 Hey, good afternoon everybody Tom Stewart here. I'm with Liz Trotter and our guest today is Kedma. Oh buckle up people This is gonna be a heck of an hour. Hey Kedma. How are you today? I am great November 1st. I can't believe it So we celebrating November 1st with you guys. It's Yeah, it's been it's been a wild ride, right? It's been a crazy fast year, right last year How how is it already? Like we're already a third of the way through our last trimester of the year. That's just crazy Hey, to me. Good to see you And you know what happens in November and no, it's not Thanksgiving. It's accounting and finance month on smart business moves Well Thanksgiving too, but you know, it's really about the accounting and finance right right now If you're looking at what's going out in the world I think it's you're probably going to find more reference to smart business moves than you are to Thanksgiving right now Yeah And November 1st is my real real property tax statement where the you know They they like to assess my property and send me, you know a big a big bill that I have to pay in you know One week, so that's my that's my November celebration Wow They give you like one week between when they give you the bill I think so and then if I don't do it within that time then they they like to tack on you know Their interest which is 16% so I just paid on my card. That's fine, but It's all good But wow, that's that's a really short amount of time. I mean You know You know They send they send it and yeah, maybe it's a maybe it's 10 days But I I just paid it because I've learned my lesson You don't want to you don't want to owe property tax to anybody, right? So no We got ours like three weeks ago and they're not due until like middle of January This is Story, you know, like we have a lot of tax returns and they go like all over the place and it's a stack that looks about like this and They went in the mail and something happened and postage wasn't applied to it So some of them are like coming back some of them were delivered though because I could see where the checks were but You know, I guess, you know, I'm doing this for 20 some odd years and that's the first time that ever happened. So I don't know Right, well, we are money today. So there there's uh, you know, there's the hiccups the daily hiccups We sometimes have to deal with so yeah, yeah, absolutely Story Tom, thanks Yeah Don't worry Yeah, that is it could have been worse. It could have been your tax return. Don't ask me to mail your tax return Never claimed to be a CPA Conventions coming up in a few weeks. Yes, you're gonna be there, right? I am I'm super excited And Kedma we were chatting a little bit before and I know that you've got another commitment, but some of your partners They're Brandon Vaughan is gonna be there and we are just so excited It's surprising, you know, we have been truly blessed with you know, the amount of You know businesses in the community that not only embrace conquer, but they're a part of conquer and they've had tremendous success with conquer and Yet so many people don't know about conquer yet So we're just delighted to really provide just a lot of education So I know we're gonna have a special opportunity to really educate and work through some, you know Some analysis we may be thinking about as we're going into the next year We want to rethink how do we plan differently, right? We used to plan things in an annual basis, right? We used to say to ourselves. Well, we need to now Tom's laughing We should be planning things on an annual basis sometimes we do sometimes we don't but now it's kind of like One day to the next, right? It's white right now. It's one day to the next is what you really at the very least You'd be doing it a monthly and and more often it could be on a weekly with changes happening, right? If we have supply chain challenges if there's You know, if maybe there's a movement we're needing to to Really bring on more staff and so, you know, we're really delighted to want to be in a position to continue to provide cutting edge solutions for For the clients we serve and for the clients we don't serve You know, we're really clear that we're not a fit for everyone, but we want everyone to win right and so that is really at the core and and I do want to say one thing because you know To know conquerors to know our values and we talk about values in in the industry, right? We always say Everybody you should have your mission. You should have your values Tom and Liz. Do you know how many times I'll call out a company I'm like, okay, what are the values? Let me just read. I'm like if you need to read your values, we have a values issue. Okay. Yeah You have to call your assistant. Hold on. Let me call this What's our values? What do we say that? What do we say in that piece of paper? So um, so our values are ingrained into us It's called I hook so we focus on innovation humility over delivery optimism and kindness and The last part is really important to me I I mentioned to you that I was I was on a three-week tour I was doing a lot of presentations three in the morning heading to the airport the Uber guy decides to ask me a profound question This guy I can't make this stuff up. So it's three in the morning. I'm heading to the airport for a flight and he says What would you prefer? Would you prefer someone to have kindness for what you do or to love what you do? I thought it's three in the morning. Do I have to really? Texting someone saying okay, he's asking me Okay, I'll have to respond and I would said to the Uber driver Well, I will choose kindness every day because if you are kind to someone whether it's a customer whether it's a vendor Whether it's an employee if you're kind to someone you will always lead with them in mind But you can love many people not be kind You can love someone you could say I love Liz, but that doesn't mean you're gonna be kind in your approach to her So that's why that last piece is so important is we really strive As a as a as a as a company to really be kind and that could be everything from Sometimes saying no to someone you're not ready right now I had to do that a few weeks ago. I said you're not ready right now. You're not ready financially You're not ready emotionally to join conquer and he's like I'm ready No, you're not ready yet, let's see what we can do to get you there, right? Or sometimes it's about helping out We have a terrible situation right now where one of our conquerors is in a hospital and he's in a point of you know life and death situation because of COVID and He he's on the truck. It's and he's part of our emergency program We have a program in conquer where people can get into the program They can enter in based on an emergency. We don't pay. We don't charge him a dime during that time So we freeze all payments We do wrap around support and that could be it could be during the week you'd be on the weekend I was on the call with his spouse all day Saturday all day Sunday and and conquer is gonna be doing a go fund me account For his family as they go through that so you know That's just a little bit about what we do behind the scenes And I'm just so delighted that Brandon will be there and providing some just amazing education around Conquer and building everyone's business Well and for anybody that wants to know he's gonna be there on Tuesday. Did you have something else to add to that Tom? Well, I know that you guys have a booth there as well in the York City Pavilion so anybody who wants to learn more about conquer can stop by the booth Yes, I know Alonzo Adams is gonna be speaking. He's one of your coaches. So great Alonzo. It's fantastic Yeah, you guys know all these written down. Yeah. Yeah Alonzo's gonna okay So everybody get out your pencils. So conquer here's the deal with conquer Brandon's gonna be on the stage from one to three on Tuesday and The deal there is it's limited seating because it's a workshop And so they can't just let anybody in you can't come and go as you please You have to register if you haven't registered already need to register. There's a little bit of Chatter that maybe it's already booked, but we're not positive So get in there register and if you can register for that event and then also on Wednesday since you brought up Alonzo Yeah, he's going to be talking about the five habits of highly effective entrepreneurs That's gonna be a great session and that's on Wednesday from 2 30 to 3 30. So if you're not Go do it you're gonna you're gonna miss out and then I mean I would be Hurting us Tom if I didn't mention that Well, I'm not gonna mention our our presentations because we're gonna be talking about that a lot but we're doing a fun thing on Wednesday before Alonzo goes on actually Tom you're gonna be there right afterwards too So from 11 30 to 12 on the showroom floor you come test your cleaning knowledge We are going to be doing a little bit of a game show I Love it. Yeah, trivia. Yeah, so we're kind of looking forward to that too But he plays on their phone. I have to show you something. I'm gonna I'm gonna step away for a second Because you just brought it up Maybe next year it would be fun. Have you guys done a pitch competition yet or anything? Okay, okay. I know what is it Well, so I just came back as one of the judges and speaking for the For the National Hardware Show and there was a lot of cleaning products and We do that every year So the year before when we did it post COVID before COVID, excuse me we had arranged for the senior management home depot that was there and Did a lot of pitches so I get to bring all these products home And then I get to show it to my kids if if they would do it and I mean sometimes they're like mama This is not the product. I don't know how they got through the trade show But I love the idea of a game show I also love the idea of pitches, you know to just pitch new ideas or new products Because what a wonderful way to have an audience there to say, yeah I would be really really interested in trying it out and learning more. So Yeah, it's a good idea. Yeah, just yeah, and if I was gonna see if I found one that was related to cleaning I would I would share it with you guys, but it was loads of fun. It was loads of fun to do so Yeah, I do I was gonna say one more thing list because I think to your point the workshop is gonna be Pretty tight or close out and and Tom if I was there, I would be right outside and I'd probably scalp the tickets and You want to get into the workshop, you know, I'll consider So Yeah, unfortunately there but the but the team will be there and if you get a chance to meet Brandon or connect with the Lonzo you will not regret it. I Think Alayna is going to be speaking to isn't she? Oh, she you want to know when? Oh, please Liz Yeah, I have my cheat. She's right here. All the people I'm gonna go see Wednesday, so Wednesday is gonna be the day y'all because Wednesday from 1130 to 12 Tom and I will be doing the game show from one to two Tom's going to be speaking. What's your topic Tom? Uh The real money is made after the sale is complete. It's about Control it's about, you know cost of goods sold and all the fun logistics stuff All stuff that we're talking about this month. All right, and then 230 to 330 is Alonzo and then at 430 is Alayna and She's going to be talking about Taking care of employee claims before they get complicated So, you know as an attorney she has Some legit information on how to manage this stuff so that it doesn't ever turn into a big deal So that's going to be a really really good day And 1130 is the first thing up that day So often cleaning business owners tend to take things that had the potential of being easy and making it hard And then the lawyers get involved and you know you want to see Alayna on that She could save us all some money. She can save a lot Yeah, and it could be little things that can like to your point can just blow up and just yeah You can avoid a lot of that so fantastic. Yeah, so it's gonna be a really good rundown on on Wednesday I'm looking forward to it All right, so we should get to our topic for today though Let's do it. Let's do it. So today you're talking about funding, right? You know, I'd love to I'd love there's so many areas around that talking about funding is is by talking about cleaning Right, we could sort of move and weave But what I I want to hope to do is is maybe open in a dialogue and to be thinking about You know to to there's two spectrums right now when we're thinking about business the first is you know What do you how do you scale your your your business when you are still limited with access to funds? Maybe you're not in a position where you are, you know have the collateral you don't have the full cash flow You're still building your company. You'd love to have another 300,000 infuse and it may not be reality for you right now Just because of how things are right? Maybe your credit is not where you need it to be and maybe Traditional lending doesn't make sense right now. So that's one side of the fence and the other side of the fence Are the other part is um companies that have been given a tremendous amount of money Because of EIDL and because of PPP and now they're swimming. I don't want to say in swimming, but let's say they're They're in they have less stress Because they have a plethora an abundance amount of funds that they're trying to Appropriate correctly which leaves them with a lot of cash flow and to figure out what to do next and In both of those cases you still have to do a strategy Right most people think about funding and Strategy as this I'm gonna go to my bank and I'm gonna tell them I need a loan the end That's not a strategy If you if you heard this and you thought that's what I did Ketla That's not a strategy Okay, that's just picking up the phone and calling someone who knows you or may not know you Maybe calling someone you've had a relationship with Either direct or indirect and then just having them make a statement a strategy for me is Really looking at where do you want to go? Next year and in the next six months and next nine months 12 months even the next 90 days And then what kind of funds are going to serve you best and that's gonna be based on on where? Where you plan to see your business are you planning to build this and automate this and maybe Build out more locations the funding you'd be different Are you thinking about creating an opportunity where you can franchise the funding may be different? Are you thinking about building out a training system or adding a product line where there could be some licensing or Product about the funding could be different So it would be fun first to just dive in and maybe have you guys Share some insight some of the things you're hearing some of the struggles some of the curiosities and maybe we could talk about different ways of Using funding as a strategy to support and scale where you want to go Yeah, absolutely and the first thing that comes to mind for me Kedmont is Like you said earlier people right now have maybe swimming's not the right word, but they have money. They have money Money A lot of people are putting that money in the bank because they have no idea what to do with this money They're like, yeah, I don't know how to spend it. I don't know what I should spend it on I'm like, I'm going to have to pay back this loan. I'm afraid a lot of people are I know people who Got money and then returned at all I know We did tell them but you know, they're like Okay, I'm feeling better now It's not hopeless though because we do have a number of people that we know that have taken advantage of you know, some of the programs at the SBA yet made available to them and we've been letting our audience know like Like the idle loans in particular They've upped the limit on those a couple of times and we have a number of listeners a qualify for two million dollars if they Want to pursue that Now who's getting a two million dollar right now? He's good. He's gonna have two million put into his bank account probably in the next week Nice And you know, and there's some schools of thought out there that you know I want to be debt-free and the whole Dave Ramsey, you know philosophy and we we try to you know And all that's good But you know, we make the distinction between You know what you're doing in your personal life was a little bit different than what you're doing in your business life And businesses as a rule use debt as a way to create more wealth and to Leverage the the good stuff that they're doing and most Successful companies have debt on their balance sheet Absolutely, and we want to remind everyone there's good debt and bad debt The bankers and the lenders will tell you the EIDL and PPP is always good debt Always good debt bad debt is your credit cards or your you know Something merchant cash payments where you're paying daily or or weekly. That's gonna be very very hard lending debt So let me answer the what's a what's a merchant cash? Essentially what happens sometimes is when when so I'm a very So let me step back. I Got into the funding world So everyone is clear Because I myself was in a predicament where I had to file bankruptcy best decision I ever made there is nothing more powerful than going to the bottom And then there's right going to the dog. It's true So if you've never done that are you recommending that we all tried at least once I would say I don't recommend it But I would say because I'm a product of my own success and I've helped over 10,000 companies And I am not just seeing it from an underwriters perspective or from a lenders perspective from investors I'm seeing it from you Right. So when you come to me and you say Kedma, you don't understand I'm about to go homeless or you don't understand, you know, the IRS is knocking on my door. I can tell you I Understand I do. Yes, I do and there is a lot of credibility in having been through the hardest times of my life and then coming back around and Being very strategic. I'm a very strategic consultant Brandon and I smile all the time because if you ever hear Brandon Vaughan's videos He always says he builds companies Right where he literally jumps off the cliff and he built his planes on the way down. That's what he says to everyone Yeah, yeah, you have that vision, right? Yeah, okay Kedma is I still jump off the cliff, but I'm in a I'm in a little hot air balloon Okay, the only way to go down is a little bit at a time I Appreciate Brandon's analogy, but I'm not jumping off the plane I did that already once and I almost crashed and burned So one of the things we want to do is we want to realize what are the funding Opportunities available. I loved Abramsy. I am debt-free, but in order for me to make more money Strategically, I have to borrow a little bit of debt in order to make more money So if you're looking at a simple thing of hey, I have EIDL money Kedma. We know it's 3.75 percent If you did nothing today But open up a brokerage account and work with a brokerage firm and get you know, right now my brokerage I have a brokerage account, which means I have money set aside That's not retirement that just goes into stocks and various funding and on average I'm seeing an annual return of about 10 12% as high as 15% now if I just put my money in there Every day all day long. I'm still gonna make eight to nine or ten percent off of the EIDL money Now I'm not gonna put it straight there Of course as we know we're gonna make sure that we pay off correctly But the money that's remaining could certainly go into a brokerage account, right? Is that fair to say? That's an easy way of making money second way You can decide to get realist what's a matter Liz what happened Liz you're okay. I I uh-oh I Think that maybe she was getting some feedback or something. I just saw her take her. Yeah, I know You okay Liz? She can't hear it Okay Hello, yeah, what happened? Yeah, okay, Liz Nope, she has no sound. I think she had an equipment malfunction Did you guys hear that? No. No. Oh really? I felt like it was frying my brain Okay, so we're we're in about 24 minutes. You need to go back and look at this the expression you had on your facelift when that happened It was like you were watching a train wreck or something. It was so loud. It it hurt It I was like I know what my face looks like because it hurt so bad Wow, are you okay? Yeah, I am now okay All right, so where were we so one way you could do it is just put it into brokerage right work with you because What makes me nervous is when people say that they're building a million dollar company two million three million four million I said, what's your 401k? I don't have 401k I don't have a 401k. Well, why so if you don't have a 401k Maybe you need to get a 401k and look at that if you have a 401k and you already vested it Maybe you look at getting a brokerage account, you know What I love about brokerage accounts is my money is working for me But I don't have to get a penalty if I decide to use my money and move it around for some kind of investment So if I need to use that money and say I need to put a hundred thousand dollars right now in order to get You know my 10% for a million dollar building I don't have to worry about going through Rob's which is called the rollover business startup or some kind of Penalty for doing that. I just call my brokerage and say hey, can you move a hundred K and Put it into, you know, I'm gonna disperse it and put it somewhere else. So there's always a benefit there second Real estate real estate real estate now real estate is really hot right now. It's very hard. There's not a lot of Real estate on there having said that You know, I'm working on some deals right now that are absolutely amazing. I have a case right now where a Gentleman is purchasing a commercial property. He's gonna move his cleaning business into the commercial property the The the seller said it was valued about 650,000. So the buyer who's my client said, yeah, I'll look at it for 700 Came back appraised at a million So now the client calls me up and it's like I got what should I do I can't afford him and I and I said, okay Let's think about this. Okay, you don't want to give this up But you don't want to go up to a million. Maybe you look at maybe 750, but there's no reason why you can't do a seller's separate sellers note and instead of paying more for the for the property Maybe the seller's note is you know, you're gonna have a small percentage. They get every year for maybe five years Because what do you you know? You you're still gonna win no matter what because the minute you close on that you have $300,000 in equity. Yeah, not fair to them. So why don't you just do a straight up? You know sellers deal based on maybe a percentage of revenue because you know the company's gonna grow double or triple That's what they did Okay, now so now What so now again, this is beautiful from them because then They can put the money down But they're gonna have immediately that balance sheet is gonna look incredible to show 300,000 sitting in equity, you know, I mean how beautiful can that be? So that's the second way third way You can buy out another company My favorite website is biz by sell.com. Have you guys been on biz by sell.com before? Like it Tom, do you like it? Have you seen anything? Have you looked at some of the the companies being sold? What are your thoughts? Yeah, I have Reminders set up and I get emails every day from biz by sell tell me about companies that are for sale in various industries And various parts of the country and it's you know Even if you're not in the market to buy something or you think that you are you need to keep your eyes open to be Opportunistic sometimes things just kind of fall in your lap It you are never expecting that are too good to pass up and at the very least It's an opportunity to get a perspective as to what's going on in the industry and what your business might be worth Exactly so that Liz that would be another thing is to buy a company and then the fourth one is a little bit more Complicated but not outside the realm for stage four stage five companies is to invest in a company What what do you mean by stage four stage five company? Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry companies that are already fully automated well established Several million in their pipeline. They may decide to invest in a company. You know what I'm hearing these days people want to invest in suppliers supply chain They're having problems with supply chain. We're sick and tired of being told wow This is not going to come in or this shipment is late and companies are we thinking they're supply chain Wait a minute. What if I buy out this company? What if I do an investment into this company? What if I make a little bit more? Because I'm part of the deal, you know That's not unreasonable but all of this requires you to have a little bit of cash available and so It's a lot of fun when you have money to play with and this is what these everything I'm mentioning to you These are what I'm I'm working with companies right now. I'm doing a lot of merger and acquisition I'm doing a lot of small business administration 7a, which is working capital financing I'm doing 504, which is real estate financing, which by the way the real estate financing for SBA is under 3% So, you know, it's just pure as far as I'm concerned. It's pure profit if you play it correctly So the fun thing is is that you have a lot to play with But it's still a strategy and for the people is who say I'm following Dave Ramsey. I Love dames Ramsey This is you know, this is kind of his philosophy. I want to follow I think Tom what you said you nailed it on the head right now where you said that may be your personal strategy, but maybe shouldn't be your business strategy And everything is about being calculated If you're trying to grow a company and you're not leveraging the funds you have available or worse, you're turning it away It may hurt you in the end You know, because you're you're turning away money that is is very hard to get at a very cheap rate 3.75% is almost impossible to get unless you're in some kind of subsidy Yeah, and it's a 30 year amortization. So you're paying it off over a long period of time Yeah No, and you need to be thinking about, you know, you're competing in a marketplace with other You know vendors and companies who are going for the same dollars that you are and in some regards You could be putting yourself at a disadvantage if some of your competitors are taking these funds and investing it to create you know create a better value proposition and You might you might find that you're at a competitive at disadvantage to some of the people in your market Correct. Yeah, correct. We're gonna say Liz. I was going to ask if you can talk So I know we have a lot of people that are especially concerned with the idle monies and they're Concerned about how they can spend the money so and there's just a lot of fear around the idle money and The first thing I would like you to do if possible is just Dispel people's fear a little bit You know help them to see how they don't need to be afraid of this money That it's an awesome tool that they can use to to grow their businesses And it's not anything they don't have to be afraid of the money that they're going to have to pay back Right there are our ways to manage that you just gave us for And and are all four of those ways? Are you able to use your idle monies with those? No No, maybe talk a little bit about that. Yes So we want to be very careful and I can understand why the fear is there because the fear is the fear is real My fine, so I work with over 60 lenders and I will tell you that you know After the EID on PPP was released. There was an uptick in fraud reviews and fraud verification and They'll always be like that, right? There's anytime. There's a lot of money people do that But the people who are worried if you're worried you're not in that category If you're worried you're you're you're you're completely Mindful of it and so we want to simplify it number one Always ensure your bookkeeper or your account is aware that the funds that you're receiving were received from EIDL simple Email or conversation if you're saying to me, I don't have a bookkeeper or I don't have a CPA You got to reach out to me Tom or or or or Liz in the next Because that's that is going to protect you number two always make sure the money is in a separate account Always make sure the money is in a separate account that way you're not going to Accidentally spend it somewhere where it shouldn't be spent, right? number three Always make sure you actually read the contracts you sign That sounds ridiculous doesn't it Pages and pages I Got this They arrange words in a way that real people don't even speak that way Then then make it easy either pay your lawyer To 300 bucks to teach it to show you or go on to you know I've worked with a lot of the what did they I don't know what it is called today prepaid legal or you know They're legal lawyer. I could look you know, I mean the ones I work with it's forty five dollars a month For unlimited consulting legal counsel, which is amazing. I mean I have half my my clients on that Do that then I'd rather you do that than for you to sign something and once you sign it and Then you come to me and you're like Too late Like I can't do anything about that like you know what I mean So so you want to make sure that you understand that now to be clear the EIDL is Disaster relief disaster relief disaster relief. That's it It's getting us out of a disaster and putting us in a better position Because of the pandemic a lot of us had no choice but to automate we may have been in the cleaning industry We may not have automated to the level. We needed to we may not have had all our training training online or a sales development online We may not have had all our manuals. We may not have had a lot of financials. We may not have had all the software available We may not have had the right structure with Applications all of that is very very permissible for the EIDL All of that is considered part of working capital. So it could be as simple as Your inventory, right? You're you know, whatever supplies are coming in it could be things related to your website Do you need to have a new website built out? Does it have to have? new information new forms does it need to streamline into You know Some kind of Mobile device all of that is included Certainly your rents certainly you your utilities certainly anything to do with accounting or bookkeeping So what I love about the EIDL is they are very specific in the categories and Then it's up for interpretation so if the categories accounting and bookkeeping and You go, I don't know had mom like I took a Dave Ramsey course Does that fall into it and I go? I don't know is your Dave Ramsey course? Part of your solution to get better in accounting and bookkeeping and can you justify that to the auditor? Mm-hmm, and if your answer is yes, I can then yes, you should Right, but if it's way out there and you're like well You know, I just spent a thousand dollars To travel to Vegas because I thought I would hit, you know the lucky number does that count as accounting and bookkeeping? I don't know Do you feel comfortable defending that decision to an auditor? So part of it is just realizing that the the SBA does not want to make things hard for you They want us to be successful and create jobs Won't create jobs Right, they want us to be successful and create jobs and again There's there, you know, they're very specific on what you can spend the ones I mentioned Are you know now? What what is an outlier? You can't you can't use it to buy a Business, but you can use the proceeds by what you didn't so if I'm spending all my money on payroll And let's say my payroll is equivalent to a hundred thousand dollars over 90 days And I use the idea to pay for that payroll the money. I didn't use To pay for that payroll could be an owner's draw Could be go go to a separate account for investment funds for the company that is You know that is what we call unrestricted funds EIDL is Restricted funds the funds are restricted to the compliance that you have That's different But what you're describing Kedma leads me to believe that is every month that goes by More of those restricted funds could be used to cover Normal business expenses operating expenses Yes, the money that you would have normally used for that could be redeployed as unrestricted Fungible money's fungible so you can take the EIDL funds to cover your operating expenses and They basically take that money that you would have spent So over time over time all of it would be non unrestricted You are 1000 correct 1000 so where there is a concern is Great that all sounds awesome And that's a great way to be able to use all of your money In all of your EIDL funds in your business without any kind of restrictions and make sure that you're using them correctly But when you're taking those other monies out you have to remember and this comes to your point Kedma about being strategic you can't just like you said you can take it out as an owner's draw. Yes, you can But just spending that money then on a corvette might not be your best move because you are you have to be paying that money back So this is why I will strongly recommend we tear the knowledge When you are setting up a legal structure for your business We always want to we always we we legal will recommend that we tear the liability, right? You will see like you have a A corporation and below that corporation you may have one or two companies and below that you may have What do they try and do they're trying to tear the the liability to prevent the liability from escalating and putting yourself in a position, right? Yeah, that's no different than what you can do with the EIDL. What you're doing is you're you're tearing the probability of mistakenly Misappropriating the funds and the way you can avoid that is by tearing it by bringing in other consultants When you have a CPA that's reviewing it when you have a bookkeeper that's reviewing it when you have a separate bank account When you have a line item that communicates for your office manager to indicate what you're spending it on You're creating a trail So if the audit happens, it's not just lis coming in to defend it lis Oh, let me bring in my bookkeeper. Oh my bookkeeper knows this. Let me bring in my CPA My CPA knows about it also on my admin manager And what you're doing is you're making sure that everyone is on the same page But if you're just the sole owner And you're just taking this, you know, that's where we can find some Concerns again unintentional. Now you mentioned something about um using it for For uh, you know something like a corvette The people who are concerned right now I can promise you that the ones that the That the ones that the irsa going after Are not you guys, okay? They're going after someone who spent $57,000 on pokemon cards Okay, they're going after someone who's you know, you know spent ridiculous amount of money You know, I hate to tell you this but like I think over a hundred thousand in strip clubs so We're not talking about the cleaning industry and situations right I would say that you're going to harm yourself more By not by denying the money or giving it back No Again I guess a couple of overarching points Can I make can I make a promise to everyone if you have this money sitting around you don't know what to do I'm I I meet with anybody for 10 15 minutes. No cost to you. Let's just get on a call Let's just talk through your fear. Do you know how many times fear prevents us from being successful? All the time the majority of the time all the time I asked I asked someone once who has been in the in the coaching business for 20 years Uh, he actually sold his company to richard branson and I said to what percentage of our success is tied to our mindset Oh He said 99 Only one percent is execution Everything else is in our head. We think about the fear. We think about the prevention We think about our thoughts And I think that for those people is I would just say just get on a call and get some certainty around it Okay, that sounds good. I I think it makes sense to um Tell people that yeah the fear is That's normal. Oh, you're not alone. A lot of people are afraid and that's just uh When you don't know what you're dealing with it's normal to be afraid, right? So get a little bit of education talk to somebody who does know Exactly and then figure out what to do next But i'm also hearing that you've got to have all the controls in place. I love the tiered advice Me too, you know, it is alone the idea This isn't like ppp the idea is that you are going to be paying it back And it's an investment if you're going to take that money you need to invest it rather than just spend it on expenses, I mean Ked, we've we've you know talk to people who tell stories about yeah, I got this idle loan and It was like 500 000 and i'm you know half of it's gone and I don't know where it at where it went It's like, well, that's not good So that's not good and that's and that and that that's why I think if you tear it and For some of you who don't have a board of directors you may decide to get keyman insurance You know get that insurance in place and it's it's not expensive, but just god forbid What happens if you're leading and something happens to you? We want to make sure everything's in place We want to make sure things are being paid Um, so I I think what I would encourage is the best way to fight and eliminate fear Is to create the systems around that fear should you be afraid? Yes. Is it a lot of money? Yes Is the sba going after people 1000% can you prevent it? Yes. All you're just going to do is tear it Right because if your accountant says yes and your bookkeeper says yes, what do you have to say? I'm not just you know, I talk like that's what I'm paying my bookkeeper for That's what I'm paying my cpa. Do you see how much easier it is for you? Absolutely. I I love that I've never heard anybody even talk about this tearing and it makes so much sense. It's so simple It's so simple and nobody does it. Yeah And it does believe that that fear. Yes And what you really want to do is just make sure that you're protecting yourself from being accused of fraud or some type of criminal activity Worst case scenario they're going to say well, you know, I hear what your cpa saying, but maybe we don't agree with that at the sba So this is what we want to do at this point. So I mean it's You know, they're reasonable They still want you to be successful as long as they can see that you're doing everything you reasonably can to use The money in the spirit in which it was intended But in the event that they go against your cpa's decision Then you have a decision to make because what does the cpa have? They have a responsibility to hold their They're training their knowledge their liability To the level of the law and now you could say great. I'm bringing my cpa in to figure this out That's what I pay them for I pay them for that expertise And I guess the just takes the edge off The part is really tricky though as we're a lot of Your analogy where brandon says he jumps off the cliff to build the airplane as he's falling That's kind of where we are with some of these roles because we're Some of these roles really haven't even been written yet Um 1000 percent And what I want especially for the smaller companies who are listening and saying You know, I'm not there yet. I don't I don't have it The company I think I use is is legal shield and honestly guys Anybody can reach out to me, but I mean 45 bucks a month and you get unlimited legal counseling If you can't afford 45 dollars a month for legal counseling, you have to see one of us anyway You really do right? Yeah, no, it's a good point If you can't make 45 dollars a month work for you where you get unlimited legal counsel and get yourself in a position You have to meet one of us anyway So so now now I want to just make sure we're clear One of the things we have to be mindful of is where do we get our knowledge knowledge is not free Knowledge is not free because if you hear my voice or you watch me And you take my advice and you implement something it's not free knowledge Right So the person that you get your knowledge from that you implement you have to make sure That they're knowledgeable in that space. That's why I like the tier Because I cannot tell you how many times I will get a different opinion within the same area of expertise This is why I work in the when I work with uh intellectual property attorneys I'll get one person says well my attorney says we need to we need to file this and and we can protect this and I say You know what I agree, but let me have my other attorney review it I'm not negating your attorney. I'm just seeing if there's a different interpretation And how many times do we see that? That that happens where one attorney will say yes This is perfectly fine check and then the other one says oh no no you're putting yourself at risk Exactly by by doing that. That's so common And it's so common also in the CPA world. You know how many times I will see a client I'll say okay. I need your tax returns and I'll say Why does it show for the last three years you had a negative net margin and he'll say Well, we made all this money But my tax attorney my tax account decided to write everything off and I could go to another CPA same books Yeah, and the margins are going to show a net margin of 20 percent, but that could be the difference of them getting alone or not getting along Yeah, so right. So I always say just verify Get a second opinion ask someone else And then you can always decide to turn the money away or you can call me Before you turn the money away. Let's make that as a rule. Yeah Please call Edna before you turn the money away. How's that? Is that okay? Can we? Absolutely Before you before you just say no to SBA. Can you just reach out to me? And yes, we will make that a rule. You can't turn the money until you've at least called Edna once We do have a question here Are not a question Brian Brian Murtaugh is saying maybe Brian maybe Not maybe how about let us know a little bit more about what your maybe is about Yeah, what's your maybe about? Yeah, because I I kind of missed that. I'm sorry. I just I'm catching it We also see I think you have Somebody named Eric. Who yes, he's amazing. Yeah. Hello. Hi, Eric. Yeah, he's he's dynamite. He's dynamite um Yeah, let me know while while we're doing that. I think what I would also want to make sure is as you're trying to navigate your business Spend some time figuring out how your business can become more attractive for investments Which could be everything from SBA investments, but it doesn't necessarily have to be it could actually be an investor Who is actually intrigued with your company and maybe wants to infuse funds and help you grow And there can be a benefit on both sides um, I like the idea of investments because then you get uh, uh, you know With that a lot of times their connections and their consulting And their direct, um infusion of of knowledge in your company as opposed to just an SBA loan, which is more like Here's the money figure out. Good luck. Yeah So think think about that because again, those are different options, but they they yield different kind of results Hey Yeah Outside investors will a lot of times bring expertise to to your organization that you don't have And and they don't have to have controlling interest. I mean, this is where people panic they're kind of take all my you know It really a lot of times they're taking a pretty small amount depending on your size of the company And maybe it's profit sharing. Maybe it's a loan back. That's a private loan I just don't want people to feel afraid That just because they're going to use an investor that that that means that someone's going to take their company away That's again another fearless That has to be resolved because companies Do this all the time and we have to remove that that scariness that myth that just it's not true And I think a lot of times because the people that come into our industry Come in at at a different place than a lot of industries Leaders come in so that a lot of times people will come into our industry because They had some free time And they're like, okay, I'm just going to start cleaning some houses Because I have some free time and then they find themselves with a business That maybe they didn't prepare to to run and to be able to manage And they're still trying to manage it like it's just them out there shopping at the Dollar Tree and buying it getting their vacuum running and You know, they find themselves with 20 employees And They're they're struggling Yeah, they're struggling because because they they never actually plan to run a business They just were trying to fill up a little bit of free time and Before you know it accidentally they created a business Yeah And they can get themselves in a bind just like the You know, you were talking about tom where The like the couple of people that we were talking about that Don't know where their idle funds went. It's not that they It's not that they can't find out. They they didn't spend them in a bad way You know, they spent them on legitimate Things they spent them in their company Yeah But there was not a plan there and that money's gone and they have to start paying it back soon And they still have more money that they need to not have disappeared in the same way Right, and that's where you just want to have a strategist, you know, someone who can just help you with that I want to say one more thing. I know we're kind of coming up to the hour. I can't believe it already I know This is very important and I think at your at the event it may be something for I would invite people to think about If you have two companies struggling and you realize you're really good at one aspect of the business and they're really good at another aspect It could be as simple as They're really good at marketing, but they don't have the capacity to meet their clients You're really good at cleaning, but you don't have the capacity to meet the marketing or social media It is not Unusual for two companies to merge or come together create an alliance and I love those ideas I actually believe in that as a concept and I've done it myself as a business So It doesn't have to be an official merge But there could be some kind of strategic partnership that allows So one of the things I love the best is if two companies are going after the same customer And paying the same amount of marketing. Let's say they're putting out 10,000 a month Let's say it's tom and I I would approach tom and I'll say tom. I know you're paying about 10,000 a month and i'm paying 10,000 a month So we're paying 20,000 a month for the same customers Arguably that's not a smart move. What I'd rather do is I'd rather align with you because you and I are in the same space Let's put our heads together Let's work for the benefit of both companies and then let's split the marketing dollars So we're instead of 20,000 We're bringing in 10,000 we're splitting it We're making more money as a company. We're leveraging more resources because we're working together and too many people are afraid of doing that They're too afraid to have that dialogue and I say Have the dialogue Marketing recruiting a lot of your back room Indirect labor. There's so many opportunities to the economies of scale Yeah, we we are at the top of the hour though. How did this happen? I don't know, but I have another meeting right now Well, we know we have to let it go But I do want to remind everybody or not remind them I want to let them know that you're going to be back So on december 6th kedna So for everybody that wasn't able to get all of their questions answered December 6th, we're going to be talking about budget planning for 2022 and that's going to be huge for people That'll be huge and if anybody wants to hop on Or before the the show send information about their budget or questions. I'm happy to answer the questions That gets sent in because that would be fun All right, that that sounds exciting actually. Yeah, so maybe there's a way to let them know or mind them Yeah, and if they want a hot seat, you know, why not we can also Do that as well All right. Well, that does sound great All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. We'll be back Wednesday I know we're keeping you late. You got to go Bye kedna. We understand bye. Bye So Marcus Sheridan is going to be here Wednesday And if you know most of you probably know Marcus Sheridan have heard him speak He always brings it, you know, they ask you answer Honestly, I'm not sure if we're going to be able to tie this directly into budgeting and Accounting or not Finance and accounting, of course we will he's going to tell us how to bring in more money Yeah, it'll be it will be fun. It'll be education. You will enjoy hearing Marcus So five o'clock eastern on wednesday be here. Bye. Bye y'all