Discover the Plumbing Work Bill Format for Businesses

Plumbing work bill format for businesses

every Plumbing business owner skips the most important steps when starting their business I talked to some guys who just skip everything and buy a price book a price book's not going to do you any good when it comes to hiring guys marketing scheduling or even understanding the true cost of running your business there's no shortcuts no Silver Bullet if you want to have a successful Plumbing business you have to Jared Williams up I win okay whatever I win I said I said it first I at this point in our podcast career yeah yeah yeah yeah I don't even care good man you've so I've helped you transcend you're welcome if anybody's helped anybody transcend I've helped you transcend yeah I've allowed you to help me transcend which therefore makes you feel like you're the transcender it's really just a play for you like a oh yeah like you're the bigger person here yeah no I'm just the better strategist okay what's up man hey dude dude today we're going over to the road map to success it's a good road map it is a good road map it's actually a checklist maybe we can throw it down in the comments or in the description if we can get who's what's our editor's name um which one who's our guy Jamie yeah maybe we get Jamie to throw it in the in the description yeah okay cool yeah we're going over this this is uh I wrote this mhm to give the guys who are in our coaching program a little more guidance to like what are the what are the steps and what are the focuses of the different steps so that you can kind of flow through this in an organized fashion as much as possible do you have a sense that like well let's talk about you when you went into business like on the first couple times did you have an organized process when you first started out no so like and I don't I get the sense that most guys don't it's kind of like a you just kind of Cobble the thing together kind of Cobble the thing together and then you go back and repair it and there's there's ways you can do things that are better for certain reasons um and then there's you know if you have cash you have a lot more freedom to do things in different orders but typically sure people don't have a bunch of cash yeah so that's kind of what this is designed for people with little cash or less access to cash as we go through it we can talk about like even if you have cash like okay well then you could skip a few of these or do this step before you do this one that kind of stuff yeah and sometimes it's about knowing what to spend your cash on like if you have cash even if you don't have a lot of cash it's like you have a you have some sort of limited set of resources and you can't get everything at once the thing is whether you have cash or not you have to protect your cash yeah true because second year out of cash is the suck year out of business yeah or the second you got to go get a really cool loan yeah and that would I don't I don't want to do that I don't want to play that game not into that what do you mean by that specifically I can just I can imagine going and getting Al loan to grow my business and then having to pay it off when I'm not like now that would make sense for me because I've done it once I know I could put it together really quickly sure and if I had cash I could do it quicker right but in when when I was starting my business before had somebody given me a loan I probably just would have wasted it yeah like can you put yourself in that head space like what would you have gotten back then what do you mean like like how would you would how would you have wasted that loan money oh I don't know I have I have no idea would I don't know probably would have wasted on something yeah or not I mean the the truth of the matter is I didn't need it sure uh so can you imagine a scenario where guys would need like a loan to start their business they shouldn't need a loan the the business is capable capable of cash flowing itself yeah yeah except for other than like van payments right what do you mean well like you got to go get a loan to get a van butre you're financing the van it's not like you're getting SBA loan or something like that you're financing an asset that makes you money so then so the only time I'm willing to do that is if there's like a van is just a tool at the end of the day yeah if there's a tool like a vehicle that I can purchase and I can use it and that allows me to go make more money right by by buying this thing I can increase my cash flow that's the only time I'm willing to take on debt to grow my business outside of that I don't want to take out debt I don't want to take out debt just to pay myself or just to you know get set up to pay yourself like what do you like what do you mean by that like do some guys like I just don't understand like like if I had zero dollar yeah and I was like I'm going to start a ploning business so I quit my job and I go get a SBA loan from the bank and then I have nothing MH and so in order to survive I have to start paying myself for my SBA loan gotcha and everything I purchase goes on my SBA loan I don't know I just I don't think it's necessary like you could go just get a credit card sure and pay off your credit card sure really quickly I would rather do that that's gonna be way easier than going and get an SBA loan number one yeah I guess also it's like maybe there's this misconception or this idea that like well I need a bunch of capital to start this business but the problem is is if you don't know how to deploy that Capital that capable that cap capable capable that Capital new word it's kind of hard to say Capital capable you don't know how to deploy it properly uhhuh then it's it's like a it's pretty dang risky you're going to waste it it's super risky you got pay it back regardless if you deploy it wrong then it's not like like you go take out a van loan you have an asset that you can sell yeah and yeah sure sure sure sure and pay back your loan or at least a major portion of it right you take out a SBA loan you got nothing backing it unless it's like unless you back it with your house or something which you probably would have to do um and so you falter on your SBA loan you lose your house it's not a I don't know it's too risky I don't see the need for that risk yeah you don't need to do that so why would you do it yeah there's no need for it yeah okay let me float this scenario by you yeah I'm still working for somebody else okay I'm a plumber and I want to go and start my own company yep and I like what should I do first in the sense of like should I buy a van and go do side work can I run this company out of the back of my Prius can I like like what do I need here to actually start making money maybe at first on the side and eventually transitioning to going out on my own quitting my job and then doing my own thing yep yeah that's exactly what I would do I would do it on the side like I would get side jobs yeah I would try to I would either use in if I had extra income from my job I would either I would use that income to get set up for business right so there's tons of stuff you can do before you quit your job you can get your name you can get your logo you can get your website you can get your gmbb like you can get all this stuff up and rolling right how many guys do you think actually do all those things that you just said I have no idea probably not every many because we see people who have been in business for three years and they don't even have a GMB right actually and they don't have a website and to the name thing yeah like I mean I've been not like doesn't take a lot of my day but I've been letting lots of people into our Facebook group and I see the business names yeah and I don't know maybe one out of 30 out of 40 one out of 50 is something that isn't last name Plumbing or yep like they're all just the exact name that we would say don't pick that name that's not the name that you really want correct so like don't underestimate the power of like creating a good brand from the get-go especially if you're working for somebody else and you have the security you have the time to think about it yeah like the only thing that's like don't rush into it use use your god-given brain yeah think about it for a minute and go okay well if I quit my job I lose my income and this is going to be different for everybody obviously if you're a family man sure and you lose your job it's a bigger deal than if you're just a single dude and you're living off 100 bucks a week well then that guy might be able to just quit his job forget about it right put all of his focus on one thing MH um but yeah be smart think about it okay if I quit my job I lose my income what does that do to my my situation okay that would suck well I probably should save up some money yeah or I should probably get enough of this going to where I'm capable of creating enough income as a side hustle to then quit my job and then start to grow this thing as much as that sucks and that's not the answer that people want to hear it's the truth yeah that's the harder thing to do like it'd be really easy to just go quit your job and say cool I'm self-employed now but yeah there's a common theme that happens when guys start their start on their own yeah is they're typically working for themselves because they want to make more money they a lot of times they don't like working for somebody else for all the reasons that come with that but then what happens if you don't know what you're doing is you're just working for a worse boss and that boss is your business yeah and before you could turn your phone off and your boss could get a hold of you you could go on vacations but now you have a business that wakes you up in the middle of night like hey bro so remember how tomorrow you don't have any work remember how we got bills do and uh how nothing's happening like you can't escape that no you can't leave you got responsibilities so when you just rush into yeah you and at a certain point like you can't just turn it off no you can't like you can't like you can't be two years in and just be like you know what I'm tired of this thing see you later yeah cuz you likely have commitments and responsibilities and things you can't just turn off yeah especially if you know at that point you have employees or all these types of things and then you're just now you're in it for like the Long Haul but it's it's a the point is is when you rush into it like chances are you're rushing out of an emotional reaction like you know what I'm fed up with work this thing happened today and it's I just hate it I'm out I quit and I'm going to start up on my own yep and you didn't think about it you picked a really weak name you didn't set anything up properly and yep put your big boy panties on yeah stay at work think about what you're doing set up the pieces so that you can just ah it's like uh it's like if I were to go I I did this analogy the other day for a guy it's like if I were my business was a pyramid right mhm what you want to do is like the layer at the bottom is the biggest layer yeah right that's all like your foundation sure you want to go put all those blocks in place it's a lot of blocks right that you got to go put in place and then go build the next layer and then the next layer and the layers get easier to build as you go up because they get smaller and smaller until finally at the top you're like Jing right but what a lot of people try to do is they try to build like the center mhm and they build this like tall tower with the pyramid on top and it's like wobbling and swaying all over the place and when the wind blows you constantly have to go like h no I got to move this thing over you're reacting yeah so what ends up happening you build this you know this thing in the middle and then you're trying to stack the bricks around it to keep it stable and it's way harder than if you just build the foundation and just put the pieces on top and build a good business and think about what you're doing and don't do dumb stuff and be smart and be use common sense yeah that's it and then if you don't have any common sense you can get a checklist like this one yeah if you don't know anything and that can really just well it can just keep you hedged in to at least do the the things you have to do yeah if you don't know anything about Plumbing business go learn Plumbing business I would say that most guys don't know anything about Plumbing business no they're really good plumbers yes terrible business owners yes yep I was a terrible plumber and I'm a terrible business owner Kidd oh boy that's not that true I was the world's greatest plumber there we go that's what I'm talking about no dude there most of my guys that work for us most not all if they're listening to this they know who they are rut r no but seriously like probably all my guys at this point are all better technicians than I ever was hands down way more talented M it's not my forte seems like your guys for the most part are pretty passionate about it too they are like and when you're passionate about something that means you're almost addicted to it and so you're going to like you're going to be really good at it yeah I mean I would hope so if you're passionate about it and you suck at it then something's wrong you're in the wrong trade yeah you've sucked at it for a long time like there's a I don't really know what's going on there yeah well that's what most people do with their business oh actually that's true they like suck at it for years and years and years and years and they're like and they just keep doing it the same old way and keep sucking at it and what's funny about that is these guys they're they're on the edge of like having ultimate Freedom ultimate freedom to me comes when if you can build a business that doesn't need you involved in the day-to-day that makes money for you and then you it doesn't even matter really how much money but enough money like there's a certain threshold of money to be comfortable right um I'm going to say it's around 300,000 400,000 you can be really comfortable yeah okay you can do a lot of things yeah if you can make a business that makes 400k that doesn't need you involved and you can live on 150k like just live well within your means you have achieved ultimate Freedom it's probably the best thing on the planet M the I used to think like my mindset growing up or well when I grew up for a long time was I'm going to live as simple as possible so that I don't need to make very much money and then when I started my business and I found out wait you can just go make more money it's not even that hard my mindset switched to like I'll just make more money until there's so much money there's no way I could spend it all right and then it was like wait what if I combine those too you can make tons of money and live well within your means and then you have ultimate Freedom sure it's the best it's awesome man dang I had a thought before we go into that road map there maybe it'll come back to me it's not going dang that was a good thought though no it was terrible you're a really good thinker gosh man I wish it was a good one though all right well go on get into it man so this is split up into steps how many steps are there I haven't looked at this thing in a while o we're at 10 holy moly this is 13 steps to Plumbing business road map to Success Checklist okay and it's split up the steps are organized by Focus okay so like Steps 1 through 4 there's a certain Focus steps 5 through 7 there's a different Focus cuz your focus starts to shift what do you mean by Focus you'll see there's things you need to there's times in your business where you need to focus on certain things okay and your original Focus will shift into focusing on something else sure because your business needs other things from you sure needs your attention to be somewhere else yes so then 9 through 10 it's a little bit of a Focus Shift 11 through 12 little bit Focus Shift right so steps one through four and this is intended for somebody who is just getting going now if you already have a plumbing business and you haven't done steps one through four you need to go back and do steps one through four okay it seems to me that this is harder for the guys to implement who have stuff already it is and I think there's a couple reasons one because because there's there's this feeling of regression when you have to go back to the basics and start to tick off these boxes cuz like I walk guys through this a lot and like I talk to a lot of different guys who are at different areas and I there's a difference when I'm talking to somebody who's got like five trucks on the road and I'm like go back through these things but it's funny because even those guys will get to like an early step and they're like I don't have that and it's just it's just an interesting mindset that that business owner has to have to go okay I got to go back and get this yeah we're like when you're starting out fresh it's it's advantageous cuz you're just starting out the way you need to start out yep and like I would much rather be in that position personally cuz then you're just like oh I do it right from the beginning instead of having to sort of piece in these steps in your already built machine yep and try to figure out how they work and what you have to do to make them work and all this kind of stuff yep 100% okay steps one through four your focus is getting the basics set up so you can make money simple as that yeah um and it's a strong focus on getting consistent cash flow like that's your first goal is to get cash flow that's consistent and cash flow is different than money in the bank yes true can I ask a question real quick yeah how many guys in your experience no damn it what well that was easy continue no how many guys in your experience like they understand that oh I I started this business too make money I think on a surface level yes they get it but on a deeper level it's like the reason for the business there is no other reason for the business the the headaches and the stress and the everything else that comes with the business whatever other reason you have other than making money is not going to be worth put pushing forward on the business yeah like go into that a little bit cuz like what other reasons do you guys have I don't even know like so but you're talking about like personal reasons like well I want to make money so that I can dot dot dot like that kind of stuff no that's fine I'm down with that but if they're like well I want to provide a really good place for my guys to work that's all fine and dandy yeah but that is not reason enough to start a business got or I want to provide a really good service to the community that's all fine in Dandy that is not a good enough reason to start a business the underlying sole reason that you have a business needs to be to make more money that's it the business has to make money or you will die it will not be a fun business it won't you will not enjoy having employees you will not enjoy providing a service to the community it will be a chore the only thing that makes it worth it is the extra money that's it and do you mean like extra money like in your pocket the business owner or like profit within the business itself profit within the business which ultimately goes in your pocket sure yeah yeah so kind of both yeah totally but on the business level yeah right it has to make money yeah or you're going to hate it I guarantee you yeah it's G to suck and it's too risky like for like if you're going to go into business then it's not going to make money why then why yeah I'm trying to think of like go work somewhere that provides a good service to the community yeah or go work somewhere that has a really that's a really cool place to work so if I was like Jared I'm starting up my own company because I just hate working for my boss he sucks I hate it I'm starting my own company if you were to come to me and say I don't really I don't really need the extra money so I'm just going to price this so that it's break even because I really want to provide the service to the community I would tell you don't do that price it to make money yeah because otherwise it's going to suck it's almost like price it to make money money so that you can afford to benefit the community yeah yeah yes 100% it's a two it's not a it's not a one or the other it has to be both yeah sure yep okay consistent cash flow yeah cash flow a lot of guys when they first start out they struggle with the idea of cash flow cash flow is money coming in money going out money coming in money going out what we're used to when we quit is money coming in and well they're probably used to money coming in and going out like in their personal lives but what they want to see is money coming in and staying in their bank account right sure and just like growing and stacking and all that kind of stuff but when you first start your business what you lack is money coming in you you have all these things you can spend money on sure but what you lack is money coming in okay money going out isn't cash flow that's spending money money just coming in isn't cash flow that's just making money and putting it away in the bank right what you need is cash flow okay you need this flow of income coming in so that you can then spend it on growing your business so that you can go make more money and have more money coming in okay and the amounts of money that flow are going to get bigger and bigger and bigger okay as you grow your business but that money that's coming in is going to be money that you use to grow your business okay so you need to have a strong focus on creating that flow of cash consistently sure okay because what H what what happens is and by consistently I mean like you have the ability to get work serve the customer price your jobs correctly build the customer and get money in your bank account every day M every single day right so it just keeps coming coming keeps coming keeps coming none of this um I got one big job yeah right and I got some cash yeah and now it's three weeks before my next job or 90 days until I get paid from this that's not cash flow that's like ups and downs we have no idea what's going on right yeah that's not really consistent no you need it to be consistent okay so that's kind of your goal so Step One is literally just getting started pick a name yeah we talked about this on our last episode quite a bit so if you want to learn more about that go check our last episode out what are the highlights of the pick a name highlights are you're just getting started and the name matters so much so take the time to go watch our last episode listen to the part about naming your business and pick a good name from the get-go because it matters a lot it's kind of one of those decisions that if you don't have to redo it later it's going to save you a ton of time headache money tons yeah yeah yep so you get the chance to pick a name pick a good one and again using your name Plumbing your name mechanical whatever is not a good name yeah don't do it cuz eventually like you like everybody else is going to be like all my customers just want me to do the work yeah like yeah I know that's I made this mistake I picked jrod spuming that was my nickname right and everybody would call and be like well I want to talk to jrod yeah and it was like my csrs my manager they couldn't do anything their hands were tied everybody was like well let me talk to jrod cuz everybody knew who owned the business and now it's just prospector Y and then it's like nobody know to your manager like all right you can talk to the manager cuz that's proper and how this works you don't need to talk to the owner nope yeah nope it's funny because there sometimes there's the oldtimers who call and I'll hear Aya take the call she's like can I talk to it's usually old dudes can I talk to jrod yeah and it's like still to this day and he was like well I don't really know how to get a hold of him you know he's down a you know like whatever and they're like oh okay well and then they go on with whatever their Spiel was that's funny yeah I like it yep um okay so pick your name get the proper licensing don't don't start your like don't quit your job until you got the licensing you need yeah I've talked to guys about that and they asked me like so I don't have the licensing like what should I do like how can I get it can I well yeah okay sure because if you don't have the licensing you probably can't charge as much like what's the well you just can't do business every State's different but oh sure like liing business license whatever licensing you need to operate a plumbing business in the state that you're in you need to go get it yeah like just go get it make it happen do that before you quit your job because it's going to take a Time usually takes a couple months for that stuff to go through yeah and you don't want to be doing work without it you can do work you can do like side work cash on the side yeah but other than that don't do it yeah so if if I have to like if I'm not like a master plumber and I need to be one in my area yeah the recommendation is to just wait the time out until I can sit for that test and do it before I really go out on my own yeah or you can go in some states you can go rent a license like in Alaska you can rent a license M um you just have to find somebody to rent a license from gotcha yeah gotcha this going to be much harder yeah ultimately it sounds like just it's one of those things kind of back to what we already talked about is like wait put the time in put the time to get the licensing you need so that you are independent yep cuz I've talked to like you know business owners who it's like there is the business owner guy and then there's the plumber and then the business owner guy is like fronting cash for this guy in his Plumbing business Y and I'm like you got to make sure that like this guy is going to be on board for a long time or you have somebody who you can grab their license because at some point if he walks and he's your license holder then like you got to yeah now you have a business and you have to figure this out I'd give that guy I'd give the plumber equity in the business yeah and I would give him more Equity as the business grows so he'd start small Equity like probably zero up front yeah but to let me use his license if he helps me grow to a certain point then he gets a certain amount of equity in the business and then I would always have a backup plan yeah like guy guy with a license number two that I can go to and be like hey I'll rent your license yeah and I'll give you equity in this business but as long as you have Equity you can't pull your license and you're required to maintain it that makes me think of something what about uh business partners I hate business partners so I hate business business partners work if like having a business partner is a terrible idea in the beginning when both of you are relying on the business for cash right and both of you have no idea what you're doing okay because what's going to happen the blind what's going to happen is one of you is going to need more cash than the other guy or you're not going to have enough cash to go around and you're going to disagree on the next move forward okay and it's going to cause tension in the relationship and to be honest with you like when you start out with a if it's just you and a business owner and you go into business it's it's harder because the business has to pay both of you now yeah now you got two guys even I mean even if you're out billing you have to have enough work for you guys to both be out billing yeah and so typ yeah right off the bat enough work for two guys second don't put like what about put those two same guys in one truck right it would you could make it work you could make it work but it's just going to be harder yeah and then one guy is going to want to work more than the other guy like this I did this right I started a business with a business partner and it didn't work out because ultimately like we didn't have the same lives outside of work like our priorities outside of work weren't the same and it caused our priorities at work to to be completely different right I wanted to work the same but make more money he wanted to work a ton and make more money he didn't care how much he worked right he worked every second of the day still does to this day I'm not down with that I don't want to work my whole life away I want to enjoy the dang thing it seems to me like and like maybe I don't know it seems to me like that business Partnerships happen with younger guys they do and they do it because they think okay now we're going to have two people that can do work and produce Revenue two brains two brains are better than one M but when you're relying on this business to produce revenue for you or produce to make money for your family having a business partner is a terrible idea bus Partnerships work obviously there's tons of Partnerships around the world right that have worked out great that have been phenomenal Partnerships okay so they don't not work I see them work best from my experience and my viewpoint is they're two individuals who already have income from other sources okay MH and they both have different skill sets complimenting skill sets and they partner together because they understand hey if we partner together and put our skill sets together sure we'll be able to create more income for both of us but if the business doesn't produce any income for a while nobody cares because they have income from other sources right they they agree to like work on this thing and grow it to a certain point it's not a thing they're relying on to feed their families right so it makes it way easier and typically their other income sources or other businesses yeah sure and so you have two business-minded people who have complimentary skill sets who've grown probably complimentary businesses sure they have understanding of business and Partnerships and money finances and how to grow a business and they usually take money from these other businesses and they put them into this other business they each equally invest a certain amount of money and time or whatever or maybe somebody has money and somebody has time sure yeah yeah yeah and they grow this thing together with a predetermined like set of rules this is what you're going to do this is what I'm going to do this is how much cash you're going to put in this is how much cash I'm going to put in here's the priorities of the business we're going to grow up to this point before we start taking any you know payments from the business right yeah there's there's Arrangements there's agreements there's transparency and there's yeah there's like a I would say like a mature trust yeah like like again when you have when I see young business partners yeah and I talk to them because like I'll talk them like hey you know see if they want to get in our program or whatever and they're like yeah me and my business partner we're both working for the same guy and we want to strike out on our own yeah and I I always caution I'm just like make sure you guys are like aligned dude like first off I would say I don't recommend you having a partner but if you really want to go forward with it you have to make sure that you're aligned I think Partners just make people feel more comfortable because there's they're going into this thing that they've never done before it's super scary Y and if you have somebody there with you it's just nicer yeah if if you're going into a dark scary cave it's nicer to go in with your buddy than just by yourself that's kind of what you're doing exactly yep but once you're in the cave and one of you gets stuck or one of you wants to go left but you know the proper ways to go right there's difficulty right and like when you're when you're starting out it seems that like that the velocity is important to like maintain like okay we're going to keep pushing like I mean here's here's one exception to this rule okay right if you went into a cave with another individual who knew the cave like the back of his hand sure that would be a wise decision yeah so if you wanted to partner with somebody partner with somebody who knows what they're doing who has a history of being success right or maybe they have the funds that would be an idea to go partner with somebody right I'm going to drop this question here I don't know if it's exactly relevant to this but I feel like it is what about like franchising franchises I think are I think they're I think they're dumb how come the franchise think about the franchise business model isn't really to make the owner of the is it the franchisee or the franchise or dude I don't know I don't either I think it's the franchisee right the guy who starts the actual business in the place okay the one who's in the town with the franchise branding and everything we'll call him the franchise he's the he's the he's the owner the local business owner right um and then think about so the franchise company okay we'll just use rer mhm whoever owns Roo mhm why do they own Roo why do they own the franchise yeah to make money to make money right so the goal is to make money y so in order to make money if there's 10 Roto roters out there they got to suck money from all 10 Roto roters right MH and in return they provide the Roto rooters with things that the individual Roto roters could have provided on their own but now they don't have to yeah what I don't like about that is number one as the business owner you're stuck relying on Roto corporate to provide these things y now if those things don't work or they suck or whatever you're still paying for them Y and you cannot get out of that so A lot of times you look at franchise owners I've talked to a ton of them we have a few of them in our course and they're stuck paying for software yeah and marketing and giving money back to corporate right and then they have to take more of their money and spend it on software and marke that actually works right yeah so I'm not a big fan of that I think it's lame yeah I think the reason why people get into it is because the franchises the franchises are really good at pitching like hey man look at our successful branches we can turn you into this and the reason is because we offer you this support I've talked to a lot of these guys too and the support that's offered again isn't about that owner of that local franchise making a ton of cash it's about them well just doing enough so that rotor router can get its cut and make money yeah so like their business model isn't with your business model they're trying to sell franchises that's it and they're trying to take business model we'll get you set up just enough to make a little bit of money so we can make some cash and then they go set up another one and another one and another one and another one yeah I talked to I think it was Z plumbers I talked to their like head marketing guy MH and their largest franchise was doing 3 million a year yeah and they were setting up new franchises and they're trying to set set up an owner and a plumber so they have two guys out Plumbing right or they're trying to set up an owner with two plumbers out in the field yeah and he called me and he was like we we just we can't figure out the marketing we can't get enough marketing to get these things going and really kicking off like well what are you charging MH do you help do you help them with like figure their hourly rates so they're charging enough yeah and he's like well we're uh some locations are around 250 somewhere at like 325 I'm like you're not charging enough to pay for marketing right so there's these like imagine that you're a you're a franchisee and they go into they do this like guys go buy into franchises because it's just like having a business partner yes it is but it's like a really cool big business it's like the guy in the cave with the flashlight who's got the map that's what you're to believe correct and then you get in the cave and you're lost yeah you realize that the guy's flashlight doesn't have any batteries in the map is in a different language this guy is not as qualified as I as he thought he was right so I get it it's comfortable but so imagine like being a business owner and you're relying on corporate to help you price yourself help you with your marketing and then corporate head marketing guy is calling some guy he saw on YouTube who has a more successful business than all of theirs right and he still doesn't want to listen to that guy it's like okay I don't want to be involved in that at all yeah so there's probably some good franchises but the fact that all of that stuff is out of your control and you have to pay them whether you make money or not like you're paying them out of your typically you're paying them out of your gross sales yeah not your net profit yeah which sucks so if you do a million like you know how many businesses there are that do a million in gross sales and have zero profit tons tons yeah lots lots even like one or two% profit yeah and you have to pay them like I there's I know of a few I don't know all of them but there's a few they're like 6% of gross ghost back to corporate that's a ton of money yeah I would so much rather take that money and reinvest it in my own business way go give it to corporate and I would much rather have control over my marketing and my logo and my branding so that I'm in control of what works not putting my faith in something else right okay this I remembered my thought from earlier and I think this dovetails into it okay this this is so my sense from the outside looking in right from the guy who just talks to Plumbers who's not a plumber myself doesn't have a business myself my sense from the outside looking in is the steps required to build a successful Plumbing business are not complex no and I don't want to say hey guys like this is easy but at the same time it's like that's not complex it's not it's simple it's not easy how about that yeah that works it's simple it's not easy and so like when when it comes to business partners or franchises I think there's this Mystique around how this business works that the franchises and business partners well let's say un let's give let's give them the benefit unknowingly lean into yeah we're like hey man like we know this is super hard don't worry we've got it all figured out it's because of this this and this and you're like yeah bro thanks but from my side of the table it's like hey man like if you don't if you understand how to price yourself properly yeah that solves so many of your problems that you're experiencing right now ridiculous and then from there it's just about learning the things you don't know and then understanding how to acquire those things be it Services of marketing or systems and then to build your business yeah even out even outside of like the franchise model the plumbers way over complicate the business yeah it's such a simple easy business model people need plumbing services they go to Google they look up a plumber they find you they call you you do a good job at serving them them you sell them your membership and you've got a customer for a long time yeah as long as you're Priced Right and you can provide five star work and you have Marketing in place to get new customers you're going to do fine now there's some like backend setup for that but sure of course like overall it's not that complicated it's it's simple very very simple not easy to do and the reason it's not easy to do is because most people over complicated yeah cuz sometimes go ahead some of the like the Coldplay song where he says nobody said it was easy but nobody said it would be this hard yeah that's what always comes to mind it's like cuz when you get into the thick of it and you're growing your business you're like nobody said it was going to be easy but this is freaking hard yeah and it's like you look at it you're like it's so simple but yet this is hard to like put in place and keep going and do sure and have well well because like the analogy that comes to my mind which might not be perfect but makes sense in my mind is like I can watch a whole tape on how to do certain exercises like hey man come to my gym you'll experience what this video will show you I'm like damn that looks pretty easy when I get in the gym it's a whole another thing where I'm like wow this exercise feels weird and these weights aren't right and these lights are bright and now I'm thinking about all this stuff you still have to get in there and experience it to the unfamiliarity that's hard is that a word unfamiliarity that's not a word that's not a word I said it 100 times a word um it's the it's that's exactly what it is it's the being unfamiliar with it and it being uncomfortable that's really hard yeah okay I think it's a pairing of it being uncomfortable and yet there's guys like us who are like hey man but it's relatively simple and then it's like the push back is like there's no way it's that simple yeah like there's no way I just got to charge more and know what I'm doing and then like have a system to get customers like it's way it's way more complicated no it's not super easy it is there's just like I guess the hard part is the growing on your end as a person right just becoming more of a business person like not getting so emotionally attached to things thinking bigger picture being patient learning how to be consistent and disciplined and and make small changes and those kinds of things like that's the hard part that is the hard part the actual steps of putting the business together are easy the rest the rest of that stuff is the hard part yeah cuz the rest of the stuff involves you almost understanding the limiting factors within yourself that's not allowing you to make the changes you need to make I'll tell you the hardest part it's managing people yeah that's it if you're really good at managing people and you want to go start a plumbing business it's super easy well yeah provided you provided you have the Frameworks yeah provided you have the right Frameworks piece of cake yeah cuz then I mean I mean at the end of the day like great businesses are built with with great people 100% like that is like I mean that is so true 100% And like when you when you have people in your business like your goal needs to be to well your goal needs to hopefully get the best people in the doors you can we've had 30 people probably in my business to this day and we have 13 right now so if we were try to build a business off the other 17 the business would suck yeah it's the 13 that we have now that make the business good same processes same business same setup same pricing same price book same software same email campaign same marketing same logo same name the people are what make it at the end of the day yeah the the seven the other 17 the business wouldn't survive we wouldn't make it MH so if you don't have the the people you're screwed and that's part of like like setting up your system you got to set it up to get the right people in the door yeah sure you got to build you have to build your business to attract the right people yes yep 100% And then to some extent I would also say it's like you also need to be the type of person that other people want to come work with work for uh yeah well I mean if you think about it right there's a huge shortage of Trades people so these guys can go work wherever they want if they're any good they can go get a job anywhere they can Lally just go down the street and go to the next plumbing contractor and say do you need plumbers cuz I know how to Plum and the contractor is going to say heck yeah I need plumbers where have you been I've been looking for you for years right um and so yeah you have to make a business that is a good place to work you have to provide them with a better offer right um otherwise they're going to go work somewhere else so it's part of the deal that boils down to I mean there's so much that goes into that that we could talk about that forever forever we will continue to talk about that forever we will um it's the hardest part people's the hardest part getting people to come work for you is the hardest part keeping them happy is the hardest part yeah knowing when to keep them happy and knowing yeah understanding the line between keeping them happy and not not not breeding entitlement yeah understanding how to actually lead and Mentor people especially those of like the plumber ilk yep right like it's a hard game to learn and to walk yep would say from my experience it's the probably the most rewarding game because I mean it's it's fun seeing people improve within their Humanity yeah and it's fun participating with them doing that I think so yeah there's a lot of reward that comes from that Beyond just like oh they make me a ton of money that's part of it correct okay let's keep on going down this list here yeah we're almost one we've got the proper licensing yeah okay cool we picked a good name get a and tools like if it was me I would go buy a brand new van I'd put typically you can get a brand new van put $1,000 down on it and if you do this before you quit your job it's going to be a lot easier yeah because you're going to be able to show your pay stubs to the oh yeah true to the bank and they're going to give you a loan no problem if you've already if you've got a big truck payment just go trade your truck in or sell your truck and get a van like if you like your truck swallow your pride and trade it in for a van the is going to make you more money than your truck I'm glad to hear you say that cuz that was the advice I gave a guy like a month ago when he was like he was like Hey man so I'm about to go out on my own him and his business partner right and I was like yeah cool dude and he's like so I got a question I got this really nice truck I just bought he was thinking of like using it for the business yeah I was like hey man you should just like one just get a van like trade it in sell it I I told him go sell it on the market hopefully get your money back or close to and then go get a van yep if you need a grocery hauler for your family go buy a thing thing that does that yep not expensive you're you're trading like you're living skinny so that you can get to your level of economic you can get to that goal quicker yeah it could be scary for guys to go buy a new van I remember when I bought my like because I went into business three times the first two times I bought old crappy beat up Chevy expresses and it sucked and then the third time instead of spending five grand of my hard-earned cash or 10 grand of my hard-earned cash on a van where I had no van payment right instead I went and spent $1,000 on a down payment for a brand new van and then I paid a th000 bucks a month on that until a couple years ago yeah or last year right I it was way better like I looked way better I was better set up to do stuff so I was more efficient you'll be more confident to charge what you need to charge way more confident guy shows up in nice brand new van you look cool yeah way better and even with that like I want to T on like again I just talked to a guy yesterday who was like very concerned like at the end of our little short conversation he was like also I'm a big Dave Ramsey guy and I don't I used to be in tons of debt and I'm not going into debt to build this business yeah and I just kind of let oh okay cool have a good day dude the thing is if you're not if you're not going to buy Vans like the only debt I went into was Vans yeah if you're going to try and buy all your Vans cash it's going to take you a long time to grow your business yeah and you can shorten that time frame by buying Vehicles MH and if you think about it like you buy a vehicle it's going to cost you $1,000 a month but if you're able to get work for the guy that sits in that vehicle he can bill out 50k a month no problem yeah or more comes back to the cash flow yeah you so that van really isn't costing you $1,000 it's really making you money yeah that's actually a good way to think about it like in your personal life it's a different story sure yeah it's your personal life don't buy stupid stuff don't go buy brand new vehicles yeah unless you got the cash yeah then go buy brand new vehicles but for your business that thing makes you money right yeah it's a tool yeah and and like if you're you know if you're going to go into business for yourself like you can go do you can make 500k a year by yourself maybe more um and you could start buying vehicles that way but you're only like by the time you pay taxes and you pay yourself and you pay your business expenses and all that stuff you're going to be able to buy a van after a year right cash and then all your cash is gone MH so then you need to rebuild your cash funds and then you're going to be able to buy another van and get somebody in it right and it's going to be a slow go it's going to take you 10 years to do what you could do in one year if you would just go get a loan on vehicles so I'd make that trade every day gotcha and the vehicle is backed it's an asset yeah sure like you go sell it or give it back like sell it back to the dealership mhm and maybe you're down 10 20 grand that's it yeah so I'd make that trade all day gotta vein and tools get set up that way you're able to serve the company okay what about like access to credit is that necessary access to cred I would always go I would apply for a credit card I'd go get another personal credit card I'd call the whatever credit card you have now some people have multiple credit cards over I think that's weird um I had one credit card I called them to get my balance raised or my limit raised I applied for another personal card and I applied for a business card and the second I got those cards I called nasam to raise a limit yeah so so that way I had credit and what credit the credit does for you is when you go to somebody's house and you give them an estimate right and they say yes now you have credit you can go buy parts right on on that you can get paid at the end of the job usually it's a day or two before the money's in your bank account and you can float that on your credit card yeah sure when the money comes in the bank then you can pay off your credit card right right so it's a creates the cash flow for you in the beginning yeah for the for the few days or weeks like if you get a if you land a big job your first week and you have $14,000 of materials to buy well now you can float it on your credit card until the end of the job rather than that money getting sucked out of your bank account yeah so I would go get credit cards for that reason right off the bat yeah 100% plus it starts building your business credit and a business card and if you get credit cards with like miles or cash back yeah you start to get those benefits as well which like aren't huge but they're something they exist there they add up over time dude I mean think about it this way each guy can do 500k in Revenue 25% of that is usually materials so that's $125,000 that you can get 10% cash back on like you just you yourself sure so you can get cash back or you can get 125,000 points and go on vacation yep like buy a couple plane tickets for you and your wife or like and this is what happened at the last place I work like when people would be like hey I got to go like somebody you know one of my family members is sick in another state or something I got to do emergency travel the boss would be like I got you yeah ticket like I got you first class right now because he had hundreds of thousands of airline miles so it's a very easy thing to do that was very meaningful yeah that you didn't have to pay for yeah didn't cost you anything yeah yeah 100% cool I get irritated my guys never ask me that stuff oh never I would totally buy them a ticket oh yeah yeah yeah that's a that's I mean that's like the that's building this business culture where like you know about your guys so you know what's going on with them cuz it's not necessarily them asking it's you offering because you know them and so when you're asking like how's it going like my mom's oh mom's still sick how's I've never had that opportunity yeah it's a cool opportunity because then you get to see the look on their face when you're like I got you like I'll pay for your time away cuz this is a big deal and I'll pay for your ticket I did send one of my guys down to we paid for his ticket to a he wanted he really wanted to go to this construction conference in Vegas it was funny yeah that cracks me up who goes to a construction conference yeah well Jared you just don't like going to conferences and talking to people okay so get a van in tools okay we haven't even made it through step one it's awesome um if you can afford to go get a good logo go get a good logo so if you've got you know 10 to 15,000 that you can go invest in really good branding go do it sure hands down money well spent yeah if you don't have 10 or 15,000 that you can be okay with disappearing then just go get a logo on 99 designs you can get one for anywhere from 200 bucks to, 1500 bucks the more you spend probably the better logo you're going to get but just go get a logo so that you have something to put somewhere okay chances are you're not a great logo maker you are not a great logo maker and then go look at like go to kick uh kick charge creative and go look at their logos and even if you're not like even if you're just buying something temporary you can go look at the artwork and look at the colors and think about the colors that are in your area and then go to 99 designs and you can kind of direct them to use certain colors you can direct them to you know pick something that isn't super terrible yeah right yeah like a water a blue and red RO water drop that' be terrible right so you can direct them in a way that at least you get something like kind of sort of halfway decent okay you'll be much better off that way yeah so I would definitely go do that um as soon as you start making money you need to go hire a bookkeeper you mean like if it's Monday and I did a job and made money I should hire a bookkeeper Monday evening call up a bookkeeper Monday evening and say hey I have a business I just made my first amount of money I need my books kept don't go get QuickBooks or any of that stuff beforehand interesting don't try to do your own books just find a bookkeeper that will work by the hour okay okay even if you have to change bookkeepers later just find somebody that charges by the hour bookkeep you can usually find a bookkeeper for like $25 to $30 an hour yeah and she's going to spend like an hour or two on your books a month MH so your bill is going to be like a hundred bucks plus QuickBooks that you're going to buy anyways so maybe it'll be 140 bucks in the beginning the more work you do the more guys you hire higher the higher the the bookkeeper is going to go right and you may have to switch to a better bookkeeper eventually but in the beginning just find an hour the bookkeeper and get it done so I'm a I'm a business owner and I have QuickBooks yeah and you're doing your own books you're wasting your time I'm doing my own books and like because I hear this a lot where it's like guys like yeah I got I got QuickBooks but I don't really know if it's accurate like yeah you want accurate books and like so how could QuickBooks not be accurate or like you don't know how to input the the data property properly even if you have a bookkeeper here's the thing they may not ENT enter the data properly yeah you still need to go to your bookkeeper like your bookkeeper is going to come back to you and say hey what were all these charges for sure on your credit card like you have a charge to this company this company and this company what were they for yeah and you need to you need to accurately classify those charges for her y or him um so that they can put it in the right spot on your p&l yeah is basically what you want so that you can look at your p&l and it makes sense okay what if guys are like running a ton of expenses through their business like personal expenses all that kind of stuff don't do that keep them separate do you think that that's why maybe some guys don't get a bookkeeper because they know they have to go to their bookkeeper and then classify these expenses and they're going to be like what's that for like well that's my truck payment or like that's my bill tell just tell her it's your personal truck payment or your personal grocer she's not going to get mad at you no she'll classify it as personal expenses so that on your p&l you'll see personal expenses right and then you can have a clear picture of like oh I actually spent all this money on my personal expenses yeah that's where all my money went right yeah because I've had conversations where guys are like well I was profitable but I run a bunch of stuff through my business so I wasn't really profitable but then even that in that conversation that guy doesn't really know to what extent he was or wasn't actually profitable has no idea which means his business he's just so in the beginning what I would recommend is you pay yourself this gets tough but you can do you can do one of two things first of all you need to talk to your bookkeeper and you need to say okay on my p&l I need to see gross sales and then I need you to subtract cogs every bookkeeper will understand this and then I want to see gross profit and then all my overhead and then net profit my cogs I want you to subtract out any parts plumbing parts or materials or anything real quick what's c what does that mean cost a good sold subtract out everything M anything I spend on materials at the part store or anything like that I want to subtract out of my gross sales okay and then any money that I pay myself I want as a cog as well yeah okay because right now you're you're in the field doing stuff yes and in the beginning what I would do is I would pay myself 20% of growth sales so at the end of every week whatever my whatever I sold that week if I sold 10 grand I'd pay myself two okay not just waiting till like shakes out at the end of the month you're like oh there's like 1100 bucks left let me get that no I would definitely pay myself regularly that's going to help you look at your p&l know if you're healthy like know if you're charging enough okay or it's going to know you as a human being you have money coming in that you can go spend and plan your life so your wife isn't pissed at you right when you're like oh I got to do another business draw I guess for grocer correct like don't do that M so once you're once you're starting to cash flow regularly then I would just put myself on a regular paycheck like okay I pay myself this much every week gotcha right you could also do hourly right you could pay yourself an hourly wage and track your hours just like you would any other employee and pay yourself hourly and that would need to be up in your cogs okay gotcha that way you can see your gross profit you can see all your overhead and you can see your net what you want to see is minimum bare minimum 50% gross profit mhm and then 20% net now when you're growing your business you're you should always be striving for that gross profit margin sometimes your net is going to be less because you're increasing overhead to grow your business right you're buying vehicles and things