The Void #22 – Union vs. Non-Union, Getting your spouse on board, and “I” or “We” – April 17, 2022

show dedicated to filling the void between being an employee and becoming self-employed most people refer to

starting your own company as taking the leap as if you’re blindly jumping off a cliff and into the unknown

this show is here to help you understand that it doesn’t have to be that way and

in the corner of my vision over here they’re trying to make me laugh so bear with me as always if you like what you’re

hearing on the show please do us a favor and help share the void with somebody who might also wanting to be starting

their own company dave and i saw an opportunity to help others understand that

self-employment is well within your reach and just as our businesses have grown organically and by word of mouth

we want this show to grow the same way so if you see somebody asking questions about starting their own service based

company please do us a favor and send him a link to the show i’m your host mitch smedley and with me

as always is david hilton what’s up buddy what’s up you got a case of the giggles i know he’s so does marcus i see

him [ __ ] back there laughing and pushing his mic away yeah how’s everybody doing he’s it’s

dave’s half-life it’s thursday yeah so i’m exhausted we just did like 74 hours of pre-show

prep so 74 hours tired from that when you reckon before this yeah of course i mean we’ve said it

before mention i we still work marcus works all day i mean like we just do this after you said you were doing some

yeah it was hard work it’s been a tough week yeah it’s only thursday one more to go see i don’t know i don’t know about

for you but for me some days are easy and some days are like good god like really tough yeah

that’s just how it is yeah if you were at construction we’re not telling anyone that listens to this show anything new

yeah yeah if you mean yeah it’s just some days you just get home and you just lay on the couch and you look at the

ceiling you’re like oh [ __ ] yeah do i want to go tomorrow you got that long even when it’s your own business you’re like

you got that long quiet drive home with no radio on yeah the window so tired the window crack just a little bit

yeah it’s worse in the summer oh yeah you stop and get a deuce do something at the quick trip because you

just showed you’re like i gotta have something we’re not encouraging drinking and

driving oh i meant for when you get home okay like you just get it and then you get home so you have it and say if you’re gonna do it drink it with your left and then drive with your right

jeff foxworthy no matter no matter how drunk the left hand gets the the right hand

yeah so uh guys today we are gonna do a q a show um with a couple of questions that

have been submitted to us here recently and as always with these q a shows they’re always going to tie back to our

six core uh areas of adversity that you’re going to want to overcome before you start

your own business so let me run through those real quick uh just so we can kind of get some framework for these uh step

one is personal finance preparation getting your personal finances in order before you start your business uh step

two is business finance preparation and so that covers everything from budgeting to

uh learning how you’re going to um fund the business how you’re gonna

raise the money or borrow the money or whatever the case may be step three is systems preparation so

that’s going over all the different systems and processes that you’re going to operate from you’re basically writing the rules for the business how to handle

customers how to handle um you know the the types of work that you’re gonna do how to handle money how to handle phone

calls and and and all of that kind of stuff um those three steps you’re gonna wanna work on those before you start your

company um and then the next three steps are steps that you’re doing actively once

your custom company has started those are we call those the beginning steps um they are step four is community

involvement work um and uh whenever we do that community involvement work we uh

hashtag it with the hashtag findtheneed fill the void and that way if you see others

using that hashtag you know they’re also void listeners as well step five is wake up do work and repeat

so in that episode we talk about um all of the the stuff that it takes to

just get up and redo the the successful stuff every day day in and day out

and then step six is evaluate performance make adjustments and improve because that’s how we get better we have to understand what good performance

looks like we have to learn how to adjust our bad performance in a good performance and then we have to actually

do that adjustment and improve so all of those steps we talk about all of those steps in episodes one

through nine of this show so whatever platform you’re listening on you can go back and look through episodes one

through nine and find those episodes and that is going to give you all of

the nitty gritty for how to start your company yeah if you’re on if you’ve just started listening and you like this you

know like oh there’s some good information in there yeah the best information and i shouldn’t say the best information

um but the most important information uh when it comes to starting your company is episodes

i shouldn’t say episodes yeah episodes one through nine yeah yeah yeah six steps the six steps are the

most important and that’s episodes one through nine yeah i wanted to say six i want to say six episodes and nine nine

nine steps no it’s six steps nine episodes yep yep and so uh that’s going

to get you 85 to 90 of the information that you need obviously everyone’s going to be

unique everyone’s going to have different concerns or or a unique facet to what they’re doing and so that’s where the question and answers come in

if you have any questions you can email us at ask mitch mitch smedley.com and uh we will get those uh questions in

and we uh that’s how we fill the gaps and that’s why we have the guest shows too yeah because those guests i mean

they have information that we haven’t thought about right or questions that were answered in their quest right to

open their own business that were answered right so i mean there’s you know everyone has little different

pockets of information yep that they use and can that they use to start their business

and that can help you start your business right man i am like super tongue-tied

and and some of the guests might even be starting a business that’s not even in your wheelhouse right you might be wanting to start a sheet rocking

business and we have a guest on that’s talking about like a hair salon well you there’s still those episodes are still

valuable to listen to because you might learn something about one of their experiences that would help you like

their rental lease they had an issue with their rental lease and you have this same fears right and that helps you get

over that hurdle right to start in your own deal yep so uh today’s questions come from two

different individuals so we’re gonna we’re gonna hit these kind of in order here um jeremy from saint louis you see

the guy that had the two questions he so he’s got a lot actually but we’re gonna go over two questions that he yeah yeah

and and he and i have been kind of messaging back and forth a little bit on facebook messenger but um

he he lives in st louis he works for a union plumbing company and um his first question was asking us

what our thoughts are on union versus non-union so dave i’m going to let you

go first with that one union versus non-union what was his exact question

what are your thoughts on the union versus was he thinking was he thinking about opening up a union shop

versus a non-union shop is that what uh the gist of his question was he’s he’s thinking in general yeah he’s thinking

about starting his own plumbing company and he’s got cons he’s he’s heavily invested into the union now okay and so

he’s got concerns about like considering leaving the union to start his own but he could also start

his own company well and be a union shop as well was his commercial or residential uh they kind

of do a little bit of everything okay so i mean my general thoughts are

you know back in the day 60s 70s 80s unions built this country

i mean they basically they built the middle class because people were getting [ __ ] on all the time

by employers basically right okay and they realized oh you know what if we band together

they can’t screw us right now we’re all getting paid a decent wage you know

especially in like in detroit in the motor city right you know when it comes to car manufacturing that it was huge

and it i mean literally catapulted this country to being the great power that is now

um i think now they have they’re probably a little

too big some of them i shouldn’t say all of them right i’ll say there’s probably probably

15 percent of the unions in this country are too big they’re so big that they can manipulate uh governments

people uh the teachers union is what really comes to mind yep you know and that

drives me crazy so um you know it puts a bad taste in my mouth as far as as that

goes um what i really wish people would do would stand up to those unions that are doing

things the wrong way and kind of take those back you know vote those people out

you know i i mean i’m on the fence yeah to be honest with you one way or the other there are great things about

unions there are bad things about unions you know one of the bad things is i feel like

people that are really working hard and making all the money these unions have in some circumstances taking

advantage of them and there are fat cats that sit at the top or maybe not all the way at the top

but you know those first four or five tiers that are sucking up a lot of that money a lot of that due money

and they shouldn’t be you know and that’s what i mean by people need to maybe need to stand up and and take back

some of those unions yeah i mean i’m not gonna say they’re all bad but um they can be and they can be good at the same

time now i’m not going to say that plumbing unions

are bad i don’t know anyone personally that’s ever been in a plumbing union

or i mean i know some pipe fitters that’s a little different you know when i think of pipe fitter i

think of uh commercial construction uh you know gas pipe

fire sprinkler you know things of that nature and those guys all have great things to say

so as far as um like service industry plumbers uh new construction plumbers

and and there are unions for all of those i’m not gonna speak to those specifically because i i’m just not sure

right but um i mean what are your what are your thoughts on that when he asks as a commercial plumber

you know that kind of does a little bit of everything so

um like let’s first i’ll give you kind of my opinion on unions in general

um i look at unions a lot like real estate agents and so

um i agree yeah unions helped build the country and everything else one thing that happened

as as the country developed into what it is today anybody who wanted to be successful and

needed a lot of employees to do that you understand very quickly that if you

are going to be successful you have to like you don’t even have a choice you have to treat your people very well you

have to pay them very well you have to give them amazing benefits you have to have a great culture you have to provide

you know health insurance and retirement and all of these things and and

you don’t even it’s not even a choice if you want to be successful you have to take care of your people and so

unions might be a little less important today than they used to be because now

everybody knows that if you want to treat people well or if you want to be successful you have to treat them well

so um and i say that without trying to discredit the unions right like a lot of the reason that is to the way today is

because unions pushed those issues over the years so in today’s world

unions i look at a lot like real estate agents and so like if i’m going to go try to sell my house

i could choose to try to do it without a realtor and i could try to navigate all

of that financial paperwork and all of the contracts and i could meet all of the potential buyers and i could walk

them through the house and i could do all the selling and i could do all the things that it takes to sell my house on my own

and i could save that fee that i’m going to pay the realtor or i could hire in a realtor and trust that

that realtor is going to do all the right things with the contract and say all the right things to

the potential buyers and look out for the sleazy buyers that we don’t want to deal with and enter into a contract with and

and do all of the experience things that that realtor does in order to help sell my house and make

sure i get a full value and a fair deal out of it the choice is mine right like i could go

by myself or i could go with a realtor and if i’m gonna go with a realtor i’m gonna pay a small fee unions are very similar

if you have the ability to know what a good wage is and what a bad wage is and you have the ability to barter for a

good wage and you have the ability to recognize what good benefits are and what they aren’t and you have the ability to

find companies that produce good benefits and give and offer good benefits and and all of that stuff

then you might not need to go union because you can handle a lot of those things on your own however if you want

to just go work and you want to just know that your employer is paying you fair and you want

to know that they’re all they’re giving you good health insurance and they’re not working you too hard and

their their retirement is good and all of that stuff well then you can go union give up a little bit of you know you’re

going to pay a small fee you’re going to give up a little bit of that but you’re all of those fears subside when you go that route and so

that’s my honest opinion of unions it just depends on what your mentality is the one characteristic of that is it

changes with geography so we’re in the kansas city area it’s not a very strong union town

um you go over to st louis ironically where jeremy’s from there’s a lot heavier union presence in st louis than

in kansas city and so um you know that experience would change literally just on the other side of

missouri um you get you get into you know detroit and new york and chicago and all that

and the unions are even stronger there so that would twist things a little bit uh you know with with geography of just

where you are in the u.s but when it comes to starting your own company

you could really go either way there i have a friend of mine in town that has a plumbing septic company and he when you

say plumbing subject they just do septic they they do septics and repair and exterior plumbing okay so excavation

stuff and everything else he actually flipped union he started non-union

he was that his choice or his employees no no his choice so he started non-union

um he was a prior union member and so he knew the people to talk to and everything else well he turned his

company into a union shop and and i had a great conversation with him i said you know why’d you do it and i’m not

questioning your decision i’m just wanting to know your motives like what made you do it and he said he found it a lot easier to get really good quality

guys because he could go to the labor hall and know like a go kind of he could go

there and meet those guys talk to him do all that and have guys on his radar right he’s got guys that does he still

get to choose guys yeah he’ll he’ll pull guys from the labor hall in in

you know i i don’t know the the ins and outs of exactly how it works but he can pull him

out and then if they don’t work out he can send them back or if they work out great he can kind of like

claim him so to speak yeah but i’m sure they have a little contract yeah i don’t know i was never in union

um but i mean it’s working out great for him so he did it because it helped improve the quality of labor that he was

finding because he was having a hard time finding guys and he was like i didn’t even care about the benefit thing because i was providing those anyway so

like it improved the quality of labor it didn’t change any of the other plans that i had so it was great it worked um

but in the same token you may i mean you could go either way you could you could stay union

and and you’re going to see some benefits there from your labor quality and improving and everything else or you

could go non-union and just know that you’re going to have to provide your guys with some amazing benefits in order

to be successful yeah and if you and we’ve we’ve beat this horse half to death but

you know if you’re providing if you’re worried about having guys but you’re providing them great benefits that’s how

you keep your guys that’s how you get good guys from other companies to want to come work for you right you know so

it’s like you said earlier you know the unions have they’ve made employers whether they’re

union or not provide those same benefits right and in that area they’re good right right does

that make sense yeah the other thing that you need to do too is they do a very good job of training they’ve got some of the best training programs out

there so yeah some of them um and and so um you know my my friend across town that

has the septic company that was what he was latching on was he was grabbing some guys that have been through a lot of training and everything

else and so he’s not getting these total green horns that don’t know their way around an excavation

so yeah and that in in his industry let’s be honest sometimes that can be unsafe oh absolutely it could be deadly it’s like

when you’re bringing you know a new guy in and you know he just jumps down the hole dude what are you doing right get

out it’s like you gotta have that one little extra eye on them right all the time right you know and if you get somebody

that’s experienced and has been through the training no matter what kind of industry it is it can be a benefit yeah

yeah so ultimately you could go either way with union um and and you’re not gonna see us like throw a blanket answer

on that like you know go union go non-union or whatever it kind of depends on what your experience level is because

your experience level is going to determine your comfort level so if you were brought up through the union then it might be better to stay union yeah

because you’re uncomfortable out of it right yeah if you were brought up out of it then it might be more comfortable to

to stay out of it because that’s where you’re more comfortable with it and like mitch was saying so around here i mean

like residential union plumbers are far and few between you just don’t see a whole lot of them so there was one

company in town for a while that was union i don’t even know if they still are i don’t think that was doing like new homes yeah i don’t know

i’m not even sure they’re in business right so i i haven’t done this for several years but i used to go to lunch

once a year with a guy who owns one of the larger union plumbing companies here in town and um

once a year that’s a pretty big gap yeah once a year like seriously like we’d go out to lunch once a year and just kind

of shoot the [ __ ] but uh um it was it was always interesting because

he knew i would never go union and and and so we were able to have like

these uh very candid conversations but just factual conversations yeah like how is

it how does it work over here and how does it work over here and how do you yeah overcome your struggles you don’t have to worry about anything yeah

because we’re not competitors or anything else no of course similar industries not competitors so i mean it

you could you could really go either way with it so just kind of stick with what you know yeah and for jeremy that’s you

know he could go either way and if he if he is comfortable and listen you know we’ve said this before when

when people send in these questions you know we answer them yep to them personally too yeah so i mean we’ve had

these conversations with jeremy actually on this one mitch has had the conversation with jeremy yep so

um jeremy also asked so later on in our conversations um jeremy was asking how

do you sell your wife on the idea of starting your own company

so that could be tricky for a lot of reasons yeah you know i i will say how do you sell your wife i told her hey

babe i’m gonna go out on my own and start my own businesses she said okay right that’s literally what happened

right i mean it wasn’t that quick but um

just some of my background i’ll just you know tell you what it was

so i had been doing heating and cooling for i think right at 10 years

and i was pretty burned out like i had been with a couple of guys that i was really

close with one of them i still consider a great friend and i haven’t even talked to him like a year but um

we were down in a small farm town and started a heating cooling company right okay and it was great

and i just i mean i got burned out it took me literally from where i live to where we were doing business it was 50

minutes to an hour every day and then an hour back so i was burned out so i quit them told them you know i

don’t want to be part of this anymore went home about two months later

i got a call from a friend that worked at lake city ammunition plant and said hey they’re hiring up there

and i was like you know what i’m gonna try something new okay so i go to lake city ammunition plant i go up there i

fill out all my stuff i go to work there i worked there one weekend three twelves that was gonna be my shift

literally so the way it worked was you had to be in this little like pre-training program

and you filled all these holes and then when there was an actual vacancy they put if they liked you they put you in

there so i worked three days didn’t work the next weekend the next weekend is when uh they

kind of had a disaster up there and a guy got killed yeah i remember that and so they shut the whole plant down

literally shut the whole plant down and i’m like i mean i’m instantly i’m like what am i

gonna do i can’t well people just started calling and they’re like hey man i heard you left

can you help me out with this hvac project okay one led to two two

all this stuff happened and i just i just told her i was like hey all these people are calling right i’m just gonna

start a heating cooling company and i’m just gonna do it on my own so it literally went from being completely

burned out never wanting to look at heating and cooling again to doing something for three days i mean

this is probably like a four month span yeah to being thrown directly into the fire right and we’ve talked about this

in other episodes i didn’t know what i was doing i knew i knew literally nothing i’m calling people trying you know

trying to figure stuff out you know setting up checking accounts but you know all this getting licensing getting

insurance doing all this stuff and literally it just boom there it happened yep and when i when i told her that she

was like i don’t this has been a long time ago i shouldn’t say a long time ago like 12

years ago i don’t remember exactly what the conversation was but i think it was probably like yeah you better do

something right it’s probably what she said to me then right you know so my mine’s a little you know different she

we were both motivated but i would say to selling your wife on it if your wife’s not on board you’re in trouble

yep okay yeah it’s just it you will fail yes either in business or in your

relationship one of those things you will be in deep [ __ ] yep okay it takes when you’re married

and and i’m gonna go on a little married tangent i feel like you know these days when people get married

marriages fail because people are selfish and they don’t realize that when you get married that single part of you

is dead and it’s gone it ain’t about you anymore no you two are together and you’re a team against everybody else

it’s you and her against everybody else okay and if you’re not together it ain’t freaking

happening right okay and for me she was completely supportive yep now when we

did it we didn’t have a kid you know it was just us it wasn’t you know a big deal and she had a good job okay i’m not

gonna say hey oh we were in dire straight you know like tyler that was on the show was ramen noodle poor right

right you know he’s not they’re not married are they no they’re not married so he’s single and it’s you know but

so it was harder for him i feel like than it was for me to do it yeah you know and i’ll say that it you know she

was she helped support my start right really i mean we had been

you know we had been married oh 10 or 12 years really and we had been

socking away money don’t get me wrong we weren’t broke or anything um but i had her to fall back on and she was

completely supportive right so thank god i had her right you know and we took off but like i said if if your wife is not

on board you’re in deep [ __ ] and it ain’t gonna work yeah so how do you convince her

mitch right if she’s not on board because mine was on board right and i know danielle was nervous as [ __ ]

that’s mitch’s wife’s name sorry i don’t know if that’s okay that’s all right no one cares she doesn’t care

um i mean how do you convey how do you convince a wife that’s not on board well for for our situation

uh my wife wasn’t working i was the sole income earner of our household making it tougher

like she ran the house i ran the money i brought the money in right and here i am looking at walking away

from she thinks all of that we’re gonna be in poverty off right what are we gonna do

and and we’re gonna start our own thing so um for me i had quite a few years of of management

experience managing large plumbing departments before i started so the the business side of things was

there my my experience about knowing how to run the run the department run the business you know run work the people

answer the phones like all of those things were there you mean the ability to go from zero

to big like in my case my curve was real slow if i was to do that mitch’s

curve was more like this because he’d already been there when it came to yeah i’m not even i’m not even talking like

after that like it’s more like one of the things that a spouse could be fearful of is like how do we answer phones like how do we you’re talking

about the actual structure yeah the structure of the business like what do we do with the money like how much money

do we have to make to make this worth it and like not even understanding the finances and all of that so that’s where

all those prep work episodes come in because they’re going to answer a lot of those questions for you yeah um and and

it’s my 20 years of experience in doing this for other departments is what’s led to the creation of those prep steps

but so so mine knew all of that um i think what it was for me was i went

through three different jobs in the last

10 to 12 months um no no no no in the last three years

so three years before you started yeah three years before i started my company from that three year point to when i

started i had worked at three different places uh prior to that i was kind of a long tenure person i would work for

people for long periods of time i worked at one place for 10 years and and i like kind of helped start

their plumbing department and then build it into what it was at the time i left and so

um um but when i left there i left in immediate like no days off

i i got it like i didn’t i left there on great terms you didn’t take like a four day weekend no no like i literally oh

initially turned it down and then decided no this is my opportunity to gain the knowledge i need to start my company and so

um i gave my prior employer i actually gave a three week notice instead of a two week notice because i knew it was

going to take three weeks to teach them how to do everything that i was doing um and i did not want i was leaving them

on great terms so left them um uh went and worked at this other company for

like 18 months um i left that company on bad terms um because they were a bunch of

uh but it but it should have been but i wasn’t fired if that makes sense so basically they told you we’re gonna

fire you unless you resign well basically they requested i resigned they didn’t have it they didn’t have a

ground to fire me but they did not want me to work there anymore so they requested i resign and they gave me a

severance package starting too many starting too many fires in upper management uh yeah calling them out on

too much [ __ ] that’s exactly what yeah that’s exactly what it was so everyone right now is thinking that’s

completely [ __ ] they’re like oh they’ve talked no i hadn’t no yeah but but usually

uh so like my wife’s uh boss recently this exact same thing happened but it was

like literally his wasn’t starting too many fires it was uh i’m pretty sure he was a complete idiot

right but the lady before him was the same thing yeah like she didn’t take no [ __ ] she was

just like no right and so they were just like i mean people were trying to you know force her out without you know

forcing her out and finally she was like adios right see ya yeah so um the one

finger signal i i left there and and i have a lot of contacts in the industry right so i left there yeah um i

took i don’t know maybe a week off and i started planting seeds calling some people and everything else i wasn’t

quite ready to start our company yet um i wasn’t pers my personal finances were not where they needed to be for me to

start my company i was not debt free yeah side tangent so when mitch left there he calls me yep and we went and got a

couple beers and he said hey i’m thinking about going to this place which was the place you eventually went to yep and he was like

you know and i kept saying do you remember i kept saying dude just do it on your own yeah

yeah do it on your own and and you can do it the reason i so i was not my personal

finances weren’t in i was not dead free and so i was not comfortable starting our company yet yeah so that turned out

to be good yeah yeah so basically i took all the ideas that i would take to start our company and start and help them and

i went to another company who had done hvac for 30 years and they had never done plumbing and i literally created a

plumbing department for them and they’re a big company and they’re a big company they do a great company uh left their own great terms and everything else they

treat their guys pretty good don’t yeah yeah they treat you everyone i’ve ever talked to that’s worked there’s yeah they’re pretty happy

and so um so i worked there for seven months and in seven months we took them from never

doing a dime in plumbing work before to now doing very respectable money in

plumbing um and and so that kind of proved my startup process like okay if

it worked here it’ll work for for me it was very self-verification right and so there was a day where

danielle and i had talked for quite a long time like years about the dream of starting our own company and everything

else well there was a very specific day in january of 2020

where uh i told her like so there was a time where i had realized okay i successfully started this company

success successfully started this plumbing department for this other company uh there’s no reason i can’t do

this for myself now and for those that have lost track or came in later or fast forwarded this is how do you sell your

wife yeah yeah you’re starting your own business yeah and so i texted her um and and said

we’re doing this i’ve now done this for three different companies had been wildly successful

have very rarely ever made a mistake i’ve never made a detrimental mistake um

it’s it’s time that i quit putting all of my skills to use for somebody else and it’s time that i start

building a legacy for our family and and we had had enough conversations in the

past she knew that when that text came across it was like but

but to the question of how do you sell your wife on it so ultimately you say you you say in

generalities we had these conversations in the past yeah people are looking for direct answers yeah so ultimately what

are direct answers what were her real caveats yep ultimately it is a matter of

getting all of your spouse’s anxieties

uh resolved well give me prior give me an example of like one that she had so

what was she what was the really one thing she was worried about money and health insurance okay so healthy okay so

health insurance so what did you do about health insurance so money’s a pretty easy yeah i’ve got to

make this much for us to make this much well so what was what was the health insurance on the health insurance side

of things it was a matter of going to some private insurance brokerages and finding out exactly what where did you go

uh we need specifics here because people have these same questions oh they’re all over like like i’m in kansas city but

the the person did you call blue cross blue shield no no no no no you’re gonna what did you do

you’re gonna like google a private insurance broker or your area yeah or and then you go to them and say hey this

hell the person we were getting it from was in like georgia oh really yeah so you just call them they did yeah they used to go nationally but um you know i

i i was this was this before obamacare or after oh it’s way after way after so

could you have gone on the private so uh exchange no we could not do marketplace insurance because i had been earning

enough money to where you couldn’t even be on that yeah the marketplace plan was not going to be effective but you could

have got it but it was expensive maybe i could have got it i don’t even know if i could have gotten it but but then you started

researching right and these are and i’m peppering him because these are real questions people have yeah yeah yeah so

actually i remember now how i did it i went to our local community page on facebook oh really and i just played

dumb and i said i’m in the market for looking for a private health insurance broker who do you got what do i do and i just

started calling everybody that got recommended and there was one person that kind of stood out with their answers a little bit better than anybody

else and so we just went through them and and we just factored it into the budget and it it it really didn’t even

matter what the cost was it the cost wasn’t crazy but it didn’t matter what the cost was it just became

a part of the budget that was going to have to get met every month it didn’t matter how much more so we were spending like two grand a

month for private insurance for a family of four through your paycheck or no no no so you’re writing them a check every week

yes i know that when you’re at cl at i almost said so when you were with them

how much of your insurance were they covering listen everyone always thinks oh you

know i have insurance through my work they’re not paying all of it right

on your check okay they’re paying 600 i’m paying 400 that’s a thousand dollars a month so

so that doesn’t really matter like like you could look at you could look and say okay right now i’m paying x amount of money x amount of dollars for insurance

i bring it up because it sometimes it’s a lot less than people realize it is yeah so

private insurance is expensive and it sucks it’s not the best insurance right like you’d have to spend a fortune to

get really really good insurance i want to say we were spending like 1800 a month for insurance

um when you’re working for an employer and they’re covering a portion of your insurance you’re spending a lot less than 1800 a month you’re probably

spending closer to like a thousand dollars a month um but that’s it that’s a group plan you

mean the policies a thousand they’re paying half 500 and then you’re paying 500 no group plans what is the actual

numbers group plans are a lot cheaper so because they have more employ they have more people in them right yeah

right so private insurance is his own animal and it really like you’re doing yourself a favor if you

forget what you’re paying for insurance now and you focus on how much is private insurance going to cost you

and how do you get build that into the budget to just get it covered if that is your wife’s biggest anxiety or your

spouse i don’t say why figure out the number and figure out figure out exactly exactly and and you’re going to learn

real quick in business costs don’t mean a whole lot anymore like when you start your business so

there’s there’s a lot of things where it doesn’t matter what they cost all that matters is how do i make enough money to pay for that cost

um yeah robert kiyosaki is economics 101 is is you know people get scared when they see

big numbers and i think that’s a lot of the anxiety that people have when they start

you know a company or they go into big management and they see this number you know and they look at it and they’re like oh man so we have this many

employees we have this much insurance and that’s 50 000 a month and and people just panic there’s no how are we going

to get all this money but you don’t realize that okay so i’ve got 20 guys working

and all those guys are making averages 750 dollars a day and

you know what all of a sudden that number isn’t as big as you think it is sales cures all people it’s more of a

percentage thing right if you want to see things small break them down into percentages right but but like mitch is

saying find out what the number is find out what the budget needs to be right and then figure out how to overcome that

number in a realistic manner hey look babe if we run three calls a day

or three calls every other day you know whatever it is and and that means and these aren’t this

money is this this is an entrepreneur either no no this is real math this this

so sales managers love to do this [ __ ] if you interact with three customers a day and and you close on 40 of them and

that closes this average ticket and all like all of a sudden they’ve now talked themselves into this crazy impressive

financial number that is unrealistic they’ve talked themselves into making 50 grand a day with two employees right

like dude okay come on that doesn’t happen right right right so yeah basically and we may be getting out

we’re getting up here right we’re way out don’t don’t do that fictitious math with

your spouse no do real very realistic math right yeah and and if your business can’t cover the cost of

private insurance then you don’t have a good enough business plan yet you don’t have enough your plan is not solid enough to cover

those sales yet or or to cover those costs yet or realize okay i’m not gonna

i realistically don’t think i’m gonna have the money to pay for that insurance for six months so i need to have the money to pay for that insurance for six

months before i start yeah or okay maybe maybe the spouse needs to look at getting a job that’s

gonna cover insurance while you start if that’s like there’s another avenue there that could happen right um

i i was so confident with ours that it wasn’t it wasn’t a concern no and we’re talking about you know how to e and

listen this isn’t this isn’t a female thing no no no you have wives if you’re a woman and you have a male husband and

he’s and you’re the breadwinner which let’s be honest it’s a lot more prevalent than it used to be yeah okay

and you’re the breadwinner now and he’s working part-time at domino’s yep okay and he doesn’t get insurance but you

carry the insurance but you want to open like claire’s that we haven’t had claire’s episode on

but a body sculpting deal and she and you think that you can make all the money to pay for the insurance

for everybody and he’s panicked you still have to break down the numbers yep no matter who’s you know making it

and listen if he can go from being a driver at domino’s to being a manager

and the money’s the same but he gets healthy insurance guess what that’s a way to alleviate

that anxiety yep but you have to be on the same page

when you’re making those decisions that’s how you win your spouse over yeah not your

wife that’s how you win your spouse over right either way to get to common ground

yeah before you can make it make it successful so for me you know i had years of experience running

financial spreadsheets and running sales reports and and analyzing

exactly how many calls we would need in in the average like sales per call and all of

this kind of stuff and so for me i was very confident in okay all i need to do is run this many calls a

day and the budget’s going to be met anything over that is gravy and that number of calls a day was like

like two and and so i i had a very fixed budget as long as i ran two calls a day we

should hit our budget and if anything if i run three or four calls a day then we should exceed our budget

um and so that calmed her fears very quickly you know initially she’s like worried about are we gonna have enough

work to even give you two calls a day that’s 10 service calls a week you know how are you going to get 10

people a week to call you well we had some other plans in place that worked out for that but ultimately and

we talk about those plans in the first nine episodes yeah and ultimately to get your spouse on board you have to very

clearly identify what their concerns are and then you have to be very practical

about putting plans in place to alleviate those concerns yeah you can’t just say i don’t know we’re going to

figure it out because you won’t yeah that’s not a plan you might figure it out after you’re broke

that’s hope yeah businesses don’t succeed on hope no you know they may drive the inspirational side of the

business but success comes with concrete plans and in sales so

um that kind of wraps up jeremy’s questions yeah that went along a little longer than i thought but that’s all

right yeah i’m just gonna benefit of podcast for him here i’m just gonna read you he’s he’s gonna top off his bourbon

i’m just gonna reach over here real quick yeah let me do i need to top off my sparkling water i don’t know

um okay last question do you last question we’ve got here is uh is from

matt coffey i don’t know where matt coffee lives um we’ve messaged him hopefully he gives us

some information he emailed us in he actually emailed us in very very recently uh but he’s got a good question

um matt he works for a farm equipment dealer and he has for four years and he’s wanting

to start what does he do there i don’t know what he does there but he’s wanting to start a business

doing farm equipment repair okay so he’s probably a mechanic there for sales or i don’t know maybe well you

have to have some kind of mechanic background i’m assuming he is right i don’t think he’s a sales guy that says i’m going to go turn wrenches no but

wrench is more fun than being a salesman right so he is very upfront that his business that he’s wanting to start

would be a one-man show his question is he sees us refer to i

and we and and things like that but he he’s

concerned he’s concerned that if he says i then people aren’t going to be able to rely on him right because they think

he’s one guy right right and if he says we he’s going to be lying to them he’s he’s

worried that he’s lying because it’s not a we it’s an i so first off matt

that’s a good conscience to have if you’re that worried your conscience is in the right spot if you’re worried about

lying to people about calling yourself we you already have my respect yep and you’re probably going to have your

customers respect right off the gate and you’re probably going to be pretty successful the way you do yeah because your first time mine’s in the right spot

yeah honesty is i mean honesty and your moral compass are what

drive you right i mean and when you look around at the country right now it’s

i mean obviously we’ve lost a lot of that right right marcus we’ve lost a lot

yeah i guess mark is literally i could feel his eyes roll and just looked over at him but

yeah but i mean we is the answer you say we yep okay you don’t say i you’re not

lying to them okay we is a thing if you’re successful you’re and you want to be a one-man show

but you’re so successful you have to hire somebody you’re going to be we anyway okay you might have a helper i don’t

know if he’s if he’s married or not but that’s a we your wife is going to help you yep okay

that’s just what it is you’re going to be a we and mitch brought this up earlier and i’m going to steal some of his points oh you’re going to steal my

point i’m going to steal one of those points here uh you know he said you know he has

people backing him up like his purse distributor right okay

that’s a we you are part of an industry you are a we even if you’re only a single guy out

there working and and even if he only wants to stay a one-man show it is

we haven’t talked about this um but if you’re a one-man show

if you’re a one-man show and you’re growing and growing and growing it’s almost harder to not hire someone

than it is to hire someone and stay on that elevated track right i did it i

know yeah okay there it’s really hard so when you start out as a one-man show

um your aud i mean your track is this and i’m gonna make marcus show me on the video your track is this and then when

you get so big that you decide i need to either hire someone or stay a one-man show your

track becomes this yep and that’s just how it is and okay and i’m not saying

dave’s giving a wavy motion with it it was going up at a 45 degree angle but then it starts wavering and the reason

it starts wavering is because you get freaking tired i forget that we’re not just on youtube right right so yeah so

so you’re going up at a 45 degree angle you’re climbing the hill and and that’s as a one-man show but when you get to

the point where i’m going to say it again you have to either hire someone or decide i’m going to stay a one-man show

that hand starts waving that line goes down and up and down and up because you’re turning down work you’re grabbing

work you’re turning down work you’re grabbing work you’re turning down work because you’re too busy to get to it and then you realize oh i turned down a

little too much and so now you’re slow yes and so now you start grabbing everything you can and then you grab a

little too much and so now you’re busy and listen i am not i did this so it’s

easy for me to say this you are not doing a wrong thing no if you’re comfortable doing that you’re gonna do

it you’re just describing the way it is when you’re a one man yeah if you’re gonna piss people off yeah are you gonna make a lot of people happy yeah are you

gonna make a shitload of money because you’re on your own yeah so you know those are just

that’s a bridge that matt is gonna have to cross if he is successful it’s just it that’s

just freaking how it is yep you’re either you either are gonna continue on that upward trend

and you’re gonna have to sacrifice a little bit of money to hire guys yep or you’re gonna have to go down yeah and then you’re gonna have to go up and

they’re gonna have to go down and you’re gonna have to go up and that’s just that’s just what it is yep not to steal too many of your points no

you’re good you’re good so um i had to grab that to fill my my

thought process there ultimately you could go either way uh of course you can if he’s if he says i he’s going to lose

some customers that want the comfort that that he’s a little bit bigger than a one-man show yeah right

um it’s kind of weird customers want the one-man show but they want the security of a company that has multiple employees

there are people that will pay the biggest giant corporations in town they know they’re paying extra money because

they want the security to know that they’ll always be able to call them and they’ll always have somebody available to send out and all of that and a caveat

to that is um some people will wait to pay someone that’s a one-man show

because they trust them so much yeah yeah and they’re so tight different types of customers and listen right and and this isn’t bad older customers are

like that yep okay i i’m not i’m 40. yep but i’m like that yeah unless it’s a

complete other disaster emergency if i know someone personally and they’re

like okay yeah i could be there but man dude i’m swamped and it’s gonna be two days

if it’s not an emergency i wait yep because i trust them that much yep so

if matt says i’m gonna stick with i it’s okay yeah okay yeah it’s awesome you can totally do that if if i were matt i

would use the wii term i wouldn’t and the reason why like i i used the wii term whenever i started hours

um uh we refers to you matt but it also refers to the

people that you’re buying your material from yeah the people you’re buying your repair parts from the trucking companies

that are delivering you know the ups and fedex drivers that are delivering those to you the people you’re buying tools from yeah hydraulic hoses from right it

also refers to the guy that’s repairing your truck so you can drive out to these different farms and repair their equipment so

um when you say we you’re not a liar right you’re referring to we as in myself and all of my vendors

because that’s what goes in it takes you and all of your vendors to deliver amazing customer service to your

customers so your vendors are very much part of that so it’s very okay to say we

even though you’re referring to a one-man show um i did it and i like i always say we on

on this show in the context of the show you’ll catch me saying i a lot because i’m i’m just referring to like my

business right yeah but when outside of this show it is always a we we we

um and even when i started i’m the only plumber we have my wife

wasn’t even my wife was answering phones but she wasn’t even on the payroll yet she’s not even like but it was still awesome officially employee stella we

and i’m saying we will get out there tomorrow and we will get you taken care of and then i would show up as one

person and the customer would say you said we on the phone is anybody else coming and i’m like no i just always say

we i refer to our like our company we our company yeah and they’d be like oh well how many of how many plumbers do

you have uh it’s just me so it’s just you yep well and it’s and so every once in a

while and you can say hey my wife helps me oh yeah you know you can say

if if someone asks and out is my wife helps me if you’re not married i have distributors that

help me they’ll bring me parts right they’ll bring me deal and if someone gets that deep in there and they’re being completely weird about

it which let’s be honest we’re talking one out of 150 people i’ve i’ve okay yeah in the last i mean that dig that

deep and it it makes them weird about it yeah but before we were gonna happen before we hired people

i probably had i’m to say 10 people over a year kind of actually like

like pause for a second and ask and finally so i i use the wii term

uh because one of my one of my mentors at a previous place i worked always said the best leaders never say i

the best leaders always say we yeah and and and the only time a leader

will say aye is if they are talking about a team failure if your team failed the leader owns it then you say and it’s

i failed yeah i failed our team i failed you guys right i should have had you more prepared right i should have done

this to help you be better yep and so if we’re talking about good things it’s we if we’re talking about things that need

improvement it’s i yeah so if a customer if one of those customers calls you and says hey this hasn’t

happened or this broke that you repaired i’m trying to think of something matt would repair

like yeah just don’t know a lot about fun yeah you would say i am sorry yeah yeah i will be right

there i’m coming out today yep you go to i yeah that’s a great point yeah so um um i

eventually so like i said something about psychology 101 right here yeah well like i said i had about 10

customers over that first year before i hired people that were like a little weirded out because i had said we so

much and now it’s just me and and so finally i would just tell them you know i i learned a long time

ago that great leaders always refer to their organizations as a we thing and so it’s just habit everything i say is we

we and eventually we will be a lot bigger than what we are now um so

i just say we and that just ended it so um but that tells you that customers are very

in tune to wanting to work with people or businesses that at least appear larger than they are yeah so

um use the wii term if you if you can you’re not really going to go wrong with using i but you’re going to go a lot

farther using we yeah um and all subconscious too because we

is a team yeah people when you say we they automatically even though you’re not referring to them you’re referring

to them yeah you’re talking we as humanity we as a group we as a small community yep we as a small shop we as

we is just the way to go yeah and and i’ll i’ll also add this matt you’re going to

want to get to a wee platform anyway you’re going to want to get to where you’ve got like three guys out in the field fixing stuff

because for one farm machinery is freaking heavy and sometimes you need an extra hand well they usually have those

little boom trucks i know and they use it but but still welder it’s i had my welder out the other day yeah i hadn’t

welded anything in a while i was just out i was out in the shop i had some angle and i was like you know what i’m gonna make a brace for this chicken coop

right here i’m gonna do it got it out welded it up a little side tangent squirrel i like doing a lot of fun stuff

like that well when you so the guys so tom that lives next to me is a farmer oh boy here we go

i’m gonna sorry matt i’m gonna verify this so he has a lot of farm machinery and those guys are always out there

working on it i love it man i’ll go over there and hang out with those guys they’ll be working on hydraulics they’ll be working on the

uh the planner they’ll be working on whatever yeah it fascinates me yeah how awesome

that equipment is and there’s a so just the other day they they run big trucks too they can’t find

any help especially qualified mechanics you know qualified anything

so if you can be in that industry i think you can make a ton of money yeah

and if you could get a few guys that were on board that weren’t flaky and trying to go off and do a ton of side

work and do this i think you could really make a lot of money doing it yeah well and and for for matt’s concern

get to a platform of we because it saves you from getting burned into the ground and just like beating

your dick into the dirt working so damn hard and there can be a lot of long hours because those guys yeah you know when it’s when if it’s harvest season

they’re out there at midnight with the lights running yeah and they have especially like around here there’s a

lot of um smaller farms you know they don’t have john deere on call because they’re running eight combines in a row

you know rolling down fields and and i think that’s probably what matt’s like that’s his niche yeah you know

you know one combine or two combine farms are calling him yep dude you could be wore out at harvest time real quick

yeah and and so like it the most difficult time in my business

was the months right before we hired our first guy because you’re better than hell well you’re busy enough to warrant having to

hire somebody you’re doing all of that work yourself you don’t even have time to enjoy the money you’re making no

you’re just socking it away yeah and it just sucks right you’re begging someone please please help me yeah and so please

come and help me you’re in in all of your concerns don’t go away your first tire really like you got to get to like

two or three to to really start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel but when you get to two or three now they’re

doing enough work to where you can kind of pull out a little bit and manage them a little bit

and and yeah because you don’t have to have one guy you have to have one guy plus one guy so that you can step back

so you really gotta have almost two guys right off the bat to make that jump if you’re that busy yeah it just depends on

who your first guy is but but like you get to a platform of three and they should be producing enough work and

enough sales to allow you to step out of the sales side of things for a minute and keep and work on the

business instead of in the business okay so yeah we’ve got this i can step up i can look and see what’s going on okay

we’re on the right track yeah and that’s and then you can jump back in don’t don’t think you can’t jump back in there that’s where we’re at like right now in

our business we have three other plumbers and myself and you know i work like in the field like two or three days

a week and that doesn’t mean like my other two days a week i’m like kicking off and [ __ ] around it means that now

investing your time in growth now i’m sitting in front of the computer running some spreadsheets and going okay if we

get to this financial situation then we can really excel here and that’s going to be the key to hiring the next guy

and i’m forecasting when the money’s going to be there to hire the next guy and when the calls are going to be there

to hire the next guy i’m strategizing better ways to take care of our guys and it’ll be an hvac

before you know it right right we might do hvac and electrical and the whole nine yards who you never know what

you never know what’s going to come down the pipe but but that all started with the platform of we

instead of i yeah so um having that vision because i i knew i didn’t want to be

work i didn’t want to be owning a job i knew i wanted to own a business so and we’ve talked about that in previous

shows but the difference if you own a job when you own a job if you don’t go to work that day no

money is made when you own a business you can take the day off and the business still makes money that’s the biggest difference

between owning a job or owning a business so and in different and different companies it’s obviously different in mitch’s

that’s just how it is right you know so like in hvac if if you’ve got service

contracts coming in anyway and your one-man show it’s it’s almost like it’s a little bit it’s a little mostly owning

a job but then just a little bit yeah and then there are you know other companies you got like tyler who owns

the gym yeah so every all of his people are paying monthly memberships right so if he takes a day off even which he does

he’ll close the gym and he’ll go to new york for three days to enjoy himself right yeah um so he’s still making money

even though he takes the day off but he can’t do that too much because if he does yeah people are gonna leave his gym

because it’s closed yeah so you know and that and that’s that was a great point so if if he had like say

he came to you you go to his gym and said hey man can you watch the gym for one day

mitch might do it yeah somebody in the gym might do it yeah his buddy not yours tyler’s buddy may go in and do

it yeah so his is like you know it’s kind of a hybrid he gave me to a key to his gym two weeks ago nice yeah you know

what i go in there on sundays and stuff and work out if i want you know what i love and hate about you so i get up this morning at five okay

i’m up i’m a five okay yeah and i’m making coffee getting ready i pull up my

phone it’s 5 30 you know i look at it and then mitch has a post on there it’s

4 53 yep one year since casey dog or dog pound kc and there’s a photo on there

i’m like 453 this mother i’ve been i i’ve been up some fish have been up for

at least half an hour before i’ve been prepped i’m at the gym waiting to start working out at 4 53 in the morning and

posting on facebook you know today was my one year anniversary of like going to the gym every day so i see it and i’m

looking at it and it’s i think it was like 5 23 or something you know and i’m thinking man i hate getting up this

early and then i look at mitch’s thing and i’m like he’s been there for half an hour now yeah and i i can’t decide if

i’m enraged at that moment or not i’m like do i drive over there and just punch him

do i call him i mean like just like you drive over and join the workout

that ain’t happening dude that ain’t happening i mean i work out but not a 453 yeah you

know that’s my routine maybe he’s literally we automatically it’s black i’m like we just dark out you know none of the

lights are wrong like this this crazy son of a [ __ ] is at this gym every day

nuts man every day like works you’re nuts so um well jeremy matt i hope those

answers uh help you out and uh as always tune back in with us as you start your journey and and keep us in the loop as

as to how successful you are so um uh i’ve actually got a phone call

scheduled with jeremy here pretty soon to go over some more questions so good we’ll see how that works you know we should maybe maybe we’ll call him on

speaker here well i was thinking maybe he could it’s not that far it’s not that far right yeah he could he could drive

four hours yeah tell him hey man you want to be on the show yeah see if i was a baller i’d just like send

my private jet over to get him i was gonna say you see mitch’s idea baller and mine are different i was

thinking maybe throw him 100 bucks for a hotel room drive your own ass out here

so well uh that wraps up our show for today again if it taught you something um if you saw value in in what you

listened to today if if you think somebody else might benefit from this show uh please do us a

favor and share the link to the show you’re listening to right now literally hit the share button and send it to a

friend of yours and say check these guys out uh they may be able to help you out a ton so uh if you have questions that you

would like to ask and get our feedback on um and we may just even talk about them on the show uh send those questions

to ask mitch mitch smedley.com um other than that uh guys have a great

week and we will catch up with you later nice job buddy love you guys thanks marcus