The Three Stages of Business

Hey, everyone, my name is Mike Andes. I'm the founder of Augusta Lawn Care, where we have over 150 locations around the world. And today I'm showing you the exact step by step needed to go from zero all the way to a seven figure business. And a lot of times focusing on the wrong stage of your business, when in reality your business needs you to be something else, is why a lot of small businesses fail. So let's talk about being a great laborer, a great manager, and a great architect. And the few things that you want to be focused on at each stage stage of business. The number one secret when you're a solo operator is to make sure that you spend the majority of your day actually doing the work. I've seen solo operators where they may work for 30, 40, 50% of their day out in the field, and they spend the rest of their day doing paperwork, doing estimates, driving around and meeting customers. I want to maximize the percentage of my day that I'm actually producing revenue. And so if you're mowing grass, keep the blades turning. If you're painting walls, keep the brush moving, do that as much as possible. Cause that's when you're actually generating revenue. All the other time spent on admin or sales or doing estimates is not making you any money whatsoever. I'm gonna have what I call an estimate comments template. It's gonna be in my notes app. It could be in Google Drive. It could also be in your CRM. We basically have the verbiage of an entire estimate. You can quickly copy and paste, change one or two things and quickly get the quote to the customer instead of typing out every single letter on an estimate. And all of a sudden either A, you're, you're gonna have really short estimates that don't have enough detail, or B, you're gonna spend 30, 40, 50 minutes trying to create an estimate. At Augusta Lawn Care, I've made estimates in five or 10 minutes for jobs that are, well, 10, 20, $30,000 projects simply because I was able to copy and paste and then change just a few things. Even on a massive like construction or paver, patio, retaining wall job, I just change a few things and I'm able to get the estimate done in just a matter of minutes. By doing this, I'll be able to make sure I get all the verbiage for an estimate completed before I even leave the customer's house in their driveway. I am going to have the estimate comments done. I'm not gonna wait till the end of the day. Why because at the end of the day, I've done five estimates and I'm gonna remember back to what happened four hours ago. I wanna do it when it's fresh in my mind. I'm in the driveway, I copy and paste my notes, I make a few changes and done. The second secret to being a profitable solo operator and making more money, simple scales. Fancy fails. And when you're first getting started, you don't need to get super elaborate with your marketing. You wanna stay basic, you likely don't have the capital. Go do massive campaigns in the form of Facebook and Google. And I'm a massive billboard, I'm gonna run a TV commercial. You don't have the money for that and that's fine. Cause simple scales meaning every single time you get a customer, I'm gonna do a 5 around of every single house around that customer's property. What's a 5 around? It's a door hanger on the neighbor on the left and right side of that person as well as the three houses on the other side of the street. So if I'm doing mowing, I am going to then do five different door hangers at all their neighbor's house and I'm going to put a price on that door hanger. And so that's simple, it's basic. And then while I'm there, I'm going to do a yard sign on the intersection that goes into that neighborhood. I'm trying to simply scale something very simple like door hangers and yard signs. I'm also going to do things that are free, like going onto Facebook looking for local groups. I'm simply gonna introduce myself, probably have like a picture of my family, like, hey, just got started up. If you ever need X, y and Z services, I'm your guy. Having that local feel inside of a local Facebook group is the move. And it doesn't cost you a lot. It's simple, but simple can scale. Not all payment for your services comes in the form of cash. You can also get referrals, you can also get upsells and you can get reviews. And so if you're just getting started this, those things are just as valuable, if not more valuable than actually collecting payment for your services. Cause if I can get a bunch of Google reviews, I will get more leads. If I can get upsells and I do one service for a cheaper price or free to a customer and I upsell them something that's five times larger. Fantastic. If I sell them mowing services and I give them a really, really good Deal or free. The first service, I might sell them a $5,000 project. If I sell them a $5,000 project and I give them a discount, I. I might actually get them on a recurring mowing service where I make a couple hundred dollars every single month. So I always think in terms of if I can do an upsell and I take them from a recurring customer, I can upsell them into a one time project. If I get them on a one time project, can I upsell them into a recurring service? The person that gets through being a solo operator in a matter of a few months versus people that never get out of being a solo operator. The difference is who has the ability to sell. You got to sell customers on the that they want your services, but also you gotta sell them on getting a review. You gotta sell them on giving you a referral. This ability to sell is what's gonna allow you to massively speed up this process of going from solo operator to an employer. The third secret to making as much money as possible when you have no employees is to make sure that your response time is dialed in. Whether it be someone calling you, whether they chatting with you from your website, whether they send you an email or they send you a text message, your response time is super important. I know from tracking thousands of leads across home services that the vast majority of people that accept an estimate, it goes to the person that answered the phone first and then got the quote to the customer as fast as possible. And so if you can just answer your phone and get the fast response time and then do number one, which is do your estimates very fast once you've met the customer, you will win this game. So if most estimates are one by the company that simply answers their phone, we want to make sure that we have someone to answer the phone as many hours of the day as possible. Not going to your voicemail, not you getting back to them in two or three days, but getting a response time as fast as possible. At Augusta Lawn Care, we have it where their phone is literally answered 247 because we've seen over and over and over again the data that points to the fact that the first person who answers their phone is going to get the job. And, and so I don't really want you to be the person answering the phone. Why? Because you're out in the field doing work. And if you're gonna get interrupted five times a day with a phone call and eight times a day with an email, and four times a day with text message, you're never gonna get any work done. And that's what leads to being unprofitable as a solo operator and feeling like you're going in a hundred different directions throughout the day is simply because you're being reactionary to all of the communication. So one of two things happen. Either a theory, you don't get a fast response time and customers are choked and they never actually do business with you because you don't get back to them fast enough. Or two, you feel completely scattered throughout your day. You're jumping from one task to the next. The phone rings and then jump on it. Oh, a customer texts you and they're mad and you jump on it and you're going from one thing to the other throughout the day and it just runs you absolutely ragged. How do you avoid this? Get someone like a virtual assistant or a part time office person that can answer the phone and answer emails, answer text messages, answer web chat, and take all that communication and do it much faster than you. But then you're able to lock in on one thing and then remember, at this point in time, we want to be maximizing how much percentage of our day is spent doing the work. Generating revenue is our focus. And a bunch of distractions is not what we want to be having. And it's not going to cost you a lot. All those things I just mentioned, the four text messages, the eight phone calls, the 10 emails, it's gonna cost you very little. Cause it's not a lot of time to actually respond. But the switching cost of going from mowing grass to then answering a phone call, and then when you're on the phone call, you get a text message. That switching cost to getting finally back on mowing grass takes you way longer than someone else that is dedicated to answering the phone. So if you can hire a virtual assistant or a service that you get charged by the minute, they're not gonna be perfect. They're not gonna answer things exactly like you. But the goal is that you can focus on doing the work. The fourth secret is use the sniff test. What is the sniff test? It is a quick way to know whether or not you're ready to hire an employee and whether or not your business is profitable enough to be able to afford them. The first sniff test is be like, okay, if I did all this revenue for the day and I took off 33% or a third of it, because employees are not gonna be as efficient as you. If they earned two thirds as much as I made today, would I be able to afford their wages? And you're like, great, I'm paying them $20 an hour. With taxes and everything, it's $25 an hour. So then take that $25 per hour, multiply it by how many hours you worked for the day. Let's call it 8. That's $200 in wages that I'm gonna be spending. If I didn't make $200 today in revenue, we got a problem. In fact, if I didn't make $300 because I know they're not gonna be as efficient as me, I'd buy at least a third. So that third is your buffer of the efficiency between you and the employee. And then I wanna make sure that I can actually afford all their wages. And so many of the times people hire a bunch of employees, they don't pass the sniff test. And then what happens is they actually lose money because it costs more in wages than the revenue produced by the employees. Now, if you're like, well, I did not pass the sniff test, good news, there's a way to be able to get out of it. You got to raise your prices. And when am I going to raise my prices? When I fill the capacity, I will raise my prices. Which means when you want to start hiring employees because you're overloaded with work, instead of doing that, raise your prices till you can pass the sniff test. Hit capacity, as many clients as you possibly can. You're booked out, lots of jobs are pouring in. Great. Raise your prices by 15, 20, 30%. And then what's going to happen? Less leads are going to come in, less jobs will be accepted because you've raised your prices. And now, though, because those higher prices, you'll be able to pass the sniff test. And that's when you can hire employees. The fifth secret to making as much money as possible when you're a solo operator is focus on being a great laborer. And a lot of times when I say that people are like, that's the meaning. I should be working on my business, not in it. I agree with you, but not when you're a solo operator. If you're trying to make as much money as possible while being a solo operator, you thinking about acquisitions and multiple locations and general managers and systems and procedures is not going to make you more money. It's going to distract you from doing what makes you money, which is the work itself. And to do the work better, be a great laborer. Watch videos about how to be more efficient, how to optimize your time throughout the day so you can spend more time doing the Work. I don't need you going to conferences about leadership. You have no employees. Just focus on being a great laborer in order to maximize the amount of profit that you make at this stage. I happen to believe if you become really profitable at this stage and you're able to raise prices high enough, you'll be able to then get the employees and then be able to afford the leadership training required to be a great boss. But right now, to maximize your profit and be a great leader, try not to get your head in the clouds too much. A lot of times, really, people have idolized the thought of working on the business, and it's like demeaning to work in the business. Flash like news alert. Until I crossed 10 million in revenue, most of my day was spent working in the business. And so the thought that you're gonna be at 0 to 100,000 as a solo operator and working on the business is absolutely ludicrous. Put your head down, become a great laborer and make more money now. All right, so now that we've figured out how to be a great laborer and you've grown the business past 2, $200,000 in annual revenue, you're going to probably need employees. Now let's look at what exactly we want to be focused on as the owner in the business, as a being a great manager, because that's the role we need to play. First secret is know your budgeted hour capacity. Budgeted hours are simply how long do I think every job is going to take? The budget hours allow you to be able to accurately predict how far out into the future you're booked out. And also make sure you you don't randomly show up on a Friday evening and realize you still have tons of work to do because you didn't accurately schedule your jobs. So whether it is equipment maintenance, an estimate, or doing a big project or recurring maintenance job, every single task in the business has budgeted hours or bh. So I know exactly how many hours I can schedule in a week, on a day, on a month. And that allows me to be able to create a very long backlog of when I have a lot of jobs pouring in. I can still absorb them all. Cause I can just keep booking them out into the future. Having budget hours also allows me to be able to track my efficiency for my employees and know whether or not I have high performers or low performers. And we'll talk more about that later on in the secrets. The second secret is to know if you are in profit mode or if you're in Growth mode. If you're trying to grow your business as fast as possible, you're probably in growth mode. If you're in profit mode, it probably means that you're raising prices and trying to increase how much cash you're making every single month. But what determines this? It is determined by when you hit capacity. And you would need to hire more people or buy more trucks and equipment in order to get more customers. What do you do then? Do you go out and buy the trucks, buy the equipment and hire employees? If so, you're in growth mode. If you are in profit mode, what you would do is instead of going out and increasing capacity by getting those things, getting all those trucks, equipment and more employees instead, you'd simply just raise the prices. By raising the prices, you would cut some of your customers out that don't want to pay that price and you would reduce your close ratio of how many accepted estimates are coming in. This would allow you to be able to make more profit without getting more trucks, equipment or employees. You are either in growth mode or you are in profit mode. I think it's crazy when owners are trying to grow really fast. Like I'm trying to double and triple my business, but I'm also trying to be really profitable. You're speaking out of both sides of your mouth because growth sucks cash. Growth requires trucks, equipment and hiring people. That requires cash. You know what that does also is it drains your cash balance, which means no profit in the business. You can't be doing both. Yeah, you might grow 5 or 10 or 15% a year and still be in profit mode, but you're not going to be doubling and tripling. So don't try to convince yourself that you can grow from 100,000 to a million dollars next year and then also make tons of profit. It doesn't work like that. The third secret is having pay for performance and yellow slips. And yes, this book will answer all your questions. Mikeandys.com P4P free training as well. Pay for performance is essentially this. The harder the crew works, the more money they make. And I give them a percentage of all the revenue they make for the business, which incentivizes them to work as fast as possible. But I'm going to balance it out with yellow slips. Yellow slips are if they make a mistake on a job, they're going to go back and fix it. And if there's a damaged case and they due to negligence, break equipment or damage customer's property, guess what? That yellow slip, that money, the cost of that damage case the cost of going back to the customer's house is coming out of their pay for performance. This balances out speed pay for performance and great quality yellow slips because if they have a lot of yellow subs, they aren't going to make any P4P because this is going to come out of their pay for performance dollars. And the reason this is so important is because if you're starting to grow the business and you get out of the field, it's hard to do quality control and you can't afford to hire someone full time to go check in on all the properties. So I need the ability to keep my crew accountable to each other, the customer and the business each other. Because if Bobby over there doesn't mow the grass this week very well and I come back next week and now it's way taller, I'm going to be mad at Bobby. I've got to keep them accountable to the customer because now if they make a mistake and they get a yellow slip, they have to go back to the customer's house and talk to the customer themselves. And they've got to show that yellow slip to the entire crew at the next team meeting. That's accountability. And then they've got to be accountable to business because I'm not going to pay them a whole bunch of money on pay for performance. Just have a system and then if they don't do a good job, you take the money out of their paycheck. That's it. The fourth secret is make sure you know what your efficiency score is. Efficiency score is simply the budget hours the job is supposed to take divided by the clocked hours. How long does the job actually take? So for example, if I am going to do six budget hours of work, maintenance, mowing, project, doesn't matter because remember number one, I have budget hours for every single thing in the business. Let's assume though, I do six budget hours worth of work that's billable to the customer in an eight hour day, six divided by eight equals 0.75 or 75%. That would be my efficiency score. Like what is good? What's a good efficiency score in general? Here's the rule of thumb. 50% or below for efficiency score stinks. What that means is that more than half of the person's day is spent on waste. Instead of actually completing budgeted hours, that is getting paid. Now that's bad. 50% or lower, 70% efficiency score, pretty good. That's where I see most people doing pretty well and they start to make above base pay on P4P and we're rolling 90% or above. If your efficiency score for your crew is above 90%, that is where you start to make a lot of money for the business. And on pay for performance, the crew also starts to make a lot of money. That means that out of a 10 hour day they get 9 budget hours of work completed. Which only leaves 10% of their day for things like driving around. So how do I get that? Well, don't have a massive service area where they gotta drive 30 minutes in every single direction. Don't have where you've gotta have like juggling of crews. Because why it leads to a lot of inefficiencies. These are the type of things that if you just build the business correctly, you'll have less waste. Make it where all the equipment is the same setup. Why? So they don't forget things and have to drive back to the shop. That is increasing the windshield time when they're not producing budgeted hours. So if you can know your efficiency score, number one, just know it. Number two is make sure it's over 70%, ideally 90% and you'll crush it. The fifth secret what we're doing is focusing on your booked out date. That is knowing exactly which day of the month you are booked out until say. Well that doesn't make any sense. I'm booked out like two or three weeks. That makes absolutely no sense to a customer. I need to know exactly what day I am completely booked out until. Why? So when a job gets accepted, I can immediately get it on the schedule when the customer accepts the estimate. Cause until the job is scheduled and a date of service is actually given to the customer, they could go accept another estimate from my competitor. And so I'm going to try to make sure I always know like if you wake me up at 2am I know exactly where I'd be putting on my next accepted project. This also allows you to be able to adjust your close ratio based upon this number. Because guess what if, if I'm only two or three days booked out, I'm probably going to not add a bunch of fees like estimate fees or dump fees or material markup just cause I need to close work and put jobs on the schedule. Whereas if I'm booked out two or three months, I should be increasing prices, I should be adding on more fees because I am booked out so far that I should be able to increase my prices when times are crazy and all these leads are pouring in. If you have a seasonal business, have seasonal pricing which Means during peak season, if people want to get on the schedule and you're booked out crazy into the future, cause you know the date you're booked out till, then you're actually gonna charge more. This will allow you to absorb as much profit as possible during your busy season. And then when you go into a time when you don't have as much work, then you can do more discounting. Then you can bring down your prices in order to put jobs on the schedule and ensure that your booked out date is in the future and it's not tomorrow. The last thing you want to be doing is getting jobs that get accepted and like, oh man, I got to put them on fast. That sort of desperation to have work on the schedule just to keep the crew busy is what leads to a lot of people leaving a lot of profit on the table and losing money on jobs. Once you start growing the business past about 500 to $800,000 in annual revenue, you start needing other support roles that are not producing revenue. Like an estimator, a general manager, a office manager. These roles usually means you now move out of being a manager and into that of an architect. The architect is focusing on trying to grow the business and do it in a way where you don't actually have to be there every single day. You're not in daily operations, you're not hiring, you're not firing. You're the architect. You step away from the business. Let's talk about the thing that you want to focus on to be able to run the business where you don't actually have to be there in person because everything's running without you. And you're the architect of the business. The first secret is that off seasons will keep you poor. If you have an off season, getting rid of that is extremely important if you want to be able to leave the business and not lose money. A lot of home services for three, four or five months of the year actually lose money. Their cash flow turns negative and it actually takes them until July or August in a year to actually make above zero and making profit. If you can solve that problem and not have that massive trough, you will absolutely be able to step out of the daily operations much sooner. So how do we make sure we don't have an off season? You're gonna have season specific services with season specific offers for your customers. You're gonna go to your existing database of customers and either offer them more of what they're already buying, or an adjacent service to what you're currently offering that is allowed to Be able to be done during the off season. For example, you might do mowing during the busy season. And then during your what used to be off season, you're now going to do snow removal, or you're going to do winter services like trimming the bushes, or you're going to do Christmas lights or some other service that allows the revenue throughout the entire year to be more continuous. The reason that off seasons really crush you when you try to leave daily operations is because a general manager or an office manager or a salesperson, they're usually considered overhead. And that overhead stays even if revenue dips. And therefore you go negative cash so much faster compared to if you were in the business, you probably just wouldn't take any payroll for yourself during the off season. So keeping off seasons away from you will allow you to be able to step away from the business much sooner. The alternative to having an off season is having no season at all for three or four months. I've seen some business do this successfully, and that is simply close down operations for three or four months so they have no wages. You can only do that if you've cut down on your overhead. Secret number two is I'm going to scrutinize with a very fine tooth comb all my fixed expenses and my overhead. Now, when we look at expenses, there are really three major expenses. The first one is variable expenses. Variable expenses are usually your cost of goods. Soldiers, your cost of goods sold are usually your labor. Any money that is spent on materials, and any contractors that actually go into producing the actual work that is variable. Which means as I sell more jobs, usually my variable costs also go up. If I don't have any work, I'm not going to be buying materials. I'm not going to be having direct laborers go out in the field. I'm not going to have contractors going out in the field. So my variable costs basically vary based upon how much revenue and how many jobs I have on the schedule. Fixed expenses. So we got variable expenses. Now you got fixed expenses. Fixed expenses. As is stated, they're fixed, they don't change. And if next month you made half as much revenue, they stay the same. This is things like your rent for your shop or your office space. This is your insurance. Your cell phone bill doesn't change. If you text more this month versus last month, it's fixed. Also a big one for home services, Especially if you're growing quickly. You gotta be careful of fixed expenses is loan payments. Because guess what? They're not gonna pause payments for the next six Months at least. Most of them don't. If you have a bunch of equipment debt or an SBA loan or any sort of debt, those are fixed expenses. That monthly payment, that mortgage that you're paying on is gonna come out every single month. So I'm gonna scrutinize those fixed expenses dramatically because I do not wanna have where I go into the slow season. And my fixed expenses are so high, I'm making negative cash flow. So we have variable expenses, then we have fixed expenses, and then we have overhead. Overhead is things that go into making the business work. This could be something like the payroll for your office employee. This could be all of the software that you need to run the business. An example of overhead expenses would be like if you have a salesperson, their wages, straight overhead, and they are required for the business to stay in operation. So. So I'm gonna really pick apart and scrutinize my fixed expenses and my overhead, variable expenses. They'll go up and down with how much work is on the schedule. But I'm gonna really dive into these two because I gotta get those down. The lower I can get those fixed expenses means that when I'm not around during the off season, when things slow down, there's no chance of me losing money. And the last thing you wanna do if you're trying to get away from your business in terms of being in daily operations is ever losing money. And the one number one way to do that is get rid of the off season. And the number one way to make sure your off season, you actually don't have to get as much revenue is just reduce your fixed expenses and your overhead. Now for everyone, that's like, oh, no. Variable costs are very important. You're about to get your treat. The third secret is you gotta know what percentage of your revenue is going to the actual direct labor that goes into making the job happen. Ultimately, in home services, we are selling an hour of labor that costs us 25, $30 an hour. And we're selling it to the customer for $100 or $120 per hour. Everything in between is the systems, the procedures, the training, and the equipment required to make that happen. And so it's very important to know what percentage of my revenue is actually going to paying the guys that are actually out and doing the work. The guys and the gals. And so if it's 30, 40, 50%, I need to know what that number is. How do I determine that? How much of all of your wages that go to frontline team members that are doing the work. What divided by your revenue, is that percentage? Okay, in general, when it comes to home services, if I see a percentage of revenue that's being spent on direct labor being over 50%, that business will not make money. Why? Because that only covers the direct labor. That doesn't cover the cost of the materials contractors, it doesn't cover the cost of my fixed expenses, and it doesn't cover the cost of my overhead. Oh, and at the end, I should probably have a profit over at the end of that. And so if more than half of my revenue, total revenue is being spent on direct labor, usually that home service business doesn't make a lot of money. Again, wages is probably, if you look at your profit loss statement, the biggest expense you have. So we have the direct labor, but we also have the indirect labor or the admin. I don't want to be spending more than 20% of my revenue on admin. Now I personally consider admin as the rent for my office space, the wages for my office folks, and all the equipment required to be able to have them operate inside of that office. I don't want that over 20%. I shoot for between 8 and 12% of what I make at my locations. I want that going to command center. They cover all my admin stuff. So that way I can focus on everything else with the daily operations, with the general manager. But, but in terms of my admin, I want to be shooting under 20%, which means buying a big fancy shop space is probably not the right move if you have a $200,000 business. Once you get a million plus dollar business, you're in profit mode. You've been around for five or 10 years. That's when investing in real estate in a bigger shop space might make sense. But if 10%, 15% of your revenue is going out the door to shop space, either rent or a mortgage, it's likely you're not gonna have enough meat on the bone to actually be cash flow positive. Because If I'm spending 30% of my revenue on just the cost of my admin, and then I'm spending 50% of my revenue on just direct labor, that means I have 20% left over to cover all the other expenses in my business, you won't make any money. That's the bottom line. The fifth secret to having a business that can run without you in daily operations is having hiring and training systems. That means having a system to attract people to come to an interview, having interview questions, they actually accept the job offer. Having a system for onboarding them and then training them, which means having a system for the trainer, having a system for the trainee. So when they show up to work the first day, it's all like, here's your uniform, hop in the truck and go. It's like, okay, let's go over the procedures and the policies for the business. Let's go over who's going to be your trainer. Here's the checklist of things we expect you to know in the first two weeks. So at Augusta Lawn Care we give them a trainee checklist that they're required for their day one and day two, they're going to use a stick edger. Day three and four, they're going to use a blower. Day four and five, they're going to use a push mower. And then day six and seven on the week number two, they're going to actually use a zero turn. Then they figure out the trailer and the truck. These are all different tasks they're required to do. And a trainer is supposed to sign off on each task as they get completed. This assessment is the type of thing you'll want to create systems around when it comes to hiring and and training your employees. By doing this, you're gonna be able to make sure that you don't have to be there to be the expert at hiring the expert at interview questions. Just make the question that you would ask and then have the interviewer ask them and write down the answers. These sort of systems will allow you to step away from the business instead of you being the master juggler that has all the answers to the business in your head. This also means having systems in place to be able to take your really hungry employees that want upward mobility and giving them something to chew on. Whether it be audible programs and audio books or meetings about how they can get to the next level of their career. That's all part of the system and having a way for them to have upward mobility inside the company. Whether it be learning how to do estimates or learning how to equipment maintenance, or becoming a general manager or starting their own location. Having those systems in place will allow you to have a much stronger culture because no longer do people think this is a dead end job because they just got a part time deal at the local lawn care service. Now they can actually see upward mobility in a way to get more money and get to the next stage of their career. The sixth secret to having a business that runs without you in daily operations is having profit sharing and open book management. Now I understand that you worked very, very hard for many years. And it took a long time to become profitable. And now you're like, I'm gonna give my profits away to my employees. And they just showed up here two months ago, and I'm going to be giving them piece of, you know. Yes, I understand that inclination, but you want to give them a piece of the pie. Because if you give them a piece of your success, guess what? They'll make you more successful because you give them a piece of the action. And so if you're really making a ton of money, give them a small piece of it and they'll want to make more money. And then if you're not doing good, like, well, what do I do if I'm not making any profit and there's no profit sharing to have? That's when you want to have open book management, regardless. So either way, I need to have open book management, which is sharing all the numbers in the business with my team. Whether I'm making a bunch of money and I'm giving them a piece of profits, or if I'm making no money, I'm still gonna share the numbers with the team, even though there's no profits to share. Why? Well, because if you're not doing good, you need everyone to band together, rally together, and understand just how bad the situation is. Otherwise, they're just gonna look for evidence that you're making tons of cash. They're gonna look for the new truck that just drove in and be like, they're making a ton of money because they bought a brand new truck. And in your mind you're like, well, we are four weeks behind and we can't find any employees. And so I went into debt to go buy the truck so we can get some of this work done for our customers. They're not gonna think that, though. They just see new truck, the owner is making a bunch of money off of me. And if that's not happening, prove it to them. If you want people to be able to work harder for you, it's probably better idea that they like you. And the number one way to make sure they don't like you is to hide things from them. Cause if you feel someone hides something from you, you probably don't trust them. And if you don't trust them, you don't like them. If you don't like them, you're not gonna work as hard for them. And instead of trying to actually get more work done through, they'll just spend their time trying to plan your demise. That's when they siphon gas out of the truck. That's when they try to damage equipment. That's when they say stupid stuff to customers to try to make your business look bad. So they don't like you. They probably don't like you because they don't trust you. And you're not gonna share numbers with them and you're gonna hide things from them. They probably aren't gonna trust you. So my recommendation is open up the books, show all the numbers and then give them a piece of the action. So when you make a lot of profit, they get a piece of of that too. The seventh and final secret to having a business run without you and you being out of daily operations is 3M. What does that stand for? Money motivated managers. You say, why do I want money motivated managers? I want managers that are going to take care of people and take care of the customer. Guess what? When you're gone, you need someone defending the bottom line. Because if they don't defend the bottom line, you won't have customers and you won't have employees. So you need someone that's money motivated so that you can give them a piece of the action and pay them according to their performance of the bottom line. So I want people that want more money and so that they make the company more money, they defend and make sure that the bottom line is protected. They're going to cut out waste, they're going to make sure that we don't spend frivolously. If they just want to make friends with all the employees that will work for a while until guess what, the bottom line goes negative and no one's paycheck is going to go through. So I need a manager that when I'm gone, they're constantly thinking about the bottom line and their paycheck is directly incentivized by that bottom line. I need them defending it at all costs. Regardless of the size of your business or if you're focused on being a laborer, manager or an architect, one of the biggest unlocks to be able to grow faster is get around other entrepreneurs that are in the stage of business that you're in and learning from their best practices. You can do that by going to blue collarsummit.com where there's gonna be hundreds of other small business owners in the home service industries. And we're gonna be hearing from experts like John Taffer from Bar Rescue. I'm gonna do a workshop on how to figure out your off season revenue. If that's of interest to you, go to bluecollarsummit.com and book your tickets today. I hope to see you there.