Hi, my name is Sam Taggert with the Door to Door Experts and Door to Door Con. I have helped many businesses over the last two years really just  helping them scale, create, and processes. We have what’s called the door to door operating system. We found that there are five simple mistakes that every door to door startup typically makes. It is my mission is to really go help optimize this with companies and say, okay, how do we avoid these 5 major mistakes? Here are the 5 start up mistakes and how we are going to avoid them in your business.

Spreadsheet Millionaires

So, the first one is they basically are spreadsheet, millionaires. Most people leave their current company. They started on their own and they’re like, I’m gonna be this millionaire. Right? And they put it on a spreadsheet. They’re like, if I sell this many deals and I’m making this type of commission as an owner, where I was a rep, I was only making this amount, then all of a sudden they’re, they’re a millionaire. Well, the reality is they don’t understand all the costs of going into all of the behind the scenes of things like software costs and employee costs of things like payroll and insurance, taxes, the legal, and the contracts and all the other stuff that goes into play when you have a business. And so they don’t calculate that in that spreadsheet. They are only calculating income, most of the time. Therefore, they usually don’t make as much as they think.

Wearing All The Hats

Then the second one is, is they wear all the hats. You cannot wear all the hats in a company, or with any aspect in life and succeed in every area. But, the problem with this when you start up a company is, for one, when you leave a company and you’re like, okay, I’m a sales guy. You’re wearing one hat and that hat is, I’m going to sell. Or, maybe that hat is, I’m a leader, or maybe it is I’m going to recruit. It won’t take long to see that when you’re an owner, you’ve got all these other hats that you are going to have to put on if you are not hiring. This will spread you too thin. You need to hire. You’ve got to know the ins and outs of managing employees and managing the backend. We actually have the a demo with softwares and different things like that for you to use. So, you’re wearing all these hats. So, in order to do this effectively, my advice would be, Hey, let’s take off all, or at least some hats, and learn how to delegate. That is a skillset. That is a very beneficial skillset to know how to go out and find the right talent. The team around me creates the environment and delegate some of the hats that really aren’t that important. Because, some of the most important things you do when you first start a business are the nitty gritty. The most important thing you do when you start up is not your website. It’s not your business cards. It’s not your logo, your swag. A lot of that is what is fun about the process of starting a business. You feel like this pride of like, I got this dope website, But, that doesn’t make you any money. What’s most important when starting a business is keeping the sales guy hat. You still want and desperately need to keep the sales hat on. Meaning no matter what I’m bringing in revenue wise, because the second you don’t have any revenue coming in is the second your business starts to suffocate.

Train To Scale

Then the third one is you gotta put a system to train in scale. A lot of people never put training to scale in their foundation, because they get so caught up in selling. This is the whole reason we have created door to door university. It is our goal to help small businesses obviously kind of automate that process. We have a turnkey solution for five different industries and then we have a lot of general stuff. what we have found is it’s like, Hey, if we can plug in our system, which is a system to where, when you hire a guy, he’s actually has some resources at his fingertips. Where most of the time, when you leave a big company, they’ve already put hundreds of thousands of dollars in these resources. We have done that for you, so that you don’t have to go spend time, energy, money, because time is money when you’re in a startup mode. My whole thing is you have to have something available for the new guy. If you were to hire somebody, because you better be hiring if you’re trying to scale your business. That is why you started a business, right? So, with the D2D platform, you can plug your new guy in and he can actually start learning what he really needs to learn, whether that’s how to sell, how to lead, how to recruit, how to do whatever you want him to do. But, with our platform, you have a system in place that is easy to replicate over and over.

Knowing How To Recruit

Okay. Or the, the, the fourth thing is recruit. Recruiting is just different. A lot of people think like, oh, I was a great a recruiter at this company. Then they think that, obviously when I go start my new company, everybody’s going to just follow me there. You know, here’s like a gut check for you. It, they went there for a culture. They went there from, uh, a promised vision. They went there for a movement and now you go start this risky business. It’s a startup. They don’t, you know, they might look at their wife and go, well, I’ve got a safe thing going here. Is it, is it worth it to go there, to meet at a Starbucks and really start this from the ground up? And how do I know he’s gonna pay me? How do we know that there will be money coming in? How do I know he’s going to be a good business owner? He’s a great leader, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s gonna make sure I get paid on time, the right way and all these other things. So, when you recruit, you’ve got to really look internally and say, how do I recruit to something that’s small, that’s a startup? It is possible, you can do it. It’s not that you can’t, it’s just you have to understand and have like a gut check and reality check of like, Hey, it’s not as sexy coming to the one man band shop or the three man company. Where they’re coming from, they have incentives and swag and everything dialed. Right? So, make it, you have got to find your value proposition. So, a lot of people’s value propositions in a startup is obviously opportunity for growth and they sell them on this vision of, Hey, one day you’ll be the regional manager. Show them that they are never going to move off the ladder, something like that. That’s one sales pitch, but you have got to be cautious with that because every new, small crappy business says that. They’re like, well obviously there’s room to grow. There’s only five of us. So, be cautious around that because in my opinion, it’s like, look obviously at a big company there’s opportunity for growth. But, at a little company, there’s opportunity to grow. Here’s how I’m going to map this new growth plan out for you, where at the big company they never really map that out for you. I’m going to show you the roadmap. We’re going to stick to this roadmap. That’s one thing we teach our people, right?

Cash Flow Problem

Then the last one is just money. Like, so many people start businesses and you can start it with a broke bank account, and that’s great. But I, in my opinion, have some rainy day funds like have a good little nest egg so that you can weather a storm. I see guys start and then they’re like, ah, crap. I need to go back to just sales rep and they’re trying to be CEO, but they’re really just having a cash flow problem. So, find ways to either leverage other people’s money, leverage your own investments, or leverage your sales commission. You have got to reinvest those sales commissions and realize you’re an owner now. Sometimes your own sales, commissions, and money actually is paying somebody else’s job. You have got to be willing to take that and bite the, you know, bite the bullet there so that you can do the long term play. That’s probably why you’re starting a business. As you’re thinking, I want to go long term, you have got to play the long game, not the short game in this. Too many people are so used to playing the short game that they never can adapt to the long game. And that’s sometimes just a money relationship problem.

So, hopefully you understood the five tips. Again, it’s, don’t be a spreadsheet millionaire and figure out what hats are important to wear and wear those and delegate the other ones. The third one is put us training and scaling system together and processes don’t manage just the people, manage the system and then learn that the recruiting is different. Recruiting is the struggle when you’re the startup guy. The last one is obviously manage the cash flow, know where the money is coming in, how it’s coming in and have a nest egg.

At the D2D Experts, we love to help businesses. Like that’s where I get my nuts and bolts, is helping startup entrepreneurs, helping medium businesses on how to put a door to door operating system together to avoid the mistakes that hundreds and thousands of people have already made before you. Let’s save ourselves some money and time. And actually just skip that, right? It’s sometimes you just don’t know what you don’t know. So, we’re here to support, you know, we have boot camps for business owners. We have Door to Door Con, where we have leadership and mastermind where we help people with those things. So, reach out. We’d love to help you out. Follow the podcast, YouTube channel, stuff like that, but let’s have a conversation, really. It’s like we have a team that’s here to support and have a conversation with you. Reach out.