From near death experiences to the devastation of homelessness, how and where do we find the will to overcome insurmountable odds? And when we do overcome these challenges, how do we pass that story of survival onto others? Life on the rocks is that place where these stories are heard from those who live to tell them. And now here is your host Kyle Miller.
(00:22): Welcome to life on the rocks. So excited to have you on the show. Kevin, I'm super stoked to hear the story of yours, man. I've heard a little bit of it before, but I am really like, I've been waiting to hear the details on how this happened. So with that, why don't you tell us a little bit about Kevin and, and how it all happened?
(00:40): Kyle, thanks for having me on I'm I'm equally excited. I'm a serial entrepreneur. I started off real young, probably got a similar story to a lot of guys was cutting every lawn in the neighborhood, delivering newspapers. When that was a thing came at it. When I was in high school, I was already cutting. Like 30 lawns, saved up money, got to commercial lawnmower. Everybody was going to college and everything. But for me, I was like, I want to be an entrepreneur, but it was kind of a dirty word back then. This is 1991, everybody. And I grew up in a, a nice home, like upper middle class. My parents were born to Irish immigrants. So like education was a big thing, right? They were not supportive of that idea, but it's what I wanted to do since the only thing I really knew was cutting lawns. I had this idea, I'm gonna get all these lawns. I'm gonna have all these crews working and I'm gonna be playing basketball and chilling, but we all know that's not how it goes.
(01:40): No, no, it's not. so Fast forward, about five years on knee deep and cutting lawns every day and running crews and I was making money for sure. I wasn't getting rich, but I was making more money than my friends. A lot of more in college or, or out. And I, I made a mistake. I started comparing myself to people around me. I who maybe weren't doing that great. And you're like, well, I'm doing this and they're doing this. So, you know, I'm doing great. That's kind of the mentality I had. Right. But I had passion for being an entrepreneur, but not necessarily landscaping or cutting grass. So I never really had my whole heart into it. Yeah. So I was making money and bought a couple homes and stuff. So I was doing well. But then in 1998, I was doing a cleanup for somebody and somebody said, Hey, can you clean my gutters?
(02:37): And it was this old guy. And I said I don't know. I guess so. And then he said, why don't you just go up there with the, the blower blow 'em at out, there's a ladder over there and do it and I'll give you 50 bucks or something. So I went up there. I was nervous, even though I'd been on ladders, I went up there, I did it in like 10 minutes. And my whole, my a light bulb went off. I was like, all right, this is there's money here. And this was super fast. You know, this is a long time ago. So maybe you gave me $70. I was thinking I could get a hundred dollars for these and I could do 12 or 15 in a day and I'm gonna get rich. So right then I started getting houses a and stuff and it, and it worked.
(03:20): I was making money and I was looking to sell my landscape business. So I did sell my landscape business and I made enough, I was living really under my means. This is like 2000. I made enough that I, I could live for two years. Okay. So I had, I was like, I think I'm gonna do this gutter business, but I'm New Jersey at this point, the gutter season is really small. So I was like, I could go make 40 or 50 grand in this short period. And then, you know, I had some success by accident on some properties. I, I bought cuz there, you know, you buy it. I was, I was, I didn't even know what a bur was, but I was doing it. I was fixing it up with my brother at night. I was, I was doing electrical and. I shouldn't have been doing, but I was everything I bought and sold was making money. So I was like, let me flip homes. I started taking those type of courses, reading books. So I was doing a gutter thing and I was kind of the homes on a low level. Nothing like you're doing or guys are doing now one at a time, take my time, make 20, 30 grand. And I, and I was liking it. Then I had the idea of, I was driving down and I saw apartment complexes. And I said, what the hell am I doing houses for? I should be cleaning the gutters on those. That's when another light bulb went out. So I spent the next six months walking into 25. It was actually 24 places. The reason it was 24 is cuz I knew every time I walked into 24, I used to keep the numbers. I would get one customer.
(04:57): So I thought, okay, I'm gonna walk into 24 places a day. I had had the map quest. I had the, the roll out maps back then. Yeah. And I would go to these places. So that fall I had about 80 complexes. That was a lot. And it was yeah, but I had all these guys working for me. I was making money, but it was a hassle like, you know, customers were always like, come back and do this, fix this. And I was doing the, the real estate flipping too. And you know what happened in the early two thousands, people were making a lot of money on real estate flipping. So right. Even though I had the gutter thing going and I was making steady money, it was good. I started to keep my, get my eye off that ball. And, and I was thinking I out, I wanted to flip real estate. So I started doing that more and more. Now we're up around 2005, 2006. I was making a bunch of money, but I wanted, I was still in like kind of CD class areas, a lot of D a lot of D class, because I was kind of taught on that 1% rule. And in New Jersey, you, you have to be in basically in a ghetto to do it. Right.
(06:07): Okay.
(06:07): And all this that comes with being there every day was kind of wearing on me, dealing with tenants. I saw somebody can, I mean, it was crazy stuff going on. I say that like, it's nothing, it, it, it me up for a little while. It was crazy.
(06:26): I had to get out of those those neighborhoods. I used to carry a gun. Yeah. Wow. In my car, driving down there and I'll never forget, I was driving die by one place. An addict walked out in the middle little street and then threw up and I was like no, I just need to get outta here, man. This is bad. So I know what you're talking about.
(06:43): I was making bunny, but my mom's like, you're going backwards. We worked to live here now, you and I lived in that town. I bought a, a little a townhouse. I had a nice townhouse. And she was like, you go all the way where we didn't wanna be. And you spend there. And half the time I was coming home at eight o'clock at night, you know, you're working on rehabs and right. And I was thinking, yeah, I'm doing this all wrong. And that was kind of like, I was reading art of the deal and all these Trump books before Trump was who he is now a politician.
(07:13): Yeah. It sounded so fascinating. So I was like, I gotta get in million dollar deals. And I had some, some money and I knew how to get money. I knew how to get access to credit lines and stuff like that. It was, they were giving it away back then. So I started doing kind of some higher end things like a million dollar home where I've tried to buy it for 800, put a hundred in itself for 1.1. I did a lake home and I did a condo conversion, a 2.1 million condo conversion. Where was, it was two apartment buildings and a great, a great town. And I was gonna convert 'em to condos. The problem with this cow was it was just me. I mean, I had people doing the work and I was trying to do 'em all at the same time. Like, I didn't wanna wait. Right. Like, Hey, do this over five years. Like, no, no, no. I need to do this all in like eight months. So I had all these things going and then the hit the fan in early 2007, I had this lake property, which we had a leak in the oil tank and it got in the water.
(08:20): Okay. So The EPA got involved and it cost me, I don't know, $125,000 kill killed all the profit and everything, but it took me like six months to get rid of that property because they have to come check it. So I'm bleeding money on that one. I had this other home. It, it was just cost me a lot more. I was kind of neglecting it. I was like putting my focus on this condo conversion. Cause I had a lot of money in there. I had basically all my money in that job. Right. Personal. I like, I went balls to the wall on it. I knew when I, when I was getting it, I thought to myself, I remember the day I said, if this goes sideways, you're, I'm gonna have some problem. But I did it anyway. I was going against what I had done most of my life, which was be not so much risk averse, but I like, I'm a numbers guy and it has to make cent.
(09:14): So when I was buying those C and D class properties, I always thought, well, I'll flip 'em, but I could always, they're three families. I can always rent 'em at the 1% rule. I'm safe. And I was, it always worked right now when you're doing a condo conversion, you're buying this. Like I couldn't rent it because people would rent those units for 2,500 bucks. But I had hard money on it. Right. There was no way it had to work. Right. And then, you know, the real estate thing went and I was a little green to it because they, they came in, they considered me new construction. They jacked up my taxes. So the, the comps, my, my property was more expensive was a little bit better. But my tax is, were gonna be like $12,000 a year. And everyone else's was like 6,900. Yeah. I mean, that's a big difference for a home buyer, right?
(10:04): Yeah. So I couldn't sell the properties and I was just in over my head and then I, I needed to sell a couple properties to get money, to finish the other ones. And then, you know, 2007 that everything was coming, you know what happened in 2008? Yep. So I kind of got wiped out. I started selling these properties. I was kind of beating what happened in 2008. For the most part, I saw it coming from a mile away. Yeah. The reason was because all these people who I had been telling about real estate for five years, six years, my friends who had no money, no savings, no credit we're buying homes. Right. And I was like, wait a second. This is, doesn't make sense to me. These guys, like they have no credit and no money. And they're getting homes like that. I've been working my off for 15 years to buy.
(10:52): Right. So I was just like, this gonna hit the fan. And of course it did six months later. So I was also married, really unhappily, married. I was living in Delaware in a, in a really nice house. I was going back and forth to New Jersey to flip my properties and everything. I was binge drinking at the end of the night, go over, my friends, stay on his couch, kill 12, 15 beers, get up, do the same thing. It was kind of like a mess. Yeah. And then sometimes I would kind of like, I knew that I was being a mess, but like I would rationalize it with like, I'm making money and I'm like, I'm living the dream. I'm gonna end up with millions doing this. Just gotta stay the course. But like, I wasn't living like my truth. Like I was becoming somebody else like this drunk guy who, you know, like binge drinking, waking up with the biggest hangover late for meetings to meet contractors. Right. It, it was kind of a mess. Right? So I'm in this relationship. I wanna get out of it. We decide to get divorced. The real estate hits the fan. Everything's a mess. I'm in way over my head. I'm embarrassed. You know, this happens, you know, it happened three months before you tell anyone.
(12:17): Right.
(12:18): I remember calling my mom and I told her She to this day, she's very involved in my company. I'll get to that. But she just like, you know, she's your mom. I said, mom, I'm like, I'm really screwed here. Big problems. And she was kind of like, just, she couldn't believe how deep I got in. Right. You know, I had like a, like a 1.2 million in, in debt.
(12:45): Right?
(12:45): Meaning like if I sold everything at, at, at a, a discount, I was gonna be like over a million in the hole. Gotcha. Because everything was selling at a dis, you couldn't do it. Right. So she's like, you gotta talk. My sister's attorney's like, you gotta talk to your sister. My sister hooks me up with a bankruptcy attorney of getting divorced. I got basically no money coming in. So that's when I moved back to New Jersey at my brother had a two bedroom condo, but one of the rooms was like filled up with junk. So I was sleeping on his couch. I told him, Hey, I need to sleep here for a little while. I'm gonna rebuild this. I'm gonna do this, but it's gonna take me a year or two. I really believed, like I could fix it in a year or two. Right. I end up getting the bankruptcy. But a lot of my stuff didn't get discharged for whatever a reason. And I had credit lines and, and some of this stuff I had put into real estate and they didn't feel that that should be discharged. So I ended up with like, I ended up 480, $3,000 in debt. Okay. Including that I had got my brother into a deal with me. And I had 84,000 on a credit line home equity line that he pulled out. So that I'll include that.
(14:01): Okay.
(14:01): So I knew I had to pay that back too. Like, it's my brother and it's I told him to do this and yeah, you can imagine people weren't really impressed or happy with me. You just, everybody. It was just like, oh my God, what are we? He wasn't even mad at me because he told me one day when I was on his couch, he said, you know, everybody's pretty mad at you, but I'm not, I know you're gonna fix it. I know you're not gonna leave me hanging. I, basically, I believe in you. I needed that at that time. Yeah. And this is, this is the rather that, that you're sleeping on the couch with.
(14:36): Yeah. Now. Okay. I got one he's he's you know, like my best friend, brother, he, he did it, everybody else. It was kind of a public embarrassment. I have to say because my friends, my cousins, everybody knew me as this kind of like entrepreneur guy who did well. And then all of a sudden I was doing the flips and you know, I was driving a night, a Mercedes and I was doing really well. Everybody was thinking, this guy did it better than me.
(15:05): Right.
(15:06): And I kind of wore it. Like I had a chip on my shoulder because I always wanted to show people not going to college and all this stuff. I'm right. I know what I'm doing. Right. I love education. So it wasn't against that. I was always reading books trying to learn, but always trying to learn on my own, never a mentor, which was a big mistake. So I, it was a very public embarrassment, but it, it kind of was worse because, so my banker attorney, of course, you know, I'm an entrepreneur. I'm like, I'm gonna be ha he's like, you're gonna be a half, a million dollars in debt. That's not gonna get discharged. You're gonna have to get a job. And I was like, no, no, I'll just start another business. He was like, no, in order to kind of get this to where we want, be a little humble, go get a job. And he was like, what are you really gonna start at this point? Anyway, you have no money.
(15:53): Right.
(15:53): I believed him. So I went and got a job. A friend of mine hooked me up with a, to sell, sell insurance.
(16:01): Okay.
(16:02): Kyle, I had never had a job in my life. Now I'm 34 years old. Yeah. I'm broke. I'm on my brother's couch. I'm still binge drinking three days. Cause I'm I'm miserable.
(16:15): Right, right, right. I'm getting
(16:17): Divorced, which I'm actually kind of happy about that. But the crazy thing about the divorce was the house we lived in. They were taking my equity outta that as part of that bankruptcy.
(16:28): Okay. But
(16:29): I put $130,000 on that house. It, she was in dentals. It was my money in my house. Right. She's still in that house to today. It like, she was in this big house. I'm on my brother's couch. I was pretty angry too.
(16:43): Right.
(16:44): So, and when I started the insurance thing, I'm gonna tell you, this is an embarrassing thing. It was $30,000 a year. That was the, that was okay.
(16:53): That was gonna be the pay. When I got my license, it bumps up to 35,000. Of course I was doing that because if you're an insurance salesman, it's kind of, I guess, limitless on some levels. But he was like, you know, we don't let people really go out and sell for two years. I just really believed I'll go in there and I'll change that two year will all make it happen.
(17:15): Right. Right.
(17:17): So all this said and done, I'm on my brother's couch. I'm grinding this job out. I go into that insurance thing. Oh, I lost the whole gutter thing and everything because I, I told you when I was doing all that stuff with properties, I didn't, I couldn't even get the gutter's done.
(17:34): Okay. Like it was, I had to just like, and my attorney was like, whatever you get, they're gonna take right. When they get it anyway, you're doing it for free. So I kind of like, let it all go. And I had kind of run it into the ground by being thinking like, oh, I'm Trump, I'll just do real estate. I don't want these Karens complaining to me about gutters and all this. It was a huge mistake. So I'm doing this insurance job. I'm staying there till nine or 10 o'clock at night. Everybody in the buildings like this guy is he works, man. He does. So I really did 10 take off within that. And maybe there was 125 people there. I moved up really quick, started doing sales, making money. I got it going pretty quick. And you know, my, I was setting my limits so low.
(18:21): All I wanted to do was be able to pay my bills, get off my brother's couch. I had a girlfriend, I wanted to take her to dinner. Like, I didn't wanna be this broke loser. Right. It took me like really Kyle, like a year and a half, two years to get there where, but to get to a point where I had like some flow of money and like, I wasn't always stressed about your phone bill and. Yeah. I had never in my life ever been stressed about money. Cuz when I was cutting lawns in high school, I always had five, $600 in my pocket. I had money in the bank. I was kind of killing it for an 18, 19 year old. Right. I had a cool car. I had money. I was like the first guy to go get his apartment at 19.
(19:07): This was totally different to me. Right. And I, I owed tons of legal stuff and I had this debt on me. Right. I was getting my wages at the insurance thing, garnished. So when I say I was doing, I was getting back on my feet, all I was doing was like a baseline. Right. I wasn't getting, getting rich. Credit's up. I couldn't even switch my phone carrier. I went switch from sprint to T-Mobile. They said no, really? So all that stuff with the credit personally, I never personally missed a bill on anything, my car, anything. But I did with the business. And I was tied to that. I had my name on stuff right. For those properties. So of course my credit got ruined so fast forward now, now it's like 2009, I'm doing the insurance thing. I'm starting to take off of that. I started, I was like, I gotta build this gutter thing back up.
(20:03): Right.
(20:04): So I would go in my car. I would write a list of the night before of complexes. I wanted call or management companies. I would go in my car and I would sit in the car in the parking lot. And I would cold call these places. I would purposely have my lunch from one to two. So that, cause if I had it from 12 to one, they'd be on lunch too. Right. Right. And I'd get people on the phone. You could get people on the phone still in 2008, nine can't now. And I, I would say, Hey, can I earn your business back? And then all these other people, I was just calling them, Hey, I wanna, can I bid on your stuff? And it's hot as hell in that car. I was so cheap. I was, I wouldn't turn the car on for air conditioning. I would leave the windows open.
(20:50): And I was calling these places and it was a slow bill. So I started getting them. I'm working this full insurance job. I don't have a van. I had ladders and I had blowers. I kept them in a friend of mine's house during all that bankruptcy. I sold off the couple vans I had and I started building on this. So what I would do is I would get these jobs. I would go to enterprise. I would rent a van for one day. I would put the ladder racks on them. Me and my brother would put them on. We'd get that van at seven o'clock at night. We'd say, well, bring it back tomorrow at seven o'clock for they'd charge you a hundred bucks for that van. We'd go over to my friends. My friend would come out. Yes we, my brother didn't drink. Yes. We would be having some beers. We'd put these ladder racks on. We'd put the ladders on the blowers. And I would call in sick to the insurance job or take a personal day. I'd go to the train station. I'd grab a couple guys who wanted to work. We'd go do this complex.
(21:53): Maybe I'd go get the, I'd get 15 or $1,800 for the complex. We'd do it in a day.
(21:58): Okay.
(21:59): I'd pay these guys cash with what I had in my own personal account. And then I'd wait on that check. And I would repeat that. So I always had capital pro problems too, because now I already was living kind of meager. But now I was sucking cash out to pay guys right. To come help me. Right. But yeah, these places take 60 days to pay sometimes. Right. You know, I set up a little LLC company. I was, I had a little insurance policy. They all, I was doing this full time and I was doing it. And then when the I loaded up a bunch, I got a buddy of mine who was outta work. I said, Hey, can you help me do this? We rented the van for a month. We got, and then we went and did like 15, 18 complexes all in like one week, two weeks I was still working insurance.
(22:46): He was doing 'em. I was showing up, I was the in sales then. So I was like talking to insurance, people, doing gutters. I was doing it all. It was, it was a grind, but I started building all that up. I ended up doing the insurance. I was making money. And then I hated the insurance. I hated being an employee and everything. And they were treating me not so well either. They were doing a lot of stuff with, like they said, you're gonna pay you 25% on this. And then they'd come back to you. And like, Hey, we can only do 14% because of some BS, it was driving me nuts. Right. So I kind of just decided one day on new year's I think it was 2010. We were going into 10. And I said to my girlfriend at the time, I said, you know, I'm gonna quit insurance next week. And I'm gonna go full time into this gutter thing and I'm gonna make a, I'm gonna make a million. And I'm not somebody who likes to tell people stuff.
(23:45): Right.
(23:46): And she said a, a million dollars, like in your lifetime, I said, no, like I'm gonna make a million dollars a year cleaning gutters. The reason I knew that is cuz I had backed in how many complexes I'd need. Right. How I would do it. Right. So I, I knew it was possible. Like there's a lot of money in 'em and there's big margins in 'em. She kind of told me, she was like, I think that you should do the insurance thing and just do it on the side. Like she was, she was a, a med student and we, she had done this residency in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. So I moved with her at this point now that was my first move off my brother's couch. I was still staying saving money. I was living really frugally. So we had this little, like a condo apartment and she had like no money cuz she was a med student. So I was basically paying for that place. So she probably was like, Hey
(24:39): Yeah, no, don't it up. So I said, no, no, no I'm gonna quit on them. But I'm not even really gonna tell anyone. Huh. I'm just gonna quit in my mind. So I think this is a good thing for anyone. Who's a W2 employee. It's not that you don't give any effort to those people. You just have to make that mental switch. Like I'm going all in on my dream.
(25:02): Right.
(25:03): And I might not tell you this week or a next I'll tell you, you you'll, you'll figure this out in the next couple months, but I'm gonna do for me now.
(25:10): Right?
(25:11): And that's if a person or an employer's good employer to you, I do believe you should just tell them straight up. But they were doing so much shady stuff with me. Oh yeah. They were doing all kinds of crazy stuff. I, I won't even waste time. They were, I didn't like it at, at all. So I decided, you know, I'll quit, I'll service my clients and stuff, but I'm not gonna make any effort for them. I'm gonna put all my effort in on this. So I started the next morning on a Sunday. And I was, I was going after these, I started building databases for complexes and stuff. I said, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna make a million dollars. And I started doing it. And about four months later they fired me from the insurance.
(25:54): Yeah.
(25:54): Which was fine. I knew that was coming. But now I'm still in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and I'm doing gutters and it's very seasonal there. So I needed to fill that gap during the, the warm months. So I was, I had this idea of doing and roof cleaning there's algae on all these roofs. So I thought that's what I'm gonna do. And I'm gonna do it for complexes. They all need it. And that's gonna help me make a lot of money. So I kind of got, this is a, a lesson you gotta stay zeroed in on what makes you money,
(26:23): Right? Yes.
(26:25): So I was still doing gutters, but I was putting a lot of effort on this roof cleaning and I was thinking, I'm gonna do both at the same time. And you kind of do that thing where you chase two rabbits and you don't get either of them. So I was making money. I was living and I was doing stuff, but I wasn't, I definitely wasn't getting rich and I wasn't on a pace to make a million dollars. Right. So I did the roof cleaning for like a couple years. It was paying bills. I was still doing the gutters during the seasonal times. And the equipment's the same. You have ladders and trucks. So it was all run through the same company. But then one night now it's like 2012. And I said, you know, I need to figure out how to do this gutter thing all the time. And I, I was making money with it. And that's when I had the idea, I need to go south during the warm met months, I need to go down to Charlottesville, Virginia, which was one of the first places I went because it will be snow on the roof, in New Jersey. And, and it it's 58 degrees in Charlottesville. And you know how many trees there are down there?
(27:28): Yeah, absolutely.
(27:31): So I started building databases. I decided one summer, Hey, I'm gonna just live real frugally. I had a little bit of money in the bank and I'm gonna just build this database I'm gonna build. So I can down to these places, I'm gonna get jobs. So I started emailing, calling all these places in Charlottesville. Where are you located? Yeah. I'm here in Charlottesville. Where are you located? I, I picked Charlottesville, Richmond and Charlotte. North Carolina. Okay. I ended up with a lot of complexes. I got a lot of people to say yes, because when I do these proposals, I don't have to go there. I'm doing it all on Google earth.
(28:06): Right, right,
(28:07): Right. And then I'm growing in the, the states I'm in. So that fall was the game changer for me. I had like four crews going and we did all the New Jersey properties. And then it's like, we're finishing around December 15th. It's frozen snows coming. We're just finishing. Normally I would've had said, Hey, I had a nice year. Right. But I'm gonna run through this money in the fall. But this time I had a ton of places lined up down and I persuaded them to move back. I was like, nah, you shouldn't do 'em in early December. You should do 'em After Christmas or whatever. I think all the late down I had a whole spiel for it.
(28:46): Right.
(28:46): And they were like, you think, cuz normally we, I said, just trust me. It'll be better for you. Like I was getting everybody to push it back.
(28:53): Right.
(28:53): So we went down there. I went, went down there with two vans. We're staying in hotels and we're just running through all these places, Richmond, Charlottesville. We were down there for about three weeks. I sent a bunch of guys for Christmas. I didn't even come back. I stayed there.
(29:10): Wow. A couple guys did it with me. And I made a bunch of, a lot of money in like three weeks. And then I said, this is the new thing I'm doing. I'm gonna like, I'm gonna be down in Georgia, Florida. And I'm gonna figure out how to, to do this. This is 2013. I started to build that. But here's the thing you were asking me about. I'm still binge drinking at this point.
(29:35): Right?
(29:36): I wasn't, I certainly was an alcoholic. I wasn't like a guy who could have two beers. Right? Like it was either I'm not drinking today or I'm 16. Right.
(29:49): Like I understand.
(29:50): Yeah. But, but I was so motivated. Still people. I had friends who were like, I don't know how you do it. Cuz they would drink with me. They'd have six or seven. You hung over the next day, I'd have 14. I was a fast drink. I'd kill him. And I would get up the next morning and go.
(30:08): Right.
(30:08): Whatever I was doing. And I would never drink two days in a row because I would be so disgusted with myself the next day. Right. That I would say I should have been building my database. I should have been working on stuff. And then, you know, you're reactive to all the stupid texts you sent. And I told this employee, this I'm gonna move you up. Like I would just, it was a, I would ha I would say dumb things to my girlfriend. And I was like, always, I had to fix everything the next day. Right. So this sounds crazy, Kyle. I had this, I don't know if it's a unique ability. I could go drink, wake up the next day. I wasn't waking up at six. Hey, I wake up at eight in the morning. I could literally work until the next 8:00 AM in the morning. Oh wow. I would not go to sleep the night after a lot of my drinking because I'd be I'd wanna fix everything. Right. And I would be, I can't explain that like personal disgust I would have with myself.
(31:09): Right.
(31:10): I would go run six miles. I would go work out. I would spend 1820 hours working. I would basically fix everything over the next 24 hours. Everything that you just screwed up from drinking the night before everything I screwed up, I would literally be up and people are like, you're still up. Like, it would be 9:00 AM. And I would still be going from the
(31:34): Right.
(31:35): But you get a lot of work done because nobody's calling you at three in the morning and I would be, so I would do that. Then I would crash to go to sleep for like four hours, wake up at 1:00 PM and I would kind of be back on schedule. And then what would happen within a day or two? I'd start thinking about drinking again. And I'm like, don't be a, don't be a loser. Don't be a. Don't drink. But inevitably I would, yeah. You tell yourself in your head that don't do this. Don't do this, don't do this. But then boom, back at it and,
(32:09): And not to make this a whole thing about drinking, but I would also have this personal shame. So I wouldn't wanna do it with my friends again. So I would do it by myself. Oh. Cause I'd really like, I didn't want everybody to think I was this like total loser getting blackout drunk three days a week, one day was a week. I would accept that. Like they, right. I was okay with that reputation, but not three or four. Right. So I was trying to do it myself. And of course my girlfriend would like watch this. She was a doctor at this point. So she was getting up at five in the morning, going to sleep at eight. I had this whole little system of like, she would go to sleep and then I would just start.
(32:50): She would never see it. And then I would fall asleep at one o'clock. She'd be asleep on the couch. And she, I remember she'd like, were you drinking last night? And I'm like, yeah, I had a couple, I was hiding the beer cans so that she wouldn't, I was getting rid of 'em in the, I would throw 'em in the woods behind our townhouse. It was it's. It's so ridiculous to me. Now we were engaged. I ruined that relationship to know surprise to anyone you
(33:21): At some point she figured it all out. She was like, you gotta stop. Of course I'm saying I'm gonna stop all of them while I'm on this cycle of drinking, working crazy hours. So I'm building the business,
(33:35): Right? Your business is still running.
(33:37): I'm still doing it. And the 80% of my, my life, I'm not drunk. I'm smart. I'm a good person. I'm clearly working hard. I'm building a business. So I'm like have this inner turmoil with this 20% of me that does like loser loser stuff.
(33:58): Right.
(33:58): It's a weird thing to like, look at your self like that. So that relationship ends. And I moved down south. Now. I have a lot of clients down south. We were still doing the thing where I was sending crews down south.
(34:13): Okay.
(34:13): Cause it's very seasonal. So you could do that. Then I, I love Georgia. I built a crew down, Georgia. I got one of the guys to down here. I was living in Atlanta. I'm still building the business and I'm still doing the drinking thing. But let me tell you, Kyle, like I want out of this, this vicious cycle.
(34:31): Yeah, no, I can like it's, it's vicious. I'm still doing literally 3, 2, 3 days a week. I'm doing the whole round the clock thing.
(34:40): Sure.
(34:41): But I also don't wanna get fat and out of things. So as part of that thing, run six miles and then go lift weights for an hour. Like the day after.
(34:51): Yeah.
(34:51): And I I'm running and I'm, I'm like, literally like if you didn't drink 14 beers, you don't need to kill an hour of your time. Right. So like, it's just this inner turmoil, but I'm building this business. It's 2015, 16. Would it be safe to say that you, you were, you were an alcoholic, Huge one. Yeah.
(35:15): I'm doing this thing, but I'm keeping it hidden from my brother knows it. He's not living with me, but every my friends know it. I'm kind of hiding it from my mom. My mom knows it, but I was telling her, oh, I haven't drank in six months. And you know, I had this whole system of, I don't, I would have to turn my phone on silent. I couldn't turn it off. Cuz you gotta look at your phone when you're drunk. But right. I, I was able to not take calls because when you're drunk, you think you can take the call. Right. So I had this mentor and I had told him, I, I, I, I can build this business and make a million dollars. And he was something like mark, where he thought you're playing small a million dollars. Right. You can make more than that.
(35:55): Yeah. He called called me one night and I was probably had eight or 10 beers in me. I wasn't drunk, but I was buzz and he talks to me and then the next morning I wake up and I, I look at my phone and I see 39 minutes and I'm like, oh God, what do we talk about? And I see, I have a couple missed calls from him. And I really respected this guy, like helped me a lot with a lot of stuff. He had no idea either. And he said, he's so blunt. He was like, who was that? I was talking to last night. And then he said, I'm gonna tell you what somebody needs to tell you. That guy is never gonna be, make a million dollars. You think maybe I was making 400,000 at this point. Yeah. He was like, you you're think you're the because you're comparing yourself to people who make 150 or 200 and you think you're doing better.
(36:44): So I was doing the same thing I had done in my twenties where I would rationalize that. Well, I'm still doing better. It's the silliest thing he gave me this whole speech about this battle is you versus you. It's not about out money. It's what you can do and what you can build. It's your legacy. Do you wanna be known as this guy who made three, four, $500,000 a year who got drunk and everything? He's like, that's a pathetic legacy, right? Why don't you be a guy who creates all these jobs builds this business that he exits for 10 million plus who makes millions of dollars a year? Who gives all these things? Like, I don't know, this phone call hit me. Like I always was thinking this. And at this point I just knew I had to stop this so fast forward really six months a year.
(37:37): I have a girlfriend at this point. Oh, she's all picking up on the alcohol as they always do. She gets pregnant. You met her Laisha beautiful young woman. She has kids. She gets pregnant. And we have our beautiful son. As soon as I had him, I, I was still doing the, the drinking on a way less schedule. But as soon as I had him in 2018, there was one night I, I got drunk. This is the story that ended me. She got, went off onto the couch, slept there. He was asleep in his crib. We were living. I had like kind of like a, we'll call it a penthouse apartment. And because I was still under lease and she got pregnant that we all, we all moved in there. So it was crazy. So I was looking for a house and we had an issue with the heat, getting to that side of the house once in a while it would get cold in there and it would be warm in the rest of the place. So I wake up, hung over, thirsty at five in the morning, it's freezing. And I go to the check on my son and he's sitting there freezing with no cover. He's a little infant, right?
(38:49): Two months. That was the end for me. I've never drank since that day, and I never will. I, I, I can't explain what you know, you're a parent like what? That felt like this, this little baby is counting on me and I'm drunk over here. I can't really feel that it's cold. It's not her fault because I kicked her out. She thinks it's warm over there. He's shivering. Like you can die from that. Right. I don't know. Like I was just like, that changed everything for me. I didn't announce to everybody. I wasn't gonna drink. I just said I was never gonna do it. And I never have that's three years ago now to nobody surprised I've more than doubled the business. Oh my almost triple I've cut out inefficiencies and everything. Everything's so much smoother. I changed kind of the model. It's virtual. I'm doing more than that million dollar net. It's kind of crazy, right? Like I did in three years, what took me 10 year more than what I did 10 years.
(39:58): Once you stop drinking. Yeah. I don't do the staying up all night thing. Yeah. I get up. I'm really, I built a better team out. I'm focused for, I really do like two focused hours a day and I work on stuff that drives revenue. Right. And then I do like another two hours where I oversee stuff, answer questions, help everybody be successful. That's how I think, how do I make other people their best versions? How do I help them be successful? I really try to work with them, ask them what they want to do. And I work way less. I make much more, my company's much better. And I all that inner turmoil I had for all those years yeah. Is completely gone. So everybody wants to hear this story. Like I hit the couch in 2008 and 2009. I was a millionaire. It doesn't work that way. Yeah,
(40:54): No.
(40:55): So when I see all this stuff on Facebook and everybody's always talking about, they're always looking to get rich and there's nothing wrong with crypto and all these things. But like they think they're gonna put $5,000 in some coin and they're gonna hit it. Doesn't work that way. Yeah. I don't know any way to get rich easy. It's a grind, but you can cut it down so much by strategizing and by not doing stuff in your life that negates it, like getting drunk or for someone else, it might be spending four hours on a gaming system. Like, you know that that's not gonna help you get where you want. You have to change it.
(41:35): Absolutely. Everybody's gonna have their vice everybody, whether it's drinking, whether it's smoking, whether it's any, like whatever it is, that's detrimental to the progression of what you want to do in your life. Everybody's gonna, everybody, most people have something, it just looks different. Right? Yours is alcohol. Somebody else's weed. Somebody else's cry. You know, it, everybody has advice.
(41:55): Everybody has something that they have to overcome and be a better person and grow and learn from and have these experiences to help them be a better person. Like just going in and seeing that. And just seeing that cold, knowing that you're cold. And you're like, I could imagine what was just going through your head and then just saying, I'm done. That's never gonna happen again. Yeah. That's awesome, man.
(42:17): I was holding him and he was cold and I, I, it wasn't like I was saying, I'm, I'm gonna try. I knew it right then will never happen. Like I thought I had a great dad. My dad died of brain cancer when I was 21. It, it sent me into a tailspin. Sometimes I, I don't wanna say, oh, that's the reason I never drank before that I started doing that. Maybe it was easing my pain, but my dad was this incredible dad. And I said, I have to be an incredible dad. Right. You can't just say it. And then be drunk. You have to be present. And that was I, I said, no, I'm not gonna do that. I'm gonna make sure he's on everything. My dad was to me and I'm gonna do that for him. And you can't just talk it.
(42:56): No.
(42:57): Oh yeah. I'm trying, man. I, I only drink when I only drink on the weekends. It's nonsense. Right. And, and this isn't for lots of people can drink on the weekends. They don't have alcohol problems. I know tons of people like that. That's this is not against that. It's the guys who are getting black out. Right. They know what they're are doing. Yeah. They're lying to themselves. They're lying to their kids. And it's, it's a mess.
(43:20): Absolutely. Man, going back through your story here, there are so many times here in your life that you just said, I'm doing this and you just went out and did it. There's no, like, I'm gonna see if I can do this. Maybe this works. Maybe I'll just dabble my toe in here for a little bit. Like you made a commitment to yourself, to your life. And you said, I'm doing this. What? You know, ma don't tell me what to do. I'm cutting grass. I'm building this landscaping company. Yeah. I'm doing it. And having all that pushback from family members and everything else. And you went out and did it sold it? I'm flipping houses. Well, it. You went out big for it right now. I'm gonna do it. And you learned a lot, hit the couch, you know, trying to make it back. All right. I gotta get a job because that's what the bankruptcy I says. And then I, no, I can't live my life like this. I have to make the decision. We're gonna start this gutter thing back up again and then just do everything like that. That's so impressive. It's so cool that you're able to just say, you know what? I'm not gonna try. I'm just gonna to do and just go after it, man. What an awesome story.
(44:20): The maybe, you know, they say this what's your unique skill. I think one of my unique skill is I knew this early on was when people were scared to do stuff. I wasn't.
(44:32): Yeah.
(44:33): So people that would've scared a lot of 17 year olds to go buy a commercial mower, save up money to it, go all in. And really I wasn't thinking about being scared. I, I understood the risks. So I used to have a notebook and I used to write out I love numbers and I, I would do my numbers and I'd say, I need this many customers. I would reduce that risk. But too many people talk and they wanna, I wanna take a seminar. I wanna learn it. I'm off doing that. But you gotta do it.
(45:00): Yeah. Action.
(45:01): And the best thing is you're gonna make mistakes. You gotta get that through your head. Anything you do the first time, you're gonna suck at it. If it's skiing, if it's a business, if it's whatever it is, if it's jujitsu, I did that. You're gonna get choked out a bunch of times on your first day. You gotta know that. Right.
(45:21): But if you're okay with that and you just know, Hey, I'm gonna stick with this. People think that, you know that saying people overestimate what they can do in a year. Yeah. And I'll your estimate where they 10, I really think it's people overestimate what they can do in a month. People think they can do a lot more than they can. Yeah. Stick with it for a year. And you'll be shocked what you can do in a year. And like anything you wanna learn, like say skiing, if you do it for a year and you're consistent and you go out there every weekend and, and two days a, you're not gonna be a great skier. Like you, you're gonna be good though. You're gonna be, yeah. You're gonna be going down all the Hills.
(45:58): Yeah, absolutely.
(45:59): But you're not gonna be in a month and you're not gonna be in three months. But if you keep doing that in five years, you could be like a master at pretty much anything.
(46:07): And, and that's anything in life. Right? Anything that you do that you come in contact with. I can't agree more with you on that. It's like, instead of calling it, Hey, I, I, I failed at that. Why don't we just say, Hey, I learned that today. I learned this today. And we, we, we take it as lessons that as we're learning the, the progression, you know, it's not a failure. It's always a, it's a step up. You go. I always used to say, when I make mistakes in, in the business and stuff and, well, that was an expensive lesson. Yeah. You know what? I'm never gonna do that again. I'm it's not gonna happen like that because now I just paid to learn that lesson. I went to college. I mean, that's what you do. That's what people are doing. When they go to college, they pay to go learn something, right? Yeah. They take tests, they fail at tests. They learn, they, they miss questions on tests. They learn from that. They retake, they, they pass. It's the same thing with all the businesses and with life and everything else that we're doing, we're going out. We pay for things we learn from that we make changes or, or corrections. And we keep moving.
(47:06): You know, you were asking me about the mindset. That was the biggest thing for me. I was almost angry at myself in two thousand eight thousand nine. I used to look at the ceiling. And I'm like, I would like really be mad at myself for putting myself in that situation. And then one day I said, you know, I'm not gonna beat myself up about this anymore. I'm gonna learn from this. And looking back, that was the best thing that ever happened to me. Yeah. Because I learned, I can't tell you how much I learned from that experience of being too risky, not going with my gut thing. There were so many things I went against my gut during that time. Yeah. All these things. And then I, the mindset thing that really shifted around 2014, 15 as I wasn't doing it for as much money, I really was just focused on doing it. The best job I could at the gutter, helping employees, helping subcontractors I had, and like really being of service to them, it was a really a mindset shift. And all of a sudden I started making a lot more money. Yeah.
(48:09): Like I wasn't chasing money. And when you, of all you think about is money and how I'm gonna save this, you, you miss the big picture. So when I stopped drinking, of course you need new friends because that's what you do. So I knew I wanted to get into buying apartment buildings and stuff, and I knew I need to different friends. So I started really thinking about getting into masterminds. And I'm a little bit of an introvert at first. So that was stepping outta my comfort zone. And then I got in Tim brots and then I got in another one and now I'm in the DM family and I meet all these cool guys. They think like I do, they got me thinking much bigger. I'm a GP in two different apartment deals at LP. And two, like all that happened because I just did it. Like, I can't just sit there and overthink it. Like, yeah, maybe next year I'll get in a mastermind. Just cut. Just do it.
(49:03): Yeah, exactly. And you'll overthink everything. Absolutely. Was it, what's that saying paralysis by analysis. Yeah. You know, you
(49:12): Probably have people in, in your life and you, like, you're talking about the dumpster thing. You're, you're running the numbers, thinking about it and then you'll just do it. Right. And then people around you, like, how'd you get this dumpster business that's doing like four minute, like when did that happen?
(49:26): Yeah. Well, I just did it. Yeah. You just did it like, yeah. Well, like two years ago I had opportunity. I did did it. And they're still thinking about like, starting something that they're never gonna do. I have friends like that. They were talking for 10 years about starting like an HVAC business or something. And I remember just saying like, bro, this has gotta be the last combo on this either. The next combo has to be talking about your customers. I can't talk about, you might do this and might be your job. Just do it. Yeah. Make a plan, make it happen. Build some business up on the side, get some momentum, pull the trigger. Yeah. You can always go back to what you were doing. Nobody's stopping you. You can always go back to the cubicle.
(50:07): Absolutely. Nobody's gonna say, Hey, I don't want you back here because you went and tried to chase your, you know, and, and you fall on hard times. Okay. Go back, get some money. Do it again. Yeah. Learn. Learn from what you just screwed up on and then figure out how to do it. Marketing. Let me just tell you one thing. If you're starting a business marketing and getting contact people, like you said, Kevin, you were, you were in there and you called, called, called, called, called. If you don't have any leads, pick up the phone and call people, pick up the, you know, figure out how to get more, talk to more people and you'll do more business.
(50:40): That's a number, one thing is marketing. Everything is marketing. I don't really care about good or so much. I like the marketing. I like the running business. I like building it. It doesn't really matter what I do.
(50:52): Yeah. Like you, you don't really care about dumpsters and picking up trash. You just like the whole aspect of, I can build this and you're thinking like a marketer, how am I gonna get more? That's what I was doing when we were talking about it. I'm like, my mind was like I got a bunch of ideas for this, that technical stuff. You need to, somebody needs to do it, but too many people think you have to know every little thing. You don't absolutely take up the phone and call people always ask me gutter guys, in these Facebook groups, how do you get so many complexes? What you do? I say, I'm gonna give it to you. Ready? Get your notebook. Call people, Call apartment complexes. Can I bid on your gutters? Repeat rents, go again. They wanna think it's like this special thing. Like I did this Facebook ad and it drove like a, it didn't happen. Contact them, call them.
(51:45): And I didn't have to talk to anybody and they just put the credit card in and bam, that was there. Yeah.
(51:49): And then do it every day. Not all day. You could just set aside an hour or two every day where you call regional managers, big players, and do it every day and enjoy it. It's part of the journey. And don't worry about people saying no to you. I, I like a lot of nos because I need 20. No, to get a yes. Give it to me. Yeah. Tell me about how you got somebody you like, or you do it in house. I appreciate it. If something changes, let me know. I go to the next one. Next thing you know, you got a lot of jobs. People don't wanna do that though. They wanna think there's an easier way. I'm gonna, I'm gonna post something on Instagram. I'm gonna get a million. No, you're not, not gonna get it like that.
(52:30): Yeah, no, I, yeah. Just contact them. How many, like you were saying with the, the dumpster I'm using at, if you call up all the, the guys who are flipping homes, you tell 'em what you're doing. Hey, you, you know me, this is what I'm doing. They're gonna use you. Right. Or you can text 'em my guest. Get the conversation going. But you have reach. You have to have it's it's hand to hand. You're gonna have to talk to people.
(52:55): Yep. That's it, man. That's simple people. People put yourself out there. Yes. Not brain surgery. Just do it.
(53:02): I appreciate man. I appreciate you sharing this story. I think a lot of people will get some, I, I was just intrigued the whole time. I was like, holy that. So that's pretty, that's pretty cool. If somebody wants to like connect with you, it has similar story story as you. I mean, how would somebody connect with you?
(53:19): Go on Facebook. I'm on Facebook. Kevin Marinn K E V I N M a R R O N. There's a couple on there, but I think I'm the only bald one. You'll see me.
(53:30): There's a couple guys over in Ireland with the same name. They look similar, but they're not bald. Go on Facebook message me, friend. Me I'm anybody has any questions? I love helping people. Even my story, if I look back and I could tell myself at 18 28 38 do this, this and this, I could have saved a lot of time and anguish, but that's all part of the learning. But I tell people all the time how to do things better that I wish I knew. Yeah. Everybody should get a mentor. You and I both know that you can speed it up. Yeah. You learn from their mistakes. But anybody who wants to ask me questions, I'll tell you what I did wrong and right. And, and, and help you out. I'm just message me.
(54:13): Awesome, man. I appreciate you coming on the show and sharing your story. I think a lot of people are gonna get a lot of value out of this one, man. Right? I love coming on Kyle, anytime. Thank you so much.
(54:29): This is the podcast factory.com.
