Digital Social Hour - Grant Mitterlehner On Beating Depression, Struggles of Dating as Entrepreneur & College | DSH #183

Episode Date: December 11, 2023

On today's episode of the Digital Social Hour, Grant Mitt reveals how he became a millionaire in his 20's, how he beat depression and how dating life has been tough for him because of having success at a young age. BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] APPLY TO BE ON THE POD: https://forms.gle/qXvENTeurx7Xn8Ci9 SPONSORS: PolicyGenius: Your family deserves peace of mind. A life insurance policy through Policygenius can give it to them. Head to policygenius.com/DSH or click the link in the description to get your free life insurance quotes and see how much you could save. That's policygenius.com/DSH. Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sports was my life. I'm sure you guys were probably similar. You played everything. Yeah. And I was kind of a scrappy dual threat quarterback. Texas 5A football. Different abilities. And I walked into every single appointment when it was just me.

I'm starting from scratch. Like my life depended on it. And sold. And in a year and a half, I had a 74.4% closing percentage. Yo. All right. Welcome to the Digital Social Hour. I'm your host, Sean Kelly. I'm here with my co-host, Wayne Lewis. What's up? up and our guest today graham mitt good to be here nice to see you guys absolutely thanks for coming what's going on man how's it going how you feeling feeling amazing man it feels good to be in vegas when did you fly in last night last night last night tell you up i'm at aria oh yeah

for food they got some nice restaurants in there it's it's nice it's classy in there they got the best restaurants in vegas so you can't wait so i wish i was better than i was what do you play roulette or um craps those are gambling games anytime i feel like donating some money those are like the worst dogs yeah yeah literally yeah i heard baccarat's about grass i'm i'm a baccarat guy you're a baccarat guy? Yeah, yeah. They say you need to gamble Baccarat with people who know what they're doing. You have to know. Asians. Yeah. That means that's their game.

I learned from a guy who's like fire at it. He taught me how to read the board and everything. I haven't lost in six sessions in Baccarat. Really? Yeah. Is it just because you're good or because you're- I keep it light. But there's a guy that you-

What's the guy's name? Who's like the Baccarat? Mickey. Yeah, Mickey. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know... Just go with the right people.

Because that's what I heard is if you could not know what you're doing and you just follow the right person, you're good. Yeah. Good. Is it a strategy game? Yes. Yeah. It's strategic, but you got to play the odds.

But if you play the odds right, it's 50-50. Yeah. Not all the sucker bets. Right. But just bank or a player, your odds are 50-50. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. if you play the odds right it's 50 50 yeah i'm not not all the sucker bits right like just banker a player right your eyes are 50 50 yeah yeah for sure but yeah anyways give people the rundown on your story yeah yeah absolutely i'd love to hear it from beginning to end so so i'm from houston texas originally um sports sports was my life i'm sure you guys were probably similar you played

everything yeah and um i was kind of scrappy dual threat quarterback, Texas 5a football Oh, you're crazy. Oh, you were quarterback. Yeah. No. Yeah, so I played those star quarterback at school called Dickinson High School And I mean they take it seriously and and you got 20,000 fans out there, right? Not that much 10,000 still crazy high school game Yeah, I mean when you look over and you just i mean you're 17 years old and it is jam-packed yeah people people are talking about you you have a good day you're a good week you're the white michael vick the next thing you're in the new we need a new quarterback yeah i mean you're getting interviewed after the game i mean i

remember our my second start we were on abc 13. yeah getting interviewed i mean it's just it's crazy experience and i went to play junior college football in long beach california wow so you went all the way to long beach no colleges won't wanted you or what well so there was a lot of small d2 offers and different things like that and i wanted to try the junior college route and also like texas is the mecca of sports though it's like y'all get recruited faster than anything it depends that's where the they're the stable of it depends on the school so when when when i was started for my high school we were kind of part of the rebuild and so we got to the playoffs that part of the group that got us back in the playoffs and the following groups after ended up competing two three four rounds deep in the text playoffs

which is impossible yeah and that's when now all these guys are going. My friend Jalen Watermeyer, I think he's at the Bills now, but he was All-American tied in for A&M. And that's when it really started picking up. I loved California and I wanted to try something different. I didn't want to go to a basics school. I kind of wanted to be on my comfort zone. And redshirted my first year and immediately got into sales and was very entrepreneurial starting online businesses doing anything to make money right right and um when i was out there it was

like everywhere i went this is back in 2014 that's when solar city started really blowing up and i had never seen everyone had talked about solar being a future thing yeah solar city's out out here too right i haven't heard that so solar so solar city is the company that tesla purchased so elon was original investor in it his cousin ran it and it was the first massive massive just dominant solar company and tesla ended up purchasing it basically to save it because it grew too fast and whole nother story right yeah so everywhere i went they just kept talking about solar solar and we had always heard it's gonna be the next big thing since we were kids but it wouldn't as far as Texas you know Texas no one got

solar you know they were oil and gas state everyone worked for Exxon and different things like that and I was like man I need to get in the solar and shout out to policy genius today's sponsor the holidays not only allow us to spend time with family but they are a reminder of how important our responsibility is to protect them that includes planning to secure their future life insurance is an easy way to give your family peace of mind provides a safety net so if something were to happen to you your family can cover expenses while getting back on their feet. Luckily, PolicyGenius can help you compare your options from top companies and their team of licensed experts are on hand to talk you

through it. You never know when you'll need life insurance. I've lost some loved ones over the past few years, and unfortunately, none of them had life insurance. With PolicyGenius, you can find life insurance policies that start at just $292 per year for $1 million of coverage. Some options offer same day approval and avoid unnecessary medical exams. Even if you already have a policy through work, it may not offer enough protection. So check out Policy Genius. Your family deserves peace of mind. Head to policygenius.com slash DSH or click the link in the description to get your free life insurance quotes and see how much you could save. That's policygenius.com slash DSH. I kind of continue my football journey, but long story short, I had after transferring, you know, doing the whole junior college thing, I had

D2 offers and I had stuff and I'm realizing, okay, I got to be the Drew Brees to make it to the league. I have friends that are as good as anybody i've ever witnessed with my eyes still didn't make it and either still didn't make it or fighting every single year to stay on the team and you didn't want to do that and people underestimate i mean just because you're in the nfl does not mean you have money but if you get the big contract for sure oh yeah for sure but if you're making five six hundred k you're w-2 so you're losing 40, 50%. You're paying agent fees. You wear your sock wrong. That's $7,000. It, you lose it quick. And so I really had a knack for being an entrepreneur. And, but at the time I was, I was super broke. I was living in an apartment with six, seven guys.

And I was like, I want to get back to Houston. Cause I have a network. And this is in Long Beach. It's in Long Beach. Yeah. And I wanted to get back to Texas because I have a network. And this is in Long Beach. It's in Long Beach, yeah. And I wanted to get back to Texas because I, quote, unquote, had a network. I had no network. I just told myself that because I knew people from back home. And what ended up happening is my mom had a place, and my parents had just gotten divorced. And my brother had one of the rooms. He was going to one of the local schools.

So I was like, I'll just crash on the couch. I was happy. Laundry there i could do it was not it was cool place good area i know houston and i get back and i'm like i'm going to transfer to university of houston and go to business school finish the last couple years do some stuff online get into sales and figure out maybe solar want to start something right but i get back january you know you have orientation for college you have all the balloons and you meet the counselors it's supposed to be an exciting thing i'm walking in and the counselors going through name by name so it's saying middle end

or whatever yeah i'm here and she goes i know you it's like wow i was like what do you mean she goes i need to talk to you and i was like okay but i'm gonna talk to you after this so of course i gotta listen to the hour long speech before i find out what she's gonna tell me and so i'm sitting there thinking about every ex-girlfriend i've had any person i pissed off right right because i'm choosing you know someone's gonna know someone so i'm like i did something she's like you threw an interception i threw an interception something right and she comes up to me and she goes okay so you're basically about to be a senior and i'm like correct and i got a lot of credits done and she said the problem is here you're a freshman i was like what she was none of your credits transferred to university

houston except for six classes from you know from long beach yes from junior college yes because it was out of state complete scam so think about it i waited all those years all those years all that stuff i'm transferring of course they don't tell me before yeah i get there i'm on my mom's couch i'm 20 21 22 years old i'm ubering as there to make money i got 200 bucks in my name right and because i've been focusing on school and i didn't know anything i don't come from money and i'm like and she's like well we can combine classes we just need syllables for all these million classes that you took and we can appeal and maybe we can add it and get you to that software level and i'm like man come on so i

go pick all my classes and i purposely get as many online classes as possible. I get a sales job and I start making money. And I'm like, okay, I'm going to save up as much money as possible. I'm going to try to make six figures. I'm going to move to downtown. I'm going to figure out how to start a solar company. What was your first sales job? So I started selling DirecTV and Walmarts first.

In Walmart. Oh, you were that guy. I was that guy. Oh, okay. And I was pretty good. And that was real? Yes. I'm'm serious and what was your close rate I can tell you my my close rate for solar so okay so solar I started off closing like 35 40 percent and whoa and but then three out of ten right but then six months in

it clicked and I went into survival mode because I needed to fund my company. And I, I almost kind of tricked my mind into thinking it's like the human brain. This is in Houston, right? You're in Houston. Yes. I'm in Houston. So I kind of started studying why people succeed and what they, how the brain works and how everything happens. And I noticed that, you know what, the reason why we worry about humans just in general is, does this person like me? Am I going to make rent? What if I lose my job? It's because we don't have to fight off a saber tooth tiger anymore.

Us three don't have to leave this podcast and go hunt to make sure we eat tonight. We can just, we can go eat at catch. We can go eat anywhere and live like kings, right? For sure. And so the reason is, is because the brain is built to survive. So I came up with this hack where if I just like a crazy person, talk to myself in the sense that if I don't make X in dollars, if I don't build this company, I don't know how I'm going to survive.

I don't know what's going to happen because if you've never made six figures before and you make six figures, a lot of times, I'm sure you guys know people, they get super comfortable. Yeah. And they think it's a lot of money. Yeah. They think it's a lot of money yeah they think it's a lot of money and if you've never had money it's gonna feel like it at first yeah and i just started psyching myself out and going if i don't if i don't make millions of dollars i don't i don't i don't know how i'm gonna take care of my family i don't know what's and i would like a crazy person psych myself out and it pulled out different maybe like different genes in me that i

didn't know i had right and different abilities and i walked into every single appointment when it was just me i'm starting from scratch like my life depended on it and sold and in in a year and a half i had a 74.4 closing percentage yo that's crazy and how much did you make in that year and a half quite a lot quite a lot yeah quite a lot over seven figures yeah wow in your first year solar yeah and we crushed it congrats and so and and i wish i could tell you guys i was just a sales master and i and i'm not it just i understood human behavior every single appointment and at this time it was just you no team started off yeah where were you getting your leads from we're buying them buying leads so online yeah so

not really well it did for him it depends he knew how to sell right he knew how to sell he's been caught bro at least they're dead leads when you when you buy them because they've been caught six or seven times it depends you got to know what you're doing. And I've lost hundreds and hundreds, if not millions of dollars on bad leads. Or I still converted, but they were just, they were just. Yeah. You got to work them. But I built processes front to back and I learned what worked and I learned the psychology of a sell and what makes people do what they do.

And the best thing I learned with influencing people is the reason why many times it's so difficult to influence people is because they know that you're trying to influence them think about when you're walking in the mall and you're walking you're with your girl you're with your friends or you're just in your lawn you're just picking up a shirt or something yeah yeah and you got those little kiosk people and they're walking out with the little flyers what do you what is your first instantly move deny yeah yeah same thing when you walk in the store hey can i help you with anything hey how's it going no i'm fine i'm just looking yeah even if you need something even waiters some sometime can be overbearing right i don't like when they check on me when i'm eating right like

let me finish yeah they read the room and so what i realize is if if i if I could figure out how to walk into an appointment that they requested, they wanted to talk to me, they need help on this and not tell them and just literally go, this is not a sell. This is me figuring out, can your home actually get it? Right. And if it does, we're going to see if it makes sense financially. if it does we're going to obviously set you up right but if we look at it and it doesn't then who cares yeah but most people coming in with that mentality since she's like we're going to see if you can get it most of them are going no no no i want it i want it i want it right but when you actually kind of make it a privilege yes they tend to want it because it's a gift like now i'm privileged to have this but when you try to force feed it down their throats they're kind of like reluctant a

little bit because why do you want me to have this yeah interesting yeah it's just it's just all about being indifferent but not faking it actually going okay there's more people that want for example this is solar but this is a lot of different products for you, NFTs and crypto. There is more people that want this product and service than the actual industry can support. Yeah, but it's not faking it, but it's strategic. Right. Which is not technically faking it, but it's a strategy. Yeah. strategy yeah i mean if you just have a kind of abundance mindset where it's like look once you've i i call salespeople or mainly entrepreneurs i call entrepreneurs magicians

yeah because they make magic out of thin air absolutely you know i mean it was figured out because i was crazy enough to think i could do it i have people all across the united states that families now they make over six figures they They're happy. They're successful. They're kids. Just because I had one thought. Now, those people made it happen because they're incredible people. But how do you coach them up or do you coach them up? Like crazy.

Yeah. So just pick and choose. You kind of know the pick of the litter. Well, at the beginning, yes. But what I've learned in scaling a company is growing a company is it's not taught anywhere. And you have to learn systems. You have to learn processes. Yes.

And if you operate off of motivation, you're f***ed. Literally. And so the trick is, is we have every single system, every single week, there's pre-schedules, there's pre-processes, there's systems. Everyone knows where they're supposed to be, what they're supposed to do, what the standard is, what the metric, how many calls you're supposed to make. We've got to the point now where I remember at first we were just on a little Google sheet and like, what if we just mark the ones we set green? It's that dumb at the beginning. That's how I started. Right. And

you all started like that, right? And then to to now i know how many calls you made outbound i know how many inbound i know what you said and now we can even get to the point where let's say you set an appointment you're like hey grant um i don't know if i set that right they call the rsm right the regional salesman like hey holden i don't know if i set this right can you listen that recording they listen back to it hey you got to answer it like this, this, this, this. Wow, so you're critiquing their cause and fixing it. It used to take me six weeks of someone burning $10,000 worth of marketing and lead that we can figure out in five minutes. So what happened after the first year?

So when did you realize, okay, obviously you made seven figures after your first year. But then that next January, let's just start from there. What was the process then? Like what happened? So it was all about scaling and realizing that it felt like something like, oh, we're all just going to go try and make money. We're doing the same.

I had to become an actual CEO. I was a glorified regional manager, director of sales that handled accounting. And how did you become a CEO? What was the mindset? What what shifted? Why did you read anything or you kind of just woke up on January 1st? I'm like, OK, CEO. Yeah, that's a good question. Right. So what I would say is I had the qualities of a great CEO leader. I knew what I was doing, but a CEO has to create systems and processes and different things. And

what I'd say is I just studied the best CEOs. And what I learned is the best CEOs could literally disappear to a desert or to some Island for two months straight. And the machine is still working. Wow. Absolutely. And I had my hand in everything because one early on i had to start up i bootstrapped it i had no investors i'm the only owner but then also at the same time i was the best at it right because when it's yours you're the best at it you know how to do it i've been through i figured it out. But you have to invest and hire very intelligent people and let them do their jobs. And you don't realize how much energy you're wasting on mindless tasks that don't matter. And how was the hiring process?

Like, what was that like? Like, we're finding your. Were you the one hiring? Yeah. At first. At first. But by the time this happened, we had two round interview process. First with like a team lead level level person, and then the regional manager. Occasionally, I would do ones if it was an important hire when it came to operations, finance, project management, I was definitely on the final say of it because I was working early on. I was working with them a lot more. But sales, I trained my sales team. I had an admin that would filter through resumes. She learned exactly how I

think. So she knew how to get a hundred resumes and break it down to 20 and then direct it to the right managers. They go through the entire process. So I just checked my phone. I go, okay, cool. We got 10 interviews lined up today. It's done. It's a process. And how long is each interview? About 20, 25 minutes. Oh, quick. Yeah. We do it via Zoom. And we're just looking for certain trades.

So that first month, how many people did you hire your first month? Well, I guess you interviewed the first month. When I started scaling. So the second month, yeah, when you started to put people in position. So early on, we scaled organically. Right. And that's when I knew I was like, okay, good. I might be kind of good at this. Right.

We kind of know what we're doing is if you're a good salesperson or it's just like you guys know each other right y'all are studs you're great at what you do yeah when you're an a-type performer you're really good at what you do right you're going to tell your friends you're likely have other people who are also talented so i started having really good reps going man i love it here do you mind if i refer one of our sales guys that i worked with at x place or wherever i told him about it he's super interested and we started kind of growing organic so the employees hired for you too early on yeah and then we incorporated systems to where we're on deed and we have all these job boards all over the place and we're getting 500 to 800 applicants a

week so how big are you now as far as employees? So we're around 45 ish people, um, total. Right. Um, we're trying to scale and grow to a hundred plus. And in, in the last six months, you're still in Houston, right? Well, I moved to, I moved to Austin. Oh, you moved to Austin. Yeah. I'm in downtown Austin.

Austin's a good place right now. I like Austin. Yeah. Food's good. He said it's great. Young people there. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's, um, there yeah yeah yeah so it's um so is that community they're building out there real um as far as elon well he's building elon moved out there yeah he but he's not there much because what is he building out there what is the name of the community the super factor for tesla no no they're actually building a community i didn't hear about it are you sure that's an awesome because i heard that they're doing that in the star base where the star star is that's that's by south ponder island or not say i can't remember what the city is that they have down there but i think it's for where spacex is yeah yeah yeah yeah it's hard to find land in austin man it's more expensive than la did you get in at the

right price when you moved there so i've i've focused all my money towards um towards my business so you know i just run around i don't think about it i can break my lease anytime i want right it's just me smart and so long term you said 86 of businesses lose money or break even why do you think that number is so high in the hard yeah it is it's hard 86 man it's tough that's crazy yeah it's tough you got to have a certain mindset you got to be like you say you got to be crazy you have to be obsessed and the fact that you got to give up so much social life obviously love life no kids you don't have any kids no i mean he sacrificed a lot a lot yeah to have what he has yeah and you and you have to put yourself in a position to be able to do that right and um what's what's so difficult about

entrepreneurship you guys understand this more than anybody is that if you're perfect if you do everything right you still can fail yeah it still may not work and and there's no i made it situation unless you sell a company for a good million dollars but besides the point we're i'm different than i was last night. I ate something different. I saw something different. You guys, the same thing. The market's different.

What's happening in the world with all this tech and AI and all these crazy things. Is it hard for you to date though? Are you, do you even date or are you kind of just? Yeah, I mean, so I've had a girlfriend

a little bit last year. He's had a little bit last year. Yeah. I had a girlfriend a little bit. That was not a priority a little bit last year yeah girlfriend a little bit i was not a priority was it well it's just what's hard about it is i would say is because i've met really really great girls that are amazing and i should want to be in a relationship you just don't have the time it's just hard man and and when you're an entrepreneur especially early on when you're trying to build your kingdom per se, nothing else matters.

And when you learn in life that it's unfortunate and tell me what you guys think about this is, you know, a lot of times the people that are around you, the girls that are around you is oftentimes because of who you are. And that doesn't mean they want to steal things from it. Not at all, but it's because you're ambitious.

It's because you're successful. It's because you, you know what you're doing. And, but those aren't bad things to be attracted to no not at all i would i'm more i like that women are attracted to those attributes than being attracted to someone who plays xbox and smoke so i mean it's not i'm not saying i think they should be yeah but at the same time people unless you're an entrepreneur you don't understand what it truly takes.

And Instagram makes it look like it's just out of the air. Oh, my God. Instagram sells entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship on Instagram is an island with two people kissing. Yeah. They make it look nice. They make it look nice. It's not nice.

I'm still waiting on my island. I'm waiting to go, Steve. Yeah, I can't go. I'm busy. You know what i mean so you were saying on instagram too now we're talking about instagram that you unfollow all the celebrities yeah so in so january so make the company's grown and done really well my social media has done well my podcast has done well but i wanted to this year completely recreate my business, my social media, the way I'm presenting myself to the world.

And kind of, I have this rule that every time I'm trying to get to another level, I got to scrap the bad parts and I got to completely change. And, um, what I did is I unfollowed all the, all the, any celebrities, any person that you just don't realize how much energy you waste on pointless things. And, um, but everybody has a blue check now. So it's like, yeah, everybody's a celebrity. 1499. Right. Become a celebrity today. Just for 1499. Right. So, yeah, I mean, I, I, I just focus and I'm'm like, you know, I don't even need to waste my energy on this. And I started kind of changing the way we do short form content. And I'd always put out a lot of my brand to look, how I want to be presented, what I want to be viewed as. And there's so much interesting things you learn

about short form content. And one thing I had one conversation, I was like, these guys are amazing, is they said, Grant, your videos right now, you've already built up 100, 200,000 people. And it's literally just you talking with a white banner that says the title and that's it it's because you have great messaging and you have credibility right but he

said what's interesting is short form content people's attention spans are getting shorter and shorter and shorter and they said the brain needs to be stimulated every about four to six seconds right to trigger dopamine help them want to keep watching that next clip and the next clip so if it's a clip of sean you're talking about nfts yeah and you're like what's the most important thing about nfts is this and this and the second it's five seconds in boom it's showing your nft project right and then boom it's showing you a b-roll clip of us sitting here and then boom it's showing a different angle of view. Just that increases the watch time,

which makes it go viral. And it could have been original clip, could have just been just you saying this most incredible thing ever and it gets no views. But because it's changing and different things are popping up on the screen, it's stimulating the viewers brain. Cause some current event videos actually put clips

in there yeah yeah it's it's just interesting you know and so yeah i mean i'm just trying to grow the grow the brand and help as many people as i can and nice and yeah i love that any closing comments and where people can find you yeah i mean you guys can check me out on uh instagram and tick tock and youtube at grant mitt and then i have a grant mitt podcast which is on spotify and apple uh podcast sick wayne follow me on instagram at the creator sean kelly here digital social hour thanks for tuning in see you guys next week