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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 bestselling books including Cut that Grass and make that Cash and his latest, Level up youp 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 Jameson.

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Welcome back to the podcast. I am Paul Jameson down here in beautiful, sunny Florida. I hope you are doing well in your neck of the woods. Today we're going to dive into a topic that touches everyone's life. Every single listener. We all have this in common and that is our personal finances. A lot of times on the program I talk about business related things, but at the end of the day, we need to bring home the bacon and make sure there's food on the table for our families. And we're going to talk about that on today's program. So if you've ever felt overwhelmed by your financial situation because you got your business going on and you got your personal stuff going on, or you just wish you had a more secure financial future, this podcast is for you. We're going to explore the top five actionable steps that we can take today to shift our finances once and for all. And these are. This is my playbook. Like, this is what I focus on to make sure that I'm reaching my potential. And I'm going to share these very practical steps with you today. Something that really kind of, I use it as a litmus test is Proverbs 21:20. It says that the wise store up choice food in olive oil, but fools gulp theirs down. And in the spring rush, I think we have to be very careful when money's flowing in. Hopefully, hopefully you're, you know, getting work. During the spring rush. Money's flowing in. A fool will gulp it all down. The fool will go live high on the hog. The fool will spend it all. But the wise they store up choice food in olive oil. Let me put it in terminology that you might understand. The wise save up their winter fund. The wise make investments maybe into a Roth IRA or a Solo 401k or fill in the blank. The wise are storing up. The wise are looking ahead. The wise are saving up choice food and olive oil. But the fools, they're just gulping it all down. So with that in mind, let's explore the five steps that again, this is just my personal playbook that I focus on to make sure that financially in a personal sense, and I'm not talking about just a lawn care business now, but back at home, back at the ranch, that things are going well. So if you want a shift in your finances, if you master these five things, you are off to the races. Number one, can you guess what it is? Mr. Producer? I talk about this all the time. It's so important. The first step to shifting your finances, both personally and in your business, is creating a budget. A budget is a plan that helps you allocate where all this income is going to go. Are you going to spend it on rent? Are you going to put it in a savings account? Are you going to do an investment? Because if you're just willy nilly, oh, yeah, well, we'll just, we'll do a little bit of that, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. And you don't actually have a written plan. It's like the money just gets wings and just flies away. And you're like, where did it go? McDonald's. Okay, let me, let me get back to my notes. Jesus himself said, for which of you desiring to build a tower does not first sit down and count the cost. He goes on to explain how silly you would look if you start building a tower and then you run out of money and the tower is not complete. And that's how a lot of us run our life. We just, we make commitments. But have we really counted the cost? How if I make this decision, what is it going to cost me? So to create a budget, I use this is hashtag not sponsored. All right? I use Google sheets. I know some folks use Microsoft Excel. Some folks use Dave Ramsey's Every Dollar budget. Some folks use a pen in a yellow pad. It doesn't actually really matter. What matters is you start tracking your income and your expenses for a month. Now on my Google sheet, I can literally go back to last year, this month, the two years ago this month. I can look at any month, and I'm so nerdy. About this, I, again, this isn't a spreadsheet. You might say, well Paul, you don't need to do all that. You're, you're, you're, you know, everything's high tech now or whatever. I do this the old school way to, to make myself look at each income coming in to my personal stuff and then each outgo because I want, I want to, I want to know what areas I can cut back because I'm paying attention every day. So anyway, my spreadsheet I can go back to any month personally. I'm talking about, I'm not talking about a business now. I'm talking about my rent, my gym membership, which I don't currently have one right now, but when I did have one, my, if I, if I buy a new pair of shoes, my groceries, my food out, all of that stuff, I can go back to any month and show you exactly what my income was that month. Like what I paid myself out of the business and took home and then what my expenses were for that month. See, budgeting isn't about just restricting. Oh, I can't do this, I can't do that, I can't do this, I can't do that. It's about giving yourself control over your finances. If you're paying yourself 5,000amonth, 6,000amonth, whatever you're paying yourself here, you come up with a plan. Okay, let's allocate all $6,000 of what? Let's just hypothetically say you pay your, you write yourself a check on the first of the month, you have a plan now of where all of that $6,000 is going to go. Now the power of, of tracking it is that now you can look at the end of the month. Okay, the plan was we're going to have 6,000 come in and here's where we're going to spend it all. But actually we ended up spending 6,300 because this happened. And then you learn, oh wow, we had, you know, we had this expense, yada, yada yada. Now you, now you're more focused for the next month. So if you want to shift in your finances, like for real, you want to go to the next level, financially, it's absolutely non negotiable. Super important to get into the rhythm of having a written budget each month and then tracking where you actually spend. So, so how you actually do versus the budget. Number two, you want to have a shift in your finances, you need an emergency fund. Personally, we're not talking about the business today. This is all personal Finance stuff today, so. And yes, these principles will carry right on over in your business. But I want to, I want to stay focused back at the ranch. I want to stay focused on your home. The plans of the diligent lead to profit, as people who are hasty lead to poverty. So diligent folk, they save for the future. Broke folk, they are spontaneous, they are in the moment, they are hasty. So an emergency fund acts as a financial safety net, helping you cover basically unexpected expenses in a case of emergency without going into debt. So I literally reached out to Dave Ramsey. I wasn't able to get a hold of him directly, but I spoke with his team and I told them, you know, a little bit about who I am, what I do, you know, I serve you guys with the podcast of helping lawn care business owners and things of that nature. And I just asked them, as a lawn care business owner, what would be your. How much money should you have saved back at the ranch, back at home, in your personal account? And they told me that you need six months. They're like, really? Any small business owner, it doesn't matter if it's a lawn care business, Pressure washing business, painting business, any business owner, because there's so much fluctuality and risk, they recommend a six month savings account back at home. So I was like, okay, I appreciate, I appreciate the advice. So if your expenditures in your home are 6,000amonth, you would multiply that by six. That would be $36,000. For a fully funded emergency fund, maybe you're only 5,000amonth. Multiplied by six months, that would only be 30,000 for your emergency fund. So you're basically looking at what does it cost to run your household per month and then save six months of that and put it in a liquid savings account, which basically means you can access the money immediately. If there was hypothetically an emergency, you could go and grab that money, pay for the emergency, and then try to replenish it as fast as possible. So if the emergency happens, you don't go into debt. And this is absolutely important. So we're going to talk about the three other things that if we do, it will shift our finances. Coming right up. Have you ever felt like you're drowning in scattered quotes, schedules, and chasing payments that never come easy? I've been there with you. I used to be a chuck in the truck, completely disorganized and constantly chasing payments. But then I started using jobber back in 2019 and it was a complete game changer for my business. Still using it today. I love it and recommend it to all my coaching clients. Now Jobber is an all in one business app software where you can store customer information, send quotes and invoices, schedule your appointments, and even collect payments. Best of all, you know I talk about this a lot on the podcast. You can save a credit card on file for automatic and hassle free payments. No more awkward follow ups or lost money. You ready to simplify your business operations? Check the link in the show notes and use my special Jobber link and try it for free. You won't look back. 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 Equips education sessions built for guys actually running crews. Use my code Paul at registration to save 50% on your pass. The link is in today's show notes. Foreign. Talk about how to have a shift in your personal finance. As we already talked about mastering a budget, building an emergency fund, step number three is getting out of debt. So I'm out of debt. I'm debt free and it's amazing. I sleep very good at night. I don't have to worry about paying the student loan, I don't have to worry about paying the SBA loan. I don't have to worry about paying taxes. Now I have to pay the next, you know, tax bill that's due. But I'm saving along the way. So when the tax bill is due, I already have the money saved. So long story short, I used to have stress related to oh man, I gotta make my student loan payment. Oh man, I gotta make my payment for this, I gotta make my payment for that. And just the emotional release and the piece that I have where I used to have anxiety is it's a game changer of not having any debt. So I personally can relate to debt being a significant burden mathematically, but also the emotional component. I didn't realize it while I was in debt, all that stress that I was carrying until I got to this place where I don't owe anybody anything. It's much more freeing now. There's quite a bit of responsibility in my business where I have monthly commitments to, you know, people that their families are relying on me and stuff like that. But that's not debt. It that's a different pressure of running a business, but the, the freedom of eliminating debt out of my life and not having to owe anybody anything is a lot of freedom. Now, statistically, the vast majority of people hearing the sound of my voice right now, you have debt, which I understand the statistics. So how I got out of debt is I put them all in a list. I literally wrote down, and I had this on my Google sheet. I wrote down every debt I had and the interest rate of the debt and the minimum payment and the balance. And I paid off the smallest debt first to build momentum. And I just kept chunking money, the minimum payments at the other debts until I just kept, you know, I just kept paying them off. And the list would get smaller as I got rid of one. And then it came down to where I only had one debt left. I had two debts left. I had a $27,000 student loan and then a $41,000 SBA loan, which when it got to that point, it got kind of intimidating. And I just kept chunking money at the student loan, chunking money and paid it off, and then start chunking money at the SBA loan and I paid that sucker off and I got debt free. So that method worked for me. It built momentum and it kept me focused. And I would say, if you want a shift in your finances, get out of debt. And if you're already out of debt, stay out of debt, my friends. Stay out of debt. Don't even think about it. Get out of debt and stay out of debt. All right, number four, maybe I'm passionate about that one a little bit, Mr. Producer. Just a little bit. All right, number four, you want to shift in your finances. Invest for the future. Ecclesiastes 11:2 reminds us, Invest in seven ventures. Yes. In eight, you do not know what disaster may come upon the land. Investing, if it's a good investment, has the potential to allow your money to grow over time, helping you achieve financial independence. Financial. Your financial goals. Now, not all investments are equal. Right. There's a stock back in the day called Enron. I think it was a Texas based company. And they went bankrupt. They went completely out of business. And there was people, mainly employees that worked there, that their whole retirement was in a single stock. And that single stock was Enron. So when that thing went to zero, they lost all of their investments gone. So that's why Ecclesiastes 11:2 basically says, invest in seven ventures and eight, you do not know when disaster may come upon the land. So if whoever was invested in Enron, if they would have also been invested in, you know, the S P 500, which is the 500 largest company you know, publicly traded companies in the United States. And they were also invested maybe in the, I think it's called vti, the Total Stock Market Index. And they're also invested in real estate. You know, maybe they, they owned a house or two. And like I could go on and on and down on down the list of different, different investments, but they, they could have weathered the storm better. So this is not financial advice. I'm not a financial advisor. You can look in and research yourself retirement accounts like a 401k, a solo 401k, a regular 401k, an IRA, a RO. If you're new to investing, just start educating yourself to where you understand all these terms. You understand what a stock is, you understand what a bond is, you understand what a mutual fund is. You understand what's the difference between a Roth IRA and an individual 401K. And you just start to understand these investment vehicles. You understand various different index funds and things of that nature. And I would highly recommend hiring a certified financial planner who can help you understand it even more. Before you invest one penny, you want to understand what you're investing in. You want to understand the track record of that investment. You want to understand the, the power of that investment, of how income. See, rich people, they do this. All right, I'm gonna tell you a little secret because I have, I'm friends with rich people. Rich people? Yes. Listen carefully. All right, I'm talking. I'm friends with really rich people. All right, my rich friends do this. I have two guys that come to mind that are just crazy wealthy. They both do the same thing. So they both have full time jobs. One guy works in sales for a company and the other guy owns a business. Two separate guys, but they're both absolutely very, very, very rich. And they actually, their personal income each year is over millions of dollars. But that's not necessarily why they're rich. I mean, that helps. But they don't spend all those millions they're making and they invest the millions and their investments are now making crazy amounts of money. So yes, they continue to work every day or, you know, they work their regular job and that they're high income earners, but they take that high income and they've invested it and their investments are making crazy amounts of money. And so that's the secret that, that's what rich, really rich people do, is their money is making them money. I mean, they have so much money in, in a mutual fund, and that mutual fund's going up on average, 8, 10, 12%. That's creating this. The more money you got in there, the more money it's creating. It's crazy. And then they got. They. They each have multiple homes. I was. I was talking to one fella, and he's like, yeah, I'm going out to. I'm going out to Laguna Beach. I was like, oh, you rent. You're renting a spot out there off Verbo or Airbnb or like, what do you rent? He was just staring at me. He's like, no, we. You know, we own our own house in Laguna Beach. I was like, oh, of course. You know, what was I thinking? And because he also lives here in Florida, and he just also happens to have another. Another beach house in Laguna Beach, California. He's like, my wife likes it out there in the summer. So anyway, rich people are different. They're a different breed. But guess what? That, that, that. That. That home he has out in. In Laguna beach, that thing's gone up in value over the years. And then all of his investments, he loves this. This one fella I know, he loves investing into the mutual funds and the stock market and into investments and index funds and stuff like that. And he's got so much money in there that every year, that money makes some money. So, for starters, you just got to get started. You just got to start investing your investment accounts started, you know, zero, zero balance. But then you start putting money in there, and then you start putting more money in there, and then the compound interest starts kicking in, and then it starts growing. And again, you remember the Ecclesiastes 11. Two invest in seven ventures. Yes. In eight. You do not know when disaster may come upon the land. Meaning you don't want all your eggs in one basket like Enron, but you have. You have wise investments that you understand, have a proven track record that they. Right. Real estate typically goes up in value. The stock market historically has gone up in value over time. So those are just two examples of investments, when done properly, that can really help us grow at an accelerated level. So again, disclaimer. I'm not a financial advisor, but I would learn about investing and then get in the habit of doing it. Last but not least, I want to talk about generosity. Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly. Whoever sows generously will also reap generously. The practicing generosity not only blesses whoever you give. Give something to, but it cultivates in us a mindset of abundance, and it protects our heart from greed. Because if you're not able to give Something, somebody, you probably are greedy and you just haven't realized it. But when we give, in my mind, it kind of helps create an abundance mentality because I'm like, okay, I'm going to give some money to this person or give some money here and I'm going to trust that God's going to provide me more and it makes sure that I'm not being greedy. So charitable giving, helping those in need, giving to the poor. That one's a huge one. Giving to the poor is so pivotal because they can't pay us back. So when you give to the poor, you're the Bible says you're lending to the Lord and he will repay you because the poor person, they can't repay you. So there's other situations where the motives get challenged because you give somebody something, but then you're thinking in return, well, I gave them this, so they should do this for me. When you go give money to a poor person, you ain't thinking. You're probably thinking, are they going to spend it on black and mild or liquor? What are they going to spend it on, right? But you, you, you, you, you, you know they ain't coming back to you, right, because they can't help you. So anyway, giving to the poor is something powerful. So I just looked at the clock. I have got to go real quick summary, my friend. If you want to shift your finances, create a budget, build that emergency fund, get out of debt and stay out and out of debt. Learn investing and make wise investments and be a generous person. Specifically, give to the poor. So those are my five core things that I focus on in my finances that have absolutely been a game changer for me and I know can shift your finances well. So thanks for listening to today's program. Hope to catch you on next one. Peace.