How Work/Life Balance can Increase your Revenue with Jerrod Sessler

Founder and CEO of HomeTask, former NASCAR driver, serial entrepreneur, and author – Jerrod Sessler

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Jerrod talks about starting up his first business which involved knowing nothing about the industry, getting a terminal disease, and having everything crash after 9/11. His outlook changed, and his faith helped him through it. Now he has countless successful brands that he franchises, and explains two really important concepts. The idea of staying on top of outgoing expenses (small leaks sink ships!) and how to organize your business processes to keep you out of it.

Plus stay tuned til the end because there is an Eventual Millionaire challenge for you to participate in!

Resources Mentioned on this Podcast:

• Good to Great by Jim Collins
• Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy

Check out HomeTask.com for more info!

Thanks so much for listening!

Transcript:

Jaime: Welcome to Eventual Millionaire. I'm Jaime Tardy and I'm excited to have Jerrod Sessler on the show. He's a serial entrepreneur, he has tons of companies - just to name a few of the brands he owns: Pet Butler, Freggies.com, Yellow Van, Handyman, he also owns a company called HomeTask.com, he has patents, writes books, it's a little bit insane and I'm actually excited because he was a listener of the show and I convinced him that he had to come on the show and just yesterday I got an e-mail from a listener of the show that said I should have him on the show too and we already had him booked for today. I'm excited to have you on the show, thank you so much for coming on, Jerrod.

Jerrod: Thanks, Jaime, glad to be here.

Jaime: So thank you, number one, because I totally convinced you - you were like "No, it's cool," and I was like "No, please come on the show!" I started looking into all the crazy stuff that you have going on and it's a bit immense so the first question I want to ask you is how do you even handle it all' Because, just doing my research, it's kind of ridiculous how many things you have going on.

Jerrod: A good team. That's really the core. It's not really about how good I am, I think it's about how good the team is that I have surrounding me - so a plug for our team and everybody that supports me and surrounds me.

Jaime: So what is your typical day like? Are you mostly managing the team? Can you give me a general idea of what that might look like?

Jerrod: I spent a lot of years as a pretty intense box checker, very serious about getting through my tasks and things like that, and that was up until maybe this last year where I feel like I've become a bit more of a people person, where I'm taking more time with my staff and my team and I think one of the big things that I have to see myself as is somebody that doesn't have a task list. So I spent a lot of years with my task list and everybody that works with me or for me has their task list of the things that they're doing but the thing that I'm best at, because I have the ability, is to go in and help them remove roadblocks and warn them of potential stumbling blocks that they may be coming upon. But if I'm so busy that I see it as an interruption when they're coming to me then that's a problem and I'm not leading very well.

Jaime: You're in a totally different box now, business owner, as opposed to what you were probably doing for many years, trying to pull everything up and working in the business. How long did it take you to make that transition?

Jerrod: I wouldn't say that I've totally made it, only because I still feel like I'm a really good task manager and I'm really good at getting stuff done and I feel it's an area where I can be creative and do some creation or some things that maybe other people can't. But I feel like it's more when can you afford to do that, when are you willing to hire someone to maybe pay more than you pay yourself so that they can do things probably better than you can do? So with all the different businesses that we have there's still areas where I'm tasking certain things or want to be involved in teams that are tasking certain things or other areas of the business that are operating really well without my input or oversight on a daily basis.

Jaime: I love seeing the other side. You've listened to this show and most of the people listening are in the beginning stages of nose to the grindstone, work as hard as you can, and it's interesting to see the other side where you had so many task lists and they worked very well for you and you're almost switching to make it even better which is a totally different focus to what you had before.

Jerrod: Very much. One of the catalysts for me doing this is that I'm trying to learn Spanish - I have three kids, I'm married, and my whole family is working on that and one of the things that we did was we've been using some software programs to help us with that and we took an immersion trip down to central America a few months ago and before I left I had maybe the last 10-20% of the list of my responsibilities that I had to get off my plate because I was going to be gone for two months - I was going to be connected but I didn't want to have to check in every day and be responsible for anything. What I realized through that was I didn't want to take those responsibilities back when I got back home and, honestly, what happened was I had some days where I didn't have anything to do and I thought maybe I should see if I could help my team and engage in what they're doing and see how I could help them to be more productive and successful in their days.

Jaime: That's an interesting transition. "I don't have anything to do. Well, at least I can help some people on my team." But that's an amazing place to be.

Jerrod: The sad thing about it is my weakness in leadership is communication. If you read Lencioni, I definitely struggle with communication and it's a pride thing for me, because I want to know everything, from the beginning to the end, before I communicate anything, so that I'm not wrong. I don't want to tell my team we're going to end up here or this is going to look like that or we're going to this. I want to know what I'm going to say, and it's pride, because I'm saying I want to know even before I communicate it and what happens is I end up putting the shackles on a lot of the information that people need to move forward just because I'm weak at communication, so getting that one-on-one time with the different team members is really helpful for me.

Jaime: It's funny - that poses a question: do you think you're an introvert or an extrovert?

Jerrod: I've always thought of myself as an extrovert, but when it comes to working I'm definitely the hunker down and get it done, do what it takes, kind of person. But I would say extrovert.

Jaime: That's really interesting. I ask because I had been reading about introverts versus extroverts and they were saying when you want to know everything involved you usually keep it to yourself and you keep it in your head, but usually extroverts just say what they want and usually end up changing course as they go. So it's kind of interesting - I've been reading too much about introverts versus extroverts. So tell me how you got started - I love seeing the other side of it. So there was central America and it was amazing, but you hunkered down probably for a ridiculous amount of time to be able to create what you've created. So tell me about the beginning - were you always an entrepreneur, did you know you were going to do this since you were little?

Jerrod: I don't know. I don't know how to answer that. To give you a quick overview ' when I was four years old I told my mom I wanted to drive racecars. I was enamored by cars and that was what I wanted to do and eventually I did that and am still very much into racing but I went through the typical school, didn't really pay attention a lot in elementary and high school, but got decent grades, was afraid to go to college because I didn't have enough confidence in myself so I went into the military, came back, went to college, got an engineering degree, grew up a lot during those years, ended up working at some pretty good companies. When I was growing up I wanted to be an engineer at a Fortune 100 or Fortune 500 company and I ended up working at Intel for a few years and really enjoyed that and my friends thought I was crazy in the late '90s when I had just quit, I left and said I wanted to start my own thing. My wife and I were in our late 20s, no kids yet, looking at corporate America, feeling like this is it, this is cool, you can make money and you've got a good rhythm and a good team to work with, a good environment, well taken care of, but there's got to be more. So we went out on our own and within nine months we'd both left our corporate jobs and started a small construction company that had a consulting arm where i was consulting with small business owners to help them with their business processes, so looking internally, how are things working, and then also including renovations and things to reorganize and rebuild the business physically as well as internal processes. We grew that company and did fairly well with it, it was a struggle for me because, I guess looking back, I realize the gaps I had in my own leadership ability, I think a lot of the failures I had in business along the way were because of my core leadership ability. Then 9/11 happened and everything tanked and we lost a ton of money for the next year and sort of started from scratch, rebuilding. I read From Good to Great by Jim Collins that was recommended by a great mentor of mine and I saw this vision for starting a handyman franchise business. So Yellow Van Handyman was the first brand we started with and we franchised that, starting building it, growing it and along the way we've acquired some other brands and started some other brands to franchise, so I love entrepreneurship, I love helping people build businesses, I think that's the reason I'm in franchising, because it's a multiplication of what we're doing, it's helping other people who perhaps otherwise can't or don't want to wear six or seven other hats to be able to go out and be successful in running a small business with a strong brand representation. So I've found a lot of success in that early on and got a lot of notoriety in the franchise industry and got introduced to a lot of powerful and wealthy people mainly because of our availability and technology - my background at Intel as an engineer and then starting a company and bringing a lot of that technology into franchising where it just didn't exist. We started franchising in 2004 and there's a big convention that pretty much all of the presidents and leaders go to and I attended that the first year and we only had four locations and the next year I was a speaker - not because I'm so great at franchising but because they wanted to know about technology and that's been uphill from there, just growing and taking on new stuff.

Jaime: So that was 2004. First, to go back, what made you choose construction? Because you had a degree in engineering, did you wife do something to do with that? What made you leap into that instead of something else?

Jerrod: Why did I do that? I think I felt like it was really easy entry, I felt like it was something that would give me the flexibility - we had a non-profit doing some youth ministry stuff and we wanted freedom with our time, so I felt that that was something where I could manage it and also manage the schedule of it without punching a time clock and I think, ultimately, that has been one of the driving factors of me being an entrepreneur - freedom. Real freedom, not freedom that means you work twice as much but make half as much money like most small business owners, but freedom in the sense that you able to make your own schedule and participate in the things that you want to do - especially now, when we have little kids and family.

Jaime: So tell me more about that, because that piqued my interest, and probably a lot of people that are listening think you're supposed to work twice as much for half as much money at first in order for you to move forward, so what are your thoughts on that?

Jerrod: I think it ebbs and flows. I think it's a choice - we can live for our work to serve the life we want to live or we can have our lives serve the work we want to do and I think it's really backwards if our life just serves our work, because I really like to work, I like what I do, but I can't get totally out of balance where it's all work and no life, so I don't know how else I would put that other than I think it's really important for us to have a full life, not just working all the time. That said, there's been a lot of late nights, there's been some hard days, a lot of times where I had to eat the frog on a regular basis - you just have to do that and if you don't do it, you're probably never going to get there.

Jaime: How do you manage that, though? It's great to know that there's a balance, and that's probably the reason you left corporate - because you felt that you had control over it. But how do we actually do that? How do you implement that balance?

Jerrod: Let me answer that in two ways - first, I'd say you have to do a little bit every single day. You can't just work in your business every single day, you've got to do some things or you have to look at getting into a different business. I would say it's really, really important, no matter what, every single day you've got to move that bubble forward a little bit and work for the future. You can't work for today all day every single day, you have to work a little bit for the future, planning, preparing, those kinds of things. Then, with regards to work/life balance, I think this is where I feel like my faith comes in a lot, because I feel like my life is a number of different things but work is a part of it, family is a part of it, my involvement in my community is a part of it, how I take care of myself is a part of it, and so I think it comes down to each of us taking the time to sit down and really think "What is my purpose in life? Why am I here?" and let that drive the way we invest our time. That goes into the fallacy that money solves everything - I think there's an element where, and I was guilty of this, you think "If I just had a little bit more money, or if I could just get somebody to believe in me and loan or give me a certain amount of money I could do this with it." The truth of it is you just get a certain place where you have enough and that's where you really need a vision and purpose for your life more than ever before because otherwise what you going to be living and working for? What's going to drive you to the next day?

Jaime: That's what I was going to ask you about. Because most of us are "More, more, more," especially people that are overachievers, where work is part of their self-identity, so they tend to skew to the way work goes and sort of push off to the side work as hard as you can for five years so that you have a crazy business and then you can do whatever you want after that. What is your school of thought for being able to enjoy your life and be able to run your business? And move that business forward, like you said, because that's what we're supposed to be doing but what if we can't move it fast enough and enjoy everything else at the same time?

Jerrod: You just have to find some kind of happy balance there. There isn't a sweet, perfect little answer, I don't think. If you don't enjoy business and you don't enjoy the adventure of it then you should go and get a job and work for someone because, in most cases, you can make more money and you can make a lot of money working for someone else if you're really good at what you do, but you can make a life for yourself if you're an entrepreneur, and that's mostly money, and hopefully the money will come, but it has to be about life, it has to be lifestyle driven, and sometimes you're going to have to make sacrifices on one end, but then on the other you have the freedom, for example, I'm rarely ever at the office in the morning because we have kids and we homeschool and I like to be involved with my kids and my wife and I work out in the morning. I check e-mail and I see what's going on but I'm not going to kill myself trying to get to the office super early and sacrifice some reading time in the morning and time with my wife and kids and things like that, so I guess it's just priority. On the other end of it, does it mean I have less power, influence or money? Maybe, but like I said, you get to a certain point and you have plenty of that anyway, so why should I sacrifice the things that can be really joyful in my life just to get more money? It doesn't matter where you're at, it doesn't matter if you're still struggling month to month as an entrepreneur, you should still have that good balance and, like I say, you have to find a place where you can enjoy it. I'm restating the same thing now.

Jaime: That's exactly what my next question was going to be, was if you did that, way back when, when things weren't as good, when it was harder, when you were really trying to prove something in business, especially after your failure, were you able to pay attention to all aspects or not?

Jerrod: Not all the time. This is why we need coaches and mentors, I think, to help us go through this stuff. There will be people watching or listening right now who are in the middle of this and they don't necessarily see a path out of it and maybe they're not going to be able to make choices this week in regards to this area in their life but hopefully this will be encouragement to them that there are some things to think about and that would be one of the challenges that I would have for people, is to actually take the time to think about what it is that you're doing - think about what it is that you want your life to be made up of, think about why you're here, what's your purpose, what your mission is, what you want to accomplish, because we just don't spend enough time thinking. Why is it that we can read a book by some guy that died 400 years ago and it feels as though he has more insight than we've had in a year' Because we don't take the time to just think. I'm convinced that that's where most of our joy and happiness lies, in just taking some time to see how good we really have it.

Jaime: I love that. I know you've had health issues and stuff like that, that was probably a big piece of moving over to this view of making life really important too, right?

Jerrod: It was. Three years after we got married I was diagnosed with terminal cancer. It's been over 13 years since then. I didn't do conventional medical treatment; I just changed my diet and changed my lifestyle. All of this was definitely part of that, but that was in the midst of trying to grow a business. It was definitely a life change for me. But it didn't change my personality, it wasn't like a mental shift of "Oh, this guy's successful because he was diagnosed with terminal cancer," I don't agree with that.

Jaime: That's good to know!

Jerrod: I worked hard when I was 12 years old and I've always worked hard and I enjoy doing it, I don't see it as a sacrifice or whatever. I feel like going through the diagnosis was really good for me. I know, for me, physically, where I'm at today versus where I was then, I'm in my mid 40s now and I feel better than I did when I was 30, so that's great progress, I feel, so I don't regret going through that. I've been able to help a lot of people, too, who rely on conventional medical methods to try to get healthy when there's no pill on the planet that's ever healed anybody of anything. God's given us a self-healing immune system and the best we can do is give it as much strength as possible so that the health can come out of us.

Jaime: I love that there's no victim mentality - you see it as something that improved the way you are, which is insane compared to what most people would think of getting a terminal illness.

Jerrod: For sure, it definitely is. But I'm really thankful, I really am. I remember sitting in the waiting room with some other people and my wife and I would just look at each other and think "What are these people doing? They're going to die. This is bad. We can't just keep going down this path." So recognizing that the path we were on, lifestyle-wise, we walked our way into that diagnosis and we had to realize "Okay, put on the brakes, we need to do a U-turn here and turn around and walk in the other direction and that means, yeah, we've got to change our diet, we need to start exercising, we need to start doing some things differently to the way we were taught to do them and enjoy the results."

Jaime: That's amazing. So your life really shifted. It sounded like you had an amazing life beforehand and pushed through anyway, but after that it sounds like life became more fruitful and more about life than about working as hard as you can. How did you deal with that and growing your business at the same time? Because that seems extremely difficult.

Jerrod: It was difficult but I honestly don't know an answer to that. I think maybe just being able to trust God that it was going to be okay. Regardless of whether I'd lived or died, okay for us should not be "I made it and lived happily ever after." The only way I think we can experience true joy in our life is if we get to a place where we're trusting God in a way that allows us to even face death and be okay with it. We have to think about what is beyond life and be able to be okay with that. If you look at the universe, the universe is expanding every single day - just in the time that we're making this show the universe is expanding by thousands of miles, and I was driving down the road the other day with our oldest, he turns 12 tomorrow, and he asked me "If the universe is in expanse every day, meaning it's getting bigger, what's just beyond that?" We got into this discussion so, anyway, yeah.

Jaime: That stuff is amazing. It's so funny, I was just thinking, my son, he's six, and one of the things that we say is "I love you all the way to the unobservable universe." That's what we do with my six year old. But that is an amazing thing and being able to have that faith makes life so much less risky, is what it sounds like. If you're okay with whatever happens, no matter what, then taking a risk in business seems small, comparatively.

Jerrod: It is, and that's the truth. The reality is we live in a culture and a time that makes it really, really easy to take risks and there's lots of nets to catch you in and so I'm convinced that more people don't trust God on a daily basis for their security because one, again, we don't take the time to think about it and, two, there's not a lot of examples out there of people who are doing it.

Jaime: Tell me more about the nets that are available. Because I know people listening, as they hear your story and all the things you have going on, risk is such a thing, we talk about calculated risks and all that goes along with it, but you just said there's tons more nets out there available yet we still don't take risks - why do you think that is and what advice do you have for someone who just can't take that leap?

Jerrod: We imagine things, I don't know.

Jaime: We do.

Jerrod: If somebody's concerned about taking a risk then you need to start with writing down the worst thing that can happen and let that be your motivation, because the worst thing that could happen is not going to happen, and even if it did happen, so what? Start over, do something different. It's kind of like after the terrorist attacks and this different lifestyle that we live in now, people went into that thinking "Oh my gosh, the air is all going to disappear and I'm not going to be able to breathe tomorrow." No, actually, it's not. If the economy crashes you're still going to have air to breathe and you're going to be surrounded by a planet full of incredibly smart and creative people who are going to help you figure it out. So what's the worst than can happen? And just face that fear. Maybe that's an area where being diagnosed was helpful for me, and also trusting God, it is very helpful in just dealing with fear. The number one thing the New Testament talks about is "Do not fear." Why not? Because the worst thing that can happen is actually pretty good for us. Philippians 1:21 says to live is as Christ but to die is gain. So to live is as Christ means we're going to suffer and we're going to serve and somehow we're going to enjoy doing that and when we die it's somehow better. I don't know anything that's more motivating than that. Just do it - go out and take a risk.

Jaime: Just do it anyway. That's awesome and I love being able to hear your faith - I know we don't talk about this very much in the show because people go on either side but it's really interesting to hear someone who has so much faith because it allows you to do so much. Whatever you believe in, it doesn't really matter, but the fact that it can allow you to do so much is amazing. I think that's awesome. Tell me about how you've done HomeTask and all these other businesses. You started out with Yellow Van Handyman but you've done so much in what seems like such a short period of time for all of that.

Jerrod: First of all, let me just say, in terms of faith, definitely no offence to anyone. I love to have these conversations, I really, truly feel like my faith is helpful to me and I don't display it openly because I want to offend or push myself on anybody or anything like that, it's part of what I've learned through my journey that is helpful to me.

Jaime: I'm going to stop you right there, too, because in the book I surveyed with all the millionaires I asked them whether they believed in God or had religion or spirituality because that's a huge beast that we never talk about, so I appreciate you talking about it.

Jerrod: It's important and the thing is that I think most people would say that they do believe in God but do they take time to really think it through and see, if there really is a God, is there a way that could be helpful on a daily basis, on a moment by moment basis, and understanding who God is, why he made me, what we're here for, all those kind of things, even if it's a little bit tangential it's still interesting and helpful to know. In terms of HomeTask, again, it's not something that I can say I can take a lot of the credit for. It's happened, I would say we grew the most during the worst economic times and a lot of that was because we had a good foundation and there were some other companies and maybe the way they were led was more on the side of gross through sales rather than good systems, processes and management. I would say, too, and I think this is a good thing for any leader to help see themselves, I think there's essentially two different types of people in the business world - one is a person like me who's really good at systems, processes, management, efficiency, all that sort of stuff, so in other words I'm really good at making sure we don't waste money. The other side of the coin is somebody who's really good at driving sales, somebody who's really good at bringing in the revenue, and those types of people tend to not be very good at processes and systems. I'm not as good at sales and driving results and revenue and things like that, but I'm really good at making what we do have run super efficiently and that sort of thing, so when you go into a difficult financial season, having a good foundation is really, really excellent and something that can help carry you through and, honestly, it's helped put us in a position to be able to grow and do some acquisitions that we probably otherwise wouldn't have been able to do.

Jaime: That's really interesting because you usually hear the other side of it, it's all about business, that's how you grow  a business, you need to have sales, but on the other end you're saying that, especially for the hardest times, this is one of the most important things. Why do you think that is?

Jerrod: I think, for me, it's because I had a mentor when I was really young, a teenager, who taught me about a poor man's savings account and basically what he taught me was simple PnL, so whenever we've got an opportunity on any sort of income situation I always make my own little microcosm of that particular situation in terms of PnL, like this little piece of the business, can we operate it so that it generates more cash that it costs us? Instead of just dumping it in with all the other revenue in the business and hoping it will work out, I look at every little piece and make sure that it's something that's going to generate revenue and produce results. You have to be able to do that. Yeah, I'm not really good at driving sales and making things rain, compared to a lot of people, but I'm good at, if I get a few dollars coming in, making sure that we're going to be able to deliver on what it is that we're selling and we can have a little bit left over on a consistent basis to make sure that it can stay alive.

Jaime: How do you do that? If you do something new or add a new business, usually there's a startup - how do you take on something like that? Do you have a process that you can run us through so maybe we can implement something like that in our business?

Jerrod: Well I don't know if I have a process that I can articulate quickly enough for it to make sense. I think the easiest part is to just look at the revenue and look at your unfunded expenses for that. For me, maybe it's a little bit easier because I can cover overhead with other stuff that I'm doing, so if I have something new like, for example, we need a website hosted, well we already have lots of space to do that and it's not going to cost us anymore to do that, so there's a lot of those expenses that I can set aside and I can just look at the direct cost of doing that business. Honestly, I have a very simple mind - if you tried to explain something to me I'd probably be the slowest guy in the world to get it, I'd be the one asking lots of questions, so I just try to keep everything really simple so that I can understand it. So, from a PnL standpoint, I just try to break up each segment and look at whether it's something that we can do and sustain and make work. I have businesses that you don't even know about because they're running on the side. My favorite type of business is the ones that I don't even have to do anything with. If you can set something up and put people in charge of it to make it happen and it just goes every month and you just get a report, those are beautiful.

Jaime: That's the entrepreneur dream! You're saying what everyone yearns for, that's what we want. So you're telling us how paying attention to our profit and loss will help us get to that dream, right?

Jerrod: I can't emphasize how frugal you have to be about overheard expenses. I can tell you, as an entrepreneur with licensing, franchise locations all across the country, our most attractive businesses are the others that are route based recurring, so it's businesses that people sign up for on a recurring basis like Pet Butler - we clean up dog poop in people's yards, or Lawn Army - we mow people's grass, or Freggies, which is an organic produce delivery service. There's Blue Crew which is a pool maintenance company. There's all these recurring, route based businesses. Why do we like those so much? We like those because they're recurring revenue, just constantly recurring. The business that I started, Yellow Van handyman, that's the one that I started with, it's a good business and there's lots of opportunity, it's a multi-billion opportunity on a national basis, especially now, there's just huge opportunities in the service industry because there's this service bubble because over the last few years things have just not been getting done and about 40% of the labor has left the industry, so we have a lot of work to do in the next ten years. As an entrepreneur I'm saying I like these recurring, route based services because it's constant revenue. Well turn that around and think about it as a business owner and think about every area where you're spending money on a recurring basis and challenge it - do you actually need to spend that money on a recurring basis? Just get your overheard down to as little as you possibly need to get by and don't waste any money until you get to a point where you have a little more flexibility, and even then I wouldn't be wasteful with it, I would just make choices. The thing that comes up a lot for me is doing stuff for our team - how can we make this relationship opportunity for people to be part of our team more interesting? And spending money on those kinds of things.

Jaime: Those are hard because those are intangibles. If I have a GoToWebinar account and I'm not doing any webinars then that makes sense, I won't pay for that. But how do you do things that are intangible? Like doing stuff for your team that you don't know you can pull out an ROI for but you know it's good for them? How do you make those determinations?

Jerrod: I think you have to have some kind of budget, like you have a labor budget, like when you're on your way somewhere and you tell them you're going to be there at 9 but you aim to get there at 8:45. You ought to do the same thing with your money, you should have a certain amount budgeted in there as playing money. We do a lot of charity stuff where our team gets involved in different things and we just have a budget where we can do stuff for our team or make purchases of equipment or things that our team wants to bring into the company. The bottom line is that I remember, not too many years ago, where none of that stuff was an option. Every single dollar that went out of the company had to be approved by me, otherwise what happens is you end up with this new administrative assistant who thinks our storage locker needs to be at the local Stapes and you have $4000 of office equipment that you're never going to use, and even today that's heresy because Amazon Prime can have it on my desk the next day, so why should I stock anything? I don't need a local store for that. When you're young in business you need to be a miser, you need to keep an eye on every single dollar. It wasn't until this last winter when we took that trip to Central America that I let go of that top level financial management, so it's only been the last year that someone else has been doing that for me. I still look at reports and keep track of it on a regular basis but, I can tell you, that's a huge blessing for me because it's my least enjoyable part of the business. I never liked managing finance.

Jaime: Really? That's what I was going to ask you next - it seemed like that part of the business is innate for you, but you hate it?

Jerrod: It is from a numbers standpoint because I'm an engineer but I just don't like it. I'm not an entrepreneur because I want to make a lot of money - that's not my motivation. I like to make money and I'm glad that the things we do make money but I don't want to manage it. I hate that. "Which account to you sign that to' How does that affect taxes'" I don't like doing that stuff.

Jaime: I'm glad to hear you say that, because as you were saying about being a miser I was assuming that that was your sort of thing, that you enjoy that and that's what you do. But it's a necessity of the business. The question that I was going to ask, which I'm going to ask now anyway, is what advice can you give to someone who doesn't like that part of the business to do it anyway, even if they don't feel like doing it?

Jerrod: You have to do it, there's just no choice. There's lots of things you can have people do for you, but the finance part is something you have to dig in and do. When I was young in business I didn't know what a PnL was. I just described it earlier because I know now and I thought in terms of PnL, it's just simple income and expenses and what's the bottom line. I didn't know what a balance sheet was, I didn't know what chartered accounts was, I didn't know any of this - but as a business owner you have to do it, you have to get into it. One of the things that I did that really helped me, and everyone out there can do this, I went to Bank of America, I'll give them a plug, a few years ago, and they offered a two day seminar that was taught by an outside consultant that was all on financial management and it was targeted at small business owners in the area. I think that that happens regularly across the country, where banks will sponsor that kind of thing, and it was free because I was a customer of the bank and I got a free invitation to go to this seminar for two days and it was one of the best things I could do to increase my understanding of business from a financial standpoint.

Jaime: I love that. That's one of the things that we don't like to say we don't know what we're talking about, the finance stuff. But I don't know how many times I've recommended Business Finance 101 to people who, even if they're doing really well, need to work on that stuff, because that stuff matters. Like you said, that was the foundation, and no matter how small you are, even if you're not making a ton of money, doing that stuff now makes a huge difference for later.

Jerrod: It helps you to see where your business is leaking. Depending on what your business structure is, it can be okay to put a lot of expenses into your business, that's one of the advantages of the way our tax system is set up, you can easily justify an expense as a business expense, but you need to be very conscious of that when you're running a small business and make sure you don't have any leaks. It's like a carpenter on a construction site trying to use a wheelbarrow that's full of holes - it's just not going to work very well and your business is not going to make it. You need to be very careful about that very early on. As your business grows and your revenue grows you can do more of that kind of thing but you have to understand it first.

Jaime: It's the same thing we do personally, too. When I was in corporate and I started making more money I was like "Sweet! I'm going to go buy more stuff!" and it's not about that at all, and changing the way we think about that really matters. We don't talk about it a lot so I really appreciate the fact that you brought that up because that's something that, even in these interviews, we don't talk about a lot because people like to just sweep it under the rug. So I know we have to start wrapping up so I'm going to ask you the question that I ask everyone. I want to have you back on the show, though, because I have a whole bunch of stuff to ask that I didn't get into. But what's one action that listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of a million?

Jerrod: First of all I'm going to say that I got some help on this because I was thinking about it this last week so I asked my wife last night.

Jaime: Smart man!

Jerrod: She pointed me in a direction that was much different to where I was going. For the listeners, Jaime did not pay for this, but what Nicki said was that the thing she thought has been most important for me over the years was having a good coach or mentor or both, and I have had both. I've had an excellent coach for many years and I've had multiple mentors and so I feel that that's really, really important. So go find a coach and even if you have to pay them what seems like a lot of money, if they're good, they're worth it. As for mentors, there's probably a lot of mentors in your life right now, you just need to formalize those relationships and start being diligent about maybe helping them and investing in them a little bit and learning from them, from their wisdom, but I would say make sure you don't just go by money. There is no question between having a lot of money and having a good life or having a life that's worth living. With my mentors, when I think about them, I think about how joyful their wives are because they're such great husbands, or I think about how their employees, their teams and their companies operate - very clean and upstanding, good members of the community, their kids are disciplined, happy and joyful, so to me it's more of a whole package. The other thing I would say, and this goes for all of us, but I would say more so for some of the people that have enjoyed a certain level of success, is if you don't see mentoring someone else as an important thing or as a priority, then let me just give you a push in that direction. I will say that the best thing that you can do to raise yourself is to help somebody else. In an area where you're required to teach something or something like that, you're most likely to grow yourself the most. So get out there and help somebody else, but the biggest thing is make sure that you've got a good coach and some good mentors that you can invest in.

Jaime: I love that. Of course, right. I say the exact same thing. I do want to follow up with one more question because I get asked this all the time and I want your opinion on it - what's the different between a coach and a mentor?

Jerrod: I think the difference, for me, is I would generally say that a coach is something you pay for and a mentor is a friend and, functionally, I see mentors as somebody that you listen to and a coach is somebody that potentially kicks you in the ass once in a while.

Jaime: That's exactly what I say too. "I'll kick you in the ass!" That's awesome. I highly recommend what you're saying, too, I highly recommend getting a mentor. I don't pay my mentors, and you shouldn't either, but you should really pay attention to their whole life because you don't want someone who works 100 hour weeks and, yeah, they're really successful in business but they'll tell you to work 100 hour weeks too and that might not be want you want to do. I really appreciate that, thank you so much for coming on the show today, Jerrod. Thank you for letting me push you a little bit and having everybody else benefit from it. Thank you so much. Where can we find out more online? I know you have a thousand different websites, but where would you like to direct people to learn a little bit more?

Jerrod: HomeTask.com is a great website, if you want to connect with me personally just Google my name and a bunch of different social options will come up.

Jaime: And we'll link to those too, because Jerrod is a really cool guy, I should hang out with him. Thank you so much for coming on the show, I hope you have an amazing day, Jerrod.

Jerrod: You too. Thanks, Jaime, and thanks everyone for listening.

Tags: Budgeting, increase revenue, Jerrod Sessler, millionaire interview, Profit/Loss, Profitability, Relationships, Work Life Balance

Categories: All, Best Life, Business, Business Model, Entrepreneurship, Fear, Mentors and Mastermind, Millionaire Interviews, Visioning

Hi I’m Jaime. Each and every week I bring you the top business advice from the people who know best.

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