The Sugar Daddy Podcast
Ready to normalize talking about money? Then welcome to The Sugar Daddy Podcast. Every episode will get you one step closer to your financial goals. Whether that is learning how to invest, budget, save, retire early or simply make better money choices, Jess & Brandon have got you covered in a way that's easy to understand, and easy to implement. Tune in as they demystify the realm of dollars, so it all makes cents, while giving you a glimpse into their relationship with money and each other.
Brandon is an award winning licensed financial planner, and owner of Oak City Financial, with over a decade of experience and millions of dollars managed for his clients all over the United States.
New episodes published the first three Wednesdays of every month.
The Sugar Daddy Podcast
85: Building a Seven-Figure Hands Off Business with Trina Julian
What do free lunch money, a horse, and a seven-figure landscaping company have in common? Trina Julian.
In this episode, Jess and Brandon dive into how Trina built Country Girl Gardens from a $10K side hustle into a seven-figure business—all with one goal in mind: freedom. From day one, she designed her company to run without her, documenting every process, system, and role. So when a horseback riding accident sidelined her, the business kept thriving—thanks to her standard operating procedures.
Her exit wasn’t luck. It was strategy.
Now, Trina’s on a mission to help service-based entrepreneurs build businesses that run and sell without them. If you’re stuck in a business that feels more like a job, this episode is your wake-up call.
Listen in for real talk on building wealth, scaling smarter, and creating a business that doesn’t own you.
Visit prenups.com/sugardaddy to learn more about fair prenups that help couples plan for a healthy financial relationship.
Watch this episode in video form on YouTube
To apply to be a guest on the show
You can email us at: thesugardaddypodcast@gmail.com
Be sure to connect with us on socials @thesugardaddypodcast we are most active on Instagram
Learn more about Brandon and schedule a free 30-minute introductory call with him
Please remember to subscribe, rate, and review.
Notes from the show:
Explore Trina’s Website and subscribe to her Newsletter
Connect with Trina on Facebook
Connect with Trina on Instagram
This episode is sponsored by Prenupscom. The truth is, every married couple has a prenup, a set of rules that defines your legal and financial relationship with your spouse. You either choose your own rules or use what your state gives you. At Prenupscom they write prenups that actually help couples stay married. Their specialty is fair prenups that help couples plan for a healthy financial relationship. Don't let the state decide your marriage rules. Make your own. Visit prenupscom. Slash sugar daddy to learn more. That's prenupscom. Backslash sugar daddy and get the prenup that helps you stay married. Already married, no worries. They do postnuptial agreements too. That's what Brandon and I did after eight years of marriage.
Speaker 2:Hey babe, what are we?
Speaker 1:talking about today. Today we are talking about how to scale your business into a seven-figure business through systems and automations, and I know in the world that we are kind of in in this finance space everybody's like be an entrepreneur, it's the most amazing thing ever, like only work for yourself and all of those things which sound great in theory. But we know it's a lot of hard work. And do you want to do it if you're not making any money? And I think the answer to that is no. But we have somebody here who knows how to scale a business into a seven-figure business and now helps other people do that. Because if you're going to do it, if you're going to take the time to invest in yourself and be an entrepreneur, we want you to do it right and we want you to have the tips and tricks and systems in place to actually make money so that you're not just burning yourself out, not working for the man.
Speaker 2:Well, it's also two different skill sets between being able to grow, have a successful business and then grow it successfully. There are two different skill sets.
Speaker 1:That's absolutely right. So today we have Trina Julian with us to help us understand how to do this the right way, because she has done it the right way. We're going to get into her story, but we want to learn from somebody who's done it. We have not done it. We are not there yet yet, but Trina has. So, trina, thank you for being on the Sugar Daddy podcast with us today.
Speaker 3:Thank you, I'm really excited. You guys are great.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you so much. Well, let's get into your bio, because we met you at FinCon and you just had such an interesting story and we were like automatically just blown away and we were like we have to have you on the pod, people need to hear this. And so let's get into the bio so people know who we're talking about, or what we're going to learn from you, and who we're talking to, and then we'll get into your first money memory.
Speaker 1:Trina Julian is the founder of Country Girl Gardens, which she started in her backyard shed. In just seven years, she built a million-dollar landscaping powerhouse, understanding the frustrations of growing a business and experiencing the relentless demands of daily operations, she now helps business owners work to build a hands-off business that runs like a profit-making machine. I love all of that. She is here to provide the roadmap of owning a seven-figure business and help you put your money to work for you so that you can achieve financial independence. Yay, this is going to be a good conversation. Trina, thank you for being with us. Yes, of course. All right, it's a financial literacy podcast. We're going to talk about that seven-figure business that you built, but first tell us about your first money memory, please.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, the thing that comes to mind with my first money memory is so I grew up in like Central California and I was always on free lunch. I had a single parent and you know she worked a lot to just make ends meet and so we were, you know, on the lower end of the income spectrum. So I always got free lunch. And you know, looking back I laugh because I'm like, ah, I wouldn't do anything like this today. But I don't know how she didn't know, but I didn't tell her or she didn't know that I was on free lunch. So she would give me two dollars every day to buy lunch and I got free lunch. So I pocketed two dollars every day. And this is probably like second, third grade.
Speaker 1:And um.
Speaker 3:I really wanted a horse. Like I was one of those little girls that just loved horses and I, you know, our neighbors always had horses and had family members that had horses. So I was like I really want a horse. So I was pocketing two $2 a day until I saved up $400. And then I looked in the classified ads for a $400 horse. Did you find one? I found one. And my mom's like I can't buy you a horse. And I'm like no, no, I have $400. I mean, I didn't add up how long it took to get there.
Speaker 3:But I know it's so weird, I have $400. She's like how on so weird I have $400? Oh, my god, you know she's like how on earth do you have $400? And it was because I had a one of those big water jugs in the back of the closet that I was putting my two dollars in every day and we bought the horse. I got my first horse. I paid for myself. Yeah, so that's my first money memory.
Speaker 1:Um, I think you, we, okay, we start every guest episode with that first money memory and we've heard some really crazy ones. That, I think, is my this you win for absolute favorite money memory.
Speaker 3:At this point, like to date, I have no idea, crazy stuff like that I have no idea how much horses cost.
Speaker 1:I have so many questions? What kind of?
Speaker 2:horse do you get for $400? Like, is this like back then? Was this like an average horse price or was this like you kind of got?
Speaker 1:I mean I'm sure it wasn't a Kentucky Derby winner, but like I mean it was definitely um year old pony of America.
Speaker 3:So pony of America is a common horse for kids. It's not full size. I think she was probably in between 11 and 13 hands, so she wasn't a full size horse and she was only two. So she had never been ridden before. So it was definitely like not the wisest decision. But I was so determined and my mom doesn't know anything about horses really but, like I said, I have, you know, neighbors, friends and family that had horses. So I did end up getting help with this horse and I was nine when I bought her. So I'm thinking it must have been like four years or something it took me to save it. But, um, I did get help with the horse. I had her until I was 11 or 12 and at that point had outgrown her. So it worked out. But no, it was a cheap horse.
Speaker 2:Well, but okay, I don't need to ask him to hear this episode, because we're not getting a horse.
Speaker 1:Our daughter would be like I can do this, Cause she she talks about saving her money for things that she wants and I need a horse not to be on that list. Um, I mean, I'm sure it costs a lot to maintain a horse and to feed a horse, and was there any conversation following of like, okay, we're going to let you buy this horse, but how are you going to help keep it alive?
Speaker 3:I mean I probably gave my mom or $2 back every day, I don't know. I actually don't need the lunch money anymore. Let's, let's put that toward the feed. No. I don't actually remember that part. I know that we had to board the horse and that usually includes feed. So, yeah, I didn't work those details out and my mom didn't share with me how we made that work.
Speaker 2:But she did.
Speaker 1:She's probably very impressed that you saved that long she's like wow, something like this has to be rewarded. Well, shout out, and I still have two horses.
Speaker 3:I still have, you know, I still have horses. I actually have, uh, half draft horses now and they pay for themselves, because my like hobby business that I do for fun is I give carriage rides in downtown Spokane at Riverfront Park, and so my horses now pay their own way. So that's fun, oh my gosh, Look at that.
Speaker 1:I mean we've come full circle. I love it.
Speaker 2:So the money memory 100% transferred into adulthood?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it did. That's amazing. Thank you for sharing that with us.
Speaker 2:That's amazing. Thank you for sharing that with us. You're just in a tough season. I created something just for you because I've had people reach out who are serious about changing their money story. But the full financial planning package just wasn't the right fit yet. So I built a new service through Oak City Financial that's focused completely on debt reduction. No fluff, no shame. You'll get a one-time planning session, a personalized payoff strategy, your own financial dashboard and monthly, if you want extra support while you climb out, it's $300 to get started in a hundred dollars a month. If you want that ongoing guidance, that's it. This is about helping you get unstuck, not making you feel like you failed. If this sounds like what you've been needing, go ahead and schedule a call with me. The link is in the show notes. Let's take the first step together. The link is in the show notes. Let's take the first step together.
Speaker 1:That's incredible. Okay, let's pivot into Country Girl Gardens. And where did that idea come from? And were you going into that with the idea of, okay, this is going to be a seven-figure business and then I'm going to sell it and teach others how to do this, or what was that journey like?
Speaker 3:Well, I graduated college in 2009. And, if anybody, I'm sure you guys remember because we're about the same age 2009, there weren't many jobs, especially where I live. 2009, there weren't many jobs, especially where I live. We're like a very much a hospitality tourism town, and so there just wasn't a lot of options of jobs. So I went back to being a barista, which is what I did all through high school and college. And while I was a barista, I was just trying. I knew I wanted my own business. I didn't want to move to Seattle or Portland, which is what most of my um, the other students that I graduated with, had done, and I didn't want to do that. So I was just trying to devise up a plan of what business to start and I started researching, um, like self-sustainability, so like growing your own food. That was always an interest of mine and that was something I had been kind of reading up on since I was like 19 or so. So it was a good opportunity.
Speaker 3:I started a garden in pots when we didn't have, you know, any land or anything, and I just kind of started studying it and talking about it at the coffee stand. And it started because I wanted to grow food and flowers. And that's hard to do in, you know, North Idaho where half of the year is freezing and years freezing and there wasn't. It was just difficult. So I had to pivot a lot and decide what was going to actually have a demand. And planting flowers had a demand, not really growing and selling them, but planting them. So I had people at the coffee stand asked me to plant flowers for them and I had enough that I kind of started a side hustle of planting landscape plants for people and that's how it started.
Speaker 1:I just love origin stories like that. Something so simple of like I had this interest and so I talked about it as I was making people's coffee, and then they decided, hey, can you come do this for me and I will pay you. Exactly. I mean, it's so simple, but like it can be so powerful, it's amazing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think nowadays it was just seeing the opportunity, like seeing that people okay, people are asking. So I'm like there's a demand here and that's what I was looking for was something that had a demand, and If people are asking me to do something for them, I'm like then more people will also be interested in that. So I saw the opportunity and ran with it, and then I started talking about it more to everybody, about how I'm planting flowers and landscape plants for people, and it took off from there. I started as a side hustle in 2015. And I only did like $10,000. Like on my days off, days that I wasn't working at the coffee shop, I planted flowers.
Speaker 1:And, but only $10,000. I mean, that's a lot of money for a side hustle that you created on your own. You know kind of just talking about your passion.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I was 29 at the time and for some reason, I had this idea that I'm like I want to be out of my job by 30. Like I don't know how I'm going to do it, like the numbers didn't really pan out in on paper. I was like I don't know how I'm going to make this work, but I want to quit the coffee stand at age 30. And so I started in May of 2015. Like I said, I did $10,000 that year. 2016. Spring rolls around and all of a sudden I had gotten traction and I had so much work coming in people who wanted stuff done. My birthday is in March. I put my two weeks notice in on my birthday my 30th birthday and my last day was April 1st. So I managed to do that and I was full time ever since and just kind of went hard, so you set your goal and you hit your goal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's amazing. There's something pivotal about 30. I don't know how it's going to work out.
Speaker 3:I don't see how it's going to work, but it did oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:So were you doing all of the work yourself at that point, or were you having to actually hire people to get it all done? It was all you.
Speaker 3:At that point it was all me. At that point it was all me and I think I hired my first employees that first full-time year, probably four months in, four to six months in.
Speaker 2:Wow. So with hiring your first employees, would you say that you hired them proactively or you had a demand and you had to hire them after realizing that you couldn't do it yourself? Had a demand and you had to hire them after realizing that you couldn't do it yourself.
Speaker 3:I knew pretty much from the get-go of this, of the landscaping business, that I wanted to. I kept saying I either wanted to build my way out or buy my way out, and what that meant was build my way out means I hire a team that runs it without me. Buy my way out means I just make enough money and invest it that I can sell it and don't have to do anything with it, like it wasn't something that I was. I was passionate about plants and I love gardening. I have tons of house plants in my office and I did my own landscape Like I loved it, but it wasn't something I wanted to do.
Speaker 1:long term it's well, it's like very physical. It's a tough grueling work too. It just wasn't.
Speaker 3:And so, from the early days, I just I knew that that was the route I wanted to go, and I got off track on what the actual question was.
Speaker 2:I always know that for most people, like you know most you know entrepreneurs start out just by themselves and then they start to grow their business and now they're going to transfer from the person who actually does the work to being the person who also manages the people who do the work. And that's a hard transition for a lot of people and often people tend to hire people too late rather than being proactive in hiring people beforehand.
Speaker 3:Too late rather than being proactive and hiring people beforehand when, like you know, people in retrospect are like, yeah, you should definitely try to hire before you need rather than waiting until you need right that is a that is a very good point and that's something I tell people all the time is like hire right away, hire before you're ready, because hiring is a whole new skill and it's something you're going to get wrong at first and it's good to start learning it before. You absolutely need need people to come in and you know do things right, cause that's a whole nother learning curve of you know how to delegate and get people to do things how you like it done.
Speaker 2:Plus, it gives you a more of a runway to find who you really think would be good at the job, because if you're scrambling at the end because oh, I need somebody, I need somebody, more than likely you're probably going to not hire the right person because added desperation.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that is 100% true.
Speaker 1:Yes, when you went from sharing about plants at the coffee stand, did you have an LLC? Once people started asking, hey, can you come do this for me? I've got this big project. How did you figure out pricing? I mean, walk us through those early stages of really building a business from the ground up.
Speaker 3:Yes, it was confusing. I did have an LLC that I had started while I was in college, because in like 2007, 8, I wanted to do the whole real estate thing, so I had started an LLC for that. All I did was use that LLC that I'd had for a while and just change the name of it. So that was set up and ready to go. And then pricing was complicated. I didn't know, I wasn't. I was charging $25 an hour. When I started, I was just trying to get work and that was more than what I was making, so I just undercharged. And then as I got busier, I just kept increasing my prices and I let the demand kind of determine what I was charging. So as my schedule was full, I'd increase prices. And when I increased prices I would lose some customers that were paying the $25 an hour and I'd bring on the $35 an hour customers and I just kept that cycle up until I sold the business. So it was. It was trial and error.
Speaker 2:Everybody underpriced this other price themselves, Cause right now I'm in the process of changing my prices because I'm underpriced but it's okay.
Speaker 1:I keep telling him I'm like people. People are selling their toenails online and people are buying it.
Speaker 3:And as long as you're increasing your prices and you understand that you're going to lose clients, but you're going to replace them with higher paying ones who are going to be better clients for you, because usually I find that the higher paying clients are the better clients.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's he says that all the time that is unfortunate.
Speaker 2:From my experience, the people who are the busiest and paying the most are the easiest to work with. It's the individuals who maybe quote unquote have a little bit more time on their hands and they're paying you the least that become the biggest headache.
Speaker 1:Yep Like our parents who pay him nothing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we all have to start somewhere. So if you start out and you're just, you know, underpricing yourself, that's okay. Just raise your prices and keep doing it until you find cause you'll. You'll find a gauge of like okay, I'm, I'm charging too much. Now I'm not getting as much work as I need, so I better bring the prices back down, and you just have to. Always, my prices weren't't ever set like it was really demand driven.
Speaker 2:And my parents, meaning your mom. Let's specify.
Speaker 1:Let's move on from this part of the conversation. How long or can you walk us through the journey of $10,000 as a side hustle to? You're quitting your job on your birthday. What did the following year, the year after that, what was that revenue increase? And then, how did you get to? Oh, somebody's knocking on my door to buy this business from me.
Speaker 3:I was able to increase the revenue a hundred percent plus every year, year over year, for the first five years. That's amazing. So I went from and it was way more sometimes like that. First year was 10,000, but my first year full time, I think I did 174,000.
Speaker 1:That's amazing.
Speaker 3:And then the second year I think it was 247,000. And then the third year was like 380,000. So it was like major leaps and bounds but I was pushing like exceptionally hard because it wasn't a long-term game for me, it was. I knew I wanted to get in, build it, get out. If you're building it, you know, if you, let's say, somebody that's listening has like a window cleaning company or a house cleaning company or something like that, and if you are in it for the longterm, like you want to run that business for a long time, I don't recommend growing that fast because it's leaves you no time for anything else.
Speaker 3:Like I don't have children. My husband has kids, but they're in their twenties and at that time I think they were teenagers. So I didn't have the responsibilities of children and I mean there were. I just wasn't giving attention to family at that time. I was just working and it did take its toll. So I did it exceptionally fast, but that was because I knew that there was a finish line. So I don't recommend somebody do that if they are in it for the long term. That's a good call out. It's unnecessary torture.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that call out because I think sometimes those things get missed when other people are watching externally someone grow business. It's like, yeah, I think we often think that someone is in the same position as we are and have the quote unquote the same responsibilities, and that's not always the case. Like you said, you know, for example, we have two young kids, so that'd be very hard for us to do in comparison to you. You know you didn't have young kids, so I appreciate that call out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, have young kids. So I appreciate that call out yeah, and it's not worth it. I just shared something on my Instagram yesterday actually, that Nicole Curtis, the gal who does the rehab addict and like repairs old houses she had, I guess, mentioned that she didn't think that the that it was worth it to sacrifice her family time, um, to grow her business the way she did. And I think that's a super common regret of people looking back, especially when you're raising kids, that they they focus so much on growing their business in those early years of their kids lives and then they miss out on a lot. And it really isn't like I and that's kind of how that's my philosophy is like I feel like family should always come first, like over your business. Your business should support your lifestyle so that you can spend time with your family, cause really, when it comes down to it, that's the most important thing in life, I think, is being there, for you know people who love you and the people that you love.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and Time is the most you know valuable thing that you can't get it back. Regardless of how much money you make, how big you grow your business, you can't buy more time.
Speaker 3:Right and not to be morbid, but you never know when it's up either.
Speaker 2:So that is very true.
Speaker 3:You know that's always something that you got to live like a happy medium between YOLO and be responsible.
Speaker 1:That's so true. Let's talk about the investments that you had to make into your business. From I mean landscaping, I'm thinking truck and wheelbarrows and, you know, material supplies like all. Like, did you, were you renting a truck or did you own a truck? Like, did you, were you renting a truck? Where did you own a truck? How did you actually get everything that you needed to do these landscape projects? And then I'm also thinking of you know how were you scheduling people? How were you invoicing them? Can you walk us through the logistics of the business tools you know, literally and figuratively, that you needed in order to grow this business as quickly as you did?
Speaker 3:Yeah, when you know, when you talk about a bootstrapped business, I was like the definition of that because I did not have a truck but my husband did. So that was his contribution to my business was. I started borrowing his truck and he never got it back. I'm sure he's okay with it. Yeah, so I started with, you know, his truck and rakes that I had already had just from raking my leaves in my yard. So I started with like a rake, a shovel, a hand trowel and a truck and that was it. And as I started getting paid.
Speaker 3:So this is why starting as a side hustle is a good idea, because that $10,000 I made that first year as part-time, I took that and bought more equipment so that I could expand the services. I also felt comfortable hiring people because I had a little bit of a cushion there. So I didn't spend maybe any of that money at first. I just put it back into the business right away so that I could. I think I bought my second truck pretty Like six months into my first full-time year and I bought it at an auction for $1,000. Wow, I still had that $1,000 truck in my fleet when I sold the business.
Speaker 2:So it was a good purchase. Yes, most of the time you think of buying a car for $1,000.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. I'm like, yeah, it's probably not going to last that long.
Speaker 3:Well, it's funny, the other skills you pick up when you own a business, because I wasn't a landscaper anymore, I was really a buyer of assets. I had to find trucks. I had to find trucks, I had to find them at good deals. I bought at least a truck a year, um, sometimes two, and I would always buy them at auction. Another horseback riding story is I was um riding horses with a girlfriend and I had my phone and I had the auction up on my phone, so I was bidding on this truck as I'm horseback riding and I ended up winning the truck on this horseback ride.
Speaker 3:I'm like, yes, it was like a $2,400 truck at that point. But, um, yeah, so I was just always looking for trucks, Like I was always buying if a truck came up, whether I thought I always looking for trucks, Like I was always buying If a truck came up, whether I thought I needed it or not if the truck came up that fit the description of what I wanted, I would buy it.
Speaker 1:Nice, my first car was an auction. My dad went to an auction and I don't remember what he paid for it. But yeah, that's a great place to buy. Yeah, you absolutely can. All right, right. So you were buying trucks when you could because your business was growing and expanding. Talk to us about those later phases where you knew you wanted to sell the business. This was not sustainable. You, you knew you needed to tap. How did you get it to that point of I know somebody is going to want to buy this from me.
Speaker 3:I didn't think anybody would want to buy it from me, because it's a landscape business.
Speaker 1:So I was like I don't.
Speaker 3:I just had never heard great things about selling service businesses, and so I started talking to a broker in 2020, 2020, 2021, something like that and we were I got a valuation. The valuation came back, okay, but I was like I want to build it for two more years and get more. So no, actually, let's, let's think about that. I started talking to the broker in 2022 and then I was going to grow it to like 2025 to try to hit a certain benchmark that I had set, and so I was working on that and the biggest thing was putting people in place, which I had already. It was already hands off. I had already had an operations manager and I wasn't working much at all at that point, but I needed to get my, my profit and revenue up to a certain point. So it was really at that point, but I needed to get my profit and revenue up to a certain point. So it was really, at that point, just managing a team. And when I say managing a team, I meant that I managed my operations manager and he managed everybody else, so it was pretty easy at that point. It was just working and trying to get more, more clients coming in, more jobs on the books and building up profit, but it was cut short and I ended up selling in 2023. There's there's a ribbon that runs through my entire life of like things that are in common and it's horses.
Speaker 3:So I was in a horseback riding accident, um, in last year, and I guess I should start with so I had I had a management team at that point. I had two sales guys. My two sales guys had put in their notice. So, as an hands-off owner, whenever a management team member quit, that was when I would have to jump back in and make sure that spot got filled. So that was pretty much my primary role at the time. So I had two people quit and it was kind of devastating because they were my two key guys and replacing them, I knew, was I was afraid of it, which I shouldn't have been, but I was and so they put in their notice. I think it was on a Friday.
Speaker 3:That weekend I went horseback riding and I got bucked off and it was really bad. I spent three days in the hospital. I had to have emergency surgery. I spent three days in the hospital. I had to have emergency surgery. I couldn't work because I was pretty much stuck at home on the couch like, couldn't do anything for six weeks and I felt like at my lowest point. I was like I don't know how I'm going to overcome this. My business needs me right now. I just had two key people quit and I'm supposed to jump in to rehire them and I can't do that because I'm injured. So I know this story is a little confusing, I think no, it's okay.
Speaker 3:I had hired a new operations manager before my two guys put in their notice, but they didn't know it yet and he was supposed to start that Monday, that Monday that I was still in the hospital because of my horseback riding accident. So this is kind of where it all came together to me that what, what I had put in place was working, because I couldn't work, I couldn't do the things I needed to do. I had this new operations manager starting and I couldn't be there to train him. So I did it through Google Docs or Google Drive because I had all my SOPs there, and so he and I just chatted and I trained this new operations manager through chat and written SOPs that I had from, like, my couch at home. So seeing those systems work was my first cue. That okay, my business is actually probably more valuable than I give it credit for, because it really does run without me being there with just some guidance and being at that low point of having that injury.
Speaker 3:I listed the business at that point because I was like I'm not needed, like I have everything documented, all my SOPs are super thorough. This new operations manager he's you know after two or three weeks I'm like he's doing a good job. He learned how to do it through my written SOPs. I'm like I think I'm just going to sell this business now because I don't think it. It doesn't need me. It's clearly working. And we listed it and it was under contract within two months. I had a bunch of people interested because it was a hands-off. You know, it was an investor business and it was an easy process. It was closed. So I listed it in like June and it was closed in September. So it was quick. Lots of people were interested and it was because my written SOPs worked. That kind of pushed me over that edge and then having that injury.
Speaker 2:Did that make sense? It made perfect sense. So the question I have is what was the thought process? You know taking, you know, several steps back to you, starting to put in the SOPs throughout the course of building your business. Reason I asked that is because, I would say, majority of business owners are so busy on the day to day that they don't take a step back to work on the business because they're too busy working in the business and years and years pass and then you know they want to sell it, but then they don't have any of those things in place that you do have and they have to take all this time to go back and do all that stuff. So what prompted you to start doing that early on?
Speaker 3:Well, knowing that I wanted to either build my way out or buy my way out from the beginning was part of it. But as soon as I started hiring employees, I pulled myself out of the field operations. So I was no longer the person pruning shrubs and raking leaves I. My primary goal from that first year, as soon as I hired, you know, my first crew, was to sell, get jobs schedule, get my crew scheduled and just keep that going. So it was get jobs, schedule my crews, hire, buy trucks, that kind of stuff and you know scheduling. I know you asked about that earlier. Like the first year I was just doing a Google sheet and old fashioned like here's when you show up, here's your list of jobs, here's when you should get back, yeah and um. So that helped.
Speaker 3:And as I hired more and more people, I just I just made sure that I wasn't stepping back into operations out of desperation. So if I had people quit, I didn't jump in to do work because we were shorthanded. I just went to hiring immediately and replaced that person right away. And that was one of the harder lessons that I learned was, every time somebody quit I felt like I had lost a major asset and that it was going to hurt my business. But actually every time somebody quit, my hiring got better and I ended up replacing them with somebody who was more qualified and fit our culture better and the company would grow. So it was kind of counterintuitive where you have people quit and you're like, oh my gosh, this sucks, that was my key person. And then you go and replace them and you realize, oh, within a week we're back up and running full staffed and everything's good again. So that was, I think, one of the bigger lessons was like everybody's replaceable. Even I'm replaceable in my own business, clearly.
Speaker 1:Everybody's replaceable. Even I'm replaceable in my own business. Clearly owners do the same are likely those SOPs and the automation and the systems and tools in place. Can you walk us through what you learned in your own business and now you know I don't want you to give away your secret sauce, but kind of what's the secret sauce you know to being able to walk away from your business?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it is those standard operating procedures and having them in writing, and I really used Google Drive for all of that. I use Google Docs because I could share with my team, I could link documents together and I was very thorough so that. So the way that I wrote my SOPs was I actually shadowed every single employee that I needed to write an SOP for, which was all of them. So, to write the admin assistant's training documents, I shadowed her for a week. She taught me everything she does and how she does it and I wrote it down and then I linked stuff together. So if you were like through an sop of how to enter data into quickbooks, for example, I would have a link to where to find the data that you have to enter into quickbooks. So I had it all down to like. You couldn't mess this up. If you follow the, you couldn't mess this up If you follow the instructions.
Speaker 3:You can't mess this up. It's all there, it's all linked, and I did that with every single role in the company, including my own. So that's how I did that and it didn't take too much time. I think it took three months to actually get it all down in writing. I mean, there were trial and error earlier on in the company where I would write SOPs and I would do it incorrectly, so I learned how to write them generically. You didn't use names like employees names, because the employee is probably not going to be there in two years Right.
Speaker 3:So I learned how to write them very generically and precisely, and then I just made sure people were following them. And I think that's a key, too, of like when I say I let people train me so that I could write the SOPs. That was something I did early on was I hired people who had skills that I didn't have. So admin skills have never been my thing. I'm terrible at most of it. So that was the first person I hired was an admin to help me stay organized, answer phones, enter data, all of that stuff. I never trained her. I hired somebody who already had those skills and I said make it work, please. And here's the outcomes I need. As long as you're meeting these outcomes, I don't care how you get it done. And so I let my employees train me on skills that they know and that they had that maybe I didn't. You filled the gaps.
Speaker 2:That is so like. What you just said is so extremely important is that you hired people, you filled the gaps and do everything, and the reality is that we all have our special skill sets, and then we have the other ones that we're not so good at. And the ones that we're not so good at, those aren't the ones that we should be focused on doing. We should hire somebody who's much better at them to do them for us.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I guess maybe that's an advantage to starting a landscape company with no landscape experience. I didn't know how to do most of it, so I had to hire people.
Speaker 1:Well it worked out pretty well for you what I did know how to do was bring an element of professionalism.
Speaker 3:I knew how to sell, I knew how to get jobs and I learned how to hire people.
Speaker 1:But other than that. That's the hardest part.
Speaker 3:Yeah, because if when we were doing construction jobs like we were doing, like paver patios and like heavier duty landscaping stuff I didn't know how to do any of that, I had to keep somebody hired at all times. That did, because I knew how to tell if it was done right. I knew the steps so that I could make sure that the quality was there. But when it came to like using a laser level to know how to get it level, I couldn't do it.
Speaker 2:I didn't know how well, the hard part is like. So the people that are skilled in doing that often don't have the skill to find the jobs to do it and do all the paperwork and everything that comes with running a business. They don't necessarily want to do that or they're not good at it, so it's that's what I teach.
Speaker 3:So that's why I that's how I got into what I'm doing now, because I'm like these people that run these service businesses. They're not business people necessarily and that's their lacking element to really reaching a point where their business is valuable and runs without them, because really a valuable business, to have a valuable business, it has to run without you doing multi-millions in sales every year. But if you have to be there as the owner, somebody is not going to just buy that because that is a huge job for them. Like they're going to have to come in and learn how to be you. So you have to learn how to make your role duplicatable so that anybody can step into it. And that's what I teach, because these most people don't don't know how to do that. And I know I did a lot of trial and error and it was a headache, at lots of low moments, lots of tears, like, yeah, so if I could save people all the stress and the anxiety and the tears that I had, that's what I want to set out to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that we. I went to a session actually at FinCon where we met you and it said exactly that you could have let it. You should probably pitch that for next year actually. But the whole concept around it was if you are the business, you don't have a business. You have a brand.
Speaker 1:If people are hiring you to speak. They're hiring you. You know they can't. If they hire me, they can't outsource to Brandon because he's not the brand or the face that they're hiring. It would be me or you. And they gave the example of if somebody is hiring Rihanna, they're hiring Rihanna to come and sing and be there and be the presence that she is on stage. That is the brand. Her business is Fenty Fenty Beauty. You can buy that any hour of any day, day or night, doesn't matter where on the planet you live, and she does not need to be there. Yes, you know. Or they said Mark Wahlberg, same thing, right, Like if you need him in a movie, well, he can't be anybody else, he is Mark Wahlberg.
Speaker 1:But if you want to eat at Wahlburgers, you can do that in you know 300 locations across, whatever the world without him having without him being there.
Speaker 1:That is the business, and so I think what you just said about building a scalable business that you actually can walk away from, I mean, that really is the secret sauce. So let's pivot into how you're doing that. So you sold your business for seven figures earlier than you anticipated, so big congratulations for that. When did you have that click, that moment of like, oh, I did this and now I can help other people do it. And what does that look like when you're working with these business owners?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I'm too young to retire, so I'm only 38. It's like one thing that I struggled with when I stepped into a investor owner role instead of an operator owner role was this feeling of not being needed and, as someone who's a doer and an entrepreneur and wants to build businesses, like it wasn't the best feeling ever. So people think you know, time is great, yes, but we all still need purposes and I found myself like what is my purpose? Like I just am, like I don't, I don't know, my crews don't need me, my company's running without me. I pretty much feel useless and it was a little depressing.
Speaker 3:So I learned some other skills and really what I jumped into was investing. I learned how to invest. So I bought some online courses and learned how to invest money and create cash flow. So not just invest for like hold and wait and you know that kind of growth, but like active cash flow.
Speaker 3:And that's something that really interests me a lot is financial independence. That's something that I had in my vocabulary from age 18. I was like I want to be financially independent. I don't want to rely on anyone. I don't want to rely on my boss or my job. I don't want to rely on my husband. I love my husband, but I'm like I want to be financially independent.
Speaker 3:To me, that was the ultimate freedom where I get to live the life I want, when I don't rely on anybody else to feed me, clothe me, put a roof over my head. So the investing was the way that I saw that being able to happen. And the step before investing is building a business. So if I wasn't able to, if I wasn't able to build a hands-off business, I would have never had the time to learn how to invest. So after selling the business, it clicked in my head Like there's a lot of business owners out there who are kind of stuck in their business and, yeah, they might feel trapped there because really, like you said, if you, if your business can't run without you, you don't have a business, you have a job and and you never have downtime.
Speaker 1:You can't go on vacation without checking your email.
Speaker 3:Exactly, sounds terrible.
Speaker 3:So, I was like I want to help those people because I know how to do this a different way and you know, like you're mentioning Rihanna and Mark Wahlberg, they invested in their businesses. They don't. They didn't bootstrap them and start them. You know. They invested in them and they found people who knew how to do what they wanted to accomplish and they hired them. And I think a lot of service business owners think that that can't be done with a service business, because they're like I'm the only one that can do it the way I want it done.
Speaker 3:I've tried hiring people and they just don't do it right. A lot of them live by the motto if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself. It's not true, but you have to be able to delegate properly. You have to know how to communicate to people who can get the work done, because employees can get it done. It just comes down to are you communicating the right way, Are you giving them the right guidelines and are you giving them the freedom to actually get the job done, Because there's more than one way to do it, and if an owner delegates and then micromanages and doesn't let the person do it, that's when tension happens and it's like, okay, they might not be doing it the way I would do it, but if the end result is the same, that's all that matters.
Speaker 3:And so I gave people the freedom like here's the outcome I need, here's my expectations, here's how I want you to check in with me. As long as they were doing those things, I did not interfere with how they were getting it done. I was like you're meeting the codes, it's getting done right. I don't care about everything in between A and B.
Speaker 1:I feel like your mindset, even going into starting the business, was like there's an exit strategy, right, you had an exit plan in mind and I don't know that most people are starting their businesses thinking, hey, there's going to be a better way I can.
Speaker 2:I'm agreeing with you. Yeah, I don't think people.
Speaker 1:You let go of that control because you had the exit in mind. But if you don't have that exit in mind, I think it's really hard to relinquish your baby, I think people started.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of people started business with no actual plan, 100%. Just like I'm good at this, I can make money off of this, so I'm going to do it 100%. They don't have a, you know, two-year, five-year, ten-year plan for the business, which is kind of winging it, and I think that's the big difference is that you had a plan, basically before you even really started the business per se.
Speaker 3:And I find that a lot of business owners lack a vision. And I think that's something that I struggle with talking to business owners is they don't even have a vision of what their life could be. And you know, as you guys, being a financial podcast, like financial independence, opens up a lot of doors and it doesn't mean that you don't have a purpose anymore, like I said. You know, like when I started to feel like I didn't have a purpose, I found another purpose. I learned a new skill and now I can teach other people to do it.
Speaker 3:But they, they're like I don't want to retire, I'm I don't, I don't know what I would do, and I think people box themselves up because they don't think that. I don't know if they don't have belief in themselves or exactly what it is. But I'm like, if you can have a mindset shift, like there's a whole world out there If you could just get your business to run without you. But they don't even. Yeah, they don't even. They don't even have the vision beyond their business. So that is something I run across when I was doing one-on-one coaching. I ran across that quite a bit Well from my experience.
Speaker 2:a lot of people in general don't even just stop think about and talk about out loud their goals. So you'll ask somebody like even if, like you know, they'll give you a generic one, like, oh, I want to retire one day, what does that mean?
Speaker 1:One day.
Speaker 2:Like when? Like, can we get a time frame here? What is it going to look like? What do you want to do? Do you want to do, do you want to travel the world? Do you want to live in a different country? Majority of people, honestly, do not really think about their goals and they definitely don't talk about them out loud.
Speaker 3:Right, and I think I probably made a lot of people mad when I was growing my business because I always talked about my goals.
Speaker 2:We're our circles always.
Speaker 1:We always talk about our goals, just not between each other, with our friends, what we want to see them do like it helps push you forward and it's the sense of accountability and pride and they say, like a rising tide lifts all boats or something like that.
Speaker 3:Like that's exactly it when you have a group of friends where you can talk out loud with your friends about your goals, like you help each other get there. And you know, even fincon. I've met a handful of people that I've been meeting with um just through Google meet or whatever, and talking about our goals together.
Speaker 1:And it's fun. Yeah, like accountability check-ins, we started doing those as well, and I think they're great, cause you you do need to be in community with like-minded people who you know they might not have the same goals, and that's totally fine, but you have people that are also working towards whatever it is that you guys are working towards. I think that's so powerful. You mentioned one-on-one coaching. Is that something that you still offer, or how are you working with people now?
Speaker 3:I am no longer offering one-on-one coaching because I felt like it was a distraction to me. It was a way to because consulting and coaching is easy, quick money Like you trade your time for money and you can generate an income right away with it and so it was appealing to me and I'm like, okay, I'll do this one-on-one coaching thing to me. And I'm like, okay, I'll do this one-on-one coaching thing. But really I found it distracting from what I want to do, which is to build an online educational database of courses, both free and paid style courses, with mastermind sessions where I can help more people at a time. Because one-on-one is a low leverage activity and the way that I built my last business was I leveraged everything and that's kind of just my mindset is leverage, so one-on-one just doesn't fit. But group coaching, mastermind sessions through my online courses is what I do offer.
Speaker 1:Okay yeah, because I was just thinking, if you're doing one-on-one again, how does that scale? Because then again you're the business People want to meet with you, the girl who built the seven-figure business, not somebody else that you've trained, right yeah, Reimtrained, right yeah.
Speaker 3:Starting a business and you know I've invested quite a bit into various things, like you know, technology, cameras, just random Starting a business. There's always expense that goes with that and so that immediate, you know income, so that I wasn't investing money. I had. But you know, making money and investing it, that was the appeal to it. But, yeah, after spending 2023, no 2024 doing that, I, I just it didn't align with with my goals, but that was the appeal, was the money and I'm like I don't need, you know, like I didn't, I don't need that income. It was like I wanted it, but I'm like I don't need it. So now I am just focusing on building out online courses.
Speaker 1:Perfect. So the people who are listening that are like, okay, I need to whip my business into shape or man, you're right, I don't want to work forever. How can I turn my business into something that works without me being present?
Speaker 2:Also, let's be honest, Majority of people, if you're listening, you have a business, you know you fall into this category. Let's be honest.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. Like you said, I think it is the majority of the people. Um, if they do want to work with you and learn more, where can they find you, and what resources do you currently have available for people?
Speaker 3:Right now. All the resources I have I share through my newsletter and I have marketing guides and roadmaps. I also put out a the newsletter every two weeks. It always has very actionable, detailed business tips and advice in there and you can get my newsletter at trainajuliancom slash newsletter. You could subscribe there and that is the first place that I will be announcing my courses as I launch them, which will be in 2025.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, the newsletter sounds fantastic, comes out every two weeks. We'll make sure to link that in our show notes. So, please, if you're listening to this and you need another free resource of great business tips, tricks, ideas, the marketing campaign, all of that sounds fantastic. So thank you for giving all of that away for free. If you're not signing up for that newsletter, what are you even doing? And then where can people find you on social media, trina?
Speaker 3:Instagram, facebook X and LinkedIn. I'm on all of those, and all except LinkedIn are my name, so Trina, julian or Trina underscore Julian, but something along those lines. If you Google me, it will all pop up Perfect.
Speaker 2:And we'll link all that information in the show notes also.
Speaker 1:Yes, do you want to leave our audience with like a final thought, either for people who are thinking about starting a business or people who already have a business that they're looking to grow and potentially exit from?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I really just want to encourage people to believe in themselves and to go for their dreams, because that's the biggest thing that holds people back, I think, is they're afraid of failing. And things are easier than people realize. When you just put the effort in to do it, it's achievable. So, whatever it is that you want to do, don't stifle that because you're afraid of failing. Just go for it.
Speaker 1:I love it. We'll end on the note go for it. Thank you so much, trina, for being with us today.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you for having me. You guys have been awesome.
Speaker 1:Don't forget. Benjamin Franklin said an investment in knowledge pays the best interest. You just got paid Until next time. Thanks for listening to today's episode. We are so glad to have you as part of our sugar daddy community. If you learned something today, please remember to subscribe, rate, review and share this episode with your friends, family and extended network. Don't forget to connect with us on social media at the sugar daddy podcast. You can also email us your questions you want us to answer for our past the sugar daddy podcast. You can also email us your questions you want us to answer for our past the sugar segments at the sugar daddy podcast at gmailcom, or leave usa voicemail through our Instagram.
Speaker 2:Our content is intended to be used, and must be used, for informational purposes only. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment based upon your own personal circumstances. You should take independent financial advice from a licensed professional in connection with, or independently research and verify any information you.
