Ezra McCarthy
Hello and welcome to the Lawn Care Blueprint. Today we’re digging into the personal side of finance. It is something I think is really needful. We’re going to be talking about how to budget smart, plan ahead and stay steady through the seasonal ups and downs of the lawn care life. So today we have with me Paul Jamison back for some more gold. Paul, thanks for having us here today.
Paul Jamison
Yeah, Ezra, super excited to talk about this. It’s super important.
Ezra McCarthy
Yeah. And you know, on this end, working with a lot of different lawn care companies and obviously as a business, helping them with marketing websites, we obviously are on the, we, we charge our customers. And so it’s interesting to see even in the busy season when people should have a lot of money, sometimes unfortunately they don’t.
Cards bounce. And I know sometimes things change, but it’s unfortunately all too frequent. So I’d love to kind of dig into your journey with money and hopefully this can help the listeners learn how to handle their finances better. So Paul, looking back, what would you say was one of your first lessons with money growing up and whether that be a mistake or a win or kind of the money mindset?
Paul Jamison
Yeah, well definitely mistakes early on, early and often a lot of mistakes, mindset shift happened more recently and that’s been a game changer. But in my early days of handling money, I was very disorganized which it felt like there was a hole in my pocket and no matter how much money would come in.
It always seemed like it was gone. So that was a mistake early on. Another humongous mistake I made early on as a small business owner is I didn’t fully understand how taxes work. And so long story short, I just didn’t save enough money for my tax bill. And I got behind with the IRS, which they can charge you penalties and interest and send you these scary letters and ultimately have authority to just come and take your money. So it never got to that.
I did have a pretty high balance with them, but I was able to get on a payment plan and eventually chunk the money their way and pay them off. So now those mistakes have helped me to be more organized and more proactive to save ahead knowing April 15th is coming or my case, June 15th is coming, September 15th is coming, October 15th is coming.
January 15th is coming when I get to send them their quarterly payments. But early mistakes, Ezra, was I was very disorganized. I wasn’t paying attention. And in the Bible, it says to know well the state of your flocks, which means you should know well what’s in your bank accounts, what bills you have coming up. You should know all these things and not just be willy nilly ignoring them. So.
Ezra McCarthy
I think a lot of business owners get into business for two things, financial freedom and time freedom. But most people, especially even mid journey, they don’t have financial peace. To you, if someone asked you what is financial peace, would you walk us through what that means to you?
Paul Jamison
Yeah, it means to me margin. So there needs to be a gap between how much your expenses are, which could be rent or mortgage, groceries, gas in the vehicles. I’m single, so I don’t have the spouse and children’s expenses, but they have, I don’t know because I’m not married, but I’m assuming school expenses and you got to, the kids are growing up, so you’re constantly having to buy new clothes as they get to the next age and stuff like that. I like the golf. So my golf expenses of golf balls and golf greens fees when you go golfing and things of that nature. So financial piece to me is having more than enough money to pay for all of my business expenses and then pay for all my personal expenses and have a cushion, have money left over. And then the wealth building part of money is then when your money makes money.
So that’s what rich people do. And that’s a lot of financial peace, think is when you can go beyond just having margin, but now your make your money is making you money. So your investments in the stock market are growing and making you more money. If you have any real estate, even if it’s just your personal residence, that’s making you money is those assets are growing up. So financial freedom, financial peace, I think is having cushion where what you have coming in is much larger than what you have going out and now your money is starting to make you money.
And I’m not there where I want to be fully, but in the Bible, it also says that peace, Jesus gives peace to transcend understanding. And if your money is disorganized and you’re at this level where it’s like, I used to be at the level where my expenses was greater than my income. That was a lot of stress. And more recently it’s been my expenses and my income. They’re about the same. One month might be better than the other month, but it’s still stressful. So I’m trying to get to this place where the income Business-wise and personal-wise is just so much higher than the expenses, which how you get there is you got to make more money.
You have to really find out how can you serve more people, them better, make a lot more, and then how can you get the expenses with frugality and shoestring budget? How can you do things more simple? So you’re not wasting any money and build out that margin. And then when you do spend money beyond the basics, you’re making smart investments that’s growing your money.
And then lastly, I would add financial peace to me as being debt free. I used to be in debt. Now I’m debt free and it’s a lot more peaceful for me now, not owing my student loan or credit card or whatever the debt was, the IRS. I had so many debts. I kind of forget some of them now, but it’s more peaceful now not having those debts.
Ezra McCarthy
I want to highlight something you said there. There’s a good quote that I’ve said before, but it says, what gets measured gets managed. And I think a lot of the frustration and the angst that comes from finances is having no idea where your money is going. And there was a stat, I’m not sure how relevant it is today. I have a feeling it still isn’t. It said something to the fact that the average American could not write a $500 check.
And if you’re in that place and you have no idea what’s going out the door, you’re naturally going to feel angst about where is everything. A big part of that is knowing your expenses, creating a budget. And I’m not sure how completely you follow it. I know you’ve mentioned before, Paul, that you’re big into Dave Ramsey. And I think personally, I would be as Dave says Dave ish, but I think it’s a really good framework for personal budgeting. Would you mind kind of walking us through that? Would you tell us what his baby steps are and how it might help the listener who’s listening in?
Paul Jamison
Yeah, totally. And I would have to classify myself over a longer period of time as definitely Dave-ish. Baby step one. So he has seven baby steps of building wealth. And Dave’s himself has got to be close to being a billionaire if he’s not already a billionaire. He’s built a magnificent business called Ramsey Solutions where they help people get out of debt and build wealth.
So the seven steps are step number one. You just get a starter emergency fund. It’s only a thousand dollars and you’re gonna do your full emergency fund in step three. But step one is just set a thousand dollars aside. And then step two is what most people have the most struggle with. That’s paying off all your debt. And so for me, when I started his plan of going from Dave-ish, which I’ll explain in a moment to actually following this plan, I was like, okay, I’m gonna really follow this plan now and pull up my sleeves and get out of debt, which is maybe step two which he has what’s called the debt snowball method.
So your lowest balanced debt would go at the top of the list. And then the next smallest balance will go second, and so on and so forth, till you get to your biggest one. Now that’s not mathematically the fastest way to get out of debt. The fastest way to get out of debt mathematically would be to have your highest interest rate paid off first, because that would be mathematically the fastest way to get out of debt.
Dave’s philosophy, if you did math you would have never gone into debt in the first place You’re gonna have to have a behavioral change to get out of debt Which would be if you can pay off the first debt first, you’ll gain a little bit of momentum. You’ll gain a little bit of energy and like excitement and then you roll that into the next one. So you’re still making your minimum payments on your debts that are down the list but all your extra money that you can scrape together by selling stuff or whatnot, you would send to the first debt.
Now my case was a little bit different because he said if you owe the IRS, you have to instantly put them at the top of the list no matter what the balance was. So I had the ugly exception of I had to pay Uncle Sam. So I had them at the top of the list and then it went to my student loans and then an SBA loan. Well, anyway, I put them all in order. So I, it’s like, you know what? The only way to clean up this mess, I’m gonna have to go out and just make a whole bunch of money and I’m gonna have to live lean and mean. And that’s what I did. And so I paid off the IRS, which was awesome. And then I paid off my, I had multiple student loans, but I paid off.
Multiple student loans were different to different companies at different amounts But I ended up paying all of them off and then I had my final debt was a SBA loan. Which when I go back to say I was Dave-ish they would have never recommended I take out a SBA loan But I used to be so broke I was like how am I gonna pay for all this stuff that I like as an emergency emergency emergency I took out an SBA loan and then in hindsight I should have never done that but I did and I paid it off. So then I was debt-free which takes you in and that’s easier said than done. But now that I’ve done it it was worth all the sacrifice of taking on extra work and not eating out.
I can’t tell you how many nights I made like macaroni and cheese and like cheap dinners or fasted, like I just didn’t eat dinner. That’s one way to save money. Then you go into baby step three and I’ll go through the rest of the list quickly. That would be you save your emergency fund, which is three months of expenses. And then baby step four is you start investing, which is 15% of your household income into investments, which I have a Roth IRA.
So I put money into that, which then I put into the stock market. So that’s been a lot of fun to see my stock portfolio growing, has been fun. And then baby step five, you save for the kids school, which I don’t have any kids. So then baby step six is if you have a mortgage, you go ahead and pay that off. And then baby step seven is you give. So I am working on that plan now and I got a long way to go, but I really have had a financial turnaround by getting out of debt.
Ezra McCarthy
Would you walk us through how did your financial piece we mentioned financial peace and then how did your mindset change even just with step number one and then specifically with step number two and to reiterate for those listening who may not know step one is the one thousand dollar emergency fund then number two is as you mentioned paying off the debt
Paul Jamison
I had to bring in accountability because I wasn’t getting the job done in my own effort. Some people who have helped me and I had to pay these people. It’s not like they’re just my friends that helped me. They basically said, hey, I’ll pay you money. Help me. Number one is Joey Cobra Lee and his wife, Megan. They’re my bookkeepers and I kind of talked to them about this over the years. We started working together in 2020 when I still had the debt and I’m like, hey, I want to pay off this debt. So they started kind of helping me stay working towards making more money in my business.
Meaning my income in my business growing and my expenses in my business going to the bare necessities to create the margin. Then when I got the margin to pay off the debt. So they really held my hand and helped me through this process along with Sheila Chaplin, who is the tax preparer lady for me. So we really started talking about all this in 2020 and they kind of held my hand and kept me focused on those financial goals and all of that. then
More recently, I hired Layla Kartafosh and I just found her on YouTube and we meet at the end of every month. We track how my money did the previous month. To the penny, how much I spent on groceries, how much I spent on food out, which is like eating out, how much I spent on golf, how much I spent on all the stuff, both in the business and in the personal. And I have to give a report to her to the penny. Here’s where I spent my money. And then we set the budget and the financial goals for the next month.
So with Layla helping me, with Megan and Joey and with Sheila helping me, that was huge. And I’ve paid all of them. Now, John Payjack, he’s a personal friend of mine and he’s kind of just been more of like moral support, but he’s helped me over the years as well, but he’s more of like one of my best friends. So he hasn’t charged me, but he’s been kind of, he came to my apartment one time, we had a spreadsheet and got me, got me on the path. So with all of them, and then just with the Christian principles, like if you’re really going to maximize your potential in life.
The Bible has a lot to say about money. And one of them was from Jesus. said that if you’re going to build a tower, when did you first count the cost to see if you have enough materials and labor and all of this stuff to build the tower? Because how embarrassing would that be Ezra, if you started building the tower and you got halfway done and you’re like, I ran out of supplies. So now you have this, you got the cranes out there and the building’s like halfway built. It’s, it’s just like a lot of people’s lives, which used to be my life was you just start going.
But you didn’t actually count the cost. And going back to your statement about measuring stuff, when you count the cost and you measure things, then you’re able to have more movement towards success.
Ezra McCarthy
People listening to this may be thinking, hey, this is a business podcast. Why are we talking about personal finance? But did you find that when you got your personal house in order financially started, even when you weren’t out of debt, when you started tracking things, measuring things, did that give you more confidence in your business to show up for your customers, for your team members and for yourself as you were growing that?
Paul Jamison
Yeah, there’s something called sales breath. When someone’s like desperate for a sale, you can kind of sense it on them. They kind of smell bad. I recently went to get a car two times recently and those guys are just sleazy. I didn’t have a good experience with either of those guys. They were just hungry for the sale and it was a bad experience, but I never want to be like that. When you’re, when you’re more financially independent and you have the margin.
Then you can truly serve your customers better. Cause you don’t, you’re not desperate that you have to have them say yes for the sale. And then you’re busy rushing up the job to get it done. Cause you got to get onto the next one. Cause you got to collect the next payment. Cause you got to pay the next bill. And I’ve been in that circus juggling act for far too long. It’s not good for the customer and it’s not good for me. And so as fast as possible, building that margin in your personal life, it’s going to make you better at business. And the more you would pay attention to the money, both in your personal.
I don’t really have a difference. Like my spreadsheet literally just has columns for my business expenses and income, columns for my personal expenses and income. So really to me, it’s just all the same, but the principles are the same. The tracking is the same. Everything’s the same. The numbers are just a little bit bigger in the business because you have a lot more money coming in and a lot more money going out versus I have way less fractional ratios of personal stuff, the personal expenses aren’t that much.
I live very frugally and then the personal income isn’t, I mean it’s decent but it’s as big as what’s coming into the business every month. So the answer to your question is when I started really paying attention, I had this moment, I need to make more money. Because when you’re really paying attention it’s like, my rent’s this, my groceries this, my eating out’s this, my golf, which again golf, not everyone has the hobby of golf, it’s kind of, bowling would be a lot less expensive a hobby, but I like golf.
So, when I realized how much it actually costs to have the life that I want to live, the lifestyle I want to live, which does include golf, which does include eating out, not every night, but that then lit a fire to go out in my business and to make more and to not to eliminate the distractions from my day in my life. That I’m using every time of my working day to build as much wealth as I can to build as much income as I can.
Yeah, there’s a correlation there between my enthusiasm and passion to go out and make money by realizing how much it truly costs to run my business and to run my personal life. And I have some friends that are really rich and I see the way they get to live. And I was like, I want that. I want that. So I gotta, I gotta go hustle and, and serve people. And then eventually I can get to where some of my friends are at who have helped a lot of people.
Ezra McCarthy
That’s very good Paul and there’s a principle that Dave Ramsey talks about. There’s also a budget at which I love and I use but the principle of an every dollar budget for the listener who may have never heard of that phrase. Would you describe to them what that is, why it matters and how it can help them?
Paul Jamison
Yeah. So Dave’s suggestion is what they call a zero based budget. So let’s say you have $5,000 that you pay yourself each month in your business. Or when I started, I started at 4,000. Um, and eventually I was able to give myself a raise to 5,000. Now I’m slightly above that from like what my business pays Paul Jamison. Now the zero based budget is you would start with $5,000 at the top of your spreadsheet or the top of his app. And then you’re literally going to allocate $5,000.
So X amount of that is going to go to your rent X amount of that is going to go to your groceries X amount of that is going to go to your eating out X amount of that is going to go to your gym membership X amount of that is going to go to your fuel. And whatever else expenses you have and then if there’s anything left over you allocate it So all we have $200 left over that’s going to go to my Roth IRA or wherever so everything before the month begin is already calculated.
Now I don’t use Dave Ramsey’s app. I actually used to use it, but Layla and I, she made a custom spreadsheet for me. And so it’s just really detail oriented. It’s got every column and every row for every income and every expense I have in my business and in my personal, and then it’s got it all broken down by the week. So I’m personally getting on this spreadsheet every morning. I’m looking at my bank accounts from the previous day, the activity.
And any expenses that I had personally in business, I insert manually into the spreadsheet and any income and expenses that I had for the business, I’m putting into the spreadsheet manually. So it’s forcing me to really pay attention every morning, what’s going on in my business bank accounts, what’s going on in my personal bank accounts, what’s going on in my investment portfolio. And I’m looking at this stuff every single morning and I’m paying attention. I know what’s ahead, I know what’s happening in the past and it’s really helping me to just stay organized.
And then it’s also helping me to stay on top of billing because the last thing you want is a customer to owe you money. So I really stay proactive when I send out an invoice of making sure that I know when it’s due, making sure that the customer knows when it’s due and just staying on top of making sure every penny is being collected into my business. Cause that cashflow is oxygen to keep everything going both business wise and in my personal.
Ezra McCarthy
Listening, maybe saying, well, that sounds good, Paul, but what about these large expenses? Maybe you have a family, maybe you’re planning for a vacation, maybe you need a new vehicle. So what would you say to them that they’re struggling with some of these large expenses?
Paul Jamison
You got a plan ahead. I remember I wanted a new vehicle for a long time and Joey Cobra Lee’s like, oh, you broke. You can’t afford it. You ain’t the numbers aren’t there and having a car payment just for me personally, I like things simple and being debt free. So that wasn’t an option. So it was like, we’re just going to have to save more money. And so ultimately I saved more money and I went out and bought an awesome Ford F-150 cash. I mean, it took like less than a half hour. I just, had called in advance and I said, Hey, I can offer you guys X amount of dollars, that’s all I have. Take it or leave it. And I will take it, bring a cashier’s check.
So I went to the bank, had an Uber to the bank and then got the money, went in, he’s like, here’s my cashier’s check. And they gave me the key and the Ford F-150 and I drove off. But that was one year of planning, one year of Joey saying, make more money, make more money. Let’s save up more money for this truck. And then eventually I bought my dream truck in cash. It’s not like super, super nice, but to me was the nicest vehicle I ever had. And I worked hard for a year, saved up.
And then I bought it in cash and then I’ve bought in two more vehicles since then in cash. Big expenses, 15,000, 23,000 in that range have been all my vehicles. I say 15 to 25,000, my last three vehicles and all of those were planning and saving and then buying it in cash.
Ezra McCarthy
I don’t know about you, but buying a vehicle to me is like getting your wisdom teeth pulled. Every time I go, the last time I bought the truck I have now, you’ll negotiate a price, then you go to talk to them and they try to add on all these prices. For window tinting, that was already done. Every time, I’m just about ready to walk out. Like, did they try that with you?
Paul Jamison
No, the people in Georgia, I’ll give them a shout out. They were Milton Martin in Gainesville, Georgia. So I literally called them, because Joey and I, I literally had, I saved up a certain amount. I said, oh, trade in my Kia that I currently have, Kia Sorento, and I have $15,678.23 saved up. I told them on the phone, I know you guys had all this bells and whistles on at the end. said,
I don’t have them, all I have is $15,768.23 or whatever the exact amount was. I was like, I can pay you that and give you the keys to my car, but you can’t play any games with me. And they were so honest. I was shocked. I thought they were going to pull something on me. I went to the bank. I got the cashier’s check. I went in, slapped it on their desk. Said, here’s the money. Here’s my key to my key. And they’re like, yes, Mr. Jameson, you know, one moment. And they took me out to the Ford F-150. I turned it on. It smelled good. It looked good.
It was in great condition and I drove off. I didn’t give any shenanigans and then they mailed me the title three weeks later. So yeah, they were great. Milton Martin, Gainesville, Georgia. Then I come down to Florida and it’s a whole nother story. These guys were just dishonest and come out with all of these things. They just kept adding on and adding on and all you, and I just, I didn’t trust them. I didn’t like the way they made me feel. I didn’t like anything about that. Those two experiences.
Ezra McCarthy
So, Paul, you got to the payment and then walked because of their sleaziness there in Florida?
Paul Jamison
No, I just made them. They were just dishonest. I just, I just paid the bottom amount of what they just kept. It just kept making it higher and higher. And I was just there for so long. was there all day. And then they were just, they were, both of them were in Venice, Florida, and they’re both sleazy business, car businesses. I didn’t like those experiences.
Either of them bad, bad, bad experiences in Florida. One good experience in Georgia, but all three of those, all three of my last vehicles were all bought in cash. It was the point where I don’t have the information or the insights of how to avoid the haggling. I just know in Milton Martin and Gainesville, Georgia, I just shot them straight with what I was going to pay for the truck and they didn’t give me any issues whatsoever.
Ezra McCarthy
Paul, this has been great and I want to respect your time. Is there one piece of financial advice you’d want to leave the listener with before we go here?
Paul Jamison
Yeah, track your money. So know what’s coming in and what’s going out personally and then in your business. Just pay attention to how much money it costs to run your life. Be paying attention. This stuff’s all predictable. You know what your rent’s gonna be next month. You know if you’re tracking, you’re gonna have an idea. Okay, well.
I can look at my spreadsheet and know here’s how much I spent on groceries in January, February, and March, and April, and May, and June, and okay, for half the year, on average, this is what I spent on groceries for half the year, or for an entire year, because I got to look back at my spreadsheets from last year, I’m like, well, my average per month for eating out is this. My average per month for groceries is this. My average for rent is this. Rent’s usually the same every month, but I can look at all of this and I know what all my averages are and then I can know what I got to tweak.
Do I need to tweak how much I spend eating out? Do I really need that gym membership or can I work out somewhere else? Like you can start making these informed decisions. And then my advice is to hang around people more successful than you. So I have some friends who are high net worth individuals, very, very rich guys. When I see their lifestyle and they have such successful marriages and just that piece, financial piece, their income and investments and their money is making them money in the tunes of millions of dollars a year.
They’re making millions of dollars of years not from their jobs, which they’re making millions of dollars a year from their jobs. They’re also making their money that they’ve already invested in assets, is making them millions of dollars. I’m just like, these guys are so rich, but I see how they did it. I see the path. My advice is hang around people more successful than you, because it’s gonna stretch your brain to what’s possible and what’s available. And we’re made in the image of God. He, I mean, on his resume, he made the oceans, mountains, this earth, whatever all is out there in the galaxies and the intricacies of human body.
He made all of this and he made us in his image as creators. And I just feel like I’m not reaching my potential financially. I haven’t been reaching my potential in creativity and in life. And so I want to, I want to get there, but part of that path of getting there is like what Jesus said, it counts the cost. Know what it takes financially to build this business, to build this lifestyle, to operate your household and do that on the front end and then track and then last but not least, get out there and serve people and make money.
That’s how you make money. Two ways. Number one is you serve a customer and then they pay you. Whatever that looks like for you, however you serve people, serve them well, they’ll pay you. And then number two, try to get margin in your finances so that you can take a portion of that money and invest it in assets that appreciate. So all three of my vehicles that I bought depreciated. They’re going down in value. But assets that appreciate or the stock market if you put it in the right mutual funds and things of that nature.
And then real estate can be something that could be an appreciating asset. So the rich people I hang around, they all are obsessed with how much they can invest in assets that appreciate, because then those are making them money. So they’re double dipping. They’re making money from their assets while they’re also making money from their businesses that they own. This has been great. Ezra, I appreciate you having me on the program, my friend.
Ezra McCarthy
Sounds good, Paul. And if people are looking to where to find you, Green Industry Podcast, be sure to check it out.
Paul Jamison
Yeah, thanks.
Ezra McCarthy
Sounds great, Paul. This has been fun. Finances might not be flashy, but they’re going to definitely affect how you grow your business. And so if you got value from this, be sure to subscribe and leave a rating and review. Catch you on the next one.
