BREAKING OUT of Prison Life to Make $140K/year

Shoot. My mama told me I need to just get a job.

When they think about having ex felons on the property, I don't want them on my property. They called you because they want their lawn.

I've been waiting here for two hours.

I was 13. I had a AK47 on me.

I was trapped in, like, the hood.

You know why you watch my content? It's because you want to make more money.

I'm done with this. I'm gonna just go and get back into that life.

I don't care about merch, I don't care about shirts. I don't care about that brand. I don't care anything of that.

Everybody mad at me. Cause I'm thinking y' all took my.

God not enough to sustain a business.

We not the only ones going through this. It's somebody else that's probably been in there 10 years and can't figure my head. Don't get scared. I'm the man. I got some shoulders to stand over your head hurl longer than I stick.

So if I get caught, I'mma say it ain't mine. Did you find it on me? No, it ain't mine.

Bad people making more money will do more bad things.

Today we're in Indianapolis, Indiana to go meet with Montez from Ace Projects. There's junk removal and lawn care. I'm very concerned. Why? Because he's running his business like a nonprofit. Why? Because he has no profit. Let's see if we can turn this thing around. Montez. How's it going, man? One yard and one job at a time. An Indianapolis man is working to make a positive impact in his community by.

Providing employment for ex felons and youth. The CEO of Ace Project, a Lawrence company, is focused on helping his employees build a better future.

My name is Montez Williams. I'm the founder of Ace Project, which is a lawn care based out of Indianapolis, Indiana.

Over the last four years, Montez has employed around 20 ex felons and youth and including his brother, Michael Williams was incarcerated for nine years and is now working alongside Montez because he believes in his mission.

Just trying to help the youth, just show them a different way, you know, just letting them know that in a second your life can change, you know, and it's more ways than thinking that you gotta do it the fast way or the easy way. We hired youth and also ex felons to be able to have a legal way, to be able to make some money and learn a new skill. I started this back in 2017, like I wish I had somebody to teach me this. At they age I was bringing on 13, 14 year olds and they didn't have nothing to do board. That's when I started getting in trouble. So I was just like, I mean you got to feed yourself, but it's like you got you some money, you ain't got to steal from a gas station or nothing.

You can.

I'm taking them going now. They buying their meals and getting cell phones and stuff like that. And just seeing it helped them out and like that kind of that's what helped me keep it going and stuff like that. I would rather them cutting grass and putting a lawnmower in their hand and.

Having them going kicking somebody door or.

Doing selling some drugs just to get some money when they really didn't need much. They just needed a little bit of guidance and some money to keep them out of trouble.

Born to Win.

Yeah. So this is Born to Win is my clothing brand.

Okay.

Also do got a clothing brand that I do. That's what kind of helped me through the wintertime. You know, that's like the slow season. But the clothes help me out besides services, but ace project is the lawn care. So it's just kind of just putting them both out there.

I certainly commend Montez for seeing the problem with the fact that he doesn't get a lot of work in the winter and trying to come up with a solution. At Augusta Lawn Care, we try to focus on things like Christmas lights, snow plowing, doing winter services like trimming the bushes because guess what, the grass isn't growing.

Cool. And what's kind of the mission behind Born to Win then?

It's more production. I do music. Got me thinking to myself, God, the real one still get to see my son. So I had to pick him up. I'm his role model, he my protege. Let's live it up. It's also like I want to get into like content movies and stuff like that, but I want it to be up under like Born to Win production. So like with all that, I want to put up under the same umbrella to keep a positive mindset though. So that's what the Born to Win is like waking up and then just like feeling like, shoot, no matter what, I can win as long as I keep going at it. So I was doing a lot of illegal stuff to be able to get money. And I realized that as I got older, it's different ways to get money. Besides of what I was exposed to at a young age.

It's legit ways to where you can get money and you don't have to go to prison. You can help somebody else be able to get them some money too. And it can just. It can keep you out of trouble. So that was my whole thing. It's just like expose people to something I wish I got exposed to. And it was really just the entrepreneurial life, the daily grind of not being out in the streets.

So that's kind of your focus during the winter and then during like spring, summer is the lawn care and the junk removal.

Yeah. And I'm trying to get that. I'm trying to figure out how that could be all year. I haven't figured that out yet. It's just about three, four months where we just trying to figure out, like, slow on work, but Bill still coming through and still keeping up on all that. So that's the problem that I've kind of been running.

But you started this in 2017, was that right? What's the revenue been for ACE Projects kind of over the past seven years?

2017. I had known. I got out that year. I wanted to work, but it was. I couldn't when nobody hired me to work for them. So I just realized I had to work for myself. Like I said, I probably had probably 150, $200, just enough to get a used lawnmower and a used weed whacker. So, I mean, that's really all I had. And it was just like I said, if I could get out here and I could at least make a little money for myself, I could keep myself from going back to prison.

Yeah.

Kind of stagnant. It grew a little bit. Like Covid kind of had it slow, and then we had to come back from that. I mean, last year was probably one of our best years because we also had the equipment to be able to take on bigger contracts. Because it was. Sometimes we couldn't be able to take on stuff with just the push mowers, But I was able to get some rod and mowers and trailer and stuff last year. So that was kind of able to help us out. So we was building up last year. We made probably 60, 70,000 last year. I mean, it's been kind of slow for us, and we kind of like break even. I feel like a lot of it goes out, but then it came back to the wintertime. And then when it came down to the wintertime, I still got stuff to pay out. And I end up having to sell the mower to be able to just to keep where I was staying at. So I had to sell the mower in the trailer to be able to keep a roof over here this past winter. Yeah, this.

Sell some of the equipment, the trailer to just get by the winter, just.

To get by the winter time and just to keep rent paid until we could keep everything going back up.

Look, I understand the knee jerk reaction to sell equipment when you don't have a lot of funds and there's not a lot of work coming in. You got to get through somehow. Instead of going into defensive measure and selling off equipment likely at a loss, can we go on the offensive? Just get more customers and get more revenue using that equipment to get through the slow season.

I mean, I don't survive without having enough money. And it's just like as long as you got you some food and you some water and you know, got roof over your head, you got another day to be able to wake up and try again. So it's like every year it's been just something that I'm learning that all right, this is what I can't do, something what I got to cut off to be able to get the profits up. That's where I'm kind of at now to where it's like you say it's been at that like 60, 70, and then it's like, sorry, so how can we be able to get six figures with. And like what would it be able to take to be able to get there and just to be able to grow? I'm not trying to run a million dollar street business. I want to run a million dollar business. I want to run a real business. And if it's a million dollar business, we helping other people take care of their families and they stand out. I'm fresh on the, I mean they seven years business. But it was, I just got out of prison, so all this is just like fresh off experience. They got a chance besides going, I mean, because all they gonna do work anyway. You go to prison and they in there working in the kitchen, they in there working in laundry mats and running out. They, the prisoners run the jail so they could act, they can actually run something and be great workers because they in there running everything and you only working in there for probably 24, 25 cent. So I'm like, if you go in there and you can bust your butt for 12 hours in there for them for 24 or 30 cent and. But then you don't want to come out here and then put in the work for 10, $15 an hour, like that's backwards, do you?

Kind of Have a shop space in the gar. Is that kind of where all the. Yeah, it's cool. Let's check it out. Got it. So you got some tree trimmers, backpack blower. So mostly the push mowers. Is that kind of your focus then?

I didn't really need commercial mowers. I just had a bunch of residential homes. So it was kind of like, oh, like, this is. It's cool. So a lot of stuff. It was a lot of slow stuff going on. So then I end up around December. I end up getting rid of the other mower. I just got to figure out how we can be able to do good throughout the year to where when we get to December, January, February, we won't have to be able to get rid of this. So it was like, I scaled, but then I also kind of failed with it because it was like, it wasn't really planned out well. Yeah. So that's what we're gonna have to go back to since we don't have. I'm gonna try to get another commercial mower before around, like, April, when them bigger apartments and stuff get to come back through, we'll be able to be able to take them on and not be going through them with no push mowers.

How y' all doing?

I'm Mike. Good to meet you. What was your name?

Devon.

Devon.

Good to meet you, man.

Ace. We was kids because I think we were just, like, in the neighborhood. It was just like. He went to a different school. I went to a different school, and we would. We just, like, cleaned up, you know? I'm so, like, that's my bro. Like, we were just. It was just me and Ace. When he first started doing this, his lawn care, I was with him. You know what I'm saying? Knocking on doors, passing out flies. I was there with him the first. When he first started it.

What's your unique selling proposition? Like, what makes you different than everyone else?

So, like, when I first started, I just. I couldn't get hired because I was a felon. So I was just like, I end up having some little money. I went and got me the basic equipment and went out cutting. And then there was some kids. After a while, they asked me, could they come out and help? I said, I just got out. So I was like, I mean, y' all can come out and help or whatever, and just like, just. I don't want to see y' all going to go do nothing crazy or something happen to y' all or whatever. So I was just like, I could. I Could use the help because it, especially if I want to be out all day, it's a lot on me. So I'm like I can just come out and help, see how it go. So bringing them on was kind of like. Or just having a young dude with me to be able to help out was kind of like my niche. And then it just came to where it's like, all right now we just making sure that we taking care of it and we doing good work. Like I wish I had somebody to teach me this. At they age I was bringing on 13, 14 year olds and they didn't have nothing to do.

Bored.

That's when I started getting in trouble.

We were just bad around that time just doing, just doing young and dumb stuff and I end up just got caught with it. Got caught with it. I've been a juvenile for a gun charge. I was like 16, 17, I was.

13 and I had a AK47 on me and they caught me outside of like a gas station and me and a bunch of friends and the people called the police on us.

I used to be, I used to just don't want to leave the hood. Like it was just nothing but the hood. My mom was trapped at that, you feel me?

They end up, everybody ran off. Of course I couldn't run. I got a big old AK47 in my pants and they end up arresting me, telling me they sure they was like you'll get like 5, 10 years something for like every bullet that's in here. It was like a hundred round clip in there.

We getting older, we ain't getting younger. I don't want to just be just trying to be in the house all day or you know what I'm saying? Or not doing nothing with my life.

What does ACE project stand for?

A Child's environment. So that's what the ACE stands for is a child's environment Environment. If I could expose them to this then maybe like it could be able to change their mindset. And like a lot of people they are incarcerated because they trying to make some money. And I could have been back there because I want to make some money. But it's like I figured I could rather show them, put a lawnmower in their hand and show you how to make some money off of lawn care. Then for me to go and give you some drugs or anything. And then like I said with them also going out, we cut a lot of like we started off in like a lot of hood areas. Now to a Fox59 crime tracker alert. A 17 year old is facing two counts of murder after a deadly shooting on Indy's northeast side.

I find it hard to believe, but two of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the country are right here in central Indiana.

We really living like this though, that's the crazy part that turned me to a killer. At the same time, this is, that turned me to a man. It make people feel like they can come and throw trash out here or make it feel trashy. So it's like we don't live just inside of the hood. We live inside of a nice neighborhood. Now the kids can come outside like we done cut grass and now the kids that came outside ran the yard, played around or whatever. So it's just like basically changing the environment.

Whatever, you bring it to the universe and it come back like I'm bringing good, positive to people in the universe. It ain't gonna do nothing but recycle. It's gonna recycle itself and becoming good to me.

That's kind of how I got my perspective to change. Now we working out every day, playing chess and they teach me how to use my mind. And now I'm actually thinking and now I'm not just crashing into stuff. Now I'm actually making protected moves and things like that. So now I'm learning.

Whatever I'm doing, I'm learning every time. So it's just like every move or step I'm taking, I'm learning.

I'm still learning. I'm still learning new words, I'm learning new stuff. So I'm like, I gotta, I gotta just keep learning new stuff and then like, then I could come out different but. Because if I don't learn nothing new, I'm gonna come out the same person.

Being locked up or doing stuff that we ain't supposed to do and just like turning our life around, it's whole, it's, it's good. Like, you know what I'm saying? It's a whole big picture. It's like changing your chapter.

I want everybody around me to win. You should want the same thing. Cause if you don't, I don't even.

Want you on my way online.

You're going to be telling a story, right? And I don't recommend you lead the story with the fact that you were an ex felon and then you hire ex felons. That's your mission statement. And I think that's awesome. That's why I'm willing to support it it. But the customers don't care. They called you because they want their lawn mowed. And if you actually are going to lead with a customer facing marketing strategy of we have ex felons and we're trying to, you know, help them make maybe 1% of the population that cares about that and is willing to have you on their property. Whereas if you say we're going to come mow your grass and do your property maintenance and it's going to look amazing. Everyone wants that. 60% of homeowners have their property maintained by a professional company. That's all they care about, the service. They're selfish. Everyone in life, they just want what's good for them. They're not going to pay a dollar more to support your vision. They just want their lawn mow. I have a lot of missions and goals and dreams that I want to do with my money. I don't even talk about them because no one cares. It's my vision, it's my mission, it's my goals. Like my mission personally is there's a, there's several orphanages in Africa that help build and I'm trying to build technology that can one day save lives for those kids over there that don't have access to medical treatment. You've never even heard me say that ever.

And I don't watch the other plan.

You know why you watch my content is cause you want to make more money.

Yeah.

And so that's why you listen.

You would have said that. It probably would have been like, all right, Mike, good for you.

Great, good for you.

All right.

Your customers think the same thing. We do not need to use what our mission statement is for the customer's mission. Their mission is I want a dependable, reliable, professional service showing up every single week and they never miss service. That's it.

That's what they want.

They just want you to turn their property into ace to a child's environment. Money solves everything. If you want to hire more ex felons, if you want to train up people, if you want to have a non profit, if you want born to win, become something really big, build a massive business that could be able to.

Do the stuff that we want to do.

You can do whatever you want.

You got the money, baby, got the money.

That's all that matters. But that's when we get in trouble.

Is when we mix mission with business.

And with business make a great business. And then on the back end you can do whatever you want.

I mean like, I mean, shoot, my mama done told me I need just get a job. So it's like, it'd be like, I mean Like, I done had a lot of like up and down moments with it to where it'd be like, man, sometimes it's just like, is it worth it?

Do you have a Google my business listing? Like how many reviews do you have on that page right now?

No review, I just got it. Like honestly just got it.

The big thing is like just increasing the amount of leads you're getting, right? Because we can't survive on just a few leads a week in terms of growth. And so right now the vast majority of leads are going to come from online. Like if you're looking for something like a service, you're just going to go on your phone, you're going to Google, you're going to try. So we have to be there. And so the fast is like the cheapest way to do that is get Google reviews. I don't care if it's family, friends, whatever. Like you need to get above 30 Google reviews as fast as possible because that alone will put you above probably 95% of your competition. Because there's a hundred other people in this market that are doing this same thing. All of them don't have Google listings. And, and a very small fraction have websites. The people who do are the ones on the first page or two of Google and those are the ones that are building million dollar businesses. The cheapest way to do that, and literally you could do this in two days, is like go on your Google listing page, go to copy the link and it's gonna be a little link and text that to all your friends and family like, hey, I need a review. Don't lie and say I did your lawn care or I did your junk removal, but just review me as the business owner, then send that same message, that same link to every customer you've ever serviced and be like, hey, could you please leave me a review? I'm trying to grow my business, trying to make a better impact on the community and hire more people. If you could leave a review for, hear me, five minutes, it mean the world to me.

Assuming you actually do great work and have great value to your customers, you probably have serviced tens, if not hundreds or thousands of customers in the past. You can reach out to and very quickly get a lot of online reviews which lead to more customers once they see the work that you do.

You do that in two days, you have 30 reviews. I guarantee you, you will double the business just from that alone. So here's the deal. I'll make you this deal, okay? If you can get 30 Google reviews when you do Let me know and I'll build the website for you and then I'll give it to you for free for a year. Yeah. And then based upon that, you'll know whether or not you want to keep using it or not. Because I believe this alone will double the business. I think if you get a website, you triple with the business pretty quickly because everyone's coming online to figure this stuff out. Like, I really believe this coming year you can do 150 grand. All your leads are going to be coming from online.

Yeah, right.

Especially when you don't have like the truck. Like to just see this number. I need to be within 10ft of your truck.

So you say you got in some. They got to be bigger.

Well, it's either bigger or I've got to be where everyone's at. And that's online.

Oh yeah, right.

And so right now that's the easier thing to do. This would take, you know, $1,000 to really put a nice wrap and things like that at least. And so I'm going for the low hanging fruit, which is online.

What about the door hangers and stuff like that?

Like doing the door hangers is absolutely something we should be doing if we have the time. That's what's beautiful about like the website and Google. Once we set it up, it's done. We don't have to spend any time doing it. Now if you have time and you don't have enough leads, we're gonna do door hangers. Right. And. Cause we know we can for 50, 60 bucks get hundreds of these things and we can go knock out doors and get leads that way. My goal is that even while you're out working, you're getting leads in from the website. Because what's happening right now is when you get busy, you stop putting out door hangers and guess what? No work comes in. So you're on this roller coaster of it's still going while you're working. So you work five days a week. On Saturday you have 10 estimates to go do. And you didn't have to go do three days worth of doing door hangers to get them.

It could help us out to be able to just figure out just different marketing ways to be able to reach people instead of just like the old fashioned door to door. Like that can work to get some people. But it's not the only way. Like yeah, we done made 60, 70,000 off of just people that we done got from like door to door and Facebook and all that to get leads. Like I've done I've got, we've gotten here from doing that, but it's like it's another level.

Bad people making more money will do more bad things. And because of that money gets a bad rap. The billionaires that screw people over and do bad things and all the rest of it. But good people with more money will simply magnify what they're currently doing. And that's why if you're trying to help one or two people now, you having a lot of money should be the focus because it'll magnify what you can do by a hundred X. Magnify helping more people 100% because that's what you care about. As soon as you start talking about that is when you lit up, you didn't light up about talking about your equipment, your truck, nothing. When you started talking about helping the youth and the guys that are coming out of incarceration, that's when you lit up. But your customers don't care about your mission. It's the bait on the hook. The same way that the bait to the hook the customers is I'm taking.

Care of your property.

And the hook is you have you want more money to be able to do what you're passionate about and be able to give. And that's why I, come on, do these turnarounds because I believe people like you having more money will just magnify what's already inside of you. And you helping one or two people will 10 or 15x. When you build a bigger business and I happen to believe the way that you've talked, you'll use your money to do some really good stuff with the community. And I believe you'll end up creating a non profit called Born to Win that'll do a lot of really cool stuff. And you'll have the money to not be in the field or doing the marketing, but rather going out and training, talking at schools, etc. That's the real vision that you want to see and I think is inside of you. But you will not be able to do that if you don't build a million dollar business. If you can build a million dollar business, you'll get out of daily operations and you'll go start doing what you really love which is actually teaching and training like a groups of people, classrooms. You'll go back to the places that you were incarcerated and actually be able to talk to people. You still might start making YouTube videos. You're not talking to one person in the truck anymore. That's the mission. The business is ace projects and we go kick butt with it. And we're gonna spend the next five to ten years doing that. I don't care about Born to Win. I don't care about merch. I don't care about shirts. I don't care about that brand. I don't care anything of that. Because I know if I build this, this, they'll listen to everything else that's.

Lit, like you said, and be able to help everything out.

Yeah. Let's go, dude.

It's been real busy. I had to put my truck in the shop, but after watching a bunch.

Of the videos, I seen other people.

Go through it and had to get rental trucks and stuff. So I end up having to. To rent a truck out to be able to catch up on work. I'm not gonna do this. And then I was like, I wonder if anybody ever used a U haul. I looked up, like, indies U haul.

And I seen them pop up, and.

I watched the video, and I'm like, yep, that's perfect.

I got a hog.

I had to move debris and all that too. So it was like, it worked out perfect. I was able to fill it up, instead of doing a couple trips, filled it up with a bunch of stuff. It was one big load to the dump, and we still had the equipment and stuff back there, knocking out all types of yards, including.

Still got it done.

Yeah. Like, I've just been trying to focus more on this to be able to.

Do more of that stuff, like, when.

I really want to and be able.

To have the money to do it.

But I feel like if I just get this going and be able to build it up, all that stuff would be able to fall in place.

So here's the deal. I'll make you this deal, okay? If you can get 30 Google reviews, when you do, let me know, and I'll build the website for you, and then I'll give it to you for free for a year.

For a year.

All your leads are going to be coming from online, literally in a matter.

Of a couple days. He got over 30 Google reviews. It's up to 46 Google reviews now that he got in a matter of a few weeks.

I mean, I reached out to the people that I knew, the people that we've already worked with, but I reached out to, like, employees so they could talk about, like, how it was working with us. Reached out, like, on our Facebook page to just all the people that we know to just, like, if y' all ever work with us or work with me with Ace Project, they'll Leave us a review. And, like, we got a lot of support here. So people was more than willing to.

Go and do it because they've actually.

Worked with us and they can actually be able to take his real review and they can really be like, yeah, but they did this good job, Came at a good time to finally be able to even see all that, though.

So if he can do it, you can too. And true to my bargain, we built him a great website where he can now get more leads and customers in his local area.

I was just like, I know when somebody see this, they gonna be like, yeah, like. Like, it's a good landscaping company. Let me at least try them out. Good stuff on here. That's what it's been like. I mean, since it's been up, we've been getting leads daily from people all in different areas and stuff like that around here. And it's like they looking it up so the reviews and them get on there. Seeing a professional website is bringing a lot of people to fill out them forms.

And we're going out doing the estimates.

Getting them on schedule and knocking out the yards. Now we can be able to add on some extra guys for some help. Be able to help us out and just build more team with it.

Yeah, like, this main focus is just like mowing landscaping, making sure that we are raising our prices this year so we can see the profits.

You gotta, gotta want it. But you also, once you want it, like, you gotta execute, gotta execute. Like, you can't. I mean, people, they talk about stuff all day. They talk about dreams and they got big plans and all that, but. But you never see them pull the trigger and execute.

I mean, that's how I was able.

To get those 30 reviews so fast. It's like, all right, the plan is to get them and reach out to.

All the people that I know.

That's the plan. But I'm not going to sit on the plan for two days if that's the plan. And now we need to execute. So I learned that I could plan stuff out. I was just planning out the wrong stuff.

And to see that sometimes we could.

Get stuck in our head in that switch where it's off, and we get stuck thinking so much that we never just tried.

Turned out that, I mean, it's something that I actually enjoy and can make good money off of. So it's just a story just to let people know. Just go after this. The things that you aspire, things that.

You want to do, you got to.

See it in your head. So go for it and stick with it. Take some time, but you stick with it. You run into people in your field, like Mike Andy's. I run to him. Just stick with it. You're running with people who can help you out, be able to show you the way.

And you, too, can get a great website by going to lawn carewebdesign.com or homeservicewebdesign.com today.

That's right.