Lee loves placing himself in a position where he’s just a bit scared in order to help push the business to expand. He talks about a scary move that his companies are about to do and why you should operate scared too.

Good afternoon everybody. Hope everybody’s having a wonderful day. I’m having a great day today. A little slow this week, job wise. Actually, our partners throughout the country have been on a bit on the slow side too. So, I’m not exactly sure why, I can tell you stuff like that occurs periodically. You’ll drive yourself crazy if he ever tries and figure out why, unless it’s completely obvious reason. It’s been rainy several days in a row. You’re generally going to be slow. It is rainy now but I don’t believe that’s the reason we’ve been slower. I think just people for some reason aren’t calling but that means the business will likely be coming. Today, I’ve been busy looking at different office spaces to move our head offices and relieve our junk removal operations at our current location. We’ve got a great shot. We have access to a great location, drive wise and everything. What we’re doing is we’re looking for main office space. We’re going to move the Junk Doctors business office. We’re going to combine it with the JRA business office.

What we’re doing is we’re actually getting an office space. We’re looking at office spaces a fair amount larger than what we currently need. The reason that we’re doing that is we plan on growing into those spaces. It does scare you a little bit because the rent on those spaces is $3,000 a month, something like that. It’ll be six to seven offices. Individual offices plus a large area for our call center. It is what we’re looking to get and we don’t require that much space now. So, why are we going out and getting it?  Number one, these places are going to require at least a three-year lease. So, you want to leave some room to grow. The other reason is, I’ve spoken about this before and all of a sudden, we’ve got a $3,000 rent payment.

We’ve got to make sure we can make. I know we can make it right now, but we don’t want to take a huge hit our profit margins. We want to be able to recoup that rent. So, what does it mean? That means we’ve got to partner more and more people in JRA. We’re making a commitment and that’s what I really have found. It has helped me out a lot in our business as soon as we’ve proven a concept. We’ve got a lot of interest in JRA. We’ve got a few partners we’re working with. I’m a hundred percent confident that this is going to go well. So, we’re making that next step. We are allowing us to get an office space big enough for a good size call center and big enough bring all of our advertising personnel and call center personnel. Consultants, right now it’s mainly me and then Christian on the demolition and things. We’re able to get all of that under one roof in this particular office space. We’re making a commitment. These are positions that we hadn’t necessarily hired for yet. So, we’re making a commitment to grow. We’re forcing ourselves. We’re making us feel a little desperate. We’re making sure you don’t get too comfortable. If you get too comfortable, that’s when you quit growing. So, we’re making ourselves. We’re putting ourselves to a position to get a little scared.

We don’t want take a hit. We don’t want to take three grand a month hit on the profit margins. We’re going to be little scared when we were in this office, but that’s going to make us hustle more. Provide better value. Making sure what we’re doing is really improving everybody’s business that we work with. That way they continue to use us because if they use us for a couple months to six months, and then they no longer want to use our services. We still get that $3,000 a month thing. Payment to make on that rent.

We’ve got expenses to make. We’ve got to make sure everything we do for everybody is quality and they want to continue using us. Unlike a franchise, people are not tied in to having to pay us every month, so we’re going out. We’re committing ourselves by getting that office space at $3000 a month. We’ll make sure we’re providing a good enough service and we’re reaching enough people to make that payment. Otherwise, it’s going to be a huge hit on the amount of money we made this year. So, we’re going to do everything in our power to make sure that we fill up that office as quick as we can. That we’re needing more space as soon as possible and that will prevent another problem. That would be a good problem though. If we had a problem that we outgrew this office and we were faced with paying a couple years in $3,000 a month. While we moved our entire operation somewhere else. We could sublease it. Maybe they allow sublease then we could sublease it. That would be a problem we want to have. I won’t be looking for another office space in 3, 4, or 6 months. That’s a problem we want. I don’t think it’s going to happen, but if we get that problem, I’m going to celebrate. That’s a good problem.

Guys, I’m telling you, make a commitment. Now, don’t go out blindly. I wouldn’t recommend you going out and getting a 10,000 square foot warehouse unless you get a deal on that. A 10,000 square foot warehouse, so you can sell stuff that you get from your junk removal jobs. Do a better job sorting and all like that. Prove it first to start out with a $3000 square foot warehouse or start out with pods wherever your location is if you’re doing any house. Start out something small. As soon as you get confirmation that idea works. Just pour everything you got into it and expand like crazy. You stay small. You stay comfortable. Then that’s what you’re going to do, to stay small. You got to get out of your comfort zone. You got to get a little scared. I always want to operate a bit scared. I’m always operating a bit scared. That pushes me to make sure that I’m doing as much as I can to reach as many people as I possibly can. Do a good job as we possibly can. Guys commit! You got to make a commitment. If you’re afraid to spend money, you’re not committing yourself.

We’ve had some people approach us, try to work out some sort of a deal on a business package. We’ve got kind of a deal that’s cheaper. We do it in about $15,000 to $16,000. That’s not all of us. That includes a down payment on a truck and a few other odds and ends. We can get you going. I don’t really recommend that route though. I recommend the full route. That way you’re fully prepared to get in that market. The other thing is, I want to make sure you’re spending money up front because if you don’t spend money up front, you don’t have that commitment where you are just going to see it through come in high water. There is going to be some tough times in your business.  If you’re a dabbler or if you get in, you get in super cheap. As soon as the going gets tough, you get the hell out. Whereas, if you’ve made that commitment then you’re going to be a lot more committed to seeing it through.

If you spent $25,000, $0,000, $50,000, or $100,000 dollars to get something into place, you’re probably going to really make sure you follow through and get it successful. Spending that initial money, a lot of times will make you see yourself through all the way to the end, but if you dabble you get crushed. Commit yourself like we’re doing on this office. Commit to whatever you’re doing to expand your business. Get another truck. If you’re close to need another truck, get another truck. If your schedule is almost full, not completely full but almost full, get another truck. Hire some people. Train them so they can get on the truck and start running another crew. Get that same day business. Make a commitment. If you don’t make a commitment, you’re never going to up your game up.

You’re not going to dabble your way into success in this business. You get started. You work hard. You fill your schedule up to about three quarters of the way full. You get another truck. You get some team leaders that are trained up. As soon as you have 2 to 3 trucks running and you get off the truck. At that point you start managing your business. Once you get to where you have 4 to 5 trucks, you hire another manager. A lot of times oversee this junk removal operation. Why? Because we’re going into another market or we’re adding another service. I’m not going to stay the same size. You stay the same size, you’re going to die. You’re either growing or you’re shrinking in business. That’s one or the other one guys. If you’re afraid to grow, then you’re going to shrink.  You’re eventually going to get burned out if you’re on the trunk all the time and your business is going to cease to exist. Either growing or you’re shrinking, it starts with a commitment. You make a commitment and you will see levels of success you never dreamed possible. We’ll talk to everybody real soon.