The FIRST Things You MUST Do to Be Successful

Hey, everyone, this is Mike Andes, and you're listening to the Business Bootcamp podcast. Today we are going to be talking about what would I do first? So what would I do first? If I was starting a new business, what would I do first? If I was having a marketing campaign, what would I do first? If I was trying to change the culture of my business, what would I do first? That's what we're talking about today on the show. But before we get into today's show, a big thank you, today's sponsor, which is Gusto Today. So many of you have tried out their software for payroll. One of the things I'd encourage you to check out as well is the side of the benefits that they offer and the way that they give your employees a great dashboard to view their hours, their payroll, and their benefits and be able to pay health, dental, so many different types of benefits that your employees want for literally $6 per month. So check it out today, get an entire 90 days completely free if you go to Gusto.com.

Boot Camp. So today we are going to be talking about the first and the reason I'm talking about this, because every single day I get asked the question, what would you do first? And then they fill in the blank. If you were trying to do X, if you're trying to do this, if you were just starting a business, what would you do first? If you were trying to do this, what would you do first? So today we're going to go through a few of those. The first thing I want to talk about, though, because we're talking about first, is I would love for you to join the Facebook group. And if you haven't already, you can just join the Facebook group. It's Small Business Owners of America. And then in brackets, I have Business Bootcamp. So you can tell which one is ours. And you'll see there's a picture of me on the icon for now, just so you can recognize it. So there's like 10 of us in there now. I'd love to see that grow and ask questions directly from you all and answer those directly on that Facebook page. If you have questions on how to start, grow, or save your business, that is going to be the new best way to get ahold of me is the Facebook group. It's Small Business Owners of America. And then in brackets, you'll see Business Bootcamp and Join the Group. And if you ever have a question, you can put it in there. And people from a whole bunch of different types of industries can comment on your situation. And give you advice. So today, what would you do first if you had to implement systems and you had no systems in your business? What system would I implement first? A sales system. So I've said it before, I really talked a lot about it several years ago. And that is your business is a sales organization that just happens to be selling a certain type of service or a certain type of product. You are a sales organization, and that's the key fundamental to growing your business is realizing you are a sales organization. And a sales organization that does not have a system around the process in which they bring leads and prospects and convert them to customers and then convert them into recurring customers. If there's not a system in place for that to happen, that is the fundamental flaw of a sales organization. And you will not be able to grow your business as efficiently or as quickly as you could otherwise. When we have franchisee training here at Augusta in November.

One of the biggest things we're going to talk about, the thing that we kind of fundamentally circle all our training around, is the sales cycle. The sales system that really encompasses the customer life cycle. Because a customer life cycle is very similar to the sales cycle in that they need to be aware of you first and then they need to become a prospect. They give you maybe some information, become a lead. They say like, yeah, I need your services to become a lead. And then there's like, there should be a system of like selling them, of like the estimate process, giving them a proposal. All of that is part of the sales system. So I would say that your first system should be the sales system because sales rules all and because it's also really the groundwork for all the other systems. Because inside of the sales system is going to be a system for how do you create recurring, you know, take a customer and you know, get a review from them, but then also continually sell to them and make them a recurring customer. That's part of the sales process. So that's a kind of a subsystem within the major system of the sales system. So, but I would focus, number one, if you have no systems in your business, figure out how you convert prospects into leads, leads into customers and customers into recurring customers. And that's the first system that I would build. Alright, so where would the first dollars be spent on marketing if you have never done advertising or marketing before? The answer to that is a website. And number two is split a budget between two different options. So a lot of you thought I would have given more like Facebook ads or like print marketing or some Sort of like tactical thing for that. The reason I'm saying a website is because I know the genre of people listening here are small business owners, a lot of which are home service based businesses. And really a website is going to be fundamental for you. There are going to be certain types of industries where it's not going to be as important. So I put a number two in there which is take two, care what they are. I don't care if it's Facebook and Google Ads. I don't care if it's print marking with a postcard versus a flyer, door hangers versus a banner like billboard, I don't care. Take two, split your budget, whatever that is, in half. Spend equal amounts of money on both and track the leads that come in and track how much revenue they bring in and quality of the leads that are coming from each source. Figure out what your customer acquisition cost is and then and literally just take that one. So if you have two different options and say it's Facebook, let's say it's Facebook ads and it's Google Ads. Say you have $1,000, spend 500 on both, track the leads that come in and let's say that Google Ads gets twice as much revenue, twice as many customers, the customer acquisition cost is half as much. And so okay, Google Ads beat Facebook ads. It's not necessarily to say that that's a global statement for your business. It might be the creative, it might be the text that you're using. But let's assume that all things equal, that Google beat, you beat Facebook ads out. Now what you do, the second step is then to take the Google Ads. That becomes the thing that you are going to try to beat. That is going to be the thing that you are trying to now create another marketing campaign that beats out the customer acquisition cost, beats out the number of leads, that, that, that. What's the word I'm looking for? Control. That's the word I'm looking for. So when you take those two, the Google Ads and the Facebook ads, and the Google Ads, let's say for example, beats out the Facebook ads in performance, then you take that Google Ad and you make it the control. And then you start making ads and other marketing campaigns that try to beat the control. So the goal is always to beat the control, have two campaigns running. So you're beating the control all the time. But before any of that.

Number one is a website. So what's the first thing I would do if I had marketing dollars? I would spend it on a website. Alright. If I was hiring my first employee and I had never hired someone before. What would I do? How would I employ them? What's the first employee I would hire? The first employee that I would hire would do one of two things. Either A, they would do something I am not good at. So it might be something that's a little bit more detail oriented, maybe numbers oriented. For myself, that's not necessarily the strongest point of what I do. So that's something that I could hire my first employee for, something that I am not good at. The second reason or the second thing that you might hire that first employee for is to do something that is not growing the business. And that a lot of times means from a top line revenue standpoint. So usually that's going to be things that are not in the sales department, that might be even customer fulfillment, that might be customer service, that might be customer communication. Those things are great, those things are important. Those might be really fundamental to your business, but you might hire your first employee so that they can focus on doing those things and you can focus on going out and getting new business, driving in more leads, focusing on the marketing, focusing on developing relationships, networking, getting in new leads, new customers, new revenue, and focusing on top line revenue. So if I was hiring my first employee, I would do one of two things. I'd either hire someone that is good at the things I'm not so they can do the numbers, they can do the more meticulous things that I'm not very good at and I can focus on bigger picture sales stuff, or I would hire out the things that are not has nothing to do with the growth and expansion of the business. If your goals are aligned with growing the business, expanding it, making it bigger, growing top line revenue, number two, that second option is going to be probably what you're going to start doing first. The first employee is probably going to do the things in terms of fulfilling customer orders, doing the thing that actually you sell. Like if you do services, the person that actually performs the services, you're going to go hire your first employee that is going to actually perform the services, actually pack the product, actually be in the retail store, actually bake the baked good so that you can go sell more baked goods, that you can go sell more services, that you can go upsell other customers and grow top line revenue. All right, next thing, what would I do first if I was starting a business? What would be the first industry that I would go into if I had no business experience? I wasn't an entrepreneur before and nothing like what would Be the first industry. If I never had a business, what would I start? I would start a service based business that is around home improvement. Whether it be landscaping.

Handyman repair, a moving company, cleaning services, roofing, painting. So many different things that you can think about around a house. H VAC systems, like lighting design, whatever it is, I would start there. The reason for that is because twofold number one, it's low cost entry. And if you have no experience, it's not likely a bank is gonna give you money. It's not likely that investors are gonna line up to give you money. And if you're just trying to get started in the business world, started as your own boss, I would go out and I would start a business that's around the service industry, around home improvement. Low barrier to entry as well as there's. It's such a complex business because yes, let's say for example, you do painting. Well, you know, technically you could teach anyone how to paint. Unless they're me, like I'm horrible at painting. But like most time it's. The painting process itself is not complicated. Cleaning someone's house is not super complicated. Lawn care and mowing lawns is not super complicated. But there's so many different facets to the business that you can really hone your skills on. If you're doing cleaning services, yes, the cleaning itself might not be super hard. However, you got to do marketing, you have to do hiring, you have to build your website, you have to do cash management, you have to sell to customers and figure out how to create that sales funnel. There's so many different things that you learn because a industry that has so many different moving parts and labor is very hard to find. So you have to work on efficiencies and culture and communication with customers and employees. So a service based business is not necessarily easy. I'm not saying it's easy, but the barrier to entry is low because there's not a huge amount of capital that you need to get started. And there's so much you can learn about so many different industries and areas of business by simply starting that type of a business that has a labor component, an advertising component, instead of just starting off like say consulting or like real estate, for example, where you're gonna learn sales, you're gonna learn that aspect really, really well. But when you start figuring out employees and you figure out laborers and you're trying to deal with even minimum wage workers and trying to train them, like you start to learn a lot of skills. And so I like when entrepreneurs when they want to start learning the craft of business and figure out marketing, figure out systems, figuring out hiring, figuring out firing. A great way to start, in my opinion, is home improvement services. And so that's why we started Augusta with a franchise and everything to give those systems up front to those entrepreneurs are getting started and have a much easier road those first five years instead of trying to figure it out by themselves. The last thing, what would be the first cultural change I would make or cult? How would I change the culture? What's the first thing I would do if I had a bad culture? If I didn't like showing up and I didn't like my employees and I didn't like the way that people interacted and people were always at each other's throats and no one liked working with each other, no one enjoyed texting each other outside of business hours. How would I change the culture? What's the first thing I would do? I would have team meetings. So if you don't have a weekly team meeting with all of your staff, that's something you really would need to do.

In terms of team meetings, I would do at least a weekly meeting, preferably twice a week, but at least a weekly team meeting. And then I would also do off site meetings where you get a little bit more in the clouds of like the goals of the business, the financials of the business, where the business is going, how you've been doing, where you can improve, all of that sort of thing. Those are like off site. So we do those twice a year, spring and fall and then every week we have two team meetings. Those meetings are a little bit more about like the day to day operations. Where can we improve what is in the moment, like what jobs like, more specific in the dirt kind of details. Whereas the off site meetings are a little bit more like about the future and about our goals and aspirations and where we're tracking towards that. So number one would be team meetings. The second thing that's kind of like A very close second, kind of like 1.5 is switching to a pay system, a compensation system that's performance based. So I just believe in it so, so much. In fact, with the franchisees we're building our own software around this pay for performance system that I just. The amount of productivity and efficiencies that I've seen using a pay by performance system is so incredible. And the returns are huge for the business, the returns are great for the employees and that changes the culture because everyone starts to think the same way. Instead of you as the business owner going in one direction of like efficiency and profitability and focusing on cutting out waste and the employees thinking about like how long they can be on the clock without being caught and not producing any work or like sleeping on the job. We had an employee start with us a couple weeks ago and he was driving by a crew from one of his previous, his previous employer. And he's like they were sleeping, their crew was sleeping for like 30, 40 minutes at a gas station in their truck. And he literally drove by and was like, yeah, well, when I used to work there, that was considered like the highest performing, the best team, a mowing crew. And here he's now driving by them and they're sleeping in their trucks. Why? Because they're getting paid by the hour and yet the owner is wanting to think about efficiencies and how do I make them go faster? But yet they're thinking about how can I do as little work as possible but get paid this hourly rate. And so that's pulling the culture in two different directions. And so number one thing I would do is have team meetings on a weekly basis, have off site meetings for those more goal projections. Looking back, seeing our results, growth pattern, where can we improve profitability financials, those off sites, then having the weekly. More like in the trenches, what's going on? Where can we improve on this job or in that client or what happened here? What did we do really well, what customer reviews came in and then. But 1.5 right behind team meetings. As a cultural changer, I would pay, I would say put a system in place to compensate your people on based upon performance that aligns you as the owner along with them. It's not like you're trying to get them, you're giving them an advantage by making more money and having the opportunity to increase their income by performing and aligning themselves with the goals of the business. And so when you do that, whenever the tide of a culture is going the same direction, there's so much better culture that is created. Whereas if you're going in one direction, your employees are going in another, your manager's going in a different direction because they have a different like, you know, they have a percentage commission that's coming out in a certain direction. And like if you don't get everyone's alignment going the same direction, there's always gonna be issues, there's always going to be people disagreeing, there's always gonna be tension or hard customers and hard accounts, or people make mistakes. But if generally everyone's goal is the same to grow the business, to be more efficient, to make more money for the employees and for the business. If that's the current, the constant theme and the constant flow and everyone's in that same sort of tied then the pressure is all going the same direction. And so you can get around those issues and like days and customers that are a little bit harder like because you all know that you're going in the same direction. And so that's what I would recommend. So if, you know, if I started my first business I'd be in the home improvement service based business. If I was trying to change my culture, I'd have team meetings and I'd implement pay for performance systems. If I was have a very first system and I had no systems in my business, the number one thing I would systematize is my sales system. How do I convert, how do I convert leads and people that have no idea who I am prospects into paying customers. And if I was spending my first dollars on marketing I'd have a website and if I already had a website I would make sure that I split test an advertising method, take the winner and make it my control and then it'd be my job to beat that control. And if I was hiring my first employee I would hire them to do something, the things that I'm not good at, I or I would hire them to do the things that are actually producing the work so that I could go out and I could drive top line revenue, focus on sales, focus on networking and bring in more business. That's the first and this is the last. And so I want to say goodbye to you. I'll see you on the next episode but make sure you join us on the Facebook group Small business owners of America Business boot camp. I'll see it in the Facebook group. I love to see your comments and I'd love to see if I can help you. It.