When Your Dream Becomes a Nightmare (Job), Before it Becomes a Dream Again

Audio Transcription

it is so easy for our dream to become a job that we hate in a task that we load a chore that we can endure no more. I remember when I had first had the dream of starting Dj Connection Dot Com and in my college dorm room at Oral Roberts University. I was so excited to start my own company to work for myself. In fact, I was willing to work at three different companies simultaneously to start that company. Target, Applebee’s and direct TV. My wife worked at office depot at Oral Roberts University. We live without air conditioning. We shared one car. We lived in a small apartment, whatever it took to build that business, but at a certain point I realized, Oh man, I’m djing nearly 200 shows per year and this is a job that I don’t want, but yet I worked for myself. How did this happen? I’m booked out for the next year and a half. How did this happen? My life is filled with obligations. How did this happen? I don’t even like the people who work in my office. I can’t stand any of these people. How did it happen? How do I create a culture that I didn’t like? What weeds did I not talk? What people did I not fire? What? How could I have allowed myself to create a company that I no longer like

Thrive nation. Welcome back to another exciting edition of the thrive time show on your radio and download now Dr. Z, on today’s show, we have 10 minutes in to big ideas we need to get into. Ooh, let’s get it on. So big idea number one, Mr. so, so fine. Matt Klein, Matt Line. Hey Mac line. You’re so fine. You’re so fine. You’re fine. You’re so fine. You’re so fine. You Blah, blah, blah. You don’t mind. Sorry. Wait, we’re a. we’re a Caucasian. We’ve worked on that for several weeks and that’s all we got. Apparently it doesn’t show. Okay, here we go. Matt. It was right and it felt good. It felt good. I felt like it’s a play that I rewind the, put it on repeat. That’s the remix. Okay, so here we go. Now when your dream becomes a job, before it becomes a dream again, think about it. What, what? Whoa. Time out. What did you just say? When your dream becomes a job. Okay, but before it becomes a dream again.

So, okay. So like, let’s say I want to start a business. Yep. I started the business and say, buy a franchise. Let’s say I buy an Oxi fresh franchise, Oxi fresh, fresh, such a great deal. So it’s great. So that I have a job, but it’s not because you’re not you, you own your own business, right? So now you create your own schedule. Matt, correct me if I’m wrong. You’ve got your own schedule, you got your own auto wrap vehicle, the new opportunity or new territory, and you’ve got, you know, the honeymoon phase where you’re excited, you’re going to get the shirts that had my name and Oh, you got the name of the broader. Matt, you’ve got the business cards, you’ve met the top franchises and Oxi fresh had been doing it for five years now. This is xx years you met, you’ve met. I mean you’re at this point, you’ve met people that have, that have done well, you’ve called them on the phone to verify they’re real, you’re excited, but now you’re alone in my dream. Now you’re alone in some rural community in Illinois or Michigan or Florida, wherever, wherever, and you realize, frick, I got to get reviews and my best friend who said he would do the company with me, he just quit. Oh Man. And now your dream became a job. A Matt, help us. How do we get through that phase?

This is the best franchise in the world. You will run across this, right? I mean, whether it’s really struggling with, you know, going from one technician to, to, or the fact that, you know, it is imperative that you go have a conversation with a property manager because that will make or break the next few months in terms of your growth. Um, and is exactly that, right? All the good feelings are now over and you’re looking at yourself in the mirror and saying, I have this much time in the day. What am I going to do with it? Right? Am I going to go play some golf? Golf is great fun, love it. Or Am I going to work on my business and I’m going to get into a point where tomorrow or next year I’m going to be way, way more, um, you know, growth-oriented than I was yesterday or the year before.

So, you know, that honeymoon piece of it as a great expression to use because it’s just like any, it’s like a relationship. It’s like anything else when you first get it, you’ve done the first step. Now you are a business owner. You have the title of business owner. That’s important, that’s exciting. It’s good for your psyche and it gets you out the door. But sustaining that excitement and going out and having small wins through the day, whether that’s going through a training session with your technicians, whether that’s having a goal of talking to five people that day, um, that just having the consistency in your business will get you through that piece of the business where you do have a job or you need to treat it like that because the more time you spend on it, that fast year grow. If you just sit there and twiddle your thumbs, um, you’ll have to go find another job.

Winston Churchill, who I realized did not own an Oxi fresh. He cut off. We don’t know. He was leading the United Kingdom, uh, in a, in a horrible war against the Nazis. And he did win, but dirty carpets. Is that what you’re saying? I’m just saying that probably wasn’t a top priority for him. They said Wednesday, do you want to clean the carpet? My coffee, but let’s pick the Germans first. But the thing is Winston Churchill, he wants to set the price of greatness is responsibility. The price of greatness is responsibility. So man, I want to go through point to all the things that you have to be responsible for as a business owner. And I’m going to start withZ and the mat. I’m going to have you one up. Um, so you can kind of take notes in one ups. Here we go. Andrew, put this on the show notes. One, you can never stop recruiting. You can never stop recruiting too. You can never stop advertising. Three, you can never stop training people for you can never stop doing accounting. And there are many other things too, but that’s the big four. Z, you can never stop recruiting. So you buy an Oxi fresh, you start a new business, you open into optometry clinic, whatever. Why couldn’t you never stop recruiting

because those employees will leave on their terms whenever they want to. It’s not what’s convenient for you. I, um, I have a horrible story right now going on in my life. I’ve got a doctor that’s leaving, me and my daughter’s pregnant at the same time and she’s gonna have a baby. My third grandchild. And I went to this doctor and said, hey, can you just have just a couple more months that be just huge in my life,

just spend months one more minute with us getting back to you.

And they said no. And I was just like, Ugh, why did they say no? Because they didn’t want to. It just wasn’t in their best interest. And so you’ve always got to have the, the pump primed. You’ve always got to be able to have the next step. I mean there’s a reason why bell check could say next step because he as a next step,

this is a, this is a thought that is uncomfortable for somebody out there, but someone needs to hear this. Um, my wife and I, we’ve had five kids but we had a late term miscarriage and Z, I don’t know about you, but typically when I have a life tragedy or something horrible happen, I typically don’t get to consult with the man upstairs. I’m like dear God, if something bad happens. And I knew it may, could it happen on like a Thursday? Cause I typically Dj on Saturdays. Yeah. Or the Monday after this Monday would be God, if we could time that you know, or like when my son was born and he couldn’t see, or I can go on and on tragedies, people dying in my life, my best friend, my first DJ partner guy died in college and a car accident. These are all horrible things and I just had this conversation with somebody about a year ago and they said, I can’t run my business this month because my wife had a miscarriage and I need to be with her.

And I’m like, dude, I care is a human like you, me, we, we, let’s go have a beer. Let’s hang out. Let’s hug. I care. But you as a business owner, you can’t put the sign up on the door as a chiropractor. This is the guy in Dallas, chiropractor. You can’t put a sign up that says that a business. You can’t do it. You can’t get a membership-based model. Chiropractic care, and this is the words he said to me, man, and tell me if you ever heard something like this. They go, well man, I didn’t buy this to buy a job. I bought this to have time freedom. Have you ever heard that kind of thing, man?

No. It’s just a frame of mind. You got to kind of get out of that. Don’t think of good job and a business. Just think of being successful. What do you need to do? Right? If today means you need to go out and talk to people, go out and talk to people because there’s certainly competitors that are doing that, so yeah, you’re right. I mean if you consider owning a business and doing something for your business, a job than absolutely. You just bought yourself a job. If you think you’re going to buy something and sit there and do nothing, then you must be pretty rich because you just bought yourself into an investment business, which is extremely hard and you also have a job that’s managing the people running the business, which also gives me way, way harder than just running your own business.

And I’ve read a lot of books about people that are very, very successful. And I remember Jay Paul Getty reading his book in Z. You remind me of j Dot Paul Getty and integrate many ways. Could you be ready to, if you read about Jay Paul Getty? Sure course, many, many, uh, attributes of him that are very, very favorable, very similar to you. He was a guy who was his easy for him to make decisions at a certain point in his career. Like he feels capable lieutenants, he could make the decision, but he also didn’t like mindless distractions. So he moved all the way to Europe even though all of his business dealings were in the Middle East and America. But he’s like, I’m going to Europe. So you couldn’t have access to them. But he liked to hang out with people so we’d have big parties and big events and big, big galas, but he actually made more money by being a uninterrupted.

But as an in his book, he talks about his books called, as I see it, he talked about the biggest responsibility to be a struggle of having of being the world’s wealthiest man is. He’s responsible for all that. And just like you’ve said, many times, z people say, what’s it like running multiple companies? You say it’s like the. The plates. Yeah. It’s like the Vaudeville act where you had the sticks and the plates and wobbling the most. Rent it. You spin it and get it, get it back straight. But he basically explained in great eloquent detail that passive income is not a thing for anyone. Even the world’s wealthiest man, right? Like every one of those assets. I mean, Matt, he had oil that was being pulled out of the ground in the Middle East and those people had like violence going on at the time. So occasionally you have to send over a militia to deal with it.

It’s great. You have to repossess stuff. I mean, he actually owned espn and didn’t know it. Did you know? Then how does that happen? I got the book on my shelf guy. He put in charge of his, a petty cash, which was something like $3,000,000. He could spend up to $3,000,000 a month or something without asking. He met these two guys who had this business, had been trying to start for years, uh, based in Bristol, Connecticut. There was this failing all sports network and they were going to sell it for like ten cents on the dollar and investments. He’s like, sure. So j Dot Paul Getty, you know, ends up calling this guy. He’s like, do we own espn? Yes sir, we do. Okay, we’ll make it work. You know what I’m saying is like, ah. When he, when he found out they own dsp in, I don’t know if you’re mad. Are you familiar with the early espn stories?

Maybe not the early one. We owned ESPN.

Dude, there are so many. Just I’ll give you just one story. They didn’t have any money for advertising and Jay Paul Getty wouldn’t give them any more because he didn’t know he owned it, so they just had a monthly budget for things. Sure. So the, the producers were like, we gotta get, we gotta figure this out. So they did is they went to the Kentucky Derby and they put a mic in front of celebrities and they said, why did you like today’s race? And they’re like, oh, the energy was awesome. They go to the next guy. What did you like about your horse winning today? Oh, just the energy. The exhilaration. I love it. And it put it all into a compilation and there are commercial went, why do people love espn?

And they did it all without asking anyone’s permission. People thought they were being interviewed about the race shirt. So again, he got legal notices like you guys can’t do that. And the second move is team did very crafty is CBS had the rights to all the games. So they made like fake lanyards. Name would kind of sneak into the game and play little games and they would be filming or they would have like access, but from limited access, like upper deck filming only and then their camera guy would wear a red espn jacket they made. All the guys were bred espn jackets and they would stand directly in front of the CBS cameras whenever they would go live to that camera. So when the red light on the camera would go on live, it would say espn, oh, how fun. And they just kept doing it and they had people like, they were like, they had headsets knowing go on down there to the 40 yard line, they’re going to go live headstand and that’s. But again, that was the world’s wealthiest guy. There’s nothing, there’s no person, there’s nothing is. There is no such thing as passive income. Let’s talk about never stop advertising that. Why couldn’t you never stop advertising as an owner of any kind of business?

Yes. The sessions, especially now, I think more than ever because in a span of 10 years, you know, print mail has really reduced its effectiveness and internet marketing. And many, many companies within that Internet marketing realm have come to the surface, so if you don’t understand what’s going on, that’s one big problem. If you don’t have the resources and the ability to take advantage of those through setting up platforms and being able to have a relationship with those companies, that’s a whole nother problem, right? So being able to not only have the budget set there and know it’s going to come back into a return for you, that scares a lot of people. I don’t want to spend that much money. Well, what do you want to make this much? So you know everything is relative, so you’re going to spend money. Are you going to spend time and growing your business? We want you to do both so that you can really grow faster and more efficient than the next guy.

But when you look at all these types of things, the budget should always be there and it should almost sometimes be increasing. That doesn’t mean your marketing Roi. It shouldn’t go down. This should go up. So always marketing, always having your, your thumb on the pulse of the current marketing trends and building relationships with those vendors will allow you to call them. If something’s going great, I want to increase my budget. If something’s not going great, why is that going on? So just pushing play and letting it go is not enough anymore. You want to be able to have a relationship, know who your people are that can help you with that specific marketing campaign and continually trend up and be able to push the button on things that aren’t working and trying new things. That’s a big one. Trying new things will always help you grow because you know if you’re an early adopter, it’s something you can very, very much take advantage of. A huge market. People are usually late adopters to marketing, so you can always stay on top of that. You’ll, you’ll be able to grow pretty efficiently, consistently.

Dr Zellner. Let’s move onto this next, this next area that you can never stop doing. Let’s talk about accounting for a second. Why can you never just abdicate accounting and just say, well, whatever my accountant handles it, no big deal, dude. What’s going to happen to your tax situation if you do that?

It’d be bad. And one thing that organization called Earth Irs, they a great people. They’re super people. We love the people. Oh yeah. Every now and then they’ll want to do an audit on your business when you get a signed letter from it. So awesome. I frame those. Usually I do too,

by the way. I thought about it and I figured that if I continue to pay the taxes I’m paying every year in 30 years I will have paid for one warhead. That was like one, like one solid missile. The ballistic missiles. Now like a new company, a solid, you know, like nice, solid.

Hey listen, don’t kid yourself. If you’re good, you’re income is going to continue to increase. So maybe you can’t afford a nuke. Distant. Maybe my tax dollars can buy a really nice nuke. That’s okay. Back to your thoughts. Just thoughts, just thoughts. A little, little midwestern boy. When you dream you got dream. Well, the thing about it is you’ve, what’s so great about accounting is it is your guide rails for your business. When you look at your profit and loss statements every month I eat, which is your accounting and it lets you know where you stand month to month, quarter to quarter, year to year, and it’s very important for you to to know if the decisions you’re making. If you’re trying something new like Matt, super fine client said, if you’re trying to do, you go, Oh wow, I see a trend now. I’m going to continue to do that, or now I’m going to change gears and do something else, and so it helps let you guide your business, number one. Number two, it keeps you out of trouble with the irs, which trust me, you don’t want to be in trouble with the irs.

No, you want to. I don’t. I’m not. I’m not kidding about this. For all the listeners out there, it is so important that you stay on top of your taxes and you always pay what is owed. If anything, I’d pay a little extra if you’re. If you’re not sure, I totally disagree with the idea of fighting with the irs because the how does it always turn out?

Plus they’ve got a gun and you have like a pocket knife. It’s not really a fair fight. I’m not saying you can’t sneak up on them in a knife and get someone to

get you, but typically I’d rather have the gun or the, you know the tank in that fight now. Okay. Now somebody says, I want of the rest of the story. The guy who was running j Dot Paul Getty’s Fund, his name is Stuart Stuart, Eve e v e y, the former chairman of espn, the guys who started espn, Bill Rasmussen along with his son Scott Rasmussen. They started the company in 1979 and they did not make a profit for what are. No other things weren’t disclosed as I became a public thing was many believe it’s like 13 to 14 years. Right? So Espn, I mean was unbelievable. If you want, if you want to read the story, it’s called creating an empire. Put It on the show notes there because Andrew, this, this book is a fascinating read for anybody who feels like, man, my business is crazy. No, no. That’s crazy. That’s crazy. That’s crazy, man. Running espn with no marketing budget. That is crazy. Now the next area you can never stop doing is training mat. You can never stop training people. Why can you not? Not ever stopped? Why can you never, ever, ever, never, ever, ever, ever, never, ever stopped training people.

Yeah. That’s a pretty big one because people get comfortable. If there’s not consistent training, they’ll fall behind. Right? I mean letting them know not only what they’re doing on a daily basis is important, but how that impacts the business, their paycheck being up to date on new trends in terms of for us at least cleaning systems, processes, right? And you can do a lot of that. The reporting so you can, you can train and keep training people because of their productivity and your ability to understand how they’re producing and what their customers are saying about them. Or you can just have consistent training that’s already scheduled and you don’t have to rely on customers and their feedback. You just know everyone’s always trained consistently, so keeps everyone on their toes and make sure they’re doing what they need to be doing. Make sure there’s complete confidence level in that technician and how they’re going about their day. Right. If they’re competent, they’re jobs, they’re doing the right things are going to be able to get those reviews at a much higher level than if they go in and they’re trying to figure out maybe if they did a good job or not. So consistent training is going to be a huge piece of any business.

Z. I have a question I’d like to ask you, and I certainly don’t expect you to be a marriage counselor, but this question was asked at the conference by somebody who couldn’t ask you direct it. I said, I’m going to ask you. This was the question they’re saying, you know, hey, I get that. I might have to work six or seven days a week. Okay, got it. To get my startup off the ground, they didn’t buy an Oxi fresh. It’s not a franchise, it’s a startup business. And they go, I get it. I don’t think my spouse gets. And I’m going, okay, the, your spouse doesn’t get it, but you get it. What does she want you to do? He goes, well, she says, I’m a business owner. I need to be working 40 hours a week or 30 something, you know, the guy you have top needs to be, uh, you know, working.

And I said, well, you know, you have a dream. It’s become a job and it will continue. Always be a job unless you’re willing to put in the work until it becomes a dream again. What would you say to somebody else? Let’s say there’s a woman out there listening and she owns the company and her husband just doesn’t understand the idea of the sacrifices and the trade offs or vice versa. In this case it was a woman who didn’t see the purpose of the trade offs and sacrifices that he wanted to make. At least that’s what I heard. So what, what, what would, what advice would you have for this person?

Song comes to mind and then I’ll and then I’ll and then I’ll explain why this song, it’s a sky rockets in flight after June, July,

didn’t it?

And why a rocket came into my mind is because the analogy of starting a business is like launching a rocket into outer space. It takes a lot of energy, a lot of work, a lot of fuel. In fact, most of the rocket is just the engine to get it up into orbit. But once you get it up into orbit, spouse, I would say to my spouse then went to tap into orbit that it takes just, it takes less time. It takes less effort, takes less fuel to maneuver that little bad boy around. Once you get up into orbit. So early on it’s all hands on deck, you know, and you need to have that talk before you buy the Oxi fresh franchise. You need to have everybody’s on the same page. But I’m gonna tell everybody out there. You’ve also got to listen to your spouse because you have to get them the ability to say, hey honey, hey dude, I forgot what you look like. Hey, would you mind remember

where we live?

Hey

Matt Klein. We have more songs in store, but we’re short on time here, so I want to ask you, for anybody out there who says, you know, I would like to look into buying an Oxi fresh because I have a dream and I don’t mind if it becomes a job, but if it’s only $57,000 to get into the game, that’s cool because I hate my current job. I want to take my current job transmute that into a business that I own. I want to, I want it to turn my big, big dream and I’m willing for it to become a job and then become a dream again. Met What are the steps? It’s getting a hold of so, so fine. Matt Klein.

Yep. So when you guys are ready to take that step into looking into a business that may fit your needs and your goals, go on, fill out the form. Once you do that, will get your information, we’ll reach out, set up an intro call, start learning about you and what you’re looking to accomplish. Areas of the country are looking to service potentially. We’ll start getting into the details of the business, go through all the financial piece in terms of operational side of the business. So through many conversations, lots of documents sharing, um, franchise disclosure review. I will get to a point whether this makes sense to you or not. Um, whichever decision you make is fine, but if it does make sense, you want to take the next steps. The goal is to get you out to Denver, Colorado to go through the training and that will be with our team here in our Home Office where everything is located and from there, if that makes sense, then you become a franchise. So unless they’re words that the process, but we’ll take it through one step at a time.

Go to thrive time show.com, forward slash oxi fresh, the thrive time show.com forward slash oxi fresh to learn more and Z. I’m going to keep this audio for you before we have to go. Are you ready? Yes. Good to find my baby gonna. Grab some afternoon delight tomatoes. Always been when it’s. Wait until the middle of a cold dark night

in the light of day. Hey, we know the night is always going to be there at noon, day and night. Sticks and stones together. Make us thought of love and light.

Oh, nice. Oh, Don Thrive magazine. That goes out to you. We’re sorry.

I appreciate that.

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