$200,000 Business GAMBLE... BIG PAYOFF!

And I know with everything going on with the family, I know this is a brutal time to talk.

Lord knew this stuff would happen. And we're just taking it one day at a time. He's at the hospital.

Oh, my. I'm sorry, man.

Make a decision. Speed is of the essence.

You get a cup of black coffee and you go to work.

60% of businesses will fail in their first three years. I'm Mike Andes and I'm on a mission to fix this on this season of business boot camp.

Oh, hey. Today is Thursday. We're heading from Inman down to Greenville. It's like a half hour drive. It's certainly worth it. These customers are fantastic. They have us do services around this time of year every year because of the leaves that they have. So we'll do that. And we've got some extra helpers with us today. We've got Judah, who will hopefully be doing some surface cleaning, and Micah, who will be running the drone today. So I'm excited for all this.

Had the crew with me today. Claire on camera, Micah on drone, and Judah on surface.

Cleaner.

Like it.

So now that we've worked up and outside, you might see it up there, we're going to one of our favorite spots. Denny.

This will be the first year that I can operate full time with no strings attached. I say that, but we are expecting a baby in December 23, Lord willing. You know, I think we can do.

North of 200,000 the next and then the Facebook groups. Any sort of traction on that nextdoor?

I only posted today. Nothing back from that yet, but it did go to 13 local groups, Facebook though. My wife and I posted two days ago and got a ton of interest back, including two quotes that I did this morning.

When did you post on those Facebook groups?

That was Wednesday night.

Oh, really? So there's basically in one day we got the two then.

Yeah.

Did you have a picture in there? What was kind of the theme of the post?

Oh, cool.

So in here, you more or less introducing yourself and then I would assume maybe even if it was like a week from now, you could post more of a like actually putting your number in there or like what services you offer, for example, you know, that's great. Good traction, I would say if you had a way for them just to click on a phone number or a way for them to just how to contact you, I think you'd get more, even more leads. So for now, because you've already done that post, you can just go in the comment section of each of those posts. Though and put your name, your business name and phone number, even just those two things alone will get you more then it comes across really authentic too because you didn't even put it in the main part of the post. But you're going forward now that you kind of introduce yourself in those platforms and those groups. You could literally do the before and after picture with just a few lines of the story, right? So hey, my name's Jim. I started the business so years ago if you guys ever need any help, let me know. Here's a property we just did over on XYZ street in your local market where they would know that's the type of thing that you can consistently do. Because if you're doing say five or six jobs a week, you could literally just take one of those that you're like, oh man, this is a great before and after picture. Already know it's going to look awesome. That's the type of thing that you can consistently keep posting and still get that engagement and just ask for the sale at the end. And it doesn't have to be sales age. You can be like, hey, if you ever need any of these services, give me a call. I'm super happy that Jim was finally able to get on Nextdoor as well as local Facebook groups to be able to share his story and ask for more work in his local community. This is an amazing way to get just a couple customers a day. If you're needing a million dollar business, probably not super scalable. However, if you need one job, two jobs a day like he does to get your business off the ground, get connected with your local community and don't be super promotional. Talk about your story. Give them a reason to know you as a human being instead of just another corporation. When you're really, really small, everyone tries to look really big and look fancy and have a fancy website, but you're not that. Be authentic to you, tell your story, be genuinely you. Because if you are, that's what people are going to buy. And when you're smaller, you don't need hundreds of leads, you just need enough to fill your schedule at the beginning and that's what you should focus on if you're small.

So in terms of the door hanger, are we at a standstill on that? Like do we need to push that through or is it just a matter of waiting for his designing to get done or what?

It's me and I can pull that up too. Mike.

Yep, that's perfect. And then what about the backside? Can you flip that Around. Oh, that's cool. Let's go. And is there a reason why you're doing the winter side of things is just because that will be for the upcoming season?

I'm just thinking because we're basically in winter mode up here. These are your best winter values to go for right now.

Yeah. Like it just comes down to how often you're gonna put them out. Right. Because if you're gonna do em all the time, I would definitely recommend doing a winter and then more of a spring or summer one. But it's really just a matter of like if you're gonna order 10,000 of them, you know you'd want it more where you can just use them any time of the year. I really like the, the idea of having your face holding up the sign that' Love it. My, my thing is like, hey, if we're just going to add one more service and then basically we can use it year round, then we can order a bunch more of these and just use them all the time. But I really like, like it overall. What are we waiting on? You said you were kind of blocking it from going forward. What is exactly are we waiting on?

Sometimes I get too detailed and like this, you know, I want to make it winter, you know, when it doesn't need to be winter only. So it's me.

Then we should just come up exactly what the design is going to be, tell them the changes needed and then as soon as those come back you just order them. Like honestly if you would have ordered those, I've been fine. Great. Let's go. Ult thinking about things too much is going to be what your, your, your nemesis is. You're just overthinking things. At this size of your business. It's simply a matter of execution and more importantly just execution against anything. Like if you would have printed those out and you said, and I'm like, ah, the winter thing. Or we could just add one more. Who cares? Like just, just do something. Right. Part of it. The reason it's that way is when you are as dependent on the business to provide, you don't want to make any mistakes, but you have to realize that any progress towards the goal is better than no progress at all. And so if you were to print it off and there was four mistakes on there, we misspelled something, whatever, it doesn't matter because it was progress towards the goal versus doing nothing. And so a lot of these things are things that you can do very quickly. Things like the Facebook thing, you an hour or two next door we got that done right. These are. These are small things that only take a small amount of our time, but yet we take weeks or months sometimes to figure these things out when it could just be done if we just made a decision. Just get started, like I would recommend. On that front part, list your services, but tell your story the same way that people engage with you on Facebook and social media, they will engage as a door hanger with your story far more than you know. Here's our services.

That's what I need to hear.

For now, though, Jim really needs to focus on making decisions and doing them quickly. A design like that door hanger should only be something you do in an hour, maybe two hours. Don't get designers involved and take weeks and back and forth and different ideas and different seasons. Make a decision. Speed is of the essence. Progress towards the goal is far more important than perfection. Focus on the quantity of decisions you're making, because the quality decisions is completely subjective, and you'll never know the outcome until it's actually executed against. All right, so we need this done. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to tell Monday, I need you to have told the designer what needs to be changed and then get that pumped through. If he can't do it, I want you to tell Zach, and we'll do it if we have to, but we need to make sure it gets done. So that way, next week, we're actually getting the door hangers here, and we're actually starting to produce, put them out. You know, putting. Putting deadlines might be a helpful thing for you on things like this that, you know, can get done quickly. And you're just, like, overthinking things. If, you know you could get something done in an hour or two hours, and the only thing preventing you from making that happen is a decision. Flip a coin. Like, flip a coin. You've got to make the decision. Like, getting it perfect. It just, at this size of business, does not matter.

Hey, it's coffee weather this morning. I don't even think of iced coffee when I say coffee, because, you know, when you get up and you're getting ready to go to work, you get a cup of black coffee and you go to work.

It's Monday morning, it's about 6:45, and we're heading down to see Jerry at Panera as we try and finalize the design for the door hanger. Hopefully we can get that done today. Ordered in our mailbox by the end of the week.

Okay, time for marketing.

Monday.

We are like 99% there on the door hanger design. Jerry is, you know, fast and furious, making the final edits as we speak. I hope Claire and I can sit down and get those ordered tonight. Lord willing, get them in by the.

End of the week.

Hey, we're in the kitchen today and today's entree.

I'm just kidding.

So today Sarah woke up and feeling contractions for the baby. But she knows when things are getting close based on how close those contractions are. So I canceled today's two jobs. Midwife's on call. You know, things get exciting tonight, then that'll be great and we'll just go from there.

I guess I gotta refer to you as dad now. Dad. Dad. 10.0.

Go.

Let's go.

Did everything go smoothly?

No, but that's okay. The Lord knew this stuff would happen and we're just taking it one day at a time.

Oh, my. I'm sorry, man.

That's okay. I appreciate it.

Hey.

So on the serious side of things, two days ago our son was born. And we're thankful that he was born. So glad to have little Jed in the family. But he's at the hospital, unfortunately. He's in the NICU and.

He'S having trouble with his lungs. So they've had to, like, you know, just try and stabilize him and give him some time.

His.

Hopefully he'll be able to develop more and be able to.

Function the way he's supposed to on his own after that time, after at least a few days of trying to stabilize him.

So we're back out at it today when we did one on Tuesday, but there was two others that were further away that I canceled. And Wednesdays was no good, of course, so I canceled that.

Let me go ahead and show you one thing that hopefully is positive.

Oh, yeah.

So this is the site.

That's awesome.

We're not done yet.

That looks great.

I was happy with it.

So it turned out really good. So they took what you had kind of mentioned in some of the requests in terms of design. So you didn't want to really have like a lot of the links or the kind of other parts of it. So we made it more where it was more design and picture based. So we have a little bit more work to do. Once you get. We get some before and after pictures. We want to do sliders where it kind of. You slide it across. It changes before and afters. So got some reviews in here. It's an automatic thing that will connect to your Google review. So you're 58 in there. So, yeah, it's coming along.

It's great. Thank you, Mike.

So I know you. I know you're working hard on the. The door hanger things, and I know with everything going on with the family, I know this is a brutal time to talk, but I see it's in front of you there, so I'd love to see it.

Yep, they came out good. From our buddy Jerry.

Let's go. I love it. Very cool. And then are those already got to you in terms of printed and ready to distribute or just the Design for now?

1,000 of these were delivered a day ahead of schedule from vistaprint.

Let's go.

So I have them. And as soon as I have a block of time, you know, I can start with the best neighborhoods or past customers. Five rounds, you know, you tell me.

No, it's good. Yeah. I think obviously, as we do the actual customers, we want to do the five rounds because those are the, you know, lowest hanging fruit. But if there's ever a day where they're just, you know, there's not work or there's only half a day's worth of work, definitely knock down a neighborhood. I think if you did 100 of those, you're going to get one or two jobs from it, in my opinion. Taking the time to already pre qualify them with the price. So when they call you, this is not a matter of like, I need to do an estimate. It's like, what day of the week do you want to be on the schedule? So I think it'll be really good how to go this week in terms of just getting the job on the schedule. I know last weekend we focused on doing some of the Facebook and posting on nextdoor things like that. What was kind of the result from that?

We had six jobs scheduled for this week. Had to reschedule some of those.

Of course, going forward. I know with everything with the family and everything like that, it's been. It's been a little rough this past week. But going forward, what's sort of your thoughts on. Obviously, the website will help, especially going next spring as it gets some more traction from an SEO perspective. We want to do a few things in terms of getting the service pages on there. So just from an SEO standpoint, there is new again, Home, Wash, slash, you know, the different services that you offer. Just because those will rank well. We want to improve some of those things. So I want to. I would really like to see next week how things roll with the door hangers. I think it's going to Be really beneficial. I know that's going to take a little time just with the family and things after today's big, big day. But I do believe that between the social media side, the website, and the door hangers, I just don't see why in a couple months we should not be able to consistently be bringing in a couple jobs a day. And so do please stay in touch with me. I know it's the end of the bootcamp, but we've kind of been slowed down by several things throughout the bootcamp, and I want to touch base with you, if possible, in a couple months and just check in and just make sure that those three things are really firing in all cylinders. And if we need to tweak them at all or adjust them, we can. But I think those are the things that I'm really leaning on in terms of just bringing in the new leads. And I think you kind of got a taste of it with the social media side and people's liking and commenting, et cetera. That consistency and you asking for the sale each time, seeing the before and afters alongside the website ranking well, like, I just don't see any reason why we can't get two jobs a day.

Yeah. Right. I'm with you.

Awesome. Well, I'll definitely be keeping the family in prayer and in our thoughts and hope that everyone, everyone is safe and makes it through. Okay.

We really appreciate you having us on.

Thanks a lot. To be honest, I just didn't really feel right pushing or prodding a whole lot on the call. Obviously, it's just devastating that his wife is trying to give birth right now, and potentially there's some complications and things, and I don't feel it's the right thing to be talking about business and driving hard and pushing somebody when they're going through that. So I hope I can check in with Jim next week and we can see a lot of progress with the door hangers, the website, and the social media sites. Between those three things, I truly believe he can double, if not triple, his business next year. In fact, I literally bet that if he does not do $200,000 annual revenue next year, in 2023, I'm gonna give him all his money back from the website because I truly believe just the website alone is going to bring in a lot of new customers. For Jim, that's one part. The second part is doing door hangers on the customers, neighbors that he works on every single day. Just do the five houses, people next door, and the three people across the street. You're Going to get new customers that way. And he's literally putting the price called instant quotes, really put the price on the door hanger for the customer. So there's not price objection. You don't have to give them an estimate. They're calling to literally get you them on the schedule. The third thing is going to be social media, using Facebook groups next door, local communities online that are looking for people that are in their local neighborhood to be able to service their property. It's going to be an absolute goldmine for him. And I truly believe just that one thing alone will keep him busy by himself. I believe in 2023 Jim will be actually hiring someone when we check in with him next.

So you know, it's one thing to have a vision and bring people on that appreciate that vision as well. But the vision is really to be a blessing to other families by being able to hire men and women for like, you know, performance based pay and offer benefits down the road that can be a blessing to them and their family. Like my wife and I have had nine children based off the benefits we had in the job God had me in before this. So to turn that around and just let God use me or us to be a blessing to others, man, I think that's so fulfilling.

I wish Jim all the best. I hope that his wife and his newborn are safe and healthy in the weeks to come.

Discovering self washing like that's it, that's how you do it.

I just take it one day at a time. I really do. I really feel like one day is its own.

Period of time and I need to be ready for what comes one day at a time. Yeah.

We'Re gonna head home and.

Check in with everybody. We're gonna head home and check in with everybody and then Sarah and I be able to go up to the hospital and see Jed tonight and we'll just take it one day at a time. That's all we can do.