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I was CEO of one business and I said, oh, I'm outside of the day today, I'll start another business.

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Welcome to the game where we talk about how to get more customers, how to make more

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customers, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons we have learned

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along the way. I hope you enjoy and subscribe.

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So when I was 28 years old, we made $28 million and $17 million in profit.

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And the next year, I made one of the biggest mistakes in my business career, which was I started

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another business. And so what I ended up doing was I was CEO of one business and so I said,

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oh, I'm outside of the day to day, I'll start another business because there's this big pile

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of money right here that I can't say no to because I'm a capitalist and I should, I should definitely

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do that. And so the next year we did $37 million in top line revenue and then we did $13.4 in profit.

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So my profit went down and my revenue went up. Now I could try and BSU and tell you that it was

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because we reinvested in infrastructure and all that stuff and we did. But candidly, it was because

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starting the business at that time given the skills that I had was a mistake. And so what I wanted

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to do is talk to you about a conversation that I had with my neighbor who was a trash man.

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And he went from trash man to cash man and sold his business for multiple eight figures.

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And we were talking one day and he was really excited and I was like, hey, man, what's going on?

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And he was like, my non-competence today. And I was like, oh, well, I mean, what does that mean?

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For you, you know, he's like, wow, I'm going to start another business. And I was like, what are

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you going to start? This is exciting new chapter, et cetera. And he's like, oh, I'm going to do the

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exact same thing again. And I was like, what do you mean? He's like, I'm going to build the exact

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same trash company. And I'm going to sell it to the exact same company you bought my first company.

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And I was like, what? You have this opportunity to start with all the capital and all the

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knowledge you have now. And you want to do the exact same thing. Don't you want something like new

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and different? And he was like, no, he's like, why would I start over brand new? He's like, I'm so good

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at trash. And I've spent the last three years working for the company that bought me. I learned

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stuff from them. And I already had my knowledge that I came in with, you know, with my own company.

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So I understand the scale even better than I did before. And I know how to start it from the ground up.

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And what you have to understand about my neighbor is that he's not a warden or Harvard MBA. He's not

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some like statistical math genius or anything like that. He's a blue collar guy from Wisconsin

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who maxed out his credit cards to start a trash business where he literally was the first one

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picking up trash for residential homes and whatnot. And then he just scaled that business through

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word of mouth and service of the smile. And there's a lot of things that I feel like I learned from him

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that I see all these people that reach out to me. And there's some people who are much more than I am

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who reach out. And they're like, hey, man, like, I've got this, I had a conversation either day

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with an agency owner who, sorry, an agency coach, he coaches agency owners on how to scale their

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businesses. He was probably a five or six million bucks a year. And he was like, I'm thinking about

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going into general business. And I was like, why? And he was like, well, it's just I'm people are

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asking me for, you know, help there. And it's I'm just turning down money. And I was like,

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duh, that's the point. The like a strategy means knowing what you say no to. And you know, I shouldn't

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be necessary. I shouldn't like just because somebody asked me for something doesn't mean I should

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change my entire business to say, yes, right? You have to know who your avatar is and who it isn't.

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Because otherwise, if you're trying to be, you know, every, everything was at all things to all

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people, you're nothing to know one. And this was a huge mistake that I made earlier on in my

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career is because I didn't understand the, the, the growth that I had to do was not through doing

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something different and new and exciting, but the growth was going to come from me sticking with

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it was from developing the character traits of grit, from developing the character traits of

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stick to itness, from developing the character traits of perseverance, of focus. And I think that

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at all levels in business, you get seduced by a woman in the red dress, which is the analogy that

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I like to use because at every level in business, like if you know the matrix, there's a woman in the

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red dress who walks by, Neo looks again, and then it's an agent pointing a gun at it. And I think

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that a lot of the opportunities that that come around towards us as we scale up and it happens at

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all levels of business, every one of them looks seductive and attractive and at every level it actually

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becomes more and more attractive and you have to kind of defeat them emotionally because it's so

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hard to turn down, you know, in the beginning you have to turn down $10,000, then you have to turn

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down $100,000, then you have to turn down a million dollars, then $10,000,000. And you know, for me,

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it turned out I wasn't able to turn down about, you know, a $20 or $30 million your opportunity when

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I was doing about $20, $30 million a year. And what it ended up doing is it cost me a tremendous

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amount of time and effort and probably lost growth on my main business at the time because I didn't

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know what I didn't know. And so what I'm sharing with you guys' mousy nation is hopefully the lessons

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that I learned from this, which is you can't be CEO of two businesses, you can't serve two masters,

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you have to, if you're the one running your business and CEO making a mistake is the one running

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the business, even though if you're not doing the day-to-day just because you're like, oh, I'm an

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owner, you get paid for what you do, you get returns on what you own. And so if your business cannot

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run without you and you're like, no, it can run without me, just because it can run without you

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for a day doesn't mean it can run without you. You have the attention, it's the shower time,

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headspace where you're thinking about new ways to improve the business, you're thinking about

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your threats, you're thinking about innovation, you're thinking about the team members need to

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circle back with. It's the small nuances that create the excellence in the business that your

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headspace has to be dedicated to. And when I split my attention and I became CEO of two companies

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and I always split my term to serve two masters, I basically made the same amount of money and I just

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did this. And I think what ends up happening for most people is that one of the truths that I've

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observed is that the amount of money that I make is only proportional to the skill that I have

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as an entrepreneur period. That's it. And so if you start more businesses, you're just going to

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end up leveling out. And so even though it looks like small and attractive, it's a small quick win

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that we're choosing to take rather than confronting the hard brutal facts of why is the business I'm

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currently doing not growing. And if it is growing, well, is there a way that I can grow it better?

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You know what I mean? Can I improve the product in a new way? Can I? There's all these things that we

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can do to improve the existing business. And I'll tell one more story to drive this home. So I got

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reached out to you by a guy that I went to high school with and he owned a general contracting

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business. And so I was like, cool man, like what do you guys do? What do you guys specialize in?

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He was like, oh, well, we do a lot of roofs. We do a lot of roof repairs. We do new roofs. We do.

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He's like, but I'm also doing like real estate stuff and contracting and flipping and all this

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other stuff. And I was like, man, that's a lot of stuff. I was like, why are you doing all those

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things? And he said, you know, I need to grow the different revenue streams of the business.

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And I was like, dude, there's there's like 200 million homes in America that have roofs. I was like

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the biggest roofing companies in the world are billion dollar companies. I was like, why? Why do you

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feel like you need to do more things to grow bigger? Because what happens is the better you get,

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the bigger you get, it's not the bigger you get, the better you get, better begets bigger,

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not the other way around.

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Hey guys, love that you're listening to the podcast. If you ever want to have the video version

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of this, which usually has more facts, more visuals, more graphs, you know, drawn out stuff,

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sometimes it can help hit the brain centers in different ways. You can check out my YouTube

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channel. It's absolutely free to check that out if that's what you are into. And if not,

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keep enjoying the show.

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And so the deeper you can sink your roots in, the more time you can put under the bar,

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this has been my finding, the better the business becomes. And then as a result, the bigger it

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becomes because it comes from the disproportionate gains and knowledge we get at the end of the track

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not at the beginning, right? In the first year of whatever business you do, you're going to learn

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more than you ever will about that business than any other time. But learning what you learn in

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the first year is not the stuff that makes you better than the rest of the playing field. It's

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learning what you learn in the 10th year and the 20th year in that same business that gets you

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the disproportionate returns. And so the easiest way to think about this is like, if you think about

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the Olympics, because they're on right now, or they are, hopefully when you're watching this,

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who knows? But the Olympics, right? You've got sprinters. And if you're the best sprinter in the world,

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you win the gold. And you might only be one tenth of a second better than the fourth best

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sprinter in the world. I don't know track metrics, but you get the idea, right? And so even though

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you're only this much better, the real world implications of being this much better is that

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you're just being gold and getting all the endorsements and Nike and Adidas and all the stuff

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versus being fourth and getting almost no notoriety. And I think the same thing happens in

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business, right? It's a winner-take-all world or oftentimes. And the way that you can combat that

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is being able to develop the stick to itness. It's the grit of understanding that your knowledge

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will compound with time. It's using time as an asset instead of a liability. It's not being in a

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rush. It's understanding that the growth that comes as entrepreneurs doesn't come from new. It comes

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from from doing the same. It comes from volume, right? Which is one of the core tenets that we have

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at all of our companies is do the boring work, right? We're willing to consistently confront the

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hard fact of like, okay, if we're not growing, then it's our fault. It's not because we need to

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introduce a new thing. It's because we need to confront what is not happening. Why aren't we

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getting more word of mouth? Because fundamentally, if our thing was so good, then every single person

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should tell their friends and we shouldn't even have to market or sell, right? Because we should be

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so good at that. So there's always areas for improvement that we just don't want to confront because

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it makes our egos feel bad. And then we try and use our business to satisfy our interpersonal needs.

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It's try to satisfy our insecurities and the holes that we have because we want to have more attention.

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We want to have more status or we want to have more interpersonal relationships or we want to have

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novelty in our life and we use our business to try and satisfy our personal needs. When in

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reality, the business is only there to serve the customer. And so this was one of the biggest

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lessons, one of the hardest, hardest lessons that I've had to learn. And to make this, to drive

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this last point home, to make this real for everybody to show you that this isn't me just saying this,

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when I started my first five years in business, I think I had like 11 businesses. And it was only

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once I chose to commit to one of them that I saw the disproportionate returns of my life. And it

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was through sticking with it for a long period of time, right? Like I had my chain of gyms, right?

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And then after that point, I was like, oh, I'm going to start an agency. So I started a

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Cairo agency and then I started a dentist agency and I started, I had another thing I can't remember

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was I had going on and I had my six gyms and they were all different types of models and different

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partnerships. I was spread soothed and I was all over the place because I kept thinking the false

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premise, which is one of these things will take off when the reality of none of them will, any of

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them could, but none of them will if I have all of them. And so you have to pick and you have to

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commit. And the thing is is that I think a lot of things that come with success are not intellectually

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difficult to comprehend. They're just emotionally difficult, which is why most people don't do them.

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Most people understand that you have to spend less than you make, right? But no one does it.

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Most people know that if you want to lose weight, you got to eat less than you burn, right? But

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people don't do it. It's simple, not easy. And I think that a lot of times in business at every

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level of the game, you have a more and more attractive opportunity. You have a woman in the red dress

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who walks by that you have to say no to because that's what it means to have a strategy. And that's

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where the compounding returns come from. And that of doing more of being able to stick your head down

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and continue through what you said you were going to do is what creates the growth. And so there's

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a story that I heard about Henry Ford and he was walking his CEO office was here and he walked

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past marketing every day. And so he walked every day and walked every day and you'd see this campaign

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that they were running, right? And after like three or four months, he was like, hey, John, he's like,

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dude, whenever you start running this ad, he's like, I'm so sick of it. And the CMO smiled and

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looked at him and was like, we honestly haven't even started running yet. And so we get sick of

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these things in our business that has nothing to do with the marketplace. It's only because of our

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own internal needs. And so we sabotage things inside of our own business because we want to satisfy

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things inside of us that have nothing to do with business. And so I think what happens is that's

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why I say like it's skills, it's beliefs and it's character traits. And so a lot of times I think

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to get to the next level, we have to look at ourselves and think, you know, for me, you know,

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which one of these things do I lack? Is it a belief about the world that I that is incorrect?

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Is it a trait that I have not developed it or is it a skill that I lack? And so I think a lot of

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entrepreneurs get stuck because what they do is they start doing too many things and they get

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spread too thing because they like to recreate chaos in their lives because whatever traumatic

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childhood story they tell themselves about, you know, how they had chaos in their early life,

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they try and recreate it in their business because that's where they feel comfortable subconsciously.

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And you have to unlearn those patterns in order to be able to consistently grow because honestly,

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the businesses that we have are fairly boring, I'll be honest with you. They're not like crazy

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exciting all the time. You know, we do the same things. We market, we sell, we provide value,

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we get referrals and we try and do as much as that as we can over and over again, but that gets boring.

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And that's why do the boring work is one of the core tenders that I have and it's one of the hardest

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learned lessons that I've learned in my business career because you have to say no at every level.

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And so my goal for this channel, Mosy Nation, is that you can hopefully learn from the many failures

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that I've had so that you don't have to experience them for yourself. That is my hope.

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And if you enjoyed this and got value from this, hit the subscribe button.

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Watch one of the other videos that we've got going on. I try and share the stuff top of mind that

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that's most relevant right now and from the questions and the DMs and the comments I appreciate

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all those I read them so that can make stuff that's more relevant for what you guys want. So

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lots of love keeping amazing and see you next bit. Bye!