Stock Market CRASH and a bad week!

Hello. Hello everybody. Welcome to another YouTube live. Today we are going to just be hanging out for the next 20 minutes or so. I am actually editing a video I made for Business Boot Camp podcast. Just kind of my thesis on what's going with the stock market and stuff like that. Just kind of some macroeconomics that are kind of causing those shifts. But if you have any questions, go ahead and post here. I got like 20 minutes before my next call, so I figured I'd just run this thing live. I am doing some computer work here, so forgive me if I am somewhat distracted. But if you have any questions or anything like that, feel free to post in the comments. I'll tell you a little bit, kind of why this week has been kind of a little bit of a trial. Like everything that could go wrong, not could go wrong. Every single one of my businesses that yesterday had a bad day. By the way, ABC Lawnworks, thank you so much for your email. You were like the fourth person that said that and I can't believe it. For those of you full disclosure. So I made this big mistake on TikTok and then even on my my MBA course online I did EBITDA as earnings before interest, taxes and appreciation. I don't know why I said appreciation because that's incorrect. It should be amortization. So thank you for pointing out to me, John, this morning we went ahead and fixed that or we're working on fixing that tomorrow on the course and everything. So I apologize. I do make mistakes and unfortunately that was one of them and it was a big one. You do not add appreciation into your ebitda. But anyways, you know, we live and learn and a lot of times I'm making those in the middle of the night. So questions or comments? Go ahead and post in the chat here. I think I made it where you can do super chats now. I've never done super chats. I don't really know how they work and all that fun stuff, but I went ahead and activated them here. I am looking to get a social media person up and going here pretty soon in addition to our video, our new video editor. So that's a lot of fun. I think we'll be able to afford it with the channel picking up and people buying lawn care, web design and landscape business course and things like that. So I'm pretty confident we'll afford it. Hopefully next couple weeks we'll get them started. ABC Lawnworks, can you please discuss further regarding selling of the gym for higher ROI on other business? Oh, good question. I Was actually this morning, John, I was emailing you and I was like, man, I wish I had a few more extra minutes to email you because I was gonna actually reference your question from that. So what John's talking about there is. I was thinking about, on the last month I talked about selling Anytime fitness. And John's question was like, why would you sell something if it basically it doesn't take any more of your time? And so this is kind of where I responded back to him. I said, hey, the reason I'm thinking about selling it because if I could get say $100,000 in profits or $200,000 in that and then take that and go start two or three Augusta Lawn Care companies, the acceleration of my profits would be significantly higher. And he agreed, as long as, yes, this is live. He agreed as long as the source of capital is limited. Which means basically that would assume that I don't have the 100 or $200,000 elsewhere to bring to the business and just go start the locations. Anyways, great point. And just to clarify on that, in terms of. Sorry, I'm kind of editing a video that I just recorded about the stock market. I just edited that and I'm trying to put it up tonight because it's kind of time sensitive in terms of what's happening in the market the past couple days. But in terms of referencing John, and this is a great question especially begin to grow your business and you start, begin to diversify. You have multiple businesses. It's like, why in the world would you sell a business that literally I spend maybe five to ten minutes a day working on on average, Right? Here's why. This week, when I say I had a bad week or like it was a tough week, I've. I'm doing good. But there's a lot of drama.

When I say that. A lot of it comes from like the gym, for example, like the security, all the security system went down. It's like a big no, no with any type of Fitness because 247 you can't have that happening. But the reason it is because Comcast came in and just like cancel out one of our networks. Well, that, that made the music. We couldn't control the music anymore. The security system went down. The printers stopped working. And like we do virtual training and everything, the zoom and everything like that went down. It was horrible. It was a pain in the neck for me. And it probably yesterday took two to three hours of my time. Now two to three hours is enough for me to freak out. And when I Start looking at where I need to be spending my time with the franchisees and growing Augusta lawn care versus the gym, that's when I start thinking about selling it. Another reason for that is back to John's question is I start looking at the return on time. So let's say, for example, the gym I spend. I don't spend a lot of time there, but I make maybe $100,000 a year. You know, basically passively, like, not having to do much. Now I have to start thinking, though, with that changes that happened with COVID the gym is now much more susceptible to employees leaving. Because we used to rely, 95% of the revenue came from memberships, which is 24 7. You don't need staff, you don't need to worry about a whole lot. It's like money getting printed, right? And now, though, with a massive chunk like 30% of our revenue now coming from training, and that's going to be growing as a percentage of the revenue we're making, even though we've recouped our. All our revenue, our membership has gone down 33% and our training has basically recouped all that. However, with that, now we're running promotions all the time for training. We're running ads. We're spending like, literally three times as much on ads to get all that new training clients in. We have more trainers. It requires training them on the sales process and overcoming objections and all the rest of it. And so that level of commitment and that tie, in my opinion.

Is a point that no longer makes the gym as just passive. Right? And so for me right now, if it's not passive and it's not Augusta, it almost has to go, right? So if it's not like, very, very passive on my time or vulnerable. And that's where I feel like the gym is right now, with everything that's happened with COVID and everything, I feel like the gym has become vulnerable to the trainers leaving. Because if literally the trainers left right now, we would be in a bad spot with the gym because we built up the training program so much, we're very vulnerable to employees leaving. And in my opinion, if that. If you have a vulnerability, you need to be there because you better be managing those people well. And so I feel like I could sell it, make, you know, a couple of years worth of profit up front, and then also it's due for a refresh where I have to spend 20 to $30,000 at least, just to kind of get it up to speed with the franchise. So just to answer your Question, John. I know that's kind of a long answer, but I'll get to some of these other questions here. But I'll probably touch on that on next month's podcast of the financial statement. Rochester ground. Do you let your crews mow their personal along with their equipment, if so, during work hours? No, we do not allow that. And.

I'd recommend you don't either. A lot of times, if you actually look at your liability insurance for your trucks and things, if someone gets hurt or gets in an accident while they are not on the clock and they are, like, driving to their personal home on the weekend to mow their own lawn, you could potentially be liable for that. And I don't want to be liable for that. So we do not allow that. We make it very clear. This morning, they had the training. All the new hires coming back from last fall came back to the Bellingham location. I was there this morning for the first hour or so, and they made that clear. In terms of policy, we don't allow people to take company trucks or company equipment.

Hey, so let's see your questions. Questions. So I bought a used mower for $3,700. Cost about. Cost about $1,000. Fix a few issues and get it running okay. Also was told by my deal it's only worth $1,000. Only have $5,000 left. Total money for the spring. Okay, that's brutal. So it looks like you got $4,700 into a machine that your dealer said is worth $1,000 and it's running okay. This is why. For mowing equipment. Maybe I'm just not smart when it comes to the equipment, which is. Which is probably true. I'm mechanically illiterate, but I buy new mowers. All our. All our corporately owned stores that we're starting up right now, we're buying brand new, even for zero turns. Like. Yes. Could you save a few thousand dollars and get a good deal? Absolutely. Is possible. Is it worth what. What we just talked about here? Someone buying a used piece of equipment, having to fix it, and it's still not being worth very much. Yeah, like, that's a real possibility. And if you can't mechanically being. If you're not mechanically inclined like me, you do not want to be playing with that risk. So that's the one reason why, when it comes to mowing equipment, I do buy new.

Can't see here, sell and loan me some money. Long care. Journeyman. Yes. Covid. Messed up everything. Hey, man, I love watching your videos and all information. You Give a lot. Thanks. Hey, Mike, I have 15 clients right now and I want to start a franchise next year. What steps should I take this season to make that possible? Jeffrey, I would increase your. Your focus on recurring maintenance and recurring jobs. Because if you're trying to sell one time work and building a brand, if you're planning on changing your brand down the road, this goes for everyone. Whether you're trying to go to Augusta down the road or if you're gonna change the name of your company a year or two. Like, don't invest in branding, like it's a waste of money. Focus on direct sales. That's gonna be like, literally click here to get an estimate. That's the kind of thing you're gonna be wanting to do in terms of spending your marketing dollars. I got a. Not a kick. I was trying to help this person. They were, they were. They had their. The name of their company. I'm just going to change the name. It was Mike's Lawn Care. I'm changing the name just to protect them. So. And they had their name in it. And they, they were like, hey, like, I'm going to change this in like a year. Like next year I'm going to change the name of my company. And I was like, well, why are you running ads that are branding? Like talking about what you're, you know, what you're all about, Know what you're different than the competition. You need to be thinking about direct sales only because recurring maintenance jobs. Very easy to transition brands. For example, when people come to Augusta, we are able to transition. 99.9% of their mowing customers transition over to Augusta. No problem. Because there's nothing but positive and good things when it comes to the transition. Now if you're changing brands and you are changing the pricing and all this other stuff, that's when you'll lose customers. But if you're just changing positive things for the customer, that's when it's very easy to change. Like to an Augusta Lawn Care, not lose customers. So.

One second.

So that's. That's what I would say. Sorry. Let me show you what I'm doing. I'm currently taking one second here. I'm. This is the video. No, it's wrong video. No, I took the wrong. Oh, mercy me. I put the wrong video on here. Oh, goodness gracious. All right. Well, I was gonna show you what I was doing. I'm gonna show you here. I just have final cut open. Trying to edit this video, but that's the wrong video. That video Is from a few days ago. What video I want to have is the video I just recorded about the stock market. Because I had like 10 people email me this morning when the stock market took a nose dive and wanting my opinions and things like that. So I just made a video on it on Business Boot Camp podcast. I'm trying to get it up tonight for everyone. What went wrong with this? Okay, here we go. Got the right file. We're back on track. That's loading. Okay, questions.

Let's see here. This is my first year owning a service business in Chicago. Air duct cleaning and dryer vent cleaning. And we net over $30,000 in four months. Is. Is this a good start? Yeah, that's really good. If you can net 30k in 4 months, means you're doing 90k net profit, take home pay on your first year of business. That sounds very good to me. Duck heroes. Very cool. By the way. I know this sounds really, really bad, but is someone able to give me like 99 cents on the super chat? Is that possible? Is there even a function for that right now? Because I think I put turn it on. I don't know if I did. If someone sees like that you can donate like the. Like the 99. Give me a penny. I just want to see if it works. Anyways.

Let'S see here. Sol dido that I love plants. I don't know much about machines. ABC lawnworks. People need to understand ROI on equipment versus cost. Something I learned late in the game. Thanks, Jeremy. Would anyone else go? Yes. Mike is only 25. Oh, okay. I see what you're saying. How, Mike, how do you deal with the pressure of the economy going down? Mind. And also being able to keep afloat or even grow during these times. Okay, so this is kind of why this video I'm trying to get up tonight because the stock market. Oh, Derek. Drag. Give me $5. Let's go. Let's go. And Derek, you didn't even ask a question. Well, Derek, thank you for 4.99. Never been so excited in my life. Let's go. Makes up for the loss of the stocks today. So, yeah, I'm making this video tonight for this very reason. Back to what you said. Wow. My mom just gave me $5. Let's go. Oh, man, that's awesome. Okay, so.

Mr. Paramo. Jesus. This is the video I'm gonna be posting tonight. And that is about investing in the stock market or just in general when things are going down. And so I get very excited when the stock market goes down or when A lot. There's downward pressure on the economy. Cause it just means that there's opportunity. And so at the end of the day, whether, like this is the thing about stocks, it's kind of humorous and that is it's very much of a herd mentality when it comes to stocks right now. And what that means is there's opportunity as long as you can think, you can think levelly and you don't be dictated by emotions in the stock market. So like in March, last March, when the economy tanked, literally, you can ask my team, they still remember the day I walked into team meeting. I was really excited. Like, guys, we're in a bear market. Like that means there's opportunity. And that was kind of before, like Covid really got serious with health and everything like that. I just knew that, like, hey, when the market crashes, there's always opportunity not only in the stock market, but also in our businesses as service based business. Like, I knew that there was going to be a big drop in the unemployment as we hit April. And I knew that that was gonna be an opportunity to be able to get employees that were displaced. Then that whole like monkey wrench of having unemployment being $600 a week, which was like insane, that threw a monkey wrench into things. So like, in my opinion, volatility in not just the stock market, but in the economy, unemployment, all of that is opportunity. And so if you can rewire your brain to stop thinking in terms of like, oh, like the stock market's down, like I need to, like I'm afraid, like that's bad. Every other thing in the world, when the price goes down, you buy. Like if on Black Friday people go and they stampede Walmart because the price of things go down. Yet in the stock market, when the price goes down, everyone like runs away and gets afraid. And so that psychology, in my opinion, is very, very important when it comes to the stock market investing, the real estate market. When everyone else is running away and prices are going down, that's the time to buy. Or when everyone says things are going to the moon and like Gamestop like, let's roll, we're going to make a bunch of money, that's when I get freaked out, that's when I sell. And so that would be my advice. I'm going to talk more about that this evening in relation directly to the stock market. But my goodness, I really think that that is the unlock for investing in the stock market, investing in your business. Like when everyone else is not spending money on marketing, that's when you should be spending money on marketing the customer. Acquisition cost is lower, Customers attentions are not as saturated because there's not as many competitors in the market. Thank you. Trey walls for $5. Like, my goodness, I'm making millions. This is great.

No, like this morning I woke up the first 10 minutes of trading and I lost $50,000 in the stock market. So, like, the thing is, if you're not educated on which trade you're making and which companies you're investing in. Yeah, like, that is super, super freaky. However, if you really believe in the long term of those companies, guess what? You do. Things are on sale, baby. We're going all in. And so, Xavier, keep up the great gamestop yolo. Oh, man. One of the franchisees, Kevin, he's awesome. He's great. You guys should all get to know him more. But he invested in GameStop for one day and almost doubled his money. I was like, man, you are crazy. But hey, he got out at the right time. But for the people who like, were like, oh, no, I'm not gonna sell at 450, like, my goodness, you probably should have done that. So I'm making this video here. I gotta log off in a few more minutes here just because I got another call at 3pm my time. But let's see here. I'm riding my exercise bike. Derek, great job. How long do you see Apple going? How long do you see Apple going? I'm guessing you're talking about the stock I got in on Apple on. Not this dip, but the dip before when it went down to 98. And that's where I kind of got in. I've trickled in the past two days into Apple as it's gone under 130 because that was my buy target on it. And I've really been going in on like Oracle has been done great the past few days. So like I'm gonna talk about in my video tonight. But like when, when growth gets hit really hard, like has past couple days, usually the money is being rotated directly into value stocks, right? And so if you are risk adverse or you don't want to lose 50% of your money, and then don't invest in like speculative stocks and GameStop or SPACs, special acquisition companies like don't buy those. Yes, they could triple over the next two days. Yes, they could do that. But like this morning when cciv, which is the Churchill Capital, which is the merger for Lucid Motors, like, yeah, like it was been. It's tripled over the past couple months. But it went down 40% this morning. And so it's super, super volatile. Whereas if you're not, if you're trying to invest for the long term, invest in companies that you believe in long term that have profits that aren't super speculative. Companies like Oracle, Facebook, Walmart, these other companies, they did great this week and if they fell, it went down like 2 or 3 or 4%. They didn't go down like 20 or 30%. And so those are the kind of stocks like if you're less risk adverse and you can't lose the money, those would be the ones I'd recommend that you invest in. All right. How does solo operators start getting leads and calls? No website or nothing. Did $100,000 last year by myself. Hired guys throughout year, rarely wanted to grow and become more professional. I think a website would be where I would start. You don't need to start with lawn careweb Design calm. That's $400 a month. That's a pretty chunk of change if you only did a hundred thousand dollars last year. Now if you're trying to go from 100 to 300,000, I'd invest in something like lawn care web design. Get it done right, have SEO done right, all the rest of it. If not, go start weebly squarespace. Just make it look professional. With COVID our target market moved online. The 60, 70, 80 year old that no luck, didn't have an email, didn't have a credit card, would never buy on Amazon all of a sudden that changed with COVID And so you've got to be online, you've got to be there. I would recommend that 110% and then beyond that I'd focus on direct sales. The door knocking. The ability to doorknock is so incredible because there's no cost. Like if you don't have money to spend on ads, go knock on doors, obviously be sensitive, Covid, everything. But like if you can walk up to someone's door, realize as you're walking up what they need and ask them if they want an estimate for the bush that's against the house, the limb that's over the gutters for the lawn that's now overgrown. If you're able to do that, like you're going to close a lot of these deals. And so it takes guts. It's not easy, but if it was easy, everyone would be doing it. So that's what I would say.

Daniel Duran. Daniel, welcome on his down river peloton. Peloton has been hit very hard the past few days. In the market. But that's just because a lot of people are transitioning out of things like Zoom, DocuSign, a lot of those Covid stocks into recovery stocks like the airlines, the cruise lines, etc. That's funny, though. Best way to start learning the stock market, just start educating yourself. You know, trickle in a little bit. Like, don't spend a bunch of money, like, oh, like Mike said to buy. No, if you have a couple hundred bucks, put those in a few different companies and then start learning about seeing why, why things go up, why did they come down? Like, why is the stock market going down right now? Very much so, because of the risk of inflation and because of treasury yields going up the past couple weeks. And so knowing that is so important, like macroeconomics and just educating yourself. So, like, listen to podcasts, listen to audiobooks. You, there's youtubers that always are making, like, meet Kevin is great, Tom Nash is great. Even Jim Cramer on CNBC is good. Like, just educate yourself. You know, if you're like, mowing, like, I made this video the other day for your team, but like, it goes for us as owners. Like, we have time throughout the day if you're out in the field or if you're doing estimates, like, listen to stuff, you know, listen to something, educate yourself. It's so, so important. Is in a seminar, so won't be able to see or hear until 10, 8. Would you say you play the stock market or invest long term? I would say I invest long term, but I'd say about 20 to 30%. I move in and out based upon when I feel like it's getting really frothy. I sell. So a couple of weeks ago, I sold quite a bit, about 33%, 34% of my portfolio. And then now the past couple days, I'm starting to move that money back in. But on the video tonight, stay tuned because I'm going to talk about kind of like my personal philosophy on how much you should spend and how much you should risk. My risk threshold. I made $15 in super chats on this this live. So my goodness, I think this is worth it. I think I'll go more live more often, especially on bad days in the stock market. I can just make a live video and we'll take care of Workhouse crashed after they lost the USPS contract. Yeah, Xavier, but like, again, that was pure speculation. And you're literally depending on the government for the, the that contract. And in my opinion, you do not want to be relying on the government for a private entities. Like, yeah, that was very, very speculative.

Looking at a CrossFit gym for sale downtown Seattle. It's on sale for incredibly cheap. Only 50 members, but fully equipped with gear and lease. Daniel, I would look really, really hard at the lease. That is where you have a lot of leverage right now with the landlords. This is why reset is getting started. Because I'm literally getting eight months of free rent. That's unheard of traditionally. So that's what I would say. Daniel, you can definitely get discounts in places like Seattle on gyms because they have been whacked. You got me watching Undercover Billionaire Need Episode four. That's hilarious. Okay, guys, I'm gonna log off here. I gotta talk to Jason Evangelista in Smyrna, Georgia, one of our franchisees. But tonight, this video is going to go up. I just recorded it. It's gonna be more about the stocks, things like that. But thank you so much for being here. Thank you for the three people that gave me $5, including my mom. Let's go. That's a lot of fun. So, anyways, we'll see you guys. Take care.