The Code To Winning - HOW I TURNED $8 MILLION INTO $70 MILLION || JUSTIN BROCK || EPISODE 077

Episode Date: March 3, 2026

I sit down with Justin Brock, an extraordinary entrepreneur and United States Marine Corps veteran who skyrocketed his business from $8M in revenue to a $70M valuation in under two years. I first met Justin backstage at the Wealth event, where we had the chance to dive into his incredible journey—from his time serving in the Marines to building and scaling a high-performing company. Justin shares how the discipline, resilience, and leadership he developed in the Marine Corps shaped the way he approaches business, decision-making, and building winning teams.   As Justin and I unpack his story, we explore the key strategies that fueled his rapid growth—from implementing critical business guardrails to focusing on high-profit metrics and scaling leadership effectiveness. We also talk about the lessons he carried from the military into entrepreneurship, including accountability, mental toughness, and staying mission-focused even during high-pressure moments.   Whether you're navigating growth challenges, building your leadership skills, or aiming for your own nine-figure outcome, this episode is packed with practical insights that will inspire and equip you to level up your business

There's a lot of quick ways to make money that are talked about. And a lot of them center around an entire industry. But I think where a lot of people are making quick money isn't necessarily where the long, steady money is. So the quick money is in like selling AI content production to small businesses is one thing that I see happening a lot. It's a high margin, really low value business. Unfortunately, the business owners, for instance, are paying for it because they don't realize how little there is going on there. Right. And I'm not hating on it.

I have friends that are doing it that are making good money at it. But I don't think it would be long before, you know, other people come in and they're like, well, I'll do it this cheap and I'll do it this cheap and it'll dwindle the margin down. AI has staying power, but what premise in AI or what parts of AI have staying power? And I think that's evolving really rapidly. I mean, obviously the hosting or the server rooms are going to have, like the actual infrastructure of AI for sure has staying power, like, Invidia and meta and all of them are investing. heavily into that, Elon with Grok, like that's going to have state power.

I was just worried about put one foot in front of the other, build a better business, have more people doing more things better than they were doing them the day before, right? That was like always the goal. And that is tried and true, you know. The co-twinning insights you need today to seize the world tomorrow. We are here in the Sin City, Las Vegas. We actually also at Wealthcon, we have an amazing guest. I know many of you guys usually love the veterans that we usually bring within the podcast.

Today we actually have Justin Brock, also a serial entrepreneur. He's also got an 11 times a beta exit. So we're going to learn a bit more about the entrepreneurial part of things. We're going to learn about his journey and his experience as a veteran. Also, without further ado, the man, the myth, the very legend himself, Justin Brock. How you doing, sir? Good. Thank you for having me.

Thank you very much. I really appreciate the time you've made to sit down with the. I want to just kind of go into just a bit more about your experience and your journey as well, especially with the exit that you made in terms of that 11 times is something that most people haven't even heard of as well. Can you just walk us through your journey? How did you start and how everything went like for you? Yeah, so basically 26 years old, got out of the Marine Corps, and like I was talking here at

Wealthcon, I was trying to replace about a $60,000 a year income and somehow accidentally. made a lot more than that over the next 10 years, but you know basically just went down the path of trying to figure out how to do a little bit better every day. And through that path, I would learn a little bit of marketing. I would get exposed to someone through podcasts or an audiobook. And at each level, I would gain access or insight into another, you know, realization. And as you would, you would do better as you would hire team members and you would have, you know, Facebook ads actually work and you would have some sort of, you know, some sort of online success in some way hit certain income goals or income variables, you know, like when you hit a million or you'd have

$100,000 in the bank, you hit something. This new level of like, that's not real would go away. You know, it'd be like, that is possible. And so I think, you know, we, you know, we, we got to that exit by climbing enough levels to get in the rooms with other people that had had exits. And then even learning, what does it even mean to sell a business? Like, you know, it's not like coming out of the Marine Corps 26 or growing up in Marietta, Mississippi, I was thinking about one day I'm going to sell a business. I didn't know anybody that had sold a business or I didn't know anybody that I knew had sold

a business, you know, maybe there were some. But anyway, I think it's like actually much more accessible and attainable than people think. It's just that when you haven't attained anything like that or you haven't been around people that you know are real that are doing it, there's this like invisible barrier that exists. And it's not real, it's in your head, you know. For some people that barrier is as low as like making $100,000 a year at a job. Who does that? You know, nobody does that.

You're like, actually a lot of people do that, you know? And I've had employees like that where they thought nobody makes more than 60,000. I mean, we're from Mississippi. It's the lowest income state. And anyway, that journey, I think, is hard to encapsulate because it's one of just graduating little steps at a time. You know, yeah. No, that's awesome. And for our views that are very curious in the field that you were in, can you kind of elaborate a bit more within the industry that you were in?

Absolutely. So yeah, our business, you know, we're in the Medicare health insurance, life insurance world. So broadly it would be considered the life and health insurance world. More niche than that, we were in the senior market. So we did focus on people typically that were 65 plus, although we would help people that were younger than that. But that was where we focused our efforts. And we really wanted to be in the Medicare education space. So there's all these people that are turning 65 or they're getting, they're becoming disabled for some reason. And they get them. Medicare and when they get Medicare that's not Medicaid Medicaid's based on income Medicare is based on I've worked and now I either through disability or age rate Medicare but they have no idea how it works and so some of them either think that it pays for 100% of your health care or they think that they or they just have no idea right and so what we do is we either dispelling the myth that it pays for 100% because it doesn't pay for 100 It has an unlimited 20% co-insurance with it. And then it has no maximum out of pocket.

So basically somebody that had was on Medicare that had a million dollars in expenses could have a $200,000 bill. Well, they need to know that because that's a very expensive content, especially for elderly retired people that are probably on a fixed income. Exactly. So we based our business around that problem originally.

That was the primary problem we were trying to solve. It's like, how can we find these people, educate them on plans, educate them on their options and what will happen if they don't choose an option, and then help them through choosing what the plan was. That's all it was. It wasn't like trying to sell someone a product they didn't need. They were going to get something regardless. We were just trying to be the people that educated them appropriately.

And, you know, the reason we were able to get a high multiple of EBITA and sell the business is because we developed systems and processes, high quality marketing, and we were able to prove over a long period of time. we could scale that business. So when someone wants to come in and buy your business, one thing they want to know is, you know, they're buying at an EBITA multiple. And so let's say they're buying at 11x earnings

or 11x, you know, EBITA. And they might be trading at 15x. So they're arbitraging that 4x. But one of the other ways they make a lot of money is buying an entity that's gonna grow. Because if I buy an entity at 11x and it grows 20% year net for five years, it's actually now making double what I bought it for. So it's almost like I bought it for five and a half X. Makes perfect sense. So that's what they're that's what they want.

They want scalable. They want difficult to replace. They also want diversification of either marketing channels or products or geography. Like so that kind of recession proofs them from like, oh, this area got hit really hard or this type of marketing doesn't work anymore. Now this is not legal or something like that. So we got that because we had unique value propositions in the marketplace. No, I love that. And you know, it's crazy when you speak about all this thing. I was in Los Angeles yesterday also speaking to another person who sold their company 50 million. But when I was just, you know, on my way here, just thinking about there's multiple different founders historically that you look have actually made the perfect exit. And you look at those that should have done it a little sooner. I'm going to make an example when I say that.

I'll look at the MySpace. I'm old enough to remember MySpace, and you look at Blockbuster before it got taken out by Netflix and all that. And then sometimes you look at situations such as Instagram that got an exit, but it may seem like a good deal at that point in time, but we saw the fruition and the rewards and how it is right now.

It's almost like 687 times more valuable than back then as well. Absolutely. My question to you, that you feel like that 11X was the perfect. exit for you? I think that there was a, there was good timing. If you look at it from the angle that in the first 18 months we doubled our EBITA, then technically they also got a really good deal because we grew fast enough. But there are no given. So like it's hard to, it's hard to

sell and like regret anything, you know. I mean one, you know, that's such a, it would be such kind of a goofy thing to do, I guess, like knowing how well we did, right? You know, there's always more. But that's the whole point of selling. Like, if it was a given that you're going to grow, you know, forever, then you just never sell, right? A hundred percent. And so it's, it's all about locking in some level of success, taking some risk off the table. I was fortunate that we found a partner that would do 51-49. I think that, you know, for me, has worked out really well so far because I'm able to stay engaged. I feel like I still have a strong ownership structure. They have, because we've been delivering, they leave us alone for the most part and just let us

kind of run the business. As long as we're not doing anything illegal and we're growing fast, they're just kind of like keep doing what you're doing. So that's been good. But the, you know, to your point, some people do, you know, time it perfect. My sale was mostly motivated on my side by the fear of being the blockbuster or one of those examples where you missed the you missed the mark. You know, now, you know, I do think our industry will have another uptick where the earnings multiples will be good, they're still good right now, but we'll peak again to where I was at. But I do think I did sell it kind of a temporary peak. No, I love that.

The question I wanted to ask, obviously being a Marine, veteran right now. What are the experiences and lessons that you learned that you applied to being an entrepreneur and achieve the success that you gained? So there's a couple things that, you know, one, one, when I had jobs before I was in the Marine Corps, which were all teenage jobs back then, I would, if there was a music festival I wanted to go to and they wouldn't let me off, I'd quit, right? So there was no, it wasn't, I wasn't a hard worker when I was there, because I've always felt like I was a hard worker, but there was no like consistency and the Marine Corps you don't you can't quit that's not like an option

you're enlisted you have to stay right and so I think it created a structure for eight years where there is no world where I can't keep showing up and so put me into this groove and its momentum where even though I wasn't completely fulfilled in what I was doing there I mean there's certainly benefits to it but it was it was good in that aspect that it put me in a rhythm where the next time I had a career it was this and there was no giving up. There wasn't like this, oh, I'll just try something else. It was like, no, stay the Corps, stay the Corps, stay the Corps.

So I think that programming was really good. There's, there's, it's, it's, the Marine Corps, especially early on, it's very much about destroying mental limits. And so even in business throughout, you know, me coming, you know, past the Marine Corps, I think I stayed in that path of like, you know, find a ceiling of what you think you can do and blow past it over and over again. and that's been a very big rewarding experience.

I think that started in the Marine Corps, really. And probably the last thing I would say is attention to detail. I was in an operations role in the Marine Corps, and I had a lot of leaders that would fine-tooth comb everything we were creating or any report we were building or anything like that, and they made me have a very good attention to detail. I think it helped with my memory. It helped me not mess things up or miss big things.

And I think that helped me be more efficient over time. So I think those are probably the three biggest things for me that really is. Very, very powerful. And right now, if there's a founder out there probably like six, seven years in, looking for a potential way for an exit as well, what advice would you give them right now to prepare for that specific exit? Yeah. The big ones are, you know, key man dependency.

You know, there's a lot of people that talk about, you know, being SaaS-enabled helps you get a higher multiple. I don't necessarily think that is true anymore. So I would almost kind of warn against spending too much time on that, especially if you think you're going to, like, develop some sort of simple SaaS product, and it's going to somehow add to your multiple. Of course, it depends on the industry. But if I was looking to sale, I would be reading books. And there's a lot of these guys out there that talk about it. But I'd read these books about things like compound annual growth rate, deal structure, what EBITA multiple should be for different industries, like where they should be,

key man dependency, things that mergers and acquisitions attorneys look for. I'd read about quality of earnings statements, and I'd get my financials in order. I'd read about ad backs. So if I had with EBITA, when they're calculating it, there are things that you as a sole business owner will run through your business that after someone buys your business, you're not going to run through there anymore. Well, that's an ad back into your EBITDA, so you can increase your EBITA. And to some people, like, that all might sound obvious, but as you're going through it and

you're looking at all these acronyms and things, the more of that you know, the more you can, you know, get. And I would definitely hire an attorney in that. process that has been through multiple business acquisitions. Ideally at least or somewhere in your space but at least has been through business acquisitions so that they're very familiar with. I had I was very happy I had a great attorney just on my deal alone he made over $100,000 and worth every penny like you know the amount of paperwork that he was able to do and the amount of

risk he was able to educate me on in the process and advocate for me having having that is awesome and potentially even some sort of tax attorney ahead of time. You know, there's certainly some tax things you could do that I did not. So I can't give advice that I did because really I didn't prepare for it in that way. Had I prepared ahead of time, I would have probably tried to maximize depreciation on certain things in my big tax year. But of course, it's a lot of capital gains, and I'm not an accountant on that front, but I would certainly look to, you know, a tax attorney that is well versed in acquisitions and capital gains tax and how you could avoid some. But be careful of the crazy things that get people audited

to because there's some recommendations that are pretty wild out there as well. You know, the reason I'm enjoying this is obviously I studied financial economics, so the terminology using is something that we had to use in like, you know, accounting and especially in economics and we used the Bloomberg Terminal. I did my internship in New York as well. And I think that's why I'm also enjoying this because every time I, like the stuff you speak about is the stuff I listen to and at Lermozie or Cody Sanchez or often just the problem right now,

I feel like with social media, there's a lot of the gurus that just talk about go do a good job and I'm this rich. Just do it. There's an Aston Martin that, how did you get this Aston Martin? Yeah, yeah. I often like the practical things, how you break it down, how it's explained. I think it's why Alex did so well, you know. I mean, he just basically said, why is anybody just talking about all the hard stuff?

There's plenty of motivational speakers, you know, and he went out and did that. And it's kind of funny because I was prying through information one bit at a time to learn most, not that I know everything Alex does, he's a brilliant guy. But when I would read his books now, I'd be like, where were you 10 years ago? Because this was the blueprint. I was having a piece a little from this guy and a little from this guy and a little from, and you can do that too, and I still do that.

But Alex, he just laid it, he's laid it all out there. He explains it so simple, and it doesn't complicate it because I was even at the $100 million models, like, it kind of crashed in the release before I got my book, but like even the leads and stuff, that's what I've been using and try and, like, you know, help people to sell my tickets in terms of affiliate, all these different stuff.

It's like he simplifies it, and I just like, simplifies it. And I feel like right now with gurus just talk about how rich they are rather than explaining how rich they become. And it's like that's not the entire purpose, you know. And I think that what they're doing worked in the original Thai Lopez days, probably some of the early Grant Cardone stuff. And the thing is, I don't fault those guys that did that then because it worked. But now some of the people that are just trying to replicate what they did 10, 12 years ago, you know, 8, 10, 12 years ago, it's kind of like, come on, buddy, like you got to do something different. do something new, bring something else to the table.

And Alex, Cody Sanchez, I think those people are doing that. And there is like a new fresh group of people. And the needle moves. It's harder over time. You know, there's just no shortage of people wanting to put content on the internet. So you have to have the attractive character, be charismatic, but also bring high quality information and be very consistent with it. And that's, it almost requires all of that now to have a breakthrough in just general

like organic content creation. And are you currently in content creation as well? We do content creation. We have our niche audience and so our content creation is really geared towards keeping them engaged and then slightly grow and absorbing. We're never, we're not, we haven't taken a focus of like trying to grow into a large audience, you know, like that's kind of diverse because we feel like the content we put out while some of it could be broader.

A lot of it is very specific to the financial services industry or, you know, life and health insurance or Medicare, that kind of stuff. And so we don't want to like go overly broad and then they get inundated with that information and it hurt us algorithmically, you know, where they're like, what is he talking about Medicare all the time? And so we kind of focus on our niche. And I do think it's important though for people to understand that maybe that's one of the only ways to be successful in content creation is really find your niche in how much.

hone in on that niche. Yeah. And you can, with 10,000 followers on Instagram, you can actually do well if they're a high quality niche specific group of people. Whereas, you know, used to it was like, oh, I have to have a million followers. Well, why?

Like, are there a million people that, you know? And I'm not hating on that you can't, like, of course, like, you know, some of the broader topics. Like, you know, the Grant Cardones and the Tony Robbins and Alex Hermose, those are broad topics. And so casting a wide net and finding, the ideal audience is solid, but if somebody's out there and they've been like, I've been producing so much content

and it's the same framework and I'm not getting anywhere, maybe really master a niche and talk about that niche all the time. Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more. And I think that's what's been happening in this specific field because sometimes people are jumping in different kind of fields, because I listen to, I actually like trying to be very specific as well personally with my niche.

So what I've been doing, I was looking at people like Patrick Bed David. I'm like, okay, I really like the suit thing he does. You know, I want to try and like kind of go towards that. I'm like, okay, I like business entrepreneurship, but I also want to diversify like with people that have got like a military experience. Because I realize people just genuinely, like I have a big patriotic like base that like, from Utah and stuff that people like just love people that have served and, you know, and I've done their part as well.

But I feel tying that down is, is. It's also sometimes hard because the stuff you least expect, because I mean, I was flagged a few times in YouTube because people, like at first I was going for quantity rather than being very specific with like the quality as well because people would talk about how they make this, but there really is no substantial evidence in the remarks of how they made something specific.

You know, it's like I'm this wealthy, I'm this wealthy. I just went to go do some sales, I got this amount. And then YouTube just flags it. I'm like, why is this flagged? There's no copyright. And it's like misleading information. I'm like, wow. You know, so yeah.

I didn't know they were flagging for that. Like that's, that is interesting because, I mean, there's definitely a lot of it, you know. Like we were talking about some people before we, you know, we're recording in that, that just say things. And it's like, how? What's, what do you do, you know? And that's where the term grifter comes from. And sometimes that gets thrown at people that I don't think earned that title.

Like I've met Grant several times and invested in Carlin Capital and respect the guy. And I see people call Grant a grifter. Grant's actually built a, he's like one of the OGs that's built a real business around this stuff. I was defending him last night as well. I mean, he's built, you know, he's got the huge card on capital concept, the card on venture stuff. You can go in and decide if you wanted to knock on the merit of the business. Like, I don't like this aspect of the business, if you wanted to. I don't find hating on people especially helpful, but at all.

But Grant is, he's absolutely, you know, built a solid business and is real. So like, anyway, so that term gets thrown around to the wrong people. But there are some people that kind of do deserve it. Exactly. And I think that's why, you know, the problem is sometimes you get a lot of these social media people that are all trying to call people out. But it's like their entire job and purpose. So it's like sometimes you're talking to the wrong people, you know.

I'm not going to call out social media platforms that do that. But like it's the same thing. I'm like, I used to watch Grant before YouTube was even a big thing back back in the day. You know, I attend at the last 10x conference here I here in Vegas. the one last year also in Florida and many as well. That's one of the people I respect them most because he's been very consistent throughout his tenure. I want to figure out on your end, if somebody out there's watching

and maybe they're in a, they want to try and jump into something in 2026, a business or something that you feel like may have a high trajectory, what advice or what do you think is the next big thing? Yeah, so there's a lot of quick ways to make money that are, that are talked about. And so a lot of them center around an entire industry. So obviously AI is something that gets brought up a lot, right? But I think where a lot of people are making quick money

isn't necessarily where the long, steady money is. So the quick money is in like selling AI content production to small businesses is one thing that I see happen a lot. And it's it's a high margin, really low value business. And unfortunately, the business owners, for instance, are paying for it because they don't realize how little there is going on there, right? And I'm not hating on it.

I have friends that are doing it that are making good money at it, but I don't think it would be long before, you know, other people come in and they're like, well, I'll do it this cheap, and I'll do it this cheap, and it'll dwindle the margin down. And I kind of equate that to like,

if you're around when the first flat screen TVs came out, I'd go to Circuit City as a kid and there'd be a 15,000 on a flat TV and you thought you were in the Jetsons or something. And, you know, fast forward to now, You can buy a 75-inch TCL Roku TV for like $800 or something, right? So that over time, it's like, I can make it for this. I can make it for this.

And so you want, if you're looking for longevity, you look at what do, if you're going to sell a business, and maybe you're not going to sell a business, but either way, if you're looking for longevity or a business that has immense value, people will pay high multiples for net revenue generated in industries that have staying power. And so as I say that, of course, AI has staying power, but what premise in AI or what parts of AI have staying power? And I think that's evolving really rapidly. I mean, obviously, the hosting or the server rooms are gonna have, like the actual infrastructure of AI

for sure has staying power, like Nvidia and meta and all them are investing heavily into that, Elon with Grok, that's gonna have staying power. But there will be services within there. there will be spin-off businesses that have stuck staying power. But I think a lot of the low-hanging, like, gimmick-style businesses with high margin aren't necessarily where the staying power is. So I would just ask people, it's almost like more, it's, if you're trying to have a high

EBITA exit of a business, avoid businesses that you think are easily going to change over the next 10 years, and it's going to be difficult to keep the same net margins you have or just keep the customers over time. Focus on, you know, the tried and true businesses or something truly new and unique. Now, software right now, I do believe there is a software race. AI has made coding exceptionally easier. You still need software engineers, so to speak, but they don't have to be the same quality of software engineer you had before. you could have basically some smart kids, you know, that are technically inclined that through A&I now can create, can create a lot of technical, a lot of SaaS.

But there's going to be a lot of people that are creating SaaS that is relatively easy to replace or low yield. But then there are people that have built some of the biggest software companies in the world that follow the minimum, the, what is it, minimum viable product. You know, have you ever heard that minimum viable product economics? say, build the minimum buy a product. And I'll come up with like some examples of that. Bird's Eye or BirdEye or like some of these other companies that do reviews.

So now anyone that has high level has review gating or reputation management built into a high level, any high level system. You could go buy a white labeled high level system for somebody for $37 a month and just use their reputation management. And you have unlimited reputation management for $37 a month. Meanwhile, BirdEye is charging like $500 a month for a small business. for just reputation management without any of the additional services and people are still buying it so so it's it's kind of a conversation of you know you think okay this this this this thing is it viable long-term and it can sometimes like why would someone pay for that but then you have to think who are

these business owners maybe they will maybe the local plumbers will keep paying bird eye because they don't know that high level does the same thing for 37 dollars powerful yeah So I think it's difficult, you know, you just kind of have to make a gambling go all in. Like knowing exactly what industry, if it's, if it's, it's like knowing what lottery machine to put in the next, you know, dollar. Like I, um, all I can say is I, you don't necessarily know exactly where the value is going, but I know that you can make good money and almost anything. The variance of 10x, 20x, 30x, 30x, a million X, you know, because Tesla trades it 70 times, earned. and it almost went bankrupt out of the gate.

So like I, there's so much variance in that and who knows how much that's to do with brand or or long-term viability or being extremely early or or whatever that is. So trying to control for all those factors ahead of time is something that I didn't do. And I think in some ways it was helpful because you could be a little bit your, I wasn't worried about all that. I was just worried about, put one foot in front of the other, build a better business, build a better business, build a better business, have more people doing more things

better than they were doing them the day before, right? That was like always the goal. And that is tried and true, you know. I don't think Elon Musk would tell, if you went back in time and you said, do you think you'll be worth $500 billion? I don't think he would believe that. That just happened.

And I think it also goes in what you said. you have to kind of go in because you've seen people that still make six figures by being an employee working at like Wall Street or something or like, you know, some Mar-Parr companies are very okay with plateauing and just being okay with making. I mean five to ten billion, like a million dollar in revenue a year. Like I think it just depends on how focused people are because right now, especially like with the generation that we're in, it's just very impulsive. It's always about the get rich quick scheme.

It's about I need to get the next dollar. So people just jump in one thing, jump in the next thing, jump in the next thing. And before you know, there's a zigzag and lack of direction. Because this is the capital of capitalism. Like the United States, in terms of economy and potential room for growth, it makes the most millionaires.

It has like the biggest economy. So opportunities are always going to be there. It's about capitalizing on the right one as well. Would you agree with that? Yeah, we're in the innovation engine of the world. And, you know, I think, I think too, like if you're looking for the highest potential return, it's going to be on the riskiest stuff, you know. Because like, you know, the investors that invested in companies like Uber, for instance, I don't know if anybody's, if you're watching this and you haven't watched Super Pumped, it's a great show with Joseph Gordon Levitt where they've taught.

It's very pretty accurate about some of the origin story of Uber and the things they were going through. But those investors that float something like that are floated Facebook when it first came out. Like those are like Hell Mary's, you know, because they're one other guy coming in and beating them to something away from being a complete flop and losing millions of dollars. Or tens of millions or hundreds of millions, right? So like those returns come from Hell Marys. But you could build a landscaping business and like Mo Yard. and have a $100 million business. I mean, like, you know what I mean?

And that's, it's tried and true. Grasswood is not going to stop fucking growing. You know, or, and that's why the service industry, like HVAC and plumbing and all these things have been doing so well, because there's like, these are not things going away. AI is not replacing that right now, you know. Maybe 100 years from now or whenever, I don't know what that timeline looks like, but right now, when,

When my air conditioner doesn't work, there's not a robot that's going to show up at the house and fix it. I need a man that knows how to fix the damn air conditioner, right? And it ain't me. So, you know, so that's not going anywhere. And I think that that's where that's where most people that are looking for an opportunity should be. The people that are going to build the next $10 billion tech thing, they're not, they're doing a passion project. Mark Zuckerberg, I don't think, was trying to be a billionaire. I'm sure he's okay with it, you know, because I think he had an ego, and I don't think having an ego is bad.

But, you know, Elon Musk, I don't think he's trying to be a billionaire. Those people were trying to do something amazing. They were just, they were in this like, I'm going to solve this problem. I want to, you know, and that's where that type of stuff comes from. But if people just are down to earth and they're like, hey, I can be, like, what is for sure attainable? You can build a $100 million landscaping business. You can build a $50 million landscaping business. And to your point about the mom and pop or the small businesses,

I just want to get to here, and that's good. I think that's true. I think that's awesome. I was talking to one of my good friends, Matt Timmon, the other day, and I said, I don't really don't really get why there aren't more billionaires. Because we started thinking about it. I was like, it's not. I wanted some condescending, but like for all the people that make $50 million or $100 million,

Everything comes into focus. And so now everything is just about scale. So to reach a $1 billion network, not $100 billion, but like to reach a $1 billion network, for all the people that did reach $100 million, it's not, it isn't that crazy anymore. And so why aren't there more? And his answer was comfort.

And so, and I think that's true. Like somebody that built a $10 million business and they're like, this is far beyond what I thought I could do and I'm comfortable. And so everybody's just, has to decide where they're comfortable, you know, and what are you chasing? Am I chasing, you know, I know I was watching something that Grant wrote one time, said something about, um, he had to quit. He's inspired by the big yacht that's bigger than his in the Mediterranean. He had to quit

chasing being the biggest. Like, I can be on that journey, but it's very likely a never-ending journey. I mean, I wasn't born an oil sultan in, you know, Saudi Arabia and or an oligarch from Russia or something, you know. So like there's there's always going to be that. And so you have to decide what are, you know, if you're on the journey to and you want to hit that billionaire moniker or you want to be a centa millionaire or you want to sell a business for 20 or 30 million dollars, that's all great. But my story is we've made 90, like we calculated when I was writing today's speech. I've made $92 million in about 11 years to me personally. And I did that. with the initial attempt to make $60,000 a year.

I wasn't trying to make $92 million. I was trying to solve a problem. I got to take care of my family. And then in the endeavor of that problem, I wanted to solve another problem. And then it became, now there was a point where it was like, wow, I just built something far more valuable than I ever thought was possible.

But for people that like me, that are, I think that are, that have a level of, of normalcy to like we there it's not like I'm some sort of tech savant or something I'm a normal guy the the the journey just had to be something where I can I can manage and be self-aware and put one foot in front of the other every day now worked really hard for it and was obsessed but short of obsession and like a desire to just build and help people that's all I had and parlayed into that and so for most people that are trying to do that it's doable but just do it by putting one foot in front of the other.

And so it comes back to like there's all those gurus that are saying just get shit done, just do shit. And while that might be annoying, it is true. You know what I mean? Like it is true. Like, you know, a lot of them are right. Just do something and do it a lot. And don't try to be, you don't have to be the, I wasn't a guru.

I was making, we got to making millions of dollars before. the only people who knew me were elderly people that were 65 plus. I had a lot, all my friends were 75 and 80, and they were customers, and they were in Northeast Mississippi. That's who I had become known to. Eventually, it became agents, too, and we developed the bigger network in that world, and amplified things, but some people were, like, so worried about being the social media influencer that they're missing the market, that most of the people that had the wealth to parlay,

And like Alex is a great example, you know, he wasn't focused on being a fancy influencer until he had already made, I think, $100 million. Exactly. Then it was like, okay. And I still don't think the goal now is fancy influence for him. He just realized at some point, like the attention at scale would do what he was wanting to do that would fulfill his goal, some of his goal. And he's now like the algorithm, like anything he posts because people just like and appreciate

like the organic and authentic way and how he approaches stuff. It's just so rewarding because you have all these years of nobody doing that. Everyone just talking about how fancy and rich they are. And Alex's like simplifying everything. Listen, you can do this thing by just doing that. You're like, what really? It's that simple. It's like, is it that simple?

Yeah, just do that thing, do that thing. It's like, wow. And then he just breaks it down. And I think that's very important. But it goes back again to what Grant Cardone said. I think he said, 10 million. is a new one million. And I think I watched another interview.

I don't know if you follow soccer so much, but there's a soccer player, Christiana Ronaldo. So he was in an interview with Pierce Morgan, and he said, listen, you want the accolades, you want the Champions League, you want to be the best playing

in what you want to be, all these stuff, it can easily be done. And he stands up as like, he has the blueprint. Just work and put in all the hours. And you look at Elon Musk as well when he was just sleeping,

like 21 hours and all these different days. Everyone can achieve whatever they set their mind to, which goes back again to what you said previously, you have to go 100% in. And I think maybe not. The reason they don't is comfort. Like Matt told me, it's like it's comfort, you know, and that's like, I'm okay with it. You know, like my employees, for instance, I know that that's not, their goals are not aligned with them.

Their goals are, their goals are aligned with the goal of our business, but their goals are not the same as mine. And they, they do want some level of comfort. And I want them to be comfortable. I want them to have, you know, the life. that they want to have. But if you want to go out and be this, you know, crazy thing you say, it gets to a point where, like, and so, and I talk about it, I watch a lot of content. Like, you're putting out content that will be helpful and help people. But here's how content works. You find the creators you want and you watch a little bit every day. But you don't, I've met

people that will watch six or seven hours of content today of like help content, information content. And I'm like, that's undigestable. Like you watch one, you know, I'm going to listen to a podcast while I'm in transition here. I'll listen to an audio book when I'm in transition here. I feel the voided time with that. But you got to be careful about like not taking the time to take the information I just got and apply it or the motivation I just got and apply it. And And it's kind of, and this goes into like a David Goggins thing, but like the way he talks about, you know, he doesn't run, when he does those long ultra-marathons, he doesn't run with music or anything. And he talks about how when the music stops, who's going to be in my head, right? And so that motivation is like, I need a little bit of, like, I want an inspirational story or I want that. That's great.

But somebody's got to go do the boring, monotonous stuff every day over and over and over again. Like when you're, if you're doing other things behind the scenes, like booking with, with guests, or, you know, running ads to get that out there, or running ads of content to try to get more viewers, or there's so many things behind the scenes that are the things that make everything tick. And everybody only sees the in front of the camera, right, or the thing that's obvious. But you've got to, you got to fall in love with the shit that nobody wants to do. and just know that that's what sets you apart. And some of that is learning the marketing budget, like I was talking about here in WealthCon, learning the lifetime value of the customer that you're getting

is minus the cost for acquisition is the profit. And then you start backwards engineering to a marketing budget and you try to figure out how much can I spend to acquire this customer. And if I don't have any money, I either need to go get somebody to invest some money or I've got to go up and beat the streets until I can find some money to then,

and then I've got to risk the money. to see if I can get something to work. And then I run out of money and I gotta get some more. And that's just the way it is. And at some point, if you do that enough, you'll hit a home run or a grand slam or hell, a third base hit, but you're gonna, you're going to have success eventually

if you try enough stuff and you keep going out there and coming back to bat, you know, and some people that might be sooner than it is for others, but whoa, you know, wang, way, way, like who cares, you know. Goes back again to chess, yes, Do it. Do it. Make your dreams.

And the thing is, there is no excuse anymore because Alex wrote those three books and they tell you how to do everything. You know? It's crazy. I carry the, they literally in the hotel room with me. All three of those hundred million dollars are, it's like the blueprint of everything I do. It's the first thing we said when you woke up is like, dude, Alex Ramose, I'm like, that's

like one guy I listened to religiously, you know. I have like my Bible book or mom, but I got to listen to Alex Amosi, you know. Yeah, if he was there early on, I don't. I don't know, it might have been information over, like, you know, when, I don't know if you're a religious guy, but they, you know, they say that it was actually harder for some people to be, to find salvation when Jesus was right in front of them. And I don't, I'm not like making Alex Jesus, but from that salvation, but in the form of like marketing and biz ops, like, it almost might be that he's giving you so much information that some people might struggle because it's all right there. Like there's not like I was piecing it together and maybe that actually helped. So I don't know. Maybe if I'd have had it all right in front of me at one time, it had been too much information overload.

Buy a business, invest in a business or start a business. If buying a business is an option, you know, it would depend on the business for sure. Starting a business from the ground up has been very rewarding because every team member that works for me started with me and we've poured into it. them and it's very rewarding. So it's also very difficult, you know. But buying a business, I do believe has its pitfalls as well. But I think most people would tell you to buy a business. I would say starting a business and then eventually buying some smaller businesses to grow your EBITA faster because we did do a little bit of that. It wasn't like a huge chunk of ours, but we probably had an extra million in EBITA from buying some smaller competitors and kind of

rolling that into what we did. It can definitely amplify. And once you have a, once you build a business that can serve the needs of those other business, you can amplify the profit from those. But in buying those businesses, I learned some other lessons too about like cultural clash and we've done it this way or we've done it that way.

So I don't think there's a perfect answer to that, but obviously if buying a business is possible, it certainly skips a lot of, you know, what if steps. Then would you say right now with any setbacks or failures that you've occurred, have they helped you and which failures or setbacks have you had in your experience and in your company as well? Yeah, we've had some marketing missteps.

I've had TV campaigns that I did for Memphis inner city, for instance, where I spent about $240,000 on television and got relatively no return or very, very, very. very, very low return. And, you know, sometimes you just go all in on some idea and it doesn't work out. But you learn from it. I tend to, as I'm coaching other people, use that information to guide, you know, guide our partners, which is another side of our business now. So I think that there's value even in that information. Other missteps, it is really difficult when you have a, So I'll say it this way. I'm perfectly okay with every mistake we made.

But if I was starting today, I knew everything that I knew, and it was today, I would do things differently. So you see what I'm saying? Like, it's not that the mistake is something I would do again. It's that I am okay with the ones that we did. Like even some of the hires we made. You know, there's some people that I hired that looking back, I'm like, I can see clear as how they were going to be a problem.

But at the time, I was excited about them. So I wouldn't hire them again, but pretty much all of them there was benefit up to as well. So I've told people that have been in our business for a long time that like, man, why did we keep that person for so long? And I said, we rode the wave, you know. We wrote a wave here, we wrote a wave there,

we wrote a wave here, and ultimately some of those people, you know, become bad fits. And the next time we're hiring, we look for, We look for different characteristics to avoid that, but we learned. We have the data. It wasn't clear to me then, it's clear to me now because I've lived it. So I don't regret them, but knowing those lessons if I was doing things over again, I wouldn't do the same thing.

Awesome. No, I really appreciate your time and thank you very much for the message you shared on stage and also joining us on set as well. The last and final question, because it's the coach. This is the coach-winning insights you need today to seize the world tomorrow. Everyone's got their own definition. But for Justin Brock today, what is your definition to winning? My definition to winning, probably go back to a common theme that I've said this entire time.

It is falling in love with the hard, monotonous, boring work that no one else wants to do and doing it over and over and over again as much as you can possibly stomach. Ladies and gentlemen, if you're curious and learning a bit more about how to try and find an exit in your business, someone who actually has 11x beta as well. This is the episode for you in terms of learning about business entrepreneurship. Justin Brock, great pleasure. Thank you, sir. Yes, thank you.