We all have bad days. What you do on those bad days determines your success.
What’s up, everybody? Hope everybody’s doing great. This evening is about 7:30. Just pulling out. Just left the office, run by the post office. Drop off some bills. Paid about 12 grand worth of bills. Got that stuff mailed off.
Today’s been an interesting day. I spent a decent day for jobs related I believe anyway. Last I looked I think it was something $8,000 or $9,000 day. Decent day, we love to hit ten. Love to hit about $10,000 but 8 to 9 grand is a good decent day. However, I’ve been in a kind of a pissed off mood today, and you’re going to have those days that I’ve gotten every so often. Something might rub you wrong. In this case, it was, I won’t go into too many details but basically deals with people. Again, some of my biggest stresses are over our team members. This particular team member, we give him a bonus because they did some extra work. They’ve been doing a good job. They’d been awhile. We didn’t do Christmas bonuses. It was wild and good work, so we got him a bonus. Well, instead of getting thanked, I think the guy expected more money or something. If he stays, goes off, does extra jobs and he works overtime, that he deserves a bonus. The thing is though when he works overtime, he’s getting time and a half. When he goes off, and he does an extra job or something like that, and he’s still getting paid for it. He deserved a little bit of the bonus, but he hasn’t been out there. These two guys, just two of them. They had not been out there bringing us good items to sell.
They backed into a car recently. They’re good workers. I don’t want to lose them. We always get compliments from customers, so they really deserve a bonus off of that, but we do pay them more. We pay them more than the majority of all our other truck team members. The people that are more than them are our dispatch guys. That’s what we call ATC, Air Traffic Controller. Our dispatch, they keep up with the routes. Greensburg/Charlotte manager, only people in the entire organization other than my Christian myself that make more money than these two because they have great customer service. They’re sloppy on the paperwork. They got stuff they can improve on.
We pay them well. We compensate them well. We compensate them more in reward for the good work that they do with customer service but what we have to explain to them is I’m not going to give you a bonus just because you’ve been here longer. You’re not going to get raise just because you’ve been here longer. It is performance-based. We’re grooming to run Greensboro and Charlotte. He’s behind me. He is at the top of the field guys. So, of all of our field guys, he’s the top guy. He’s been with us just about 4 months. It’s been longer than October. So, he’s been with us about for about 6 months. These other guys have been here about three years. This guy is organized and gets review requests out. He asked for reviews. We already have 30 plus reviews in Greensborough location, which is a bit open since October. It’s a fraction of the size of Raleigh. Neurology has like a hundred and 80. It’s a fraction of the size of Raleigh. Raleigh was like 180. We do 50 amount of jobs in Greensboro as we do in Raleigh. Same goes for Charlotte, but Greensboro already has more reviews than Charlotte. Charlotte has been open for two years. It’s mainly just one guy. This one guy wants to make something of himself. He takes pride in his work. He’s a little easier to start. He got some motivation. He got some maturity, and he’s just a really good team member. He does everything that’s asked of him. He wants to learn, he wants to learn how to do stuff right. He’s rewarded for it. We hope to continue rewarding him.
When you have people that do good work, you have to make sure you pay them accordingly. You thank them for their good work. You recognize them for their good work, but some of your guys who have this level of expectation or this expectation that just because they’ve been with you for a certain period of time, you should get a bonus. That’s not right. If I hire somebody that’s been with us for a month and they’re outperforming you, I’m going to pay that person. Experience, we don’t cut it here. What will happen is if you get to the point you think you’re entitled to something just because you’re experienced, I’m going to cut you lose.
I told Christian about this guy. He had a bunch of questions on his bonus and everything. I told Christian “You deal with this.” He said “If he rubs me wrong, I’m going to cut him loose” We don’t want to lose them. That would be a bad move on our part, but he pissed me off so much that I said, “Just make sure you deal with them.” They might rather watch this video if they do but I don’t think they’re watching these videos. It’s amazing the stuff we put out, and none of the team members work for you watch this kind of stuff. If he puts it out there, I probably really wouldn’t have let him go, but I was that upset.
We treat these guys fairly and sometimes they don’t think we do. A lot of guys think we do. A lot of guys are happy with their job. Some of them just think they’re entitled to more just because they’ve been with us for a while or whatever. That’s just not the case. So, anyway, that was my rant. I already feel a whole lot better. I appreciate everybody for listening to me right here. Just like a counseling session.
This is like therapy to me, just sitting here and talking to the screen. Talking to all of you. Maybe you’ll get to watch this video one day when you’re having a bad day. What I’m about to say will make you feel better. What do you do when you’re not having a positive day? Most of my days are positive. I have a pretty positive outlook generally. If you got a bad day, what do you do? You work. That’s all. Things are always going to get better. Very seldom I have two bad days in a row. Sometimes I do. Sometimes a few bad days in a row. I got something that is stressing me a little bit. You just got to deal with it. You just got to work. When you’re small, your slow days can be the days you’re a little stressed or whatever. What do you do? You work. You go out and drop off flyers at real estate offices. Place calls to professional organizers. You place calls to a renovation company. You write thank you cards to your past customers. You send out cards to customers that have used you in a while. You get to make sure all your bills are paid, and your accountings called up. You work. When you have a slow day, you still work.
That’s one of the things that allowed us to get to $2,000,000 year by year five. Some of our competition that’s been in business the same amount of time has one or two trucks. That’s one of the reasons that we’re one of the few junk removal companies in the entire country that have reached $2,000,000 a year in sales. When we have slow days, we’re working. We were working on building that business. When we had busy days, we made it sure we were staffed where we didn’t have to be on the truck.
One of the biggest things is when we had days where we were pissed off, upset, and negative as hell. We still work. We got the job done. We kept grinding. You’re not going to have a good day every day. It’s not going to happen. There’s no way. Anybody that posts YouTube videos all the time and all they’re showing is good days and never talk about having bad days. It’s fake. Everybody has bad days. The guys that can push through those bad days are going to be the guys that succeed. The ones that let those bad days make them stay home, watch TV, eat a lot or make irrational decisions. That’s a really a big asset to your company that you’re just pissed off or whatever. Like I was before, I was to make that move, that would not have been a smart move.
So, you got to control those emotions, and you just got to work. You’ve got to push through. Everybody’s going to have bad days. You’re not the only one. Everybody’s got ambitions and stuff that you want to achieve. You look at other people, and they think they’ve got it. Why do they deserve it? They’ve been in the same position you have. I’ve looked at other people when we first started. I’ve looked at other companies. I still do now. I look at other people and other companies that have achieved more than I have achieved now. In no way, shape or form. They’re saying they don’t deserve it. Everybody that achieves anything in this life deserves it. Whatever you get. Those professional athletes that go out there, they make $15,000,000 to $20,000,000 a year. People will say that they don’t deserve that amount of money. That’s not true. They deserve every penny they can get. The market will not overpay for somebody if it does it will get corrected. We’re seeing that NASCAR right now. For years and years, NASCAR guys were paid a bunch. That’s way down now. It was used to be, you might have to have a sponsor and might have to pay a guy $5,000,000 a year. It’s not like $500,000 a year. I can’t even name some of these guys. I just don’t follow. Some of the new guys out there, they’ll race for $500,000 a year salary. They’ll get some bonuses and all like that. They’ll probably still want to make it over a million bucks depending on how they do. Earnhardt Jr making $25,000,000. Jeff Gordon is making $15,000,000. Jimmie Johnson is making $22,000,000. Jimmie Johnson is losing lowes. Lowes has gone, in a year they’re gone. If Jimmy Johnson doesn’t want to take a significant pay cut, he’s going to have to quit. He’s not going to quit. I think he’s passionate enough. I’ll think he will keep on doing it. Kevin Harvick sitting there making $12,000,000 to $13,000,000. If he’s not willing to accept $3,000,000 to $4,000,000 coming up, he’s probably going to have to quit. These basketball players and baseball players and all that go out. They make $20,000,000 a year. They’ve earned every penny. They’re good at what they do. They fill the seats. They help sell a product like shoes and stuff like that. They’ve earned every penny.
So, one of the key things about not getting a negative attitude is don’t believe that somebody is overpaid. Don’t believe that somebody that achieved more than you do not deserve it. Figure out what they’re doing. Emulate it, and maybe improve on it and get to that same point. Everybody, if you think big enough in this life. If you think that you can do it, you can. You can certainly do it. Now, that being said, I’m not going to go out there and be a professional football player. There’s got to be some sort of realism, but what you’re doing doesn’t require some physical training or whatever that you simply don’t have, you can achieve it. One of the keys is fighting through those days where you just don’t want to work. You just don’t want to work out. You just don’t want to do whatever you want to do. You don’t want to place that phone call.
You don’t want to deal with that customer complaint. You don’t want to hit up that bank because you’ve got to get a loan. You’re worried about taking a chance and spending money and making an investment. You’ve done your research, make that investment. When you push through that stuff, that’s when you achieve a high level of success. Those guys you’re looking at, anybody that’s achieved any sort of level of success has taken a chance. They’ve taken a leap, especially in business. Any self-made business person down there, they’ve taken on some serious risks. They’ve probably lost at times. All of them. Anybody that achieved any level of serious success in business had a failure. It’s how you respond to that failure. I did. We had a shredding company.
We tried creating a company called an askyourneighbors.org to compete with Angie’s list. I spent about close to $30,000 on askyourneighbors.org. I did not get a single penny from it. Actually, once we’re done developing it, I decided that problem was I didn’t think I could take on Angie’s list without hurting my core business. Anyway, we passed on it. It was a neat system. It is actually integrated with Facebook and your social media sites. You can actually see when you logged in to ask your neighbors. If you’re logging into Facebook too, you would actually know people that you’re friends with, on Facebook. You would see how they reviewed other service companies. It’s a hell of a platform. I’ve still got to have the rights to it. It is built and pretty much ready to go. I might shoot out an email to a couple of companies and see if they want to buy it because it’s a nice platform.
Anyway, that was a failure of mine. We had a shredding company that was a failure. We bounced back. We decided that failure was not going to define who we are as a business person. We went back out there, and we took a chance. We don’t think small. Nothing I do, so I think small. In my relationship and marriage, I think large. We don’t have kids yet. When we have kids, I want to have great, beautiful kids that are athletic and smart. I want to have a big house. I don’t want a small house. I want to get a jet. I got a plane now. I want a jet. I got a piston aircraft, now I want a jet.
I want to build a huge company that helps hundreds and thousands of people. Achieve a level of success in the business they never dreamed of. I want to do great. I want to relieve stress for people that are moving or have accumulated stuff over the years or just whatever there is. I want to remove their junk and make them happy. I want to help more people than anybody else in the junk removal business. That’s my goals and ambitions, everything’s big. If you’re thinking small if you’re thinking “I just want to make $50,000, $75,000 or $150,000 a year. If you’re thinking small, the smaller that you will get. The problem is the people that think small are ones that get burned. The most in a downturn of the economy.
Work through your bad days and think large. Now, by thinking large, you’re going to have days where you get crushed because you got major dreams, ambitions, and motivations. You’re working hard. You think you’re doing the right thing. WHAM! Something slams down right on you unexpectedly. Well, maybe expected but unexpected or expected, it knocks you. How are you going to respond to that? What you must do is you work through it. That’s the only way. Everybody that achieved anything has worked through the bad days. Has worked through the failures and they’ve succeeded. You do it long enough. You do it for a long enough period of time. You take enough failures and bounce back from them. You will succeed, but you got to think large first guys. Think large, and you can achieve whatever you want to achieve, but you got to be willing to work through those bad days and work through those defeats.
Talk to everybody real soon. We’ll have a special episode of Junk Removal Made Simple, second of the week. It’s going to be uploaded a bit. It’ll be late tonight because this is an hour long. I was very wordy. Talk to everybody real soon. I hope everybody had a great day. I hope it was better than mine. It’s still a great day. It’s always a great day when you’re alive, things are going well and when you’re living in the United States of America. If you’re in the USA, there’s no way your problems can be as bad as some of the people that live in other parts of the world. Talk to everybody real soon. I hope everybody has a great night. Enjoyed it as always.