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Hello and welcome to the Green Industry podcast, your go to guide for building a more profitable and thriving lawn care and landscaping business. Your host, Paul Jamison is the author of five best selling books including Cut that grass and make that Cash and his latest, level up your money, all available on Amazon and Audible. Now get ready for more expert insights and practical strategies to boost your business and level up your life. Here's Paul Jamison.
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Welcome back to the show. I'm Paul Jamison down here in beautiful, sunny Florida. Well, when you think about your finances, when you open up your bank accounts, when you open up your investment accounts, when you look at your business finances, do you have peace and joy and excitement and you just smile like, I like the way that account looks. Or do you have fear and anxiety and stress and you're overwhelmed, you're dissatisfied, you feel like you should be further along in life than this, you're upset. You kind of get where I'm going, right? Well, I've been in both to the extreme. On the, on the bad side. I remember the emotions of being broke, busted and disgusted. It affected my health. It affected my emotions, which are all intertwined together. It just affected so much of my life. And I'm not boasting like I'm some multi billionaire, you know, rich this and that and the other, but I have seen a dramatic transformation in my finances, a financial turnaround. And the plan that helped me get there was simply the seven baby steps that Dave Ramsey shares. And I'm going to share those seven baby steps on today's program and talk about how it transformed my finances and in many ways, my life. Because when you start winning financially, it helps your emotion. You're just more happy when you log in and you check your bank account. You like the way it looks or you're like, okay, let's go versus oh, no, how am I gonna pay all my bills? I don't have it all, you know, and all of that. So we will go over the seven baby steps on today's program and the the path to wealth that I think is the most simplest and straightforward path to wealth. So years ago, I'm thinking it might have been 2010. My friend Jacob, he invited me or his. To what? Anyway, he invited me to a Dave Ramsey event. And at the time, I didn't really know much about Dave Ramsey. And his dad, Jacob's dad was the owner of a Chick Fil A, which happened to be right next to the arena where Dave Ramsey spoke at. It was a Saturday and there was some good peer Pressure, because a bunch of my friends were going, and he's like, hey, my dad got us all tickets to whatever the event was called, Financial peace, whatever it is. I don't even remember what the name of the event was, but he's like, and we can go eat, you know, unlimited Chick Fil A beforehand because his dad owned Chick Fil A. So we.
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I was.
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Think I was more excited for that one Chick Fil A. And, you know, I'm eating the.
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The.
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The chicken sandwich, the spicy chicken sandwich, them warm, hot waffle fries with the salt and the honey mustard. Maybe you're Polynesia. I'm going to town on Chick Fil A now. I get all fat and happy, and we head over to the arena, which is across the street, and here comes out this fat bald guy. I mean, he's not fat, but he's. He ain't skinny, Dave. But he gets out there and he starts teaching his principles. And my immaturity, where I was in life, it didn't necessarily land, like, on good soil, but I did remember some of the stuff. And I remembered he had a illustration of a cheetah and a gazelle, and he played a movie of a gazelle running from a cheetah. And in this video, the cheetah won the race. Pardon me, I said that wrong. The gazelle won the race. And Dave made the point that this is because the gazelle wanted it more. The gazelle and the cheetah, on paper, as Kenny Atkinson would say, the coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers at the moment. And analytically speaking, analytically speaking, the cheetahs faster. So if a cheetah and a gazelle race, the cheetah should win. But the reason the gazelle outran the cheetah is that the gazelle was fighting for its life. If the gazelle slowed down or didn't keep its foot on the gas, if you will, and then keep running fast, the cheetah would have caught the gazelle and ate the gazelle for lunch. So the. The cheetah's motivation was lunch or dinner, whatever time of day it was, it was his next meal, which is motivating. But life or death, If. If. If you don't run as fast as you can, you're gonna die and get eaten by a cheetah. That's more motivation than just your next meal. So the. The gazelle pushed into a gear that was the absolute most focused. All I got, I'm going as fast as I can to save my life gear. And the cheetah was just in you know, not, not full throttle gear. So Dave's point was, and I remember this vividly, if you are in debt, you need to do everything you can to get out of debt as fast as possible. And that, that stuck with me really good. So what I'm going to do on today's program, we're going to go through the seven baby steps. And if you are in debt, I want to provide you hope, I want to provide you encouragement. I want to provide you a plan to get out of debt. I am personally debt free. I don't owe anybody anything. I'm current on my taxes. I'm current on. I don't even have debt. Like, I don't even have a credit card to be current on or whatever. But my point is, all my bills are, are paid on time. And I don't, I don't have a car payment, I don't have a student loan payment. I don't have any business debt, you know, no SBA loan. I don't have nothing. No debt, debt free. And the amount of stress that that reduces. Meaning, I remember the stress I used to have when it's like every month I was like, okay, I got to pay $200 on my student loan. I got to pay money to the SBA loan. I, back in the day, I had credit cards, I had them calling me and they had all these weird names, Betty o' Barry and all the. I remember people call me, hey, you owe us money, pal. How are you gonna pay it? You know, like all this BS and now I paid them all off. All of it. Paid it all off. And I'm debt free. Feels so much better. It feels so much better. And it gives me so many options to get, to be more generous because I have extra money that I'm able to, to be a blessing to others. That's what God told Abraham. I'm going to bless you. I'm going to bless you so you can be a blessing to others. And I'm able to invest. And you invest in good appreciating assets. They're going up in value. Then. Then that money basically grows quickly. I mean, not like super fast, but it's. It's like you're walking at the airport. You can walk regularly at the Atlanta airport. They have like between A, B, C, D, E, F. All right, they have all these terminals, the Atlanta airport, and they have this. Sometimes I'll go there to Texas, not to go to air protect. But why? If I have a long layover in Atlanta, I'll walk around the Airport. I kind of got used to it over the years. Used to live in Atlanta for most of my life and so anyway. But they have this little like, like, it's not an escalator like goes up and down, but it's, it goes up and down, um, where you can walk on it and it makes you walk faster because it's like, it's like moving. And they have them at other airports too. But anyway, when you're investing in assets that are appreciating going up in value, it's kind of like you're, you're on that thing. It's just, you're just going a little bit faster. You're getting some help. So anyway, we're going to talk about all that coming up after we hear a quick word from today's show. Sponsored. I'm going to share the story of how I paid off all my debt and became debt free. Are you serious about leveling up your lawn care business this year? Then you need to be in Louisville, Kentucky from October 20th through 23rd for the equip Expo. This is the super bowl of our industry, featuring 30 acres of outdoor demos where you can test the latest gear from every major manufacturer. Don't be the pro who pays a hundred and twenty dollars at the gate. Go to the link in the show notes right now. Use promo code Paul at checkout and you'll save 50% off. That's half off your registration locking in your pass for as low as $12.50. Don't wait. Register today at the link in the show notes. Use promo code Paul. You'll save half off and I hope to see you soon in good old Louisville, Kentucky. Stop wasting time responding to website inquiries that are not in profitable service areas. Let my service area filter those inquiries for you so you know every inquiry will be in one or more of your profitable areas. My service area is a secretary for your website that will only allow good leads and inquiries through your website. This means no more looking up addresses and responding to people that you cannot service. Using my service area will allow you to focus on certain areas which help build dense routes daily. Miles traveled matter more than ever today. So knowing your numbers and how far you can travel mean everything to your success. Start saving time and become more efficient today with my service area. You can learn more at my service area.com Paul again, that's my service area.com forward/Paul real quick before we move on. If you're tired of buying equipment blind or running your crew the same way, hoping something changes, get yourself To Equip exposition this October in Louisville. Test drive the best equipment from every major manufacturer in one place. Come see me at the morning show. Check out Equip's education sessions built for guys actually running crews. Use my code, Paul, at registration to save 50 50% on your pass. The link is in today's show notes. All right, what are the seven baby steps from Dave Ramsey? Number one, we're going to go through all seven. I'm going to share my story. Number one, if you're just getting started out with this plan, and the ultimate path of this plan is to generational wealth. In the Bible, it says that a good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children. That's a fancy way to say grandpa or grandma. They leave an inheritance to their grandkids. So maybe right now you're like, Paul, I'm 16 years old. What do you mean, grandkids? Well, hopefully Lord will in one day grow up. You'll get married, you'll have children. They'll grow up, they'll get married, they'll have children, and then you're gonna have grandchildren, and then you die. In newsflash, everyone listening to the sound of my voice right now, including me, we're all scheduled to die. It's a hundred percent of us, right? And it's not the most fun thing to think about whatsoever. But when you do die, what are you going to leave behind? Are you going to leave an inheritance to your children's children? That's what a good man does, according to the Bible. So the Dave Ramsey path leads you to wealth so that you can get there. So here's step one. You save $1,000 for a starter emergency fund. So if you want to have a financial turnaround that I'm experiencing my transformation, I started here, you save $1,000 and no more. Because after you save the thousand dollars, which is step one, and hopefully you can sell some stuff or go mow some extra yards or do whatever you can to get $1,000 saved up and set into a savings account for emergencies. So if you have an emergency, you don't have to go back into debt. You don't have to go put something on your credit card. You just use that thousand dollars if necessary. So you set that thousand dollars aside. That' then step two, and this is the popular one, it's called the debt snowball. You're going to pay off all your debt except the house. If you have a mortgage, we'll talk about that in baby step six. But you're going to Pay off all your debt using the debt snowball. So what the debt snowball is, let's say you have five debts, you're going to make a list and you're going to write them down with the smallest balance at the top of the list. So let's say you have a credit card you owe a thousand dollars on. So you'd put that credit card top of the list balance $1,000. You could put the interest rate if you want to the right of that in your column on your spreadsheet, but that's the top of the list. And then let's say you got a two thousand dollar debt, you owe your cousin Pookie. You borrowed two thousand dollars from Pookie and he's been texting you, hey, where's my money brother? Where's my money? Say okay Pookie, I got you on the debt Snowball, I'm gonna pay you off soon, okay? And then let's say you got a three thousand dollar debt, you have three thousand dollars still on your truck. You put that third. And then maybe you got a, a bigger debt, maybe you got whatever you got. Ms. Fictitiously naming debts here. But say, let's say you got an SBA loan and that, that one's 10,000. And then you got your, your, your another debt that's even a bigger balance. So you would Write them down. Debt 1, debt 2 Debt 3 Debt 4 Debt 4 Debt. Pardon me. Debt 4, debt 5. Top of the balance. Top of the list is the lowest balance. Pardon me. So what you're going to do is you're going to make minimum payments on all five of these debts. However, you're going to do everything you can legally to scrape together every penny you can. This is through extra hard work to earn income and this is through selling stuff. And this is through frugality of saving money from not spending money on, on, on, on like going out to eat and things like that while you're in baby step two. And you take every last penny you can inch together and you chuck it at that debt at the top of the snowball. So you've made your minimum payment on your debt to debt three, debt four, debt five. And whatever's at the top of the debt snowball, any extra penny you can figure it out way to get it legally, you throw it at that debt until that debt at the top of the debt snowballs paid off. Who now you only got four debts left. So you keep making minimum payments on debt 2, 3, 4 and the new one that's at the top of your list, which is now, Pookie, you text Pookie and say, hey, I got good news, Pook. Money's coming your way. I'm doing. I'm mowing extra. I'm cutting that grass, making that cash. And then you, you, you. You scrape together, say, 500 extra bucks. And you. You Venmo, Pook. And you say, hey, Pookie, just Venmo. You. 500. It got the balance down to 1500. And then you actually realized you had your motorcycle. Isn't a need, it's a want. You don't really need that motorcycle. You sell your. Your bike and you get 1500 bucks for that. It wasn't the nicest one. And now you text Pookie, hey, keep an eye out on your Venmo. In the next hour, Pook, you text. You send him the 1500. You say, did you receive it? He says, yes, sir. And he's, I don't owe you any money anymore, Pookie. Now that debt's gone. Now you only got three debts left. So you make the minimum payments on debts two and three, and the new one, that's at the top of your list. You do everything you can. You're working as hard as you can. Remember the Gazelle. You're. This is life or death. You're every thing. You got to make as much extra money as you can. And then you pay off that debt at the top of the snowball. Now you only got two left. And I can remember when I only had two left. It was a student loan and it was the SBA loan. And I remember when I was. This is real life now. I got two left. And I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, baby. I was getting fired up. I was like, I'm almost there. Two more to go. And I paid them off. And I became debt free. Taking deep breaths because it feels good. I remember pay. I met. Oh, baby. I remember when I got that. That money in my account, I knew. And I'm weird, and in this way, I'm a nerd. I didn't want to wait till the morning, so I knew the night before the money was going to be in my account. Long story short, I had talked to my bank. It's a long, long story, but I knew it was that money was going to be released into my account at 12:01am on this specific day. I just. I knew how my bank worked and I knew how, like, I had. Long story short, I deposited a check in the bank, and they're like yeah, we have to release the whole or we have a hold release scheduled for this day. So I knew when the, I knew when the release hold thing was going to be released and I talked to my banker like yeah it's going to on 1201 on this day, you know, that money will be clear and it'll be in your account. So I woke up, I set my alarm. I woke up because I go to bed early and I log into my bank account and there it is that you know the, the customer I served pay me and the money's there. So then I was like okay. So I went over to my, my debt. The, it was a student loan, my last debt ever. And I logged into the website, typed in my username, typed in my password. I double checked, triple checked, quadruple checked the, the remaining balance just so there was no, you know, nothing, nothing fishy going on. I knew to the exact penny what I owed and I typed in the amount, you know mount because it said amount due is only 200 but I was, I was going to pay the whole balance off. So I put in the number for the, the remaining balance and there's a little blue button that said submit baby. I hit submit and I went, I went crazy. Probably like 1207am in the morning and I'm like let's go. I'm debt free. I'm debt free. And I went back to bed and I woke up the next morning and I got back on and I checked, you know checked the, the thing and it said like processing for like two days. So I, it was like anti climatic. And then finally I kept logging into the student loan and then, then it, you know it showed paid balance zero and I, it was, I mean the whole time I knew I was debt free but I was like I just want to see 00000 and I don't know, I don't owe anybody anything and it's awesome. And so I went through baby step two. I know the emotions of it. I know the, the struggle bust of it. I know because my debt snowball when I started was over 100,000. I owed, I owed everybody. It seemed like I, I owed my buddy Joe. I literally there's a guy named Joe. I borrowed 1500 bucks from him when I was so broke. Yeah, I went over to his house for lunch one day and I was so broke. It was a long time ago but he's like what's wrong? And I was like I, I'm out of money. He's oh no big deal. I'll loan you 1500 bucks. Will that help you? He asked me how much you need to, you know, make it. I was like a lot like 1500. And I thought he was broke too. He's like, oh, hold on. And he went and got his checkbook, he wrote me 1500 check. Just pay me back whenever you can. And you know, like a dummy, I'm like, okay, thanks so much. And I thought it was God's provision not knowing that the borrower slave to the lender. So then it affected my relationship with Joe because every time I go over to his house, you know, I go over to his house to watch a baseball game like a schmuck. I shouldn't have been watching baseball when I was in debt. I should have been out working. But anyway, I was dumb at the time, not anymore. Now I'm wise and smart and diligent and I work my butt off because I never want to be back in that place again. But anyway, it was awkward because now it's like I owe my friend money and there's a dynamic there. Well, eventually I paid Joe off and I paid the student loan off and I paid them all off and I'm debt free and it feels so awesome. Next up, baby step three. So once you're out of debt, then you save three to six months of expenses for a fully funded emergency fund. So remember in baby step one you only had $1,000 saved. Now you bump that up and if you're listening to this, likely you own a lawn care business. You would be what's called an self employed entrepreneur. So you would be wise to save six months of expenses. Now someone who, let's say they're like a nurse and they work 40 hours a week at a hospital and it's kind of like, I don't want to say it's predictable, but it's not as much volatility in their life. Then they would only need to save three months of expenses to fully fund their emergency fund. But us who are out in the wild and self employment and so much could go awry there, it would be better to save six months. So just calculate, okay, it cost me $5,000 a month. I'm not saying me personally, I'm just saying an example here. Let's say it cost $5,000 a month to pay your mortgage and to pay your groceries and to pay your,
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gym membership and all your expenditures. 5,000amonth to run your household. But you know, household monthly expenditures, you would multiply that by six months. So that would be $30,000. So now baby step three, you save $30,000. And actually Dave teaches that gazelle intensity for getting out of debt. You continue that so you can have a little celebration that you're debt free. But you continue that gazelle intensity until you get through baby step three when you have your six months of expenses saved. Now once you reach that point, that's when you can kind of relax a little bit because that cheat is not chasing you down, trying to eat you. And you know, you can start going out to eat now within ratio and with, you know, you don't want to go live high on the hog and blow all your money. But, but my point is that gazelle intensity happens for baby steps 1, 2, 3. Then when you go into baby step 4, Dave Ramsey recommends investing 15% of your household income into retirement. And again, I would not put all my eggs in one basket. I wouldn't put all my money into like the Enron stock, which doesn't even exist anymore. But some of you are too young to understand what Enron was, was this company in Texas that went out of business. So I want to put all your money in like one stock. But if you put money in, in good growth stock mutual funds or you know, you can even put like the, if you put in like the s and P500, which is the 500 largest companies in the United States, publicly traded companies, typically over time that goes up like 10% every year, your money would grow. So Anyway, baby step four is when you take 15% of your household income and you invest it into retirement. These are Dave Ramsey seven baby steps. Number five is then you save for your children's college fund. And I know some of you are like, I kid ain't going to college. And that's a very valid point. Well, I'm just giving you Dave's steps here. And then number six is if you do have a mortgage now, you're going to start chunking extra money at that mortgage and try to pay off your home early is baby step six. So then once that's done, now you're like my boy Tony Rudolph, my boy Andy Molder. Their homes are paid off. They don't have a mortgage, they don't have any debt. They're debt free, paid for mortgage. That's called baby step seven. That's when you just keep investing. Keep your foot on the gas with the investment and you're going to keep building wealth. You get to live and give like no one else. You get to give generously. You get to live generously or live wealthy ratio wise. You know you never want to get you know, you never want to live a lifestyle beyond your income, but you get baby steps. Fun. That's when you're building wealth and you're giving generously. Dave Ramsey's Baby Step seven so that's the goal to get to. Again, a quick recap. Number one, save $1,000 for your starter emergency fund. Number two, pay off all debt. Accept the house using the debt snowball. Baby step three is to save six months of your expenses for a fully funded emergency fund. Baby step four is to invest 15% of your household income into retirement. Baby step five is save for your children's college fund. Baby step six is to pay off your home early. Baby step seven is to build wealth and give generously. I hope this has been encouraging to you. This is the, the path that I personally follow in my personal life and my business and it works and I highly recommend it. So if you're in debt, I shared with you the process that I use to get out of debt. And the reason I'm so passionate about this is because I know how much peace is in my heart. I know how much better it is to not owe anybody anything. And it's, it's hard for me to watch guys, they go out and they buy these brand new trucks. They got this fancy truck and they think they're all cool because it's fancy and it's nice. And they have this astronomical truck payment every month. And I'm thinking, ah, stay out of debt. And if you are in debt, get out of debt. And it's not because it's like just my opinion. It's, it's my, it's my reality in my life. I know how much better it is and I want other people to experience that. But anyway, that's my story. That's Dave Ramsey's plan. Do with it what you will. Thanks for listening to today's program. Quick reminder, my buddy Naylor Talia Farrow is hosting The LCR summit October 19th through 20th, 20th, 2026, the year 2026 in Louisville, Kentucky. I'll be speaking there alongside Jason Creole, John Pajak, Eric Triplett, Naylor, a very special guest who's going to be named soon. And tickets are very limited. There are a few left, so you can grab one of those and save yourself half off the ticket price with the promo code. Paul and that's the week of Equip Expo. Of course, Quip Expo will be happening then the rest of the week. Louisville, Kentucky Save 50% off your tickets for Equip Expo as well. Promo Code Paul, thanks for listening to today's program. Hope to catch you on the next one.
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Peace. Hey, it's Marty, producer of the Green Industry Podcast. This episode is over, but check the episode notes for links to products and services that you heard about during the episode. And thanks for listening.