Year-end Business Decisions

Foreign. Welcome, everybody, to this week's episode of the Main street business podcast. This is Mark Kohler on location. And for those in Salt Lake that know this is the Grand America, not the Little America. This Grand America.

I thought it was Little America. I could swear that's more Little America style behind you, but fair enough.

That's. That's a. That could. I could see that. Yeah, there's. It's kind of like old world, you

know, when you walk in, though, it turns into Grand America.

Definitely more grand. Now, I don't. I didn't stay here last night, but I was like, I'm on the road. I need a good background. I'm one block away. I'm going to Grand America. So I'm going to stay here and work the rest of the afternoon and

knock it off as you do. Well, thanks everyone for getting onto the episode. Today. We are talking about stuff for year end. You've got to be looking at your business. We're doing it right now ourselves, Mark and I, on what we need to be doing. And we just want to share some tips and ideas on things to clean up. On the legal side, what you need to be thinking about tax wise, but also more big picture of what's going on in your business, not just the tax and legal. We got some comments on that.

Yes, of course.

The big picture. Of course, we could go without it. Can't help ourselves.

And you know, it's funny, people say, well, you're tax lawyer, so you can't give me advice on anything but tax or legal. But ironically, many of you that have called our office and start talking to Matt or I or any of our 12 attorneys or accountants or paralegals. Hey, you're a business owner. We see a thousand business owners before you and things they've done well and mistakes they've made. And so oftentimes we end up being a business therapist as well as your tax and legal therapist. So we've got tips, we got tips,

so, oh, yeah, it's gonna be it.

All right, well, which topic do you want to start with first? Matt and I've got an array here. So what do you think?

Well, I figured we'd get lawyer Matt out here for a little bit and then put them away and tell him to go away for the rest of the show because lawyer Matt's kind of boring.

All right, all right.

So let's have lawyer Matt come out for a moment because I want to give a couple legal tips. I think this is a good time on a couple legal things. To be thinking about for year end. So I'll throw out a legal tip first.

Okay, I'm going to go. My first topic is going to be strategic plan and review. I love the strap plan. It's something all of you should be looking at already for 2021. Now it's time to review it and see where we ended up. So. But I like starting with legal. Okay, so, okay, I can tag team with you. You can tag team with me, right?

Yeah, like the best WWF wrestler can tag team like Hulk Hogan. And Randy was the macho man. You know, like those two. Macho man, Randy Savage.

Cold stone. No, that's ice cream.

Stone cold Steve Austin.

All right, yeah, obviously I'm getting some ice cream later, so I was thinking of cold stone. Okay. Anyway, okay, so legal tips before legal tip.

Yeah, back to legal tip. And we say we can tag team this stuff. Legal tip. All right. I want you to be looking at the business entities you have. You need to close out and dissolve. A lot of you business owners have old entities laying around. Maybe you set up a dumb C corp back in the day, you transition and got rid of. Or there's a piece of real estate you sold out of an LLC you don't need anymore. It's a great time to close it down at year end. Close out the books on it if you haven't already. Get rid of ongoing state fees. We always have quite a bit of disillusions going on with clients just trying to get stuff shut down before year end. It's also a good time, on a related note, to transition.

Okay, before you go transition, let me indicate a couple of points if I could on this dissolution topic. First of all, why Matt said state fees. California is a classic example. You have that LLC one day into January, you're paying the state minimum fee next year. So let's kill it right now. And some other states have those kind of administrative or franchise tax type fees. So we want to get rid of them. Number two is tax returns. If you've got an llc, that's a two member LLC one day into January. Now you're doing a federal tax return next year. So let's let your accountant know that you're closing these down, which is another ancillary point, is that just don't disillusion these things. Dissolve these things in a vacuum. You want to say, okay, accountant, no, look what I did. Okay, lawyer, look what I did. Because we've had disasters where we start preparing our tax return next year. And the guy said, why dissolve that well, it might have been nice if you told us that. So, you know, let everybody know. Talk to your advisors. This means turning, shutting down insurance policies. When you dissolve something, there's collateral.

Yeah.

Benefits. Really?

Yeah.

What'd you say?

You said, well, I'll talk about transitioning. It's also a lot of. A lot of people are setting up new entities for the next year. So let's say you were a sole proprietorship this year. Maybe you had a DBA or something, or maybe you're just an llc, but you're like, oh, I'm an S corp next year, and you're transitioning your entity. So sometimes there's some cleanup in that as you're transitioning into a new entity or the common one. And we still get this, people setting up the Nevada Corporation and Nevada entity, and we're starting over and setting up in the new state to begin with. So those are also ones when you're transitioning out of that wrong structure into the new, correct one for the new year. A lot of times the new year is the perfect time to start up the new entity, get it going right. Close out the books and the old crappy structure you shouldn't have done in the first place.

Okay, now, I. There's a couple metaphors here I'm not sure if I can use. First, lipstick on a pig. Because Sarah Palin. Yeah. And then.

And then say, so whatever happened to her, by the way?

I don't know. She's.

She's just, like, off snowmobiling in Alaska.

She's in Russia. She's looking out for us.

Yeah, she's looking out. She's like, I can see Russia from my house.

My house. Okay. So, by the way, I went to Alaska. I didn't meet anyone with their accent. I mean, I loved it, you know, but. Okay, number two is the old Matt Sorensen quote. You cannot polish a turd.

Metaphors mean a lot here, although I think that was. They actually proved you can polish a turd on Mythbusters, but the phrase still works. All right.

Oh, my gosh. Now, one thing here. Why bring up those two metaphors? One, if you have an LLC that you're going to solve, and at the same token, you have an LLC you're going to set up, sometimes if there's not a tail or some problem with that LLC in the past that you want to put to rest, change the name. Sometimes you can just file articles of amendment, and you can keep the same llc, but just repurpose it. So I was thinking lipstick on A pig. Just dress it up, make it look new and fresh and turn the corner. So that can sometimes save you some money. Talk to some of our paralegals and call them up and go, hey, I'm going to dissolve this. Or I want to change the name. What's the fee? What could I do? And so sometimes you can save a lot of money there. The other thing is polishing a turd. If you've got an LLC that's just a train wreck, maybe there's no prior returns, maybe you haven't done minutes on it by the time you try to repurpose it. It's cheaper setting up a new one.

So yeah, especially if you're behind on your state fees or the classic one that is the turd you just don't want to polishes. You have the Nevada entity and you're in California or some other state. Just stop trying to stop to save that thing. I know you spent 5,000 bucks at some corporate headquarter BS place, but just stop. Get rid of it. Don't polish that turd. Just let it just, just bury it.

Bury that turd. Go find a little plastic bag dispenser and deal with it properly. A client yesterday that with an ill and he lives in Illinois and he was setting up a new entity and I said, did we set it up for you? What do you mean? It's a Delaware. And see, this is kind of the east coast problem attorneys out there love to set up entities in Delaware on the west coast. They're screwing around with Nevada. And I go, are you doing business in Delaware? No. Do you live in Delaware? No. Are you going public anytime soon? You got a really killer idea. No. Why'd you do Delaware? Well, that's where my trademark attorney told me to do it and they did it for me. I. And I said, well, what's done is done. And so we're going to register at foreign in Illinois for the new year. So some of these you, you may just end up keeping around. It's just easier. Sometimes you dissolve them. But I like Matt's point. In summary tip number one, look at your legal structure. Where does it need to be tidied up? This is a good time here to do it. Yep.

Cleanup time, baby ball cleaning, not spring cleaning.

December. Ooh, that's good.

There's year end cleaning.

There's a blog article in there somewhere.

Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, when you, like you move or something, there's like this kind of like you've got to kind of Thin out all the crap you've accumulated. This is like the great, the best time to do that. I know you're not physically moving, but we are moving into a new year of new fees, new tax returns, new opportunity to restructure. It's kind of that perfect time to just purge all the crap that you don't need anymore.

Get rid of it. Purging. That's good. Purge.

Purge.

Very powerful word.

Okay, word of the day.

Okay, topic number two at year end. Strategic plan. Now, Matt and I, every year, oh my gosh, I don't know how many years we've done this. Every January we do a podcast and we talk about setting up your strap plan for the year. What are your, what's your objectives for 2022? Well, really, let's get real. You should be thinking about 2022 right now, not in the middle of January. So this is a good time to pull out your strap plan. By the way, Matt and I will still do a podcast in January. Just have a way out. But pull out your strap plan now for all you stragglers. But pull out your strap plan and go. How did 2021 go? And are we going to make some major changes? Things didn't go well as planned. Maybe things went better than as planned. And you really want to look at and kind of retrospect what, what? Well, what did it. And this is where the SWOT analysis comes in. You know, what are my strengths, my weaknesses? After playing with this new list of objectives for 2021, what do I need to change? Oh, and you know what, Matt was cool. You know how Grant Cardone last week we had him on and he said his 12 year old daughter was on stage. I actually got to watch the YouTube video of his 10 year old. She was 10?

Yeah.

Unbelievable. I'm not kidding. I was 10 year old, freaking manhandling a stadium of like it had to be at least three or four thousand people. Anyway, she's on stage and she was so cute because she said next year is going to be the year of more learning, the year of more creativity, the year of this. And someone told me, you know what, 2022 is going to be my year of production. I've been kind of in this learning phase. Now it's time to put it to work. And so this is a good time of year during the holidays to kind of have that soul searching.

Yeah, I love that. You know, it's funny on this, this year of thing, I want to come back to that. But just a little side comment. 2021 was, we talked about this was the year of the great resignation. Everyone quitting their jobs, whatever. It's the year of the great formation. There was a 70% increase in new businesses formed in 2021. Over 2020, 70%, over 400,000amonth. Businesses are being established in the last year that is, it's like that used to be barely 300. I mean that's such a huge. Sorry, barely 200. That's been such a huge increase. So this last year we've seen a lot of people go out and start a business, try entrepreneurship, start freelancing, do investment activity, you know, in their, whether it's rentals or using their self directed retirement account. And so as we've seen this great formation, I think that's what's happening nationwide, which we love. And we've seen it in our office when all the busy work we have, we're so busy trying to help all of our clients right now, which we love. But find your own personal, you know, what is that year going to be for you?

Yeah, I love that. And you know, one thing on this Too is if 2021 didn't work out the way you thought, change your thought. Change your thought process about it. Go. You know what, here's what did go well with 2021. I really learned this experience. It wasn't great, but I learned a lot from it. And I'm never going to do that again or I'm going to modify my business. I hate it when they say businesses fail within, you know, three out of five fail within so many years or whatever the crap is. A good entrepreneur is flexible. They're pivoting, they're learning. And so don't beat yourself up. If 2021 wasn't perfect, just say, you know what, it was perfect for me, that I really learned a lot and turn it into a glass half full scenario as you plan next year.

Did you tear?

Did you tear up?

That was, I mean I felt it though, but not tears. I felt it.

Okay, all right.

That was touching.

I was trying to touch you. I mean this is okay.

Yeah, I know you did it. Well on the strategic plan, I think like I have mine here, the one for directed Ira Mark and I do ours in here for KQS lawyers and my personal ones in here I have a strategic plan personally.

Okay. For those on YouTube, Matt is holding up these cool little books and I'm going to Moleskine. Yes. I'm going to hold up mine. I think I've got mine right here. Well, anyway, I'm going to have to move my.

Okay, we'll go over what to put in your strategic plan in January. But for those of you that had one or maybe you just had some goals for last year, whatever you want to say, go back and look at what you have accomplished and what you still want to get done. This would be my challenge. We still have three or four weeks left this year. Go find the most important thing on that strategic plan you didn't get done, which is what I did with my team last week at Direct and we said there's some really important things here we're almost done with, but we haven't got there. Or we. Or we have really not addressed. We've got to focus on those and don't get overwhelmed. Just pick one thing. Maybe that's like, I'm going to tackle this and get on this for. Because it's important to get done for this year.

I like that. I'm thinking, I mean, I've got our. I'm doing the same thing and I'm thinking of what's a good one to share. I guess from the law firm perspective, we're from our. I guess I'm sharing my soul here is. It's closing up files. You know, I'm like, this has been sitting on the corner of my desk for freaking two months or three months. Some of you listening, know who you are and you're like, damn it, Kohler, get it done. But you know that, that this is a good time of year to, to feel like, okay, I need some closure. So whatever your business is, maybe you're wrapping up some inventory, you're finishing up some restructuring of your storage unit, or you're getting stuff off your desk that's been sitting there for six months. It is so liberating to take a night. You know you don't want to do it. Go get a bag of popcorn, put on a movie you've seen a thousand times and get your favorite drink and then just sit down and just plow through this stuff and oh my gosh, you'll feel so much better the next day. You're going to start January off a little better.

Yeah. Well, one thing I just want to say on a strategic plan, too, is you're going to have a lot of things that carry over into next year. Like there's an ongoing thing, like one piece of Mark and I strategic plan in all aspects of all of our businesses. Is this podcast okay? I mean, we have an objective to provide the best tax, legal, small business entrepreneurship, self directed Content, period. That's. That's an objective of ours that we really strive for. That's part of our strategic plan. But then we have a strategy on how we do it. We have execution points on how we pull it off. The fact that Mark and I get time to sit down once a week to do this and find the time and protect that time religiously, is like a commitment to that. And so you're going to have these big objectives in your strategic planning, your business. But you may start looking back and say, how I planned the strategy on achieving that objective wasn't great, or the execution points, the schedule, or the way that I. The person that is involved in that on my team or me or whoever it is, and getting that done is not the right one. So you may keep the same objectives, but look at your strategy and execution on those things and look back at what you did this year. Reflect, be critical of yourself. And why didn't I hit that objective? Maybe this is a good time to start thinking about what you're going to adjust for next year in your strategic plan.

You know, I love that. And last night, it's funny, it was in the evening, I had a phone call with a realtor who's a family member. I'll leave it at that. And she was stressed out. She was like, I've been trying to do video. I've been trying to do all this marketing, and it's just killing me. I just feel this pressure. But meanwhile, the business is going pretty well. And I said, you know what? Just set it aside. I mean, think everybody. What's created the most pressure in your life this year in your business? We're not going to be your marriage and family therapist today. But what's created the most pressure in your business? Okay. Is that serving you? Is that, like, something you should keep doing? If it is, figure out how to do it with less stress. But if it's just there and it's not really critical to the business operation, but it's making life miserable, set it aside for a month or so. And that's what I said to this client. I was like, just set it aside for a month. Come back to it. You're still busy, you're still doing well, you're still learning. Just sometimes that could be one of the best things, is not to do more, but to do less.

Yeah, I like that.

Wow.

Sometimes that's the answer. Don't do more, do less.

I'm done for today. I'll see you guys later.

That's it for me.

I'M out here. Wow. Where did that come from? I just had a drink of a rock star. That's why, you know,

that is actually, I think, very wise. So. But, uh, this is a time to recalibrate. But on that point on the strategic plan, I think one other thing you need to be thinking about right now is you need to have good data. So as you're looking back at this year, obviously you want me tighten up your finances and your bookkeeping, but also, what data do you have to. To really analyze your objectives in your strategic plan? Are you tracking that? Let's go back to our podcast for a second. We track how many people listen to this thing. We track when people come up.

Yeah.

Not in like a creepy way where we're like on your phone or anything, but just like, we get the stats from like all the podcasts, you know, Spotify, itunes, all that we get. We get the stats.

We added Spotify and about three more listeners. I mean, I was really. It was a big deal, big day.

And we know who you are. No, mom, dad.

Yeah, no, but data, data. You can't make good decisions without data.

Yeah, so. So start pulling that data. But what I think too, and this is what I've started doing because I like to kind of rough draft it right now. You know, I'm starting to rough draft out some of my stuff for next year of what I want to. Because I want to be ready. I want to be crisp in January to get the plans going. Be ready, but also let it kind of marinate in my brain for a few weeks.

Nice. Good point.

We got to let it. You got to marinate and then, then you've got to let it simmer. You know, you don't just like, you don't just throw it on the grill on the Barbie and like pull it right off and eat it, you know?

Yeah, no, you got to let it settle. Yeah, settle. Let it rest. That was something I learned Thanksgiving with the turkey. You know, it continues to cook for half an hour after you pull it out of the oven.

Oh.

So if you pull the turkey out when you're like, oh, it's done. 30 minutes later it's dry. And so I had some compliments this year on my turkey. I just want to say at the dinner table, they're like, this is the most moist turkey I've ever had. Well, maybe that half a pound of butter I slather on top of.

It was like a 30 minute rule. Pull it out 30 minutes before it's done. You know, that would have helped Clark Griswold that, that would have helped.

He didn't know that, you know, it was, it was, it was a tragedy. Now on data, this is a good transition for topic number three, taxes. I'm holding a webinar next week, Wednesday evening. It's my year end, hottest tax tips before year end. I think I have almost 30 now and it's in a slideshow. I constantly update it and tidy it up for this, this big webinar. If you'd like to participate, you can get to markjkohler.com I think it's like 25 bucks for it. Just it'll be at least be an hour and a half so you can tune in, it'll be recorded. But get over to markjkohler.com if you want to. For any accounting or legal professionals out there, this is a good one to go. What's on Mark's list? You know what's on my list and compare if I'm missing something, I'd love a little email or a tip. But anyway, so we're going to go into that in detail in the webinar next week. I think we'll do it on a podcast here in the next 10 days as well. But you can't figure out I met with a client a week ago. I said, okay, you got to pay your kids. And I'm like, well, we've been paying them. I said, how much? Well, I don't know out of which entity. I don't know. And so you have to do some reports, get some data because if you're going to run some money and funnel here or pay this or pay that, you got to know where you're at in your book. So, yeah, gather data.

Okay. Yeah, a couple quick tips just on, I kind of want to hit a couple of just finance tips actually that came up. I just was thinking about, you know, I know you'll hit some, some tax strategies, but just I'm just thinking about retirement accounts and a lot of what our clients are doing here every day at Directed IRA and what our law firm clients are seeking advice on is Roth conversions. Should I be converting right now? Oh, you know, it's if you want a conversion in the tax year 2021, you got to do it by December 31st. Now remember, with the new tax bill, there are, if it passes in the Senate, Roth conversions are going to get closed out for high income people. But that's not for that. That, that's not for like 10 years down the road. So don't Stress about it for tax, the pending tax bill. But just for you, right now, in 2021, you want to do a Roth conversion, just you're going to have to get it done by December 31st. And those clients that have like existing assets that you own that you don't want to sell that are not publicly traded stock, let's say it's crypto or real estate or something in your ira, those are pretty tricky to pull off. You got to go get a valuation of that stuff. So start preparing now. On the retirement side, if you're converting over to Roth, which many of our clients love Roth, many of you take the steps to get over there, this is the time.

Let me ask you that, Matt, because I just had a call with a client yesterday and I encouraged him. If you've got the tax losses, he had some carry forward losses from another venture and I said this would be a good time to do a Roth conversion and wipe kind of offset those. And so it worked. But at the same token I told him who knows what this new bill is going to look like because it's sausage. We're not going to see it until it's finally out on the grill. It's right now, it's back in the kitchen. And so continue with our foodie podcast. So, so tell us everybody what you think. I mean, and no one send us a letter or a lawsuit if Matt's wrong here. But what are we seeing on the Senate bill, by the way? Everybody needs to know. All the self directed IRA provisions that were pretty crappy gone. Matt and his team did a great job lobbying on those. I helped as much as I could, but kudos to Matt on that. But we still have this Roth conversion kind of mega Roth problem Democrats are still pissed about. So what do you think's going to pass and do you think it will before year end? Is it going to be F? Should people convert to Roth in anticipation of never being able to do it again?

Yeah, well, there's some lobbyists and industry groups. I'm part of that do a daily call. So like today we had a call this morning. So right now there's so much going on in the Senate, it's not really a high priority. You know, there's a lot of victory lapse over the infrastructure bill, but the Senate's still moving forward on it. But they've got other stuff in their pipeline, so. And there's some technical things with part the Senate parliamentarian can strip out things that aren't budget related in the bill because this is all budget reconciliation bill. So if any provision in the bill doesn't have to do with the budget or funding taxes, they can kick it out. And so there's a lot of stuff getting caught up in it like immigration and some of the things that's been in the news. So there's some kind of legal problems or so with the bill, but it doesn't seem like it's a high priority right now, which is good for us, right? I mean, great. No bill. The nice thing is even if this bill from the House does go through, a lot of the provisions in there don't go into effect for a while on the Roth conversions and all the self directed stuff's out. So the self directed clients, you're not going to be affected by this unless you got a 10 million account or more. So that's good news. And we did a full update on it on the Directed IRA podcast last week. So go check that out if you want kind of a more in depth dive on the bill.

Yeah. So on your, your podcast portal, whatever you're using, just type in the word Directed Ira. You'll see mine and Matt's faces pop up again. And that's our sister podcast every week just on self directed issues. Well, okay, so you want to talk

about products and services?

Yeah, I do. I love it. And this is kind of where also the SWOT analysis comes in because you're, you're trying to set up this scenario where you can protect yourself with all these supply chain problems. I mean, just, you kind of want that force field around you. You kind of want like, okay, what can I do to protect myself from more market uncertainty? It's really hard.

Yeah. So I think right now, and this is something we're doing, and again I have those three areas. I'm thinking of my own strategic plan. Matt Sorenson, personally, you know, the law firm Directed ira and the easiest way for me to talk about is what we're actually freaking doing ourselves.

So sorry.

So, but I think when you're looking at your products and services, I think you want to look at it from a couple different lenses. One is what are my potential customers and my existing customers want? Like, like what do they need? What's new? Like, like for a lot of us, it's crypto. You know, we, we've had. The crypto has been very new the last few years. What resources those customers need, what, what educational content do they need? What advice do they need? What services do they need? What products do they need?

Okay.

And that's what We've, it's been a big piece of our firm and directed IRA this last year and getting that content out me and learning a lot of that stuff on my personal side, so. And there's going to be a lot of that coming out for next year.

So.

But also look at what resources you have. Like, what are you good at? You're gonna have to put in some resources. Like, let's go back to crypto. You know, it takes some getting up to speed on. Like, you gotta know what the heck you're doing. Do you need to add people to your team? Whether this is an employee or a contractor or some expertise you need to get in your business to, to add something new in or to add, you know, maybe you gotta make a change with something you already have. I don't know. But look at the resources you have to execute on these things.

And this is where I think the data comes into play. And I'm going to bring up another term here that is so important in your strap plan. And it's called KPIs Key Performance Indicators. Now if you've never heard that term before, write it down. KPI Key Performance Indicators. And what's interesting, Liddell Air, our partner in the accounting firm, he serves on a board, a billion dollar board of directors, which is pretty cool. I always ask, what'd you do? You know, what are you guys doing at these part? What do you talk about? And he goes, mark, you'd be surprised at how simple the meetings are in these massive organizations because we really just talk about two or three key performance indicators. And so if you're making decisions about is this product line profitable? Is this service really worth my time? Should I be charging more here? What is my offering going to be in January? Is it simple? Is it convoluted? Is it profitable? Data is going to play a big role in that. And so throughout the year, you want to be looking at the performance of these indicators. How many site website visits do you have? How many phone calls did you make? How many of this did you sell? How much did you spend in labor? So use that data to look at decisions you're making with your services and products. Just don't say, oh, I don't like this service. No one likes it. Come to find out, it could be your most profitable thing and you don't even know it.

Yeah, yeah. And I think these key performance indicators funny because I have like an article on my desk on, you know, building better key performance indicators and.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Cool. That's awesome.

I didn't even know, always learning over here. But a couple points I thought were interesting. This article was start by building a system of measurement is what they said. So you need to have a system that measures what's happening in your business. If you want to look at it and analyze it, what are the start figuring out how to measure certain things and you want to measure the things that drive success in your business. What drives success in my business, whether it's sales, whether it's profitability, which is not just sales, there's, you know, expenses and things in that people, customer satisfaction, all these different facets. Everybody's like, this could be on. You could look at the web in terms of like, there's an easy key performance indicators. Get a Google Analytics account, you know, for your business. If you don't have one, like, there's a lot of key performance indicators you're going to learn just right there and getting Google Analytics.

I love remember when Tony Bass came on our show. He's been on a couple times. He's a landscape consultant, so a landscape business consultant. So if you mow lawns or put up Christmas lights or do sprinklers, you're going to go to conferences to learn how to be a better landscape maintenance and yada yada. Well, Tony Bass teaches classes on this and has books and he's come on our show and what was interesting with him that really brought this whatever I think of KPIs, I have to be honest, I think of Tony Bass because he goes, I can go into a landscaping business and with three or four numbers, I can tell you if they're profitable or not. And I go, really? Just three numbers? And he goes, yep. And he goes, one of the ones that was, I always will remember, is the revenue per hour worked by your employees. So I'll come in and say, what's your revenue from mowing lawns? Whatever it is, your core services and total hours worked. Because they're like, well, hey, this is what I paid in payroll. Because I don't care what you paid in payroll. I want to know how many hours you had workers, you know, 40 hours a week times how many employees, blah, blah, blah. And then he divides those and he can say, here's your revenue per hour worked with your employees. And he goes, if it's not over this amount, I know they're struggling. And so he teaches concepts of when one landscaper is moving from one house job to another. He goes, we will literally plan their route to save just a half an hour in the day because they got to go out of the way to go get their coffee or they got to go out of the way to get their soda, but then they're going to go here and they're backtracking all over town. And he goes, you'd be shocked how many times landscapers just waste time driving and setting up. And he goes, we'll hang gear on the side of the trailers to save 15 minutes setting up. And he goes, all those little things. If you can just save an hour a day of one of your employees by being more efficient driving around your landscaping trailer, he goes, that's revenue to the bottom line. You just don't know it. And I was like, oh, my gosh. And it's just fascinating.

I love that a couple other ones that are good ones to think of. A lot of businesses do is their customer lifetime value. Try to determine when you get a customer, what is the lifetime value of that customer? Are they a. Is this a recurring customer type thing you have? Is it a product you continue to sell them, if they like it, you know, or the services you have? And also, what's your customer acquisition cost if you're spending money on marketing or putting time into marketing? Okay, like a lot of times, marketing, like, we don't spend money on marketing, but we put time into marketing and that costs a different way on marketing.

Yes, we do.

I mean, not like, like the typical verm, you know, it's like about like buying ads or things like that, you know.

Yes, that's.

That. That's what I mean. So, you know, there's like paying for commercials or ads or whatever or billboard.

I once got a billboard, people.

Yeah, we did have one billboard. Yeah, we did. I don't think it really worked that well.

But it didn't.

So.

But everybody does it. So you think, well, it must work.

Yeah, clearly. Yeah, so, but so think of your lifetime value of the customer and then your customer acquisition cost. Try to understand that because then, you know, like, all right, what's the ratio there? If I like have, you know, if I spend a dollar, but I get a customer, and that lifetime value of them, not just their first transaction with you, but their lifetime value with you is 10, 10 to 1. That's an amazing business right there. So think of your customer acquisition costs and the lifetime value of the customer. Those are good KPIs to track, too.

Okay, I just have one more point. And Matt, I'll let you finish with any point or thought or suggestion. Is that as we're talking about products and services, this is a really good time to look at what is your offering going to be next year. And it can be exhilarating, it can be exciting. You can say, okay, this is our array of services. I have five or six services or five or six products. Some of you may have 50 and 60, I don't know. But look at them and then hopefully you're making decisions on which ones really make you money or not. But it's always good to be out there if you're. What do they say? If you're not moving forward, you're moving backward. And so Matt and I every year want to try a new offering of some sort of, what are we going to do this year that's a little different? Is there a new service that's a certain price? Is there. What are the clients really wanting, but we're not providing? And if you're not creating new revenue sources, you're devolving in some ways. So think of something new. I challenge all of you. Think of one new thing I could sell next year that I think my, my customers would buy. Now, if you're going to school, you hear this. Horizontal integration or vertical. Or if you're watching YouTube, I just screwed that up. Horizontal, that's left to right or vertical. So for example, if you're horizontally integrating, you may say, well, if we're providing landscaping, why aren't we also selling hoses and fertile. And fertilizer? But just like home furniture, let's just think of that like yard furniture. If I'm a landscaper, why am I not selling something that kind of goes along with it? I'm in front of these people, I got the trust. Why can't I sell them something else? And it could be a revenue stream that you could fall into that could just be life changing. So be thinking outside of the box. That's my take.

Okay, love that. I was just going to give this little Jeff Bezos quote because I saw this, this is a little clip that I saw of his on Instagram. He talks about how customer success is key. He says, he says if you can obsess about over the customer, customer experience, selection, ease of use, good prices, give them information to make decisions. He says, then you're going to have a great customer service. You're going to have a great customer experience. And so I like that about obsessing over the customer, giving them information. What information do they need to?

List those again. List those again. So he said if you could do these things for your customers.

Yeah, see scrolling back through here because it's on the video, you know.

Okay, sorry.

So he says service, obviously. B says, all right, here we go. Focus obsessively on customer experience. Says selection, ease of use, pricing. That's it. Simple. If you think of Amazon, I mean, you know, it's incredible how much stuff they sell on Amazon. But what is it? Easy to use. Right. Amazing selection, good prices. Isn't that why people use Amazon?

Yes.

And think of your business. Every business out there has a competitor. I mean, you're not. No, nobody's really selling something unique. I mean, there's very few businesses out there have something very unique. You know, now you may say, well, but I'm so special and I do this and that. Well, okay, are you articulating that? Maybe. But like, you got to give those customers that information about what you provide. Make this. Make the different things that you offer easy to select.

I like it. On that easy part, I've got to say this, I just. It boggles my mind. How many young entrepreneurs. Well, no, it's old ones too. But how many entrepreneurs don't make it easy for a client to pay attention? If you're in business, you better have tied to your business account. Venmo, PayPal, Apple Pay.

I had someone linked on your website. Yeah.

And someone the other day to say, well, I'll just send you a bill and you can write a check. I'm like, a check? What's a check? Checks. Can I just pay you right now on my phone? Well, I just don't, you know, and they're always like, well, I don't want the 1%, the year, the two. Are you kidding me? You're going to wait 30 days for me to hopefully write you a check that requires you to go down, make a deposit because you don't want to pay 1% or 2% to just use Apple way. Really? That. That's good use of your time and money. Oh, my hell. So just. I like that ease of use is think of how can this next year, can I make it easier for my people to pay me? And so many businesses don't do that.

Yep. Well, all right. Well, thanks everybody for being here for another amazing episode. The Main Street Business podcast. Hoping the rest of your year is merry and bright. You know, happy holidays, of course, Merry Christmas. But also, like I said earlier, take some time here, start getting some thoughts down. Start. Let this stuff simmer because we're going to come back in January and we're talking about strategic planning. We want you to have a little inventory and some thought, put into it. Some of these ideas percolating maybe so we can come out ready to go and make some awesome strategic plans for

2022 and talk about it at your board meeting. Have your year in board meeting, bring these things up, bounce them off your family. And perfect. Love that bounce. It's a tax write off, people. You know that. We've covered that so many times. Well, thank you, Matt, for that takeout. We'll see everybody next week. Happy holidays.

Till then, Sa.