SUCCESS STORY: AJGlobal

Ok so I found some time to write my story.

Growing up I always had this drive to want to make money. I honestly don't know where it came from but I just remember it always being there. I also remember seeing that picture of the all mighty Lamborghini Coutach 5000 and dreamed of one day owning one.

My father and my Mother both were born in Sicily and came here to the US when they were 12 and 18 (my mom at 12 and my dad at 18 and they are 1 year apart in age). My mother went to school here but my dad didn't and worked in the masonry union in Rochester, NY for as long as I can remember. He could barely speak clear English but by the time I was a teenager he had gotten pretty good, still speaks broken English today.

When he was about 30 he started his own construction company and I worked for him in the summers of my teenage years hauling around heavy block and mixing cement etc etc. I was making good money but I was working hard for it. I never showed an interest in really running or taking over the business cause it just was not for me.

When I turned 17 I met a friend of mine who today is my business partner and he owned a driveway sealing / lawn rolling / snow plowing biz. I started working for him on and off and eventually got my own set up and started doing it for my self by age 19. I was still living at home an was going to a local community college but LOVED working for my self and reaping the benefits of keeping all the money.

Needless to say I got myself into some trouble with this and that and wasted the next few years partying, dropped out of college, but I still managed to maintain my business only when I needed money of course. Because of my partying my friend and I became somewhat estranged and a year before I got my act together he left for Vegas to live with his mother and seek out better opportunities that the west had to offer.

I finally got my head out of the clouds and sold whatever I had left and moved to Phoenix in Dec. of '97, a year after he left for Vegas. Once I was here I worked driving 10 wheel dump trucks and other construction jobs while trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I was now 23 years old and I was basically starting with less than I had when I lived in NY.

I ended up working in the limo business and started making decent money and one day I got a hold of my buddies number in Vegas and gave him a call (this was in Sept. of 98.) We talked a bit over the next few weeks and he said come on out to Vegas I have a business I just got into and I think you would be really good at it. My mind had been spinning for months wondering what to do out here. I was excited beyond belief so I got on a plane and flew to Vegas.

Within the next few months I started to learn what he was doing and decided that I wanted to give it a try. I'm not going to get into details about the biz but lets just say it has to do with marketing and not many people even to this day do what we do, which makes it lucrative.

During my first 9 months or so here in AZ I had met someone and she had a 3 year old already and had gotten pregnant with our son. So here I am working 40 to 60 hours a week driving a limo, a baby on the way and this new opportunity to have my own marketing company.

So in Feb of 99 after a few months of crash course training from him and learning how to run the programs needed to make files and whatnot I got the basics of what I need to get started and set up in the kitchen of our 2 bedroom 800 sq ft. apt.

I was working the biz during the day and would drive limos at night. With maybe a few hours a sleep per night I would be up bright and early every morning making cold call after cold call soliciting new business, sometimes 12 hours a day or until I had to go to my other job.

I could not afford to advertise at this point so I was using whatever resources I had to find business...newspapers, internet, etc etc. What we do is world wide so there was not limit to where I could call, just when because of the time zones. I had seen the checks and money he was making and just knew that I could make it happen so I busted my ass and rode it out.

My first month I made $3,000...........my second month I made $5,000 and by summer of 99 things were really starting to take off. By the end of that year we went from looking to rent a house to buying one. The cars we had were old a always breaking and one of them didn't even have A/C so I always ended up with that car cause I would need to give her the car that had A/C for the kids to ride in. We sold the car without A/C and for a new one and kept the other that had the working A/C. WOW, now we had two cars that both had working A/C !!!!!!!!!

In Jan of 2000 we moved in to our new home. I was now 25 with a family and things were starting to look good. I turned our living room into my office and really cranked up the cold calls and was able to spend some money on advertising and finding new things to sell based on what people were looking for.

I heard Mike say a million times...........find what people need and they will essentially spend whatever it takes to get it and make THEIR business more profitable. All my sales were and still are today B2B so even though I did not meet Mike until 2 years ago, this concept is very true and real.

Consumers are much more conservative when spending money but businesses are not, if its going to make them more money. By the end of 99 I had made close to $60k in a little less than 10 months. I quit my job working for the limo company and went full time doing this new biz.

For the next 2 to 3 years I spent 10 to 12 hours a day building a name for myself in the business and developing a good reputation by paying attention to what it was these people needed and wanted and then I would go out and find it for them and they would BUY BUY BUY, sometimes at 100% mark-ups. At the same time I kept cold calling to get more customers. In this business people come and go regardless of how good you are or the product your selling so it was a constant fight to keep clients and get new ones.

At this time I was now making about 10 to 15k a month and in Sept of 2001 we bought our second home. It would not be done being built until June or July of 2002 and I wanted to put down 20% on the house which was about $60k at the time. I spent the next 9 months working even harder to add to the money I had saved knowing I needed to come up with this $60k.

My credit was ruined from the years of abusing it back in my early 20's so at the same time I was dealing with cleaning all that up in time so that I could get this mortgage at a good rate. I also had been educating myself on taxes and write off etc etc by reading and finding out info on just about anything that had to do with money and savings and investments. Whenever I was not working, I was doing research on all this stuff. Knowledge is power and I wanted it.

My current home I was living in was in my parents name as was the loan because I could not get one on my own when we bought it in 2000. I had just given them the down payment money an essentially they bought the house with my money and I paid the mortgage. Well that year I ended up hitting a goal I never thought I would hit. For the first time in my life I showed $100,000 in my bank account. I printed this online statement and put it up on my wall, I was so excited. The graph that Mike had put up in a another post showing the curve of income for a person employed vs. a self employed person was starting to take shape for me and basically explode.

In July of 2002 we moved in to our new home and now I was making close to $20k to $25k a month and I actually had a office in this new house, not a living room turned into an office.

Now my phone was starting to ring as people were referring other customers to me, my 3 years or so of all those cold calls and hard work was really starting to pay off. I was getting so busy that I barely had time to make any cold calls anymore.

In Feb of 2003 my partner and I (at the time we were still separate entities) took a trip to Utah outside of Park City to go snowmobiling with out wifes. We were looking for something to invest in and do together. Across the street from this lodge that was out in the middle of no where was a small custom home community that was all log homes that had 16 lots with about 10 of them with homes on them and 3 of the lots were for sale. We were at 8000 ft elevation, snow everywhere and it was just absolute heaven and in the summer time the weather was never hotter than 85 degrees with no humidity. Fishing, skiing, snowmobiling, 4-wheeling, horse back riding, boating, tubing on sled hills with lifts that actually pulled you up the hill on your tube like a ski lift........you name it, this place offered it all. No matter what time of year there was some type of activity you could do and Park City was 20 minutes away. After doing some research and talking to girls we decided to make this our first REAL investment/vacation home and inquire about the area and the lots for sale and build a log home. Everything for 20 miles around this little lodge and community was preserved national forest.

Within the next 30 days or so we decided on a lot, made an offer and bought it. Over the next year worked on paying off the land and finding a builder and log home company to design and build this home. Moving into 2004 we were ready and started the construction loan process with our 1 1/2 acre lot paid for. By the end of that year the project was under way.

During this time (2004) we started our company together, which basically was the same thing we were already doing we just structured it so we could run all our funds and revenues for this project as we made the money into this company. At this point both our business were running on automatic pilot and money was rolling in steady at about 30 to 40k a month for me. I'll get back to the Utah house in a second.

In April or May (I can't remember) of 2004 I found a commercial industrial condo suite that I wanted to buy as another investment here in Phoenix. In order for me to make more than what I was making I needed to have an actual office now and have a little help. I was pretty much maxed out with time on what I could do by myself. It was time to diversify so I could delegate other less important things to someone else so that I could focus on making more money.

I also hired a sales person to do what I did the for the first 3 years and solicit new business the same way I did. My idea was to buy the building and rent out half, this would allow me increase my business profits and also get someone else to pay for half of my investment. I qualified for an SBA loan without a business plan because my company had strong financials and had been in business for 5 years.

There was not even a concrete pad poured yet and only 1 of the 13 units had been sold across the 3 buildings that were going to be built. The area was getting ready to explode and I knew this was a great buy all around, not to mention it was about 3 miles from house so my commute would be a breeze with no traffic what so ever to get to work. I also liked the fact that is was right off the main road. Most industrial suites like these are set way back off the road and buried in with a ton of other buildings in non-traffic locations which makes them hard to find and for people to see. I did not care to much about being close to road for my business as I had no walk in the door traffic but for re-sale reasons and rental this was huge. I was pretty much getting commercial frontage property at a non-frontage price. I made the deal and bought the unit for $520,000 as a shell. These are industrial condo suites so you can build out the office space any way you want. The space was 5,000 sq. ft. and had 2 frontage glass doors, 2 rear doors and 2 rear overhead doors. I cut the unit right down the middle and built out about 1900 Sq. Ft. of office.......4 offices on each side and left about 3,000 sq. ft of warehouse, 1,500 for me and 1,500 for the tenant. There is also a 2500 sq. ft enclosed rear yard as well. This place was it. If I had ever felt strongly about a purchase, this one was it. I got my tenant improvement permits right away and a friend of mine who is a contractor did the job. My build out was about $70k and was built into the loan.

It was ready in July and we closed escrow in August, built out the offices and moved in by November. I had purchased my first commercial building and granted I had to come out of pocket only $70k for a total investment of about $570k on the deal I still had a little bit of fear cause we had the Utah project going on at the same time. I found a tenant to lease out the other half before the building was even ready to move into and had a 3 year lease signed.

It will be 3 years this November that we have been in that building with the same tenant and the comps for my suite are about $900,000 today and I owe $510,000 on it. This is based on sales NOT asking prices in the area. The whole area around me just exploded as I had predicted. My investment there in 3 years has done well for me not to mention I was able to kill 2 birds with one stone and that was make an investment, get someone to pay for half of it and expand my business out of the other half.

Going back to the Utah project now, by Nov of 2004 about the same time we moved into our new office building we broke ground the house and the foundation was poured, by Feb of 2005 the log structure was erected and the process of finishing the house was under way. Unfortunately I'd like to say that it went as smooth as my office building did, but with my partner and I both being hundreds of miles away, people slacked off and the contractor we hired to finish the house was an idiot.

With our construction loan due by Dec. of 05 with extensions we were forced to fire the contractor in Sept of '05 and luckily his foreman was about to go into business himself and we contracted him to finish the house. We had to have the house at least 90% complete in order to close out the construction loan and roll it into the perm loan by Dec. 21st of '05. We got it to that point on Dec. 19th with one day to spare. Thank god there was 6 feet of snow outside the house because it hid all the stuff that had not been done yet. We got our approval and the loan closed. The bad part was he under bid the job by about $250k so he could get it and over the next year and half we spent $125k a piece out of our pockets getting it done.

The good news is that it turned out to be all of what we wanted and more and today its up on the market for sale for $1.7 million and we owe $630,000 on it !!!! The sale price is for a turn key house that includes 8 snowmobiles, 6 ATV;s including 2 for kids along with 2 kid motorcycles, 2 kids snowmobiles, a bobcat with a plow and bucket to keep the driveway clean in the winter, a suburban we keep up there and about a $50,000 game room with bar.

You can ask Mike about the soprano's pinball machine. Him and Missy have been up there with us and he was glued to the dam thing until 3 in the morning one night........"party at the bing !!!! ". It also includes all the furniture, 5 flat screen TV's etc etc The house under roof is 7000 Sq. Ft. with 6,000 livable. 2 master suites, 4 additional bedrooms, a loft, two offices and 2 3 car garages. it really is a slice of heaven. Part of me wants to keep it but its time to move on.

In June of '05 my dream of owning a lambo came true. After owing M5's and E55's and other nice highline cars my partner and I decided to buy a lambo and share it. People told us we were crazy to try and and share a lambo and it could not be done without problems which made me want to do it even more.

When someone tells me I can't do something, I say FUCK YOU, I MAKE THE RULES IN MY LIFE, NOT YOU. We ended up getting a '04 Gallardo coupe and trading it on and off between the two of us every month or so between here and Vegas and it worked out PERFECT. We had not one issue sharing the car. As a matter a fact it worked out so well that we sold that car in August of '06 and took delivery of an '07 Gallardo Spyder and also bought a C6 Z06 so now when one has the Vette the other has the lambo and we both always have a "toy" to drive in addition to our daily drivers without getting bored. So when we got the first lambo, here I was 30 years old and I had gotten my dream car.

In the middle of 2006 and we were getting the house in Utah wrapped up, our company's are cranking and we are starting to corner the market in certain areas, now we have other people doing what we do calling us and asking us for the same stuff we sell to the end users, WOW.....who would have thought???

In Jan of '06 the sales guy I had flaked and I decided not to hire another one , or anyone for that matter..............I had heard from other competitors in the biz that you teach these people the biz and then they get too greedy and start trying to hide deals or go on there own......well thats exactly what happened to me.

It took me 9 years to build what I have an this guy who was a friend decided to get lazy and stop making calls to get new business and just sit back and answer calls coming in when I was not around to take them he would take the orders, then expect to get paid his commission on them.......when I told him that was not going to fly with me he got even worse and eventually tried to start his own thing which is supposedly doing today.

I still have somewhat of a resentment towards him but oh well, life goes on. Someone who is too lazy to create their own won't ever be able to go the distance. He may make enough to survive but i doubt he'll ever achieve what I have. I feel as if I got robbed of all my effort and hard work I had put in over the years and it one year he kinda stole it and ran. I guess it was my fault for not making him sign a non-compete agreement.

So at the end of '06 I have 4 girls who have been working for me all year that I had hired in Jan and Feb and and my cousin who moved out here from NY that is 10 years younger than me. I trained him to be my office manager and he has been with me now for almost 1 1/2 years. Also in August of '06 Amy and I purchased our dream "LOT". We bought an acre and half on the side of the mountain here in Phx with a view of the entire city out the back yard. This is a 100% mountain side home that was a dream of mine since coming here to visit AZ as a child before I moved here.

For all of '07 up to today business has never been better and I've structured myself to be able to work back from my home half of the day or all of it if I choose to and income levels are around 50 to 60k per month each and growing. Our goal with what we have in the works is to hit 80k to 100k a month a piece and we have several irons in the fire that are at that curve line in the graph that Mike has in one of the threads where we are still at the bottom with right now.

If any one of the irons in the fire take off, I am 100% positive it will explode and we will surpass those numbers and goals. So basically that is it. There is my story. I have not added up my net worth without my primary residence in a while but if I had to guess I'm somewhere near the 1.5 million range plus or minus 50k and close to 1.8 million plus or minus $50k with my home I live in.

The new house will cost about 2 to 2.2 million to build with the land included and I'll have about 20% of that in equity in the house with it being worth about 2.5 mil when finished. These numbers would include all my investments in the 2 real estate properties plus $150k in cash that my partner and I have on a restaurant that is suppose to open in Vegas soon that got tied up in the courts and has been for about a year now. It also would include liquid cash including tangible items...........toys........cars that are paid for free and clear etc etc.

I did not add in the net worth of my business as its hard to put a number on it. If I had to guess I'd be able to sell it for around $500K to $750K or so, maybe more, but the I am the business. Without me it does nothing and someone stepping in to buy it would be buying my phone number, website rankings and the incoming traffic I've created over the years which allows it to make the revenue that it does today. So I guess If I were to add that to the numbers written above I'd be over 2 million.


If anyone has any questions feel free to ask and I hope something I wrote here helps someone else in their life regardless if your trying to get into the fastlane or your already there.

Thanks to all who read the whole story !!!!!

Tony
AJGlobal

Thanks so much for posting your tale tony

Thx Tony ... I had to do a little editing --- you forgot to use spell check!!

Anyhow, lots of good points therein ...

I noticed

1) Use of corporate structure to build assets
2) Diversify assets (You profit from both business assets and real estate used both in your personal and business life)
3) Employee issues and how to protect yourself
4) The importance of networking and contacts

Imagine if you never contacted your Vegas friend and/or you were on bad terms with him?

Would you still be driving Limos?

I see that as a Life Altering Choice.

Very good story! Congrats on your success and thanks for taking the time to post this. Good luck achieving that goal!

One question I have related specifically to your business: Do you pay your employees a set salary or do they work on commission? Just trying to get an idea of different views from different business owners. Thanks again and good luck!

Good story. Thanks for sharing.

Cool story. You had the vision, and now you're living the dream! Kudos! (I hope to share a similar story one day.)

My office manager I pay salary and I also pay all his health benefits and part of his cell phone bill. Wihout him I'd have to work twice as hard. The girls all get paid hourly as none of them work full 40 hour weeks (they are all about 30 to 35 hours) but the one girl who is my 2nd in command behind my office manager also gets 100% paid benefits from me as well.

One thing I have learned is that if you take care of your employees they WILL appreciate you for it. Every 6 months I have been evaulating things and giving out raises and this year gave everyone 1 weeks paid vacation (as long as it was not all at the same time). Next year I will give them 2 weeks.

I don't know where I'd be if I had not made that call, your are 100% correct.

As far as editing, well it was late and it took me longer than I thought to write it all. I was up until 1:00 AM and was getting tired. I noticed you spaced everything out for me too. THANKS !!!! There is that bannana again.

great story, thanks for posting it.

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http://snowbank23.blogspot.com/

Thanks for sharing, and congratulations on your achievements.
I did notice that you and others do not share what your business is about. I guess you have a good reason for it but that makes me feel like there is a big part of the story that was left behind.

Thanks again.

I know Tony's business, and believe me, nothing was left behind!!

Great story Tony!!!! It feel's good to know that I'm not the only entrep they had a kid at a young age.

All of the story is there. Sometimes by sharing what I actually do, it takes away from the story and what I did to get where I am today. For me its not what someone does for a living but the time line of events and how it happened for them. When I first met Mike he did not tell me what type of business that he owned but we briefly shared a little bit about ourselves and our history and as time went on I learned more and more about him and what he actually did. What I actually do is another story in itself...........this one tells you how I got there !!!!!!!

It wasn't easy , thats for sure, but it can be and has been done. I know many others that have children that have made things happen.

Great read! Thanks for sharing your story.

Thanks for sharing your story.

Continued success!

Thank you all for the kind comments. Now lets see some more success stories !!!!!!!

And I just realized that I forgot to include what my business is worth in my Net Income . So what you see listed is without my company. Its really hard to say as its one of those businesses that is worth what the person thats running it does on a day to day basis. I'd have to discuss this with Mike to come up with a fair market value as he knows my business. Not that big of a deal but it would definitely add to my Net worth.

Tony

Great story. All of you guys posting here are motivating me. I feel like you in that I have that drive and desire to make money. I know my nich is out there I just need to find it and get moving. I think I am there. I am at least trying. I have a lot of work to do but that is ok. I do not mind hard work. I will be posting my success story sometime and hopefully soon.

Talmadge