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Most personal finance advice is complete garbage. I've tested every tip hack strategy on my way to building an eight figure business from zero. In this video I want to give you the habits that actually worked for me to unlock growth as a business owner. Now the first one is probably the most important, which is to avoid lifestyle creep. Now most people, as they start to make more money, whether it's in your job or business you own, just start to spend more money, right? It's like you, your income goes up, your lifestyle creeps up, you buy a, you know, nicer car, a house, you go to eat more fancier vacations, you buy like things and like over time it doesn't feel like a lot. But then all of a sudden like you're making 300 grand, you're spending $299,000, right? And you have like no savings and you're like feel like you're never catching up. This is like a big problem almost everybody experiences. And as a business owner though, like you have so much control over how your business grows. And for me I understood the power of compounding and that as much money that I could save in the business and reinvest to grow, that while it may not feel like a lot in the beginning, it can really become some massive numbers over time. And so I did my very best to slow the like personal burn rate as much as possible. So I bought my business in 2016. My first one, I would say by 2018, 2019 is really when I started to make, you know, significantly more money. And for many years I drove the same Honda or what is it, Mazda. And then I, and then I had used like BMW. And then in 2019 I bought another BMW. But like, I mean I own that car today. It's paid off like it's fine because I knew that like if I could reinvest into people and equipment and these other things, that is ultimately would make me a lot more money in the long run. And so that is going to be a common theme, but like avoiding lifestyle creep and having a really good control on the money that you spend is by far like the biggest thing that you can do and avoid as much of that as possible. Number two is to automate savings, automate investment. So in the business I set up three bank accounts, I set up a operating account, so all the money comes into the operating account. I have a tax account and a profit account. And so I estimate how much money I'm going to owe in estimated taxes and then I allocate money into that account every Week. Now it might be a thousand dollars a week or $10,000 or 20,000, doesn't matter. Kind of as the business grows, I just move more money based on what I think I'm going to owe. Because then at the end of the year and like, you know, April 14, normally I make those payments and that money is coming right out of the businesses kind of escrow savings account. And I'm not like, scrambling to figure out, like, where that money's going to come from. And then I have a profit account. And my profit account is one that I move money based on essentially how much money I have in my operating account. Like, I say, hey, I want to keep, I don't know, let's just say $30,000 in the account. And then anything over 30, I move over. I like, take a haircut on it. So If I have 35, boom, I take five over. And then that profit account, even if it's small in the beginning, that's okay, starts to grow and grow and grow. And then the goal, my goal is to keep that money in there as long as I can to then use that to invest back into the business. That is the one that I use for, for the next opportunity or if I feel like there are no opportunities, is I know I take it out personally and then I invest it into, you know, Vanguard funds or like, whatever I'm. I'm going to do personally. And then on the personal side, we have a 401k set up. Same thing. Max out my personal contribution to that, which is like, what, $65,000 a year or something like that. And then I have a company match now for the company, you know, it is a, an expense. You pay less on taxes. And then personally, you know, that money grows tax deferred. And so anyway, I, I do that. I think it's great. But as much as you can automate in your life, the better, because if you don't automate it and you have to, like, think about it, be like, all right, how much money do I want to make? You have to, like, it's constant decisions. It leads to, like, decision fatigue where, like, it takes up mind space that you could better use to say, how do I grow the business? Like, my mind is much better off figuring out how do I, you know, add a million dollars in revenue a year than to worry about, like, do I move 5,000 or 10,000 to this thing?
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Right?
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Like, I'd rather use that time, energy, and effort to figure out something that makes me a lot more money versus, like, something that makes me, like, a little bit money that could be automated. So do that, automate as much as possible then. I mean, this kind of relates. But focus on buying assets. So, like, an asset is something that makes you money, not a toy. So, like, I don't own a Rolex, like I said, I don't own a lot of fancy things. Like, I'm not like, a material person by any means. But, like, I will take that money and then I'll buy another franchise. Like, I'm the franchise business, right? We have 35 locations now. I started with two in 2016. And I've continued to buy more and more and more. And then I buy into other businesses, turf and painting. And now we're buying tow trucks to build a massive towing business to then, you know, make money and then also feed our stores. And so, like, we buy real estate occasionally. And so, like, all those things are assets. Like, they make me money. And so I have no problem on Monday going out and spending $200,000 to buy two tow trucks that actually I'm going to get debt on, which is whatever, a later one here. But those are going to make me money, right? Versus, you know, I'm all stingy about buying, like, a watch or something that's like, it's not going to make me any more money. Like, it's shiny. But, like, once again, my goal, like, I have big goals financially, personally, like, it's a game to me here, and I want to win, and I win by saving and then investing as much of my money as possible. And so this is like a mindset, though. This is something like you have to develop over time. And if you don't have these habits, like these conservative habits, like, you're never going to be able to build a big business. Because if you take all the money that you earn and you're immediately spending on, like, dumb, like, you buy a boat, like, what the hell's a boat gonna do, right? You spend money on all this stuff. Like, you're not gonna have the money when the opportunities come up to do the acquisitions, to expand the business, to hire that next person because it is so thin and you have such burn rate. So, like, you may be able to get it to a certain point, but you're never going to break through that barrier because you are spending it as fast as you're earning it versus someone like me who's, like, way more, you know, stingy in a lot of ways. I then can make those big investments and I can blow through those barriers and all of A sudden now I have a business that's 10 times bigger that then can afford me whatever I want when I want it. But like that's by my choice and I control that. So buying assets, not toys, for as long as you can.
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B
Right?
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Like as long as you can. The better number four is using credit cards, but never carrying a balance. And so I'm a huge fan of spending as much as possible in my business on a credit card that gives me 2% cash back. Like we go to all of our vendors and we negotiate as part of the deals that they allow us to charge the bill on our credit card without charging us a processing fee. And so, you know, I mean, at the size I'm at today, I mean it's a lot of money. It's like $200,000 a year. We're getting back in tax free credit card rewards. And I've never paid a dime in interest or late fees because you know, we view it more as like a debit card of money that we have to pay every month. But as a way, if you're responsible that you can, you can get that 2% and it's, it's tax free. Credit card rewards as a business owner are tax free free, like totally legal. I'm not making this up because it's like a rebate of purchases, not, not income. And so you know, in reality the, the $200,000 that, that we get in credit card rebates is really worth like you know, 250 or, or whatever of actual income. And so I use that money then to say, hey, let me go on that, that nice vacation or let me like help pay for my kitchen remodel or like whatever it is because I've got then this like extra cash that's coming through. And so I've linked below my favorite hard. If you own a business and you're looking for one with really good rewards, this is my favorite one. Number five is to use debt strategically. Now a lot of people say, oh, never do debt if you're like Dave Ramsey or whatever, big fan. But as a business owner, I mean I've used a ton of debt, but good debt, debt that buys me assets. So I've used debt to negotiate a ton of seller finance deals. So basically I buy the business but instead of going the bank, the seller holds the note. Like I pay the seller every month, but principal and interest. I've done this like seven, eight times. And like I have the retirement plan of like all these people, but it allows some really creative deals. It Allows some win win scenarios. It allows me to put maybe little money down, but give them a number that they need. And then we do like the snowball effect, right? I do like to say when we get to a certain point, like, let's knock out this one, let's knock out that one. So I use debt to acquire a cash flowing business. And then as that business makes money, I use as much of that new profit, that new cash flow that I didn't have to then accelerate the pay down of the debt, right? So it's like use it to get it, but then immediately work your way to chip it down. So another example is like I'm on Monday gonna go buy a tow truck for $80,000. And I have a bank that will give me 100 financing on the purchase. And so, you know, I'm no money into this thing, no money down. But that truck, I'm gonna have a payment of like 1500, 1600, something like that a month. Just on the debt side of it. But that truck is probably gonna be able to produce $15,000 a month in, in revenue, you know, minus all my costs. I mean, I hope to make maybe $5,000 and then I got to pay the debt. So like, you know, maybe net, NET I make $3,500 more after paying all of it just on the towing side, let alone like the work that it brings to our stores. And so basically I go, and now all of a sudden that one truck is net, net net, making me three to four thousand dollars more per month. I'm going to buy two of them. So now all of a sudden I'm using debt to make 7 to 8,000 dol it. And then I'm using the money to accelerate the pay down of the debt to then continue to reinvest. Not to mention there's bonus depreciations, a bunch of stuff. I don't want to get into that. But like assets are what you want to buy. You want to buy cash flowing assets. That is huge. Number six is to take asymmetric bets. So what is an asymmetric bet? A symmetric bet is like equal, right? So it's like you have a 50% chance of winning or losing. An asymmetric bet means like you might have a 10% chance of losing and 90% chance of winning, or that your downside is very small compared to the upside. Like if it doesn't work, like I'm not going to lose that much money or like even I make a little money compared to what it is. And so that is what I really look for, like, in. In the business financially, as much as I can. I am looking for the deals that have very low downside, but huge upside. And so it works in business acquisitions. And so in the franchise game, like, once you learn how to operate a store, like my two stores or whatever, for me to go out and buy another store in a business that I already know how to operate in my market, like, there's very low downside for me because, like, I know all the factors, and I trust my ability to increase it. Right When I say I'm going to go and launch a tow truck business, my cost is buying these trucks right now. The upside is that I build a profitable towing business. The bigger upside is that I feed millions of dollars of very profitable repair work into the stores that I already own, and it's a complete win. The downside is it's a fricking nightmare. And I hate the business. And, you know, we break even and I sell the trucks because they retain value. And so my downside is, like, my time that I've invested into it and the energy and having to tell people here on YouTube and Twitter and stuff that I failed at it, and then, like, it was a total disaster.
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B
Right?
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Like, that is my downside. Now, obviously we have insurance, and there's, like, other. There could be worse downsides, but for the most part, the downside is very small compared to the millions of dollars we could potentially earn. And so that is one that I've done my entire, like, business career is figuring out what are the bets where I have very low downside and huge upside. And in a franchise system, once you learn it, copy paste, copy paste, and figuring all that out. The other asymmetrical bet that has zero downside and literally unlimited upside is number seven, which is investing in yourself. There's no better investment than investing in yourself, in your own education, in your mindset, in the things that you believe. And I used to think like everyone else, so, like, mindsets like a guru. And I thought Tony Robbins was just, like, people crying and I don't know, whatever. I didn't understand it. But then I surrounded myself with other people who were, like, worth 100 million, 200 million people that, like, were absolutely crushing in the business world. And, you know, you want to learn from other people. Like, you know where you want to be. And so from those people, you know, I was like, well, what did you wish you knew? What are the best investments you made? Like, I was asking, like, some financial questions, and they said a lot of it was just, like, working on themselves and, like, realizing that the only thing that was holding them back from growing was themselves. And so then I got into all this stuff, and I said, all right, let me figure that out. And I realized back, you know, in the earlier days that, like, I limited my own business because of my own limiting beliefs. Like, I thought that I personally had to be able to touch everything, and that if I couldn't physically touch it and drive to it within 15 minutes of my house or whatever it was, that it would fail. And if it would fail, it wouldn't be an embarrassment. And, like, there's all these reasons not to do it. And so I turned down doing all these deals because I didn't believe in myself and my ability to do it. And then I learned the phrase, why not me? Like, if other people can do it and they have success, why not me? These other guys, like, they are weren't any more, like, smarter. They weren't any more educated. They didn't have, like, any more connections initially. They just said, why not me? And if, like, other people can do it, I can do it. And they trusted that. They will figure it out. And so that clicked with me, and I said, art, screw it. I can do it, right? And so that's what I did. So. So then we started to make these big bets, and we started to answer that question and say, yeah, you're right. I can do it. And so we started to push outside my comfort zone, which led to doing deals in New Jersey and Allentown and getting into new business ventures and hiring people that I never would have hired before because I believed in myself and I believed in our ability in the team. And all of that just, like, opens up your mind to a whole new possibility that you didn't even know exist. Like, all of us live in this, like, bubble, right? Like, there is a bubble that we all live in. Like, I still live in a bubble. And for the most part, our visibility is at the edges of the bubble. You only think of what's possible if you can see it, right? Your belief of what you can build as your business, personally, whatever, is limited by what is right in front of your face. And by investing in yourself, by surrounding yourself with, like, other people who are doing cool things, who have a bigger bubble than you, it pops that bubble, or it expands the bubble at least to see, like, wow, like, what is possible and other people have done it, and you learn how they did it. And a lot of it was nothing special. It was just a matter of they had the vision, they took the action. Like they might have messed up, but they figured it out. And so all of that comes back to investing in yourself and belief that if they can do it, you can do it. And what does that look like? I mean, first it was joining Mastermind. So I paid money to be in a group to be surrounded by other people doing really cool shit, which has inspired me to create my own group called Eight Figure Franchisee. So this is for existing franchisees that want to surround themselves with me and other people who think similarly and are trying to up their game and want to be surrounded by other people who are winning. Soft pitch here. If you're a franchisee and you want to be in a group that I lead and people like me, you can shoot me a message, you can, you can learn about it, but find a group that resonates with you. And if you're into real estate, if you're into like adventure, whatever it is, it's a matter of finding like minded people and paying to be in a room and showing up and taking it seriously. I've hired business coach. I've had a business coach for four years. I pay him $20,000, but you know, over a hundred thousand dollars I paid him. But all that was to help accelerate the things that I wish I knew. Now obviously if you're just getting started, can't afford that. It's totally like I couldn't either back then. But it's a matter of learning these things and not being afraid to put your money and then the money makes you serious and then you take the action that you wish you did and you have this accountability. And so I'll get off my, my horse here, but big one there, number eight is to track your net worth every month. So starting in January 2020 is when I really started to track it and I made this massive spreadsheet. I'll link to it below if you want to like get a copy of it or whatever. But basically every single month I track my net worth. Like what, what did I ballpark my business was worth? The real estate that we owned, all the debt. Remember said I've taken on a lot of seller notes, a lot of debt. All the money in the business bank accounts like that is mine if I want it, but I keep it in there, you know, Vanguard and crypto and like other dumb that I invested in, I probably shouldn't have and all these different things. And so I look at that every single month and I've tracked it like I have a chart and it's going up and it's great and all this stuff. But like, I don't do it from like an ego standpoint. I do it mainly because like a, I want a really good pulse of like, am I making good decisions? And also it's this sense of like accomplishment because a lot of the money that the business makes stays in the business. We have more money in my business business account right now than I do my personal like checking account. I have way more money in the business, like profit account. If I only looked at my personal stuff, like I wouldn't, like I wouldn't feel that good. I'd want to take more money out of the business to put in my personal account to make myself like feel better about myself or like whatever. But instead it's on my spreadsheet, it's in the business account. It doesn't really matter to me whether it's in the business account or my, my personal account. It's still like counts towards my number that's climbing every month. And then also the net worth explodes when you make these investments when you own a business that you can create massive value. So let's say I have a hundred thousand dollars to invest and instead of taking that $100,000 as a distribution, right, and moving it to my, my personal net worth, it's all my spreadsheet, but it's in the business. And I say I'm going to use that money and I'm going to acquire another franchise. That franchise I acquire now is making $100,000 per year, like profit. So I've distributions, but then it's worth now probably $400,000. So all of a sudden my net worth went from like, let's say a hundred thousand dollars of that cash to I made that investment into that cash flowing business that we like basically created or you know, improved. Now it's worth 400,000. So I 4x that piece of money to, you know, my net worth. And so, so that is just like what I've done over and over and over again. And goes back to like the things I talked about in the beginning, which is like you automate these savings to allocate the money and then you take that money and then you invest it into assets that cash flow and then use debt strategically to buy more assets in things that you know very well, these asymmetric bets. And all while like investing in yourself and tracking along the way. And then as part of this process, I review the numbers, right? I go through that sheet, you know, every month and I Look at like, what's the revenue? Like, where are we on in the debt? What are my recurring charges that are like hitting my credit card every month and like going through those. Like, I'm totally okay for like trying things, but, like, at a certain point you cut what you can. I look at distributions, I look at like, hey, there's credit card rewards at 2%. Like, I go through all these different things and if something was off, I really can dig in and figure out like, what was wrong with this and try and come up with a solution. So it's really good to have like a time that you do it every month. For me, it's the first, it's usually like the Sunday or whatever. It's like right at the beginning of the next month to review the previous month, month and go through. At the same time, I'm going through my financial goals. So I set like a one year, a five year and a ten year target. So I set like a couple different goals and then I reverse engineer to think back to like, what I need to do to hit these. And I believe that all these goals should be massive. Like so big that they make you feel a little bit uncomfortable. Like, I don't, man, I don't think we can do that. Or I think it would take a massive amount of action to be able to hit that is really what you want to think through because you want that sense of urgency. Like, I want a sense of urgency that time is ticking. Here, watch this one. And we need to get moving on doing whatever this thing is. And so set these big goals and just like have this massive sense of urgency to push it forward, push it forward as fast as you can. And then number 11 here is to think in decades, not months. So I want to be able to, like, think through this filter of like, if I were, you know, Brian in like 10 years from now, would he look back on the decision that I'm making today. Big, big decisions, right? Not little ones, but like, big decisions and say, like, this was a great idea or is he gonna be like, you're an idiot. Like, why did you waste your time doing all these stupid things? We should have just been focused on this thing. So that's what I really try and do is I try to look back and even now, like, it's been almost a decade since 2016 when I bought my first one, and I look back to the things that I was doing then, I'm thinking that was a pretty good idea. But then I looked to like 2017 and I got Into a business I shouldn't have. I diversified too soon. I got into something that distracted my personal attention too quickly and, and which hurt growing the auto repair business, which led to me turning down multiple deals that would have added probably 10 million a year to my revenue right now if I didn't have that distraction and that weight on my shoulders and I believed in myself a little bit more. And so I want to think back to like in 10 years from now, what would I think of Brian's current day self and if that was a good idea or not. And normally I don't talk in third person either. By the way, number 12 cut ruthlessly. So like I think that businesses get so bloated with expenses, they get bloated on the biggest one's. People. This is payroll. Like as your company grows, you grow in headcount. And then you have this belief that we need all these people, but because it's like the way we've always done it. And like, but then other people are running like way leaner or there's a better people doing other things using technology, leveraging, outsourced or remote talent.
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B
Right.
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And there's so many ways that you can cut your expenses and really stay sharp. Like I would much rather run a business that runs a little bit lean but has really good margins than I see these other guys that have this massive overhead and this massive like, you know, all these subscriptions and all these things and they have like razor thin margins. Like that's a lot of stress. And so I'm all for trying new things. I'm all for forward investing into people, into assets before we think we need them. But we have to see a return on those things. Like it has to be worth it. If not, there's no point. Like that is money that you are literally lighting on fire every single month that should be used to reinvest in the business, buy assets that make you money. Like literally go through all the software. We go through subscriptions. We work with like trash vendors to renegotiate. Like we just saved $30,000 on Comcast Internet account. Like we are constantly going through to figure out what can we cut, what do we don't need. Where can we have a single vendor that can replace multiple ones?
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B
Right?
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Where do we have leverage as your business grows? Like you have more leverage in these things. It's, it's hard when you're, you know, to have negotiating power when you're newer, but just having that mindset to no matter how big you get to continue to, to really focus on margins and getting all your people on the same board. Like we pay as many people as we can based on the profitability. We share P Ls, store managers, district managers, C suite executives, now in our organization and all of that, everyone's paid on profit. So like if they see something that is costing is the business money, like that hurts their bonus as well. And so we really want to create this culture of this like profit driven mentality. Not just sales, because if it's just sales, they all care about sales. It's like, hey, this tool helps me sell like $1,000 more a month, but it freaking costs $2,000 and they don't care, right? Align incentives, cut ruthlessly and you'll be fine there. And finally, I think it's to really just define your money like philosophy, right? Mine is obviously one of a couple things that matter to me. Number one, I understand the power of compounding interest, right? If you understand compound interest, that the longer that you can delay gratification and the longer that you can let money work for you, the bigger the rewards, right? So for me it's, I'm trying to get to $100 million a year revenue business in a year and a half from today. I'm at 50 right now. So I want to double, literally double the size of my company in a year and a half. And I want to primarily do that through same store growth. Like I literally want to double the sales out of the same exact stores we have. And that is a maximum massive, massive, like Endeavor versus if I just like acquired $50 million of revenue, right? Like it's way easier to buy it, it's way harder to grow, but it's way more profitable to grow it. And that's the route that I want to take. It's like, choose your hard, right? And so for me it's a matter of like, what are the things that get me there faster. I want to invest in the things that get me there. So my money philosophy is I want to leverage the power of compounding and then I would invest in assets that get me. Now the assets could be people too. So like I have invested in a rockstar leadership team at our company that has allowed the company to grow way faster than me. They are all better than me in a lot of ways. And I love it. Like, I don't want to be the smartest person in the room like I was for years, but now, like, I want to find great people who are better at it than me and then I enable them to go and build business. Right. And reward for that through our profit programs. You know, for me, I want time freedom, right? I value my time freedom more than like anything else. And so having a big business with good margins, I can afford good people is how you get your time back. That allows me to go to Disney for a week and Dollywood for a week and allows me to go to Europe and like my phone doesn't ring because I have a great team that takes care of all this stuff.
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B
Right?
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A
And so a lot of that though only happens when you can build a company that's large enough to support the team that you need. And you're never going to get there if you go back to number one here and you have this total lifestyle creep. Like if in 2016, 2018, 2019, like if I was spending tons and tons of money because I could, I would not be where I'm at today. I would not have the time freedom, the financial freedom or the opportunities that lay at our doorstep if I had irresponsible money habits. And so I hope this was helpful. If you own a business, audit your own life, go through these things, automate as much as possible, focus on assets, leverage debt, the whole thing. And I linked all the stuff that I talked about below and I would love to hear from you, like, is there anything I missed?
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B
Right?
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Is there anything that maybe you're doing that you think have been a game changer for you from like a personal finance, you know, but really intertwines as a business owner or if there's anything that stood out, drop in the comments below, I'd love to read them and I'll respond and I'll see you in the next video. Cheers.