The UnlearnT Podcast
The UnlearnT Podcast is designed to help you gain the courage to change your mind about things you never thought you would change your mind about. Our hope is that you will begin to move towards a life of freedom after hearing stories from individuals who have chosen to unlearn some things in their lives.
The UnlearnT Podcast
Unlearning Entrepreneurship with Mayor Greg Bennett: How to Run Twelve Different Businesses At Once, Community-First Governance, Strategic Business Pivots, Financial Discipline, and Expanding Local Impact
Ever wondered how a small-town mayor can drive significant community growth without pocketing a dime of his salary? In our latest episode of the UnlearnT Podcast, we sit down with Mayor Greg Bennett of Swainsboro, Georgia, who shares his remarkable approach to governance and development. Mayor Bennett details his choice to reinvest his mayoral earnings into local projects, offering a fresh perspective on the power of a community-first mindset. From creating jobs to building affordable housing, his initiatives have not only increased Swainsboro's population but also set a new standard for local leadership.
Transitioning from farming to running a successful assisted living business, Mayor Bennett reveals the financial and environmental challenges that pushed him to pivot his career. This former farmer delves into strategic planning, the importance of partnerships, and how he expanded his business portfolio to include a travel center, gym, restaurant, and hotel. He shares invaluable insights on managing multiple ventures while highlighting innovative solutions, like forming a co-op for better crop pricing, to support the farming community.
Connect with Greg!
https://cityofswainsboro.org/government/mayor/contact-the-mayor/
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https://open.spotify.com/show/0rgu2jIXzNrjQKMwjPGC7z?si=ef78d1b341c14f9b
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-unlearnt-podcast/id1659687407
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Welcome to the UnLearnT Podcast!
Welcome to the channel of a true trailblazer in the podcasting world! I'm Ruth Abigail (AKA "RA"), the host of 'The UnLearnT Podcast,' a unique platform that helps people gain the courage to change their minds in order to experience more freedom! Our show dives deep into subjects like religion, politics, race, and more—all geared towards helping you UnLearn what you think you know. If you're looking to shake up your mindset and gain actionable insights, you've landed at the right place. Don't forget to hit the 'Subscribe' button for regular doses of transformative content!
Hello everybody and welcome once again to the unlearned podcast. I'm your host, ruth Abigail aka RA, and this is the podcast that is helping you gain the courage to change your mind so that you can experience more freedom. And we are in our series called Unlearning Entrepreneurship, and I have a very, very special guest with me today. He is the first government official I've ever had on this, on this, on this podcast. This is exciting. I would like to introduce to some and present to others. Mayor Greg Bennett of Swainsboro, georgia. What's up, greg?
Speaker 2:Hello, how are you? I don't know about a government official, I don't. Small-time politics is small-time politics. It's not like there's not really a Democrat and Republican. We're all just in the same boat, trying to make everything better. Honestly, when we're in our little meetings, I couldn't tell you who's a Republican and who's a Democrat. It's just. It's just different.
Speaker 1:It really is. Well, I mean okay, but you did get voted in, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Voted in. I mean you're a government official to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes, sir, I don't get paid, I don't take a salary.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you don't. You don't take a salary, oh, you don't.
Speaker 2:No, I uh, I'm supposed to get a salary but I've never turned in my paperwork to get them to pay me. That way I know I won't get paid. It's about 20-something grand a year but I don't take it.
Speaker 1:Oh, you know what that's wonderful. That's wonderful. Did you know, coming in, you weren't going to take it. You just knew you were going to.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, what am I planning? Here's what I do I kind of take it without taking it. What happens is, let's say, the Christmas. The Christmas budget is five grand and they need $8,000 to do lots.
Speaker 1:So I say take 3000 out of my pay and buy the lots. Oh, that's perfect, that's dope, okay, so you said small town. You're from Swainsboro, georgia, uh, and you know, um, we've met a few times, I've been out there a few times. Describe how small it is, wouldn't you say small town, swainsboro, the?
Speaker 2:whole county is like 25,000 residents and Swainsboro, if you took like maybe a diagram of maybe three miles from our center, we're like 10,000 residents right there, Just like a three-mile radius. Okay, the population is really about 7,500, but the city lines are just screwed up. So it's really you take about a three-mile radius 10,000.
Speaker 1:So all right, so about 7,500 to 10,000. So that's about. I think that's okay. That's not as small as it could be.
Speaker 2:Well, we actually grew. We probably grew 300 people in the last year, really, and we've grown by 100 people in the last 30 years, and we grew by 300 people this year.
Speaker 1:What was different? What happened? That's a huge jump.
Speaker 2:I started a whole new subdivision. I'm a developer too, so I started. Anyone don't ever think they can do a subdivision. Subdivisions are the most time consuming thing you've ever seen in your life. And I'm even building the houses. I'm not really a house builder, but I put people together like this guy's a construction worker, this guy's a plumber, this guy's electrician, so I put them all together to build houses. But in the end of the day, after you sell the home, the homeowner don't call those people. They call you if something goes wrong. So now I'm on the hook for a year dealing with things like there's water leaking here and I'm not really the person who does all that right. But you know they did directly pay me, but I didn't do it for profit. I made absolutely no profit Really and I just wanted to put. There was about 50 people who work out there building houses every day. It gave 50 people a job. Plus, we've got 50 more homes in the community than we didn't have before.
Speaker 1:Hold on, you're the developer. You're not a broker, I guess, but you're acting as a property manager, though.
Speaker 2:I'm acting like the general contractor. What I do, I put these eight people together and I pick out house plans and I do everything. But then halfway through the house build I'll put them for sale and so then the owner can come in and pick their own paints and do small little things and we have yet to finish a house that wasn't sold yet. By the time it's ready, somebody buys it. And I'm not saying they're cheap houses, but if I'm not taking a profit, so the general contractor will usually make about 15% profit. So if I'm selling a house for $200,000, $250,000 in that range, technically I probably should have made $35,000 profit. So the houses would have been $35 higher, but they're not 35 grand higher. So they're selling pretty fast.
Speaker 2:And I'm not saying they're probably middle to middle upper class homes. The cheapest home we sold out there was $193,000 and the highest price home was $450,000. So it's a good array of homes but for Swainsboro actual residents you know it's on the higher end but not really on the higher end. You know like all of Swainsboro cannot afford these homes and I've been blasted a few times saying you're not building homes. People in the community can buy, everybody can buy, but my go back to them is to take Chevrolet, the Chevrolet place. The Chevrolet place has a hundred thousand dollar car Well, they also have a five thousand dollar car.
Speaker 2:So you're telling the Chevrolet place they shouldn't sell the hundred thousand dollar car, even though somebody about you know. So maybe you can't afford every house out there, maybe not, maybe everybody can't afford houses out there, but there's, you know, half the community can. And my goal to do this thing was to make Swainsboro grow, and I'm not saying that I didn't want people from Swainsboro to buy the homes, but in order to grow you got to move people here, you know. So if I just build these homes and everybody in Swainsboro moves out there, we didn't do anything.
Speaker 2:So I'm going to say 90% of everybody in the subdivision are not from. I'm going to say half of them are not even from Georgia. Really, yeah, because what they do like. One couple told me from Boston they went to Savannah and they liked Savannah. They wanted to move here from Boston. Well, they couldn't afford a home in Savannah because they were so expensive. So then they said, okay, let's search 50 miles out of Savannah or 75 miles, and we want a brand new home. Then they said, OK, let's search 50 miles out of Savannah or 75 miles, and we want a brand new home. And then they were finding the homes that I was listing and they said there's no way these homes are this. Why are they $50,000 cheaper than the other homes we're finding? So they flew down here, looked at it, they bought it. I wasn't even finished with that house and they bought it before we was finished.
Speaker 1:So OK, so I want to, I want to, I want to back up a little bit because you, you, first of all, I just I got to ask what is your motivation? Like you said, like, ok, you don't take a salary for your position as mayor, you aren't making a profit on this development, you know, you, what's your motivation? You're, you're an entrepreneur, like you're, you know you're, you're not giving stuff away. But obviously, there's obviously a motivating factor here, at least for those two things that you said. What's your motivation for doing things and not necessarily reaping the benefit?
Speaker 2:you get. Well, I was born here, naturally, so I've only moved away for probably three years of my whole life. I went to college. I went two years of college after I finished a local college here. So I went to two years in Statesburg, georgia Southern, and I graduated there and there's a little story there. And then I moved away for one year to a neighboring town called Dublin and then I built an assisted living home there. So I moved over there for a year while I was getting up and running and then I moved back.
Speaker 2:But I really want Swainsboro to grow, because we've pretty much been in like a standstill for like 30 years and if you're not growing, you're you're, you're going backwards. You know, if you don't, swainsboro is almost becoming, or was becoming, like a rental house town. You know, like always you got grandmothers and grandmothers living in the town. Well, they pass away and their sons or daughters get it and they just rent the home out, and so a rental house town is way different than a town. That's got, you know, people living there, because no offense to renters, but you're not invested in a community like you would be if you actually owned the home. So you take care of the home more, you take care of your yard better, and I didn't want to see it go that way. So in order for us to grow, you have to have the whole brand new center, because we don't have a lot of lots left scattered around town, so we had to create the lots.
Speaker 1:You got pushback but from what it makes sense is like, okay, you bring new people in, you can grow the economy because you got new money in, you got new people in. That have you know, potential to to to increase different in different ways and the city contribute differently. So, even if you can't currently afford a home, because it's possible that if you, if new people come in, the economy could be such to where maybe you could do better in order to afford that home because there's when somebody moves there, like there's 50 homes, I'm gonna say 40 of them is gonna have people that don't live here.
Speaker 2:So those 40 people either work or gonna find a job here or they're retired. Right, but when they bought those 50 homes, that say on average of 225 000 a piece does a lot more economy that the government here can get more tax money off of. And so if you got more tax money coming in from this group of people that you didn't, not everybody else's taxes might go down because there's more people sharing the pot than it was before. And the more I'm not going to say more expensive homes you build, but the more middle-class homes you build, those people are going to spend more money in town than somebody who comes here and don't really have a job and don't really work, you know, and won't rent a home. Maybe they don't have a job to contribute much to this community, as would somebody who comes in and, you know, got a good retirement they make and can spend money around town.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's go back to you. Said you graduated from Georgia. You said you graduated from Georgia Southern.
Speaker 2:Georgia Southern. I went the long route. I went, like everybody does, when you graduated high school and I loved high school. I'm one of these weird people that I went from ninth grade through 12th. I didn't miss one day of school. I just loved school. Well, I like sports too. You know, back when I was going to school, if you missed that day you couldn't participate in any sports. You know, if we had a game the next day, if you missed the day before, you're not playing the game because apparently you're sick. And I played year-round sports. You know I went from basketball to baseball to track, so I played year-round, so I played year round.
Speaker 2:But anyway, after I graduated high school, I went to college, a local college it was called East Georgia Colleges here in town, and I found out right quick, like you don't really have to go to class. It wasn't like high school, you know, like if you want to go, you can, if you don't, it don't matter, we don't care. So it took me probably four years to get two years because I was pitiful. So then, after I finished here, I went to Georgia Southern and after two years I just got bored with it a little bit and didn't want to and I still like six months from graduating. So I quit, went back home.
Speaker 2:My dad was a farmer. So I said you know what? I'm ready to make some money. I was probably 22 at the time and I said I want to make some money. So I quit college with six months to go and when I was probably 35 years old, my wife at the time, her dad was sick in Statesboro Hospital. So I've said you know what, I'm here, I'm going to go see how much college I like. So I went over there and they said you only like six months. I said you know what, sign me up for classes. So I think I was 35 when I actually graduated.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow, that's cool. I finished, you finished, that's it. You got a degree, yeah, okay. So what were you doing in between 22 and 35?
Speaker 2:I formed, like I said, my dad formed. So I think from probably the age of 23 until probably 35, I farmed. That's all I did. My dad did it. So naturally, I said that's what I got to do is farm. But one year I was farming.
Speaker 2:And farming is different. Farming is it doesn't matter how hard you work or if you do everything right, if it does not rain or if it's too hot or if it's too cold, you don't make any profit, which means you can't eat. And it's not like other jobs. Other jobs, you get paid every two weeks, every once a month. Farmers will get paid once a year. You have to put all your eggs in one basket and if that year is bad, you don't pay out. You can't pay the bank off. And so I got to thinking when I was 35, I remember this I was 35 when I was farming for the springtime, that's when we plant everything and I said this is absolutely insane, because I've already figured on paper that I can't make a profit this year because prices were down, you know, and inputs were up. And I said what am I doing here? If it doesn't work on paper? It's not going to work. This is stupid. So what I did. I said, okay, when I got through planting, I sold my planters. When I got through spraying for the year, I sold my sprayer. When I got through harvesting my crop, I sold my harvester. That way I could not farm the next year. So I made myself not farm.
Speaker 2:And at the time my wife at the time we had started an assisted living home. It was probably two to three years into that so she did that on the side and I helped her some. And then I said you know what it does? Pretty good, I'm just going to take all of my assets that I had farming and build another assisted living home. So that's when I moved to Dublin and built a whole new assisted living home. And while we were over there she and I got a divorce. But she took the nursing home in Dublin, the new one, I took the old one and I moved back home. Then from there I started a new business. I think I'm up to I think I have 11 or 12 right now businesses you have 11 or 12 businesses.
Speaker 1:Okay, I want to know. But I want to go back to the farming thing because that is I'm sure you know. Go back to the farming thing because I, that is um I'm sure you know, ty, who's my husband.
Speaker 1:This is how I know greg, he's probably called you. We have a little garden in the back, right, so we started planting stuff. Uh, earlier this year, and, and, and I, so I'm I'm from houston, texas. I got no country farm in me at all, right, so this is a new world for me. Okay, you said you get paid once a year. I need you to break down the economy of farming. I don't. I don't understand why it's a once a year payout, all right.
Speaker 2:So let's take. Let's take first of the year. The first of the year you have to pay all your rent. So, like I was a renter, so I didn't own any land, so I had to rent land and you have to pay all your renters up front. So say, if I had a thousand acres I probably paid 30 to 40, 30 to $50 an acre rent right. So right off the bat I'm paying you know a lot, $50,000 in the first month for rent on all this land.
Speaker 2:And then you have to put things like you have to get all the soil ready, so you have to put something called lime. Lime helps to pH right in the land, so you have to get. If the pH isn't right, the fertilizer is not going to work, so you have to spend that money. Then you have to buy the fertilizer, so, and the fertilizer and the lime usually cost about $75 an acre. So now I got the rent and the fertilizer all up front, so I'm investing all that money up front, okay. Then you have to seed. You got to put the seed out, and once you put the seed out you have to make sure no weeds come up, and so and through, all through the year you're either plowing the field or spraying the field to kill all the weeds. That's all you do all year long no weeds, no weeds, no weeds. And then at the end of the year this is probably now we're talking September, october. So from March to September October, all you're doing is spending money.
Speaker 2:You don't make anything and if it quits raining, say in July, for the whole month, well, you're out there saying, okay, do I spend more money or do I just quit? Because do I throw good money after bad? But you always got hope. You always believe in God He'll make it rain. So you keep spending money. You keep spending money. So then October comes, you either have a good year or a bad year.
Speaker 2:So we harvest from about September to November. And when you're harvesting, if the prices aren't right because us farmers are different September, october, november we're broke. Everybody's screaming to pay me If the prices are down. We don't really have a choice. It's not like we can say I don't want to sell right now, I want to wait because I think prices are going up. Well, it don't matter, you got bills to pay, so you can't really speculate and hope they go up. So we pretty much have to take what they'll give us September, october, november and then try to pile it all up, pay everybody off. You can, or you can go the next year. Whoa. And that's not even getting to the equipment. The equipment is a whole different thing. I mean you have to go out and spend $500,000 on one piece of equipment and probably not take 10 pieces of equipment to farm.
Speaker 1:You're starting off, I mean like unless you have capital.
Speaker 2:I mean you're starting off in debt day one, yeah day one, day one, and most farmers it takes everything they got to pay off. When we start we're having to borrow that money to start off with, because it took all the money we made the last year to pay everybody off. So you start day one having to go to the bank. You have to go to the bank in January. We always say as a group, like a little joke, the further along a farmer can go before going to the bank, that's how rich he was. You don't have to go to the bank. But if you can make it till like May or June, you're a rich farmer. Because how could you farm all that time without borrowing money? Me, I had to go in January, like January the 3rd. I was always in the bank January the 3rd trying to borrow some money.
Speaker 1:That is no. I had no idea. It was that. I did not know that. That's how that went.
Speaker 2:If you want to start farming today, you would need to go borrow a million dollars just for the equipment. That's no expenses on seed and fertilizer and all that.
Speaker 1:I'm going to get off this in a second. I'm just intrigued. What, um how does one become a successful farmer?
Speaker 2:I don't know how somebody would become a farmer now. If you're, if you're not generational people you know, like if your dad or your granddad didn't farm, I don't see any way that you could be a farmer. Because, for one thing, there's no way I could go. If I was 25 years old and I said okay, I want to go borrow a million dollars worth of equipment, there is no company that's going to let me borrow a million dollars to go buy equipment. So if you've got a dad or an uncle or somebody who says, okay, I'm going to bridge your tractor, they're growing season and I'll just rent it for you while I need it and you pay him a little bit at the end of the year, that is the only way you can do it and most. If you don't have kin, people you know or family that could loan you the equipment, there's no way you could start.
Speaker 1:No way. So is the farming community. I mean, like just as a from a national perspective. And when it comes to food and growing food, is that in jeopardy?
Speaker 2:I would be nervous Because, like when I told you when I was 35, I said I couldn't pencil it out. Well, if I can't pencil it out, how does everybody else pencil it out? No-transcript 2007, I think, I put together a group of people 15 farmers and we went and bought our own peanut market. So we didn't have to take what we were given for peanuts, we could set our own price. So we had like a co-op we started and so now that co-op makes a great profit because we can pay the average farmer a little bit more than everybody else pays them and then we can hold it and sell it when we want to to make some more income. So that helps the farmers. Like every year, all of us farmers that own that peanut market we get an extra 25,000 a year just because we're like a buying point now. So we're already starting off the year with $25,000 where everybody else don't have that. So the longer you can keep your product and keep hands off of it, the more profit you'll make.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. Okay, this is all right. So you have 11, you said 11 or 12 businesses, right? What types of businesses do you have?
Speaker 2:Assisted living home. It's called Summer Willow. I'm building a travel center right now. It's a truck stop. It's going to be. It's huge, it's like a Bucky's.
Speaker 1:It's like a miniature Bucky's.
Speaker 2:Okay, we should open it in December. I've got two partners on that. Okay, I'm also. I just sold my liquor store. It's called Mojo's Wine and Spirits. Okay, I started it in 2011, and it did absolutely great. But it comes a time, you know, you think to yourself. You know, is this a business I want to be invested?
Speaker 2:in a long time you know I'm not saying liquor store is bad, but it doesn't look good, you know, and you fight with yourself a few times and somebody came along and offered me a little bit more than it was worth so I sold it Also on CPR Fitness in town. It's a gym here in town. It's like 20,000 square feet, it's got a heated pool, it's got a sauna, it's got everything. It's way too nice for Swainsboro. That's the thing. The next business I got I'm building a hotel right now. It's called the Blanton. It's going to be a Wyndham hotel and we've actually just started building it. The next business I have is a Manor County Peanut and Grain. That's the peanut place I was telling about the Stockyard Restaurant. I started it last year with one partner. It does good, very good. Swainsboro doesn't really have a middle to upper scale nice bar restaurant place to go, so it has great food. It's doing great Quick, clean laundry. I own a laundromat with two other people too, if you'll notice, I have partners and stuff right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm not saying it's good to have partners or bad, but to me I could not own 11 businesses if I didn't have partners. There's no way to do it. If you don't spread the workload around, then you can't own it. And if I own 11 or 12 businesses, I don't have to take a lot of profit. I don't need a slither of profit from every business. And then I got a good living and then I didn't tell you this. But let me finish my business first. The next business is Mojo's Car Wash. It's one of the express washes. You know like you pay a membership and you come through. The next business is a retail store my wife and I own. It's called Sumner's Boutique.
Speaker 2:I built a retail place that's got two down below and two apartments up tall and the apartments up tall I just got three or two like a year ago. They look like New York style apartments. They're like studio with brick walls and it's absolutely beautiful. But I do not want to get in the rental house business. I got these two apartments on top but I just don't like rental houses. The people expect too much of you, you know, like my toilet's messed up. Well, I'm only making $40 profit this month. You know on your part I didn't do it to make a profit. So if I get a plumber there to fix your toilet, I wrote 60 bucks this month you know like, and it's so slow of income. There's people I know that has a lot of rental income. I just don't see it. It's way too slow to invest all that money to get a little sliver back. The next one is Crossroads Landings. That's the subdivision.
Speaker 1:I'm doing.
Speaker 2:Next one is Mojo's Car Wash. I got another one in Waynesboro, georgia. Okay, I think that's it and I'm a mayor. I don't know if that's a job. That's kind of a job.
Speaker 1:Okay, greg. So here's the thing Even before I officially met you, right, ty would tell me. And I said there's no way this dude is doing all of that. How in the world? But you made partners. And this is interesting, I think, and correct me, this is how I'm interpreting it. You have partners. You say you take a sliver of each one and you don't have to. So it's more attractive for a partner to say oh man, I can have a nice chunk of equity in this and plus.
Speaker 2:I don't want to say too much, but the larger man. That's a good example. Theromat, I had the idea Swainsboro didn't really have a nice laundromat, right, and we do drop and fold, it's not really just a coin laundromat. I mean we wanted people there all day, right. And how do you pay people all day unless they have a task to do? So what we do is people can drop their clothes off. We'll wash them for them and iron them and put stars to do all that, and they just pick them up that day or the next day. So that helps pay for that employee. Because my opinion is, if you got a large amount and you leave it open 24 hours a day, they're going to destroy it. People just destroy it.
Speaker 2:So, you don't want that, so that's why we have people there. But, like here, we put up $20,000 a piece, us three partners, so it's $60,000. So 60 grand. I think we built it for around 250. You know, I think the building and then I think we spent around 190,000 on equipment. So we had around 450,000, I think in the day.
Speaker 2:But if I did it by myself one, I'd have to put a lot more money in front and it takes one of the owners every morning, goes in there and counts up the quarters, puts the quarters back in the machines, makes sure everything's fine. It takes him about an hour every morning. Well, he does it because he likes doing it. Well, if I had to do it, I couldn't do all those stuff I have to. Not that an hour is a lot of time, but if you've got 11 or 12 businesses, you can't spend an hour dedicated to one space. Because if I did that, what if I had an emergency in one of my other places? I said, okay, I can't come, but I can come in an hour. That won't work If I got an emergency. I got an emergency to go leave.
Speaker 1:So there are people out there that would say, if you're going to be an entrepreneur, partners are not a good way to go, because you can't trust them.
Speaker 2:Here's the thing Never pick a partner that doesn't bring something to the table that you can't bring. You know if, why would I pick partner X? Let's say, if a partner said I just want to put in some money and be a partner, well, I can go borrow money. What are you bringing to the table besides money? Because I can borrow money and pay the loan back and I ain't got to give you a portion of it. But if you'll say, okay, if we'll do this partnership together, like the partnership I'm doing with the truck stop, the travel center, I got three partners. Well, I got two. I'm the third partner.
Speaker 2:One actually owns a gas station now, so he's got experience, so he's going to run the place. My other partner owns a trucking company, so now we got automatically 100 trucks. That's going to buy diesel from us every single day because he's got a trucking company, he owns a mill, he owns a bunch of stuff, so your customer base just grew because there's no way he's going to buy it anywhere else. He's going to buy it there. So all three of us bring something to the table that if somebody just didn't want to put money in, I would not have took them as partners. I don't take any money partners in, because all you're telling me is you don't want to work, you just want to put money in and you want me to send you a check.
Speaker 1:So that's what I was going to ask you. What are the other elements?
Speaker 2:What are the other elements? What are the other characteristics of a partner? You're looking for the hotel I'm doing. I got two partners. With that I'm going to be 52% owner, and that's another thing I like to have to say 52%.
Speaker 2:If there's a bad call to make, I want to be the one that made the bad call. I don't want to get outvoted and somebody tell me this is the way it's going to be. Not that I ever have that on any owners I got. We're all great, great friends, we're all going to break, but at the end of the day, if there's a bad decision to make, I won't be the one to blame. And so I'm 52 percent. And then I have two owners. It's 24 percent. One of those owners is a contractor. So automatically we're saving around $400,000 on general contractor fee because he's bringing that to the table and he's not even knocking it off his thing. He's just donating the $400,000 to the project without saying that's my money to put in. He's not doing it, he's just doing it because eventually we hope to make money off the project.
Speaker 1:And I'm a little different too.
Speaker 2:What I do and all my businesses I got you know. Naturally I got to live and I got to. You know I'm going on a little vacation but I don't really spend a lot of money. You may see me in the same five outfits for two years. I just don't waste money.
Speaker 2:Many of my friends will tell you he is tired, because anytime I get somebody to do something for me, I jewel them down. I try to get as cheap as I can. I don't do that because I'm cheap. I do it because if I jewel you down on doing the plumbing of these houses, that's that much more cheaper I can sell the home for, so that much I can save the home.
Speaker 2:On the way I'm getting at is every one of these businesses that I make, and some of them don't make a profit. Now, some of them don't make a profit, but if I can take a little bit out, so then every end of the month I can pile up another pile of money if it makes a profit to go do another business, because all the profit I make I only need what I need, and so then I can start like a new hotel or a new truck. Stop, you know so and I don't like take it out of the community I try to invest more. Let's turn it right back in the community. Turn it right back in the community and try to make more jobs.
Speaker 1:So you know, you know, social media is full of this kind of lifestyle culture of entrepreneurship. You know, I got you know, man, you know, you know we're doing this. Look at us, we're at where you were in Mexico and we're doing this trip and we're doing these masterminds, I got these cars, private plant, all the. You know, you see all that.
Speaker 1:When people want to get into entrepreneurship that's kind of the mind that they have what, what, what, what you're, what you're talking about is a very different picture of entrepreneurship and to me it's like it's a servant entrepreneurship Like you, you, you, you're you, you know you, you get what you get right, you deserve, cause it's this, it's your stuff. But it's not about the, the, the material aspect of of everything. You want to do it to pour back in the community. How would you help people who have to like negotiate what they see on social media and kind of that picture of what most people see entrepreneurship is? And how would you help them to kind of swing their mindset to where you are of like and cause you're successful? It's not like you out here, you know you ain't giving stuff away, I mean, but you are a successful businessman but your mindset's different. How do you help people get there?
Speaker 2:Here's the problem All those ones you see, you might see you don't see the losers. When you look on social media, you only see the winners. And so and I'm not saying that's not true, it does happen People do hit these little lottery things. I'm not talking about lottery, but you know what I'm saying the lottery in the business world. But that's not the way it goes, because for every one person that succeeded, there's 15 others that are back working a nine-to-five job because it didn't work out. You know why most businesses fail. I think because there's been a few businesses I know and I've tried to help these people.
Speaker 2:You know different ones to do different things, and this is the same thing I tell everyone. When you start a new business, you have to treat it like a new infant. You have to give it everything it needs. You can't take anything from it. If it makes $4,000 this month profit, you don't take anything. You got to learn to live well within your means, even lower. You're not supposed to take any money out for a couple of years. And it's hard for people to do that because you know you start a new business and this month it made $3,000 profit and you got a bill at the house.
Speaker 2:It's hard not to pay that bill with that money. So because you got to put it right back in the business the next month. So what if you have a bad month next month and you lose $3,000? You close because you took all the profit the month before and you didn't save it. So my thing is treat it like an infant. If you give that infant everything it needs for a couple years, it can start feeding you. But you can't expect it to feed you right out of the crib. You've got to feed it for two years, at least two years. So you got to have a plan. That's the thing about it.
Speaker 2:Everybody says the bank says I need a business plan. They want to know how are you going to pay your bills if you can't take money out. That's all they want to know. How are you going to pay me back and how are you going to pay your bills? And if your thing is okay I want to borrow $50,000 to buy $20,000 worth of merchandise because I need to make $3,000 a month to pay my bills they're automatically going to say, okay, next You're not going to make it because you can't borrow money to live on.
Speaker 2:And then you can't say, well, I got to. If I'm working for myself, I need to get paid. No, you don't, you can't take money out. You just cannot take money out. And that's what they do wrong. They think they can take money out because it's there and you can't. You got to be disciplined not to take it out. And if you do that for say, two years, well now you got to. You got like a toehold. Now this business can can give you an income while you start a new business. Now the new business don't have to support you either, but you cause. You got the old business that you worked for two years on and then two years later. Well, now you've got two businesses that can support you and you start the next one.
Speaker 1:So what does someone have to do to be prepared to not take from their business for two years? How do I need to prepare for that?
Speaker 2:What I would do is sit down. Okay, how much is it going to take me to go from January 1st to December 1st? What is the minimum? I have to live? And you say I got to pay this bill, I got to pay this because you got to eat, you got to pay your rent, you got to pay everything. So let's say, if the bank, you went to the bank and you want let's just do the fictitious number I need $50,000 to buy this merchandise and to pay my rent, or I'm doing the building, all business stuff, and it takes you $27,000 for you to live.
Speaker 2:You can't go to the bank, bar 77. They're going to laugh at you and say, no, you can't do that. So you got to have enough money to satisfy the bank for the business and satisfy the bank for you to breathe. Because I say you need to go two years, but you got to go a year. I mean there's no question, you got to go a year. Then after a year you'll know either this business is going to make it or it's not. And if you think it's going to make it, the next year you might could take 15,000 out of the 27 you needed and it can still flourish and still grow. But you ain't got to go that whole year knowing that you don't have any money. But you got to have a plan. How do you pay your own bills? Because you just can't get greedy with your business. You got it. Let it support itself.
Speaker 1:So you say one more thing.
Speaker 2:You got to be ready to work a hundred hours a week. Don't go in there thinking, okay, I'm going to start this new business and I will hire two guys or two women or whatever, and they're going to work 40 hours a week and all I got to do is supervise If you need to hire two and you don't hire zero and you work 80. And that's why you technically could pay yourself. You know, like I'm going to hire, I'm not going to hire a person, but I would have hired one and I was going to work, so I'm not going to hire any, and so I was going to pay that person 15 bucks an hour, so I can draw out $600 because I would have paid that person. But you got to be willing to work 80 hours a week.
Speaker 1:All right, I was going to go somewhere, but just let me ask this first Um, when people come to you and they say I want to start a business, or I want you to help me, coach me through starting a business, or you know, I think I want to be an entrepreneur, what are the things, um, what would make you encourage somebody to do that versus discourage somebody to do that?
Speaker 2:For one thing to come. Come to me. I had a group that come to me. They were local people and two guys and they wanted to start a sub place. Larry's Giant Subs is one of those. Right, they came to me and they wanted to do the sub place but they didn't have. After we talked for about 30 minutes I said you have to figure out how much you're going to have in that sub all your ingredients, every one of your things. And then you got to figure out your staff and then you got to figure out how much you're going to have in that business every single day to turn the lights off. And turn the lights off Like like what a restaurant. I was trying to explain to them. About 30% of your cost has to be food cost Right and then 30% of your cost has to be food cost right and then 30% of your cost has to be labor right and then about 15% has to be like overhead, like your rent, your gas and all that. So that's about 75%. Now you need about 5% to pay the credit card fees. You still have to have credit Credit card fees was killing everybody.
Speaker 2:Like people think, please, I'm going to tell everyone on your list will think please, I'm going to tell everyone on your list pay cash, the more cash you pay. Like I've heard this before If you go into a place and you take $50 and you pay it to that restaurant and they take the whole 50, now they got 50 more dollars to spread around somewhere. If you go into a restaurant and pay them a credit card, they just lost $3. So actually they got 47. And then when they pay out their stuff or they go use a credit card, that credit card the value went down to 33. I mean 43. So every time you use that credit card, if you use it 10 times, it's worth zero. The bank got the whole $50.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the bank got the whole. If you do 10 transactions, the bank ends up getting the whole $50. If you do 10 transactions, the bank gets the whole $50 because all us business owners we have to pay about 3% to the credit card people for you to use your card and most of it. There are businesses now that's adding it to their bill. They are doing that. I just don't think that's right. My opinion is give me the price and I'll pay the price. Don't give me the price plus another fee that you need to do this because, you've got to sign up.
Speaker 1:We just went to the fair last week and for every, every time we use the card and what is? It wasn't a credit card, it was just a card like it was, but it was a fee If you had to use a card for cash. It was like a dollar and twenty five cents to use the card. Yeah, they passed it all to the consumer for the card. That's interesting. I really didn't realize.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like I said, not the restaurant. Let's say, if we did $100,000 a month in credit card fees I mean credit card purchases they take out around 31.31%, and so we actually didn't get $100,000. We got $96,900. And so the bank made $3,100 off of people using our credit card. So it's just gone. So most businesses too. It's a corner of how much revenue you turn, cause this really isn't true. If you turn a little bit of revenue, but like a restaurant, you might make 5% profit. That's about what you're going to make. 5% of all your expenses. You're going to make 5%. The credit card fee is making 3% and they're not doing anything. They're not doing it. All they're doing is putting a little box in your thing and it's going in the cloud and it's paying you. So the credit card people are making about 60% of the profit that you make.
Speaker 1:But you're doing all the work. Yeah, yeah, shoot, oh yeah, okay, so you pay, cash, pay cash. Pay cash.
Speaker 2:Pay cash and I forgot what we were talking about before. I forgot.
Speaker 1:No, you're good. No, Okay, yeah, I'm going to get this back. So people come to.
Speaker 2:you were talking about the guys who wanted to start the sub place and you were saying and anyway, I figured out how much they needed and I said you know, like, if you need like 80% of your stuff now, you got to figure out how many subs a day do you have to sell. They said I have no idea. Well, you got to know that. You got to know. You got to have a business plan. Like Wednesday and Thursday is going to be different, monday, tuesday, wednesday is going to be different. Friday and Saturday and Sunday Cause Friday, saturday, sunday is when most restaurants make their money.
Speaker 2:So, except subway, you know that's a cheaper item, so everybody goes on every day. But you got to know every single day what your expenses are. How many subs do I have to sell on Tuesday in order to stay open? And if it's not realistic, if you say I got to sell, you know, 900 subs on Tuesday, it's not going to work. But if you got to sell 78 subs on Tuesday, okay, it'll work because it pretty much tells you how much help you can afford to pay.
Speaker 2:Like if you go in there and it says I think I'm going to sell 75 subs a day, well, if 30% of that is, you know, if you sell every sub for 10 bucks, let's just say 10 bucks, that's $750 a day. You can't spend but about $250 on labor that day, right? So that already tells you this is how much staff I can afford. So I told them they got to know every day how much staff they can afford, how much your expenses are going to be, and then how much rent you could pay. So they didn't know how much. You know how much could they afford to pay rent? I don't know that answer either. You're going to have to figure it out according to how many subs you think you'll sell a day.
Speaker 2:And that's easy to figure out. People said how do I know how many subs? You can go to places like, say, zaxby's, you can go to Zach's music. If you get there at 11 o'clock they'll say they used to say I don't know this anymore, order number seven, right. Then they'll say your name, greg or whatever, but you look at your ticket and your ticket will say order number seven. If you go there at three o'clock it might say order number 377. So you can get a good idea idea of a fast food restaurant in your town by just going there early and see what the number is, because everybody don't start over new every single day.
Speaker 2:They may say 837 and then by three o'clock they might be at 947. So they sold a hundred. So you just divide how many hours they were open over how many orders they did. So that gives you a general idea of how much you think you could do Find a comparable business.
Speaker 1:I would have never thought to do that Like. That makes a lot of sense, like your order number, that's the number of orders they've had so far that day.
Speaker 2:That's right, that day yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh shoot, that's interesting. Okay, so all right. So be prepared. You need to know what you need before you try to go out there and do it. You need to answer all these questions, right. What other things are necessary for you before you go, whether it's a technical thing, or maybe it's a character thing.
Speaker 2:My thing is here's what I always do, too. Before you can say I want a job that pays me a lot of money, right? Or I want to open up a business that pays me a lot. I'd rather open up a business that's going to pay me, okay, but I love doing it. If you love doing it already, it's not really a job, right? So then if you work 80 hours a week, for that first week in your mind you really didn't work 80 hours because you were in a place you love to do. You like doing that. If you like to cook, open up a restaurant. But I've always said this before. I say that Just because you can cook doesn't mean you don't need to open a restaurant. That's the truth.
Speaker 2:Because you can hire a cook, you can't hire a person that can sit down and do the business plan, because that's the most important thing. Because if you know how to cook, that don't mean you know a lot about numbers, and I don't mean a lot. You can't figure out how much do I have in this. You know, like if we sell a ribeye steak and we got $11 in the steak, and if we put a baked potato in there, we got 80 cents. And if we put sweet potato souffle, we got a dollar and a quarter. So you add all them up and say we're at 13, 14 bucks. You have to multiply it by three because you got food costs, you got labor costs, you got other costs. So that's the price you have to charge for that thing. And if you figure that wrong, you're going to close. If you're too high, nobody's going to shop with you, and if you're too low, everybody's going to shop with you and you're not going to pay out. So you got to find that fine line of where the price point is, because people think we make a lot of money. Oh, like a steak. Right now I think we charge $37 for ribeye steak with two sides. Well, we got about, I think, 13, 14 bucks in it.
Speaker 2:They'll say, oh my God, the profits are making. That's the food. That's just the food. We had to prepare it, we had to pay the cooler costs, we had to buy the gas, we had to pay the taxes. You know there's so many, they don't figure in all those other costs we have to pay. So unless you you got to triple what you put in it. Now, everything you can't triple because the more stuff costs, you know. Like if you're selling a plate for $75, obviously you're probably not going to have $25 in it because you know you can charge. You can have more of your cost into it because your labor is your labor. Like, if you make an egg sandwich for $4, you only made a dollar on the labor. But if you're making a steak for $75, well, now you're making $25 of labor. So the higher price your items are, the better your labor costs are going to be, because they're still cooking and they're still cooking.
Speaker 1:How did you? Ok, so here's it. At some point, I would imagine, business is just business, because you have all these different businesses, that obviously the business models are very different, but you speak of them so fluently. How did you learn how to do all these? How did you learn the ins and outs of all these different?
Speaker 2:Because every business is the same. You may sell a different product, but it's all the same. It's all about the numbers. If you get the numbers right, what it does like a larger man. This is how much we need to charge per hour for the washing machine. This is a dryer. We need 84 customers a day. This is how it's going to break you At the end numbers. If you know your numbers, you can learn the business. Larger maps are boring. Who wants to open a larger map? I mean, think about it. It's not really a glamorous thing, but if it can have you a second income without working a lot of hours, that's the whole point of doing it anyway. So now you have more time to spend on the business that you actually like doing, as opposed to what you're just doing.
Speaker 1:So you said it's all about the numbers. So like, okay, okay, but but still all right. So they have the restaurant business, where you gotta, like you said you're factoring in a, food costs, labor costs, over at costs. You know, um, equipment, all this stuff you talked about. Farming you talked about you know the laundromat, which you know um, you have the, the assistant living, I mean, which you know. You have the assisted living. I mean, I hear you when you say it's all about the numbers, but and it's like wait a minute, but there still are, there still are nuances to each one of those things, like where you have to understand some. You know the working principles of how this business works, or am I? Am I wrong?
Speaker 2:You are absolutely correct and it's a. It's a learning. It's a learning process, like the restaurant. Like I told you, swainsboro needed a restaurant. We didn't really have one, right, so I knew it was going to be a learning curve. So we opened up in October October 25th I think and we've done astronomical business because everybody, I'll tell you about a restaurant, your best day is your first day. Your best week is your first week. Your best month is your first month. So everybody wants to try you. But that's when, the worst time, you want people to come because you don't know what you're doing yet.
Speaker 2:I mean, we were a bunch of idiots. That's the truth, you know, like we had a, it was like putting together a puzzle. We had all the pieces to the puzzle but we didn't know where they fit. You know to work as a team yet, because I've never owned a restaurant, so it was a learning curve. So October, november and December that was our best month. You will never equal that again and we made $20,000 profit, which is good. Right January, up until this month, we probably made $5,000.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So you think about that. So the last eight months we've only made $5,000 profit Wow. And the first three months we made 20, because anybody, any idiot, can make money in a restaurant If you're serving 400 people because you're, you're moving up many plates, but then when it got to regular time, what's your regular business is going to be? We had labor way too high. Our labor was 46% and I already told you it needed to be 30%. So we had way too much labor. But it's not that you're spoiling people, but if you have way too much labor, people are used to doing 60% work because they don't have to, because there's somebody else taking the slack. And so then we had to trim the staff down. Everybody got mad, everybody hated me, said everybody was going to quit. But I said there's two choices Either we can trim the staff down or close.
Speaker 2:That's your only two choices, because we can't have 46% labor cost, because if your food cost is 40 and your labor cost is 46 and your other cost is 17, that's 108% profit. That means you lost 8% of your business. So we went a few months. We're losing money, but it took that in order to figure out okay, what are we doing wrong? What are we doing wrong? How much labor can we have? So now our labor cost is around 40 percent 33 to 40, it varies, you know like accordingly, but that's more in line and we fixed our food costs. So now we're much or worse, like we're doing worse sales, but the profit is coming back. Like January, february, march. I think we lost like $30,000. So when I say we made $5,000 these eight months, that's not the true tale, because we lost for four or five months and now we're trying to make up money to fill in the holes that we lost. But now it's finally working out, because last month I think we made it wasn't much, I think it was like $8,300 profit, which is great.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But we're trying to fill the holes up where we lost so much money the first of the year.
Speaker 1:Which of your businesses do you what? What's a, a, a, what do you like? Like, what's the business that doesn't feel like a job to you?
Speaker 2:I spend four hours a day at CPR, my gym. I spend four hours a day. I love it here.
Speaker 1:The reason I got here is I got an office.
Speaker 2:Everybody has to walk by. I mean, I leave my door open so I'll get to see 300 people a day walk by the office. Hey, greg, how you doing.
Speaker 2:So I get to see the customers that's coming in. It's the same people I've known for 20 years, so it's like you get to see all your friends every day, because I'm here every day and most people don't complain about the gym. If you'll go to the car wash, we may wash 250 cars in a day. You know what I know? Everybody's not happy with whatever you do You're going to?
Speaker 2:have 10% of the population. You could give them a detailed job and everything's clean. They're still going to find fault with what you did. Either they want something for free or either they just want to complain as one of those people. So at the car wash we probably have 10 people a day. They either have to rewash their car or, you know, give them a free wash the next time you come in because they're not satisfied with what their wash did. Or we have these people your car wash just put a dent inside of my car. We'll wash the tape and let's wash it together. So we'll wash the tape and we'll say there's a dent. There's you pulling into the place and there's the dent on your car. Well, I just swore it wasn't there. No, it was there. There's the dent right there in your car before you pulled in here and then so.
Speaker 2:But you have to have those conversations and we learned right quick, like put as many, many cameras as you can in a car wash, because then people can't complain that you messed their car up. Now you said we don't mess cars. We've had a few times that things happen. What happened is maybe a truck had come through and they'll have fishing gear or something. That's what happened. Man had fishing gear in his back of his truck. Well, those wraps caught the fishing gear, and so the next car that come through it just banged that car all to the crap and I had to pay for that, yeah, no, that's I'm really.
Speaker 1:I'm just sitting here. I mean I could listen, you are. What I love about, what I love about this conversation is you all these businesses truly are yours. You know them, you've got stories about them. You, you're, you're in it like you're not. You're not just, uh, you know um, a king in the sky just telling people what to do. Like you are, you are, you're in the trees and in the weeds, right like I'm with that on every one of my businesses but one.
Speaker 2:I have a car wash that's in Waynesboro and it's around 45 minutes away. Now I could go there, but I'm going to spend three hours. I'm going to spend an hour getting there and an hour getting back and an hour there, and if I do that it takes away from everything I do here. So that's the only business. I'm embarrassed to say. It's been open for probably a year and a half. I've been there five times. That's almost embarrassing. But I hired a guy who runs the car wash here and here's the deal.
Speaker 2:I told him because I didn't want to open up another business in another town because I can't devote my time to it. So I said if we do this and you'll work for me for 10 years 10 years, not nine and a half for 10 run both these washes, I will give you half of that wash Shoot. So who wouldn't want that deal? That's right. So I think he's in year, like maybe four or five, and I have a little caveat. So if I ever sell it you can have half the profit. So if he works me for 10 years he's got half that watch.
Speaker 1:And I don't have to worry about it. Yep, and it makes the payment, and so he's not making any payments.
Speaker 2:but the business is making payments and he's working there. So without him working there it couldn't make the payment. So I think it's going to take around nine years for it to pay off. So in the 10th year he'll walk away with a boatload of money.
Speaker 1:All right. So you said something. You said he's not making payments. The business is making payments, right, right, okay, so I'm going to pivot to something you and I talked about. Uh, like when we, when we kind of after I and after we talked about I, was like hey, I want you to come on a podcast.
Speaker 1:So we this, our conversation started with talking about Dave Ramsey. Now, I'm a Dave Ramsey fan, okay, and I'd love for you to tell the people how you, you know kind of what your thoughts are about Dave. But because people got different thoughts but but I I think you know, one of the things that we were talking about was discipline and how you know there's gotta be. You have to have a level of discipline. What people like you said on social media and all this stuff, you don't. You don't see.
Speaker 1:You see the successes I would also argue for those successes. You don't see everything that goes into it, like it looks all glamorous, the private jets and all this stuff, and you know you don't have to work for three weeks or whatever the vacations, but what it took to get that these people are not sitting on their couch recording for an hour a week and then just making all this money they are doing. They're doing a lot of work and so you can't expect to get those things that they get without putting in that kind of work. So we're talking about discipline and um and just like how, uh, Dave Ramsey helps to get people, you know, disciplined. I think that's about the one thing that we agreed on with Dave Ramsey. But so talk about discipline and then, from your standpoint, kind of the way that you would approach some of the ways that Dave Ramsey talks about when it comes to wealth building.
Speaker 2:And I'm going to clear up something too. You know you said and I forgot to tell you this you know you said there's a lot of people on the Internet that's got cars and jets and whatever, whatever. I don't know how many of them are real real, you know. What I'm saying is you know they have filters now to make people look younger, to make people look whatever. I think some of those people use filters, and when I mean filters, I mean there's a jet you can rent at Jacksonville. It never takes off. You just go in there and you'll take a picture of yourself and argue with your friends and you get back home. So how many of them? People use the filter that are really not real but they want followers, which means they'll get there, but cause. This is a whole new way with this followers and you know, TikTok.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's a whole nother people, that's a whole nother stream of revenue. I see it, but I just don't see it. I don't, I don't see, I don't see how you can get up, you know 20 million followers and make a penny off of every one of them a month and accumulate some, because everybody's got a lifespan on the on TikTok, correct? And if you're, if you're the hit girl today, you're broken four months. So I don't. So the pictures you're seeing let me take another picture of them in a year because it's not real. Yeah, it's not real, because it's not sustainable. You're not going to be the hot two girl, you know, for a year. You're the hot two a girl for for six weeks, unless you can bring something else to the table. How are you going to sustain?
Speaker 1:this lifestyle you correct Well.
Speaker 2:I agree 100%. Here's my opinion about Dave, and I know a lot enough about Dave to hurt me, but I did get this right. When I asked you a question, I said you said what are you talking about Dave? And I said apparently he went broke in his life Apparently because his strategy is not one that I would take, but it reeks of somebody who went broke and so he don't trust himself. And then you told me he went bankrupt twice. Swear, I did not know he went bankrupt twice, but I called it. I knew something was wrong.
Speaker 2:There's no way you can instruct people don't go borrowing money, because there's good debt and there's bad debt. And I've always said good debt, bad debt, good debt will make you money one day. Bad debt costs you money today If you go get a credit card. Well, now you got a credit card, that next day you owe money on a credit card that you don't have anything to sell to make money off of. But good debt is supposed to pay you back one day. So and I don't know how he can tell people I know how he tells people don't go borrow money unless you got X, unless you got everything paid for, unless you got this. But there's no way I could started a business without borrowing money. There is absolutely no way you may start a t-shirt business but you're not going to retire with a t-shirt business. So in order to get your foot in the door for one business, you have to borrow money. But in order to borrow money means you have to save money. In order to save money means you got discipline. So if you can't get there, step one to discipline. Agreed, you shouldn't go borrowing money. But if you borrow it the right way, you've already showed discipline. So you should be fine borrowing money then, because you've already aware what it takes to get there.
Speaker 2:But I just don't agree with him. But not everybody Saving $150,000 to go buy a $150 house. You'll be dead. How do you pay your If it takes you 20 years to save that? First off, the house is $300,000. Now it's not $150,000 because it took you 15 years to save this money. You're paying rent somewhere else while you're saving this money when you could have bought a house, paid your own mortgage in 15, end of 15 years. Now you have a $300 house and if you rented something the whole time and you saved $150, now you got $150. But you could have had a $300 house. I just do not agree with him at all. Now I do agree with him if you're making $3,000 a month, you don't need to go borrow $1,000 a month. You don't need to go borrow $1,000 a month car payment. He pushes stuff like that because you don't need to borrow more than you can pay off.
Speaker 2:My main goal is always to borrow. I don't want to. If I got an idea like the hotel, let's say the hotel is going to cost around $6.6 million Do you think I want to go put First of all? I don't around $6.6 million. Do you think I want to go put six First of all? I don't have $6.6 million. So the goal is to put down $1.5 million. So that's why I got these two partners to try to pitch in some money too. But even if I had $6.6 million, I would not put $6.6 million on this hotel. Why would I want to put everything I've worked for my whole life on the line for this hotel and then, if it don't work, I've lost everything I've worked for my whole life.
Speaker 2:So what you do? You put 1.5, you start a whole new corporation. So that corporation. If it doesn't work, you lost 1.5, you didn't lose 6.6. So at the end of the day, if you just take a number off because 6.6 is a lot, but so if you took a number off, you lost 150,000, not 1.5 million, so more people can relate to it. So you would have lost 150,000, not 660,000. So you can overcome that in your life, whereas if you lost 6.6, every other business is going to fail because you're going to have to rob from them to pay that off. So and I've never, I've never went bankrupt, I never did anything, I've never. I've always paid my bills. So I don't want to say I've never left one hanging. But you don't want to put every one of your eggs, you don't want to put your 11 eggs. I got in that one basket. If it fails, yeah.
Speaker 1:That makes sense, yeah, so so Dave Ramsey?
Speaker 2:I don't agree with him. Whatsoever, whatsoever, whatsoever. You have to borrow money, you've got discipline.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think, to be fair, I don't think Dave would require, from what I understand about him and I've done his programs and he's helped me a lot with the discipline part and so, like you know, doing the like, saving $150,000 to buy a house, like saving that, buying a house cash, he applauds it if you do, but that's not that ain't something he's like I want you to save by and I don't think he's like that. So I would be interested. I will say the what you said and like about businesses Right, because this you educated me on this. I didn't realize that at a certain point the business is the, the treated like a person. Basically Right, like so, so you, you, you borrow and your business pays debt, or your business pays this off, your business borrows. So you know, I think that's a concept that I did not understand and you know I'm still learning and I'm still not sure I totally get it, but I do understand, like OK, my name is not on the hook for this and so in theory, I am not in debt.
Speaker 2:The business is in debt. The more money you put down, the more you could step away from the debt. You know, like, if I want this hotel, if I went to the bank and said, ok, I got six hundred thousand dollars, I got 10 percent, I want to put it down, they're going to make me tie my name to it now. So now I'm on the hook for the whole six point six million, which is fine. If you think it's going to work, that's fine. But you don't want your family to suffer because you made one bad decision, and so the more money you put down like 20% most of the time, if you've got a good history with the bank, that's all they want. They want 20% down. All their owners are happy because you done what you're supposed to do, they done done what they're supposed to do and everything will be fine. But if you put 10%, they're going to want cross-collateral or your personal guarantee, and you want to try to stay away from personal guarantees.
Speaker 2:You don't want that. At the end of the day, if you make a bad decision, you want your house to be free and clear. You don't want to have to move and you lost your house. To be free and clear and not right. You don't want to have to move and you lost your house. I'm pretty sure your wife or your husband will divorce you. If that happened, you know sure yeah, yeah, I won't do that.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, and that makes, and that makes sense, and I think that's like this is this is really good information. People understand, like how it works, you know, and it's, it's um. But that discipline part, though, is like to your point. I like how you kind of backed it out Like, ok, you know, it starts with being able to save money. If you can't save money, then you shouldn't be borrowing money.
Speaker 2:Here's the truth Dave Ransby, ransby, ramsey. He speaks to the masses, right 90 percent of his audience needs to listen to him. That's the truth. 90 percent of audience is not going to the bank to borrow money and start a business Actually, probably 95%. They're not entrepreneurs. They're not going out and borrowing money, they're just regular everyday people that have a job that gets paid on Friday they want to buy a house.
Speaker 2:He's just trying to keep them from overextending themselves, because most people don't have discipline. That's just the truth. If they, you know, you know, you know the people that live week to week, month to month, they get an income tax check of 3000. Talk to them in a month, because it's gone, because it just been.
Speaker 1:So he's, he's really speaking to those people.
Speaker 2:You know, if you're an entrepreneur, when you see his name, just you see his name, just turn it off. He's not talking to you. He's not because he knows. If he's talking to you he's talking to a different, not a different brain, but a different mindset. You know like we think differently. We don't think what's the word I'm looking for. We don't think we want money to work for us. We don't want to work for our money. We don't want to go out there and slave every day to try to make money. We want to take the money and turn it into something that eventually we get returned back. I've always heard this before If you want to make money, start a business that backs up against the wall and makes you money For instance, large amount.
Speaker 2:All the machines back up against the wall and you collect money. You don't actually they work. Machines work for you. So you collect the money and then, if you're disciplined and don't spend the money, you put it back into the business. You know you take a little bit out, but 80% of you put back in the business buying new machines. It'll keep paying you, but if you start taking all the money out, it's going to quit paying you and then you got a debt that can't pay for itself.
Speaker 1:That's um. I like that. Say that phrase again.
Speaker 2:You want to invest in things that back up against a wall that pay you.
Speaker 1:I like that. I like that. Um, all right. So, greg, before we, before we go, cause I I've taken up too much of your time, man, this has been like this has already been an hour, my goodness, I know right, that's crazy.
Speaker 1:It doesn't feel like it. I want to know because, you know, I want you to share something with people. You know, maybe they're entrepreneurs, maybe they want to be full-time entrepreneurs, maybe they are thinking that they just want to start something, maybe on the side, and work their way into it. But what are what is and you've said a lot, but what is something you feel like people need to unlearn about the journey of entrepreneurship like, and becoming successful as an entrepreneur. What is it that people have to unlearn about that?
Speaker 2:To unlearn. Let me tell you something that I forgot. They need to learn too. You would think with me. With 11 businesses, I just got money coming in. I know where it's going. I don't have to really worry about a plan. I don't have a business plan anymore. I could pull it right now in my Excel file.
Speaker 2:I do a year out. I do a year, a projected year, on every single thing I have coming in for the next year and everything I got going out for the next year coming in for the next year, and everything I got going out for the next year. And then so I can look at October Wow, I'm going to be 60 short, unless I find something to do in order to make that 60 grand up. And so, okay, next month I got a hundred coming in extra that I didn't have in October. So I'm going to have to pull back on these things. I can't buy that thing right now, so I'll buy it next month when I have a hundred grand. That way you never put yourself in a bind, so I can go ahead and have a projection of what I'm going to do every month. So and that works on a big scale and a small scale too. It's no different than your home. You know like, this is my bills this month. This is what I can spend. Oh, I can't go all the money. It works the same scale. It's just even with me. As much as I have going on, I still do a budget for a year, every single business I have, even though they're up and running. But you have to Now unlearn.
Speaker 2:Unlearn is people are set. They think they have to get a check every Friday. They think if I don't get a check every Friday, it's over, that's over. Let's just say, let's say if you, you had an idea, I want to start even a larger amount Now. Just use that. Okay, but I work now and I get, I'll get. I know I get $900 every Friday, every night I walk. I. I know I get $900 every Friday, every night I walk. I'm going to get $900. This is the bills I got to pay. People are too scared to lose that $900. You know, do you need $900 to make? That's what you need to tell yourself Do I need $900? No, because if I cut back on these eight things, I can do it for five, and if I can do it for $500, I can put $600 in the bank every month and in two years I can open an armchair mat up so just think small.
Speaker 2:Don't think like that first $400 a month you're saving. It's worth it if you can say, okay, two years. Because most people think, oh, if I can't do it next month, I don't want to do it, it's taking too long.
Speaker 1:No, let it take two years.
Speaker 2:Save your money, have a plan, and then you already showed the bank two things. You showed it's got, you got discipline and you showed the bank that I have a collateral. I have money to put down in my own business. So I'm risking my own self, not just your money, I'm risking my money too so you can't, don't, don't, don't expect, like like I, like what you say.
Speaker 1:You most people think that they have to. They got to get paid on Friday. They don't get paid on Friday.
Speaker 2:And then after that two years and you saved all that money every you can say, okay, I don't. I've showed myself I can live on $500 a week, so I don't need that $900 check. Now I can go work in my own business because I have saved $22,000 in two years. I can start this thing, I can work for myself and I can let go of that $500. You're not letting go of $900.
Speaker 2:You're letting go of five because you've already showed yourself you can live on five. Now your own business can only take $5 a month out of. You know I'll work for there, so it's actually paying me a salary. You're not taking money out if you're working there. You know you maybe can't take if you think you were $50 an hour. You can't take $50 an hour. You still got to take out that $500 a week. What you've been living on. You know that's what I would have paid somebody anyway. So let me take the five. Then after maybe a year I can, wow, I can make, I can. It can pay me a thousand a week. Now, wow, you know, because you didn't take what you should have took out the first year. Now for three years you can take. The first two years you saved and that year you just showed yourself the discipline. Now you're probably worth $50,000, where if you just kept getting that check every month you'd been worth zero. But now you're worth $50,000 where you wouldn't have been worth $50,000.
Speaker 1:That makes perfect sense. I'm fascinated by the simplicity of you know kind of the way when you talk about, when you hear people and I know I'm sure you have tons of people around you that want to aspire to be entrepreneurs kind of have the success you have all this stuff and you think about it and it really comes down to can you be consistent, committed and have discipline? And if you can do those things you probably be all right Would you agree.
Speaker 2:Here's the thing I will tell you the more successful you are, the smaller your circle gets. If you think you've got a lot of friends, let's say, if you've got a nine to five job and you're making the $900 a week, you might think you have 25 close friends. Right, you're just like them. You're all in the same boat together. Whatever that third year when you're working for yourself and you've already quit and you've showed all your other friends, wow, he's doing pretty good. Your friends maybe high five because they get jealous, there's nothing. But you didn't need them anyway. They weren't real friends anyway.
Speaker 1:Oh man, that Greg, because see, now I got a whole other track in my head. Now you done opened up a whole other can. The truth, that's real man Like you really. Yeah, your friend group is small. Is that something you experienced?
Speaker 2:If I told you my friend circle, oh my God, You'd say there's no way. It's so small. It is so small, my friend circle.
Speaker 1:But that's good. I mean, you don't need 25 friends.
Speaker 2:But you think you do. You know, we're all in high school and all. We thought we had 25 friends and we probably did at the time because we're all in the same boat together. But the more successful you are, they leave you by the wayside. It's not a bad thing, it's just you know. But we all grow and change too. Maybe you're growing and changing where they're stuck in the same path they were in.
Speaker 1:That's it and that's yeah. And I, man, I think that's, I think that's a huge thing. To unlearn is like you're, the more successful you get. Don't think you're going to get more. You might know more people and you might have connections to more people, but your trusted group is going to shrink.
Speaker 2:And the more successful you get to, you'll notice your own self. You pick friends differently. Usually, if you'll find a successful person and pick their five closest friends, their five closest friends are successful too. Maybe not in the same sense, maybe they got to, maybe not money-wise, but they'll have family together. There's more ways to be successful than money, so that circle right around you are going to be successful too.
Speaker 1:I like the the saying you know, if you want to, if you want to see your future, look at your friends. That's right. You know, if you, if you, if you desire certain to be a certain way, you need to be around those things.
Speaker 2:And if you're not where you want to be, you might need to change friends, you might need to change your friend group.
Speaker 1:That's straight up, man Greg, thank you. When I asked Greg to do this, he said I don't like to talk, but I do it. Man you a great communicator, man.
Speaker 2:We talked for what we talk 80 minutes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you great. I love this. This is a great conversation. I appreciate you coming on the show.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you very much.
Speaker 1:Absolutely All right. All right, people. That is it. We are done. We'll catch y'all next week, so let's keep unlearning together so that we can experience more freedom, peace. Thank you once again for listening to the Unlearned Podcast. We would love to hear your comments and your feedback about the episode. Feel free to follow us on Facebook and Instagram and to let us know what you think. We're looking forward to the next time when we are able to unlearn together to move forward towards freedom. See you then.
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