Seth Said It
Welcome to Seth Said It, the unapologetic podcast where real stories meet raw truths. Join Seth Mills as he dives into personal experiences, business growth, and the highs and lows of life’s journey. From lessons learned the hard way to the wins worth celebrating, Seth lays it all out with unfiltered honesty and a touch of humor.
This podcast is for those who value authenticity, aren’t afraid of a little controversy, and believe that growth often comes with a bit of discomfort. Whether it’s a deep dive into entrepreneurial struggles, personal growth breakthroughs, or just telling it like it is, Seth Said It is your go-to for real talk that inspires, challenges, and occasionally ruffles some feathers.
Tune in, stay curious, and remember: if it needed to be said, Seth said it.
Seth Said It
Crafting Stability Amid Service Industry Fluctuations
Venture with us on a financial odyssey where Nik and I crack the code on staying buoyant in the service industry's sea of unpredictability. We're diving headfirst into real-deal strategies that have steadied our own ships through stormy economic climates. From engineering a six-month financial safety net to the ingenious addition of holiday light installations, we share the secrets that allow us to thrive, not just survive. Our candid conversation promises to equip you with tools for building resilience against the headwinds of inflation and the unpredictability of election years, ensuring your business sails smoothly through even the toughest seasons.
The journey doesn't stop at money management; it extends to the core of entrepreneurial grit. Revisit the roots of marketing mojo with us, from the power of the human voice carrying our brand to new heights, to navigating the corporate labyrinths of LLCs and S-corps. Listen in as we unfold the layers of financial foresight needed when personal life throws a wrench in the works, like unexpected injuries, and how community support becomes the life raft in times of need. This episode isn't just a talk; it's a treasure map for service industry captains determined to chart their course to financial security and business success.
Welcome back to the astro craft, grow, influence and best podcast. I am your host. Seth Mills, joining me today, is your co-host.
Speaker 2:Nick Dawson.
Speaker 1:As always, we're going to just jump on into it. How are you doing today, brother?
Speaker 2:Man doing good, Doing good Well. So I got nine and three quarter fingers and 10 toes. We're doing all right, Yep.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. I don't know how you can be so easy about it, but you know what I mean. It kind of ties into what we're talking about today, kind of down turn and having money stockpiled for when issues arise or when seasons pass and work slows down. So I mean, I don't know about you, I'm not very good at the saving aspect. I like to spend my money like it's going out of style.
Speaker 2:Well, man, me too, me too, trust me. If it wasn't for me having a business partner, I wouldn't have a. I wouldn't have no money to my name and be working like nonstop to be filled in that thing back up.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yeah, no, and see, that's what I'm doing. Um, but I've got a plan, and that is a six month plan, and I will be a okay, I will have a decent, hopefully a decent amount stockpiled, if not just be, uh, in a good place.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean Well, I mean, we both work in an industry where there are heavy times and then there are slow times and the really money making season and the not so money making seasons oh, 100%.
Speaker 2:So I think having a stockpile, whether it's for so, that way you could still make sure that you've got money so that you can still pay people, so you can still operate your company and pay for what it owes, then you're good, um, and then just kind of restock back. That's what I did all last year, because by the time November, december you know, last year was pretty, a pretty slow year for us Um, just because it wasn't as hectic as the year prior. But I usually take from at least March all the way through August, september, try to make as much money as I can. So that way, when it gets too cold, I've got a stockpile of money that will push me through the rest of the year and then help me in the event that my year starts maybe a month later. Yeah, usually spring break is whenever it all kicks off for us.
Speaker 1:See, and we follow pretty much the exact same timeframe. Thankfully, I've expanded into Christmas lights, so we do have that working for us. Whenever uh October rolls around Actually, we start pushing Christmas lights in July. Uh, we tend to take a vacation, um over July 4th. When we get back, uh due like by July 15th, we're kicking off campaigns for Christmas lights.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Um, six months ahead of time, because we have to get in front of people. Um, right now we're going to be installing, starting installs October 15th, damn, potentially October 1st, before Halloween and Thanksgiving. Before Halloween, before Thanksgiving, we're going to be installing Christmas lights. They will obviously have some customers with some kickback, um, and if, if there is any kickback, then we'll just explain that we will leave them powered off until, or at least like kind of show them how to turn back on. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, something like that. Why wouldn't you have something that you could? Maybe maybe you get some snowmen and everything in the front yard but put like a Halloween costume on them. Let them get through Halloween? Actually, that'd be a good idea.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, uh, whatever. See, last year we installed some early but I didn't have as much kickback as I thought I would. So I mean customers just said, hey, like, let's just leave them off until last week at Thanksgiving or November, which was Thanksgiving, and that's exactly what we did. As far as customers who have reads, I got a kind of but as far as everything goes, our time, our timeline, follows yours pretty much on the dot. March 15th is when window cleaning, pressure washing, starts picking back up, which I'm interested to see this year.
Speaker 1:How it reacts. Have the market reacts because we're in an election year. Yours is pretty much steady just because it's it's warranty, mine. People actually have to want the service to be performed and can afford service. With it being an election year in 2024, with inflation and everything I'm not gonna use very Safe for home language a Very fucked up inflation right right now in a very fucked up economy, yeah, I, I just I don't For see this year being a very great one for the service industry. However, there are things you can do to change that. You can chase the work doorknock, for example. You can go find people who are impulsive buyers.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:I could sell a thousand dollars tomorrow. As a matter of fact, I might go sell a thousand dollars of work tomorrow Just to prove a point and film it on tiktok and post it on tiktok also, if you all want to see, it's the Astro 150 on tiktok. Y'all can go see if that video is posted, because I Mean today is a Wednesday, tomorrow's Thursday, thursday, the thing. It's like what, the 18th tomorrow or something like that, right, yeah, and so If y'all want to go see it, I'll post it there on like the 19th of Friday, the same date that this podcast goes live, but uh, yeah, so there's things that you can do, but I'm interested to see how the market goes as far as money and like saving money. Dude, like I was saying, I spend money like it's going out of style.
Speaker 2:No, absolutely. I mean, I have zero reserve.
Speaker 1:I actually have like a few hundred, but That'll get you so far, exactly.
Speaker 2:And yeah, I'm curious to see what this year brings to, because the amount of pools that didn't get built last year and the amount of pools that probably won't get built this year, yep, dude, all my 2020 pools, they're out of warranty. So all of them are out of warranty, unless they want some non warranty service. So I'll be curious to see how busy this because I wasn't as busy as 2022 and I'm curious to see if it picks up or if it stays the way that it is this year or not. But if that's the case, then I'm gonna have to pick up work. I'm gonna have to go hunt that work, yep, and actually Get a little bit more on top of it than the warranty side.
Speaker 1:So you just got to make sure to keep that hustle in mind, keep that, keep that mojo jojo, oh yeah, cuz I mean both of us had to start with a lot of hustle, so we just got to go back to our roots because I mean, dude, whenever I first started, I was out knocking, I was out chasing work, posting everywhere. As a matter of fact, I started posting today. I'm not afraid to go back to where I started. Oh hell no there.
Speaker 1:Last year I ran zero dollars in ads. I was a strictly word of mouth and I did just shy of six figures, yeah, with pressure washing, a window cleaning alone. So but as far as saving I this year, that's, that's one of my big goals. Business wise is I just I need to put money aside. I need to start paying myself a set salary, whether I go to an escort or I stay just an LLC. There's tax benefits to go into an escort. However, there are also tax or not tax, but there's not very good benefits. There are cons to going to an escort, seeing as you can't take just owner draws out of the company. You can, but it's taxed a lot more than if you were just an LLC. I, everything I make, is my money. With just being an LLC. I get taxed more but I have a little bit more freedom with my money right, but if you don't have a set for you, you know go well, shit.
Speaker 2:Why not go spend an extra $200 on these air pods? You?
Speaker 1:can still set it through that. You can still set it and still be an LLC. I could have mine auto draft X amount, say $1,800 a month, and put it into my personal account that that's my spending money. I could definitely do that. However, you're right, because if you have a company card, it makes it a hell of a lot easier.
Speaker 2:Well, and it depends on who your tax person is gonna be. If you do it through a tax person or if you do it yourself, you go and buy something, or you do take that owner draw that I found out about. They go, hey, what was this for? And you're like I think I went to fajita jacks. Well, with who? Well, with my buddy Seth. Was it work related? Yes, okay, why did it cost this much? Usually on a business. So, like they start asking you questions, not that it's any of their damn business, but they're trying to be as truthful because they don't want to get in trouble either. Was this a partner? Oh, between my partner and the tax lady that she was talking to? Yeah, okay, where was this draw from? What was that for? And if you don't know, you don't know.
Speaker 2:And then they got a, they got to file it as something see, but that's not exactly true.
Speaker 1:I are. That's not true. Are you an escort or are you an LLC? I'm an LLC. That's not true then. If you're an escort, that's true. If you're an LLC, everything that's in your business account is your money. You don't have to come up with. If you're trying to take a deduction, sure. However, if you're just saying, yes, that's a deduction for food, if you and your partners write out the deductions with the amounts, they shouldn't, they, they shouldn't and they won't, the tax person won't get in trouble. If the IRS audits you, you'll get in trouble, yeah, but the tax person won't get in trouble. I've never had my tax person asked me what's this charge for and why? No, if it's labeled under category food or business dinner, cool, got it. We're writing it. Is that? So I don't know.
Speaker 1:It might be my business partner then probably I was gonna say but yeah, no, 100%. I completely get that. As far as man this, this slow down and work from 2022 or 2021, when I started my company to now, my cells have gone up, but the amount of houses visited have gone down Because I and the only reason my cells have gone up is because I started adding services.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:If I was just strictly doing pressure washing, I would have broke maybe 40,000 dollars last year. You think that, then oh, 100% window cleaning accounting.
Speaker 2:I say that bad. I kind of space for a second. I didn't even hear what you said 40% of my my.
Speaker 1:If I would have said what I said is if I would have stayed just pressure washing, I probably only would have done 40,000 last year. I got you. Pressure washing accounted for, I believe, only 30% of revenue over the last years, like two, three years. Once I started adding window cleaning, that started accounting for about 40% of my revenue and now that I'm doing Christmas lights, that accounts for the other 30 which the Christmas lights jumped from the first year to the second year. It jumped from being about 15% of my work to 30. So I'm interested to see how much work it brings me this year. Fit jumps up much, much more. It'll probably be anywhere between 40 and 50% of my business revenue this year. There you go.
Speaker 2:With the downturns.
Speaker 1:We can't hire employees because we don't have. We're not making enough money. That's another issue. I don't know how you feel about the downturn, but that's how I feel no, I got you.
Speaker 2:I mean, like right now I'm gonna have to come out of pocket to have somebody come help with work, whether it's you or if it's another warranty station or if it's whatever Because it's gonna be a pain trying to get all this work done because I still got to have money coming in. Oh yeah, and if I don't have money coming in, then I'm not making money, nobody's making money and it's just stagnant. Yeah, so Thankfully I have money set aside to where I can do that and hire somebody to bring me in more money, but I'm also not making the same amount as if it was just me, absolutely so, and Trying to. It's easy to change that clue center. It's not easy to change out the fan and the igniter and all the other stuff.
Speaker 1:But as long as you're there, you can point, I can point and I can go. Yeah, you need this wrench, you need this nut driver, you need even with your one good hand, you can, but you can grab the wrenches. Hey here, use this, use this. I can?
Speaker 2:I can do that and I could probably work with just my left hand. Absolutely problem is is when it comes to lights or certain other things, I kind of need more than one hand, yeah, so that's that's where the struggle is gonna come from.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, but yeah, I think I'm mainly grateful to have that money set aside for stuff like that, or if I can even get my partner out in the field, which I'll see how well that goes. She's talked about it, but I'm like I don't think she's going to are we talked about the same partner, my mother, uh-huh yes.
Speaker 1:You're gonna get your. Your mother is going to go into the field.
Speaker 2:She, she's talked about it Interesting man it's. Here's the thing. It's in her best interest for the company to run the same way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, as I wanted to run absolutely it's, that's our, that's, that's my Two-year-old child and say her it's. If she she's like okay, you're down, as there's stuff that I can do, even if you just told me how to do it, absolutely Okay, well then I'll work with you and we'll get work done and we'll do it the way that we need to. So and even if I have one hand and she's got two, I can still go back and forth Careful she might listen to this podcast.
Speaker 1:That's, that was my next question. That was my next question. Is she gonna be listening to this podcast, which is perfectly fine?
Speaker 2:I don't care, I encourage it. I would say all the same stuff to her too.
Speaker 1:I was just gonna ask because I know that this would be a question that you you would have for me in that case.
Speaker 2:Do you want her to work in the field with you? I think, more than anything, it would be good for her to see what I do on a daily basis and what other things mean. So I talked to her throughout the day. Would be no different if she was riding around with me so I could see where there might be a little bit of struggle. But at the same time it helps me out because it shows her what I do on a day-to-day basis, because I see what she does on a day-to-day basis for me.
Speaker 2:I don't want no part of it. Yeah, 100%. I could probably finagle my way through and make it happen, but she knows too much to where.
Speaker 2:Yeah it's, it's all a system at this point yeah so for her to at least see and, if not, just change an actuator. Or yeah, help me put a new board in, because I can still use my thumbs to program a board or I can install screen logics. Main thing is gonna be working on motors and Lights, just because of the amount of water that's involved, I mean you know, I mean, I have offered.
Speaker 2:No, I know wait for the board of directors to. Yeah, I'll keep you in the loop on that. One of them is out of town, so Interesting but, yeah, I'll get. I'll give you more info on that.
Speaker 1:No worries, brother, I know that this is a quick episode just because of all of the things we've got going on and it's not gonna hit that hit quite to that 23 minute mark that I like to try to stay around.
Speaker 2:But Well, I mean, where do you have dad? What, how, how long do you think, or how much money do you think you should have set aside as a small business owner To keep going, whether you get hurt, whether your hospitalized, whether whatever, to make sure that trucks, insurance, everything are paid for?
Speaker 1:as a small business owner, I think you should have six months Expenses plus 20%. So if you have a thousand dollars a month going out, you need to at least save 1200 bucks a month and I this is just a random like an example At least have 1200 dollars a month for six months saved. So what is that? That's a? It's 7,200 or 7,400, something like that. What's 200 times six. I'm only good with it 7,200.
Speaker 2:I'm only good with this if it's got a dollar sign in front of it anymore, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean it does have a 72, you're at so $7,200 is what I would recommend having saved up in an account somewhere, because if you're out of business for more than six months, if you're injured for more than six months or still recovering Just keep in mind so a rotator cuff surgery, the most painful surgery in the United States three months recovery time with physical therapy With a knee replacement, two to three months ankle you break your ankle. Four to five months, maybe two to three to get you walking. So if you're out of business, the whole point I'm going here with this is, if you're out of business for more than six months, the chances of you making a full recovery for one are very, very slim. And two, you honestly may need to start looking for another job. Because if you're out of business for six months in a service industry, a service heavy industry you're going to lose clients. They're going to go to other service providers. You're going to have to start practically from scratch again, unless you can figure out how to sell the company to one of your competitors while you still have.
Speaker 1:If you think you're going to be out for six months, I think you should sell your company to a competitor for a decent amount of money. Obviously, don't let them screw you and, honestly, you have no intent. You're not required to tell them why you're selling. But if you're in that position unless obviously it's obvious why you're I mean you're limping around with one leg then yeah, they're going to know. But I think that that would be my advice, and a lot of people will disagree with us, but that's how I feel on the subject.
Speaker 2:Well, and I think, probably taking account for all your expenses, if you're going to do you've got going on where you own or draw and you take certain amounts of money, you've got to make sure to supply what you need, not just for the business, but personal.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely yeah, and that's why I said expenses, I didn't just say business. If you're doing an expense, say you have $1,000, I just used $1,000. No, no, no, I know.
Speaker 2:To make that. I'm just. I wanted to re-clarify that that's what you meant.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%.
Speaker 2:That might pay for the trucks and the entrances and everything, but it's not going to pay for your food.
Speaker 1:It's not going to pay for your groceries, your gas your whatever. Light bill yeah.
Speaker 2:I think you should keep everything in mind, because 10 years doing this is the first time I've been cornered by dogs. I've had other, but I've never been bit. Yeah, I've never had something to the extent of this where it's at least going to put me out for three weeks. Oh, 100%. It's not a month. I've never had that happen, so thankfully I've just got money set aside to make it happen, but if I didn't, I'll do that?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, it'd be bad. I for one can attest to that. Yeah, so I mean, I don't know what. Did you say a specific number whenever you were talking earlier? Did you say a specific number that you believe that business owners should save up?
Speaker 2:I don't really have a specific number. Mine was kind of along the lines of you is, even if you start get you three months of it Expenses and a savings or whatever, or worst case scenario I hate saying this but Even if you don't believe in credit cards, have a business credit card with a rather large business credit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because the business credit. Here's a little tip for everybody business credit cards do not report to they. They initially when you apply for. When they hit your personal credit, yeah, they do not report the balances. So if you have X amount of balance on a personal Credit then those report to your personal credit. Say, you have a $10,000 credit line on your business credit and you max it out, it doesn't report to your personal credit unless you are delinquent on in that payment, miss the payment, just flat-out, stop paying whatever. Then it hits but it won't show the balances.
Speaker 2:Yeah, plus, in the event of an emergency or something like this, you can put this on your company and You're not now having to file for a loan. Or if you are doing anything legal, you're not waiting on money. You've got a credit limit. You've got a set amount of money that you can work through. Yeah, get you three months. Have a good business credit card good to have one, any ways to build your business credit. But work your way up to six months. For me, my expenses are gonna be different than yours.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah different than mine. Mine are gonna be different than the next pool guy or the next yeah, because I have about 3000 a month in expense. So for you, you talk about that for six months, for six months. Yeah, that's $18,000 to decide so you've got to have that amount of money, but does that also cover you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah that's three thousand would cover business and personal so keep you $18,000 in there and, worst-case scenario, just keep throwing the same amount of money in there, yep, and at the end of the year give yourself a nice little bonus, but keep 18k in there.
Speaker 1:Yep say you have 45 in there at the end of the year and I mean but 45 minus 18 is like 20 something 23, something like that give yourself about you know, it's a nice bonus or Keep a little extra in there.
Speaker 2:Maybe now you're new, maybe your new tags 25. Yep, and keep it at 25 and you pay yourself. Whatever it may be. Just you have to expect the unexpected. I didn't expect it and Now I can't say I'm suffering because there's people like yourself that are willing to help and make sure things stay afloat.
Speaker 1:But you are suffering mentally and physically.
Speaker 2:Yeah, between everything else, this is at least more of a piece of mine there, but you got to have something to keep yourself safe 100%, Absolutely well.
Speaker 1:I do appreciate you sharing this and and coming on here again. No as always, is love having you over here, love having you on this podcast, and I hope your hand gets better.
Speaker 2:We'll find out soon enough.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, well, Thank you guys for tuning in to the Astrocraft grow, influence, invest podcast. I'm your host, seth Mills, and joining me today was your co-host Nick Dawson. We hope you have a fantastic weekend and we will see you guys next Friday. Peace you.
