How One Entrepreneur, Before 30 with $1,000 Saved, Started Two Multi-Million Dollar Businesses - Ch

You're listening to Finances Demystified with Dominique Broadway, the podcast that provokes the conversation of money, demystifies all your finances, and shows you how to bring all of your dreams to reality so that you can live your very best life on your own terms. All right everyone, I'm so excited for our guest today. He's a good friend of mine that I've known— I guess I think we We went to high school together and he is dynamic. He has become a millionaire before, or created a million-dollar company before the age of 30, which is like phenomenal in itself. His name is Chico. He went to Towson University on a Bill Gates Scholarship, graduated in 2008 with honors in healthcare management and business administration. And he worked in the healthcare recruiting and human resources management for about 4 years before he had that moment that we've all had where he decided he wanted to quit his job at the super young age of 26 with only $1,000 in his bank account and basically start his own company. So a couple of days later he started his firm, his staffing firm, Perfect Staffing Solutions, which is now a multimillion dollar revenue generating company with over 50 employees. Insane, right? Insane. And he was super just driven by the whole entrepreneurship thing and ended up starting Perfect Office Solutions, which is essentially similar, I guess, kind of like a coworking space which houses over 200 entrepreneurs in 5 locations. And he did that 3 years after starting his first company, which is insane. So, Chico, like, first of all, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to talk with me. How are you today?

I am perfect. How are you?

I am great. I am great. I'm just, I'm just so happy to be able to call you my friend. I'm like, you are out here killing it.

Yes, I'm excited, I'm excited. Yeah, I'm excited to join you this morning. Let's, let's, let's get it going.

All right, cool. So tell, tell the people, like, when you started your company, you were 26 years old, you had about $1,000 saved, and that's like the biggest thing most people like, oh, I don't have enough money, I don't have this, I don't have that. Like, what were your initial steps to get Perfect Staffing Solutions started?

Good question, good question. I think when it comes to starting a business, I think it's more so making a decision to start a business more so than it is having enough money because I mean for the longest when I was working at a job, I was trying to save but you know how life, you know, kind of hits you. You have different emergencies that pop up here and there when you have money saved. So I think when it comes to entrepreneurship and getting your business started, it's a decision. You just got to make a decision to just start and I got tired of just, you know, um, you know, working a 9 to 5 and not being able to save. And I just had to make that decision. So, um, I made the decision. It just happened that I just, you know, I had $1,000 in the bank, but, um, when you make a decision that is something that you want to do, um, and you have your mind wrapped around it, um, it gets figured out, you know? So that's, that was pretty much what happened.

So you just made the decision like you wanted something better for yourself. It's as simple as that, right?

Yeah, simple as that. But leading up to that point, what I was doing, I knew I wanted to start a business. So what I was doing was kind of getting my finances together. Like, you know, I had a condo at the time, then, you know, I started renting it out on Airbnb, making a little bit of money. I started tutoring, I started investing in the stock market a little bit more, just kind of taking steps to reduce my monthly expenses, but at the same time creating other revenue sources outside of my job. And then when I kind of built it up to like maybe $1,500, $2,000 on a monthly basis after all my expenses have been cleared, then I kind of made that decision that I just, you know, want to leave and get my time back so I can focus more on building something that I wanted to build.

Gotcha. So I know you didn't have tons of money when you started your company. What did that look like financially? Like What were the things that you had to pay for upfront? Like, what was your strategy since you, you know, you had limited funds? Um, what was your strategy there?

Um, it was kind of, it was kind of tough a little bit because one of the decisions that I made in the beginning was to get an office space. And at that time, my office space was like maybe $750. And as you can see, after the first month, I was, uh, I didn't have any more money. Yeah, but the good thing was I was able to kind of get, you know, get some contracts early on and was able to just kind of like, I was able to kind of like, kind of get it going pretty much. But it was tough in the beginning because, you know, because of limited funds. And at first I wasn't even living, I mean 'Cause I was renting out my condo, so I had to move back in with the parents.

Yeah.

You know, had to cut back on a lot of different things. And even though in the beginning my business was kind of growing a little bit faster in the beginning, but I still didn't pay myself as much. I think my first year in business, I only paid myself about maybe $5,000 from the business. But we made over $400,000 that first year.

Wow. So how did you make over $400,000 in your first year? Do you— what do you think led to that? Was it kind of your relationships? Was it you constantly being out there selling? Like, what do you feel like was the thing that made you like, you know, how did you hit that goal in your first year? Because most people don't even hit $50,000 in their first year. What do you think that you did differently than other people, I guess, are doing or haven't done?

Um, I would say it's just being on the phone. Like, one of the things that I did was The office space was very important in that I had a place that I can go to and then just kind of just bang out phone calls. I was probably making 100 phone calls a day and then, you know, like reaching out to different companies about them needing temporary staff. And so I would take phone calls and sales calls and getting out there and then just trying to make something happen. You know, my back was against the wall. I had expenses. You know what I mean? I had an office space to pay for. So I think that kind of motivated me a little bit more to make sure that I had some type of contract that would produce some type of revenue so that we can keep going. Because I had, I mean, think about it, I had already made the decision to leave my job, you know? So I couldn't necessarily go back, so I had to make something happen. So I think that pressure of being against the wall as an entrepreneur I think you find ways to kind of figure things out.

Gotcha. No, that's true. And I think, I think that's what makes, you know, you, I, and a lot of other people different from other, from others who are, you know, kind of scared to make that leap and scared to fail. But the thing about when you make that leap and you're like, okay, I'm going to do this, like balls to the wall. If I go broke, I go broke. I'm not going back. You really put yourself in a situation where you are, like you said, you're forced, or you kind of tell yourself, this is my only option. Going back is not something that I'm willing to do.

Right. Going back is not an option.

Yeah.

And then it's so funny because we, and I think sometimes for most entrepreneurs, the reason why it's so hard is because we get so used to living an average lifestyle. You know, as young kids, You know, we're told go to school, get good grades, graduate, and then get a good job. So, um, for most people, we just get comfortable in that, and we just have to just like retrain and reprogram our minds that that's a life of being average. And if you want to be great, you gotta do something different, you know, get your finances right, get out of a job, and then get started, you know what I mean?

No, that's true. I think it's a big mindset thing, and I think Actually, one of our first podcasts was about that. Just, just the mindset of like understanding that we deserve more and that, um, you know, that you, you can, you could have a grander life if you want one and you don't have to settle for just getting into this day-to-day kind of quote unquote grind that's not fulfilling, you know? Um, so I know after you hit that kind of having that big $400,000 a year, which is dynamic. And how many staff— how many people did you have? Obviously, you're a staffing company, but how many people did you have, like, on board for your first year?

Yeah, so my first year, kind of what happened was once I started my staffing company, one of the things I didn't realize— and it's so funny, once you make a decision to move forward, a whole bunch of, like, roadblocks come up— but one thing I didn't realize is starting a healthcare staffing company is that to staff nurses, I didn't realize that I needed a healthcare staffing license. So I had already quit my job, had already signed an office lease, and now I get a call from a friend asking me if I had my nurse staffing license, and I was like, what is that? And he was like, I hope you haven't quit your job because that takes like 3 to 6 months to get. So one of the things that I did was, as I filed for that application, as I was waiting for it to receive the application, I started staffing myself out to different companies, and one of the companies that I had staffed myself out to— actually, the first company that gave me a contract is a tech company now that we know as 2U. Yeah, and I was a recruiter for them, and I did such a good job that they decided that they wanted to use my staffing agency to hire a couple more recruiters. And so that was my first contract that I that I got, and I put about maybe 6 employees there at the time. And while they were there and we were generating revenue, I was able to kind of end my contract with them to focus more on going out and getting other contracts. And that's kind of how we built up to $400,000 our first year.

Gotcha, gotcha. That's so cool. So I know that you went on from the Perfect Staffing to Perfect Office. So what was that like? I mean, do you feel like it was easier to start Perfect Office because you had Perfect Staffing off the ground and had more, you know, kind of revenue? Or what was that transition like? Because going from staffing to office, it's totally different. That's two totally different fields. So what was that like?

Yeah, two totally different fields. I still run both companies, Perfect Staffing on a full-time basis and then Perfect Office also on a full-time basis. But it was a lot easier to start Perfect Office in terms of the upfront cost because I mean Perfect Office, I probably started Perfect Office with $10,000 loan from Perfect Staffing. So I couldn't have done Perfect Office first, in my opinion, the way I wanted to do it. You know, so Perfect Staffing was a segue and then kind of helped me understand entrepreneurship, entrepreneurs have to go through in terms of finding an office space, in terms of keeping costs down, in terms of things like that, how important that is in helping an entrepreneur ramp up really, really fast. 'Cause I think with Perfect Staffing, the first organization, The reason why we were able to ramp up very, very fast is because we kept our costs very, very low, and office space played a big part in that. So naturally, when I would go around and talk to different entrepreneurs, and I would talk to them and ask them what's holding them back or why they haven't made the commitment, one of the things that they wanted to, that they were afraid of is the cost of entrepreneurship. So naturally, I just, it, I started thinking about how do we reduce, make office space more affordable because, you know, the competitors out there right now, I mean, they provide a great service, but just some entrepreneurs just can't afford to pay as much. So I decided to bring to market something a little bit more affordable, a little bit more flexible, but at the same time professional. So that's how Perfect Office was born.

That's cool. That's so dope. So what, um, I guess what, what's next? Like, I know you got the staffing on lock, you got the office space on lock. I've also seen you're like secretly like an amazing stock trader. Like, what else do you have going on right now? And like, what else are you doing? Cause you're doing a lot.

I don't know how you have time, but I mean, I got a couple different things that I'm working on and I think it'll come to light as it, 'cause I mean, as an entrepreneur, you're always working on something. I mean, I think I probably have 100 million, not 100 million, but 100 things in my mind right now that I'm kind of filling out, working on. And as they come to fruition, I think I'll probably put it out there. But one of the things that I'm excited about right now is I'm going back to school. So there's this 10,000 small business a program that I accepted to. Warren Buffett, Michael Bloomberg, it's a program that they put on, they're putting on for Baltimore City.

So is it the Goldman Sachs one?

Yes, the Goldman Sachs one. Yeah, I'm excited about that. Just got accepted into that.

Awesome, congratulations.

That's phenomenal.

Thank you. How long is that program?

It's about maybe 3 months from April to July.

Okay.

Uh, so I'm excited about that. I'm excited about, um, Perfect Office. We have 2 more locations that we're probably going to be launching. Yeah, we're definitely gonna be launching this year, possibly a 3rd location. Um, but, um, I'm excited about having, uh, 10, 10 locations in the Maryland area and then maybe moving into DC and other states soon. So excited about that.

Wow. That's, that's awesome. So like if you had to, What were some of the key takeaways or what were some of the biggest things that you learned? Or if you were to do it all over again or if there's a new entrepreneur saying, "Hey, I want to do something similar. I just want to start something in general." What do you feel like were the top things that you wish you would have done differently or things that you're like, "Wow, I'm happy I did this this way." I would say start.

I mean, like, for entrepreneurs, I would say just start, you know what I mean? Because you would be so surprised how time flies. And if you start now, you can put yourself in a whole nother arena in 1, 2, 3, 4 years from now. For me, I am glad that I started early. I mean, I was so scared when I quit my job at the age of 26 when most of my friends are probably making really good money. Living a good lifestyle and all of that. But as an entrepreneur, you can't— if it's in your mind, I wish I had started even earlier. I wish I had quit my job at 22, you know, but when you— you just gotta start, you just gotta jump, because if you jump, right, you're gonna figure it out. Because a lot of things that I know now, you know, and when I was planning to start my business, the stuff that I thought I knew then, I mean, I've learned so much more now, you know what I mean? So it's just like, you just gotta start and move forward. Along the way, you're gonna learn what you need to To make your business work or to get closer to your dream, but you got to start. You can't be like one foot in, one foot out, one foot in, one foot out. Like, if you're one foot in, one foot out, it's gonna take you like 20 years to do the same thing somebody has done in 2 to 3 years that's fully committed, you know. While I was working my corporate job, I probably only made— not probably, I made— on my first year, I made $32,000. Second year, I made $32,000. Third and third and fourth year I made probably $38,000 each. And now, like, I mean, I mean, if I mean $30-something thousand a year, like, come on.

Yeah.

So it's just, and yeah, it's crazy. Like, and sometimes I think about it, it's like, I've been an entrepreneur longer than I've been in corporate America. So it's like, I'm starting to think different naturally now. But in the beginning, it wasn't like some of these thought processes didn't come to me naturally. I wasn't as confident, you know, but now I'm really confident about what I'm capable of or what is possible. So, and when you're moving with that type of mindset, anything is possible.

Yeah, that's so awesome. I love it. I love it. All right. So tell me, or like, how can people like get in touch with you, follow you? Because clearly you're about to be doing amazing things and We just want to make sure we know you now while you still remember ol' little Dominique. But how can everybody else like follow you and just kind of, you know, learn about all the different things you have going on?

Yeah, so I mean, I'm on social media on Instagram as Chico the Dream Chaser. I'm also on Facebook. And then also in terms of like Perfect Office, we're theperfectofficellc.com. Perfectstaffingllc.com. But yeah, we're out there, you know. If anybody needs to reach me, just, just, just shoot me a message or send me a DM. Yeah, let's chat. I'm all about entrepreneurship, and I'm all about leveling the playing field for entrepreneurs so that that way we have more entrepreneurs doing great things and affecting people in a positive way.

I love it, I love it. Awesome. And we'll put links to all of these in the little, the little section or whatever so you guys can get in touch with Chico. Well, thanks again, Chico, for joining us today. Like, you dropped so many nuggets. I can't wait for everyone to hear this and share this with my audience. Um, and I guess we'll chat very soon.