John Malott spent seven years growing a satellite TV business from $4,000 to $116,000 in annual income, selling a $50-a-month service that people mocked until the company added HBO channels. After that first $100k, growth accelerated: the company sold to a legal-insurance firm, and his income jumped to $224,000, then a million, then $2 million.
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So what was your, um, so after you get— what was like your first big success?
Like after, man, yeah, it took such a long time. That's what's funny, man. I get on these shows and I'm on stages and, you know, people hear kind of stories and they think that all of a sudden, you know, I got all this money and I'm rolling in Rolls-Royces, living in this life. But it was, it was, man, it was brutal. So it took me 7 years as a full-time entrepreneur to finally crack $100,000. My first year as a full-time entrepreneur, I made $4,000. So you can imagine the people around me like, oh yeah, you're gonna do great, fucking loser. You know what I mean? But here's what's crazy. My first year as a full-time, and I was involved in a company called TPN. It was called the People's Network. And they were pumping personal development into your home via satellite. Not like the satellite we know today. These were big, like analog. Digital didn't exist back then. I'm aging myself. I know I look like I'm 26, but you know, but they're analog. You have to put it up on your roof and I, you know, it was snow. I remember putting this thing on the roof and I'm yelling down, you get a signal yet? And it's snowing and it's, I'm half off the roof risking my life. But I, but the personal development thing was interesting to me because I knew personal development was changing my life. You know, all of a sudden you got Zig Ziglar coming into your home, Les Brown, Mark Victor, all these authors were on there and right in my living room. Anyway, so that was, we had an opportunity to sell these things and it was a network marketing deal.
Okay.
MLM deal. And I didn't know what that meant. I had no idea. All I knew is they were harassing me to get more people on it. And then nobody would buy it though. People looked at me crazy when I said, oh, you get like, you know, Tony Robbins right in your living room. They're like, who, what? Nobody wanted it. It was $50 a month, so they for sure didn't want it.
Okay, and that was more than, I guess.
Yeah, but for me, $50 a month, 'cause I was going to some of these seminars and dropping back then $200, $300 to get a ticket. But here's what happened, here's what changed. The PrimeStar, it got replaced by PrimeStar Digital.
Okay.
So now it went from an analog dish with one channel for $50 PrimeStar had like 4 HBOs. So we caught on. They don't give a shit about personal development. Sell them 4 HBOs. And if you drove through the hood back then, you see— and back then the PrimeStar dishes were pretty big, so we always knew that's one of our dishes. That's once we started putting up these dishes all over the hood selling 4 HBOs. That's what people wanted, and that's what we gave them. And that's where we started getting a little success. So my first year, $4,000. Second year was $16,000, which people still laughed at me. But the percentage of growth from 4 to 16, I was catching on. That's, that's if I can keep doing that. And that's what happened. So the 7th year, $116,000. Then that the company got bought, they got bought out by a legal insurance company. Then the next year my income went to $224,000 and then a million, then $2 million a year. I mean, it just—
it kept—
yeah, it was 7 years of, you know, being laughed at, you know, around the dinner table. Are you rich yet? You know, are you rich yet? You've been on the same job for 27 years, you know what I'm saying? It's like, at least I'm doing something to change my life. Definitely.
I think that's pretty though. I think it's almost kind of not normal, but like 7 years to reach $100 grand, and then what, within 3 to 5 years after, then you already had a million?
Yeah, that, that's how it started to crank.
Yeah, yeah. And that's the thing, I feel like that first $100 grand is the hardest, at least for me. Yeah, yeah, I think it is for most. And like, that's the at least from my standpoint, like the biggest lifestyle change. Like $100 grand was when I could start doing whatever I wanted. Yeah. And then, you know, obviously your lifestyle expands from there, but like anything above that, you start spending $200 grand. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, I get a credit card too now.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's definitely— you can definitely go above that, but I just mean like the, like happiness level I think was there, and then everything above that's just kind of like fun just things in a sense and also impact. You really start thinking about like how I can use this to like make a big change in different scenarios.
