More Than A Side Hustle
More Than A Side Hustle
Building Digital Wealth and Community (What Most People Get Wrong)
Have you ever wondered how to build digital wealth and meaningful community at the same time?
This is an show he was featured on called UNMOTIVATED.
In this episode, Anthony Hartzog (The Hartrimony) pulls back the curtain on his journey from 15 years in IT to creating multiple million-dollar businesses including a remote cleaning company and a digital education platform that have generated over $3 million each.
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Guys, welcome back to another episode of Unmotivated. I'm sitting down with the hatrimony aka our guy Anthony. Now Anthony, my man, thank you again for coming over and sharing some wisdom, information, giving me perspective on community business. Side hustle you might change your name to the Side Hustle King.
Speaker 2:We've done quite a few in the side hustle space man.
Speaker 1:There you have it, man. Now walk them through and go ahead and tell them who you are, what's going on and all the stuff that you got going on, man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so my name is Anthony Hartzog. I am a former 9-to-5-er. I worked in IT for about 15 years and throughout that journey we've been able to start multiple businesses, start multiple side hustles and pretty much build digital communities and also a physical local service business. So we've been in the cleaning business space now coming up on eight years and we've done over $3 million in our cleaning business and also over $3 million in the digital education space. So now we help others build out either their cleaning businesses and also just sharing a journey along the way.
Speaker 1:There you have it Now, guys, if you don't know this, and thank you as always for listening and watching and hopefully learning something. Life is about the journey. You hear that it sounds cliche and you know it's like man, it's some bullshit, until you wake up one day you're four and you say, damn, I've been on a journey. But then you go. If you learn that quicker you can get to where you want to go. I won't say faster, but more effectively. If you embrace the fact that, hey, nothing ever works, it's your job to figure it out and be curious enough to learn from your choices. I won't call them mistakes. There's a mistake if you fucking know better, clearly. But this guy put us on. I won't call it game, but I'm a guy who's curious, more curious than I've ever been. About human connection. Now, my fascination has always been human behavior, so I can analyze my safety and a bunch of other stuff based on how I was raised. But human connection, I never trusted it, man.
Speaker 2:So when you got into building the community side. Man, what's the one thing you enjoy most about community? Yeah, one thing I enjoy most about building community is it allows you to connect with other people all across the world and different backgrounds, different races, but they're always along a similar path as you. Very rarely you join a community where everyone's completely different from you. Right now, you see a lot of running clubs a lot of them and you actually question why are they building out so much running clubs? You could get outside and run by yourself, but isn't a lot more fun to run together?
Speaker 1:so it's it's easier to get where you're going, absolutely, you know, when you have a job set at best and I think you use another quote. But uh, you know, I'm a, I'm a job fanatic, aka c jobs, and uh, so much. So I walked out of the movie theater and asked the coaches. I was was like this ain't no, steve Jobs, this is ridiculous, get my money back. I said, sir. It's been 15 minutes. I said, and it fucking sucks. I want my fucking money At any hoot.
Speaker 1:I would say that Jobs said it best it's easier to walk a thousand miles when you have someone with you and most times you want to bring people that add value. And it's funny because even on the relationship side of the world, people say you should never settle. And I said no, no, no, you need to settle with the right people because when they came to America you had settlements and you needed to settle. You needed a guy who could, you know, create irrigation. You needed a guy who could build. You needed a guy who could organize things and a woman who could keep the house you need. You needed these people who had settlement, like mentalities and understood that we're about to do work and we're going to build something structurally that could change things. So I even changed that ideology Because I'm like what makes you think you shouldn't settle? If you can't settle, then you can't build. You know, you got to sit fucking still sometimes, but you need to write settlers with you, otherwise nothing's going to change. Preaching right now, man, just food for thought.
Speaker 2:That's all, hey, just food for thought.
Speaker 1:Hey, I'm never going to settle, I said I bet you're not. You're going to be unhappy the rest of your life motherfucker, absolutely. So what's one thing you learned most from your communities that you've built and the communities that you manage and sustain? Because I don't know everything about your upbringing. I came from a community community meaning my home a bunch of selfish bastards, uh, who had no. They had basically no interest in in really taking care of a person, or they just were selfish. That's the best way. They're just selfish people. So it's like, hey, it's me or you, or it's me or them or he's like everybody gets the world, it's every man for himself, which is a dangerous way, survivor, wise, to live. So you know, in your case you've got community. You know people are dependent on you. What about community kind of keeps you like going Because I struggle with it, as we just talked about. I'm struggling with it, man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, even if I go back to my upbringing, I didn't recognize that a lot of us do have communities. I mean, you think about you know, back in the day, where your neighbor used to be able to kick your ass if they needed to, because you was outside when you shouldn't have been. Or your neighbor was calling your mom because you're outside messing up and you always want to be on your P's and Q's because you know you're always being watched by someone to make sure you are in the best interest of yourself and your family. So, looking back, that itself is a community. A lot of us black people we did grow up in these communities, or whether it's church or it might be family, religion, whatever it is. So we do have some version of community growing up.
Speaker 2:Now, when it translated over to us in the business and entrepreneurship world, we realized that we had a goal of helping other people achieve a result that might be similar to us, and we built our community around other people that are looking to achieve that similar result. So one of the biggest things that I learned throughout that journey is that people just want their voices heard. So this is why, inside of our communities, we are always active, whether it's digital, whether it's in person, and listening to the needs of other people, because that's the biggest way to retain them, but then also there might be different versions of help that they need. You won't really know that until you start asking your community hey, what are you here for, why are you sticking around and how much more value can we provide to you?
Speaker 1:And what's been your biggest value gain and add to these people's lives outside of financial gains.
Speaker 2:I think that I got to think about that one. So financially they've made over $18 million in their own businesses.
Speaker 1:With your guidance and infrastructure, absolutely and support.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I don't take we don't take credit for all of that. Right, They've learned the structure. They've learned from us. We answer their questions, we make sure they have a right structure when they're building their businesses and they all go out and build it on their own.
Speaker 2:But I think, outside of that financial, I think a lot of people are now coming to the space of entrepreneurship so not even just the financial side of it, just having the freedom to be able to do something that belongs to you. So we get a lot of people that's like I've never started anything in my life, I've never built anything, I've never structured anything, I never had an LLC. Nobody in my family has done this. Now we realize this is bigger than just building businesses. These people are building things that their family has never even done as well. So now they're learning from us and then they're able to apply it. I had one of my frat brothers when he told me that he had his kids answering the phones for his business because he couldn't give them jobs at his job because he didn't own it. He was able to build something that allowed his kids to learn structure, learn skills and then also work for him. That's when I realized this is bigger than just money.
Speaker 1:You know, guys and I'm going to lean into this for two seconds Some people think wealth is what you have, it's what you know, and so when you have a billion dollars, you know. Oh yeah, he comes from Bill Gates. Bill Gates' daughter doesn't need the money. She's not buying chains and houses and gloating online. She has access to information, relationships. Think about it like this Jesus didn't have no money, but that nigga knew everybody. So you go hey, how did he make it? Nigga had relationships. Everybody was feeding him. I had to meet this, even though Zach Key is thieving ass. So you go wow, that's interesting. No, it's not Relationships, as I'm learning, even when I go back and think about all the stuff I've read, are assets, some of the greatest assets you own, even if you're a Shark Tank fan.
Speaker 1:What does Kevin O'Leary say? He says so you just need me to call. He says I know five people that rule the whole world. If all you need me to do is make a phone call, I want 30%, because that's relationships. That's putting a relationship on the line. You can't call them. I can. If I say such and such, they'll at least roll the dice. You rolling the dice with me, you ain't going to crap out, you know. So when I hear that what you said, I'm like go look at those people who have kids, you know, and more so the ones that don't look like us, um, and, and see what they're doing online. Even and, uh, I don't know if you even heard recently uh, the obama's daughters took off their last name because they want credit for what they're doing, which is stupid. By the way, nobody else tells you this shit's stupid. It's fucking stupid. It just is. It just is. It just is.
Speaker 1:Now, if there's a negative, you're not proud of what your father achieved. No, it's funny, nobody. Who's the opposite? The Indians love their last name. The Africans good Lord, they love their last name. The Mexicans take pride in their last name and most of them are named on days specific to their religion. You go down a line. Every other culture loves their last name and leverages that last name. It'd be stupid not to be like oh yeah, my last name is Bezos. There's niggas who didn't con people for 10 years because they was pretending to be a Rockefeller. You go, there's whole documentaries on that shit, right, and then the first thing you do is say I don't want to be an Obama. You go. Do you know what your dad achieved? Good, bad and ugly. If you Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:As we're growing up in this space of building a brand, entrepreneurship, digital assets we are showing them tools that they can use online. So the most fun thing that I'm doing with my three-year-old Alani is I'm just showing her how to translate pictures that we have in our phones into digital assets. Like, she literally created her own coloring book using chat GBT. I took our picture, put it in chat and she's like I loved it, like can we make another coloring book? And chat gbt. I took our picture, put it in chat and she's like I loved it. Like can we make another coloring book? And I'm like oh, I'm just showing her how to do it. Another thing we did was we created a digital asset for her first birthday. We created a alani's abc affirmation and it was just uh, we talked about building things, ai. We created a. This was three years ago. We're literally abc affirmation book and we sold it online for like nine dollars and she made like a thousand dollars for her first birthday.
Speaker 2:So we are building digital assets for them and then, alongside we had her do the video with us on our lap, as we're. You know it's my first birthday, you know. Thank you guys. So much blah, blah, blah and we literally sold it. So we're gonna make sure they ate their millionaires by the age of 18, but we also want them to be able to utilize their resources outside of us, because it's not just about the money, it's about are you a good human being and can you also help others? So I think those, right now, the biggest things that we're we're sharing with them dude, super impactful man, and you know.
Speaker 1:What they're really doing, too is he's forcing them to be creative. Creativity is how you create change. Change is what you know when the times get tough or things change that we can't control, which is why you got to stay ahead. You say, man, what's going on here? Well, if you are unaware, you know. Even myself, before I really started using chat, I'd start. I made myself okay, you got to play with it 10 minutes a day at least and just learn it, leverage it, lean into it, figure it out, build around it, etc. And you go wow, this thing's pretty interesting man and you know it's going to get better.
Speaker 1:So you go, I'm fucking cooked. What is Cuban saying? Emma Greed's current Aspire podcast? What do you say to those people who say they've got too much tech and don't want to use AI? Mark Cuban just says oh, you're fucked.
Speaker 1:I mean this person is like you're fucked. It's that simple. So what's one of the things that you've taken away or learned about yourself along the road too, man? Because self-development is another thing that always is constantly changing, but changing because it has to improve. And you start your journey with one, one desire, one idea, and then that desire I don't want to say continues to change, but it improves or gets better. Like what? What's the thing you've? You've gained most from, I guess, going down that rabbit hole of building businesses and connecting to your family and then putting all the stress not on both y'all's backs right, because now you're liable for both the wins and losses. But what's the one thing you learned about yourself that you, you hope other people kind of learn, maybe even sooner?
Speaker 2:I think I learned a lot about myself in terms of who I am and who I am becoming. So I this whole my whole life, I thought I was an extrovert and I realized there's a version of you have to be a forced extrovert, right?
Speaker 2:so every position I've held, whether it was in my frat, I had had to be in front of the meeting room, speaking up in front of people. I was able to speak in front of staff admin and I was like well, I'm always so tired after these things, well, I just need some time off. And then even at my job, I had a staff of about 35 people and I always had to be in front of them, always had to be smiling. But in these, you know, as I'm closing, I'm actually an introvert.
Speaker 2:At this point in my life I'm okay with being extrovert when I need to be, but I also like my own solitude. I also like my own space. I also like my own family. That's something I've learned about myself and I'm recognizing that the older I get. I'd just rather be a mom it could be just me becoming an old nigga, but maybe just being in my own space. But then also I do enjoy the fact that we have the ability to help others and I think growing up it's like all right, you know you do this one thing, right, you help somebody on the street, things like that. But I've always been an entrepreneur even going back to growing up. I used to pack bags at this grocery store called Key Food and I'd make a dollar here and there, and then I built up enough income where I could buy this game called Killer Instinct, and I remember those exact moments.
Speaker 1:That was a sick game, by the way.
Speaker 2:Super Nintendo Killer Instinct it was like $40. The most expensive video game that came out during that time was Killer Instinct and I remember it because they were like how'd you afford this? And I literally packed bags at Key Food for about a month and a half to make $40. To flip sneakers and things like that. And all of these little memories make me realize I used to shovel snow. There was a kid that went viral in Dallas who was trying to make $1,000. Shoveling. You know not shoveling. You know cleaning out trash cans. I've always been an entrepreneur, but I never. There was no title for it back then it was like you're just doing a bunch of side hustles or doing a bunch of things. No, I've learned over these last couple years.
Speaker 1:Is there another word that you think is synonymous to entrepreneur? That sounds more attractive, and I'm only asking because, unfortunately, I think at times that word gets tossed around quite a bit and we don't want people to think that everybody can be one because they can't. But the other part is, what does it really mean to be an entrepreneur?
Speaker 2:I think that the word I've been using the word founder a lot more. Yeah, and I like that word because it gives you the ability to be creative, and I don't think entrepreneur is you know we got. We come from a space where a lot of content is being created and I like the word founder because it coincides being an entrepreneur that someone has built something, but also being a creative because you're building digital assets and you're sharing your story and sharing your journey. So I enjoy the word founder and I think that if you think about your story growing up, there was something that you started and built from ground zero that made you income outside of what you were doing. So the word founder would probably be the one I'd go with. I like that one a lot.
Speaker 1:I do too, man. I've actually told Jamarcus and the guys around me. I said, guys, you know I'm more of a founder and I love founders because you need a good founder. You say, what's a good idea that we can build around? And then part of me is I got to find infrastructure. You know that could be an operations person, a design person, a marketing person, a sales guy, but there's a concept that I think would work and then you turn around and you build around this one idea and then you hire a CEO so you can go find something else, because I can't sit still, my brain works too fast and I like to analytically take a what's this or what's that. If we do this, this could work. Man, look at this industry and I'm not ever looking at competition, more so the opportunity, to say the least. Man. So, being a founder man, what is the next thing that you might, that you are getting involved in?
Speaker 2:I am trying to. One of the biggest difficulties is staying still when you got things that work and when you're building things, because I think as a founder, as a creative, we get what we call shiny object syndrome. Oh well, we'll see something like. Oh, one of the first things I did was all right, was a cleaning business. But then, also during that time, I was like, oh, I want to start a car rental business or I want to do this, I want to do that. Now I'm more of in a phase where I am building around the things we already have structure for. So everything that we do with the who have built either something similar or something that I'm looking forward to building. So one thing I'm doing along this phase of our journey is sharing more of the creative side. I'm sharing more of the founder side. What are we doing outside of the cleaning business space? Because that's been our story, our claim to fame, for so long, but we kind of boxed ourselves in, or me specifically.
Speaker 2:So I think those are the things I'm trying to get into right now.
Speaker 1:So don't marginalize yourself, but don't overextend either. Absolutely there you have it, man. And what was you know we talked a little bit about on the YouTube. Guys, when you see that, come out, definitely go watch it. He does a very good job of answering some questions about what got him into it, man, but what was the thing that made you pivot objectively to this? I got to basically take my life into my own hands Because, for those that didn't pay attention to COVID, none of y'all are in control of nothing.
Speaker 2:One thing COVID did was forced us to get out of our comfort zone. We went from driving every day maybe about 45 minutes, to an hour, sitting in office for eight hours and then driving home for another hour. That's 10, 12 hours of your day working for somebody else. What the pandemic did for I don't even know what to say pandemic. They might take the episode now. Be careful.
Speaker 2:Just be mindful of that Pandemic in a COV word kit has been weird on social media, but I'll let you guys figure that part out.
Speaker 2:But one of the things they taught us was that we we don't have as much time as we think we have on this planet. I lost my best friend during it during that time, and I also lost my wife's uncle her closest uncle during that time as well, and we all thought we had all this time, we're gonna go to all these places, and we realized we didn't have that much time. But what it did give us back was a sense of freedom, even though freedom was taken away from us. It gave us a sense of freedom, meaning that we now didn't have to commute into an office anymore. We didn't have to sit there for people that we absolutely hated their guts for 8, 10 hours a day, and we realized that you know what? I have more time to do, things that I want to do. This is why we saw a boom of entrepreneurs and founders and creators during that time, because we had nothing but time to ourselves.
Speaker 2:Even though we don't have as much time as we think on this world and this planet and this lifetime, but we had more time to think, we had more time to be creative. So I think that was one of the biggest blessings that we got during that, and that's one of the things that I've learned, that I've been sharing with people. If you ain't build it during the time when you actually had the time, you got to figure it out.
Speaker 1:And good luck with that man and, mind you, people, I do hope to get him over in a few more. What I do is normally just sit down and do a little light breakdown, but he did such a great job on the whiteboard and giving us complete, basically all the information I needed to see how to solve our community problem and, mind you, it won't solve it, but it gives me perspective on where to put my primary focus in terms of time to help define the things we're struggling with. Every business, and even your job, is rooted in your struggles, which gives you an opportunity to work through challenges. So, learning about community and doing everything that we're doing, you go, wow, that's interesting. And even how he's thinking about it and the people that he's helping and then having that, hey, we help people do 18 million in sales and build businesses, etc. You got that is something to think about.
Speaker 1:So I allow I now hope that I get to be a part of his continued work and and sit down with him in in detail about other things, but normally, again, I'd ask 1500 more questions, but we he killed it. I mean on the whiteboard, I mean like that was, that was a solid 20 minutes of pure pound and like no ums and uhs and this I mean you go, that's informative, so I want you to watch both. But this is just to sit down and make sure that we sit and create a time stamp, you know, with Anthony about what he's doing and I'll walk them through where to find you. And then the last question is always what keeps you motivated, man?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you can find us on social media at the Heartrimony. That's T-H-E-H-A-R-T-R-I-M-O-N-Y. You can just google us Heartzogs online. We're probably one of the only black people that you know with the last name Heartzog and, funny enough, we've been finding a lot of family members over these last couple years. Oh wow, Really. I found my brother on social media, oh wow. Like a real brother, my real brother. Yeah, I got pictures with him growing up. It was him.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you did what he just disappeared.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know how we do. Ah, we ain't gonna go down that road like, oh, is that what it is?
Speaker 1:Oh, it's one of those brothers. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, this blood, but he was the side of the tracks. Listen, you go to bali for a reason. It's been cool man. So the social media journey, you guys can follow me and my wife. We talk about faith, finances, fitness, family and freedom. So that's the heart trimony.
Speaker 1:And your question was what keeps you motivated, man? That's because it's the unmotivated. It's funny because everything that we do seems like we're highly motivated. I'm like guys, I'm not. I said I just the latter is I can't sit, still too well listen, man, I.
Speaker 2:I would love to be in my house right now chilling on on this day, but listen I, what keeps me motivated is this, you know you guys coming back and sharing about what you've learned from it, the journey, what you, what you've accomplished.
Speaker 2:We had a student come back the other day and was like you know, I just helped my, my mom, do this and I was like it may not be a big thing to you, but for us it keeps us motivated to keep going. You know there's so many people out there that you know they think everything they see online is a scam and it's like you see somebody make a million dollars and it's like, well, that's a scam. They had to rob it and steal it from somebody else. But I think the motivation is seeing somebody else accomplish something and then also coming back and sharing the game with other people. That's what keeps me motivated.
Speaker 1:You say the Okay, that's pretty straightforward, guys. The best thing you can do is do for yourself and, even more importantly, if you can help somebody along the way, that makes it even worth more, while my man, for one, thank you a ton for your time. Today, friday, he said, is a day where he don't do shit, and here he is doing shit. So I'm blessed, to say the least, just to have him in the house and teaching us something. Man, again, people, let me tell you this If you look like me, do not be afraid to ask for help. If you need help, ask. There's so many things I know I'm going to continue to need help about and I'm just warming up. You know what I mean. You think you got something good and it worked, but you go oh, this could get so much better.
Speaker 1:And it will not get better if you don't get out of your own way. Guys, stay motivated.