Depressed When Your Business is Cash Poor?? (Why Most Give Up NOW!)
A franchisee feels empty despite making money. Mike Andes explains the mistake: treating cash as the goal instead of fuel toward a real destination. Most people quit in years two or three when cash dips, before they reach what actually matters to them.
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Hey, everyone. Today is a special clip from a Mike Minutes mastermind that I have with our franchisees every single morning during the week. And we actually talk about success, how to get there, and the different routes you can take and why so many people don't ever actually achieve the goals they have. So it's gonna be really interesting. I think it's really important for all business owners, especially if you're just getting started your first few years of business. I think it's a really key piece of content I want you to watch. Good morning, guest nation. Hope you're all doing fantastic. I find myself struggling with the feeling that I'm not doing anything of meaning I'm. I feel like all I am doing is working to the status of making more money, which I don't think is bad, but I feel like this is all I am working towards. While I have goals, I feel kind of empty. I usually have a really high high this time of month when I invoice, but by the end of the month, I feel depressed or unsatisfied. Can you maybe give some advice or pointers maybe on how to feel less empty about what we do? We all do as business owners? I typically feel this way the most this time of year when it is very hot and work hits kind of a lull. But for whatever reason, this year, it feels like it hasn't gone away. So let me be honest and say it's not going to go away. Whenever you have a mission or a goal, the tools and techniques and the route you choose to get to that goal is always going to be in question. There is no roadmap. There is no GPS to reaching your goals, and there's a hundred ways to be successful. And so it'd be like if you were like, hey, you're in Mexico, and you're like, hey, get to Canada. Like, there's several ways you can go, and there's many different routes that you can take. And so what happens because success is that way is we choose a path. I'm gonna start a lawn care business. I'm gonna join Augusta. I'm gonna stop my other job, whatever it might be. I'm gonna hire employee. I'm gonna grow my business. And because there's so many routes to success, we always start to question and wonder what would have happened if we would have chosen another path and what would have happened if we didn't chase the money? Could I have been successful and achieved work, life balance or what I want with my family or personal relationships or health without having to do this business thing. And so what is important is defining what success looks like for you and then realizing that you're just on one of many paths to that location. There are many ways to be successful, many ways to make money. And if money isn't a real massive motivator for you, the goal, the dream, the ambition needs to be much greater than that. And then you've just realized that money is the fuel to get to the goal. If you're going from Mexico to Canada, you're going to need fuel. Money is that you got to have it, you can't run out of it, and you've got to have a lot of it. And so just realize that if making money is not going to be enough of a motivator for you to get up when you don't want to and to do things that you don't, that are not comfortable, you're going to have to keep the North Star of Canada or whatever you're moving towards that success in your mind and then not judge yourself based on the path you've taken. There's a hundred ways to get there. And that's why most people will quit, quit their business usually in the second and third year. Because it's been a year, two years, three years, like, man, I'm not making money anymore. I'm not making enough money. Like I'm running out of cash. And it's hard, it's difficult. They get disillusioned by the fact that the five to 10 years that they is required to get to Canada to get to their successful position. It's very disillusioned. It's very hard when you're halfway through that goal and, and you're running out of fuel cash. And that's why you feel better when you've done invoicing, is cause you just tapped up on fuel, you just got more cash in the bank. Let's go, we can get to this. I'm gonna become successful cause I got fuel. That's what you'll feel better when you invoice at the end of the month. You have the cash, you have the fuel, and now your goals seem more obtainable. Then what happens is you get disillusioned by two things. One, other routes of getting to that success. And then secondarily, the definition of success and the destination that you're traveling to is not clearly defined. And so just getting more money, that is getting more gas in the tank, is not enough for you to wake up every single day and do things, hard things. It's not because it'd be like me saying, well, I'm traveling and I'm just getting more and more fuel. I'm fueling up, I'm getting a bigger and bigger gas tank. Great. Why? If you're wanting to make more money, you've got to figure out why are you making more money. What's the goal? Where are you trying to travel to? If I'm getting from Mexico to Canada. Fuel, very important. If you're trying to give back to your church and become financially independent, provide for your kids and your family so they can go to college, whatever it is, whatever that North Star is, that probably requires fuel. But fuel in and of itself can never be the goal because otherwise you just keep driving all over the place. Drive, drive, drive, drive. There's no reason for fuel other than getting you to the destination. You got to figure out what the destination is. You got to figure out what the destination is and then not be disillusioned by the other thousand ways, other routes to get to that same goal, that same place. If your goal is to become financially independent, own five real estate properties and be able to cash flow $3,000 a month passively and have $500,000 in stocks and whatever it is, whatever that goal that you're, there's a thousand ways to get there. You could start a laundromat, you could start a restaurant, you could start a roofing company, you could start a pressure washing company. There's a hundred ways to get there. And so people get disillusioned because they start questioning their route. And then secondarily, they do not have a very clear definition and destination of what success looks like for them. And that might mean taking a pad of paper and for two hours locking yourself in a room or going out and sitting next to a nice view. For me, I like views of the ocean. I like seeing far away. Helps me a lot in terms of just clarity of thought and thinking in the future is like, I like to see far away, right? You guys notice that the, the run that I do on Saturdays, I can literally see hundreds of miles away. Somehow this is like unlock something in my brain to be able to think into the future and think about what's going to happen and my goals and my dreams. And because it's far, I have to look far away. My I will never spend millions of dollars in house, but if I did, I have a little tiny, very modern house, but overlooking a vast 180 degrees of mountains and ocean and I would just be able to see forever. Like I Just be able to see a long, long ways away, get in a spot like that and just start to define those two things. Number one, where am I going? What's the destination? Very, very quick. Why am I getting all this fuel? Why do I need to make money and secondarily be very committed to the path that you're on. Because every single time you reset your path, you're going back to zero. If you're trying to go from Mexico to Canada every single time, like, oh, I'm going to switch businesses, okay, you're starting back at zero. You're starting back at the beginning of the roadmap. Just stick to one for five, ten years. You will get there and there's going to be times where you have lots of fuel, you have plenty of cash. That's why you feel better. You feel like it's more attainable to get to the goal. There's going to be other times. You're running out of gas, you're running out of the Jerry can to going down to the gas can gas station, try to get some more fuel. That's going to happen. That's that that scenario is like getting a little loan that is running up some money on your credit card. Like was talking to the Facebook group, literally running your, your credit card inside a credit card processing so that you can get the cash out for payroll. That happens. So cool question.
