We may receive commissions for affiliate links included in this article. This is a sponsored post. Future Sharks makes no warranties about the statements, facts and/or claims made on this article. These are the opinions of the author. Read our advertising and contributor disclosure here.
Can you tell me the story of your prior successes, challenges, and major responsibilities?
Through a combination of timing, skill, work ethic and sheer luck I have been able to create multiple companies from thin air and turn them into multiple 6 figure and beyond businesses.
In 2013 I started my first brick and mortar insurance agency from scratch. It was a challenge and something that forced me to grow up fast and cut my entrepreneurship teeth fast.
With a great team beside me, I was able to elevate that business into a high revenue agency and set a standard by which many others sought to achieve.
Our use of video marketing and communication with our clients was what set us apart and allowed us to achieve and maintain new levels of success year over year.
During that time, I also formed another company, an industry trade association alongside friends and within 12 months, we had created the industries most sought out event. To this day, our annual event which nearly doubles every year continues to amaze a once dying industry.
Not being content with where I was, I wanted to venture into foreign waters and teach others what I spent 2 decades learning and implementing. That is how Made You Look Video Marketing was born.
Shortly after starting, having never done a mastermind, or a course of any kind, I was able to quickly see success, but more importantly, our students are seeing incredible results as they implement and execute.
That has been the most rewarding. Knowing that what I have learned and was doing inside of my companies wasn’t regulated to just me, but that it could be modeled, distributed, and scaled by others.
Along the way, I have had to learn very valuable lessons. I have had to be cautious with who I do business with and who I align myself with. I have also learned the importance of having a team. The term “entrepreneur” is so sexy and stylish, however, I have learned that the best and most successful entrepreneur’s don’t attack their goals alone, they are surrounded by a great team and understand the importance of delegation and accountability.
Can you tell me about a time when you almost gave up, how you felt about that, and what you did instead of giving up?
My first year in business was like most people’s foray into business. Hard, unexpected, and challenging.
2 months prior to opening my company, my wife told me she was pregnant with our first child. Not that I didn’t need anymore pressure, but I now had an exponential amount more placed on my shoulders.
I typically prefer it that way. The pressure has always kept me sharp and accountable. For the first 8 months of my company being open and having to reallocate new revenue to my team and processes, I had to take a 2nd job at night. I was doing what felt like humiliating work in being a process server in the lower income neighborhoods around the SF Bay Area. I would start my day at roughly 6am and end it at roughly 8pm. I would then get in my car and drive door to door at night and knock on strangers doors to serve them their paperwork.
It was dangerous. I often laugh with people when I tell the stories of having people come to their doors with big dogs, knives, or other weapons and threaten me.
I was doing what needed to be done to support a wife and infant at home, and I wasn’t going to allow my circumstances stand in the way.
It was a challenge. I saw very little of my family that year as I was trying to “hustle”. I often wondered “did I do the right thing?” “Should I go back to being a worker?”
Knowing that I could never return to that life, I was “ruined”. I doubled down and persevered past those few months of eating popsicles and popcorn for dinner, and after being patient and sticking to what I knew would pay dividends in my operations, I was able to come out on top.
➡ Looking to get featured on Future Sharks?
