What to Do When You Are BORED of Your Business

Hey everyone, it's Mike Andes on this episode of Home Service Millionaire podcast. And today we're talking about boredom at the top. I've heard this said probably more than ever before this year and that is like, look, the business is going good and I feel bored. I don't really have to be there. It's profitable. As we head into Q4, there's quite a bit of cash in the bank. I don't really know what to do next. Or it's a year or two way before I make a big move. What should I be doing in the meantime? So today the producer has put together a docket for us talking about boredom at the top. We're gonna go through five different conversation starters, questions from the producer about this topic and hopefully if you have a million plus dollar business or business that's very profitable and you feel bored, it's helpful today for you. First one is if you're bored, is that success or proof you've stopped growing? So in general, when I say growth sucks cash and growth creates chaos, the when you're growing, you're adding more customers that are new and you're adding more employees that are also new. Those two things collide in the form of very difficult to have solid operations because typically when you have new customers, that's when the vast majority of their callbacks complaints, that's when all the bad stuff happens. They're not used of your service. And when it comes to at the same time onboarding a whole bunch of new employees, that's also when they make the most mistakes. They're not efficient, they're not profitable. They also make a bunch of poor quality decisions when it comes to the service that they're providing. And so that's why growth creates chaos, is because growth means more customers and it means more employees. And when you add both of those things at the same time, you have a recipe for for chaos. Now, when you stop growing, many times when you're in profit mode, you have cash being stacked and you don't have new customers coming in, you literally have capped your capacity. You don't hire more employees, you're not buying more trucks, you're not buying more equipment, you're in profit mode. By definition, you're going to have less chaos because you aren't in growth mode. And so if you're bored in a way that's a good thing. And from that location's perspective, you are successful many times you are profitable. Profit is usually pretty boring because growth sucks cash, therefore you're not profitable, therefore if you're in profit mode and things are boring, it's likely that you are profitable. And so I see this over and over again when we get addicted to kind of the first few years of starting a business where we're working 14, 16 hours a day, every single day. There's landmines, things blowing up, employees walking off the job. You're training new people, you're having a whole bunch of new customers. You're in 5, 6, 10 new customers a day. Leads are coming in, the phone's ringing off the hook. Like, that's craziness. And a lot of times when you're in the middle of that, you're like, oh, that's horrible. This is so horrible. I just wish, can't wait till I get in profit mode. And you long for that day, and then that day comes. You're like, man, I feel like kind of bored. Like everything's going smoothly. All my employees have been here with me for three or four or five, six months. And, you know, things are just chugging along, not really running a whole bunch of ads because I'm at capacity. And every time I hit capacity has raised prices again. So for that one location, I would say you're successful. I think what I would do is macro. Look at your whole life and the business as one segment of your life. And I would say in that business segment, you have become successful. The question just becomes, is the goal either to a grow the business, which would mean going back into growth mode, expansion, hiring, et cetera, or has this section of your life success been fulfilled and now you need to use time, energy and resources to go fulfill other areas of your life, like family relationships, spending time with their children, et cetera. Those are all noble and only you can answer that. So when you get to this stasis of boredom, I ask you, like, do you a need to expand the business more just to be fulfilled and content, or being successful in business? You've crossed that off your list. It's being profitable. It doesn't take a lot of your time. You're quote unquote bored. Now you have the time, energy and resources to be able to go focus on the things that maybe you shelved for three to five years, getting the business off the ground many times, health, relationships, et cetera. So is it success? Yes. I would say this from a business perspective of success. I think a lot of times when someone hits this point, what I would ask is, is this a time to expand the definition of success for your business? In other words, I need to Grow up more, get another location, be able to expand it to a different division or different service? Or do I need to actually put this business on ice for a couple years, allow that success to continue, stat, cash, and then go focus on other areas of life that I might have sidelined while I was growing the business? All right, second topic on the docket. Why smooth sailing seasons breed the exact complacency that kills you in downturns. Ah, very good. This many times happens when someone that I like, I just mentioned, they're like, hey, you know what, I'm going to let the business run by itself. I'm not going to try to keep growing it. I'm going to go focus on other life stuff. I'm going to get her in a relationship, I'm going to focus on my kids, I'm going to focus on a hobby. And they spend a few years away from the business. And a few years away from the business can cause a lot of rust very quickly. Someone out of the game for 3, 4, 5 years comes back to the game and they feel like nothing's changed. But the market has changed, the labor market has changed, technology has changed. And so the smooth sailing, the temptation to let off the gas. What I would encourage is if you ever plan on coming back into the game and accelerating, make sure you keep the vehicle optimized, make sure you keep it clean, make sure you do the maintenance, the oil changes, the tires, the brakes. Don't let the vehicle just sit there and gain rust. And so I would stay sharp. This, I think could come in the form of just a few hours a week of educating yourself, learning podcasts, books, staying sharp. So that if and when you come back to the game and want to accelerate that, you don't spend a year or two of spinning your wheels, trying to get reacclimated to where the business is at, reaction acclimated to where the market and advertising and labor market is at. And so smooth sailing seasons can breed complacency. It can, it can be like, hey, everything is good, I don't need to spend money on marketing. Great, that's fine. I agree. The whole objective of getting into profit mode is you don't have to spend money on marketing. But what if your long term goal is you want to start a couple locations on the other side of the state where you have your family and all of a sudden you haven't run ads for five years and you don't even know what Google tracking is, you don't know what Facebook pixels are, you don't know what SEO is, you don't know what AEO is for artificial intelligence coming along. How do we actually give answers instead of just tags and the keywords that were so attributed back in the day to Google. So these are the type of things that you can gain rust on. But I think if you just stay sharp, if your objective long term is to come back into the game, you can absolutely keep your skills up to date. So just be careful of complacency. I think it's very important to distinguish between contentment and complacency. I can be content but not complacent. And I think the thing that you want to be careful of, if you're content, the business is productive. You're letting off the gas a little bit, you're letting other people run the business. But if your objective is down the road to go back into growth mode, make sure you don't get complacent and allow the vehicle that is your brain, your skills to rust because it can happen in a matter of just a couple years. Number three, are you reinvesting profits for true expansion or just scratching the itch to stay busy? This is something that especially once you passed a million, once the business has systems in place, you have middle management, it can be very difficult to just want to scratch the itch of staying busy and not really feeling productive. Because in the past it was very, very clear what you should be doing next. Because urgent things were put in your plate every single day. Customers freaking out, employees walking off the job, you're way behind on budget hours, you have a huge amount of Christmas lights to put up, or a huge foray into Facebook ads that you're doing or going to put out tens of thousands of door hangers. And so it's very clear as to what you should do next. With everything is going good. All of your team members have been with you for a long time and customers come in organically from your website and you're not running a bunch of ads. It can be like, well, what should I do next? And you almost feel the sense of not belonging because you're so used of constantly chasing the next fire and constantly going from one problem to the next to the next. And all of a sudden there's no problems and you actually feel a sense of not having a purpose. That can happen. And it's a horrible problem to have. You know, if someone else is watching this, like, I'm just grinding, I'm in the middle of the fires every single day. You're like, oh, yeah, so Sorry for you, mister. Everything is going so good, I don't know what to do next. Trust me, I agree. But if you ran your business for 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 years and now it is profitable and now other people are managing it and you really don't have any fires to fight, it can actually be a little alarming and jarring of like, what am I supposed to even do here? And so this is why I believe creating a very clear goal to be able to have some level of there's a gap, there's a book called Gap the Gap and Gain. But having a gap between where you're at now and where you want to be at. And a lot of times the challenging part is where you've been wanting to get to for so long is now actually where you're at. So you wanted the million dollar business and you've wanted to have a profitable business that makes 150, $200,000 in distributions. And now you're there and you're like, well, now what am I supposed to do? Because in the past, the reason there was so much clarity is because the deprivation of not having the million dollar business, not having a profitable business, forced you to wake up. It made it very clear as to what you should do next and the urgency of the task in front of you. And now all of a sudden, when you've met the goal, there is no deprivation because you have exactly what you've always been wanting. And so I think there are two options, like we've talked about. Either A, extend your goal and create deprivation again. This can be, in my opinion, starting a location is really, really positive. If you have one location just printing money, you have a great general manager, everything is running on its own. And you're like, okay, I got an itch. That's when starting another location is great. Because instead of trying to break the business model, just go copy and paste it, rinse and repeat. This is why, like someone that's like, I've done a million dollar business, I have really solid margins. All of a sudden they're like, I'm expanding other services or I'm going to expand a different service area, my crews are going to drive an hour and a half, or like, that's where I start to get very worried. And all of a sudden I start seeing them running a three or four million dollars business, making the exact same amount of profit as when they were at a million. And this is why I believe that sometimes the best way to scratch that itch is start new things. Because us as Entrepreneurs like new things. And so instead of scratching the new itch with a new service, a new industry, a a completely different market, just scratch the itch with doing the same thing over and over and over again. Because every time you start a new location in a new market, it's new types of properties, it's new types of customers, it's new demographics, it's new equipment, new trucks, new types of employees you have to deal with. And doing that is going to have a higher probability of success. Then you're like, all right, I'm bored of lawn care. I'm going to go, I'm going to go paint houses now. I'm gonna go into plumbing and electrical. I'm gonna go into H Vac. And everyone just gets really distracted in completely different markets. Instead of just being like, I'm going to scratch the itch of when to create and build by just copying and pasting instead of creating new things over and over and over again. So that would be my kind of my idea of copy and paste. The copy and paste millionaire is the person that takes one location, makes it profitable, and copies and pastes it. Last year at Augusta Lawn Care, the average location was grew revenue by more than 27%. And we're on track to beat that this year. If you want to see why, go to augustalawncareservices.com franchise and watch over 50 videos and case studies of different owners that took their independent lawn care business and turned it into Augusta Lawn Care. And if you're in that place of having one really solid location before you start branching into new services, before you start trying to send your crew 3 hours away to go to a new market. Thank you. Think about, okay, what if I just took this model, I refined it, made the systems, and I got nerded out about it, and then I just copied it over in a different area. And then I was the one that got to start the new location. Because I like most entrepreneurs, like the start. They like the hunt. They like the beginning. They're not really great at the optimization perspective. That's when you need a great operator to come in and refine things and tweak things and adjust. 1%, 2%, 3%. That's when a great general manager, that's what they do. They're really good operations, and they're really good at tweaking, refining, and optimizing. Most entrepreneurs, the reason you feel bored is because you like the hunt, you like new stuff. And so I would just be very careful with adding new stuff to other Industries. I'm going to go to real estate. I'm going to go to crypto. I want to look. Whoa. If you've built a business that runs without you, that is $1 million in revenue, that is producing 20% plus profit margins and you feel bored, it means you are probably in the top 1% of your industry. So my recommendation for the highest likelihood of making more money and being successful again and duplicating that success is do the same thing again. And I highly recommend that. All right, number four on the docket, the trap of creating fake work to feel important instead of building enterprise value. Fake work. Fake work comes up in the form of, honestly, a lot of times, becoming the bottleneck and becoming addicted to the person that's handing out answers all of the time. I understand the need to feel wanted. I understand the desire that you like when you show up, people ask you questions and you have the answer. Surprise, surprise. You have been here at the business from day one. You do know all the answers. Congratulations. If you constantly force your mid level managers to just come to you with every single problem that they have, you're going to lose them. The great ones, the really good All Stars, do not want to run every single thing by you. I was talking to the group of owners at Augusta the other day and I talked about what makes a great manager. I said a great manager can identify the problem, identify the solution, and execute. And if you, if you, if you drop one of those three things, you have a manager that's not great, you should probably fire them. Or at least they're like a, B or C player. But like, the best of the best can identify a problem, create the solution, and execute. Okay, well, what, what happens if someone is not capable of identifying problems? I would call this person the eternal optimist. Everything is sunshine and roses. Everything is amazing. Everything is awesome. Like, we can't, we can make no mistakes. Then what happens if you have a manager that can't identify solutions? This person is the pessimist. This is the person that sees every single thing wrong in the business. They're like, that's wrong and that's wrong. And so, and so should be doing this. This is way better. And this, this person's making this mistake, but it's like, okay, let's solve it. I don't know. That's your job. No, I don't, I don't know how to solve the problem. I just know how to come up with problems. So this person many times can identify the problem but cannot come up with Solutions. And then likely the thing that a lot of us do as entrepreneurs is we find people, managers, great people that can identify a problem, they can come up with solution, but then we get in the way before they execute. And this is where a lot of times the kind of fake work comes into play is like you basically speak on the bottleneck for decisions. It's like, hey, before you execute, you got to run it by me. Before you come with solution, run that problem by me. And so my encouragement is to allow the free flowing of ideas for your middle level managers to go from problem space to solution space to actually getting stuff done, executing without your involvement. And the fake work part usually comes in the form of like you just want to insert yourself somewhere in between that, like hey, come to me with problems because I feel important to come up with solutions or come to me with your solutions so we can come up with a plan for execution. And this will many times bottleneck someone around that $3 to $4 million marker. They can't get past it because their mid level managers keep leaving or getting frustrated by the fact that you never allow them to do what they want to do, you never allow them to identify the problem, come with a solution and then just go do it because you're trying to inject yourself throughout that system. And a lot of times it's just a complex we as business owners have when we started to let things go and delegate and like, man, I don't feel in control, I don't feel needed anymore. And so we create fake work and we slow that process down by injecting ourselves somewhere in that three step process of problem, solution and execution. So the fifth and final thing on the docket, when we talk about the danger of boredom at the top when the business runs without you, are you still an operator or is it time to step into the role of investor? Okay, this is a good, good question. I actually think when you think about an operator, like from a, like just a terminology perspective, you have operator, you have owner, and then you have investor. I, I would say like you wouldn't want to go into the owner. If you're like, I've been an operator, I've been in the business every single day. And I think if you go down a level, it's like you're in the field, right? So I think it's kind of like you try to get out of the field, then you try to get like out of daily operations. You become the owner and then down the road you become the investor. I think an investor many Times is going to be another layer, even above an owner, because an owner still gets dragged into things. When there's chaos in operations, an investor literally never ever sees what happens in operations. So I think there's a whole other level of in the field, you know, out, I guess, off the truck, out of daily operations. Then I would say you're an owner, which is now removed from daily operations. And then there is an investor type. And so as you step into that role, most of the time what you're trying to do is you're trying to lead through metrics. You're trying to lead via dashboards and numbers. An investor, true investor type, looks at, let's just call it the real estate market or the stock market or the bond market. They're just looking at numbers and they're making decisions based on metrics. I own stock in thousands of companies because I have index funds and index funds are just a conglomeration of a whole bunch of different stocks. And the only thing I'm really interested in is things like what's my PE ratio, price to earnings ratio? Okay, what is my expected future revenue for a stock that I'm purchasing? If I'm in real estate, it's like, okay, what's my cash on cash returns? What's my internal rate of return? These are all numbers that are just associated with being an investor. And so in your business, what you want to figure out to go from operator to owner and then investor is what are the numbers I need to be tracking? And this many times I'm trying to track each level of sales, operations and admin. So in sales, what are the metrics I need to know to never walk in the door of this business and already have the answer, or already know, have a pulse on the business. What are the things in operations? Do I need to know from a KPI metric perspective that I can never walk in that door, but I would know exactly what to be able to do in this business. Same thing with admin. So what are they? Well, it's the riff on it for a second. Sales, things like close ratio. Very, very important operations efficiency score. Very, very important admin. How long is it taking you to get back to estimates and contact forms like your speed to lead? Those are just a couple of the metrics, one of each for the sales, operations, admin departments. But you'll need to know what 2, 3, maybe 4 KPIs do you need to know to know whether or not that business is functioning correctly without you being there. And that's why the Stock market is well priced. There's an actual price that we all agree on as the price per share because we all have clear data of everything in terms of incomes, revenues, what's the profits, what is the future expected cash flows from the business, what the debt are. It's a publicly traded company, and because it's a publicly traded company, we can all associate a value to it. And so the value of your business and the value that you as the investor have, the equity that you have in that business hinges on knowing the numbers and, and having clear KPIs that you can look at without being at the business. I don't walk into Apple and walk into Microsoft and check out Nvidia and be like, hey guys, what are you up to? I'm an investor here. I got to figure out what's going on around here. If I'm, if I am as an investor having to do that, I am now an operator, I'm back in the business. No, shame on that. You'll have to go through that as you build your own business. But if you're thinking for an investor's perspective, I never step foot in the business and I am able to still gauge the success of that business using the numbers. Recently at one of my locations, we noticed that a few KPIs around operations were starting to come down, the business was profitable. And it's very easy to sometimes look at a P and L like, well, yeah, they were like 23% profitable last month. They should get green pass. But there are some indicators as an investor I've identified that in four, five, six weeks from now, I'll actually see it in the P L. But based on today's numbers, I can see there's a red flag. And that's what happened. And so we were able to quickly move out the general manager and move a new one in without damaging the pnl. Because we were able to see red flags around operations and the KPIs and the numbers far in advance of it actually affecting the business's profit margins. And so the objective of an investor is to be able to see red flags and warning signs of a general manager of production, of sales, of your admin team before it actually hits the profit and loss statement. And so figure out what those KPIs are based on. Very important tracking them. Also very important, making sure that your general manager, your managers, your crew leaders, your foreman, however you want to call them, is actually filling out the paperwork and the metrics so that you can clearly identify red flags. Also very important. All right, everyone, if you've enjoyed this episode of the Home Service Millionaire podcast, where we focus on the 1 million to $5 million operator in the home service industry, I want to hear from you in the comments below. Let me know what next topic you'd like me to cover here on the podcast and we'll see you on the next episode.