Overcoming Adversity: A Inspiring Tale of Job to Business Transformation – 91 Days Success Podcast

Transcript:

As I built those processes and I started to hire great people, and I started to put better systems in place, and I was able to take the pressure off of me and off of my team. I fell in love with running my agency again. So now what I have is options. I have a, I have an agency that’s worth something. I have a business that I love.

I have clients that I help, that I love, and I have a team that I love dearly.

Hi, and welcome back to the 91 Day Success Podcast. Last week we talked with Lyn Askin, and we had such a great time while we were chatting that we decided to turn Lyn’s episode into two separate episodes themselves. Here’s part two, and make sure you stick around because last week we talked about some great technology and some fun stories.

Today the story gets a lot more serious. But the outcome’s amazing. One of the things I know you’ve done pertaining to that, Lynn, is you’ve really systematized your business and brought in standards and that, can you tell us a little bit about what drove you to that, that objective to systematize things and some of the things you’ve done along the way that have helped you in that process?

Sure. This is a cool story and I love telling it and., for many years we just enough and, we struggled and there were definitely things in my business that only I could do. All of the great business books, the Revisited, and all of those things say, if when you work like that, you don’t have a business, you have a job.

Correct. For many years I had a job in. Let me see if I can get the timeline right here. It was October of 2022. Oh, I’m sorry. October 2020. I was tired. , I was worn out. We were working really hard a lot of things going on and I was just getting burned out. And I was asking myself, man, why do I feel this bad?

Why am I so outta shape? Why am I so fat? And all of these things. And then as it turned out, I suffered a massive pulmonary embolism. I was sick. Oh, wow. And when that happens that day I had to do probably two of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my life. I had to walk into my son’s room and I had to tell him that dad’s in trouble and I don’t know if I’ll see you again, and I don’t know how this is gonna go.

Whoa. That’s the second hardest thing I ever. . First hardest thing I ever had to do is I had to turn around and walk out of that room. , I can’t imagine. And so that 30 minute drive to the hospital which I’m sure my wife was driving, what was beyond reasonable and prudent to get me there quickly, but it felt like forever.

And they say your life passes in front of your eyes when you’re dying. That’s not exactly what happened to me. All I could think about Jonathan was what kind of mess did I just leave my wife and my family? They’re going to have to, my wife is gonna have to go down to my office. She’s gonna have to lock the door.

She’s gonna have to fire all of our employees and she’s gonna have to fire all of our clients. Because I did not have a business. I had a job. No one could have taken over what I, the mess that I.

So let that sink in for just a minute. That’s so powerful, Lynn. Luckily I’m still here today. I survived. Most people don’t. And two out of three people that do die from a massive pulmonary embolism die within the first two hours. Wow. And somehow I made it I was given a second chance.

And so obviously after a little recovery, a little bit of time spent just getting healthy again to where I could get up and move around and be able to catch my breath and, lots of medicine to dissolve blood clots. I got on a mission and my mission was, at first I thought, man I think I just need to sell this business and spend more time with my family.

I spoke to some friends who were in the business of buying and selling agencies, and it just wasn’t enough money. I wasn’t in a position that I could get enough, that I could actually retire and quit. And so what I asked myself next was, how could I make it worth enough? What would I have to do to push that number up enough where I could actually retire someday and have a real business?

Sellable asset for my family’s future. And so I listened to several podcasts, read a lot of books and the gist of what I needed to do next was I needed to create a business where the CEO wasn’t involved in the day-to-day, because that means the company has good people and it has good processes.

And I had to build a company that was profit. . And so I got on a mission to do those things. I started taking myself out of day-to-day. I hired great people. I got us in, better project management. Roles. I invested in, click up, invested in training for click up. I invested in an, the EOS implementer, someone to come in and help us really put the entrepreneurial operating system in place for our agency.

Spend a lot of money doing those things. But honestly I have a business now that’s sellable. I have recurring revenue. But as I built those processes and I started to hire great people and I started to put better systems in place and I was able to take the pressure off of me and off of my team, I fell in love with running my agency again.

So now what I have is options. I have an agency that’s worth. . I have a business that I love. I have clients that I help that I love, and I have a team that I love dearly. And going from winging it and flying by the seat of your pants to a very systemized process for client acquisition, for fulfillment, for hiring, for firing, for hr, for accounting, all of those things I was able to put those in place in my business over the last couple of.

Now, what an amazing story. And I think, boy, you just really hit home when I hear, wow, what have I left my wife and my son with? And the answer your mind is a mess. And to see what you’ve done over the last few years, to change that around is truly just amazing. And then to know that out of that you’ve decided so selfless.

Become a coach and teach others as you do through seven figure agency, how to do the exact same thing you’ve done. So personally I want to thank you cuz it’s made a big difference in, in my life as well. Thanks. What a great story. Amazing thing. Before, before we wrap up, one of the things that we call this the 91 Day Success podcast, and one of the questions that I like to ask everybody along the way, If you had to start over and the reason we wanted, by the way, do this is I know a lot of people are looking at the next couple years and thinking, you know what?

Economically, probably gonna get a bit harder. Maybe it’s a good time to start a side hustle. Maybe I’ve lost my job, or I’m worried about losing my job and I need to look at starting a business. and I love hearing what seasoned mentors like yourself think about if they had to start over and they had a thousand bucks, which I think most everybody could come up with if they have to.

They had didn’t have to worry about food. They didn’t have to worry about lodging. They had a computer. They had a phone. They, but they had a thousand bucks. What would you do if you had to start over? First, 91 days or three months to build a business that was going to be able to have an ongoing revenue stream or earn money ongoing.

What would you do in the first three months, Lynn to start that? This is a fantastic question and I don’t have this fully thought out, but I’ll tell you how I’d start. That’d be great. I tell anyone who will listen or anyone who ask. Hey, Lynn, how do I start a business?

Here’s what I tell them. Find a group of people that you love to work with. Figure out what their biggest problem is and solve it. . So that’s the basis and the foundation of everything that I would do. If I had to start over, I would find a group of people that I like to work with, whether it’s plumbers or dentists or whatever it.

I would find a group of people that I like to work with and I would talk to them and I would figure out what challenged us they’re facing in their business and not just little challenges. I want to f I wanna solve their biggest challenge. Cuz quite frankly, if I can’t charge you $2,000 a month to do what I’m gonna do for you, I’m not solving a big enough problem.

And so then of course you’d have to take this concept and this idea and actually do it. And so you may have to do. For free for someone you may have to prove your concept. It’s not always the case. But certainly you would want to build a case study and so whatever that would be, and for me it would.

I don’t know what it would be, honestly. It, I sure I would learn, I think. The problem that a lot of people and a lot of businesses or that the mistake that they make is they create something and then they try to find a place to shove it, right? Absolutely. If they build this thing and they’re like, oh, now I gotta go find people to buy this thing that I created and yes, convince, I’ve gotta convince people that they need it, and I want to figure out, I want to figure out where people’s pain is.

Cause I want to put a big giant bandaid right on it. I wanna figure out what challenges you’re facing and a. A lot of great has come out of that in the last couple of years. A great example of this is Jodi Underhill, in, in the trades. It is very difficult. It has very, been very difficult in the last couple of years to find employees.

And sure. I worked with a pool company. We got them 18 pool jobs in the first month. We started with them eight Wow. Pooling pools. And then they fired. , they were booked up for three years. Wow. And they didn’t need our marketing services anymore. They needed employees and they needed team and they needed growth.

They couldn’t handle the business. And I think people are finding that across the board in lawn care and in all these other industries. I think when you talk to those sort of owners, one of the biggest challenges they faced was team or. Or, that sort of recruiting. And great example, Jodi.

He built a, a recruiting agency around that pain and yeah, absolutely really well. And so I don’t know what I would be delivering exactly, but I would talk to the people that I liked and I would talk to the people that I could, that I had access to, or I would talk to, friends or neighbors or anybody that needed help in their business.

I would figure out what that pain is and if I could solve that pain for. , it’s very likely applic applicable across their entire industry. And and then you just offer a very valuable solution. Alex Tramo has got a great book called Hundred Million Dollar Offers. Fantastic. It’s an amazing book. And if you go on their website, acquisition.com, you can, he’ll walk you through the entire process. But one of the things that I love that he says is to build an offer so great that they’d be dumb to say. , . And so you can create a really valuable offer. Then you, obviously you need to establish a sales and marketing plan to be able to acquire new customers.

Obviously that hopefully comes with, a case study where, you’ve done this for other people and then you just continually refine and scale your product and your offer and just keep getting better and better. And then of course you gotta work yourself out of the day.

and great advice. And it reminds me of just another, very similar advice. Again find a group you like. Find somebody with a problem that’s got a few dollars that’s willing to pay to fix that and find a problem big enough as you stated that they’re willing to pay good money to fix it.

Because when that’s the case, the value you bring is so significant, and you can scale that because now you become an, you’re the expert at solving that problem for that industry. And people will start coming to you saying, Hey, I know you are the guy, Lynn, that solves this problem in my industry and I want to pay you to do that for me.

Great advice. I had a customer once and I think you made a great point there. The, again the value has to be so large. I had a client came to me one time and really nice lady, and she had a great idea. A lot of us have flip flops laying in, in the bottom of our closet and there’s really difficult way to store them.

She built this really cool flip flop holder and it was like, oh, that’s pretty cool. And she wanted to me to help her sell them. But the retail price and the flip flop holder was $6 and. Yeah, exactly. I’m like, man, do you know how many of these I have to help you sell to be able to even afford my monthly fee?

It was too many. , I couldn’t put me or her in that position and to turn her down. Yeah, no, absolutely no. And again, a great product, but just not one that was gonna be capable of generating the revenue in all , short of a Shark Tank feature you’re not, you’re just not gonna be able to generate enough revenue with that product as opposed to, let’s look at your garage door industry where I don’t know the exact amount, the average new garage door, I’m guessing is somewhere between 10 and $20,000.

And there’s a lot of labor involved in putting that together, and labor is higher profit. They don’t need to have 27 leads every day in order to be really. Th to have you be valuable to them. A handful of those leads that turn into jobs pays for months of your service. Yeah. That then that’s true in a lot of industries whether it’s garage doors or cosmetics or, the things that, you’re looking for recession proof businesses too, yeah. We obviously were going into, year 47 of Covid and . And some businesses got hit really hard. Even ones that you weren’t sure about. On March 1st, in 2020, I lost 40 clients. Wow. 32 nail salons, four veterinarians and four dentists all shut down on March 1st. That’s a huge chunk of recurring revenue that we took a giant hit.

I, and the week before that, I had told my. Okay, look, this covid thing’s here won’t be forever. Give us a couple months. We’re gonna fight through this. But I wanna promise you guys, none of you will lose your jobs. None of you will get your hours cut. We’re gonna get through this thing together.

Ouch. And then a couple and a couple days later, we lose 40 clients. And Jonathan, I kept my promise. We fought, we borrowed, we put money on credit cards. We did everything we had to do to survive. And. and it’s one of the things I’m most proud of, as you should be. As you should be. Lynn, I just want to, again, thank you for your time, you sharing the stories you’ve shared, just some amazing stories today.

One last question. We’re gonna put links out to your business to garage marketers and all that, but if somebody’s watching this, we’ve, we mainly have business people that watch this. They’re in the garage door business, and they want to find out how you can help them grow their businesses, the problems that you can solve.

What’s the best thing for them to do to reach out to you, Lynn? Go to garage marketers.com. Hit the schedule strategy session button on the top right, and book a call with me. We can talk through, your challenges and we’ll see if we’re a good fit for you. And let me tell you I’ve known Lynn, as I mentioned for a little over a year now.

Lynn is the real deal. If you are in that industry and you’re looking for help, don’t hesitate to reach out to Lynn. He’ll give you the straight scoop whether he can or can’t help you out. So Lynn, again, thank you so much for your time today. It’s been very appreciated and I’m just so thankful that we’ve had the opportunity to get to know each other and really looking forward.

Are you gonna be down in Miami in March? Absolut? Good. I will, if not before, I will definitely see you in about five weeks then down in Miami. Yeah, very good. I’m looking forward to seeing you in person again, and thank you for this was a lot of fun and I love having these sort of conversations, so thank you.

Thank you as well. All right. Make it a great day and everybody reach out to Lynn. Have everyone have a great one, everyone.