The ULTIMATE SUCCESS ADVICE For Every Entrepreneur! | Joseph Valente

This is a big lesson for entrepreneurs. Listen, if your business fails, you just got to move and start again.

Yeah.

You can't cry about it. Even though I was mortified that it had happened, you got to rebuild.

Dude.

You got an amazing story all your own. I want to get. I don't want to give it all away for the listeners, but I want everybody to understand. So you're obviously one of the most successful construction contractors, obviously, in the uk. You've worked really hard, you've obviously had a lot of success, obviously won the Apprentice, you've done a lot of really cool things, but life hasn't always been that way. In fact, in your book, you talk about going from the troubled room or being a troubled youth to the billion dollar boardroom. So break it down for us. Like, tell us a little bit about the early days.

So I grew up in a working class family. My mum worked three jobs. She was a cleaner, a dinner lady, you know, three or four pounds an hour. My dad was an alcoholic, he didn't work. But a very difficult upbringing. Struggled a lot financially, struggled at home with the environment is very hostile. And that kind of.

That kind of forced me to want to create a better life and, you know, give back to my mom and so on and so forth. And when my dad left when I was 13 years of age, I kind of went off the rails, you know, I went out of control. My mom couldn't control me. I did whatever I wanted to do. No one was going to stop me, no one at school, no teachers were going to tell me what to do. I was literally just uncontrollable. Very, very angry teenager, very angry young man, hated the world and kind of anybody with any authority figure. And so at the age of 15, I was expelled from school. Teachers kicked me out. And that's kind of where the journey begins. The title of my book is Expelled from the Classroom to Billionaire Boardroom.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, and it's a pretty amazing story. I mean, obviously there's. I think that, you know, this show is all about helping people, for lack of a better word, go from stuck to unstoppable, meaning they're not making progress or they're frustrated, they're stuck in place or whatever. So consistently making progress and doing some pretty amazing things. And I think it just goes to show that no matter your upbringing, no matter where you're from, no matter what you're about, that if you're willing to put in the work, great things will happen. So how did you end up even on the Apprentice TV show, let alone winning it. How did that even come about?

So I started in, I went to work when I was expelled from school, you know, at 15, I went and found an apprenticeship with a local plumbing and heating firm. And I spent, you know, the next few years getting a. Getting qualified in the trade and then qualified in gas engineering. And then at age of 22, my mum got me Lord Sugar's autobiography. Famous billionaire in the uk, Host of the Apprentice in the uk, she got me Lord Sugar's autobiography. I kind of had leveled off in my career. I'd maxed out what I was going to earn. I was getting 50k a year, you know, 22 years of age for a guy that had been expelled from school where I grew up, that was like, whoa, yeah, you know, and for me it just wasn't enough. Like I was desperate for something more. So I read this book anyway and it was kind of the first book that I'd read in such a long time. And reading that book and watching how this guy had come from a council estate, welfare estate in the UK to building billionaire wealth in one lifetime, I looked at his journey, I looked at mine and I thought, hang on a moment, this guy's got nothing that I haven't got. He started like me and if he's gone on to be able to do it, then why can't I? And it changed me that much that when I put the book down and it's about that thick, I read it cover to cover in three weeks. I quit my 50 grand a year job. I. I took out a 15,000 pound loan, personal loan, and bought a van, 1500 quid, started my plumbing and heating business, Impregas, which was entrepreneur in Latin, Improvio Gas.

And went to work. And then for the first three years I was a tradesman running a trades business. I hit 25 years of age, we're doing half a million a year. It was quite profitable. I had seven guys working for me, but everything was running my mind, you know, I still a tradesman trying to run a business with no formal business education. And I started to become frustrated. I've leveled off, I needed cash to grow, I needed mentorship to grow and I needed exposure. You know, I've always had this belief inside me that, you know, the world was going to know my name, you know, and I was going to create legacy and I have destiny to go on to achieve insane things. And I came home one night, it was January 9, 2015. It was a very, very cold and dark rainy night. I was really Frustrated. And then I got my phone out on the phone. Came up Facebook, Lord Sugar's page came up the final call for the apprentice. 24 hours left to apply. And at that very moment, I knew the universe had sent me my sign. Yeah, I knew that it had sent that sign. And that was my moment to capture and grab and own. And I believed at that very moment. And everybody asked you to say to me, oh, did you really think you were going to win it, Joe? Of course I thought I was going to win, enter in any competition that I don't think I'm going to win. And firstly, I just knew that the dots had connected because I did so much from that book and quitting my job and everything else, that was my law of attraction moment to take and own. So that's kind of how I ended up applying for the show.

Yeah, well, how did that. So talk to me just a little bit about the show. I want to spend more time, obviously, in the. In what you've been doing, because you got a lot of really cool things cooking. I even know you're hitting the east coast here in the near future, so I'm excited to hear more about that as well. But in the meantime. Right, so, you know, people think entrepreneurship, at least the solopreneurs want to be entrepreneurs. As people referring to people I used to be. Right. They think entrepreneurship's easy. I think the, you know, things will come easy. You can get all the customers you want, you can. You can Facebook market yourself into oblivion, and everybody will come. Right. What do you think the three toughest lessons that you learned during the filming or during that process with the Apprentice, what were the three toughest lessons? And then, like, follow up with that. With, like, what. What were the three most exciting things?

Okay, so what were the three toughest lessons? No risk, no reward. You know, I had to disappear for nine weeks, and when I say disappear, I could only tell four people where I was going. At the time, I was central to my business, running everything with all of these estate agents, real estate companies, giving me loads of maintenance work and so on. So I told my office manager, my mum, my girlfriend at the time, and my best friend, and then I disappeared off the face of the earth. Yeah, Nobody could contact me, none of my clients. And with the one hope that out of 60,000 people, I was going to go and win because 60,000 people applied. So no risk, no reward. The second toughest lesson was.

Being in a room or a home or a house of people with 18 other people that wanted to see you lose that were going to snake you at every turn, every opportunity that were trying to set you up to fail to so they could look good. But you still had to. You still had to do your best for the task so your team would win. You know, that guy's trying to set you up. And if you lose, it's going to be war in the boardroom. But you also have to focus on doing your very best in the task to make sure that your team wins so you don't end up in that boardroom situation. And then finally, number three.

Is when a billionaire speaks to you, you better talk cleanly, clearly, and concisely. Say what you've got to say and then shut up. Because if you talk too much, you talk yourself into trouble.

Those guys like their information fast and on point. And if you keep going, you can dig yourself a hole. So no risk, no reward.

It's kind of a lesson was, if you're around snakes, be a shark. And then number three.

Number three, Speak when you're spoken to and don't talk too much.

Yeah, no, I like all those, you know, to entrepreneurs out there, all over the place, there is a lot of risk. Right. And your rewards are directly correlated to your risk. In many cases, I think the biggest trick is knowing what your threshold is and go just a little bit behind the threshold. Right.

I've always been. I've never, ever been scared to risk everything that I've built. And something happened to me a year and a half ago with my business that we'll talk about in a little while, where I took a big shot and I missed. But for years, I took shots, big shots, and they just kept on hitting the bullseye, you know, And I didn't expect that. I didn't think I could miss. Yeah, I was unstoppable. And then I missed, and it hit hard. So, you know, I've never been afraid to risk because I always want more. I'm not too fussed about protecting what I've got because I know that I can rebuild again. So. Yeah, you know, but if you don't risk anything, you risk everything.

Yeah. No, I love that. I love that. And then the importance of surrounding yourself with the right people is definitely something that I think hits home for everybody. I think, in fact, a lot of the entrepreneurs that I've worked with and who have various sizes, some. Some of them have bigger businesses than I do, and for some reason, they'll have me coach them through a few things. And almost in every case, they're surrounded by people who are doing nothing but stealing from them on a regular basis. You're stealing time, stealing resources, stealing momentum and stuff like that. And it's that situation where, well, they've been moving for 10 years and 5 years and 15 years. I'm like, dude, I have been there and those people stabbed me in the back.

Yeah.

If the production's not there, if the stuff's not there, we've got to find a different way. Right? So I love that. I love that. Absolutely love that. And the clearly concisely thing, I love too, because you're right. People who have great levels of influence, typically you only have their ear for about 30 seconds, maybe, maybe 60 seconds. And you, in that time, you've got to come, you got to come across as not being over serving but also being knowledgeable so they can try to trust your direction. Right?

Yeah, 100%. And you know, just getting straight to the point. And there can be no lying. You know, you've been in business a long time and I'm sure your bullshit radar is on point. You can see when somebody is lying to you, a little twitch of their eye, a little movement of their face and you know, you've got them straight away. And you can sense it now because so many people would have done that to you. You know, same with that guy. For me, it was like, I mean, you know, what's your. Did you watch the Apprentice in America? You're a fan of it?

Oh yeah.

You know when people are just arguing and they just go in and I'm like, I'm used to just. Right, you two, you two argue it out because he's getting more and more wound up. So I'd be quiet if I were you, you know, and just talk yourselves into trouble. I learned very, very quickly that to speak, make clear points and then just be quiet because their headspace is thinking of, you know, 20 million different things. And you've got to get your point across. So yeah, especially when people are pitching and speaking with these guys. Just be on point. Don't.

Yeah, dude, I love it. You know, and the other thing I love most about what you've been doing is you're giving construction a great name. Right. And here's what I mean by that. You know, I don't know if you, if this happened when you were in high school, but when I was in high school and it's been a while, but there used to be this big poster that was about my height, right? A life size poster with a guy in construction, construction jeans, a T shirt A hard hat, a tool belt, and the thing says, don't be like this guy, go to college.

Really blame me. Yeah.

So I don't know if you ever saw that on your side, but that has always stuck in my mind because I had this interesting epiphany not long ago that construction may not be sexy to everybody until they want something built.

Yeah, right.

Then all that, you know, because if you think about it, every multi million dollar house, every skyscraper, every school, every church, every building that's on this planet, somebody in construction had their hands on it. Or actually a variety of people. Right. So I love the fact that you've really drilled hardcore in bringing construction back up to the surface. Because look, construction can be crazy lucrative if you do it right. Right. So I love that dude.

And you're 100% spot on, you know, and I used to feel like that, you know, if you, it was kind of if you go into a trade, you are a universe. You're not good enough for university. That's what it felt like years ago. All of the high school dropouts, which I was, me too. And the people that weren't academically smart enough would go into construction. But you know, and as you pointed out, it's very, very lucrative. By the time I was 19, I was making 40 grand a year, you know, probably double what teachers were making who told me I was no good. People that go, you know, without any debt, without years of trying to earn the money back, without trying to, you know, struggle to find a job. The skill is so in demand and you can take it to whatever level you want to take it. You can be a one man band, sole trader. What do they call one man bands in America?

We call them solopreneurs.

Solopreneurs in the construction space?

Yeah, we just call them laborers.

What about like a one man construction business owner? Oh, handyman in a van. Yeah, yeah, handyman, handyman. Okay, cool.

And so, you know, you can go to so many different levels. Self employed, employed, you know, going on to start a business, build a business. There's so, so much opportunity in that space, you know, and it is. And even I felt like that after the Apprentice. You know, I was the only construction person in the UK and the US to ever have won the show. And I kind of always felt like I wasn't, it wasn't a business. Not the guy that won the year before me, he was in digital marketing. So he got to do B2B in the city of London. And it was like the style that matches the Apprentices Well, I had to go back and run a business to consumer plumbing and heating business. You know, even though we took that company national and I built it as big as it could possibly go.

I always had that stigma in my own mind that it wasn't sexy enough. Yeah. But now what I'm doing with training construction businesses and trying to elevate the name and the industry and showing these guys that it can be so lucrative and they can build big businesses, it's kind of a game changer. But it's a strange one even still. You know, you talked about Clubhouse earlier. These guys are going on there and talk about entrepreneurship, they're talking about real estate, they're talking about Amazon. And then I'm like saying, well, I train construction businesses to grow. Everyone's like, what? That market hasn't even been invented yet. I'm like, no, I'm inventing the space. So it's kind of a strange one where. Yeah, it's a strange one. It's a strange.

Well, I love it, man. I love it. I really do. You know, it's. It's really cool because a couple, you know, because as I mentioned, I think it gives more hope to a lot of people because a lot of people that, man, the reality is not everybody needs to go to a college or a university. Some people are not wired for that. Some people are wired to just get it in there and get it done, put their hands on it, you know, and actually experience things like that. And I'll. And I'll say this, and this is why I think what you're doing is so needed in the marketplace. And that's because the vast majority of construction companies right out there, the ones that started as a handyman, they try, maybe they grow to five or six people and they kind of get stalled there. Are doing it because they haven't been taught the business side, but they know the tactical side. They know how to turn the wrench, screw the screwdriver, nail the nail, do all that kind of stuff. So at what point did you decide, look, I'm going to go out there, that people group that I believe in, and I'm going to help them become more successful as business owners. When.

When did that. Okay, cool. So to get there, I've got to rewind the story back a little bit. So I was 25 when I won the Apprentice. Lord Sugar invested £250,000 into my business, became my business partner. I'm sorry, the billionaire business partner at 25. Hence the. From the classroom to billionaire boardroom it showed a 10 year gap. And anybody listening, by the way, on my Insta RJoservalente, there's a free download for any of your listeners on that podcast, so check that out of that book. And.

I worked with him for two years. It was great. They helped me put in some financial infrastructure, all of the stuff that I didn't really understand, you know, which got an accounting department internally and loads of other bits. But it came a time after two years where I took the cash, I'd got the exposure, I'd built my own connections off the back of it. And their team of financial advisors couldn't really teach me any more about running a service based field business. Lord Sugar came from a manufacturing background, building Amstrad computers, you know, in the late 80s and whatnot. So they didn't know our industry. So I one day went into the boardroom. I was getting a bit frustrated with the partnership, but they could, they were asking me for the answers and I brought them in to give me the answer. So I ended up buying them out at the age of 27. First apprentice winner in the UK ever to buy him out. And then at that point we were doing 1 million a year. Fast forward to 29 years of age. I took the company to a national business. We operated in Scotland, Wales, England, every major city in the UK. We had 100 staff, eight figure turnover and we'd grown very, very quickly from like 1 mil to 10 mil in the space of like 3 years. And you will know it's a very resource heavy business, surveying of these jobs. If the survey goes wrong, the margin goes through the floor, you know, and so on and so forth. And we got to a point in November 2019, we just won National Installer of the Year, beating all of the largest companies in the uk.

Where we hit really, really hard. Difficult financial times, all of our leads dried up. The winter was a lot warmer than what we were used to. We'd got so, so big, so many overheads and sales just didn't hit the level we expected. So it put the business in a very, very difficult situation. Cash flow dried up and then I was like, right, I'm going to have to shut this business down or break it up and sell it. So I sold the brand, sold the assets, made sure the staff got TPed into this new business, kept the job and I had to liquidate the company and so the existing shell company and so on. And 1-1-2020, at the age of 31, I found myself basically starting again. Yeah, yeah. My empire had Pretty much crumbled underneath me that I wasn't expecting to happen. And I was a single entrepreneur back in the game. So, you know, for the listeners here, you know, and I was saying to you when we first started, like, I was at a point where I was winning the apprentice building business. I got in Forbes when I was 28 out of 18,000 candidates in Europe as one of the 30 entrepreneurs to watch in their prestigious Forbes under 30. I had a number one best selling book, number one podcast in the world. Every award I went into, I won. So it's like I had this, like, like this. I don't say false self belief that everything I touched just would work, but it kind of felt like that. And then I hadn't had a right hook for a very, very long time. And then all of a sudden, life just came out of nowhere and put me on my backside. And, you know, it was a real, real wake up call. A real wake up call. So I ended up, you know, exiting the business. I pretty much lost everything that I had created. I didn't walk away with much money from it. And yeah, it's very, very difficult for me, you know, being in the UK press and everything that came alongside that, my reputation and all of the things, you know, what are the stick, the stick that I got, the aggro that I got, it went in the papers. So it's very, very difficult as an entrepreneur, especially one that had been in the public eye, in the limelight, to go through that, you know, and I struggled a lot. But at the beginning of the year, I said to myself, right, Joe, okay, what happened to you? Why did this happen? Yeah, and what, and you don't want to go and build another construction company because it wasn't going to stop. Right. And this is a big lesson for entrepreneurs. Listen, if your business fails, you just got to move and start again. Yeah, you can't cry about it. Even though I was mortified that it had happened, you got to rebuild. So I looked at the industry. I said I was a tradesman that built a trades business. And my business was growing at such a level. I went from one man in a van at 22 to a CEO of over 100 people by the time I was 29. And it was such a fast track journey. No one was teaching me those skills. I was learning them as I was growing, you know, making a lot of mistakes. So I looked at the industry and said everybody that starts a business usually starts one because they were good at the job and thought they could do it. Better than their boss.

Yeah.

So the construction industry is full of tradespeople running trades businesses, not business people running trades businesses.

Yeah.

I decided to solve problems, add value. Yeah. Provide solutions to problem. I said, no one is teaching construction businesses. It's an untapped space.

Yeah.

It's literally there for the taking. I've got the brand, I've got the exposure. Granted, one of my businesses had to be struck down and stripped out, but the lessons from that journey are going to be so valuable to people. And also the insane success. We built the largest independent boiler installation company in the uk.

So there'll be so much value. And then I started, you know, I branded it the trade mastermind. I started coaching businesses for £1,000 an hour later last January. And I've grown rapidly through the pandemic. I was going to run it as live events, getting businesses to come to the events and so on. That got stopped in March, so I pivoted again and went online and we've built the trade accelerator university now and we've done about 1.5 million sales in my first 10 months. I'm too shabby now. I've got 16 staff again. It's a very profitable business. We hoping to get to 10 million this year against forecast. So I kind of went all the way to the top, hit the bottom very, very hard, looked at my journey, created solutions to problems based on what had happened to me and I've opened up a market in the UK that didn't exist. I worked night and day, seven days a week to get back to where I am now in the last 10 months. And I've gone on to build a hyper profitable business in such a short space of time when everybody else was contracting. And that's how I got there in a nutshell.

Well, you know, I'm glad you said it that way because. Because I've learned that I too have experienced rapid rise and a hard ass fall. And then I've. In that moment when you're kind of. For me, I was literally on the bathroom floor crying with my wife when it happened to us, when we actually went through a pretty substantial thing. Now, we didn't. We were fortunate. We were able to pivot and then work, work our butts off and kind of dig back out. But something interesting taught me I learned more about my own character while at the bottom than I ever would climb in quote unquote, to the top. Right. We learn more about who we are, what we achieve. And you know, you mentioned before, so much of us pivoting so many times is having all these people looking at us. You mentioned tabloids and stuff like that. And in the UK they're quite a bit more aggressive than they are in the Americas, and they're pretty aggressive in America in some cases. So I can't imagine what that had been like. But then to have the character to start again and then to take the lessons of, this is what I did well, this is what I messed up, and then teach that to business owners so they don't have to suffer the same consequences of a mistake or a market or a crash or a pandemic or anything like that. Man. I just think it's so important. I just think it's so important. What do you think? Now we'll focus on construction business for just a second. Because, I mean, what we're going to share is, you know, if you learn how to build a construction business, you learn how to build people. So we know that to be true. What do you think.

Most construction business entrepreneurs need the most help with in terms of getting going from, you know, kind of that stuck to unstoppable phase? What do you think standing in the way? What do you see most often?

Education. Yeah, literally it's education. It's knowledge. They've got knowledge of doing the job, but they don't have knowledge of growing the business.

Yeah.

And they don't know how to grow a business because no one's opened up their eyes to growing a business.

Yeah.

Yeah. So it's literally they can get the skills to be able to do it. But the fact of the matter is, somebody needs to tell them that they need to do it because there's either a demand for it or you create one. And I've been creating the demand using provocative content.

Yeah.

We built a business through Facebook ads.

Yeah.

Do you want to go from tradesman to businessman? Do you want to get off the tools? Are you tired of hurting your knees, your back and all that type of stuff? Yeah. Are you building a business of value? Are you trying. Tired of recruiting the bad engineers? So the big biggest one is education. And then when you speak with them and you say, listen, this is what you're doing wrong, or this is where you can go. They're like, wow, you know, this is exactly what I want, but there's nothing like it for us in this space.

Yeah, yeah, I love it. No, I totally agree with you. I mean, my first mentor that gave me a second chance that got my. You know, one of my businesses is a construction company of the six. And you know, he gave me a second chance and he asked me a long time ago, he essentially asked me what's different, a rich man and a poor man, which my audience has heard me say a thousand times. And I responded with, well, money. He's like, absolutely not. It's the way they think.

Yeah.

You know you could, if you learn to think, which is what you're talking about, which is knowledge and wisdom and understanding and experience, if you can get that on the front end and learn that without having to learn from the mistakes of making the screw ups to do that, then you're ahead of the game at the same time. There's nothing wrong with learning the hard way either. Right. So yeah, I love that part and piece of it. Now the other thing I think is interesting is you have the opportunity to be inside those billionaire boardrooms. How are things handled differently in the mindset of a billionaire versus the mindset of the average everyday, you know, know, person on the planet?

Yes, a good question. And I did a, I did a clubhouse room on this last week. Beliefs of.

Lessons from a Billionaire.

Yeah.

And I did that last Friday. And it's, you know, for me, number one is about the way that they think. They think insanely big. You know, they're thinking on changing the world levels. They're not thinking in the micro, they're thinking about impact on such a scale that allows them to, you know, to move into that, that, that, that way of thinking. So number one is thinking big. Number two is time. You know, time is so, so precious to these guys. They move fast, they make quick decisions. I see so many people just sitting on the fence all of the time. Shouldn't I, should I, should I, shouldn't I? When am I going to do it? I'll think I'll do it in six months, I'll do it in 12 months. When they know that they're going to make a move, they make a move, right? It's done. I've agreed it, I'm committed. Let's go. Yeah. Making sure there's always margin, you know, I know that sounds really, really.

That's kind of important, huh?

Construction businesses, you know, how many, how many small construction businesses win work to keep their guys busy, you know, or they're competing because there's lots of them or they've never been taught how to price properly so they don't know whether they got profit in the jobs and they're just running around being busy fools, making sure there's margin in what you do. You know, there's a Whole host of different lessons. I think, you know, for me it was about being forced to level up. Just being around those types of people really made me want to get to that next level. You know, I wanted to have that winner's mentality. I wanted to be like him. I wanted to get to that level.

Dude, I love it. Love it. A quick question. Well, actually, quick. Congratulations. First, I hear you're about to be a new dad or.

I am, yeah. Thank you so much.

It's always cool. What is being aware that you're about to be a father done for you mentally as. Because you're obviously doing. You're. You're doing what I refer to as serving at scale. Right? You mentioned it earlier. Some, some of us have just inside of us that we were meant to serve at scale, meaning we're meant to serve masses. It's not that we're against helping the 1 or 2 or 10. I'll, I'll talk to somebody at the coffee shop and I don't mind talk to a 10,000 square foot or 10,000 audience. Right. It doesn't matter what that is. But when you become a dad, right, when you, when you have that coming down the pipeline, right, it does seem to switch a little bit of things in our brain. So what does that mean to you so far?

So far is it's given me purpose again. I started my first business, really, because I wanted to get my mum into retirement. That was one of the main reasons I built in from the early days and I was able to do that by the time I was 28 and then after that, kind of lost. What am I doing this for? Is it just for the money? Is it for this? I wanted to build a national company and I did that. And when I did that, it was kind of like, well, what else can I do with this thing? So now it's given me more purpose and it's made me more motivated than ever. Like, I want to go a thousand times bigger and harder now. I want to build an empire to create generational wealth. I'm not just thinking about him, I'm thinking about Joseph Jr. Valente in 500 years that he's got a picture of his granddad on the wall saying, that was the guy built this empire for us. He was the one who created this for us. So it's made me think on so much of a bigger, bigger scale.

I love it, man. You know, that's exactly what I'm all about. I think that's one of the reasons why we vibe so well. Is because we're both trying to create a legacy that outlives us. Right?

Yeah. I mean, my kids are, I got, my daughter's involved in the accounting office and I got two boys. One's going to be a professor, one's going to do graphic design. But they all love what dad does. They all like seeing what, seeing people engage and have life transformation, stuff like that. Dude, I'm excited, man. This is, this is crazy. Dude, you are going to set the world on fire. I can't wait till you get here to the east coast and if I'm not understanding this, we're talking march. We're talking march and we'll have some kings of construction in the nearby future.

Yeah. On March. Hopefully you're going to see my ads coming, coming on Facebook. That's how we started ads to webinar free training and then go from there. I mean, it's a new space for me, obviously. Hopefully the American construction businesses take to me. I'm, you know, I, I, I'm, I'm kind of, you know, it's a learning curve.

Yeah.

You know, they don't think, who's that guy from Great Britain coming over here trying to tell us businesses, they go, actually, hopefully because of what I've done, they, I get some respect there. But, you know, I always think that it's knowledge that gets respect.

Yeah.

Now, if you go into a room and you're full of shit, you're not going to get respect if you go into, you know, I've been, I've been employing people that were 20 years older than me since I was 22 years of age. But the one single thing that they can never do when we're in a room face to face, is they know that they cannot outsmart me in what I know. So knowledge has always given me a.

An edge.

Yeah.

Because they know when I speak, I know what I'm talking about. And then that immediately gets respect. If you go in there just full of it and you can't back it, then that's when people can see through it and I know I can back it for 100%. So I'm really, really excited. It's a huge, huge market and I just want to add value and wake as many people up to the potential that they have, you know. So very, very excited.

Well, it's going to be a huge market and obviously I'm here to help your success. You know, growing up in the construction industry here on the East Coast, I've got quite a bit of.

Network and stuff. Like that knowing people in the business, they watch me build my business from nothing. So there's some automatic respect there.

So the universe has sent me another sign in Houston.

There you go. There you go.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, it's cool because the. I don't know about the uk, but in the construction industry here in the United States, specifically.

Right.

Obviously, I mentioned earlier that we build the important stuff. Pretty much, if it gets built, there's a construction guy that touched it. Right?

Yeah.

You've also got this, this. This concept of people who are owning some of these plumbing, electrical, H vac, exterior service companies, roofing, windows, doors, all that kind of stuff. People like myself, it's a dying breed right now. Right now, there's not enough young people taking advantage of what could be a very lucrative lifestyle, largely because they don't necessarily want to pick up a hammer, not realizing that if they can learn to use their hands, they can learn to use their heart, and then they can learn to use their head. And the next thing you know, all of a sudden, that solopreneur, that construction guy, that guy wearing the tool belt, the nail apron, the hard hat that's doing the labor, picking up the heavy stuff, going into the crawl spaces or going into areas that nobody else wants to, all of a sudden, that person's sharp.

Yeah, right.

And that means you have the chance right now, dude, this is why I'm so excited. You have the chance right now to inspire young people, right, to get out there and make some amazing businesses and help us build a. Like, literally build a better world. Literally build a better world, you know? So I can't wait to see that happen, see what happens with that. And I'm here for that, for sure. Well, let me ask you one final question. If you could talk to young Joseph, right, 12, 13 years old, with all the wisdom and experience you got right now, how would you sit him down on a stump and talk to him? What would you tell him?

Great question. I'd sit him down on the table and I'd say to him, keep going, son. You can do it. All of those crazy things that you've got in your mind that everybody tells you that you can't do, you can do. Go out there and be the best version of you. And that's exactly what I intend to do with my boy as soon as he's born. From day one, I'm drumming it into his mind. While he's sleeping, I'm going to be in his room talking to him. While he's awake, I'm going to be in his room talking to him. I'm going to push him so damn hard and just make him believe that he is unstoppable, you know, and, and he's going to be a million times greater of a man than I am. That's for damn sure.

Love it, man. I love it, dude. Well, I wish you nothing but success and the best. I can't wait to work with you when you, when you, when you, once you cross the pond or once this Covid thing is done, I can invite you to our live event center. We can put on one of these stickers.

Man. We just got to get this Covid thing out of the way.

Has it affected the construction market over there much?

We've been very blessed in that we were able to keep working.

Yeah, same in the uk it's been, you know, we've. That's why we've been able to scale through it. All of our businesses have kept going because as you say, it's literally if that stops the infrastructure falls the entire economy. Yeah, exactly.

Seriously, I mean most people take this for granted. I think, I think this, I think we should, we should definitely just. I know we're a little over on time, but we should talk about this for a second. When the construction enemy industry is down, economies follow it. When the construction industry is up, economies follow it. That's how vital the construction industry is to the world.

It's 10% of GDP in the UK. I don't know what it is in America, but it is a big, big part of keeping people comfortable, keeping people safe, keeping people clean, keeping people secure, giving people warm, giving people cold. You know, so it turns out people have shelter, right? You know, it's a safe one. When I sat down in January of last year, I was like, what am. I was like, I spent eight years building a business, right? The next one that I build has to be bulletproof. I am not going through this again, right? There is no way that I am going through this hell ever again. So I'm gonna make some that is going to be absolutely recession proof, sales proof, margin proof, market proof, lead proof, you know, Covid proof. And I saw an opportunity in training and development. Construction can't stop it can't physically stop. And you can deliver it in the way that we have. So it's a safe old bet. And for these guys, you know, even over in America, in the uk, you know, young people looking to get into the space, the. They know that it's a safe long term gain. A lot of these Businesses, you know, hospitality, food and drink, travel, leisure, they've been wiped out. Who would afford it that they were going to ever be able to. They were going to get hit so hard. And that, you know, for me is for every entrepreneur looking now, it's like, what's the long game? There's obviously short money to be made everywhere and quick wins. But what's the long term? And construction is so, so solid and lucrative and it's an opportunity because we've seen over here, you know, the domestic demand for services. People locked in their homes are literally like, I need a new bathroom. I can't look at that bathroom anymore. I need a new garden. I need to do this, I need to do that. But yeah, awesome stuff. So safe industry, big demand. I'm looking forward to coming to America. It's going to be absolutely sound like Eddie Murphy then.

Well, you come along with Bo. I've already told me he's got, he can, he can stay at our crib when he's here and have some fun, but love it, dude. Well, look, how can everybody get. Learn more about Kings of Construction. Everything you've got going on, what's the best way for people to find you?

Okay, just Valente on Instagram, that's kind of central for us in terms of content and then follow on from there.

Yeah, you just click the link in the bio, which takes you to the link tree, which is, that's where you get the free book. That's where you learn more about the masterminds. Yeah, you can get it all there. Dude. Thank you for taking time. I know it's crazy busy. I know you, you're technically heading towards the after hours. We're in the midday here. So I appreciate you taking the time to spend a few minutes with me today.

No, thanks for having me. I really appreciate your time and hopefully we can do some bits further down the line.

I'm sure we will. All right, dude, we'll take care. See you.

Thanks.

I keep telling people all the time that entrepreneurship is a scrappy game. And I know you love that interview with Joseph. Do me a favor, check out this one right here. You're going to love it. But for, I know there's a lot of entrepreneurs out there listening like, okay, how can I grow my business? How can I, how can I be more effective? How can I be more effective in my family or my community, the things that are important to us. And I just would encourage people to first identify what is everybody else doing?