How I closed $103,360 in 2.5 months working part time

What would you do? 

I don’t have to imagine what this is like, because this is exactly what happened to me. 

Yet following this in 2 ½ months I closed over $100,000 in sales working 3 hours a day in an industry I had zero previous experience in. 

I will show you EXACTLY how I did this, using FOUR STRATEGIES.

How I went from $33 million to $0

I grew my last company to over $33.5 million in a two year period. 

My company took on an army of clients, our expenses skyrocketed, Covid hit, and the supply chain and shipping costs wreaked havoc on the company’s cash flow. Clients angry about the delays, sued us 4 times in federal court, 2 times in state court, and 2 times in small claims court. 

My company could not sustain the supplier delays, the monthly operating costs of over $300,000, and the legal fees all at the same time, so my company went down in flames, filing chapter 7. 

I owned no home. The one rental property that I had purchased with my own personal funds in 2018, I had sold and given most of the capital gains to my coaching company to try to keep it going so it could complete its service to its clients. 

I had no retirement. I had liquidated my wife’s and my 401K fund of $55,000 and deposited that into my coaching business in an effort to keep it going as well.  

I had no leftover Amazon income. Too busy leading a team who was building 978 Amazon stores for clients, I had stopped my own Amazon store and put my remaining Amazon reserves of $40,0000 into the company to try to save it. 

Even my one car belonged to the company. So after the company closed, I purchased a bicycle. 

The plaintiff's lawyer persuaded my bank to freeze my personal account, leaving me with no option to buy groceries, so I started selling furniture to pay for food. 

But even after my bank account was unfrozen, I ran out of money, utility bills were bouncing, and if that wasn’t enough, my sewer system clogged and flooded my bathroom. 

I even asked the trustee to hire a forensic accountant to go through all of my company and personal finances and see if there had been ANY wrongdoing–just to show the clients coming after us that I had hurt myself  financially trying to make their Amazon stores successful. 

The forensic team spent months going through all of the data and came up with…NOTHING. No fraud, no deception. Covid took my company down. 

But, in their magnanimous spirit of generosity, the lawyers persuaded their clients that I was hiding money under a rock in the backyard, so they continued to pursue me legally. 

I could not afford to fight the lawsuits, so I filed personal bankruptcy. 

I was flat out of money. In order to live, I needed to find a way to make money, and I had to make it fast. 

I had zero interest in returning to a 9 to 5. 

I didn't have time to build a company. 

And I needed to find a way to make a lot of money in a very short amount of time.

I scoured the earth for options. 

One day I was on 6th street in downtown Austin, a ministry I started where we share the gospel with people who are hurting. 

I ran into a couple who had just moved into town. They were looking for a church and so happened to run a roofing company. They said they were looking for people who could help them sell roofs and manage the replacement process with the insurance companies. 

Of all the options I had looked at, this would be the fastest path to cash. But there was one glaring problem: How do you make money in an industry you have zero previous experience in?  

I didn’t have time to learn. So I made a hard decision: I WILL LEARN BY DOING.

I dove in head first.

Strategy #1: Be willing to learn AS you do, instead of BEFORE you do.

I went to training sessions. 

I started watching podcasts. 

I created a list of terms with definitions. 

I filled up a Google doc with everything I could digest. 

I even set up my own CRM since I couldn’t afford to pay for one. 

And every day on my drive to south Austin to knock on doors, I roleplayed–out loud–selling the roof. 

But of all these activities the number one most important action I took that helped me learn lightning fast…was doing it. Knocking on doors. Talking to homeowners. Calling insurance companies. Writing up contracts. 

Nothing in life will teach you faster than straight up experience. 

Most people approach a new project like this: 

• First I need to get trained. 

• Then I need to get everything set up perfectly. 

• Then I need to think about it a little more. 

• Then I’ll start. 

I didn’t have that luxury. I needed to eat. 

But then I encountered a severe challenge. When you sell a new roof, paid for by the homeowner’s insurance company, it takes 2-3 months to get paid. 

Sales are great for making a lot of money. But I wasn’t going to operate too well if I had to wait 60-90 days to eat. 

Strategy #2: Pool your expenses. 

My family and I pulled a card from Asian and Hispanic culture by pooling our expenses. 

Let’s say you have family who live nearby, and you all are struggling to make ends meet. Instead of everyone living in their own house, paying their own separate mortgage, and footing their own utility bills, find ONE place for everyone to live, pool your combined expenses, and you can cut your living costs in half. 

I know it doesn’t feel very independent, but it’s just plain smart if you have the grace and humility to all be sardined into one place. 

But there was another issue: If you make just enough to pay for your living expenses, what happens when you lose your job? What happens when an unexpected medical emergency falls on top of you? 

Not only that, but I did not want to make money selling roofs, and then spend that money selling roofs, so that next month I’m making money selling more roofs. 

Five years down the road I would end up exactly where I started. 

That’s not progress. That’s stagnance. Robert Kiyosaki calls that the rat race. 

I needed to find a way to cover my living expenses while reducing debt and growing assets at the same time. 

Because my previous coaching company was an LLC, and because it made a lot of money before Covid started destroying the supply chain, I was still on the hook for the company’s income tax. Income tax on money that never entered my bank account. 

Welcome to sole proprietorships and LLCs: the tax liability passes through to you even if the income never does. 

This left me with an IRS debt of $146,701.

But there is a solution to this…

Strategy #3: Have each person who lives with you, generate independent income

Everyone shares in the expenses. But everyone makes their own money. 

This reduces your costs while expanding your revenue. 

So my wife and each of my adult children living with me, went out and got their own jobs. 

Their combined income paid the bills. 

And then anything I made selling roofs was income ABOVE our living costs, income I used to pay down debts and eventually will use to build assets that someday will make us money passively. 

Now when you start a new venture whose income completely depends on your success instead of a consistent and predictable paycheck, how do you decide what to do every day? 

Strategy #4: Decide what minimum daily goals you must achieve in order to reach your desired financial outcome.

Always start with my ultimate end goal: how much money do I want to make? 

Then work backwards from there to determine the actions you need to take with relentless consistency, to reach that goal. 

I knew my goal: a minimum of two roof sales per week. 

And I knew that conducting ten roof inspections per week would result in at least two roof sales. 

This meant that all I needed was two roof inspections per day. 

When you approach it mathematically, it’s so much easier to motivate yourself, because now you have a tangible goal to fight for. And even though you might not get paid for a few months, there is mental satisfaction when you achieve your preset goal. 

Every morning I rose at 5am, drove to South Austin, knocked on doors, and would not go home until I had conducted two roof inspections. 

Sometimes I won two inspections after knocking on only eight doors. Other times I didn’t get two roof inspections until I had knocked on 54 doors. 

It didn’t matter. I didn’t get to go home until I got my two inspections. 

After two and a half months of doing this, I closed $103,360 in sales. 

And it only took me an average of three hours a day, five days a week, freeing me to spend the rest of my time building a new business. 

I want to include a fifth strategy, because even if you followed the first four down to the last letter, they won’t do anything for you, unless you implement strategy #5: 

Strategy #5: Do it even when you don’t feel like it.

There were days where I hated knocking on doors. Some people yelled at me. One guy who turned out to be mentally insane put on brass knuckles while I was talking to him. 

This was all in the height of Austin summer, some days breaking 100 degrees—one day reached 108°. 

Even when you hate it, don’t stop.  

Self discipline beats intelligence and skill every single time. 

I don’t care how smart you are, I don’t care what business school you graduated from, or how many magna cum laudes you have on your graduation certificate. If you don’t have self discipline, you will join the myriads of people content to live an average life. 

But here’s the awesome news: You may not be able to change your IQ. You can’t modify your genetics. And you may not have the time or money to go get a business degree. 

But you CAN learn self discipline.