Hola, Hard Knocks Community 💰 

In this edition of the School of Hard Knocks newsletter, we've got an inspiring interview with a 28-Year Old that went from living in poverty to building a 9-figure company. This was an absolute masterclass on developing systems in a company and taking your business to the next level!

Today’s Schedule

• He Made $350 Million Doing This: 28-Year-Old’s Inspiring Story of Going from Poverty to Building a 9-Figure Business

• From the Hard Knocks Library: Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy

• In Case You Missed It: We Interviewed The Owner of the Houston Texans and Millionaires all across Houston, Texas.

Let's dive in!🔥

He Made $350 Million Doing This..

How does someone who doesn’t come from money or connections build a successful company?

This is a question that a lot of people ask themselves on their journey to success, especially if they are starting from ground zero with the cards stacked against them…

Today we are going to be looking at the story of Zain Jan. Zain is a first generation American who had a very humble upbringing, he explains, "My parent’s combined never made more than $30,000 in a year."

From a young age Zain knew that he wanted to pursue business, and although he didn’t know what industry he would ultimately pursue, at the age of 18 he started knocking doors for a solar company. After selling for that company for two years, he was promoted to Chief Revenue Officer (CRO).

Although Zain was making great money as a CRO, he knew he wanted more. He had learned the in’s-and-out’s of the solar business and was confident that he could start his own, so that’s what he did..

Zain ended up moving across the country to California and started his solar company Better Earth. Within 4 years of starting his company, Better Earth became a top ten installer of solar in the country and did over $350 million in revenue.

We had Zain join a live call for our community the School of Mentors to answer questions from our members and share some of the lessons that enabled him to scale his company to 9-figures and be successful in a competitive industry.

Here’s our top 3 favorite questions:

Q. How did you develop systems and delegate? and how did you eventually scale the company from 7 to 8 and eventually 9 figures?

A: It all starts with standard operating procedures. When people first get into entrepreneurship, they don’t realize that they are essentially becoming an employee to themselves just under harder terms. In the beginning of any business you are typically wearing multiple hats such as payroll, marketing, sales, product delivery and more. The only way to escape this and continue your focus on growing the company is by creating standard operating procedures, a literal step by step guide on how to complete a task / objective successfully so you can duplicate yourself and remove yourself from it.

The truth of the matter is, running a business and succeeding within business is incredibly hard. You can’t do it alone. You need to bring others in that can help you with these processes and then eventually improve upon them so you can scale successfully.

Q. What do you look for when deciding to partner with someone in business?

A: This is a great question, because one of the most important decisions you decide to make in your life is who you do business with. Often times, you will spend more time with this person than your actual spouse.

When determining compatibility I like to ask them a lot of questions such as:
- What are your goals?
- What are they willing to do?
- If X happened, what would you do? scenario questions.

The reason asking these questions is so important is because there will be times in business that things get incredibly difficult. I have seen people straight up run away and stop doing their jobs when the going gets tough which is a huge red flag.

The things I am usually looking for is experience, persistence, someone who takes extreme ownership, and an optimist. Although this is not always possible, I always recommend trying to do a project with someone or collaborating on something before going into actual business with someone.

The final thing I will say on this is, make sure your ethics and values align. Often times you will see that peoples values and actions outside of business directly correlate to how they act within business. If someone is willing to cheat on their wife or get money in an unethical way, what is to stop this person from potentially taking all of your money out from the business account? 

Q. What has been the importance of surrounding yourself with the right people in your career and networking?

A: Two things.
1 - The hard truth is, is that no one will care about you unless you have something to offer. Often times the best relationships and friendships are created where there is an exchange of value. The first thing you should be focused on is building yourself up so you can become someone of value so you can get invited into the rooms where more opportunity awaits.
2 - It’s not just about who you hang out with, it’s also about who you don’t hangout with. If I am around a group of bums, who don’t work on themselves and are constantly consumed by drugs and alcohol then others will start to associate you with them. Even though they may like you as a person, they will start to stray away from you because of the company that you keep.

Focus on surrounding yourself with people that are constantly looking to improve and elevate their own life and others will gravitate towards that. Who you hang around with is ultimately a reflection of yourself.

Connect with Zain here: https://www.instagram.com/zainjan/?hl=en

If you enjoyed learning from Zain, our community was able to learn directly from him on a live call. If you want to learn from 7, 8, and 9 figure entrepreneurs like Zain, and watch our full interview with him, sign up for the Hard Knocks Community: School of Mentors! 

Words of Wisdom

From the Hard Knocks Library

In Case You Missed It

We went to the wealthiest districts in Houston, Texas and did interviews across the city. We even ran into the owner of the Houston Texans football team, Cal McNair. We interviewed people in a variety of different industries such as restaurants, medicine, labor management and football. If you are looking for an entertaining videos that contains gems about building your wealth within business, then this video is a great watch for you.

Let Us Hear From You

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