 Okay, hi, we're with Smart Business Moves today and our guest is Tom Stewart. Hey, Tom. Hi, how are you? I'm quite well. I'm glad you're able to make it here today. Well, we're just getting started, you know. It's nowhere to go but up, right? Hey, Denise, did you catch that, Denise? Were you here when Tom joked? Not sure what happened there. That was interesting, Tom. I've never seen you do that one before. That was good. Hey, what is this weird background I have? Look at my background. What do you mean? This is the really old Smart Business Moves background. Oh yeah, that's the money thing. That's not mine. Where's my background? That's interesting. I'm sorry, Tom, you're choking there. Yeah, that's okay. I don't know where this background even came from. Okay, Mike, stop, cam, share, invite. Maybe here. Here we go. I bet I got it. So what are you talking about today, Tom? High school band competitions. Well, that is what we were talking about while we're waiting for everybody else. So why don't you share a little bit about that? I actually think it's kind of interesting. It's kind of exciting, actually. My son plays in his high school marching band. They just won the state championship last weekend. And they're going to be going to Indianapolis for what they call the Grand Nationals, the national championship this weekend. So I'm going to be going to Indianapolis in a couple of days to watch a bunch of high school marching bands from all over the country. And yeah, it's kind of cool. We're excited about that. How long are you going to be there, Tom? I'm going to be there until Saturday night. The whole thing wraps up Saturday night really late. I'm going to get up Sunday morning. And actually I'm going to get on a plane Sunday morning in Indianapolis and go out to wherever it is, Las Vegas. Vegas, okay. Because that's what I was wondering. We have to be in Vegas. Well, one day. What time are you getting in? Yeah, I come Sunday. I'm getting there Sunday. I don't know, afternoon late. Well, I'm getting in really late, like 10 30 on that night. Let's see. Do I gotta get us fixed? Did I get my green screen fixed? Yeah, you're good. You're current. You got the 2021 version. Yeah, don't know why it does that every periodically. But yes, Liz, it is. Yay. Thank you. I know. Super exciting. So what, what is he thinking? Does he think that he actually has a chance? Richard, I mean, sorry. Yeah, they think they're going to do well. I mean, the way the whole thing works is they have preliminary Thursday and Friday and then the 12 best bands from their play Saturday for what they call the finals. They did a super regional somewhere in Alabama a few weeks ago, several weeks ago, maybe a month ago, and they took first place there as well. So they think that, you know, they're one of the better, better bands in the country. But there's a lot of really good bands in the country. So who knows, but for exciting though, it's kind of like sports, right? You have to be, I'm guessing it's exactly like sports to just keep whittling it down until we get to who's the best in the land. And just to get to this level, you've got to be really, really, really good. The thing about sports, and I've gone through that with with some of the kids as well as typically a competition with like, there's room you can screw up and still kind of get back. But at this level, you got like 200 and some kids running around and if just anybody screws up, it kind of blows it. So there's no, not much of an opportunity to say, okay, we'll just come back and, you know, we're still in it. It's anyway, like I'm saying, I didn't even know understand half of it. Well, I think it sounds exciting. You know, we should, I just realized Tom that you mentioned before we got on here that we should probably mention Peter. Yeah. And I know a number number of us in the industry have known Peter for a long, long time. You know, I'm at Peter. It had to be like maybe 2004. You know, it was when we were first getting Arksy going and he was he was like one of the original we didn't really have a board of it. Like a like a formal board, but it was like an advisory council and he was one of the original, you know, founders in that group that, you know, help get get Arksy started. I know that, you know, he was active active in the industry for for a long time. You would always see him at events, you know, at convention. It's going to be kind of weird going to convention this year and knowing that Peter's not going to be there. I felt like that with the first year that Teresa, you know, I was like, really hard and they're such close. I'm pretty sure they were best friends. Yeah, Teresa Ward was a very good friend of Peter's I mean they were really close and she, you know, she was a big part of getting Arksy started as well. She had a really large successful cleaning company in Long Island. I think a lot of you guys probably know Teresa Ward and she passed away suddenly with a heart attack. It must have been several years ago now. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to say because it always feels like such a short amount of time, but then when you ask somebody, they're like, no, it's been five years. It never seems like it. And Peter had a heart attack, I understand it and had a series of them, I guess, over a course of a week and just didn't quite, didn't quite make it. So anyway, for all of us who enjoy the community that we share in as cleaning business owners, especially, you know, with Arksy, but a lot of things have spun off of that with Arksy. It's just the fact that we're able to communicate and share in this manner. You know, a lot of people did things a long time ago to kind of create that community. Peter certainly contributed to that. Yeah, absolutely. He was a fun guy. I mean, it was not, it was never boring if Peter was around ever. No. You know, Peter, if Peter was in the room, you knew it. Yeah, everybody knew it. Yep. Okay, he's going to be absolutely missed by a lot of people, a lot of people. He touched a lot of people's lives. So this is about two o'clock in Las Vegas time, I guess. So week from now, we're going to, are you going to be presenting Liz or maybe a little bit later? Yep. One hour. One like a week and 45 minutes. One week and 45 minutes I'll be presenting. Yep. So if you haven't, if you haven't bought your tickets yet for Arksy, a major travel arrangements for the convention, the window is still open. I mean, still do it. Oh, sorry, Tom, go ahead. No, go ahead. Yeah. It's just my understanding that, you know, a lot of people have been signing up here more recently. I mean, it's kind of a rush and it's not unusual. I mean, we see that more and more with live events that people just kind of wait for the last minute and say, okay, I think I'm going to go. I know quite a few people. Actually, Sherri Weaver's just emailed me. Oh, I did like a hot topic Tuesday for Arksy on Tuesday. She emailed me on Thursday or Friday. I think it was saying that because of that hot topic Tuesday, she's now coming to convention. So she, she remembered this thing. I wish I had her email up, but she wrote something along the lines of that it reminded her that even if she gave me examples of two things that she got out of that presentation. And she said, and it reminded me that even if I only get one, one percent out of the events that I go to, those could be making the big difference. And she lives in Canada. And it is a chunk of change for her that head over here. You know, she's looking at some, some big money. She's making it happen. I am. And just the, just the mechanics of that. I mean, I went to Vancouver, I guess it was three weeks ago. Yeah. And you had to get a COVID test. One of the, one of the, not the rapid one, but the one that takes like a day or so to get back. You had to get one of, you had to get one of those right before you left. And then you had to get another one in Canada in order to get back into the US. And if something happened and you were in Canada and it didn't work, you had to quarantine for, for 10 days. So I guess it's the same deal with Sherry. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. Maybe things have changed over the last couple of weeks. And the numbers have been dropping a lot. So maybe, maybe, maybe it's not as bad, but you know, everybody's still nervous about COVID. And I know we got kind of lucky where everybody was worried. Going back to school was going to, you know, make things spike and get bad again. We got kind of lucky there, but here we are going into the colder weather. So there is a concern there as well, you know, going back in the fall and winter. Well, they had a webinar on Friday and I missed it. I don't know, Liz, did you have a chance to see it? They were going to be talking about all the safety precautions and things they're going to be doing. I think it, I mean, there's going to be masks required for some of it, I think, right? Yep. For sure. And you have to have your immunization card for some things. I don't remember what those things are, but you have to bring your card with you or show something where you had recently had a test within 48 hours or something. So the other really big piece that a lot of people didn't know about, haven't heard about is that there are no shuttles this year. So we really should make a point of that. Making sure that everybody knows, depending on which, well, I guess it doesn't matter which hotel you stay in. There are no Arksy shuttles or ISSA shuttles this year. So if you're planning on staying in one place and you're trying to figure out where to go. One thing that is nice about valleys, which is the convention hotel or the Arksy hotel preferred hotel where they're going to have the round tables. And I don't know if they have any other events. Do you talk? I don't remember seeing any other events. I am not sure. I don't remember seeing like a welcome reception or anything that we have seen in the past. I think they're probably most likely trying to keep the large groups to a minimum as much as possible. But if that's not a concern for you to stay with all of the events and I'm not sure exactly what those are. You might want to stay at hotel that's closer to the convention center. I don't know. But one thing that is good about valleys is that they do have the tram and it's pretty close. I would say five minute walk from the hotel to the tram and then a bit of a ride and then the walk from the tram to the actual convention center is just a couple of minutes, like two, three minutes. So it's pretty convenient. That is. It's not a big deal to go around. It is. And the weather is usually nice and it's not a bad walk. It's supposed to be really nice. Is the walk from valleys? Can you walk from valleys to the convention center? Yeah. Oh, I didn't know that. I am pretty sure. Oh yeah. I had no idea it was that close. I knew the tram was a really good option. I was asking, I see the needs on here. I was wondering if she's going. If you are all the strategic success group members, we're going to meet on Monday night. Robin, if you're on here, we had said Wednesday, but it won't work because we have too many people that are leaving early. So Monday night while Tom's looking this up. Okay. It's okay. You got a lot of work to do. All right. I am. So. Yeah. I get to walk in this, but this is the arcsy agenda. So. Yeah, you're going to be speaking at three o'clock. On Monday. Tuesday. Let's see what's going on at the end roundtables. And that's going to be at valleys. So it looks like it's the first event. It looks like it's the first thing going on at valleys. At night. It doesn't look like there's anything other than that going on at valleys. I didn't see anything else. Nope. Nope. So, but it is very convenient. Monday it is great Robin. Thanks. We'll get times and all that stuff on details later. So Tom, what are we talking about? Oh, you guys wait first for if he gets rid of that. Did you see that Marcus is going to be there? Bright and early Monday. So that should be a great. A great start to the convention too. Oh, is this the walk? That's a drive. We'll see if I'm walking when it does. I'm sorry. That's a bit of a walk. It's 38. It's almost two miles. It's a two mile. It's a two mile walk. That's probably 45 minutes. Well, 30 38. If you go to the 1.9 mile route. Right here. I can't really see it very well. I'm just kind of basically. Guessing. Oh, there we go. I was good with that 46 minutes there. All right. So as little as 38 minutes. So if it's if it's moderate weather, that's kind of a nice walk each of breakfast on the run. On the walk. Perfect. Do me a favor. I'm staying at New York, New York. How far is that? I don't know. Look at that. You're right there. And anybody that wants to come see me at New York, New York. You could do that. But here, here we are at the convention center. And here we are at Bali. This is flamingo caesars. Bali's right here. You can get on the. Tram. The tram is so nice. It really is. What do you want me so that I could. Figure out what to search for. You want me to. Yeah. Do it for me, Tom. I know you guys are all just so excited to find out how long it's going to take me to get to. There it is. New York, New York hotel and casino. Yay. See how far away I am. Holy cow. It's a 31 minute tram ride. If you're walking, let's see what it is. It's like three miles. This is far. You can get a bike and do it. There's no flights available. There's what? Airplanes available. But they do have a tram. Right. The tram. Oh yeah. The tram should do you. Yeah. You got a little bit of work to do. You got to catch it at MGM Graham. Yeah. All right. That's okay. Okay. So what are we talking about today, Tom? Now that we have talked about. Convention. This is important stuff. No, it is. Convention. No, it is. And I'm very much looking forward to it this year. It's going to be a different experience. It's been a long time since we've all gotten together. So smart transportation moves from the airport to the strip. They usually do have a shuttle, a hotel shuttle, Robin. So I've always taken a hotel shuttle. And it's kind of a luck of the draw though. I mean, you know, some of them you're going to be on it for a while and go into a lot of different hotels before you. So, you know, I've spent 45 minutes before on the shuttle going from the airport just because they make so many stops. Oh, Lily. The convention is November 15th through the 18th. It is Uber. Shovels out of business. Whoa. The shovels out of business. Wow. Interesting. Okay. Well, Uber works well. Another thing you can do is depending on when you're getting in, a lot of times people will ride share because so many people are coming in to go to the convention. So, yeah, Lily, if you show up at the convention, show up at my session at three o'clock on Monday. Actually, I have quite a few sessions this year. I have a bunch of small sessions too. So later on in the week, I'm hoping to see my people there, Robin. We certainly want to be there for, for Marcus. He's going to basically do to pretty much, you know, book out the morning for, for, for Monday. But, you know, we had Marcus on here. It was Wednesday. Wasn't it? Yeah. Wednesday. And he's a very dynamic speaker. He's got a lot of really good information. He engages his audience. I mean, he does. It's, it's not like it's a can presentation. He just like hangs out in the audience and he just create, I mean, he's, he's got a theme and he's got a point, but a lot of it is just impromptu. And he kind of makes it work with, with where the audience wants to take it. So, Yes, in Vegas. And yes, absolutely. He is super engaging. I don't know. He's amazing. He is very inspirational too. It's interesting because you can hear him say the same thing that you might have heard somewhere else, but it sounds doable. It sounds like, yes. Yes. I can do that. That makes good sense. Are you giving Lily a link, Tom? She wants to know how she can get the information. Maybe post the link that you just had. I can do that. Lily, have you ever been before? If you haven't, do your, I don't know where you're located or anything, but do your best to get there. This is the first one that we've had in a couple of years. And it's going to be amazing. They're, I don't, I've never missed one since, since I got into, well, I guess since I got into Arksy and found out about them, I've never missed one. And I have always found them to be valuable. I come home, even if I didn't get any ideas and I always do get a lot of great ideas, but even if I didn't, I come home so energized and motivated. It's so expensive, inexpensive this year. You cannot beat the price. It's less than $200 for a full access pass this year. So if you make it, you will never regret that you did. Some of my best friends, I met at convention. Yeah, actually, I think most of my best friends, I met at convention years ago. Actually, Tom, you met at convention, didn't we, Tom? Probably certainly, certainly happened through Arksy. I mean, you're going to meet a lot of, a lot of people, if you've never been to one of these events, the networking is in and of itself is worth the trope. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think most people value the networking at least as much as they do the education at least. And the showroom floor too is awesome. I love the showroom floor. So yeah, if you can make it happen, make it happen. Come see me at three o'clock on Monday and I will talk you around. I'll help you get acclimated to. I mean, I can, we can connect earlier, but I'll for sure be speaking on Monday. Alrighty, so, well, we're, we're using up our whole hour here, Tom. We, we got to talk about the topic because isn't this the first one of the, no, it's not, not even close. Yeah. Actually it is. For what? The first one of the topic for the month. No, this is it. But Monday, Monday we had. What do we do one day Monday was the first. Kedma Kedma was our guest on Monday. Yeah. And Kedma talked about SBA money and different ways of, of, you know, raising, raising capital through debt. Yeah. That was a great call actually. For anybody that missed it, go back and watch it. Definitely worth a replay on that. All right. So what are you, so Tom, what do you want to, what do you want to talk about Liz? We're our expert today. You are the person that we're bringing on today because, and actually for me of all the people I know, you pay more attention to the numbers and the money and how to be profitable than anybody else I know of in our industry, including the financial people, including those people that are accountants and, and bookkeepers, et cetera. So I wanted you on here to talk about a couple of your passions. You have a couple. Yeah, I do. I guess. No, I do. And thank you. Thank you for the kind thoughts. I don't know if all of that is necessarily true, but you know, I'll take it. Come on. You know it is. I, I definitely believe that if you study the numbers, you can sleep better at night and you can make decisions with more confidence. And you can get predictable outcomes in your business. I mean, every once in a while weird stuff happens, like unprecedented events, global pandemics and whatnot. Yeah. But as a rule, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's a tough business. But if you are actually have the mechanics in place to capture data, it's like driving. Can you imagine driving a car without a gas gauge or speedometer and trying to figure out if this is like not, not to mention like GPS. Forget about that. But if you didn't have any of that stuff on the dashboard, how could you do it? Well, you could do it. Tom, you would just have to make sure that you had enough money and savings to pay the speeding tickets and to, you know, the tow truck when you run out of gas. Yes. To manage all of the money that you're going to lose from not having that information. Right. You could still do it, which is what I think a lot of people do right now. I love that analogy. That's pretty much what people do. I can totally run my business. I don't need that stuff. Nope. It's true. You don't. You're just going to struggle to be as profitable and to, to make money as easily in this quickly. And you know, how important that is and how sophisticated it needs to be. I guess in part changes, depending upon your business model and what your aspirations are and how complex your business is. I mean, I know a lot of solopreneurs out there who have their own businesses that are, you know, cleaning a house or two on their own and they're their only employee. And I mean, you still have some accounting involved and you still need, you know, to have a basic understanding of your numbers. You want to, you know, make sure that you're getting paid, you know, fairly for the work that you're doing, but the complexity gets more and the requirements get more and the, the benefits get higher and the risks get greater as you start hiring people and create, you know, other expenses where you wind up with, with space costs and insurance costs and marketing costs and everything involved with, with hiring and maintaining a committed, you know, workforce that if you're not measuring the outcomes, then, you know, you're basically just rolling the dice. Just like we do, just like we'll be doing in Vegas. Doesn't mean it's a great thing to do y'all. Vegas is still around because they win more than we do. So. So one of the big things that kind of ties into the discussions from, from, from last week. And I guess the general theme of finance as a whole is a big part of finance is where do you get your capital? Where do you know, do, are you, are you financing your business just through, sweat equity? Are you, are you like self-funded as a bootstrap operation? A lot of people start businesses that way and build businesses that way where, you know, maybe they start off with a little bit of money on their own just to kind of get started. But for the most part, you know, they're taking the money that they generate week after week and they're putting it into the business and eventually grow it to be very large business. And that's a viable way of, of starting a business. And you know, there's a lot of people in this industry have been successful doing that. You know, as you go from being the solopreneur to a larger company with employees and the costs that we talked about though, there is this thing that happens from a profit standpoint. And we've talked about profit ad nauseam. We know what profit is at this point. Right, Liz? Yep. Well, we have different people watching all the time too. Hey, Rohan. That's you. Yep. That was me too. That's a lot of people out there. It is simplest at the simplest level is the amount of money you have left over is the money your customers pay you when you subtract out all your expenses in the simplest form. Let's call that profit. And if your customers are paying you more than what your expenses are, then you're, you're making money. You're the only employee. That's also your salary. So it's pretty hard, I guess, to wind up not having something to take away from, from your labor each day. But once you start hiring other people, it's really possible to spend more money in a week than what your customers paying you or, you know, paying you. You know, you wind up having to get somebody to do some office work for you. Maybe it's a VA initially and you need to get some insurance and you want to do some marketing and yada, yada, yada, yada. And before you know it, you're spending more money than what your customers are paying you. And every time you think, okay, all I need to do is add three more homes to my schedule and I'm going to break even. What happens? You know, is what happens? Yeah. So the same, hold on just a second. What happens is you find out you've got another expense that pops up. It's like, oh gee whiz, now that I've got, you know, these three more homes, I'm going to have to buy more equipment or I'm going to have to, you know, I need a supervisor now or whatever it is and you're chasing it. And every time you grow from a, from a number of home standpoint, from a revenue standpoint, revenues, the money your customers pay you for the service you provide, you wind up your expenses also grow and sometimes even, even more. We call that the valley of despair. It's like you could be making more money as a solo cleaner than what you would be once you start growing until you get to a point where you pop out the other side of the valley of despair. And at that point, you have a real, you know, I say a real business, you have a business with employees and, you know, marketing and insurance and, you know, all the other things that you think about, you know, with large cleaning companies. The trick is getting from one side of the valley of despair to the other. And if you're going to bootstrap it, you know, you really got to keep those losses to a minimum because you're basically doing it with your own money. So, you know, at some point you can run out of money if you're bootstrapping. So you really got to know your numbers and you know, you can have a, have a lot of sleepless nights doing it that way because you can be cutting it tight and be laying in bed, you know, Thursday night trying to figure out what to do when you're on Friday morning. Yeah, I know a lot of people are doing that for a long time, too. So that's part of what we don't want to have people dealing with because that is no way to run your life, right? Just be miserable week over week over week over week. Especially when you're happy. But you know, there's a, there's a lot of ways to be miserable. So... Yes, there are. I know, I know that there are a lot of people in this industry, in the house cleaning, you know, community who own businesses, run businesses that are shall we say risk adverse when it comes to taking on debt. They are, a number of them are like disciples of Dave Ramsey. Dave Ramsey has some really awesome material and you know, there's a lot of people who have gone down the wrong path with debt and he straightened them out. I think we could all benefit and learn by you know, philosophies that are put forth by by people like Dave. And you can apply that to your business too, if you choose to. And you're bootstrapping, right? Yeah. Nothing wrong with that. But a lot of businesses do use debt as a tool to help bridge that gap from one side of the valley of despair getting to the other. Or they use it as a tool once they've popped down the other side and they're profitable but then they want to be even more profitable. They want to grow and they need cash to do it. Maybe they need some vehicles. Maybe they need maybe they want to do an acquisition and buy a competitor. Maybe they want to do something from a marketing standpoint that they've got good reason to believe after research is going to generate a lot more business for them but they need to build that new website. They need to do work with an SEO company to get their ranking where they need to and they're burning cash that they're not going to be making back. They'll be making it back in the years ahead but at that instant they don't have that money and without that money they can't get those assets and with those assets there the belief is that they're not going to grow. All of those are rational reasons for debt. So at that point I guess it's a matter of where does that money come from and how do you manage that and what do you do with it. Again it's a choice but it's a little bit different than your personal life. If you're running your personal life off of credit cards then arguably Dave Ramsey has something to share with it that you'll benefit from. Well I think in your personal life it's a lot different too because the income that's coming in to your personal life tends to be more fixed where with your business you have so much more opportunity or it seems like you have a lot easier opportunity to be able to grow what your money is faster. And you have more control over that in a more visceral way than with your personal income. I mean unless it's tied to having a company. So having your own company right. But if you're working for someone else the amount of money that's coming into your personal income is closer to being fixed than it is if you are an entrepreneur. Your options at that point are to drive for Uber in the evening or find another job or buy lottery tickets. It's closer for sure. I'm joking about the lottery tickets by the way. Thank you Tom. Do you have any and we've never talked about this before Tom and so for everybody that's watching you might be like Liz why do you have to be questions that I don't have the answer to. I'm not knowing that you will I'm just curious if you do have any kind of recommendations or benchmarks or parameters anything that we can look at as to when people might want to be putting money into their business like when they're a certain size or when they need a certain thing because and the reason I'm asking this is one of the things that I notice a lot is when especially when I'm working with a smaller company they want to be big in their minds what their idea of big is so badly that sometimes they're spending too fast that they can't grow into it quickly enough and they put themselves into a really precarious situation just because of their how fast they're able to grow either in their area or because of their mindset or for whatever reason so it's I kind of feel like they need to show some growth to be able to see how much they're going to be able to grow to get a sense of how much they make sense to take on or is there a number like don't take on more debt than you can pay off in two years or is there anything like that do you have any kind of parameters or suggestions a couple of thoughts on that it starts with knowing your numbers taking on debt without having like your basic financial sheets let's just start you know with a shell and a balance sheet and we've talked a lot about you know how to structure a P&L on smart business we spent the month of January talking about that but in a nutshell out of the money your customers pay you the revenue that money goes in one of several places if you think about it being split between covering what we call your variable costs which is basically your labor costs variable that goes up and down with every home you clean that number goes up and you need to think of it as a percentage of the revenue that you generate we talk a lot about this KPI metric which is really important payroll to revenue if you know what that percentage is then you know as your revenue goes up assuming that numbers you know static and for the sake of this discussion pretend that it doesn't change that you can quickly figure out how much money you're going to have left over after you pay your cleaners and that money covers your fixed expenses and what's left over after that is your profit so if you've got the mechanics in place if you've got the accounting in place if you've got the chart of counts setup and a lot of companies sadly that we work with initially don't they've been trying to run their business the way that their accountants set up their quick books and not to slam accountants but but I'll let you know that most accountants that work with small businesses their purpose is pretty much focused all on filing income taxes and for that point they don't really care about variable cost or fixed cost or cost a good sold or gross profit all they want to know is what the bottom line is they set your quick books up that way makes their life easier but you really can't run your business from it we've seen that right Liz we've seen it a lot so so much and actually I think we're going to have DNA on Wednesday aren't we Tom I'm going to be in Indianapolis on Wednesday I will I'm going to and she's going to be talking about the chart of accounts a little bit and P&L and some stuff like that so that'll be interesting but so what you're saying Tom is first know your numbers because if you know your numbers that you can make decisions with confidence so once you know your numbers and know you know how you're going to pay that many back basically because whenever you're borrowing money what it really comes down to is well I got all of these expenses that are already have that's going to require cash week after week month after month in addition to that I'm going to be adding more of a cash requirement paying this off that I'm getting ready to take so then what are you going to do with that debt and if you're going to be able to apply it in a way where it's going to generate more cash for you then what it's going to cost you to pay it back that's called a return on investment and if I can borrow money with confidence that you know if I have to pay back a thousand dollars a month but that money I borrowed allowed me to invest in equipment and space and people and you know the tools to generate more revenue if I can get two thousand dollars more a month than what I would have before borrowing that so I can pay a thousand to cover the debt and the other thousand is money that's going in my pocket right yeah absolutely I mean you're going to pay taxes on that so you don't get to keep all of it but you know it's that's kind of the whole logic behind using debt you can start out without cleaning home wine and use debt to start a business and grow a business and grow it quickly but if you don't have the strategy if you don't know how you're going to invest that money and if you don't have a way of measuring outcomes and making sure that you're putting that money to work what you don't want to do is spend it on stuff and wind up not generating any more revenue because if you weren't making money before now you're even making less money because you have to pay the debt back so that's where having the mechanics in place from an accounting standpoint and the KPI standpoint to make sure that you're putting that money to use to grow your business all right so what do you think about this Tom and I know we've had a couple of conversations about this so in the past it made sense to invest in some things like cars, office space just some different things maybe different benefits for your employees what are you thinking these days are good investment opportunities or options or how about bad ones or just things to think about in that realm that's a good question you know roll the clock back let's roll the clock back 20 years what the heck we can do because we can because we can right the business model was different technology I mean we still had computers and there were still quick books there was even the internet 20 years ago but barely yeah it was a more of an analog business for sure and it was more of a brick and mortar business it was a more of a hard what I call hard capital business you'd buy stuff you needed cars you needed all of that just to make it work because these things weren't even around 20 years ago right there were phones there were flip phones you actually used them to talk to people that was about it you could text how long have we had smartphones I don't know I think about 11 years ago the iPhone came out maybe 11 wow considering how they've completely changed our lives that's crazy it's only been that amount of time back to what you were talking about back then it was like buy space because real estate is an investment and you can occupy yourself and run your business out of it and I've played that game several times over the years and it's worked well the technology and this guy here had a lot to do with it it's changed it's created more options for us in terms of how we can build a business and what type of business model that we use and we had this unprecedented event a little over what about a year and a half ago now yep a little bit more actually like a year and seven months now that's crazy isn't it where the idea of social distancing and not getting people together in big groups and all of that has kind of pushed us towards more people I know in my business and I believe in your business too is that you've got more smaller teams if not solos and not even coming into the office every day and there's a lot of efficiencies for that and another thing that's driving that too is what's happening and just the demands of the workforce in general that people want to be more flexible have more control over their schedule and so forth and spending time every day looking out of a windshield driving to an office just for the privilege of getting ready to go to work and then they have to drive from the office to the first home with their cleaning and then doing the same thing in reverse at the end of the day it's a horrible waste of time there's going to be a day there's going to be a time that we're going to be telling people about how we used to do it in the old days like the yellow page people are going to laugh about that people are going to laugh about it at home no obligation consultations in order to do sales they're going to laugh about you had people drive to the office every day why for why what they do we gave them their work instructions on pieces of paper yeah these are the homes you're cleaning today we gave them keys we gave them paper we gave them supplies and people are going to be why why did you give them all that stuff that seems silly so I'm giving you a slow answer to your question but is real estate still a good investment yeah I think so there's probably some deals out there right now I've actually spent some time looking at real estate over the last week or so for other reasons and there's a belief that there's a lot of pent up demand for office space and it's out there right now but the belief is by next summer a lot of that's going to be snatched up like in the news there's a lot of things have happened over the last week or so with Pfizer's got this new pill that you take that's going to be on the market by the end of the year it's like if you get COVID you take it within like three days and you're not going to get that set the likelihood of going to the hospital is really diminished and if you're vaccinated not vaccinated not whatever there's a lot of really we're on the brink of saying that the pandemic part of this is over COVID is going to be what they call endemic that it's going to be out there for years and people are going to get it but well here take this Pfizer pill and drink some water and take a nap and you're going to be okay wow that's awesome I haven't heard that Tom that's awesome information about that and how long did you say that they're thinking that that's going to be until it's on the market by the end of the year wow yeah there were all kinds of tests you know with the you know phase one phase two and the numbers the numbers were just so profoundly positive that you know the FDA and the CDC said just hey stop doing the test you're just wasting your time this stuff works let's just go ahead and get it to market that's amazing alright I'm excited about that I'm really looking forward to that okay so real real estate supply um you still got companies out there that are not doing well and you know a lot of people out there kind of want to get out of their cleaning business and acquiring somebody else's you know business they're customers anyway you know can be a really big opportunity there's a lot of details there you just don't want to go out and just do it without doing your due diligence this is a whole other discussion there's a lot of ways that you can screw that up and lose money too so I don't want to just say just do it but I'm telling you you know there's a risk involved but there's also potential for some big rewards there too so that's a play um investing in your digital marketing and again this gets into your strategy how big do you want to be, how many clients are you looking to attract what are the competitors in your particular market but building out your website and doing all the things from an SEO standpoint to make sure that you're getting the page rank you need in order to generate the demand um you know good investment um the technology involved both from a production management standpoint as well as from a work measurement and KPI accounting standpoint you don't want to you know this is 2021 for guide sex you don't want to be you know taking pieces of paper and trying to you know jam something in a spreadsheet to kind of figure out what your payroll to revenue is there's tools out there now where your cleaning technicians are doing everything through their phone and all the data that you need to know if if you're being productive and efficient and in essence controlling your costs in the way they're going to get you the predictable outcomes can be captured just through the normal course of work and you should have a dashboard giving you the basic information just think about if you had to get a calculator out in your automobile to figure out you know how many miles you could drive before you needed to get gas you'd be running out of gas all the time right yeah I know that you can't really say this you're not really going to say it but software is absolutely a good investment opportunity so and I'm going to say it because I talk to people in groups all the time and we end up having this conversation about oh my gosh but software can be so expensive absolutely it can but again it's because it's an investment investment it costs money that's kind of how it works you invest in it and then it pays you back dividends on that investment and so software is absolutely like that a good software program should be making it so that you can make more money faster with fewer resources spent etc so the bottom line is once you know the investment is implemented if you don't have more money in the bank at the end of the month then you did at the beginning of the month without you know if you don't have incremental more money in the bank every month because of that investment it wasn't a good investment so when you're looking at technology you need to be thinking about well how much time is this going to save time that I'm having to pay for how much additional revenue am I going to be able to generate how might how's this going to help me make better decisions to make sure that you know I'm getting the right amount of revenue for every job that I do and how's this going to help me control my my costs how's this going to help me get more revenue per labor hour or the type of questions that you need to be answering because that's really where the money is made which is really what I'm going to be talking about in Las Vegas on Wednesday as part of the ARCSE you know convention if you really want to know more about how to make more money off the homes you're cleaning you know we're going to be talking about that Wednesday afternoon I guess after Liz and I do cleaning trivia on the trade show floor yay myself it's fun I can't wait to do that cleaning trivia you guys need to be there for cleaning trivia it's going to be fun we've got awards right yeah yeah we do we have PHC classes in varying degrees so I think we have like a full three month all you can eat program I think we have two single classes we also have some cups we have all sorts of stuff and you play on your phone and y'all it's going to be fun so especially if you think you know about cleaning you know just before we got on the air you know I was thinking about using debt from a business standpoint and the most successful companies and in this country have used debt they wouldn't exist if it wasn't a lot they wouldn't exist if it wasn't for debt but you know they're professionally managed companies so they've got all the tools in place and for the most part they know how to use debt responsibly they're 17 trillion almost 18 trillion dollars worth of debt that businesses in the United States have on their balance shape trillion and we hear the word trillion flashed around a lot you know like nowadays we didn't use to congress just passed a trillion dollar plus infrastructure bill to build bridges and roads and fix the trains and electrical grid and a long list of other things I saw this I thought this was really interesting a thousand seconds ago is like 17 minutes right yeah it's reasonable a million seconds was like 12 days ago okay a billion seconds is 31 years so think about it a thousand is 17 minutes a million is 12 days a billion is 31 years a trillion is 31 700 that's like neanderthal type stuff you are a caveman in a trillion seconds you go back a trillion seconds and we'd be in a cave wearing a bare skin that is so hard to although I do like I still can't fathom that number it's still too big for me but it is for me with the years and the seconds so a million what's the difference between a million and a trillion it's both a lot of money right and it is 12 days to 31,710 years it then seemed like that big a million seconds ago we were getting ready for a halloween a trillion seconds ago we were out trying to save the tooth tiger for dinner we were using clubs wow that's awesome crazy we are at the top of the hour I am going to do band stuff towards the end of the week and then I'm hopping a flight out of indy going to vegas so you guys come to vegas I'll be there and we'll see and we'll network and have some fun what are you doing Wednesday Liz? I don't remember off the top of my head I'm pretty sure that we're having denay I think so and I don't know denay who's denay? denay? oh she is the cfo chick is that it? chick cfo and she is very well known in our industry for not only working as a bookkeeper but also working as your offsite cfo she is awesome she is very down to earth very energetic y'all are going to love her one of the things that they do in her company that I love is when she and I know we're out of time here I'll talk fast I'll just start spitting one of the things she does that is really awesome is when they do your they balance your checkbook and they do all of your stuff for the month and they update your pnl and they do all of that stuff you get a video every month you get a video where there's a problem different suggestions on things that you can do to attack some of those different numbers and if she thinks you need it to have a meeting with somebody she is I love these videos anyway everybody that I know that uses her swears by her and swears by the video she'll tell us all about this on Wednesday but that's just a really interesting thing I thought that's different so that will be Wednesday her name of her business is ScalingSmart no that's the title of the presentation ScalingSmart it's going to be good I'm excited I might actually I'm traveling but we'll make a point of going back and catching that so that'll be Wednesday 5 o'clock eastern and we'll be in Vegas next week so we're not going to be doing anything Wednesday but don't worry about that catch today and Liz on Wednesday and we'll see you soon bye bye