Service Based Business Society Podcast

SEASON 1
EPISODE 14

TITLE: Going Deeper Not Wider

Tiffany:
Hello, and welcome to the service based business society podcast. I'm your host Tiffany-Ann Bottcher.At our weekly episodes, we will dig into everything you need to know about scaling your business without losing sleep. With my experience in creating over seven figures per month, and a passion for marketing, finance and automation, this show will provide tangible tips and techniques for scaling your business. Let's get started.
Hey guys, today we are talking with Adam Keller. Now, Adam owns a party rental company, he made a YouTube channel about the events industry. He has a Tiktok page and another YouTube channel about side hustles and starting other businesses. He is a serial entrepreneur and has so much knowledge to share about business partnerships, YouTube content creation, and overall entrepreneurship. Super excited to have him on the show. So welcome, Adam.
You've got so many different things going on. So I can't wait to hear more about them. Why don't you? Why don't you kind of take it a little bit from the top into how you made your shift into entrepreneurship. And if that was something you knew you always wanted to do?

Adam:
Not really. So when I was 18, I kind of thought I wanted to own a bar. But that never happened. And in the businesses I'm in deal with bars. I realized, you know, when I was older, I was like, Yeah, bar is a hole, I just want to eat at a farm. Just you know, the long hours and the weekends that drunk young people I would have hated it. So that's why I thought I wanted to but so I went to college. And as I was doing a business degree, and I hated accounting, and I hated business Calc, it was too late for me to drop it. So I saw I just didn't go to class. And then the final test is, you know, just 1010 questions where you have to fill a whole page. And I just want jokes. Like I just learned a bunch of math jokes, like why was six afraid of seven? Because 789? What are the kinds of pated mathematicians you think, the pencil and the back? And the last question, I just put, hey, listen, you know, I just dropped this or I got, I got done with a business degree. I just need to pass this class, can you just please pass me and she did.

But I was in a cab going to a defensive driving class and I was just talking to the guy who was like 45 minutes away from my college, telling him what to do. And he's like, You really need to go to business school to own a business. And I was thinking like, I don't know.
I'm hitting accounting, I'm hitting business, Cal competing every other business class. And it just hit me like, you don't really need to go to business school, to open a business. Yeah, you just open a business, you go to business school to become a manager at a big company, not to not to own your own business. So for the four years of college, I didn't really think about it anymore. I went on to my other degrees. And then one of my roommates worked for a party rental company, because that's what I mainly do at Party Rentals. And I'd occasionally go work with him at the one he was working with in the city we were in. And then in the summer, I came home and worked at one in my hometown. And that's when I started seeing the invoices before I just show up to the things that tell me to do that. Now I'm seeing invoices, because I'm on the trucks. And I was like, wow, this is a lot of money, I could do this.

So two weeks into leaving, or graduating. This is back before the internet, not really the internet, but for it was super big. So I called the Pennysaver paper, I called the local newspaper, and I called the Yellow Pages and got a listing for the business I was going to create doing tents and trying to get the stuff out.

Tiffany:
Fantastic. You know, it's interesting, everyone has their different, you know, they're different journeys. And as someone who has been to school, lots of school, I love I love school, I could go to school forever. But often I hear people say, " I need to go back to school. And I know, it's like if you actually just took the same amount of time and dedicated it to learning outside of school, you could quit you know, often make your business such a success and it really isn't required. I think you were so right when you said you know, it's required to be a manager in a big, big company but to start your own business. Sometimes it's just you know, passion and intuition and jumping in and, you know, you can hire for different pieces that you don't know or, you know, you two books. It's incredible the amount of information and resources that are available. We really are in this information overload era where you can learn just about anything.

Adam:
Yeah, people don't ever think about it. There's Facebook groups for pretty much every single business category. So I'm in the tech world. There's like 10 Facebook groups for my world, outside. As groups, painters, bookkeepers, if you can think of a business, any business, there's at least one Facebook group for it. And the groups are there, because people want to join them and learn. And all those people don't treat you really as competition, because it's nationwide, it's worldwide. They just give you all the info. And then also, you gotta go to school, like, that's gonna be a lot of money, you could spend point 00 1% of that on some reliable like business coach kind of guy, course, whatever, Patreon, whatever, and learn everything about a particular field for maybe 50 bucks a month, subscription to some person who's in the field, you want to,

Tiffany:
I think, you know, Facebook groups are often underestimated, but people really do start to kind of build that connection and community and share so much knowledge. It's incredible. I am a member of a few different groups myself. And, you know, it's, it's interesting, like you said, people don't necessarily view it as competition, because it is so wide. And I truly believe that there's enough room for everyone to be successful. Everyone has their own specific niche, and what makes them unique and so good at what they do. And so it's actually through this podcast that I've connected with so many people that I probably wouldn't have, without the podcast to be able to sit and chat and go through some different pieces. And it's been probably the most rewarding part, to be able to collaborate and connect with other entrepreneurs.

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So once you got started, and you decided that you were going all in? How long ago was that? What year was that?

Adam:
I graduated

So you've been out this a while now? And? And have you had any major shifts to your business then? Or, you know, have you been able to kind of stay on the same path I noticed, you know, you've got lots of different businesses on the go. So would you say that you've, you've modified what you were doing or

I added to it. And so speaking Facebook, again, you know, when you get people who on their Facebook page, say that they own five businesses, and then you really into an old person like this. They own a little diner, an ice cream place and food truck thing, but it's all in the same building. It's all one business, but they like the cloud. So that's like what I'm at, but I just tell people, I'm in really one business, I have the party rental company. And then with Party Rentals, people want dishes, but I never wanted to do dishes. So I had an employee who was like, really, really good. And so I gave him equity, he's gonna run the dishes and glasses and flatware, wash them, take care of all that for equity, because if he owns it, and his work produces money, and he's gonna keep everything really, really clean.

So that's technically a separate entity, but it kind of works together. And then I have a restroom trailer business with two other guys. And that's a separate business kind of, but it also works together. And then our truest separate business is we own this 12,000 square foot barn converted specifically into an airbnb That doesn't really have too much to do with the rental stuff. So that so I own two businesses, but really, for right, okay,

Tiffany:
So this really comes into this, you know, niching down, and this concept and I don't necessarily agree with how specific a lot of marketers talk about going into niching down, but what I am hearing you say that I 100% agree with is when you're expanding, you're going into something that is a similar audience, you're expanding your offering to the same clientele, or a slightly modified clientele. It's, you know, someone who already owns a clothing store and adds another line to it is is you know, offering to that same audience, but it's when you make these pivots and additions where it's, you know, you own a clothing store, and then oh, and I opened the ice cream shop, and it's like totally different. And there's nothing wrong with that. But it's definitely more time consuming because you're learning something entirely different. And so when you're adding pieces on, you're using the knowledge that you've accumulatelated instead of starting over again, and so you know, you're saying, Okay, well, I know enough about this audience and the equity piece. So tell me a little bit more about how that worked and what you liked about it. I often get the question of people who are trying to maintain relationships with someone who's very important in their business, maybe they've been around since the very beginning. And they are now, you know, making that next step, but they want to make sure that that person feels appreciated. And so, you know, should I give them a piece of ownership, you know, and what that looks like. And so we are talking about equity versus ownership, how has that worked for you?

Adam:
It's worked well. So there were things that I didn't want to deal with. So with the dishes, it's literally like, we got 20,000 dishes that got to be washed every single week. Deal with that, I don't want to hire people to be on their behinds to do that. So it was just like, hey, you do this, you get people to do it. And at first, we were 5050. Because I put up all the money, he does all the work, I've only cleaned a few dishes at all. So I'm done. No work for it. But I put up all the money, then eventually, once we got to a point where it's like I've been making a lot of money, I'm dropping down to 30%, you will and 70% And that relationship was tough to navigate that that partner went through, like messy kind of like relationship ending. And for two years, he was a mess. And there were a lot of fights. But we worked through it. And now we're at a better point, the restaurant trailer thing was like, you know, I'm already out eight hours a day setting up these big weddings, I don't have time to do this plus that they were my friends, and I trusted them. And I wanted to make their lives better, too. So they did. And also I just don't want to deal with poop. Because it's a restaurant, but you come to find out that you never see it because it's a luxury restroom, it gets hooked up to a pump, and you never see it. But that one's been good. But yeah, when you're in it with friends or other people, there's relationships and things that happen in life and work ethics. And it's rough to navigate and money's involved.

Tiffany:
So it's so if you could take, you know, if you could take one lesson that you learn from, you know, those two relationships. So just to give you, you know, a little history as well, I, when I made the shift on corporate, I had two business partners and made the decision to leave. And that was probably one of the most difficult things to navigate in my career, and going through the pieces, and I look back and I'd say, you know, what really led to the decision to leave. You know, it started when we were very young. And over the decade, we kind of all, you know, we all grew a lot, and the business had great success. But we almost grew apart versus growing together and really realize that a decade later, we all really wanted different things. And so that was very tough to navigate. After spending it, you know, a decade building a business with two people. So what did you do? What did you take away? Or have you taken away from, you know, those partnerships? And how would you offer advice to others who may be thinking about, you know, partnering with friends and equity stake and all of these different things.

Adam:
Don't get into a partnership with someone who's too young. So he was probably like, 23 24 at the time. That was the big thing, kind of like you said, You were young and you through the years grew differently. So that's basically what happened. And then like things happen. If you get into a partnership with someone who's a little more mature and established you kind of already know how they'll be 24 year old green, you don't know anything so so don't you bunch of your 20 year old kids who are in college right now and it's like and we're gonna start a business together do it on your own you don't you actually don't need them. Like yeah, it seems cool and commodity camaraderie, but your business probably doesn't need them so I mean, some businesses will have some sort of segments but you can pretty much do it alone and it'll be much better and relationships will be better.

Tiffany:
Yeah, I think what you touched on the work ethic piece I think everyone has a different variation of what all in means and you know, the entrepreneurs are such passionate people. It's all you know, the will to keep going when it gets tough and put yourself out there and be rejected and get up and try again and all of these different pieces.
When you get that when one person really is all in and someone else is not necessarily or it is their version of all in it is it can really lead to some additional challenges for sure.

Adam:
Yeah, apprenticeships are Rough. And if you can see any sort of path to delete yourself to yourself, you can bring them in later. Or you can start another business with them later. But I think doing it yourself is better.

Tiffany:
Now that your business is growing, and you've you're offering lots of different teaching and whatnot on YouTube. When did that shift happen where you wanted to now share your knowledge with others? Was that that early on? Have you decided? You know, did you decide that? Has that always been your way? Or is that more of a recent development?

Adam:
Yes, so I always like my competitors would come to pick up stuff because in the rental world we do is this thing called sub rental, there's no reason for me to turn down a $5,000 job, if I don't have 50 chairs, or the vice versa, we'll get the chairs from the other company. So whenever they would come and show one of my cool stuff, because I'm the only one in my area who had the cool stuff like the jackhammer is the stuff to pull out the stuff for more efficiency and to make things faster or to keep things clean. And I would try to show them all this and they didn't seem very interested in none of them having ever bought any of it.

Cuz, so I'm watching them from the outside. And some of them were very big. But I know for a fact that I wait, I make way more money than they do. Because we keep things we get things done faster, employees are not as tired, or whatever. But anyways, so I was trying to show them this and, you know, they're listening, but whatever, they didn't do any of it. And then I just used to watch this one guy on YouTube.

He talks about Magic, The Gathering, some people listening are gonna know that. It's called Alpha investments. And he literally just points his camera at his face and talks for 10 minutes. Exactly. So you get the ads. Now it's eight minutes exactly. So you can get the ads. And as I was like, this isn't that bad, because one of my degrees in college was video production. And I just did not want to be doing editing and stuff, because I'm already busy. So I was like, He's just pointing a camera at his face, you know, I'm just gonna point out a point camera in my face. Because if you go to my channel, there's not high production. I try to spend the least amount of time I don't even put tags anymore. My first few 100 videos had tags and stuff. So that gets everyone in the channel. My next 400 videos, I just upload no tags.

So it was just like seeing that other person in the simplicity of this point a camera in your face and go, if I had to do it on, I can't do it on a phone. And I had to use a regular camera and import it into the computer. I wouldn't do it.

Tiffany:
Interesting, you know, it's like, I feel like on YouTube there's this some you know, if you look at Me. Beast for you know, everyone knows Mr. Beast, it's produced in a way that looks like it's not produced, you know what I'm saying? It's, it's, it's done in such a way. But then you get the videos where you know, it is just that just the camera, just recording just, you know, the value. And the success, the wild success is incredible. And so you know, and there is so much time that goes into editing and whatnot. So very interesting to hear you say, you know, you just upload straight from your phone.

Adam:
And you've Yeah, I did all this awesome. Alright moving, which was a plus, because I don't like spending.So I had iMovie. And it was pretty easy. I've sent an Adobe printer for that. But I usually use Adobe Premiere Pro in school, so I knew it, but I want to buy it and ignore your pirate because I got flagged one time. But I have since bought it so I can edit the longer interviews because I tend to like, do what I'm doing right now and take a break. I just hate it and I just want out.

But I call myself a guy who does YouTube, not a YouTuber, like, I don't like YouTubers, where they're all crazy and zany, and crazy editing and they change their voice and whatever. They're YouTubers. I'm just a dude, who does YouTube like that.

Tiffany:
I like that. At the end of the day, it really is just about getting your message, your information out and to the people that need to see it and hear it and you know if it can be done in a simplistic way and deliver the results. Why not? It'd be it. Why not?

Adam:
Yeah, you may not grow gigantic, I'm thinking more than 6300 on my tech channel. But YouTube doesn't pay that well. Anyways, what I've gained more is people have told me products, tips, relationships that have earned more money than YouTube could have ever paid me monthly right.

Tiffany:
Now that's an interesting perspective. So one of the things that I often talk about is that you know, Instagram, when you're a service based business, you know, like yourself and you need people in your area, building this massive following that may or may not be in your ear
Korea is not necessarily serving the purpose. Often it's a bit of a vanity metric, you know, if you are a cleaning company, and you have this great, massive population across the continent, it's not really benefiting your business. So, you know, these are pieces, building relationships, networking, new products, these types of things. This is a great use for social media that still is providing results, but not necessarily in the most direct conventional way of, you know, sales conversions.

Adam:
Yeah, my tech guy, YouTube channel has nothing to do in my business. Like, I don't have a channel for my business, and nor would I want customers seeing similar things. Right. Right.

Tiffany:
So to do it all over again, if you were to say, if you were going to start your YouTube channel, now, knowing what you know, now and everything you've learned,

Would you make any changes?

Adam:
No, I'm still doing it the way I did it, the only thing I'm doing now differently is I just had a really kind of crappy thumbnail in the beginning. And still, my thumbnails are not that great. But my first 50 videos, that is just what I've done with different thumbnails, no, I will not do anything different. I don't like it. Not that I don't like it. I just don't want to put that much time into it. I just want to turn the camera on and go and do a few edits and upload. If I had to spend five hours a day doing this, phase one, good.

Tiffany:
So what about other parts of your business? Where do you feel your energy and time is best spent? When it comes to scaling your business? Um, kind of this kind of brings us back to something you were saying before about, like, you know, clothing line, you got another line, it's a different business.
Adam:
So in any business, you're in for a little while, you start to see things like, oh, that's related. There's this old people who are doing this, like, I'm just gonna say the wedding industry, because that's what I mean, man is we're just they're doing tents, tables, chairs, dance floors. But then you see a caterer there, who's rented dishes, and rented ovens. And so I got those. And then every single job we're at, we see this same goddamn dude showing up with the restroom trailer. And he's out in 15 minutes. And it's like, All right, we can get a restaurant trailer too. And then there's just more pieces to the pie than any business you're in. I could do DJing if I wanted to, I could do photo booths, right? We can even do catering. I think once you have a successful business, and you are in it, you can see all the other things. That's where you go, that's how you grow. Because it's a lot. Like if I just decided to start a dog cleaning business.

I don't have any time for that. But if I add refrigerators into my inventory, and run the job site, I'm already doing that, now I can do more of it.

Tiffany:
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. That's going, you know, deeper instead of wider in the same industry.

Adam:
Like we got this opportunity to do glamping tents, you know, the big giant tents got real beds, you know, it's like a real room inside of a tent, camping for boys. But so I kind of initially initially thought this was like, complimentary to my business, still renting out tenants, it was a different kind of tenant. And that is sitting down thinking about it. I was like, No, this is way different. This is super high touch kind of stuff. This is dealing with people who have really high expectations. This is a full time business. It's not really related to my business, even though it seems like it. And if I did it, I could, I 100% already know we're gonna make two or $1,000 the first year doing it. But number one, I couldn't find anyone to run it, like I found before I've run out of people. And number two, it's a sideways move. Even though this seems like it's not, 100% is a different business. It's not in the same realm. So we just find something in the same realm that I can do

Tiffany:
That is so valuable, that example and you know, it is still you know that the 10 businesses. But it is entirely different. And it is not in all ways. You know, there are certain things that you would be able to 100% You know, would crossover. But if you took that same amount of energy that it would take for that first year of something that is entirely different
and put it into your same business. You could also create some massive growth and recognizing that difference before jumping in I think is key there.

Adam:
There's another thing I want to touch on in any business, but I have a second as myself as an example. You start to be like, Let's offer this, let's offer that I wanted to offer fancy fancy chairs. I had these fancy fan

To tents and stuff, and they just weren't going out that much. And they were the kind of things that don't fold in store easily. They're just big, bulky items. And people would always balk at the price. And I just started hating them. And every time we had to send them out, they were like a full truckload plus the other truckload of normal stuff. I just hated it. And then I sort of started thinking, like, you know, I make money on the white chairs, the rustic chairs, basic tables, basic chairs, and this is what I make money on every single weekend, no matter what this always goes out. Sure, this fancy stuff goes out every three, four weeks and makes $30,000 That weekend. But it's annoying. So I sold all of that stuff off.

And just focus on the stuff that goes out every single weekend. So that's the wedding thing. But like, in your own anyone's business, there's always a tendency to be like, I'm going to add this, I'm gonna add that, because of the fancy cool, like, awesome things. But they don't always add that much. They may make your Instagram page look cooler and website, but they are always worth it. And you could have spent that money, you know, on the core stuff, instead of five years later being like, Oh, I'm gonna sell it now and then buy the course.

Tiffany:
Right? Yes, consistency is so key when it comes to business and creating that predictable, repeatable process. And so as soon as you add in something that just doesn't, doesn't fit into the regular flow, you know, whether it's additional tracking, or, you know, difficulty in setting things up, or just just the sales process, it's just that time and energy, I always reflect back on, you know, the fact that Steve Jobs always wore the same sweater, because it was just easy. It was easy. You know, you don't have to just he didn't have to decide, he just put it on. And it was one less thing to worry about. And it's really the same thing in your business. Because when you have something that just just takes up the extra energy all the time and extra capacity, it's really where, you know, what is the opportunity cost of that? What could you be doing with that time, and, and, and growing something that is going to consistently, just just make money? You know, if you're saying well, like, I know that this other stuff can go out. And it can generate, and I know exactly what it takes to do it. And all of these pieces that are much as it's not as flashy, I feel like sometimes entrepreneurs in general, it's the new and shiny because we are Passion Driven. It's like, oh, I can make something happen with that. But just because you can doesn't mean you should.

Adam:
I like exactly how you said the opportunity cost. Because we're talking about service based businesses, which is kind of like you have to go to a lot of these service based businesses, you have to go do things. Obviously, there's service based businesses where people come to you. But for the ones we have to go places, we used to go anywhere that anyone would be willing to pay the delivery fee. But once you start looking at it, it's like, wow, we had four hours to get there, four hours on site, four hours to get back, we could have done so much more in those eight hours of driving, made way more money than the delivery fee that we charge to get there. So I just stopped going certain distances, so I cut off this one town entirely. Because I hate how far it is. In the mountains, I got giant trucks, and we can't ever get down people's driveways, whatever. But there's not too many costs to like taking that. Sure the job may be 10 grand. But if you would have stayed for those 12 hours at home, you probably would have made 11 grand and not have to go so far or way more than that, right?

Tiffany:
You know, I was speaking earlier, we have a mastermind group that has a weekly coffee meeting. And we were talking about just that and you know, the cost of doing a job and this balance of when things are quiet taking on work, that might be less profitable, just keep things moving. And you know, there was kind of this discussion about what was the real cost of doing that. And, you know, the business and I think there's an element of what is the risk, you know, it's the risk versus reward. And of course, we all know, if we have employees that we want to keep working, everybody has families to feed and whatnot. But there's certain industries where taking on that extra less profitable work comes with, you know, risk and so for yourself taking these, you know, a truck that if you break down and all of a sudden, way out of town or something like that there's this potential for additional cost. And so, you know, one of the companies you were discussing was a plumbing company, and it's okay, well, you know, what if that job that we all know isn't gonna make any money? What if there's a big water leak, and suddenly now you're dealing with massive costs, you know, it's these different pieces of, you know, evaluating and running a business really is managing resources and risk. And, you know, basically making the most efficient use of the resources we have. And managing to keep the risk low. And, everyone's you know, the level of risk aversion is going to be a little different. But it really comes down to dollars and dollars and cents at the end of the day.

Adam:
Right, I have another thing kind of related. So like, we used to do these little tiny jobs, maybe 50 chairs on a Saturday where you have to go drop them off in the park, stay there the whole time, because there's no point in coming back and then pick them up. or other, we did things on decks, we just did difficult things. So for any business it is doing something that you kind of just don't like doing and don't want to do. And you're kind of like, I'm in business, I'll do it. And you charge something for it. But if you find yourself on the job being mad, or the drive there being annoyed, you didn't charge enough. Now I charge crazy for those things. If someone wants something that we used to do for 250, like a tent on a deck, I'll just be like, yeah, it costs the cost of the tent plus $2,000, to put it on that deck. And if they say yeah, and we're doing it, I'm no longer mad. I'm like, I got $2,000 to do this. So you got to charge enough so that when you're on the job, you're like, these idiots pay me for this. I'm not mad that I'm here.

Tiffany:
Yes, it's, you know, money doesn't make the world go round. But it does, you know, man, it helps manage resources and manage risk and cover off some of these pieces. And you're protecting your own energy. At the end of the day, running a business, your time and energy is honestly the most important. So in terms of, you know, tangible tips for someone to implement right now, you've got so many different, you know, different businesses years of experience all these pieces, if you had, you know, an entrepreneur saying what is the piece of advice you have for me that can make the biggest difference tomorrow? What would that be?

Adam:
Okay, so we'll use myself as an example. And someone in an interview, he's a chiropractor, I'll go with myself first.

I'm gonna ask you, what business? Would you say that Ironman? What is the end result of putting up a tent? What is the end result of putting up a tent? Yeah, what is my business? What's the end result of my party rental business? What happens?

Tiffany:
Well, gatherings?

Adam:
Yeah, party, right. So I'm in everyone would say that I'm in the event business. And that's what I used to think I was into as the end result of my business events. So I'm in the event business. And then I kind of always knew this intuitively. But it took some really experienced guy saying you're not in the business. None of us are, unless you're a wedding planner photographer, actually, on site, you're not in the event business, you're in the material handling and logistics business.

So you got to know what business you're actually in. Once I fully realized that now I can spend, you know, $8,000 On Deck cameras and not feel bad about it. Because it makes the day go faster, it makes employees less tired, it makes everything go easier. I can buy things, put them on wheels, get trucks to lift gates, because my entire job is getting stuff from the warehouse to the truck, truck to the site, reverse the whole process.

So if I can focus on that, then I just make more profit, I could just buy, you know, 100 more tents and 10,000 more chairs and stuff, and work five more hours a day, you know, going crazy. And not even making more profit making more revenue. Or I can invest in the material handling logistics stuff to the same amount of work but faster, making more profit without having to, you know, put more into inventory. And then this chiropractor I talked to said he's a chiropractor. He fixes people's backs. Well, he doesn't think he's a chiropractor, at the end of the result of what he does, but he focuses all his time and attention on customer acquisition. Because if you're just sitting there being a chiropractor, everyday just waiting for people to call, you get 40 clients a month. He wants 500 clients a month. So he does Instagram Tik Tok. He does everything he does little, he puts up just little information, little free tips. People see him and then they're like, oh, I need my back, fix our car. Because it's one of those things like, if you break your foot, you find a doctor. But a lot of people don't think about finding a chiropractor until it's too late or too bad. So he was able to take his 50 clients turn on a 500 a month, because he views himself as a client acquisition company.

So he does his chiropractic and then the rest of the time he does that and pays everyone else to run the business. So if you know what business you're in, and if you're just thinking that whatever business you're in is the end result of your business. You might be wrong, because there's a lot of other stuff in there. That might actually be your real business.

Tiffany;
Yes, very interesting, and I heard this concept when you were talking about, you know, revenue versus profit. And it's, you know, Oh, do you want to add another $10,000? Sales? You know, this seems to be a magical online question. Everybody wants to boost their sales by 10k a month. But at the end of the day, boosting the sales by 10k is a significantly different outcome than boosting, you know, and focusing your operation and saving the operation, you know, saving 10k on the operations and creating efficiencies, the end result is just significantly stronger business, happier people, and whatnot. So I love to focus on being more efficient. And the logistics of things, often often underestimated is the ability and the fulfillment side of actually performing the service in a scalable way.

Adam:
Right, one of my friends' businesses was at $5 million a year. And when I was talking to him, he's like, No, there's other people in his field making 10 million 12 million, and he's like, 5 million a year, in this business is a lot of profit. If you try to go to 10 million, it's way more work. But you don't get any extra profit.

Where you start seeing more profit is once you get to $20 million, then it's an unbelievable craziness. But for all those years, between 5 million and 20 million, it's just more work with no more extra money coming on, you get more revenue, but no more profit, just way more work.

Tiffany:
Yes. And, and how common is it just to just to want to keep growing, and not necessarily really evaluate that and to know, and for, you know, for him to evaluate that now and say, Hey, like, this is the sweet spot, I'm good here, you know, and it's all comes down to different times in different phases in the business, there may be a time, right, he says, Hey, I really want to go to that 20 million mark.

But for now, the decision is a strategic one to stay at the same size. Because that, you know, what we often refer to as the valley of death between five and 20. That's a pretty big valley. And so to maintain and keep pushing on, there's a lot of risk in there, you know, longevity and sustainability. So the decision to stay at that size that's offering, the better return, definitely fits his choices there.

Adam:
Yeah, I mean, there's some people whose ultimate goal is just to get the company as big as possible. And that's the drive. And there's other people who, you know, kind of to the point they want it to or are happy at the point that it's at. And that's fine, too. You don't always have to be, you know, you don't have to be the t-shirt company that makes 30 million a year, you could be the t-shirt company that pays yourself 250 a year.

Tiffany;
And yes, it's that I think that it comes down to knowing, making the decisions based on, you know, the the end objective, and using the data and knowing and making those decisions, not not deciding, Hey, I just want to keep growing, but I don't know how much and I don't know what my profit margins are here or then. And, you know, this, this kind of blind just, I just want to keep growing, can often get businesses into trouble. But the decision to, to stay or to grow really comes down to knowing the numbers and using them. And, and often I think, you know, people, especially as they're starting out, don't want to dive into analytics, don't want to talk about, you know, what's working and what's not. But often it just comes down to what is logical, what is reasonable and saying, you know, okay, well, I can do this much work and make this much profit, or I can double the work and make the same amount of profit. I mean, it's just, you know, you don't need to have gone to business school to know sometimes that it's, it's just the decision is made for you really,

ADAm:
If there's enough time I go,

Tiffany:
Okay, let's do it.

Adam:
Okay, so a lot of people, you know, they're gonna want to sell their business one day, or they're gonna want to sell their business one day. But you're not going to be able to if the entire business relies on you, in order to get the most money for your business, someone who's coming in to buy a business doesn't want to buy the job, it's an investment for them, they want to come in to an already running operation, if it's a plumbing operation, they want a big team of guys that kind of run themselves. They're not going to mind working there, you know, anywhere from eight hours a week to maybe even 40 but they don't want to be the entire reason why the business exists. So if you're ever going to sell your business, you need to think how to get to the point where the business doesn't need you. Yes, are still gonna work there. You're probably gonna do the books, you're gonna do some things but you're not going to be hands on everything. So that one day you can sell it because all of a sudden just today you decide to sell it. No one's gonna buy it because they 100% need you in there or they're gonna have to come in and take over your role. So if you're ever gonna sell your business, you need to get it to the point where it doesn't necessarily need you there every day.

Tiffany:
Absolutely. Fantastic advice. Yes. Preparing to sell a business often takes long term planning for things just like that, you know, unless you are wanting to sell yourself and your time with your business, you realistically need to be able to the business spelled out you or, you know, yeah, with some training and, you know, different standard operating procedures

Adam:
I talked to Business Brokers recently for interviews, and they've all said the same thing for at least three years, you don't just decide you're going to sell your business one day. You decide you're gonna sell it three years from now. Right. Right.

Tiffany:
Great, great advice. Well, Adam, if people want to, you know, learn more about you, your business and what you have going on, where can they connect with you?

Adam:
Oh,Hopefully you put all these down and down somewhere, we get the tech guy YouTube channel, the tech guy, Instagram, I got a separate channel interviewing business owners called how I started, and that was hard to find on YouTube. I'm sure they had different names because you type in how I started and never come up.

I got a tik tok thing called real world side hustles to talk about, like real things instead of like, dumb online stuff. And then I got that that's the business stuff. I also have a Twitch channel where I stream. I just bought an arcade, like a four person arcade. And I'm streaming it because I thought it would be cool. And I got several other YouTube channels about other things. But that's another reason why I don't. I can't spend too much time editing because I think I have 12 YouTube channels.

Tiffany:
That's amazing. I bet. Yes. Very cool. Very cool. It was very interesting the exposure that YouTube can offer and the people you can connect with.

Adam:
Right? My craziest YouTube channel if anyone wants to watch is called coin push and craziness. I bought a coin pusher. And I pretend like I'm playing somewhere and try to win. Very cool people watch.

Tiffany:
Well, thank you so much, Adam. I really appreciate it.

Adam:
Awesome, thank you.

Tiffany:
Well, we are all out of time for today. If you guys have not joined the service based business society Facebook community, make sure you head on over to Facebook and we can continue the conversation. Be sure to also follow the show by going to any podcast app and searching surface based business society. Click subscribe, click the fifth star and leave us a written review. Have a great week and we will see you soon