The Business Guide
Just a regular guy that decided to quit his stable job and start a business. After successfully being in business I've learned a thing or two, unfortunately the hard way. I've created this podcast to share my successes & failures and to talk about the "real" ins & outs of business. I'll be personally sharing my stories along with guests.
As Business Owners we wear so many different hats and we have so many different struggles, we will breakdown those struggles together and talk about how we've overcome them and how it's shaped us to be better. If your a business owner currently going through a struggle, I hope this content helps!
The Business Guide
From Fast Food to Franchise Success: Matthew Wagoner’s Entrepreneurial Journey
Have you ever wondered if a college degree is necessary to achieve entrepreneurial success? In this episode, we promise you'll learn the true value of motivation and seizing opportunities as we chat with my brother, Matthew Wagoner, a seasoned entrepreneur in the restaurant industry. Matthew reveals his incredible journey from working at McDonald's in his teenage years to owning multiple franchise locations, showing that determination can often outweigh formal education. This inspiring story is a must-listen for anyone looking to navigate their own business challenges and growth.
We dig into the nitty-gritty of managing both the daily grind and the back-end operations of a business. Matthew emphasizes the importance of documenting processes early to ensure smooth growth and quality maintenance, and shares the benefits of being open to feedback from employees and customers. From negotiating favorable lease terms to maintaining brand consistency, Matthew's insights provide essential guidance. We also discuss how letting go of pride can lead to necessary changes that improve business outcomes, and why it's crucial to have a real estate attorney on your team.
Finally, we highlight the significance of long-term planning and building a robust support system. I open up about my own journey of delegating tasks to achieve a better work-life balance, and the benefits of having a solid team, including a real estate attorney, accountant, and legal advisor. Matthew and I explore effective marketing strategies to stand out in a crowded market and the importance of understanding all financial aspects of your business. Join us as we encourage listeners to engage with us, reminding them they are not alone on their entrepreneurial journey.
Hey everyone, it's Jonathan Wagner and I want to welcome you back to another episode of the Business Guide. Today I have a special guest, a fellow small business owner, but really exciting, it is my brother and I am so excited to have him here. Matthew Wagner, thank you for being with us. Thank you for having me on. It is super cool.
Speaker 1:A couple weeks ago, I mentioned, we were on vacation and I was so tempted to do like a fireside chat. Where we were, we were doing a little camping and I really held off to get him into the studio and do this as a legit podcast. So really excited to talk about your business endeavors. I'm going to quickly introduce him. He's been in business for a little over 10 years 10 years, yeah, 10 years. He is in the restaurant business and has multiple locations, so has definitely seen his fair share of ups and downs in business and I'm really excited for him to be here to go over the challenges.
Speaker 1:So, as you guys know, first things first is we do some core questions and then we dive into some unspoken challenges. With the unspoken challenges, my brother wanted to be a little bit more surprised on the questions, so I picked out a couple questions that I thought would fit him and his business model. So, without any further ado, let's jump into some background. So you've been in business 10 years. You started your operation, you know. Can you share a little bit about your background and what led you to start your business and specifically, how do I phrase this? Specifically, how you kind of took advantage of an opportunity that presented?
Speaker 2:itself. Sure Well, I started working in the restaurant field back when I was 15 at McDonald's. Then I worked there throughout my high school and then, after I worked there a little bit after high school, and then I moved over to another restaurant a couple years after high school, and when I started working at the place two weeks into it, I knew that I wanted to own one of these restaurants.
Speaker 1:It's a franchise.
Speaker 2:And I knew that I wanted to own it. So I worked there for three years and then I had an opportunity to manage a location and then an opportunity came where I can actually buy that restaurant. So I actually ended up buying that in 2015.
Speaker 1:Now I think I just want to pause for a second and go into that. At the time you decided to buy a business, did you have the money lying around to start a business?
Speaker 2:I didn't have all the money lying around. I own my business with a business partner and it is just one of those situations where I had he's my friend and he wanted to own, go into owning a business as well, and he's not. He wasn't in the restaurant industry like I was. He was in another field and he wanted to grow his. He wanted to be a business owner as well. So we ended up partnering up and yet, you know, I had someone that believed in me with that and gave me the opportunity to actually go ahead and go full force and actually acquire the place.
Speaker 1:I think it's important for you know, business owners or people that are looking to get into business, I think are sometimes discouraged by maybe I don't have the money to get into the business, or maybe I don't have the resource or the know-how to get into business. I mean, shoot, when I started my business, very limited funds, I had no experience in running a business, but I still made it happen and I think that to a certain extent I mean I'll throw out a random statistic, but it's probably like 80 percent of people get into business while they're figuring out how to run a business.
Speaker 2:They have no idea what they're doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they have no idea what they're doing. You can walk into that fancy showroom or retail spot or whatever it is and you've got a business owner that's maybe crammed away in the corner thinking how do I get through this time? Or maybe has some questions, things like that. So I think that the biggest thing that business owners do is we have the will to figure out how to get it done, would you say. That's I mean Someone's got to figure it out.
Speaker 1:Somebody's got to figure it out, that's usually going to be that person for sure. So, um, no, I think that's really important. And, uh, going into your background real quick Um, I didn't go to college, you didn't go to college. I think that it's important that you know college is important for a lot of people and they've, they've, they've gone into college, they've worked, you know, they've gotten their degree, they've put some hard work into it. But I think that I've heard from small business owners that is also maybe like something that's preventing them from starting a business is well, I don't have any schooling experience, and where I sit, maybe you sit we don't have necessarily the schooling experience, but we were still able to accomplish starting and forming legitimate businesses.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't go to college. I kind of wrapped up my whatever I was going to spend on college is probably in what I've lost in the first couple of years.
Speaker 1:Same with me my college degree.
Speaker 2:You're going to make mistakes running businesses and things are going to happen. So I just kind of chalk it up to that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my college degree is all the mistakes I've made in business for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have more to make. I have more schooling, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I mean, I think you know again you got business owners out there or somebody that's looking to be in business, don't use you know. If you've got a college degree, great, if you don't, that is also just fine. So swimming into our next question, it's a motivation question. I mean in business, I yeah, I know that business owners have to be cheerleaders. We have to motivate our team ourselves, maybe our family, when maybe times are tough. Can you dive into maybe your motivation and maybe how it's changed through the years? But also you know, during tough times what keeps you motivated now?
Speaker 2:Well, I think motivation is going to be. There's no one standard, you know, one size fit all for motivation. Motivation is going to change from year to year, from month to month. Of whatever your goals that you need to accomplish. It first could be raising revenue and then that's going to change over to creating stability in your company. So what keeps me motivated is I know that I want to have we have several restaurants right now and I want to make sure that we increase our store count, and I also want to make sure that we're running the best stores that we possibly can.
Speaker 1:So as far as motivation that's, where I'm at right now and your motivation has definitely changed throughout the years. It has.
Speaker 2:It has. I had my first store closed and the lease ended up not working out and we had to leave and I ended up having to decide if I'm going to keep going in the direction that I was going or if I was going to fold up and get another job or something like that. But I knew that I wanted to be in business for myself and keep continuing on that path. So that was the day that the store reopened. All that chasing what I wanted, it paid off that day. And then motivation, all right now I got to get the store open, I got to get it stable, got to keep, you know, keeping up the high standards of what we're doing.
Speaker 1:And yeah, yeah, I think that's. I mean, you know, you went through a challenge there where you found an opportunity. You threw yourself into it. You found a business. You're running the business and things are looking on the up and I mean, somebody just completely pulls the box. You're standing on completely off and now you don't have that and you're kind of figuring out. You know, hey, what do I need to do? And I think, as you know, as business owners and we have so many different challenges and I have challenges every single day. There's always something new presenting itself and I think that you know what you did to get through that tough time. You know, really shows that we're always down to figure stuff out, but roll up our sleeves and get to work when we need to get to work.
Speaker 2:You're always going to have bad. There are, there will always be bad times in business. For sure, For sure.
Speaker 1:All right, well, I mean thanks for that, okay, so going in. So, unspoken rule or unspoken challenge, you don't know the question. I'm going to throw out a question and I want just kind of your feedback on it. I normally, normally, you would know the question and this is customized to you, but I've kind of customized this. So, first up, I'd like you to share a time that this was a challenge for you and how you navigated through it. So this one is specifically on managing growth. Now you've had the one location, you've dived into having several locations. So on managing growth, scaling your business without losing the quality or control and I know that's important for you because you have multiple locations now. So how do you scale the business without losing control?
Speaker 2:How do I scale the business without losing control? Well, what I've always had to do is put. You got to put your pride away sometimes and you have to reach out to other people or when you're working with other people. I didn't just jump into the franchise business as an outsider. I've worked in several different locations and worked for several different people and you pick, know, you pick what you like and what you don't like and you get to apply that into into your, into your four walls, and um, I, I, I set it up as having the systems down for any kind of scenario that's going to happen. And because you have the day-to-day operations of what's going on in the restaurant, but then you actually have the back-end operations. You know the payroll, making sure that you're putting together P&Ls, reviewing P&Ls, understanding everything. So what we did was, you know, we made a copy and paste from even where we ordered the smallest things. There's a procedure for it. So when we went from store one to store two, it was a copy and paste.
Speaker 2:The hardest part, that's easy. The hardest part that's easy. The hardest part is going to be the crew or the people that you work with. You've got to find managers, you've got to train managers, no-transcript. Once you find out that rhythm that works for you, then you can start copy and pasting and maybe copy and paste a little bit faster too.
Speaker 2:But it's also realizing. I think business owners do not want to hear that their business is not good. And you have to listen to people on that. You've got to listen to your crew, you've got to listen to your customers, you've got to listen to everyone. And then you have to be able to go this isn't working, I need to change what I'm doing and change it. So that's one big thing that I'm someone that will implement something, be full gun about it, and if it's not working, I will be the first one to go well, this isn't working, and then I'm going to move on and we're going to find something that does work. So that's my kind of take on managing the growth of it. So that's my kind of take on managing the growth of it.
Speaker 1:And you know we're at several locations now and we look forward to moving to more. I want to go to a couple things that you talked about there which I think are important. So number one you mentioned sometimes you have to put your pride away. Putting your pride away I talked about it in the last episode that I filmed on the podcast. Sometimes you have to ask being in business because your business is just not going to thrive.
Speaker 1:You may be in business you ever been to a business that you're dealing with a business owner and he's super difficult and you know customers just don't come in or he can't have employees work for him because he's very difficult. You have to put your pride away and this allows you to, you know, grow your business. You know, something else you mentioned in there which I think is really important to touch base on is it doesn't matter how big you are. Start documenting your systems when you're smaller, and I have to agree with that a thousand percent. When I was first starting up, that was some business advice that I got from a gentleman in business. He said, hey, document your process. And it was just me and I was like this is dumb, why am I going to document how I'm doing this for myself, and little did I know later as I wanted to grow the business and have employees.
Speaker 2:That makes it so much easier down the line, because in the beginning, when you open up a business, you could be the only employee yeah. And then for the next trick is you at one point you're doing everything because you either can't afford to hire someone to do bookkeeping or you can't afford to hire someone to answer the phones and all that. But as you slowly you grow, then you already have these procedures down yeah. And then also working with people, because everyone's not going to do it exactly the way you do it, but if you have your standard of like, this is how we do things, this is how I've. You know how I've done it. Here's what's worked for me in the past and whatnot that's going to. That's going to. That's going to set you up pretty fast, for sure.
Speaker 1:For sure. So, um, if you're just starting out in business any of the listeners if you're just starting out in business, one key takeaway is document your process. It's going to make it much easier for you to grow and maintain quality without losing that control. So, moving on to the second unspoken challenge, again, can you share a time when this was a challenge for you and how you navigated it? I know in this particular question it's loaded. I know in this particular question it's loaded For you.
Speaker 1:You deal with I'm just going to get into it but it is negotiating leases. So challenges with securing favorable terms on a business premise. But I mean it's also a loaded question. You deal in the retail side, where you need customers to come in and engage with your product. For me, I don't need that and I've negotiated out warehouses or offices. So I think where we're different because I'll call you if I'm there's been a couple times I've explored a retail space and I'm calling you for your experience there and vice versa, you're calling me for my experience on warehouses and offices. So speak to me about, specifically, retail leases challenges and I mean just how do you secure those favorable terms? And I do want to touch in on how you can also leverage that to grow your business with building out the operation Well, the first and best advice I would have is get a real estate attorney.
Speaker 2:Don't do it yourself, don't have a cousin that does real estate, or that they're a real estate agent, or something like that. You want to get a real estate attorney and you're going to work with the real estate agent at first and then you're going to pass it off once you start negotiating the lease. You don't want a one-page lease, two-page lease, something like that, especially for the retail side, because you're going to have everything that's been thrown out there or that's going to be into that, from who pays for the trash cans to be dumped, who pays for the sidewalk to be cleaned and who pays for the HVAC unit to be cleaned and maintained. That's all going to be in the lease. So that's one area that I would highly suggest of making sure that you have a real estate attorney, because once again, I'll put my price aside all the time. I don't know real estate, I don't know, I'm not an attorney, and there's a 50 page booklet, sometimes 80 page lease. I don't know any of this, but I've worked with my real estate agent or, sorry, a real estate attorney for over 10 years now, and we've made mistakes too, where we ended up having to pay for something that we should have not have paid, but we missed it in the lease or it was more favorable for us not to do that. So that is the strongest advice I would have to say.
Speaker 2:For once you go into real estate, especially your leasing places at a retail site, prime location, you want to have that. The next thing that you want to make sure that you have is TI, if you can get it. What is TI? Which is that's a tenant improvement allowance. Which is that's a tenant improvement allowance. So meaning, if you're leasing 1,000 square feet, they're going to give you $10 back once you sign the lease and you've completed your construction $10 or $10 per square foot. $10 per square foot sorry, $10 per square foot. So that's going to give you a good amount of money back when you've completed the build-out. Now it could be $10. It could be $20. It could be $10, it could be $20, it could be $30, it could be $0. Sometimes I've taken leases where we took a very low TI, but we wanted that location. So there's always going to be a balance of it. But just because you're going to get a higher tenant improvement back doesn't mean your lease is going to be cheaper, they will offset it, so your rent might go up.
Speaker 1:So I know, when you know I've done offices or warehouses we can negotiate some sort of free rent couple months, things like that. Maybe walk back from the square footage dollar, you know, maybe a couple, couple cents or whatever it is per square foot, but we're not necessarily getting the tenant improvement money. And I think what's important to talk about real quick I don't want to get wrapped up in it is again going back to a business owner trying to figure out how to start that business and really trying to just secure opportunity. Maybe they see a good opportunity in a retail spot and knowing that there is money there to maybe even help build out a business, and so maybe you don't have that money on hand to do some of the things you want to do, but you can really use and leverage yourself with these tenant improvements, would you agree?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, definitely. But also, I mean, if you're just starting out, you know you're just opening a restaurant that you want to open up and it's, let's say, it's not a franchise, it's a mom and pop kind of place You're probably better off taking a five-year lease or a one-year lease, see if it works out and have that option. You always have to have a backup plan.
Speaker 1:We talked about that on the podcast is having a backup plan in business. We talked about that on the podcast is having a backup plan in business.
Speaker 2:You don't want to think about challenges that you're going to run into. But having a backup plan so you know how to get out of something, so ultimately your business can survive, is important. Yeah, I think everyone's really caught up in when you first incorporate and then you think that there's this business credit and I'm sure for in some scenarios it works out that that is a thing. But for all of my leases and a lot of other leases I know there's a person that backs it Personal guarantor, yep, and you have to be on that. So we have it in some of our stores. You know that after the first five years, if it doesn't work out, we're able to leave and not be in that big of a trouble. But you know, luckily we don't have to go down that road, but there is that backup plan.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I think it's important to mention, since you brought up the, you know, the business credit. That was a common misconception for myself when I started. Now I think that there is definitely some business credit. Dunson Bradstreet, I think, runs business credit. I think they use that. But ultimately when we need equipment or we need vehicles or whatever it is, the business is definitely the one financing it, depending if you have a relationship with that bank or not, at that time they will want a possible guarantor and ultimately that is a person at the end of the day. And that's what you're saying on leases as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay. So, moving on to the third unspoken challenge, can you share a time that this was a challenge for you and how you navigated it? So this is brand consistency maintaining a brand voice and identity across all channels. Now I think it's important to mention you have four locations right now and this could really speak to somebody that's listening, that is maybe on that one location or has just started that second location, and they're having a problem keeping the same message that they created and poured their blood, sweat and tears into that first one. They're having a problem keeping that identity at that second location or are nervous that it's not going to transfer over to that second location. How do you do it? How do you keep it all consistent?
Speaker 2:We don't. No, we try. We definitely strive to make sure that we do. Like I said in the beginning, I think my biggest advantage is I will be the first person to say, hey, something's not right. So kind of like I was saying with the whole copy and paste. Yeah, we can definitely copy and paste of opening up multiple locations and make them all look the same order, the same everything, but at the end you have people that are running the stores and that's where your consistency is going to come from.
Speaker 2:So I've heard this in the past and it still resonates with me is you've got to train hard and manage easy.
Speaker 2:So we've got to make sure that everyone is doing everything very consistent and even when people have been with us for a year or two years and whatnot, if they're not doing exactly how they should be doing it, what we do is very simple, but we're very particular on the way that we do things, because we want that same customer service at one location to the next location, to the next location. So I'm not going to sit here and say, oh, yeah, everything is always great and it's always fine, but we definitely have our standard of how we do things and 99 percent of the times we're hitting it and when we have a customer reach out which I love it, when customers reach out and they're saying, hey, this isn't right, something was wrong, I got the wrong order or this happened, I'm reaching out to the customer, we're talking and I'm looking back and I'm seeing what happened and how we can fix it, just to make sure it doesn't happen again. So that would be my take on keeping the brand image the same throughout everywhere image the same throughout everywhere.
Speaker 1:I think it's important to go back on that question and really point out again and I mentioned it earlier in the episode, excuse me is, you can walk into that shiny building as a customer and think that everything is figured out, and I think what's important is for business owners to understand it's not always figured out and sometimes you just have to throw yourself in it to figure it out. Would you agree? I would, yeah.
Speaker 2:Definitely.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you for the Unspoken Challenge questions. The series of hard questions are over. I really hope you guys found value on those questions. Thank you for answering them, matthew. Moving on to a couple more questions, this is a personal question. So running a business can take a toll on you personally. How do you manage a work-life balance? What do you do to turn it off when you're at home? Now I want to say small business world. Sometimes you pull together your husband, your wife, your son, your daughter, cousins, aunts, uncles. Sometimes they're coming into your business as a small business owner and helping you out For me. I know that my wife works with me For you. I know your wife works for you. So this I'd like to hear your take on how do you turn your work off when you're at home and keep that relationship strong?
Speaker 2:We don't. We've gotten better. We've definitely gotten better over the years, but especially since me and my wife work in the same field. That's our life, that's everything that we're. I mean, that's our jobs. What are you talking about with your significant other? You're talking about what you do and what you want to do. But over the years we definitely have gotten a lot better on at home, just being at home.
Speaker 2:But when you own something, you're going to be responsible for it. It doesn't matter if you say, well, I'm not responsible for today, you can't do that. I mean, and if you are, you know that's, you know that's your decision. But what's made it a lot easier for me is for the first, you know, eight, nine years, no, seven years I was the person that had to handle everything and as we've been expanding, I've been, you know, setting up with my managers, and I have a district manager and another business partner. I have two business partners. They're taking on more responsibility, so I'm not the one that has to answer small questions at, you know, nine o'clock at night. That's now. We've created more jobs for someone else for that particular situation. But I don't really ever, we never, really turn it off the work-life balance. But I did say if I'm going to go on vacation, you guys got to handle it.
Speaker 1:And you're on vacation right now. So how's that going? I don't know.
Speaker 2:I'm just kidding, it's going. Great, I'm still, of course, I'm still getting emails and everything. Yeah, yeah, no, it's going.
Speaker 1:And you're going to learn. You're going to learn.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you're going to. I've had a store get broken into in the middle of the night. I didn't answer my phone because it was on silent and we had to handle that that situation in its own way. So I've learned from that and now I keep. That's not going to happen again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I appreciate, I appreciate that that feedback on that question. So, moving on to our next question, this one is advice. So, looking back, let's just say you could rewind the clock 10 years and you could give your younger self some advice that you wish you would have received starting out. So you know, this is speaking to, obviously, entrepreneurs that are looking to start their journey or have just started. But, looking back at yourself, if you could tell yourself something, a nice piece of advice, what would that be?
Speaker 1:Hire a real estate attorney Right from the start Right from the start that I had to learn the hard way.
Speaker 2:Regardless, you're never going to have. If you're crazy huge, maybe one day you're going to have an in-house lawyer, but most times those are the three basic things that you do need, because things do happen. You have to have a plan for everything. You have to assume the worst, for if you're going to need a lawyer for an accountant, you got to make sure that the government's happy and and all the, the, the, the numbers are lining up correctly and whatnot. And you know, for the on the real estate side, you want to make sure that you have someone that's in your favor, looking out for, uh, for, for you. So that would be my, my three main things that I would highly recommend. Um, highly recommend.
Speaker 1:So what's next? What's next on your project block? I mean, you've just you know, a little little back piece is that these four locations have popped up pretty quickly. You've you've went from really kind of expanding your footprint and that's where you've kind of rolled up your sleeves. What's in the cooker for you in the future?
Speaker 2:We're just going to keep expanding at this point right now we're going to keep going. Technically, I've had five, because I actually have the opportunity to sell one so we can focus on the area that we're in, because they're about 400 miles apart and that made it a little bit more difficult. So, rather than dropping that, before, I wanted to make sure that that store was always going to be good, because if that store ended up dipping in sales and it didn't do well or something like that, it would actually decrease the value of that huge asset. So we sold it and then we're focusing on the four of them now and then we're going to be knocking out one by one, and it's not about how fast we can get them open. It's how well we can train the people that are working with us, because we take a lot of people that are just coming in the doors and they're jumping in here and kind of getting the same thing that I had is where.
Speaker 2:I want to keep working here. I want to manage this place. Two weeks into it, where I was working, I knew I wanted to own a place. So we have people like that working with us now and that's what I want to do, what we are doing. So, one by one, just keep going one by one.
Speaker 1:I picked this up and I think it's important to talk about it. I didn't drop this. We were going to talk about this. I picked this up and I think it's important to talk about and I didn't drop this. We were going to talk about this but we recently got back. We were together doing a camping trip and I've talked about this on the podcast before.
Speaker 1:I talk about this in my business, but in my business plan. I update my business plan once a year. I go through it. I actively look at it, maybe on a monthly basis, but I really like to sit down once a year and dive into it. A big part of that business plan and my goals are more short-term goals. Of course I do have long-term goals, but I do focus on what is this next year going to look like? What is this next three years going to look like? I do a five-year and then a 10-year, maybe a 20-year, but more importantly, a lot of my stuff is wrapped up into the short term. So I'll say you know, here's everything I want to accomplish this year, here's everything I want to accomplish in the next three years. That is really my focus.
Speaker 1:It was interesting to me as you were explaining some things just while we were camping and you, your outlook was a little bit more long-term on five years and 10 years. So the way you spoke about your expansion plans and certain things that you want to do, it really dragged it out to that five and 10-year mark where I felt like I'm focused more short-term. I just kind of want to know what your thoughts are. I mean, obviously you've got to kind of forecast, I think for me it's my shorter, maybe, attention span. Right, I focus on this year, this year, this year. But I think there is value on saying, hey, it's going to take five years to get here, to be successful in this location, and it's okay, it's going to take time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, best advice I got was you know, restaurants don't really kick off. Some kick off right out the door. Some take two years to build up. So it's making sure that you have your eye on what you want to make sure is going to happen there and making sure that you're very consistent on the operations and the service in those stores in that short term. The long-term plan that is something that's really gotten to me in the past maybe probably four years. I used to be very all right, how fast can I get this open? How fast can I get this open? And because when you're building out a store or you're building your business, or even if you're concurrently working a job, it's like you don't want to jump the gun too fast. So, yeah, I have my short-term goals and I have my long-term goals as well, but I mainly do focus just on the short-term right now, because you're not going to have a long-term goal if the short ones aren't working out.
Speaker 1:No, and I like that. I think that that's it's super cool to think and it hit me as we were just talking and I was just like, yeah, it's a different way of looking at it.
Speaker 2:I ask all my people that I'm interviewing because I like to do all the interviewing, because I like to make sure I know who's working with us and I ask everyone. I'm not going to ask the hey, what do you see yourself doing in five years. I'm going to ask them hey, what do you want to do? Where do you see?
Speaker 1:yourself in a year.
Speaker 2:And we work with a lot of college students. We work with a lot of people like me that just didn't go to college, and you know, I want to make sure that the people that are working with us are motivated too. You know, if it's, I want to get a car, I want to get a house, I want to get. You know, I want to finish college, I want to go into my field where I'm studying. So that's a big thing with me, of where do you?
Speaker 1:what are we doing in a year? What would you say to and I'm just thinking about this as you're talking because obviously we're both in California, we know it there's been some, there's been some changes with like minimum wage and things like that in the industry and a lot of restaurants dealing with a little bit more of harder times right now. How has that hit you and how have you been able to adapt to that changing market? And specifically, I ask this question because I talked about this on another episode of being able to pivot and change in an ever-changing market to make your business succeed. So we're seeing 99-cent stores closes, we're seeing restaurants close. How do you adapt to that change and survive?
Speaker 2:I don't like to do it, but we have to.
Speaker 2:We have to. We got to raise prices and you need to make sure that the price matches the service and the quality of what you're serving. The market will speak for itself. If you're not playing by those rules. I would say that is the best answer I could probably give on that. Okay, it's tricky, especially in the last year or two.
Speaker 2:We're in this unchartered territory right now, so we're all monitoring as best as we can, but at the end of the day, we're there to make. We're a business, we're there to make money and you know if a business is not profitable, it's going to close. That's why you go into business and you got to make sure that you're doing it responsibly. And by that, offset topic of that is you are making sure that you are looking at every number in your business. You should know how much you're spending on insurance. You should know how much the electric bill is. You should know how every penny, you should be able to account for it. And if you don't, I would highly recommend that you hit your books, hit your P&Ls and if you don't know it all completely, take the time and learn it, because I mean, that is the lifeblood of your business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, know your ins and outs of business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is your numbers, so you got to know that.
Speaker 1:All right, one more question before we wrap it up for today, and this is important as, like, you go out, you drive down the street, you see there's a ton of restaurants, there's a ton of restaurants to choose from, and you want to stand out in a crowded market, right? How do you leverage that and stand out in front of? I mean, you're in a busy space, so how do you stand out in a crowded market?
Speaker 2:How do you stand out in a crowded market? Well then, you just have to market the way that other people aren't marketing. You need to go send people. You know we're looking for. Marketing. Online's great, that's fine, but it costs nothing to get some coupons printed out and go grassroots, go ground pound and go pass out. Hey, have you been to my place? No, I haven't. All right, come in, here's your, your, your yeah no that.
Speaker 2:Get them in, get them in for free at once, uh, and then show them what you're all about, and then you got a customer right there. I mean, it's not that hard.
Speaker 1:It's interesting you say ground pound with you know how much does it cost to throw out a flyer. And this is something that, when you look back at even this digital market age we're in, is how successful that can be in every business. I mean it applies to your business, it applies to my business Getting out, rolling your sleeves up and making that phone ring or getting customers in that door.
Speaker 2:Because if you're just sitting there doing nothing, you're saying well, it's slow, you have time, then Go out there and do it.
Speaker 1:It's like if you've got time to lean, you've got time to clean. If you've got time to lean, go out and market your butt off.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to sit here and go, oh yeah, everything's great. But in the beginning I worked 50, 60, 70 hours, just like every starting business does. I've done it and I don't have to do that anymore. There are still weeks I have to do that, you know, before a grand opening coming up, or you know, sometimes some weeks are just chaotic and you have to do it, but consistently. You know that's how I kind of do. My work-life balance is I'm not always just working, but if it's light in your store, I like to say slow, but if it's light in your store, um, uh, go, go, go get the customers.
Speaker 1:Now you got let's, let's, let's do a little forecast. You got a ton of employees, you've got four locations. You're looking to grow. You're on the up and up Um, let's just say, a slow next week. And you got to go take out flyers. Go take out flyers. Are you going out and taking out flyers?
Speaker 1:I'll go take them out. Look at that. I want everybody listening to know how important that is. Nothing is below us owning a business. You need to be resilient, but you need to be down to do whatever it takes to make the phone ring, and I think that that is important. I cleaned the toilet last week and I literally clean my bathrooms. If they're not done, I clean them. Yeah, and I clean. I jump up and I clean the HVAC systems yeah. Nothing is below being in business and making sure your business is successful. So, no, I think that I think we had some good answers to the questions. I appreciate you jumping. Hopefully they weren't too hard for you. It's pretty easy, guys. I just I'm really thankful that Matthew could be here, so thank you for taking the time out. It's been kind of a tight time. He's come back to his hometown and we have done nothing but eat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have all the restaurants I want to go to. We've gotten all these restaurants and we're actually on the way to a friend's barbecue right now to continue eating. So just being able to get in here and jam this episode down, it was something I was really looking forward to. So I appreciate you being here. Well, thank you for having me on. I appreciate it. All right, guys, I want to say shout out to you for listening. If you've found yourself at the end of this podcast, I really appreciate you listening through the episode. I thank you for the feedback that I'm getting seeing the text messages come through. I love the feedback that I'm getting Seeing the text messages come through. I love the feedback that I'm hearing on the show.
Speaker 1:You know, it's really my goal to put something together for other business owners to understand and know. You're not alone in business. So many business owners go through the exact same things and my job with this podcast is just to break that down. If you've got a question, send us a text message, throw us a comment in the comment section, do a thumbs up on the video. All of that is going to help these videos continue to go and this podcast continue to go. So um shouts out to you. Thank you so much. Um, I'm closing up. I'm going to sign off. You want to say anything? No, thank you for having me on Get a good real estate attorney.
Speaker 1:Get a good real estate attorney. That's my voice. Get a good CPA.
Speaker 2:That's mine, All right guys.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you for joining us on this episode of the Business Guide. No-transcript.
