your contributions,
(20:14):
so that if you work twenty hoursa week, your pay it reflects
it. Or twenty hours a day. You know, some folks get to
be working twenty hours a week andthey get bored. They want to work
forty hours a week. They justwant to have the choice to work twenty
hours a week. If that soshould move them. It is not as
complex as I make it sound.But when we sit down and go over
(20:37):
your situation, it is such arelief. And again I put it all
on paper because I get excited.You'll get excited. You're gonna get emotional.
I'll get emotional or yell at eachother sometimes because we got to get
this out. Why is it thatyou're not happy where you're at? What
is it that you really want anddesire? How can we bridge the gap
between what you have today and whereyou want to be? And again,
(21:02):
sometimes leaving and running out on yourown is not the right approach. I've
seen people who are dissatisfied with theirbusiness. They leaned into it and they
improve the things in the organization thatthey were at. And again, it
doesn't matter if it's your organization orsomeone else's organization. If you don't have
the skills to improve it, thenyou're going to be a slave to it.
(21:22):
But they improved it. And nextthing you know, one of the
owners walks up and says, look, you've done so much for this business,
would you like to be a partner. Now, this isn't gonna always
happen. Sometimes you're going to justtake advantage of it. But you'll know
the difference because you're going to havebetter insight, more experience, better purview
of what's going on, and ultimatelywe can move you on the well side.
Because again, it doesn't matter ifyou run a business of your own
(21:45):
or you're working for somebody else.You can still accumulate wealth, you can
still generate free net cash flow.You might find it's easier. And I'll
tell you from my own experiences.I'll work for a fortune one hundred because
of the credibility of the position,because they take care of all the overhead,
and very often they can pay multiplesof what it would cost me to
(22:08):
do a corp to corp. SoI'll take an employment position because if I
took the same role corp to corp, which you're open to, my overhead
would be so much higher. SoI can basically have them take care of
the overhead and then I work asan employee, and I don't see that
any different than working as a asan employer because I'm still a freelancer.
(22:29):
I still hire my own staff,I still do the things necessary to scale.
And so if you want that kindof insight working for you to build
your wealth, to build your positionin the marketplace, to increase your FREEEDAM
cash flow, then visit www dotSustainablewealthsecrets dot com. Go to the contact
page and ask your questions. Ifyou want to engage in a consultation,
(22:51):
I'll just ask somebody else send youdetails about how to do that. If
you want to talk about a specificchallenge that you have right now, I'd
be more than happy to get oncall with you and we can do a
discovery call to see whether or notwe're a match. But again, know
what you're seeing and whether it's thewhole picture plan on paper. Don't worry
(23:12):
so much about whether you like aposition or not. Shape the position into
what you like. Be prepared towork out on your own as an independent
by even supplementing the day to daystuff that you do. You know,
do you really need to be moaningyour own grass, and then ultimately act
like a leader, and if theydon't respect it and they don't want it,
(23:33):
fine, You'll have the skills togo do it on your own,
but you also have the awareness tonot make common mistakes. I've justin hit
with sustainable Weil secrets. Thanks forbeing a part of what we do here.
I always look forward to your questionsand your success stories, which keep
them coming because I love to hearthem. Thanks for listening and I'll see
you next time.
If you want to grow your businessand build sustainable wealth, then pay close
attention. Too. Many organizations willgrow in an unstable way, which causes
more problems than it's worth. Infact, you can keep a company small
and be more profitable over time,and I'll explain that here shortly. I'm
just in hit with sustainable wealth secrets. So I've known a lot of people
(00:21):
over time who have started inconspicuous businessesforest mulching, landscaping, trash company,
as well as it services companies andother firms, usually starting from an expert
level of experience or a subject matterexpertise. They start either consulting or delivering
(00:42):
that service as a freelancer, andmany of them I've helped grow their business,
and many of my provided advice onhow to structure their business. And
what we found is the structure ismore valuable than some of the common mistakes
that are made, and the structureeliminates these mistakes. And so I'm going
to try to share with you someof the details about that. So let's
(01:03):
say you're driving a dump truck.Now not a lot of my listeners are
driving dump trucks, but imagine you'redriving a dump truck for the man,
and the man is telling you whatto do each day, and you're frustrated
by it. And you know thatif all you had to do is get
a dump truck, you could dothe same type of jobs because you kind
of understand how it works. Youget a job, it's scheduled, you
(01:23):
go out and perform the the youknow, drop the load, and then
you go get another job. Andthat's how you make money. And from
your perspective as a as a persondoing the work, it is very easy
to do. Excuse me. Andnow let's say you're a computer consultant or
you're a computer repair guy. Yougo out, you get a ticket,
(01:48):
you go do the job, youturn in the ticket, you get paid.
It looks like it's easy to do. Now, from the the doing
of a thing to the owning ofa business that does the thing, there's
such a large gap in knowledge thatyou will not ever understand that if you've
only done the thing. I knowa lot of folks out there you could
(02:10):
be mow and grass on the weekends, and now you've got more clients to
mow grass, and then you're mowingmore grass and you tell that boss that
you don't want to work for himanymore because you got your own business now
and you're going to compete with theboss man. In majority of the cases,
these businesses fail. So when Iwas volunteering with SCORE, which is
a part of the Small Business Administration, I saw it time and time again
(02:31):
because people were looking at the thingthat they do rather than the services they
provide. And then even worse,they didn't understand that they're not in the
business of doing the thing. They'remore importantly in the business of marketing a
thing. So it doesn't matter ifyou're driving a dump truck, if you're
fixing computers, or you are mowinggrass. The structure is exactly the same.
(02:54):
There are finance companies that will helpyou get equipment, there are organizations
that will encourage you to start thatbusiness, but very few will actually set
you down and say, let's lookat your structure. So we'll just kind
of call this a professional business.I know a lot of you guys are
thinking, you know, truck driveris a blue collar job, but no,
it's a professional business. They've gotto maintain a schedule, and they
(03:16):
maintain a certain persona or a certainprofessionalism about them, and those are factors
of success. So let's say youhave a professional business of any kind,
doctor, lawyer, truck driver,whatever, the structure is the same.
You're doing the job today, andthen you think you can do it better
than your boss, and so nowyou're going to do it on your own,
(03:37):
your freelance. What you're missing outis the contributed overhead that's required to
even have that position available. You'remissing out on the marketing necessary to get
the customers. You're missing out onthe finance necessary to get the equipment.
I've heard a lot of people say, oh, this old, crappy equipment
we're using this job. If Iwas running this business, i'd get new
equipment. Well, again, themarketplace shows you that you can get new
(04:00):
equipment, and then they would loveto sell you new equipment, and then
they'll finance at zero percent, andif you just had X number of jobs,
you're going to pay for the equipment. But that's not really how it
works in the majority of cases.So let's say you're out there doing the
work and you decide you're going torun your own show, and so you
set your prices based on your understandingof the work that you're doing. A
(04:23):
lot of folks believe that their bossesare overcharging. A lot of folks believe
the guy down the street charges toomuch, but they never once will sit
down and figure out what's the overhead, what's my insurance cost? How much
do I need to pay myself,What is going to cost me to have
a bookkeeper to do the taxes atthe end of the year. What's it
going to cost me for legal ifI have any problems with my clients or
(04:44):
the clients don't pay the bill.There's like this giant, long list of
stuff that you don't know exists becauseall you've done is the work. And
I had the same problem. WhenI started my computer consultancy. I was
out there charging fifty bucks an hour. I was eighteen years old. Get
fifty dollars an hour? Well thatwas my billing rate. Now in the
nineteen nineties, that seemed like alot of money, but that was my
(05:05):
billing rate. There are other peoplecharging eighty eight dollars an hour, and
instead of asking why are they chargingeighty eight dollars an hour, I said,
well, I'm gonna charge less andI'll get more work. It doesn't
work that way. That's simple thinking. That's the thinking of someone who's a
call and a machine, who justshows up and does their job, thinking
everything's gonna work out. Now.I don't mean to burden you, but
(05:27):
there are times when you sit downand you look at these numbers and you're
like, holy crap, I'm gonnamake more money working for someone else than
I am gonna make money working formyself, even though in the short term
the gross numbers could be higher workingfor yourself. So the sustainable wealth approach
here is actually sitting down and doingthe math. But let's say you sit
down and do the math and you'regetting a good number of customers. You're
(05:48):
filling a need in the marketplace.You're out there doing work, but it
requires heavy equipment, some kind ofequipment cost. So when I was doing
it services, we had these Flukenetwork analyzers, We had laptops, We
had a lot of equipment there.Forced Maulture is going to have a forest
multing machine. It's one hundred thousanddollars. Guy driving a dump truck,
(06:08):
it's gotta have a dump truck.Construction company, it's gonna have construction equipment.
The marketplace is going to try toget you to rent this equipment because
the market the business model of themarketplace is to get the equipment out of
the manufacturer's warehouses. Now you mightnot known about that, but I know
about it, and I've used thatto get my equipment for So for example,
when I was at Lillian Vernon,we got a multimillion dollar network attached
(06:32):
storage as sand storage attached network.We got it for like a half price
because it was the end of theyear and the company were buying it from
wanted to get it out of thewarehouse and not like a lot of people
buy that type of equipment. Sowe were able to get the equipment because
(06:54):
we can pay cash very cheap.Now, the same thing goes with excavator
and dump trucks. Of course,there's a good used market for equipment.
And because there's a good used marketfor equipment, these dealers will finance and
get you the equipment because they knowthat if you can't pay for the equipment,
they've got you under contract on thefinance to get some of their money
(07:15):
back or the majority of their moneyback. But they always get the equipment
back which has a high resale valueor a they can lease it back out
to someone else. So they canrent it back out to somebody else,
because literally, it's not a financecontract. It is a lease agreement or
a rental agreement that defaults with themgetting their equipment back. So what I'm
(07:36):
describing here is going in upfront understandingthe whole picture. Now you might get
discouraged. We don't want to bediscouraged, because it does work out well
if you do this correctly. Butdoing the numbers up front is going to
tell you, Okay, what doesit cost to run this show every day?
How many customers do I need?What is the marketing going to cost
(07:59):
me? How long is it goingto take to get a customer? Once
I have customers, how much canI charge? And should I be charging
less or should I be charging more? If you fundamentally do a better job,
there's no way for your customer toknow that until they've experienced your services,
And then, like prostitution, afteryou've experienced the services, it has
much less value when the need hasbeen met than it did before you enter
(08:26):
into agreement. I don't mean tobe crude about that, but the desire
and the anxiety about the problem ismuch stronger than after the problem is solved.
And you're moving on to something else. That's why we don't remember the
good things that happen in our livesbecause they don't have an etching of drama.
So should you be charging more,should you be charging less? Should
(08:48):
you have someone in an office doingscheduling, or can you start the business
all by yourself and do the schedulingyourself. Well, if it's an hours
for dollars business, you better notbe doing your scheduling because every time you
stop to schedule, you're not makinganother dollar. And if you are making
a dollar while you're stop just scheduling, then you're doing a disservice to your
(09:09):
customer. So one of the beststructures I've seen that works well is to
start a business on the side,or to start the business as an absentee
owner, meaning you get other peopleengaged to start the business. Even though
you can do the work. Youget other people involved and you finance other
people doing the work, and youstart building the structure of the business,
the process of the business, theframework of the business before you go into
(09:33):
it all alone. Now, whenI work with clients and we do consulting,
I don't make up frameworks. Iborrow frameworks from different industries. That's
why I can give you an example, and why I know that driving a
truck versus you know, beingny kindof freelance work, professional or otherwise is
the same model. If you're tradinghours for dollars, then you're not efficiently
(09:54):
doing things like bookkeeping, marketing,compliance, things like that. That stuff
comes to you in the long run, and as you grow. If you
just add more people to do thework rather than replacing yourself first, then
you'll be so busy doing the workitself that you won't be out there getting
new customers. And then the firsttime you have not enough customers, you
(10:15):
end up having a lot of equipmentpayments, You end up having a lot
of people that are just going toimmediately hurt your business, rather than having
a good framework for getting new customersin place, and so that when you
have these temporary disruptions, things movesmoothly. Now, if we were sitting
down and talking about your specific businessor an idea you had about a business,
we would do a comparison model andwe would say, okay, well,
(10:37):
what is it that you do today, what do you like about it?
What do you not like about it? And then what is it that
you'd like to do, would youperceive that you'd like about it or not
like about it? And the majorityof the cases, individuals are primarily replacing
the job they have. They're notbecoming entrepreneurs and scaling and building a business.
They're literally hate the job they're in. They think the boss charges too
(10:58):
much, they don't think they're gettingtreated fairly, they think they could do
a better job, and then theygo out on their own and it's nice
for a while. There's a littleeuphoria as you're an independent man of your
own self, but again things startcollapsing because as the business grows, rather
than replacing yourself, you add tothe business by adding another person does the
(11:20):
same thing you do, not understandingthat that discomfort and dissatisfaction is the exact
same thing every employee you add isgoing to have unless you're able to manage
the business differently. So it's notthat you don't like it's not that you
can do a better job or anythinglike that. It's just you don't like
the situation you're in, so youthink this new situation will be better,
and that blinds you from the maththat's necessary to produce the results that you're
(11:45):
really looking for, which is thatindependent security, that financial wealth. So
my advice most of the time iswhatever position you're in right now, go
ahead and make make yourself indispensable.Basically, solve these problems for your employer
to take notes, start structuring abetter business. And then after you've built
up a nest egg, if youdecide to go out on your own or
(12:09):
to buy into the businesses you've madebetter, then you're going to be in
a more stable situation than if youjust quit and try something new. Now,
if it's an abusive situation, youcould, yeah, you could quit
and try something new, but ultimately, do it with forethought, do it
with a written plan, and doit with a better understanding of what's required
(12:31):
at the management and ownership level ofa business. And the best case I've
seen is where somebody will go andthey'll they'll do the math, they'll build
out a business plan, they'll getsecond opinions, they'll get a line of
credit, they'll open up this newbusiness. Maybe it competes, maybe it
doesn't compete with where they work before, and then they will get the business
role and strong, but they'll havea personal assistant who's doing the scheduling,
(12:54):
who's making sure compliance is taken careof, who's keeping track of, you
know, picking up the mail andsorting all the overhead stuff that is not
very desirable to most people who doa thing, they'll have a good CPA,
they'll have a good lawyer, andthen when the time comes time to
grow the business, they make adecision to grow the business not by cookie
cuttering themselves, but by elevating themselvesinto a leadership role and then taking the
(13:18):
position they were in before and copyingit in a profitable way. So,
if you were the equipment operator andnow you have enough work that you need
two equipment operators, then you takethe leadership role and you scale everything so
that you can have two equipment operators. Now, if one of those operators
fails to be able to do theirjob, you can always step in and
(13:39):
take care of the job because youknow how to do the work. But
ultimately you're not out there working withthem, because that would be unscalable because
there is when you add the otherpeople, you now have leadership roles,
and if those leadership roles are notdone, then your people are going to
be just as upset as you were, and they'll think about going and get
their own company because there's this kindof flawed humans thinking that we can do
(14:01):
it better. It's kind of anego speak where I want you to look
at the logic. I want youto look at the structure. And then
I've even gone as far as tooverpay the people who work for me.
So I overpay them. I tellthem what the expectations are, I set
a framework for expectation. I monitorthat framework, and very often they can
do the work better than me,So they're not sixty percent of what I
(14:26):
was doing, they are one hundredand ten percent of what I was able
to do. And then I havea program to bring people into that program,
and I can end up adding seveneight people to a team in a
very short period of time and haveconsistency and deliverables. But more importantly,
I have redundancy in delivery. Soif I'm sending people out on jobs,
let's say the landscaping example, Icould have five or six jobs going at
(14:50):
the same time, and then ifthere's a problem on one job, I
can easily shift people around to makesure the customer doesn't see the problem.
Because the problem and business happen allthe time. You're going to end up
with employees they think they can doa better job, they want to be
out on their own, they thinkyou're a stupid boss, and they're not
going to be proactive and in theengagement of making that position better, and
(15:11):
they're giving you only twenty percent ofwhat they can give you, and of
course you're only paying them fifty percentof what they deserve, so you know,
everybody's losing. But the bottom line, though, is if you want
sustainable wealth, if you want tobuild a business that lasts for generations,
if you want to produce positive netcash flow, then you can't listen to
the sirens songs of the experts tosay, hey, just buy another piece
(15:33):
of equipment. You have to basicallywork the numbers out. You have to
become an expert in your business.You have to become the leader in your
industry, not in what you do, but in the marketing of what you
do, so that what enough alevel of service you can consistently deliver.
You've got ready capable and willing customers, because it's the customers who are going
(15:54):
to finance the business. Now,there will become a time we will have
enough cash, and you know youcould buy cash for a piece of equipment,
or you can finance it. That'sa different conversation. But if you
have no cash and you're already toobusy that you need more equipment, just
going out and getting the equipment inan operator isn't necessarily going to do anything.
It could make your situation worse.So if you want to sit down
(16:15):
and go over your unique business situationor your dissatisfaction with your current employer,
or your current opportunity and that dreamyou have for starting a new business,
I can help you structure it differently. Now, it's not different when you
compare it to those who've been successfulin starting a business, scaling a business,
growing a business, but it's goingto be way different than you might
(16:37):
expect when it comes to the commonknowledge about how businesses operate. Because again,
when you're working at doing something,when you're a professional as a lawyer
working in a firm, if you'rea truck driver working at a company,
if you're a carpenter working at ageneral contractor you're only seeing a very tiny
(17:02):
part of that business. Now,I've had the great fortune to see the
deep and intimate details of many,many businesses, and I kind of there's
kind of a little glaff in there, because sometimes you see, I've seen
businesses making a million dollars a monththat had nothing to show for it.
Every dollar they were making was goingto vendors, so they would make a
(17:22):
million dollars at the end of themonth, collect actually collect a million dollars
at the end of the month,and then every penny of that went to
the fancy building they're in. Itwent to the health insurance plan they never
open marketed. It's going to employeebenefits that the employees aren't even using.
It's going into nice, fancy newtrucks. So the finance company who talked
(17:44):
them into the trucks, and thenat the at the end of the month,
that owner had to confide in meand say that they don't get a
paycheck. And for a million dollarsa month, the owner's not getting a
paycheck. Everybody else is getting paidexcept for the owner. And my response
to that was is is this whatyou expected? I said, is this
what you expected? And they said, no, this is not what expected.
(18:07):
I said, great, well,let's sit down make a list of
what you do expect to happen here, and let's make that happen to What
we're able to do is that milliondollars a year. Now. He had
to give up some stuff, sowe audited the health insurance plan and found
out what people were not using andremoved it from the plan. We went
through his building and decided that hecould probably get away with So we owned
(18:30):
the space, had a mortgage onit. We could split the space up
and he could have a nice office, beautiful office, but down the street
he's going to have a big,old, ugly warehouse. And so his
little tiny office people can come intoschedule. That was his face to the
customer. And then there was asublet the rest of the building because he
(18:51):
needed cash flow. You know,there are certain things that we could do
for him, because again he wasallowing himself to be vulnerable. And I'm
not going to judge because I mademistakes and running businesses myself. But when
I go into a fortune one hundredcompany, when I go into a twenty
million dollar a year business, itreally is about helping that owner be absentee.
(19:12):
Now they don't have to be absentee, they don't have to go on
vacations all the time or go playgolf, because that sometimes makes the employees
upset. But they have to beable to step away from the business long
enough to have some clear thought aboutthe business and about where they want the
business to go and what they wantthe business to do. And whether you're
a business owner or an executive,there are personal career objectives that we have
(19:32):
to meet otherwise you'll be dissatisfied nomatter where you are. So whether you
work for the man or you workfor yourself, it doesn't matter if you're
unhappy and unable to retain the wealththat you're producing. And again we talk
about wealth beyond the financial means.If you're spending twenty hours a day working
at a job you hate, twentyhours a day running a business you hate,
(19:53):
isn't any better. There's some happymedium between the two. And again,
your employe maybe making mistakes that youcan help them solve that will gain
you value in that organization and moveyou up to partner. And then now
you have equity, because maybe it'syou didn't want to run a business,
you just want to have equity sothat you had the upside of your contributions,
(20:14):
so that if you work twenty hoursa week, your pay it reflects
it. Or twenty hours a day. You know, some folks get to
be working twenty hours a week andthey get bored. They want to work
forty hours a week. They justwant to have the choice to work twenty
hours a week. If that soshould move them. It is not as
complex as I make it sound.But when we sit down and go over
(20:37):
your situation, it is such arelief. And again I put it all
on paper because I get excited.You'll get excited. You're gonna get emotional.
I'll get emotional or yell at eachother sometimes because we got to get
this out. Why is it thatyou're not happy where you're at? What
is it that you really want anddesire? How can we bridge the gap
between what you have today and whereyou want to be? And again,
(21:02):
sometimes leaving and running out on yourown is not the right approach. I've
seen people who are dissatisfied with theirbusiness. They leaned into it and they
improve the things in the organization thatthey were at. And again, it
doesn't matter if it's your organization orsomeone else's organization. If you don't have
the skills to improve it, thenyou're going to be a slave to it.
(21:22):
But they improved it. And nextthing you know, one of the
owners walks up and says, look, you've done so much for this business,
would you like to be a partner. Now, this isn't gonna always
happen. Sometimes you're going to justtake advantage of it. But you'll know
the difference because you're going to havebetter insight, more experience, better purview
of what's going on, and ultimatelywe can move you on the well side.
Because again, it doesn't matter ifyou run a business of your own
(21:45):
or you're working for somebody else.You can still accumulate wealth, you can
still generate free net cash flow.You might find it's easier. And I'll
tell you from my own experiences.I'll work for a fortune one hundred because
of the credibility of the position,because they take care of all the overhead,
and very often they can pay multiplesof what it would cost me to
(22:08):
do a corp to corp. SoI'll take an employment position because if I
took the same role corp to corp, which you're open to, my overhead
would be so much higher. SoI can basically have them take care of
the overhead and then I work asan employee, and I don't see that
any different than working as a asan employer because I'm still a freelancer.
(22:29):
I still hire my own staff,I still do the things necessary to scale.
And so if you want that kindof insight working for you to build
your wealth, to build your positionin the marketplace, to increase your FREEEDAM
cash flow, then visit www dotSustainablewealthsecrets dot com. Go to the contact
page and ask your questions. Ifyou want to engage in a consultation,
(22:51):
I'll just ask somebody else send youdetails about how to do that. If
you want to talk about a specificchallenge that you have right now, I'd
be more than happy to get oncall with you and we can do a
discovery call to see whether or notwe're a match. But again, know
what you're seeing and whether it's thewhole picture plan on paper. Don't worry
(23:12):
so much about whether you like aposition or not. Shape the position into
what you like. Be prepared towork out on your own as an independent
by even supplementing the day to daystuff that you do. You know,
do you really need to be moaningyour own grass, and then ultimately act
like a leader, and if theydon't respect it and they don't want it,
(23:33):
fine, You'll have the skills togo do it on your own,
but you also have the awareness tonot make common mistakes. I've justin hit
with sustainable Weil secrets. Thanks forbeing a part of what we do here.
I always look forward to your questionsand your success stories, which keep
them coming because I love to hearthem. Thanks for listening and I'll see
you next time.
Popular Podcasts
CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist
It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.