How To Build A Business That Runs Without You: From Technician To Entrepreneur | Andy Seeley

What if the very business you built to create freedom is the one keeping you stuck?

In this must-listen episode of Small Business Pivots, Andy Seeley—Founder & CEO of Creatively Disruptive—uncovers why so many small business owners end up trapped in demanding roles instead of running true businesses. With over a decade of experience helping 120+ small businesses scale through smart marketing and strategic leadership, Andy explains the critical mindset shift from technician to entrepreneur.

Most small business owners aren’t actually entrepreneurs—they’re skilled professionals who monetized their talent but never made the leap to ownership thinking. Andy challenges listeners to stop doing everything and start building systems, teams, and processes that allow them to grow, scale, and step away.

From empowering analogies like “be the captain, not the crew,” to real talk about why underpricing causes staffing headaches, Andy drops gold-level advice on what it really takes to grow a business that doesn’t rely on you.

💡 Key insights include:

• The 80% Rule: Why perfection is the enemy of delegation
• Why character trumps skill in every hiring decision
• How underpricing kills your ability to find (and keep) great people
• The importance of defining your “exit strategy”—even if you never plan to sell

If you’ve ever felt stuck in your business instead of confidently leading it, this episode will help you reframe your role and reclaim your freedom.

Andy Seeley: Founder & CEO of Creatively Disruptive

Website: https://creativelydisruptive.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyseeley/

Blog: https://creativelydisruptive.com/lovesmarketing/

#SmallBusinessPivots #AndySeeley #CreativelyDisruptive #BusinessCoaching #BusinessGrowth #EntrepreneurMindset #FromTechnicianToEntrepreneur #BuildToScale #TeamBuilding #ExitStrategy #WorkOnYourBusiness #BusinessSystems #ScalingStrategies #BusinessLeadership #HiringTips #BossBusiness #BusinessOwnershipSimplified #BOSS #MichaelDMorrison #GrowWithBOSS #SmallBusinessTips #MindsetShift #StopUnderpricing #ReclaimYourFreedom #SmartHiring #OklahomaCity

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Andy Seeley
• 9:02 The Business Owner vs Entrepreneur Mindset
• 16:23 Transitioning from Job Owner to Business Owner
• 25:34 Building Teams and Scaling Your Business
• 32:59 Finding and Hiring Good Employees
• 39:21 Final Thoughts on Exit Strategy

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

All right, welcome to another Small Business, pivots, where we bring guests from around the world, and today we have another special guest. But I know only the business owner can say their name and their business. Like the business owner, so I'll let you have the floor to introduce yourself and your business and just tell us a little bit about what you do.

Speaker 2: 0:18

Sure, my name is Andy Seeley. I am the CEO and founder of Creatively Disruptive, which is a small, business-focused marketing firm. We have about 110, 120 clients right now. All small businesses, all are ma's and pa's and they range between service industry-type businesses to kids' activity businesses type businesses to kids activity businesses a lot of kids activity businesses, mainly because my wife is a gymnastics coach and we owned a gym for a little while. So we we got a little bit of that business going on. And, uh, e-commerce so we've got a little bit of an e-commerce brand as well. That's a bit smaller. About 10 10 of the 120 or so of our clients are e-commerce. That's doing very well but, yes, basically every single one of them, even the e-commerce brands, are small businesses, families with hopes and dreams and wishful thinking and trying to get the American dream and make things happen.

Speaker 1: 1:22

Fantastic. Well, before we introduce the show, how do you think we're going to help our listeners today?

Speaker 2: 1:29

Well, I think, yeah, I've been in this business for 25 years, credibly Disruptive has been in business for 10 years, which is a lifetime, if I'm honest, in the marketing industry, especially digital marketing industry. We're a very old company in this industry, but there's a couple of common factors that we see all the time between the successful and the not successful, and that is what I'd like to talk to us to get the magic source of what I see out of the hundreds of businesses I've worked with. The commonalities between the and some of the stuff that we'll talk about might be uncomfortable for people to listen to, but I will 100% guarantee that it is a difference maker.

Speaker 1: 2:15

Absolutely there are. The challenges are common in most small businesses. So we're going to share that right after we introduce the show Simplified for success. Our business is helping yours grow. Boss offers business loans with business coaching support. Apply in minutes and get approved and funded in as little as 24 to 48 hours at businessownershipsimplifiedcom. All right, welcome back to Small Business Pivots, Andy. Where would you like to start?

Speaker 2: 3:06

Well, I think one of the things I want to go through kind of what a lot of business owners have spoken to me about as their problems and a lot of the times when we brought it be brought in as a company, because the reality is, whilst I'd call ourselves a digital marketing company, we've really become a revenue growth company. So a lot of companies come to us when their revenue is on the downslide or stuck and not growing and they're like we don't know what's going on here, we can't grow, we need to hire somebody to help us get more customers and oftentimes us get more customers. Right, and oftentimes the answer is not just you need to have better google ads. Um, oftentimes, in fact, all the times, they're not just better google ads or better facebook ads or better website or better whatever is, and a lot of times I think small business owners that have a small amount of uh resources don't have an endless amount of money to just throw stuff at things and see what happens end up spinning their wheels and doing a lot of things that actually don't move the, I guess, the needle in the direction that they want. They get very frustrated. So a lot of times, what I hear from clients when they're new is.

Speaker 2: 4:22

I was working with these agencies. I was working with these agencies. I was working with these people. I'm so frustrated. I've been burnt by all these people. I've been burned and burned and burned, and oftentimes it's, it's very much similar stuff. Hey, you've, you've you've gone to a vet to to see why your plants are dying Right? Or you've, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're? You know you're taking your motorcycle into the car dealership to be worked on by a guy that specializes in fixing trucks. Or you know you're going to the wrong place and the wrong people to try to get a fix and they're going to do what they're really good at and you're going to pay for their service and you're going to walk away going. Well, I guess this part of my business is working a little bit better, but I have still got the same problem. I see that all the time. Um, and we've actually uh, not because I promise not to get too deeply into the ai thing, but with ai, we're seeing loads of people talk about that as the fix as well, and oftentimes it's just another. It's just another thing that you can spend a lot of money on, which there is value in it, but if you don't correct some of the stuff beforehand, which is kind of almost like time and memoriam kind of issues, right it. It's not a technology problem, it's a human mindset problem.

Speaker 2: 5:48

And you know, to cut to the chase a little bit, what I see typically with business owners is very few business owners are true entrepreneurs. A true entrepreneur, in my mind, is somebody that wants to start a business. They don't care what the business is, they want to run a really good, they want to build a business. They want to. You know, they want to have a really good operating systems and they want to build it out and and and build a business and sell a product or a service and and and maybe at some point it gets to a certain size and they sell it and they move on. They start another business and they don't really care what the product or service is, but they love building businesses. They love the hiring and the building of teams and the putting of everything together.

Speaker 2: 6:30

That's about 0.5% of the people that start businesses. 99.5% of people who start businesses are people who are really good at something and they go oh, I'll start a business doing this. So it might be a guy who painted some neighbor's houses and did a really, really good job. And he's like you know what? I could paint houses for a living. I'm going to go and I'm going to start a business Andy's Paint Shop. I'm going to go. I'll start my business by printing out some business cards and I get some flies.

Speaker 2: 7:04

I go out and suddenly I'm painting five houses a month or six houses a month. I don't know how long it takes to paint a house, but whatever it is, and I'm making $10,000, $15,000 a month. I'm rich, I'm a business owner and I'm painting houses all day. And then it suddenly turns into man. I'm working six days a week, seven days a week, painting houses. I'm making okay money, but I can't make any more money. But if I stop make painting these houses, I'm not making any money. I can't go on vacation. I can't enjoy family events. I'm working all the time, I'm earning good money, but I don't have a life.

Speaker 2: 7:43

I've now become a slave to my business and my business owns me. My business owns my time and many business owners kind of that's their entry point into a business. Not let's create a business that serves me, but oh, I'm good at this thing, I can make money doing this. It becomes a business. But if you're not thinking about it sensibly, it becomes a business. But if you're not thinking about it sensibly, if you're not thinking about it with a plan of how you want your life to be, your business will enslave you, and it's more.

Speaker 2: 8:15

Most people have heard of you own a job. Right, I actually think it's worse than that. The business ultimately enslaves you because you can't leave it. You can't quit. You can't quit, you can't stop. You end up having commitments. You buy a nicer house because you're earning $20,000 a month painting houses like crazy, seven days a week. You've got to pay the mortgage, you've got to do stuff and I've seen people literally cascade into mental health issues, all sorts of problems, marital mental health issues, all sorts of problems uh what?

Speaker 2: 8:46

Marriage, marital breakups, all sorts of stuff because their life is suddenly is taken away from them and all they do is whatever their, what, whatever their. Their profession is house painting, what could be, whatever it could be baker could be, you know builder, you know plumber, you know anything that's. You know a business that you think oh, I'm pretty good at this, I know some things about this, I'm going to try it. So that is the problem, that is the difficulty. The people who are successful most of them that I've ever spoken to started that way, but what they were really successful at is transitioning out of that, which is, you know I know, michael, you probably tell us all the time is your specialty to try to help people transition out of that, but that transitioning out of that is the key to happiness, key to success and the key to turning that. That slave master, which is your job Sorry, not your job. That slave master, which is your job Sorry, not your job.

Speaker 1: 9:48

Well, I guess it is your job. It is a job.

Speaker 2: 9:49

Your business into a business that serves you, so you can go on a vacation. You can leave for two months, like I'm going on vacation in December. I won't be back till the middle of February. I'm going to New Zealand. In New Zealand it's the summer down there at that time of the year and it's beautiful. Right, I go down there. I'm going to go down there, and I would be very surprised if the business is not in a better space in February than it was in December. Not because they're all like, oh, thank God, andy's gone, we can actually do some proper work. No, it's because it's just the evolution of the company. We've got it set up in a way that the people that are working in it are actually doing their stuff. And hey, instead of us having 120 clients, we'll have 130 clients in February, and I didn't have to do anything because I'm on a beach in New Zealand and that's what I want for business owners and you can absolutely have it.

Speaker 2: 10:49

What we don't let go of, what was always ours as business owners, is the liability we carry the liability of owning a company. If something bad happens, if an employee does something bad, or whatever it does, ultimately come back to us and we've got to deal with it. That's the downside that you can't really escape from. But you can escape from it with good processes, good systems, hiring the right people, insurance, legal setups, asset protection strategies. That's why all these things exist to help protect the small business owner from the liability, which is actually something that you can't escape from right. But there's things to manage it and to make it a little bit better and a little bit easier, and I've never been concerned about it. In fact, I'll probably never be an employee of anybody's. I'm probably a damaged employee. Now. I'd be a horrible employee. I'd probably be lazy. They would think I was lazy, they'd think I'm lazy and entitled, and whatever I want to do, I'd be just terrible, right.

Speaker 1: 11:51

I tell you, I've got some business owners that have told me their drive that keeps them going is because they know they're not employable. Right Exactly.

Speaker 2: 12:01

It's true, it's true. I mean, most of us who have had especially successful businesses would be terrible employees at this stage, right, Because we've got habits that have been developed in a different way. But you know, with that being said, you know I'll go away. I'm going to be driving. I was talking to you before we started, Michael Sorry, I'm a New Zealander, so we shorten everyone's names. We're going to be driving to Texas and then driving to Illinois and then driving to South Dakota, and blah, blah, blah. That's going to be about a 19-day drive experiment of whether or not we like each other Experiment.

Speaker 1: 12:41

I like that, not an experience. An experiment of whether or not we like each other Experiment.

Speaker 2: 12:44

I like that Not an experience, an experiment, experiment of whether or not our family will stay together during that period. But we're going to be doing that and I won't be checking in a whole bunch. I'll be checking in a little bit but I'm not going to be working eight hour days, I'll be working 30 minute days and I'll be checking in to see if there's any questions or any difficulties and the team runs itself in to see if there's any questions or any difficulties and the team runs itself. And that is what I work on 100% of the time. I don't work on anything else. And all of the business owners, the really successful, out of the 120 businesses that we work with, I'd say 60 of them are in that spot. 40 of them are kind of newer, I guess, working with us and they're kind of working through our processes to help them get to that understanding. And then say 20 of them are kind of like in that transition period where they're working really hard to make that transition to join the 60. The 60 that are doing it are doing well and they seem to do well, regardless of economy. I mean now maybe they do better, but they do well.

Speaker 2: 13:50

The ones that are technicians I call it technicians and business owners. The ones that are technicians, which are the ones that own the job and are the slave. Bad things happen to the economy. They get smashed, they get hurt. When COVID happened, our clients that were more on the technician side, they went out of business because they were like think of the painter analogy. Covid happens all of a sudden, you can't paint any houses. What's going on? What am I going to do those painters?

Speaker 2: 14:24

Oftentimes they didn't actually have they had partnerships. They didn't have EIN numbers, they didn't have employees, they didn't have anything, so they couldn't access all of the help that the federal government gave. That helped my business owners. My business owners were able to. I mean, a lot of our clients during that period were actually gymnastics, gyms and swim schools and so forth, which they were closed down Six months they were closed down forcibly by the government.

Speaker 2: 14:50

Almost all of them, though, got high hundreds of thousands of dollars of assistance from the government because they kept their staff on board. They got the PPP, which was employment assistance. They got assistance from the Small Business Administration. There was a lot of things that helped them, those that didn't treat themselves like a business that they did all the work themselves. They pretty much went out of business because they had no employees, there was no assistance and they couldn't work. They couldn't do anything. What they did do was just go on unemployment for six months. But if you're making $15,000 a month painting houses and then suddenly you drop to $700 a week, that's probably going to cause some problems. But there you go. There's a long you nailed it.

Speaker 1: 15:46

You need to write a book on that. It's obvious that you've worked with a lot of small business owners, so there was a point in your story, though, that you were like they're, they're working a job and then they transition to the business works for them, to the business works for them.

Speaker 2: 16:06

I'll be honest that part.

Speaker 1: 16:07

right there is the hardest part of the transition and I see so many business owners they're like they get to that point where they go. Something's got to change. And so they invest in the coaching, the consulting or a business mentor or whatever it doesn't matter and then they quit because they're like this is just more work, Right, I'd rather go back to painting houses all day than try to fix my business. So in that transition period, what have you seen that people can motivate themselves to? Just plow through it because it will get better?

Speaker 2: 16:37

Yeah, I don't even know if it's a motivation thing. What I think it is is a them coming to terms thing. It's a them changing their brain patterns and how they think about life and themselves and the way things operate, change in mentality that, um, I'm okay with something being done at 80 of what I could do it at if I don't have to do it right. Um, you know, a lot of times what I see is and it doesn't mean that it has to be 80 of how good, because sometimes some of the stuff that you think you're the best at, um, it's just a control thing. Right, you're actually not the best at it. There's maybe a different house painter that's actually better than you. But because you've done it yourself and you know that it's done, and blah, blah, you feel like, okay, I've done it, I'm the one who I can rely on. I can't rely on anybody. Can I add something?

Speaker 1: 17:39

to what you just said yeah, for our business, because you made a valid point without actually saying it. Remember what we said earlier business owners are not good employees and most business owners think they do it the best way. So that's kind of a contradiction, right it?

Speaker 2: 17:56

is. It is and and I think you know that mentality is actually stops the scaling. So scaling is where the money is to be made. The idea is not how do you paint a house at any one time. The idea is how do you paint 10 houses at any one time? So how do you have 10 houses being painted at the same time? That's where the real money is and the reality is the way you do that is by building a team, and you build a team of good people. The problem is, when you start building a team of people, is that you need processes, you need standards, you need management and you know where.

Speaker 2: 18:36

I think a lot of the small business owners that are successful put a lot of their time is figuring out how to get the best out of people. What I see is the really successful guys, the ones that are doing personally high six figures, maybe seven figures income. They're very good at building teams, very good at finding good people, very good at getting the most out of those people. I find that the majority of my job is not interacting with clients. There was a time when we started the business where I knew all the clients, in fact, some of our clients. One of our clients was our very first client that we ever got and they're still a client of ours 10 years later, which is a feather in our cap. I guess they're a personal friend of mine now because I found them, I brought them in, I helped them, I worked with them. I don't work with them at all now. The team works with them. But the new ones that are coming on, probably in the last five years, I don't really have a relationship with them.

Speaker 2: 19:44

But there's no way we could have had 120 businesses that we serve if I was operating like I did when we started. Right, we probably would have maxed out at 20, maybe even 15. And you know, what building a team around me has allowed me to do is scale to get to 120. What building a team around me has allowed me to do is scale to get to 120. That is like building. You know I always kind of use this analogy a little bit. I'd rather have like lots of little vending machines where I make a little bit of money out of all of them than five vending machines where I have one vending machine where I make all my money out of it, right. So I feel like I look at it and I got 120 clients making it. I'm personally making a little bit of money from all those clients. If one goes away, I haven't, it hasn't really affected me and if I can add 10, my income goes up a little bit and I feel very like as a, as a, as a human and as a dad and a husband.

Speaker 2: 20:39

I feel very calm and collected about my situation because we were able to scale to a point where I have very little concerns about the future of our business and we've hired very good people. We've put in very good processes, which is stuff that you should learn. But the biggest and those are not hard things to learn right there's a lot of companies out there, like yourselves and like others, that will help people figure out processes and systems and so forth. Those are not hard things to learn. What is the hardest thing in my mind is the person deciding I'm not going to paint any more houses anymore. To paint any more houses anymore. I am going to focus on working with a Michael Morrison, getting my systems and processes and the way I'm operating correct, get my headspace and mentality correct, find the best people I can find who are great at painting houses, manage those people right. And then even the next step is getting management below you that are managing them day to day. So you don't even really talk to your painters anymore because you've got really great management who really know how to get the houses painted. And then at that point you're not looking at how the company is operating, you're looking at where you want to take the company.

Speaker 2: 21:59

And that is another analogy. I'm a big one on analogies. So that takes you to the point where you really start going somewhere is where you become the captain of the ship and not the crewman of the ship. And the way I look at that is a captain sits in his captain's room with this to think of an 1800s sailing ship Right, he's in his captain's room and he's got his charts and everything and he's mapping out where he's going to go. He doesn't hold the tiller, he doesn't pull up the sails, he doesn't swab the decks. He has a crew that does that. He has a first mate or a first officer that might be, and even the first officer's not holding the tiller. There's a sailor that's holding it and they're just saying pull it over here.

Speaker 2: 22:43

We're going in that direction, we're doing this, but the captain's in his cabin with his charts, saying, okay, we need to get, we're here and we want to get here. This is how we're going to do it to avoid these rocks and this storm and this thing and that thing and get the boat safely from this place to this place. And it's truly the only person that can do it as the captain. Truly the only person that can do it in a business is the owner. You can't hire that out. That is going to be the owner of the business.

Speaker 2: 23:19

Or, if you step to another stage, you could get to the point where you're the member of the board. Right, you're an owner who's a member of the board, or just an investor, a stockholder. You might be 100% stockholder and you have a director who actually is running the ship. But then, in my mind, you're the admiral. Right, the admiral's not telling each ship where to go and what rocks to miss. He's saying, saying we're moving our ships to this or hey, these ships, you know, we want to serve this, this, uh port and that port and this port and these people and it, and it just grows on different levels and that's how you scale. You can't stay at the bottom scrubbing the decks and hope you can actually have 20 ships. Does that make sense? I feel like I've kind of gone. I've done a trump there, where trump talks about stuff and then it's like what is he? What's going on?

Speaker 1: 24:14

no, no, that was good stuff. So we're talking about a team. So, yes, one of the challenges I hear from a lot of business owners is where are all the good employees? So how do people find them? I wouldn't say find them. How do they onboard them or recruit them? You're listening to Small Business Pivots.

Speaker 1: 24:37

This podcast is produced by my company, boss. Our business is helping yours grow. Boss offers business loans with business coaching support. Apply in minutes and get approved and funded in as little as 24 to 48 hours at businessownershipsimplifiedcom. If you're enjoying this podcast, don't forget to hit the subscribe button and share it as well. Now let's get back to our special guest to hit the subscribe button and share it as well. Now let's get back to our special guest. So we're talking about a team. So one of the challenges I hear from a lot of business owners is where are all the good employees? So how do people find them? I wouldn't say find them. How do they onboard them or recruit them to where they have good employees? Because I've seen business owners thinking well, if I just hire some people and then they're running a daycare because they've got six misfits on their team and it's created more havoc and chaos.

Speaker 2: 25:36

Let me give you some real life stuff. This is the biggest issue in the kids activity center realm right. So we've probably, of our 120 clients, we've probably got 60 in the kids activity center realm right. So we probably, of our 120 clients, we probably got 60 clients at kids activity centers. Those, though, the biggest issue in the kids activity center industry is staffing right. Oftentimes they've got waiting lists, they've got all sorts of stuff and that's you know. Oftentimes when, when a client comes to us and they're saying, oh, help me grow, and the first thing we have to do is actually unplug their business, because we could bring loads of mums to their business, but if they've already got waiting lists, we're just going to have longer waiting lists, and that doesn't actually help anything. So one of the things that is almost 100% of the time the issue is that they can't find staff, and that is almost always based on the fact of how much they're willing to pay right. That oftentimes is based on the fact that they don't charge their true value, so they don't actually charge enough, which stops them from being able to um, you know, pay people. You know to get good people. Now that not charging enough is oftentimes something that happens because they're worried about losing customers. They're worried about getting customers. They think that I have to be cheap to get customers.

Speaker 2: 26:54

The reality is no one buys any service, especially gymnastics classes for kids. But no one buys any service to save money no one does. No one buys a service to save money no one does. No one buys a service because they're saving money. If you truly are wanting to save money, you won't buy the service Right and that's everything right, even food right. I don't buy food to save money. I buy food to keep myself alive, right, and I will pay a lot of money. If the only place that I can get food is Michael, I'm going to pay. Whatever you charge, you have to have food Right. So, business owners getting out of the mindset of you know, I need to charge, I'm scared of raising my prices because I'm worried about not getting customers. Customers don't buy things to save money, so that means it's about value, it's about what does the customer get is really what it's all about.

Speaker 2: 27:52

And also, if you're a business that isn't marketing and I use this term, I try to change this term with all the business owners. I do a lot of speaking. I try to change this term with all the business owners. I do a lot of speaking. I'm actually going to a Congress in July and August and I'll be speaking to about 500 business owners and I will say to them, instead of thinking about marketing and advertising, which makes every small business owner go oh, because they all say I've been burnt by a million people mainly because they're trying to get these companies to fix things that the company can't fix Right, but they, they have a bad feeling towards marketing.

Speaker 2: 28:32

Stop thinking of it as marketing, advertising thinking. Thinking of it as effectively communicating with your community. So is it important for you to communicate with your community as a business owner? I don't know a single business owner that's ever said to me no, it's not important for me to communicate to my community. Almost all of them have said yes, and I'm not doing a good job. All right, well, that's what marketing and advertising is. So let's just stop using that term and just say communicating with your community. If you communicate very effectively with your community, you'll have more people looking at what you're doing.

Speaker 2: 29:02

So let's use a kids activity center. But it could be anything, it could be a plumber, it could be any service, right, but let's say, a kids activity center, I'll use gymnastics because my wife owned one and I understand kind of that. You know I can walk through that. So kids activity center owner only wants to charge 50 bucks a month because I'm worried about reaching getting customers and if I raise prices to $100 a month I'm going to lose customers and I won't be able to get any more because I don't know how to get customers and I'm not really doing a good job of getting customers Because I can only charge $50 a month. The only people I can hire are teenagers because no one really wants to work for me for a little bit over minimum wage.

Speaker 2: 29:44

And then I'm caught in this thing where my product is poor and I've got parents complaining and writing Google reviews that I didn't pay a company to have kids teaching my kids and that's a very common thing that we see all the time. That literal scenario is the thing that we hear all the time and we see all the time. That literal scenario is the thing that we hear all the time and we see all the time. So the way to fix it is you make sure you're communicating effectively with your community, so everybody. That's important. So if you're a gymnastics gym it would be. We want to make sure that every single mom in your community, within a 10 mile radius of your location or where you serve, knows that you exist and knows why you're great. Right, so that's start one.

Speaker 2: 30:24

So you start getting an influx of calls. You get an influx of calls and then all of a sudden, you're in a situation where your supply is here and your demand is here, right? So if demand and supply are out of whack, where supply is lower than demand, then most people understand that an easy fix to that is you raise prices. Right, that's why inflation happens. Right, we've got a lot more dollars chasing a lot less goods, right? So so you're. You're communicating with your community effectively.

Speaker 2: 30:56

There's lots of people showing an interest because they didn't know that you existed and, quite frankly, google, facebook and instagram is where all small businesses local small businesses should be to explain this is what we are and this is what we do. You'll get those incoming inquiries. You now know that people are interested. You now know that people are finding you. You raise your prices. All of a sudden, you have excess money coming in, right, so instead of getting $50, you're getting $75, getting 75, right? All of a sudden, you've got an extra 25 per class. If you've got 10 kids in a class, it's an extra 250 an hour. Give some raise instead of paying minimum wage and getting a whole bunch of teenagers pay 25 an hour and start getting some adults get. Get some people that are good.

Speaker 2: 31:45

You know, if you're a painter, pay good money for your painters so you get real good tradesmen that are interested in you. If there's other painting companies and you're paying more than the other painting companies, the good painters and those other painting companies will come over to you. The good coaches and the other gymnastics gym will come over to you. The good coaches in the other gymnastics gym will come over to you because, oh, I'm getting paid $18 an hour at this gymnastics gym and I'm a top-rated coach, but I can go to Andy's gym and get $25. Andy's raised the amount that he charges and he's making $250 an hour and he's making loads of money anyway and the value, which is what I originally spoke about, has gone through the roof because all of a sudden, the parents aren't complaining about kids coaching kids. The parents are like wow, this 30-year-old ex-gymnast who is now teaching my kid. This is wonderful, this is amazing and that 30-year-old can give a lot more to my kid than what a teenager can.

Speaker 2: 32:43

That the painter that's been. You know that I've sourced from another, from a, from a competitor. Um, who's working for me is now, you know, doing such great work. The reviews start going up. People start talking to people. Everyone's got a house, everyone needs to paint one once in a while. Everyone starts out with I'll walk across the road and say who painted your house? Oh, andy's painting company did, and they did a great job. They had a guy came in, he just knew his stuff and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So it comes down to in my mind a lot of times it's paying Like, if you can't find people in this area country, it's not because there aren't people.

Speaker 2: 33:26

There's 330 million people that live in the United States. I live in Phoenix and we've got in the Phoenix greater area. There's about four and a half million people. If I want three human beings to work for me, I can find them right. If I'm charging $6,000 to paint your house, I can probably afford. And it takes 20, you know, it takes, let's say, 40 hours to paint your house. I can probably. I can probably charge, you know, pay 30, 35, $40 an hour for my painter to paint it and I'll still have profit. And guess what? I'm not painting it. I'm in New Zealand on a beach.

Speaker 2: 34:07

All of a sudden, I'm doing better and it might sound very kind of like oh yeah, just pay people more. Well, because you're out there painting all day. You're not spending time honing your skills on how to find really good people, on how to interview good people, right? I tend to weigh my decision-making on good people much more heavily on character and personality than I do skills or experience. However, you know, with something like painting, if you're wanting to have somebody go and get on a painting job, you probably want that. But if you're looking at 10 experienced painters, you're choosing the one with the best personality and the best characteristics and character. Right? That's the difference. You know, if they've all got two years of experience, I don't think I'm going to hire the guy with five years. If he looks like he was drunk when he came into the meeting, right into the interview, or he maybe had a hard night the night before. I want to hire the guy that seems like he's got it together and he answers the questions well and he communicates well and he's really effective. He represents the company, because the painters that are going to people's houses are going to represent the company, right, and you just hire a higher grade of human and that in itself will solve the problem.

Speaker 2: 35:25

I think a lot of business owners get into exactly what you said, which is a problem. They hire bodies, yeah, and they think the body count will fix the problem, and, honestly, it's the opposite. If you're just hiring body counts, it's going to be a major problem. We spoke about liabilities. The real, true thing that business owners take on is liability and difficulty. Liability is probably the biggest thing. You hire the wrong people. That becomes a nightmare, right, yeah.

Speaker 1: 35:55

Yeah, and we always remind business owners that don't forget that you usually hire for skill set. Most business owners hire for skill set and fire on character or a character flaw. They could be tardy, they could be stolen something from the company, drunk when they came into work, but it's usually never. We fire them because of skill set. Every once in a while they might be lacking some skills, but most of the time it's a character flaw. So what is it? Slow to hire, quick to fire.

Speaker 2: 36:29

And I always look at it as you know. You're not discounting the fact that you need someone with some skills, but it can't be the key factor of why you hire you. For me it's like if I'm hiring, I'm like you need to have these skills to get into the room to talk to me. You have these skills Great. Then I'm trying to find out if you're a great person and we'll test to see if you actually have some bare skills and minimum skills to actually do what you want to do. But I've seen time and time again, if somebody's got great character, great work ethic and a really good person, I can actually increase and better their skills quite easily. A really good person I can actually increase and better their skills quite easily. If they're a flawed character and flawed by nature, there's almost nothing I can do to increase their skill set.

Speaker 1: 37:16

Yeah, they've got to be trainable right, Exactly. That's a good character.

Speaker 2: 37:21

And that gets into the will of the way. Have you heard of the will of the way thought process where, when you're trying to figure out whether or not somebody should be fired or whether, as a good employee, you look at them and you go do they know the way to do something or do they not have the will to do it? And if they don't know the way to do it, you teach them how to do it. If they don't have the will to do it, you fire them. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 37:44

Amen. Well, I know you've just kind of wet people's ears wanting to know more about you. Where's the best place to follow you? Engage with you Right? So the?

Speaker 2: 37:57

best place to follow us is go to creativelydisruptivecom and you can yeah, there's a lot of stuff on there. Go to YouTube and search for Creatively Disruptive and you'll see a lot of me talking about a lot of stuff and you can definitely engage through there. I don't run the social media parts of the business. If you do want to speak to me, reach out to the team and the team will talk, because, if I'm honest, I truly want to live what I'm preaching, which is I want to spend time swimming in the pool with my seven-year-old, not painting houses. Yeah, right, amen, yeah.

Speaker 2: 38:37

But I also love the game of the small business owner and I love helping small business owners discover what they deserve, especially living in this country. The United States is a wonderful country. I'm an immigrant, a legal immigrant, that loves the opportunity that was given to me and I want every American and every person that's in here to benefit it. I truly believe small business owners are the powerhouse of the United States. It's where the hopes and dreams are, it's where the greatness of America lives, and all large businesses started as small businesses Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 39:14

Absolutely, they reach out to me creativelydisruptivecom. We do have ashweststrategycom, which is more on the e-com side. If you've got an e-com business that you're looking at starting or that you've started and you need some help with, but from a local owned business, creatively Disruptive is the place to go and go to the YouTube page for us Just find Creatively Disruptive on YouTube.

Speaker 1: 39:38

Well, I always end our shows with a question, and that is if you were in a room full of business owners, different industries, different sizes, what's one thing that a tip, an insight, a quote, a book, whatever it is that could be applicable to all of them, something you've learned or come across?

Speaker 2: 39:56

And this is business, all sorts of different like different levels everything.

Speaker 2: 40:00

Yeah, I would say. I would say the most applicable is what is your exit strategy? Why are you doing this? Exit strategy doesn't mean you need to get out of the business. An exit strategy going back to the what the uh talking about the ship and the captain charting his course. The exit strategy is the destination. Right, like most ships, you get to the destination. It doesn't necessarily be where this ship is scrapped and sold off and everything. Yeah, you can choose another destination over that.

Speaker 2: 40:36

But what is your clear destination? And in a room of business owners that will, for me, sort out the guys that have trouble and need help to the ones that are really good and going well, and either way, I, I win with that information, right? Um, I want to. I want you know if I speak to you and you say to me Andy, yeah, this is what we're looking to do. In three years time, we want to be at $3 million of revenue. Um, I want to be doing, you know, 800,000 profit and we're looking to sell that business for $3 million and at that point I might be looking at some other options. I would look at that as well. That's a really good answer. I'll go to another person, I'll say what do you mean? Exit strategy? I don't see myself ever selling this. I need to be painting the houses every day to pay my mortgage. That's a good answer too, but it tells me a different story.

Speaker 1: 41:28

Correct. Well, clarity is key, as I've always found out so well. You've been a blessing to many and a wealth of information. Appreciate your time on the show. I wish we had a whole bunch more time because I feel like we just barely dipped our toe in the water, but we are out of time. So, again, I appreciate you coming on and sharing your insights with our audience. Thank you, michael, and hope to talk to you soon. Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you for listening to small business pivots. This podcast is created and produced by my company boss. Our business is growing. Yours, boss offers flexible business loans with business coaching support. Apply in minutes and get approved and funded in as little as 24 to 48 hours at businessownershipsimplifiedcom. If you're enjoying this podcast, don't forget to hit the subscribe button and share it as well. If you need help growing your business, email me at michael at michaeldmorrisoncom. We'll see you next time on Small Business Pivots.