356: Terry Ogburn – Build your photography business with a view to selling it

356: Terry Ogburn – Build your photography business with a view to selling it

Andrew Hellmich: Today's guest has developed a process that helps entrepreneurs and business owners learn the importance of working on their business instead of being caught up in the day to day grind. He system has contributed to the success of hundreds of small to large business ventures. And his passion is helping entrepreneurs and small business owners plan, launch and develop their businesses. He's adamant that we should get into business with the idea of selling it. We should never get into business with the idea of running it. I'm talking about Terry Ogburn and I'm rapt to have him with us today. Terry, welcome.

Terry Ogburn: Thank you Andrew. And it's great to be here on your show.

Andrew Hellmich: Mate, it's great to have you on. I guess to start, I'd love to hear, I'm sure the listener would too, a little bit about your background and I guess what we're thinking is why should we listen to Terry? What places even that position that we should take advice from him?

Terry Ogburn: Oh good. And I like that segue. Why should we listen to me? If you said many, many times, what makes me the expert so good? So, uh, traveling along in life and I got fired out of the car business. I was pretty good at it and I knew how to work on an air conditioner. So I started an air conditioning company with $118.42 cents. I didn't have a car because or truck or anything because in the car business they provided you with a demo. So anyway, I had this little idea, a little entrepreneurial spirit of mine probably introduced to me by my dad early on. I used to have to write business plans. If I wanted a bike or [inaudible] more or something like that, I'd have to give him a how I was going to pay him back concept, you know. So I took off and in just a few years I had 26 people, 12 trucks and I just studied what others did in the industry and I come up with better ideas just to give your listeners a quick little concept here.

Terry Ogburn: The industry then dictated 90 day guarantee only in parts and labor, you know, if you fix something. And so I found out that if you put use the original manufacturers parts, you could get a year on those parts. So, and if you, you know, if the technician puts it back wire for wire, then you should get a year, you know, your guarantee out of it, you know, it should last that long. And what I found out was that as the part did fail, you wasn't blaming me, you were blaming the manufacturer as I put the right part in. And the other idea was when it broke, the first person they called was me because it was under a year guaranteed. As long as that part was still working, it was like getting a free service call.

Andrew Hellmich: Nice.

Terry Ogburn: So if you get my drift. So it was just finding some little difference that, you know, 90 days it was out of warranty. So they didn't call that person, they call somebody else. So I found that little niche there. I also focused on the service part of it. And so that's what helped grow the business. By 1985 I had been nominated for small businessman of the year and received it for the state of Florida. I then decided to take my systems and processes on the road. By that time I had been introduced to the e-myth and thinking grow rich. So I was applying those concepts, you know, to a business. I was a technician, I was a good, uh, you know, I knew how to work on air conditioning, but I didn't know anything about business. And I'll imagine that a lot of your listeners are out there are similar to that. They decided to start their own photography studio because they got mad at somebody or whatever. They decided to land and they found out.

Terry Ogburn: Now there's a lot more to it than just taking pictures of people. You've got marketing, you've got all these other things you'd budgets and performance and all these things that you've got to deal with. Operations manuals and different things like that. So I took that on the road and the next thing you know, I was involved in the corporate arena and I worked for companies like Uniglobe travel. I was part of a five person team that took a travel company public and two and a half years we developed 11 regional offices and over 2000 franchisees. So I learned that if you're going to build a business, you might as well build it as if you were going to sell it. That's what franchises is. You build a franchise concept and you sell it. But the interesting thing is that in the United States we are governed by something by agency called the federal trade commission and that federal trade commission basically makes sure that you're a viable business before you sell it.

Terry Ogburn: So it works on paper and you can't make any earnings claims or anything like that because that's a jailable offense in the United States. So that's a good way to pattern your business. So then I was [inaudible] after the company went public, then RadioShack brought me in to do some turnaround stores for them, a [inaudible\ paging and stuff. The different companies brought me in big companies. And then to do that century 21 real estate, I don't know if you guys have that over there.

Andrew Hellmich: We do, yeah.

Terry Ogburn: Yep. I was brought into do some turnaround stores for them using my system and the processes that I've developed. It works in anything. It works in retail, it works in the service, it works in any MLMs. That doesn't matter. It works and after that, in 2005 at the end of there, we kind of had that downturn in business. I can't speak for Australia, but here in the United States we had this real, the bottom fell out of real estate. And so I figured that at this point that would be the small business person that would be the, you know, pull this country back around. And you know, small businesses always been the backbone of any country or any business that, you know, any consumer, uh, concept. So why not go after that sector of the market. And so I zoned in on that. I've been in business now for 14 years. I'm starting my 15th year. We're just kicking it off. It was started in 2005 in December. So we're just finished 14.

Andrew Hellmich: Congratulations.

Terry Ogburn: And we're headed into our 15th year. My air conditioning business lasted 10 years. So I've had two companies that gone past 10 years, and if anybody out there 10 years in a business and it's stays profitable, and I sold it to my employees, which is the easiest and the best sale you can make, build a business, sell it to your employees and get a [inaudible] income coming in, you know, from then on. So that's a little bit about me. I've worked with some big companies, you know, I know your podcast is around photography. I've worked with photographers before, so yeah, that's a little bit about me.

Andrew Hellmich: Nice. And one of the things you said there, did you say you can't, when you're selling a business, you can't project earnings, but even though you have runs on the board, I mean, if your business was operational for 10 years, wouldn't a new owner expect to be making the same money?

Terry Ogburn: Well, of course, what I meant there, and I'll clarify that when you're selling a franchise to a prospective franchisee, I can't promise you, Andrew, any money that you're going to make.

Andrew Hellmich: Right.

Terry Ogburn: I can't forecast your numbers. But in a business when you're selling it, you can, like I factored my company based on, um, there were over 7,000 customers that had done business with me for three years or longer. So that set a precedent so I can factor my business and sell it that way, but I can't be the franchise or, and want you to buy into my concept and tell you that you're gonna make money.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. Got it. Got it. Now, one of the things you said, Terry, or one of the things I said, Terry, about you when I introduced you was that you're adamant that we should get into business with the idea of selling it. We should never get into business with the idea of running it. Now I'm wondering, does that apply to photographers who a lot of the time get into photography as a business because they love photography?

Terry Ogburn: And that's good. There's are a lot of little small, you know those little solopreneurs and things that just get in business and they just want to make a difference in a company and you know that's just a hobby that makes money for them. And there's nothing wrong with that. But if you're going to be in business, you're going to have to have employees. A person with one or two employees is not really in business. They have a business license, they have a business thing, a, you know a concept. But what I'm talking about businesses is where you have a photography studio, there are three or four people work and you have photographers, either you dispatch them out to different locations and things like that. When you're wanting to develop your business to that level, it shouldn't be called Sam's Photography. Like when I named my air conditioning business, I named it Buccaneer after the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, which was a local football team.

Terry Ogburn: So you want to brand yourself and be able to step away from it. So many people that get in business, they go into it with the mindset of they have a vision of opening their business and which they do. And then they got to get it on the copier and they get to get all the stuff and everything and in place. And then they get sucked into the day to day routine, the sales and doing the photography work and going into the dark rooms and all the things that they have to do. And there's so much time devoted to that that they forget that about the other two pieces. The reason they'd got in the business to start with was to have financial freedom and to do things where we able to go on vacations and do things. But most of the time, what happens through years is you're strapped to twelve, fourteen hour days and you make ends meet and things like that. But the idea would be to select a name that it could be like mine, Buccaneer or you know something that can become a household name that would go along with photography.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay. So if you see a photographer who has named their business after their own personal name. So Terry Ogburn photography. If you do that, have you automatically restricted your potential to grow?

Terry Ogburn: It's my belief that that's correct. You can grow. There's nothing wrong with that. But when your name is there, then you're most likely to have to be a part of that business to be successful. If we removed you from that business, the people would show up and say, where's Andrew? Well you know Andrew's, you know, he's not with us anymore. Okay. They may do business with you once, but they don't come back because they're not getting the same service that they got from Andrew from, you know, from someone else most likely. I mean that's the typical, I mean there's exceptions to this rule, but more times than not, that's what's going on.

Andrew Hellmich: Got it. Okay. I'm happy to throw questions at you. I'm happy to delve in and try to explore this in more depth. But first of all, it might help if you outline your system, cause that'll give me a little bit more direction instead of just firing questions at you.

Terry Ogburn: Oh good. And I appreciate questions cause it keeps me on my toes too. You know, you have to kind of bob and weave, you know, kind of thing.

Andrew Hellmich: Well I'm going to keep you docking and weaving, that's for sure.

Terry Ogburn: Okay, well good, good, good.

Andrew Hellmich: So can you outline the system that you talk about? What is that?

Terry Ogburn: Well, my system is about designing an operations manual. One of the things that you learn in the corporate world is there's an operations space. It's kind of like your rule book. And inside of my system, this operations manual consists of eight pieces or eight sections. One is your development plan. How you or your culture of your company, how are you going to develop, you know, what are the guidelines to that fall within your development process. An action plan with the steps that it takes necessary to get your goals done, your dollars met, your budgets, you know, getting to budget. Then an organizational strategy where I think most companies don't create job descriptions or, or an organizational chart because they all were too small and were too big. I mean we're too small for that. We don't need that. But that's not true because there is accounts payable and receivable and all the other little gimme do things that go along with running a business.

Terry Ogburn: And then after that we need checklists. Was this one of the things that I add to the program that most company, you know, most consultants or coaches don't do is for every job that you need there should be a step by step checklist that causes it to, you know, come to fruition. And in us, if you don't mind, I'll just share a little tip here of how to write a checklist that was be very productive for people.

Andrew Hellmich: Go for it, yes.

Terry Ogburn: First is you state the outcome. What is the object of the process, what we're about to do, what is the end result in it and why? Then the next is the why. Why is it important? Why do we need to do it? So you can establish the why and then the outcome is what will it look like when it's completed. So let's say you wanted to develop or create an email addressed for a new coworker so you could write it down and you know, then you put out the tools that you need to do it.

Terry Ogburn: So you need access to the Google and so forth. And then you'd need the password. And then the next thing you would do is how long would it take you the elapsed time. So it should take you 15 minutes and then you put this step, follow these steps, open Google, and you lay it out from step one, step two, step three, step four. And so that you can hand that to any person basically with a eighth to 10th grade education. And they should be able to follow those steps and complete the task. That way, if you bring in a, you know, somebody comes in as a temp, you can pull out the things that you want them to do out of your thing and say, okay, these are the things that you're going to do and they should produce the same exact results each and every time. It makes sense, right?

Andrew Hellmich: Yes. So for a photographer, if I have a studio assistant and I would set up a process for what they would do when I get back from a shoot, I hand them my cards with the files on there and there'll be a step by step instructions on how they deal with those cards.

Terry Ogburn: Exactly.

Andrew Hellmich: Right.

Terry Ogburn: It does take a little work, you know, to sit down and plot that out, right? I mean it does take a few minutes to think about how to do that and you're going to leave out some steps and so you're going to have to add them back. So that's a very intricate part. Then we have a budget and performa. Now back in the, you know, when I started my business, this was a big tool that was used. Now most people use QuickBooks in these, you know, online programs, but a budget with a performa, what that is is a forecast of how well your business is going to do. When you forecast your budget, you know the expenses that you're going to make and therefore you create, you know, a template of how your business is going to go in the next three, six, nine, twelve months. I'll give you a quick little example here. A 100% would be revenue generated. In a photographer's world, 30% should be costs of sale. So if you take a $200 sale, $60 should be the one time expense film or whatever you guys use to produce the photograph or the series of photographs for one time. Just one time use. That leaves you with a 70% gross profit, then you should be able to pay your expenses out of that. Leaving yourself a net profit of probably around 20% because we want to factor in, this is a big mistake, Andrew, that most small businesses forget to do is they have to pay taxes, right?

Andrew Hellmich: Yes.

Terry Ogburn: Okay. So if they're in a 26 or 30% tax bracket, then go ahead and subtract that out of the expenses and then you take that 25% or whatever. Let's say that off that number that's going to leave you in a new figure. Right? Okay. And that figure is called your net net. So, and that net net should be 10%

Andrew Hellmich: Okay. So that's after all expenses, after taxes paid, that's your net net?

Terry Ogburn: Exactly. That should be 10% of your gross revenue.

Andrew Hellmich: That's the true profit. That's the take home.

Terry Ogburn: That's a true profit.

Andrew Hellmich: Right.

Terry Ogburn: Too many businesses and startups and solopreneurs out there, they ended up at the end of the year having to pay their own taxes. So they go in debt with a credit card or you know, leveraged money or whatever they do. But I learned a long time ago, we need to get the customer to pay our taxes.

Andrew Hellmich: Absolutely. Yes.

Terry Ogburn: Pay everything. They're supposed to pay our spoilage, our loss or you know, our accounts receivable, you know, probably your listeners got there, they're free to give money out, you know, accounts receivables. Well, they're not going to get all that money back. I mean if they put out $100 they're probably going to get 70 of that dollars back cause 70:30 ratio. Well you got effect of that 30% loss into the cost of sale, you know, into the retail. Like for an example, when I was in the air conditioning business, we started taking MasterCard and Visa and American express. Well back in those days American Express was the highest percentage and that was 3% so all of my prices went up 3% for fear that I would have to take all American express cards. But if you added into the retail and therefore the customer, you know, reflects the blown up [inaudible]. So once we get an understanding of how the company works and we can get it on a profit concept and we know it refers back to the sales because of performance, the part about where the sales are going to come with a 30% or like a 30% projection. Cause if we hit 30 we're probably going to get 22 to 24 we know that 15% of our business is going to fall away each year. Not because of something we did wrong, just they're going to change. My brother-in-law went into business, I moved whatever. So and then 7% should be calculated in for the cost of living like gas prices, film, all these different things, solutions and things that they use.

Terry Ogburn: Those prices go up. So if we're growing our company between 22 to 25% you usually are going to stay ahead of the game. And this is how important the performance becomes because you can actually dial in your sales, you can dial in your profits and so forth. So on then you need a policy and procedure manual. And this is the rule book. This is how the policy, when you take a credit card and what are the policies, what are the procedures, what your vacations and all this gimme do things that that companies go through. You know, sick leave and vacation and harassments and you know all the things that you know, these policies and procedures are there for, and then in my world you need to, you need a direct marketing plan, which is, you know, sending mail outs, you know, doing your mail outs. And I'll give your listeners a tip here. I can give them a tip right now and I think this would be good if we could share something with them that would get an 80% or higher open rate on their direct mail pieces.

Andrew Hellmich: Yes.

Terry Ogburn: Okay. All right. So it's just very simple. You get a little nine inch tube at the, at the staples or you know, your office supply store and you get, you know, tube like a poster tube and they come in colors or whatever. You make them be fun with it. All right. Take your flyer, your advertisement or whatever you want to send to them, roll it up, put it inside. And then you guys have, I'm sure that the people out there have Tic Tacs?

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah. Like the sweet, the lolly?

Terry Ogburn: Yeah. Yeah. The little tic-tac breath mints. Well, they fit perfectly right into that nine inch tube. So you seal it up. And so when it arrives at the P.O. Box or the box, guess what's happening? It's shaking. It's rattling.

Andrew Hellmich: It's rattling, yes.

Terry Ogburn: So they're going to open it.

Andrew Hellmich: That's going to get 100% open rate.

Terry Ogburn: Well, I want to say that I can't say a hundred because maybe they don't hit the right mailbox. You know what I'm saying?

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, true, true.

Terry Ogburn: So with a little disclaimer there, but you can see how that would I, well, that would get curiosity. That would build curiosity and get somebody to open something.

Andrew Hellmich: Absolutely. Yeah.

Terry Ogburn: And you know, it doesn't mean they're going to buy, but it gets the open rate up there. And if you're clever about your flyer, your newsletter or whatever you're going, you're sending, then you know, you got their attention. Now they open it, they'll think it's clever and so forth and so on. So it's just a good way to, um, and then Facebook, if you don't mind, can I share how you and I met?

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, of course.

Terry Ogburn: So I have an assistant and I'll share the whole process with you. So my assistant has a virtual assistant and this virtual assistant finds a genre of podcasts that we would like to get me on. So they line them up on a Google drive and so she picks out the ones and then she goes to Facebook. She doesn't go to your email, it doesn't go in the door. She goes through Facebook and she says, "Hi, this is Millie, the Executive Assistant with Terry Ogburn and he would like to be a guest on your show." And it usually the person will send back an email that we would go through and then we go through the email process, but we start out by Facebook. Do you know why?

Andrew Hellmich: I'm guessing because the open rates is going to be higher, otherwise I may have ignored the email.

Terry Ogburn: You may have or whatever. But that's how we got connected. It was through somehow like that. And it is, it's 100% open rate.

Andrew Hellmich: Yes. Okay. I like that. So why does your assistant do that? Why does she or he need another virtual assistant?

Terry Ogburn: It takes my assistant to, let's say, do two hours worth of work, finding names. Okay, well my virtual assistant, I can get 10 hours worth of work done from them on a weekly basis for what I would pay her for the two hours that she's going to do it.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay. So you're just cutting your cost there. They're doing the research and then you've, their finding the name.

Terry Ogburn: Right. So they're just feeding in the right people and then she, it's cut three to five hours out of her time just on, you know, for this segment of her work. For me.

Andrew Hellmich: Yes. Okay.

Terry Ogburn: And it's a numbers game. You know, getting on podcasts, you don't really a chance to build rapport until you like you and I got on the call first, but so it's just a numbers game. You got to throw it out there and throw it out there. Now I'm not saying that all businesses should be like that. I'm just giving your listeners some little tips of how to get things open. So if you've got a good offer, you know, send it through your Facebook messenger. Don't bombard your people that way, you know from your fan page or something. Be smart about it. Don't be, you know...

Andrew Hellmich: I know what you mean.

Terry Ogburn: Yeah. I'm trying to get a good word out, but I can't think of anything that would be appropriate.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, no, I know what you mean. And I guess in our case, if your PA hadn't sent me an email and it was addressed to me by name and she indicated that she actually knew the podcast and that the audience, the listener is going to be a photographer, then yeah, I'm going to be opening that and reading that, but using Facebook was a sure bet that I was going to read the message.

Terry Ogburn: Yeah, and you probably directed her to your assistant and then she started communicating with your assistant and then somehow whether you know, whether we filled out a questionnaire or whatever, you've vetted us. I'm sure you did that.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, I did all that.

Terry Ogburn: And you said, you know, you said, well, this guy might be a good guy to have on and voila!

Andrew Hellmich: Yes, I love it. So really, really the takeaway here is don't bombard people's email. Look for different avenues to get in touch with someone, whether that's the poster tube or using messenger. There's other ways to get in front of your target or ideal clients.

Terry Ogburn: Exactly. And LinkedIn, you know, that's 100% open rate.

Andrew Hellmich: Terry, why is LinkedIn a hundred percent open rate?

Terry Ogburn: When you're going to Messenger, you know, when you

Andrew Hellmich: Oh okay. Right? Yeah.

Terry Ogburn: Right. Cause you can go right into you know, you and I were connected on LinkedIn. I can message you. It doesn't cost me anything.

Andrew Hellmich: Once you've got a connection. Yes.

Terry Ogburn: Yeah.

Andrew Hellmich: Yup. Got it. Cool. So all these things that you're talking about here, these are the system that go into the operating manual.

Terry Ogburn: Correct. And now you police this on a quarterly basis. You update it if checklists change, if this policy change, you've got to go in, you know, update it like you normally would, but it gives you so much control over your business that once this thing is going, you can actually put it in another town and duplicate it. You can move it, you know, just took down the street someplace and say, here, here's a licensing you know, here's a business opportunity. Open a second store. In my air conditioning business, I opened a second store.

Andrew Hellmich: I love it. All because of this operating manual?

Terry Ogburn: Right. Because I didn't have to be a part of it. It's not "Where's Terry?" They didn't know. One of this is just a little quick funny story. I also did another unique thing is every time you spent money with me, Andrew, you got a thank you card. So it was automatically, it was hand addressed by my assistant and I signed it and it, you know, put in an envelope and it was mailed out.

Terry Ogburn: Didn't matter if you spent a dollar with me or $500 everybody got a thank you card and it had a little caption on it and it was a fit in a number 10 envelope. The word "Thanks" was rich in an arc. It was a football, you know, ball flying through the ear like a person was passing the ball, you know, in an American football. And the arc is the same as with the thanks and you open it up and it said for throwing the business my way.

Andrew Hellmich: Nice.

Terry Ogburn: And then I signed it. This is a simple little thing. So back in the day I did some in the, especially early stages, I did service calls as well. And so I'd come in and I say to Mary Beth, I say, okay, how many calls I have today? And she goes, oh, three or four, whatever. So I'd get them lined up and get them all. So I'd go up to show up this house and I only did air conditioning work and we had all, we did also appliances and microwaves and all kinds of other stuff that we did. And so I've come up to the door of the lady's house and knock on the door. And so she opens the door and she goes, "You're not Terry." And I pulled my shirt up and I'm with my name and I go, "Yes ma'am, I am." And she goes, "No, no, you're not the one that fixed my stove." And I go, "Oh no, that would have been Jeff. Jeff does our stoves." I said, "but you requested Terry." She goes, "Oh, that was because of the thank you card. I really didn't know his name." And so, so I got the call. It was just fortunate it was air conditioning, but that we did have people call up and say, "Can I get Terry to come out and work on my stove?" And Marybeth laugh at him. "Ma'am, you want anybody but Terry working on your stove."

Andrew Hellmich: So is this all because of the thank you cards? Like is that what you're saying? That it just helped? What's the idea of the thank you card? Is it to save top of mind?

Terry Ogburn: Well, think about this for a second, Andrew. You've gotten cards from your family, your, you know people, right?

Andrew Hellmich: Yes.

Terry Ogburn: Isn't it hard to throw it away?

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, it is. It is. Particularly for my wife, she really struggles with it. But yeah, I tend to keep them. I store them.

Terry Ogburn: Right. Well that's human nature. So the first thing would happen, my guess is, the husband would come home and the wife would say, or vice versa. Let's say, "Well guess what? We've got a thank you card from those people from Buccaneer." "Really?" You know? And that would be, you know, that would be like, well these guys are a little different, you know. So we tried to, my rule is and this rule should be for every one of your guests, study what others do and find a better way to do it.

Andrew Hellmich: I like that.

Terry Ogburn: When I sold cars, I gave a bottle of champagne away with every delivery. Now in this day and age, mothers against drunk drivers, that wouldn't work. But back in the day, this was a celebrated purchase. So why not give him a bottle of champagne? The bottle cost me $2.30 cents at the time. And so I mean, it was a cool little gift. And so therefore it got to be a point where it was somebody mentioned car, they would think car - Terry - champagne, you know. That would go together.

Andrew Hellmich: I like that. Terry, let me take you back to the budget and performa aspect of the system because I think what gets really frightened a lot of listeners is that 10% true profit. Because I know that a lot of photographers in business, they using this six figures or $100,000 as a bit of a benchmark, which to me generally would say if someone's grossing $100,000 they're probably taking home around 50,000 but by your numbers, they're only taking home 10,000.

Terry Ogburn: No, no, no, no, no, no. Just don't go there. My mistake. Let's remember that salaries and everything are going to be in our expenses.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, well that's another thing. I bet, I'll bet. Anything that most photographers that are running a small business are self employed, aren't even paying themselves a wage. They're taking it out of the profit.

Terry Ogburn: Well, again, that's where my system, my program, me, that's where I would fix that.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. Okay. Okay, so let's say I'm a small business operator and let's say I have hit six figures. I'm going pretty good in the photography world as let's say I'm going, okay. What would be your advice when you came in my business? It's just me, maybe my partner working in the business and I want to grow. What do you do when you come in?

Terry Ogburn: Well, the first thing I would do is I'd want us, you and your partner to sit down and let's analyze what we're doing. Okay. A problem defined is half solved. So then we figured out what it is that you want. So we have to figure out what does your business look like five years from now. Okay, now then we chunk it down to one year. Now I'm just using a formula. You can do it a year in three months or whatever. But the idea is to figure out what is your business looks like in five years and then set for, you know, four, three, two, one of plateaus. So that we would sit down and say, okay, where do we need to be at the end of 2020 and you make 50,000 and your partner make 50,000 and we keep 10% of what we make. Okay. So that means that we may need to do $600,000. I'm just throwing a number out there.

Andrew Hellmich: Sure, sure.

Terry Ogburn: Okay. All right. So then we have, we would set down a marketing strategy that would get us to that plateau. So that we get the $50,000 end of the year. Now starting out fresh, we may start with, you know, 10,000 this quarter and so forth and so on. We ramp it up, but it has to be based on your gross revenue.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. Okay. And then out of that gross revenue, I'm getting the feeling that your thought process is every single business owner should be paying themselves out of the expenses, not out of the profit.

Terry Ogburn: Exactly. Because that's why 80% of the businesses will fail is because it's flawed logic to be paid out of the profits. We're supposed to keep the profit.

Andrew Hellmich: But when you say keep the profit for what, isn't that our wages? Isn't that our money?

Terry Ogburn: No, that's a flawed concept in business.

Andrew Hellmich: Terry. I could talk with you all day and I know the listener is going to really enjoy what you had to share. First of all, where's the best place for the listener to learn more and get more from you? Where should we go?

Terry Ogburn: Can I give your listeners just one more tip before we sign off?

Andrew Hellmich: Absolutely. Yeah, you bet.

Terry Ogburn: Okay. This is four steps. If they put these four things in place, it'll never fail them. So you're ready?

Andrew Hellmich: I am.

Terry Ogburn: Commitment. Number one is commitment. They gotta be totally in all in boats, burn the boats, all that stuff. You probably remember the story, but be committed. If you're going to be in the photography business, be all in. Don't put your toe in the water. I mean, just commit. Dive in, do whatever it takes to make it happen. Number two is disciplines. You have to have put disciplines in place to make sure that your commitment comes true. So that means if you've got to get up earlier in the morning, you've got to stay up late or whatever, you know, make sure that you get your processes and things in play. Number three, decisions. The decisions you make must be leading you towards your commitment. I'll give every one of your listeners permission to procrastinate on anything that doesn't take them towards their goals. And then fourth is visualization. They have to visualize themselves in obtaining the commitment, already having the commitment completed, have it done, visualize it over and over and over, and it will come to fruition each and every time. It won't fail you.

Andrew Hellmich: Commitment, discipline. What was the third one?

Terry Ogburn: Decisions. The decisions you make must be driving you towards your commitment.

Andrew Hellmich: And then your visualization at the end.

Terry Ogburn: Already having it in your possession.

Andrew Hellmich: I love it. Why does this work?

Terry Ogburn: Well, first of all, it doesn't matter if you're committed to go to the grocery store, you gotta be disciplined to get there. Right?

Andrew Hellmich: True.

Terry Ogburn: Okay. Now the decisions as you're driving, you're not going to just drive wherever the car, you'd come up and there's a red light. You don't turn right and go around the block. You put disciplines in place to stop the car so you don't have to, you know, maneuver the car around all over the place. Okay. And then the visualization is you getting to the store and getting what you want. It works. It doesn't matter if in anything.

Andrew Hellmich: Very cool. Commitment, discipline, decisions, visualization. All right, that's our takeaway.

Terry Ogburn: Good.

Andrew Hellmich: Awesome. Yeah. So why can we learn more from you, Terry?

Terry Ogburn: Well, ogburnsbusinesssolutions.com that's my company. They can go and learn everything they need about me. I'm the only coach, consultant, business development company that offers a 100% guarantee. You do what I asked you to do and if it doesn't work then I'll gladly refund your money. That's right there on my website. But the listeners that would like to work with me directly, I've got a special offer for them. This is, they go to my website, terryogburn.com, my personal website, they go into the contact us button, a dropdown box will kick in there, put in their name, their email address in a subject that they'd like me to talk, a challenge that they're having. So in the subject line, put the challenge they're having and if in the message center, if they want to put a little note, send that off to me. I will spend one hour with any of your listeners and we'll tackle that challenge and you know, do our best to make it go away. No charge, no money, no upsell, it costs nothing. If I can just help you know more and more listeners, you know, through their challenges, it would be a great service for me.

Andrew Hellmich: That's fantastic. So what's the URL for that?

Terry Ogburn: It's terryogburn.com, my name dot com.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay. And where do they go? Is it just on your homepage or they have to go somewhere else into the site.

Terry Ogburn: No, that's just you know, the http slash www. So, you know, it's a active website. It's not a landing page, there's no sales things on it. I just designed this web page for podcasting and it's just for podcasts. The podcasters use, you know, I mean there's further offer but that's all. It's just a complete websites. Got testimonies on it and they can go and look at some of the video testimonies that people have worked with over the years. There's some pretty, some high, but maybe some people they may even know. You know, Ross Hamilton, Lee Goff, some big named people that I've been able to work with to um, you know, to get my business established. Ross Hamilton for an example, has the largest, um, his website's called connected investors. He's got the largest real estate investment community in the world.

Andrew Hellmich: Wow. Realistically, for the listener, like what stage of their business that they have to be at for them to get in touch with you? Or do they have to be turning over a hundred thousand, 200, 500?

Terry Ogburn: No. I would help anybody. Money is not the thing. It's about helping them get, you know, what their goal is. You know, if I was working with, let's say you for an example, Andrew, the first thing I'd want to do is I'd want to find out what your goals are. Because until I know that then we can't build a bridge. My tagline, I don't know if you noticed it, it says bridge the gap between dreams and reality.

Andrew Hellmich: I like it.

Terry Ogburn: Well, when we're building our business, we have this dreams that we have in and you've been in a business for awhile, so you know that you have these dreams that you have and then there was this reality section and you kept bouncing your head against this glass wall or glass ceiling. Is that fair to say?

Andrew Hellmich: Yes.

Terry Ogburn: Okay. So when we built a bridge, if your listeners would probably get this and you probably too, that you build a bridge from both ends, don't you both ends of the bank?

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah.

Terry Ogburn: So there's part of our bridge that we need to build on our work, on our dream, and then there's part of our bridges the reality. So we need to connect, go through the barrier. And my systems and processes, uh, not just mine, but there are plenty of them out there. But the right systems and processes for your business will be able to poke holes through that thing until you crack that ceiling and then you start hitting your goals. And once we start hitting our goals, they become easier. And it's, it's like climbing a summit. We get to first base camp, second base camp and move on and it's all systematic and it can say, my program has 90 day checkpoints. We check in every 90 days to make sure that we're on target for our goals. We readjust and aim a little higher or whatever.

Andrew Hellmich: I love it. I love it. Terry, it's been great talking to you. It's been wonderful to hear what you've had to share. I know that listeners are going to enjoy it and thank you so much for that super generous offer as well. Mate, it's been a pleasure. Thank you.

Terry Ogburn: Oh, you're most welcome and I appreciate you for allowing me to be on your show as well.