Kirt Linington | He Came to America With $700… Then Sold for 9 Figures, Started Knocking On Doors At 42 & Made Millions

Summary

School of Hard Knocks Podcast

Episode: Kirt Linington | He Came to America With $700… Then Sold for 9 Figures, Started Knocking On Doors At 42 & Made Millions

Date: January 23, 2026
Host: James, with Jack and Josh
Guest: Kirt Linington

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Episode Overview

This episode features Kirt Linington, a South African immigrant who arrived in the U.S. with only $700, started a roofing company by door-knocking at age 42, and later sold his business for nine figures. The discussion centers on his unorthodox entrepreneurial journey, unbeaten work ethic, overcoming rejection, leadership, and key takeaways for aspiring entrepreneurs—especially those who feel they’ve “missed their window.” The episode is packed with practical business advice, personal philosophy, and the gritty reality behind building wealth and success from nothing.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Starting Late: Breaking Age Barriers

• Door Knocking at 42:
  Kirt began his entrepreneurial journey and started door-knocking for roofing sales at 42, challenging the notion that success is only for the young.
  • Kirt: "You can bind to any limitation that you set for yourself, whether you're old, young, you come for money, don't come for money… Wanting to win and wanting to be the best was more important than my pride." (02:08)
• Leaving Corporate Comfort:
  After 20 years (including as an EVP) in corporate America, he left a stable six-figure executive role to start “from scratch” in a blue-collar trade.

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2. Immigrant Hustle and Early Struggles

• From South Africa to the U.S.:
  Kirt moved to the U.S. purely inspired by the American dream, flying over with just $700 after a breakup and little else.

  • Kirt: “We sold everything, didn’t have much, had $700 left, and was on that plane… rest is history.” (06:22)

• Military and Discipline:
  He credits mandatory service in the South African army for instilling discipline, calling it “the best, the worst time” of his life.

  • Kirt: “Kids that hadn’t been in the military too long that were exposed to things we probably shouldn't have seen… but we worked through it.” (05:13)

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3. Building a Business With No Plan but Relentless Execution

• No Grand Plan, Just Sales:
  The business started with humble “hit the streets, knock the doors, get the sales” mentality—no big plan, fancy office, or infrastructure.
  • Kirt: “There wasn’t. It was hit the streets, knock the doors, get the sales. If we sell enough… apply production and operations to it, then you look after it and can keep growing.” (09:27)
• Sales First, Process Later:
  Focused on getting customers before perfecting backend operations—contrasting to most “overengineered” startups.
• Team Growth:
  Started with just 4 people, expanding rapidly by learning to recruit, train, and retain top talent using lessons from corporate America.
• Lean Operations:
  Grew to $62M in revenue while working two jobs before going “all in.”
  • Kirt: “Got to $62 million part-time. I did both… Saturdays and Sundays I was door knocking.” (12:13)
• Delayed Gratification:
  Prioritized reinvesting in the business rather than instant personal gain for bigger eventual rewards.
  • Kirt: “Invest into the business long-term, invest into people long-term, and the rewards will come.” (14:09)

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4. Sales, Rejection, and “Unsexy” Work

• Making Door-Knocking Profitable and Respectable:
  Framed “unsexy” door-knocking as a goldmine because most people avoid hard work.
  • Kirt: “There’s a lot of things that you could do that are shitty, that no one wants to do anymore, and you could create a lane for yourself.” (02:22, 55:00)
• Mindset Shift: Promotion, Not Sales:
  Used Jeffrey Gitomer's “Sales Bible” philosophy: rejection isn’t personal.
  • Kirt: “People are not rejecting you, they're rejecting your offer. Stop taking it personally… go from selling to promoting and just be a facilitator.” (23:58)
• Overcoming Rejection:
  Recommends relentless repetition (“10,000 hour rule”) and reframing sales skills as something everyone does daily in life.
  • Kirt: “We closed our whole childhood… The sooner you realize you can do it, the better.” (29:02)
• Hiring Mindset:
  "Hire for attitude, teach for skill." Best salespeople aren’t the smoothest, but the most consistent and resilient.

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5. Scaling and Operating for Sale

• Avoiding Shiny Object Syndrome:
  Urged complete mastery and focus on “one thing” before diversifying, calling the seven-streams-of-income rule “bullshit.”
  • Kirt: “You haven’t become great at one thing yet, and so everything else is a redheaded stepchild… Go become great at one thing.” (32:27)
• Transition to Private Equity:
  The realization to sell came after learning about private equity at an industry event.
  • Kirt: "You can go build this business and get a multiple on that EBITDA number… it's really accelerated income." (34:53)
• Preparation for Sale:
  Rejected early, lower offers; learned to structure and clean business operations/data for maximum valuation.
  • Kirt: “We waited… spent another seven months building, preparing, cleaning… learned about how to maximize the value of your business.” (37:50)
• Execution and Aftermath:
  Closed in Vegas, celebrated with a (literal) refresh of his bank account at the blackjack table; stayed even-keeled but grateful.
  • Kirt: “Me and my partner were… playing blackjack and we’re refreshing… then obviously it hit. Then we had a tequila.” (41:31)

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6. Key Lessons for Entrepreneurs Looking to Exit

• Buyer’s Perspective:
  Buyers look for: repeatable systems, transferable leadership, geographic expansion, legal/financial cleanliness, and ability to bolt-on acquisitions.
  • Kirt: “You have to show that the business can keep trending through the systems, process and leadership… Repeatability is key.” (43:56)
• Integration Matters:
  “Billion dollar funds don’t want to buy an assembly” of brands, but a unified operation.
  • Kirt: “…If you want to maximize your return, getting everything as one is probably prudent.” (42:21)

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7. Personal Philosophy and Life Advice

• No Such Thing as Business Problems—Personal Problems Bleed In:
  • Kirt: “There’s no such thing as business problems, just personal problems that roll into the business… You’re shitty at home, you’re shitty at work.” (49:29)
• Impact of Character Over Money:
  Success is about who you become, not what you have.
  • Kirt: “…Respect, trust, loyalty, and work ethic… Those things will compound in your life over and over a lot longer than a paycheck.” (53:00)
• On Legacy:
  Not chasing legacy intentionally—just doing the right thing, expecting results to follow naturally.
  • Kirt: “I'm not chasing that legacy… if you do the right things, it'll happen.” (66:04)
• Passion Is Created, Not Followed:
  Don’t “follow your passion,” create it through repeated exposure and focus.
  • Kirt: “Screw following your passion… Exposure over a period of time creates passion.” (55:34)
• On Wealth and Advice:
  Wealth amplifies who you already are. Many "broke" individuals reject advice as they want to always be right.
  • Kirt: “Do you want to be right or do you want to be rich?” (59:47)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Late Starting:
  “Most people, they can't comprehend that. They think that it's too late for them to start a business… What are your thoughts on that?”
  *— James (01:51)

  “Wanting to win and wanting to be the best was more important than my pride. And so, you know, we say leave that at the door, right? What's more important? Like, just put it aside, go do it.”
  *— Kirt (02:08)

• On Personal Integrity:
  “There’s no such thing as business problems, just personal problems that roll into the business. You’re shitty at home, you’re shitty at work.”
  *— Kirt (49:29)

• On Focus & Hard Work:
  "Figure out how to eliminate the distractions. Go do the shitty stuff. Stop chasing the cool stuff that everyone's chasing."
  *— Kirt (54:37)

• On Advice for the Next Generation:
  “If you can get laser focused and eliminate that noise, you can’t go wrong… Go find something that’s shitty, that no one wants to do anymore, and you could create a lane for yourself.”
  *— Kirt (55:30)

• On Wealth & Character:
  “It’s not necessarily about the money that you make. It’s about who you become along the way.”
  *— Kirt (53:00)

• On Being “Right” vs. Being “Rich”:
  “Do you want to be right or do you want to be rich?”
  *— Kirt (59:47)

• On Door-Knocking and Humility:
  "I'm promoting the fact that you have damage. We can improve or get your property back to better than pre-loss condition... I’m a facilitator of a process. I’m not selling you anything."
  *— Kirt (24:02)

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Timestamps for Significant Segments

• Starting Door-Knocking at 42: [00:00] – [02:22]
• Coming to America & Early Hustle: [06:22] – [07:26]
• Switching from Corporate to Roofing: [07:40] – [09:27]
• Scaling a Lean Business: [09:27] – [15:01]
• Handling Rejection and Mindset: [23:58] – [29:00]
• Sales Culture and Team Building: [15:01] – [18:12]
• Marketing Evolution: [20:03] – [22:19]
• Private Equity Sale Details: [34:21] – [41:31]
• Advice For Young Entrepreneurs: [49:03] – [56:56]
• On Passion & Focus: [54:37] – [56:48]
• Why the Poor Stay Poor: [57:00] – [63:58]
• Lasting Legacy: [65:57] – [67:28]

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Conclusion

Kirt Linington’s story defies “overnight success.” His journey is filled with grit, humility, relentless execution, and uncompromising integrity—valuable lessons for anyone, whether starting late or seeking the next level. His advice: embrace hard, “unsexy” work; reject shortcuts; focus fiercely; develop character; and, above all, never let self-imposed limitations—age, money, background—define your potential.

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Transcript

[James]

You started door knocking at 42 years old?

[Curt Lennington]

Yes, sir.

[James]

Most people, they can't comprehend that.

[Curt Lennington]

Did you put this big infrastructure in place? Did you have this big operations plan? There wasn't. It was hit the streets, knock the doors, get the sales.

[James]

You ended up having a sale at your company for a healthy nine figures.

[Curt Lennington]

We didn't have this massive plan. It was just, hey, go sell sales.

[Jack]

Especially door knocking is very unsexy.

[Curt Lennington]

But in today's day and age, there's a lot of things that you could go do that are shitty, that no one wants to do anymore, and you could create a lane for yourself.

[Josh]

What's the best piece of non business advice that you would want to give them?

[Curt Lennington]

There's no such thing as business problems, just personal problems that roll into the business. You shitty at home, you're shitty at work. But guess what most people are doing, they're leading different lives. And what's happening is who you really are is starting to bleed into the business. And it does over time.

[James]

If me and you died tomorrow and you had one more guiding principle to be with the younger generation, what would that be?

[Curt Lennington]

It's a simple answer.

[James]

What's going on, everyone? And welcome back to the School of Hard Knocks podcast. I'm James, I'm here with Jack and Josh and we have an incredible guest for you. All right now here in Dallas, Texas, the roofing mogul, the man that sold his company in 2022 for nine figures, Mr. Curt Linington. It's great to be here with you today, my friend.

[Curt Lennington]

Good to be you.

[James]

Well, where I want to get things started today is first of all, where are you from?

[Curt Lennington]

Born and raised. South Africa.

[James]

And you didn't come from a rich family?

[Curt Lennington]

Did not. No.

[James]

You spent a lot, what, 20 years in corporate America?

[Curt Lennington]

I did, yeah.

[James]

I want you to take us back to that moment, you know, not even when you had that realization of going from the corporate world to entrepreneurship, but more so the people watching, they may have no idea. You started door knocking at 42 years old?

[Curt Lennington]

Yes, sir.

[James]

Most people, they can't comprehend that. They think that it's too late for them to start a business or they're too young per se. How do you feel about that narrative that, oh, no, you have to start way sooner. You didn't let that define you, even though that you were 42 years old. What are your thoughts on that?

[Curt Lennington]

Well, I mean, I think you can bind to any limitation that you set for yourself, whether you're old, young, you come for money, don't come for Money. Whether you feel like you have an advantage or a disadvantage in a lot of cases, I think folks that come from an environment where they're disadvantaged should love their parents even more and say, thanks for giving me the roadmap on not how to do it. I appreciate the education. Right. And leverage that. I think, hey, look, for me, I was an executive vice president at a company when I started door knocking. And there's a lot of times humbling moments where you knock a door and you're sitting in front of a homeowner and they're sort of talking down to you, Right. Like. Like you're some door knocking salesman. And, yeah, I was already pretty successful in my corporate career, but I think wanting to win and wanting to be the best was more important than my pride. And so, you know, we say leave that at the door, right? What's. What's more important? Like, just. Just put it aside. Go do it. There's far worse things out there, if you really think about it. And if you've watched that TV show where folks, like, have the worst jobs on earth kind of thing, and there's some really bad jobs out there, having the ability to live in Texas with the beautiful weather and beautiful people and knock doors. Homes are big, roofs are big, massive opportunity. Texas is also along sort of like hail alley, which comes down from Colorado all the way into Texas, and so gets a lot of hail. A lot of roofs get damaged every single year. And if you look after people, you look after your customers, you get to replace their roof more than once.

[James]

And what was life like growing up in South Africa?

[Curt Lennington]

Yeah. You see the scar under my chin? Yeah. I was walking home one day and a tiger got me.

[James]

Are you serious?

[Curt Lennington]

No, I'm just kidding.

[Josh]

Probably wouldn't believe you if you ran out that story.

[Curt Lennington]

Yeah. You know, I think I'd mentioned earlier, we came over to the States. I came over with a buddy, and I remember one night we were riding our bicycle to the movie theater, and, you know, I'd left because I felt like I needed to go find myself, or I'd sold myself on that bullshit, Right. Like, at a younger age. And I'm like, I want to go find myself. And I realized it doesn't matter where you go in the world. People are people. They've always been people, even today, you know, in governments and all those kind of things. Those things have been happening for centuries. They were just never publicized as quick as they are or recorded as quick as they are. Information's just moving so fast, so people are the same. And so you can become great wherever you're at. You don't need to change your location because people are people and opportunities, opportunity. And you shouldn't discriminate that. Whether it's door knocking, whether it's. Whatever it is, you can become great at it because there's somewhere in the world someone making money doing that.

[James]

And if I'm not mistaken, you spent a couple years in the South African army.

[Curt Lennington]

Yeah, I went to mandatory service in South Africa right out of high school.

[James]

Did that help you out?

[Curt Lennington]

Yeah, it was the best thing that ever happened to me because, you know, I was a little tricky growing up, you know, playing rugby, getting into trouble. We didn't have money, probably always in fights, always, you know, on the streets. And so going into the military and getting that discipline in South Africa, we said, it's the best. It's the worst time of your life. The best time of your life. You never want to do again in the military. And we were deployed, right? We were deployed when there was a lot of unrest between Nkata and ANC in South Africa. And so, you know, we were kids that hadn't been in the military too long that were exposed to things that we probably shouldn't have seen. And we were way too young and probably not trained well enough to be in that situation, but we worked through it, and here we are.

[Josh]

You left your corporate job to start a roofing company. How did you land on roofing, of all things, as the vehicle that you wanted to venture into?

[James]

But before you get into that, why did you even come to the United States in the first place?

[Curt Lennington]

You know, I was a kid with an interesting upbringing, went to a ton of schools growing up. I grew up watching movies and seeing the Hollywood sign. And you just have this first time I went on a plane, I was in my 20s on an airplane. So for me, coming to America was this dream, this big thing. I didn't have the dream to come to America and become an actor or anything like that, but I felt like, how awesome would it be? What had actually happened was a buddy came to me and he's like, hey, do you want to go to America? And I'm like, that'd be friggin awesome. How do we make that work? He's like, well, I know some people. And all the rest of it. I was dating a girl at the time, she was a ballerina. And I actually said no because I didn't want to break up with her. And then like a year later, we broke up. I called my buddy up. And I'm like, hey, you still want to go to America? He's like, yeah, let's do it. So we sold everything, didn't have much, had $700 left, and was on that plane with some bags and, you know, rest. Rest is history.

[Josh]

And so, yeah, I want to get into that. That's an amazing story. But I also want to get into, you know, leaving the executive vice president position to go starting a roofing company. Why was roofing the vehicle that you wanted to venture into?

[Curt Lennington]

It wasn't necessarily the vehicle, and I didn't have this amazing plan either. Right. But the theory is you have to get in flight to get feedback, to change direction. And so I tell most people, like, whatever it is, just get in flight. And the feedback will tell you whether you're going to stay there, whether you're going to move on, whether you're going to pursue it, whether you're going to change to something else. I met a gentleman that worked with me at LA Fitness that came from the roofing space, and him and I became friends. And I'd actually left the Texas region to go deal with an acquisition with the company I was with, and he ended up quitting because he didn't like his new boss. They transferred me back to Texas, and him and I sat down. I got back, he'd left. He actually went to go work for another roofing company. And I sat him down and I said, well, what if I put the money up and you don't work for the other company? At first I was like, hey, if I make an extra 10,000, 20,000amonth on top of what I was making, that'd be pretty cool, right?

[Jack]

Sweet gig.

[Curt Lennington]

Yeah, that's all it was.

[James]

And that was your five to nine?

[Curt Lennington]

Pretty much, that was. Yeah. And that's all it was. But then we realized how fragmented the space was and how all these companies were sort of mom and pop operators. And so if we applied all the things I learned over 20 years, recruiting training, developing people, attracting talent, looking after talents, helping them win, and applied those things to the roofing space, how good could we become? And so we quickly surpassed most of the companies in the space within a couple of years.

[Jack]

I love that. And I think there's a big misconception that you have to have this grandiose plan to get started, when in reality, you just have to put one foot in front of the other and kind of just figure it out. So when you first got started, what did that initial kind of plan look like to kind of get the business off the ground.

[Curt Lennington]

Yeah. So a lot of folks ask like, did you put this big infrastructure in place? Did you have this big operations plan? Was there a lot of systems and process in place? There wasn't. It was hit the streets, knock the doors, get the sales. If we sell enough, but we react quick enough to apply, you know, production and operations to it, then you look after it and you can keep growing. So we did it the other way around. We didn't have this massive plan. It was just, hey, go sell form the business, learn the presentation, understand the product and go do an arc.

[James]

How big was the team at the beginning?

[Curt Lennington]

We started with like four guys.

[Jack]

You know what I love about that as well is I feel like so many people, especially like the newer entrepreneur, they spend so much time trying to build out the back end and the process and it's like, look, it doesn't matter how good the back end or the process is if you don't have any clients and any money coming in and none of it matters.

[Curt Lennington]

Yeah. And look, there are probably some industries where that back end is absolutely more necessary than others, but in the roofing space, that's something you can get away with. And you're right. What are you going to do if you don't have sales but everything else is perfect? What are you going to do if you have a big sales team but you haven't learned how to develop them to be great salespeople? You're not going to grow your business. I've always led with sales first and then made the adjustments. But more importantly, hired people that have the skills that I don't have to get that stuff done because a lot of that stuff to me sucks. I don't really want to do it. I don't love it. I did it all myself in the beginning. So I taught myself everything and then I brought in the expertise and. And that's also a challenge, right? Picking people, choosing the right people and just learning from those mistakes and just continually moving forward regardless of how many times people let you down. Because people will let you down through this process and sometimes it's the closest people to you that'll let you down first.

[James]

Now a lot of people would think that, man, I'm 42 years old, I'm not going to go door knock, like almost as if, like, it's like a job that's like below them. But you didn't have that mindset because you realized that if I, hey, if I can understand how to do this, then we can kind of grow everything. Else outside of that. Was that kind of your mindset when you initially, when you first started the company, did start off kind of doing the door knocking yourself.

[Curt Lennington]

It was simple math. And I'll tell you why. When I left my corporate job, I remember making a post on social media that it was the first time I had not worked in 19 years on new Year's Day. I'm so used to working six days a week, night and day, living on a plane, living in a hotel, traveling the country for so long, especially in fitness.

[James]

You got to work throughout New Year's.

[Curt Lennington]

Yeah. You got it's New Year's resolutions, right?

[James]

Yeah.

[Curt Lennington]

You know, you gotta be there, you gotta take advantage of the time of year. Right. That's when everyone's thinking about it. And so for me, after we started knocking and we did the math on how much we were gonna make per roof, I was like, well, wait a minute, there's people in the health club business that work two weeks a month, two months to make that one commission that I could make on a Saturday. And I did the math and I said to myself, even if I. Only if I. Because I kept my corporate job for four years, I did both and built the business. I got the business to about 62 million in revenue part time. Well, a lot of people would say I was doing two full time jobs. My wife would tell you that like Saturdays and Sundays I was door knocking. Sundays I was doing presentations and she was sitting in the car while I'm inspecting roofs, doing presentations. So she knows all about it. Right. And so it wasn't just this, hey, I'm gonna like, you know, leave my job and go do that. We built it up. Before I walked away, I thought I was gonna be at my corporate job for the rest of my life. But we did so well so fast that eventually one day I woke up and said, I've got all these folks that have bought into us in the business and the future and the growth, yet I'm still part time. What message is that sending them if the leader is not all in?

[James]

Out of that 62 million, how much of that were you kind of taking home in terms of like personal income and profit, or was that purely a lot of that going back into the business to expand even more?

[Curt Lennington]

Yeah, I always ran the business super tight. I mean, we started in the living room and then we eventually got like a office half the size of this room, just could fit a desk and two chairs in. And then we got to another office and another office. We didn't run out and buy a gazillion trucks. We didn't go out and do all that stuff. And so, yes, we reinvested a lot into the business. But here's what's pretty cool, right? My business partner at one point is like, hey, shouldn't we be taking more? Like, we're making all this, all this money. I think his wife at the time, actually, he was like, hey, we're doing all this. I hear all these sales numbers, like, why don't we. And then one day I called him to the office and I sat him down and I had a check for him. And it was a million dollar check. Biggest check he's ever received in his life. He's like, what's this? I said, see, we don't need to spend the money. The minute we make it, we invest in the business where we'll be able to share in much bigger things than those little bits of money that you take along the way. Invest into the business long term, invest into the people long term, and the rewards will come.

[Josh]

When you guys were just starting out, the roofing company, for instance, obviously you're kind of figuring things out. There wasn't necessarily a vision in place. What were kind of some of those initial challenges that you experienced that you had to overcome? Maybe that's not even particular to just roofing, but that you would see other entrepreneurs deal with on your way up to scaling to even that 62 million revenue point. And beyond that.

[Curt Lennington]

Yeah, everything's progression, right? Like, if you think about, like these industries, these home service industries, labor is a big deal, right? And so when you go to market, some of the big questions are like, talk to us about your labor force. Talk to us about, you know, how that's looking legal, not legal, all these things, right? And so I remember in the beginning, it's just like, you know, salespeople, professionals, the good ones are taken, right? And you got to figure out, how do you get the good ones? Well, the same thing with the laborers, right? In the beginning, you know, hey, we didn't. We didn't have the greatest laborers because we had the ones that didn't have jobs to go and install, right? So you got to work through some of that initial. Like, and I remember once we had. Because we were selling like crazy, right? And we had these in stores, but we didn't have enough laborers to. Or crews to install these roofs. And I remember me and my business partner in the office, and we were going at it, we were like, you know, and I'm like, get into your Truck and go drive the streets and find people that are installing roofs and go hire those crews. Like, let's go, let's get out there and find people. Right? And so, you know, getting past labor, but once you've got the right reputation and you really look after those guys, they're independent contractors, subcontractors, they, they're subcontractors for us, but they really. We keep them busy all year long. Right. And we take care of them. Right. We come up to jobs with small things like, you know, a case of waters and breakfast and, you know, things like that. We treat them like family, we look after them and we always pay them on time and we pay them fair. We don't try and screw them over, we don't shortchange them because we understand the value. Installing those roofs and having those guys out there when it's cold, when it's blistering hot in summer, like so, so labor was a big one. But once, once you've done it long enough and you've taken care of people, then those guys are like super loyal to us, like, and they'll travel the country, they'll do whatever they need. We currently do work in 27 states.

[Josh]

Wow.

[James]

Correct me if I'm wrong, you were not just selling residential, you were also selling to commercial jobs instead.

[Curt Lennington]

Yeah, our business has always been at least 80% plus residential with some multifamily and commercial platforms. But we always kept residential on the forefront of what we were really doing. Right.

[James]

I would imagine that those commercial dealers can typically be a bit more substantial in terms of the amount of money that you make off of them. But I could also imagine it'd be a much harder sale. Could you kind of discuss some of the differences in your business selling residential versus commercial?

[Curt Lennington]

Yeah. So the theory is you're either a residential roofer or you're a commercial roofer. Your commercial platform is going to be far more technical, far more variable, a lot more money. And in a lot of cases, depending on the market, those things are dwindled down on the profitability too. Just like new construction. Because folks that own buildings and owners, you know, malls and strip centers and all the rest of it, they're already wise to this process. Property management companies. Right. They'll actually squeeze it, even though it may be an insurance deal, turn it into a retail deal, and then, you know, pocket the difference to bridge budget deficits or whatever it is. Right. So, and then there's the look, Your sales guys that do commercial, they've got to know what they're doing, right? Because it's very technical. Right? And so a lesson we learned really early is like, hey, stay in your lane in business, right? Stop trying to take on everything too fast. Right? Great lesson for people. We did that and we wanted to be the big dogs fast, right? So we managed to convince this property management company to use us in a high rise downtown Dallas condo. And we didn't have the expertise. We relied on the crew because they'd been doing it for a really long time. Right? Because we didn't know what we were inspecting. Right. And we were idiots, right? And we're like, yeah, we got this big job and we did it first. Rain comes in, they did the seams the wrong way. All the condos in the top floor got saturated with water. And we had to build out those condos again. Cost us a couple of hundred grand. And I had to float that. Right. Cost of doing business. Hard lesson to learn. Stay in your lane until you're great at it. Don't take on too much too fast.

[Jack]

One of the things that I'm kind of curious about is you started off with door knocking. How did your marketing kind of evolve over time? Did you start to do Google Ads? Did you build out canvassing teams? Were you doing, you know, like, you know, Angie's List style ads? Like, what were you doing to continue to grow the company outside of just maybe door to door?

[Curt Lennington]

When she started with so crazy thing in corporate America, my budget per location, and I started there when they had, you know, 40, 50 locations somewhere around there. I left when there were 820 locations and my budget was 500 bucks a month per location.

[James]

It's not that much.

[Jack]

It's not much at all.

[Curt Lennington]

It's nothing. And so I came from a culture where it was sort of grassroots business to business. You've got to go build relationships with the businesses. And that's what we did. So I just took the same methodology in roofing. I didn't spend any money on marketing. It was all door knocking. Here was my thought. There were a lot of companies out there, and there still is. There's a lot of folks saying, well, you got to go digital. You got to do this, you got to do that. And I agree, there's a place and time for it. Absolutely. But what I did was I met with my sales folks and I said, guys, all these other companies are like generating these leads for their people, but guess where that money's coming from? It's coming from you because they get paid less because they get handed leads. So Let me ask you a question. Do you want me to pay you less and go generate leads or do you want to make all the money and keep door knocking? And because we generated this culture of like massive success, my people were like, no, we want the money, we're going to keep door knocking.

[Jack]

And one of the things that I'd imagine would happen is if you're, if you're door knocking. So in, in a more tradit, like the, the process in which I come from you, I would, I would appointment set from which a closer would come in. And if your salesperson is also the door knocker, I'd imagine they can also take appointments that same day or maybe even right there on the spot. So I'd imagine the sales process and the close rate could be even higher. Did you find that to be the case?

[Curt Lennington]

Absolutely. The goal was to knock the door, inspect the roof and get a close. Whether it's retail or insurance. If it's damaged and you have an insurance policy and it's damaged enough to the point that it's not a matter of if it's going to leak, it's just a matter of when it's going to leak, then the insurance company based on certain parameters would say, yes, we see that as a future risk. We should replace this roof now because later it would cost us a lot more money. And so we would want to get an insurance claim through that process now only if it qualifies. Meaning if there is damage and it is, is, is going to save the insurance company money, then it makes sense for everyone.

[James]

Hey, what's going on guys? We're going to get right back to this episode with Curt Lennington on how to build a nine figure company. But we want you to take a second real quick to subscribe to the Hard Knocks podcast because every single week we bring you GU business moguls from all over the world. We're talking eight and nine figure operators, billionaires, Fortune 500 CEOs. You are not going to want to miss this content on the Hard Knocks podcast. Subscribe to the channel for new episodes every single week. With that being said, let's get back to the episode.

[Jack]

Sales, especially door knocking is very like unsexy. You know, it's one of those things where people, you know, they don't grow up and be like, hey, I'm actually gonna go knock doors and then, and be a salesperson. Right. But it's also a huge opportunity when people find out how much money they can make in the actual opportunity that is behind there.

[Josh]

If you're.

[Jack]

Especially if you're a successful at it. So there's so much you can accomplish and so much money you can make. How do you go about finding the talent and pretty much almost showing them the vision of what is possible through this career?

[Curt Lennington]

Two thoughts. 1. Jeffrey Gittermo, Sales Bible. He says, people are not rejecting you, they're rejecting your offer. So the first thing you gotta do is stop taking it personally. When you go out there and you door knock, take your sales cap off. Stop thinking about sales. Think about it this way. You're at an event. The ladies wearing the Red Bull, things are running around giving out free Red Bulls, right? Come running up to you. If you drink Red Bull, you're like, yeah, or the monsters or whatever it is, right? Because they are promoting. They are not selling. They don't want money from you. They're promoting a product. Now if you go door knocking and you change your hat from sales to promoting, I'm promoting the fact that you have damage. We can improve or get your property back to better than pre loss condition, whatever that was, and also prevent a future issue. I'm a facilitator of a process. I'm not selling you anything, okay? And so when I. When I think about it that way, right now, I don't stink of sales. Look, you guys are young. When, when I was young and we hit the bars, right? And you go into the bar and let's say you're dating someone. And you walk into the bar and you're like, man, this place is full. Like, I got all these ladies. Look at me. Maybe you're just dating this girl casually and maybe like a month or two later, you're not with her. It didn't work out. And your friends say, hey, where are we gonna go tonight? You're like, I got the spot, right? You get there and no one's looking at you because you don't have your woman on your arm, right? You're desperate to find something. You stink of sales. You're repelling everyone around you. Stop thinking about selling and stop thinking about promoting, right? Be a facilitator of a process. And that way people are attracted to you, not repelled by you.

[James]

He just dropped the game right there.

[Jack]

That was a free game right there.

[James]

Free game.

[Josh]

Everybody listening to. Write that one down.

[James]

Yeah, that was fire.

[Curt Lennington]

Yeah, like it's. It's not that hard. It's the same as relationships. I go to all these masterminds and everyone's trying to learn from everyone. And I've spoken At a lot of events and, and it seems like everyone's always running up to someone to get something from them or get something out of them. Right. And I've never been that guy. I don't want anything from you, as a matter of fact, I just want to keep adding value. But eventually you're going to say to me, hey, can you come check my roof? Or hey, can you come speak at this event? Or hey, can you? Because I don't need to. If I wake up every day and I do the right things, I don't need to have these desperate moments. Right. It's almost like in sales, like a regular person in a sales job, if they haven't done the work and they don't have enough appointments for the day, that one appointment they have, what do they do to it? They try to squeeze everything they can out of it. And that customer hates the experience. It's like this, are these guys desperate? Like, and then they drop their pants, if I'm allowed to say that, like. And it just. And then at the end of the day it becomes non profitable for the business anyway.

[James]

You touched on something right there. And this is. You said that oftentimes you have to get in the mind frame, the mindset of thinking that they're not rejecting you, they're rejecting your offer. And I think back to, you know, the early days of when we were building this channel. We didn't have any connections, we didn't have any credibility. So like the only way that we got interviews was literally cold approaching off the street and asking them for a minute or two of their time. And there were days where we'd get hundreds and thousands of rejections. The only reason why we're here today is because we just, we didn't take no for an answer. And like, we just didn't let the rejection phase us. But again, I want to dive a little deeper in this because you have so much experience within this business and knowledge and expertise on this to that person out there that's watching this, they're terrified of rejection. People saying no beyond just, you know, again, trying to think about it as they're more so rejecting the offer that you have. Is there anything else about rejection that you've learned or how you can kind of transfer that negative energy into success that you could maybe instill in them?

[Curt Lennington]

Yeah, I mean, it's a simple answer. I think getting past that rejection and taking it personally is the first one. Like if you're going to keep taking it personally, like then you're never going to get anywhere. And then the next one is the 10,000 hour rule, right? You just absolutely, positively, just got to keep doing it because you could do. I mean, there's a lot of studies and stuff out there. You could do anything with enough time allocation per day, you'll become great at it, right? And if you think about it, we were all kids at some point. We closed our whole childhood, if you think about it, to get what we wanted with our parents, our family, right? Everyone. Don't tell me you're not, because you are.

[Jack]

Everything is sales.

[James]

How do you think she closed our whole childhood?

[Curt Lennington]

Hey, how do you think you got the lady that you're with? How do you. If you're married, how do you think you got your wife? You closed her and she closed you and you closed each other on why this is so magical and why it's going to be awesome for the rest of your lives, right? Everyone's always closing. So the sooner you can convince yourself that like, you do close, you just may do it differently, the sooner you're going to realize you can do it. Now, does that mean it's going to be easy? Does that mean it's comfortable? Does that mean it comes natural? Absolutely not. As a matter of fact, I think the more unnatural it is, right? The more you got to work at it, the better success you're going to have, Right? If you believe you can, right? Sometimes those folks that are natural at it suck because they develop bad habits. Right? And what also happens is when they are so good at it and you're in sales, it can start coming across as contrived because it's too smooth and too good. And it's actually the people that aren't that smooth and that good that are the greatest. And we see this at our awards ceremony every year, which we've got one coming up this Friday. Last year, a gentleman in our salesforce, quiet guy, never knocked doors in his life. He actually got the award and he stood up there and he actually said. He said, I suck at door knocking, but I don't give up. And what we're doing in a lot of sales environments is not rocket science. It's good attitude, great work ethic. We say hire the attitude, teach them the rest. We can teach you that stuff. But if you hire people with a bad attitude, they're always going to find, you know, a reason for their failure.

[Jack]

You can teach competency, you can't teach character.

[Curt Lennington]

Yeah.

[Josh]

So you've launched other businesses in addition to the roofing company. What are some of those Businesses for the audience so that they can get some background on there. And why did you launch those companies?

[Curt Lennington]

Yeah, it was more of like, hey, how do I make sure that I'm being diligent with the money that I've made? And, you know, I've always believed in, like, allocation. Like, if you allocate your money, you can't spend it. Right. And so. So I've always believed in that. So that's what I did. And landscaping company, swimming pool company, land development company, and then obviously, personal investments.

[Josh]

Yeah, absolutely. For entrepreneurs out there, at what point would you see them being able to diversify in other industries like that? Because I think, like, today, so many entrepreneurs, like the starter entrepreneur, they get shiny object syndrome. They want to do 100 different things. I want to do crypto and boring business and AI and content. And a lot of times, it's like they don't realize that they need to just focus on one thing. So how were you able to just kind of stay focused on that vision with the roofing company before you ended up diversifying? And at what point did you diversify into these other businesses?

[Curt Lennington]

So a couple of thoughts. I think through Covid, like, everyone sort of started preaching like, the, you need seven streams of income, you know, and you got to do this.

[Josh]

Seven streams will make you a millionaire. It's the biggest myth out there in the world.

[Curt Lennington]

It's such bullshit. Seven streams of Inc. You haven't become great at one thing yet, and so everything else is a redheaded stepchild. And so, sorry, But you get my point, right? Like, you haven't mastered one thing yet. Like, stop getting in today's day and age with social media. It is. It's shiny object syndrome. And you're seeing everyone else's highlight reel, and. And you're just getting sucked into this myth that you're doing it all wrong and you've got to go do something a little more sexy. A lot of people have even said to us, we don't know how you did it, but somehow you made roofing sexy. Because all our people in shape, they work out. We've created this culture where it's like, we can't be our best until we are best for ourselves first. Right? And so that's sort of the culture that we've built. And we can be our best for our customers, for our vendors, for our suppliers, whatever it is, if we take care of ourselves first. Right? And I don't know, everyone says that, but do they actually do it right? And so the seven streams of income like, go become great at one thing. And then once you've made enough money and you want to go put that money to work, yeah, you can do that, Right? But know this, buying a portfolio one house at a time is actually another job and it will take away from your main thing. So there's also other industries out there that everyone sold everyone that it's passive income. There's nothing passive about that. Right. Like you're leasing a property, there's a problem. You can't get hold of the property management company if you have one, or if you're still small and you don't, it's going to take time. And every minute that you allocate to something else, you're depriving that main thing from becoming as great as it could be.

[James]

In 2022, you ended up having a sale of your company for a healthy nine figures. Could you walk us through start to finish? First of all, when you had that realization that, wait a minute, I, I have the potential to sell my company and then eventually what that process was like, you know, kind of start to finish from when that money kind of hit the account. Could you walk us through, you know, again, first the realization of when you knew that, hey, I'm going to go from this is not just a profitable company, but a real company that can sell for a lot of money. And then kind of what that exact process was like, step by step.

[Curt Lennington]

Sure. We'd experienced, you know, a lot of good success pretty quickly. And so I was at a roofing convention in Florida and I was with one of my suppliers for lunch and he said, hey, I need to introduce you to that guy. He just sold his company to private equity. And I'm like, hmm, okay, I don't know much about that. Right. And once you learn, you know, how this private equity thing works, you start reflecting on it and saying, shit, why didn't I learn this sooner? Right? I could go build this business and get a multiple on that EBITDA number. It's really accelerated income, right? If it's a 10x10 years income accelerated within that number for you. And so I started doing some homework on it, started researching it, started talking to more and more people, and I eventually met with our leadership team and I said, we're going to plan this thing and build it up to actually take it to market and get everyone a payday. And I tied some people into the business, I made sure. And same thing when we joined private equity, we've tied all our leaders into the business because, you know, you Sleep in the same bed. You share the same dreams, right? And so. So we want to make sure that we're all roaring in the same direction, and we don't want to be greedy because we can go do this again. I could do this in the pool business. I could do this in the landscaping business. I could do it in whatever I want to do it in. We went through this process, and then I found out another company that had sold. I contacted the broker that represented them because it's new to the private equity space back then, newer. So private equity didn't understand it and buyers didn't understand it well enough yet, because there's certain ways that you look at how you count your revenue and how you get to those numbers. Right? And so specifically on the insurance side. So I hired a guy that had already successfully sold a big roofing business. He's phenomenal. And we role played, role played, role played. We analyzed the business, we looked at what we needed to tighten up on, and then we actually went to market with that broker. We got an offer. And I was like, no, I think we're worth a whole lot more than that. And I met with a team, and the team actually said, no, we should take it. Join private equity. Join a group.

[James]

What was that offer?

[Curt Lennington]

It was lower than nine figures. Not too far under it, but it was just under. Right. And I'm like, no, we're worth a whole lot more than that. And I met with a team and they were like. Because there's this excitement of, like, joining a platform and a team and having this massive financial backing and how they're going to pour into the business and you get caught in this, like, glitz and glam of joining a big group.

[James]

How did you know that you were worth more than that?

[Curt Lennington]

If I looked at everyone else in the industry and what they were doing and what we were doing and how quickly we'd done it, I knew that we had something special. Right? And I felt like if you were going to lump us in to the same multiples that they were buying all these companies at, I was like, no, we're way better than that. Right? What we've put together with our training platform, with our recruiting platform, how big we've become so quickly by running this play and how we can go reproduce this play all over the country, no, it's worth a lot more than that. And so I met with a team and they were like, yeah, we should do it. I'm like, we're not going to do it. We're going to Wait. And so we waited. We spent another seven months building, preparing, cleaning. We learned that, we learned from those interviews with those companies more about what they're looking for and what the nuances were and learned more about how do you maximize the value of your business and all the small things that you can do to get there. Right. And so we then went on a mission to go do that. And we went to market again and we got a couple of offers and we obviously we went with the one. I could say this. If you're planning on going with private equity, it's a marriage, all of a sudden you're calling the shots and then all of a sudden you're not. And most business owners aren't ready for that. And so you've got to be someone that's very pliable, specifically for the bigger picture. Right. Our goal was to take over the nation. We wanted to become the first true national roofing company in America. That was our goal. And when we started looking the private equity route, we felt that would be able to, that would help us accelerate achieving that goal. But it would mean that we would have to put our pride aside, maybe not call the final shot on everything, take some chips off the table. Right. Reinvest into it, which I did. And so now the goal is to. We've bought eight businesses now and we have centralized the businesses, we've integrated the business, we've got them all on the same CRM, same erp. And so when someone now looks to buy the group, it's now one forward facing business. As a matter of fact, in the next 30 days, all the brands names will be gone and so it will just be one name nationally.

[James]

And you were, you were in Vegas when that sale actually happened?

[Curt Lennington]

I was, yes.

[James]

What was going through your mind before the money hit the account when you closed the deal and you're there refreshing. Can you. What was that experience like?

[Curt Lennington]

Yeah, look, we, we'd obviously started and we were making good money at this point, right. But you know, for a guy like me, came here with 700 bucks to know that you're about to get millions and millions of dollars put into your bank account, in some ways you sort of still pinch yourself. Like, how did I not learn this earlier?

[James]

But you didn't tell Josh yet that when it hit in Vegas, you had put all the money on black.

[Curt Lennington]

Yeah, yeah, I doubled.

[Jack]

You doubled?

[Josh]

I doubled, yeah.

[Curt Lennington]

I wish, I wish. No, it was surreal. Right. We did the closing and me and my partner were sitting there and we had it on speaker and ever been On a closing call, all the banks and O2 and all the attorneys and all the accountants and everyone that's worked on this deal is on that line. And everyone's sort of like, okay, we good to go? We good to go? You good? You good? Thank you everyone. Okay. Money will hit your bank accounts in a next hour or two. So we go downstairs and we're playing blackjack and we're refreshing.

[Jack]

I was going to say you have to be refreshing.

[Curt Lennington]

Every couple of minutes you're refreshing. And you know, and then, you know, then obviously it hit. Then we had a tequila.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[James]

Did you guys start to lose your mind a little bit when that happened?

[Curt Lennington]

Not really. I'm generally a pretty even kill kind of guy. I sort of keep it internal. But we had a ton of fun that day.

[Jack]

I was about to say that has to be one of the probably top five days of your life, if I'd imagine. Just like, man, all my hard work, I started, I came here with nothing and I have built something truly great. And now I have something to show for it of like, hey, all my hard work has kind of paid off. So I'm kind of curious for you. You have diversified into multiple different service based industries and now you're doing it into one synonymous brand. Why is that?

[Curt Lennington]

Larger equity firm, Your billion dollar funds don't want to buy an assembly. So you know, there's a lot of guys that will go out there and buy companies and just give them some light integration and then try flip them. There's a couple of things that have changed. The debt markets have changed the expectations for buyers. Larger equity firms at this point is more diligence. You got to have everything more streamlined, more centralized, more integrated. Their expectation to pay you north of a billion dollars for your platform is that it's one company operating as one cohesively and being highly successful, not an assembly of different brands. And so it's sort of not a total requirement. But in today's times, based on what's happening out there, if you want to maximize your return, then getting everything as one is probably prudent.

[Jack]

And if someone has the dream similar to yours, of exiting their company one day, what are some of those things that they should know about what private equity are looking for in order for them to package their business in order to exit?

[James]

That's a great question to add on to that you talked about from all those conversations you look to maximize, you learned, hey, how can we maximize the value of that? I just wanted to add that onto there. Like what was it that you were like, how do we maximize our enterprise value of what we're building?

[Curt Lennington]

Yeah, the biggest thing is like how much meat is left on the bone in this business. Right. Because remember, if someone buys it, they may buy it at a certain multiple. Say a 5x example, we got a lot more than that. But say a 5X, right. They're gonna go buy a bunch of businesses at a 5x and then they're gonna want to sell that at a 10, 12, 14 x. Right. And then pay all the debt off, keep the difference kind of thing. Right. I'm really simple terms, there's obviously a lot more to it than that. And so I think the biggest thing is that you have to show that that business can keep trending through the systems, process and leadership that you have built in that business. And there's two thoughts to that. Some folks go to market where they have a successor in place and the owner actually gets his payday and leaves. And then there's the other side where the equity group wants the owner to stay on because they're integral to that business. And then over time, just like myself in our group, over time, as you've put in far more infrastructure and systems and process, then that owner that sold you won't be needed anymore. Because the business is now at this massive operation that can operate without you because it's sort of automated. But if I were to get a little more granular, always hire the best accountants, best attorneys, get your contracts where they need to be. Spend the money, file your taxes the right way, don't take shortcuts. Your CRM, your data and your accounting must be clean, not a bunch of, you know, because remember, when a lot of folks start a business, what do they start doing when it comes to accounting and money? They start cutting corners on what is a write off and what's not a write off and what's a business expense and what's not. And, and what's being paid for out of the business on a personal level is the cars now paid for by the business. You got all these convoluting and mixing of funds that starts creating gray. Do the right thing with your customers and your people so that you're not dealing with lawsuits. Because if you're a business that's had a bunch of lawsuits because it's not important enough to you, that's going to haunt you when you try to go to market because no one's going to want to buy a business that's had a lot of red tape in it. So Yeah, I think showing them that you have a strong enough leadership team in place for that business to keep growing. Because if it can't keep growing and you can't repeat it, there's a couple of things that they look at specifically on the bigger businesses. Geographical diversification. Can you take that model, whatever it is, and go reproduce it in many different markets? And have you done that in one or two markets to show that what you've done in your primary market actually works in other markets? So you've got more geography on the map. You'll get a bigger multiple. And this is like simple stuff. Right. And then if you're a slightly bigger business, have you done any acquisitions? So you can grow your business through greenfielding new locations. You could grow your business through acquisitions. Right. And then you've got to show that, hey, now we can prove that we can go replicate this. Because now they're like, this is a massively massive opportunity. Because they're successful, they've got a great leadership team in play. They've proven that they can reproduce it in other markets. They brought in one or two other companies. Like, the leadership team is phenomenal. We can keep growing this thing. We can now take this business and go bolt on a bunch of other businesses and get them to do it their way. Because if you have the business, you are then called the platform. And so if they buy you first, you're called the platform. And so now they go buy a bunch of other businesses and plug them into your business as the platform. And in a lot of cases, those businesses that you're buying is on a lower multiple than the platform and they have areas of opportunity. Maybe their stuff isn't as clean, maybe their systems aren't as great, but you're going to get penalized on that in your multiple. Right. And so now we already have a role model on how it works and what it needs to look like. And we could just bring all these businesses in and implement what you guys are doing to be successful within all those businesses and then turn it into one big business.

[Josh]

We've talked that ton about business on this podcast.

[Curt Lennington]

Yeah.

[Josh]

But I want to ask for everyone that's listening out there, especially they're trying to go into entrepreneurship. High performer. What's the best piece of non business advice that you would want to give them?

[Curt Lennington]

It's a simple answer. It's just be a good person. Like, can you really go wrong if you wake up each day, you're good to your family, good to your wife, good to your kids, you work Hard. You got a good attitude, right? I said this the other day, there's no such thing as business problems, just personal problems that roll into the business.

[James]

I was going to have you chew that up.

[Curt Lennington]

You're shitty at home, you're shitty at work. But guess what most people are doing? They're leading different lives. A life at home and a life at work, and the businesses that truly struggle to grow. You're in a fishbowl. Your people see it, you're thinking. You're pulling the wool over their eyes, specifically the talented ones. They can sniff it out, they can see it. You're leading two lives. And what's happening is who you really are is starting to bleed into the business. And it does over time, right? And so I say so. In my office, I have a sofa and two chairs. And I spent more of my time coaching success and the challenges that success bring specifically in the personal life to keep people on track as opposed to failure, because everyone focuses on failure, right? And earlier you spoke about, like, how did you separate the business and recruiting and teams? And I know we're going to go back into business quick, but I've always felt that, like, if I can coach people to do better in their personal lives, we're going to have a much better business. And if I live what I tell them and they see it, it's genuine, it's real, and it becomes powerful.

[Josh]

They have a lot of faith in you as a leader as well. We interviewed a gentleman who talked about how, you know, when Abraham Lincoln wanted to cut down a cherry tree, he'd spend for, let's say he takes five hours to do that. He would spend the first four hours sharpening the axe before he was going to cut down the tree. And he equated that, like all those things in your personal life that you do to live a really great life, to not only take care of yourself, but your family, your physical fitness, the way that you carry yourself, your moral code, those. All those things are sharpening the axe for when you have that exact hour where you have to perform as a leader in business. It's the sharpest axe that you wield and carry. So I almost equate it to that.

[Curt Lennington]

It's simple and everyone says it, but they don't live it.

[Josh]

They don't live it. Yeah.

[James]

Another thing, first of all, that's got to be one of my favorite quotes. Let me make sure I nail this one down. You said that you don't believe in business problems, just problems in your personal life that carry over to your business.

[Curt Lennington]

No such thing as business problems, just personal problems that roll into the business.

[James]

I love that.

[Curt Lennington]

Right.

[James]

Another principle that you do believe in is that money doesn't necessarily change people. You believe that it amplifies them even more. So in this sense. We were talking about this earlier, about how if somebody's a genuinely shitty person and they come in to step into a lot of money, it's not going to necessarily change them for the better. Vice versa, if somebody's a great person at the core and they're broke and they're a hustler, if they come into money, they're going to. Chances are, in most cases, you would, say, use that money for good. Do you think that money changes people or just amplifies the person who you are?

[Curt Lennington]

I think it could probably be both. I think depending on where you're at in your life, I could probably see how someone super young that hasn't matured enough that could let that maybe a good person, but could let that ego get massively inflated by that money. And so that's a maturity and sort of, you know, too much too fast, where people don't know how to handle it. But we see that in life and a lot of things, right? We see that with pro sports people, we see that with people that win the lottery, we see that just because you got a bunch of money in the bank account doesn't mean you're going to get the kibit, right? And if you make a lot of bad choices over a period of time, that money's gone. And we've seen this over and over and over again, right? And I think I said this earlier, where, you know, it's not necessarily about the money that you make. It's about who you become along the way. And I'll tell you why. Because who you become along the way, if you're someone that has respect, trust, loyalty, and work ethic, right? Those things will compound in your life over and over a lot longer than a paycheck. Right? And I know that's, like, extremely simple, but the compounding effects of being that good person, working hard and applying yourself, will always pay you back. Even if you lost all your money, you'll make money again. But if you were someone that just got lucky and made some money but didn't have those things, there are odds that you'll lose it, but you'll never make it back because it's not compound.

[James]

We like to end these podcasts off with two questions for our guests. So, Kurt, I'll start. And Jack, Will end it. If me and you died tomorrow and you had one more guiding principle to leave with the younger generation, what would that be? Just one more sentence, word of advice to them, you know, that they'll take with them for the rest of their lives, what would that be?

[Curt Lennington]

Figure out how to eliminate the distractions. Right. If you think about a racehorse, right. They put those on them for a very. It's a simple lesson. It's a very good lesson. But in today's day and age, kids are just so exposed to so much. If you're that person that can get laser focused and eliminate that noise, you can't go wrong and go do the shitty stuff. Stop chasing the cool stuff that everyone's chasing. Go find something that's shitty. Look, knocking doors is shitty. Plumbing's not super exciting. Dealing with shit. There's a lot of things that you could go do that are shitty, that no one wants to do anymore. And you could create a lane for yourself. That's what I say.

[James]

So your favorite piece of advice is to follow your passion.

[Curt Lennington]

No, not at all. No. Where's passion created? How is it created? How do you become passionate about something? If you think about it, really, when someone says, hey, I'm passionate about cars, I'm passionate about watches, I'm passionate about whatever it is. Right. It generally comes from your upbringing, generally comes from exposure. Exposure to something over a period of time creates a passion. And in most cases, it happens as a kid because you smiled when there was a race car on TV and then they bought you a toy and you smiled some more. And then you grow up like, I'm passionate about cars. But it was really just exposure. Which proves to show that we could become passionate about anything if we created enough exposure for ourselves. And as adults, when we turn 18, we now have the ability to place ourselves in whatever we want to get the exposure. We want to become passionate about it. Screw following your passion. No doubt. If you've worked hard and developed a business and you've been successful and you now have money just like the investments, and you want to go spend time and money and your passion at that point, go do it. But it doesn't have to be your business.

[James]

I've never heard such a simple concept like follow your passion and like, broken down that. Have you always been a deep thinker?

[Curt Lennington]

Yeah, I think about this shit because I think about me and I think about why I've done certain things and how did I get that? And so I always try and break it down to like, where does it even come from. And why are we this way? I haven't written a book. Everyone always said, hey, write a book, write a book, write a book. And I've always like, hey, I've got to be in my mind, hyper successful to have earned the right to write a book. Because through Covid, everyone's like, yeah, get a ghostwriter, write a book. Because it makes you like the specialist in the industry that you're in, like the source that people go to. Right? But you haven't done anything to back that up. Words are just words and you probably stole them somewhere else. And so for that reason, I've never done it, and I may never do it. But something I've always thought about from a book perspective is as we're thinking about and talking about stuff, I just haven't found the right answers yet. And hopefully someone can solve this. There's a lot of answers to this. And that is why do most poor people stay poor?

[James]

I have my answer. There's a saying that I love that most people are addicted to education but allergic to execution. All they do is scroll all day versus go and get at it after it themselves. I just think that they're allergic to taking action and execution.

[Curt Lennington]

But you could place them in an environment where you tell them, tell them, show them, train them, tell them, and they still self sabotage.

[Jack]

I'm gonna go with it. Like belief system. That's one of the first things that I kind of think of is like a lot of people think things are so out of reach when in reality, because they start with the end result and like what the outcome could be when in reality, most people are just so hesitant to just take that first step and just put one foot in front of the other. So for me, I think it's a lot of people's belief system, but there's no way that's the look.

[Curt Lennington]

I still think there's more to it that we haven't really figured out yet. You're not wrong. The belief system's a big part of it. Right? But it's too easy. Belief system didn't grow up with good examples, didn't have money, parents had a negative attitude. It's been instilled in them. So they don't have the belief system. I can't believe it's that easy. Maybe it is. I don't know.

[Josh]

Well, the answer is not that simple because there's so many people, you know, everybody's dealt with a different set of cards when they, when they start, you know, the game, it's almost like, if you look at the game of life, you're dealt with a different set of cards. And, you know, every now and then you hear of a story of somebody that came from nothing, that dealing with the cards that they had, they still made something of themselves. But most people just don't look to change their cards. I really don't know.

[Curt Lennington]

Yeah, think about it this way. We all talk to ourselves. We all have that inner person thing. We talk to ourselves. Right. I can't believe that there really, really is someone that truly believes the thought that they don't. And it's not about money. People always say this. When I talk about this, they're like, oh, it's just about the money. No, it's not. There's another expression that says, do you want to be right or do you want to be rich? Which one you choose? The owner of the business that I worked in drummed that into my head because when I was younger, I wanted to be right all the time. And she just said to me, said, man, you just got to make that decision. You want to be right or do you want to be rich?

[James]

What's the difference between the two of those?

[Curt Lennington]

Well, when we say rich, we don't just mean money. We're rich in friends, rich in family, rich in life. Or do you want to be right? Because some people, I've had a lot of people reach out to me, hey, Kurt, can you coach me? Hey, Kurt, can you work with me on this? Hey, Kurt, can you work with me? And then there's been one or two people that I've actually helped, but when I'm trying to help them, when I say, hey, why don't you do this? Why don't you do that? Why don't you do this? Why don't you do that? No, I've done that, I've done this, I've done that. And I eventually start saying to myself, well, I don't even know why you're sitting in front of me. Because I don't believe that you've done everything and you don't want to listen to me. You'd rather be right and prove me wrong, yet you don't have the success to back it up yet. And I can't believe that you've done everything I'm telling you.

[Josh]

Wow. Yeah.

[Jack]

That is incredible. Because, you know, it's so crazy is we'll meet with some people sometimes and. And they will ask us for our help or opinion on what they should do given their certain situation.

[James]

And I finally found the answer to his question.

[Jack]

Yeah, go ahead.

[James]

Broke people, they know everything. You can't teach them anything.

[Curt Lennington]

You can't.

[James]

You can't teach them anything, bro.

[Curt Lennington]

You can't.

[James]

You can't teach them nothing.

[Jack]

You give them input, advice, no matter how much success or proof of concept you may have, they just don't want to help themselves. They're like, I've tried. It doesn't work. Or it's like, well, maybe the way you went about it just isn't the right way. Or maybe the messaging was wrong. Or maybe the system itself is broke. Like, tried it, not gonna work, or did that, you know, I just. It's just not gonna work for me. And they, like you said, they just don't want to help themselves.

[Curt Lennington]

My. My stepdad, he passed at a younger age, but he just couldn't keep a job. And we lived. He worked for the railways. We lived in this little shack with a tin roof on the side of the railway lines, because if you worked at the railways, you got one of those shitty little houses, right? And he always went from job to job to job, and guess what? It was always someone else's fault. Always. It's like, hey, when we look, we keep looking out the window, when we gonna look in the mirror?

[Josh]

It's almost like, you know, if you're dating, if someone with their dating history, it's like they jump from one relationship to the next, and it's always the other person's fault. It's like, maybe you were the problem the entire time.

[Curt Lennington]

Yeah. But I still don't think we've cracked the code. Right. And so I'm gonna keep digging on this until. Until I can figure out the code. And maybe it's a bunch of things in one just based on the.

[Josh]

That one's pretty damn close, though. They always got to be right. You can't teach them anything.

[Jack]

That might be the book right here.

[Curt Lennington]

I have some people. I have some people that I know that, like, I want to shake. I'm like, dude, you're always right. You're always right, yet you're always asking me for money.

[Josh]

I have some friends that I guess they asked us for advice with their business and social media and. And I think I've probably said the advice, like, probably like five or six times over the course of two years, and they just haven't changed it. And I just. I'm telling them, I'm like, you make that one change, it's going to change everything in your business. And it just doesn't happen.

[Curt Lennington]

You know, most folks look at you guys being successful, me or anyone else, and they look at them and say, they got lucky. They got a break. They got that one guy or knew a guy that you guys interviewed. That put you on the map, right? It's the overnight success, right? I worked at corporate America for 20 years, and I opened up a roofing company, and everyone in the roofing industry is like, how'd you do it? Overnight success? No, it's the 20 years prior to that that helped me make decisions and choices running the business. Some people even say, don't you wish you did it earlier? I said no, because I had too many lessons to learn.

[James]

There's value in that right there. Because we were just having this conversation the other day, which is that, you know, hey, you know, we started this channel five years ago. We've scaled it up to where it's doing over a million dollars a month across all of our businesses. And Josh had, you know, brought up. He said, guys, if we were to go back five years ago when we were first starting, you know, the. The company, the channel, because, I mean, our first year or two, and we were. We. We didn't know business, you know, I was talking to you in the car on the way over here that, you know, great businessmen are terrible content creators. Great content creators are terrible businessmen. We were great content creators, sucked at business, got a lot better at it over time because we wanted to learn and we weren't afraid of. To let experts give us the direction. But he asked. He proposed the question to the two of us. It's like, guys, what would you told ourselves when we were starting out and, you know, me and him started to kind of share some thoughts about, oh, I would have told us to do this and, oh, not try and start that business, whatnot. And Josh had a great point, which is that, you know what, guys? I actually, I don't think so, because you needed to go through it. And it's just like you're talking about. A lot of people say, you know, what would you have done differently or whatnot? Or would you have started it sooner? But it's like, no, no, no. You needed to go through that to. To build the experience, the knowledge, the expertise to actually do it the right way. And sometimes you have to go through it. You got to. You got to. What is it? You got to go through it to grow through it.

[Curt Lennington]

That's right. Yeah.

[James]

Jack, take us home.

[Josh]

Absolutely. All right. Kurt, how old are you now?

[Curt Lennington]

52.

[Josh]

52. And if it was all said and done tomorrow, how would you Want to be remembered.

[Curt Lennington]

How much impact did I make for those folks that were like me, right? Like, I'm always out there, like, talking to kids, talking to people. I go to all these car shows, people always coming up to me, and I'm always sharing. I've traveled to companies to help them for free. I've always had this mindset. At one point, I was in a leadership group. I used to speak. I used to go to all the meetings. I used to always give, give, give, give. And I think if we could just do that, right? So I don't chase, like, a lot of people, like, what do you want your legacy to be? I'm not chasing a legacy. Think about it. Most people are like, well, I want to do it for this or I want to do it for that. Like, no, no, no, no. I know that if I just do, there will be one, right? But I'm not chasing that legacy. Like, some people are so caught up on, like, yeah, I really want to, like, leave my stamp here or leave my stamp there. It's different. And it's very controversial the way that I think about it, because in some ways, it's. It's a massive. It can be a massive ego, too. And I think if folks get too fixated on it, it could hurt them, right? So I sort of think about it a little differently. I'm not chasing that, but. But I think if you do the right things, it'll happen.

[James]

Anyway, Kurt, this was phenomenal, and it has genuinely been such a pleasure to ask you questions all day, man. I just want to say thank you so much for your time and for being with us today, man. It means so much to us, and thank you. You know, for everybody watching right now, be sure to like and subscribe to the School of Hard Knocks podcast for amazing content, amazing guests, amazing episodes every week with some of the most incredible business owners. Just like our man Kurt right here. We're gonna put the link down in the description to all of Kurt's social media so you can follow along with him. And hopefully the next time we do this, we'll put a link down to your book as well. With all that knowledge and expertise, man, because this was. This was excellent, man. I really appreciate you. And lastly, guys, do yourselves a massive favor, guys. Go down. Click the link in the description, this video to join the school of mentors, the most powerful entrepreneur community and network in the world, with over 7,000 entrepreneurs that get direct access to the 8, 9, and 10 figure entrepreneurs we interview here on this channel, where you will ask your questions directly to them on live calls. We host every single week, and they give you the answers. So we can't wait to see you on the inside. With that being said, we'll see you in the next episode.