Local Market Monopoly

Clarence: Episode 100. Welcome back to Local Market Monopoly. It's Clarence Fisher, your host. Can you believe it? Episode 100 today. Of course, it is so fitting that we're going to talk about the 11 biggest business mistakes that I've made over the course of we've been in business way longer than the episode 100, but of course, over these episodes I've made mistakes as well. So we're just going to look at all of it. The 11 biggest business mistakes I've made in how you can avoid them, I'm going to unveil for you the invisible expense trap. This is how unnoticed costs were bleeding my business, dry in the swift action that I ended up taking and that you can take today to seal those financial leaks seriously, this one shift can safeguard your profits and propel your business to stability. I'll share the exact moment I realized traditional business advice was sabotaging my business and the unconventional strategy that turned everything around and the quickest, the most effective way to bounce back from any bad decision you make. Hang on, we'll be right back.

Intro: You are listening to Local Market Monopoly with Clarence Fisher uncovering the tools, tactics and strategies, the most successful small businesses used to their local market and own the block.

Clarence: Alright, we're back. Okay. So it is, like I said, episode 100, I cannot believe it seriously starting this out, this podcast out. I was like, we'll, just see if anybody resonates with it, then you do. So I am very, very grateful. Number one that you continue to listen and grateful that we are hitting 100 episodes. Now, I started my actual, well this business, Tulsa Internet Marketing was the business that started it all. Well, I guess Clarence Fisher Consulting, of course is the umbrella, and that was March 10th of no March 1st, officially 2010. So it's been a run in that business and eventually we had localmarketmonopoly.com way before we did the podcast. Just did not know really what I wanted to do with it, but I did know we wanted to help businesses, local businesses dominate their market. That was the main thing. So I didn't know how we were going to do what we're going to do with that brand, but definitely we want people to dominate their market and own their block, right?
So what I'm going to share with you today are the 11 big business mistakes that I've made. Of course, I've made way more mistakes than 11, but I thought it would be fitting to share, kind, revisit, and share some of my mistakes. You can compare them with yours and I can let you know how I overcome them. So the purpose of the day is to share those and give you what I've done to overcome them. Before, as I was thinking about my mistakes, I did put out on the survey board, which is hashtag social media, and I'm like, well, hey, what are your biggest mistakes? And some of the answers that came in are some that I've made and some of them are different. One of the biggest mistakes that was mentioned was not knowing those that you plan to partner with you really you got to know.
And honestly, if you can do it without financial support, without bringing in extra money from other people, that's the best way to go. And I personally agree with that, which is why I've always, I can't say I've always, I've had a couple of partnerships, but after those couple of partnerships, I have always bootstrapped and believed that if I can do it myself, I definitely will do that. Katie said, keeping the wrong people on the bus too long. It's okay to make room for better team members and stop forcing a square peg into a round hole. Leading is teaching, growing others, growing others grows you. I absolutely believe in that. You can't escape holding others accountable and have a successful and a cohesive team. You can see the finish line and it will change 100 times before you get there. Absolutely. So keeping the wrong people on the bus, definitely a mistake that I made once I finally agreed to get people on the bus, which is another mistake that I made.
We'll cover this here in a little bit, but just like a lot of business owners, I was driving the bus myself after those failed partnerships and like, Hey, I'm driving the bus and I don't want anybody on my bus. I know this is a big bus, but I really don't want anybody on my bus. And then you finally get started getting people on the bus and you keep those people a bit too long. Debbie said, not doing enough through social media. And so that could be in our world, it's ads, but it could also be content. Content really is king and it is right now king and queen content. So Debbie said, not doing enough through social media, Jeremy said that the biggest mistake that he made was stopping when the most momentum. This is a big one too. And I've made this mistake of getting kind of complacent.
I mean, I have fought this mentally for a very long time. It was easier for me mentally when we were super struggling when my back was against the wall. I am what they call a wartime leader. I'm not sure where I discovered it, but if you look it up, there's different types of leaders for different situations, and it's the same for presidents. Actually. I happen to be a wartime leader. I shine my best when others are retreating. I step in and make quick decisions, run into the fire, make it happen. I'm that dude. What I am not good at is when there's peace, when there's a peace time, I'm looking for where's the war? And so it's really crazy. So in business, and I've had to watch out for this even in personal relationships, right? AKA, my marriage is like, you don't want to be in wartime, you want to be in peace time, but back to business, let's keep this on business.
You fight, you fight, you fight, you fight, you get things to peace, meaning you get revenue going, you get, everything is running on all cylinders, everything is running nice and then I don't know what to do. And so what can happen is you just relax too much until the war happens again, and then I spring to action. So that is a big one for me. Mike also said, biggest mistake, taking foot off the gas. Never, never, never, never, ever he put ever, ever, ever. If you've ever seen Chris Tucker say, ever, ever, ever, ever, take your foot off the gas, always go for growth. And again, you can get comfortable. Things can happen. We had some stuff happen this year that took me off my auto focus for 90 days, for three months, and I praise God every day for my team that keeps things going.
But it's hard, especially if you're in business and if you're dealing with any kind of rough patch. There's no secret that entrepreneurs have the biggest rate, one of the biggest rates of depression, right? Because it's so lonely to be an entrepreneur, but things can happen. You can just mentally take your, you focus off the game, but we never ever want to do that. That was a big mistake for me too. Sarah said, let go of ego. Oh my goodness, ego. Ego is the enemy. I got that book. Have not read it yet because the title, I mean the title says it all to me right now. Ego is the enemy. Can I get rid of the ego? Very, very hard, let go my egg, my ego. And she's also said, you cannot win without people, without employees or without customers. Let's see, Caroline said the biggest mistakes, just one. She said, probably thinking I have to do everything exactly like everyone else has thinking I could just start, which is BS that stands for baloney sandwiches.
It's like building a house. You need the structure in place and to understand certain things before the build starts. And you need to know the right tools, understand the language, have a mentor who is truly interested in your success, not how successful you'll make them. Sounds like Caroline is new in business and absolutely right. You don't have to do it how everyone else does it. In fact, here's the thing, there are some principles. There are some principles and we're going to go over some of these that I learned, but I'm the type of person that will immediately do things differently than anybody has ever done them. It's just how I'm wired. I'm a quick start. I will just go after it. So you can definitely make it happen. Jesse said, not producing content and not prospecting enough. Part of that goes up to what Debbie was talking about as far as not doing enough on social media.
And Jesse says, not producing enough content, not prospecting enough, not prospecting enough will definitely kill business for sure. And I have been caught in that and Tommy said, not implementing charts HCM earlier by Kevin Burr and Barracuda Staffing. Kevin Burr. We interviewed on Local Market Monopoly way, way back. He has Barracuda consulting, I'm sorry, it's the Barracuda Staffing and Consulting now, but my man is on fire. And that HCM, I think it's Human Capital Management is ridiculous. So definitely reach out to Barracuda Consulting if you want to grow. I mean, it's crazy. It really is crazy. So I hear you Tommy, and I agree. You can go back and listen to the episode that we did with Kevin. It was awesome. Alrighty. Those are some of the common mistakes that people were having when I reached out to our community. You can always go to localmarketmonopoly.com and click the Ask Clarence link in the navigation.
You can leave me a voice message that way. And so let me share with you my 11 biggest. I promise this is so crazy. I've had a lot of businesses, none. Okay, I'll say this last business run, this last 14 years has been great. Before that, everything failed miserably and we've had some scary moments with the business that I have now. I mean, don't get it twisted. We've had some scary moments, but the crazy thing about business is, and I guess this is life and anything that you tackle, you start learning things from the failures. And then as I got smarter and smarter, I actually started asking for help, but I have number 11 on here, which is what I believe Mike and Jeremy spoke about. Number 11 for me was losing focus, losing focus, staying focused on business, on the business goals, the goals that I have, not being complacent.
Complacency is a big one for me that I fight. It is a crucial, it is so crucial. It's like that thermostat. I was telling one of my girls that you have to learn, let's see, how did I explain it to them? When you grow up poor, and unfortunately it's not just for people who grew up poor, but this is how I had to do it. I was not very good at saving money or investing, and this was me trying to teach them how to break this cycle as I feel like we've broken. It is you have to get used to adjust your thermostat.
A lot of us, our thermostat is set to where we don't really kick into action. Kind of like I said that I'm a wartime leader. I don't kick into action until things like all hell breaks loose. That's when I kick in action and I'm at my best. Well, when it comes to finances, I had gotten to a point to where I didn't kick into action until I had to do something back against the wall, got to make something happen. Oh yeah, now I'm in. Well, who wants to keep living like that? So what I told her was, you need to get a hundred bucks and a hundred bucks that you don't need. You're not going to touch, take out of your paycheck, put that up. And I mean, I'm talking about small, like slight, slight edge and put that up and get used to seeing it.
Get used to seeing that in your account so you see it. You don't have to do anything with it. Don't do anything with it. Just look at it. Look at it every day. Just get used to seeing that and get comfortable with having a bit more. Don't spend everything. Get comfortable with having a little bit more. Guess what happens when you get used to seeing that a hundred bucks and you realize you can have it. You can have a little bit of excess and then put another a hundred bucks in there. Now you've got 200 bucks. Oh, don't panic. Don't panic. You don't have to spend that. You don't have to spend that. So really what you're doing is you're raising your thermostat, you're raising your thermostat, things aren't kicking in so low. And so she really bought onto that and oh my goodness, this kid got me so proud.
We were talking just yesterday about numbers and she, she's doing well, way better than I was at 30 years old and way better than most 30 year olds are doing. But don't lose focus I guess was the whole point of that. Complacency is super huge for me. I remember calling one of my mentors after we had hit a point to where we didn't really have to worry about paying the bills. And I know you're like, Clarence, are you serious? You didn't have to worry about paying the bills and you lost focus. Yes, I lost focus. There was a time when we hit a certain income that my parents never had and we were able to do things like vacations and all of this stuff. And I'm not even talking about being super wealthy. What I'm talking about is growing up super poor and then all of a sudden you're middle class, you're flirting with upper middle class.
Just that made me complacent. Yeah, so don't think I'm talking about yachts and all this stuff. I'm talking about what you may just consider. I mean that still could be nothing to you, but we were so behind the eight ball that when we got up and got a bit extra, especially living in Oklahoma, the cost of living is great here. I got a little bit complacent and it bit me. It caught me a couple of times, but I'm a wartime leader, so I always get back. And so it took me a minute to get over that. Number 10 was inadequate sales and marketing. And this jumps into what Jesse was talking about and not prospecting enough. It did take me a minute to figure out that if don't sow seeds today, you have no harvest next month. I mean the sales cycle, especially of what we do can be kind of long.
I mean, I could have a 60 day sales cycle with what we do. So I had to get into the habit of prospecting and I know you're like you own a marketing company and your biggest mistake was not marketing. Absolutely. Because I own a marketing company and we built a lot on referrals. Referrals, which you do too. Most businesses build their business on referrals also. Most businesses don't have a referral marketing system. Take that one. But yeah, inadequate sales and marketing, you got to have that machine going. Number nine for me was not seeking expert advice when I needed it. This is what I'm saying, not asking for help. I got it. I'll figure it out. I'm surrounded by super dope, super smart people not asking for the advice. Then when I got to where I got to where I would ask for the advice I got to where I would even pay for the advice and then don't do it. What? Listen to me. I paid for the advice and then didn't do it. That's how hardheaded I am.
Big mistake. Big mistake. Now what I've done is put myself, and I talked about this in another episode, a recent episode is I put myself on these buying freezes, these spending freezes. And it's like you have everything you need, every training, all this stuff. Go through what you have. And I am blessed now that I am friends with a lot of experts, even to me, folks that have seen me come up and folks that I've helped in some type of way that I can call or reach out to and they have no problem helping me free, but I take the advice now. Number eight was a lack of delegation. This is called trying to do everything myself. As I said before, the people on the bus trying to do everything myself. In the very beginning, I didn't want to pay any money for, I mean, this is the very beginning of our business with SEO and all that stuff.
We started doing it with doing SEO, and I did all the SEO. I did everything I could. Not in my mind, I could not see breaking bread with someone else to do it when I could do it. And I know you're sitting here thinking, yeah, but I didn't scale. No, I didn't scale. And not only that, I worked my tail off. You want to talk about getting up at 4:00 AM and going to sleep at midnight? That is ridiculous. But I did it. I did it all myself. And who was it? It was my buddy Mike Cooch. He did an event in Colorado and I flew out to Colorado and my mind was blown here. I was a decent sized agency for a one man shop.
I had maybe a couple of contractors at the time, but I didn't have a team. But the way that he broke that he had, he had built a seven figure business and then very quick after they sold that multiple seven figures I think. And after he sold that, he quickly built another seven figure within months, definitely a year. And so he had the processes down and shared the numbers with us. And that's when I realized that I am being very, very stupid unless I want want this to just be my job, which is fine. If you want to be self-employed, that's fine, but I want it to be a business owner. And guess what? You can't be a business owner. True definition of business owner means someone else sells it and someone else delivers it. That is the true definition of a business owner. That means you have to bring people in and you have to start delegating.
So fast forward to today, when things come to me, my man, Tommy, who commented about Kevin's program, actually, I was listening to him once and I got this idea from him, which is when things come to me, I am very quickly almost immediately trying to figure out who can do this. There's a book called "Who Not How" that I totally recommend find out who can do things instead of spending your time trying to find out how to do them. And that way you can concentrate on your zone of genius, like the stuff that only you can do. And when I think about, and I think about our team, I think about things like recording this podcast, recording this episode right now. Only I can do that for us right now. This is what I need to be doing, the strategy, the vision, all that stuff I need to be doing.
If you are sending us something and it's like, Hey, can you claim this online business director or create this Google business profile? I promise you there's someone on the team that can do that, and I promise you at this point better than I can. So that's the point. So the delegation has gone from me doing it myself and getting totally burnt out, not having any productivity because I really don't even want to do it sometimes to finding people, finding whos whos, whos finding whos to give this stuff to Now, when I very first started, it was a train wreck. I kept on a particular person. I'm not going to say that person's name, but I kept on a few people too long. And my wife once was like, if you don't let her go, if you don't let her go, I promise. And she was on me.
She was on me, she was on me. And I was like, whoa, who's going to do the one thing that she does? In my mind, I don't want to do that anymore. Now I've gotten a taste of not doing that, but it really was a train wreck. And I finally had to, something happened and ended up letting her go, and I realized I should have done that a year before. It was bad. I kept her a long time. And so we don't do that anymore. And Katie had said that when she said that. I mean, I'm like, girl, preach. Because it's hard to do. It's hard to see, but you really need to let them go and find something that, and here's the crazy thing is I bet that person was not happy either because of they're giving subpar performance and it starts to be this thing where I'm going to keep, if he's going to keep paying me, I'm going to keep clocking in.
You know what I mean? But I know I'm not doing the best work, and so everybody's still on edge. We're not going anywhere. It's just a bad thing. So lack of delegation. Now I delegate my bate off sometimes. No, no, no. There is no sometimes anymore. Yes. I just got the realization. I cannot remember the last time that I tried to keep something. I really would say, Hey, I'll hold on to this and I'll do this. No, it is, and I have an awesome, awesome, awesome team. Shout out to Kristine. I've had people tell me, Hey, Kristine, is the bomb shout out to Florence? Had people tell me Florence is the bomb. Listen, listen, listen, Linda, love these ladies on the team.
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All right, number seven was a biggie. We're getting to the biggies poor financial planning and management. This was so huge for me. I just want to sell. I just want to go and get the money and sell the dreams, sell the vision. It was a long time before I realized. Yeah, this is part of what broke me down on the delegation as well, because selling it, when I was doing it all myself, I would sell it and then I would bring it back and I'd have to do it. And then I got to where I did not want to do that. So guess what I stopped doing. I stopped selling. It wasn't consciously, but unconsciously. I'm talking you out of doing business with me. Like if you buy this thing, I got to go back and do it. So finally we got some people back, we call it it over the fence, right?
Throw it back to the kitchen and then they can do it. I can create your plan. I can create the strategy and all of that stuff, bring it back, and if I have to dip in, I'll dip, dip in. But most of the time I just don't have to do that anymore. But once we got a clear separation between sales and operations, things started picking up again. But when that happened, still there was a piece missing still, okay, we've got operations. Alright, y'all handle that. We got sales. I'm just going to sell this stuff and bring this money in. But I'm not really looking at the money. In the very, very, very beginning, we actually, I'm talking about 2009 of this company, we mixed personal and business finances. It was one bank account I didn't have, I remember my accountant who ended up being my very first agency client said, do not take another check in your name.
We had gotten a pretty big, decent sized client at the time right after him and he said, man, don't take another check in your name. You're taking all these checks in your personal name. So I went and I got a business account, which was kind of hard to do. This is a quick side. This is a quick side note. I don't know that I've ever shared this on this podcast, but people who know me know that as a youngster I got into a little bit of trouble. And when you get into a little bit of trouble in America, it is very hard to, and I don't think, I promise you, if you have someone in your life right now that has been in trouble as a youngster, they have had to overcome things that you have no idea about. If you've never been in any trouble, it is not as easy at all as it is painted that you've paid your dues.
It is not at all. Even once you become an outstanding city, you see it now, once you become an outstanding citizen or somebody runs for an office or something, all this stuff comes out, all this stuff from 50 years ago comes out. So it was hard for me to even open a bank account, even though I've been outstanding. And now you're thinking like, holy crap, I liked this guy. Now he's telling me. I'm telling you man, we're not going to go into that. Just understand it is not as easy as it is painted to be. So I had to jump through hoops just to open a business bank account. Now we're fine. Of course, as a matter of fact, the place that I went, it was such a joyous time when I was asking them for services that they did not provide and I was getting really, really frustrated.
And finally I told the manager, I was like, man, what is going on? This is a business account. And he said, man, Clarence, lemme tell you something. You've graduated. Basically we don't make our money by serving people basically with real businesses. That's when I found out that I had a second what's called a second chance bank account, and they were taking a chance on me and a lot of the services that I was requesting for because all of a sudden I was hanging around real business owners and doing real business. I am requesting these services from my bank and they are putting me through the ringer in order to do these things. I remember some checks that came through that were, I mean, I get it on $7,000 checks or $10,000 checks, but when a thousand dollars check comes in and we got to go through all these hoops in order to have it deposited, even though the money's there, something's wrong.
So I ended up leaving that bank account, but all of this is saying I was mixing personal and business finally got to business. And then when we got that account, I still wasn't really tracking income and expenses and all of that stuff. I was kind of doing bank account balancing where you're just checking the bank account every day and that's really how it's going. So then we ended up getting hooked up with QuickBooks and a bookkeeper. Oh, this was a recommendation for my buddy Mike. Mike Cooch, get a bookkeeper. You can't afford not to have a bookkeeper. And then even if you're not hiring the attorney spend, I'm not the attorney, but the CPA, you owe it to yourself to spend an hour a month and go pay the CPA and ask the CPA the questions and all that stuff. So I started doing that and I realized I'm paying too much.
And when I started paying attention to it, I'm paying way too much in operations. I got the team on now and it almost doesn't matter what I'm paying them. And this is when I had all these invisible costs and a book that saved my life was Profit First by Mike Michalowicz, check it out, Profit First when he broke it down to where I shouldn't be spending any more than 30% on operating, then I shouldn't. Then I think that's up to 250,000 and then it jumps to 40%. You shouldn't be spending any more than 40% in operating costs. And going through that system and being honest with myself and cutting expenses is what saved everything. Because there was a couple of times that I actually took the business account down to zero. And that's scary even for a wartime person, that can be scary because by this time we had people and payroll has to happen.
I don't know if you've been around when payroll, there was one time, one time I had gotten so stressed out that I was sitting here and I told my wife, I'm going to have to tell them that I'll have to pay them next week or I forget what it was, but I was just tired of juggling things and giving it up to my wife. She said, how would you feel? How would you feel? I mean, she wasn't saying it sassy. She could totally appreciate the stress I was under because I'm her husband and this is the household. But she was like, how would you feel if my job said that I had to wait for my check? And I'm like, your job? No, we need that check right now. What do you mean? I get what you're saying. I get what you're, I get it.
And we went on, we separated or whatever for the night and it really ate on me. It really ate on me and I paid everybody. I mean, this is not their fault, totally my fault. So it's never been at that level again. But it was scary until it wasn't. And then it was like, we'll put all the pieces back in the board and we'll have to go do something else. But I'm glad she told me that. And I'm not ever, ever taking a business back down to zero. And the way that that happened was mistake biggest, mistake number six, which was making unnecessary investments. One of my original mentors in the agency business, Kevin Wilke warned me about what he called future spending and that is spending on things, spending on growth.
He recommended against that and I'm glad he did and I didn't pay attention. When I say spending on growth, it's like when you are at the size definitely that I was in the beginning and I'm so used to bootstrapping now that that's just the way that we do things is, Hey, I'm going to invest in this thing and you're counting on future revenue from implementing this thing. Not really the best thing to do here. And so what you get into is a cycle of, especially as an entrepreneur and then especially if you're a visionary type person, you get into this cycle of, oh, this is the greatest thing. Oh my goodness, I see it, I see it, I see it. And you plop the money down. And then if you're a quick start like me, which is how we got in trouble, I'm a quick start.
I'm going to get it started. I'm going to get it launched, but I need the people on the bus to carry it. They need to be able to carry it because after I have a quick started it and the vision and everything's going, then I'm off to the next thing. And sometimes worse than that, it just never gets off the ground. But we invested in that. We invested in that equipment, we invested in that big training, so making unnecessary investments can really, really drain the resources and impact financial stability. And speaking of financial stability, we're getting to the fifth biggest mistake that I've made, which is slashing prices too much, actually underpricing and taking for granted the things that I know. For instance, I remember it got to where this is before we had people and I got so good at SEO, I got so good at the things that I was doing that I could do them very, very quickly.
If you ask me to build a backlink or you ask me something, I could just knock it out. Well, I started charging for that for like, Hey, it doesn't take me very long. I'll just do this. Totally discounting the fact that I just spent five years figuring out all of these processes and the simplest way to do it and the best way to do it so that you don't get sandboxed by Google, which I had personally for even our Tulsa Internet Marketing site, we got sandboxed because I was trying out all of these black hat, gray hat, purple polka dot hat tactics and we paid for it. I try all that stuff out on my own properties before we ever use them on client properties, which is what we should be doing. But I got to where I wasn't pricing for that value and then when we ran sales or promotions, I slashed prices too much.
So you get to where you can't sustain business that way. The fourth biggest mistake that I've made is failure, not complete failure to adapt. You don't make it 14 years in a digital marketing agency without adapting, but you can adapt to slow, which is what I've done several times is adapt too slowly to where other people can beat us to market. And then we're in a kind of a commodity type situation or we're trying to figure out how we can differentiate or your clients are asking you about new technology. And for instance, one of the things that we recently had to come to grips with, I had to come to grips with is LinkedIn outreach. I didn't want to do it. I did not want to do the LinkedIn outreach through Sales Navigator and then reaching out to people on behalf of clients and setting up appointments.
But I had a client, have a client that love her to death. She's been with us probably five years or so and thank God for her. We're sitting in a meeting and I am actually actively selling her ongoing with our competitor for this LinkedIn outreach. Just like, eh, I don't think we want to mess with that. And she says, well, why can't I be your Guinea pig? Why can't I be the Guinea pig? And you work it out. And this is why number one, this is why you give it for us. Why I feel like you give it all for the people that you work for and the people that you work with. Because the loyalty that I give to her, she is giving that back to me and saying, Hey Clarence, we want to continue. If you can do it, if we can pay you the money, we'd rather you do it.
Now I get it that you're being honest and you're saying you've never done that before and you don't want to do that, but if you want to try, I am willing to pay for you to try. And I'm so glad she did because we knocked it out of the park and she was so elated with the results and now we have a new quiver in this LinkedIn outreach, which I did not want to touch, but we were so incredibly successful with it. It was crazy. So slow adapting, we're not doing that now with ai. We are full force with AI making that happen. But you have to iterate and you have to listen to your customers, to your clients, to their feedback and say, will this benefit everyone in our portfolio? Which definitely the LinkedIn outreach would benefit just about everybody in our portfolio. So I was a bit stupid by being so slow on that, but thankfully I have such great clients that we were able to work our way into that.
And the way you do it is you start with simple systems. What's the simplest system that you can put if you don't know how to do it at all, you start with the simplest system that you can work and then gradually improve that system. You've got some feedback coming in and you're like, well, what does that look like? We don't even know where to start. At the simplest place you can, the minimal viable process that you have and then just iterate, iterate, iterate, iterate. Okay, so the third biggest mistake is over reliance on one client. This one has almost bit me in the butt a couple of times where especially not so much now, but in the beginning of our business up to probably the year five, year six or seven, we were so heavy on consulting and so heavy on SEO that I'll put it like this.
One client would be worth $7,000 a month like one client. Now, when that happens, when that happens, you are pretty much, at least in my business, I'm pretty, that's so outpaced, I'll put it like this so that you get a hint of how outsized that is. At the time, the average, the median retainer that we had was $1,500. So 1500, 2000, 1500, $2,000, which on our done for you, if you're doing absolutely straight done for you work where we're doing everything, it's still around that. Now imagine a $7,000 month client and what happens when they call, that's a, Hey, you got to get up off of, I remember it happened Thanksgiving, we need you get out of Thanksgiving dinner. It was crazy when that finally ended. You don't want it to end because you're kind of stuck on this cycle. But when it finally ended, it was almost the best thing that happened. And now we have the, it's always in my mind, nobody can be more than 10% of revenue. Nobody can be more than 10% of revenue, whether we're doing consulting or anything at that time, revenue was not where it is now.
And so I needed it and man, I did everything I possibly could to keep it. That brings us to the second biggest mistake, business mistake that I made is lack of planning and when, who is it that said that it was Caroline when I put out the feelers that had said that she thought that she could just start, which is bs. It's like building a house. You need to structure in place and understand certain things before the build starts. Know the right tools, understand the language. Have a mentor. Caroline's, right? I mean, you really should know. There's some things you should know before you start. And as I said before, I am a quick start, so I'm like, Hey, somebody bought that. Okay, well we're in business.
So there's five processes that every business has to think about first. The number one, you have to figure out what's going to be your value, what are you providing, your value creation. And then the second thing is how you're going to market this thing. How are you going to market the value that you're saying that you're going to bring? And then how are you going to sell it? How are you going to make money? Tehis all kind of comes down to how are we going to make a dollar? And so what's the value we're going to bring? How are we going to market that value? Once somebody raises their hand and says, Hey, I'm interested, how are we going to sell that? What's the process of selling it now after it's sold? How are we going to deliver that value? And then now that we've delivered the value, we've got some money coming in, what are the financial processes that need to be in place?
What is our profit margin? What is our operating costs? All of that stuff. Taxes, when are you going to get paid? How much are you going to get paid? All of that stuff in the finances, it really all comes to this. And this is the biggest, biggest thing that, well, not the biggest, it's number two. I've got one more super huge, the biggest thing, the Biggers thing, mistake that I've made. But those are the five processes really. And I would advise that if you haven't sat down and done that, you do that now. Then definitely if you haven't started a business, if you're listening to this and you're like, this is a nightmare, really just figure out these five things and continue to iterate on these five things you're going to do that always iterate on these things. What's the value we're bringing? How are we going to market that value When somebody raises their hand, what's the sales process after they buy it?
How do we deliver it? And then after we deliver it, work out all your finances. So that brings us to the number one biggest business mistake I've made in my entire business career, and it's actually not even about business. It's overlooking the importance of work life balance. Now I want you to hear me out if you're in the camp like I am and you're like, work life balance is a myth. I get it. I am the type and have always been the type to work. I work hard. I was 13 years old, I have worked at my 50th birthday. My brother gave a toast and he said, I hope that you'll at least take two days off. No, I think he said a week. If you'll take a week without working, just relax. Every I looked around and just about everybody in attendance were nodding their head because when they call me, if you ever called me, it's say, Hey man, what are you doing working? What are you doing working? And that hit me. I looked around and I saw my kids, my grown kids, and I remember telling myself that I'm doing this for them, but I was too busy. We didn't have date nights with my wife for the longest time. I was just too busy.
I don't want that to happen for you or anyone else. I mean, you can work your butt off and should, but don't. And maybe there's not, we know there's not a 50 50 balance, but don't forget the life. That's the point. Don't forget the life. Thankfully my girls are still around even as adults now, I'm able to drive in 45 minutes and walk grand babies to bus stops and stuff like that. And we have our first Sunday dinner every first Sunday of the month where everybody comes to our place. My brother comes to our place, but the girls the grandbabies and it's just don't, you don't have to pay for anything, just show up and everybody still shows up and we're all good. And I got wifey and I are good. We've been doing date and date nights now for, oh man, it's got to be a decade, but early on it was crazy. So I think that was, I guess when I say that was the biggest mistake to me it still wasn't worth it. I mean, it all worked out great, all worked out great, but it wasn't worth it.
There are things I should have been present for. So that's number one. I'd love to hear about the mistakes that you've made and what you've done to avoid them and maybe learn from them. If you go to localmarketmonopoly.com and hit the Ask Clarence button and the navigation, you can leave me a voice message and I will get it. I really hope you enjoyed today's episode 100 episodes. Now we are going to go another hundred. I don't know what that one hundred's going to be, the 200th episode, but we're here and I thank you so much for validating this idea that I had and listening and reaching out. I'm just so grateful for you and it is that season right now where we are thinking about all the things that we're thankful for and I'm thankful for you. So take what we covered today and go own your block. I'll see you next week.

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