Side Hustle Showdown: Freelance vs. Agency (Greatest Hits)

24:04But with that as a goal, I made a decision and say, no, I'm not going to teeter with, okay, I'm turning down work. No, I'm going to max out what I personally want to do, get the most I can for a client, and I had a referral network. I have friends that I could give other business to, and maybe I could take an affiliate on that, a small commission on that, or it's just good faith I send them business, and down the road, I get business from them. And so you can look at it different ways. Yeah, I like that. We had a guest in the SEO space who was booked up, you know, with his freelance SEO consulting, started a very similar thing.

24:42He was like, well, I got other people I trust. I can't take on your project, but let me send you to this guy. Hey, would you pay a finder's fee? Ended up building a whole side business just around that referral element. I was like, oh, this is pretty cool. Chris, what got you through that valley of despair? Yeah, this is a fun little story time. For me, it was October 2016. In the middle of my final semester at university, I was very solidly in the Valley of Despair, also University of Despair, I guess. It was midterm time, so a lot of despair all around. We'd grown very quickly from about zero to 20 ,000 a month in about 90 days.

25:16So it was a ridiculous amount of growth. What are you thinking at that time? Are you thinking, I am this entrepreneurial alchemist? I willed this into existence, and now look at this thing. It's funny. There was so little I understood about business. A big part of it was luck. My profit margins were low because I was reinvesting everything back into marketing. So I was barely paying myself. Obviously, that's changed with time. But I was in this situation where I was studying for exams. I was answering the phone all day, handling cleaning teams, marketing, doing everything. I was really deeply unhappy and it kind of came to a climax Halloween week where I was booking seven, eight people a day because it's Halloween week and everyone wants their house cleaned before the party and after the party.

26:01I made such a stupid mistake and I didn't ask my cleaning teams if they wanted time off with their family for Halloween. I just assumed they would want to work on Halloween day because it's extra money and it was just a grave mistake. So I scheduled them in and then that morning, like half my teams called off, something like six teams called off that day, which is a lot of bookings that not getting done. It was 10 or 12 bookings that were not going to get done. And every other cleaning, I searched for hours that day before calling customers. Every other cleaning business in that city was booked solid.

26:33Or if they weren't, they did not have a good reputation. And so I had to call all my customers and let them know the cleaning that they booked a month ago was not going to be happening. And so I was, I wouldn't call it a nervous breakdown, but it was on the edge of, I had, you know, a dozen people screaming at me. And it was at this moment that I decided there's no way that I could possibly run this business, even if it makes me a lot of money. There's no way that I could deal with this every day for years. It's not a business. It's this soul sucking job that I built into myself and called a business.

27:04And so for me, the way that I really escaped it was, well, two things. I'll keep it to one though. I knew I needed an office manager, but I knew that I couldn't afford an office manager full-time. I didn't even have an office space. So there was nowhere for the office manager to go. I'd read the four-hour workweek by Tim Ferriss a few times, and he talks about virtual assistants a lot. And so I thought, is there a way that I could find someone who used to work for a family business based in the US who could do the majority of what I do, but they don't have to be in DC? And so I started looking for someone who used to run a family business, and I found two people.

27:37They agreed to try it out. They'd never worked as VAs before, but I trained them up to handle most of the office tasks remotely besides the hiring. and I, this was another stupid mistake, but it ended up working out. A week after I trained them, I took off to Japan for a week and I just basically ignored my phone unless it was an emergency and I just let them handle it. I threw them in the deep end and they handled things okay. And I came back and my business was still in one piece. And so this was the first inkling that I had that I could run a business in a very minimal amount of time each day and have it function and not fall apart.

28:09And so over the next few months, I started to work on systems with them, started to teach them how to do stuff more in depth and started to remove myself bit by bit from each different area of my business. Okay. Very nice. So they're working from home. They're working remotely. They're fielding your phone calls. They're scheduling the different teams on the ground to go to the different addresses and you're just paying them an hourly wage. Are they salaried? How does that work? So in the VA industry, and you're quite knowledgeable about this as well, Nick. We do it by the minute basis. And so what I do is I'd have them track their time.

28:44So in an eight hour day for a cleaning company of my size, we didn't need someone working eight hours a day. We needed someone working maybe two to three hours worth of time, but available for eight hours a day for when things came in. And so I'd worked out a higher rate that I would pay them, but with the agreement that they would track their time. And instead of paying eight hours a day, it would be on a contract basis for the amount of work done each week. And so we paid them to be available during that time, but only to be paid for the minutes they put in. Okay. Interesting. So it's like based on whenever the phone rings, the clock starts.

29:19Precisely. And so that was a good middle point that they were happy with because it meant that they could take on other high paying clients as well during their day. And they weren't just beholden to one client because they were their own boss as well. And so we found a happy medium between us where I could afford them and they could afford to pay attention to us. What was the second thing? You can't tease two things and then only give us the one. The second thing for me was shifting how I thought about my business. And the E-Myth really is a big shift in how you think about your business too.

29:49I hadn't read the E-Myth at this time, but the way I started thinking of my business was I knew that I couldn't remove myself from everything all at once because I tried that initially after the Japan trip and there was a big drop in quality because I basically transferred 20 different hats for myself to two other people. And so they were overwhelmed. So I wanted to find a way where I could only have them do it working on the areas that they were good at. And so I started to look at how big businesses structure their business. And the way any big or medium-sized business structures their business is by having different department heads for each department.

30:20You have a sales head, you have a marketing head, you have a communications director, right? You have a customer service agent. So I thought, could I outsource each area of my business as if it were a big business and assign a department head to each one? And so that's what I did. I assigned the customer support and the teams to the customer support to VA one and the teams to VA two. So the front end was being handled by VA one and the back end was being handled by VA two. Then I outsourced the sales to someone. Then I outsourced the marketing to someone as if they were a marketing head. And so I started to think of my business as if it were a big business and how all the different moving parts work together so that I could outsource them one by one instead of just throwing it all on someone else.

31:03And so that was the other big thing that really worked for me was finding a way for someone to step up and take responsibility for each part that they were an expert at. Were those hires similarly structured in terms of the payment or was it this sprint to get to where revenue justified those hires? So we tried a little bit of everything. We're pretty solid now, which I can explain, but we tried everything. We tried salespeople on the ground. We had people doing door hangers. We had professional marketing agencies. But what ended up working for us was finding an expert in their field and negotiating either if it's a sales or marketing job, a retainer fee plus ad spend so that they're earning something, the better they perform for us, or if it's an office or customer support job, offering them a higher pay rate, but for the minutes that they work instead of the full day.

31:54And so what I'm saying is there's no standard pay structure. It depends on the position that you're outsourcing in your business at the time, because there are different pay structures that work better for different positions. But the two most common were paying by the minute per work or coming to some sort of commission agreement. Okay. Gotcha. Like a performance basis on new business that you bring in for us. Right. And so one thing that did not work for us was I tried to have my VAs who were not salespeople. I tried to entice them to become salespeople as well. And I was going to offer them a bonus for every person that they closed, for every good review that they got.

32:30But the problem was I was spreading them too thin and they were not salespeople. They didn't have years of sales experience. And so I could have these bonuses in place, but they weren't getting used that much because that wasn't where their strength was. And so don't try and fit a square peg into a round hole, right? Don't try and force a person that you hire to be something that they're not. Gotcha. That's something that has been, I guess, a common mistake for people looking for outsourced help is like, well, I'm doing all of these roles in my business. Like, why can't I hire somebody to do that?

33:01It's like, no, like you can compartmentalize, departmentalize that a little bit more. You set everybody up for success. Nick, I would even take that expression, that quote from Chris, the round square peg, round hole, whatever. I think that applies to in general, if you're coming into a business, into a side hustle, kind of know yourself, know your personality, know your goals, what your dreams are. Do you want to go through the route and become like Chris, or do you want to stay small? Like, I think you don't have to start small. And like, there's so many cleaners that come, they start small, then they feel like they have to scale.

33:34It's like required. Well, if I want to make more money, I have to scale. And some people don't want to. Some, like a stay-at-home mom, they want to start a side business. They're already good at cleaning. There's tremendous pros of cleaning. They're already good at it. They can make great money and they can be flexible with their schedule. They can clean when they want. It's very therapeutic for them. It relieves their stress while they're doing it and they can bring home great money. And then I don't want to hire people. I don't want to scale. And down the road, they might want to, but it's just some people may just want to pick one of these two sides as per the name of this particular podcast.

34:06That's a really good point. Me and Ken were talking before as well about it's very easy these days to be sold a dream that's not yours. And I think that's always been a problem in business, but now so more than ever with movements like the digital nomad movement or becoming a virtual assistant, which the term is always expanding. It's almost meaningless at this point. You need to be very clear on what your end goal is very clear for me. when I started, my vision of what I want my business to be has changed quite a few times over the years. I have the lifestyle of what I originally wanted, but the vision of what it will be at the end is very different than it was at the start.

34:41And if you end up buying into a dream that's not yours, it's going to get you stuck. And maybe you'll do well for a year or two years or five years, but you'll eventually get stuck because you reach a stage where you hit the initial goal that you had in mind, but you never have a bigger end goal. And so you can't get unstuck unless you actually map that out. And so mapping that out at the beginning is so important. And with Ken, for example, in our industry, it's very common now. And I talk about this all the time because this is the way I run my business. It's very common to push solo cleaners.

35:14You'll see it in every thread, in every comment, a solo cleaner says they're overwhelmed. The second they say that there's a hundred comments saying you need 10 systems in your business. You need two virtual assistants. It's the same advice all the time, but it's not right for that person. If you read what that person wrote and you listen to what they want out of their business, you're telling them very bad advice. It's good generic business advice, but it's bad personalized advice. And so you have to be very clear on what that person and you yourself want out of your business before you can find a way to get to whatever the next stage is for you.

35:45Yeah, I like that. Don't get sold a dream that's not yours. Kind of know where you're going, know what you want to get out of this thing and go down that path. Like even if it's quote the slower path or if it's going to lead you through this valley of despair, whichever it is, like know where you want to take it. And Nick, there's so many people, I believe, listening to this podcast, they're in a job that they don't like. How many people, I mean, they got a taste of this work from home freedom. Oh man, I got to go back to that place at some point. And maybe it rekindled the dream, the fire, like I want to get out, I want to get out.

36:16And they make their dream, like, I want to have my own business on the side. And maybe you've seen this and people that you've interacted with and like the dream becomes, I want a side hustle. That's my dream. And then they get a side hustle. They get out of their job and they're doing their side hustle. They're doing their dream. But then they realize that the side hustle wasn't the dream. They made it the dream and they become unhappy with what they're doing. And they don't get themselves, they don't attach their why to something that's emotional quickly with an end goal. They're going to phase out and they're going to end back up at that desk they were just sitting at.

36:50So that's a good point, Ken. I guess I would say then And what we're all saying here is you can transition later if you need to, because your goals and your life will be different. But when you start your side hustle, your business, you want to start your business as close to the stage you want to end up at as possible. So day one, you want to be as close to that stage as possible. Whether you want to be a freelancer and optimize your income then, or you want to run an agency style business where you're not doing the work yourself. As soon as you start your business, you have to be as close to that end stage as possible because it'll make everything easier if you can.

37:23versus Chris, you going out and cleaning in the early days. Like, I want to test this out. I want to see how I like it. And then I'm going to hire people later. It's like, no, I'm gonna hire people from the very onset. Right. So this is like from my own personal stress and mistakes and breakdowns. I knew I wanted to travel, but that was it. It's a very vague goal with business. I want a business that lets me travel. That's the most generic business in the world these days. And so I got stuck in this valley of despair, this adolescent stage in the E-Myth, as he calls it, because I wasn't clear on what I wanted.

37:52And so I had a job that was 12 or 14 hours a day instead of seven or eight hours a day because I was peddling my feet. I didn't know where I was headed. I didn't have any roadmap towards any end goal. The vague goal that I had was grow my business bigger and then somehow skip a stage and then not have to run my business. There wasn't a path there. So you have to have it mapped out. Yeah. Step one, idea. Step two, question mark, question mark. Step three, profit. More with Ken and Chris in just a moment, including how Chris runs ThinkMades in just five to 10 minutes a day and how Ken sold his original cleaning business, even though it was centered on him doing the work.

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39:07Because if you can't answer the phone, Quo's AI agent can. It can qualify leads, it can route calls to the right person, and it's going to make sure no customer is ever left hanging. Think of it like having 24-7 support without the 24-7 payroll. More than 90 ,000 businesses are already running on Quo, from solo operators to growing teams. Try it free when you go to quo.com slash side hustle. That's q u o.com slash side hustle you can even keep your existing number quo no missed calls no missed customers chris can you give a sense of the time that you're putting into operations today sure so these days this is another funny story me and ken have talked about you're gonna hear a lot of these stories so for me i spend about five to ten minutes a day on my cleaning business i spend I work all day, but on my other businesses these days.

40:01And it's hard for people to believe that because it's a business with people in it. It's very people-intensive business, the cleaning industry. And there's a lot of moving parts. But this is the power of having an agency-style business that you've learned to work well with and that you have hired the people to be in the right places. So for me, I have my office managers handling the office work. I have a sales guy, a marketing guy, a bookkeeper handling those parts of the business. So at the end of the day, the only thing that I actually need to do is check in with them. And sometimes I'm bad at that too.

40:33Sometimes I won't check in with them for a couple of days and then they get annoyed at me, but I won't check in with them. But the only thing you really need to do is jump in and say, hey, how's it going to each person in your business in different areas? And if everything's going well, you can log off. And if it's not, you can chat with them for a few minutes and come up with a solution. Me and Ken were talking, a lot of people get stuck with a mentality that business has to be a lot of work. And it does at first. it does have to be a lot of work at first. And if it doesn't, you found a unicorn.

40:59The first two to five years, your business will be a lot of work. But I talked to people who've been in business since 1979 or 1985, and they're still working eight or 10 hours a day in their business. They're doing something wrong there if that's the case. There's no judgment there, but they've had time where they should have been able to work on each part and optimize it a little bit more. What I guess I'm saying is you have to be able to measure your progress and you have to see how other people who are a step or two ahead of you are operating their business so that you know how to actually get to that stage as well.

41:35So I was talking to a guy in one of the Facebook groups in the cleaning industry. He will sit there and he's been in the group for years and he's never said a single positive thing. He calls everyone doing better than him a scam. We've all seen these people. And it's impossible to run a business in 10 minutes a day. But I told them there are tens of millions of business owners who are not in their business at all. There are so many shopkeepers. There are so many textile industry owners. There are so many people in every industry imaginal who are business owners who haven't touched their business in years because they have the right people in place.

42:05It's a normal evolution in business to eventually have someone in place handling each part of it for you so that you're able to just oversee the big picture. If you're stuck in a mindset where you think business has to be work, take a step back and look at what people who are a little bit ahead of you are doing. And if they're still working just as hard as you, because if they're not, which I'd bet you that they're not, then this is a limitation that you're facing yourself. You need to reframe how you start working on your business again. Now, Ken, five or 10 minutes a day, like, doesn't that sound appealing?

42:35Well, sure. He chose that path and he has owned it and he's optimized it. And I applaud him for it. I didn't choose that path. Now, what's nice is if you are a freelance solo, you can choose that path at any point. If you want to, you always have the option. What Chris and I are both saying, it sounds like if you're going to get started in this business or any, go grab the e-myth book. Understand that because you really, I'll give an example too of a company that didn't grab the e-myth book right away. And I found another cleaning company, probably in the same group that Chris found his gentleman.

43:09And we got on a phone call and I was trying to help them out. And after just hearing their numbers, I cringe and I feel sorry for them. And they have a good business. It's doing$400 ,000 in revenue, which is really good. And digging in further, I find out, okay, so you're in the office. You're working those eight-hour, nine-hour days handling everything. Six days a week, their husband and wife with kids. Six days a week at the office, not seeing their kids much. and out of a$400 ,000 revenue, they're pulling out$30 ,000 to$35 ,000. $30 ,000 to$35 ,000 in a salary and the business is doing no profit.

43:48And I just paused and I said, well, let me just ask you a question. Just a contrast, really. That's your business,$400 ,000 in revenue. You're working six days a week. You're hardworking and you're keeping$30 ,000. My business is just me. And my revenue is not even$100 ,000, but yet my profit is double yours at$60 ,000. And I'm only working two days a week, not six. I'm working one third of the time and making twice as much. I said, so what do you think is wrong with that picture? And just that same mindset that Chris was talking about, it just didn't register. We didn't talk again. I wish them well.

44:28And there's a lot of that. And that company, they started off with a dream of growing and growing. and they just, oh, I got too many clients. I need to bring on some employees. And it's always the growth happens and then they try and fix it with systems. And instead they're supposed to lead with systems and then let the growth fill in. They do it backwards and they get themselves in that valley of despair. And I didn't want to go that route. So yeah, Nick, five and 10 minutes does sound good, but I was perfectly happy with what I had optimized. I mean, five day weekends and still making enough money for my family.

45:00and it gave me other days of the week to work on my other side hustles to make other income, which I was able to build up an online business during that time. And I was with my kids. So that was the path I chose. So I'm not saying that I prefer Chris or Chris prefers mine. I think each of your listeners will have to decide if they want to go into a side hustle. They need to pick a side. That's what the point is. Go small and optimize and find your perfect business or go big and do it right, but don't get stuck in the middle. Yeah. They bring up an important point about the profit margins and being able to pay yourself and minding those.

45:36Chris, is there a target margin that you're shooting for on a per job or per month basis? Okay. It's a really good question. It ties into exactly what Ken was saying with the guy who just talked to profit margins. The more you outsource your business are going to be lower. So you're going to have to build the bigger business to get the same pay because you're paying everyone to do the work for you. Right? It's not cheap to do that. For us, we're in an industry where there's a big difference between profit margins with employees versus contractors. So it's a little hard to generalize, but generally, because I work with painters and lawn care guys too, I have some general knowledge of the local industry.

46:14Generally, in this industry, you want to aim for between 8 % and 30 % profit. Like if you run a massage parlor, for example, and you have a physical location that you're paying for and beds and therapists, I know a guy who ran a$70 ,000 a month massage parlor. His profit was good in the industry and he was profiting 8 % a month, but that was really good for him. Most people weren't profiting anything at all in that industry. In the cleaning industry for us, the way I've set up my business, if you really truly want to do minimum work, the owner will be paying themselves between 10 % and 17 % of revenue by the end of the day.

46:52I'm closer to the 10 % because I outsourced absolutely everything. I think it works out to between 12 % and 14%. So if my revenue is$500 ,000 a year, I'm only going to be making$65 ,000 or so from that business, for example. But you only had to work 10 minutes a day, so trade-offs. But you do have a lot more liability. You have a lot more chances for one of your teams to screw up by accident or for a customer to be unhappy. So there is a lot more risk that you're taking on. If you're doing 300 or 400 jobs a month versus 30 or 40, there's a lot more stuff that can go wrong as well at the bigger scale.

47:26And so that's a risk that I take, but it is a bigger risk. You leave yourself more open. Do you have any of those nightmare scenario stories outside of the Halloween episode, like where something bad happened with one of these crews or on somebody's property? This is a little specific to the cleaning industry. I actually don't know if I can say this one on air. Is this a family-friendly show? Keep it PG. I'll tell you after the call. This is not a PG story. Okay. It's not, but we haven't had too many bad ones. One of the ones we did have though, was a person who was selling their house and we take before and after pictures.

48:02We ask people for permission to do that. We cleaned their house very well. It was actually our A team cleaning that house and they really are a truly amazing cleaning team. and they did a great job and there was no scratches left. Again, we had the before and after photos and they must've forgotten that we took those because they scratched up their marble surfaces and they scratched up different areas of their house, like the fan above the stovetops. And then they sent that to us and they said, our team damaged it. They were going to sue us for the damage. They were trying to basically sell the house and make a lot of money out of us by damaging their own equipment and their own household.

48:36And luckily we took the before and after photos. Otherwise, we probably would have been screwed. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Was that something like a liability policy would typically cover if you hadn't had that backup? Well, yes and no. Yes, if it's unintentional, which didn't happen. It wasn't our fault at all, but it would cover it was unintentional. But the way they were describing it, I think they would have actually had a pretty compelling case to make some money out of us. So they were trying to hold us hostage from damage that they caused themselves to their own house. So there are things like that.

49:06There are typical things like people leaving money in weird spots to see if the cleaner will take it. Our cleaners always text us a picture of it and we laugh about it, but people will test you in little ways. So there's always things like that. That's interesting. I never, okay. Yeah. Like here's the stock drawer. It's kind of funny. Do you ever get the threat of, so you're, you're taking a margin on top of this labor. Do customers ever go like, why am I going through this company? Why don't I just work with this team directly and save money or pay them a little bit more? Like just cut out the middleman.

49:35Has that ever come up? Sure. Yeah. Early on, before I knew how to deal with that, it hit us very hard. The first year in business, a great team of ours was slowly siphoning off clients of ours to build their own thing. And they did successfully. We basically did the marketing for them and they built their own cleaning business and stole those clients. It's very rare. I've talked to so many cleaning business owners. It happens, but it's so rare that this actually happens. But there are occasions where cleaners will take customers' ears behind your back. I was going to say, they need to have the mindset of an entrepreneur to be successful with it.

50:04And there's a lot of folks that work in team cleaning systems. They just want to do the work. They don't want to do the business. And then when they try, there's a typical, oh, I'm good at the work. I can make more money because I run the business. But then they don't know how to run a business. They don't have the mindset. They haven't read the books. They haven't listened to the podcast like this. And they miserably fail. Then they end up, hey, can I mail a job back? And it's bad for everyone when that happens. And I know companies that when they see entrepreneur like tendencies or desire in their employees, they'll encourage them and say, you know what?

50:35You want to go out on your own? I'll help you. And that's totally fine. You can help the community and get and provide another cleaning company in the area. I mean, we're not, there's enough houses, enough offices to be cleaned. Trust me, we're not that competitive. We tend to help each other out a lot. I mean, look at me and Chris. We're in the same industry. We're friends. We help each other. Well, you're in different cities. That helps. He's in London. But what he's saying is absolutely true. I've helped several people start a cleaning business in DC where we're based. And it's never been a problem.

51:03I don't think we've ever once had a customer conflict between each other. There's just, if you're even in a medium-sized city, there's so many people who need cleaning or so many people who need a local service. There's just, there's no way that you're going to be interfering with each other unless you're really determined to. Well, and this is one of those examples too of it. The pie just continues to get bigger as more and more people outsource this chore versus it's probably orders magnitude what it was in 20, 25 years ago. So that's a cool place to be kind of in this rising tide. Ken, early on, you mentioned selling the original business.

51:36And I'm curious if it's you doing the work, like what is the asset that you're selling? Just the customer list? I'm curious how that works. It was. So I went through a pretty tedious process with this. And there was lots of online resources I was able to find on how to evaluate your business. And I did so. And there was like nine different points. And I honestly evaluated that and it became a profit multiplier. So the ones about, well, you doing the work, I got a low grade there, obviously. But the ones on customer retention, when my average customers were five years and they were totally loyal to the business.

52:14And yet to me, obviously, but I had to find the right person to fit in to my spot. And then things like keeping amazing books, keeping your numbers. Those are so vital. And the brand that you have, there's some, there's little factors and how the recurring model. So I had a really good multiplier. It was around three. And then I looked at some comps from a biz buy sell website and I was able to come up with a price that seemed reasonable. You have to know how to shop it around. And I did not sell it to another cleaning business because that wasn't going to be the max I could get for it. I sold the dream, not the business.

52:47And so I found someone that was working$16,$17 an hour. That was a good friend of mine already that he was not happy with his job. He was 25 years old. He just wanted something more. He wanted his own business, flexibility, and he was hurting his body operating these machines he was doing. I just presented him a dream and said, here's what I've been doing. I've built a company 15 years. I got all these little clients. Here's what it's worth. Here's what it does. If you were to take this on, you could triple your income and you could do it on a fraction of the time you're doing now that allows you to pursue the other things in your life that you'd like.

53:22And he was so excited. We're sitting at Starbucks a few days later talking about this for three hours. Within two weeks, he's going on his first airplane ride ever to go to a cleaning conference with me in Dallas. And two months later, he's got the down payment money to buy the business. And I go through a process to train him and to go through all of my clients and work out arrangements. And some people didn't take the transfer. And I worked that into the price. So people said no. But most of them did. It was a wonderful transition. You got to find the right person. But I'll tell you, you can sell a solo business.

53:56If you do it right, you have to sell the dream, like the dream of what the business can do for him. And here he is, it's two years later, Nick. Everything I sold him would happen for him. He has done it. I'm so proud of him. His name's Ian Trainor, Albany Pure Cleaning in Albany, New York, where I used to be. His business is cruising. He's getting clients on his own. He's fully trained. He's teaching me some things now, actually. But his income is triple what it used to be. and he's working the schedule he wants. And so he's achieved his dream and he's thankful. All right, that's an important note, sell the dream and not in like a scammy sleazy way, but because a typical business buyer investor type is like, I don't want to touch this thing.

54:34The owner was doing all the work. I want to be more hands-off and just get a return on my money. So it's like, you got to find a different type of buyer that's still a sellable asset because of this recurring nature, but just have to position it a little bit differently. Chris, do you think, I mean, is that the end game for ThinkMades? Like you're going to have a big exit down the road? Where do you want to take this thing? No, and this is so controversial what I'm going to say, but I'm going to say it anyway. It's funny. Again, me and Ken were talking about this. You're going to hear that a lot.

55:02I've really changed this past year and a half on what I want out of my businesses. And I've become a lot more clear, precise on what I want. For me, what's important is giving back to my local communities. And there's certain ways that we're doing that now that we weren't financially capable of before. So I'm starting not single mindedly, but I'm starting to reposition the way I view my businesses and the way they're going to continue growing in the future towards community service. So they're not nonprofit, but they're like a profit, nonprofit type of situation where I'm guiding them towards supporting organizations that are really important to me.

55:34So that's one thing. But the other thing is, I actually have reduced intentionally the size of my business the past year and a half of ThinkMades. We were breaking that seven-figure barrier. And I was reaching a point where there's a couple different stages. Like when you go from zero to six-figure business, that's kind of your first business. Usually that's where you start to learn about systems and you start to put them in place. And then from low six figures to low seven figures, there's a whole new set of systems that you have to put in place and a whole new set of people that you have to put in place and a whole new type of work that you have to learn.

56:06And every big chunk of revenue that you ads, you have to keep having your business evolve. At one time, relearning and redoing all that appealed to me. But these days, I actually am very comfortable with the way my business runs, where it's at, the profit margins it has, the client retention that it has. And so I've come to a point where it's actually not desirable to continue growing it because I'd have to sacrifice more in order for it to continue growing both of my time and my money. I'd have to ask more of my people. For us, the company culture is very important. I also run my VA agency. And one of the big things for us when we hire our VAs is that they're coming on because they want their own life too.

56:47They don't just want to work from home job. They want their own work-life balance as well. And we promise them that when they come on with us. And that's what I want for my cleaning teams as well. And so if I were to continue growing bigger, I'd be pushing and pressuring my teams and my managers more than maybe they're capable of, or I'd be taking more away from their life just to continue growing a little bit more. And so now at the stage I'm at in my businesses, it's all about balance. A balance between giving back to my local communities, but also a balance, not just for me as the owner, but for the people who work for me.

57:17And so we're finding a sweet spot where we don't actually need to grow too much more. That's awesome to hear. I think that's a good place to wrap this up as well with like finding that sweet spot, having the business support the lifestyle that you want, support people, support the communities, rather than having it just be a drain and something that you dread doing and all the things that can go into that. Pursuing growth for the sake of growth. Chris mentioned his VA company. That's InovaLocal.com, I-N-O-V-A Local.com, specifically built for local service type of businesses like cleaning companies and LocalBusinessMBA.com.

57:54Like he said, hey, only 10 minutes a day on cleaning operation, but lots of other projects in the fire. Always excited to see what you're up to. Check it out, LocalBusinessMBA.com. Ken is over at Smart Cleaning School. Any parting shots, closing arguments before we wrap up here, Ken? I would say this. You need to really figure out why you're starting a business and what you're trying to accomplish. And take this podcast episode, because we are two diverse and two contrasting models to one industry. And I think this contrasting model could apply to other business models out there. I think it'll be very similar.

58:35So figure out what kind of a business owner you'd like to be. Would you like to do the work because you love the kind of work? You can be therapeutic. You love the feeling of it. And hey, you'd love to stay small and optimize and have four or five day weekends. Or do you want to grow it big and go through that value to spear and push through it and get to the other side where Chris is at and then be able to pursue that lifestyle and freedom on the other end of it? My biggest takeaway is what we talked about already is just pick a side. Don't get stuck in the middle. And both Chris and I, I'm sure Chris would agree that both of us are available.

59:08If you just want to bounce ideas off us, I mean, I have a podcast, Solo Cleaning School. You can check that out. Chris has plenty of resources. I'm available. And so, Nick, my takeaway is just pick a side and don't question it. Pick a side, set a goal, go after the goal and make it happen. I like it. Chris, any closing arguments to add or are you good? That was great advice. I wish I had something profound to say, but I don't. I guess the only thing I'd say is it's all about balance. It's easy when you start your business, whether it's going to be a solo or an agency, whatever stage you're at, it's very easy to get consumed by it.

59:40But you have to put limits in place. You have to have sacred time for exercise, for family, for other parts of your life. Otherwise, it will become all about business. It will become all about money. Even if you never intend that, it might be years before you get out of that trap. And so all I'd say is go with the intention to work hard and honestly, but make sure that you have balance as well when you start your business. Sounds good, guys. Really appreciate you joining me. Really appreciate your involvement and engagement inside the Side Hustle Nation community. And we'll catch up with you soon.

1:00:16Again, big thanks to Chris and Ken for sharing their hard-earned wisdom in today's show. Be sure to check out Chris's stuff at localbusinessmba.com. and you can grab Ken's solo cleaning quick start guide at smartcleaningschool.com. That is it for me. If you liked this conversation or any other Side Hustle Show episode, be sure to tell a friend about it and then hit the subscribe button in your podcast player app. Thank you so much for tuning in. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen and I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show. I'll see you then. Hustle on.