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Lawntrepreneur Academy live is back November 7th in Novi, Michigan at the newly named Vibe Credit Union Showplace. This year brings a new format, new speakers, expanded breakout sessions, hands on learning, and more chances to put ideas into action right away. Bring your entire team and get ready for a bigger, better experience at Launcherpreneur
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Academy Live tickets go on sale July 15th. You're now listening to the Fullerton Unfiltered Podcast. Straightforward, no nonsense business advice, completely on filtered. Grow your business, grow your life.
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Now here's your host, Brian Fullerton.
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Hey, what's going on, guys? Welcome to another episode of the Fullerton Unfiltered Podcast. It is your host, Brian Fullerton here hanging with you guys and good morning. Well, today's podcast episode, I really am excited about this topic and that is the topic of comparison. But I want to take it in a couple of different angles, a couple different approaches than what you've maybe heard from and for before. I don't want to just do a podcast episode talking about, hey, like, don't, don't compare yourself to other people and other businesses, you know, you don't know what they got going on. Right. I want to maybe look at this in a little bit more of a mature approach and really maybe just give you guys some peace of mind, some encouragement, and maybe just some, some clarity, you know, with what you're trying to accomplish out there, that what other folks have going on versus what you have going on, as you might imagine, are wildly different stories. But that doesn't mean that somebody else is more successful or less successful. Right. And I want to talk about that here for a couple of more minutes today and I'll expound upon this a little bit more as we go. The, the preface of this is when I was at Saima last week, had a lot of great conversations with a lot of folks and had a lot of high level fun. Yuck, yuck. You know, great conversations with some folks, Had a couple conversations with, oh yeah, you know, like, we're hanging in there, you know, and things are good. You know, had a decent winter or man, winner was tough, you know, those kind of conversations. And then had a couple more where, oh man, hey, you know, best winter ever. Best winter that we've ever had and things were fantastic and you know, you know, we made all kinds of money, talked to some big fish, big, big fish. And they're like, dude, up, big time up. And you just like, what does that mean, bro? Is that like a $1 million, 5 million, $10 million? I don't know, you know, how much did you make off of that? Big up, right? And when you're walking around trade shows, you're walking around conferences, you're walking around events, you're consuming podcasts, you're, you're watching the highlight reel, right? On social media, all that fun stuff, it's very easy to, man, it's so easy to get a head fake. I, I, I'm even susceptible to it as much or more than any of you guys, man. I'll be on Instagram and then my wife sent something on Tick Tock. I live on ig, my wife lives on Tick Tock. And Liz will send me something, then I'll watch that reel and then I scroll just out of like, you know, habits. And then I'm on some like, lawn care influencer, lawn care guy, lawn care guru page, you know, and there's like, my God, an epidemic of everybody and their brother being content creators. And I don't even know what their goal is. I don't know what they sell. I don't know who they're talking to. I don't. They're just creating content, they're grabbing followers. And some more, some less, some crazy, some fun, some funny, some, my gosh, I can't even believe some even like, like attract followers because I'm like, my gosh, anybody should be able to see through this nonsense in about 10 seconds or less. And you know, I don't judge on any of it. I'm just like, oh my God, get me off of this cesspool. Mostly TikTok, but a little bit of IG as well. And when you're, when you're scrolling around, obviously, you know, you see that high level and you start thinking to yourself, like, it's so easy to start doubting. It's so easy to start second guessing. So many of you have a lot of great stuff going on, right? You really do. You've made 5, 10, 15, 20% growth. You've been able to accrue a 5, 10, 15%, you know, net profit on the business. You went from not paying yourself, you know, but peanuts last year to have $30,000 your salary this year. And you made 50, 60,000 true net. Other of you guys are making, you know, $800,000 in revenue and you're going to keep, you know, 150,000 out of the business this year. And there's been some ups and some downs and replacing some team members and some people and, you know, a couple culture hits. But overall, like, the business will track in and you got seven crews that are mobilizing, and you got a great little team of 20, 30 people, and things are rocking and rolling, and that's fantastic. But you're like, you get on social and then you go, oh, man, we're not so and so, or we're not doing this. Or, man, we don't. We don't get any free equipment from. Pick your brand, pick your influencer, pick your whatever, right? Like, all of this stuff. And we're not going to do the whole, like, conversation. Like, comparison is the thief of joy. Although it is, right? What I wanted to have a different conversation about here today was social media is really terrible about, like, measuring what actually matters, right? I don't want you guys to just look at, like, your lowest versus somebody else's highest or your, like, real life versus somebody else's highlight reel, or you're, like, in the thick of it. And all you do is when you go on Instagram and see everybody with new trucks, new skid steers, new mowers, and you start thinking to yourself, like, man, like, we don't have it going on. Well, here's the reality. The. The scoreboard that you guys are looking at. You know, the. The highlight reel that you guys are looking at. Honestly, I personally feel like you're looking at the wrong scoreboard, right? Like, social media, right? Think about it. It only measures revenue, followers. New trucks, new cars, right? People get in their shops and buildings or going shopping for buildings, right? How many employees they're adding or, like, they take a team photo, which is always awesome. It's always cool. And I'm not here to take anything away from anybody like that. I mean, that's all. That's all great stuff. Like, who doesn't like posting the wins and the successes? Or you see somebody buying a new car, a new home, building a home, you see people on vacations or buying a boat, renting a boat, fancy dinners, going to a dinner, going to a steakhouse, like that kind of stuff. Like, that's all fun and awesome, but here's what I wanted to just spend, like, just honestly, a couple of minutes on here today. Because again, this stems from some conversations I had at sima is that you don't get the full story. And I'm. We're going to go down the. The obvious, you know, drive over here today. But. But what you guys never get to see is people's profit, people's debt, people's cash flow, their. Their mental health, their marital health, the. The stress that those guys are living with. The sleep that they have or the lack thereof. You don't get to see employee turnover, key employee turnover. You don't get to see the lawsuits that maybe some of these guys are under. You know, you don't get to see the $1 million landscape, hardscape design, build job and overruns that that company has behind the scenes with a beyond terrible project that just went AWOL and is in a massive literal six and seven figure lawsuit. You don't get to see that. And I know folks that have bid three four hundred thousand dollar jobs that have had a million dollar lawsuit to fix the backyard, to fix the project. You, these are people that you would know and you don't know these full stories and I barely learn these stories because people, even best friends and good friends and peers and coaches and mentors and all this stuff, like we're all trying to just be positive, encouraging and show the, the highlight reel not from like a lack of one in the show, like reality. It's just like do when I get to hang out with you, you're going to tell me about the latest exciting thing that's going on with your life. And we all do that. And then social media basically enforces us to like only show that kind of stuff. You don't get to see people's tax bills, right? You don't get to see behind the scenes that somebody has a, you know, a labor tax issue, a payroll tax issue. You don't get to see somebody having a state or federal tax issue where they owe, you know, 1 grand, 10 grand, 100 gram in back taxes. You don't see fees and fines and penalties, right? You don't get to see all that stuff on social media. I don't, I don't think anybody's that I know of like in any recent time been like, oh man, hey, miss my, you know, payroll taxes and we're up or over whatever. And then we owe this plus fees. You know, we owe like 1300 bucks today on our unemployment or our state taxes or our federal Q2. We missed it. We put it in, you know, a week late because we didn't even have it. But we know we put it on the credit card and now we've got six GS on the credit card and we're still paying interest on that. And we got to somehow figure out how to cash flow that and pay that off. Not counting our 20, 25 back taxes, right? Nobody ever shows that stuff. And it happens, dude. It happens to all of us. It happens and it shouldn't Happen, right? If we're diligent and we've got a good plan and good coaches, this stuff shouldn't happen. But it does. And one thing that I want to talk about here today is that again, we're all looking at like the wrong scoreboard of social media. But like, you're comparing your entire business to somebody else's highlight reel and you're using a scoreboard that doesn't even include the stats that really matter. Like revenue. Think about it. Like, everybody's always talking about top line, right? Revenue is like just screaming at you nonstop, but nobody ever tells you, oh yeah, we did 6 million last year. But like, well, how much profit? Like, how much, how much profit? Now? It's. It's Nunya, right? It's Nunya. It's none your business, but you might realize that a company doing 6 million might have only made like $150,000 profit. Not $600,000 at 10% or 1.2 million at 20%. Are those companies out there? Absolutely. Are there companies also out there that are doing 1%, 3%, 7% true net? Yeah, yeah, that happens, right? Nobody gets to see the. When you're. When you're looking at the, the highlight reel, right? And somebody's got that awesome slick drone shot of the buttery smooth B roll and they got the trucks rolling out and everybody's doing the deployment, you know, or just the drone shots of all the trucks parked. At the end of the day, you're on the weekend and you know what? No. Nobody posts, hey, all those trucks are financed, right? And I'm not judging that. I got two trucks right now that are financed. Like, I'm not saying that that's a good thing or a bad thing, but what people don't know is that every one of those trucks is a thousand dollar a month obligation or more. And you've got 32 trucks in the parking lot. And that dude not even counting payroll, not even counting overhead, just the trucks, right? He's got to pay $32,000 a month just to break even on the trucks. Probably double, triple that with payroll. Double, triple that with overhead. And now dude's got to make quarter million bucks a month just to pay all that down or pay all that off, right? Or just make his monthly obligations, I should say, not even accelerated pay downs, right? Well, another quick thing, and again, I'm gonna make a big bow here on this. Just follow me here. But nobody ever talks about payroll that's due to, you know, this upcoming Friday. And you don't have it right. Nobody's ever said on social Media, hey, man, Ms. Payroll this week. I've seen one or two, and I don't know if they're really being honest or if it's clicks or views or who knows what. Like, I don't really know. Don't really care. But I'll tell you what. There's been one time in 20 years where we came close to not having payroll. I mean, like, they was due next day. This is about two and a half years ago, and we were dumping out the bank account to build the barn, and we were literally like, hey, we need to come up with. I. Dude, I don't even know what my payroll was. Like six or seven grand maybe. Back then it was nominal. And I was like, I don't know if we're going to make it. We've never had the rob Peter to pay Paul. But I think I put 1500 bucks maybe into the business to make payroll. And then I think like, a day later, we had a check clear, and I was able to pull that right back out. But, like, dude, nobody ever shows you, hey, we've got ten grand, fifty grand, a hundred grand in payroll due this day, this week, this month, or, you know, bi weekly. Nobody's ever showed that. In fact, the more I get around certain friends, certain leaders and folks that are, you know, trying to do their best to pay it forward in the industry, the more of these crazy stories I hear. I remember Mark Bradley at a conference saying, I've been in business for 30 years, which means I've essentially almost had 30 years of, you know, cash flow issues, right? Or cash flow challenges, right? And Marcus shared. He's like, when we were doing big Design builds in 50 million, he's like, we just couldn't keep up on our receivables and our payables to pay off our suppliers, plants, pavers, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right? Who knows what? Not that they didn't make it work or they weren't profitable, obviously, but, you know, dude, like, imagine at that level, every day, you've got a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand dollars of material needed. Not counting payroll. How many of you guys have seen a real in the last 60 days where anybody has ever said, hey, we didn't make payroll this week? You're telling me out of every single person that. That you follow and I follow on social. Everybody made payroll. Nobody had to take it out on, you know, affirm. Nobody had to take it out on a buy now, pay later type of Deal. When you're checking out at gusto, nobody had to take a stripe loan to pay back later. Like there's no way. But nobody has ever posted about it. So all we do is we think business is fun, business is easy, and it's the highlight reel, right? How about the other side of the. The payroll, right? How, how few or how. When was the last or how little or have you ever not paid yourself from the business for a day, a week, a certain couple of weeks, a couple of months? Multiple months, the whole year, Right? Or maybe you took distributions to stay alive, or maybe you had a nominal salary but there was no upside for what you thought the distributions would bridge the gap in your personal family's budget. You paid yourself 40. Hey, we always take about 20, 30 grand chips off the table in the fall, winter, or after 20, you know, after January 1st and taxes are compiled and then we got a little bit left for us, right? No, everybody's always perfectly, always paid themselves. So what's my point? When I'm walking around on the Simo show floor and talking to folks good, bad and ugly and mostly good, a little bit of like, great, very few bad and very little if any ugly, right? I know people that have 10 plus million, multi tens, millions of dollars of businesses and their true nets are low single digits. And I'm like, hey, what's up man? Like, you doing good? You're doing great. And they're like, ah, you know, yeah, we're gonna grow this year. And I'm like, awesome. And they'll tell you, like, yeah, last year was tough. And I go, oh, yeah, for sure, it always is. And they're like, oh, like, it was really tough. And have you ever lost a quarter million, half a million million dollars a year in your business? I don't even know where that money would come from. What is like checking account that just had like 1.2 million and you lost an extra 600,000 and you're like, oh, shit, that's a pretty rough year. If we lost money like that, I don't know what would happen. People would go missing in the woods, in a concrete mixer, in the ground. You know what I'm saying? Whoever was responsible for that, there's great leaders out there. They like just talk smooth and like, like, hey, like no big deal. Over 10, 20, 30 years, there's this upside and it's all good. I'm like, I will, I will. People will be gone from my circles if that ever happened. You rob, you steal, you don't make profit. Like Blah, blah, blah. I could never even imagine something like that. I was talking to a friend and like, yeah, we lost this million dollars basically to the mafia on this highway job. I'm like, come again? Like, oh yeah, yeah. Like it was a pretty known thing actually. I think they lost $6 million to like the mafia because it was like a mafia job. And, and I'm not saying like that's who you should go in business with or that's who he did goes in business with, but just tell me stories and I'm like, you didn't get your receivables of $6 million. I do. You have no idea what I would do for $6 million. People, people, again, people would go missing. Just tell me, give me a name, give me a photo. I'm sure some of you guys feel the same way. $6 million. And like, yeah, you know, we learned a lot that day. We learned a lot that year. And I'm like, you, I can't let that stuff go. I'm like, dude, I'll still debt collect for you. I'll go find that 6 million bucks right now. Right now. Right? But again, what does everybody do? They post about the new trucks, the new shop, the excavator, the next million dollar revenue mark, or you know, hey, we did XYZ number, right? Like here's the, here's the whole conversation. Like you meet somebody on the, the, the simul trade show floor, right? Or pick your conference, right? They're like, hey, we did 5 million last year and like they made 150,000 bucks. Which I'm not saying it's bad or good. I mean that's, you know, that's pretty decent. I'll take it. But then what if you like actually met a different guy who did 1.5 million but took home a half a million, right? Like which, which guy is successful, right? I, I don't know. But when folks are talking about like what winning actually means, like it's not just success, you know, top line. It's not just the bigger company. Think about it, right? Like here, here's some intrinsics, right? Like do you have dinner every night with your kids? I know guys have great businesses. I'm telling you. I see them on social throughout mowing grass till 7, 8, 9, 10pm I, I know owner operators. There's a lot of folks like, oh, owner operators where it's at, I'm not judging that. But what do you do when you get rain and now you're screwed for two days and you have to make up for two days or a day or two worth of work. On Thursday and Friday, you are going to work till 8, 9 o'. Clock. And it wouldn't be any difference if you have multiple crews out there doing the same thing. But you know, typically you can get it done a little bit faster when you got many hands to make light work. But when folks are like, oh, owner operator is the way it is. And look, everything has its pros, everything has its cons, no doubt about it. But I see people that, you know, logging off at 8, 9, 10 o' clock at night. Look, I was there for a very, very long time. We're still there in a lot of different ways. I'm not judging, I'm just saying, well, like, are you having dinner with your kids every single night? Because I see people with bigger trucks, more trucks, you know, equipment. Oh, like, you know, beautiful stripes. And I'm like, dude, it's like, you're like, I'm looking at a time stamp on instagram and it's 8pm at night. You Are you like, proud to like show the stripes? Are you like, hey, I might as well show the stripes because I'm already here, I'm already screwed. I already, I'm already, I already know that I'm not getting dinner with my family tonight, so might as well get some content out of it, dude. If that's the mindset, bro, I'm with you. I love that. That's awesome. Like Double Tap, you might as well. But I know some people that would like, rather be at the shop, be at work, or show that they're working, you know, until 9 o' clock at night or the weekends or something like that instead of spending time with their family. I, I, I just don't relate to that. I don't resonate with that. I'm not judging. I just don't understand that. Right. What about, what about having no debt? I'm not debt free, by the way. We've got the mortgage in the house, I got two trucks. We're not debt free, but my finances are, you know, pretty stable to where, like, that's not that big of a deal. Neither of those three obligations are that big deal in terms of like the macro of our finances. Would I like to have the two trucks paid off? For sure. Am I working towards being debt free with the mortgage? Of course. But if somebody's like, hey, we did $7 million, they got three new trucks, that's awesome. But what if you got like the guy that's doing like 800 grand has no, no debt obligations. And he's like, truly netting 20, 25% of the business, taking home, like, three, $400,000. Like, that's pretty dope. Are you gonna see that on Instagram? Very likely. No. Because people that are financially stable and maybe debt free, they're not gonna, like, yak about it and talk about it. But then you see on Instagram, some dudes bought three new trucks and they're all leveraged. And again, not judging that. I'm just saying, where's the peace of mind? Here's another one. The healthy marriage. Some notes I wrote down, like, what about having a healthy marriage? Even if you see the highlight reel on Instagram, I will tell you. I will tell you somebody who's been there, done that. I've been single, I've been engaged, I've been married, I've been newlyweds. I've been married for three years. I've been married for five years. I've been married for six years. I've been married without kids. I've been married with kids. I've been married with one kid, two kid, three kids. I've been married with kids, with pregnant, two kids with pregnants, three kids. Right? We've lived in campers, we've built homes. It is not always a highlight reel. Are you effing kidding me? There are so many times when Liz and I have been at each other's throats behind the scenes. How do you show that on Instagram? Hey, like, let me get the security footage of you throwing the pot and pans at me, right? Or whatever. And I'm not saying that's Liz, but I'm just saying, like, dude, we've all had black and blue, bloody murder, screaming out, shout fast, somebody's probably gonna call the cops on us, right? Type of conversations. If you haven't, God bless you. I have. And sorry, I'm a real person. We've had sparks fly. We've had frustrations. We've had financial stresses. We've had lack of sleep. We've had, you're traveling too much. We've had, oh, you didn't help with the kid at night. I've had, you don't know what it takes. I've had. You don't know what it's like going out there. I've had. Do you think I want to do this? Anybody relate to any of those conversations? What you don't see behind the scenes ever is, like, a healthy marriage. Because we all don't spend enough time with each other outside of, like, Work and business and podcasting and YouTube because it's always like, content centric and there's a reason behind the content that's getting put out. I'm not here to, like, talk today about how happy Liz and I are married. I'm like, hey, here's some things about not comparing yourself on the highlight reel, but, like, the only time you get to see that stuff is at a conference. And even then at a conference, you got the kids with you, the family with you, the mother in law with you. You're stressed out trying to get your seats, trying to get to the content, trying to get to the event, trying to get to the after party. You're go, go, go. Everybody's tired, everybody's sleeping. Somebody came in at 2 o' clock in the morning because they missed their flight. Then they drive six hours to the local place because they wanted to be at the conference, right? Like, all this stuff. So that's not even a good litmus. The good litmus is like, hey, are you, like, sleeping in the same marital bed as your spouse? Can you guys actually, like, enjoy the weekend together and not have anything to do and actually, like, have time to unwind and not kill each other, Right? Like, do your kids love you? Do your kids want to spend time with you? Do your kids want to spend time with you around the business? I was talking to a friend once and they were like, yeah, like, we're doing all this for the, for the, for the, for the team. We're doing all this for the business. And the guy I was talking to, he said, you know, it was an interesting litmus. He goes, my kids even said, yeah, but dad, you, you hate, you hate our people. You hate your employees. You said that. All they do is stress you out. All they do is make you miserable. Like, dude, your kids are like, just little truth tellers, bro, for the most part. And you can't fake that stuff. You can't hide that stuff. You know, I see people that are like, I've got a great business. And then you, like, look at them and, like, no offense to anybody, right? Like, the health just looks like it's failing. They're putting on a couple pounds. They're, you know, they got like the bloated face. That was me a couple of years ago. They got the dark circles. That was me a couple of years ago. Burning the candle at both ends. Not saying it's bad, saying, like, you know, you add 5, 10 pounds. 5, 10 pounds, 5, 10 pounds. Next thing you know, you're 20, 30, 4050 pounds overweight, and you're like, what the hell happened? Nothing. You're just stressed out, dude. You're trying to grow, you're trying to build, and I get that. But when you look at the highlight reel, everybody's like, new trucks, new equipment, new revenue, and behind the scenes, 5, 10 pounds. 5, 10 pounds. Then you run into, you know, to a conference at the airport on United and you're walking, you know, a mile to go get to your gate before the door closes because you ran a couple minutes late because you're trying to put out some last minute fires, and you run to the gate and then you have a heart attack and you freaking die. Because this little 45 extra pounds that you didn't even see coming hit you over the last five years, bro. You want to talk about, like, that's real, like, that's a real thing to me because I'm always running to airports and I'm huffing and puffing. I feel like I'm in pretty decent shape, you know, Like, I'm, I'm not out of shape, I'll tell you that. But I'm not necessarily in shape. And I, like, get to the gate, I'm like, like breathing heavy and I'm like, that was, that was an effort. And I'm like carrying, you know, a camera bag or a tripod or, you know, a banner bag or, you know, a suitcase or something, or my podcast backpacks on my backpack, which weighs 300, 000 pounds. You know, like, think about that stuff. And we're like, oh, like, hey, it's just always the highlight reel. Everybody else is doing great. You don't see these things behind the scenes and you start asking yourself, like, who's, who's actually winning? Let me just rephrase it and we'll kind of wind things down here for the next couple minutes. Let me just put it like this way. All this stuff is going on out there, but here's, here's a fresh take, if you will. I want you to stop maybe so much also thinking about those people, but if you do, I want you to start thinking about why are people doing what they're doing? Why are you doing what you're doing? Here's my question for you. Like, what are you optimizing for? Are you optimizing for revenue? Are you optimizing for influence? Shouldn't be an influencer or something like that. Whatever, that's fine. Are you trying to optimize for enterprise value in your business? Are you trying to optimize for Time, freedom. You know, some people, Mark Bradley has said criticized him because he was an absentee CEO. The business ran without him. But there's people that would criticize that he's an absentee CEO. Back in the day at Element, at different seasons and periods of the business, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Like, think about that. Be like, oh, you're not even here. The business runs great. There's stable growth. Let's just saying all things being considered. And somebody might have fault with that, and somebody might not have fault with that. But again, what. Maybe Mark or that the investment team or the leadership team or the whatever. The whatever. The whatever, right. Like, that's what they were optimizing for at the time, for whatever that allowed them to do. Maybe somebody wanted to take some time off or have a sabbatical. I'm more open to more grace and leniency on so many things as I get older. Because, damn, life is crazy when you get older, right? But think about it. Are they. Are they optimizing for enterprise value? Right? Maybe they want some time, freedom. Maybe they want to spend some time with family. Maybe they just had, like, their first kid or their second kid and they're taking four to six weeks off. I talked to a couple folks later that are, you know, getting the boat close to the dock. To be able to do that, you'll. You'll see zero judgment. For me, I think that's a fantastic thing to do. But other people might say, oh, why aren't you working hard enough? Or somebody might say, oh, I see on the highlight reel that you took six weeks off and then you don't know behind the scenes, like, they're doing everything they can by the skin of their teeth just to stay home. Even if they're sacrificing profit just to be able to give their wife some support behind the scenes as they go into this new, critical, new season, scary season potentially, of their life, right? So, like, be very careful. And you've gotta, like, put this wall up, this filter up, this, like, protection mechanism, this, like, emergency red light flashing on the dashboard. Don't compare, don't compare. Don't envy, don't envy. Don't jealous. Don't jealous. Don't seek. Don't seek. Not saying that those aren't good things to get inspired when you can get inspired. But damn, dude, like, you don't have any clue what that other person is dealing with. You don't have any clue what that person's dealing with. And you're over here like, not counting your blessings, not having gratitude, not being thankful, good, bad or ugly, but probably most everybody here listening in good or better. Because for the love of God, if you're listening to a podcast while you're on a $15,000 lawnmower with a 11 or 1500 dollars iPhone, you know, 15 or above, and you had food in your belly today to go to get Jimmy John's. Dude, you're living the 1% lifestyle, whether you know it or not on the planet. Well, I don't have a yacht. I'm not worth a trillion dollars. Statistically, it ain't going to happen. I don't mean like, statistically you can change those statistics. I'm just saying it's probably never going to happen for you to be worth a trillion dollars. Maybe one in a billion here could be a billionaire. But if all of Y' all did 2 or 3 million and made 4 or 500 grand and you had some time, freedom, some money, freedom, and you're able to go get a boat, a car, a nice home, and put your kids into private education, pay off all your debt, take care of your parents when they need a little bit of this or that, folks, like, that's the number one lifestyle in America. And I think anybody listening in can do that. And I know you're going to do that, if you haven't already. Be careful when you start comparing legacy recognition. Like, I can go down the list, right? Like, if you're chasing somebody else's goal, you are always going to feel left behind, right? Instagram. I just put a quick note here. Instagram doesn't show interest, payments, equipment notes, investor obligations, payroll loans, credit card debt. Right? It only shows the drone shots, new logos, wrap trucks, conferences, 800 people here, 200 people here, 500 people here, right? Like, we try to be as authentic as we can. Many of my friends and peers, they try to be as authentic as they can. But I'm not saying everybody's like that. Other people just also, like, there's a lot of negativity, by the way, like, out there, like, people are just throwing shade. This guy's not this, and that guy is not that. And have you seen what so and so does or haven't done or what this guy is or that guy? Don't. Does that guy even have a business or this stuff or that stuff? And I'm like, dude, I don't. I don't really, honestly, truly, brother, like, get lost in any of it. I'm not here to, like, count, score, keep tabs, check Things. Know where pulses are at. Like, don't know, don't care. So infatuated with how much stuff I've got going on in my own life and my own kids and my own wife, my team and my friends and my peers and the people that I'm trying to look out for and all of you guys listening in. I mean this sincerely. I don't even care what that other person has going on. It's irrelevant. For real. It's so irrelevant. Well, they said something about don't even care. It's not going to take a dime or anything off my plate. It couldn't. It won't. I have had every single thing thrown at me you can imagine. It has never affected my income in my lawn care or my personal business, ever. So that should give you some good news that if it's never affected me ever, it's never going to affect you, likely ever think about this stuff. But, I mean, at the end of the day, like, you can lease almost anything. You can finance almost anything, but you cannot finance and you cannot lease. Peace of mind, guys, stay in your own lane. Because at the end of the day, you know the destination that you're driving towards, right? And I don't want to say, like, hey, keep the blinders on. I just mean to say, stop comparing. You don't even know where the other person is trying to go and what they're trying to do, right? Like, what if that person's crazy and you're spending all of your time trying to understand what they're trying to do? You're trying to understand crazy. Good luck with that, right? They have a different destination, they have a different route, they have a different speed, they have a different set of circumstances, right? At the end of the day, like, it doesn't shape or affect your life at all. So stop asking yourself, am I keeping up with everybody else? And instead, here's a more mature way to answer this, in my opinion, is are you getting closer to the life that you wanted? Because that is the only scoreboard that actually matters, right? Think about it. The highlight reel, it has no balance sheet, right? When they say comparison is the thief of joy, right? At the end of the day, when you start looking at what that guy's doing and what that guy is and you stop thinking about what you're doing, you've lost the minute you spend an extra second or any seconds away from you on somebody else comparing or looking at jealousy, envy, maybe some inspiration. Sure, I'll give you that. That's how I would Chalk it up. But folks, at the end of the day, stop worrying about what other people are doing. Who cares? And if you notice that all you're doing all day long is consuming other people's highlight reels and other people's accomplishments and other people's dreams and you kind of have this, like, snap out of reality when you're on the pooper and you're like, hey, wait, wait a minute, like, oh, wait, I'm supposed to like go do, do something to go get this on my own. Like, instead of watching everybody else get Lamborghinis and yachts and cool cars and nice clothes and great vacations and awesome steak dinners, go build something. Think about all the time that you're contributing, consuming, watching everything and everyone else wishing that you had X. And you took that time and you diverted it into creative energy. You picked up the phone and made some sales calls. You got some job ads on, indeed. You started to do some research on your next big piece of equipment that's going to 1x2x5x10x your lawn or snow business. You made an investment into being on weekly sprints with the accelerator team with leanscaper. You decided to go get your ticket to leo and you said, counting the cost you looked at, what could the upside be? If I actually put myself in that type of environment, the let it compound for 2, 5, 10 years that would then grow my business 2, 5, 10x to net me a 2, 5 10x net profit, which would translate into probably 50 to 100 to $300,000 a year pretty quickly in a short amount of time. Because you got your head right, because you got your mind right, because you got around. In a successful environment where people have focus, does that make sense? And that's my wish for you, you know, to wrap up. When I was at Saima, there's a lot of folks that were like, dude, best winner ever. Oh, worst winner ever. Great time, awesome time, bad time, you know, it's like everything in between. And I didn't say like to the bad guys or the guys are having a bad day. I should say, hey, like, you know what went wrong? Because it's none of your business. And I didn't say to the good guys, hey man, like, what went so great? Although I'm sure they would love to share because who doesn't like to share when things are going right? But the reality is like, just to hear it was bad or just to hear it was great is but 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, 1/10 of the entire story, 1/100 of the story of what's going on in that person's life. And so at the end of the day, you know, the only thing that really matters was how good my winter was. What I'm doing about it. To fix the things that were wrong or to improve the things that were wrong, or to double down on the things that were good, or to regroup and to fix the things so we can make it great. I'm not saying be selfish, but I'll just tell you, I think a lot of you guys out there could definitely do yourself a favor and spend more time on you versus more time on everybody else. So we're gonna leave you guys today. Man, that's good stuff. That's good stuff for you. That's good stuff for me. I'll tell you what, guys, I love you. I appreciate you listening in. That's the Monday show. A little bit of motivation, a little bit of swift kick in the booty. Because if you're not going to do it to yourself, I love you enough to tell you the truth. And I'll do it for you while I'm wearing the Cujos. It's good stuff. All right, fam, I love you. Anything you never do for you, I'm always here for you. Email me, DM me, Facebook, message me, whatever. Hope to see you guys in the highways, the byways, the conferences, Everywhere in between. Lal tickets go on sale July 15th. Promo code Brian Everywhere else you go, if you guys need anything, I'm always here for you. Reach out, Love you, appreciate you. Have a great day. We'll catch up to you guys here on Wednesday.
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A
Listen to what lawn care pro Joel Adams said after buying the SOP training bundle. Quote, that's the least painful $999 I've ever spent. It would take my team 200 hours to make lesser content. That's five bucks an hour. I don't work for five bucks an hour. So it was a no brainer. Smart move, Joel. If you're a lawn care business owner drowning in bottlenecks and burning daylight training your team from scratch, stop reinventing the wheel. The SOP Training Bundle gives you plug and play systems that bring clarity, remove bottlenecks and free you up to grow. Just $999 using the link in the description or by visiting thelantrepreneuracademy.com stop duct taping your business together and be like Joel. Pick up the SOP Training Bundle today.
- [36:22]
C
Thanks for taking the time to listen to the Fullerton Unfiltered Podcast with Bryan Fullerton. We hope you enjoyed this production. If so, please consider leaving us a five star review for the show. While the techniques and ideas presented here are designed to help you grow a more successful and profitable business, no one can guarantee these results for you. We want to emphasize that entrepreneurship is not easy and the ideas presented here are just the opinions of Brian Fullerton and his respective guests. No one can guarantee success for you. That being said, we hope the ideas presented here help you and motivate you to go on out there and crush it with your own business.
- [36:56]
A
Fullerton Unfiltered Podcast thanks for listening and
- [36:59]
C
we hope to see you on the next episode.
- [37:02]
A
This has been a Bryan Fullerton and Mr. Producer Production.