Transcription
I built two separate million-dollar-plus businesses by the time I turned 30. And one of them is pacing to do a little bit over $2.5 million a year. And in this video, I'm going to go over everything that I learned while building these businesses along the way and consolidate them down into 10 actionable things that if you implement these things into your life and business, you will make more money. Because I'm not saying it because it's good for my health or because it sounds good on YouTube. I'm saying it because this is what I actively did and continue to do and I'm getting success. So, let's dive in.
[Music]
Some of this is going to be philosophical self-help. Some of this is going to be tactical business. If you follow me or subscribe to me on here, you likely own a business or are starting to. So, this is going to be really speaking to the entrepreneur. If you're not an entrepreneur, I don't know how much you're going to get out of this. So, number one, let's begin.
The worst thing that can happen to you as a young man when growing your business is winning at gambling, day trading stocks, or doing something outside the book like crypto or casino. What I mean by this is you can book wins.
>> We are back, baby. We are [ __ ] back.
>> We are back.
>> Classic.
You can go to the casino with the fellas and run up $100 to $2,000. My buddy Jacob did it last week in Vegas with me. Absolutely insane run. If he keeps going to the casino and he keeps doing that and chasing that dragon, eventually the house is going to win. So, you have to find things that you actually have an edge in. You don't have an edge day trading stocks. That data is crystal clear. You don't have an edge day trading crypto. That data is crystal clear. You do not have an edge doing something that seems too good to be true 99% of the time. The way you can actually have an edge when growing a business, when growing your sales skills, your marketing skills, whatever else, is doing reps and actually investing in the knowledge you have in something. It sounds corny, it sounds whatever else, but I wasted so much of my 20s and so much of my money like day trading options in GameStop because I saw it on Reddit. And like, yes, I would win once and it would feel amazing. I would go brag to my friends that I put in 2,000 and got back eight. But what I didn't tell my friends was when I put in 2,000 and lost 1,800 over and over and over again in the same process. And so when you look around at your friends, especially in your 20s and 30s who are doing day trading, stock picking, whatever this nonsense BS, they're typically only going to tell you when they win. They're not going to brag when they lose. You know the data. It's crystal clear. You're not going to win off of those things. And I say that it's a terrible detriment for a young man to win at something like these early because they're going to continue doing the negative thing until they lose because they got that positive dopamine hit when they won once on something that is literally just gambling. There's a reason the casinos have marble floors and fancy chandeliers. It's not because you're going to go in and turn it into a cash register.
And number two, this goes for building a business. This goes for networking. This goes for friends, relationships, whatever. The more I gave without the expectation of getting something in return, the richer I got and the richer my employees got because my businesses got bigger. And when my businesses get bigger, I can give my employees raises and compensate them better than we did when we were in the building phases. A really good example of this is I look everywhere I can to give a referral to somebody in my life. If I'm at a networking event, if I'm at a home show, if I'm at a conference and I hear somebody say, "Oh, I'm looking for this." I am running, sprinting out of my way to go tell them, "Oh, you have to use this person. I've used them and they're fantastic." And the more I do that and the more I put goodwill into the universe, the more those people all want to reciprocate it to me because it's the law of reciprocity. When you give something to someone with no expectation for something in return, they will subconsciously and consciously feel indebted to you to return the favor. So then they turn around and try to find ways to help you. And so what's beautiful about it is you don't do it with expectation. You do it because it makes you feel good as a person. And you do it because selfishly doing that for somebody else feels good. And then in return, you do that enough in the world. And there's a lot of people who like you. And when a lot of people, especially entrepreneurs, like you, good things happen in your business. So if you're a home service business in your market, look for the other businesses that are in different trades near you. Build relationships with them and find ways to refer them business. Find ways to send business their way. If you have realtor connections, find ways to get those realtors more listings. Find ways to get them more connected. Invite them to the same networking groups you do. And you'd be shocked at how much money you will make by just giving, giving, giving without the expectation in return. And some of you might watch this and say, "Well, Steve, it sure sounds like you have something expected in return." I, if it happens, great. If it doesn't and I never get a referral from somebody, I don't even think twice. And so I give, give, give. And then if something comes back and it has come back pretty much tenfold from how much I've given, then good things happen. And that same thing happens with my customers. My Christmas light customers refer their neighbors because we do such a good job. They love us. Home Service Accelerator customers go tell their friends to go join Home Service Accelerator that own businesses in completely different markets or different states because they joined and 90 days later they're still just as thrilled that they paid us on day 90 that they are on day one. So they're champions for my brand. And when somebody else talks about how great you are, it means a lot more than you talking about how great you are.
And number three, this is a quote. I do not fear the man that practiced 10,000 kicks one time. I fear the man that practiced one kick 10,000 times. That is Bruce Lee. I do not fear my competition that does junk removal, Christmas lights, landscape lighting, pressure washing, roofing, and everything else and handyman services. You know who I fear? I fear the business that does just that business and does just that business for years on end. My business gets substantially easier to run every single year because we've done the same thing every single year now for six years. So, you know what happens at year six? We're just better at everything. We have a bigger book of returning business. Our SEO is better because we've been in business for longer. Our customers are referring us better because we have more lifelong customers. Our employees when we start season are better because I'm not training an entire new crop every year because my business is growing to the point where I have industry experts in each different department in my business. And so when I look at guys in their 20s and 30s and even guys in their 40s, 50s, like dude's my dad's age, when I see a guy that's like, "Yeah, I got this pressure washing business but like I yeah, I'm actually in the middle of starting a roofing company." I'm like, how does that even make sense? What are you going to do? Grow both to 500k a year? Grow both to 250k a year and now you're going to have two separate trucks growing at a time. No, you need to double, triple, quadruple, and 5x down on your fastest horse. And this also goes for marketing, but we'll talk about that a little bit later. And Alex Hormozi talks about this all the time. It's laser focus on one thing. Because watch what happens if I'm a roofer and all I do is spend 50 to 60 hours a week growing my roofing business. And then there's a roofer in my market who's a roofer and a plumber and a handyman and he's chasing money and getting jobs from all these different services. He might be working 70 hours a week. He might be working 80 hours a week. He might be working 90 or 100. But I promise you, he's only spending 33 hours at most on each of those different businesses because he's diluting his focus where I'm going to win over time because I'm dedicating all of this time and focus into one thing. And that's what grows amazingly. Some of you might be watching. You're like, "Steve, you have a Christmas light business and Home Service Accelerator. Aren't you defying the very advice that you give?" My Christmas light business can only make money two months out of the year. I am an exception to the rule, but I'm not going to pretend that that doesn't exist. So, let me address that elephant in the room that you might be thinking. If I'd had a year-round business, I would not have Home Service Accelerator.
And number four, knowing something, researching something, and planning something is not doing something. Stop mentally "you know-whating" and start actively working. I cannot tell you how much time I lost when I was 25 and 26 because I equated reading a book about business and watching YouTube videos about business and watching YouTube videos about crypto and listening to podcasts about house hacking and all this stuff instead of just building. The second I stopped researching and getting that dopamine hit because it looked like it felt like I was working because I was doing something productive and I just started acting, that's when everything exploded for me. And so, stop watching the YouTube videos. I know it's kind of ironic because this is a YouTube video. While you're watching this YouTube video, write something down and implement it. Because if you're just watching something or reading something or listening to something and not actively changing anything in your life after listening to or consuming that content, then you're just wasting your time. Like you're completely wasting your time. You might as well not watch this video if you're going to watch the entire thing and then not implement anything I say.
And number five, hard work, piss and vinegar, grit gets you to about 100K in a home service or contracting business and honestly most other business models as well. Hiring gets you to 500K. Taking yourself out of the truck, all the other stuff, starting to delegate, that gets you to half a million. When you get to a million, it's systems and processes and repeated winning steps. And then past a million, it's finding top talent. So, if you take my business for example, let's just go through exactly how I practice what I preach. Year one, I did everything myself. I did sales, I did marketing, I did installations. Year two, I hired out installation. Year three, I hired salespeople. Year four, I doubled down on all of those things. And year five, I tripled down on all of those things with more people. What happened? Year one, we did 100K. Year two, we did 250. Year three, we did 350. Year four, we did 500. And then last year, we did $88,000 in two months. Notice a trend. The more I stuck with the same business, the bigger the business got. And the more I doubled and tripled down on systems and people, the bigger the business got. That is not coincidence. It's the exact same way I did Home Service Accelerator. Home Service Accelerator was the exact same thing. I started running all of the sales calls and all of the one-on-one coaching calls myself. And then what did I do? I brought on somebody to help me with sales and I did fulfillment. And then I did half sales, half fulfillment. And then I brought on some people to help with fulfillment. And then I brought on more people to help with sales. And I focused on marketing and systems. And now you fast forward to now, we bring on 15 times the amount of people in a month now than we did a year ago in the same month. And so the principles I'm sharing are not just principles that work for me. They're principles that are universal laws in business that work for every single person.
And number six, this is a little bit foofy, it's a little bit self-help, but like trust me when I say this. As somebody who was morbidly obese, by definition, clinically depressed with a with a doctor's note, but I think it was nonsense and BS. I just wasn't doing enough. And all these other things in my mid-20s, I can tell you that discipline is freedom, but it's not some cheesy "Joe thing." The quote that I love and the quote that resonates with me is discipline is only mentally hard if you give yourself an option to not be disciplined. Burning the boats and destroying your illusion of choice makes discipline easier than the alternative of not being disciplined. So let's use the easiest example. Let's say you want to lose weight. Let's say you want to gain weight. Either one. Maybe you're a twig. Maybe you're an Asian pear. Whatever it is. Let's say you want to do one of the two. You go in on a Sunday night. You're like, "Tomorrow, I'm going to wake up and go to the gym at 5:00 a.m. and I'm going to eat chicken and broccoli and rice for every single meal, and I'm going to sprint to this weight loss or weight gain journey, whatever you wanted to do." What ends up happening is you work really hard for about a day or two or two days or three days, because every single time you're doing implementing those habits, what you're doing is you're making a conscious decision that like in this moment, I'm going to practice willpower and do it. And a lot of the self-help content out there is all about like the David Goggins stuff and everything. You just you just got to like tame the inner [ __ ] and just work hard. No, you know what worked for me was like I'm not emotional about the discipline anymore. I literally just tell like myself like I don't have a choice at all. I don't I take away the illusion of choice. And so like for right now, one of the things that helps me wake up in the morning and I know it sounds corny. I don't think that cold plunges are like God's gift to humanity, whatever else. But I like starting my day by doing that because it wakes me up. And so what I did was I don't give myself a choice. I don't care if I'm sick. I don't care if I woke up late today. I don't care if it's a Saturday. I don't care if I have people in town. When I wake up, I go downstairs and I do the exact same routine that I do every single morning now. I wake up, I pour a cup of coffee, and then I go straight to the cold plunge before I've even brushed my teeth or showered or anything like that. I go right into it. I dunk my head. And then I go into the hot tub and I write down like five things I'm grateful for and then my goal for the day. And I do that every single day when I'm on vacation and I come back and I'm tired and I'm like, "Oh, I don't really need to do that today." I just do it. And it's not because I think there's some magic behind cold plunging. It's not because I think there's some magic behind this routine I have and that's what's making me successful. It's because I take the illusion of choice out of discipline and I just go do it. And when I take the illusion of choice out of it, I don't have to decide whether I'm doing anything or not. I'm just doing it. And it's like it's the same thing with the gym. It's the same thing with marketing in your business. If you just burn the boats, take the option away. When you tell yourself you're going to do something and you actually promise yourself you're going to do it, it doesn't take willpower. You just turn your brain off and do it. You don't give yourself a choice. You just do it. And it's the same thing with marketing in your business. If you tell yourself you're going to do a 100 yard signs a week and you do a hundred yard signs a week and it's raining outside and you have a thousand different excuses for why you shouldn't do it three weeks in or whatever and you just go do it anyway regardless of choice. It's amazing how easy it actually is. So burn the boats on whatever promises you actually make yourself and you don't have to practice willpower and just be like white-knuckling these decisions you make all the time. You just go and it's so much easier. And if you think my routine's crazy, you should listen to some of the guys that I've interviewed on the podcast talk about what they do every day. We got like I don't even have kids. Like we have guys that come on the podcast with eight, nine figure businesses that have like three kids and they're doing way more stuff in their routines and they're fitting way more activity into their routines, way more productivity into their days than I am and they have way less time. And so again, there's levels to this [ __ ] and I'm just getting better at it every day. But you can't look at me. You can't look at the guys that I've had on my podcast. You can't look at the guys that you are in networking groups with who are way further along with you and try to use their lottery ticket for your own life. You can't build your life exactly how they did because if you take their winning lottery ticket, it's already been cashed in, baby. So you can take inspiration from these people. Like I read Tommy Mello's book. I listen to Tommy Mello's podcast. I listen to Alex Hormozi. I listen to all these other people. But the way they ran up and their perfect daily routine and all this other stuff is not mine because my road and your road is going to be different. So you got to stop like trying these crazy routines and white-knuckling everything and just go make a few promises to yourself and execute on them. And it's not about executing on them for a month. It's not about executing on them for three months. It's about executing on them for years. Years. And that's where the difference is. And so what happens is, and I'm and I'm so guilty of this in my early 20s, you're so shortsighted on how long it's actually going to take you to accomplish these goals, whether it's a business goal, whether it's a weight loss goal, whether it's anything, it's going to take a lot longer than you think. So you better find a way to just turn your brain off and go execute than using that final product as the piece of motivation for you to keep going because the motivation is going to be long gone by the time you get the results.
Number seven, energy transfer is everything. People don't care nearly as much about what you're saying as they do about how you say it and how much conviction you say it with. A lot of you guys watch every single one of my YouTube videos. You are no stranger to this if you watch my content. I love this [ __ ]. I love it. This is not work for me. Making these videos, growing Home Service Accelerator, growing Valley Christmas, doing everything, working with a bunch of different home service businesses is literally my favorite thing to do in the world. You can feel it when I'm talking. You can feel my passion. You can feel how enjoyable this is to me. And because I enjoy it and because I'm fired up when I talk about it, you like listening to it more. And so take this into your own business when you're going out and doing sales. Who do you think people are going to buy from more? The person that's selling a $5,000 product, $10,000 install, whatever your home service is, or the person who's just mundane checking a box? Like when I'm fired up and I'm passionate about what I'm doing, that is a subconscious energy transfer to you. We talk about it with our salespeople all the time in Valley Christmas. If you're not fired up about the display that you're pitching or quoting to the customers, how on God's green earth are you going to expect the client to actually be fired up about the vision you have for this? And it's not some foofy Grant Cardone stuff. This is just real actionable stuff. It's the reason why you like listening to the stuff that I put out. It's the reason why you like listening to your favorite money influencers or your favorite fitness influencers, your favorite whatever. They are fired up about whatever they're talking about. They're industry experts. If they were talking like this in every single video and you feel like they're just there to punch a clock, you're not going to like listening to them. And so, you have to find a way to have that positive energy transfer when you're doing anything in your business. And it's 10 times more impactful when you start having employees. If your employees feel like you're more dialed into your business than they are, they are going to fall in line. If your employees feel like you're just letting them run all willy-nilly and it's just a lifestyle business for you, you will feel it because your employees will never care as much as you do and they shouldn't until they have equity.
Number eight, the best entrepreneurs in the world are typically the least emotionally attached to the results. And so, let's take sales for example. If you have a home service business, contracting business, whatever business of any kind, you all know what I'm talking about. When you've when you closed that mega first big sale. So, for me, it was like back in the day in year one, it was like the first time I sold a $3,000 job, which is funny now because now we sell $50,000 jobs. But I am I got more excited back then when I sold that $3,000 job. It was like the greatest dopamine rush of whatever. Give me any drug you can name. That's what I felt when that person deposited for that $3,000 job. Shout out my dear friend Matt Delapedra. He's a customer for six years now. He was the first time I sold a job that was like what I deemed to be big. And he's still a customer to this date. And I've told him this before. When he agreed to be my customer at that stage of when I was in business, my first year, I never ever sold something to somebody that was substantially expensive in my business. When he agreed to that quote, I have never come close to that feeling of euphoria and excitement ever again. But what's crazy about that is that's actually a sign of a bad entrepreneur letting the highs get you that high. Because what happens is when you let the highs get you that high, when the lows and the low points eventually come, you're way more emotionally attached to both ends of the spectrum. And so I talk about this with all my salespeople. You can be excited about closing big deals, but it's level. Like I call it like you should just be at a seven all the time. Like you shouldn't be like you shouldn't be closing a deal and then immediately running to the steakhouse and taking your girlfriend or wife to a $500 meal because you just closed one big one. Like sure find your time to celebrate, but stay levelheaded. And all of the best entrepreneurs are not emotional about it. All they care about is the data. Are we moving it forward? Are the numbers on track? Are we making more money this month than we did last month? Keep going. Don't get me wrong, when we hit goals, I'm definitely excited. But I'm not jumping for joy, texting everybody I know about how great I am and going and popping champagne every time we have a big win. Because when that happens, the trade-off is when the bad things happen. I'm not going to my balcony hoping to jump off when we have a bad sales week. So that's the difference. Level-headed. Because entrepreneurship is like this. Your growth is like this. It's not linear. It's up and down. And that is a universal law. I don't care what your business is.
And number nine, stop advertising. Start Chad advertising. Insert Chad meme here. Stop trying to be the world's greatest and most slick advertiser in the world by finding 18 different unicorns that everyone else hasn't discovered to grow your business. Block and tackle with the things that work. In most cases, you're finding something in your business that's making you money and you're putting money in and you're getting out four times, five times, six times, seven times, eight times your money. Stop chasing something else. So, let's say it's Facebook ads for you. You're doing $50 a day. You're getting back $250 a day on average. That's a five times return on ad spend. Don't go run to Angie's List. Don't go run to Google Ads because Facebook's working. Double down on Facebook until it stops working. Start throwing 75 a day into it. Start throwing $100 a day into it. Start throwing 125 a day into it until it stops working. Stop advertising and start Chad advertising. Run that [ __ ] into the ground until it breaks. Fix what breaks and then keep going. That's what every successful business does is they do volume, volume, volume of the things that work until something breaks. They don't go do a thousand different things a thousand different times. Go back to the Bruce Lee quote. I do not fear the man who practiced 10,000 different marketing avenues one time. I fear the man that does one working advertising avenue 10,000 times. That's the competition that you should be afraid of.
And number 10, it's easy to grind when your back's against the wall and you're getting out of the hood. The hardest it is is when the business starts to work. That's the hardest mental part because what happens is once the business starts to work a little bit, that's where the temptation is to take a little bit off the top extra for yourself. Buy your girl a Chanel bag, something like that, because you had your first five, six-figure month. Trust me, the guys that won and the guys that won big are the ones that kept investing back into the business even when things got good. Because I'm telling you, I've experienced it. When we got out of the hood for the first time, like when I went like, "Okay, I'm not going to go bankrupt this month and the bank account had six figures liquid in it with no debt." It was really tempting to go spend that money. And to be completely honest with you, in year three, part of the reason we did almost go bankrupt between year two and three is because I was a dumbass with a little bit of extra liquid cash that we had. I went to the Bahamas one time and gambled away like four or five grand on the craps table out by the pool at the Bahamas sipping my daiquiris because my business had its first $300,000 year. That is nothing. That was so stupid because even if you do $300,000 in sales at that point, our margins, I probably netted 100K. So after taxes, I probably didn't even take home that much. I really didn't have that much money. And so for me to go dump that money on something as stupid as the casino because for the first time my back wasn't against the wall, those actions actually set back my business a lot because if I didn't take that money and blow it on something stupid like a casino at the Bahamas, I could have reinvested into my business and pulled the rubber band back even harder and got my business even further along faster. Because that's all this is. That's all the reason you're watching these videos for. Like I can make a million dollars and you can make a million dollars. The only difference is it might take me one year and it might take you five. So everybody's going to make a million dollars. Everybody's probably going to make close to 2, 3, 4, $5 million in their lifetimes. The difference is how fast you do it. The difference between me and Jeff Bezos is not that we touch a few M's. The difference is Jeff Bezos touches a few M's a day. I take years to touch an M. That's the difference. And so that model, that lesson is something that I've had to just hammer into myself and my employees because now I have employees in their low 20s that are like they're taking home six figures a year themselves. They're getting out of the hood themselves and I have to tell them the same things like, "Dude, don't go get the luxury high-rise Miami apartment because your favorite influencer did it after selling you a course. Just stay in your lane and keep your foot on the gas. It's easy to have your foot on the gas when you're broke and poor and everybody in your family's telling you this is a bad idea and you shouldn't do this and you should have stayed at your 9-to-5. It gets harder when it's time and you can kind of start telling them well, f you. Look what look at me. That's where it gets hard because you start to realize like for me it was an immature way to be motivated but this was a way that motivated me back then. It's not the thing that motivates me now. I'm motivated by a much bigger purpose now. But I'm not going to lie to you, in year two and three, I was strongly motivated by people that were in my life that told me that I couldn't do it and it was stupid that I and I should have just stayed in my 9-to-5. And so the second I started getting a little bit of bread, you knew that I was going to be going to the Bahamas and posting that I'm going to the Bahamas in the middle of March while they're at work and I financed a car I shouldn't have back then and all these things because in me it was my big FU to everybody that told me I couldn't do it. And it's so immature looking back on it now because even those people I gave them so much power over myself that like my results were dictated upon like like shoving it in their faces when they're not even thinking about me. They probably made one willy-nilly comment one time that they didn't even think about again. And I used it as motivation and fuel for years on end. So what does that tell you about me? It tells you that I was really concerned about somebody that I didn't even respect's opinion. And while it worked short-term, it's not a good recipe for long-term. So if you're young and you have people in your life that you know piss you off, maybe it's your parents, maybe it's something else and they tell you you can't and they tell you you're an idiot. Sure, put it in a bottle, use it as jet fuel a little bit, but it's not going to be the thing that motivates you long-term. Trust me. But stay focused, keep the foot on the gas, and you'll crank.
So that was 10. And here's bonus 11. Learn from my successes, learn from my mistakes. But number 11 is the one that every single person listening to this needs to implement today. And that is, uh, never tuck your shirt into jeans.
Thank you so much for watching. If you like this video, please feel free to subscribe. If you want to join Home Service Accelerator where there's 450-plus other home service businesses all taking control of their own advertising, setting up their own Facebook ad campaigns themselves without an agency, optimizing their Google Maps SEO, setting up all their automations and systems and everything like that. Feel free to click the application below. It's in the comments and in the descriptions. If you're eligible to join, we'll tell you. Other than that, please feel free to keep watching this YouTube video for free. Watch on my Instagram. Follow me on X. And I'll see you guys in the next video. Thank you so much for watching.