Two Jobs That Prepped Me to Become The Wealth Builder Agent in My Market
The power of compounding is pretty extraordinary and it doesn't only apply to investing. It also applies to your professional skills and experiences to drive income.
What' I’ve discovered is that your ability to stack your skills to make yourself more valuable to the marketplace is imperative for you to make the income and build the empire you desire.
I learned this the long way over the years as I went from a broke college student at Virginia Tech finding ways to pay for $2 fatties at Hokie House to becoming a business builder of several small, but fast growing million and multi-million dollar start-ups.
The journey from broke and in debt to multi-millionaire by 30 all happened within 8 years because of what I have outlined below.
I’m sharing this story and my insights because my goal is to encourage other entrepreneurial minded people to leave their W-2 rat-race jobs and become small business builders.
I also want to help real estate agents become more profitable and have a better lifestyle by becoming business owners. The lessons in these stories may helpful.
What Is Skill Stacking?
When I was in college I had two jobs. I was a calculus tutor (yikes!) and a Domino's pizza delivery driver (lame right?), but the skills and knowledge I learned at these two jobs led me to create a real estate sales and brokerage business that skyrocketed to the top ranks in the marketplace in record time.
These two jobs are ones that I chose to do.
Yes, I needed to make money like we all do, but I was more interested and serious about using my natural skills versus just going to the dining hall (like my now wife, girlfriend at the time, Brittany did). That would be a job that likely won’t skill stack since no niche skill is being created by serving food at a dining hall (not a waiter) and washing dishes.
Picking a job that matches my skills really paid off. So much so that Brittany eventually took on the calculus tutor job, too, as it fit her skillset as well. Lucky for her (she’d never say so), she could model herself off of my adventures (and avoid all my failures, too). So let’s jump in!
The First Job That Prepped Me to Become a Business Builder.
The first job that led me into entrepreneurship was when I became a calculus tutor — and it came about naturally. I had high demand organically via a market, my college calculus course, because many students really struggled with the calculus concepts. Other students noticed how fast I would finish my test and get A’s but rarely show up to class. They wanted to do the same.
My target audience was B and C students who wanted to be A students. Most students didn't really want to work hard -- they just wanted the A for their resume. I could solve this problem.
So, approximately half the student class fell in this B-C student bucket. And like most things, word of mouth travels fast when results are realized quickly.
So, I quickly learned the power of the network effect and how powerful the almighty referral is versus having to convince people to pay the price for your services. In fact, at one point, I had so many referrals that I had to limit the number of students I could tutor.
Similarly now, my time is limited in how many people I can assist one-on-one on a daily basis, so we’ve now created group classes and meet-ups which extends the reach of information and conversation. Just like this newsletter you’re reading, it pushes the network effect (16,000 people read every post) and it has led top agents to discover and join our brokerage simply through exposure alone.
Anyway… after finding demand, knowing my target audience, and generating referrals, I learned that there's several great benefits of working for yourself.
First, I charged $30 an hour versus what I could earn in the dining hall - about $9.50 an hour. I made 315.7% more than I could in a dining hall. Why would anyone settle for less if they had the skill and desire to make more?
Another benefit is that I could set my schedule versus having an employer schedule it for me. Who would choose to be owned by someone else if they didn't have to be? And, I could always take on more students if I wanted to, or even raise my prices.
I had total control of every aspect of my income and time. It was wonderful.
That's when I learned you can earn and learn exponentially more working for yourself than for someone else. And, that the marketplace rewards higher level niche skills from responsible humans who show they care and get results consistently.
What I found myself to be, in this tutor role, ultimately, was a simplifier.
I would take the complex ideas put out there by the professor and simplify them down into digestible pieces of information used in actual test scenarios. I knew that if my students could memorize a core set of formulas, they'd ace the quiz.
There wasn't any conversation about big complex math theories or philosophies. Instead, I would watch the student do the problem, and step in when they got stuck. Or I would simply write down the correct formula they need before they even approach the problem (so they understand the power of formulas).
Once the student had the list of formulas down, they could apply it to any problem. At a certain point, the student would see the wording of a question on the test, and be able to immediately pull the appropriate formula from their memory and solve the equation. That's when I learned that simple is better. Especially if you just want to get the A and move on.
My Second Job Taught Me to be Effective & Efficient.
My second job was as a Domino's delivery driver. I was the only non-local, student driver who got the job. In fact, I was told by the manager that this particular Dominos location, the one that serves all of Blacksburg, Virginia, is the most productive Dominos on all of the East Coast.
Yes, imagine 40,000 hungry Hokies who all live within 20 square miles. That’s a lot of pizza to sling.
First off, being a delivery driver is a fast paced environment where you absolutely cannot tolerate or sustain mistakes. If you deliver the wrong food, you have to go back and get the right one or complete a refund, both of which eat up your time and reduce dollar per hour / future income opportunities.
That's when I learned it is so important to have incredible systems, which Domino's did. Through repeatable systems, you have a higher output. And, if you know how to play the system, you can make more than $30 an hour (my average was about $32.50/hour).
Ultimately, your level of service falls to the strength of your systems.
Dominos had incredible systems to maximize your time while working. When deliveries were slow, we were folding boxes, cleaning, and organizing. There was no down time. When you were at work, you were working. If you were lazy at work, you'd be kicked off the good shifts. Accountability for systems is also very important. That's how the best stay on the best shifts.
For me, hard work was the easy part -- the most important thing was picking the right shifts (today I would equate that to picking the right type of customers to serve) and optimizing drive time or hiring showing agents (if you’re a real estate agent).
By picking the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday afternoon shifts, I could make nearly double what I could on Monday through Thursday. The ticket sizes were bigger and closer together, meaning more tips and bigger tips. To me, this was great -- because happy hour for $2 fatties at Hokie House was on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And, I've never really been too big into football anyway.
My roommates all laugh because my 1999 Toyota Camry and I smelled like pizza all the time. Yet they'd stop laughing when they saw me unload a large wad of cash on the table. Though that didn't stop them from calling me Pizza Boy.
How I Managed My Cash Flow.
Now I didn't want to have to keep working forever, so I became focused on tracking each dollar.
Out of each paycheck, I made sure to pay my bills and then any extra funds went directly into investing in stocks and options. In fact, I did quite a bit of options trading (primarily on Apple call options before Carl Ichan got in) which helped me pay for part of my college.
I learned that it's not enough to simply trade time for money, but to find ways to multiply it after earning it, while living on very little along the way.
The goal was to have my passive income make more than my job. That would be huge and I could become one of those people I see retire at a very young age on CNBC. I’ve always had a dream of sitting back at a beach condo watching the sunset after a day of managing my investments and helping others manager theirs (lol yes, don’t ask me why, it’s just been a dream).
Bonds and Securities Investing by Students (BASIS) at Virginia Tech 2012.
What I Learned.
In sum, I learned the following lessons through my short stints as a calculus tutor and delivery driver. These lessons very much apply to my career in real estate and other businesses:
Stack your skills to become more valuable to the marketplace.
Model yourself off of other people's successes and avoid their failures.
Identify a target market that has a problem that you can solve and then solve it.
The network effect and referrals via excellent service and results are paramount to growing a business. (I've never seen a growing business with bad service).
The marketplace financially rewards higher skill levels in niche services.
It's less risky working for yourself than someone else.
Simple is better.
Your level of service falls to the level of your systems (and/or quality of your people depending on the industry).
Accountability of systems is important so your best people rise to the top and stay there.
Pick the path that works for you (ignore the other chatter/noise).
Eliminate drive time at all cost as time is the most valuable asset.
Multiply your income after earning it, while living on very little along the way.
These lessons and the ability to stack skills are what built a foundation for me to earn $300k, $500k, and $1M in revenue in my first three years in real estate sales, with no database, in a new city, with no money, and then go on to create several more million dollar enterprises by the time I was 30 years old.
My mission now is to help other real estate agents get their financial house in order and improve their profitability. I want to help agents become so successful with financial management and leverage systems that they are able to walk away from the role if they so desire. That’s what Momentum Realty is all about. More profit, better lifestyle, more impact.
If you're interested in learning more about my story, feel free to follow along.
If you're interested in following my journey more, here's how you can find me.
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