3 Years Of Business Lessons (In Only 20 Minutes)

Really, my mission is, is to not only help entrepreneurs and solopreneurs with like their content and teaching them how to leverage content in order to grow their business, but also like inspiring other entrepreneurs who are also faith-based because there's not a lot of that talked about in the business world. My first $2,000 a month social media management client came from Facebook on a Facebook group. Of local business owners. And so don't sleep on Facebook groups, guys. Don't sleep on that. Don't sleep on Instagram stories, Instagram DMs. Like, if you are a service-based business, you have to figure out some like subscription model, retainer model, something that is going to bring you cash flow even in months that are slow. Because at the very beginning— hey y'all, welcome back to the Howdy Podcast. Today I am super excited to get into this episode. We're going to be talking about the last 3 years of business, starting from nothing, starting from my college apartment, my college dorm with zero funds, actually negative funds, all the way up 3 years later to multiple 6 figures annual revenue. Just to make that clear, some people are confused. The business is making that. I don't take home that much because I got to pay people. Okay, and so I want to speak to those entrepreneurs, those solopreneurs out there who are just now starting a business or thinking about starting a business. And I want to give you some insight on what it actually looks like versus what it appeared from a distance, if that makes sense. I was 22, 21 How old am I? I was— no, I was like 20. I was 20 years old and I was like, I have a vision. Like, I was a real estate agent at the time and I was selling my first houses and I was like, man, there is nobody— I mean, there's maybe like 1 or 2 people in the whole area who can actually take good pictures of houses. And so that's how I got in. That was like the The little door cracked open right there. And then from then on out, like, I realized the power of the camera because not only did I grow my personal brand at the time with the camera, I grew my real estate. I made content about real estate, did that sort of thing. Realized very quickly that real estate was not my favorite thing to do in the world. It's great money. It's great, like, relationships. But it's just not what I was called to do, if that makes sense. And so that's how I got into the media world. I got a camera out of blind faith. I really wasn't nervous or like scared, because scared money doesn't make money. I know that now, but looking back, I wasn't scared to take a risk because I knew it was on myself and I believed in what I was doing and what I was capable of. And so that's when the door split wide open and the Lord was like, hey, like, this is gonna work. This is a need. You could help a lot of people. And so then it pivoted to like doing wedding videos, doing YouTube videos, doing a bunch of social media management for multiple different companies. And so the first 2 years I'm not gonna lie, was mainly an experiment. I didn't make that much money. The first year I was negative $6,000 on my tax return. And so the first 2 years was straight-up experience. So if you're looking like, if you're about to start a business, don't expect to make tons of money at the very beginning. Even 5 years into it, like, I'm barely at a spot where it's like we're starting to actually be able to pay payroll. We've been paying payroll for the last probably 10 to 12 months and consistently. We haven't missed payroll. We haven't done any of that. It is a massive burden to take that on, but it took a while. Like, I was a solopreneur for the first 2 and a half years, and it wasn't until I burned out— and you may feel the same way if you already have a business— It wasn't until I burned out that I realized if this thing is going to continue to grow and scale, then I'm going to have to delegate and find people who can help me out. And so I didn't have any systems. I was undercharging for all of my work because in this type of business, it's a creative business and you get to decide what pricing you put on your services. So I was undercharging. I was just trying to get reps. And at the very beginning, if you're doing a creative service, like undercut people, do free stuff, build a fantastic portfolio. Um, and, and then you can start charging once you start getting those reps. And so that's really what I did. Like I did a lot of free work. I went to Best Buy and bought a, um, This was before I bought the camera. I bought a DJI gimbal for my phone and charged like $50 for a house tour, and I used my iPhone, and that's how I got my first paying clients. And so don't be discouraged, but I didn't have any systems. I was undercharging. I was trying to do everything on my own. And then one day I had worked probably from 6:30 AM all the way until midnight on my computer editing, like just doing admin work, doing, sending invoices, sending emails, communicating with clients, all of these things, doing things in Canva and just to get the post put up in time for the next day. And my wife looked at me and she was like, hey, this has got to stop. And that's a whole other thing. You got to have a good spouse. You got to have a good relationship with at least one person who can look at you and say, this is not good for you. You need to figure out a different way to do this. Because like, I have the mindset of like, I, I will not stop working. I will not stop obsessing over that thing until I figure it out, until it succeeds. And so that was a breakthrough moment for me. And I— that, that's why I wanted to make this video, is because I feel like every entrepreneur goes through the same exact thing, and there's not a lot of people talking about the real and hard things that entrepreneurs go through. And so some of the things that I've learned, these are the 5 business lessons and life lessons that I've learned within the last 3 years. First of all, you got to fall in love with coffees. Shout out Espresso, shout out Espresso Coffee Truck— trailer, sorry, not truck. But the first thing is going to be your faith over feelings. If God has placed something on your heart and given you a passion to do the thing, then it's for a reason. Like, he will provide and open the right doors for you to go through, and it's going to be up to you and your discernment and your connection with the Holy Spirit to like decide which door to go through. And so faith over feelings, that's the first one. Um, honestly if I didn't have my faith, I don't know that I would still be in business because there have been times where I wanted to quit so freaking bad. But for some reason, the Lord— every single day I would fight him like, this isn't going to work, like, what are we doing? I'm not worthy, like, I don't know enough. And then he would turn around and be like, basically, shut up, keep going. He didn't tell me to literally shut up, but basically go and keep going. Don't look at yesterday. I gave you this vision for a purpose, and I'm preparing you for the next season that is coming your way. And as you know, we don't know what season is coming. And so faith has been probably the number one thing that I have leaned on. And, and it's, and it's not just in business, like, it's my whole life. There's a scripture, um, Philippians 3:13-16 says, brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it, but one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining forward towards what is ahead, I press on toward the goal. And so like, stop looking at what happened yesterday. I had multiple deals fall apart. Oh, I'm going to keep looking forward. I'm going to be a a kingdom visionary, and I'm gonna press on towards the goal, the goal that the Lord revealed to me a while back. And so if it's clear, if the Lord gives you this vision, it's not gonna necessarily like change overnight. Just because he gave you the vision a couple years ago doesn't mean that it's like gone away. And so you're gonna have trials, you're gonna have tribulations, but just continue to press into the Lord. And like, I don't know, there's a peace that you— there's a burden that gets taken off your plate. So number 2, um, clarity over chaos. So whenever I first started making content, it was very messy, for a lack of better terms. There was no direction, there was no system. I didn't know what I was doing. And the clarity of my messaging has developed, and it's like completely different now from what it was. Uh, and that's where a lot of entrepreneurs get stuck with content. It's like content is what drove my business, even whenever I was making it messy and I didn't know what I was doing. I was throwing things against the wall and seeing what stuck. And then that ultimately led to getting my first clients. My first $2,000 a month social media management client came from Facebook on a Facebook group of local business owners. And so don't sleep on Facebook groups, guys. Don't sleep on that. Don't sleep on Instagram stories, Instagram DMs. Like, these are probably some of the most valuable platforms that you could possibly push. And so as time goes on, try to like work on your craft, get better at messaging, at communicating. We're all getting better all the time. I'm still trying to get better every single day. And so doing YouTube videos like this one, that has been huge for me in my personal growth because it's teaching me how to talk, it's teaching me how to take the ideas from my brain and put them into words in sentences that make sense. And so that was one of the hardest things for me. But if I can do it— I was, I was really introverted throughout junior high and high school, and over time, the more reps that I got, the more comfortable I got. I'm still not perfect. I still got a long ways to go. But clarity in your messaging— what are you trying to achieve? What are you trying to help people with? Who are you trying to reach? And, and like, that's basically it, because if you're confused, the clients are going to be confused no matter what you do. And so having systems is number 3. Um, this is something that I'm working out, and it's never going to be the same. Like, you can find a system that works, but there's always going to be a flaw within that system. And so it's like a refining process. And so An example, we, we've been communicating with clients over iMessage group chats and email. Well, now that we have so many things going on, we have 5 podcast members at the moment. And so that means we're putting out 6 episodes per week, publishing them to YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. And so I was like, okay, we got to figure out a system. So I discovered Slack and we've been using and switching over to Slack at the moment. And so it's been a whole thing. Systems alleviate stress. Systems alleviate things falling between the cracks. And so, yeah, it's just a refining process. So if you haven't found something that is working the most efficiently, keep looking, keep researching, always be learning, and you will eventually find something that works with what you're doing. Because that's what I ran into, um, when I first— I first tried to bring employees on and then it didn't work because I didn't have the systems in place. And like, I ended up having to do more work myself Then I like, the whole reason I brought them on was so that I didn't have to do as much work on the little things, on the little tasks. Like I was delegating more, but I didn't know how to delegate. And so, and I'm still learning. Like it lasted like 2 months of having payroll and I was like, guys, I can't do this. Like I've got to figure out something before I can bring you guys back on. And so number 4 would be focus on who, not how. Whenever you're bringing on people to help you, if you're in that stage, even if you're outsourcing like from a third party, because that's what a lot of companies do with us, they'll outsource like their social media management, their content creation, their video editing, video production. And so some companies they want us to act as like a whole partner within the whole thing and help them develop a plan for their content, like every single platform. And then some people have a person at their company or solopreneurs who are wanting to learn all the skills. If they're in their first 1 or 2 years of their business, they want to learn all these skills and we can basically teach them through my coaching program. And so focusing on who you hire and who you bring on is important because they gotta have, um, social proof. They gotta have like a track record of actually helping people. And so that's one thing that I pride ourselves in is we've actually been able to help tons of people and gain tons of traction on social media. And I never realized how big of a need this was until I went and did a training one day. For a few realtors at a brokerage. And this was one of the first in-person trainings that I did on social media. And the content on the slideshow, like, I had the best dang slideshow ever. I had all of the things, all of the interesting facts, all of the percentages and age groups and all of the algorithm hacks. And then multiple realtors were like, how do you download Instagram? Or how do you post on Instagram? And so that's when I had to take a moment back because I had to take a step back and just realize there's a huge need for this specific thing. What I thought they wanted, they didn't actually want. And so focus on who, whenever it comes to hiring third party when outsourcing your work, as well as like who and what your clients, your customers want to know and what they need. So number 5, consistency. And this is with anything in life, guys. Like, if you're not consistent, then you will never have anything actually be fruitful and Like, it won't be able to multiply because that's what we're called to do, right, is be fruitful and multiply. And not just like in a sense of the population, but like in all the things that we do— create, um, leaders, like disciple others and show them how to be a leader in this world that goes against all the other ways according to the Bible. If you don't know, I love Faith already. That's— did a whole section on that already. But just stay consistent, keep grinding. It's gonna get hard. There's no like easy shortcut. And so if there are any coaches or programs that promise like immediate success, if there's not a disclaimer saying like, hey, these results are only gonna work based off of the amount of effort that you put in, as well as like implementing the strategies that we give you. And, and not every niche is going to work the same. Not every business is going to work the same. There's frameworks and guidelines to all that applies to everything, but you've got to be consistent or else none of that even matters. And so you got to show up. That's why I'm such a big advocate of social media. It's because like it is always evolving and changing, and if you don't stay at the top of like your content game, then you're gonna get forgotten and left behind. But if you can pull it off, the benefits of that are huge. So a few things, um, that I would do differently if I was starting a business from scratch today, I would really think about my offer and what it is that I'm actually offering to the marketplace. And so at the time, I didn't know what I was offering because I didn't know what I didn't know. And you may be in the same boat, and that's where you got to just do A/B testing constantly. Try this method, try this thing. Oh, didn't work? Okay, move on to a different thing. It did work? Double down on it. And that applies to like business, that applies to Content strategies, like what types of content that you're posting. Have a crystal clear offer on what it is that you're offering to the marketplace. Because I was everywhere. I was everywhere. I didn't have a clue. Focus at the very beginning on recurring revenue. That would be my second suggestion. If you are a service-based business, you have to figure out some like subscription model retainer model, something that is going to bring you cash flow even in months that are slow. Because at the very beginning, you don't know when the next job is going to come along. And so there would be months where I would have a big job, a big video job. Let's just call it at the time, it's a big $2,000 video job. I was like, that was the biggest check that I had ever made up to that point in my life. And then 2 months go by, I have maybe like a $100 job here, a $100 job here. And so now I'm playing the game of like, okay, when is the next check going to be here? We got to save this until we know that we have another job coming up. And so whenever I was able to start getting monthly and retainer fees, on a contract-based period, that's whenever I was able to free myself up and free up my mind space to focus on the things that I usually didn't get to focus on because I was always looking at where am I going to get the next check. And so that's what I did here. So I'm here in the Howdy Podcast studio right now. This is like the foundation of my business because it's pretty risk-free. It's easy to manage, easy to film, easy to edit. And I have a team that can basically do all of it while I'm out there doing bigger video projects, sending client emails, like meeting with clients, doing more of a sales job. And so this is what pays every single month, like it's a monthly retainer. Like if they want to be a member, they pay X amount of dollars a month and And so that is what is allowing me to pay for the space. So the space is paying for itself and it pays for the payroll and pays for our subscriptions. Everything else on top of that is just extra profit. Now obviously there's more things like paying contractors and travel and all the things, but this is like the most foundational thing of my business that has put my mind to rest. It's not always perfect, and your cash flow is going to go up and down. But as a business owner, if you're going to make it long term, you have got to set up some form of risk management. And that comes in the form of retainers. And, uh, contracts are good, monthly fees are good, subscriptions are good. A couple more things and then we'll wrap this thing up. One thing that I've learned is you can't serve everybody in the marketplace. There's going to be people who come along who want to be clients, but they're ultimately not a good fit. And meaning like they have the right desires, they have the right um, mindset, but they don't have the right goals in order for us to help them. Like, they— we are looking for very specific people whenever it comes to partnering with companies, like companies that are $1 to $3 million in revenue, like have profit margins of over like 40% per transaction. And so if you don't meet those criteria— gosh, I keep burping, it's coffee, man— if you don't meet that criteria, then you're probably not gonna be a good fit. I have made that mistake way too many times where I sign up a client, I didn't get enough information or backstory or goals or anything. I was like, oh, they're going to pay me for the service, so let's just do it, we'll see what happens. And Next thing you know, it is— ends up— it ends up being like 3 times the amount of work. They're not happy with your services. You're way underpaid. And so yeah, you can't serve everybody. Like, just find your ideal client and only target on— target them. And even if it's family and friends, like, you can't serve everybody. You have got to find your niche and your type of person that you're trying to reach. That would be one of them. Relationships are huge. Prioritize relationships over monetary value. So like, if, if there's a scenario where you have to offer something for free or do something out of the kindness of your heart and you're not going to necessarily make tangible funds or like money, from the situation. But what you're building, you're building other than that is trust with that person, loyalty with that person, a relationship with that person. And because you never know whenever they can have a friend that says, oh hey, I have $20,000 for this project, can you help me out? And the only reason they recommended you is because you did that one little act of kindness 5 months ago. And so don't underestimate the value of that. I still do free videos every now and then. I'm actually gonna do one next week for a roofing company, and like, I'm gonna do it for free, and I'll probably throw in some extra free stuff because I'm trying to gain the trust and build the relationship. And so don't serve everybody. Prioritize relationships. Um, if you have access to a mentor, do it. If you have access to accountability, do it. That is one thing that has helped me. Like, my wife has been huge for me. My wife has been one of those. My pastor has been one of those. I have multiple friends who are in the same, like, entrepreneur space who— they push me to do better. And so make sure to have people who are going to hold you accountable, um, and that will take you very far. So final words of encouragement: Um, wherever you are right now, keep going. Again, if the Lord gives you the vision, like, it's, it's there for a reason. And so press forward, press on, look, look up, like, take the blinders off, see the big picture, and just keep grinding it out because the Lord will provide in the seasons that you— even when you don't think he will provide. Number 2 would be you don't need a perfect plan. You need progress and faith. And so every single day, you can't control what happened yesterday, you can't control what happens tomorrow. Like, there's things that happen all the time that I have no control over. And so why would you be worried about those things whenever you could focus on today? Because that's all you can focus on. So focus on today of making the progress of some sort. Like bettering yourself, whether that's learning, whether that's getting a mentor, getting an accountability group, whatever it is, get better every single day. Get in the word every single day, and it's very unlikely that you'll fail if you're getting better all the time. So I hope this podcast helped you out. Um, let me know in the comments if you've ever felt any of these things. Make sure to like this video so it can be spread to more people. Um, that's really my mission, is, is to not only help entrepreneurs and solopreneurs with like their content and teaching them how to leverage content in order to grow their business, but also like inspiring other entrepreneurs who are also faith-based, because there's not a lot of that talked about in the business world. And Like I said earlier, I don't know how I would have been able to get this far unless I had the faith. And so yeah, I just want to encourage you guys, keep pushing forward. Make sure to comment where you're watching. What did you learn from this video? Have you felt any of these things before or experienced these things before? What businesses are you wanting to open up and what, what has God called you to do in the business world, in the marketplace? And let's just spark a conversation. We have an insider's group on Facebook. It's completely free. Make sure to click the link in the description to join and request. We just— it's a bunch of creators and entrepreneurs who are just like you. And I'm giving tips there constantly, like giving resources, giving advice and going live, all the things. And so make sure to join that. We're also having a Content That Profits Challenge, which is a 5-day challenge for an hour a day. We'll meet with the group. It's going to be online. We're going to talk about all the systems, all the funnels, all the strategies that you need to go and implement into your own business in order to create content that converts into clients. And so if you're interested in that, link's going to be in the description. Again, thanks for watching today's video, and we'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.