June 2, 2025 • 40 mins
The path from employee to entrepreneur is rarely straightforward, but Aram Street's journey from certified butler to successful business owner offers a masterclass in calculated risk-taking and resilient entrepreneurship. When faced with an impending job loss from his position managing a 25,000 square foot mansion, Aram made the deliberate choice to bet on himself rather than seeking another employer.
What makes his story particularly compelling is the practical reality of launching a business while supporting a growing family (now with five children). Without romanticizing entrepreneurship, Aram shares how he supplemented his emerging cleaning business with rideshare driving and food delivery – doing whatever necessary to keep finances stable while building something sustainable. His candid insights demolish the "overnight success" myth while illuminating what true entrepreneurial commitment looks like.
Aram's evolution as a business owner reveals crucial lessons in adaptability and opportunity recognition. Some of his most profitable business developments stemmed from opportunities he initially rejected multiple times. His transition from residential to commercial cleaning – now his primary revenue source – almost didn't happen due to his initial reluctance to expand beyond his comfort zone. This experience transformed his approach to new possibilities: "I no longer say no to anything immediately."
Throughout our conversation, Aram emphasizes the value of mentorship and learning from others who've already navigated similar paths. Had he sought more guidance early on, he could have avoided numerous costly mistakes. For aspiring entrepreneurs, his message is refreshingly honest: expect to work harder than anticipated, for longer than expected, while making less than you hoped – but for those committed to ownership and financial independence, the journey remains worthwhile.
As Aram perfectly summarizes: "It can be done, but it's probably harder than you think." With unprecedented access to information and connectivity, entrepreneurial possibilities are greater than ever – but success still demands perseverance, strategic thinking, and willingness to adapt along the way. Connect with Aram on LinkedIn to continue learning from his entrepreneurial journey.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yeah, it's Mindset Cafe.
We all about that mindset.
Gotta stay focused.
Now go settle for the last.
It's all in your head how youthink you manifest.
So get ready to rise, cause weabout to be the best.
Gotta switch it up.
Gotta break the old habits.
Get your mind right.
Turn your dreams into habits.
No negative vibes, onlypositive vibes.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
What is up guys?
Welcome to another episode ofthe Mindset Cafe podcast.
It's your boy, devin, and todayI am honored to be on another
episode with this gentleman.
Right, we were on his podcastCoffee, chaos and Cashflow, and
it was a great conversation andI wanted to kind of bring it
(00:41):
back and go round two with itand kind of put him on the other
side of the stool.
So, without further ado, youknow, I'm sitting down today
with Aram Street, right, hetried to give me a different
pronunciation and almost threwme off, right, but he is a
serial entrepreneur and abusiness builder, a risk taker
who's you know, walked away froma lucrative career in household
(01:01):
management and really bet onhimself to start a business,
right, so that's one of thebiggest things on Mindset Cafe,
but also betting on yourself.
Thank you so much.
Thanks so much.
Let's.
You know, let's dive in alittle bit.
Yo, what's happening?
(01:22):
So, with your whole bring upand everything, right, what?
What was your background like?
What was your parents like?
What was your childhood like?
Speaker 1 (01:33):
yeah, um, so it was interesting.
I, I had a.
I had a great growing upexperience.
Five siblings were all spreadout in ages, so we're pretty,
you know.
It was like a couple of us onone end.
Older ones were alreadybasically in college by the time
I was growing up, and so my dadwas a Nazarene evangelist.
So he traveled, did a lot ofrevivals and speaking
(01:54):
engagements for differentchurches, and then when he
wasn't traveling, he wasbuilding homes specifically.
A-frames were just like histhing.
So he was pretty muchself-employed growing up, but we
didn't have a strong businessbackground.
It was just kind of what my dadwas doing and he was very
financially on top of things.
So he made a lot of gooddecisions.
(02:14):
But growing up I had a good workethic taught to us.
We all knew what it meant towork really, really hard, but
not necessarily how to build abusiness and go out and do it.
We were just.
You know, I grew up thinking Iwas just going to be a great
worker, go to work.
You know, nine to five punch mytime, and it really where
things started to turn for mewere people like Robert Kiyosaki
(02:35):
.
I remember the first time I sawthe cashflow quadrant and heard
about it, it was like brand new.
I had no idea.
Even though I grew up my dadwas making money other ways than
as an employee, it still didn'thit to me personally that's
something that's attainable,right.
So I was seeing the S, the Band the I quadrants and even
(02:57):
knowing that they existed asviable options for people was
kind of an epiphany, if you will.
Options for people was kind ofa epiphany, if you will.
So that's, people like himreally got me thinking in the
direction of hey, what would itbe like to create income rather
than just make it from apaycheck?
So a little bit of backgroundthere, yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
So what was your first?
What was your first job in?
In what did that?
You know what was your,basically your career path to
becoming an entrepreneur.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Yeah, my first job was McDonald's size 16 16.
Nothing particularly sexy orinteresting about that.
It was just, like you know, wehad to start buying our own
stuff.
Uh, I think at 12 was the agewhen parents like, hey, you got
to get your own clothes, yourown like, you got to provide for
anything that's not food,basically.
So as soon as we could legallystart working it was, you know,
we had to get income fromsomewhere.
(03:43):
So, other than the roof overour heads and the food in our
stomachs, we were paying foreverything.
So I got a job as early as Icould.
That wasn't, you know, nothingexciting to write home about,
but that was my first thing.
And then, when I moved toLexington in 2012, lexington,
kentucky I got this job as awhat was called a house house
man, basically glorifiedhousekeeper for this 25 000
(04:07):
square foot house.
Was this like mansion on athousand acre horse farm?
Beautiful 18th century Frencharchitecture just an incredible
massive place.
I tripped into that jobaccident.
They ended up making me thehousehold manager a couple years
into it, which basically is abutler, a North American
equivalent for the for thebutler role, and so that's how I
started out my adult career.
I was just kind of in thisdidn't have any connection to it
(04:28):
sort of tripped into it.
They sent me to an academy inToronto and I got certified as
butler, so I had a cool career,I suppose.
And then in 2020, I got firedfrom that job.
And it's without going into alot of detail.
It's kind of funny because Iknew for a full year that I was
going to be let go before hefired me.
Uh, it was just some like it'sjust discussions about, uh,
(04:52):
about a compensation that justended up not going well.
I was, I was really reallyunderpaid and I was like, hey, I
think you know I could get abump here and my employer was
super not happy about it.
So I knew for a full year hewanted to fire me, but it was so
hard to source my job he had towait till I found somebody
train them and then, when theywere competent, that person took
my place.
So I basically trained myreplacement, got let go in April
(05:15):
, I think, ish of 2020.
And by that point, I'd readenough and and kind of done some
side hustle things to know thatI really wanted to be an
entrepreneur.
My wife and I had talked aboutit and it was like look, this is
we can do it now.
We can either stay in householdmanagement I can we can move
and I can get a different jobyou know making much, much
better money even than I hadbeen making but we're always
(05:36):
going to be at someone else'sweb, there's someone else going
to be citing what we call thefront of the check and we're
just going to be signing theback of the check.
So I kind of wanted to flipthat script a little bit and we
thought, hey, we just got let go, we've got a month to figure
this out and see what we coulddo.
So that's how I got intoentrepreneurship.
I was sort of halfway into it,knew it was coming, and that's
(05:57):
what got us out of the nest, soto speak.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
So I want to rewind something that you said that
kind of intrigued me.
Did you say that you gotcertified as a butler?
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Yes, so there's this place.
There are basically a handfulof internationally known
academies for butlers andhousehold managers and I was
certified with the CharlesMcPherson Academy in Toronto,
ontario, back in the I think2016 is when I went up there,
went through their program andit's like a month long program
(06:34):
that you just learn every in andout from an international
perspective on what it means tobe a household manager or a
butler, and it was great.
Learned a lot of really coolstuff, stuff I've been working
in for a while, and then a lotof new insights.
So, yeah, I'm trained at a veryunique background.
Most people I'll tell them whatI used to do or even when I was
working like wow, I've never meta butler before.
(06:55):
It's like I'm usually a firsttime for most people there and
it's kind of funny too, becauseI'm in Kentucky, so it's not
exactly like LA or New York City, where there's a few more of
those people.
We're just like there's likethree of us in this greater
Midwest area.
So it's a really interesting,very, very niche markets
workforce.
But it was fun.
(07:16):
I learned a lot, had a greattime and don't plan on going
back, but you know, cool stories.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
No, I mean, the reason I asked is because, like,
when you hear Butler, I wasthinking of, like Fresh Prince
of Bel-Air and you know, andeverything is like, is like, did
you wear?
Did you wear the suit?
Is it like?
You know, is, how is that whole?
Speaker 1 (07:34):
process.
It was slacks and a dress shirtand that was about as formal as
we got.
They never had us do white tieor anything like that, so it was
somewhat laid back.
The setting itself it was aformal, semi-similar dress
(07:55):
setting but very, very formalinteraction.
So it was just the principalwas just the man and his wife
and they ran everything really,really, really, really well.
So we were just managing thismassive home, making sure
everything was getting done,from housekeeping to contracting
to just any random thing.
It could be landscaping.
You're just overseeing theestate, essentially right.
So there wasn't a ton of.
They were really private.
(08:15):
So the one thing they didn't dowas entertain a lot, which is
one of the hardest jobs inprivate services having to
entertain a lot of parties.
So thankfully for me that myprincipals just didn't love to
have a ton of people throw a lotof parties.
So it made my job much, mucheasier than most of my
colleagues, cause you knowpeople at that kind of net worth
they're having, you know, two300 party person parties like
(08:37):
every other weekend and if youcan imagine the background work
that takes to put that together.
So I was fortunate to not bedoing that all the time.
But yeah, it was.
It was a pretty interestingrealm.
I mean, it's a big house, youknow, like a really, really,
really cool place, and it's thekind of thing that you just
wouldn't find yourself in,unless you're in, that you
(08:58):
personally have that kind ofnetwork.
You know you're you're buildingthose kind of homes.
So it was.
It was unique, for sure.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
No, that's, it is super.
That's why I had to ask it'syou don't?
It's not every day you comeacross like that kind of
background and that kind ofstory.
So you know, one thing I dowant to ask is like OK, so now
that you got let go or you'retransitioning, instead of trying
to pivot and do somethingsimilar, you took a different
route right.
You went the entrepreneur route.
Do something similar.
(09:25):
You took a different routeright, you went the entrepreneur
route.
And so what was that mindsetshift for you?
And let's dive into what yournext step was.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
For sure.
So from a mindset perspective.
So the year I told you aboutthat, I knew for sure he wanted
to let me go, but he just didn'thave to take my space.
I did interview for severalother household management jobs
across the US.
I got fairly close to taking ajob in Cleveland, ohio, but the
biggest thing was that it was inCleveland.
It's like who wants to go toCleveland?
Always this on Cleveland.
I got some friends up there, sowhenever I get a chance I kind
of throw some shade that way.
But no, we got to the pointwhere again, my wife and I sat
(09:59):
down we had four kids at thetime and we're like look, we can
keep doing this.
We can make a lot more moneythan we're making right now.
But I'm going to just continueworking the same schedule.
I'm going to probably spendmore hours 60 to 80 hours
working for somebody else andwe're never going to build
anything unless we get controlof it and build it.
So the mindset shift was justgetting to the point of thinking
(10:24):
about okay, what can I do?
How quickly can I implement it?
And the reason I started acleaning company was I'm much
more of a black and white personthan I am like a super creative
individual, so I like to thinkof things in as logical terms as
possible.
I thought, hey, if I start acleaning company, I can build a
cool brand around that, becausethere aren't that many clinic
company owners that were trainedbutlers.
(10:45):
Right, I have a really, reallyweird, specific high-end I guess
you could say training here, soI can capitalize on that and
that's why I started a clinic.
It just made the most sense andif I was going to create, go to
a market and create customersthere and find them, that was
the easiest thing for me to getinto.
That made the most sense.
I look at I talked about thiswhen I think of like business.
(11:08):
A lot of people want to go intobusiness and they talk about
like doing something that theylove.
Right, I think that's great ifyou can do something that you
love, but you need to dosomething that's going to make
more so than do something youlove all the time.
If, if both of them line up,that's amazing, good for you,
but if they don't, like, I'dlove to skydive.
I just don't have a way to makea lot of money with that
because I'm not going to teachpeople how to do it.
(11:29):
I just want to do it Right.
So that's going to cost memoney.
It's not going to make me money.
So for me it was just a.
It was an X's and O's thing.
I'm just lining up the play andI have a really good network.
People know my background is inhousehold management.
This should be pretty easy andit was the best thing for me to
do at the time to start creatingincome.
(11:52):
Because when you go fromworking to building a business,
I mean literally, it's like oneweek I had a paycheck every
Friday and I knew what theamount was.
It was the exact same for likeyears, with very minimal
adjustments, and then all of asudden it's not was?
It was the exact same for likeyears, with very minimal
adjustments, and then all of asudden it's not there.
It's like you have to create it,like you have to go out and
find value in the market andgive people a reason to write
(12:12):
you a check and that's that's ashift and it's sort of scary.
You know starting out becauseyou're hoping that it happens
quickly and that you can coveryour bases as quick as possible,
so you're not just you knowlosing money and homeless for
(12:32):
long.
So it is a bit of a shift.
But I think being, you know,not super risk averse helps and
for whatever reason I amoriented towards risk, for
better, for worse.
I probably err too much on theside of doing a lot of risky
stuff.
So that that was just apersonality, you know,
psychological composition.
That really helped me there too.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
No, I mean, you said, you guys had four kids.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Yeah, we have five now.
So we had four when we made thetransition and then, a little
over a year after that, we foundout we were having our fifth.
And so, yeah, we were man, wewere in the thick of it, it was
going down, yep.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Man, I have one and one on the way and I can't even
fathom three, let alone five.
That's intense, Yep, it is.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
I will say three is the magic number.
I always tell people if you canget to three and get a handle
on it, you're fine.
After that, like one and twowas whatever.
We had three, we had no ideawhat was happening.
We thought we had just likeforgotten everything that there
was to know about parenting.
Once we got sort of the hang ofthree, four and five, you heart
, you don't even notice that yougot.
(13:34):
It's like oh yeah, we're, we'reon autopilot, we got this.
So I just tell people just getto three, get it on lockdown,
you'll be fine.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
From there you need seven, ten, it probably doesn't
matter so, with that being said,are you guys good planning on
more?
Speaker 1 (13:48):
oh yeah.
So I've told, we've said forlike since the beginning, people
like, are you gonna have anymore kids?
I'm like, oh yeah, doubledigits, baby, we're gonna, we're
gonna get to 10 plus.
Um, that's, that's sort oflighthearted because we
genuinely don't have a number.
We've never come up with Like,hey, we didn't plan and decide,
hey, at this number we're done.
We've just always been like,yeah, you know, not right now,
(14:09):
we'll wait a little bit.
But we've never had a hard andfast cutoff date.
So part of it whether or not wehave any more biological kids we
definitely want to adopt downthe road.
We kind of have a plan mappedout for that and that's going to
be three to four years probably, conceivably, before we start
on that journey.
But that is definitely likesomething that we want to do.
I grew up with foster kidsgrowing up in our house.
(14:31):
My wife's actually adopted, sowe have a lot of firsthand
experience with those realms andsee a big need there.
So a lot of desire to do that.
We want our kids to get alittle bit older and develop
different routines and stuffbefore we jump into it.
But yeah, I think it'sdefinitely foreseeable that
we'll hit double digits.
I'm still holding out for that.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
So that movie Cheaper by the Dozen is going to be
your lifestyle?
Yeah, it's so funny.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
I still haven't seen that.
I don't know how many timespeople reference that and I'm
like, oh yeah, I need to watchthat because people keep saying
it and.
I still haven't seen it, so gotto put that on the playlist at
some point.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
but no, yeah, I mean, that's awesome though.
So I mean, many people, though,leave fear, leaving a stable
income right To to essentiallytake that bet on themselves and
take that leap, even though youknow you think that it's going
to be a great, you knowtransition or a stable, a stable
transition, right, but at theend of the day, everything is
(15:30):
still a risk in.
You know, you had a family, youhad four kids, so what was like
the, the mindset of you knowtrying to subside that you know
uncertainty, or that negativityof hey, it didn't work out off
of day one and I'm growing thisto be stable and support a
family of six, essentially withyou, your wife and your kids.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Yeah, Well, for me, I can just tell you what it was
for us.
Everybody's story is a littlebit different for us because
when it was kind of our choiceto have a large family and to
jump into that and and grow thatearly on, we we were a little
bit more financially limited,you know, for for obvious
(16:14):
reasons, than a lot of people.
So we were working with asmaller budget, I guess you
could say, in terms of free cashto just throw around and
experiment with different ideas.
So, knowing that out of thegate, I knew, particularly in
building a business, you know,in the early stages, I was
probably going to be hustling alot on the side to help out and
get that moving.
So that could like for me for acouple years early on.
(16:36):
It was I was doing a lot ofrideshare driving, I was doing
food delivery along withbuilding a business and getting
it to a point of sustainability.
So I never had a complex whereit's like, oh, I'm too good to
do this, I'm going to be anentrepreneur, so I'm not going
to do all these other thingsthat sometimes people look down
on.
I just threw that out from dayone.
(16:57):
It's like, look, our goal is toget here.
We want to become financiallyindependent and if we're going
to build it ourselves, we'reprobably going to have to do a
lot and work a lot in a lot ofdifferent areas and pull money
from wherever we can to get thisthing off the ground.
And so for me, it was like look, this is my responsibility, I
got to make this happen,providing for the family, and
(17:18):
there's nothing that I'm toogood to do.
Essentially, I didn't have aline there.
I'm surprised, like it's notacross the board.
A lot of entrepreneurs aren'tthis way but I'm surprised by
the number of people I've talkedto who are like oh yeah, I
would do that, like I would, I'dnever drive for DoorDash, like
I'm just not going to do that,right, it's almost like it's a
little.
It's a little too, there's alittle bit too posh for it.
So that's that was one thingthat for me personally, I just
(17:41):
got past.
I wasn't going to not dosomething because I thought I
was too good for it.
And again, I think you havedifferent options.
If it's just you, especially ifyou're single, or if it's just
you and your wife you don't havekids you kind of have a lot
more freedom to experiment andtry things, because you don't
have as many you know mouths tofeed lives on the line.
In my case, we're just, youknow, our backs were a little
(18:03):
bit more up against the wall, sothat might have helped.
But, again, being not beingrisk averse and being willing to
do whatever you need to do tomake it happen really, really,
really helped us in a long way.
I'm also really fortunate that,even though, especially early on
, I really sucked atcommunication right You'd think,
uh, be, you know, my wife andI've been married for 13 years
(18:26):
now and she's incredible.
But even like in the earlyyears, I just I just didn't
communicate well at all.
So she's, she really, reallyhung with me through a lot of
just Aaron's doing stuff, he'sbooking meetings, he's doing
things, and then she's also findout about it when she finds out
about it just was terrible atthat.
So I was really reallyfortunate that she was very long
suffering and hung in therewith me until I found out hey,
(18:49):
you know I could include Beverlyon this journey, right, like
she's actually part of thisequation maybe I could like cure
in a little bit and that wecould do this together and that
that really was something thatin the last year or two started
becoming a much more commonfixture in our relationship and
has helped out tremendously.
And it's just silly things likethat that sometimes you I think
(19:12):
entrepreneurs were super liketunnel vision we can get very,
very task oriented and close outa lot of people that are really
close to us and very importantin the process.
So kind of, you know, looseningback a little bit.
I think you and I even talkedabout this when you were on our
podcast like just even havingthe wherewithal to talk with
your significant other and belike, hey, you know, let's plan
(19:32):
this ahead, let's plan this weekout and, you know, be on the
same page so that neither of usare getting surprised by
anything.
So very, very grateful that mywife was patient to put up with
all this, but she also is veryentrepreneurially minded herself
.
She started her own business acouple of years ago and that's
really been taking off.
So we're definitely together inentrepreneurship, having a
(19:58):
blast, seeing a lot of struggles, going through all the ups and
downs, but it's been a good time.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
No, that is so awesome, and I think the
communication part is such a key, and I think we did talk about
it on the podcast too, because Imean, I was the same way.
I didn't really say anything, Ididn't really talk about it and
then you realize you'restarting to build two different
lives and two different versionsof yourself, and so letting
them in allows it to feel liketo them that it's all one
(20:29):
version of you and that they getto have an aspect of
essentially the business that'sgetting built.
And I would say you've builtmultiple businesses, from
LexClean CleanSpace a bakerywith your wife, I believe, right
, and.
And so what were some of thebiggest mistakes or challenges
that you faced in your firstyear of business, as well as,
(20:51):
like, once you started scalingand having multiple businesses?
Speaker 1 (20:58):
When you talk about mistakes, if you're trying to
rank order like the biggest ones, that's where it gets tricky,
cause there are so many tochoose.
Let's see what were the biggestproblems.
I think I would have done muchbetter if I had sought like
mentorship is something that Ireally preach to people now
because I'm on the back end ofnot seeking out the kind of
mentorship I should have hadearlier, so I can kind of see
(21:20):
the hindsight.
You know, looking back, I wishI had sought some people out
that were really accomplished,like in a cleaning business that
I could say, hey, this one, I'mgetting ready to do.
What I need to be aware ofParticularly like.
We started out in residentialcleaning and then, a year and a
half in, we added commercialcleaning and that's where the
bulk of our revenue is today ison the commercial front.
Those are very differentmarkets.
(21:42):
You have completely differentcashflow operations going
between the two and it was justknowing that one was going to be
different and seeing thatchange.
If I had at least done a littlebit more work to reach out to
people that were alreadyaccomplished there and sat down
even 30, 60 minutes, you know,been able to learn from them.
That would have helped me avoida lot of the pitfalls that we
(22:06):
had to experience the hard way.
Right, business is a big trialand error experiment, but if you
can talk to people that havealready been through the
minefield, they can just tellyou hey, don't step there, there
and there, and you won't blowup.
It's like that's alreadyavailable, so try to take
advantage of that.
And I did a little bit too muchthe hard way because I was
figuring it out solo, so thosewere in any business.
(22:30):
The times that have beenhardest had just been the
decisions that I made without,you know, consulting people.
I have a great network man, andI had a good network even, you
know, five years ago, and itcould have utilized it a lot
better to get ahead of thingsbefore they took place.
So that's kind of to like makea summary.
(22:50):
That's what I'd say is, if Iwere to do it again, I'd reach
out to a few more people and belike hey, this is what I'm
looking to do, what should I beon the lookout for?
What should I be avoiding?
What decisions do I need to bemaking now to, you know,
forestall the things that arecoming down the road in six
months, and that's what I wouldtell people that are getting
started.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
It's like, if this is the industry you're picking,
find three or four people youknow that would sit down and you
know kind of walk you throughwhat they did good and bad and
write all that down, take it tothe bank and just be on the
lookout for it.
So definitely, I mean,mentorship is huge and I think
we all learn this.
You know, as an entrepreneur,you learn that you don't need to
(23:30):
be the one that solves everyproblem.
You don't need to be the personthat does it.
You know all by yourself to beclassified as an entrepreneur,
right?
And so I'm big on mentors.
You know, from the franchiseand everything, we hired mentors
and when you look at it and youput your ego and your, you know
, have a little bit of humility,it's.
You're condensing your timelineto success, right?
(23:52):
Someone else has already walkedthis path.
Why not just get the answersand then tweak it up and
implement, right?
So what role do you think thatcreativity and adaptability play
in your entrepreneurial journey?
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Yeah.
So again, creativity is alwaysinteresting for me because
everything that has been createdin any of the businesses that I
have been part of or havefounded in some capacity, they
have all been at the hands ofsomebody else.
I have zero new ideas.
I look for systems that I canduplicate, that have worked and
that I duplicate.
That's all I do.
(24:26):
So if I need something creative, if it's like a logo or
something, I go to my wife.
I go to a designer.
We've worked with several thathave been excellent.
So that's just like mycreativity.
That's not my strong point.
I don't try to do something.
I'm not good at.
Adaptability, on the other hand, I have had to implement a few
times and I guess my biggestthing on adaptability, again
(24:46):
looking back, is I can talkabout like three different
things in LexClean.
I get three different pointsthat come to mind.
I won't share all of them.
Where I there was a certainchange, it was actually going
from one really big one wasgoing from residential to
commercial.
We almost didn't do that and,again, most of our revenue today
in the company is commercial.
We almost didn't do commercialbecause I was in the middle of
(25:12):
transitioning from traditionalresidential to doing short-term
just becoming an Airbnb cleaningcompany.
That's kind of all the marketwe were going to focus in on.
There was an opening in thearea.
I was like, okay, we're goingto double down on this.
My buddy is a continuousimprovement leader over at a
dairy factory and he's like, hey, aram, our company's on the way
out.
I want you to come out and giveus a quote.
And I'm like, oh no, no, wedon't do commercial, because
we'd only done some like retailcommercial.
It was not not good, very badmargins.
(25:34):
And so I was.
I just didn't want to do it.
So I told him no, like threetimes.
He sends me, he just keepsbugging me.
He sends me a list of all thethings they do day, day and
weekly.
He's like, well, just give me aballpark range for what this
would be.
So he sends me, sends thisthing over.
I give him a number.
I threw a bunch of money on topof that.
I thought would just get himoff my back.
(25:55):
I was like, look, the range isgoing to be this, it's going to
be stupid.
And it's like, yeah, that's anall bar part.
I was like, oh crap really.
And so that's how we got intocommercial.
And there've been a couple otherevents like that in various
things that I've done, where, atthe time, if it was just me
saying no the first time, wewouldn't have done it, because
my, my thought process was, ohwell, I don't think it's this,
(26:15):
that or the other, and so for me, adaptability was the thing.
The things that I turned downinitially, that I thought
weren't going to be any good,actually ended up like
seismically changing the outcomeof our businesses today, and so
for me, I used to think I waslike a super open-minded person,
very balanced and looking at alot of new data all the time,
(26:39):
and I've surprised myself withhow a little bit closed-minded I
can be on some of these topics,and so it's helped me come a
long way and I no longer say noto anything immediately, like
almost at all.
Um, if something's completelyout of our, out of a wheelhouse
like I've somebody reached outto us for, like it was like a
(27:00):
crime scene cleanup, which is atotally different certification,
like you have to have a whole,that's a whole different, like I
can clearly say no, we can't dothat.
You have to go to this likeother company.
But unless it's completelyoutside of our certification.
There's almost nothing in anybusiness that I'm part of now or
like even helping my wife, likeyou know.
Don't say no to anythingimmediately.
(27:21):
Let's at least get some moreinfo, let's test the water, see
what it is, send a quote andthen, if they say no, if it
doesn't work out, it doesn'twork out.
Send a quote and then, if theysay no, if it doesn't work out,
does work out.
But um, I I've come a long waysin learning that you don't know
a lot the way it is.
So don't assume, especially onnew opportunities, that you
think you know what they arebefore you find out.
(27:43):
Because I mean, we'd be, we'dbe making a lot less money right
now if the people I had turneddown initially just took me at
the first, the first go insteadof pushing the envelope a little
bit.
So just ironic how some of thisturns out.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
No, I mean, that is so true, right.
You don't know what opportunityis going to lead from it.
You don't know what itselfcould really bear fruit from it.
Sometimes you just got to takea leap, try it, maybe it may,
maybe it works, maybe it doesn't.
But you, at the end of the day,why limit yourself or cap
yourself and say sorry, we onlydo it this way.
(28:17):
And it's like you know, maybeyour, your business, especially
in the beginning, your businessis not that big or not that
established to niche down, thatthat much, right.
So, and I was.
I was talking to someone theother day and they were like you
know well, I heard, niches arein the riches are in the niches.
And I was like, yeah, but youdon't have any clients.
So you, you can't claim thatyou have a niche yet if you
(28:42):
don't have anyone to say see,this is our past results, this
is why we do it with this, youknow.
And he was like oh, that makessense.
I was like broaden yourumbrella, grow.
And then, with this, and he waslike, oh, that makes sense.
I was like broaden yourumbrella, grow, and then niche
down.
And then he was like that makesmore sense.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
But that is no, that is so true.
So I'll say, like when Istarted out because I was had
the background in in butleringmy initial approach to
residential cleaning was like,well, we're just going to target
really, really high incomehouseholds right, we can develop
a really unique experience.
That was a niche market that wevery quickly had to broaden and
(29:16):
, just like you said, likestarted out to niche so we
broadened, got the customer baseand then we could start zoning
in a little bit.
And then we had customers cometo us and we're like, if you
don't really fit the profile, Ican refer you out.
But we knew what we could offer, what we were good at at that
point.
And you're spot on, sometimescoming in with a super, super
(29:38):
niche category right out of thegate before you developed what
we'd call in software productmarket fit is totally backwards.
You have to be a little bitbroader on the funnel and then
cue in as you've developed thatcustomer base.
So great, great little tipthere for all of you guys
listening that was, that wasgood stuff, devin, I've never
heard people like say quite likethat, but that is, that is
(29:59):
totally true.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
So, and I want to say you know, I want to, you know
real quick, just talk about thecrime scene cleanup Now.
Now, was that for like a lawenforcement agency, or was it
the bad guys that you?
Speaker 1 (30:14):
know it wasn't the mafia.
No, it wasn't uh wasn't anyperpetrators that reached out,
thankfully, I mean, I'm I'massuming that was the case.
No, it was.
It was really just aclassification thing where they
I don't know how they eventually, how they initially got our
contact info but LexClean's inthe name, so sometimes they
could just roll through somestuff and give us a call.
(30:36):
I don't remember who evenreferred them, but it was like
right out of the game, like wait, wait, what is this?
What exactly is the scope?
And when they told me I waslike no, no, no, that's not.
You literally have to have awhole different set of licensing
for that.
You have disposal requirements.
It's just, uh, it's.
And I have been in homes and wehave turned some residences over
that looks like someone died inthere, for sure it was not
(30:59):
confirmed.
It looked that bad.
But like actual crime scenecleanup is just a difference.
That's a different ball of wax.
Um, again, it is actuallypretty niche and generally the
companies that do that most ofthe time only do that like it is
a pretty niche.
And generally the companiesthat do that most of the time
only do that Like it is a hyperniche, like this is boom and you
, yeah, they're like you'll haveyou'll work with local law
enforcement or some sort ofgoverning body and kind of a
(31:20):
direct line partner type ofthing, just not something I was
like super, super keen on.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
It's also didn't fit our brand, so we just we did, we
never pursued that and youdefinitely have it, kind of have
to have a different kind ofstomach for it too, yeah, which
I don't personally, it would be.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
It would be hard for me to train people for that
because I yeah, I don't.
I don't do super well with core.
So that was that, was notanother I dude, I this is like a
dumb story.
I remember in high school, uh,there was an anatomy.
In anatomy class there was alecture series and they were
showing um, like the I forgetnow it's a surgery where they
(31:55):
take a like a super, super smallcamera and they do surgery on,
like you know, people, thegallbladders and stuff.
So it's like an incision.
They put the camera in thereand there was like this little
pre thing where it's like hey,you know, this might be
sensitive for some people, soyou don't have to watch this
section If, like, you're beingqueasy.
I was like what the heck, dude.
I almost passed out.
It was like two minutes in andI couldn't even handle that.
(32:16):
I was like what the heck.
So, yeah, I'm not great forgore.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Oh, that's, that's funny, so I do want to.
I want to ask you know, forpeople that are, or what advice
would you have for people thatare hesitant to take that leap
of faith and, you know, become abusiness owner, but really have
that desire or that, you know,dream of doing so?
Speaker 1 (32:38):
Yeah, it's a great question when I, I think, early
on, when I was really gettingenamored by the idea and I still
am enamored by the idea ofmaking income in any other way
other than employ, I started tothink oh man, everybody should
be a business owner, right,everybody should do this.
(32:59):
This is just like the best wayto make money.
I've kind of come away fromthat to a degree where I now I'm
just like hey, what is yourgoal?
If your goal, whatever that is,if your 10-year, 20-year,
30-year plan is to be here, howare you best going to accomplish
that?
And for a lot of people that'sman, I want to do a 9 to 5.
(33:19):
I'm going to dump a bunch ofmoney into a 401k and I know
what I'm going to have at theend of it and everything's going
to be peachy Cool.
Go for it, don't do it.
So you should run that play Forpeople that want to be
entrepreneurs.
Sometimes they look at it from aget rich quick type of thing
and there are just no legal getrich quick schemes out there, so
(33:44):
plenty of illegal ones.
And if that's what you'relooking at, I'd still advise
against it because it's not agreat payout in the long run.
But if you want to do it theright way, it's so much more
work than I think a lot ofpeople understand when they're
starting out and they think thatit's a really glitzy, like oh
yeah, I'm going to open this up,I got a logo design and we're
(34:05):
going to go gangbusters.
It's going to be amazing.
We're going to hit a millionARR in month two.
You get the unicorns that pullit off.
It's amazing when it happens.
But for the majority of thecases, I tell people you're
going to work a lot longer and alot harder, making a lot less
money, just for much longer thanyou anticipated.
(34:26):
If you thought you're going toget here and make this money,
that timeline is probablyanother year or two out and
you're working twice as hard asyou thought you were going to be
.
So you have to adjust thoseexpectations to begin with.
Now.
If your goal is financialindependence, ownership and
being able to set your own terms, and you understand that it's
(34:46):
harder than working and gettinga W-2, then okay, good, you've
at least like you've come toterms with that.
So come to terms, adjust yourexpectations.
I don't want to shy anybody awayfrom it.
I just don't want people to getinto it dreaming that it is
something that it's probably not, because a lot of people get
burned out in the first.
You know three months I'm like,oh heck, this isn't working, I
(35:07):
haven't sold anything, I don'thave customers.
You know three months I'm like,oh heck, this isn't working, I
haven't sold anything, I don'thave customers, and that could
be for a variety of reasons.
But uh, yeah, don't don'tromanticize it Like, I think,
what you might imagine it to bein your head.
Try to be a little bit morerealistic.
And again, that comes back totalking to people that have been
successful, because if you talkto anybody that's successful,
(35:28):
they'll say the exact same thing.
They're like, yeah, this is notgoing to be a walk to the park
and week three is not going tobe the best of your life.
So I would just tell peoplethat.
And then I would ask people tokind of tell me, on a scale of
one to 10, where they're at.
On risk averseness, this isjust something I keep coming
back to.
Are you super, super riskaverse?
(35:49):
If you are like, if that reallybothers you, then it is going
to be hard, right, you're goingto have to set much, much lower
limits.
You know, if you're like, oh, Ican lose this much, you have to
drop that way down and hopethat this thing takes off really
early.
You might have to do a lot morebackground work.
You might have to spend threeor four years on the development
(36:10):
stage, really getting somethingsuper, super crisp before you
launch.
If you're hyper risk averseBecause if you're like me and
you're willing to try things outa lot more it's fine.
But I think people just need tobe honest from a psychological
standpoint with where they arepersonally and what they can
tolerate, and then develop aplan around that with good
(36:30):
mentorship, good counsel thatcan can help them.
So it's, it's not.
It's not like a bunch ofone-liners and like super
awesome, like one, two, threeplays.
It's just just look at thingslegitimately, be honest with
yourself, get some outsideperspective and develop a plan.
It's, it's.
It's a lot less again, a lotless sexy than I think people
(36:51):
want it to be.
It's like this is just how itis.
But we're, you know we're we'resuper sensationalist culture
and so we like to think ofthings in like bright lights and
big moments and very, veryquick, and we just got to.
You know, dial it down and be alittle bit more realistic.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
No, I love that and, honestly, I agree with
everything that you said.
That is, that is how it is,that's the real talk, as they
say.
And so the last question I wantto ask you know, before we wrap
up, is your legacy wall, and onyour legacy wall, this is not a
tombstone, is not, you know,anything of that nature?
(37:25):
So I like to say that ahead oftime, because it's the message
that you've learned, or the youknow, the message, essentially,
that you learned from yourlife's journey for the up and
coming generations.
Right, and it could be short,it could be long, but what would
that one message be?
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Probably it can be done, but it's probably harder
than you think.
But I like to lead with.
It can be done because I reallythink just about anything's
possible.
Particularly, I mean, this is2025.
Man, you and I, when we weregrowing up you know, not that
long ago because I'm not thatold, you're not that old, but I
(38:08):
mean I remember dial-up internetand we were moving from dial-up
internet like high speedinternet and that was that was
revolutionary, right.
You weren't waiting fourminutes for every web page to
load while you went and you know, mow the lawn, something like
that.
Like like things have moveddrastically just in our lifetime
.
I think we're way moreconnected.
We have way more information.
(38:28):
We have way more educationavailable to us.
You know the people that you'veinterviewed on this podcast.
You know we can glean from allof these individuals, right, and
get light years ahead of peoplea hundred years ago, for
example.
So there's much more that'spossible now.
So I think just about anythingcan be done, but again, it's
probably harder.
You need to come to terms withthat.
(38:49):
It's about playing around itbeing hard and then go for it.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
I love that and it is true.
And so where can people connectwith you?
Speaker 1 (38:59):
LinkedIn is really the best place.
I'm on that, probably the mostand so I'm really easy to find
Aram Street.
There aren't too many of us, soif you find me there, I'll link
that I'll be.
Uh, I'll be sure to respond.
It'd be great to connect withanybody.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Yeah, and then, guys, that will be in the show notes,
that'll also be in the videodescription if you're watching
on YouTube.
Um, but make sure you guysshare this episode with a friend
.
I mean, this is straight up thereal talk of you know, taking a
bet on yourself, really divingin and taking that leap of faith
.
So you know, not only for you,but who is that one person that
you know that is trying to, or,as always, talked about becoming
(39:37):
an entrepreneur or taking theirpassion and making a reality.
Right, send this episode tothem.
But, aaron, I want to say, youknow, thank you again for taking
the time out of your day to hopon the mindset cafe and just
drop some knowledge, dude.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Devin, it's been great talking with you again now
and thanks so much for havingme on.
This has been a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
Of course, brother.
We'll definitely connect againsoon.
All right, Cheers, buddy.
Cause it shies, got my mind onthe prize.
I can't be distracted.
I stay on my grind.
No time to be slack.
I hustle harder.
I go against the current cause.
I know my mind is rich to becollected.
Yeah, it's Mindset Cafe.
We all about that mindset.
Gotta stay focused.
Now go settle for the last.
It's all in your head how youthink you manifest.
So get ready to rise, cause weabout to be the best.
Gotta switch it up.
Gotta break the old habits.
Get your mind right.
Turn your dreams into habits.
No negative vibes, onlypositive vibes.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
What is up guys?
Welcome to another episode ofthe Mindset Cafe podcast.
It's your boy, devin, and todayI am honored to be on another
episode with this gentleman.
Right, we were on his podcastCoffee, chaos and Cashflow, and
it was a great conversation andI wanted to kind of bring it
(00:41):
back and go round two with itand kind of put him on the other
side of the stool.
So, without further ado, youknow, I'm sitting down today
with Aram Street, right, hetried to give me a different
pronunciation and almost threwme off, right, but he is a
serial entrepreneur and abusiness builder, a risk taker
who's you know, walked away froma lucrative career in household
(01:01):
management and really bet onhimself to start a business,
right, so that's one of thebiggest things on Mindset Cafe,
but also betting on yourself.
Thank you so much.
Thanks so much.
Let's.
You know, let's dive in alittle bit.
Yo, what's happening?
(01:22):
So, with your whole bring upand everything, right, what?
What was your background like?
What was your parents like?
What was your childhood like?
Speaker 1 (01:33):
yeah, um, so it was interesting.
I, I had a.
I had a great growing upexperience.
Five siblings were all spreadout in ages, so we're pretty,
you know.
It was like a couple of us onone end.
Older ones were alreadybasically in college by the time
I was growing up, and so my dadwas a Nazarene evangelist.
So he traveled, did a lot ofrevivals and speaking
(01:54):
engagements for differentchurches, and then when he
wasn't traveling, he wasbuilding homes specifically.
A-frames were just like histhing.
So he was pretty muchself-employed growing up, but we
didn't have a strong businessbackground.
It was just kind of what my dadwas doing and he was very
financially on top of things.
So he made a lot of gooddecisions.
(02:14):
But growing up I had a good workethic taught to us.
We all knew what it meant towork really, really hard, but
not necessarily how to build abusiness and go out and do it.
We were just.
You know, I grew up thinking Iwas just going to be a great
worker, go to work.
You know, nine to five punch mytime, and it really where
things started to turn for mewere people like Robert Kiyosaki
(02:35):
.
I remember the first time I sawthe cashflow quadrant and heard
about it, it was like brand new.
I had no idea.
Even though I grew up my dadwas making money other ways than
as an employee, it still didn'thit to me personally that's
something that's attainable,right.
So I was seeing the S, the Band the I quadrants and even
(02:57):
knowing that they existed asviable options for people was
kind of an epiphany, if you will.
Options for people was kind ofa epiphany, if you will.
So that's, people like himreally got me thinking in the
direction of hey, what would itbe like to create income rather
than just make it from apaycheck?
So a little bit of backgroundthere, yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
So what was your first?
What was your first job in?
In what did that?
You know what was your,basically your career path to
becoming an entrepreneur.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Yeah, my first job was McDonald's size 16 16.
Nothing particularly sexy orinteresting about that.
It was just, like you know, wehad to start buying our own
stuff.
Uh, I think at 12 was the agewhen parents like, hey, you got
to get your own clothes, yourown like, you got to provide for
anything that's not food,basically.
So as soon as we could legallystart working it was, you know,
we had to get income fromsomewhere.
(03:43):
So, other than the roof overour heads and the food in our
stomachs, we were paying foreverything.
So I got a job as early as Icould.
That wasn't, you know, nothingexciting to write home about,
but that was my first thing.
And then, when I moved toLexington in 2012, lexington,
kentucky I got this job as awhat was called a house house
man, basically glorifiedhousekeeper for this 25 000
(04:07):
square foot house.
Was this like mansion on athousand acre horse farm?
Beautiful 18th century Frencharchitecture just an incredible
massive place.
I tripped into that jobaccident.
They ended up making me thehousehold manager a couple years
into it, which basically is abutler, a North American
equivalent for the for thebutler role, and so that's how I
started out my adult career.
I was just kind of in thisdidn't have any connection to it
(04:28):
sort of tripped into it.
They sent me to an academy inToronto and I got certified as
butler, so I had a cool career,I suppose.
And then in 2020, I got firedfrom that job.
And it's without going into alot of detail.
It's kind of funny because Iknew for a full year that I was
going to be let go before hefired me.
Uh, it was just some like it'sjust discussions about, uh,
(04:52):
about a compensation that justended up not going well.
I was, I was really reallyunderpaid and I was like, hey, I
think you know I could get abump here and my employer was
super not happy about it.
So I knew for a full year hewanted to fire me, but it was so
hard to source my job he had towait till I found somebody
train them and then, when theywere competent, that person took
my place.
So I basically trained myreplacement, got let go in April
(05:15):
, I think, ish of 2020.
And by that point, I'd readenough and and kind of done some
side hustle things to know thatI really wanted to be an
entrepreneur.
My wife and I had talked aboutit and it was like look, this is
we can do it now.
We can either stay in householdmanagement I can we can move
and I can get a different jobyou know making much, much
better money even than I hadbeen making but we're always
(05:36):
going to be at someone else'sweb, there's someone else going
to be citing what we call thefront of the check and we're
just going to be signing theback of the check.
So I kind of wanted to flipthat script a little bit and we
thought, hey, we just got let go, we've got a month to figure
this out and see what we coulddo.
So that's how I got intoentrepreneurship.
I was sort of halfway into it,knew it was coming, and that's
(05:57):
what got us out of the nest, soto speak.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
So I want to rewind something that you said that
kind of intrigued me.
Did you say that you gotcertified as a butler?
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Yes, so there's this place.
There are basically a handfulof internationally known
academies for butlers andhousehold managers and I was
certified with the CharlesMcPherson Academy in Toronto,
ontario, back in the I think2016 is when I went up there,
went through their program andit's like a month long program
(06:34):
that you just learn every in andout from an international
perspective on what it means tobe a household manager or a
butler, and it was great.
Learned a lot of really coolstuff, stuff I've been working
in for a while, and then a lotof new insights.
So, yeah, I'm trained at a veryunique background.
Most people I'll tell them whatI used to do or even when I was
working like wow, I've never meta butler before.
(06:55):
It's like I'm usually a firsttime for most people there and
it's kind of funny too, becauseI'm in Kentucky, so it's not
exactly like LA or New York City, where there's a few more of
those people.
We're just like there's likethree of us in this greater
Midwest area.
So it's a really interesting,very, very niche markets
workforce.
But it was fun.
(07:16):
I learned a lot, had a greattime and don't plan on going
back, but you know, cool stories.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
No, I mean, the reason I asked is because, like,
when you hear Butler, I wasthinking of, like Fresh Prince
of Bel-Air and you know, andeverything is like, is like, did
you wear?
Did you wear the suit?
Is it like?
You know, is, how is that whole?
Speaker 1 (07:34):
process.
It was slacks and a dress shirtand that was about as formal as
we got.
They never had us do white tieor anything like that, so it was
somewhat laid back.
The setting itself it was aformal, semi-similar dress
(07:55):
setting but very, very formalinteraction.
So it was just the principalwas just the man and his wife
and they ran everything really,really, really, really well.
So we were just managing thismassive home, making sure
everything was getting done,from housekeeping to contracting
to just any random thing.
It could be landscaping.
You're just overseeing theestate, essentially right.
So there wasn't a ton of.
They were really private.
(08:15):
So the one thing they didn't dowas entertain a lot, which is
one of the hardest jobs inprivate services having to
entertain a lot of parties.
So thankfully for me that myprincipals just didn't love to
have a ton of people throw a lotof parties.
So it made my job much, mucheasier than most of my
colleagues, cause you knowpeople at that kind of net worth
they're having, you know, two300 party person parties like
(08:37):
every other weekend and if youcan imagine the background work
that takes to put that together.
So I was fortunate to not bedoing that all the time.
But yeah, it was.
It was a pretty interestingrealm.
I mean, it's a big house, youknow, like a really, really,
really cool place, and it's thekind of thing that you just
wouldn't find yourself in,unless you're in, that you
(08:58):
personally have that kind ofnetwork.
You know you're you're buildingthose kind of homes.
So it was.
It was unique, for sure.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
No, that's, it is super.
That's why I had to ask it'syou don't?
It's not every day you comeacross like that kind of
background and that kind ofstory.
So you know, one thing I dowant to ask is like OK, so now
that you got let go or you'retransitioning, instead of trying
to pivot and do somethingsimilar, you took a different
route right.
You went the entrepreneur route.
Do something similar.
(09:25):
You took a different routeright, you went the entrepreneur
route.
And so what was that mindsetshift for you?
And let's dive into what yournext step was.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
For sure.
So from a mindset perspective.
So the year I told you aboutthat, I knew for sure he wanted
to let me go, but he just didn'thave to take my space.
I did interview for severalother household management jobs
across the US.
I got fairly close to taking ajob in Cleveland, ohio, but the
biggest thing was that it was inCleveland.
It's like who wants to go toCleveland?
Always this on Cleveland.
I got some friends up there, sowhenever I get a chance I kind
of throw some shade that way.
But no, we got to the pointwhere again, my wife and I sat
(09:59):
down we had four kids at thetime and we're like look, we can
keep doing this.
We can make a lot more moneythan we're making right now.
But I'm going to just continueworking the same schedule.
I'm going to probably spendmore hours 60 to 80 hours
working for somebody else andwe're never going to build
anything unless we get controlof it and build it.
So the mindset shift was justgetting to the point of thinking
(10:24):
about okay, what can I do?
How quickly can I implement it?
And the reason I started acleaning company was I'm much
more of a black and white personthan I am like a super creative
individual, so I like to thinkof things in as logical terms as
possible.
I thought, hey, if I start acleaning company, I can build a
cool brand around that, becausethere aren't that many clinic
company owners that were trainedbutlers.
(10:45):
Right, I have a really, reallyweird, specific high-end I guess
you could say training here, soI can capitalize on that and
that's why I started a clinic.
It just made the most sense andif I was going to create, go to
a market and create customersthere and find them, that was
the easiest thing for me to getinto.
That made the most sense.
I look at I talked about thiswhen I think of like business.
(11:08):
A lot of people want to go intobusiness and they talk about
like doing something that theylove.
Right, I think that's great ifyou can do something that you
love, but you need to dosomething that's going to make
more so than do something youlove all the time.
If, if both of them line up,that's amazing, good for you,
but if they don't, like, I'dlove to skydive.
I just don't have a way to makea lot of money with that
because I'm not going to teachpeople how to do it.
(11:29):
I just want to do it Right.
So that's going to cost memoney.
It's not going to make me money.
So for me it was just a.
It was an X's and O's thing.
I'm just lining up the play andI have a really good network.
People know my background is inhousehold management.
This should be pretty easy andit was the best thing for me to
do at the time to start creatingincome.
(11:52):
Because when you go fromworking to building a business,
I mean literally, it's like oneweek I had a paycheck every
Friday and I knew what theamount was.
It was the exact same for likeyears, with very minimal
adjustments, and then all of asudden it's not was?
It was the exact same for likeyears, with very minimal
adjustments, and then all of asudden it's not there.
It's like you have to create it,like you have to go out and
find value in the market andgive people a reason to write
(12:12):
you a check and that's that's ashift and it's sort of scary.
You know starting out becauseyou're hoping that it happens
quickly and that you can coveryour bases as quick as possible,
so you're not just you knowlosing money and homeless for
(12:32):
long.
So it is a bit of a shift.
But I think being, you know,not super risk averse helps and
for whatever reason I amoriented towards risk, for
better, for worse.
I probably err too much on theside of doing a lot of risky
stuff.
So that that was just apersonality, you know,
psychological composition.
That really helped me there too.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
No, I mean, you said, you guys had four kids.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Yeah, we have five now.
So we had four when we made thetransition and then, a little
over a year after that, we foundout we were having our fifth.
And so, yeah, we were man, wewere in the thick of it, it was
going down, yep.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Man, I have one and one on the way and I can't even
fathom three, let alone five.
That's intense, Yep, it is.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
I will say three is the magic number.
I always tell people if you canget to three and get a handle
on it, you're fine.
After that, like one and twowas whatever.
We had three, we had no ideawhat was happening.
We thought we had just likeforgotten everything that there
was to know about parenting.
Once we got sort of the hang ofthree, four and five, you heart
, you don't even notice that yougot.
(13:34):
It's like oh yeah, we're, we'reon autopilot, we got this.
So I just tell people just getto three, get it on lockdown,
you'll be fine.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
From there you need seven, ten, it probably doesn't
matter so, with that being said,are you guys good planning on
more?
Speaker 1 (13:48):
oh yeah.
So I've told, we've said forlike since the beginning, people
like, are you gonna have anymore kids?
I'm like, oh yeah, doubledigits, baby, we're gonna, we're
gonna get to 10 plus.
Um, that's, that's sort oflighthearted because we
genuinely don't have a number.
We've never come up with Like,hey, we didn't plan and decide,
hey, at this number we're done.
We've just always been like,yeah, you know, not right now,
(14:09):
we'll wait a little bit.
But we've never had a hard andfast cutoff date.
So part of it whether or not wehave any more biological kids we
definitely want to adopt downthe road.
We kind of have a plan mappedout for that and that's going to
be three to four years probably, conceivably, before we start
on that journey.
But that is definitely likesomething that we want to do.
I grew up with foster kidsgrowing up in our house.
(14:31):
My wife's actually adopted, sowe have a lot of firsthand
experience with those realms andsee a big need there.
So a lot of desire to do that.
We want our kids to get alittle bit older and develop
different routines and stuffbefore we jump into it.
But yeah, I think it'sdefinitely foreseeable that
we'll hit double digits.
I'm still holding out for that.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
So that movie Cheaper by the Dozen is going to be
your lifestyle?
Yeah, it's so funny.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
I still haven't seen that.
I don't know how many timespeople reference that and I'm
like, oh yeah, I need to watchthat because people keep saying
it and.
I still haven't seen it, so gotto put that on the playlist at
some point.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
but no, yeah, I mean, that's awesome though.
So I mean, many people, though,leave fear, leaving a stable
income right To to essentiallytake that bet on themselves and
take that leap, even though youknow you think that it's going
to be a great, you knowtransition or a stable, a stable
transition, right, but at theend of the day, everything is
(15:30):
still a risk in.
You know, you had a family, youhad four kids, so what was like
the, the mindset of you knowtrying to subside that you know
uncertainty, or that negativityof hey, it didn't work out off
of day one and I'm growing thisto be stable and support a
family of six, essentially withyou, your wife and your kids.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Yeah, Well, for me, I can just tell you what it was
for us.
Everybody's story is a littlebit different for us because
when it was kind of our choiceto have a large family and to
jump into that and and grow thatearly on, we we were a little
bit more financially limited,you know, for for obvious
(16:14):
reasons, than a lot of people.
So we were working with asmaller budget, I guess you
could say, in terms of free cashto just throw around and
experiment with different ideas.
So, knowing that out of thegate, I knew, particularly in
building a business, you know,in the early stages, I was
probably going to be hustling alot on the side to help out and
get that moving.
So that could like for me for acouple years early on.
(16:36):
It was I was doing a lot ofrideshare driving, I was doing
food delivery along withbuilding a business and getting
it to a point of sustainability.
So I never had a complex whereit's like, oh, I'm too good to
do this, I'm going to be anentrepreneur, so I'm not going
to do all these other thingsthat sometimes people look down
on.
I just threw that out from dayone.
(16:57):
It's like, look, our goal is toget here.
We want to become financiallyindependent and if we're going
to build it ourselves, we'reprobably going to have to do a
lot and work a lot in a lot ofdifferent areas and pull money
from wherever we can to get thisthing off the ground.
And so for me, it was like look, this is my responsibility, I
got to make this happen,providing for the family, and
(17:18):
there's nothing that I'm toogood to do.
Essentially, I didn't have aline there.
I'm surprised, like it's notacross the board.
A lot of entrepreneurs aren'tthis way but I'm surprised by
the number of people I've talkedto who are like oh yeah, I
would do that, like I would, I'dnever drive for DoorDash, like
I'm just not going to do that,right, it's almost like it's a
little.
It's a little too, there's alittle bit too posh for it.
So that's that was one thingthat for me personally, I just
(17:41):
got past.
I wasn't going to not dosomething because I thought I
was too good for it.
And again, I think you havedifferent options.
If it's just you, especially ifyou're single, or if it's just
you and your wife you don't havekids you kind of have a lot
more freedom to experiment andtry things, because you don't
have as many you know mouths tofeed lives on the line.
In my case, we're just, youknow, our backs were a little
(18:03):
bit more up against the wall, sothat might have helped.
But, again, being not beingrisk averse and being willing to
do whatever you need to do tomake it happen really, really,
really helped us in a long way.
I'm also really fortunate that,even though, especially early on
, I really sucked atcommunication right You'd think,
uh, be, you know, my wife andI've been married for 13 years
(18:26):
now and she's incredible.
But even like in the earlyyears, I just I just didn't
communicate well at all.
So she's, she really, reallyhung with me through a lot of
just Aaron's doing stuff, he'sbooking meetings, he's doing
things, and then she's also findout about it when she finds out
about it just was terrible atthat.
So I was really reallyfortunate that she was very long
suffering and hung in therewith me until I found out hey,
(18:49):
you know I could include Beverlyon this journey, right, like
she's actually part of thisequation maybe I could like cure
in a little bit and that wecould do this together and that
that really was something thatin the last year or two started
becoming a much more commonfixture in our relationship and
has helped out tremendously.
And it's just silly things likethat that sometimes you I think
(19:12):
entrepreneurs were super liketunnel vision we can get very,
very task oriented and close outa lot of people that are really
close to us and very importantin the process.
So kind of, you know, looseningback a little bit.
I think you and I even talkedabout this when you were on our
podcast like just even havingthe wherewithal to talk with
your significant other and belike, hey, you know, let's plan
(19:32):
this ahead, let's plan this weekout and, you know, be on the
same page so that neither of usare getting surprised by
anything.
So very, very grateful that mywife was patient to put up with
all this, but she also is veryentrepreneurially minded herself
.
She started her own business acouple of years ago and that's
really been taking off.
So we're definitely together inentrepreneurship, having a
(19:58):
blast, seeing a lot of struggles, going through all the ups and
downs, but it's been a good time.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
No, that is so awesome, and I think the
communication part is such a key, and I think we did talk about
it on the podcast too, because Imean, I was the same way.
I didn't really say anything, Ididn't really talk about it and
then you realize you'restarting to build two different
lives and two different versionsof yourself, and so letting
them in allows it to feel liketo them that it's all one
(20:29):
version of you and that they getto have an aspect of
essentially the business that'sgetting built.
And I would say you've builtmultiple businesses, from
LexClean CleanSpace a bakerywith your wife, I believe, right
, and.
And so what were some of thebiggest mistakes or challenges
that you faced in your firstyear of business, as well as,
(20:51):
like, once you started scalingand having multiple businesses?
Speaker 1 (20:58):
When you talk about mistakes, if you're trying to
rank order like the biggest ones, that's where it gets tricky,
cause there are so many tochoose.
Let's see what were the biggestproblems.
I think I would have done muchbetter if I had sought like
mentorship is something that Ireally preach to people now
because I'm on the back end ofnot seeking out the kind of
mentorship I should have hadearlier, so I can kind of see
(21:20):
the hindsight.
You know, looking back, I wishI had sought some people out
that were really accomplished,like in a cleaning business that
I could say, hey, this one, I'mgetting ready to do.
What I need to be aware ofParticularly like.
We started out in residentialcleaning and then, a year and a
half in, we added commercialcleaning and that's where the
bulk of our revenue is today ison the commercial front.
Those are very differentmarkets.
(21:42):
You have completely differentcashflow operations going
between the two and it was justknowing that one was going to be
different and seeing thatchange.
If I had at least done a littlebit more work to reach out to
people that were alreadyaccomplished there and sat down
even 30, 60 minutes, you know,been able to learn from them.
That would have helped me avoida lot of the pitfalls that we
(22:06):
had to experience the hard way.
Right, business is a big trialand error experiment, but if you
can talk to people that havealready been through the
minefield, they can just tellyou hey, don't step there, there
and there, and you won't blowup.
It's like that's alreadyavailable, so try to take
advantage of that.
And I did a little bit too muchthe hard way because I was
figuring it out solo, so thosewere in any business.
(22:30):
The times that have beenhardest had just been the
decisions that I made without,you know, consulting people.
I have a great network man, andI had a good network even, you
know, five years ago, and itcould have utilized it a lot
better to get ahead of thingsbefore they took place.
So that's kind of to like makea summary.
(22:50):
That's what I'd say is, if Iwere to do it again, I'd reach
out to a few more people and belike hey, this is what I'm
looking to do, what should I beon the lookout for?
What should I be avoiding?
What decisions do I need to bemaking now to, you know,
forestall the things that arecoming down the road in six
months, and that's what I wouldtell people that are getting
started.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
It's like, if this is the industry you're picking,
find three or four people youknow that would sit down and you
know kind of walk you throughwhat they did good and bad and
write all that down, take it tothe bank and just be on the
lookout for it.
So definitely, I mean,mentorship is huge and I think
we all learn this.
You know, as an entrepreneur,you learn that you don't need to
(23:30):
be the one that solves everyproblem.
You don't need to be the personthat does it.
You know all by yourself to beclassified as an entrepreneur,
right?
And so I'm big on mentors.
You know, from the franchiseand everything, we hired mentors
and when you look at it and youput your ego and your, you know
, have a little bit of humility,it's.
You're condensing your timelineto success, right?
(23:52):
Someone else has already walkedthis path.
Why not just get the answersand then tweak it up and
implement, right?
So what role do you think thatcreativity and adaptability play
in your entrepreneurial journey?
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Yeah.
So again, creativity is alwaysinteresting for me because
everything that has been createdin any of the businesses that I
have been part of or havefounded in some capacity, they
have all been at the hands ofsomebody else.
I have zero new ideas.
I look for systems that I canduplicate, that have worked and
that I duplicate.
That's all I do.
(24:26):
So if I need something creative, if it's like a logo or
something, I go to my wife.
I go to a designer.
We've worked with several thathave been excellent.
So that's just like mycreativity.
That's not my strong point.
I don't try to do something.
I'm not good at.
Adaptability, on the other hand, I have had to implement a few
times and I guess my biggestthing on adaptability, again
(24:46):
looking back, is I can talkabout like three different
things in LexClean.
I get three different pointsthat come to mind.
I won't share all of them.
Where I there was a certainchange, it was actually going
from one really big one wasgoing from residential to
commercial.
We almost didn't do that and,again, most of our revenue today
in the company is commercial.
We almost didn't do commercialbecause I was in the middle of
(25:12):
transitioning from traditionalresidential to doing short-term
just becoming an Airbnb cleaningcompany.
That's kind of all the marketwe were going to focus in on.
There was an opening in thearea.
I was like, okay, we're goingto double down on this.
My buddy is a continuousimprovement leader over at a
dairy factory and he's like, hey, aram, our company's on the way
out.
I want you to come out and giveus a quote.
And I'm like, oh no, no, wedon't do commercial, because
we'd only done some like retailcommercial.
It was not not good, very badmargins.
(25:34):
And so I was.
I just didn't want to do it.
So I told him no, like threetimes.
He sends me, he just keepsbugging me.
He sends me a list of all thethings they do day, day and
weekly.
He's like, well, just give me aballpark range for what this
would be.
So he sends me, sends thisthing over.
I give him a number.
I threw a bunch of money on topof that.
I thought would just get himoff my back.
(25:55):
I was like, look, the range isgoing to be this, it's going to
be stupid.
And it's like, yeah, that's anall bar part.
I was like, oh crap really.
And so that's how we got intocommercial.
And there've been a couple otherevents like that in various
things that I've done, where, atthe time, if it was just me
saying no the first time, wewouldn't have done it, because
my, my thought process was, ohwell, I don't think it's this,
(26:15):
that or the other, and so for me, adaptability was the thing.
The things that I turned downinitially, that I thought
weren't going to be any good,actually ended up like
seismically changing the outcomeof our businesses today, and so
for me, I used to think I waslike a super open-minded person,
very balanced and looking at alot of new data all the time,
(26:39):
and I've surprised myself withhow a little bit closed-minded I
can be on some of these topics,and so it's helped me come a
long way and I no longer say noto anything immediately, like
almost at all.
Um, if something's completelyout of our, out of a wheelhouse
like I've somebody reached outto us for, like it was like a
(27:00):
crime scene cleanup, which is atotally different certification,
like you have to have a whole,that's a whole different, like I
can clearly say no, we can't dothat.
You have to go to this likeother company.
But unless it's completelyoutside of our certification.
There's almost nothing in anybusiness that I'm part of now or
like even helping my wife, likeyou know.
Don't say no to anythingimmediately.
(27:21):
Let's at least get some moreinfo, let's test the water, see
what it is, send a quote andthen, if they say no, if it
doesn't work out, it doesn'twork out.
Send a quote and then, if theysay no, if it doesn't work out,
does work out.
But um, I I've come a long waysin learning that you don't know
a lot the way it is.
So don't assume, especially onnew opportunities, that you
think you know what they arebefore you find out.
(27:43):
Because I mean, we'd be, we'dbe making a lot less money right
now if the people I had turneddown initially just took me at
the first, the first go insteadof pushing the envelope a little
bit.
So just ironic how some of thisturns out.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
No, I mean, that is so true, right.
You don't know what opportunityis going to lead from it.
You don't know what itselfcould really bear fruit from it.
Sometimes you just got to takea leap, try it, maybe it may,
maybe it works, maybe it doesn't.
But you, at the end of the day,why limit yourself or cap
yourself and say sorry, we onlydo it this way.
(28:17):
And it's like you know, maybeyour, your business, especially
in the beginning, your businessis not that big or not that
established to niche down, thatthat much, right.
So, and I was.
I was talking to someone theother day and they were like you
know well, I heard, niches arein the riches are in the niches.
And I was like, yeah, but youdon't have any clients.
So you, you can't claim thatyou have a niche yet if you
(28:42):
don't have anyone to say see,this is our past results, this
is why we do it with this, youknow.
And he was like oh, that makessense.
I was like broaden yourumbrella, grow.
And then, with this, and he waslike, oh, that makes sense.
I was like broaden yourumbrella, grow, and then niche
down.
And then he was like that makesmore sense.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
But that is no, that is so true.
So I'll say, like when Istarted out because I was had
the background in in butleringmy initial approach to
residential cleaning was like,well, we're just going to target
really, really high incomehouseholds right, we can develop
a really unique experience.
That was a niche market that wevery quickly had to broaden and
(29:16):
, just like you said, likestarted out to niche so we
broadened, got the customer baseand then we could start zoning
in a little bit.
And then we had customers cometo us and we're like, if you
don't really fit the profile, Ican refer you out.
But we knew what we could offer, what we were good at at that
point.
And you're spot on, sometimescoming in with a super, super
(29:38):
niche category right out of thegate before you developed what
we'd call in software productmarket fit is totally backwards.
You have to be a little bitbroader on the funnel and then
cue in as you've developed thatcustomer base.
So great, great little tipthere for all of you guys
listening that was, that wasgood stuff, devin, I've never
heard people like say quite likethat, but that is, that is
(29:59):
totally true.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
So, and I want to say you know, I want to, you know
real quick, just talk about thecrime scene cleanup Now.
Now, was that for like a lawenforcement agency, or was it
the bad guys that you?
Speaker 1 (30:14):
know it wasn't the mafia.
No, it wasn't uh wasn't anyperpetrators that reached out,
thankfully, I mean, I'm I'massuming that was the case.
No, it was.
It was really just aclassification thing where they
I don't know how they eventually, how they initially got our
contact info but LexClean's inthe name, so sometimes they
could just roll through somestuff and give us a call.
(30:36):
I don't remember who evenreferred them, but it was like
right out of the game, like wait, wait, what is this?
What exactly is the scope?
And when they told me I waslike no, no, no, that's not.
You literally have to have awhole different set of licensing
for that.
You have disposal requirements.
It's just, uh, it's.
And I have been in homes and wehave turned some residences over
that looks like someone died inthere, for sure it was not
(30:59):
confirmed.
It looked that bad.
But like actual crime scenecleanup is just a difference.
That's a different ball of wax.
Um, again, it is actuallypretty niche and generally the
companies that do that most ofthe time only do that like it is
a pretty niche.
And generally the companiesthat do that most of the time
only do that Like it is a hyperniche, like this is boom and you
, yeah, they're like you'll haveyou'll work with local law
enforcement or some sort ofgoverning body and kind of a
(31:20):
direct line partner type ofthing, just not something I was
like super, super keen on.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
It's also didn't fit our brand, so we just we did, we
never pursued that and youdefinitely have it, kind of have
to have a different kind ofstomach for it too, yeah, which
I don't personally, it would be.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
It would be hard for me to train people for that
because I yeah, I don't.
I don't do super well with core.
So that was that, was notanother I dude, I this is like a
dumb story.
I remember in high school, uh,there was an anatomy.
In anatomy class there was alecture series and they were
showing um, like the I forgetnow it's a surgery where they
(31:55):
take a like a super, super smallcamera and they do surgery on,
like you know, people, thegallbladders and stuff.
So it's like an incision.
They put the camera in thereand there was like this little
pre thing where it's like hey,you know, this might be
sensitive for some people, soyou don't have to watch this
section If, like, you're beingqueasy.
I was like what the heck, dude.
I almost passed out.
It was like two minutes in andI couldn't even handle that.
(32:16):
I was like what the heck.
So, yeah, I'm not great forgore.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Oh, that's, that's funny, so I do want to.
I want to ask you know, forpeople that are, or what advice
would you have for people thatare hesitant to take that leap
of faith and, you know, become abusiness owner, but really have
that desire or that, you know,dream of doing so?
Speaker 1 (32:38):
Yeah, it's a great question when I, I think, early
on, when I was really gettingenamored by the idea and I still
am enamored by the idea ofmaking income in any other way
other than employ, I started tothink oh man, everybody should
be a business owner, right,everybody should do this.
(32:59):
This is just like the best wayto make money.
I've kind of come away fromthat to a degree where I now I'm
just like hey, what is yourgoal?
If your goal, whatever that is,if your 10-year, 20-year,
30-year plan is to be here, howare you best going to accomplish
that?
And for a lot of people that'sman, I want to do a 9 to 5.
(33:19):
I'm going to dump a bunch ofmoney into a 401k and I know
what I'm going to have at theend of it and everything's going
to be peachy Cool.
Go for it, don't do it.
So you should run that play Forpeople that want to be
entrepreneurs.
Sometimes they look at it from aget rich quick type of thing
and there are just no legal getrich quick schemes out there, so
(33:44):
plenty of illegal ones.
And if that's what you'relooking at, I'd still advise
against it because it's not agreat payout in the long run.
But if you want to do it theright way, it's so much more
work than I think a lot ofpeople understand when they're
starting out and they think thatit's a really glitzy, like oh
yeah, I'm going to open this up,I got a logo design and we're
(34:05):
going to go gangbusters.
It's going to be amazing.
We're going to hit a millionARR in month two.
You get the unicorns that pullit off.
It's amazing when it happens.
But for the majority of thecases, I tell people you're
going to work a lot longer and alot harder, making a lot less
money, just for much longer thanyou anticipated.
(34:26):
If you thought you're going toget here and make this money,
that timeline is probablyanother year or two out and
you're working twice as hard asyou thought you were going to be
.
So you have to adjust thoseexpectations to begin with.
Now.
If your goal is financialindependence, ownership and
being able to set your own terms, and you understand that it's
(34:46):
harder than working and gettinga W-2, then okay, good, you've
at least like you've come toterms with that.
So come to terms, adjust yourexpectations.
I don't want to shy anybody awayfrom it.
I just don't want people to getinto it dreaming that it is
something that it's probably not, because a lot of people get
burned out in the first.
You know three months I'm like,oh heck, this isn't working, I
(35:07):
haven't sold anything, I don'thave customers.
You know three months I'm like,oh heck, this isn't working, I
haven't sold anything, I don'thave customers, and that could
be for a variety of reasons.
But uh, yeah, don't don'tromanticize it Like, I think,
what you might imagine it to bein your head.
Try to be a little bit morerealistic.
And again, that comes back totalking to people that have been
successful, because if you talkto anybody that's successful,
(35:28):
they'll say the exact same thing.
They're like, yeah, this is notgoing to be a walk to the park
and week three is not going tobe the best of your life.
So I would just tell peoplethat.
And then I would ask people tokind of tell me, on a scale of
one to 10, where they're at.
On risk averseness, this isjust something I keep coming
back to.
Are you super, super riskaverse?
(35:49):
If you are like, if that reallybothers you, then it is going
to be hard, right, you're goingto have to set much, much lower
limits.
You know, if you're like, oh, Ican lose this much, you have to
drop that way down and hopethat this thing takes off really
early.
You might have to do a lot morebackground work.
You might have to spend threeor four years on the development
(36:10):
stage, really getting somethingsuper, super crisp before you
launch.
If you're hyper risk averseBecause if you're like me and
you're willing to try things outa lot more it's fine.
But I think people just need tobe honest from a psychological
standpoint with where they arepersonally and what they can
tolerate, and then develop aplan around that with good
(36:30):
mentorship, good counsel thatcan can help them.
So it's, it's not.
It's not like a bunch ofone-liners and like super
awesome, like one, two, threeplays.
It's just just look at thingslegitimately, be honest with
yourself, get some outsideperspective and develop a plan.
It's, it's.
It's a lot less again, a lotless sexy than I think people
(36:51):
want it to be.
It's like this is just how itis.
But we're, you know we're we'resuper sensationalist culture
and so we like to think ofthings in like bright lights and
big moments and very, veryquick, and we just got to.
You know, dial it down and be alittle bit more realistic.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
No, I love that and, honestly, I agree with
everything that you said.
That is, that is how it is,that's the real talk, as they
say.
And so the last question I wantto ask you know, before we wrap
up, is your legacy wall, and onyour legacy wall, this is not a
tombstone, is not, you know,anything of that nature?
(37:25):
So I like to say that ahead oftime, because it's the message
that you've learned, or the youknow, the message, essentially,
that you learned from yourlife's journey for the up and
coming generations.
Right, and it could be short,it could be long, but what would
that one message be?
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Probably it can be done, but it's probably harder
than you think.
But I like to lead with.
It can be done because I reallythink just about anything's
possible.
Particularly, I mean, this is2025.
Man, you and I, when we weregrowing up you know, not that
long ago because I'm not thatold, you're not that old, but I
(38:08):
mean I remember dial-up internetand we were moving from dial-up
internet like high speedinternet and that was that was
revolutionary, right.
You weren't waiting fourminutes for every web page to
load while you went and you know, mow the lawn, something like
that.
Like like things have moveddrastically just in our lifetime
.
I think we're way moreconnected.
We have way more information.
(38:28):
We have way more educationavailable to us.
You know the people that you'veinterviewed on this podcast.
You know we can glean from allof these individuals, right, and
get light years ahead of peoplea hundred years ago, for
example.
So there's much more that'spossible now.
So I think just about anythingcan be done, but again, it's
probably harder.
You need to come to terms withthat.
(38:49):
It's about playing around itbeing hard and then go for it.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
I love that and it is true.
And so where can people connectwith you?
Speaker 1 (38:59):
LinkedIn is really the best place.
I'm on that, probably the mostand so I'm really easy to find
Aram Street.
There aren't too many of us, soif you find me there, I'll link
that I'll be.
Uh, I'll be sure to respond.
It'd be great to connect withanybody.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Yeah, and then, guys, that will be in the show notes,
that'll also be in the videodescription if you're watching
on YouTube.
Um, but make sure you guysshare this episode with a friend
.
I mean, this is straight up thereal talk of you know, taking a
bet on yourself, really divingin and taking that leap of faith
.
So you know, not only for you,but who is that one person that
you know that is trying to, or,as always, talked about becoming
(39:37):
an entrepreneur or taking theirpassion and making a reality.
Right, send this episode tothem.
But, aaron, I want to say, youknow, thank you again for taking
the time out of your day to hopon the mindset cafe and just
drop some knowledge, dude.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Devin, it's been great talking with you again now
and thanks so much for havingme on.
This has been a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
Of course, brother.
We'll definitely connect againsoon.
All right, Cheers, buddy.
Cause it shies, got my mind onthe prize.
I can't be distracted.
I stay on my grind.
No time to be slack.
I hustle harder.
I go against the current cause.
I know my mind is rich to becollected.
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