I have always believed the Entrepreneurial “itch” can’t be taught, and I have had it since I was a young kid. If you ask me, it was really just an innate desire to hustle combined with the inability to listen to authority (ask my parents about that one).
Remember those little ovens that came with molds of different insects on them? You could put colored liquid in the molds and then cook them in the oven and make your own rubber insect toys. Well, in fifth grade, I was the kid that brought them to school and sold them to the 2nd and 3rd graders for a profit.
But there is something else. If I wanted something growing up, my parents wouldn’t just give it to me. We grew up on two acres with a never-ending overgrowth of weeds. So if I wanted something, my parent’s response was always to tell me “go weed.”
They would pay me $5 an hour to do it. That $5 would only profit me $3.50 per hour in spending money, because $.50 was always taken out for giving, and a whole dollar was subtracted for savings so I knew the importance of putting away a large percentage of my income.
In high school, I figured out that if I could land larger landscaping jobs than just pulling weeds for my parents, it would pay a much higher hourly wage. This meant I would be able to afford to pay a lower hourly wage to workers who helped me get the job done faster.
I remember sitting in class one day during my senior year of high school, barely paying attention, but instead calculating how much money I was going to make on a couple landscaping jobs I had going. See, I had done nothing but sell and manage those jobs, but I was still going to make more than the college students I was paying to do the labor on the jobs. That is when I realized the value of selling and creating customer relationships.
In college, I grew tired of landscaping, and I was searching for a way out. One of my friends told me about a new opportunity. He had just started in door-to-door sales, which intrigued me because he got paid a decent hourly wage with commissions based on what he produced. I started a couple weeks later and was immediately hooked.
That started a career in door-to-door sales that I am very thankful for. I have sold for and built sales teams for a few different door-to-door and retail sales organizations across different industries (including solar, alarms, and water filtration). Even though I was making good money, with a short work week, at just 23 years old, I began realizing that I wasn’t doing what I felt made to do. I took a step back from selling and reevaluated what I was doing with my most important asset…time.
Up to that point in my life, I really just depended on my hustle and my natural strengths and abilities, and all I knew was that I wanted to change that.
That is when I started diving into personal development. I took a few months where all I did was work out, read, listen to podcasts and audiobooks, and really try to figure out what the next step was going to be for me.
During that time, I started listening to Entrepreneur on Fire, a podcast hosted by John Lee Dumas. It was crazy to me that John had created a DREAM LIFE by having conversations with great people and sharing them with the world. I knew at that point that I had to reach out and get to know him because I wanted to learn from the best. After a hefty investment, I found myself at his house in Puerto Rico learning how to create something that would allow me to build the life of MY dreams.
After I decided on podcasting as the vehicle that would take me to the next level in my life, I eagerly went to work on my show and it’s purpose. I didn’t want to do a cookie-cutter “share inspirational stories” show that would get lost in the noise of the ever-growing podcast landscape. I really wanted to do a show on something that I genuinely cared about and in an area where I wanted to improve.
And that’s when it hit me – building a network. Everyone knows how important it is to create relationships, but nobody exclusively dealt with the topic. So I got to work. Since then, it has been a long journey of continued self-improvement, personal development, and mistakes. But thanks to the community, mentorship from people like John Lee Dumas and so many others, Build Your Network is consistently in the Top 25 Business Podcasts in iTunes and I’ve been able to have conversations with hundreds of incredible business leaders and high-level influencers who would have otherwise been inaccessible to me.
The coolest part is I don’t just have conversations with them, but I’ve been blessed to build real friendships too.
To say that this show is my passion project would be an extreme understatement. I’ve poured countless hours and tens of thousands of dollars into producing the highest quality show with the most value possible, so when you tell me you have listened to it, I am incredibly honored.
Thank you so much in advance for tuning into the show. It means the world to me. Please don’t hesitate to reach out and connect. It’s what I love to do!
I am in the process of creating a training that will share the proven methodology that enabled me to explode my network fast. I don’t call this a “course” because that wouldn’t do it justice. This is going to be the ultimate networking and connection training that will enable you to actually learn a real skill and implement that skill to reach your goals and level up your inner circle.
If you want to shorten the runway to success, cultivate real relationships with the people you think are unreachable, and unlock your next level, you are going to want to put your name on the waitlist for when this training is released. Trust me, building and maintaining quality relationships is what has been missing from your formula. So don’t wait any longer. Take action toward your goals!