Business 101
It's been exactly 1000 days since I registered my first business. I took the path less traveled and started a digital marketing agency in 2017. The goal was to earn enough money to travel and be free. Mission accomplished. You can read about that here if you like on my first progress thread. If you read the first few posts it sounds like a gravy train. If you read my last few posts you'll see that there were ups and downs. I learned more from the downs than the ups.
A Cold Winter
It was exactly 1 year ago that I returned from Japan to the US and started to look at my business path more seriously. It was time to start doing something "for real". It took me a while to pick up momentum. While traveling, I didn't push very hard to grow the company. I just wanted to make enough to get by so I could focus on having fun. Upon returning I needed to revamp my mindset and get focused on a different direction. Completing 75 Hard was a great start. The biggest insight I gained from that 2.5 months was looking ahead. A few days into it I realized that I would be doing the exact same things in 2 months from now. Up until that point of my life, I never grasped forward-thinking in that way. Having the certainty of future actions let me see ahead at the progress I would make, not could make.
The winter of 2019 was a struggle. My girlfriend at the time decided she was done waiting for me to "make it" and we broke up. Fair enough. This made December and January extremely tough on me mentally. I was feeling like a failure and very unsure of what was to come. I even considered going back to a 9-5. I taught myself Javascript in a few days and started interviewing for jobs. Luckily nobody wants to hire a programmer that barely knows how to code. Looking back, it was a big action fake, but I learned a lot about programming so it was worth it.
The 2020 Fastlane Summit
I was down and out, but the fire was building up inside me. I knew I had to figure it out. There was no going back. I burned those mental bridges long ago. Thanks for helping with that MJ. The momentum changed for me at 2020 The Fastlane Summit.
Being around you amazing people solidified my vision for the future and gave me the courage I needed to go home and figure it out. I had more genuinely valuable conversations in the week I was in Phoenix than I had in the 5 years prior. It was truly amazing to meet people and instantly click. Not just a few... hundreds. A tip for anyone looking to attend a future event (which you should) is to write a progress thread and keep it honest. I had people come up to me who had read my thread and already knew more about me and what I was doing than anyone I know personally... Talk about instant connections. One guy in particular, Game, introduced himself and immediately started asking me how I was getting along with the things I wrote about in my progress thread. To have that kind of instant interest and support was truly amazing and priceless. Thanks Game.
By the end of the week, I found a group of guys and formed a mastermind. We've shared a video call 2x per month ever since. That has been one of the major keys, I think. Having a solid support group full of people that are on similar paths has been a definite game-changer. I'm sure they would say the same. We've all seen major progress in only a few months. I could see us continuing to meet for years to come.
Fingers crossed that there's another Fastlane Summit in the next few years.
The Second Business
Now that you have some background, let's dig in. Upon returning from the Summit, my dad called me and asked me to partner in the family construction business. I agreed to discuss it.
I had worked in this business many times over the years. I have some decent carpentry skills and now, some decent business skills. I knew I could make a killing in this business, but could it be Fastlane? My biggest concern, which I expressed ad nauseam, was "I do not want a job". Getting that through to my dad has been tough. He's done this work his whole life and likes the 1 man show mentality. My philosophy is different: "As soon as I'm working full time on something, it's time to hire a replacement". The last thing I want is to be working full time on something I could easily find someone else to do.
After some long discussions, I agreed to come into the business. We're 3 months in and so far, it's going great. We have hired 3 guys so we have a crew of 5 including dad and I. I work on the job when I need to but try to limit it to 3 days per week. My other time is spent on the marketing business and/or working on the business. I handle most of the sales and we both work on estimates.
This business has a great reputation and marketing, so we get a lot of calls from new and past clients. Our area is booming too as people with money are fleeing cities and coming here. I doubt it will slow down much even as the economy struggles.
The Twin Stars Business Model
Now, for the fun part. My marketing company has naturally drifted towards the home services industry. Having spent years of my life providing home services, I understand the consumer mindset as well as the producer mindset. I speak the language, so it's a good fit for my skills and knowledge. There's also great need despite there being tons of marketing companies focused here. We might get into why most of them suck later...
If you have ever sold services to contractors, you'll know that they are always worried about getting scammed so it's very hard to earn their trust. Companies like Homeadvisor have made this so. A challenge I always had was getting them to trust me enough to invest a lot in something they don't really understand. It was an uphill battle. That all changed when I could say "I am a general contractor and this is the exact method I use on my own business to produce x, y, and z results." The positioning of being in the construction business makes it a lot easier to sell to other similar businesses.
So, making sales has become easier. But wait, there's more!
My marketing company provides dedicated marketing services to my construction company. We get to test all sorts of things quickly and easily and sharpen our skills much faster than we could by working only with clients and their limited budgets. I've used this easy access to marketing to start marketing a bunch of different services, some of which we don't even offer yet. My thought is that I'll sniff out the demand in my area and see what is needed. If there's enough demand for any one thing, I'll find a way to fill the demand.
The final piece I'll share today is the symbiotic employee. I recently hired a young apprentice that really wants to learn construction, marketing, and business. He will be the helper to the master carpenters and help them produce more. When he's with me, he'll be my assistant and I'll teach him as much as I can about everything we're doing. When he isn't on a construction site, he'll be working in the marketing company. My goal is for him to become very good at photo/video stuff. If he can be gathering marketing materials for the construction business while he's on the job site, then turn that into valuable content at the marketing company, then he'll be extremely valuable. I have high hopes for this kid, so we'll see how it plays out. If he can hang with us for a couple of years, he will be on the path to a very successful life.
Final Thoughts
Having two businesses is definitely a lot of work. It's forcing me to learn how to hire and manage people. It also takes a lot of pressure off in multiple ways. Each business can easily support my lifestyle so there isn't a ton of pressure to pull resources out of either one to support myself. This allows each business to be flexible and invest into growth when it counts. There's also less pressure to keep the apprentice "busy" as well because the separate businesses can share the responsibility of keeping him busy and productive. The next employee might be an office manager that can answer calls and do admin for both businesses.
It's all a big experiment. At the end of the day, I have goals that include earning a lot of money, so if it becomes clear that narrowing my focus to 1 business is better, I'll have to go that route. So far, I really enjoy the security of having multiple streams of income, especially ones that are in very different industries. If the internet goes out, the marketing business is toast, but people still need houses. If the country locks down and we can't leave the house, then I can still build websites and help the few companies left find customers. If the zombie apocalypse happens, I can lead my people to safety. Extreme examples, I know, but crazier shit has happened in the 20th century!
To be continued...
It's been exactly 1000 days since I registered my first business. I took the path less traveled and started a digital marketing agency in 2017. The goal was to earn enough money to travel and be free. Mission accomplished. You can read about that here if you like on my first progress thread. If you read the first few posts it sounds like a gravy train. If you read my last few posts you'll see that there were ups and downs. I learned more from the downs than the ups.
A Cold Winter
It was exactly 1 year ago that I returned from Japan to the US and started to look at my business path more seriously. It was time to start doing something "for real". It took me a while to pick up momentum. While traveling, I didn't push very hard to grow the company. I just wanted to make enough to get by so I could focus on having fun. Upon returning I needed to revamp my mindset and get focused on a different direction. Completing 75 Hard was a great start. The biggest insight I gained from that 2.5 months was looking ahead. A few days into it I realized that I would be doing the exact same things in 2 months from now. Up until that point of my life, I never grasped forward-thinking in that way. Having the certainty of future actions let me see ahead at the progress I would make, not could make.
The winter of 2019 was a struggle. My girlfriend at the time decided she was done waiting for me to "make it" and we broke up. Fair enough. This made December and January extremely tough on me mentally. I was feeling like a failure and very unsure of what was to come. I even considered going back to a 9-5. I taught myself Javascript in a few days and started interviewing for jobs. Luckily nobody wants to hire a programmer that barely knows how to code. Looking back, it was a big action fake, but I learned a lot about programming so it was worth it.
The 2020 Fastlane Summit
I was down and out, but the fire was building up inside me. I knew I had to figure it out. There was no going back. I burned those mental bridges long ago. Thanks for helping with that MJ. The momentum changed for me at 2020 The Fastlane Summit.
Being around you amazing people solidified my vision for the future and gave me the courage I needed to go home and figure it out. I had more genuinely valuable conversations in the week I was in Phoenix than I had in the 5 years prior. It was truly amazing to meet people and instantly click. Not just a few... hundreds. A tip for anyone looking to attend a future event (which you should) is to write a progress thread and keep it honest. I had people come up to me who had read my thread and already knew more about me and what I was doing than anyone I know personally... Talk about instant connections. One guy in particular, Game, introduced himself and immediately started asking me how I was getting along with the things I wrote about in my progress thread. To have that kind of instant interest and support was truly amazing and priceless. Thanks Game.
By the end of the week, I found a group of guys and formed a mastermind. We've shared a video call 2x per month ever since. That has been one of the major keys, I think. Having a solid support group full of people that are on similar paths has been a definite game-changer. I'm sure they would say the same. We've all seen major progress in only a few months. I could see us continuing to meet for years to come.
Fingers crossed that there's another Fastlane Summit in the next few years.
The Second Business
Now that you have some background, let's dig in. Upon returning from the Summit, my dad called me and asked me to partner in the family construction business. I agreed to discuss it.
I had worked in this business many times over the years. I have some decent carpentry skills and now, some decent business skills. I knew I could make a killing in this business, but could it be Fastlane? My biggest concern, which I expressed ad nauseam, was "I do not want a job". Getting that through to my dad has been tough. He's done this work his whole life and likes the 1 man show mentality. My philosophy is different: "As soon as I'm working full time on something, it's time to hire a replacement". The last thing I want is to be working full time on something I could easily find someone else to do.
After some long discussions, I agreed to come into the business. We're 3 months in and so far, it's going great. We have hired 3 guys so we have a crew of 5 including dad and I. I work on the job when I need to but try to limit it to 3 days per week. My other time is spent on the marketing business and/or working on the business. I handle most of the sales and we both work on estimates.
This business has a great reputation and marketing, so we get a lot of calls from new and past clients. Our area is booming too as people with money are fleeing cities and coming here. I doubt it will slow down much even as the economy struggles.
The Twin Stars Business Model
Now, for the fun part. My marketing company has naturally drifted towards the home services industry. Having spent years of my life providing home services, I understand the consumer mindset as well as the producer mindset. I speak the language, so it's a good fit for my skills and knowledge. There's also great need despite there being tons of marketing companies focused here. We might get into why most of them suck later...
If you have ever sold services to contractors, you'll know that they are always worried about getting scammed so it's very hard to earn their trust. Companies like Homeadvisor have made this so. A challenge I always had was getting them to trust me enough to invest a lot in something they don't really understand. It was an uphill battle. That all changed when I could say "I am a general contractor and this is the exact method I use on my own business to produce x, y, and z results." The positioning of being in the construction business makes it a lot easier to sell to other similar businesses.
So, making sales has become easier. But wait, there's more!
My marketing company provides dedicated marketing services to my construction company. We get to test all sorts of things quickly and easily and sharpen our skills much faster than we could by working only with clients and their limited budgets. I've used this easy access to marketing to start marketing a bunch of different services, some of which we don't even offer yet. My thought is that I'll sniff out the demand in my area and see what is needed. If there's enough demand for any one thing, I'll find a way to fill the demand.
The final piece I'll share today is the symbiotic employee. I recently hired a young apprentice that really wants to learn construction, marketing, and business. He will be the helper to the master carpenters and help them produce more. When he's with me, he'll be my assistant and I'll teach him as much as I can about everything we're doing. When he isn't on a construction site, he'll be working in the marketing company. My goal is for him to become very good at photo/video stuff. If he can be gathering marketing materials for the construction business while he's on the job site, then turn that into valuable content at the marketing company, then he'll be extremely valuable. I have high hopes for this kid, so we'll see how it plays out. If he can hang with us for a couple of years, he will be on the path to a very successful life.
Final Thoughts
Having two businesses is definitely a lot of work. It's forcing me to learn how to hire and manage people. It also takes a lot of pressure off in multiple ways. Each business can easily support my lifestyle so there isn't a ton of pressure to pull resources out of either one to support myself. This allows each business to be flexible and invest into growth when it counts. There's also less pressure to keep the apprentice "busy" as well because the separate businesses can share the responsibility of keeping him busy and productive. The next employee might be an office manager that can answer calls and do admin for both businesses.
It's all a big experiment. At the end of the day, I have goals that include earning a lot of money, so if it becomes clear that narrowing my focus to 1 business is better, I'll have to go that route. So far, I really enjoy the security of having multiple streams of income, especially ones that are in very different industries. If the internet goes out, the marketing business is toast, but people still need houses. If the country locks down and we can't leave the house, then I can still build websites and help the few companies left find customers. If the zombie apocalypse happens, I can lead my people to safety. Extreme examples, I know, but crazier shit has happened in the 20th century!
To be continued...
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