The Real Deal on Earnings and Entrepreneurial Resilience

Ever found yourself entangled in the pervasive myths that swirl around the lawn care industry? I certainly did. In a candid reveal, I peel back the curtain on the entrepreneurial odyssey that saw me leap from lawn care partnerships to fitness training and back to the grass roots of my business journey. It's not just a tale of soil and seed, but a chronicle for every entrepreneur who has ever stood at the precipice of innovation and pondered the plunge into the unknown.

This discussion is a hard look in the mirror for anyone who's felt the sting of skepticism from those closest to them. We hash out the real sacrifices necessary for entrepreneurial success and the resilience it takes to bounce back from setbacks. It's a candid conversation about the stamina required to endure the marathon of business ownership, and the recognition that the support we crave from friends and family must be earned, not expected. Through it all, I share insights into the gratifying aspects of forging your own path and building something from the ground up.

We're stripping down the glitz of social media's misleading financial triumphs to reveal the honest underbelly of business earnings. I confess to my own brush with this deception, discussing the consequences of misreporting and the vital importance of knowing your numbers. It's a no-holds-barred examination of the transparency that business owners owe to themselves and their audience, aiming to cut through the noise with unvarnished truth. So, buckle up for an episode that's set to arm you with the clarity needed to navigate the entrepreneurial waters with your eyes wide open.

Your listening is greatly appreciated!
So lets make "Mow" money ; )

To see live recordings and additional helpful content, please visit our Youtube channel at:
www.youtube.com/MowMoney2020

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Email: Mowmoneymindset@gmail.com
Web: www.beeleafmnm.com
Web: Mowtivationcolumbus.com

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Welcome back everybody to another episode of the Momentum Mindset Podcast. I want to thank you guys so much for joining. My name is Dana, I own the company B Lee Blanc Mowing and Maintenance and I am also on the creative team and we're the designing team, the founders of the Momentum Mindset. So if you're catching us on YouTube, welcome to the channel. I hope that you will find a reason to like and subscribe, especially from today's content. We're doing something very special. We're actually covering one of the videos from YouTube, the lawn care lies part one video. We're kind of doing a deep dive into those four lies that I talked about on that video today on the podcast, and so I'm so excited to do this episode I've been thinking about it nonstop for the past couple of weeks Very, very good. It's going to be very beneficial, especially for those of you that are new, looking to get into the industry this year, in 2024 or later down the line. Some great information I'm planning to give you guys to help you all make that adjustment.

Speaker 1: 1:00

Today's episode is sponsored by none other than my company, beleaf Lawn M&M LLC. Go check us out online at BeLeafM&Mcom If you are in the area. Family members that are in the area. Signing up for one of our packages or services can be a great gift, a great anniversary gift, a new home ownership gift. So all you have to do is go to BeLeafM&Mcom new home ownership gift. So all you have to do is go to BeLeafM&Mcom, hit on the new client the new, I think it says new client offer tab. You'll hit on that tab. It'll take you directly to a request and estimate link. You fill out the information and put in the code Mo Money M-O-N-E-Y 2024. And that will make sure that you get signed up for that $15 one-time cut, no strings attached. We believe you're going to love our services, love what we have to offer and, of course, from there we will discuss if you'd like to move further and use us for the remainder of the season to take care of your lawn care needs. So if you are a new client in any of those areas the greater Columbus area, go check us out and make sure you sign up to get that promotion over this next 15 days.

Speaker 1: 2:10

Now, with that being out the way, we're going to jump right into what we're talking about. I'm getting dry mouth because it's been a while since I recorded. I'm nervous. I feel like it's my first time doing a podcast again. Let's jump in.

Speaker 1: 2:26

We're talking about lawn care lies. Lawn care lies. This is such an important topic. Some of these lies we tell ourselves, some of these lies we hear from other people, maybe in the industry, people that aren't in the industry, that just have preconceived notions or opinions, and so I think it's good to address these, because this is one less thing that the new business owner, the upcoming law and care business owner, the one who's interested in probably just kind of toeing the line on the fence, not sure if they want to jump all the way in or not, will be the start of helping you overcome some of those fears, some of those obstructions or challenges that your mind is just going through with making decision. Or, if you've made the decision, your mind is going through and it's kind of blocking you from growing or expanding or profiting the way that you really want to or would like to. So I'm going to start with lie one. All right, lie number one is running a lawn care business sucks for various reasons. I think this is a standing lie.

Speaker 1: 3:30

Let me give you some history. My very first business I ran for three years was a partnership lawn care business. So I was 50 50 50 partners with a guy and I want to. I want to talk about that with him here. 50 partners with a guy and I want to talk about that with him here. So this way I don't you know. This way I can make sure that we're on the same page with how we remember things going between us, how we got started and how we split. So I'm not going to get too deep into that story. But that was my very first business, ran it for three years. It was a lawn care company similar to the one that I run now and I left that business. We parted ways. I left that business and went back to school, went back to college.

Speaker 1: 4:08

To finish college, once I graduated, I went for sports and exercise sciences so I could get into personal training and things like that. I thought that that was going to be my new business calling. So I started a fight club. I started private coaching MMA, amateur and and boxing, amateur striking and strength and conditioning so that was my big thing. I also did a little bit of work with bodybuilding athletes. If you go to my Facebook my personal Facebook back you know I was like 12, 13 years ago. You'll see pictures of me actually bodybuilding for natural competition and stuff and get my body together. So that was really big and I thought that that was going to be the business that I took off with. That didn't work.

Speaker 1: 4:52

My internship that I did from school as part of my graduation requirements was I had to work with professional athletes. So I got to work with professional football players, olympians, national championship teams and stuff like that. Of course I was not the head. I was there really mostly to observe and administrate and really just do grunt work that just bossed around, babysit, stuff like that. It wasn't a lot of my expertise being put, but I did learn some things from that and so once the fight thing didn't take off, I had a couple of clients on the weekends, a couple of clients I would see after work, stuff like that. But I didn't really jumpstart that business. That business ended up shutting down. I'm going the route of more track and football training, strength and conditioning, and I did that personal training, if you will, did that for a number of years, went back to boxing after that as a personal freelance coach.

Speaker 1: 5:49

Boxing had some good runs, got some good things, going to professional ranks my actual, my actual very first fighter that I ever trained came back to me when he turned pro and I started training him for his bouts. No, no big ups, but I'm going to be real. He never lost one fight under my tutelage. He never lost one single fight in his amateurs or in his professional career as long as I was in his corner, as long as I was strength and conditioning him and as long as I was doing some of his striking training alongside the assistant and head coach that was there to help him out. So I thought I was pretty good. I don't want to say I thought he was my ticket, but I knew the work that we had done, the relationship that we had. He was introducing me to other fighters, taking me to other gyms. It was really really good, gaining some momentum and again I just could turn it over to a place where I could just get away completely from my job.

Speaker 1: 6:38

I was working third shift probably all of these years during you know, all this training business stuff that I was doing. I was working third shift and I would train during the day, right when I got off. I'd meet a guy do road work and stuff like that. So that was the routine for years and years and I just could never build it or get it to a space where it took me off my job, which was very frustrating. But I didn't give up. I just kept moving, kept rebranding, kept renaming, kept doing something different, trying to be an entrepreneur. And so, probably from the time I started my first law company until this company, I literally started maybe I want to say eight, eight or nine different official businesses. Ok, in various different areas.

Speaker 1: 7:24

I was a dance instructor when I was younger. I used to breakdance. I used to breakdance like for real for breakdance spin on my hands, headstand, like all that stuff flip, roll, tumble, do all that kind of stuff. And I remember I would practice at the gym and one day, while I was practicing at the gym that I was a janitor at, the director saw me and said you know, kids are always stopping and watching you practice. Would you be willing to teach a class? And so I started teaching a class with them, but also private teaching lessons, going out to different events and competitions and stuff like that, having a lot of fun doing that. But thinking that that was going to be something that I could make a living off of. And again, I just couldn't turn it into enough revenue, enough clients, enough opportunities to take me off my job. So, you know, we got break dancing, we got boxing, we got the mowing thing that I did. I'm trying to think of what else.

Speaker 1: 8:19

I taught myself to play guitar. I'm a musician. I play about four different instruments, but I taught myself to play guitar. I got pretty pretty good, decent, decent. Definitely not the greatest, probably wouldn't be getting any gigs to go on tour or anything like that. I got asked to do a couple of weddings, you know, asked to do a couple of gigs like nightclub gigs, stuff like that throughout the years. But even that I was like, ok, I'm going to start teaching people. So I started trying to do online in-person lessons, stuff like that.

Speaker 1: 8:46

Like I was always trying to take what I was doing and turn it into a business and I just met challenges. Some of them had, some of them were the same challenges that I saw over and over. Some of them were just specific and nuanced to that specific industry challenge that I ran into and so, again, it just failed. I could not press past those challenges. I could not turn that business over either. I ended up circling back full circle, back to lawn care. All right, and this is an experience.

Speaker 1: 9:23

I'm going to give you an experiential truth, the truth that really combats the lie that lawn care business sucks. I don't know what the reason why people say that. Well, I'll say this Statistically, there's a small group of people, right, there's a small group of people that enjoy lawn care, like lawn care is their passion. I run a lawn care business, but doing lawn care is not my passion. I don't. I hate it. I'm actually allergic to grass, I'm allergic to dust, I'm allergic to pollen, but I spent three or four years out in the field grinding every day, so it's just a part of what came with the territory. I hated it, I didn't like it, but I did it because I loved being an entrepreneur. I love being my own boss, I love commanding my own schedule, I love making my own salary Right, naming my own price, my own value. So those are things that I love. But the truth is, lawn care doesn't necessarily suck. Being an entrepreneurship, being an entrepreneur sucks. That's really what sucks.

Speaker 1: 10:20

That was a big revelatory moment for me, because I think about all of the businesses I started, from the time I was 20 up until I was 32. And I think about how I ran into so many challenges with each one, and some of those and a lot of those challenges washed me out. At least eight or nine times I got washed out of entrepreneurship because of the challenges I ran into until I got here and I ran into the same challenges again and I just pressed past them. This time I had the experience. This time I had the gut check. This time I had the blood, sweat and tears. This time I had the ability, I had the willingness and the mentality to sacrifice All right.

Speaker 1: 10:55

And so I want to make it very clear Lawn care running a lawn care business does not suck any more than running a tech business. It does not suck any more than running a personal training business. It doesn't matter what business you're in. If you make cookies, if you bake for a living, if you make trinkets and ornaments, if you're a toy maker, I don't know what you do. But whatever it is you do or you decide to do, you need to understand the industry itself is not one that sucks. It is the act of being an entrepreneur that is very difficult. That is the thing that washes people out, and I talked about that on the video. So I'm not going to go too back like back over exactly what I said in the video.

Speaker 1: 11:32

But you got to understand, like if I could just put it simply, it's going to take a lot of time. It takes time to develop the skill set so that you can be successful, or hard work if you will. But effort, sacrifice, right, trial and error. You're going to have to be able to take some losses. You're going to have to be able to go into some situations mysteriously, not really having it all figured out and not really having everything under your hands, not barely having your legs all the way under you, steady. Not every decision that you have to make you'll have time to think it through and spend 30 days on it and practice, practice, practice.

Speaker 1: 12:07

Some stuff you have to be. Some opportunities are going to present themselves, some problems are going to present themselves that you have to make split decisions on. And guess what? If you've never made that decision, you may make up and make the wrong decision in that time. If you've never had to deal with that problem, you may come up with the wrong solution for that problem at that time. That's very likely and that's a loss you might have to take, but you can learn from that if you don't let it destroy you, if you don't let it create such a depression or such a discouragement in you that you walk away from it.

Speaker 1: 12:38

So it's very, very important, very, very important, to understand that, like trial and error, wins and losses you have to have endurance. You have to have endurance. You have to be able to take a lot of things. A lot of stuff is going to go wrong. A lot of stuff is going to happen that you don't anticipate, that you don't plan for, that you don't find beneficial or profitable, that you're not necessarily comfortable with, and you have to be able to keep going. All right, you have to be able to get up and keep going. So endurance is very big stamina. So I think about it like this Endurance is how much you can take without quitting or wilting. Stamina is how much you can give without quitting or wilting. So how many days in a row can you get up and just go after and grind and attack your goals? How many days in a row can you get up and put that same energy, that same fire, uh, to that flame that seems to not necessarily want to spark up, not necessarily want to grow.

Speaker 1: 13:31

You ever seen those videos where they're like trying to start a fire and the guy has that one stick and he's like rubbing it back and forth with his hands between his hands, like that right? And you know, in movies they make that seem like, oh, it's just a two-second process, just a little. He does it real quick, boom. But really in real life that is a very intense process. Your hands are probably going to hurt, your arms are going to hurt, all of that. That whole process is very intense. It's very intentional. You have to be focused and you have to have tenacity. You have the ability, the stamina to keep going until that thing starts, until that fire catches.

Speaker 1: 14:05

Well, being in entrepreneurship is similar to that, and that's where you have to have the stamina every day to wake up to look and go. When you're discouraged, when things aren't going right, when you're not making money, when you're losing money right, you have to have stamina. But then also you have to have endurance when things happen that affect you, when challenges come that are not only just a part of your industry, that just come with being an entrepreneur. When you're not eating a lot, you're not sleeping a lot, when your relationships are starting to get a little strained because of all your attention being focused on your business, when no one believes in you, when no one's supporting you. But I think at the time I had to learn how to grow beyond that. I had to learn how to get out of that mindset.

Speaker 1: 14:46

I mean, I got all these family members sprinkled throughout the city. You know, don't none of y'all want to help me out and be some of my first customers? Heck, no, heck, no. I haven't proven myself. I haven't shown myself valuable. I haven't shown that this is what I'm going to stick with and do. I haven't shown that I can do it. People don't want to buy into business just because they know you, and you, as an entrepreneur, are wrong to think that people should support you just because you're starting a business or a company. I don't care how close they are.

Speaker 1: 15:14

My first year in business I made so little money. A lot of the conversation that I heard not necessarily from my wife I heard it maybe once or twice from my wife but just conversation with people around me was like yo, you might want to go get a job. That's very discouraging. That's one of those things I had to endure. Keep my head to the ground, keep my eyes focused, keep my vision focused and press through all of that noise. Entrepreneurship sucks. It's very rewarding high risk, high reward, very rewarding. Trust me, I know there's another side to that coin which I'm not going to talk about today, but it is a very rewarding move to make as an entrepreneur. But entrepreneurship, especially with your new that all makes being an entrepreneur suck extremely.

Speaker 1: 16:03

My number two was discussing false numbers. Discussing false numbers is something I see a lot on social media. It's been getting better. A lot of the companies and kind of what do you call that Influence leaders in this industry have been doing better now with being more transparent about numbers. There's little series and shows that really pull out. Let's really look at the numbers. But I remember for a long season I guess I've been doing this for five years at least for the first three years, maybe even the last. Yeah, first three years, first four years. Like you couldn't find anybody being honest about their numbers. People be like yeah, I made, I made. Now I broke it down on a whiteboard, on the, on the video. So if you haven't seen the video, I'll give you that. That's a great example. You can follow me. It's a little two minute, three minute section. I break down on the whiteboard what's happening.

Speaker 1: 16:51

Generally, people say their number, that they make, for example. I just gave one example. But people will say something like you know I make. I said I made twelve thousand a year in one instance. I mean twelve thousand a month in one instance and I did my business, did revenue twelve thousand, but that's all I said and I left it at that and I moved on saying some other things about money. But the truth of the matter is that I really only made about $3,200 that month. I only took home to pay my bills, support, everything in my personal life. I only took home about $3,200. But what I said was hey, I made 12 grand.

Speaker 1: 17:29

And I fell right into that same trap, that same lie, because guys, some guys do it on purpose. They want to conflate the numbers. They don't want you to know the truth, because the truth might show there's some deficiency there. It might show that there's some weakness there. It might show that there's some incompetence there. It's important for the other half of that coin, which is some guys really just don't know their numbers. So they really think they made 12 grand. They go out, they look after the month how much they collected on their little CRM software, quickbooks, whatever, and they're like oh, I made 12 grand, let's go. I made 12 Gs and I know what you mean. I've been there.

Speaker 1: 18:11

I felt that feeling coming out of my first year into my second year, making $163 a week, making probably a little over $600 a month, my first year in lawn care a month, not a day, not a week, that was a month. That's what I was making. My first year in lawn care to month one of year two, grossing a revenue of 12 grand. I thought I was the man. I was like I've hit it, let's go. It's time to make this money. I'm feeling really good. But the truth was when I started I didn't know my numbers at the time. So it was easy for me to make that claim. It was easy for me to say, yo, I'm making 12 grand in lawn care right now. No, you're not. I made barely three grand in lawn care that month.

Speaker 1: 18:45

But if you don't know your numbers, you don't know how to break your numbers down. That's another reason why a lot of especially people in our industry give out false information and false numbers. They give out conflated numbers. One is embarrassment. So they might do it purposely or consciously because they don't want you to see, hey, I'm really only making this much. Hey, it's really not as lucrative as you think, the processes that I'm using, the way that I'm going after I'm marketing. They don't want you to see that. And I understand that Some people don't give accurate numbers because they just believe in playing that part of their business close to the vest. It ain't nobody's business. They keep it very personal, which I understand. That too.

Speaker 1: 19:24

I think if you're going to be on a platform like YouTube, you're going to be on a platform like a podcast and you want to talk to people about how to make money, about how to be more productive, how to be more profitable. You, in my opinion, you, have a responsibility to be honest and transparent. You know how can people trust you if you're not willing to give them the information that they need to make sound decisions, to make informed decisions, the information they need to process the information you're giving properly? You know, if I would have said I made three $3,200 my first year, my first month of lawn care, some people might have had a different response. You know what I mean Some people that heard that message might've been like, okay, you know what I'm saying. Maybe I don't want to get into this. That's all you made so out of 12 grand, that's all you took home. Okay, why is that? Let's break that down. So I did that on a whiteboard, very briefly Now, that was just a cursory glance.

Speaker 1: 20:24

That was four years ago, so I was not speaking like had the numbers in front of me breaking it down. I was giving you guys a broad example of what happens when people share numbers and they share them untruthfully, and how easily you can get caught up in that. And so you have to understand your numbers. You have to understand when you're listening to other companies or people talk about these numbers. You have to be able to kind of weed through a read between the lines If you're dealing with people or you're listening to people and influencers and things like that that are not being completely honest. You just have to develop that skill, and the best way to do that is to know your numbers yourself, learning how to calculate your numbers yourself. If you don't, go, get yourself a great accountant, a great financial advisor, and then we do a review and she helps me say, hey look, you need to raise your prices here or you need to do this, or I would invest in this or I would stop doing this service. It's not being profitable whatever. Those are key pieces of growing a healthy business that require you to know your numbers, real, recognize real. And so it was the same. It's the same deal in business.

Speaker 1: 21:31

People that have mastered these things, that know their numbers, that understand the language, the dialect that's involved revenue, expenses, profitability you know those are words, people that know what they're talking about. Those are words that they generally use in conversation. What's your marketing spend, cost per click, customer acquisition these are things that I didn't know. I had to learn them as I heard people talking about them that knew what they were doing, find the definitions and it's okay. Now how do I calculate that? How do I learn that? Talk to me, how do I learn that? I started researching, I started getting with my accountant, I started doing my own research, finding ways to learn and develop that skill of knowing my numbers. So now, when I hear people talk about numbers, it's easier to catch on to the language.

Speaker 1: 22:18

And a lot of times in lawn care, because lawn care is such a cash flowing business, a lot of people paying cash checks, things like that, because it's such a cash flowing business. A lot of times you don't focus on knowing your numbers, on learning your numbers, and what happens is that's the thing. I just got to get out and make more money. I just got to get out and cut more yards. I just got to get out and do more of these kind of services and that's kind of what you get wrapped up in. That's one of the things I think that's specific to the nuance of lawn care, because it's such a high, you know, cash flow business. You're just like money, money, money, money, money, money, money and you don't start thinking about those things. You never really spend time, especially as a new business owner, because your first goal is just to make money. You just want to get the business flowing cash and you get sucked into that loop of putting all your energy and effort into how can I make the business make more cash, make more money, get me more, more, more, more, more.

Speaker 1: 23:24

Guys, I'm so sorry but I have to draw the line in the sand. I see that we were getting ready to approach our time limit. I made you guys a commitment that I would never do an episode beyond 30 minutes and we are pushing it pretty close. So I decided that I'm actually going to cut the rest of the episode, edit it separately and package it into its own experience on a separate episode and entitle it lawn care lives part two. So please stay tuned for that.

Speaker 1: 23:49

I cannot guarantee that it will be consecutive to this episode because I already had other episodes planned to record and release and, as a result of that, this one might be two or three episodes down the line. But we will finish it up. We will tie it all together and make sure you guys have a clear picture about debunking some of these most common lies within this industry of business and some of these most common lies that we tell ourselves or have heard as a result of the research we've done, which is our own personal, preconceived notions with getting into the business of lawn care ownership. With that being said, thank you guys so much. If you haven't already, please go check us out on YouTube under the Mo Money Mindset.

Speaker 1: 24:29

Refer to the show notes. There are going to be some links there that'll take you guys directly to that channel If you are just solely listening to us on podcast. I want to thank you for that support. Please leave us a five-star review on this episode. We need them on every single episode and I appreciate y'all so much and I look forward to getting back on here and catching you guys on the next episode. Until then, continue to make more money. Outro Music.