Business Innovators Radio - Building a Nation of Doers: An Entrepreneurial Journey with Joe Mikitish and Sterling Crawford of DoWork Nation

Episode Date: May 8, 2023

In this episode of Business Innovators Radio, host Marco Salinas interviews Joe Mikitish and Sterling Crawford, co-founders of Do Work Nation, a company that helps Home Service Pros and Tradespeople entrepreneurs to build and grow their businesses.Mikitish shares his early entrepreneurial journey, which started when he was just a kid. His father and grandfather taught him the value of hard work and how to turn his dreams into reality. He started his own lawn mowing and pressure washing business at the age of 14 and quickly learned the importance of profitability and customer satisfaction.Crawford, on the other hand, had a more traditional career path, working in finance and real estate before becoming an entrepreneur. However, he always had a passion for helping others and saw an opportunity to do so by partnering with Mikitish to create Do Work Nation.Together, Mikitish and Crawford share their insights on entrepreneurship and what it takes to succeed in today’s business world. They discuss the importance of having a clear vision, setting goals, and taking action. They also emphasize the value of building a strong team and surrounding yourself with people who share your values and goals.Throughout the episode, Mikitish and Crawford share their own experiences and lessons learned, providing valuable advice and inspiration for anyone looking to start or grow their own business. They also discuss the work they do with Do Work Nation, including their coaching and consulting services, as well as their popular networking events in Boise and San Antonio.This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in entrepreneurship and building a successful business. Mikitish and Crawford’s passion, knowledge, and experience shine through, making for an engaging and inspiring conversation.https://www.doworkuniversity.com/https://www.facebook.com/josephmikitishhttps://www.facebook.com/sterlingcrawfordhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/doworknation/about/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/building-a-nation-of-doers-an-entrepreneurial-journey-with-joe-mikitish-and-sterling-crawford-of-dowork-nation

Welcome to Business Innovators Radio, featuring industry influencers and trendsetters, sharing proven strategies to help you build a better life right now. And welcome back to another episode of Business Innovators Radio. I've got a couple of really awesome guys joining me today here as guests, and I'm going to give them a quick little introduction. First and foremost, we've got Mr. Joe Moters. McKiddish. And both of these gentlemen, by the way, are of Do Work Nation. We've also got his co-partner in crime, Mr. Sterling Crawford. And today, I have the privilege, actually, of having these two fine gentlemen on my podcast. And I'd like to ask some questions and pick y'all's brains and see if we can get a little bit of information out of you. And most of all, I love to hear about

the entrepreneur and the business's journey. And all that you've been through, and who you love to help and who you plan on helping also in the future. So I'm super excited to have these guys in the show. Joe Sterling, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having us, Morville. Absolutely, guys. Like I said, it's my pleasure. And out of consideration for y'all's time and your busy schedule,

we'll go ahead and just dive right in. Is that okay? Perfect. All right. All right. So this first question I'm going to address to Joe, but I'm also going to follow it up as soon as Joe is done. and I do want to ask Sterling a very similar question.

Okay. And this is one of my favorites because it allows us to know a little bit more about y'all's backgrounds. Looking back, Mr. Joe, were there any signs or clues that you had the entrepreneur gene, so to speak, in your DNA? And feel free to go back as far into time as you'd like to on that question. Sure. You know, and I don't know if it was DNA or learned behavior. I will tell you a story how it all started. I think I was 10 or 11 years old, and I was big into camping scouts the whole thing.

I wanted this wall tank for me and my friends would hold like six of us. And this was in the 80s, right? So you're thinking it was like $150. It was like 10 grand in today's money. You know, this tent was awesome. So I was excited about it. I had the catalog. I've shown my dad and my grandpa.

I'm like, this is what I want for my birthday. My birthday is right in the middle of the same. It was like, weird of you. And my dad, my grandpa were at the table and they were like, actually, you can get that tent now if you wanted. And I was like, what? You know, my mind was blown. I'm like, that'd be awesome. I could do some camping in the spring.

This will be super great. And, you know, what they did for me was they actually took out a notebook and they were like, this is how many lawns you need to mow. I mean, cars you need to wash, how many windows you need to clean, how many houses you need to fresh clean in order to get that tent. And I looked at that instead of feeling overwhelmed. A lot of people would. I was like, this is doable. Let's go get it. And so two weeks later, I had enough money to buy the tent.

I never did buy that tent. I think I bought a pressure washer with that money. So suddenly I was pulling a pressure washer, like a little wagon that I rebuilt around the neighborhood. I was pressure washing. I was his washed cars. Wow. I found that was the most profitable. And then I ended up starting a Walmart business, right?

And so I was the kid at 14 years old that had a truck, you know, basically with a guy driving around, drive me around. That's the level of entrepreneur that I, I want my kids to have them. I want them to be the guy who's 14 with the guy driving around, employee driving them around. That's what I always equate like the ultimate entrepreneur.

So that's how I want my kids to be and that's not a DNA thing. I think it's a learned thing. Sure. One of those things where us as parents as entrepreneurs and still the entrepreneurial spirit in our kids. just let them play video games all day, mess around on YouTube. Sure, 100%.

Or dare I say something controversial and say like, we can't also just automatically let our kids just go through school and just be like, you know, employees, right? Because that's what school tends to, you know, be a little bit more conducive to breeding, right? Is employees.

The way that whole structure is set up, it doesn't really allow for a whole lot of room for, you know, being independent, being creative, which we as entrepreneurs, we tend to be that way, right? We're kind of, we kind of go against the grain a little bit. So, so pretty much Joe said that whenever he got money for his birthday or for Christmas, instead of buying, you know, all the typical kid stuff, he was like, I'm going to go buy something that I can make money with this, you know, with this purchase, right?

Like you're, you were just constantly flipping stuff around. I love that, man. That is incredible. And that's what I love to hear. And back to your school thing, you're absolutely right, right? I had the benefit of me in homeschooled. My wife, she's homeschool. We homeschool our kids.

My son, he's making t-shirt designs and we're building a T-store and, you know, a print on demand and the whole thing. You know, that's what that's school, right? When he's watching videos on training, he's learning how to do graphics design work. He's in, you know, Canva building stuff. 100%. How much more value was that than sitting in class by somebody else and having a teacher to tell you're so. Not the greatest place.

be it become an entrepreneur. The people who do it go through public school and become entrepreneurs, more power to them, man, because that's an overcome thing. Society train, burn that out of you. Okay, so we're six minutes into this podcast. My brain is going nuts. I think we're going to have to do three, four more podcast episodes. Because just in the first five minutes, what you've covered here,

I've got a lot that I'd like to talk with you guys about. All right. But for the sake of time of this episode, let me also switch that over to Sterling. So a little backstory, I've had the, opportunity to hang out with you guys. We went hung out at the cigar shop. We're all cigar officiados, so to speak. And we had some great conversation. And I got the opportunity as well to talk with Sterling. Sterling was sharing a little bit of some of his entrepreneurial journey with me. But I didn't go back to the very start of it. So I'd like to pose kind of a similar question to

you, Sterling. What's your version of that? Did you feel like that was maybe something that was in your blood? Or was it something kind of like Joe that was presented? And then you kind of ran with it. Yeah, interesting way to phrase the question. So a little bit of both, a little duality on my side. So it's interesting you guys brought up the whole school system because that's where I first learned. I was a little bit different. And maybe borderline autistic, I don't know. Sure. Whatever you want to call it. Yeah, definitely against the grain. I didn't like to follow the rules very much. Anytime a task was presented in front of me, I would challenge how could we do it more efficiently, how could we make it, and with a better result for the whole class. And it was interesting to my mind, didn't just focus.

with on my success, but I wanted everyone around me to also succeed at the task at hand. And it was just really interesting, but that first brought to my attention that I saw it a little bit different, and then segue from that into competitive sport. And that's what really launched me to the next level of kind of unlocking my potential and helping me build the confidence of what was needed to not only succeed in my own world, but then lead others to succeed in their world. So that really had occulted me into this whole journey and path of being a leader ultimately. And I just ran with that, but launched me as to buy businesses so far and I've been pretty successful in them and nothing but success through all that.

That is awesome, dude. So let's segue a little bit more into that conversation, because that is actually, that is my next question officially. We just kind of, it just started kind of naturally going that way and a lot of times it does. But the next question is describe the person that you were before you became an entrepreneur. So I'm going to switch back to Joe. So Joe, obviously you had a, you had a very good childhood that was conducive to growth within this type of mindset, right? You yourself, you said you were homeschooled. So you didn't, you weren't, you know, you didn't have to deal with all of the effects of the, you know, the distractions and the problems that I think a lot of the, a lot of the public school kids do have to deal with.

And then again, there's just kind of this over-overriding emphasis on you got to go to college and you got to climb the corporate ladder. And unfortunately, I think if you don't have someone in your life that's saying, well, that's not the only option that's out there. Why don't we explore this or that? Or, you know, the other thing that I think is wonderful as parents, I think we're supposed to identify certain skills in our kids, right? Because I may have one kid that's like, okay, that's like, okay, that's

guy right there, he's going to be an employee. There's just no doubt about it, right? But this guy over here, man, this guy doesn't want to follow any rules at all. I can't put him in any box whatsoever. He's a total lunatic, man. So I got to let him go down that road of entrepreneurship. We've got to be able to identify those things, right, as individuals, because we're all so uniquely made. We're all so different. We've all got such different backgrounds and things. You can't just put everyone in the same box. I wanted to know, did you have any kind of jobs at all, Joe? Did you work any kind of nine to five jobs? Once you started doing the pressure washing and the lawn mowing, did you just pretty much parlay that into another business after another business? Or did you do any nine to five

stuff at all? No, actually, crazy enough, I used all that money and went to college. Okay. And I went into corporate America, work corporations for a long time, far too long. Even one year was too long, to be honest. But I didn't know any better, right? Even though my parents and grandparents were still encouraging of entrepreneur away, they were still stuck in that minds of get a degree. A degree is the only way getting a corporate job. And dad, he's got like remaster's degrees. My mom's got one. They're highly educated, right? Very intelligent. But, and they still work corporate jobs today, right? One of them works for the state. The other one works for big hospital system. and they were bought in 100% into that.

We're like, go there, you're pitching, get your 401k, do your retirement thing. And what I found was it, it was a struggle for me and I fought it until I was probably 21, 22. I was like, I'm going to go into corporate America. I'm going to do the thing, right? So what I failed to do was pay attention to how I felt. And one day I woke up, not in the United States, I was traveling somewhere and for work. And I'm like, what am I doing here? This doesn't make any sense.

It's not what I want to do. It's exciting because I get eaten new food, but not so great because I come home. My son's like doing different stuff. Like one day he's walking. I wasn't there. He's talking. I'm not there. You know, and I'm working 16 hour days when I am home for what.

And never any thanks. You know, what did it to me? And there's the thing that did it to me. I worked all weekend for my corporate job. And all weekend, Friday night. I was there till 9, 10 o'clock tonight. woke up the next morning, got down there, seven worked till nine, 10 o'clock and I did the same thing on Sunday.

Three days I worked and then I showed up to the office 10 minutes late for the morning stand-up meeting on Monday and got reamed by my boss. And I was like, dude, where were you all weekend? I was here all weekend. I was 10 minutes late. And so I was like, you know what? You're right. I'm taking time for all the overtime I've worked since I've been here.

I walked out of there and never went. So by comp time, I mean, and I was told people, I've been happy with an employee for, for what year is this, 18 years. Very nice. Very nice. You know, and it won't be, man. It's been huge, but I didn't know any better. And that's one thing I tell my kids.

I'm like, you want to go to college? Go to college. You don't want to go to college? You don't go to college. You want to learn a trade? Man, I'm the guy to help you build a trades business. Go learn a trade from a tradesperson for three years. And then I'll teach you how to grow the biggest one of those businesses.

So, exactly. And it's a lot more fun. In that time, I've started 10 businesses, exited them. You know, it's an entrepreneur thing is like, it's great. I wish my parents had not told me to go to college, although the story wouldn't be as good. Sure, exactly. And to that point, though, Joe, I think obviously our parents always had the best of intentions, right? In their mind and in their generation, they probably saw a lot of people where college was just a game changer.

I mean, it just, it took people from being, you know, selling hubcaps to, you know, live in large. And so I think that, you know, because I experienced something very similar and that their intentions were all in the right place. It's just they didn't realize, though, that for some of us, you know, you're kind of choking us out a little bit, you know, of maybe certain skills or abilities that we might have. But if they're not aware and they don't really know that world, they don't really even know to advise it. They just know what they know. And so, you know, I think their intentions were definitely the best, the best of intentions. Like I said, one thing that that I wanted to point out, you said,

that you had one of those moments. And I read a book by a guy named M.J. DeMarco. You guys ever heard of that author? M.J. DeMarco. He's got a book called The Millionaire Fast Lane. And he calls it. And I'm not allowed to use profanity on this radio network that I'm a part of. But we'll clean it up a little bit.

He calls it an F this event. And that's kind of what you had, right? You had your F this event. It was that moment. It was like that turning point where you're like, from this point forward, I'm going a different direction. F this. I'm not putting up with that crap anymore. And you literally never look back, Joe. You literally never look back once you had that F this event, right? And so that was just a huge moment in your life. And so again, for all we know,

maybe had you not gone to school and had you not had that corporate job, maybe or may not would have lit that fire underneath you to do what you're doing today. So sometimes we do, You just have to kind of trust that journey that we're on. Sterling, you're up on deck, my friend. Yeah, so yeah, you guys nailed it on the head with that. So a couple things that set out for sure mentorship, having somebody in your life, I think all entrepreneurs need, quote,

unquote, permission to be able to explore and express what that tick is that they have inside them, right? You all have is it. And it's interesting with entrepreneurs, because very few of us start one business and stick with that forever. Usually we start it, we scale it, we get all excited and we're like, okay, we did that. What else can we do? And it's just constant chase of like unlocking that potential and seeing what our next level could bring to the world, right?

So absolutely. Somebody in a mentor role or lead a role in your life to help you explore those boundaries and ultimately show you what you don't know, right? And it's again, kind of that permission that you need to be like, yeah, go explore that. with kids to be able to let them push those boundaries, which they naturally do really well. But at the same time, you know, encourage and support them through that in a healthy way. So that way you're letting them explore all of that and figuring out where those boundaries are of their capabilities and what they enjoy. Good example of that is what Joe's doing with his son right now. He's 13 and he was showing me a couple days ago this shirt design that he put together on Tanva.

and he used like chat beat GBT to put some prompts into mid-journey and then pull that over to Canada to like polish it up and make it look real nice. And it was a cool looking shirt. And then I see him today wearing the shirt. I know that happened so fast. That's so awesome. You know, so. I love that. Yeah, it just gets support from Joe in that aspect.

So all good there. And then when it comes with the nine to five, man. And at this moment, oh yeah. That's the prominent moment. We all ate. And you throw our arms up and we're like, why the heck are we doing this? And, you know, maybe a couple choice of words on the way out or not. That's right.

For me, it was a giant fuel in the fire moment to like prove everybody wrong if that makes sense. Like, people in Delightful tell you can't do that. And I'm the complete opposite. I'm like, watch me. Like, beat that I can't do it. And I'm going to explode this thing and make it the greatest ever. And you'll be your boot in six months. watch. I love that, man. Yeah, that's big for us, right? Don't you dare tell me that I can't do something in this space, in this world, because I'm going to make it my life's mission to prove you wrong, man. And it's, it is very fulfilling when you're capable of doing that. It really is. So here's a question that I have for both of you guys. And this is a big one. I think this is a really big one. I always love to hear the response to the reaction to this. What was the reaction to fast?

family members, specifically, or maybe even friends, once you let them know that you are no longer in corporate America, you are no longer nine to five, you're not going to follow that script. You're going to go ahead and do this absolutely insane thing where you don't have a guaranteed paycheck, you don't have that security blanket, you know, what if you don't get customers, Joe, you know, that sort of thing, right? What happens if they don't pay you, Sterling? There's all those things that our parents and the previous generation, even some well-intentioned friends have about this idea of stepping out on her own like that.

Let's start with you, Joe. What kind of response did you get when you finally did switch over? So my first business, I started in 1999, the first real one, like with a corporation and all that. And I was in Houston, Texas. I'm in Idaho now. But I started a business that was in the same area. Like a lot of people, right? We're technicians.

We go start a business, you know, the E-Miss style. I started a business in the same industry that I was doing it. And I ran it in parallel with working a job, right? So I had a job that on the weekends, my buddy and I would do this business. And we grew that business really fast. Having a business partner was not the smartest plan. I usually advise against that now. I always do.

But back then, I was like, I got to have a business partner. We're going to build this thing. End up selling him, him, that business when I moved to Idaho in 2003. And then my dad was getting out of the military. And he was like, hey, let's start a business together. And I'm like, well, what do you know how to do? What do you know how to do? And then we did this whiteboard session.

And we came up with starting exactly the same kind of business I was running in Texas. But he was really managing the finance because he had a master's degree that allowed him to do the business manager side of things. And I did engineering and sales side. And so we built a IT company, a tech company, technology company from scratch. And in very short period of time, we were making decent money. Right. And that's the job that allowed me to quit corporate America. We weren't making decent money. Then I quit. And then I was like, well, I'm all in. And he was like, what did you do that for? We don't have the money coming out to support your salary yet. And I'm like,

well, we'll figure it out. I'm going to eat on my savings until we get it done. And it didn't take long. I think it was like two months, three months. And I was paying myself, not nearly as much as I was making a corporate America. Ex-wife, she was the one that was really mad. She was used to living a certain lifestyle. She's like, and we're still being able to buy anything all the time, whatever I want to not be able to. And she didn't know the, she grew up poor,

but she didn't want to go back. And so end up causing some consternation between the two of us over the years, but, you know, there's probably a reason why she knew, but we just didn't see eye to eye. She didn't want to entrepreneur in her life. and I wanted to live it, breathe it, support other entrepreneurs. And so my family was really supportive. I think the people who weren't were some of my friends and to my ex-wife and her family.

Yeah. We're all like, how are you going to support the kids and whatever? And I'm like, I got this. Yeah. Awesome. But you couldn't see the vision. Yeah, I think one thing I learned early on, people who came in that were the tractors and talked any kind of smack to me at all about starting.

businesses and having my own business. I got those people off real quick. I didn't entertain them for even one second. I was like, you know, somebody told me the other, oh, my wife, my current wife, she told me the other day, she was like, the block button is not what she say. It's, you know, she's like, it's not taking them away from what they're saying. It's more self-care for you. Sure, sure. I would do that in life, like all people in real life. Yeah. And that's what saved. An entrepreneur, saved me from listening to people who are Debbie Downers. And the more I work, the harder I'm working, the more I got it. Right. You're working too hard. You're looking too many hours. You know, you need to slow down. You need to take it easy, Joe. You're being a little bit too crazy.

And I'm like, I'm glad I didn't listen to any of those people. For sure. Yeah, we have the privilege, right, that we were born in a time period where we grew up without technology. And then, of course, it's here now. But back then in the 80s and 90s, man, we had other ways of blocking people. And it was effective. Right. Those were the good old days, man. It was a lot easier to avoid people back then. We didn't have to worry about all this bumping into them in the digital realm. So that was really cool. So no, I totally understand. And I really appreciate all that you shared with that, Joe. That is, that resonates with me a lot. I can certainly relate to that in many ways. What about yourself, Sterling? I know you had some businesses as well. So when you first jumped into that world, what kind of a response did you have? And did you have some negative naysayers out there too? Oh, yeah. Yeah, constant. So I I opened my first brick and mortar business when I was 19, man. Wow.

You know, really young. And I think there's almost a duality with that because part of the world is excited for you, right? Like you're the next generation. They want to support you. They want to see you succeed. So the willing and offering Bison's guidance through all that, right? But that inner circle, family and friend, kind of a blend of disbelief ultimately that I was actually doing it.

And then all their worries were projected onto me. Like you said, if you're not going to make enough money, would have to think about it's down the road, you know, you end up having to sell or whatever the case may be. They all had their worries. Like we discussed earlier, all that fueled me, right? Because then it was just like, part of me wanted to prove them wrong, but at the same time, it was like, I'm not going to let that happen.

Like, I'm the controller of my destiny, and I'm going to decide what happened with this. And I was really successful. And when it comes to the inner circle, my family is a very interesting dynamic. Ultimately, though, my dad was a huge, Porter. And he always has been to the most part up front. He was there helping me like like carpet, you know, put up the sign on the building. He was just so thrilled and excited. And he had been 1099 a handful of times on his life. So it was exciting for him to see me take that leap of faith into it as well. Yeah. What I've noticed though, and especially with close friends and like, do you had mentioned like, you know, family is there's an interesting tipping point where that excitement almost turns into like a jealousy that you are spending so much time. building an empire or building something unique. And they want to take from that, right?

Maybe that's not their intention, but it feels that way from the entrepreneurial side. Sure. You know, we get this momentum or we're going all in and everyone's all excited until they're not. And then when they're not, it usually tends to be a little more negative.

This time, not by much of worry if you're going to fail or it's not going to work. But Joe said, you know, you're not spending enough time with me or you're, you know, you're not making enough money or whatever the struggle is. It depends to be negative. So I encourage.

all the entrepreneurs out there to have a very clear focus on what your goal is and what you're working towards and be able to segment that out a little bit of that negative. If you don't use it for fuel for the fire, but if you take personally, you got to block that stuff like you guys are saying. Turn that off and you know, you are what you feed yourself. So you're positive and think about why you started. Definitely, man. Yeah, I love how you said that. And I really appreciate your point of view from that, from that angle, Sterling. I think this is a perfect segue into the next question. So as business owners, we know that when you start the business, everything goes perfect, right? It's this perfect, you know, perfect little uphill slant.

There's never any dips. There's never any setbacks. And it's easy, right? It's easy to be a business owner. And so, let's remove that fairy tale and let's come back to reality and say, I'd like to ask business owners about setbacks or. dare I use the F word, right? Failure. Have you guys, and we'll start with Joe, have you guys experienced any kind of failures, any kind of setbacks in the growth of any of your business, or businesses, I should say, and then if you guys could maybe pinpoint something that, you know, somewhere in that setback or that failure that you feel like you definitely learned a lot, and maybe it's even helping you to this day. Go for it, Joe. Yeah, you know, it's a lot.

Yeah, I'll kind of unpack some of it. So failures across the board, you know, of the businesses I've started, which is closer to 20, 10 of them actually work. Gotcha. 50% success rate with businesses is pretty good. It is. Business is building you an income that you can actually live on. Thing is minimum level of success.

And then, you know, getting to the point where the business is bringing in seven figures or eight figures in revenue is something else. And I've done that with multiple businesses. But I also have businesses that I start. I thought it was a good idea. And either within a month or two, I'm like, oh, this was actually a bad idea. Nobody wants this product.

And I've learned a lot of things about pre-selling businesses now. The thing that I've learned with failure is to always have your eyes forward, right? You could dwell in the problem where you learn from it and immediately pivot. We had a problem. This isn't working. You know, we could work all day engineering a fix for that problem. Or you can pivot to a whole new thing, like Sterling and are dealing with us right now. We're like, we got a thing in our business that's irritating.

And we're like, do we spend the next three months fixing that thing? Or do we know that there's a better way and we just pivot the whole business and never direction? Yeah. I've learned to make that decision on the fly, like over, I give myself a day or a weekend. And I do some meditation and I think about it and I do some journaling. And I'm like, at the end of it, I'm like, decision has been made. You know, we're making a change.

So changing quickly is one of the things. that we do. That's why Sterling and I get along so well because we're like a lot of people I've worked with over the years and this is a thing I've learned is if somebody can't handle pivoting and changing, they need to go get a corporate job. You know, a small business, our rate of change is so fast. Their brain just, they're emotionally stressed. They're freaking out. I don't know what we're doing having a panic attack, you know, and I'm like, this is like normal thing. You know, we're going to be doing this about 10 times this year. So. Sure, right. Yeah. And then, you know, mistakes. I mean, go. Sorry, man. We're a little off on the, I mean, whatever you want to say. No, I just said, you better buckle up. Get that. Buckle up. Yep.

I think that's what I told Sterling, like, right before he started working with me. So buckle up. It's going to be a ride. So at the beginning, like the first year or two of running the business, it's kind of bumpy. It's a bumpy ride, no matter how much you lay out. And I've done everything from starting up businesses from scratch with nothing to getting investors and I could tell you I hate that. Getting business partners also hate that.

I've learned that through trial and error. I went and got business partners, even though Dave Ramsey, when I was in in Nashville in the late 90s, he told me he was like, you know, business partners don't do. He always said this thing. There's one ship that doesn't sail and that's a partnership.

You know, he would say that all over and over again. And what did I do? First business I would. After that, I went to business partner. That burned me hard. And I'm like, Dave Ramsey's a smart guy. So, you know, should be.

And, but you think about all the things in business at the beginning, you do, right? You get enough traction. You get enough movement going. You start getting some money. And what do you do? You know, I need more customers. I've got the foundation to handle it. So I'm going to go spend money on marketing.

And, you know, when I, there's some statistics. Last 30 days, 70% of small business owners have spent money on marketing that didn't work. And I was in that same boat. I was in, I owned an IT business. What the heck did I know marketing? I didn't. know much. I knew what roles were, but I didn't know anything about going and getting customer forals, right? And so I tried to rely on experts who were really good to take my money.

I'm not so great. That's healthy. I mean, experts, right? And so for years, I spent, you know, I spent a fortune on marketing. I'll just tell you that. I won't, I won't tell you an exact number because people think I'm lying because the number's too big. But it's scary how much I spent because somebody has to know. I don't. do this stuff. And I never could figure it out. I never could find a company that would do it. And so I educated myself. I started taking all that money that I was spending on experts and invested in myself to become the expert. And there's the lesson in business, right? The failure of most business owners is because you're not the expert and you don't know how to run a proper

business and you don't know how no marketing, you got those sales. You think you do because you've sold some stuff. It doesn't mean you're a professional. You're not a professional marketer. not a professional salesperson. You're not a professional and even reading your P&L statement. Like I put a P&L statement in front of most business owners. They have no idea what's what. And so, you know, take an accounting class. Your local community college are going to be better than 99% of business owners. So these are things where you could spend a little bit of time, a little bit of money and become an expert. And as soon as I made that decision, that's when my whole life changed. I was like, okay, now not only can I do it for my own businesses, which I've done

and over and over and over again. I can teach other business owners how to do it. Them to paint, right? I'm like, you know, in fact, I got the whole, that whole accounting thing, I got from Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett in a speech like in the late 90s, he was like, he's telling people who are business elders, he was in stockholders in Berkshire Hathaway,

go take an accounting class and learn how to read a P&L statement. And I was like, all right, if Warren says I should do it, I'll go. So, yeah, these are no these ideas that I have are original. right. We all, everything's a universal truth. I've read all these books behind me and a hundred and thousands more and I spent hours and hours educating myself. I wish I'd done that early, man. I wish I had. Sure. You know, and I started it. My grandpa's library looked like this.

It was all business books. Right. So you talk about public school, what books are in the library at the public school. I've been to the public school library here because my son, he wanted to graduate from public school, went down there and I'm like, what is all this trash, man? What is it? What are we teaching our kids? We're teaching them. And when it's in the library, it's garbage. And where, forget all the books should be banned or whatever. I don't care about any of that.

Just give them good books to read. And it'll change everything. Sure. The mistakes I made would not reading enough, you know, not continuing on my path of education, believing that I was smarter than what I was and intelligence could overcome, you know, everything in business. But the reality is no-out can overcome everything. And, you know, when there's that old saying competence, in his competence, I had confidence, but I have the confidence. And so I was an incompetent, big business owner at the beginning, and I succeeded through lunch.

Now I'd succeed because I know what that can do. I tell everybody's a parent in business. Absolute gold, Joe. Thank you. Thank you for sharing all that wisdom. Sterling, did you have any failure? Has it just been perfect? Oh, it's been perfect, man.

No speed bumps, no nothing. It's been great. No, I think, yeah, we all experience those failures and, you know, come to summarize with Joe, it said, it's how you pivot. It's how you roll with the punches for lack of better words, you know. Yeah. You think it's in everything, even if you got a W-2 job. Correct.

Sometimes you're only as good as your last performance report, you know, and you're not getting that raise that you were expecting. So anyway, there's all these actors and the life as far as, you know, quote-unquote failures, but I look at it as an opportunity to learn to better myself, right? I'm on this journey of self-perfection, so constantly looking for ways to better my way of thinking or whatever the case may be. But ultimately, I think the resolution to that is a balance of both education and experience. Good simple way putting that together is he could read a book on how to rebuild a car engine and then get in there and go to take that first

bolt off and the head snaps off. And there's nothing in the book to teach you how to tap out a bolt, right? So now you're just left looking for somebody who has a little more experience than you do. and then it's just a fine balance between the two. But through that, if I could leave some words of encouragement, it's just to not lose that passionate excitement you have or why you started something, because there's always going to be people that tell you it's not going to work, you're not good enough.

That's the wrong way to approach that. You're going to have a great day sometimes and show up and have your favorite client freak out and quit and be all upset about you over something that you had no control over and not let that crush your excitement, you know. So it's really important to remember why he did things. And then lean on those who are more experienced, right? There's always somebody out there who knows more than you do.

He's been through the right. And more Buffett's been around for, you know, since dirt was invented. So. Right. No, he listened to that, man. Right. And yet there were guys before him. You know what I mean?

That's just, that's what's crazy. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Man, that, more wisdom and more gold, Sterling. I love it. Thank you, man. I think that, just that subject alone right there, you guys dropped some big nuggets. And that information is just priceless. Do you guys have just a few more minutes as we wrap up here? Yeah, we're just going to think a lot of what we talked about today underscores exactly why Joe and I do what we do. Because we've been through the ringer, if you will. You know, between the two of us, 15 businesses, that's a lot. Like, that's more than most people ever even think about doing. And to take that first experience and be able to, deliver it to the people that we work with. You know, that's impactful as well.

And then, you know, Joe's vast brain of knowledge, it's crazy. Like, I see him just like fire stuff out and I'm like, what is going on? Who are you right now? Yeah. Yeah. No joke, man. Sterling, you could not have created a better segue to the next question, which is all these years of experience and trial and error between the both of you guys and running your businesses and big wins. and certain losses and different things like that have led you guys to where you are today.

And today you guys are running a company called Do Work Nation, something that certain people, especially nowadays, want to run away from, which is work. But the kind of people that you guys are working with tend to not be that way. That's, I think, the first thing. Why don't you guys tell me a little bit about Do Work Nation? And I know you guys also have something called Do Work University as well. describe your current business, the types of people you help, and the problems that you guys are solving. You want to take this one, Sterling?

Go for it. I'm waiting on you. All right. So, you know, really, our business now is focused around helping business owners grow their business, primarily focused on customer acquisition. And so our target market is home services and trades people. So people who are everywhere from window cleaners to roofers to plumbers, to plumbers. electricians, carpet cleaners, people who make their money with their hand. That's the type of business that we work with primarily.

There's a lot of reasons for that. Primary reason for us that those people get left behind. They get their money stolen by marketing companies. They get their money stolen by attorneys. BAs take advantage of them. All these types of businesses are there to take their money and provide them very low in return. And so what we do, we not only help them by teaching them how to grow, their business the right way, teach them how to sell, teach them how to market their business.

We also find those marketing people, attorneys, the CPAs who will not steal their money and we provide those resources to them. Part of the Newark Nation, right, we're there to help support them and grow their business. So like our social networking events, there's a whole bunch of people in there. The people that we actually work with after all the beer is done and, you know, all the wine has been drunk and all the pizza's been eaten. Those are the trades and home services, people. And they know when they come to us

that we will not only help them grow their business, acquire more customers, fix that marketing thing that they've been to shove a money out, not getting anything in return, but also protect them from the predators. There's a lot of business owners out there that are unscrupulous.

In fact, you know, this is a cease and desist letter. One of our clients got because he wrote a negative Google review for one of those companies that stole his money. Wow. And instead of like doing the right thing and giving him the money back and helping them out, they wrote him a cease and desist letter.

That's a lot. Yeah. Sterling and I are doing right after this. We're thinking that cease and we're going to make a video about it. I mean, it would be a cease and this letter and see how you like that. Correct. Yeah. I'll tell you what I'm going to do with it.

But, you know, and everybody can use their imagination. But if they do send me one to see it on YouTube, the reality is that's what we're here We build that Do Work Nation around the people who are trades, home services, people, and we help them grow their business and help them make more money. And then on the other side of that, once they start making money, we have people that we work with that will teach them how to build passive income in real estate so that they can leave their family legacy. Because a lot of times trades people, they're great and electrician.

They're an amazing electrician, right? I would never fix this like socket above me for any reason. It's changing the ball doesn't fix something I'm calling it. Yeah. Same thing with finances, right? They're good at doing electrical stuff, but they're not great at building passive income stream. So our goal is to help build people who are them leaving a legacy for their family. They're building passive income stream. That way, when they get to be 60, 65 years old, too, they're not still, you know, to be an electrician if they want, don't want to be. They can do whatever they want. And they don't get sucked into this thing where they're like, oh, you need more life insurance and you need an annuity and they're spending all these money on product. rather than stuff that actually builds a lifestyle for them. So that's what we're about helping those people do work better and do work the right way. And then actually live a life reflects all that hard work they put into it. Very exciting.

Sterling, what's your take on what you guys are doing? You know, what gets you up in the morning to help these people? Yeah, to me it's the transition. It's the phase of where they are when we met them to where they are a few months to maybe a few years down the road, you know, the name of the companies do work. We're not very shy about what it takes to be successful, and we're not trying to blow smoke anywhere it doesn't belong, you know. So we're really looking for those people that have those intangible qualities, right, that work ethic. I don't think Joe and I mentioned earlier, but we both grew up on farms, bucking hay and

cheered sheep and, you know, shoveling up poop all day long. So I'm not afraid of work. And so I think that's one of the reasons we resonate so well with people in the trades and home services is because they have that same kind of intangible drive to just work. They know what it takes. They're not ready to get up early and hit the grind to provide for their family and hit the dream that they sought after for, right? So really what we're here to do is support them in that and make sure that they could get to that dream life that they set off for a little bit quicker, a little more efficiently, and then give them the tools to maintain that life afterward. because we all know people that have made a decent amount of money at some point and then blew it all on silly things.

You see guys that win the lottery and they're broke two years later, you know, we try to make sure that they're not following that same path. So with that, there is a big emphasis on coachability. I think all entrepreneurs look for that. You know, bring somebody into your circle. You want to make sure that you're able to work well together. And again, trades and home services are great for that because they're willing to learn. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I love this niche that you guys are in.

These are not blue collar guys, right? These are get down and dirty, hardworking folks, right? I'm sorry, these are not white collar guys. These are blue collar guys. Yeah, these are the kind of people that I totally brain farted on that. No, these are exactly the blue collar guys that actually get down and get dirty and they're not afraid to do so, right? And I think here's the thing that I love the most because I've got a few clients that

are in that same world. And man, these guys are just very humble, man. Yeah. They're very humble. They acknowledge that they don't, you know, that they're experts at their craft and their trade, but beyond that, a lot of today, they don't know a whole lot of what to do and where to go. And they want somebody to help them, but they do have trouble finding people that are willing to actually help and not just take advantage of them. Right. And so that's exactly what do work is doing.

Yeah, yeah, that's the Dewark University side of things. You know, a lot of those guys go to school to learn the trade, but they don't know how to run a business at the end of the day. They don't really teach them to do how customer acquisition and how to organically grow or even teach them how to network properly to ask for a referral. All of these things get looked over. And, you know, that's really how you grow the business. We talk to people all the time, man, all the time across the U.S. that spend, you know, $2,500 on the low end. Some guys we've talked to spending over $7,000 a month on like Facebook ads.

And, of course, they're not getting anything in return on that, but that's what they think they need to do, right? Sure. Coca-Cola and everybody else is doing, but in come Joe and I, we're like, actually, let's do something different. That works. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Guys, this information that you have shared today has been phenomenal. I can't thank you enough for all of the wisdom that you've imparted in this. And I love hearing about your journey and your story. I got one last final question. And this is the fun one. I just want to know a little bit more about you individually. What do y'all, both of you guys, do you guys? you to recharge from business.

If you're not at work and you're not doing your life's passion, which is work, and you finally got some downtime, what does that look like? What are your and who are you guys spending that non-business time with? You can go first, Joe, on this one. All right. Well, I got a bunch of kids, so there's a lot of time with them. You know, five of them still at home, seven total. So the ones that are at home with us now are seen to be the ones who are embracing

entrepreneur spirit the most, right? So they're all doing different stuff. We try to encourage them and support them, whatever they want to do. So that takes a sizable chunk of my off hours. It's really interesting because I have friends who are like, well, have you seen this new TV show? I'm like, man, I don't. It's weird because it's like midnight and I'm like going to bed and I'm like, how the hell do people have time to watch TV?

Yeah, I don't know. So TV is not one of them, but I do fish. You know, I like fishing. In fact that my son, he was just texting me a second ago. He's like, we go, for sure going fishing this weekend. right. So, you know, I like cigars, smoking cigars. And, you know, it's interesting. A lot of our clients of the day, I met at a cigar shop. You know, I'm in there working at my laptop. Yeah, my wife and I'll go down there work. Sterling and I'll go down there and work. And we're sitting there with our laptops and people just come over and talk to us. And you can't miss us. And we're wearing do work shirts. Got our name badges on. We're clearly. Yeah, we're clearly doing work. Right. And so people come over and sit down and they're like a house cleaner, right? Or a commercial. cleaner, one of our customers, he came over. I met him at the cigar shop. He was a cleaning business. Now he's just blown up about a cleaning business. Right. And so that's

a combination of fun and work, right? And we're trying to do everything that I, is graded life. Right. People are always talking about like the separate, you know, they have the separation of work and home. They work life balance or whatever they want to call it. I'm more integrating the two. I integrate, you know, building. businesses and have fun with my kids. I integrate, you know, building businesses and smoking cigars. I integrate business and fishing. A lot of times I'm usually fishing with one of our clients or somebody I know who does

business. So Sterling comes with me now. You know, like, let's go fishing and talk business. Let's do it once. So that's kind of how I rule. That's what I like to do. Set on the back porch and smoke a cigar, read a book. That's the next one.

So, you know, not too bad. I love that, man. Yeah, I think y'all's fishing is kind of your version of like the golf course, maybe, right? Oh, yeah. Fishing with climate. Yeah, that's awesome. What about yourself, Sterling? What's your downtime look like? Yeah, so, man, I'm a plethora of hobbies. I've gone through so many different things. And it's interesting, too, going back to entrepreneurial mindset, because anytime I pick the new hobby and I start to feel I'm getting good at it, I'm like, how can I make money? Right? So that's just like time back and forth. So it is a very blurred line as far as hobby and

in work, I guess, ultimately. But if you're having fun of work, it's not work, right? Exactly. Exactly. I think in short, a few things I've really enjoyed, you know, martial arts for sure. I've done martial arts my whole life. I've taught for 20 years, you know, competed on a high level. I've got to hang up some really great guys through that whole journey.

So I get to like, you know, move around a little bit. I tend to. A quick side story on that. Actually, one of the first networking socials I went to with Joe. His kids were all there. And, you know, we all get along really well. They call me Uncle Sterling and stuff like that. So we're just kind of rough housing.

One of Joe's kids was taking bockding, so we started messing around a little bit. And next thing I know, I've got like kids from all over the networking social, like attacking me. And so I'm just like flying them through the air and like stacking them up. And I stopped and looked around the room and the whole room, like the adults were like, what are you doing to those kids? Like breaking out. And we were all just laughing and having a good time. But I taught for 20 years.

So work with kids. Exactly. Yeah, man. You were in your element. Yeah, we were all having a good time. So outside of that, though, man, I love to travel. I love, love, love to travel. Sitting on a beach somewhere, getting a snorkel or surf or hang out with so cute ladies, man,

with all a win for me. So. And for the record, Sterling, you are single at the moment. Yeah. Okay. Now, this is going to be put out through audio mostly, but in case they like your voice, right, it can inquire more. Ooh, maybe.

Yeah. A little bit or something. Shirley's got one of those ASMR-type voices, man. Very soothing. No, we're going to do some video clips too, though. So we'll put out a couple of videograms. You can put those out there. And you never know.

You never know who's watching on LinkedIn, right? So that could be your next little romantic date out in the forest, out in the woods. Yeah, well, if you're in the forest or woods or on a beach and you see the war walking towards you, it's probably, though. There it is. There it is. Guys, how do we find out more about Do Work Nation and you guys, how can we follow your journey and reach out to you if anybody is watching or listening? want to learn more. You know, following us on social media is the best way. You know, a lot of people do business under their business pages. We don't. We're allowed on our personal pages, but it's all

business, right? So I usually tell people, follow me on Facebook. Follow me on LinkedIn. You're going to get a lot more content on Facebook that you will LinkedIn. But that's because just LinkedIn's got some restrictions and they just don't let me post stories and stuff like Facebook. But Facebook's a great way. you know, even if you don't want to directly engage with me and have me talking to you, following works great. A lot of people do that where they'll jump on there. They'll add me as a follower. I can't see that.

They did that, but I know that the number goes up, right? Sure. And then following Sterling as well. And then we're getting our YouTube up and rocking so that it's more specifically based towards trades people. So following us on YouTube over the next like six months, there's going to be some amazing content that we push out.

around helping individual businesses. And you'll be able to hear their stories directly. And so you'll be able to apply what we teach them in real time to your own business. So it wasn't all just apply to trades and home services, right? If you own a bookkeeping company, what we teach a trades business totally works for bookkeeping. So just check it out. And then if you ever need anything, hit me up on LinkedIn.

I do respond to messages pretty quick on there. That's fantastic. And I'm going to add your website in those type of links on the show notes. So that will be available there. If anyone's listening and they're interested in learning more about you guys, we'll make sure that we include that as well. Gentlemen, thank you guys so much, man. What an honor to spend this time with you guys and get to know you guys better.

It's been a lot of fun. Thank you for coming on today. Absolutely. Thanks for having. Yeah. Kick butt. Maybe we can do it again. And worst case scenario, I will see you guys again.

the cigar shop soon. Yeah, we'll be there in a few weeks, man. Sounds like a winner. All right, guys, thank you again. And that does it for another episode of Business Innovators Radio. We will catch you here next time. Thanks for listening to Business Innovators Radio. To hear all episodes featuring leading industry influencers and trendsetters,

visit us online at businessinnovators radio.com today.