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Sept. 24, 2024

Unlearning Entrepreneurship with Mayor Greg Bennett: How to Run Twelve Different Businesses At Once, Community-First Governance, Strategic Business Pivots, Financial Discipline, and Expanding Local Impact

Unlearning Entrepreneurship with Mayor Greg Bennett: How to Run Twelve Different Businesses At Once, Community-First Governance, Strategic Business Pivots, Financial Discipline, and Expanding Local Impact
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Ever wondered how a small-town mayor can drive significant community growth without pocketing a dime of his salary? In our latest episode of the UnlearnT Podcast, we sit down with Mayor Greg Bennett of Swainsboro, Georgia, who shares his remarkable approach to governance and development. Mayor Bennett details his choice to reinvest his mayoral earnings into local projects, offering a fresh perspective on the power of a community-first mindset. From creating jobs to building affordable housing, his initiatives have not only increased Swainsboro's population but also set a new standard for local leadership.

Transitioning from farming to running a successful assisted living business, Mayor Bennett reveals the financial and environmental challenges that pushed him to pivot his career. This former farmer delves into strategic planning, the importance of partnerships, and how he expanded his business portfolio to include a travel center, gym, restaurant, and hotel. He shares invaluable insights on managing multiple ventures while highlighting innovative solutions, like forming a co-op for better crop pricing, to support the farming community.

Connect with Greg! 
https://cityofswainsboro.org/government/mayor/contact-the-mayor/


🎙Listen to the show

https://open.spotify.com/show/0rgu2jIXzNrjQKMwjPGC7z?si=ef78d1b341c14f9b 

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-unlearnt-podcast/id1659687407


😀 Connect  with me:

Instagram: @theunlearntpodcast

Facebook: @theunlearntpodcast


GET IN TOUCH

🌍 My website - theunlearntpodcast.com


Welcome to the UnLearnT Podcast! 


Welcome to the channel of a true trailblazer in the podcasting world! I'm Ruth Abigail (AKA "RA"), the host of 'The UnLearnT Podcast,' a unique platform that helps people gain the courage to change their minds in order to  experience more freedom! Our show dives deep into subjects like religion, politics, race, and more—all geared towards helping you UnLearn what you think you know. If you're looking to shake up your mindset and gain actionable insights, you've landed at the right place. Don't forget to hit the 'Subscribe' button for regular doses of transformative content!

Chapters

00:03 - Small Town Entrepreneurship and Community Growth

10:42 - Farmers' Financial Challenges and Entrepreneurship

18:52 - Scaling Business Success Through Strategic Partnerships

31:28 - Financial Discipline and Entrepreneurship

36:03 - Restaurant Financial Planning and Entrepreneurship

45:32 - Business Strategies and Profit Growth

53:47 - Debate on Financial Discipline and Borrowing

01:05:06 - The Journey of Entrepreneurial Success

01:13:42 - Great Communicator Appreciation and Acceptance

Transcript
WEBVTT

00:00:03.705 --> 00:00:08.253
Hello everybody and welcome once again to the unlearned podcast.

00:00:08.253 --> 00:00:19.062
I'm your host, ruth Abigail aka RA, and this is the podcast that is helping you gain the courage to change your mind so that you can experience more freedom.

00:00:19.062 --> 00:00:27.960
And we are in our series called Unlearning Entrepreneurship, and I have a very, very special guest with me today.

00:00:27.960 --> 00:00:34.554
He is the first government official I've ever had on this, on this, on this podcast.

00:00:34.554 --> 00:00:35.862
This is exciting.

00:00:35.862 --> 00:00:40.015
I would like to introduce to some and present to others.

00:00:40.015 --> 00:00:43.206
Mayor Greg Bennett of Swainsboro, georgia.

00:00:43.206 --> 00:00:44.009
What's up, greg?

00:00:44.432 --> 00:00:45.176
Hello, how are you?

00:00:45.176 --> 00:00:46.862
I don't know about a government official, I don't.

00:00:46.862 --> 00:00:51.241
Small-time politics is small-time politics.

00:00:51.241 --> 00:00:55.183
It's not like there's not really a Democrat and Republican.

00:00:55.183 --> 00:00:58.067
We're all just in the same boat, trying to make everything better.

00:00:58.067 --> 00:01:03.643
Honestly, when we're in our little meetings, I couldn't tell you who's a Republican and who's a Democrat.

00:01:03.643 --> 00:01:04.343
It's just.

00:01:04.343 --> 00:01:05.387
It's just different.

00:01:05.527 --> 00:01:06.028
It really is.

00:01:06.028 --> 00:01:09.641
Well, I mean okay, but you did get voted in, oh yeah.

00:01:09.661 --> 00:01:09.841
Yeah.

00:01:09.861 --> 00:01:11.105
Yeah, Voted in.

00:01:11.105 --> 00:01:12.530
I mean you're a government official to me.

00:01:13.000 --> 00:01:16.471
Yeah, yes, sir, I don't get paid, I don't take a salary.

00:01:17.620 --> 00:01:18.099
Yeah, you don't.

00:01:18.099 --> 00:01:19.100
You don't take a salary, oh, you don't.

00:01:19.400 --> 00:01:25.063
No, I uh, I'm supposed to get a salary but I've never turned in my paperwork to get them to pay me.

00:01:25.063 --> 00:01:27.004
That way I know I won't get paid.

00:01:27.004 --> 00:01:32.128
It's about 20-something grand a year but I don't take it.

00:01:32.989 --> 00:01:34.289
Oh, you know what that's wonderful.

00:01:34.289 --> 00:01:35.750
That's wonderful.

00:01:35.750 --> 00:01:37.471
Did you know, coming in, you weren't going to take it.

00:01:37.471 --> 00:01:38.671
You just knew you were going to.

00:01:38.691 --> 00:01:39.731
Yeah Well, what am I planning?

00:01:39.731 --> 00:01:41.953
Here's what I do I kind of take it without taking it.

00:01:41.953 --> 00:01:44.275
What happens is, let's say, the Christmas.

00:01:44.275 --> 00:01:49.778
The Christmas budget is five grand and they need $8,000 to do lots.

00:01:49.798 --> 00:01:57.882
So I say take 3000 out of my pay and buy the lots.

00:01:57.882 --> 00:01:59.323
Oh, that's perfect, that's dope, okay, so you said small town.

00:01:59.323 --> 00:02:04.671
You're from Swainsboro, georgia, uh, and you know, um, we've met a few times, I've been out there a few times.

00:02:04.671 --> 00:02:08.520
Describe how small it is, wouldn't you say small town, swainsboro, the?

00:02:08.539 --> 00:02:23.627
whole county is like 25,000 residents and Swainsboro, if you took like maybe a diagram of maybe three miles from our center, we're like 10,000 residents right there, Just like a three-mile radius.

00:02:23.627 --> 00:02:30.473
Okay, the population is really about 7,500, but the city lines are just screwed up.

00:02:30.473 --> 00:02:32.888
So it's really you take about a three-mile radius 10,000.

00:02:33.300 --> 00:02:36.448
So all right, so about 7,500 to 10,000.

00:02:36.448 --> 00:02:38.144
So that's about.

00:02:38.144 --> 00:02:40.311
I think that's okay.

00:02:40.311 --> 00:02:42.685
That's not as small as it could be.

00:02:42.805 --> 00:02:43.667
Well, we actually grew.

00:02:43.667 --> 00:02:55.546
We probably grew 300 people in the last year, really, and we've grown by 100 people in the last 30 years, and we grew by 300 people this year.

00:02:55.586 --> 00:02:56.389
What was different?

00:02:56.389 --> 00:02:57.131
What happened?

00:02:57.131 --> 00:02:57.932
That's a huge jump.

00:02:58.419 --> 00:03:00.247
I started a whole new subdivision.

00:03:00.247 --> 00:03:02.703
I'm a developer too, so I started.

00:03:02.703 --> 00:03:06.893
Anyone don't ever think they can do a subdivision.

00:03:06.893 --> 00:03:11.651
Subdivisions are the most time consuming thing you've ever seen in your life.

00:03:11.651 --> 00:03:13.663
And I'm even building the houses.

00:03:13.663 --> 00:03:21.703
I'm not really a house builder, but I put people together like this guy's a construction worker, this guy's a plumber, this guy's electrician, so I put them all together to build houses.

00:03:21.703 --> 00:03:26.906
But in the end of the day, after you sell the home, the homeowner don't call those people.

00:03:26.906 --> 00:03:28.967
They call you if something goes wrong.

00:03:28.967 --> 00:03:37.734
So now I'm on the hook for a year dealing with things like there's water leaking here and I'm not really the person who does all that right.

00:03:37.734 --> 00:03:41.757
But you know they did directly pay me, but I didn't do it for profit.

00:03:41.757 --> 00:03:46.645
I made absolutely no profit Really and I just wanted to put.

00:03:46.645 --> 00:03:49.024
There was about 50 people who work out there building houses every day.

00:03:49.024 --> 00:03:50.389
It gave 50 people a job.

00:03:50.389 --> 00:03:54.066
Plus, we've got 50 more homes in the community than we didn't have before.

00:03:55.409 --> 00:03:58.782
Hold on, you're the developer.

00:03:58.782 --> 00:04:01.706
You're not a broker, I guess, but you're acting as a property manager, though.

00:04:02.580 --> 00:04:04.623
I'm acting like the general contractor.

00:04:04.623 --> 00:04:11.435
What I do, I put these eight people together and I pick out house plans and I do everything.

00:04:11.435 --> 00:04:22.562
But then halfway through the house build I'll put them for sale and so then the owner can come in and pick their own paints and do small little things and we have yet to finish a house that wasn't sold yet.

00:04:22.562 --> 00:04:25.391
By the time it's ready, somebody buys it.

00:04:25.391 --> 00:04:32.810
And I'm not saying they're cheap houses, but if I'm not taking a profit, so the general contractor will usually make about 15% profit.

00:04:32.810 --> 00:04:40.725
So if I'm selling a house for $200,000, $250,000 in that range, technically I probably should have made $35,000 profit.

00:04:40.725 --> 00:04:44.793
So the houses would have been $35 higher, but they're not 35 grand higher.

00:04:44.793 --> 00:04:46.983
So they're selling pretty fast.

00:04:47.043 --> 00:04:54.482
And I'm not saying they're probably middle to middle upper class homes.

00:04:54.482 --> 00:05:00.019
The cheapest home we sold out there was $193,000 and the highest price home was $450,000.

00:05:00.019 --> 00:05:10.394
So it's a good array of homes but for Swainsboro actual residents you know it's on the higher end but not really on the higher end.

00:05:10.394 --> 00:05:17.028
You know like all of Swainsboro cannot afford these homes and I've been blasted a few times saying you're not building homes.

00:05:17.028 --> 00:05:26.112
People in the community can buy, everybody can buy, but my go back to them is to take Chevrolet, the Chevrolet place.

00:05:26.112 --> 00:05:30.526
The Chevrolet place has a hundred thousand dollar car Well, they also have a five thousand dollar car.

00:05:31.139 --> 00:05:35.672
So you're telling the Chevrolet place they shouldn't sell the hundred thousand dollar car, even though somebody about you know.

00:05:35.672 --> 00:05:43.807
So maybe you can't afford every house out there, maybe not, maybe everybody can't afford houses out there, but there's, you know, half the community can.

00:05:43.807 --> 00:05:55.293
And my goal to do this thing was to make Swainsboro grow, and I'm not saying that I didn't want people from Swainsboro to buy the homes, but in order to grow you got to move people here, you know.

00:05:55.293 --> 00:05:59.084
So if I just build these homes and everybody in Swainsboro moves out there, we didn't do anything.

00:05:59.545 --> 00:06:03.891
So I'm going to say 90% of everybody in the subdivision are not from.

00:06:03.891 --> 00:06:06.093
I'm going to say half of them are not even from Georgia.

00:06:06.093 --> 00:06:08.685
Really, yeah, because what they do like.

00:06:08.685 --> 00:06:12.569
One couple told me from Boston they went to Savannah and they liked Savannah.

00:06:12.569 --> 00:06:14.807
They wanted to move here from Boston.

00:06:14.807 --> 00:06:19.432
Well, they couldn't afford a home in Savannah because they were so expensive.

00:06:19.432 --> 00:06:24.446
So then they said, okay, let's search 50 miles out of Savannah or 75 miles, and we want a brand new home.

00:06:24.446 --> 00:06:26.790
Then they said, OK, let's search 50 miles out of Savannah or 75 miles, and we want a brand new home.

00:06:26.790 --> 00:06:29.000
And then they were finding the homes that I was listing and they said there's no way these homes are this.

00:06:29.000 --> 00:06:32.146
Why are they $50,000 cheaper than the other homes we're finding?

00:06:32.146 --> 00:06:34.839
So they flew down here, looked at it, they bought it.

00:06:34.839 --> 00:06:38.302
I wasn't even finished with that house and they bought it before we was finished.

00:06:39.322 --> 00:06:49.567
So OK, so I want to, I want to, I want to back up a little bit because you, you, first of all, I just I got to ask what is your motivation?

00:06:49.567 --> 00:06:58.572
Like you said, like, ok, you don't take a salary for your position as mayor, you aren't making a profit on this development, you know, you, what's your motivation?

00:06:58.572 --> 00:07:03.134
You're, you're an entrepreneur, like you're, you know you're, you're not giving stuff away.

00:07:03.134 --> 00:07:08.538
But obviously, there's obviously a motivating factor here, at least for those two things that you said.

00:07:08.538 --> 00:07:11.687
What's your motivation for doing things and not necessarily reaping the benefit?

00:07:11.706 --> 00:07:11.887
you get.

00:07:11.887 --> 00:07:17.088
Well, I was born here, naturally, so I've only moved away for probably three years of my whole life.

00:07:17.088 --> 00:07:17.872
I went to college.

00:07:17.872 --> 00:07:20.968
I went two years of college after I finished a local college here.

00:07:20.968 --> 00:07:26.834
So I went to two years in Statesburg, georgia Southern, and I graduated there and there's a little story there.

00:07:26.834 --> 00:07:33.749
And then I moved away for one year to a neighboring town called Dublin and then I built an assisted living home there.

00:07:33.749 --> 00:07:37.870
So I moved over there for a year while I was getting up and running and then I moved back.

00:07:38.459 --> 00:07:50.091
But I really want Swainsboro to grow, because we've pretty much been in like a standstill for like 30 years and if you're not growing, you're you're, you're going backwards.

00:07:50.091 --> 00:07:54.812
You know, if you don't, swainsboro is almost becoming, or was becoming, like a rental house town.

00:07:54.812 --> 00:07:57.564
You know, like always you got grandmothers and grandmothers living in the town.

00:07:57.564 --> 00:08:08.442
Well, they pass away and their sons or daughters get it and they just rent the home out, and so a rental house town is way different than a town.

00:08:08.442 --> 00:08:15.309
That's got, you know, people living there, because no offense to renters, but you're not invested in a community like you would be if you actually owned the home.

00:08:15.309 --> 00:08:20.456
So you take care of the home more, you take care of your yard better, and I didn't want to see it go that way.

00:08:20.456 --> 00:08:28.874
So in order for us to grow, you have to have the whole brand new center, because we don't have a lot of lots left scattered around town, so we had to create the lots.

00:08:32.225 --> 00:08:43.923
You got pushback but from what it makes sense is like, okay, you bring new people in, you can grow the economy because you got new money in, you got new people in.

00:08:43.923 --> 00:08:50.659
That have you know, potential to to to increase different in different ways and the city contribute differently.

00:08:50.659 --> 00:09:11.001
So, even if you can't currently afford a home, because it's possible that if you, if new people come in, the economy could be such to where maybe you could do better in order to afford that home because there's when somebody moves there, like there's 50 homes, I'm gonna say 40 of them is gonna have people that don't live here.

00:09:11.462 --> 00:09:16.919
So those 40 people either work or gonna find a job here or they're retired.

00:09:16.919 --> 00:09:27.663
Right, but when they bought those 50 homes, that say on average of 225 000 a piece does a lot more economy that the government here can get more tax money off of.

00:09:27.663 --> 00:09:36.400
And so if you got more tax money coming in from this group of people that you didn't, not everybody else's taxes might go down because there's more people sharing the pot than it was before.

00:09:36.400 --> 00:09:51.692
And the more I'm not going to say more expensive homes you build, but the more middle-class homes you build, those people are going to spend more money in town than somebody who comes here and don't really have a job and don't really work, you know, and won't rent a home.

00:09:51.692 --> 00:10:01.124
Maybe they don't have a job to contribute much to this community, as would somebody who comes in and, you know, got a good retirement they make and can spend money around town.

00:10:01.684 --> 00:10:07.802
Okay, so let's go back to you.

00:10:07.802 --> 00:10:08.807
Said you graduated from Georgia.

00:10:08.807 --> 00:10:10.525
You said you graduated from Georgia Southern.

00:10:10.626 --> 00:10:11.188
Georgia Southern.

00:10:11.188 --> 00:10:12.424
I went the long route.

00:10:12.424 --> 00:10:16.100
I went, like everybody does, when you graduated high school and I loved high school.

00:10:16.100 --> 00:10:20.030
I'm one of these weird people that I went from ninth grade through 12th.

00:10:20.030 --> 00:10:21.085
I didn't miss one day of school.

00:10:21.085 --> 00:10:22.663
I just loved school.

00:10:22.663 --> 00:10:24.129
Well, I like sports too.

00:10:24.129 --> 00:10:30.086
You know, back when I was going to school, if you missed that day you couldn't participate in any sports.

00:10:30.086 --> 00:10:35.006
You know, if we had a game the next day, if you missed the day before, you're not playing the game because apparently you're sick.

00:10:35.006 --> 00:10:37.386
And I played year-round sports.

00:10:37.386 --> 00:10:41.760
You know I went from basketball to baseball to track, so I played year-round, so I played year round.

00:10:42.181 --> 00:10:53.566
But anyway, after I graduated high school, I went to college, a local college it was called East Georgia Colleges here in town, and I found out right quick, like you don't really have to go to class.

00:10:53.566 --> 00:10:58.508
It wasn't like high school, you know, like if you want to go, you can, if you don't, it don't matter, we don't care.

00:10:58.508 --> 00:11:04.770
So it took me probably four years to get two years because I was pitiful.

00:11:04.770 --> 00:11:15.654
So then, after I finished here, I went to Georgia Southern and after two years I just got bored with it a little bit and didn't want to and I still like six months from graduating.

00:11:15.654 --> 00:11:17.535
So I quit, went back home.

00:11:17.975 --> 00:11:19.057
My dad was a farmer.

00:11:19.057 --> 00:11:20.417
So I said you know what?

00:11:20.417 --> 00:11:21.758
I'm ready to make some money.

00:11:21.758 --> 00:11:25.222
I was probably 22 at the time and I said I want to make some money.

00:11:25.222 --> 00:11:34.610
So I quit college with six months to go and when I was probably 35 years old, my wife at the time, her dad was sick in Statesboro Hospital.

00:11:34.610 --> 00:11:38.302
So I've said you know what, I'm here, I'm going to go see how much college I like.

00:11:38.302 --> 00:11:41.486
So I went over there and they said you only like six months.

00:11:41.486 --> 00:11:43.350
I said you know what, sign me up for classes.

00:11:43.350 --> 00:11:46.833
So I think I was 35 when I actually graduated.

00:11:47.034 --> 00:11:52.041
Oh, wow, that's cool.

00:11:52.041 --> 00:11:53.809
I finished, you finished, that's it.

00:11:53.809 --> 00:11:54.494
You got a degree, yeah, okay.

00:11:54.494 --> 00:11:56.842
So what were you doing in between 22 and 35?

00:11:57.304 --> 00:11:59.431
I formed, like I said, my dad formed.

00:11:59.431 --> 00:12:07.437
So I think from probably the age of 23 until probably 35, I farmed.

00:12:07.437 --> 00:12:07.899
That's all I did.

00:12:07.899 --> 00:12:08.643
My dad did it.

00:12:08.643 --> 00:12:10.563
So naturally, I said that's what I got to do is farm.

00:12:10.563 --> 00:12:11.827
But one year I was farming.

00:12:11.868 --> 00:12:12.730
And farming is different.

00:12:12.730 --> 00:12:23.929
Farming is it doesn't matter how hard you work or if you do everything right, if it does not rain or if it's too hot or if it's too cold, you don't make any profit, which means you can't eat.

00:12:23.929 --> 00:12:26.601
And it's not like other jobs.

00:12:26.601 --> 00:12:28.466
Other jobs, you get paid every two weeks, every once a month.

00:12:28.466 --> 00:12:29.671
Farmers will get paid once a year.

00:12:29.671 --> 00:12:36.952
You have to put all your eggs in one basket and if that year is bad, you don't pay out.

00:12:36.952 --> 00:12:38.620
You can't pay the bank off.

00:12:38.620 --> 00:12:57.404
And so I got to thinking when I was 35, I remember this I was 35 when I was farming for the springtime, that's when we plant everything and I said this is absolutely insane, because I've already figured on paper that I can't make a profit this year because prices were down, you know, and inputs were up.

00:12:57.404 --> 00:12:59.089
And I said what am I doing here?

00:12:59.089 --> 00:13:00.393
If it doesn't work on paper?

00:13:00.393 --> 00:13:01.825
It's not going to work.

00:13:01.825 --> 00:13:02.849
This is stupid.

00:13:02.849 --> 00:13:04.355
So what I did.

00:13:04.355 --> 00:13:07.144
I said, okay, when I got through planting, I sold my planters.

00:13:07.144 --> 00:13:09.951
When I got through spraying for the year, I sold my sprayer.

00:13:09.951 --> 00:13:12.285
When I got through harvesting my crop, I sold my harvester.

00:13:12.285 --> 00:13:14.311
That way I could not farm the next year.

00:13:14.311 --> 00:13:16.662
So I made myself not farm.

00:13:17.764 --> 00:13:22.671
And at the time my wife at the time we had started an assisted living home.

00:13:22.671 --> 00:13:28.113
It was probably two to three years into that so she did that on the side and I helped her some.

00:13:28.113 --> 00:13:30.081
And then I said you know what it does?

00:13:30.081 --> 00:13:36.110
Pretty good, I'm just going to take all of my assets that I had farming and build another assisted living home.

00:13:36.110 --> 00:13:40.552
So that's when I moved to Dublin and built a whole new assisted living home.

00:13:40.552 --> 00:13:43.306
And while we were over there she and I got a divorce.

00:13:43.306 --> 00:13:49.274
But she took the nursing home in Dublin, the new one, I took the old one and I moved back home.

00:13:49.274 --> 00:13:51.125
Then from there I started a new business.

00:13:51.125 --> 00:13:57.004
I think I'm up to I think I have 11 or 12 right now businesses you have 11 or 12 businesses.

00:13:57.065 --> 00:13:58.361
Okay, I want to know.

00:13:58.361 --> 00:14:03.827
But I want to go back to the farming thing because that is I'm sure you know.

00:14:03.827 --> 00:14:07.167
Go back to the farming thing because I, that is um I'm sure you know, ty, who's my husband.

00:14:07.187 --> 00:14:08.272
This is how I know greg, he's probably called you.

00:14:08.272 --> 00:14:11.764
We have a little garden in the back, right, so we started planting stuff.

00:14:11.764 --> 00:14:16.995
Uh, earlier this year, and, and, and I, so I'm I'm from houston, texas.

00:14:16.995 --> 00:14:23.208
I got no country farm in me at all, right, so this is a new world for me.

00:14:23.208 --> 00:14:25.573
Okay, you said you get paid once a year.

00:14:25.573 --> 00:14:27.905
I need you to break down the economy of farming.

00:14:27.905 --> 00:14:28.267
I don't.

00:14:28.267 --> 00:14:30.761
I don't understand why it's a once a year payout, all right.

00:14:30.783 --> 00:14:31.826
So let's take.

00:14:31.826 --> 00:14:32.788
Let's take first of the year.

00:14:32.788 --> 00:14:34.500
The first of the year you have to pay all your rent.

00:14:34.500 --> 00:14:41.029
So, like I was a renter, so I didn't own any land, so I had to rent land and you have to pay all your renters up front.

00:14:41.029 --> 00:14:46.682
So say, if I had a thousand acres I probably paid 30 to 40, 30 to $50 an acre rent right.

00:14:46.682 --> 00:14:55.643
So right off the bat I'm paying you know a lot, $50,000 in the first month for rent on all this land.

00:14:56.544 --> 00:15:01.682
And then you have to put things like you have to get all the soil ready, so you have to put something called lime.

00:15:01.682 --> 00:15:04.326
Lime helps to pH right in the land, so you have to get.

00:15:04.326 --> 00:15:08.634
If the pH isn't right, the fertilizer is not going to work, so you have to spend that money.

00:15:08.634 --> 00:15:17.169
Then you have to buy the fertilizer, so, and the fertilizer and the lime usually cost about $75 an acre.

00:15:17.169 --> 00:15:20.941
So now I got the rent and the fertilizer all up front, so I'm investing all that money up front, okay.

00:15:20.941 --> 00:15:23.145
Then you have to seed.

00:15:23.145 --> 00:15:33.490
You got to put the seed out, and once you put the seed out you have to make sure no weeds come up, and so and through, all through the year you're either plowing the field or spraying the field to kill all the weeds.

00:15:33.490 --> 00:15:36.365
That's all you do all year long no weeds, no weeds, no weeds.

00:15:36.365 --> 00:15:41.160
And then at the end of the year this is probably now we're talking September, october.

00:15:41.160 --> 00:15:44.566
So from March to September October, all you're doing is spending money.

00:15:44.866 --> 00:15:54.328
You don't make anything and if it quits raining, say in July, for the whole month, well, you're out there saying, okay, do I spend more money or do I just quit?

00:15:54.328 --> 00:15:57.283
Because do I throw good money after bad?

00:15:57.283 --> 00:15:59.489
But you always got hope.

00:15:59.489 --> 00:16:01.253
You always believe in God He'll make it rain.

00:16:01.253 --> 00:16:02.442
So you keep spending money.

00:16:02.442 --> 00:16:03.345
You keep spending money.

00:16:03.345 --> 00:16:06.533
So then October comes, you either have a good year or a bad year.

00:16:08.960 --> 00:16:10.162
So we harvest from about September to November.

00:16:10.162 --> 00:16:16.731
And when you're harvesting, if the prices aren't right because us farmers are different September, october, november we're broke.

00:16:16.731 --> 00:16:22.864
Everybody's screaming to pay me If the prices are down.

00:16:22.864 --> 00:16:23.708
We don't really have a choice.

00:16:23.708 --> 00:16:27.745
It's not like we can say I don't want to sell right now, I want to wait because I think prices are going up.

00:16:27.745 --> 00:16:32.144
Well, it don't matter, you got bills to pay, so you can't really speculate and hope they go up.

00:16:32.144 --> 00:16:39.546
So we pretty much have to take what they'll give us September, october, november and then try to pile it all up, pay everybody off.

00:16:39.546 --> 00:16:41.548
You can, or you can go the next year.

00:16:41.548 --> 00:16:43.289
Whoa.

00:16:43.289 --> 00:16:45.332
And that's not even getting to the equipment.

00:16:45.332 --> 00:16:47.416
The equipment is a whole different thing.

00:16:47.416 --> 00:16:54.173
I mean you have to go out and spend $500,000 on one piece of equipment and probably not take 10 pieces of equipment to farm.

00:16:54.700 --> 00:16:57.710
You're starting off, I mean like unless you have capital.

00:16:57.879 --> 00:17:05.790
I mean you're starting off in debt day one, yeah day one, day one, and most farmers it takes everything they got to pay off.

00:17:05.790 --> 00:17:13.691
When we start we're having to borrow that money to start off with, because it took all the money we made the last year to pay everybody off.

00:17:13.691 --> 00:17:15.905
So you start day one having to go to the bank.

00:17:15.905 --> 00:17:16.990
You have to go to the bank in January.

00:17:16.990 --> 00:17:25.372
We always say as a group, like a little joke, the further along a farmer can go before going to the bank, that's how rich he was.

00:17:25.372 --> 00:17:26.904
You don't have to go to the bank.

00:17:26.904 --> 00:17:30.770
But if you can make it till like May or June, you're a rich farmer.

00:17:30.770 --> 00:17:34.069
Because how could you farm all that time without borrowing money?

00:17:34.069 --> 00:17:37.028
Me, I had to go in January, like January the 3rd.

00:17:37.028 --> 00:17:39.588
I was always in the bank January the 3rd trying to borrow some money.

00:17:40.941 --> 00:17:42.505
That is no.

00:17:42.505 --> 00:17:43.567
I had no idea.

00:17:43.567 --> 00:17:44.471
It was that.

00:17:44.471 --> 00:17:46.924
I did not know that.

00:17:46.924 --> 00:17:47.808
That's how that went.

00:17:50.502 --> 00:17:55.493
If you want to start farming today, you would need to go borrow a million dollars just for the equipment.

00:17:55.493 --> 00:17:59.931
That's no expenses on seed and fertilizer and all that.

00:18:03.480 --> 00:18:04.624
I'm going to get off this in a second.

00:18:04.624 --> 00:18:05.346
I'm just intrigued.

00:18:05.346 --> 00:18:09.507
What, um how does one become a successful farmer?

00:18:09.827 --> 00:18:12.093
I don't know how somebody would become a farmer now.

00:18:12.093 --> 00:18:20.065
If you're, if you're not generational people you know, like if your dad or your granddad didn't farm, I don't see any way that you could be a farmer.

00:18:20.065 --> 00:18:24.334
Because, for one thing, there's no way I could go.

00:18:24.334 --> 00:18:32.026
If I was 25 years old and I said okay, I want to go borrow a million dollars worth of equipment, there is no company that's going to let me borrow a million dollars to go buy equipment.

00:18:32.026 --> 00:18:46.126
So if you've got a dad or an uncle or somebody who says, okay, I'm going to bridge your tractor, they're growing season and I'll just rent it for you while I need it and you pay him a little bit at the end of the year, that is the only way you can do it and most.

00:18:46.126 --> 00:18:50.631
If you don't have kin, people you know or family that could loan you the equipment, there's no way you could start.

00:18:51.251 --> 00:18:51.571
No way.

00:18:51.571 --> 00:18:54.234
So is the farming community.

00:18:54.234 --> 00:19:01.105
I mean, like just as a from a national perspective.

00:19:01.105 --> 00:19:02.400
And when it comes to food and growing food, is that in jeopardy?

00:19:03.640 --> 00:19:09.608
I would be nervous Because, like when I told you when I was 35, I said I couldn't pencil it out.

00:19:09.608 --> 00:19:13.115
Well, if I can't pencil it out, how does everybody else pencil it out?

00:19:13.115 --> 00:19:28.425
No-transcript 2007, I think, I put together a group of people 15 farmers and we went and bought our own peanut market.

00:19:28.425 --> 00:19:33.096
So we didn't have to take what we were given for peanuts, we could set our own price.

00:19:33.096 --> 00:19:46.292
So we had like a co-op we started and so now that co-op makes a great profit because we can pay the average farmer a little bit more than everybody else pays them and then we can hold it and sell it when we want to to make some more income.

00:19:46.292 --> 00:19:47.469
So that helps the farmers.

00:19:47.469 --> 00:19:55.257
Like every year, all of us farmers that own that peanut market we get an extra 25,000 a year just because we're like a buying point now.

00:19:55.257 --> 00:20:00.116
So we're already starting off the year with $25,000 where everybody else don't have that.

00:20:00.116 --> 00:20:05.490
So the longer you can keep your product and keep hands off of it, the more profit you'll make.

00:20:06.551 --> 00:20:07.272
That makes sense.

00:20:07.272 --> 00:20:09.174
Okay, this is all right.

00:20:09.174 --> 00:20:12.638
So you have 11, you said 11 or 12 businesses, right?

00:20:12.638 --> 00:20:14.421
What types of businesses do you have?

00:20:21.105 --> 00:20:22.388
Assisted living home.

00:20:22.388 --> 00:20:22.951
It's called Summer Willow.

00:20:22.951 --> 00:20:23.773
I'm building a travel center right now.

00:20:23.773 --> 00:20:24.335
It's a truck stop.

00:20:24.335 --> 00:20:24.717
It's going to be.

00:20:24.717 --> 00:20:25.618
It's huge, it's like a Bucky's.

00:20:26.240 --> 00:20:27.023
It's like a miniature Bucky's.

00:20:27.044 --> 00:20:29.594
Okay, we should open it in December.

00:20:29.594 --> 00:20:31.450
I've got two partners on that.

00:20:31.450 --> 00:20:33.807
Okay, I'm also.

00:20:33.807 --> 00:20:35.693
I just sold my liquor store.

00:20:35.693 --> 00:20:37.660
It's called Mojo's Wine and Spirits.

00:20:37.660 --> 00:20:42.016
Okay, I started it in 2011, and it did absolutely great.

00:20:42.016 --> 00:20:46.869
But it comes a time, you know, you think to yourself.

00:20:46.869 --> 00:20:48.295
You know, is this a business I want to be invested?

00:20:48.414 --> 00:21:07.773
in a long time you know I'm not saying liquor store is bad, but it doesn't look good, you know, and you fight with yourself a few times and somebody came along and offered me a little bit more than it was worth so I sold it Also on CPR Fitness in town.

00:21:07.773 --> 00:21:09.433
It's a gym here in town.

00:21:09.433 --> 00:21:14.152
It's like 20,000 square feet, it's got a heated pool, it's got a sauna, it's got everything.

00:21:14.152 --> 00:21:16.372
It's way too nice for Swainsboro.

00:21:16.372 --> 00:21:17.315
That's the thing.

00:21:17.315 --> 00:21:21.636
The next business I got I'm building a hotel right now.

00:21:21.636 --> 00:21:22.444
It's called the Blanton.

00:21:22.444 --> 00:21:27.153
It's going to be a Wyndham hotel and we've actually just started building it.

00:21:27.153 --> 00:21:31.549
The next business I have is a Manor County Peanut and Grain.

00:21:31.549 --> 00:21:36.332
That's the peanut place I was telling about the Stockyard Restaurant.

00:21:36.332 --> 00:21:38.752
I started it last year with one partner.

00:21:38.752 --> 00:21:40.530
It does good, very good.

00:21:40.530 --> 00:21:47.490
Swainsboro doesn't really have a middle to upper scale nice bar restaurant place to go, so it has great food.

00:21:47.490 --> 00:21:51.730
It's doing great Quick, clean laundry.

00:21:51.730 --> 00:21:56.413
I own a laundromat with two other people too, if you'll notice, I have partners and stuff right.

00:21:56.473 --> 00:21:57.115
Yeah.

00:21:58.445 --> 00:22:05.519
I'm not saying it's good to have partners or bad, but to me I could not own 11 businesses if I didn't have partners.

00:22:05.519 --> 00:22:08.586
There's no way to do it.

00:22:08.586 --> 00:22:12.555
If you don't spread the workload around, then you can't own it.

00:22:12.555 --> 00:22:16.409
And if I own 11 or 12 businesses, I don't have to take a lot of profit.

00:22:16.409 --> 00:22:20.498
I don't need a slither of profit from every business.

00:22:20.498 --> 00:22:23.910
And then I got a good living and then I didn't tell you this.

00:22:23.910 --> 00:22:25.092
But let me finish my business first.

00:22:25.092 --> 00:22:29.440
The next business is Mojo's Car Wash.

00:22:29.440 --> 00:22:30.808
It's one of the express washes.

00:22:30.808 --> 00:22:32.714
You know like you pay a membership and you come through.

00:22:32.714 --> 00:22:38.457
The next business is a retail store my wife and I own.

00:22:38.457 --> 00:22:41.434
It's called Sumner's Boutique.

00:22:42.105 --> 00:22:50.310
I built a retail place that's got two down below and two apartments up tall and the apartments up tall I just got three or two like a year ago.

00:22:50.310 --> 00:22:52.351
They look like New York style apartments.

00:22:52.351 --> 00:22:55.730
They're like studio with brick walls and it's absolutely beautiful.

00:22:55.730 --> 00:22:58.451
But I do not want to get in the rental house business.

00:22:58.451 --> 00:23:03.270
I got these two apartments on top but I just don't like rental houses.

00:23:03.270 --> 00:23:08.510
The people expect too much of you, you know, like my toilet's messed up.

00:23:08.510 --> 00:23:11.471
Well, I'm only making $40 profit this month.

00:23:11.471 --> 00:23:13.932
You know on your part I didn't do it to make a profit.

00:23:13.932 --> 00:23:20.671
So if I get a plumber there to fix your toilet, I wrote 60 bucks this month you know like, and it's so slow of income.

00:23:20.671 --> 00:23:29.992
There's people I know that has a lot of rental income.

00:23:29.992 --> 00:23:30.394
I just don't see it.

00:23:30.394 --> 00:23:32.505
It's way too slow to invest all that money to get a little sliver back.

00:23:32.505 --> 00:23:35.155
The next one is Crossroads Landings.

00:23:35.155 --> 00:23:35.982
That's the subdivision.

00:23:36.002 --> 00:23:36.224
I'm doing.

00:23:36.486 --> 00:23:40.115
Next one is Mojo's Car Wash.

00:23:40.115 --> 00:23:41.807
I got another one in Waynesboro, georgia.

00:23:41.807 --> 00:23:45.013
Okay, I think that's it and I'm a mayor.

00:23:45.013 --> 00:23:46.457
I don't know if that's a job.

00:23:46.457 --> 00:23:47.239
That's kind of a job.

00:23:49.088 --> 00:23:49.671
Okay, greg.

00:23:49.671 --> 00:23:57.229
So here's the thing Even before I officially met you, right, ty would tell me.

00:23:57.229 --> 00:24:01.589
And I said there's no way this dude is doing all of that.

00:24:01.589 --> 00:24:02.432
How in the world?

00:24:02.432 --> 00:24:04.444
But you made partners.

00:24:04.444 --> 00:24:09.711
And this is interesting, I think, and correct me, this is how I'm interpreting it.

00:24:09.711 --> 00:24:10.633
You have partners.

00:24:10.633 --> 00:24:13.587
You say you take a sliver of each one and you don't have to.

00:24:13.587 --> 00:24:20.772
So it's more attractive for a partner to say oh man, I can have a nice chunk of equity in this and plus.

00:24:20.792 --> 00:24:22.826
I don't want to say too much, but the larger man.

00:24:22.826 --> 00:24:23.548
That's a good example.

00:24:23.548 --> 00:24:31.112
Theromat, I had the idea Swainsboro didn't really have a nice laundromat, right, and we do drop and fold, it's not really just a coin laundromat.

00:24:31.112 --> 00:24:34.461
I mean we wanted people there all day, right.

00:24:34.461 --> 00:24:37.713
And how do you pay people all day unless they have a task to do?

00:24:37.713 --> 00:24:40.032
So what we do is people can drop their clothes off.

00:24:40.032 --> 00:24:47.979
We'll wash them for them and iron them and put stars to do all that, and they just pick them up that day or the next day.

00:24:47.979 --> 00:24:48.682
So that helps pay for that employee.

00:24:48.682 --> 00:24:52.885
Because my opinion is, if you got a large amount and you leave it open 24 hours a day, they're going to destroy it.

00:24:52.885 --> 00:24:54.131
People just destroy it.

00:24:54.665 --> 00:24:56.633
So, you don't want that, so that's why we have people there.

00:24:56.633 --> 00:25:01.628
But, like here, we put up $20,000 a piece, us three partners, so it's $60,000.

00:25:01.628 --> 00:25:02.289
So 60 grand.

00:25:02.289 --> 00:25:06.075
I think we built it for around 250.

00:25:06.075 --> 00:25:10.460
You know, I think the building and then I think we spent around 190,000 on equipment.

00:25:10.460 --> 00:25:15.490
So we had around 450,000, I think in the day.

00:25:15.509 --> 00:25:28.579
But if I did it by myself one, I'd have to put a lot more money in front and it takes one of the owners every morning, goes in there and counts up the quarters, puts the quarters back in the machines, makes sure everything's fine.

00:25:28.579 --> 00:25:30.050
It takes him about an hour every morning.

00:25:30.050 --> 00:25:31.933
Well, he does it because he likes doing it.

00:25:31.933 --> 00:25:35.935
Well, if I had to do it, I couldn't do all those stuff I have to.

00:25:35.935 --> 00:25:43.269
Not that an hour is a lot of time, but if you've got 11 or 12 businesses, you can't spend an hour dedicated to one space.

00:25:43.269 --> 00:25:46.873
Because if I did that, what if I had an emergency in one of my other places?

00:25:46.873 --> 00:25:50.055
I said, okay, I can't come, but I can come in an hour.

00:25:50.055 --> 00:25:51.675
That won't work If I got an emergency.

00:25:51.675 --> 00:25:53.438
I got an emergency to go leave.

00:25:54.018 --> 00:26:05.313
So there are people out there that would say, if you're going to be an entrepreneur, partners are not a good way to go, because you can't trust them.

00:26:05.594 --> 00:26:11.396
Here's the thing Never pick a partner that doesn't bring something to the table that you can't bring.

00:26:11.396 --> 00:26:15.253
You know if, why would I pick partner X?

00:26:15.253 --> 00:26:20.910
Let's say, if a partner said I just want to put in some money and be a partner, well, I can go borrow money.

00:26:20.910 --> 00:26:24.074
What are you bringing to the table besides money?

00:26:24.074 --> 00:26:27.512
Because I can borrow money and pay the loan back and I ain't got to give you a portion of it.

00:26:27.512 --> 00:26:36.468
But if you'll say, okay, if we'll do this partnership together, like the partnership I'm doing with the truck stop, the travel center, I got three partners.

00:26:36.468 --> 00:26:37.391
Well, I got two.

00:26:37.391 --> 00:26:38.334
I'm the third partner.

00:26:39.215 --> 00:26:44.833
One actually owns a gas station now, so he's got experience, so he's going to run the place.

00:26:44.833 --> 00:26:50.307
My other partner owns a trucking company, so now we got automatically 100 trucks.

00:26:50.307 --> 00:27:02.611
That's going to buy diesel from us every single day because he's got a trucking company, he owns a mill, he owns a bunch of stuff, so your customer base just grew because there's no way he's going to buy it anywhere else.

00:27:02.611 --> 00:27:03.394
He's going to buy it there.

00:27:03.394 --> 00:27:11.398
So all three of us bring something to the table that if somebody just didn't want to put money in, I would not have took them as partners.

00:27:11.398 --> 00:27:18.153
I don't take any money partners in, because all you're telling me is you don't want to work, you just want to put money in and you want me to send you a check.

00:27:18.664 --> 00:27:19.730
So that's what I was going to ask you.

00:27:19.730 --> 00:27:21.672
What are the other elements?

00:27:30.865 --> 00:27:31.405
What are the other elements?

00:27:31.405 --> 00:27:33.191
What are the other characteristics of a partner?

00:27:33.191 --> 00:27:34.213
You're looking for the hotel I'm doing.

00:27:34.213 --> 00:27:34.795
I got two partners.

00:27:34.795 --> 00:27:37.582
With that I'm going to be 52% owner, and that's another thing I like to have to say 52%.

00:27:37.602 --> 00:27:39.547
If there's a bad call to make, I want to be the one that made the bad call.

00:27:39.547 --> 00:27:44.646
I don't want to get outvoted and somebody tell me this is the way it's going to be.

00:27:44.646 --> 00:27:46.753
Not that I ever have that on any owners I got.

00:27:46.753 --> 00:27:52.695
We're all great, great friends, we're all going to break, but at the end of the day, if there's a bad decision to make, I won't be the one to blame.

00:27:52.695 --> 00:27:55.333
And so I'm 52 percent.

00:27:55.333 --> 00:27:56.509
And then I have two owners.

00:27:56.509 --> 00:27:57.452
It's 24 percent.

00:27:57.452 --> 00:28:01.730
One of those owners is a contractor.

00:28:01.730 --> 00:28:13.076
So automatically we're saving around $400,000 on general contractor fee because he's bringing that to the table and he's not even knocking it off his thing.

00:28:13.076 --> 00:28:18.522
He's just donating the $400,000 to the project without saying that's my money to put in.

00:28:18.522 --> 00:28:22.618
He's not doing it, he's just doing it because eventually we hope to make money off the project.

00:28:23.923 --> 00:28:24.885
And I'm a little different too.

00:28:25.267 --> 00:28:28.515
What I do and all my businesses I got you know.

00:28:28.515 --> 00:28:30.587
Naturally I got to live and I got to.

00:28:30.587 --> 00:28:33.951
You know I'm going on a little vacation but I don't really spend a lot of money.

00:28:33.951 --> 00:28:37.554
You may see me in the same five outfits for two years.

00:28:37.554 --> 00:28:38.911
I just don't waste money.

00:28:39.884 --> 00:28:46.798
Many of my friends will tell you he is tired, because anytime I get somebody to do something for me, I jewel them down.

00:28:46.798 --> 00:28:48.186
I try to get as cheap as I can.

00:28:48.186 --> 00:28:49.711
I don't do that because I'm cheap.

00:28:49.711 --> 00:28:58.968
I do it because if I jewel you down on doing the plumbing of these houses, that's that much more cheaper I can sell the home for, so that much I can save the home.

00:28:59.048 --> 00:29:04.777
On the way I'm getting at is every one of these businesses that I make, and some of them don't make a profit.

00:29:04.777 --> 00:29:23.009
Now, some of them don't make a profit, but if I can take a little bit out, so then every end of the month I can pile up another pile of money if it makes a profit to go do another business, because all the profit I make I only need what I need, and so then I can start like a new hotel or a new truck.

00:29:23.009 --> 00:29:27.719
Stop, you know so and I don't like take it out of the community I try to invest more.

00:29:27.719 --> 00:29:29.367
Let's turn it right back in the community.

00:29:29.367 --> 00:29:32.817
Turn it right back in the community and try to make more jobs.

00:29:34.806 --> 00:29:40.845
So you know, you know, social media is full of this kind of lifestyle culture of entrepreneurship.

00:29:40.845 --> 00:29:44.550
You know, I got you know, man, you know, you know we're doing this.

00:29:44.550 --> 00:29:54.768
Look at us, we're at where you were in Mexico and we're doing this trip and we're doing these masterminds, I got these cars, private plant, all the.

00:29:54.768 --> 00:29:55.570
You know, you see all that.

00:29:55.590 --> 00:30:15.432
When people want to get into entrepreneurship that's kind of the mind that they have what, what, what, what you're, what you're talking about is a very different picture of entrepreneurship and to me it's like it's a servant entrepreneurship Like you, you, you, you're you, you know you, you get what you get right, you deserve, cause it's this, it's your stuff.

00:30:15.432 --> 00:30:21.068
But it's not about the, the, the material aspect of of everything.

00:30:21.068 --> 00:30:22.992
You want to do it to pour back in the community.

00:30:22.992 --> 00:30:34.967
How would you help people who have to like negotiate what they see on social media and kind of that picture of what most people see entrepreneurship is?

00:30:34.967 --> 00:30:42.834
And how would you help them to kind of swing their mindset to where you are of like and cause you're successful?

00:30:42.834 --> 00:30:49.394
It's not like you out here, you know you ain't giving stuff away, I mean, but you are a successful businessman but your mindset's different.

00:30:49.394 --> 00:30:50.384
How do you help people get there?

00:30:50.404 --> 00:30:54.673
Here's the problem All those ones you see, you might see you don't see the losers.

00:30:54.673 --> 00:30:57.390
When you look on social media, you only see the winners.

00:30:57.390 --> 00:31:04.214
And so and I'm not saying that's not true, it does happen People do hit these little lottery things.

00:31:04.214 --> 00:31:07.098
I'm not talking about lottery, but you know what I'm saying the lottery in the business world.

00:31:07.098 --> 00:31:16.673
But that's not the way it goes, because for every one person that succeeded, there's 15 others that are back working a nine-to-five job because it didn't work out.

00:31:16.673 --> 00:31:19.107
You know why most businesses fail.

00:31:19.107 --> 00:31:23.067
I think because there's been a few businesses I know and I've tried to help these people.

00:31:23.087 --> 00:31:28.032
You know different ones to do different things, and this is the same thing I tell everyone.

00:31:28.032 --> 00:31:31.738
When you start a new business, you have to treat it like a new infant.

00:31:31.738 --> 00:31:34.721
You have to give it everything it needs.

00:31:34.721 --> 00:31:37.508
You can't take anything from it.

00:31:37.508 --> 00:31:40.896
If it makes $4,000 this month profit, you don't take anything.

00:31:40.896 --> 00:31:44.592
You got to learn to live well within your means, even lower.

00:31:44.592 --> 00:31:47.096
You're not supposed to take any money out for a couple of years.

00:31:47.096 --> 00:32:00.288
And it's hard for people to do that because you know you start a new business and this month it made $3,000 profit and you got a bill at the house.

00:32:00.308 --> 00:32:01.630
It's hard not to pay that bill with that money.

00:32:01.630 --> 00:32:04.512
So because you got to put it right back in the business the next month.

00:32:04.512 --> 00:32:07.997
So what if you have a bad month next month and you lose $3,000?

00:32:07.997 --> 00:32:12.301
You close because you took all the profit the month before and you didn't save it.

00:32:12.301 --> 00:32:14.854
So my thing is treat it like an infant.

00:32:14.854 --> 00:32:19.349
If you give that infant everything it needs for a couple years, it can start feeding you.

00:32:19.349 --> 00:32:23.231
But you can't expect it to feed you right out of the crib.

00:32:23.231 --> 00:32:26.037
You've got to feed it for two years, at least two years.

00:32:26.037 --> 00:32:32.307
So you got to have a plan.

00:32:32.307 --> 00:32:33.030
That's the thing about it.

00:32:33.050 --> 00:32:34.175
Everybody says the bank says I need a business plan.

00:32:34.175 --> 00:32:35.884
They want to know how are you going to pay your bills if you can't take money out.

00:32:35.884 --> 00:32:36.787
That's all they want to know.

00:32:36.787 --> 00:32:39.695
How are you going to pay me back and how are you going to pay your bills?

00:32:39.695 --> 00:32:54.553
And if your thing is okay I want to borrow $50,000 to buy $20,000 worth of merchandise because I need to make $3,000 a month to pay my bills they're automatically going to say, okay, next You're not going to make it because you can't borrow money to live on.

00:32:55.085 --> 00:32:56.490
And then you can't say, well, I got to.

00:32:56.490 --> 00:32:58.684
If I'm working for myself, I need to get paid.

00:32:58.684 --> 00:33:00.467
No, you don't, you can't take money out.

00:33:00.467 --> 00:33:01.968
You just cannot take money out.

00:33:01.968 --> 00:33:04.089
And that's what they do wrong.

00:33:04.089 --> 00:33:06.852
They think they can take money out because it's there and you can't.

00:33:06.852 --> 00:33:09.474
You got to be disciplined not to take it out.

00:33:09.474 --> 00:33:12.497
And if you do that for say, two years, well now you got to.

00:33:12.497 --> 00:33:13.999
You got like a toehold.

00:33:13.999 --> 00:33:18.142
Now this business can can give you an income while you start a new business.

00:33:18.142 --> 00:33:22.528
Now the new business don't have to support you either, but you cause.

00:33:22.528 --> 00:33:25.031
You got the old business that you worked for two years on and then two years later.

00:33:25.031 --> 00:33:29.259
Well, now you've got two businesses that can support you and you start the next one.

00:33:35.231 --> 00:33:40.779
So what does someone have to do to be prepared to not take from their business for two years?

00:33:40.779 --> 00:33:42.310
How do I need to prepare for that?

00:33:44.164 --> 00:33:45.250
What I would do is sit down.

00:33:45.250 --> 00:33:50.034
Okay, how much is it going to take me to go from January 1st to December 1st?

00:33:50.034 --> 00:33:51.135
What is the minimum?

00:33:51.135 --> 00:33:52.018
I have to live?

00:33:52.018 --> 00:33:57.347
And you say I got to pay this bill, I got to pay this because you got to eat, you got to pay your rent, you got to pay everything.

00:33:57.347 --> 00:34:13.804
So let's say, if the bank, you went to the bank and you want let's just do the fictitious number I need $50,000 to buy this merchandise and to pay my rent, or I'm doing the building, all business stuff, and it takes you $27,000 for you to live.

00:34:14.429 --> 00:34:16.186
You can't go to the bank, bar 77.

00:34:16.186 --> 00:34:18.353
They're going to laugh at you and say, no, you can't do that.

00:34:18.353 --> 00:34:24.672
So you got to have enough money to satisfy the bank for the business and satisfy the bank for you to breathe.

00:34:24.672 --> 00:34:28.690
Because I say you need to go two years, but you got to go a year.

00:34:28.690 --> 00:34:31.235
I mean there's no question, you got to go a year.

00:34:31.235 --> 00:34:34.940
Then after a year you'll know either this business is going to make it or it's not.

00:34:34.940 --> 00:34:43.818
And if you think it's going to make it, the next year you might could take 15,000 out of the 27 you needed and it can still flourish and still grow.

00:34:43.818 --> 00:34:48.061
But you ain't got to go that whole year knowing that you don't have any money.

00:34:48.061 --> 00:34:50.302
But you got to have a plan.

00:34:50.302 --> 00:34:52.150
How do you pay your own bills?

00:34:52.150 --> 00:34:55.211
Because you just can't get greedy with your business.

00:34:55.211 --> 00:34:55.934
You got it.

00:34:55.934 --> 00:34:56.835
Let it support itself.

00:34:58.644 --> 00:35:01.233
So you say one more thing.

00:35:01.846 --> 00:35:03.411
You got to be ready to work a hundred hours a week.

00:35:03.411 --> 00:35:19.597
Don't go in there thinking, okay, I'm going to start this new business and I will hire two guys or two women or whatever, and they're going to work 40 hours a week and all I got to do is supervise If you need to hire two and you don't hire zero and you work 80.

00:35:19.597 --> 00:35:22.474
And that's why you technically could pay yourself.

00:35:22.474 --> 00:35:35.228
You know, like I'm going to hire, I'm not going to hire a person, but I would have hired one and I was going to work, so I'm not going to hire any, and so I was going to pay that person 15 bucks an hour, so I can draw out $600 because I would have paid that person.

00:35:35.228 --> 00:35:37.670
But you got to be willing to work 80 hours a week.

00:35:41.947 --> 00:36:02.367
All right, I was going to go somewhere, but just let me ask this first Um, when people come to you and they say I want to start a business, or I want you to help me, coach me through starting a business, or you know, I think I want to be an entrepreneur, what are the things, um, what would make you encourage somebody to do that versus discourage somebody to do that?

00:36:03.048 --> 00:36:03.690
For one thing to come.

00:36:03.690 --> 00:36:03.911
Come to me.

00:36:03.911 --> 00:36:05.094
I had a group that come to me.

00:36:05.094 --> 00:36:11.335
They were local people and two guys and they wanted to start a sub place.

00:36:11.335 --> 00:36:13.590
Larry's Giant Subs is one of those.

00:36:13.590 --> 00:36:18.090
Right, they came to me and they wanted to do the sub place but they didn't have.

00:36:18.090 --> 00:36:27.759
After we talked for about 30 minutes I said you have to figure out how much you're going to have in that sub all your ingredients, every one of your things.

00:36:27.759 --> 00:36:34.951
And then you got to figure out your staff and then you got to figure out how much you're going to have in that business every single day to turn the lights off.

00:36:34.951 --> 00:36:38.090
And turn the lights off Like like what a restaurant.

00:36:38.090 --> 00:36:39.076
I was trying to explain to them.

00:36:39.076 --> 00:36:51.751
About 30% of your cost has to be food cost Right and then 30% of your cost has to be food cost right and then 30% of your cost has to be labor right and then about 15% has to be like overhead, like your rent, your gas and all that.

00:36:51.751 --> 00:36:53.311
So that's about 75%.

00:36:53.311 --> 00:36:56.871
Now you need about 5% to pay the credit card fees.

00:36:56.871 --> 00:36:59.449
You still have to have credit Credit card fees was killing everybody.

00:36:59.804 --> 00:37:08.603
Like people think, please, I'm going to tell everyone on your list will think please, I'm going to tell everyone on your list pay cash, the more cash you pay.

00:37:08.603 --> 00:37:17.402
Like I've heard this before If you go into a place and you take $50 and you pay it to that restaurant and they take the whole 50, now they got 50 more dollars to spread around somewhere.

00:37:17.402 --> 00:37:22.215
If you go into a restaurant and pay them a credit card, they just lost $3.

00:37:22.215 --> 00:37:23.838
So actually they got 47.

00:37:23.838 --> 00:37:30.652
And then when they pay out their stuff or they go use a credit card, that credit card the value went down to 33.

00:37:30.652 --> 00:37:31.554
I mean 43.

00:37:31.554 --> 00:37:35.434
So every time you use that credit card, if you use it 10 times, it's worth zero.

00:37:35.434 --> 00:37:38.048
The bank got the whole $50.

00:37:38.690 --> 00:37:39.213
Really.

00:37:39.532 --> 00:37:40.916
Yeah, the bank got the whole.

00:37:40.916 --> 00:37:45.126
If you do 10 transactions, the bank ends up getting the whole $50.

00:37:45.126 --> 00:37:53.590
If you do 10 transactions, the bank gets the whole $50 because all us business owners we have to pay about 3% to the credit card people for you to use your card and most of it.

00:37:53.590 --> 00:37:56.751
There are businesses now that's adding it to their bill.

00:37:56.751 --> 00:37:57.452
They are doing that.

00:37:57.452 --> 00:38:00.554
I just don't think that's right.

00:38:00.554 --> 00:38:03.914
My opinion is give me the price and I'll pay the price.

00:38:03.914 --> 00:38:09.918
Don't give me the price plus another fee that you need to do this because, you've got to sign up.

00:38:10.478 --> 00:38:16.242
We just went to the fair last week and for every, every time we use the card and what is?

00:38:16.242 --> 00:38:26.503
It wasn't a credit card, it was just a card like it was, but it was a fee If you had to use a card for cash.

00:38:26.503 --> 00:38:27.364
It was like a dollar and twenty five cents to use the card.

00:38:27.364 --> 00:38:30.291
Yeah, they passed it all to the consumer for the card.

00:38:30.291 --> 00:38:33.005
That's interesting.

00:38:33.005 --> 00:38:34.231
I really didn't realize.

00:38:34.965 --> 00:38:36.311
Yeah, like I said, not the restaurant.

00:38:36.311 --> 00:38:49.054
Let's say, if we did $100,000 a month in credit card fees I mean credit card purchases they take out around 31.31%, and so we actually didn't get $100,000.

00:38:49.054 --> 00:38:50.804
We got $96,900.

00:38:50.804 --> 00:38:55.635
And so the bank made $3,100 off of people using our credit card.

00:38:55.635 --> 00:38:57.690
So it's just gone.

00:38:57.690 --> 00:38:59.389
So most businesses too.

00:38:59.389 --> 00:39:03.213
It's a corner of how much revenue you turn, cause this really isn't true.

00:39:03.213 --> 00:39:08.833
If you turn a little bit of revenue, but like a restaurant, you might make 5% profit.

00:39:08.833 --> 00:39:10.431
That's about what you're going to make.

00:39:10.431 --> 00:39:12.012
5% of all your expenses.

00:39:12.012 --> 00:39:12.978
You're going to make 5%.

00:39:12.978 --> 00:39:16.389
The credit card fee is making 3% and they're not doing anything.

00:39:16.389 --> 00:39:18.496
They're not doing it.

00:39:18.496 --> 00:39:22.853
All they're doing is putting a little box in your thing and it's going in the cloud and it's paying you.

00:39:22.853 --> 00:39:28.978
So the credit card people are making about 60% of the profit that you make.

00:39:28.998 --> 00:39:30.063
But you're doing all the work.

00:39:30.063 --> 00:39:35.588
Yeah, yeah, shoot, oh yeah, okay, so you pay, cash, pay cash.

00:39:35.588 --> 00:39:36.391
Pay cash.

00:39:36.724 --> 00:39:38.945
Pay cash and I forgot what we were talking about before.

00:39:38.945 --> 00:39:39.708
I forgot.

00:39:39.869 --> 00:39:40.572
No, you're good.

00:39:40.572 --> 00:39:41.929
No, Okay, yeah, I'm going to get this back.

00:39:41.929 --> 00:39:43.375
So people come to.

00:39:43.394 --> 00:39:56.554
you were talking about the guys who wanted to start the sub place and you were saying and anyway, I figured out how much they needed and I said you know, like, if you need like 80% of your stuff now, you got to figure out how many subs a day do you have to sell.

00:39:56.554 --> 00:39:58.608
They said I have no idea.

00:39:58.608 --> 00:39:59.833
Well, you got to know that.

00:39:59.833 --> 00:40:00.976
You got to know.

00:40:00.976 --> 00:40:01.965
You got to have a business plan.

00:40:01.965 --> 00:40:06.731
Like Wednesday and Thursday is going to be different, monday, tuesday, wednesday is going to be different.

00:40:06.731 --> 00:40:10.835
Friday and Saturday and Sunday Cause Friday, saturday, sunday is when most restaurants make their money.

00:40:11.275 --> 00:40:14.878
So, except subway, you know that's a cheaper item, so everybody goes on every day.

00:40:14.878 --> 00:40:18.786
But you got to know every single day what your expenses are.

00:40:18.786 --> 00:40:22.512
How many subs do I have to sell on Tuesday in order to stay open?

00:40:22.512 --> 00:40:30.092
And if it's not realistic, if you say I got to sell, you know, 900 subs on Tuesday, it's not going to work.

00:40:30.092 --> 00:40:38.856
But if you got to sell 78 subs on Tuesday, okay, it'll work because it pretty much tells you how much help you can afford to pay.

00:40:39.364 --> 00:40:51.833
Like if you go in there and it says I think I'm going to sell 75 subs a day, well, if 30% of that is, you know, if you sell every sub for 10 bucks, let's just say 10 bucks, that's $750 a day.

00:40:51.833 --> 00:40:55.496
You can't spend but about $250 on labor that day, right?

00:40:55.496 --> 00:40:59.175
So that already tells you this is how much staff I can afford.

00:40:59.175 --> 00:41:07.347
So I told them they got to know every day how much staff they can afford, how much your expenses are going to be, and then how much rent you could pay.

00:41:07.347 --> 00:41:08.632
So they didn't know how much.

00:41:08.632 --> 00:41:10.945
You know how much could they afford to pay rent?

00:41:10.945 --> 00:41:12.389
I don't know that answer either.

00:41:12.389 --> 00:41:16.067
You're going to have to figure it out according to how many subs you think you'll sell a day.

00:41:16.467 --> 00:41:17.489
And that's easy to figure out.

00:41:17.489 --> 00:41:19.170
People said how do I know how many subs?

00:41:19.170 --> 00:41:22.934
You can go to places like, say, zaxby's, you can go to Zach's music.

00:41:22.934 --> 00:41:29.590
If you get there at 11 o'clock they'll say they used to say I don't know this anymore, order number seven, right.

00:41:29.590 --> 00:41:35.036
Then they'll say your name, greg or whatever, but you look at your ticket and your ticket will say order number seven.

00:41:35.036 --> 00:41:39.173
If you go there at three o'clock it might say order number 377.

00:41:39.173 --> 00:41:48.230
So you can get a good idea idea of a fast food restaurant in your town by just going there early and see what the number is, because everybody don't start over new every single day.

00:41:48.289 --> 00:41:53.550
They may say 837 and then by three o'clock they might be at 947.

00:41:53.550 --> 00:41:55.054
So they sold a hundred.

00:41:55.054 --> 00:41:58.789
So you just divide how many hours they were open over how many orders they did.

00:41:58.789 --> 00:42:04.592
So that gives you a general idea of how much you think you could do Find a comparable business.

00:42:04.612 --> 00:42:06.365
I would have never thought to do that Like.

00:42:06.365 --> 00:42:10.413
That makes a lot of sense, like your order number, that's the number of orders they've had so far that day.

00:42:10.445 --> 00:42:11.454
That's right, that day yeah.

00:42:12.626 --> 00:42:13.992
Oh shoot, that's interesting.

00:42:13.992 --> 00:42:16.572
Okay, so all right.

00:42:16.572 --> 00:42:17.755
So be prepared.

00:42:17.755 --> 00:42:21.411
You need to know what you need before you try to go out there and do it.

00:42:21.411 --> 00:42:25.260
You need to answer all these questions, right.

00:42:25.260 --> 00:42:33.057
What other things are necessary for you before you go, whether it's a technical thing, or maybe it's a character thing.

00:42:37.630 --> 00:42:39.152
My thing is here's what I always do, too.

00:42:39.152 --> 00:42:42.507
Before you can say I want a job that pays me a lot of money, right?

00:42:42.507 --> 00:42:45.635
Or I want to open up a business that pays me a lot.

00:42:45.635 --> 00:42:49.858
I'd rather open up a business that's going to pay me, okay, but I love doing it.

00:42:49.858 --> 00:42:54.110
If you love doing it already, it's not really a job, right?

00:42:54.110 --> 00:43:02.896
So then if you work 80 hours a week, for that first week in your mind you really didn't work 80 hours because you were in a place you love to do.

00:43:02.896 --> 00:43:03.717
You like doing that.

00:43:03.717 --> 00:43:05.840
If you like to cook, open up a restaurant.

00:43:05.840 --> 00:43:07.280
But I've always said this before.

00:43:07.280 --> 00:43:11.327
I say that Just because you can cook doesn't mean you don't need to open a restaurant.

00:43:11.327 --> 00:43:12.492
That's the truth.

00:43:13.585 --> 00:43:20.452
Because you can hire a cook, you can't hire a person that can sit down and do the business plan, because that's the most important thing.

00:43:20.452 --> 00:43:25.014
Because if you know how to cook, that don't mean you know a lot about numbers, and I don't mean a lot.

00:43:25.014 --> 00:43:27.438
You can't figure out how much do I have in this.

00:43:27.438 --> 00:43:35.233
You know, like if we sell a ribeye steak and we got $11 in the steak, and if we put a baked potato in there, we got 80 cents.

00:43:35.233 --> 00:43:38.235
And if we put sweet potato souffle, we got a dollar and a quarter.

00:43:38.235 --> 00:43:40.893
So you add all them up and say we're at 13, 14 bucks.

00:43:40.893 --> 00:43:48.389
You have to multiply it by three because you got food costs, you got labor costs, you got other costs.

00:43:48.389 --> 00:43:50.153
So that's the price you have to charge for that thing.

00:43:50.153 --> 00:43:53.586
And if you figure that wrong, you're going to close.

00:43:53.586 --> 00:44:00.715
If you're too high, nobody's going to shop with you, and if you're too low, everybody's going to shop with you and you're not going to pay out.

00:44:00.715 --> 00:44:07.735
So you got to find that fine line of where the price point is, because people think we make a lot of money.

00:44:07.735 --> 00:44:09.338
Oh, like a steak.

00:44:09.338 --> 00:44:13.956
Right now I think we charge $37 for ribeye steak with two sides.

00:44:13.956 --> 00:44:20.757
Well, we got about, I think, 13, 14 bucks in it.

00:44:20.824 --> 00:44:22.487
They'll say, oh my God, the profits are making.

00:44:22.487 --> 00:44:23.550
That's the food.

00:44:23.550 --> 00:44:25.251
That's just the food.

00:44:25.251 --> 00:44:31.561
We had to prepare it, we had to pay the cooler costs, we had to buy the gas, we had to pay the taxes.

00:44:31.561 --> 00:44:36.262
You know there's so many, they don't figure in all those other costs we have to pay.

00:44:36.262 --> 00:44:39.362
So unless you you got to triple what you put in it.

00:44:39.362 --> 00:44:42.844
Now, everything you can't triple because the more stuff costs, you know.

00:44:42.844 --> 00:44:50.702
Like if you're selling a plate for $75, obviously you're probably not going to have $25 in it because you know you can charge.

00:44:50.702 --> 00:44:54.144
You can have more of your cost into it because your labor is your labor.

00:44:54.144 --> 00:44:59.088
Like, if you make an egg sandwich for $4, you only made a dollar on the labor.

00:44:59.088 --> 00:45:03.072
But if you're making a steak for $75, well, now you're making $25 of labor.

00:45:03.072 --> 00:45:11.681
So the higher price your items are, the better your labor costs are going to be, because they're still cooking and they're still cooking.

00:45:11.740 --> 00:45:12.001
How did you?

00:45:12.001 --> 00:45:12.782
Ok, so here's it.

00:45:12.782 --> 00:45:23.079
At some point, I would imagine, business is just business, because you have all these different businesses, that obviously the business models are very different, but you speak of them so fluently.

00:45:23.079 --> 00:45:26.527
How did you learn how to do all these?

00:45:26.527 --> 00:45:28.501
How did you learn the ins and outs of all these different?

00:45:28.521 --> 00:45:30.005
Because every business is the same.

00:45:30.005 --> 00:45:32.322
You may sell a different product, but it's all the same.

00:45:32.322 --> 00:45:33.385
It's all about the numbers.

00:45:33.385 --> 00:45:36.123
If you get the numbers right, what it does like a larger man.

00:45:36.123 --> 00:45:39.342
This is how much we need to charge per hour for the washing machine.

00:45:39.342 --> 00:45:40.126
This is a dryer.

00:45:40.126 --> 00:45:42.762
We need 84 customers a day.

00:45:42.762 --> 00:45:54.157
This is how it's going to break you At the end numbers.

00:45:54.157 --> 00:45:55.402
If you know your numbers, you can learn the business.

00:45:55.402 --> 00:45:56.083
Larger maps are boring.

00:45:56.083 --> 00:45:56.827
Who wants to open a larger map?

00:45:56.827 --> 00:45:57.670
I mean, think about it.

00:45:57.670 --> 00:46:03.746
It's not really a glamorous thing, but if it can have you a second income without working a lot of hours, that's the whole point of doing it anyway.

00:46:03.746 --> 00:46:08.858
So now you have more time to spend on the business that you actually like doing, as opposed to what you're just doing.

00:46:09.820 --> 00:46:11.202
So you said it's all about the numbers.

00:46:11.202 --> 00:46:14.936
So like, okay, okay, but but still all right.

00:46:14.936 --> 00:46:21.103
So they have the restaurant business, where you gotta, like you said you're factoring in a, food costs, labor costs, over at costs.

00:46:21.103 --> 00:46:24.300
You know, um, equipment, all this stuff you talked about.

00:46:24.300 --> 00:46:31.916
Farming you talked about you know the laundromat, which you know um, you have the, the assistant living, I mean, which you know.

00:46:31.916 --> 00:46:32.699
You have the assisted living.

00:46:32.699 --> 00:46:41.766
I mean, I hear you when you say it's all about the numbers, but and it's like wait a minute, but there still are, there still are nuances to each one of those things, like where you have to understand some.

00:46:41.766 --> 00:46:45.402
You know the working principles of how this business works, or am I?

00:46:45.402 --> 00:46:46.143
Am I wrong?

00:46:46.585 --> 00:46:48.056
You are absolutely correct and it's a.

00:46:48.056 --> 00:46:48.898
It's a learning.

00:46:48.898 --> 00:46:50.483
It's a learning process, like the restaurant.

00:46:50.483 --> 00:46:57.478
Like I told you, swainsboro needed a restaurant.

00:46:57.478 --> 00:47:00.067
We didn't really have one, right, so I knew it was going to be a learning curve.

00:47:00.067 --> 00:47:07.336
So we opened up in October October 25th I think and we've done astronomical business because everybody, I'll tell you about a restaurant, your best day is your first day.

00:47:07.336 --> 00:47:08.480
Your best week is your first week.

00:47:08.480 --> 00:47:09.762
Your best month is your first month.

00:47:09.762 --> 00:47:10.987
So everybody wants to try you.

00:47:10.987 --> 00:47:15.246
But that's when, the worst time, you want people to come because you don't know what you're doing yet.

00:47:15.855 --> 00:47:17.360
I mean, we were a bunch of idiots.

00:47:17.360 --> 00:47:21.284
That's the truth, you know, like we had a, it was like putting together a puzzle.

00:47:21.284 --> 00:47:29.663
We had all the pieces to the puzzle but we didn't know where they fit.

00:47:29.663 --> 00:47:33.266
You know to work as a team yet, because I've never owned a restaurant, so it was a learning curve.

00:47:33.266 --> 00:47:38.150
So October, november and December that was our best month.

00:47:38.150 --> 00:47:43.596
You will never equal that again and we made $20,000 profit, which is good.

00:47:43.596 --> 00:47:47.880
Right January, up until this month, we probably made $5,000.

00:47:47.900 --> 00:47:48.081
Okay.

00:47:48.501 --> 00:47:49.302
So you think about that.

00:47:49.302 --> 00:47:53.065
So the last eight months we've only made $5,000 profit Wow.

00:47:53.065 --> 00:48:07.181
And the first three months we made 20, because anybody, any idiot, can make money in a restaurant If you're serving 400 people because you're, you're moving up many plates, but then when it got to regular time, what's your regular business is going to be?

00:48:07.181 --> 00:48:08.920
We had labor way too high.

00:48:08.920 --> 00:48:12.974
Our labor was 46% and I already told you it needed to be 30%.

00:48:12.974 --> 00:48:15.123
So we had way too much labor.

00:48:15.123 --> 00:48:25.440
But it's not that you're spoiling people, but if you have way too much labor, people are used to doing 60% work because they don't have to, because there's somebody else taking the slack.

00:48:25.440 --> 00:48:27.842
And so then we had to trim the staff down.

00:48:27.842 --> 00:48:30.436
Everybody got mad, everybody hated me, said everybody was going to quit.

00:48:30.436 --> 00:48:34.239
But I said there's two choices Either we can trim the staff down or close.

00:48:34.820 --> 00:48:46.150
That's your only two choices, because we can't have 46% labor cost, because if your food cost is 40 and your labor cost is 46 and your other cost is 17, that's 108% profit.

00:48:46.150 --> 00:48:48.652
That means you lost 8% of your business.

00:48:48.652 --> 00:48:51.719
So we went a few months.

00:48:51.719 --> 00:48:54.512
We're losing money, but it took that in order to figure out okay, what are we doing wrong?

00:48:54.512 --> 00:48:55.255
What are we doing wrong?

00:48:55.255 --> 00:48:56.557
How much labor can we have?

00:48:56.557 --> 00:49:05.764
So now our labor cost is around 40 percent 33 to 40, it varies, you know like accordingly, but that's more in line and we fixed our food costs.

00:49:05.764 --> 00:49:11.746
So now we're much or worse, like we're doing worse sales, but the profit is coming back.

00:49:11.746 --> 00:49:14.224
Like January, february, march.

00:49:14.224 --> 00:49:15.614
I think we lost like $30,000.

00:49:15.614 --> 00:49:25.744
So when I say we made $5,000 these eight months, that's not the true tale, because we lost for four or five months and now we're trying to make up money to fill in the holes that we lost.

00:49:25.744 --> 00:49:34.065
But now it's finally working out, because last month I think we made it wasn't much, I think it was like $8,300 profit, which is great.

00:49:34.706 --> 00:49:34.885
Yeah.

00:49:35.706 --> 00:49:38.871
But we're trying to fill the holes up where we lost so much money the first of the year.

00:49:40.614 --> 00:49:42.581
Which of your businesses do you what?

00:49:42.581 --> 00:49:45.719
What's a, a, a, what do you like?

00:49:45.719 --> 00:49:47.684
Like, what's the business that doesn't feel like a job to you?

00:49:47.855 --> 00:49:51.784
I spend four hours a day at CPR, my gym.

00:49:51.784 --> 00:49:53.206
I spend four hours a day.

00:49:53.206 --> 00:49:53.947
I love it here.

00:49:54.195 --> 00:49:55.922
The reason I got here is I got an office.

00:49:56.635 --> 00:49:57.661
Everybody has to walk by.

00:49:57.661 --> 00:50:03.788
I mean, I leave my door open so I'll get to see 300 people a day walk by the office.

00:50:03.788 --> 00:50:05.101
Hey, greg, how you doing.

00:50:05.315 --> 00:50:07.539
So I get to see the customers that's coming in.

00:50:07.539 --> 00:50:18.777
It's the same people I've known for 20 years, so it's like you get to see all your friends every day, because I'm here every day and most people don't complain about the gym.

00:50:18.777 --> 00:50:21.898
If you'll go to the car wash, we may wash 250 cars in a day.

00:50:21.898 --> 00:50:24.001
You know what I know?

00:50:24.001 --> 00:50:27.103
Everybody's not happy with whatever you do You're going to?

00:50:27.123 --> 00:50:28.543
have 10% of the population.

00:50:28.543 --> 00:50:32.666
You could give them a detailed job and everything's clean.

00:50:32.666 --> 00:50:34.188
They're still going to find fault with what you did.

00:50:34.188 --> 00:50:39.471
Either they want something for free or either they just want to complain as one of those people.

00:50:39.471 --> 00:50:42.072
So at the car wash we probably have 10 people a day.

00:50:42.072 --> 00:50:54.570
They either have to rewash their car or, you know, give them a free wash the next time you come in because they're not satisfied with what their wash did.

00:50:54.570 --> 00:50:56.034
Or we have these people your car wash just put a dent inside of my car.

00:50:56.034 --> 00:50:58.539
We'll wash the tape and let's wash it together.

00:50:58.539 --> 00:51:01.235
So we'll wash the tape and we'll say there's a dent.

00:51:01.235 --> 00:51:04.684
There's you pulling into the place and there's the dent on your car.

00:51:04.684 --> 00:51:06.396
Well, I just swore it wasn't there.

00:51:06.396 --> 00:51:07.538
No, it was there.

00:51:07.538 --> 00:51:11.043
There's the dent right there in your car before you pulled in here and then so.

00:51:11.164 --> 00:51:20.338
But you have to have those conversations and we learned right quick, like put as many, many cameras as you can in a car wash, because then people can't complain that you messed their car up.

00:51:20.338 --> 00:51:21.942
Now you said we don't mess cars.

00:51:21.942 --> 00:51:23.914
We've had a few times that things happen.

00:51:23.914 --> 00:51:29.119
What happened is maybe a truck had come through and they'll have fishing gear or something.

00:51:29.119 --> 00:51:29.719
That's what happened.

00:51:29.719 --> 00:51:31.481
Man had fishing gear in his back of his truck.

00:51:31.481 --> 00:51:43.550
Well, those wraps caught the fishing gear, and so the next car that come through it just banged that car all to the crap and I had to pay for that, yeah, no, that's I'm really.

00:51:44.490 --> 00:51:45.211
I'm just sitting here.

00:51:45.211 --> 00:51:47.317
I mean I could listen, you are.

00:51:47.317 --> 00:51:56.764
What I love about, what I love about this conversation is you all these businesses truly are yours.

00:51:56.764 --> 00:51:58.628
You know them, you've got stories about them.

00:51:58.628 --> 00:52:00.900
You, you're, you're in it like you're not.

00:52:00.900 --> 00:52:06.661
You're not just, uh, you know um, a king in the sky just telling people what to do.

00:52:06.661 --> 00:52:13.637
Like you are, you are, you're in the trees and in the weeds, right like I'm with that on every one of my businesses but one.

00:52:13.856 --> 00:52:17.947
I have a car wash that's in Waynesboro and it's around 45 minutes away.

00:52:17.947 --> 00:52:22.003
Now I could go there, but I'm going to spend three hours.

00:52:22.003 --> 00:52:28.905
I'm going to spend an hour getting there and an hour getting back and an hour there, and if I do that it takes away from everything I do here.

00:52:28.905 --> 00:52:30.288
So that's the only business.

00:52:30.288 --> 00:52:31.148
I'm embarrassed to say.

00:52:31.148 --> 00:52:34.061
It's been open for probably a year and a half.

00:52:34.061 --> 00:52:36.465
I've been there five times.

00:52:36.465 --> 00:52:38.476
That's almost embarrassing.

00:52:38.476 --> 00:52:42.786
But I hired a guy who runs the car wash here and here's the deal.

00:52:42.827 --> 00:52:48.181
I told him because I didn't want to open up another business in another town because I can't devote my time to it.

00:52:48.181 --> 00:52:58.824
So I said if we do this and you'll work for me for 10 years 10 years, not nine and a half for 10 run both these washes, I will give you half of that wash Shoot.

00:52:58.824 --> 00:53:01.360
So who wouldn't want that deal?

00:53:01.360 --> 00:53:02.284
That's right.

00:53:02.284 --> 00:53:06.157
So I think he's in year, like maybe four or five, and I have a little caveat.

00:53:06.157 --> 00:53:08.559
So if I ever sell it you can have half the profit.

00:53:08.559 --> 00:53:11.322
So if he works me for 10 years he's got half that watch.

00:53:12.141 --> 00:53:13.143
And I don't have to worry about it.

00:53:13.143 --> 00:53:18.148
Yep, and it makes the payment, and so he's not making any payments.

00:53:18.188 --> 00:53:21.250
but the business is making payments and he's working there.

00:53:21.250 --> 00:53:23.472
So without him working there it couldn't make the payment.

00:53:23.472 --> 00:53:28.539
So I think it's going to take around nine years for it to pay off.

00:53:28.539 --> 00:53:30.423
So in the 10th year he'll walk away with a boatload of money.

00:53:34.775 --> 00:53:34.956
All right.

00:53:34.956 --> 00:53:35.398
So you said something.

00:53:35.398 --> 00:53:36.081
You said he's not making payments.

00:53:36.081 --> 00:53:38.594
The business is making payments, right, right, okay, so I'm going to pivot to something you and I talked about.

00:53:38.594 --> 00:53:43.737
Uh, like when we, when we kind of after I and after we talked about I, was like hey, I want you to come on a podcast.

00:53:43.777 --> 00:53:47.342
So we this, our conversation started with talking about Dave Ramsey.

00:53:47.342 --> 00:53:53.413
Now, I'm a Dave Ramsey fan, okay, and I'd love for you to tell the people how you, you know kind of what your thoughts are about Dave.

00:53:53.413 --> 00:54:06.824
But because people got different thoughts but but I I think you know, one of the things that we were talking about was discipline and how you know there's gotta be.

00:54:06.824 --> 00:54:09.048
You have to have a level of discipline.

00:54:09.048 --> 00:54:12.027
What people like you said on social media and all this stuff, you don't.

00:54:12.027 --> 00:54:12.971
You don't see.

00:54:13.030 --> 00:54:17.864
You see the successes I would also argue for those successes.

00:54:17.864 --> 00:54:37.889
You don't see everything that goes into it, like it looks all glamorous, the private jets and all this stuff, and you know you don't have to work for three weeks or whatever the vacations, but what it took to get that these people are not sitting on their couch recording for an hour a week and then just making all this money they are doing.

00:54:37.889 --> 00:54:45.637
They're doing a lot of work and so you can't expect to get those things that they get without putting in that kind of work.

00:54:45.637 --> 00:54:52.885
So we're talking about discipline and um and just like how, uh, Dave Ramsey helps to get people, you know, disciplined.

00:54:52.885 --> 00:54:57.175
I think that's about the one thing that we agreed on with Dave Ramsey.

00:54:57.175 --> 00:55:08.891
But so talk about discipline and then, from your standpoint, kind of the way that you would approach some of the ways that Dave Ramsey talks about when it comes to wealth building.

00:55:10.016 --> 00:55:11.222
And I'm going to clear up something too.

00:55:11.222 --> 00:55:16.606
You know you said and I forgot to tell you this you know you said there's a lot of people on the Internet that's got cars and jets and whatever, whatever.

00:55:16.606 --> 00:55:21.114
I don't know how many of them are real real, you know.

00:55:21.114 --> 00:55:27.083
What I'm saying is you know they have filters now to make people look younger, to make people look whatever.

00:55:27.083 --> 00:55:35.682
I think some of those people use filters, and when I mean filters, I mean there's a jet you can rent at Jacksonville.

00:55:35.682 --> 00:55:37.384
It never takes off.

00:55:37.384 --> 00:55:41.724
You just go in there and you'll take a picture of yourself and argue with your friends and you get back home.

00:55:41.724 --> 00:55:42.943
So how many of them?

00:55:42.943 --> 00:55:49.898
People use the filter that are really not real but they want followers, which means they'll get there, but cause.

00:55:49.898 --> 00:55:53.746
This is a whole new way with this followers and you know, TikTok.

00:55:53.766 --> 00:55:56.719
I mean, that's a whole nother people, that's a whole nother stream of revenue.

00:55:56.719 --> 00:55:59.525
I see it, but I just don't see it.

00:55:59.525 --> 00:56:12.528
I don't, I don't see, I don't see how you can get up, you know 20 million followers and make a penny off of every one of them a month and accumulate some, because everybody's got a lifespan on the on TikTok, correct?

00:56:12.528 --> 00:56:17.800
And if you're, if you're the hit girl today, you're broken four months.

00:56:17.800 --> 00:56:18.744
So I don't.

00:56:18.744 --> 00:56:23.931
So the pictures you're seeing let me take another picture of them in a year because it's not real.

00:56:23.931 --> 00:56:26.822
Yeah, it's not real, because it's not sustainable.

00:56:26.822 --> 00:56:30.358
You're not going to be the hot two girl, you know, for a year.

00:56:30.358 --> 00:56:35.766
You're the hot two a girl for for six weeks, unless you can bring something else to the table.

00:56:35.766 --> 00:56:37.648
How are you going to sustain?

00:56:37.668 --> 00:56:39.951
this lifestyle you correct Well.

00:56:42.056 --> 00:56:43.039
I agree 100%.

00:56:43.039 --> 00:56:48.016
Here's my opinion about Dave, and I know a lot enough about Dave to hurt me, but I did get this right.

00:56:48.016 --> 00:56:50.559
When I asked you a question, I said you said what are you talking about Dave?

00:56:50.559 --> 00:57:04.260
And I said apparently he went broke in his life Apparently because his strategy is not one that I would take, but it reeks of somebody who went broke and so he don't trust himself.

00:57:04.260 --> 00:57:06.543
And then you told me he went bankrupt twice.

00:57:06.543 --> 00:57:09.889
Swear, I did not know he went bankrupt twice, but I called it.

00:57:09.889 --> 00:57:12.117
I knew something was wrong.

00:57:12.498 --> 00:57:18.780
There's no way you can instruct people don't go borrowing money, because there's good debt and there's bad debt.

00:57:18.780 --> 00:57:23.155
And I've always said good debt, bad debt, good debt will make you money one day.

00:57:23.155 --> 00:57:27.530
Bad debt costs you money today If you go get a credit card.

00:57:27.530 --> 00:57:32.867
Well, now you got a credit card, that next day you owe money on a credit card that you don't have anything to sell to make money off of.

00:57:32.867 --> 00:57:35.563
But good debt is supposed to pay you back one day.

00:57:35.563 --> 00:57:45.123
So and I don't know how he can tell people I know how he tells people don't go borrow money unless you got X, unless you got everything paid for, unless you got this.

00:57:45.123 --> 00:57:49.106
But there's no way I could started a business without borrowing money.

00:57:49.106 --> 00:57:56.625
There is absolutely no way you may start a t-shirt business but you're not going to retire with a t-shirt business.

00:57:56.625 --> 00:58:02.920
So in order to get your foot in the door for one business, you have to borrow money.

00:58:02.920 --> 00:58:05.523
But in order to borrow money means you have to save money.

00:58:05.523 --> 00:58:07.903
In order to save money means you got discipline.

00:58:07.903 --> 00:58:10.664
So if you can't get there, step one to discipline.

00:58:10.664 --> 00:58:13.842
Agreed, you shouldn't go borrowing money.

00:58:13.842 --> 00:58:17.280
But if you borrow it the right way, you've already showed discipline.

00:58:17.280 --> 00:58:24.704
So you should be fine borrowing money then, because you've already aware what it takes to get there.

00:58:25.210 --> 00:58:26.237
But I just don't agree with him.

00:58:26.237 --> 00:58:31.380
But not everybody Saving $150,000 to go buy a $150 house.

00:58:31.380 --> 00:58:32.623
You'll be dead.

00:58:32.623 --> 00:58:37.784
How do you pay your If it takes you 20 years to save that?

00:58:37.784 --> 00:58:39.431
First off, the house is $300,000.

00:58:39.431 --> 00:58:43.161
Now it's not $150,000 because it took you 15 years to save this money.

00:58:43.161 --> 00:58:51.882
You're paying rent somewhere else while you're saving this money when you could have bought a house, paid your own mortgage in 15, end of 15 years.

00:58:51.882 --> 00:58:59.119
Now you have a $300 house and if you rented something the whole time and you saved $150, now you got $150.

00:58:59.119 --> 00:59:00.987
But you could have had a $300 house.

00:59:00.987 --> 00:59:02.356
I just do not agree with him at all.

00:59:02.356 --> 00:59:10.420
Now I do agree with him if you're making $3,000 a month, you don't need to go borrow $1,000 a month.

00:59:10.420 --> 00:59:12.135
You don't need to go borrow $1,000 a month car payment.

00:59:12.135 --> 00:59:16.882
He pushes stuff like that because you don't need to borrow more than you can pay off.

00:59:18.835 --> 00:59:20.583
My main goal is always to borrow.

00:59:20.583 --> 00:59:21.358
I don't want to.

00:59:21.358 --> 00:59:30.193
If I got an idea like the hotel, let's say the hotel is going to cost around $6.6 million Do you think I want to go put First of all?

00:59:30.193 --> 00:59:30.956
I don't around $6.6 million.

00:59:30.956 --> 00:59:32.036
Do you think I want to go put six First of all?

00:59:32.036 --> 00:59:33.483
I don't have $6.6 million.

00:59:33.483 --> 00:59:36.652
So the goal is to put down $1.5 million.

00:59:36.652 --> 00:59:40.505
So that's why I got these two partners to try to pitch in some money too.

00:59:40.505 --> 00:59:46.387
But even if I had $6.6 million, I would not put $6.6 million on this hotel.

00:59:46.387 --> 00:59:57.570
Why would I want to put everything I've worked for my whole life on the line for this hotel and then, if it don't work, I've lost everything I've worked for my whole life.

00:59:58.655 --> 00:59:59.318
So what you do?

00:59:59.318 --> 01:00:01.708
You put 1.5, you start a whole new corporation.

01:00:01.708 --> 01:00:03.315
So that corporation.

01:00:03.315 --> 01:00:08.244
If it doesn't work, you lost 1.5, you didn't lose 6.6.

01:00:08.244 --> 01:00:19.101
So at the end of the day, if you just take a number off because 6.6 is a lot, but so if you took a number off, you lost 150,000, not 1.5 million, so more people can relate to it.

01:00:19.101 --> 01:00:23.054
So you would have lost 150,000, not 660,000.

01:00:23.054 --> 01:00:32.106
So you can overcome that in your life, whereas if you lost 6.6, every other business is going to fail because you're going to have to rob from them to pay that off.

01:00:32.106 --> 01:00:35.596
So and I've never, I've never went bankrupt, I never did anything, I've never.

01:00:35.596 --> 01:00:36.599
I've always paid my bills.

01:00:36.599 --> 01:00:38.746
So I don't want to say I've never left one hanging.

01:00:38.746 --> 01:00:43.478
But you don't want to put every one of your eggs, you don't want to put your 11 eggs.

01:00:43.478 --> 01:00:45.583
I got in that one basket.

01:00:45.583 --> 01:00:47.916
If it fails, yeah.

01:00:49.041 --> 01:00:52.181
That makes sense, yeah, so so Dave Ramsey?

01:00:52.295 --> 01:00:53.077
I don't agree with him.

01:00:53.077 --> 01:00:56.005
Whatsoever, whatsoever, whatsoever.

01:00:56.005 --> 01:00:59.338
You have to borrow money, you've got discipline.

01:00:59.880 --> 01:01:26.384
Yeah, I think, to be fair, I don't think Dave would require, from what I understand about him and I've done his programs and he's helped me a lot with the discipline part and so, like you know, doing the like, saving $150,000 to buy a house, like saving that, buying a house cash, he applauds it if you do, but that's not that ain't something he's like I want you to save by and I don't think he's like that.

01:01:26.384 --> 01:01:28.007
So I would be interested.

01:01:28.007 --> 01:01:35.139
I will say the what you said and like about businesses Right, because this you educated me on this.

01:01:35.139 --> 01:01:43.230
I didn't realize that at a certain point the business is the, the treated like a person.

01:01:43.230 --> 01:01:50.949
Basically Right, like so, so you, you, you borrow and your business pays debt, or your business pays this off, your business borrows.

01:01:50.949 --> 01:02:10.443
So you know, I think that's a concept that I did not understand and you know I'm still learning and I'm still not sure I totally get it, but I do understand, like OK, my name is not on the hook for this and so in theory, I am not in debt.

01:02:11.777 --> 01:02:13.219
The business is in debt.

01:02:13.219 --> 01:02:17.168
The more money you put down, the more you could step away from the debt.

01:02:17.168 --> 01:02:26.224
You know, like, if I want this hotel, if I went to the bank and said, ok, I got six hundred thousand dollars, I got 10 percent, I want to put it down, they're going to make me tie my name to it now.

01:02:26.224 --> 01:02:29.760
So now I'm on the hook for the whole six point six million, which is fine.

01:02:29.760 --> 01:02:31.682
If you think it's going to work, that's fine.

01:02:31.682 --> 01:02:43.717
But you don't want your family to suffer because you made one bad decision, and so the more money you put down like 20% most of the time, if you've got a good history with the bank, that's all they want.

01:02:43.717 --> 01:02:44.960
They want 20% down.

01:02:44.960 --> 01:02:51.425
All their owners are happy because you done what you're supposed to do, they done done what they're supposed to do and everything will be fine.

01:02:51.425 --> 01:03:00.123
But if you put 10%, they're going to want cross-collateral or your personal guarantee, and you want to try to stay away from personal guarantees.

01:03:01.597 --> 01:03:02.181
You don't want that.

01:03:02.181 --> 01:03:07.806
At the end of the day, if you make a bad decision, you want your house to be free and clear.

01:03:07.806 --> 01:03:09.679
You don't want to have to move and you lost your house.

01:03:09.679 --> 01:03:10.461
To be free and clear and not right.

01:03:10.461 --> 01:03:11.626
You don't want to have to move and you lost your house.

01:03:11.626 --> 01:03:13.612
I'm pretty sure your wife or your husband will divorce you.

01:03:13.612 --> 01:03:16.139
If that happened, you know sure yeah, yeah, I won't do that.

01:03:16.240 --> 01:03:20.701
No, no, no, and that makes, and that makes sense, and I think that's like this is this is really good information.

01:03:20.701 --> 01:03:25.458
People understand, like how it works, you know, and it's, it's um.

01:03:25.458 --> 01:03:28.481
But that discipline part, though, is like to your point.

01:03:28.481 --> 01:03:33.670
I like how you kind of backed it out Like, ok, you know, it starts with being able to save money.

01:03:33.670 --> 01:03:36.083
If you can't save money, then you shouldn't be borrowing money.

01:03:36.755 --> 01:03:39.903
Here's the truth Dave Ransby, ransby, ramsey.

01:03:39.903 --> 01:03:48.163
He speaks to the masses, right 90 percent of his audience needs to listen to him.

01:03:48.163 --> 01:03:49.045
That's the truth.

01:03:49.045 --> 01:03:53.893
90 percent of audience is not going to the bank to borrow money and start a business Actually, probably 95%.

01:03:53.893 --> 01:03:55.943
They're not entrepreneurs.

01:03:55.943 --> 01:04:04.880
They're not going out and borrowing money, they're just regular everyday people that have a job that gets paid on Friday they want to buy a house.

01:04:05.014 --> 01:04:10.349
He's just trying to keep them from overextending themselves, because most people don't have discipline.

01:04:10.349 --> 01:04:11.150
That's just the truth.

01:04:11.150 --> 01:04:17.322
If they, you know, you know, you know the people that live week to week, month to month, they get an income tax check of 3000.

01:04:17.322 --> 01:04:20.664
Talk to them in a month, because it's gone, because it just been.

01:04:20.864 --> 01:04:23.516
So he's, he's really speaking to those people.

01:04:23.617 --> 01:04:27.041
You know, if you're an entrepreneur, when you see his name, just you see his name, just turn it off.

01:04:27.041 --> 01:04:27.882
He's not talking to you.

01:04:27.882 --> 01:04:30.565
He's not because he knows.

01:04:30.565 --> 01:04:36.150
If he's talking to you he's talking to a different, not a different brain, but a different mindset.

01:04:36.150 --> 01:04:41.940
You know like we think differently.

01:04:41.940 --> 01:04:43.182
We don't think what's the word I'm looking for.

01:04:43.182 --> 01:04:45.648
We don't think we want money to work for us.

01:04:45.648 --> 01:04:47.681
We don't want to work for our money.

01:04:47.681 --> 01:04:51.525
We don't want to go out there and slave every day to try to make money.

01:04:51.525 --> 01:04:56.847
We want to take the money and turn it into something that eventually we get returned back.

01:04:56.847 --> 01:05:05.887
I've always heard this before If you want to make money, start a business that backs up against the wall and makes you money For instance, large amount.

01:05:06.875 --> 01:05:09.577
All the machines back up against the wall and you collect money.

01:05:09.577 --> 01:05:11.601
You don't actually they work.

01:05:11.601 --> 01:05:12.661
Machines work for you.

01:05:12.661 --> 01:05:19.869
So you collect the money and then, if you're disciplined and don't spend the money, you put it back into the business.

01:05:19.869 --> 01:05:28.710
You know you take a little bit out, but 80% of you put back in the business buying new machines.

01:05:28.710 --> 01:05:32.954
It'll keep paying you, but if you start taking all the money out, it's going to quit paying you and then you got a debt that can't pay for itself.

01:05:33.655 --> 01:05:34.217
That's um.

01:05:34.217 --> 01:05:35.099
I like that.

01:05:35.099 --> 01:05:36.405
Say that phrase again.

01:05:38.016 --> 01:05:41.045
You want to invest in things that back up against a wall that pay you.

01:05:41.675 --> 01:05:42.177
I like that.

01:05:42.177 --> 01:05:43.400
I like that.

01:05:43.400 --> 01:05:44.905
Um, all right.

01:05:44.905 --> 01:05:53.887
So, greg, before we, before we go, cause I I've taken up too much of your time, man, this has been like this has already been an hour, my goodness, I know right, that's crazy.

01:05:53.947 --> 01:05:54.768
It doesn't feel like it.

01:05:54.768 --> 01:05:59.704
I want to know because, you know, I want you to share something with people.

01:05:59.704 --> 01:06:09.967
You know, maybe they're entrepreneurs, maybe they want to be full-time entrepreneurs, maybe they are thinking that they just want to start something, maybe on the side, and work their way into it.

01:06:09.967 --> 01:06:21.447
But what are what is and you've said a lot, but what is something you feel like people need to unlearn about the journey of entrepreneurship like, and becoming successful as an entrepreneur.

01:06:21.447 --> 01:06:23.402
What is it that people have to unlearn about that?

01:06:24.204 --> 01:06:24.967
To unlearn.

01:06:24.967 --> 01:06:27.016
Let me tell you something that I forgot.

01:06:27.016 --> 01:06:28.478
They need to learn too.

01:06:28.478 --> 01:06:29.400
You would think with me.

01:06:29.400 --> 01:06:32.567
With 11 businesses, I just got money coming in.

01:06:32.567 --> 01:06:33.648
I know where it's going.

01:06:33.648 --> 01:06:35.360
I don't have to really worry about a plan.

01:06:35.360 --> 01:06:36.920
I don't have a business plan anymore.

01:06:36.920 --> 01:06:39.682
I could pull it right now in my Excel file.

01:06:41.097 --> 01:06:41.900
I do a year out.

01:06:41.900 --> 01:06:52.818
I do a year, a projected year, on every single thing I have coming in for the next year and everything I got going out for the next year coming in for the next year, and everything I got going out for the next year.

01:06:52.818 --> 01:06:59.097
And then so I can look at October Wow, I'm going to be 60 short, unless I find something to do in order to make that 60 grand up.

01:06:59.097 --> 01:07:03.815
And so, okay, next month I got a hundred coming in extra that I didn't have in October.

01:07:03.815 --> 01:07:06.061
So I'm going to have to pull back on these things.

01:07:06.061 --> 01:07:09.800
I can't buy that thing right now, so I'll buy it next month when I have a hundred grand.

01:07:09.800 --> 01:07:14.782
That way you never put yourself in a bind, so I can go ahead and have a projection of what I'm going to do every month.

01:07:14.782 --> 01:07:18.625
So and that works on a big scale and a small scale too.

01:07:18.625 --> 01:07:19.981
It's no different than your home.

01:07:19.981 --> 01:07:22.182
You know like, this is my bills this month.

01:07:22.182 --> 01:07:30.922
This is what I can spend.

01:07:30.922 --> 01:07:32.163
Oh, I can't go all the money.

01:07:32.163 --> 01:07:33.324
It works the same scale.

01:07:33.324 --> 01:07:34.684
It's just even with me.

01:07:34.684 --> 01:07:43.351
As much as I have going on, I still do a budget for a year, every single business I have, even though they're up and running.

01:07:43.351 --> 01:07:47.856
But you have to Now unlearn.

01:07:47.876 --> 01:07:50.117
Unlearn is people are set.

01:07:50.117 --> 01:07:52.340
They think they have to get a check every Friday.

01:07:52.340 --> 01:07:58.623
They think if I don't get a check every Friday, it's over, that's over.

01:07:58.623 --> 01:08:02.967
Let's just say, let's say if you, you had an idea, I want to start even a larger amount Now.

01:08:02.967 --> 01:08:03.347
Just use that.

01:08:03.347 --> 01:08:05.588
Okay, but I work now and I get, I'll get.

01:08:05.588 --> 01:08:07.030
I know I get $900 every Friday, every night I walk.

01:08:07.030 --> 01:08:07.070
I.

01:08:07.070 --> 01:08:09.791
I know I get $900 every Friday, every night I walk.

01:08:09.791 --> 01:08:10.811
I'm going to get $900.

01:08:10.811 --> 01:08:11.793
This is the bills I got to pay.

01:08:11.793 --> 01:08:17.180
People are too scared to lose that $900.

01:08:17.180 --> 01:08:19.104
You know, do you need $900 to make?

01:08:19.104 --> 01:08:25.932
That's what you need to tell yourself Do I need $900?

01:08:25.932 --> 01:08:37.541
No, because if I cut back on these eight things, I can do it for five, and if I can do it for $500, I can put $600 in the bank every month and in two years I can open an armchair mat up so just think small.

01:08:37.622 --> 01:08:40.765
Don't think like that first $400 a month you're saving.

01:08:40.765 --> 01:08:44.502
It's worth it if you can say, okay, two years.

01:08:44.502 --> 01:08:49.317
Because most people think, oh, if I can't do it next month, I don't want to do it, it's taking too long.

01:08:49.596 --> 01:08:50.798
No, let it take two years.

01:08:51.640 --> 01:08:55.345
Save your money, have a plan, and then you already showed the bank two things.

01:08:55.345 --> 01:08:59.890
You showed it's got, you got discipline and you showed the bank that I have a collateral.

01:08:59.890 --> 01:09:02.775
I have money to put down in my own business.

01:09:02.775 --> 01:09:14.185
So I'm risking my own self, not just your money, I'm risking my money too so you can't, don't, don't, don't expect, like like I, like what you say.

01:09:14.206 --> 01:09:15.787
You most people think that they have to.

01:09:15.787 --> 01:09:17.588
They got to get paid on Friday.

01:09:17.588 --> 01:09:18.789
They don't get paid on Friday.

01:09:19.329 --> 01:09:24.033
And then after that two years and you saved all that money every you can say, okay, I don't.

01:09:24.033 --> 01:09:33.619
I've showed myself I can live on $500 a week, so I don't need that $900 check.

01:09:33.619 --> 01:09:35.707
Now I can go work in my own business because I have saved $22,000 in two years.

01:09:35.707 --> 01:09:39.180
I can start this thing, I can work for myself and I can let go of that $500.

01:09:39.180 --> 01:09:40.485
You're not letting go of $900.

01:09:40.506 --> 01:09:44.838
You're letting go of five because you've already showed yourself you can live on five.

01:09:44.838 --> 01:09:48.704
Now your own business can only take $5 a month out of.

01:09:48.704 --> 01:09:51.770
You know I'll work for there, so it's actually paying me a salary.

01:09:51.770 --> 01:09:54.262
You're not taking money out if you're working there.

01:09:54.262 --> 01:09:57.884
You know you maybe can't take if you think you were $50 an hour.

01:09:57.884 --> 01:09:59.247
You can't take $50 an hour.

01:09:59.247 --> 01:10:02.644
You still got to take out that $500 a week.

01:10:02.644 --> 01:10:03.686
What you've been living on.

01:10:03.686 --> 01:10:05.756
You know that's what I would have paid somebody anyway.

01:10:05.756 --> 01:10:06.657
So let me take the five.

01:10:06.657 --> 01:10:10.720
Then after maybe a year I can, wow, I can make, I can.

01:10:10.720 --> 01:10:12.842
It can pay me a thousand a week.

01:10:12.842 --> 01:10:17.006
Now, wow, you know, because you didn't take what you should have took out the first year.

01:10:17.006 --> 01:10:18.948
Now for three years you can take.

01:10:18.948 --> 01:10:23.131
The first two years you saved and that year you just showed yourself the discipline.

01:10:23.131 --> 01:10:30.608
Now you're probably worth $50,000, where if you just kept getting that check every month you'd been worth zero.

01:10:30.608 --> 01:10:34.542
But now you're worth $50,000 where you wouldn't have been worth $50,000.

01:10:37.338 --> 01:10:38.283
That makes perfect sense.

01:10:38.283 --> 01:11:02.228
I'm fascinated by the simplicity of you know kind of the way when you talk about, when you hear people and I know I'm sure you have tons of people around you that want to aspire to be entrepreneurs kind of have the success you have all this stuff and you think about it and it really comes down to can you be consistent, committed and have discipline?

01:11:02.228 --> 01:11:06.926
And if you can do those things you probably be all right Would you agree.

01:11:08.496 --> 01:11:13.238
Here's the thing I will tell you the more successful you are, the smaller your circle gets.

01:11:13.238 --> 01:11:22.688
If you think you've got a lot of friends, let's say, if you've got a nine to five job and you're making the $900 a week, you might think you have 25 close friends.

01:11:22.688 --> 01:11:24.899
Right, you're just like them.

01:11:24.899 --> 01:11:26.884
You're all in the same boat together.

01:11:26.884 --> 01:11:34.984
Whatever that third year when you're working for yourself and you've already quit and you've showed all your other friends, wow, he's doing pretty good.

01:11:34.984 --> 01:11:40.757
Your friends maybe high five because they get jealous, there's nothing.

01:11:40.757 --> 01:11:41.882
But you didn't need them anyway.

01:11:41.882 --> 01:11:44.216
They weren't real friends anyway.

01:11:45.039 --> 01:11:49.521
Oh man, that Greg, because see, now I got a whole other track in my head.

01:11:49.521 --> 01:11:51.421
Now you done opened up a whole other can.

01:11:51.421 --> 01:11:55.742
The truth, that's real man Like you really.

01:11:55.742 --> 01:11:57.961
Yeah, your friend group is small.

01:11:57.961 --> 01:11:59.480
Is that something you experienced?

01:12:00.824 --> 01:12:04.679
If I told you my friend circle, oh my God, You'd say there's no way.

01:12:04.679 --> 01:12:05.502
It's so small.

01:12:05.502 --> 01:12:08.662
It is so small, my friend circle.

01:12:09.385 --> 01:12:09.805
But that's good.

01:12:09.805 --> 01:12:13.360
I mean, you don't need 25 friends.

01:12:14.197 --> 01:12:14.920
But you think you do.

01:12:14.920 --> 01:12:16.618
You know, we're all in high school and all.

01:12:16.618 --> 01:12:20.340
We thought we had 25 friends and we probably did at the time because we're all in the same boat together.

01:12:20.340 --> 01:12:24.658
But the more successful you are, they leave you by the wayside.

01:12:24.658 --> 01:12:27.041
It's not a bad thing, it's just you know.

01:12:27.041 --> 01:12:29.278
But we all grow and change too.

01:12:29.278 --> 01:12:32.703
Maybe you're growing and changing where they're stuck in the same path they were in.

01:12:33.506 --> 01:12:34.927
That's it and that's yeah.

01:12:34.927 --> 01:12:36.918
And I, man, I think that's, I think that's a huge thing.

01:12:36.918 --> 01:12:39.775
To unlearn is like you're, the more successful you get.

01:12:39.775 --> 01:12:40.798
Don't think you're going to get more.

01:12:40.798 --> 01:12:47.600
You might know more people and you might have connections to more people, but your trusted group is going to shrink.

01:12:48.061 --> 01:12:53.470
And the more successful you get to, you'll notice your own self.

01:12:53.470 --> 01:12:54.780
You pick friends differently.

01:12:54.780 --> 01:13:03.484
Usually, if you'll find a successful person and pick their five closest friends, their five closest friends are successful too.

01:13:03.484 --> 01:13:09.725
Maybe not in the same sense, maybe they got to, maybe not money-wise, but they'll have family together.

01:13:09.725 --> 01:13:16.506
There's more ways to be successful than money, so that circle right around you are going to be successful too.

01:13:17.335 --> 01:13:22.728
I like the the saying you know, if you want to, if you want to see your future, look at your friends.

01:13:22.728 --> 01:13:23.376
That's right.

01:13:23.376 --> 01:13:30.469
You know, if you, if you, if you desire certain to be a certain way, you need to be around those things.

01:13:31.076 --> 01:13:36.082
And if you're not where you want to be, you might need to change friends, you might need to change your friend group.

01:13:38.137 --> 01:13:40.966
That's straight up, man Greg, thank you.

01:13:40.966 --> 01:13:47.216
When I asked Greg to do this, he said I don't like to talk, but I do it.

01:13:47.216 --> 01:13:49.841
Man you a great communicator, man.

01:13:50.354 --> 01:13:53.324
We talked for what we talk 80 minutes.

01:13:54.542 --> 01:13:56.358
Yeah, you great.

01:13:56.358 --> 01:13:57.240
I love this.

01:13:57.240 --> 01:13:58.438
This is a great conversation.

01:13:58.438 --> 01:14:00.338
I appreciate you coming on the show.

01:14:00.860 --> 01:14:01.724
Yeah, thank you very much.

01:14:02.475 --> 01:14:03.479
Absolutely All right.

01:14:03.479 --> 01:14:04.337
All right, people.

01:14:04.337 --> 01:14:04.961
That is it.

01:14:04.961 --> 01:14:06.358
We are done.

01:14:06.358 --> 01:14:12.738
We'll catch y'all next week, so let's keep unlearning together so that we can experience more freedom, peace.

01:14:12.738 --> 01:14:19.594
Thank you once again for listening to the Unlearned Podcast.

01:14:19.594 --> 01:14:23.746
We would love to hear your comments and your feedback about the episode.

01:14:23.746 --> 01:14:30.483
Feel free to follow us on Facebook and Instagram and to let us know what you think.

01:14:30.483 --> 01:14:36.820
We're looking forward to the next time when we are able to unlearn together to move forward towards freedom.

01:14:36.820 --> 01:14:37.743
See you then.