13 Life Lessons that I Wish I Knew Earlier

Let your unfiltered self be your filter. Just be yourself and that will filter out everyone that you don't want to do business with or you don't want to partner up with. I built 120 plus location lawn care franchise and today I'm going to share with you 13 different things that serve me well and things that I found to be true and that I learned over the past 10 years. Building the business. Number one is to invest money in only the areas that you have a knowledge or skill advantage. In other words, don't go try to invest in penny stocks and the stock market if you are not above average in areas because otherwise you're just dumb money. And those are typically the people who lose their shirts when it comes to investing is going into industries and investing structures that they don't have any unique advantage in. I only want to invest my money in the thing that I am in the top 10 or 15% of investors in that category. That's typically where most of the profits are. In that top 10 to 15%, the people who are the best in knowledge and skill in that discipline. Number two, time is worthless when you are poor. Now some people are gonna hate me for this, but your time isn't worth a lot when you don't have a lot of money. And so for people that are saying, oh, I don't have the time to do this, or it takes too much time to door knock, or it's too much time to go and talk to people one on one, your time is not worth anything. It's very invaluable when you don't have a lot of money. As you begin to make a lot of money, that's when efficiencies, saving time, having a virtual assistant, all those other things come into play. But at the beginning, when you're not wealthy, your time is worth nothing and you should spend as much of it as trying to ensure that you get the skills and knowledge to be able to have the upper advantage. So like we mentioned in number one, you can actually have a unique advantage in the marketplace. Number three is come to grips with the worst possible outcome. Just realize that as you begin to go through your entrepreneurial journey, things will happen that are bad. Realize what those are going to be potentially and then come to grips with them prior to them happening. Already foresee an employee leaving. Already foresee something really bad in the business happening, losing a key person or a customer leaving. Envision those things, come to grips with them, have a plan in place. And even if you don't have a plan in place, just realize that it's probably gonna happen. And if you come up with that mentality and it doesn't happen, great. But if it does happen, you're emotionally stable through that period of time and you're not reactive to things that happen in the business. Number four is great when it comes to investing and business in general. And that is, anything that is popular already, the money has been made in that area. So when the crypto market went crazy and NFTs got crazy, each market, each bubble, when everyone starts to know about it, the money has already been made. So if you're just hearing about it from hearsay and the public and people just talking to you about it, I guarantee you the vast majority of the riches have already been made. So don't get swept up in things that are popular. Focus on the niches, because that's where the riches are. And when those niches blow up and become bubbles, the money's already been made. Number five is that high growth equals low profit. In other words, growth sucks cash. If your business is growing very quickly, there's a very high likelihood that you're not gonna have a lot of profit because you're buying more equipment, you're hiring more people, you're investing into R and D and you're investing into marketing. And those things cost a lot money. So you're going to be cash strapped. If you're growing very quickly, don't expect to go from 100,000 year one to 500,000 year two to 700, 800,000 in year three and expect somehow to be really profitable. It's unlikely unless you're inside a high leverage opportunity like software where there's not a lot of unit costs. But if you're doing something in terms of home services where labor is involved, as you begin to scale, your unit cost is also going to go up and so your margins get compressed. Number six is listen to, comprehend. I stink at this one I'm still trying to get better at. But that is when I'm listening to someone talk, I'm not just waiting for there to be silence for me to say something. I'm just listening to comprehend and then formulating a response. And that might mean that there's a one or two second gap in between them stopping talking and me starting talking. But there's no need to try to fill in those gaps because otherwise you're going to disrespect the people that you're listening to and they're going to feel it. It's disrespectful to people. And your employees and the people that you're trying to lead will not like it if you just can't listen to them because you're constantly flipp formulating what your next sentence is going to be. Number seven is that scarcity is the greatest closing mechanism. You can have all the fancy skills and sales abilities and tactics in the world, but scarcity is the number one way to sell more of whatever you want, whether you're trying to sell employees to come work for you, whether you're trying to sell more jobs or whether you're trying to sell million dollar houses. Regardless if there is scarcity involved, whether it is perceived scarcity or actual scarcity, because there's a limited number of something I've consistently seen the salespeople that use scarcity, whether it be perceived or actual, are the ones that close the most deals. You can create scarcity by simply limiting supply instead of just constantly getting more and more employees and more trucks and be able to do increasing the supply of what you can do in your business. So perhaps instead of expanding your business, what you actually want to do is reduce your capacity or at least cap it. So that way demand continues to go up and now capacity is below that and it allows you to raise prices and increase your profit margins. Number eight also has to do with sales, and that is unload the prospect's gun. And this is basically what's called damaging admissions, which means say everything that's bad about your product or service or whatever you're trying to sell. If you're trying to sell an employee to come work for you, say everything that is potentially bad about taking the job. If you were trying to sell a prospect on becoming a customer, tell them everything that is bad about your service or product. Why? Because if you do that and then tell them all the good things, they'll believe you about the things that are good and they'll trust that whatever you're saying is in reality the truth, instead of you trying to sugarcoat something by only sharing the good, positive things. And a lot of us try to hide the skeletons in the closet, when what we should do is parade the skeletons, get them out of the way, and then focus on what's good about our product and service. Now, before we continue to Number nine, the gentleman's agreement is that you subscribe to the channel. I make these videos for free, and all I expect in return is that you push the subscribe button. Now, this gentleman's agreement operates on the trust system, which means I Cannot see whether or not you subscribe. But for absolutely no cost whatsoever to you, I only ask that you subscribe to the channel. So please do that. And let's continue to number nine. Number nine is really simple. Eye contact builds relationship. Whether you are trying to do this with your employees, the people that you are leading, your customers, vendors, big deals you're trying to close make eye contact. A lot of people because of technology are not great at this. And this is something some people say, I have like piercing eyes. It's just simply the fact that I'm looking at someone in the eyes and they're not used of it and it can be a little bit uncomfortable. Try to practice this on people specifically that you might actually tell you're working on this. Because if you can get eye contact with people and get comfortable with looking them in the eyes, you'll be much more perceptive as well as you'll be able to sell people much more. Because you'll pick up on things that you would otherwise have always missed because you were looking here or looking off to the side and talking here or looking down. Look at them in the eyes, make eye contact and get comfortable looking deep into someone's eyes. Now obviously don't be weird about it, but absolutely, eye contact will unlock a lot of opportunities for you. Number 10 is let your unfiltered self be your filter. A lot of people are always concerned about what people think about me. What do people think about me online or social media? Just be yourself and that will filter out everyone that you don't want to do business with or you don't want to partner up with. For example, myself, I'm religious. I will pray on my channel. I've been pretty public about this. We pray and it's simply a mechanism to screen out a lot of people down the road if they start doing business with me. And I tried to hide like, oh, I'm not religious, I don't mention Jesus. If I did that, that might bring in more people on the up front. But down the road, eventually that's gonna come into the play. My true colors will show and they'll eventually leave and it'll create way more headache for me down the road. Cause I'm trying to constantly hide something. Just be your authentic self on social media and in person. And some people will not like that. And that will be the filter that will keep them away from the other individuals that just respect and like the fact that you're authentically you. And those people will be your best fans and typically your greatest supporters. Number 11 is to go very narrow when it comes to influencers or mentors or people that you look up to and try to emulate in business or in life. Go very narrow. Don't try to take 15 or 20 people that you follow on YouTube and try to emulate everything that they're saying and digest from a fire hose of all their content. Take one or two that you look up to admire and realize it might only be a couple years that you really focus and go really deep with that individual, but during that period of time, get everything you can from them. Absorb every piece of content, but don't do it from too many people because so many different perspectives and ideas are going to simply confuse you. Back in the day, those influencers were Grant Cardone and Gary Vaynerchuk. Now I've moved on from them because I feel like they've moved on to things that I'm not really super supportive of. But back in the day, I remember very consciously taking those two individuals and trying to extract as much as possible and really tried to keep everyone else's opinions and ideas and angles and perspectives away because I wanted to go very deep on those individuals and I probably that for about two to three years before kind of realizing that they had moved on. I didn't really like the direction they were going and I moved on to other people that I admired or I wanted to absorb information from and went very deep and very narrow on them. Too many different voices, ideas and opinions and perspectives is going to confuse you, not help you. Number 12 is that the quietest person in the room is the person you want to hear from. Typically, the person that's running their mouth is the person that has absolutely nothing to share, usually has the least amount of money, has the least amount of experience, and has the least information that you need. Seek out the individual that's hardly talking because they're usually the ones that are the wisest, have the most experience and usually have the most money. And just a little tip for you, that probably means that if you want to become that person, you should chart to be like them. Don't feel pressured to be the person that's always talking, always sharing, always communicating, always posting on social media. Be okay with quiet, diligent, head down, hard work that is required to build a base, but which people will actually listen to you and they'll ask for your opinion and what you have to say because you aren't constantly just randomly spouting it off at any moment in time. The final thing I want to share is progress over perfection. This is simply a matter of speed. If you look at billionaires and multimillionaires and people have become very successful in any area of life, most of the time they act very quickly, they're very decisive, and they're okay with the fact that 1 out of 10 times they're going to get a really bad decision and that's going to hurt them. But they'd rather swing 10 times and make nine hits than try to get the one perfect swing and wait for 10, 15 years, keep swinging, keep making decisions, and be okay with the fact that progress is far more important than perfection. You're not going to be perfect. Just keep swinging and eventually you'll hit home runs. And the cool thing about business is the fact that people are known for their home runs. They're not known for how many strikeouts they have. So keep swinging and swing hard, because just one or two massive at bats could potentially put your career on the map. Now, I did not know these things when I first got started my career, and I was just making $10 per hour working at State Farm, where I talk about that progress that went from $10 per hour all the way up to making hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars in my businesses. Check that video out right here.