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So You Want To Work For Yourself · Inside Strategic Relations

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If you want to grow your business and build sustainable wealth, then pay close
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attention. Too. Many organizations will grow in an unstable way, which causes
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more problems than it's worth. In fact, you can keep a company small
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and be more profitable over time, and I'll explain that here shortly. I'm
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just in hit with sustainable wealth secrets. So I've known a lot of people
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over time who have started inconspicuous businesses forest mulching, landscaping, trash company,
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as well as it services companies and other firms, usually starting from an expert
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level of experience or a subject matter expertise. They start either consulting or delivering
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that service as a freelancer, and many of them I've helped grow their business,
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and many of my provided advice on how to structure their business. And
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what we found is the structure is more valuable than some of the common mistakes
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that are made, and the structure eliminates these mistakes. And so I'm going
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to try to share with you some of the details about that. So let's
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say you're driving a dump truck. Now not a lot of my listeners are
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driving dump trucks, but imagine you're driving a dump truck for the man,
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and the man is telling you what to do each day, and you're frustrated
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by it. And you know that if all you had to do is get
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a dump truck, you could do the same type of jobs because you kind
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of understand how it works. You get a job, it's scheduled, you
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go out and perform the the you know, drop the load, and then
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you go get another job. And that's how you make money. And from
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your perspective as a as a person doing the work, it is very easy
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to do. Excuse me. And now let's say you're a computer consultant or
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you're a computer repair guy. You go out, you get a ticket,
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you go do the job, you turn in the ticket, you get paid.
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It looks like it's easy to do. Now, from the the doing
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of a thing to the owning of a business that does the thing, there's
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such a large gap in knowledge that you will not ever understand that if you've
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only done the thing. I know a lot of folks out there you could
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be mow and grass on the weekends, and now you've got more clients to
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mow grass, and then you're mowing more grass and you tell that boss that
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you don't want to work for him anymore because you got your own business now
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and you're going to compete with the boss man. In majority of the cases,
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these businesses fail. So when I was volunteering with SCORE, which is
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a part of the Small Business Administration, I saw it time and time again
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because people were looking at the thing that they do rather than the services they
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provide. And then even worse, they didn't understand that they're not in the
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business of doing the thing. They're more importantly in the business of marketing a
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thing. So it doesn't matter if you're driving a dump truck, if you're
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fixing computers, or you are mowing grass. The structure is exactly the same.
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There are finance companies that will help you get equipment, there are organizations
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that will encourage you to start that business, but very few will actually set
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you down and say, let's look at your structure. So we'll just kind
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of call this a professional business. I know a lot of you guys are
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thinking, you know, truck driver is a blue collar job, but no,
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it's a professional business. They've got to maintain a schedule, and they
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maintain a certain persona or a certain professionalism about them, and those are factors
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of success. So let's say you have a professional business of any kind,
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doctor, lawyer, truck driver, whatever, the structure is the same.
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You're doing the job today, and then you think you can do it better
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than your boss, and so now you're going to do it on your own,
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your freelance. What you're missing out is the contributed overhead that's required to
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even have that position available. You're missing out on the marketing necessary to get
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the customers. You're missing out on the finance necessary to get the equipment.
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I've heard a lot of people say, oh, this old, crappy equipment
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we're using this job. If I was running this business, i'd get new
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equipment. Well, again, the marketplace shows you that you can get new
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equipment, and then they would love to sell you new equipment, and then
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they'll finance at zero percent, and if you just had X number of jobs,
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you're going to pay for the equipment. But that's not really how it
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works in the majority of cases. So let's say you're out there doing the
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work and you decide you're going to run your own show, and so you
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set your prices based on your understanding of the work that you're doing. A
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lot of folks believe that their bosses are overcharging. A lot of folks believe
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the guy down the street charges too much, but they never once will sit
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down and figure out what's the overhead, what's my insurance cost? How much
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do I need to pay myself, What is going to cost me to have
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a bookkeeper to do the taxes at the end of the year. What's it
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going to cost me for legal if I have any problems with my clients or
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the clients don't pay the bill. There's like this giant, long list of
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stuff that you don't know exists because all you've done is the work. And
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I had the same problem. When I started my computer consultancy. I was
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out there charging fifty bucks an hour. I was eighteen years old. Get
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fifty dollars an hour? Well that was my billing rate. Now in the
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nineteen nineties, that seemed like a lot of money, but that was my
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billing rate. There are other people charging eighty eight dollars an hour, and
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instead of asking why are they charging eighty eight dollars an hour, I said,
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well, I'm gonna charge less and I'll get more work. It doesn't
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work that way. That's simple thinking. That's the thinking of someone who's a
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call and a machine, who just shows up and does their job, thinking
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everything's gonna work out. Now. I don't mean to burden you, but
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there are times when you sit down and you look at these numbers and you're
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like, holy crap, I'm gonna make more money working for someone else than
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I am gonna make money working for myself, even though in the short term
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the gross numbers could be higher working for yourself. So the sustainable wealth approach
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here is actually sitting down and doing the math. But let's say you sit
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down and do the math and you're getting a good number of customers. You're
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filling a need in the marketplace. You're out there doing work, but it
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requires heavy equipment, some kind of equipment cost. So when I was doing
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it services, we had these Fluke network analyzers, We had laptops, We
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had a lot of equipment there. Forced Maulture is going to have a forest
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multing machine. It's one hundred thousand dollars. Guy driving a dump truck,
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it's gotta have a dump truck. Construction company, it's gonna have construction equipment.
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The marketplace is going to try to get you to rent this equipment because
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the market the business model of the marketplace is to get the equipment out of
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the manufacturer's warehouses. Now you might not known about that, but I know
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about it, and I've used that to get my equipment for So for example,
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when I was at Lillian Vernon, we got a multimillion dollar network attached
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storage as sand storage attached network. We got it for like a half price
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because it was the end of the year and the company were buying it from
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wanted to get it out of the warehouse and not like a lot of people
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buy that type of equipment. So we were able to get the equipment because
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we can pay cash very cheap. Now, the same thing goes with excavator
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and dump trucks. Of course, there's a good used market for equipment.
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And because there's a good used market for equipment, these dealers will finance and
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get you the equipment because they know that if you can't pay for the equipment,
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they've got you under contract on the finance to get some of their money
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back or the majority of their money back. But they always get the equipment
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back which has a high resale value or a they can lease it back out
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to someone else. So they can rent it back out to somebody else,
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because literally, it's not a finance contract. It is a lease agreement or
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a rental agreement that defaults with them getting their equipment back. So what I'm
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describing here is going in upfront understanding the whole picture. Now you might get
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discouraged. We don't want to be discouraged, because it does work out well
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if you do this correctly. But doing the numbers up front is going to
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tell you, Okay, what does it cost to run this show every day?
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How many customers do I need? What is the marketing going to cost
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me? How long is it going to take to get a customer? Once
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I have customers, how much can I charge? And should I be charging
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less or should I be charging more? If you fundamentally do a better job,
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there's no way for your customer to know that until they've experienced your services,
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And then, like prostitution, after you've experienced the services, it has
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much less value when the need has been met than it did before you enter
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into agreement. I don't mean to be crude about that, but the desire
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and the anxiety about the problem is much stronger than after the problem is solved.
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And you're moving on to something else. That's why we don't remember the
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good things that happen in our lives because they don't have an etching of drama.
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So should you be charging more, should you be charging less? Should
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you have someone in an office doing scheduling, or can you start the business
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all by yourself and do the scheduling yourself. Well, if it's an hours
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for dollars business, you better not be doing your scheduling because every time you
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stop to schedule, you're not making another dollar. And if you are making
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a dollar while you're stop just scheduling, then you're doing a disservice to your
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customer. So one of the best structures I've seen that works well is to
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start a business on the side, or to start the business as an absentee
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owner, meaning you get other people engaged to start the business. Even though
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you can do the work. You get other people involved and you finance other
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people doing the work, and you start building the structure of the business,
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the process of the business, the framework of the business before you go into
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it all alone. Now, when I work with clients and we do consulting,
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I don't make up frameworks. I borrow frameworks from different industries. That's
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why I can give you an example, and why I know that driving a
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truck versus you know, beingny kind of freelance work, professional or otherwise is
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the same model. If you're trading hours for dollars, then you're not efficiently
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doing things like bookkeeping, marketing, compliance, things like that. That stuff
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comes to you in the long run, and as you grow. If you
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just add more people to do the work rather than replacing yourself first, then
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you'll be so busy doing the work itself that you won't be out there getting
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new customers. And then the first time you have not enough customers, you
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end up having a lot of equipment payments, You end up having a lot
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of people that are just going to immediately hurt your business, rather than having
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a good framework for getting new customers in place, and so that when you
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have these temporary disruptions, things move smoothly. Now, if we were sitting
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down and talking about your specific business or an idea you had about a business,
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we would do a comparison model and we would say, okay, well,
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what is it that you do today, what do you like about it?
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What do you not like about it? And then what is it that
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you'd like to do, would you perceive that you'd like about it or not
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like about it? And the majority of the cases, individuals are primarily replacing
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the job they have. They're not becoming entrepreneurs and scaling and building a business.
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They're literally hate the job they're in. They think the boss charges too
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much, they don't think they're getting treated fairly, they think they could do
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a better job, and then they go out on their own and it's nice
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for a while. There's a little euphoria as you're an independent man of your
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own self, but again things start collapsing because as the business grows, rather
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than replacing yourself, you add to the business by adding another person does the
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same thing you do, not understanding that that discomfort and dissatisfaction is the exact
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same thing every employee you add is going to have unless you're able to manage
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the business differently. So it's not that you don't like it's not that you
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can do a better job or anything like that. It's just you don't like
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the situation you're in, so you think this new situation will be better,
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and that blinds you from the math that's necessary to produce the results that you're
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really looking for, which is that independent security, that financial wealth. So
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my advice most of the time is whatever position you're in right now, go
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ahead and make make yourself indispensable. Basically, solve these problems for your employer
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to take notes, start structuring a better business. And then after you've built
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up a nest egg, if you decide to go out on your own or
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to buy into the businesses you've made better, then you're going to be in
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a more stable situation than if you just quit and try something new. Now,
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if it's an abusive situation, you could, yeah, you could quit
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and try something new, but ultimately, do it with forethought, do it
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with a written plan, and do it with a better understanding of what's required
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at the management and ownership level of a business. And the best case I've
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seen is where somebody will go and they'll they'll do the math, they'll build
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out a business plan, they'll get second opinions, they'll get a line of
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credit, they'll open up this new business. Maybe it competes, maybe it
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doesn't compete with where they work before, and then they will get the business
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role and strong, but they'll have a personal assistant who's doing the scheduling,
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who's making sure compliance is taken care of, who's keeping track of, you
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know, picking up the mail and sorting all the overhead stuff that is not
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very desirable to most people who do a thing, they'll have a good CPA,
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they'll have a good lawyer, and then when the time comes time to
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grow the business, they make a decision to grow the business not by cookie
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cuttering themselves, but by elevating themselves into a leadership role and then taking the
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position they were in before and copying it in a profitable way. So,
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if you were the equipment operator and now you have enough work that you need
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two equipment operators, then you take the leadership role and you scale everything so
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that you can have two equipment operators. Now, if one of those operators
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fails to be able to do their job, you can always step in and
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take care of the job because you know how to do the work. But
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ultimately you're not out there working with them, because that would be unscalable because
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there is when you add the other people, you now have leadership roles,
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and if those leadership roles are not done, then your people are going to
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be just as upset as you were, and they'll think about going and get
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their own company because there's this kind of flawed humans thinking that we can do
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it better. It's kind of an ego speak where I want you to look
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at the logic. I want you to look at the structure. And then
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I've even gone as far as to overpay the people who work for me.
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So I overpay them. I tell them what the expectations are, I set
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a framework for expectation. I monitor that framework, and very often they can
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do the work better than me, So they're not sixty percent of what I
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was doing, they are one hundred and ten percent of what I was able
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to do. And then I have a program to bring people into that program,
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and I can end up adding seven eight people to a team in a
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very short period of time and have consistency and deliverables. But more importantly,
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I have redundancy in delivery. So if I'm sending people out on jobs,
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let's say the landscaping example, I could have five or six jobs going at
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the same time, and then if there's a problem on one job, I
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can easily shift people around to make sure the customer doesn't see the problem.
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Because the problem and business happen all the time. You're going to end up
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with employees they think they can do a better job, they want to be
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out on their own, they think you're a stupid boss, and they're not
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going to be proactive and in the engagement of making that position better, and
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they're giving you only twenty percent of what they can give you, and of
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course you're only paying them fifty percent of what they deserve, so you know,
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everybody's losing. But the bottom line, though, is if you want
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sustainable wealth, if you want to build a business that lasts for generations,
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if you want to produce positive net cash flow, then you can't listen to
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the sirens songs of the experts to say, hey, just buy another piece
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of equipment. You have to basically work the numbers out. You have to
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become an expert in your business. You have to become the leader in your
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industry, not in what you do, but in the marketing of what you
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do, so that what enough a level of service you can consistently deliver.
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You've got ready capable and willing customers, because it's the customers who are going
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to finance the business. Now, there will become a time we will have
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enough cash, and you know you could buy cash for a piece of equipment,
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or you can finance it. That's a different conversation. But if you
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have no cash and you're already too busy that you need more equipment, just
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going out and getting the equipment in an operator isn't necessarily going to do anything.
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It could make your situation worse. So if you want to sit down
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and go over your unique business situation or your dissatisfaction with your current employer,
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or your current opportunity and that dream you have for starting a new business,
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I can help you structure it differently. Now, it's not different when you
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compare it to those who've been successful in starting a business, scaling a business,
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growing a business, but it's going to be way different than you might
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expect when it comes to the common knowledge about how businesses operate. Because again,
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when you're working at doing something, when you're a professional as a lawyer
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working in a firm, if you're a truck driver working at a company,
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if you're a carpenter working at a general contractor you're only seeing a very tiny
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part of that business. Now, I've had the great fortune to see the
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deep and intimate details of many, many businesses, and I kind of there's
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kind of a little glaff in there, because sometimes you see, I've seen
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businesses making a million dollars a month that had nothing to show for it.
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Every dollar they were making was going to vendors, so they would make a
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million dollars at the end of the month, collect actually collect a million dollars
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at the end of the month, and then every penny of that went to
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the fancy building they're in. It went to the health insurance plan they never
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open marketed. It's going to employee benefits that the employees aren't even using.
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It's going into nice, fancy new trucks. So the finance company who talked
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them into the trucks, and then at the at the end of the month,
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that owner had to confide in me and say that they don't get a
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paycheck. And for a million dollars a month, the owner's not getting a
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paycheck. Everybody else is getting paid except for the owner. And my response
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to that was is is this what you expected? I said, is this
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what you expected? And they said, no, this is not what expected.
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I said, great, well, let's sit down make a list of
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what you do expect to happen here, and let's make that happen to What
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we're able to do is that million dollars a year. Now. He had
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to give up some stuff, so we audited the health insurance plan and found
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out what people were not using and removed it from the plan. We went
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through his building and decided that he could probably get away with So we owned
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the space, had a mortgage on it. We could split the space up
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and he could have a nice office, beautiful office, but down the street
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he's going to have a big, old, ugly warehouse. And so his
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little tiny office people can come into schedule. That was his face to the
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customer. And then there was a sublet the rest of the building because he
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needed cash flow. You know, there are certain things that we could do
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for him, because again he was allowing himself to be vulnerable. And I'm
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not going to judge because I made mistakes and running businesses myself. But when
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I go into a fortune one hundred company, when I go into a twenty
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million dollar a year business, it really is about helping that owner be absentee.
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Now they don't have to be absentee, they don't have to go on
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vacations all the time or go play golf, because that sometimes makes the employees
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upset. But they have to be able to step away from the business long
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enough to have some clear thought about the business and about where they want the
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business to go and what they want the business to do. And whether you're
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a business owner or an executive, there are personal career objectives that we have
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to meet otherwise you'll be dissatisfied no matter where you are. So whether you
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work for the man or you work for yourself, it doesn't matter if you're
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unhappy and unable to retain the wealth that you're producing. And again we talk
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about wealth beyond the financial means. If you're spending twenty hours a day working
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at a job you hate, twenty hours a day running a business you hate,
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isn't any better. There's some happy medium between the two. And again,
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your employe maybe making mistakes that you can help them solve that will gain
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you value in that organization and move you up to partner. And then now
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you have equity, because maybe it's you didn't want to run a business,
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you just want to have equity so that you had the upside of your contributions,
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so that if you work twenty hours a week, your pay it reflects
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it. Or twenty hours a day. You know, some folks get to
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be working twenty hours a week and they get bored. They want to work
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forty hours a week. They just want to have the choice to work twenty
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hours a week. If that so should move them. It is not as
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complex as I make it sound. But when we sit down and go over
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your situation, it is such a relief. And again I put it all
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on paper because I get excited. You'll get excited. You're gonna get emotional.
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I'll get emotional or yell at each other sometimes because we got to get
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this out. Why is it that you're not happy where you're at? What
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is it that you really want and desire? How can we bridge the gap
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between what you have today and where you want to be? And again,
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sometimes leaving and running out on your own is not the right approach. I've
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seen people who are dissatisfied with their business. They leaned into it and they
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improve the things in the organization that they were at. And again, it
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doesn't matter if it's your organization or someone else's organization. If you don't have
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the skills to improve it, then you're going to be a slave to it.
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But they improved it. And next thing you know, one of the
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owners walks up and says, look, you've done so much for this business,
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would you like to be a partner. Now, this isn't gonna always
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happen. Sometimes you're going to just take advantage of it. But you'll know
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the difference because you're going to have better insight, more experience, better purview
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of what's going on, and ultimately we can move you on the well side.
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Because again, it doesn't matter if you run a business of your own
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or you're working for somebody else. You can still accumulate wealth, you can
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still generate free net cash flow. You might find it's easier. And I'll
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tell you from my own experiences. I'll work for a fortune one hundred because
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of the credibility of the position, because they take care of all the overhead,
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and very often they can pay multiples of what it would cost me to
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do a corp to corp. So I'll take an employment position because if I
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took the same role corp to corp, which you're open to, my overhead
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would be so much higher. So I can basically have them take care of
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the overhead and then I work as an employee, and I don't see that
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any different than working as a as an employer because I'm still a freelancer.
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I still hire my own staff, I still do the things necessary to scale.
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And so if you want that kind of insight working for you to build
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your wealth, to build your position in the marketplace, to increase your FREEEDAM
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cash flow, then visit www dot Sustainablewealthsecrets dot com. Go to the contact
22:48
page and ask your questions. If you want to engage in a consultation,
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I'll just ask somebody else send you details about how to do that. If
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you want to talk about a specific challenge that you have right now, I'd
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be more than happy to get on call with you and we can do a
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discovery call to see whether or not we're a match. But again, know
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what you're seeing and whether it's the whole picture plan on paper. Don't worry
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so much about whether you like a position or not. Shape the position into
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what you like. Be prepared to work out on your own as an independent
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by even supplementing the day to day stuff that you do. You know,
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do you really need to be moaning your own grass, and then ultimately act
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like a leader, and if they don't respect it and they don't want it,
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fine, You'll have the skills to go do it on your own,
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but you also have the awareness to not make common mistakes. I've justin hit
23:41
with sustainable Weil secrets. Thanks for being a part of what we do here.
23:44
I always look forward to your questions and your success stories, which keep
23:48
them coming because I love to hear them. Thanks for listening and I'll see
23:51
you next time.