Entrepreneurs *START HERE* | Become a Millionaire in the Next 10 Years!

Hey, everyone. I'm Mike Andes, and you're listening to the Business Bootcamp podcast. Today. I'm talking about how you can become a millionaire in the next 10 years. This is not a get rich quick scheme or even an idea. Ten years is a long time, and it's definitely possible. I'm going to walk you through the steps today. They're going to be simple, maybe oversimplified, but I truly believe that anyone can do these steps if they put their mind to it and work hard. Before we get into today's show, a big thank you to today's sponsor, which is Gusto. If you haven't already, go to gusto.combootcamp and see how you can pay your employees very quickly and efficiently. Get great reports. And right now, if you're submitting your loan forgiveness application for the ppp, this is something that was really important to keep track of your payroll, the breakdown of your taxes, and all the rest of it. So check it out today. Get it for free for three entire months. Go to gusto.combootcamp all right, so today we're talking about the next 10 years to become a millionaire. And these are the steps that I would tell any young person, and I would also tell anyone that's wanting to become an entrepreneur or business owner in their 40s or 50s. And this is a really interesting conversation I had with. Last weekend, we had Discovery Day, and the individual came up for the Discovery Day for Augusta Lawn Care. We were talking. He was really discussing about the entrepreneur kind of culture and the ideologies around entrepreneurship and how so many people aren't really entrepreneurs, and they might be business owners, but they're not entrepreneurs. And he was talking about that, and I thought that was really interesting. And I wanted to talk today, though, about maybe you're not an entrepreneur, but can you have a small business? Can you be an investor? And can you actually become a millionaire in 10 years? This is not easy. This is not tomorrow. This is not buy a stock and flip it next month. This is not any of that stuff. This requires hard work, hard, long hours, a lot of patience, a lot of grind, a lot of learning, a lot of getting uncomfortable, but it's possible. And I've always said that there's a few different ways that you can become wealthy in life in terms of finances. And number one is you get really, really lucky, right? Something happens, technology kind of moves your way. You get really, really lucky. You meet the right person, whatever it might be, the next thing is genetics. Like, if you are born and you are six and a half feet tall, 250 pounds of solid muscle. Like there's a good chance you got an athletic career in front of you or genetics of like you have an amazing voice and talent right from the get go. Those are things that I can't control. I can't control my luck and I can't control my genetics because if I could control my genetics, I'd be a lot taller. But one thing that you can control is how hard you work. And that's the one variable that leads to success that you can control. And so that's the thing that I kind of try to actually focus on because I can't. Focusing on the genetics, focusing on getting better luck usually doesn't lead in very good places. So I'd much rather focus on the one variable I can control, which is hard work. So I'm going to break up the next 10 years of your career in two year segments. And again, I know I'm oversimplifying, but this is a very easy way to look at your career path and determine, okay, I'm where I'm at right now. Maybe I'm just out of school, maybe I finished a failing business, maybe I just got unemployed, whatever it might be, and I want to be a millionaire in 10 years. This is how I would go about it. And this is not the absolute best way, this is not the easiest way, this is not the hardest way. This is just the way I would personally recommend someone do it. Number one, the first two years I of this 10 year journey is get a job. And for a lot of people, they're like, oh, well, I thought I was going to start a business. I thought I was going to, you know, become an entrepreneur and go start my own thing. And I'm not going to tell the boss to, you know, that I am doing my own thing and forget him, I'm out of here. No, go get a job and learn work and learn what it's like to work in an industry. Learn what it is to put in a 10, 12 hour day working hard. Maybe it's physical labor if you're young. Just really getting to know what it's like to go create a work ethic and get a job. This is for so many people, like a foreign concept. When I was 8 years old, that's when I got my first job and it was super simple. It was picking blueberries for a farm down the street. Then it was, I got a little bit of a raise because I was able to be the beekeeper and Go into a beehive and get the honey out. Like that was super cool. I was able to make more money. I still remember making $8 an hour as an 8 year old boy and being like, man, I am rich. As I'll get out, there's a wage and thinking like, okay, if I can just match my age to my dollars per hour, like for the rest of my life, I'll be set. If I'm making $8 per hour at 8 years old, you know, if I can make 9 at 9 years old and keep moving up anyways, then I was like $12 an hour doing beekeeping. I think I was nine years old and doing some beekeeping and things. I thought it was the best thing ever. But the bottom line was work. Whether it be when we are doing delivering newspapers and phone books, or whether it be when I was selling sandwiches to golfers or pushing mowing lawns when I was young, whatever I be learning, work ethic is very, very important. And maybe it's not even the business side of things. Maybe it's not mowing the lawns for yourself, maybe it's doing it for another business. Maybe it is. You go work for a restaurant just to learn the industry, learn the concept of working 14 hours sunup to sun down and developing your work ethic and learning about an industry that you might think you want to go into down the road when you open your own business. So the first two years is get a job, work hard, work hard, hustle, do everything you can to make the business you're working for successful. That's what the first two years should be. The next two years is no, you don't get to start your business yet become a manager at that role. Maybe it's not with the same company, but maybe it's in the same industry. Maybe it is. You've developed your work ethic. You developed learning how to really some industry skills. But then the next two years should be management. This is the part you need to learn about people. You need to learn about hiring and firing and dealing with people's issues and motivating people and talking about hard things with an employee or a coworker. This is where you're gonna become a manager again. The first two years you were just an employee. You're just a entry level probably, but you were earning an income. Stage two. Next two years, your manager, you're still earning an income. These are solid paychecks that if you're really, really diligent and you are thrifty, you can put aside A lot of this money through these four years. The first two as an employee, the next two years a manager. Put that money aside, creating a safety net that you are going to use down the road when you start your business. All right, but right now you're developing the skills, the work ethic in the first two years. The, the next two years is management skills. Dealing with people is very important as a small business owner. And you're traditionally going to get a little bit more money in those next two years. Maybe you start managing a team, maybe you're growing with another business. So there's opportunity for better pay, whether it be in the office or be out in the field or if it be managing like hr. But this is all about learning how to deal with people, motivating people, and really being able to, how you hire. The whole process of dealing with people, that's the hardest part about dealing with a small business, especially when you're first getting started. All right, year number five and six, so we talked about first two years as an employee, next year as a manager, next two years. Now you get to start your business as a side hustle. So as you're moving up in management throughout years five and six, that's when you start your side hustle. Maybe you start it on the weekends, maybe you start in the evenings. Maybe you do a little bit of consulting in that industry. Maybe you start writing a paper or doing a YouTube channel or writing, doing a podcast. Do you start getting more and more involved in the industry, you start actually doing a side hustle. What makes a little bit of money? For example, maybe you want to do mowing lawns. Maybe on the weekends and the evening you start mowing some grass. You know, start learning the industry. You, maybe for the first two years you are pushing lawns for someone else. Then the next two years, manager, you were an estimator or you're an office manager, you're doing some sort of managerial role. Then the next two years you start your side hustle. And maybe you are a manager, but then you're doing something else on the side. Maybe it's roof repair. You're like, you know what? I'm going to start my business and roofing. So you start roofing on the weekends, you're roofing in the evenings. And a lot of times when it comes to Augusta Lawn Care, most of the landscapers I talk to, this is how they started their business, as a side hustle, doing things on the side, figuring out the industry. And they in year number seven and eight, that's when they go full time. Okay, so the first two years of your job, the next two years is a manager position. Years five and six, the next two years are when you start the side hustle. And what that means is that really for years you're in a management position and the last two of those four years you are doing the side hustle. You should be making significant amounts of money in years number five and six. When you have the side hustle, producing revenue as well as now, you're really worked your way up in a management position, you should be making good money, setting money aside for when you actually launch your business full time and you take that leap. Alright? And that's what happens in years number seven and eight. So the next two years is going full time with a service business. Now this is where I'm going to lose some people and they don't agree with me. But service based businesses are awesome to get started in your entrepreneurial journey and business ownership. Because all you got to ask yourself is what service do people want that they do not want to do themselves? Is it mowing the grass? Is it cleaning out their gutters? Is it cleaning their toilets? Is it cleaning their house? Is it? There's so many things around home improvement, around doing their tasks, around grocery delivery, around walking dogs. All those service based businesses are built around one question, Mr. Jones. What could I take off your plate and do for you? It's a service based business and it's something that people do not want to do themselves and you can take that off their plate. Job security is found in doing services that other people do not want to do. And that's how you think about the service based industries. Like what do people not like doing? People don't like preparing their taxes. Okay, guess what? There's a whole industry around tax preparation. Oh well, people don't like mowing their lawn out in the heat or out in the rain. Guess what? There's a whole landscaping and lawn care industry. That's what Gusta lawn care is built on. And what's beautiful about these service based businesses, they don't take a lot of startup capital. You can be profitable within a couple months of getting your equipment, getting your trucks, getting set up and going. You know, it doesn't take hundreds of thousands of dollars or years of burning through cash as a tech startup before you actually become profitable. And so some people like, well it's not as scalable, blah, blah, blah, guess what? That, that can be the next 10 years, that can be down the road. But right now we're trying to get to a millionaire status and we're trying to build our wealth and build our repertoire of skills and abilities as a business owner. So that's why we started working on our work ethic as an employee, then management, then we started our side hustle. Well, now we're full time. We've made the leap. We should have saved a lot of money in our side hustle years, during our management years as an employee and being able to have that safety net to go launch the business, spend money on marketing, really blow it up and be grounded in the industry because we've already worked in it for six years and now we're ready to roll. And the business should be much more successful because we have the skills, we have the knowledge, we have the experience in that industry. Alright, so now we're full time, we're really cranking. This is now years number seven and eight of our ten year journey and the business is growing. You should have that safety net like I said. So it's a safety, a way to start safely and grow quickly because you have that money saved up from all your first six years. Then we go into years number nine and ten. So we've already been in business now for a few years. We're really beginning to hit stride, becoming profitable, doing service based businesses. You can scale them if you have a system in place, if you have a customer acquisition cost, you pour money into the funnel, you get leads out, you convert them into customers, you convert them into paying customers and then you get a profit percentage. As long as you keep that system running, you can keep pouring fuel on the fire in the form of marketing and generating more business, growing the company. And then as you begin to kind of get to where you want to be, 1 million, 2 million, whatever it might be in revenue, you can kind of take off the marketing fuel. But then word of mouth begins to flow. And the flywheel of marketing, this is something I'm very interested in. The flywheel of marketing keeps turning because you've been pouring the gasoline for, on for a couple years and all of a sudden it gets momentum, right? Referrals and people start seeing all your trucks and start seeing your ads and they start seeing all your employees. And the flywheel of marketing continues to spin even when you're not putting on more marketing dollars. And that can happen in year two, three, traditionally is when if you've been consistently spending on marketing, that flywheel continues to spin and spin and spin until finally you don't have to keep pouring the fuel on and that's where you become very profitable. And that's why you hear a lot of times when people say you need to be in business for three to five years, become really profit is because they've hit that flywheel of marketing. Usually if they're trying to grow their business because they're no longer needing to spend as much money on marketing in order to have the same return in terms of new leads, new clients and new business. And so this is very much a reality to me. Who has one location for Augusta Lawn Care, our first one been established for over six years. Six or seven years and $1 spent there is almost four times effective as the dollars spent on a location 45 minutes away, but just started a few months ago. That's the flywheel of marketing. The effectiveness of your marketing dollars increases as your business continues to grow. All right, so this is, we're still talking about years number seven and eight, which is your full time business. It's really pumping, really going good and you can scale that business. But now maybe nine and 10 years, nine and 10, we're trying to get to millionaire status. And the thing about service based businesses, you know, the valuation of your business is kind of people's opinion, especially small businesses. Like some people are willing to pay more for it, some people are willing to pay less. Yes, you have assets like trucks and equipment and office space or whatever it might be. But I really want to talk about net worth. Like I want to have real assets. I don't want to just be like, oh yeah, my business is worth $10 million. Well, to who? Who's gonna actually pay that? And so in years nine and ten is what I encourage people to do, is take their service based business and begin to invest. Because the flywheel of marketing should be turning, it should be coming more profitable, at least 15%, hopefully 20% net profit margin in the bank at the end of the day. And so take that money and start investing it, invest it into real estate, real assets like stocks, et cetera. And those are things that you can invest in and not have to spend a whole bunch of time on. They're more passive. You can still keep cranking on the business, keep growing that service based business, increasing efficiencies, increasing profit margins, all the while taking the profits and dumping it into real assets. That's real estates and stocks, alright? And doing those things is going to build up your net worth, build up the value of your assets to the point where you become a millionaire in 10 years. Is that easy? Is that an easy process? No. Is there a lot of assumptions I'm making throughout that whole process? Yes. The biggest assumption I'm making is in year seven and eight that you actually create a flywheel of marketing, that you have a system in place, that the, the leads coming in are profitable. You have a system in place from customer acquisition to actually delivering on that service, to collecting the invoice money. And like having a system in place is what allows that functionality in year seven and eight to happen. But it's not rocket science. It's a lot of hard work, It's a lot of pain. And especially in years five, six and seven when you're going from side hustle to full time running your business, that's very, very difficult. I'm not stating this like, oh, just like follow these steps and it'll happen. This is not easy. This is 10 years, two years of working on the bottom, scraping floors, mopping whatever it might be. The next two years are a management position which is sometimes the hardest because you get a lot of the pressure and the stress of frontline employees put on top of you. Then you got the side hustle. This is stressful too because now work, life balance, you're trying to do a full time job and do good at that and save that money. But then you're also trying to do your new side hustle thing. That's tough. Then you switch and you take this massive risk from side hustle in year seven and eight to becoming full time business owner. That's a lot of stress. Now you're hiring people, now you're taking all those things that used to be an employee managing other people. Now you're hiring them as your employees. This is a big change, a big risk. No longer do you get a W2, no longer do you have unemployment, no longer do you have Social Security. Now you're self employed. And then year number nine and ten, if you've gotten through all of that, that's when you start investing in real estate and in stocks with the profits that you make from your business. And this is the part that I am really studying a lot now knowing that a lot of the franchisees at Augusta are really in years number seven, right. They have jumped into being full time. They're starting to really trying to figure out the systems. They're still in that grinding process of going from an employee or like kind of a side hustle into like a full time gig. That's hard. Like I talked about. And I know that in a couple years though, once they figured out the systems, once they begin to rely on the systems more than their personalities. As they hit, you know, two, three years from now, they're going to be thinking about investing. And this is something that I've been looking a lot into is researching and educating myself on stocks and on real estate and the best ways to invest, whether it be passively or whether it be more aggressively. And these are things that we got to know. And you might be in years one and two, but it's not a bad thing to be thinking about. Okay, how do I do marketing? How do I think about years number five and six? That's how you get ahead. That's how you cut the years. Someone's asking right now, how do I go from 10 years to 5 years? The bottom line is, learn what you need to know before you get there. When you're in years one and two, be listening to audiobooks and learn about marketing and hiring and culture and all the things that you'll need for years five and six. And when you're in five and six, be thinking about what you're going to be doing in terms of nine and 10 years, nine and 10, when you are real estate investing and investing in stocks and understanding about all the different elements of the stock market and mutual funds and indexes and how it all works. These are things you've got to educate yourself on if you want to shave time off those 10 years. I hope today something was said that was helpful. Comment below. What year are you in and what are you trying to do to get to the next level? You've been listening to Mike Andes on the Business Boot Camp podcast. Until next time, be great. Nothing else pays.