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Episode #22 - Startup Strategies for a Successful Small Business

• American Gutter Monkeys, LLC • Season 1 • Episode 22

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Starting a small business is exciting—but the first year is often the hardest. In this episode of Monkey Business Radio, Chris Collins and Dennis Siggins (a.k.a. Bobby Downspout of Cape Cod Gutter Monkeys) dig into the strategies that help entrepreneurs not just survive, but thrive in those early stages.

From avoiding common pitfalls to focusing on the decisions that drive profitability and growth, Dennis shares lessons from decades of working with small business startups and owners. Whether you’re just getting started or already a year or two into your journey, you’ll hear practical, real-world insights to help you build a small business that lasts.

Chris:

Thank you. Before you blow your budget on a conference room table, join us for a real talk on what it takes to launch a successful small business and keep it growing. We have a great show for you, so grab a cup of coffee, sit back, relax and welcome to Monkey Business Radio. Hello everyone, I'm Chris Collins and, as always, I'm here with my good friend and business partner, dennis Siggins of the Cape Cod Gutter Monkeys, or, as everyone knows him on the Cape and the islands, bobby Downspout.

Dennis:

Chris good to be back again. Good to be back. We got a good topic today. One of my favorite topics beginning strategies for the successful startup. I've been self-employed my whole life. It's been a joy and one of the things I do. I work with a lot of small businesses, startups or especially companies that are in the first year or two, and help them get over some of these bumps and get to profitability and get to growth, and that's kind of what we're going to talk about today. Good, maybe an interesting topic.

Dennis:

About 45 years ago, the housing department at Bentley College randomly selected Andy and me as likely roommates my four-year college roommate and I. We hit it off good. We were great buddies. We stayed friends over the years and 35 years after we graduated from college, we got back together again, this time as business partners. That was about 11 years ago and life's been good. We started this current business that we own, the Cape Cod God of Monkeys, which has grown into five or six other locations plus a parent company, plus a holding company. It's been a blast. Today we're going to talk about business startups, how to do it, what to look for, what not to look for.

Chris:

And yeah, yeah, it's been an interesting story. I've learned your story since I've been here for the last two going on two years now. I can tell you still the friendship you guys have is pretty amazing and I've been through a lot of startups. I've been involved in a few myself. They don't always end the way that yours is ending or not ending, but.

Chris:

No, it's ongoing Ongoing, and so I'm really amazed. And I think this is a great topic, because I've experienced this both as I've joined a lot of startups and I've also been involved in a couple from the ground floor, and my experience was quite different than Cape Cod gutter monkeys. So I'm going to this is a very interesting topic to me.

Dennis:

So let's dive right in. We were in a meeting a bunch of us, what an hour ago, yep. And one of the things that Andy mentioned in that meeting is he basically said look, we can set the hierarchy this way. That way, there's nobody in this building that's going to steal a nickel from anybody else. And that's kind of a big part of the basis for a good partnership is trust.

Dennis:

Back in the beginning, andy was a corporate guy and he was still working his corporate job and we would work nights, weekends, sometimes days. We would talk on the phone. I was still living here, I was living here on the Cape, he was still living up in Walpole and commuting up to the North Shore for his corporate job. And this was 11 years, 12 years ago, and we were building the brand. We were building our company. We were choosing a name and our logos and our color combinations, taglines, marketing strategies. You know, and I can say choose a brandable name because it's so much easier to market, it's so much more memorable. You know, we chose the Cape Cod Gutter Monkeys at the time as our company name and it's a great name, it's a memorable name, you know. Another option could have been Andy and Dennis's gutter services, but that just lands flat. You know, cape Cod Gutter Monkeys is a much. It's a friendlier name, it's a memorable name.

Chris:

It's a name that gets. I was in a golf tournament yesterday. I went down to a very nice golf club in Lowell, massachusetts, actually Tingsborough and Vesper, very nice club and I forgot that I'd gotten my hat. So I wore my American gutter monkey's hat and I know if I would have been Joe Blow, snowblower Repair or something like that, no one would have said a word. People kept coming up to me and saying what are the gutter monkeys? And I was like out of the blue, why would you say that to me?

Chris:

Then I realized oh, I got the gutter monkey's hat on, oh, okay yeah, you know, if it was Joe Blow Snowblower Repair, no one would have said anything to me. It's such a powerful.

Dennis:

So you're in an area where they really don't know the Cape Cod gutter monkeys. But the name is catchy. Oh yeah, Always pick a good name. Oh yeah, 1-800-GOT-JUNK it's my favorite name. It's the name of the company, it's their phone number, it's their tagline, it's everything. 1-800-got-junk, it's a great, great name. Choose a memorable name.

Dennis:

You know that initial phase before we started the business. That's where we build our mission statement. It's where we build our company philosophies. It's where we start the entry-level process of building our company culture, or what will become our company culture. We make decisions on websites. Long-term seeds are planted. This is a wonderful time. This is where you're building your foundation. Always, when you're building a house, you build a foundation first, and that's what we do way back at the beginning. Build that foundation so that when you start the company, you got something underneath of you.

Dennis:

One of my favorite topics removing distractions. Gosh, I see this so often in business. You know a business owner. We all start for a different reason, but some business owners get in because they want to build a company. Some business owners want to make money. Some business owners or startups they want to live a lifestyle and my suggestion is get rid of all the distractions.

Dennis:

First of all, there's two kinds of distractions necessary distractions and unnecessary distractions. There's one thing that has often sustained me in my life is I know the difference between the two. When I was a dad with three young kids, you know what I had. A lot of distractions. I got doctor's appointments, an emergency room, I gotta take the kid to, you know. You got birthday parties and they get into school and you got little league and you got high school track meets and wrestling matches. My daughter's a singer, we're going to shows. I mean there's a lot of family distractions that you have. There's other distractions that you can have as well, Like my fishing boat, my Harley.

Dennis:

You know, do you golf the golf membership, the golf membership? When my partner, Andy and I started the gutter monkeys, I did own a fishing boat and I love to fish. I sold the boat and I put all my fishing gear away. I still do shellfishing on the side, but that's just me. I sold my Harley. I had an absolutely pristine showroom condition, 19, 100th year anniversary of the Heritage Softail, Immaculate motorcycle and I sold it Because I knew when I was starting a company, I need to get rid of distractions. I don't need to be cruising Cape Cod on my Harley. I don't need to be out in my Boston Whaler in Buzzard's Bay catching fish. I need to be building my company. It's like the.

Chris:

Cortez in Mexico. Remember the story of Cortez. He landed all his guys on the beach in Mexico and then proceeded to burn the boats behind them. Oh yeah, there's no going home.

Dennis:

Yeah, and you know what Andy did. He's a bit of an athlete. He was a real good athlete in college and he was still playing league softball and basketball and 50 and over soccer and his deal was he has to give those up. And he was still playing league softball and basketball and 50 and over soccer and his deal was he has to give those up and he gave them all up. Now in recent years he started playing golf again and a little bit of softball, but he was a gym rat. He was a sports junkie. He gave it all up.

Dennis:

So neither one of us had any distractions and when we started the company our kids were all grown and we don't have children. We don't have all those family distractions. So eliminating distractions is important. We still have some distractions. We have parents and grandparents, we have kids and grandkids and there's still family obligations, but on a day-to-day basis I don't have any distractions.

Dennis:

Some of my siblings one of my siblings in particular asked me about this business because it's so much bigger than I used to own an inn and a restaurant. I owned a construction company. We flipped. We used to buy and flip houses. We owned a real estate development business. This company right now is so much bigger than those. And one of my sisters asked me one time how do you account for this? You're in your retirement years and your company is just booming and it's bigger than all your other companies. And I said because I have no distractions and I can focus, I can focus entirely on what I'm doing.

Dennis:

I strongly recommend that the startup business owner, the young manager, recognize the difference between necessary distractions and unnecessary distractions and eliminate the unnecessary distractions. There's nothing like it Sell the boat, get rid of the Harley. The other thing too, chris if you sell the boat let's say you have a loan on the boat of 10 grand like a lot of people finance stuff like that Maybe you sell that boat for 20 grand. You pay off the loan on the boat. You now have $10,000 that can be used to fund the business. So you've eliminated a debt that the owner has and you've taken it and you've turned it into an asset it's cash.

Chris:

Yeah, I'll say another thing about it. My personal experience is, when you do hold on to some of these distractions, what ends up happening is you're not satisfied, because when you're at the business, you're thinking I should be on my boat or I should be on my golf membership, and when you're playing golf, you're thinking you should be in the business, and so you're never happy with where you are in your space. So, even getting rid of the golf membership, when you're actually at work, you're feeling much better about being at work because you don't have that. You don't feel like, oh, I should be doing this or I should be doing that. I do have the ability to single-mindedly focus.

Dennis:

I've been doing this for so long I can really focus. Well, sometimes I'm in my office and I'm focused on something and someone will come in and I'll put them on hold for a second. I'll just kind of hold my hand up, I'll finish what I'm doing and then I'll take my hands off the keyboard or put my pen down or whatever, and then I'll talk because I want to be focused. The worst thing for me is to try to multitask, because then I do a bad job at two things instead of a really good job at one thing.

Dennis:

And when you step back and look at the bigger picture, yeah, I could be golfing, I could be fishing, I could be riding my Harley, I could be jumping out of planes, whatever it is that I used to do, I could do those things, or I could really be absolutely top-notch and excellent at running a business. I'd rather do that. I'd rather do that. And you know what? I can go buy a Harley now, anytime I want, I can go buy that boat, and I probably will. I'm thinking about buying a boat sometime in the next year or so and when I want to, I will. And the reason I will is because this company will allow me the free cash to do that. So you pay it up front and it pays you back 10, 20, 30 fold in the end.

Chris:

Yeah, I know I missed a lot of golf trips with my buddies. We always went every year. We'd go down Still doing it now, but every year I used to go down and play golf. I didn't do it in those years when I was in startups, Just couldn't get around to it. Eventually got through those startups A couple of them worked out and they ended up with a golf membership. So they get there eventually. But it was definitely worth minimizing those distractions, especially in the years I had kids and doing those startups at the same time.

Dennis:

One of the biggest challenges to a small business is the owner's need for a salary. One thing about this my most recent business, which is 11 years old now, is back in the beginning. I was already kind of retired, so I really didn't need to take a salary. But my partner was leaving the corporate world and he really needed to replace his salary, or at least a good portion of it. But what we did was we decided on a salary that we could each take, which, by the way, was probably about 20% of what we would earn in the corporate world. So we took a very small salary, and what that does is it allows us money to live on. We're not going to become wealthy off that salary, but it also eases the burden on the company.

Dennis:

If Andy said, hey, I need $125,000 salary because that's what I used to make when I was in the corporate world, I might have said there's not enough money for that. Maybe we'll get there eventually, but not in the first year or two. So what we did was we chose a small salary. Like I said, I was already retired or sort of semi-retired, so for me it wasn't that difficult. But Andy just had to use a little discipline and say I'm going to live within my means. I'm not going to feed my 401k or my IRA over these next two or three years. I'm going to build a company.

Chris:

Yeah, we had a similar situation when I joined our startups the first couple that I did. My wife was an engineer, probably making about as much as I was at the time. We decided that she would after her second baby. She decided she would stay home, be a full-time mom. We lost half our salary, literally half our salary to join the startup.

Chris:

So we made a lot of changes and they weren't easy Again. These golf trips my friends were going on and the vacations away and Disneyland and all that stuff went on hold and she did a great job of holding down the fort. She took over everything. She does our finances. She did everything. I 100% focused on the startup and doing the work there and they were long hours and I was away a lot. But again, my ability to focus was almost 100% based on the fact that I knew she was at home and she had things under control. And that's what it took and it was quite a sacrifice on the part of Sandy in particular, giving up her career so she could do that, and it worked out in the end for us.

Dennis:

One of the things about taking a smaller salary and keeping the expense line under control. It allows the company to grow better and more steadily, more rapidly. I know we sold one of our companies. I was still a young guy at the time, I was about 35 years old. We sold it for a lot of money and then I didn't have a mortgage anymore after that, and everybody who's owned a home and has a mortgage can understand the value of financial freedom. It's better than financial security and it was because my wife and I at the time we built this company that was so streamlined and so efficient that it presented really well and it sold really well, for significantly more than what I thought it was worth, and that takes the pressure off.

Dennis:

But even still, in each subsequent startup that I was involved in, I always take small salaries. I still, to this day, take a small salary. I don't take a salary that reflects my value to the company. I take a salary that reflects my commitment to the company and I make that up in the end either by you know maybe after five or six years when the company's booming, you can take bonuses or, if you ever have an exit strategy, you sell the company. That's when you make it back, and keeping the owner's needs as small as possible is a huge piece to the puzzle of success when you have a small business. Yeah, I mean, think about it. If I take a big salary, what am I going to do with that money? I'm going to invest it in my IRAs, my 401k, my mutual funds. I'm going to invest that money in mutual funds and that's the best case.

Chris:

You might invest it in a boat.

Dennis:

Well, but let's say I invested in mutual funds. I'm going to earn between 11% and 13% give or take in any given year. But what if my company's growing at a 25% to 30% rate? Where do you think that additional money should go? You've got some call it disposable income. It's discretionary income that the company has. If it goes to the owner, I'm going to put it in mutual funds and earn 11% to 13%. Or if I keep it in the business, it's going to earn 25%, 30%, 40% if it's early on and that business is still growing at a rapid rate. So where do you want to put that money? You want to put it where it's going to grow the best. It's going to grow the fastest. More on that later, because that's a really dynamic part of business operations.

Dennis:

Yeah, we keep touching on that over and over again. Everything we're talking here today, this is all stuff that we've talked about. We're just wrapping it up in a different package. You kind of know this about me, chris. I'm allergic to debt by now. I say it all the time Debt is necessary at different points in our life, but it's great if you can get rid of it ASAP. Same thing with your company High financial demand placed on the upstart company by the owner, it can put a strain on the company, especially early on in the company's life, right? So if the company owner is dedicated to taking a small salary, he can do that, as we said earlier, by taking some of his personal debt his boat, his Harley and changing it from personal debt to personal wealth and then invest that in the company. It's a great way to start. The benefits are, as you say you're not out playing golf thinking about being at work, and when you're at work you're not thinking about being out on the golf course. Just take those off the table, turn those toys, turn those unnecessary distractions into revenue for the company.

Dennis:

And it isn't even just the cost of the bike, the cost of the country club, it's the ongoing membership at the country club expenses. You have to spend so much at the club, right? You don't just pay the upfront club, it's the ongoing membership at the country club expenses. You have to spend so much at the club, right? You don't just pay the upfront fee. There's other expenses that come along with it. Plus, when you're golfing you know you're going to have a few drinks, you're going to have dinner. I mean it can be a constant burden on your pocketbook. The Harley, it's not just the Harley. There's insurance, there's maintenance, there's fuel. Get that stuff off the books.

Chris:

Yeah, I remember a lot of the startups or a couple of the startups. I know this was a difficult conversation I had a couple of times with people. There's always this association of a startup having to have a certain look when people come through the door. We've got to look like we're successful, so they would go out and buy furniture. Why are we buying? Oh, because you got to look. You got to have a nice conference room, you got to have an old conference room in at least four or five chambers, and it was just that kind of conversations and that comes up a lot in small businesses. We have to look a certain way, we have to have a certain sort of sign, we have to have a certain sort of look and things and it's just that's just debt. You're just adding on, you've got to pay it off and it makes absolutely no sense.

Dennis:

It also just helps you. If you are financially literate, it helps you to make good decisions. Yeah, some people can't see that what you just explained, and that's exactly where it comes down to.

Chris:

They don't have nothing to balance it off against. So of course it makes sense, having a big conference room table makes you look successful. But again, if you don't understand how that debt affects you and how it's affecting your business, you don't have anything to weigh it off against.

Dennis:

I want to go back and revisit the building, the brand, not the bank account. As I said earlier, my partner and I we don't take salaries that reflect our value to the company. We take salaries that reflect our commitment to the company. So we take about as small of a salary as we can and still get by and still make it look good. At one point our accountant told us you guys got to start taking a bigger salary because the company's doing X and typically you don't want to be red flagged by the IRS for taking too small of a salary. You want to be as mainstream as you can. So we took a little bit of a raise that year. But again, remember, if Andy and I took a massive salary, the discretionary income that we would receive in our salary is just going to get invested into mutual funds. I don't trade stocks individually. I go with index funds, etf, mutual funds, anything in that fund family, and I'm going to earn 11% to 13%. But if my company does 300,000 year one and then, let's say, year two, we do 600,000, we just grew 100%. And let's say year two, we grew another 300, went to 900,000. Year three, we just grew 50%. And even year three, let's say we did another 300 grand. Okay, now we're growing at a rate of 33 percent and 25 percent. Your company's growth is very, very likely to outperform the stock market for the first five, six, seven, eight years. So common sense and financial literacy would tell you that's where you want to put your money, because this company is growing beyond belief. But even now. So we're 11 years in and let's say we grow 300,000, but that's only about maybe 8% of where we're at now. Now you take a step back and look and say, all right, maybe we want now to take that discretionary income or some of it, because the company's fully funded, we have all the trucks, we have all the inventory, we have all the stuff we need. And also the stock market can and likely will outproduce the growth of the company because we're still growing, even if we grow the same amount, though it's such a smaller percentage. So right about now we're right at that break point where our growth is still about 11% a year and that's just in sales. But if you look at the value and I have another chart that I was doing a seminar the other night for a group and I was talking just about that the value of my company as it still grows, but it's now only growing at about 11% a year, not like it was back in those early years. This is the time that the ownership may take a step back and look and say all right, this is the time that I think the stock market may outproduce my company's growth. So maybe we want to invest more in there.

Dennis:

And I have a good retirement portfolio built and I'm very satisfied with it. But honestly, every day I look at what's gone on here, I have so much more value in this company than I do in my retirement portfolio because we made all those good moves way back in the beginning. So build the brand, not your bank account. I know that's hard to resist, but that's my recommendation. I constantly encourage my teams and I have franchisees that I work with. I have clients that I work with. Point toward the long-term success. Develop the company, don't contaminate the brand. The success of the company as it grows, so does the brand, and so then does the company's value. There's so much value in your business today. Keep that in mind.

Dennis:

And then, of course, one of my favorite topics team building. We once did a whole seminar on team building, the Billy Bean Moneyball approach yeah, that was our first podcast. Was that our first one? Yeah, it's one of my favorite topics. I wrote a piece on that years ago six, seven, eight years ago and my son he owns a PR firm he got it published somewhere. It was real good, it really went well. And that whole money ball strategy, it's one of my favorite movies, one of my favorite topics. You don't often hear me say this because I'm not really an avid reader, but the book was even better than the movie You've seen the movie?

Chris:

Yeah, I've seen. I've read the book.

Dennis:

And you read the book. Oh my gosh, I really enjoyed the book.

Chris:

It was very interesting. Yeah, yeah, I mean it gets more into the analytical piece of it that's kind of missing from the movie, that I can't really put that in the movie.

Dennis:

Yeah, exactly.

Chris:

It gets much more into the sort of the history of analytics and sports and it's really very fascinating.

Dennis:

Yeah, critical analysis at its finest. It was a good podcast.

Chris:

Actually, if you're interested, go back watch our first podcast or listen to our first podcast.

Dennis:

Behind every successful business owner is his or her team, and team building is one of the most important components of your business, one of the most important components of life in general, and there's a lot of levels, there's several levels of team building that's going to be necessary, and the two most important components I call is your employees and then your inner circle. When we're building our employee team, remember you got to work with these people every day. If you're the new owner and you're the manager and you're the clerk of the works, you want to hire people that you can get along with. You want to hire people that are good people to be around, good people to work with. Every co-worker, every potential co-worker, brings two things to the table skill set and personality. Skill set can be taught, skills can be learned, but personality is highly unlikely to change. So for this reason, when hiring, I generally focus more on personality than skill set. It's kind of unusual in the trades, for example, so many times a small business owner he's a carpenter, maybe he's a three or four man shop and he looks around. He says I need another carpenter or I need a painter or I need a roofer. So they look for one and they go right into the usual pool of, you know, roofers and painters and carpenters, because that's his immediate need. He needs a carpenter, so he's looking for one. He's going to go find one. Personally, I try to look much further out than that and say I need a really good coworker, and sometimes he might come in the form of a carpenter. Sometimes he may not, but carpentry skills can be learned. Carpentry skills can be taught, but personality is not going to change.

Dennis:

You were zooming in on our last night's meeting and one of our franchisees was talking just about this exact thing. He has a carpenter that's been with him for several years and I've met the guy. He's kind of a jerk, very hard to get along with, and one of my franchisees finally let him go. He's got good skills, he can bang the nails, he can cut wood, he can do all the things that carpenters are supposed to do. But he's got a really awful, abrasive personality and he's very arrogant. And he'd been with this client of mine for several years at least yeah, at least two years and he's really abrasive. And my franchisee had just hired a new guy and he's real good.

Dennis:

And after a short time this new employee said to my franchisee. Hey, listen, this guy is very abrasive, very aggressive, his language is terrible on the job and he explained a very difficult situation and so my friend, let him go. He got rid of him. It wasn't because of his skillset, it was because of his personality, and that's why I look heavily toward personality and a little bit less on the skill set. I mean, listen, if I need a good carpenter, I'm not going to hire a guy with no carpentry skills. But if I'm just looking to beef up my labor for us, I'm okay hiring a guy that doesn't have great skills because I can bring him in the bottom. I'll train him. But personality is not likely to change.

Chris:

Yeah, I worked at a very successful startup and I kind of compare it against the other ones and I've kind of for years was thinking along the lines of it the reason why this startup was so successful is that the founder had such a great technical mind. It was such a great product and such. But now as I kind of look back on it and I have time sort of reflect about it and my time here, I'm kind of getting more of a feel for it that he was a brilliant team builder, because when I do look at the team that he built, there was a lot of very we're all engineers, so there's a lot of very strong personalities. There was a lot of quirky personalities and stuff like that, but when it came to it I can't remember any arrogance.

Chris:

Anybody would do any job If you were there late and someone was walking out of the building and sometimes it's 11 o'clock at night or something. Someone was walking out of the building they would stop, throw their coat on the back of the chair and ask you if you could help. I used to have this director of software engineering. I'd be leaving the building in the evening and sometimes it was morning be going out the back door and he'd be sitting in the lab doing testing, because that's what it was's.

Chris:

When I kind of look back on that, that was the number one thing, this complete lack of arrogance in that you know this is my job or that you know that sort of thing and it, it, uh, that's really probably the success of that. And as I kind of look across sort of the companies that he started and I kind of know some of those people now that he that he was working with and dragging along with him, I think that's like the number one thing with him. I think that's like the number one thing with him. He was a great team builder because he put together this amazing team and I look and compare it to the other startups that I was at and failed miserably at a couple of them, I can see that's really was the difference. It wasn't the technical thing they're all pretty good ideas, timely ideas but it really was the team. It was a complete lack of cohesion or that sort of thing. Care for each other like brothers in arms sort of feel.

Dennis:

Yeah, well, it's also part of the culture that is formed after a while.

Chris:

There is that brothers in arms sort of feel to the company you know and you can really really feel it, no man left behind, sort of thing that's so important in these startups.

Dennis:

In our corporate location, which is our flagship location, is Cape Cod Gutter Monkeys. It's our original, it's our first one and it's the biggest of our locations. We have about 25 employees right now and I would say only two of my team members really had skill sets specifically in our industry and all of us came in through the side window, in the back door, and came up through the basement stairway. I mean we all arrived here from different directions. You know it is I affectionately call us a group of square pegs and misfits because we didn't all come from the same background. For example, I have found that chain restaurant managers make great gutter monkeys, that chain restaurant managers make great gutter monkeys.

Dennis:

If you are the manager of a Bertucci's and your last name isn't Bertucci, I know how hard you worked. You're the manager at a Bertucci's. You've washed dishes, you've probably been a line cook, you've probably run a team in the kitchen, you probably were a shift supervisor, an assistant manager, and now you've landed at the top of the hill. You're the general manager of the restaurant. It doesn't matter whether it's Wendy's or McDonald's or whatever. I have several guys that came to me through Friendly's, which is kind of a chain that's been failing lately, but I have several. Many, many of my current coworkers came directly from the restaurant industry to my company. They didn't own the tools or the equipment that we currently use. They didn't have any experience doing what they do. But if you're that guy, if you're the manager of a Wendy's I know you show up every day. You're not the guy calling in sick. That's how you start out running the fryer later and you end up running the store is because you're not that guy that calls in sick. That's how you start out running the fryer later and you end up running the store is because you're not that guy that calls in sick. And I know it takes you a few years to get there. And I also know you've worked through a Christmas rush, the late afternoon rush hour type of stuff. I know you've dealt with grumpy customers and kids that made a mess in the dining room. You're my kind of guy. I've got a home for you and I can pay you better than what you're making in your current position.

Dennis:

We can teach all of our skills to anybody, but give me those guys that come from another industry, like the restaurant industry, who have reached the top and they've almost limited out in how much money they can make, because that's very typical of the restaurant industry. To them it's a lateral move from restaurant world over to working for my company installing and cleaning gutters. And I've watched these guys come over. I mean Mo has been with me for 10 years, james 11 years, adam 11 years. These guys all came from restaurants and they love it here. They don't want to leave, they don't want to go anywhere and they have it here. They don't want to leave, they don't want to go anywhere and they have skills. Now They've been doing this for eight, nine, 10, 11 years and they've developed skills and they're great coworkers.

Dennis:

One of the things I find too is restaurants are hard. When someone says, hey, I want to talk to the manager, it's never good. It's never good. And in our world people come in and say, hey, I want to talk to the owner. I'm so proud to get up out of my desk because I know it's a compliment, I know they're coming in here because it's a good thing or they want to give me some money Very different. And so I love restaurant people.

Dennis:

I've worked at restaurants when I was in high school and college and dabbled in the industry and it's a great industry for team building and that's why I love these people. The other team that needs to be built is your inner circle. That's the team of professionals just outside the company. The new business owner should not wait till he's involved in a legal dispute before enlisting the help of an attorney. Every small business owner who wants to be an industry leader is going to need an attorney, an accountant, a banker. You're going to need a financial planner, a tech person and maybe a few business consultants. So establish this as you go along. Be on a first name basis with all of these people.

Dennis:

I think it's great that I know my banker. I think it's great I have three attorneys. They're all friends of mine and they've helped me out in business and in personal stuff and they're always just a phone call away. My accountant was a teammate of ours back when we were in college. I mean, dave went to Bentley College with us and he was a soccer player at the time. We've known Dave for 50 years. You know almost. Yeah, don't wait till you need a financial planner to go find one. You know, start that building that inner circle and remember you are the average of the five people that you most closely associate yourself with. Yeah, I love this one Think about that.

Chris:

If I kind of look back on, I've had some very successful starts. I've had some very bad ones and I can honestly say, looking at all these different things that we've gone over the last many weeks doing these podcasts and stuff, this is my number one thing, Because this is the one in those situations where I was in with some of the bad outcomes, this was my problem. I think I was surrounded by people that I knew were not good to be around.

Chris:

I was surrounded by people that I knew were not good to be around. And yet I thought I could move forward and still succeed, knowing I was surrounded by people that I didn't necessarily wouldn't hang around with normally or wouldn't trust normally or whatever, and I should have known right then. If I had known this sort of thing it's the average of the people you're around oh, Then that would have been clear to me. You know that's not a good situation. This is like my number one thing. I think if I go back in time and change things, this would be the number one thing I would change.

Chris:

And I've had a pretty successful career in startups, but I still would go back. I still think this is the number one thing.

Dennis:

This is so overlooked. I tell people all the time, especially the young kids don't do all your e-banking, don't do all your banking from your pocket. Don't do it while you're driving down the highway. Go into your bank once a week, walk into your bank once a week and just this week alone, for example, I got a call from my bank on Saturday and they just mentioned I got a couple of CDs that are turning over. What do you want me to do? Well, the bank's protocol is, if you don't tell them anything, they will just automatically roll it over. But my bank has never done that.

Dennis:

They call me because I'm not only on a first name basis with the branch manager. I know every single teller in there personally. My son was with me and he's a young guy, he's a millennial, and they do e-banking and he lives that lifestyle. It's very different from me. He was with me one day and it was. I lost my wife last year and I was in the bank about three or four weeks later. I hadn't really gone out of the house yet and my son was with me and we went into the bank and the branch manager came out and gave me a hug. Every single teller came out from behind the counter to express their condolences and then Charlie said my son. He said, wow, dad, I see what you mean. You really are on a first name basis with your bankers. I said, yes, I am.

Dennis:

And throughout I mean throughout the final year of Barbara's life my attorneys called me all the time to make sure all our bases were covered. And all of our bases were covered. I didn't even have to call them. That's more of on a personal level, but on a business level. You know my banker I talked to, I talked to the branch manager at least every two weeks, if some. Some days it's a hello. Some days she says, come on in, I'll pour a cup of coffee and go sit in her office and hang out for 15 minutes. Business is personal. I mean, it really is. Oh, it really is. And my financial planner, his name is Tim. He calls me at least once a month. He lets me know what's going on. He says, hey, we got some markets moving in this direction. He keeps me posted. All of these people my attorneys, my banker they're my friends. They come over to the house and we cook burgers and we drink beer. I mean, make sure you're in a circle of a good quality of people.

Chris:

Because that's my, that's the average of my five people and don't be afraid to change it, because if you know it I mean, I had it in a circle I knew there was deficiency, I should have changed it and I didn't. And there's a lot of reasons why. All of it on me, really, but so important, this is the number one thing. In fact, I'm making a note here. I'm going to go tell my kids to watch this.

Dennis:

It's so interesting that you say that because of this topic.

Chris:

This is the number one thing for me.

Dennis:

Well, again, you're building a team of employees. Those are your coworkers. You're building your inner circle.

Chris:

They're employees in your business. They're effectively I mean they affect your business as much as your employees do. So you know you wouldn't put up with a bad employee. Why would you put up with a bad person giving you advice?

Dennis:

bad inner circle, I know so many people in the trades, for example, that you know they run a four-man shop or a three-man shop and they need two more guys because they have a big job coming up, but they only need two more guys for like a week or two and then they need to let them go and so they have their regular pool of recently released parolees and recovering alcoholics that they go to and they just need an extra pair of hands for a week or two and then they cast them aside when they don't need them anymore and it just lowers the grade of the company. It lowers the value of the company. I see it all the time. So from coworkers to your inner circle, I say always surround yourself with the best talent available.

Chris:

Yeah, we did a show one time when we were talking about this. Will you tell me a story? What happened was?

Dennis:

one of my coworkers. I was working on a job with him, roger, and this was three or four years ago. He said you know, dennis, I love working for your company. And I said geez, roger, that's great.

Chris:

I appreciate it. He says you know what I like the most about it? I said, oh yeah, it was a flip side of that, yeah.

Dennis:

He says you know what I like most? I said no. He says every day that I come to work, I know who I'm working with. He said I used to work for XYZ company and he said I could show up and they'll hand me three guys. I've never met them before, we just hired them yesterday and he gives me the plans to build a deck and I go, arrive on the job site and there's a pile of lumber and I have to build a deck with three strangers. And he said sometimes maybe we're replacing windows. That day I got a total stranger footing my ladder. I have no idea who's footing my ladder. I don't know that guy. He just came on yesterday. You know, and that's what he said, because you know we're gutter monkeys, we work on ladders every day. He said every day I know who's footing my ladder and that's just wonderful. Yeah, that's such a powerful image it is. And Roger's still with us. He's a gem. We love him. He's a very, very skilled carpenter and I hope he's a lifer here. He's been with me now for about five years, almost six now. He came on right at the very beginning of COVID.

Dennis:

So, chris, successful owners, successful business owners, we all know that seven and eights hire nines and tens, right. And fours and fives, they hire twos and threes. Seven and eights hire nines and tens, and we know why. And fours and fives, they hire twos and threes and they don't know why. And that's a huge piece of the puzzle, right there. Hire the best talent available, because they become part of your inner circle and they raise your average, right? You're the average of the five people that you most relate to. So hire the best talent available. Open up the checkbook a little bit, pay them what they're worth and build your team. And that's my story and I'm sticking to it, all right.

Chris:

Great story. Love this. Talk about startups and experiences we've all had and do it all day, but we've run out of time so we're going to go out with no monkeys were harmed in the making of this podcast.

Dennis:

Thank you, chris. Right, all right.

Chris:

Talk to you later. Thank you for tuning in to monkey business radio. If you enjoyed today's episode, please make sure to subscribe, like and follow us wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us reach more aspiring entrepreneurs like you, and if you've got a question or topic you'd like us to cover, leave a comment or reach out to us on social media. We'd love to hear your thoughts and keep the conversation going. Don't forget to leave us a five-star review if you found the episode valuable and make sure to share it with anyone who might benefit from our tips and stories. We'll see you next time. Benefit from our tips and stories. We'll see you next time. This podcast is produced by American Gutter Monkeys LLC. Build real wealth through business ownership. For details, visit us at AmericanGutterMonkeyscom.