#038 Mowers & Math: How a 20-Year-Old Built a Million Dollar Business in Alaska - Kaedyn Jennings

Kaedyn Jennings is 20 years old, from Wasilla, Alaska, and by almost every conventional measure wasn't supposed to be a success — a complicated upbringing between Anchorage and the Mat-Su Valley, and a self-described bad student who nearly dropped out three months before graduation to start a lawn care company. 

He didn't drop out, but he did start the business — and four years later Snip&Clip Alaska has crossed a million dollars in total revenue, serviced properties over 6,000 times last year, and has become a force to be reckoned with in the industry.

In this conversation Kaedyn walks Manny through all of it — his upbringing, the lawn care math that started everything, how he solved the three biggest problems in the industry before he even had his first client, and what he's learned about debt, hiring, leadership, and money from a network of real Alaska business owners he's built around himself.

But the deeper thread running through this episode is what comes next — Kaedyn is 20, has already built the time freedom most people spend decades chasing, and is now figuring out how to turn that into financial freedom, 50 rental units, a helicopter, and a life built entirely on his own terms.  

What We Cover 

• Growing up between homes,  the aunt who raised him — and what shaped his drive
• How he went from watching a friend cut grass to building a company that did close to $750K last year
• Why he believes passion is overrated when it comes to building a business — and what matters more
• His take on Dave Ramsey, debt, and why he's focused on eliminating it entirely at 20 years old
• "Hire fast, fire fast" — his no-nonsense approach to building a small team and getting out of the way in leadership.
• The loneliness of being a young entrepreneur, and why he says the bottom is just as lonely as the top
• Big aspirations and the long game he's playing while others his age drag their feet

 
About Kaedyn Jennings
 
Kaedyn Jennings is a 20-year-old entrepreneur from Wasilla, Alaska, and the owner of Snip&Clip Alaska, a lawn care and snow removal company serving the Mat-Su Valley and Anchorage. He built the business from the ground up as a teenager, growing it to a small team with an operations manager, a sales team, and an office — and he's currently aiming for 400 customers this year. 

He also creates content daily across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, where he shares his journey as a young business owner in Alaska.
 
Follow Kaedyn Jennings on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok

Subscribe to his YouTube channel @KaedynJennings907 

 Contact Snip&Clip Alaska for your lawncare and snow removal needs.

 
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Transcript

The State I Am In (00:10)
When you were first starting, do you feel like people didn't give you much...

Credibility like you hadn't I still establish your street cred still. Yeah, I still I still don't get that like people it's very interesting when I'm in business settings with a lot of people I still end up being kind of the muted guy the guy that's muted out or talked over There's a lot of business settings where I get to stand out the opposite, you know where people are like, yeah You are young and they let me talk and do my thing There's still a ton of settings where people are just like this guy

He doesn't know anything. Who's this guy, you know? Interesting. Like do you show up and people are like, you own this business? Like, do give you that? The great thing is I don't show up anymore. Okay. But no, usually like even, even younger lawn care and like snow plow is a little different, but again, I never see.

My clients in snow plowing really, but the lawn care side of things it's, you know, they kind of expect it, ⁓ especially in the Valley. The Valley is a very kid lawn care industry. got a lot of neighborhood kids cutting grass. There is, I think me and five other actual companies that do lawn care.

But the market is very over saturated between the kids that are starting up, know, back where I was when I first started, which I give them all the credit in the world and any of the work I don't wanna do, I'm calling them. I'm like, hey, do you want this? ⁓ But the credibility side of it is still, I still run into that here and there. I mean, for me, just like meeting you, talking to you about like what you've built in.

Snip and Clip Alaska. I mean, all you have to do is just tell me exactly what you said before of where you started to where you're at now. Right. And that establishes some credibility pretty, pretty quick. So do you kind of want to give an idea of like when you give a snapshot of like, hey, this is my little lawn care snow removal empire that I've built within four years. Like, how do you, how do you let people in on like what you've established?

Where they take you seriously? So ⁓ I like metrics. I'm a numbers guy. ⁓ I'll either talk about money or I'll talk about clients. so we've serviced last year, we service properties 6000 times. So we were on clients properties 6000 times and I say we

I've used we now for the last four years. That's my term is me us the company, you know, because it isn't just me anymore. I've got a small team. Yeah. And so, you know, we were at properties over 6000 times last year. And from a numbers perspective, perspective, it's like we did almost three quarters of a million dollars last year. So from the beginning, I've done a million dollars total. And that is, for me, that's a big thing.

Not that, know, numbers are flashy, right? It's just a number, right? That's a million dollars revenue, not profit in my pocket. can tell you I've got nothing in my pocket. ⁓ But you know, to look at it from that perspective, it's like people in my family have never even made a million dollars who've worked for 30 years. So to even have a million dollars run through my hands or through my account just feels cool. You know, it's like, my gosh, wow, we've actually done that much work.

⁓ You start to learn the value of a dollar. You start to learn the value of debt and credit. You start to learn all those things. And as you and I were just talking about, it's like ⁓ I'm getting into this very Dave Ramsey space in my life of realizing that not all debt is good debt. And in fact, most, if not all debt is pretty much bad debt, at least from a math perspective. ⁓

It's funny, the last two weeks I've been posting about it on Facebook, just kind of triggering my friends about money and just kind of hating on debt, not hating on them, but just hating on debt. my favorite thing that I've been telling people is if you take a $750,000 loan out on a house for 30 years at 6%, which is actually lower apparently than the going rate today, you're gonna pay $850,000 in interest over the life of that loan.

Paid more for the loan than the house itself. Tell me how that makes you rich. you know, numbers don't lie to me. And yes, the, reality of it is, is all right, if you make 10 % on that money, you made, you, made a profit. Yes. But you lost out on the 6 % that you paid the bank. I'm 20 years old. I'm getting away from debt. That's, I want to be able to just, Hey, I want to shell out the money and buy this in cash.

because I want the maximum amount of profit from this asset to come to the company and go to my employees. I think part of the reason why guys aren't getting paid super well is these companies take out these huge loans and are having to make monthly payments. And so the margin of profit they actually make is so slim. It's not much. So they're paying their guys dirt, basically. Exactly. Yeah. Or some of them. I mean, I know some guys that have the old trucks and the old equipment and they still just pay their guys really bad. Yeah. I don't get it. Just.

I know the numbers of the industry. So it's like, all right, if I, if we can do a two half acre properties in an hour at $60 each as $120 an hour, you can't pay your guy 30 bucks. You can't even pay them. Uh, what's that 22 % or 23 % of your total income off the property. That's crazy to me. dude, your perspective on life and business and a bunch of other things I've learned in just a short period of time and meeting you is.

Pretty phenomenal. Kaedyn Jennings, 20 year old business owner from Wasilla. ⁓ We're just scratching the surface. mean, there's so much to talk about. This could be a multi episode podcast. I've got all day. So we have to start from the beginning. ⁓ Did you grow up in Alaska? Yeah. So born in Anchorage at Prov, most of you Prov babies. ⁓

It was 2005, so I'm 20 years old now. I was born August 9th. Born at Prov, lived in Anchorage. I grew up on, I grew up in a few different parts of Anchorage actually. Ironically, I grew up.

Initially, we lived on Muldoon Everybody that knows Muldoon knows Muldoon. So I actually grew up in a trailer initially. My mom had a trailer. We stayed there for, I don't know, a couple of years. And then my parents eventually bought a house on Southside. But within that period of time, my mom was military. Real dad was kind of a criminal. So he was actually in jail most of my life. And then...

to add on to that. I'm really bad at organization when I'm trying to tell a story. So I have an oldest brother, his name is Zay. ⁓ He is four years older than me or five years older than me. Different dad.

And then I've got an older brother, his name's MJ, same dad. ⁓ He is almost two years older than me. And then there's me. And then I have two step siblings who are younger than me. And so just kind of this, I have a decent little group of siblings there. ⁓ So my mom was in the military and we were living in Muldoon. My mom deployed and we went to live with our aunt, our great aunt. So it would have been my mom's aunt. ⁓

We stayed with her for, I don't know, gosh, it would have been the full year that my mom was deployed for. But my mom got back and from what I understand now, I was a young kid, but this is how the story goes. And I can't account for it exactly, but.

My mom got back and was just like, I don't want to watch my kids basically. So we stayed with our aunt. Me and my brother stayed with our aunt for a long time. ⁓ Once my mom got married to my stepdad, they bought a property on Southside, not rich Southside, poor Southside. if you've driven down, ⁓ it would be the Anchorage International airports here. You've got.

Raspberry Road that goes all the way back and then you've got like this left turn that'll take you back to diamond Okay, so you go down that road and off on the right side You've got West Park, which is like the pit neighborhood with nice new development houses And then on the left side, you've got the old houses. So we lived on the left side. Okay, and That is is a big part of where I grew a big part of my story and kind of I don't know growing up so anyways, ⁓ lived with

my aunt and then we kind of went back and forth with my mom and my aunt. That's about, I don't know, 10 years of my life right there in a very condensed period. Now, 10 years in, we're living with our aunt and going back and forth to our parents and my parents actually, very interesting story, decided that they were gonna go to court. They were gonna tell the court that my aunt was abusing me and my older brother.

And we were actually forcibly removed from our aunt's house and brought to our parents' house. Then very, very quickly my life developed after that. My parents decided, hey, we're moving. So within a year of that happening, we moved out to the valley. And so it was a very quick just boom, boom, boom transition in life. being, would have been 10 years old at the time, so it was 2015, 2016 in there when it happened. A lot went on.

A lot of emotional trauma in there as a kid, a lot of just changing things. It's like having divorced parents almost. So parents moved out to the Valley, which we went with them. And then we were granted visitation with our aunt once a month, me and my older brother. My younger siblings were never old enough at the time that they never lived with her. And then my oldest brother was already out of the house living with his dad. So just kind of a perspective view there for you. So anyways, me and my brother, we're going back and forth.

from the Valley to our aunt's house, but we're only, only get to see her once a month on a weekend. So it's, like having divorced parents literally. Yeah. And this person played a pretty prominent role in your upbringing. aunt did. Yeah. Absolutely. ⁓ for the people that know me that are going to watch this, everybody knows Auntie Twyla. Like I say her name all the time. She's basically my parent. ⁓ she was the person we looked up to. She was who we lived with most of the time. you know, in the period of going back and forth between my parents and my aunt's house.

We mostly were with her. ⁓ so that's where we grew up and she lived over on 72nd. Campbell Creek runs right by there and we lived over there. So that was a big portion of our lives right by Kasoon Elementary. Me and my brother lived there. We had friends, all the people in the neighborhood we knew. That was like our thing. But anyways.

Um, so we're going back and forth from the Valley to our aunt's house and my oldest brother or my old, sorry, my older brother, the one who actually lived with my aunt with me, uh, he ran away and very interestingly, he would have been 13 at the time. So it was, was very quickly after we moved to the Valley and we're doing this transition thing. Uh, he ran away and never came back. So, um, it was.

interesting as a kid because so much just went on in this two year period, a lot of just freak out, a lot of craziness. in that time, I kind of became very isolated. My parents, we didn't have a family perspective. We didn't have like this, we eat dinner at the table. Yeah. Traditional family model was not there. Not there at all. Not there at all. So, you we weren't eating dinner at the table every night. We weren't coming home and talking about school.

there was not a whole lot of communication. And so after my brother ran away, it was, I was just kind of doing my own thing, right? Um, I would have been 12 or 13 at the time when he did. And you know, I'm going back and forth to my aunt's house, my parents' house, and I'm just living my own world. so that's actually when I started to kind of learn about business and stuff. And I just, I was very big on YouTube and educating myself about anything and everything. there was points in my life where I wanted to be an air traffic controller. I mean,

I wanted to be a cop, wanted to be this or that, so many different things. How did school work during this time? With the back and forth, were you changing schools? Were you in one specifically? All right, so there's two different parts to that. So when we were going back and forth from my aunts to my parents before there was any custodial issue, we went to Kincaid Elementary, me and my older brother and my younger siblings. We all went to Kincaid Great school. I love that school. ⁓

I learned a lot there. And so during that time, my aunt would actually just drive us from across town over to Kincaid and she actually volunteered at our school. She worked in the library. She was retired by then. And so she was very involved in our lives. We actually had like with my aunt, a very good family dynamic. There's even more to this story. And like I said, I'm bad at telling a story in order because there's so many details to it, but like my aunt was married for a large portion of that time and then her husband passed away. And so, you know, we,

There's been just so much experience in that period of time. ⁓ but yeah, she would, she would drive us back and forth to school. She would make sure that we had our lunches. We'd never ate school lunch when we were with her versus with our parents. It was like, Hey, you figure it out. ⁓ and then once we, once we, ⁓ moved out to the Valley and there was this, you know, custodial issue, we only saw our aunt on the weekends. So we would just go to school like regular kids. ⁓ so yeah, anyways, very just, that was just a.

crazy period of time. My brother ran away, basically never saw him again until now. After he turned 18, he came out of the woodwork and obviously then became part of my life again. ⁓ But just a lot of emotional kid trauma stuff, know, crazy kid story. ⁓ And most people would think that, all right, you're the product of this crazy system that's happened. You're gonna get into drugs. You're gonna be a drinker. You're gonna be a partier kind of kid.

whatever. That was not me. I was just determined throughout that whole period of like, want to be different. I don't want to be like everybody else. I don't want to be like my family. And I knew somewhere in me that that was not how a real family works. And that's not how role models work. ⁓ so anyways, from then on, ⁓ after my brother ran away, I just, I just took that, that time from, you know, 13 years old to 18 years old to just educate myself.

Just learning about anything and everything possible. Like I said, I wanted to do all sorts of different jobs. ⁓ I got into helicopters then, which is now a big part of my life. and anyways, to get to the, to the main part is like throughout that period of time, I started to learn about business, right? And that's where I am today. I had friends that started businesses. i had kids I went to school with that were selling stuff in the school and all that. That wasn't me. I wasn't that guy. ⁓ I was never the guy. pawning off Laughy taffy out of my locker.

but I observed, This is how this is going on. And throughout that, I had a friend who started a lawn care company and this was in the Valley and he was doing 20 lawns a week in his neighborhood. And so I started just becoming more and more friends with him and started talking about that and learning how he got his mower and how much he was charging and what his process looked like and all that.

And I just analyzed everything he did. And one day, I mean, I literally took out my calculator and I was like, all right, so you're doing basically, this is the math I did. I was like, you're doing, you're doing 20 lawns a week at 50 bucks. So you're making a thousand dollars a week. You're making four grand a month. And for me, just like, nowadays I look back on that and I'm like, man, four grand a month is not a ton of money. But back then I was like, my God.

This guy's rich. Like he's cutting grass after school. And so I took that and kind of back engineered his whole thing and was like, okay, so I could back engineered it to all right. He's making a thousand dollars a week. did the math and I was like, well, if I worked five days a week, 10 hours a day, and I could do two lawns an hour, I could make almost $20,000 a month. So that's kind of where it started. That's where it started brewing in this time. Also, I was working.

I worked at three different places. worked at diversified tire. I worked at the Palmer ale house and this is out of order. I worked at the Palmer ale house first, diversified tire and then another tire shop after that. In that time, again, still just educating myself, trying to learn as much as possible. But now I've got a little bit of money behind me. Yeah. Did you feel like during that period of time, was this education, like you said, educating yourself? So you mentioned YouTube earlier. Yeah.

Were you getting more just on your own time outside of school or were there opportunities in school that you were like taking advantage of? Like, do you give any credit to like the education part of it? did you have teachers that were like helping you out or anybody in the traditional school system or was this all just like self-driven stuff outside of that? So I would say most of it was self-driven. There's a few different teacher influences I had who I knew on it. Like I was.

friends with in school on a personal level with my teachers, which most kids don't do. Like they're all like screw the teacher. I try to make friends with everybody and there was a few teachers I can think of them. Susan Krieger was one of them. She was a history teacher for me. Dana Kershaw. She was ⁓ like a.

English language arts type. She did a few different things. But on all of them I connected on a personal level and kind of explained my thoughts to them. Like just sat down with them and would talk to them. Everybody would be doing their schoolwork. I'd be done. I'd be sitting at their desk just chatting with them. And I've always been that kind of person. But I would attribute it mostly to just learning online.

Got you through YouTube self-education. I think most people won't take the time to just like Google something to learn about it. Like people will be like, why is that like that? I'm like, all right, I don't know. I'm going to Google it and figure it out. Now it's chat GPT. But yeah, think that a lot of it was just self-driven. Yeah. I want to learn about things. I want to learn how the world works, how money is made, how people get out of this nine to five world. Yeah. Do something different.

Do you feel like you were a pretty strong student so that you had the extra time or were you a bad student? And then you were like I'm just gonna go up on YouTube and learn the things I want to learn? one definitely a bad student Okay, I didn't like the idea of homework. I didn't like the idea of Specific have a specific instance of this and this is really funny. So I was on an IEP, which is an individual education plan

And so the reason for that was I have dyslexia, or at least I think I do. And anyways, I tested into it basically. So they would test all the kids and I tested into meeting an IEP, I guess. So I've always had one. And I had this one math teacher in high school in the Valley at Palmer and he kept, one of the things we were working on was like, he's trying to teach us about the slope of a roof. And I'm like, I literally had an argument with him. I was like, hey dude, like.

I get you're just the teacher, but like, are we learning about this? And why does this matter? Because I'm not a carpenter and I'm not building a house right now. And he's like, well, you gotta learn to do the slope of a roof. And I was like, why? Why do I need to learn it? I had this huge argument with this guy in the middle of class and I don't argue with people. I usually just kind of stick to the rules and do what I'm supposed to do. So I actually left class, walked down to my counselor, was like, hey, look, I can't do this class anymore. I need a different math class. I got transitioned into a different one. But like, no, I was...

It's definitely a bad student. He's not into doing stuff. I cheated on most of my schooling, just Googling stuff, getting the answers. I did not care about school. I was focused on the world. What happens in the world. I don't care about this class stuff. That was kind of my. Interesting. But it's still kind of cool that you, like you said earlier, you could have, based on everything that was going on at home, based on how you were doing in school, those are...

two things that are usually in the recipe of dropping out, getting addicted to drugs or getting involved in crime, stuff like that. And you didn't follow that path at all. No, I actually, it's funny, I wanted to drop out to start a business. And this was after I talked to my lawn care friend. My initial plan, I started my lawn care business the year I was graduating. And so literally we had like three months of school left and I was already gearing up for the lawn care season and getting my stuff together. And I was like,

Why don't I just drop out right now? I got talked out of it, luckily. ⁓ Which, I still don't think I need the diploma, because it didn't do anything. I mean, I haven't.

I honestly, I'm pretty sure I threw it away to be honest with you. I don't think I have it anymore. I look, I've hired people and I can tell you I haven't verified. ⁓ I call the references and I talked to all their previous employers, but I've never cared about the high school thing. And part of me wishes I dropped out cause it makes the story better. makes a story. But no, no, didn't. Yeah. So you launched that. mean, so you graduate high school and then you're off to the races that first summer with you.

with this business that you started. Under that name, Snip N Clip. Under the name, yeah. So initially it's actually transformed from a few different things. It was Snip N Clip Lawn Care. Then it was Snip N Clip Lawn Care slash snow plowing. And then I was like, wait a minute, let me just call it Snip N Clip Alaska. Cooler Cover it all. Exactly. So anyways, no, I started it the, you know.

The last three months of schooling was you know gearing up for spring cleanups and stuff So I already had clients. I already had people who had paid me money I charged all my clients up front and so I already had money in the bank and that's why I was thinking about dropping out and ironically the week before graduation We did our graduation practice where we all go out and do the thing, right?

I literally was in the, I was late to my graduation practice because I was doing spring cleanups, getting people's lawns ready for summer. Like I can remember showing up with my truck and trailer, being all dirty, like changing out of a hoodie and changing into different pants and then throwing this gown on to practice for graduation. It was hilarious. And I remember it, somebody said to me, they were like, why are you late? You're just, aren't you just running your stupid little business or whatever? And I was like.

Yeah, but I've got I think at that point in time. I think I had like probably 10 grand in spring cleanup money I was feeling good about myself. Yeah, totally. So yeah, so I Mean you start this business Not because at least from what I'm hearing not because you have this love and passion for lawn care and snow removal You're looking at the numbers saying like this this can work if I if I put in this amount of effort I can get this

amount of money in my bank account, that makes it worth it. Yeah, so a majority of it was the math. The other part of it was I actually mowed my parents' lawn. My parents had a two-acre lawn. so part of the reason why I was first interested in it was I was already cutting grass. was cutting my parents' grass, and they had two acres. So it took me like three hours to do on a tractor, and I had to weed-weak everything. And that was my job at the house.

I'd already done it and was in the space a little bit and was like, hey, I know how to do this. It's not hard. And so that's when I started asking my buddy who was making money from it, hey, give me the back end of this so I can re-engineer it. But yeah, mean, mainly it was numbers driven and...

I was like, I don't want to work like everybody else. My goal in life was never to have a nine to five. It was to do something different. yeah. In that first year, you did have to put in the work for it. mean, I'm thinking like anyone, I mean, yes, anyone can start a business, but businesses, as you know, start and fail all the time. The numbers aren't great for startups within the first five years, but you started this.

And then you've been grinding and you've reached a point now where, like you said, you know, ⁓ a million in revenue in the last, four years, last four years, total aggregate revenue was four million or a million. But I mean, a bunch of money going through this business. And now, like you told me earlier, like you have employees, right? You pay them well. you have, I can't remember how much you said in equipment. we've got, yeah. So I think total equipment owned. We've got it's.

about three quarters of a million dollars. Some of it we still have loans on which we'll get into. But it's like we have, it's turned into from a six, $7,000 investment to this big million dollar thing. And I think that if there's any advice I could give to anybody, it's like the dream's never too small. It's all just numbers and you gotta figure it out. Do it on paper.

getting back to the business aspect of it, like I said, anyone can start one, but how do you do it well to where people actually want to call you up or put you on their list of people to work with, whether it's an individual or other businesses? So, okay, there's a few things, at least for me, that were important when I started. My biggest thing was...

I had studied the lawn care industry, right? A lot of the research I did was specifically with what I wanted to do. And the problem in the lawn care industry specifically is clients don't pay, the lawn care companies don't show up on time, and they all do bad work.

Those were the three solves I had. So we solved these in this order. Credit cards on file charged in advance. So all of our clients on the first of the month were billing them, which also gives you capital at the beginning, right? When you start a business, like the first month, we hadn't touched anybody's lawns we had this money in the account, which is great. ⁓ it's, call it like cashflow positive, right? You just have, you have the money before you do the work. ⁓ so we were paid by all of our clients. If they didn't pay, we didn't service and there was never an issue. ⁓ on the flip side of that, people would

ask, well, what if you didn't service? And it's like, we don't. That's where we get to ⁓ showing up on time. So.

A lot of lawn care companies promise you one thing and don't do it. We show up the same day of the week every time, you know, every week, same day of the week, no matter what. don't care if it's raining, I care if it's snowing, we're going to be there. ⁓ And so our clients over last four years who have been with us for four years know this is how it goes. When I'm on a Monday route, I'm going to see them on Monday, usually within a two hour window of when they normally show up. the billing.

people showing up, and then good work. A lot of the guys in the lawn care space don't invest in equipment, right? They're running like the bottom of the barrel, like push mowers and ⁓ residential ride on Well, my initial investment was low. I was the guy that had to get the cheap equipment because I was just starting, but now a mower, we have two sitting at Jewel Equipment, our equipment dealer right now, shout out Jewel. ⁓

You know this year we're spending 32 grand on two lawn mowers. People are like $32,000 on lawn mowers right last year we spent 45 grand on three and so it's like our mowers are like 15 grand apiece if not more and ⁓ Most guys just want the profit instead versus having the quality equipment that shows up, know We show up on time. We need our equipment to show up on time. We need stuff to not break

And so those were the three problems I noticed in the industry and I came in with a solve for it and that's how I've done it. And I've actually convinced a few friends now that I have in the space to do the same thing, charging their clients in advance.

So they're never worried about cashflow issues or having to deal with a client and have to send them to collectible or into collections. Yeah. Nobody wants to do that. You know, it's, it's a hassle on the businesses side and it makes the other person look bad. I'm more look at it as like, Hey, if you can't pay your bills, no worries. We just won't come or Hey, we're just going to comp you the service this month to get your life figured out and pay us next month. know,

But those were the things I noticed. Those are what were important to me. And I was like, if I'm going to start this business, those things have to be dialed in and figured out. The great thing is, with quality work, there's two ways to go about it. In the beginning, it was me. I was the quality work, right? It didn't matter what mower I had. I knew I could do good work. Now it's, all right, I have employees who are experienced running this equipment, but I need to give them the tools.

to do really good work with the equipment they have. So that is just buying the good equipment that lasts and doesn't break. We still have issues, you our stuff still breaks, ⁓ our employees still mess things up.

we're human beings. Nothing's ever perfect in our world, especially in the grass cutting world. But that's what we set aside money for and fix things. Whether that be equipment, people's lawns, we broke windows. Ironically, last year, 6,000 services, right? 6,000 times on people's properties, we broke two windows, which is crazy to me. I was like, we got lucky. But yeah, it's been awesome. ⁓ I'm just...

I'm proud of what I've built and I can't take all the credit for it because the team around me is what has helped make it happen. The team and the people in the community. Without those, I wouldn't have a business. Yeah. So what do you think is the, there might be multiple obstacles that you found in this business that you didn't anticipate that you were like, how am I going to figure this out? And that could have been staffing. could be, I mean, the books, you know, managing all these finances now that you have like significant cashflow. Like what are the obstacles that came up?

that you felt like you weren't prepared for that you had to learn? You know, I think I'm one of those people where like everything is learnable. nothing's ever really too complicated for me. I'm always gonna figure something out. But I think, you know, initially before I ever hired anybody, I was always like, my God, hiring people, how do you even do that? There's gotta be all this regulation. Hiring people is like the easiest thing you could ever do. It's one paper on QuickBooks, if you use QuickBooks. ⁓

I was so scared of all these different little things like the insurance, the... ⁓

the hiring side of it, the workman's comp, like there's so many different things. But a business, I like to think about it like a car. There's so many different systems that it makes it complex, but each individual system is very simple. And so if you have an iPhone, which most people do, you should be able to start a business. Google is my best friend. ⁓ If you asked my lady, my girlfriend, if you know,

what she hates most, she's like, he's on Google all the time. On Google and my calculator. It's crazy. So you bring up a good point. You have a girlfriend and kids? Just one. One kid? One kid. OK, cool. ⁓ When did that begin? What's that story? This is going to sound really ⁓ interesting. It's a long winded story, but I'll make it quick.

As a kid, I always had a really good connection with my aunt and my uncle. And after my uncle died, which there's a whole story within that too, but after my uncle died, kind of had like this piece in myself missing and I always resulted towards like, hey, I'm gonna get a girlfriend. And so ⁓ I spent a large portion of that time from when my uncle died to being 18, just having multiple different girlfriends all the time, like get with a girl, break up, get with a girl, break up, just on and on and on.

And I started to figure out that that was not my problem. My problem was myself and you know, what's inside. And I needed to figure that out before I got into a really good relationship. And so before Amelia, I think I had had, you know, a six month break being with anybody. I had kind of just...

tried to figure my own life out first versus, let me try to get a girlfriend to figure out my problems. And so that actually made it a lot easier to be with somebody. ⁓ And we've been together now for...

year and a half, almost two years, yeah, it's been a while. And then we got pregnant, had a kid, that was kind of a surprise, but I think it's been the biggest blessing just in the side of like, it gave me a new perspective on life. Just figuring out like, hey, what's really important to me and how do I wanna go forward with my life and be an influence on my own kid. So I think a lot of people... ⁓

A lot of people can have kids on accidents or surprises and they lose their sight of everything in life. I took that and was like, hey, I gotta figure out what, I gotta figure out this thing. I've gotta figure out how I'm gonna go forward and be a role model for a kid. And so I need to figure out what's the best thing to do in life, what's the best examples to set, and how am I gonna do that?

That's a lot, man. Dude, it's a lot. That's a lot. mean, you're, 20 years old. You have a business, you own a business. ⁓ that's, it's doing well. You have, ⁓ a family and you know, at 20 years old, you're, you are experiencing some things that my guess is maybe not a lot of 20 year olds are. ⁓ you know, we can play the stereotype like generational game, right? Like, I don't know. Are you, would you be considered like Gen Z? Are you Gen Z? I'm not sure.

Yeah, I'm not sure where we're at either right now, but, you know, a lot of people could say that, you know, the younger generation, mean, boomers would say this about me, like, I don't have, you know, the same understanding work ethic as they did, you know, and that could be the set said the same thing about you. So where do you find the, the motivation, the discipline, the wherewithal to be able to do what you're doing now? Do you feel like you're just charging ahead and just like,

for lack of a better way to say it, like you give a shit about how successful you are, taking care of your family, like is that what drives you? Like where do you think your motivation I think a lot of it, and this is what a lot of people say to me too about it, is a lot of it stems from just proving my parents wrong and showing that I can be different and be bigger than just what they said I was going to be as a kid. I think another part of it is just like, man, you've gotta have goals.

Everybody my age and the reason why I don't have a lot of friends my age is nobody has like a direction. And I've always been somebody that like, all right, there's gotta be like, it's gotta be organized. It's gotta make sense and we've got to have a path. Right. And so I'm riding

riding down this valley right now. I have a very open path because I'm so young. There's so many different ventures that I can get my toes into. But the end goal for me is a few very simple things. It's freedom, the ability to do what I want when I want, and the cause of that is you have to have money. I always tell people everything costs money.

Doesn't matter what it is, right? And no matter what you want to do, you have to have it in order to get by. There's no option otherwise. So money is a big driver for me. It's the only way I'm going to be able to get to the goal of being free. And then a couple of just hobbies. helicopters is a new thing for me over the last three-ish years. I really like helicopters. ⁓ I don't know what I'm going to do with it. As I was saying to you earlier, like I could start a business doing it. I don't know. ⁓

But the other thing too is just being secure. Knowing that, I've got my stuff taken care of, right? I'm not gonna have to worry. ⁓ I think a lot of people go through life, take out loans, get into credit card debt, and they have to work. I don't want to have to work. I want to work.

I want to want to work as well. Like I don't want to be forced to do it. Yeah. And so I think that's, that's my greater thing. And I think the drive is really like, man, I just, I want to be successful. I don't want to be just the ordinary guy. Yeah. Everybody is the ordinary guy. So I don't want to be him. Yeah. When you look at the next like five years of, of your business, do you see yourself growing out of it? Do you see yourself moving on? Like you mentioned some other, other ventures, like

when you look ahead, how do you make the math work for you to get to that point? Yeah, so, you know, every year in business, like we set a goal.

So like this year our goal is 400 clients that are weekly at an average of $75 a week for the entire summer. That's our goal. It comes out to $112,000 a month. With that money, we are going to pay off all of our trucks and we're have no debt, which means going forward, we're gonna have more money. It's kind of a win-win. ⁓ But over the next five years, what I see happening is kind of just a moderate growth. ⁓ We make really good money, now it's managing it.

So we've been given the ability to to manage this money. We need to now manage it make it work for us and so I don't really Expect to see a huge crazy growth in my business I thought about some different expansions whether that be coming down here to the to the K-Pen or Going up to Fairbanks and opening up something up there I don't really know what the plan is for that, but I know the goal is no debt and to be able to pay people very well

Those are the things I care about in this box of business. On the personal side of things for me, it's like, I want to get into real estate. I want to start building rentals. My plan is we're going to be buying some land here by August is kind of our goal. And we should have our first rental property built and finished by February. And I'm going to do that by myself. I've always had the goal of like, man, it'd be cool to build something. I never knew what it was. And I'm like looking at it now and I'm like, I think I'm going to build a rental property. So, um, but over the next five years,

I have like the general path, right? Like I said, I'm in a valley. I don't necessarily have a pinpoint on the destination. Now I'm...

Over the next few months probably going to be in the stage of just figuring out, what do want to do with my life? I know how to make money. ⁓ How do I make more of it to get to the number I want? And everybody asks like, what's that number for me? It's like, I don't know if we were worth, if I was worth $20 million. a great number. I could do probably everything I want to do if I was worth $20 million. And then the other thing is like, okay, what do I want to do to give back?

And I'm figuring that out still. It's like, all what do I want to do to help people? The community has gotten me to where I am and is going to get me to where I'm going to be. So what do I do to give back to that and to become like a charitable person in my community? There's a couple of things that are very important to me, like runaway kids, very important to me. ⁓

You anything to do with helicopters, like medevac, that kind of cool stuff. So I don't know. Yeah. I have no idea what, where the destination is going to be, but I know where I'm going. Yeah. ⁓ not exactly sure where it ends. So you brought up, ⁓ being able to manage, know, you know how to make money. Now your, focus is on managing it. Well, one thing that you brought up was Dave Ramsey and Dave Ramsey for me in my generation was kind of like a standard, at least growing up, I knew that that was kind of like a household name.

He was big in radio. I hear his radio show come on. I'm sure you could probably still find it on radio stations. They just do a podcast now. Yeah, they do have a podcast. And so many other personalities are involved with the the Ramsey network now. But, you know, to hear someone, you know, your age talk about Dave Ramsey was kind of a surprise to me because now there's a lot more voices out there saying this is how you are supposed to manage money. This is how you get rich.

Dave Ramsey's an idiot. He gives advice to poor people. How did you come across his philosophy? And then what was attractive ⁓ to you about his philosophy? Dave Ramsey.

He's more of like, right, the religious guy of like, hey, Jesus tells me this is what to do with my money. That wasn't really the attractive part for me. The attractive part for me was he does math. And the problem that I have is, and I'm going say this is going be very controversial. Everybody on the internet is dumb. And there's all these Tik Tokers that are like, yeah, you can BRR properties. can, ⁓

You can you can buy a property put three percent down and expect it. It's gonna pay for itself. Don't worry about it Nobody thinks I swear to god nobody in this community. I've read comments and comments and comments hours on these kinds of posts Nobody thinks about when shit hits the fan Right when the economy crashes, right everybody who put three percent down on a house in 2008 they shit the bed and had to sell it for pennies on the dollar because they couldn't afford the payments and you know

I think that there's two different ways to go about it. Or three, actually. There's people that take out a ton of debt and they manage it horribly, which is a majority of America, and then they have to work to pay off their debt, right? That's the position that...

I'd say probably 75 % of America is in. Just a good statistic that I love is that, I don't love it, but a statistic I love to use is 45 to 75 % of Americans, and that's a wide range because it's a few different studies, cannot afford a $1,000 emergency expense. That's crazy to me. As somebody who's seen a million dollars come through an account and thinks about $1,000 and that's between 40 % and 70 % of it.

everybody one in or sorry, four to seven in 10 of people you see can't afford $1,000 is freaky to me. That's scary. And so that has been a shocker to me, just the statistics of it. And then also the thought that everybody just thinks it's all gonna work out. Like, yeah, know, hey, I'm gonna put all my money into this property. I'm gonna put 3 % down, which is like, you know, I'm gonna put 20 grand on this property.

And then the renters are going to pay the payments. There's too many horror stories out there. People do that and they can't find a renter for the first three months. And then they have to go bankrupt or sell the house. so anyways, for me, right. I've been a believer the last few years in debt of like, yeah, you know, it's great. If you make more money than your interest rate, you're making money, which yes.

Mathematically, that is how it works. If you took out a loan at 6 % and you're making 10%, you're making more money. But you're only making 4%. I'd rather make 10 % total. So for me, it's a simple math equation. I don't like the idea of having a bunch of debt out and then having to pay it for 10 years or for 30 years.

And right now we've got about $350,000 in trucks. You know, that's our vehicle loans, trucks. And then we have a company camper included in that. And for me, I look at my business and I'm like, hey, like in the winter, we can do 30 grand a month. And in the summer, we can do upwards of a hundred grand a month. And we have 10 grand a month that's going out every month towards payments. That's 120 grand I could either be saving.

I could be using to buy another truck every year. I could be using to pay myself. I could be using to distribute across my employees and give them better wages. And the whole American public is just trapped in this debt race. Like, yeah, we're going to spend on our credit cards or our FICO score will go up so that can spend more on my credit card. Why not? You know, if you've got a credit card with a $10,000 limit on it, why not just have $10,000 in the bank?

Why not be able to use that and replenish that every month like you're paying off a credit card? I've gotten very aware.

of how the whole thing works. And now I'm looking at it. I'm like, credit cards are dumb. There's no point in having it. In my opinion, it's like, if you can just put the money in the bank and bank on your 10 grand every month, instead of having a $10,000 credit card, that's the best way to do it. ⁓ People get in the trap of you're using plastic. So automatically, you you see that the two for one deal at the store, you buy that two for one deal that you didn't need because you're going to get more points on your credit card and it was on sale.

And that's people's reason not because they needed it or not because they wanted it because they got more points so could go on vacation. I'd rather just save up for a vacation. Like, I don't know. I've been in this race now too. Like that's the thing. I've used credit cards for the last, since my business started. I got an Amex my first year and I was like, this is cool.

I'm legit now because I have a credit card. Yeah, there's a community around it and I find it very strange and it's almost from the outside perspective, right? You step back. You're like, this is like a cult. Like credit cards have a cult following and it's weird. And you start to realize American Express can spend a billion dollars a year on marketing to get you to like their credit card because yeah, you're rich if you have an Amex. No, you're rich if you have money in the bank. That's where I'm at. I just, the idea of

Spending just to get points just to go on a vacation. I'd rather just pay for the vacation. Mm-hmm and ⁓ I'm very much so in a space of getting away from credit cards getting away from debt our business goals this year to pay off all of our debts so that we can pair employees more I can pay myself more because I haven't paid myself for four years. We make enough money that I should ⁓ And on top of that, it's like if I invested that hundred and twenty grand in rental properties

my gosh, I'd make even more money. I can pay my employees even more money. Like it's just a self-revolving problem. So Dave Ramsey is a voice that you respect in the, in the money sense, you know, as a business owner, as you're the CEO of your own company, right? So you have, you're, you're at the, at the helm, you're leading this ship, right? you're 20 years old. I'm assuming you have employees that are older than you. Yeah, everybody.

All of your employees are older. Is there any voice out there like leadership wise that you respect, that you look to? Do you assess your own leadership ability within your business? Yes, so I've got a few. ⁓ I've got a few really good people that.

First of all, your network is your net worth. So people you meet are the most important thing. Knowing other business owners in completely different spaces is super important. Your network is your net worth. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. So, ⁓ and I didn't come up with that. Somebody else did, but it's a great saying and I love it. Ryan Cropper. He is somebody who I've met and who I was just texting on my way out here today, figuring out when we're going to have lunch. ⁓ he's a business mogul here in Alaska. He used to own, ⁓ all of the able body shops in Anchorage. He sold them to classic collision

for an undisclosed amount of money. And then through that time he also started a trash company. He owns Northern Waste and Anchorage, which is now the second largest trash company in the city. And he's just kind of been a great person to look up to. ⁓

When he owned Able Body Shop, he had probably, I don't know, 50 or 100 employees. And so somebody who's led hundreds of people, they had to have the leadership skills to get there. And so always look towards those kinds of people. Now you have to be aware of the snakes in the grass, the people who, yes, they have a big company, but they suck at leading. So, you know, I always take anything I get from a leader with a grain of salt. I always listen to what they have to say. And then I take it in and I interpret it for my own business. And if I choose to apply.

I'll apply it if I think that's a weird practice. I don't like it. I won't use it Another great person who's been an influence of mine is Heath Martin who owns Klebs Mechanical They're one of the largest plumbing and heating contractors in Anchorage and They manage 75 to 100 employees all the time year-round plumbing and heating is a ⁓ big business Yeah, and he's given me tons of advice tons of advice ⁓

I could call him right now and he can pick up. He's what's going on? know? But he's given me lots of perspectives when it comes to the money side of the business, how to manage it, how to manage a hundred employees, which is crazy. I've done the numbers. If I had a hundred employees, we would be doing like $50 million a year. It's just crazy. And so I just, I look up to the people who have done it and that's the only way that I'm going to be able to do it. Right. I'm not going to take advice from somebody who has a two person company on how to build a hundred person company.

company.

Amber Witchers, she's the manager of Everett's restaurant in Wasilla She's an amazing person. She's very good at your customers. She knows everything there is to know about how to treat a customer right. ⁓ She's big in the hospitality business. And so it's nice to just have all these different people with different perspectives that I can take. And I can take all the best things from these different people and apply it to my own business. And I have. Amber says something that I love. And this is something I would say to any business owner. But

It is when a customer comes in, have to do these three things and you have to minimum do two of them. You have to make it special. Every experience that you have with a customer, needs to be somewhat special. You need to make it happen, meaning you get it done, right? Whatever it is you said you were going to do, absolutely do it 100%. your word. Yeah. Yep. And then you make it right. And so if you screw up, you make it right. You make it special, you make it happen and you make it right. All of those three things are super important. If you can do all three of them with every customer,

we'll have a successful business. If you can at least do two of them, you're good. If you're doing one, that's not good. So, ⁓ you know, if you screw up with a customer, you make it right. If you tell somebody you're gonna do something, you make it happen. And then you make it special, which is gonna make you stand out from everybody else. Yeah. You know I love about your response is you gave three examples of people that are real and in your neighborhood. Yeah. They're not someone on the internet. They're not someone asking,

to sign up for their seminar on TikTok, their course on TikTok. if you were to look, if you're listening right now and you're looking to start your own business, all those voices, the ad space is gonna be attacking you. And yet you have examples just from other businesses that you, whether these were businesses you've worked with or just personal relationships or whatever, you're looking at them with that leadership mentality and exactly like you said.

How can you apply those principles to your own business? Right, because not everything they do works for me. It is a different business. It's very hard to look at a lawn care space where we're never seeing our clients ever. Same with snow plowing. We literally never see them. We are there when they are not there. We are the silent housekeepers. We show up and cut their grass. If they leave for work in the morning, grass wasn't cut, they come home, it was cut.

That's all they get. And so how do we in our own industry, for me, you what I figured out was like, we do monthly check-ins with our customers and we call them, but figuring out in your business, how do you make it special for your client, right? If you're never seeing them, how do you do that? How do you make it important to them, right?

I haven't met half of my clients ever. That's the craziest thing. Like my team is in the office right now today doing sales calls, signing up new clients. And I'm like, these are people I'm never going to meet. I need to make sure that anything they do with our company is special and that they can trust us. Right? We have their credit card information for God's sake. which I don't like the credit card thing, but we have their information and they're trusting us to be at their half a million. You know, the average price of a home is half a million dollars. They're trusting us with their asset.

And so, you know, we need to show them that we care about it and that it's special to us and you're not just another number in our set of hundreds of numbers. ⁓ I think that's the most important thing in business. like if you can just, business is people. It's the only way business happens. Without you, without me, we wouldn't be here today. Without my customers, I wouldn't have a business. so...

It's only people. The money comes second. If you strive to make the people happy and do right by your customers, the money follows. It's kind of a win-win. So. It's a lot of wisdom, man. I don't know. is just things I've picked and taken from several different spaces. And it's like, God, there's so many business owners and it's amazing to see what people do. Another person I'd love to mention is Michelle Lackey. She owns the racetrack in the Valley. you know,

She does an amazing job of running something with nothing. ⁓ And the racetrack is something that a bunch of people in the Valley come out to a minimum of once a year, if not all of the time. And people just absolutely love being there. And she's been able to bring together a huge team of people and make it happen.

I've had so many people on this on this podcast talk about how they turned their passion into their career Yeah, and whether you know, I think about I just episode that just came out today with Lizzie Hartman, she's a she's a chef she does

personal chef stuff all over Alaska. Never dreamt that her job would take her to all these beautiful places. People are paying her to make these elaborate meals. Or Anne Marie Henderson is an artist. She has her own shop, Downtown Anchorage. Or they don't call them a shop. It's a... Like a collective or like a... Yeah, I know what you're Studio, it's our studio. And she...

She's a full-time artist making making a killing and she does a phenomenal job because she also Not only does art but she does the content side of it. Yes, totally. haven't even talked about yet. We're yeah, we'll there We'll get there but yeah, she's phenomenal. She does great with that as well But they found a way to take the thing that they love and then to make it their career and they get they get to do what they love every day and a lot of people would say not so much with

maybe these professions, you can make a living being a chef and you can make a living being an artist much more difficult, but Anne-Marie's found a way to do that. sometimes people think that they have to love what they do. I think that's a, it's a common statement when people, especially coming out of high school, like, what are you gonna do after you graduate? Well, I just wanna find something that I really love. I mean, listening to you talk, can't say that like,

you love snow removal or you love cutting grass. You have the knowledge and the experience and then you knew how to scale it as a business to make an income that would eventually free you up to do the things that you actually want to do and you had that mindset, but it didn't actually start with just this passion for like lawn care, right? So do you want to maybe talk about like that aspect of it? Like what you do, how you get through your work weeks and plan your business and think about the future?

when you're doing something that maybe you wouldn't have necessarily picked if you didn't have ⁓ the experience in it or just being able to match up the numbers and how to make it successful. Right, I think that's an interesting question and a perfect example I'd reference too is like laundry mats. I've never met anybody who wants to own, who wants to work at a laundry mat, right? That's not a dream job you see in kindergarten. And so,

I think that's really the perspective is like the boring businesses. There's so much money in it. Nobody wants to pick up trash for a living. Ryan Cropper is a great example. I don't know Northern Waste numbers, but I could only guess that they do very, very well in the probably 10 to $20 million a year range picking up trash. It's like you don't have to do something that's glamorous or beautiful. You just have to understand it and you have to know how to scale it. And sometimes people don't even care about the scale. They just want something to

earn an income. know people that build houses and it's just them and three crew guys and that's all they do because it makes good money. You know, I would say a majority of the world, kids coming out of high school, they say exactly what you said. I want to figure out my passion. I want to do what I love. Doing what you love can kind of come second to how you make money because sometimes what you love like me, helicopters, it's very expensive. It costs $500 an hour to fly helicopter.

That's an expensive hobby and that's yeah, that's renting it basically to own helicopters is a crazy expense and so I think just finding something that you understand and that you can scale and make money from if you're in the business space is Is the best way to go about it, right? Helicopters might turn into a business for me in the future, but I don't think you know where I was at I didn't have a million dollars to buy a helicopter

That's just how it is. ⁓ Now for people that are getting jobs, right? I think that that's a different perspective. If you're getting a job, you should find what you love because most people are trying to make a career out of their job, right? You can get a job flying helicopters, but I don't want to work for somebody flying helicopters. ⁓

If I did, that's what I would have done, right? But my drive more is like, I want to have freedom. I want to have money to be able to do the things I want to do. And people have this hatred towards money, right? I don't get it because it's just a number on a piece of paper or it's a bill in your pocket, right? And people envy or hate people that have a bunch of money. it's like, money only just, it's a tool and it allows you to do things.

with it, that's all it is. You can buy things with money, you can spend it, you can save it, and you can give it, right? That's Dave Ramsey's principle, but that's the reality, that's all you can do with money, you could burn it I guess, that's another option. ⁓ people have this hate towards money and it's like money only allows you to do things, that's all it does. And I think the people that hate or envy money haven't made enough of it to realize that it's just such a tool to be able to do things.

I think that people need to, instead of worry about what they...

love or their passion when it comes to making money, you need to figure out what makes money. art, like you said, it's a hard thing to make money in. I know plenty of artists that like, ugh, you're just scraping by, but it's your passion and you love it, and that's cool. For some people, it should be a hobby. For her, she's great at it and phenomenal with the social media side, so she can make money from it because she's been smart about it, and actually made it a business, not just a hobby. So anyways, I just...

think it's important that people ⁓ figure out which is which, right? If your passion can be a job, go get that job. But if your passion is reliant on money, you need to find something that makes money. And whether that be in business or your job, whatever, it doesn't matter. there's tons of people that don't make enough money to do their hobby and then they just work their whole life. And that's not my goal. I don't wanna work my whole life. I wanna be able to do my hobby.

Do you feel like there was any pressure at all when you first started to? squash that path that you were on. Like, did you have any voices? Did you have like cheerleaders or did you have naysayers or did you just not care? Mostly a lot of mostly cheerleaders and then a lot of silence as well. ⁓ starting a business young, it's a very lonely space. In fact, for the last two weeks, that's how I felt. I felt very alone in the last two weeks because you start to realize as a young business owner, you're very

with your time, right? I can drive out to Soldotna three hours away and throw my whole day away because it doesn't matter to me. Yeah, it's fine. I've built that freedom.

All my other friends can't do that. They have to work to pay the bills. ⁓ But in the beginning for me, was just there was quite a few people cheering me on those business owners. Some of them I knew Ryan Cropper. You know, I knew who he was. I looked up to him. My uncle worked for him and I was like, man, that that guy is cool. I never knew him. Never thought I'd get to meet him. ⁓ Heath Martin with Klebs. It's very funny story. I dated his daughter and so I had a little influence there when I started and somebody who had already had a successful company.

And I saw what money could do as a tool. And I was like, man, that's, that's what I need in life. You know, that's what everybody needs in life. ⁓ but mostly it was a lot of silence, a lot of alone, lot of days, headphones on, on the mower, pretty much listening to podcasts, listening to music, just thinking. And I think a lot of people get discouraged by that when they go to start a business, they don't realize how lonely it is.

They always say it's lonely at the top, but it's even lonely at the bottom. When you're just starting, if you do have that time freedom, you start to realize, my gosh, I don't have very many friends because they don't have the same time freedom that I do. It's very interesting. ⁓ I would say though, it was mostly just a lonely start, figuring it out. my advice to people would be don't let that discourage you because there's going to be a point where that can change. ⁓

Where that point is, you kind of determine for yourself. for me, that point is, all right, hey, I'm working towards getting a helicopter. I already have people in place who basically.

Manage my business. I mean I make the ultimate decisions on buying things and big spending but Dylan is my operations manager He makes it happen. ⁓ I have a sales guy He brings, you know, he gets the clients to sign up I have an office person who answers every phone call that comes through so we never miss somebody And so i've built it to the point now where it's like I have though I have the ultimate freedom now My next thing is I need more money to be able to do the hobbies. Yeah, that's it. So This is so weird and i've been talking

talking

about this for the last two weeks as well through this very quiet and boring depressive phase of not talking to anybody. And I'm like, okay, well, in theory, everybody who, everybody who has a job thinks that you've made it when you just have time, freedom, and you can do whatever you want. I have that. I just don't have money freedom now. And I'm realizing that that's not the goal anymore. Like, I have all this free time. I can do whatever I want with my days.

What's next? And so I'm, as I said to you earlier, when we first met, I was just, you know, I'm trying to figure out what is the thing I want to do next? Is business my thing? Do I want to keep starting businesses and growing them and maybe the other businesses I start, I want to start and sell. ⁓ Is it, you know, one thing I've thought about is do I want to develop real estate, you know? And so there's so many different things, but.

What learned is you have to have a purpose in life. The hobbies come second. ⁓ You know, the hobbies spend your money, but you have to have a purpose that either makes you money or does something good for your community. That's where I'm at in life. You did bring up something that I do want to touch on though. You like you said, you started this off with just a mower and then you built it from there, got more clients, got more...

people get staff, right? You people that are working with you. How stressful was it to pick those people to kind of be you? Like to do things the way that, you know, to the standard, like is there freedom there and just trusting an individual to like for your operations manager? Was there a hard process to be able to find the right person? Was it pretty easy fit? Like what went into that selection? Very easy. Very easy. Everybody overcomplicates this hiring thing. When you're hiring a CEO, oh my God.

Different story. But when you're hiring a guy to do the work, it's a warm body that is smart and experienced. That's it. And so everybody gets caught up in this hiring phase of like, how do I find the right person? Hire somebody. If they can do it 80 % as good as you, you keep them. Hire fast, fire fast is one of the best quotes I've ever gotten. And I've used it. The second employee I hired.

Hired him, week later fired him. I mean, I've only ever fired one person, which is great. I've been lucky. You know, I think I've been lucky with the employees I've got, but I also have some logic base behind it. A lot of business owners are emotional and they're hiring and they're very like, this is my baby. They've got to make my business look good and do the things it's supposed to. My whole purpose in hiring is this person has to be able to do the job. How I say the job needs to be done. Cause I, know, at the end of the day, I make the decision and if they don't, you get rid of them fast.

A lot of owners and lot of even friends that I have have employees still on their teams that they threaten to fire all the time and they just won't get rid of them and I'm like look fire him hire somebody else

You've got to move on because if this person is a drain, you know, if they suck at their job and they're bad in your company, they're going to drag everybody else down with them. You know, if you've got the guy that's excuse me, you know, fuck this place, this place sucks, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh. That's going to bring your whole team down, especially if it's a team environment. ⁓ and so, you know, my biggest thing for people is hire fast, fire fast. I wouldn't like to say I'm too experienced in it. You know, I've hired, I guess this would be eight people now total.

⁓ But put your people in their positions, give ⁓ them breathing room to make decisions and allow them to grow. If you micromanage an employee and you are on their ass about everything they do, you're gonna have a bad employee because they're gonna be too worried about what you think about everything. ⁓ My operations manager, we've...

Initially, he was just the lawn care, you He came in and he did lawn care and I used to micromanage the hell out of him and I learned very quickly that that turned into him asking me questions about every little intricate detail and I'm like dude stop asking about this you you know this and so I changed it up and was like hey dude you make the decision and And what I've been saying very recently is hey If you guys have a problem with something or a client calls and has an issue come up with an answer Bring it to me

I will verify it and then put it out there. And there's going to be a point in time where I just tell you, hey, I'm not making the ultimate decision anymore. This is your wheelhouse. This is part of your job now. I trust you enough to be able to make a good decision and please the client. And that's all we care about. And so a lot of people just get really afraid of.

letting other people control their business. And I think that you need to just empower your people to control your business because it's better when they have a little bit of power than when they don't. That's solid, man. Let's take a break. Yeah, yeah.

one of the few things that you said that you have a passion like you talk about helicopters But you said recently that like you have a passion for

creating content and videos and stuff like that. Where did that get started? So that actually started way back actually. I posted my first ever YouTube video just after my parents moved us out to the so I've done like little YouTube things here and there. Me and my friend Jeffrey who is the guy that has filmed my videos for me, excuse me.

We did an overnight Walmart challenge when we were like 14 years old. Dude, yeah, it was crazy. So I've been posting content for a long time. Is that video out there somewhere? No, it's private. I still have it I would totally show it to you, but you would laugh. But like I have tons of videos. Me and Jeffrey actually did a podcast for a little while. We did the Kade n' Jeffrey show. Awesome. And that was the first time I ever learned that content can actually like...

force people to comment and say things. And we just talked about all sorts of controversial stuff. This is back then when I didn't care about people. I'm very politics adverse now. I don't talk about politics really unless it's a private setting. Just because that's such a hot button topic. But when me and him did our podcast, we went all in on politics and all sorts of crazy stuff. Like is Michael Jackson a pedophile? Any of the fun topics and we got so many comments and a lot of good traffic from it.

I took it all down after I decided I want to go a different direction. Content's always been a thing for me and I like it. ⁓ Obviously we see YouTubers that make lots of money from content and so that's partially a driver for me but also with what I'm doing now in the content space, I really just like sharing.

what I'm doing. I'd like to be able to look back in 10 years from now and let's say I'm worth $20 million in 10 years. Look back and say, hey, this is where it all started and I've documented the whole process. The other thing too is in my industry, there's a lot of guys that try to educate in the space and they do a good job, but they don't show the bad and the ugly and the good, you know? I want to show people just all of it, everything possible. If I had the money right now.

What I would do is I would have a full-time filmer who follows me around all day every day to everything. He'd be here right now just sitting and I would have a full-time filmer and I would have a full-time editor, which would probably cost me 10 grand a month. And with that every single day, no matter what I do, something about it would be filmed and videos would be made. And that just kind of creates this machine of people trusting you and you're showing behind the scenes of your life. Most people don't do that. ⁓

I look at a lot of the big channels that I follow, like Heavy D Sparks, he's big YouTuber. ⁓

They do a bunch of helicopter stuff and like truck stuff and cool stuff like that. That's his motto. Like people follow him around film and they just capture everything possible. And then his editor who's full time spends all his time editing. so that would be my goal with content. ⁓ And I would in turn probably make money from it if I was entertaining enough. ⁓ But also like the young entrepreneur aspect of it, like I'm 20 years old. run a company and I have employees is very foreign.

to a lot of people and that does really well. So a lot of people see the same things you see in me like the drive and all that and I hear it all the time so it doesn't phase me anymore but a lot of people see that and they comment and they're like dude this drive is awesome I'm following you da da da. Like I told you I've been posting content hardcore for a year now basically with no breaks I would say

90 % of the time it has been a video every week, if not two or three. And I've just been going so hardcore on it, I've probably invested.

10 grand in content between my video editors and all that and paying for Opus clip and all that. ⁓ And it's came back to me tenfold. I've got clients from it. Lots of clients will call into the office and say, hey, we saw your videos on Facebook. They're so awesome. We just wanted to try you out this year. Like that has been a huge benefit for me. I probably don't make a ton of money off of it. I made a video. My most viral video on Instagram was me filling up my sander at the sand yard with my meta glasses.

If you're a business owner and you don't have meta glasses, you gotta have these. ⁓

But anyways, I was filling my sand truck at the, at the pit, basically a big loader comes and dumps my sand in so I could sand driveways. And this was after we had a big freeze thaw event. so everything was sheer ice. got like 20 or 30 calls after that video for sanding. probably made five grand off of that one video, from the Facebook revenue. you know, I also just like, I like sharing my world. Like I'm, I like to think I'm a social person. I'm very awkward socially. I think also a lot of the time I'm pretty

pretty sure I'm on the spectrum. But when it comes to people that I know and people that I've talked to, I am the most social person in the world. And so being able to share that and get to know more people just through social media space is fricking awesome.

People are what make the world go around. And so the more people I can meet, the happier I am. Yeah. This is where I like, this is most people get their battery discharged by talking to people and you know, all my social batteries done or whatever. I get that sometimes, but most of the time it's the opposite for me. Talking to people, doing stuff like this, talking business with people. That's what gets me going and it gets me moving. Yeah. That's funny. I relate with that a lot. I, I, this is a plus up for me to having conversations like this one on

one but go put me in a bar somewhere ⁓ my gosh like it's different it's just it's a different type of ⁓ social setting and it's hard to explain to people that having conversations about that have direction that have some kind of meaning knowing that someone else will probably get something out of it like doing stuff like that is is ⁓

has always been a plus for me. So it's kind of cool that you experience the same thing. What ⁓ do you think people get for business owners or people running businesses, what do you think they get wrong with social media?

So I'm gonna steal a line from Gary Vee because I trust him in the social media space tenfold because he's the reason I do what I do now. ⁓ Document, don't create. And what that means is do not pull out your phone purposefully to make a video.

Document what you do. All right, if you're a fry cook at McDonald's, put a GoPro on your head if your boss will let you, and document making fries at McDonald's and put a voiceover over it and post a ton of it all the time. And you will get thousands of views. There's ⁓ one of the creators I used to follow when he was very small and grew very quickly is Malad. He's a guy out of New York who.

his family owns a Subway restaurant and he would make sandwiches. And he would document making sandwiches and tell stories over the video of him making a Subway sandwich. He now owns several Subway franchises, all in the period, this is all like from COVID to now. And has millions of dollars. And so, you know, the number one key to growing your business is social media. And I'm sorry to tell you.

I don't give a shit what you spend on Facebook ads, because I mean even I spend on Facebook ads. A social media post will go 10 times farther. ⁓ I'm trying to think. There was a video that went very, very viral about those...

Those little kid dolls with the teeth. I don't even know what the heck they're called. my god, we were in Vegas this last year and saw a bunch of them. And I can't remember the name. They're like... Not like the old school, like... Not like the Cabbage Patch Kids. No, they're new. These Asian dolls and they have these teeth and I can't remember what they're called. I think they start with an L and my brain said Lulu Lemon, but that's not what that is.

All right, but anyways, they all went viral somebody made a post was like, oh my god I love this thing and they hook it to their girl hooked it to her purse and Their sales went through the roof because of one social media post So another great example is Chili's Chili's revenue in q3 q4 of last year 10x because of their mozzarella cheese stick pull you remember that phase and everybody yep, and that has been a menu item for 10 years

And somebody went to Chili's and made a video of this crazy cheese pull in their revenue 10x for two quarters. People don't understand the power of just an organic social media post. And I'm saying all of this through my own experience, but also Gary Vee is very big on this. In my own experiences, I filled my sand truck on a video and posted it the same day and 20 people called me asking about sand and I made $5,000.

Oh my God. Right? It's like, if you had a vending machine where you put $1 in and $10 comes out, how many dollars would you put in? The answer is unlimited. And so if that dollar in the top of this vending machine is a social media post and you put it out to the world and you get dollars back from it, how many would you post?

Right. Unlimited. Unlimited. So that's my perspective on it. And you and I were just saying, know, for this podcast, for you, I think that you need to get on every accessible platform and spend a little extra time, you know, doc, creating the caption or the.

descriptions and titles of the individual posts and putting them out there and just letting them do their organic thing. You will have 5,000 followers in the next six months. I would almost bet money on it. I'll buy you lunch and Homer or something. literally, I can't emphasize it enough. If you spent all your money that you had spent on advertising on social media.

my God, your business with 10 X. I try to just tell that to everybody. like, if you can, it doesn't matter what you do. If you own a restaurant, a Mexican restaurant and you fry carne asada all day, put a GoPro on your head and tell a story. Yeah. Right. It doesn't matter what it is. I promise you it will work. The organic social media is it's just crazy to me. Yeah. I, so my son loves outdoor boys. I'm sure you're familiar with outdoor. Absolutely.

We kind of got to the point where we're watching like some of the early, early videos. They're not that, I mean, it's, it's documenting. It's exactly like you're saying it's, it's documenting him getting in the car and him driving and him walking and him setting up camp and like, there's a touch of create in there. Right. create what I mean by that is actually like, you know, setting up the camera in a specific way and purposefully catching this shot of you getting out the car.

documenting would more or less be like, hey, you've got a GoPro on your head and you're getting out of the car and doing your thing. But even then, the only reason Outdoor Boys blew up is because somebody opus clipped his content and put it on TikTok.

Really? is the only, so I know people that know him. ⁓ I've never met him, don't know him personally. I wish I did. Cause I'd probably have even a better insight on content. But people started clipping his content, posting it on Instagram and TikTok. And that's how I found him. I literally scrolling through TikTok one night and I see him frying a thing of bread on a fire. And I'm like, who is this guy? And I read the comments and then I watch his videos for two days straight. Yeah, no, you're right. The first time I saw his video was, know, it's, you know, it's late when you see this guy's videos on TikTok.

And it was the outdoor boys guy, like just in the middle of winter, building a freaking shelter. Yep. so before that, he had thousands of videos out and he had a moderate following. He also used to be a lawyer and I'm pretty sure he sold out of his law firm and made a good chunk of change from that.

but he just wanted to document his life and post it and share it with the world. And he started, he was probably making decent money before it all went out on TikTok. But after TikTok, dude, if you're a metrics guy and you know how numbers work on YouTube, a million views average for any creator in the space is about 10,000 to $20,000. After he went viral, he did like ⁓ hundred million views in a month. Yeah.

That's crazy. So people don't understand the value of content creation, you also, has to be, you know, it doesn't have to be this perfect, well-produced thing, right? You don't have to have the lights and the special camera. Everybody's got.

this in their pocket right now. the guy who, you've seen this video, the guy who was in California riding a skateboard drinking the Ocean Spray. Ocean Spray sales quadrupled after that happened. And I'm just saying that, I actually don't know what the real number is. But ⁓ their sales went crazy on Ocean Spray cranberry juice.

all because of some dude riding a skateboard and they gave him a couple million dollars. So, you I just try to tell people it's the freest marketing tool you have. And if you post one video and you get $10 out, how many would you post? Unlimited. you mentioned Gary Vee, which I've also seen some of his videos. ⁓ He's got like a no bullshit way about social media that he just cuts. He's kind of like Dave Ramsey kind of is the same way. I mean, he's not as

He doesn't say cuss words, but he's kind of the same grumpy old grandpa. He just needs to tell you how it is to take care of your money. Gary Vee kind of does the same thing with social media. And one of the things that he kind of talks about is the future, right? So we're kind of operating in this the way things work right now. So we have social media as a tool. We create these videos, we create this content. Is there anything that you...

have on your radar as far as things that you want to pay more attention to because you think that's the future when it comes to business, when it comes to utilizing and leveraging social media, is there anything like on the horizon that you're like, I probably need to pay more attention to that? Not not that I can think of other than, know, the only thing I can really think of is is using all of the platforms available. That's that's the best way because right if you're ⁓

If you only advertise your business in a newspaper, you're only gonna get people who read the newspaper. And so you have kids use TikTok, adults do too now. ⁓

Older folks use Facebook. Facebook's my favorite platform. ⁓ Kids my age and older are Instagram people and single moms. And then political people are on Twitter. If you use all of those platforms, and there's five more, which I'll show you, ⁓ if you use all of the available platforms, you can hit everybody. Whether your content is for everybody or not, you're gonna be everywhere. But I don't think,

I would just be repeating Gary Vee. think Gary Vee's thing right now is live shopping. And that's the way people are gonna make a ton of money. Like for Anne, the art girl, it would be great for her to live paint and sell the painting while she's doing it and have a bidding while that happens. That's what I would do. But that's not advice I came up with. That's Gary Vee's advice. For me, I think the best thing you can do is just create, create, create, or sorry.

Document document document. Yeah, and if you can create to like the videos I create naturally do better but everything else is document and those do well to you know, they get eyes on my stuff and You know having your your social media very set up and organized I followed a very prominent guy in the helicopter space. This was like two nights ago

followed him on Instagram. And because my page is set up a very specific way, it's got the highlight reels where it says, you know, about me part one, about me part two, helicopter adventures, camping, I've got a few different things. And so he was able to go on my profile.

tap into that, who the hell is this guy? Look through it and be like, my God, hey, I'm gonna follow this guy. And he messaged me and he was like, hey dude, I looked through your stories, your highlight reels, and I was like, man, this guy's cool, I gotta follow him. And he was like, keep it up, dude, you're doing awesome, just wanted to hit you up. And it's like, so, I don't know, the best thing you can do is just post, post, post, post, post, and have your account set up properly.

For you, you've got your picture and it's the same on every platform. Right? I took a really nice headshot of myself and have an orange background because that's part of my brand is orange and that's on all my platforms. So people aren't confused when they go to an Instagram that has a picture of me holding the fish, which is what it used to be. ⁓ You know, keeping everything brand aligned is very important, but yeah, I don't know.

I don't know the direction of the space really. ⁓ I know live is really popular. Yeah. Live seems to be pushed at least when I like, TikTok's always telling me to go live. TikTok really, really wants me to go live. ⁓ And how that reflects on the other side. I don't know. Does, it growing accounts, you know, tremendously? I'm not sure because I haven't done it. Yeah. I say too many bad words to go live. So you get censored. Yeah. I would get shut down quick. Yeah. You mentioned.

We sprinkled in helicopters throughout this whole conversation, right? So we have to talk about like where that began. Okay. I have the exact, the exact day it happened. So ironically I was out at the racetrack. this is when I was, I was dating the, the daughter of the guy who owns Klebs So Heath Martin, was out there with their family. He has a little race car. He would run his race car on the track, right? And her sister race cars too. We're out there hanging out, eating out the back of his camper and just, you

hanging out BSing. Well, this guy, a very prominent businessman here in Alaska, a lot of people probably know his name, Dana Pruhs He has a race car and he has a helicopter. And he, we're sitting there eating our food and we hear this, so he loops around the track twice and then he comes down and he lands his helicopter. I'm like.

That's the most badass thing I've ever seen. I literally for the rest of that entire day, that's all I talked about. I didn't go up and meet him or anything because I wasn't business person then. wasn't that kind of guy, but I was like, holy crap, that's freaking cool. I want to do that. And so that's where it all started. Really. ⁓ I, was, I think there was some stuff before where I had seen helicopters. These are cool, but never was like, my God, this is awesome. That's, that's that moment for me. And so from then on, you know, I started just researching helicopters.

learning about them, learning the physics of it, all of the little intricacies of it. And now I have almost 40 hours in a helicopter. Oh, you do? Yeah. Sweet. Yeah, I almost have my private license. Every time I go to fly, it's like a whole thing. The whole day is just awesome. Yeah. And so even if I'm not flying, just on the way into Anchorage to go jump in the helicopter is like the best part of my day.

I think the reason why I love the idea of helicopters is just the freedom you have with it. It kind of aligns with my greater goals of like, hey, this is going to create time freedom for me. ⁓ This is going to create the ability for me to almost be in two places at once. Like I can think of even yesterday, right? It was Easter Sunday. have between my lady and me, you know, we have four different places to go. And so I could literally, we could have spent way more time at each individual place.

that we didn't have to drive. So we just were able to leave our house, jump in the helicopter, fly, land. was literally a five minute flight from our house to the first place. Five minutes, and then 10 minutes, and then.

Home, you know, it's a time saver and for me about like a value my time Not that my time necessarily makes me money anymore because I'm not out in the field cutting grass really But I just value the ability of like hey if I could get here faster, I would yeah and so that's why I drive a hellcat I just try to race everywhere as fast as possible. Yeah, so We're joking that you could have been here on the peninsula, you know in 20 minutes and three hours I was I was going pretty quick. I will

But you know, it's just the freedom, like you could be in Homer from Anchorage in an hour in a helicopter. I love the idea of that. Does it make sense financially? No. But when you have money, which I don't have a ton of, but when you have money and you have the ability to do that kind of stuff, to save yourself time, you will do it every single time. So for me, you know, every time I've flown a helicopter, just the whole thing around a helicopter, you being able to like,

basically go up almost sideways in a helicopter over a glacier is the coolest thing in the world. And it's something that when plane people fly in a helicopter for the first time, they're like, this is freaking cool, but I can't afford it. Helicopters aren't cheap.

But it's the ultimate way to explore Alaska. 100%. If you want to go fly out in the middle of nowhere and catch a fish somewhere nobody's ever caught a fish, you can do it. I know plenty of people that do that. Now that I'm in the space and know people, it's crazy, the helicopter community here and the money they spend and the things they get to do that us regular old people do. Peasants. Yeah, yeah. We just can't do it. You mentioned something earlier, though. You said you don't want to do it as a job, though.

So that's the thing. So if I was gonna start a business around it, it would strictly be to help pay for the helicopter. It wouldn't necessarily become my job, right? I think ⁓ I have to differentiate. You can only fly helicopter for so long, right? I think like.

If I stay fit, I could probably fly until I'm 70 or 75 healthy, and then I'd probably have to stop, you know, because flying a helicopter, there's a lot to pay attention to. You've got to be all there here. know, when you're flying a helicopter, you get to forget about everything else, but what you're doing right then, which is one of the benefits of it, especially if you're like me and you think all the time. Um, but I wouldn't want to do it as a job because, um,

It's it's a time constraint, right? It's another thing taking up my time The goal would be alright, let's get this helicopter to pay for itself and some maybe and then ideally have a free helicopter. I Don't know. It's again. This is why for me. It's so up in the air right now of like alright What do I want to do? You know, how am I gonna make this make sense? And maybe the reality of it for me is maybe it doesn't make sense, but it's what I want to do Yeah, right not every hobby, right?

Not every hobby everybody does make sense, right? Riding horses Just ride a four-wheeler, right? Like it doesn't have to make logical sense for it to work out But in my brain for some reason it does so I'm trying to figure that out and maybe my ultimate answer is it doesn't make sense But I'm gonna do it anyways. Yeah, do you know who Leigh Coats is? Yeah, so Through a mutual friend that ⁓ he used to be a helicopter pilot for life med I think okay here on the peninsula

started this podcast last year and I was like seeing Leigh's stuff all over Facebook. She does amazing content, talking about content. does amazing content. I've watched her videos, like her videos are mind blowing, the glaciers and stuff that she gets to see. Very well put together. Yes. Very, very kind person. I've had actually quite a few conversations with her just through text on Messenger. She's awesome. Yeah. And so that's what I was getting at was that just through a mutual friend, he was like, you want, he's like,

I was like, it'd be so cool to just talk to Leigh about like how she got into like doing this and you know, she comes from Arizona. I think she flies up from Arizona every year. So in the helicopter, has, she, okay. I have a little bit of her story because I followed her for so long, but she started flying in Hawaii. She then moved to Alaska, worked for a company up here.

Then she started her business in Valdez. And she worked in Valdez for, I don't know, 15 years. Sold the business to Alpine, which is the company where I do my training, actually. And then now she has a house up here and a house in Arizona. And she goes down there for the winter, she comes up here for the summer. Seems like a pretty sweet gig. I would love to talk to her. I joked with her, so the only time I sent her message was about that mutual friend.

And I was like, yeah, you can land. I think you can land in my yard. I was like, I can't confirm, but I was like, I think you might be able to. And so ⁓ she thought that was funny. maybe, yeah, maybe we make something work in the future. Who knows? But yeah, it's so, yeah, pretty cool that you've got to follow her story for that long. I'm not surprised by it based on your love for helicopters. Absolutely. There's a few, there's like, I think it's her, there's Russ Robin, who's a rich helicopter guy up here. He does cool stuff. ⁓

There's another guy and he's not from here. I think he's from Sweden. But he flies around an R22 and makes just sick content with it. I'll find his thing and share it with you. But there's so many cool people like, this is what money allows you to do. Money allows you to do cool things. ⁓

Like her passion is helicopters. That's what she likes. That's the whole reason she started a helicopter business was to do helicopter stuff. so like aviation is her thing. And now she gets to make content doing it. It helps pay for her hobby. It's kind of a win, win, win. yeah. One of the things you mentioned earlier, it may have been here or when we were talking earlier, but you talked about

on the trajectory that you're on now with business, what you understand about business, scaling a business to be successful, paying off debt so that you generate more income. Whether you put that income into real estate or whatever comes down the road, you said that, I need to figure out what am I going to be doing when I'm like 30? Like, what do I do if I have a lot of money and I'm 30 years old? And you kind of hinted at it being purpose, right? And so that seems like...

you know, to put, you know, that look at 30 years, you 10 years from now, it's just like a little dot on the map. Like how do you gauge your trajectory towards what that's going to be as a 20 year old? And that's, that's, that's very difficult. Like technically your brain is still developing and that's just science. know, right. And, and I've, like projections wise, if I do what I want to do in real estate and do what I want to do in business, I should be worth about 20 to 25.

And that's a number on a piece of paper. That means I have access to be able to sell things that would generate me 20 to 25 million dollars, right? ⁓ With a yearly income of probably about a million two million bucks, which is cool ⁓ Figuring out right? Okay most people that make it really well. They do a few different things right a lot of them

screw off and do nothing, which is an option. ⁓ you find, and I'm in a position now where I don't necessarily have to work every day and I hate it. I need something, right? And so that's where that purpose thing came from. ⁓ Or they start organizations and help people and do things to help. ⁓ I'm trying to gauge and figure out, you know.

Do I do those two things? Do I start more businesses and sell them? Do I get into the helicopter business space and start that? Like, I don't even know. And that's the hard part for me, because when income isn't an issue, right, my whole life has been driven towards, right, hey, I need to make income, and as much income as possible, right? And that's most people's thing in life, right? How do I make the most amount of money so I can do what I want with my money? When you don't have to work for the money anymore,

Whether that be through owning a rental properties that pay you every month or owning a business that you don't have to run that pays you every month that you hire a CEO or whatever. Figuring out what do I do with my time now and how do I not waste it? Because wasted time is the biggest regret people have. Now in that position, right?

Most people worry about wasted time in like job man. I wish you didn't take that job I wish you didn't do that for 10 20 years or whatever I wish I did this instead and so for me, I'm not gonna need a job, but I'm gonna need a Passion and a purpose and so figuring that out of what that's gonna look like is very difficult and I think I think a lot of people struggle with that even just regular, know, regular working class just regular life

That is the struggle everybody has. What do I want to do with my life? And a lot of people's limiting factor is just money to get to do what they want to do. But for me, it's like, all right, I know I want to fly helicopters and I know I want to be able to go on vacation, but I need something else that is, you know, keeping me going every day. Something to look forward to and to continue to set more goals going forward.

And I don't know what that looks like. ⁓ One thing I have thought about very in depth is like getting into the real estate development space of like buying big plots of land and developing, becoming a developer, you know, having the construction company to do that. ⁓

that almost, finding verticals that align with what my other plans are in life, such as real estate and helicopters, is where it makes the most sense. And so that's kind of what I'm leaning towards right now. But I'm almost just talking myself through this right now too, which is funny, but it's like, ⁓ if I start building rental properties by myself and eventually start hiring people to help me build my own rental properties, why would I not take the other money I have and then...

build rental properties and sell them, right? And that's a great way to make a ton of money. And so I don't know. It's very difficult to figure out, know, and the helicopter thing is a passion, but with it being a passion, I don't want it to become something I hate, you know, or something that I feel like I have to do. That's the nice thing about ⁓ a passion is like, you don't have to do it. It's an option. And so figuring out what that is, I don't know. But I definitely am not going to just...

I'm not gonna just go sit on a beach.

and sit around. I can't do that. I'm not going to gamble my life away. Can't do that either. Like I like Vegas. I'm not even old enough to drink. I've been to Vegas and I just like the space and being there. That gave me a different perspective on life being in Vegas. Just with all like the money in that town, seeing private jets take off every day. You're like, holy crap. You start looking into these different private jets taken off and you figure out who owns them. And you're like, oh my God, wow. This guy owns a trash company and made a hundred million

dollars. Crazy. But anyways, it's just figuring out, what's...

the future day to day for me gonna look like. And one of those people that I can talk to and I'm going to when I meet with him is Ryan Cropper because I think he's in that position where he doesn't have to work if he doesn't want to. But he runs Northern Waste to run Northern Waste. So I don't know. I'm gonna probably ask him about that when I sit down with him next The good news is, is you're 20 years old and as long as you don't get into drugs or some debilitating like habit, I don't know. think you'll be, I have confidence.

Kaedyn that you're gonna be alright. I think it'll be fine. I think you're gonna be alright. I think I'll figure it out ⁓ You know like I'm just I'm realizing in my life that people just a lot of the goals people have are driven on Buying stuff. They don't need to impress people. They they don't care about yeah, and and I've done a lot of that and and I think the goal for me is to not Like that's not what I care about anymore

I care about quality of life and experiences. And so figuring out what aligns with that vision. Yeah, yeah, that's a great, that's another Dave Ramsey-ism, right? Yeah. One thing that he does talk about that a lot of people, once they start...

seeing success succumb to is the lifestyle creep, right? Have you felt that at all? absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I drive a Hellcat. You know, my, and this is before I was really deep into Dave Ramsey. knew about Dave Ramsey, but I was like, he's just for poor people. like,

I'm realizing now like his principles just make sense in every aspect of life no matter how much money you make no matter what you're worth if you spend less than you make you'll have money and so for me I have had a lifestyle inflation with it now I don't have a house I'd have a nice car and a nice truck and a camper ⁓

And that's really about it. And so I guess I haven't seen significant lifestyle inflation, but like we used to eat out at dinner every other night. Like I used to spend so much money. It was ridiculous. And I'm at the point now where I'm like, I need my money to work for me. And this is the point in my life where I can change that huge amount of cashflow into more. Most people take that cashflow and buy shit that.

Goes down. Yeah, it goes down in value. ⁓ Stuff that they don't even really care. Like I'm realizing what I drive does not matter as long as it ⁓ gets me to and from where I need to be. That's the only purpose of a car. And so why do need the flashy car? You know, I'm probably gonna keep my car. But that's because I'm in the position to pay that my truck.

my other company truck and two more company trucks and a camper off in one year. And so, know, wiping all that debt and starting on a clean slate is going to give me a I can reanalyze my life. ⁓

I'm not a big vacation person. I've been on vacation a few times in my life and I think it's fun. It's cool to go experience other places, but I don't like being gone from here for more than a week. Like four days is really my limit. Like if I'm gone for more than four days, I'm like, my God, I gotta go home. Yeah. this, this is going to sound kind of funny because I I've never posed this question to someone in the timeframe be so small, but

advice to your high school self, right? So you were just in high school a couple of years ago. ⁓ But it sounds like the wheels were turning in your mind on how you could find success through business and what you're doing now, ⁓ maybe even before that. there's maybe kids that listen to this, they were in your spot, maybe the same type of home situation, of ⁓ a home situation that's kind of in turmoil.

Definitely at risk to go down a path that is not gonna lead them into any kind of meaningful success as far as like, you know, business or starting something from the, or building something from the ground up. You know, when you look back on the last couple of years, you know, through your life's experiences up until this point, what's your advice to someone that finds himself in the same spot you were in? One word, well, two words, I guess. One hyphenated word, delayed gratitude.

That's the biggest word I would have given to myself. you know, I knew the word, but I didn't care then. And now I care a lot. And I'm looking at my life. I'm like, look, I'm, I'm 20 years old. People like Gary V didn't start their business till they were 45 years old and he's almost 55 now and is worth $150 million.

If I delayed my gratitude, think I'd be in a better position than I am now. I think I'm in a good position, but I think I could already have my first rental property right now. I think I could already have my pilot's license right now. ⁓ And so if I had stopped worrying about what other people thought about me, which I still worry about to this day and struggle with, ⁓ if I just worried about what I thought about me, I would be in a better position.

and I think people just get too caught up in Instagram and tik-tok and my god that guy drives a Lamborghini when it doesn't from a logical perspective if you're a logical thinker it does not matter what you drive it doesn't matter how you get from point A to point B as long as you have something to get you from point A to point B that's reliable I was too concerned about what people thought about what I drove and I guess you could say

What you drive could fall into two categories, right? It could fall into you care about what other people think about you, or it could fall into the experience category, right? Driving a Lamborghini is an experience. I've never driven one, probably never will, because I don't see a point. But, ⁓ you know, if I had $100 million in cash in the bank, I'd probably go buy a Lamborghini. But people worry about buying things they can't afford with money they don't have at interest rates they can't afford.

to make other people think something. Do you mean delayed gratification? Or you said delayed gratitude. I'm sorry, yes. I think that's what I meant. gratification. Delayed gratitude, I'm thinking like waiting to be thankful for something. Delayed gratification is like putting off, like thinking you need something now, but you don't actually need that right You know what? I think I've been saying delayed gratitude for like the last two months. Now I've just been fact checking. It's all good. I just was, I was trying to, cause both I could see,

Because delayed, let's just unpack this for a second, delayed gratitude can mean like, don't feel like you've arrived too soon. Some people celebrate the finish line way too early. And with that, they buy things they, yes. So that could be an option. And then the delayed gratification, though, can also feed into the other things that you're saying, like putting out, thinking you need something now when actually you can put that off until later. Just to give you a perfect example.

So my rental properties I've priced out what it's cost me to build each unit. I'm doing detached four plexus and Aside from the land well and septic which are all variable costs, right? The building itself fully finished will cost me $80,000. That's 30 by 50, which is 1,500 square feet that $80,000 investment if I just built it and sold it the next day

Obviously with the well land and septic, which is different, I would make 275 grand just on the one building. That's how much it would sell for on paper. That's what a 1500 square foot house goes for right now. It's probably even more to be honest with you. You probably get closer to 300 grand for that. And so instead of taking 80 grand.

and buying a Hellcat or buying a Corvette or buying a this or buying a that build something, especially if you're my age, because the appreciation time for that is, is I've got 30 years, 40 years till I'm, ⁓ till I'm 60. That's insane to think about. I built, which my goal is to build 50 units in the next 10 years, which is a lot.

⁓ But take all of the cash flow from renting them to reinvest and build the next one in cash I will have and this is the projection is fourteen and a half million dollars just in real estate And that's a resale value not what I put in what I put in comes out to about five million bucks and it'll resale for fifteen fourteen fifteen and so Instead of buying the crap you don't need drive the POS car Get around do what you have to do to make the money

and then build something that's an investment for yourself, it'll come back to tenfold. If I had 14 or 15 million dollars right now, I could buy the car and not even wink at it. Not be worried about signing a document with an interest rate. Not be worried about making a payment every month and having to work for it. I could just buy it and not worry about it. And that's my biggest thing to people. It's like, realize what your money could do for you.

Instead of buying things that other people care about you and and ⁓ you know part of my my helicopter thing is like I like a helicopter but part of me also just likes the idea of a helicopter and the idea of Arriving somewhere in helicopter and how that looks and so trying to figure out gauge for me. Like where is the Where's the point where I just like it?

and it's not to impress people. That is something that people struggle with and you have to look inward for that. And it's really hard for people to self-criticize. You have to be able to look at a decision you're making and say, am I doing this for somebody else or am I doing this for me? It's a hard call to make. How many doctors I've have finished med school and

They don't want to be, they did, they went down that path because either they were pressured to by family who had a standard for them to achieve, or they thought it would be really cool to say, I was a medical doctor. And then they arrived there and now they're doing a job that they spent a ton of money on. Probably went into a lot of debt for that they are unhappy with on day one. Right. And, and the rule of thumb.

for Dave Ramsey is like, if you want to buy something, whether it's to impress somebody or not, whether it's something you really like or it is to impress somebody, doesn't matter. 10 % of your net worth is what you should spend on that. So if you've got...

⁓ If you're worth 14 million dollars, you could spend 1.4 million dollars on something to impress somebody or whatever It doesn't matter what it is. That's what you can spend and not feel guilty about it. And that's a fair number I think so. and 1.4 million dollars can get you a lot of cool things, right? And if you want to look cool for people fine, but it's it's not a good way to live your life, know worrying about

what Joe and Sally think about you. Do the things that you wanna do. Do the things that you care about. If you like fishing every day, then go buy a fishing boat and fish every day, right? If you like flying up into the mountains and landing on top of mountains and ⁓ hiking glaciers, buy a helicopter. But don't just make that decision for somebody else. Like don't.

Don't be like, I'm gonna buy the Lamborghini because John's gonna say I look cool. Keeping up with the Joneses doesn't, it doesn't work in today's world. And with interest rates being so high, it doesn't work when you take a loan out for it. So, you know, I'm just, that's where I'm at in life. I'm realizing that a lot of the decisions I've made, I mean, I've always wanted a Hellcat, but why have I always wanted a Hellcat, right? You know, I drive a nice truck with leather heated seats and a heated steering wheel. And I'm like, did I buy?

that for me or did I buy that just to look cool and have the nice truck and so it's hard to decipher that. It's hard to decipher that. ⁓ Well, dude, you've dropped some knowledge. I hope so. You've dropped some knowledge today and really just impressed by your perspective on not just business but just a variety of things of you figuring out, you know, who you are right now, where you've came from and your upbringing ⁓ and then how you've just kind of developed this

this motivation and this life that you've built and you're building and the things that you're heading towards. It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool to hear that story firsthand. So yeah, thanks for just sharing all of that. thanks for having me. Oh, of course, of course. But one of the things I always ask every guest that comes on the show, know, this guest is all about, or this guest, this show is all about highlighting Alaska and the amazing people that.

you know, live here, work here, have a special area of expertise or cool experiences. You've kind of checked off a couple of those, which is pretty cool today. ⁓ Like I told you earlier, it's like, there's no one, like what you bring to the table is so exciting and awesome and relevant, I think to so many people out there listening. But who do you think would be a cool interview to have on this show? ⁓ Like I told you earlier too, I can list a few, but Michelle Lackey with Alaska Raceway Park would be a great one.

I think you might be able to convince Ryan Cropper to come on here. He's, mean, just in a business sense, that's a guy. ⁓ Let me think, who else do I know that's really cool? ⁓ Leigh Coates, obviously. I didn't know you had the connection there. I'll definitely probably send her another message and be like, we talked helicopters for at least 30 minutes on this episode. You should tune in. And yeah, if we can make that happen, that'd be pretty sweet. Yeah.

that she's awesome.

I have a buddy, name's Seth Sheldon. He's an airplane guy and he's also in, he's in the construction industry. He's got a construction business in the Valley. He'd be a great one to have on. Man, if I think of anybody else, I'll text you if I can think of anybody else. worries, I'll look those up, those suggestions. Thank you. Well man, tell people where they can follow you. We talked a lot about social media and YouTube, like give everyone the handles. I'll put them in the show notes as well.

⁓ Kaedyn Jennings on all platforms, pretty much. It's spelled K-A-E-D-Y-N. And then Jennings is like, Waylon. So, but you can find me on everything. I post on social media every single day when it comes to Instagram, TikTok, ⁓ YouTube short, like anything short form we post every day. And then, ⁓

YouTube I'm posting once a week, but summer we're probably probably gonna ramp up to two times a week if I can and so And you taking new clients with Snip and Clip Alaska? Yeah, we're always taking new clients with Snip and Clip any point that we can grow we will okay So our goal for this summer's 400 customers. I think right now we're sitting at 150 or 200 or so. I don't know I have to check with the guys Okay office, but my sales guys have been doing a phenomenal job. So I just have to thank Dylan and Eric but

Yeah, man, you guys check me out and yeah, hopefully I can come back on again. Yeah, it'd be sweet, man. I would love to talk to you about any number of things we talked about today already and just getting a feel for you now. I almost guarantee that a year from now you'd have some pretty ⁓ cool stuff to say to check out, you know, what you're up to, what you've done. I guarantee there'd be something we could talk about for sure.

Let's grow this podcast. Heck yeah. I appreciate it. know. I know. ⁓ One year into it and I've made some growth, but yeah, definitely plenty of room to grow. So I'm down for it. Cool. Kaedyn Jennings, Snip N' Clip Alaska. Thank you so much. Thanks, Manny.

Manny (1:52:42)
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Manny (1:53:24)
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