Mike Minutes Mastermind 09/20/2023

Oh, destination.

Hope you're doing super well. Let's go ahead and get started.

If the video is a little bit laggy, it's because I'm on hotel wi.

Fi and you never know what you're gonna get. So let me just back out of this, get this set up in Facebook real quick.

On the road for the next few days.

But I'll do these as I can get time.

Boom, boom. Save.

And drop us into Facebook. All right, let's see. I think we had some questions. I know I told a couple people to post on there, so there should be a couple at least.

Okay, Cool top.

Facebook.

Very good. All right.

Present.

Okay, first one is from Mike from Athens, Tennessee.

Our conference ticket covers two people. From what I understand, I am going alone. Is it possible to give the extra ticket to someone who needs more than two tickets? No. Each location is governed up to two tickets. If they don't come, they're unused. It is a measure of trying to get as many of the owners there as possible and ideally their key employer, spouse, etc.

So it's.

If it's not used, it's not used.

And they would just have to another location need to buy any. Anything more than two per location has to be purchased. Next up is for nobody is tax ID number public information. I have a customer asking it for it so they can write it off for mowing.

They should be able to write it off no problem without it. But some, especially property managers, commercial contract contracts, et cetera, will ask for a tax ID number. Your tax ID number, though, if it's your EIN number, is typically pretty easy to find online, depending on your state. Most states have it public. In Washington state, we have what we call a UBI number. But most companies finding an EIN number is pretty simple. It's not as private as your social. Your social.

It gives you a lot more access.

To things, but just depend on your state. Each state, their department of licensing typically.

Is a little different in terms of.

How they do the numbers and whether or not the EIN number is something to be shown. But if you were to fill out, say a.

If someone wanted to fill out a 1099 as a contractor, you're gonna have to put your EIN number in there, and that's likely what they're asking for. I'm blanking right now on the form number that you send out to get that information. But yeah, I wouldn't be too concerned about it. I just don't know why they would need that in order to write it off.

It's considered an expense.

Max Harlow, Burnaby Changing level professionalism with.

Spell check that's funny. All right.

Hey, Mike, do you think it might be worthwhile getting editor for Augusta Content.

On the recent email advertisement for Lansing? So I know the following 8 figure entrepreneur should be an 8 figure entrepreneur outrank the competition should be outrank the problem. Does that make a difference? Should be does that make a difference in the professional industry and overturn the notion that landscape are uneducated. You haven't advertised everything correctly will help.

I don't know if you're making fun.

Or joking.

To be perfectly honest. Yeah, this is the media team. To be honest, though.

If we have a spell one, occasional spell issues, I'm.

Not too concerned about it. As long as people get what I'm trying to do, I'm not going to slow things down too much.

But since we're at it, I'm going to screenshot these because we can always fix it.

Boom.

I'm going to screenshot this, send it over to the media team.

I will say your spell check editors have spoken.

All right.

Mike from Athens. Would it be possible to have the fall cleanup yard signs offered in the threshold available in the 18 by 24 size as well as the 24 by 36?

I'm 90% sure Vistaprint allowed us to do this already. I know we had the big ones, the 24 by 36, but there should be additional sizes. If not, feel free to email mediagustalongerservices.com and then we would need to reach out to Vistaprint because I'm pretty sure I thought we had asked them to do on all of them. But if they missed that one, we.

Can make sure that gets fixed.

All right. The person I had asked put on their question here, did not respond or did not put their question. So I'm going to pull it up and respond to it.

Delete all responses. Delete. Okay, let's see here. Let me pull it up.

I don't know if they want their name said or not, so I will.

Not read their name. I'll just read what they said.

All right.

So I've had this opportunity fall in my lap.

Okay, wait one second.

There you go.

Whoa.

There's a lot of people live. Did I mess something up? No, I guess.

Okay, this is a question, it's fairly long about an acquisition. Someone had asked me about it. I told them to why is there.

So many people live? There's never this many people live. That's great. It's awesome.

How does opportunity fall into My lap. I'd like to get your input on what you think I should do. I've been offered by a competitor to merge both our companies. They only do interlock repair, which is like papers. And he's looking to expand his business and bring in a gm. His main reason for wanting to buy my company is essentially to poach me to be his GM or coo. To give you an idea of where my head's at, a couple years ago if someone would have offered me this, I would have never considered it. I would have bet on myself 100%. The past couple of years have made me realize that maybe I'm not all I thought I was cut out to be. Ever since the Q2 roundtable where you made the point that if your business is in shambles because you or your gm, I realize that it's as clear as day I am 100 in the way of the business and the reason.

We are where we are.

Okay, let me stop there for a second.

Man.

I wish this person was submitted a question because I said their name because if you're going to take that much risk stream ownership of the failures of the business, you have to take extreme ownership of the positive business and that is that you've grown dramatically over the past three years, both professionally and the fact that you're still in your early 20s and you have almost a million dollar business. There's a lot of good things to be said. So all the quote unquote shambles of your business that you are seeing is because you were the closest to it. So keep that in mind. You're being if you're going to be hard on yourself on the negative, you got to be hard on yourself on the positive. So let's just say that first I'm trying to keep this concise so we won't get into deals, but let's just say I would make a pretty good a good turnaround episode. Lol. The core of the issue I think comes down the fact that I had such high long term goals. I had complete disregard for short term profit progress and the mindset dug me into a hole. For the past couple years every single day has simply been about surviving. My, my standard for productive day is horrifically low.

Okay.

All this to say the decision I need to make here is whether I bet on myself or take a smaller piece of a bigger piece. Okay, so part of this is context of the person talking about this. I have seen the ups and the downs of how you have felt about the business and your relation to it. I've seen you in the lowest of low moments and I've seen you when everything's crushing and kicking butt and you're like full expansion mode.

It sounds to me like you are in somewhat of a lower moment. And I think that you would potentially not potentially. I know beyond the shadow of a doubt you would.

Within the next 12 months probably come out of this and you would feel the exact opposite if you were to get underneath someone else. If for your entire career you've been self employed and you've been growing a business, you have full autonomy, full control and then you go to being employed.

It's.

That is a rough game to play for a lot of people, especially when you grow in your business the size you have, where you have people underneath you in terms of management.

But let's keep reading.

Let's see here.

I guess I'm just at a point where I don't know if betting on.

Myself is the right call.

I'd love to say I'm going to be able to get my stuff together, but I have a real fear that I won't be able to because I've been saying it for years. Yeah, but this is the thing. I think you're being too hard on yourself. Just one man's opinion. I'm also the same way. Like, I literally think, I think quite often that like, for example, copilot, I'm just like, this is extremely hard and makes me want to quit all the time. I felt the same way when we started Augusta.

I felt the same way when we started Franchise Augusta. I'm like, this is way harder than it sounds. I should have licensed this. I should never have franchised. You will have times where you doubt that. You'll have times that you feel burnt out and.

There will be fear that you have. You shouldn't bet on yourself. I have that all the time. And anyone that says they don't is lying straight to your face. Even if you read the most recent book from Elon Musk, his biography, read that, read how often he doubted and cried and let the emotions get the best of himself and question whether or not he should be doing stuff, whether or not someone wants that level of pain is. Is up to them. But like, I think that's a very normal process. The question is, is this long term what you want? Because a lot of times what happens in the short term, whether it be in moments of pain or moments of elation, we make decisions that in the long term is not cohesive with what we want. The question is in 10 years, do you want to be owning your own business and continue to grow? Whether it be multiple locations, whether it be you completely out of day to day ops and it's being profitable like you're three years in and you have built a very good business with a good general manager. And.

There'S a lot of possibilities of that even in a couple years, in one year, like when you say turnaround, you get a good turnaround video.

One year can make all the difference. Going from unprofitable and extremely stressful to being profitable, raising prices, delegating, making the business more profitable and stop getting out of chasing the next service. This is something like, you know, I'd say right to your face and like the next thing, this acquisition, like I'm gonna buy this person. I want to do this. Like these services, like just lock in and either a build the business over the next three years to optimize for profit and you never being there, or over the next three years optimize it to continue growing. And I truly believe in 10 years you'll look back and be like, that was the right move. In 10 years being another location, I do not see that happening. Let's keep reading. I have not read this whole thing, so I don't necessarily believe in burnout, but that's. There's just something not clicking for me. Complete lack of ability to make decisions because I don't have confidence in myself. I feel extremely behind based on how long I have been doing this. Okay, so how long you've been doing this is all relative. All right. You've been part of Augusta for three years.

I think just, just over three years now.

You have had a moment where you went all the way back to basically being solo. And from that probably two years, you have built the business to. I'm. I haven't looked at your numbers recently, but probably 8 to 900,000 in annual revenue. That's pretty phenomenal. I'm going to, from just the numerical standpoint, say that this is a low moment and that in two, in. In one year, you would probably regret walking away from it completely. And I know that having the temporary someone offering you money is very, very appealing during moments of pain. You know how often it is so nice. It would be so nice to respond back to people that want to buy stuff from me and just be like, just get this headache off my plate and let me go live happily without a lot of all this garbage Pain in terms of people and problems and team members and servers and people complaining like that is quite Frequently on my brain. But when you ask yourself, what do you want in 10 years? What is the reason for you even making money? What is the reason for you getting into business? Is that accomplished? And.

Then it's a matter of like, do I need to recalculate and recalibrate how long I believe it's going to take for me to get there? Because a lot of times the thing is, we're just in a rush. And so the progress you have made over the course of the past year or two years or three years might be less or lower than what your end result goal is. But if you would just give yourself another two or three years, and now in six or seven years, you've built something exactly the way you wanted it when you could have gotten off the train at years three and four and five. And honestly, a lot of times I know we talk about, like years three to five, people start becoming more profitable. I find in years five through seven, there's a lot of people that will actually bail from the train and get off, mostly because they get bored. It's like they've realized that doing the same thing and getting the boring work and refining it and making it better and better and following systems is how you make more profitable. Now they've done that and they actually get bored.

Right.

You're still in that years 3, 4, 5, where you've grown a ton of. You have a lot of pressure on yourself to keep growing, and you're gonna have to step away from that if you think that it is potentially going to be so hard. There's so much pain and pressure and growth. And I think that we underestimate just how much growth is painful, financially, emotionally, psychologically. And if you were able to take that off the table by raising prices, stop marketing, stop getting new customers like you, dramatically increase the.

Longevity of your entrepreneurial career because you take a step back and realize, for the long term, I'm going to take a. I'm going to go slow in the short term, to go faster in the long term and get further in the long term.

Let's keep reading. I think I just told myself somewhere along the line that I wasn't going to reach my goals continuing down this path. Don't get me wrong, I work pretty much all the time, and it's just highly unproductive and a little personal time I do take. I don't allow myself to enjoy as. As a way to punish myself for not being productive. Before this merger was proposed to me, I wanted to reach out to you about these issues I was having but never reached out because deep down I know the answer is just get over it. But maybe you have some Mike wisdom for me.

Lol.

Yeah, it's not like get over it. It's not. It's define what you want out of the business. And if it's not calibrating towards that, that's when you bail. What people fail to realize, though, is when you're in, when you're on your. When you're traveling towards your destination, you're not at your destination for a very long time, especially when you're building a business that in my opinion, will take 10 years to build successfully to where you like. This is it. And for everyone that looks around at Augusta Nation and most people that you admire, they have been in business for eight to 10 years. Right. So, you know, some people have mentioned, you know, I don't mind me mentioning their names. Brian Conner. Right. He has got a second location going. He's spending a lot more time away from the business. He decided he's not going to go to 20 locations the next five years. Right. Much slower growth, spending much more time with family. That's awesome. That's what he wants. The business is serving him. But he has been in business for like eight. I think it's eight to nine years, maybe seven. Ryan Payne, he's got his third location. Congrats to him in Portland, Texas.

Just.

Is it going to be opening that up?

And, you know, he's getting general managers and like, that might be really. He's been in business for like 10 years. It doesn't take. It's not easy. You know, you just have to close his dealership. That's not an easy decision. You have to buy out someone that. It's painful to close down something and then have to go pay off the person that you. You bought a bunch of equity from. It kills. It kills you. Does that mean he's a bad entrepreneur? Does it mean that he should quit? No. But those are people at their 8, 9, 10 years in business and people that quit before that. Many times it is because we are simply too impatient. And I say we because I include myself in that. Because I want copilot perfect tomorrow. I want it perfect by January 1st, when most of us are inside of it. Do I believe it will be perfect? No. Do I believe that working towards that goal over the next five years is a worthy cause? Absolutely. And so every day that I want to quit, including this morning, doesn't take away from the fact that that is the goal And I have bought into that. And whether it takes me 5 years or 10 years or 20 years is inconsequential to, as to whether or not that goal is worth worthy of the work to attain it. So, all right, his merger acquisition proposition, okay, he's the last part.

His company is currently doing 1.1, has a profit about 1, 178,000. My business is doing 750,000 revenue, so I was close. Profit is unknown, but probably close to zero. Offer is 35% of the merge cut company plus a hundred thousand dollar salary. So again, I'm not.

I'm not against this, right? So like, I'm not. Don't say like, oh, Mike said I should not do this. And don't, don't think. I'm just saying get over it. That is not the goal. The goal in this is will you be happy having 35% of anything? 35 means that anything in the business goes and you have no say over it. You're a minority stake owner. You are essentially a glorified. You are a general manager. You're getting a salary and the 35% of the merged company.

Is now going to be doing like 1.8 million, still doing 200,000 in profit. So you're going to be basically, again, profit is different than distributions. Like I would assume distributions is probably 100 grand. So if you get 35 of that, yeah, you're, you're making 135k as a salary. The question is, in five to 10 years, does this alliance your goals. If it does, go for it. And if you're like, hey, I have made the decision, I am just a better employee than I'm a business owner, that's fine. I was, I would say go for it. That's. What is the future of business or the future of your goals? I would say over the track record. If you look back at anyone's track record, if there was ever a moment in time when they wanted free of that, being a minority stakeholder, not having a boss, if there was ever a moment where you're stoked about building a business and you wanted to grow, I have rarely seen those same people be very good at minority stake ownerships or being a manager. I just haven't seen it.

Because you have shown at some point in your life so far that there is a goal for something more, whether it be more money, whether it be more growth, whether more autonomy, whether it be.

Scheduling, your schedule freedom. Like whenever you want, you can take a vacation. Like right now. It doesn't feel that way right now he's like, my goodness, I. I can't take a vacation. The business making money. I guarantee you though, if in. Because, because the way you grew in terms like 2000-006000-00800,000 over the past few years, instead of going to a million next year, just do $750,000 again.

And I don't know if that's 750 to date and you're more going to be around 900 or if that's like 750 for the year, but if I remember correctly, around 750 to 800 for this year. So I truly believe that if, if people would disassociate themselves from growth and be like, okay, objectively, what would would happen if I didn't grow next year? What would have to happen? Okay, don't spend any money in marketing. Oh, they're just going like, I know this business owner specifically, I bet spent at least 7% of revenue on marketing, so probably.

$50,000. I'm just guessing it could be a little bit less. There are 7%. There's a whole bunch of profit that fueled your growth this year that you do not need to spend anymore. Let's go raise prices on every customer and all new services. You might only do 650 next year, but you might have $150,000 in profit next year with a smaller size. Business growth sucks. Cash is more than just something that sounds cool and fancy. It is so incredibly true. And the amount of stress that creates on your brain is magnitudes high, like extremely difficult.

And it cannot be underestimated. In my opinion, until someone has a flat year where they say, I'm not going to grow, I'm not going to spend money in marketing, and I'm going to raise prices until that. You don't know what the benchmark of literally what a business feels like. Because until then, it's just. It's just straight pain of growth. It's sucking cash. It's sucking emotional and psychological energy. And it is hard. Just take one year before making this decision and ask yourself to do go. Be profitable. Do not grow. Be profitable. Cut out services. Don't spend money on marketing. If you do that for one year and you still feel that you should go become an employee, go for it. Secondly, I would say if you did that for one year and your profits went from negligible to $150,000 of cash on a 650 to $700,000 business, all of a sudden his acquisition offer is not looking nice. It's not Looking as rosy in one year. And you just. Because this is what happens. People build the, build their business to buy, to sell. Like built to sell. They build their business sell and they realize, oh my goodness, this is a good business. This isn't so bad. I just built all the systems, I just raised my profit margins, I stopped trying to grow, and now this business is actually pretty good.

And so.

You have to ask yourself, what size of business would it require for me to hit my goals and feel achieved and accomplish the why that I set out to go for? What is that number? If I'm headed towards that number, I have to realize it's going to be painful. It's going to be harder than I thought. There's going to be times I want to quit and I will question myself many, many times over and over. But the reason that's a positive thing is because it clicks, clarifies and quantifies what that size of business needs to be for you and why. Why? The why becomes clear by the pain and the chiseling away of like, really what does this statue look like? Is the chiseling. It's like the pain. Painful part of growing the business is what questions. And you constantly like, my goodness, I should quit. That is what's going to hone away until finally like, this is actually why I'm in business. This is what the business needs to become. And for some people, that's a four or five hundred thousand dollars a year business and they just consistently raise prices. They have the same three to four crew members and that's perfect for them because they, they have won the game of getting to the statue, chiseling it all the way. Like, this is where I want the business to be at and I'm not going to grow beyond that. And for other people that, you know, it's not necessarily better. It's not like.

It'S painful, it just, it's painful. Like, listen to Elon's book and see how, how much pain he goes through because he has this crazy, audacious goal, like going to Mars or like electrifying America. Like, those are such insane goals. You're going to, you're going to doubt yourself. You're going to question if you're going to cry. Like, those are normal emotions in that process. And so I would personally say quantify the goal. I would say give me one year of maximizing for profit instead of growth. Just one year is your baseline. You're gonna, I predict at the end of that year, you awaken, said, this business isn't so bad either. A, it can run by itself. Like for example, you could let this business run off with a GM and take 60, $70,000 distribution and still go get a GM role. If that was still something, you have a lot more options than a business profitable to sell it to let it run by itself to continue expansion because now it's super profitable. But just give me one year. One year of we will not spend money on marketing. We will focus on upsells, we will raise prices and there will no longer be the distraction of adding more services or growth. Like I just think most people be blown away at how profitable their business can become and how, how much different the business becomes over the course of that time.

What in the world? Okay, look, I have heard about all this stuff about making the bed. I don't make my bed and I get the whole like concept mentally of like make your bed first thing in the morning, blah blah. Look, if making my bed's gonna make me successful, we got bigger problems in the world. So. But yes, you, you got me. That is not made.

We couldn't wait to watch you later. Have to get the real deal. What's this? Who is this? Oh, it's alive.

Yes, a lot of people are alive, which is fun.

Built to sell radio, excellent podcast. It's good podcast and the book is good. And if you listen to a lot of people, when they build, when they really focus on building their business to sell it, they build the business and they realize this is a good business. I don't want to get away from it. It's profitable, it's running on systems. I have great people around me. I really enjoy this because they built it to sell, which is usually means optimization of profit. Um, because you optimize profit, you're building the business to sell. When you're creating systems, you're building the business to sell. And when you deviate from those things that make a business quality a quality sale, it usually just creates havoc in the business. You get away from systems, you add lots of growth, you aren't worried about profit. You're like, I'm investing back in the business. Just stop doing that for a second and just see how much more, how much less psychological damage you have to endure before and set that as the baseline. And it's like, okay, but that was a good year. I'm gonna go ahead and grow a little bit more. I think I can take a little more. I'd like to be able to get to the point where I have another location or have a General manager. That takes all operations off my plate. I'm gonna grow a little bit more and then be more calculated. But think in terms of years, right? Like, I, I.

I am so incredibly overwhelmed with stuff, with the technology side of things, but I'm gonna give it five to 10 years. Like I've said before I ever try to judge myself on it, I know why I'm doing it. I know exactly why we need it for a guest, the nation. And the day or the week or the month where I feel like giving up or quitting because extremely painful is not going to deter me from what the goal is now if it's so damaging, it's going to make me quit. I need to recalculate the goal, but I don't think it's going to. And I think for the vast majority of us, we can do a lot more than we think. If the goal is so lofty and you might have to recalculate goals if you have family, if you have spouses, et cetera, other people's goals will have to then be calculated into the mix. But I, I genuinely believe that in years three to five, if people could get there and then get through the boredom that comes in years five through eight and get to year 10, the amount of options you have is a lot more. Whether it be like it's basically stages 5, 6, and 7 of growth or wealth at a Gusta nation, multiple locations, divest into other opportunities and other industries, or invest the money in things like stock market and the real estate market. Like, those things become possible only once you've built the business in a way which is quote, unquote, sellable, which is it has systems in place, it's very profitable. There's not havoc, there's people in place. And that only comes for most people when they take a year and say, I'm not going to grow.

So.

All right, everyone, have a fantastic rest of your day.

I'm gonna be traveling all week, but I'll be back in the office next Monday. I will be doing these as I can over the next few days, so.

Feel free to keep the questions coming.

Thanks so much. There's a lot of people live, so that's, that's always fun. There's like 25 people live. All right, love you all. Take care.