Show notes from podcast episode 67.
The first one started out by opening a single pizza restaurant with two friends in a small town in Ohio. 4 years later he sold 30 pizza restaurants. Then he built and sold the next business and the next one after that. Now he is a wealth manager and makes a living investing for and advising mega wealthy families and buying and selling real estate and businesses.
Another started making caricature t shirts of NBA players and selling them out of the trunk of his car. Ended up getting the contract to provide the NBA champions with custom T Shirts (and selling them to all the fans) when they won the title. Sold the clothing brand a few years later and was one of the first investors in the planet fitness franchise and made boat loads of money at their IPO and now buys shopping centers in major metro cities.
Another started by remodeling his friends house for him in a super small southern indiana country town. Then he built a house for himself. Then his neighbor. Then another neighbor. Then a restaurant. Then a local doctors office. Now he builds, owns and leases hospitals and nursing homes to nationwide operators for $150k a month and has a portfolio of 30 of them.
What I learned from them…
Start really really small. Don’t try to change the world on day 1. Business is like a snowball effect and it grows with time. The first step should be doing something simple and risk free with the goal of quitting your job and getting your time back.
Then you move on to the next thing and the money grows and the opportunities grow. We read biographies of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk and watch shark tank and everyone thinks they need a new revolutionary world changing idea to be an entrepreneur.
All of these people started out super super small and LOCAL doing things that other people were already doing.
It’s all about not being afraid to work hard on something others would think is boring and “unscalable”. Get your feet wet. Learn entrepreneurship. Make some money. Learn to sell and interact with people and manage expectations and deal with money.
Then keep your eyes and ears to the ground and make really good logical (not emotional) decisions on what opportunities you should say NO to and what opportunities you should say YES to.