15 | Sherv | How a Strong Mindset Allowed Me Run a $100,000 Plus Business As a Second-Year College Student

The first person that you interview is going to be your favorite person in the world. You're going to interview them and you're going to be like, "Oh, this guy is a stunt." But if you don't know what's warm and what's cold, everything's just going to be watered to you. You're not going to know what guy's good, what guy's bad. So I guess in life and in business, again, make sure you're getting a lot of repetitions. Make sure you are interviewing a lot of people, for instance. Make sure you're doing a lot of either sales presentations, estimates. You don't know what customers are good and what customers are bad until you've dealt with 100 customers. You don't know what potential recruits are going to be good or bad until you've interviewed 100 people. So I'd say that's just a big thing I want to leave people with is just make sure you're doing your due diligence and practicing your repetitions, whether it be in life or in business. Welcome to the Leaders Across America podcast. My name is Steve Acorn and I'm the host of this show and the CEO of the Management and Leadership program, Young Entrepreneurs Across America. This show is dedicated to young, driven individuals who truly want to change the path of their life, step out of their comfort zone and create a better future for themselves and in the end control their own destiny. Each week I'll be interviewing a graduate from our program. You will hear some amazing stories of how being part of Young Entrepreneurs helped transform them into who they are today. You can determine if you want to be like these individuals and you will understand what it will take to get there. Enjoy the show. We have Sherv Satter on the show today and Sherv is a senior now at UMass Amherst in New England and he's going to talk about his first two years here as a freshman and sophomore and the experience he got out of Young Entrepreneurs and then he's going to go into his junior year and the internship that he just got and then he's going to finish off with just telling some incredible stories and incredible takeaways and trials and tribulations that he went through his two years here and how it helped define who he is today as he enters his senior year at UMass Amherst. Great story, great lessons and you're really going to love the show. I'm sure it brings so much maturity and energy to the show so please enjoy. Sure, welcome to the Leaders Across America podcast and thanks so much today for taking some time to be on the podcast and great to have you on the show. Thanks, Dave. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. You know, just trying to get started here. Maybe introduce who is Sherv. I mean, I know you've been around for about three years but introduce Sherv and a little bit about who you are. Yeah, of course. Who is Sherv? That's a deep question. I guess, you know, I live in Waltham, Massachusetts, about 50 minutes outside of Boston, grew up here my whole life. You know, I went to Waltham High School in high school, big on wrestling across the big two things I did. And, you know, all of high school I never really took too seriously my work ethic and things like that kind of towards the end of high school when college and those things started coming and you kind of had to start taking some high level courses and, you know, really ramping up who you are so you can stand up to colleges. But I think before that, I never really took things too seriously. Obviously, I never really like slacked off too hard, but I never really took everything to the next level of like trying to be an above average person, you know. And not that there was anything wrong with that, but it's just interesting going into college, seeing how much that changed. Yeah, basically, that's kind of how I was in high school. And then I go to UMass Amherst now. Okay. Yeah. So I was a rising senior now, finance major, I found this program when I was a freshman. Okay. So you're an athlete in high school, both wrestling and lacrosse, those are not easy sports by any means. By no means, no. UMass Amherst, which is one of our, which is actually our number one school that we have at Young Entrepreneurs Across America from an intern standpoint. And sure as a freshman, you heard about this program, credit or as a freshman, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. How did you even hear about the Young Entrepreneurs Internship Opportunity? So that story is actually pretty funny. I was in my astronomy class, astronomy 101, I think it was my first ever college lecture. First day of classes, just a little freshman sure, if I walk into the class and this booming voice just starts screaming in front of the class and it's like under 50 people. A guy I soon came to know and love, one of my best friends now, Aaron Griffin, is screaming in front of the class, something about business, make 10 to 12 grand in the summer, do your own thing, business opportunity. And I'm not really, I'm not really grasping at anything he's saying, but he's saying it with a lot of conviction. So I'm getting excited. Okay. All right. I'm excited about this, but if he's excited about it, I'm excited about it. And Aaron can be loud, can he? He can be really loud. Yeah. He can be loud. So you took over the room and you took my attention and I said, yeah, I mean, I'll check this out. He passed a clipboard around and signed my name down and I went from there. And so then you probably went through the info session, obviously, whatever he was saying sparks some interest in you. Absolutely. And he went through the interview process and then became one of our interns. Was that back in 2018? Yes. 2018 you were 17, 17, actually. 17. And then you ran a business in 2018 summer. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So what was the thing that really drew you into the program? So obviously you heard him yelling, make $10,000, $12,000 business, what was the thing that after you went through the interview process that really drew you in as that you said, you know, I'm going to go for this? I think I'll bring it back to the, to the info session. Honestly, I think it started there when he was also talking about a lot of conviction in the info session and kind of, I just fell in love with it immediately, honestly. And I can't say that's the case for many people. A lot of people, they start hearing about what it is you do, they hear the word paint and immediately it's like, uh, you know, I don't know about this. I don't know if I want to paint for three or four months, but I heard the, you know, all those words didn't really process with me. The only word that I processed was a business is running your own business management leadership. And I had seen beforehand, I, you know, more about sheriff was that I worked at a furniture store since I was 14. Okay. So 14 through 18, I worked at a furniture store and I worked my way up to be a sales manager at a, it was, it was, it was a smaller furniture store. And I know the business owned it pretty well. So I got to see how he ran his business. It was really interesting to me because, you know, and I think it was at that point, I realized like, I might want to do something like this, not furniture, but running a business and doing some entrepreneurial venture because his life was just so cool to me and the whole process of this isn't a nine to five and his, you know, his business is his life. Yeah. I really liked that. So that's why when I got this opportunity, I, I was like, you know, I was so drawn into it immediately. And again, Aaron, you know, yelling as he does, he just kind of drew up a lot of conviction into me and my heart was immediately telling me that this was just something I had to do. Awesome. Awesome. And then your freshman, your freshman summer, you were now an intern. You went through the training process with probably 29 or 30 other interns at that time. And how did you do your first year as an intern? How did that year go for you as a Ricky branch manager? Yeah. The first year was a fun one, a painful one, a rewarding one, a sad one, all in one. All in one. And, you know, if you do the first year, right, that's how it should be. It was so packed with, you know, experiences and learning. I think the biggest way to sum it up was just, I screwed up a lot and it's, you know, what made me who I am today and I wouldn't have changed it for the world. I'm, I'm glad I messed all those things up, but I ran it, ended up still running an $80,000 business and profiting about 16 or 17,000. So all margins, you know, some, some, listen to this podcast may say that wasn't a very big screw up. It's that's a $80,000 business as a 18 year old, probably, right? Sure. Yeah. It'll be 19 and earning $16,000 in a summer, which is real. Now, you talked about, you know, I think I know why you're, you're, you're so hard on yourself because your expectations were so high coming out of training and what, even though you had never ran a business before, you had high expectations if I'm, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. Absolutely. I wanted to, I came out of that room and I'm naturally, I'm a very competitive person and yeah, I came out of that room. There was a lot of other good guys and guys who are now some of my best friends, but you know, they were all high on themselves too and saying, you know, we're going to do, we're going to run a $100,000 business. Yes. Myself. You know, why, why can't that? That's the goal. I want to run a $100,000 business and I want to beat these guys. So yeah, I think definitely I had high expectations for myself. And you know, you talked about your highs and lows and all that a second ago. What were some of the, let's maybe go to the highs first, what were some of your highs of that year as you went through the process running an $80,000 business? I think it's an interesting question because the highs and the lows are kind of the same in different aspects. My lows were my highs because of what they ended up teaching me and what they ended up doing for me. But I'd say it's just some pretty concrete highs was a obviously making $60,000 is always a good, it's always a good reward for yourself. Making that awards for, yeah, you know, that's a pinnacle, right? The trip of 60, 80 people on that boat from across the country, that you're meeting very like-minded people that walked into an info room to just to check this thing out and they're there now. Exactly. I think that's a big thing. And like you said, I probably understate how impressive the $80,000 is for anyone that does it or $75,000 and above, you know, that's got something to be really proud of. And I was very happy when all of a sudden done with what had happened. And the thing, another thing was obviously the network. That's probably the biggest thing I've taken away from all, you know, both years of this program is the incredible people I've met yourself and all of the other executives. Well, as you said, you, you, you met some of your best friends, right? And if I'm not mistaken, one of them is Tyler LaJoy. I think you guys have your own podcast. Oh yeah. Quick, free plug. Yeah. We're the one. Yeah. What's your, what's your podcast name? The One World Podcast. One World Podcast. So how, the listeners, they want to go and say, hey, listen, I want to hear more about this Shurf guy and listen to the One World Podcast because I've listened to some of them and they're fantastic and how you're bringing it back to your experiences here at Young Entrepreneurs is great too. I appreciate that. Yeah. Of course. But how do they find that podcast? Oh, Spotify. Spotify. Spotify. Okay. The only place it's on right now, but yeah, if you just look up One World, it should come right up. That's awesome. And how many episodes are on there now? Right now there's nine. Awesome. Awesome. And I think that's listening to this podcast to go there too because there's some, you know, I think Tyler's also, is Tyler graduated? Yeah. It's always. Yes. We just graduated. You're going to your senior year, but you're having this podcast. You guys sound fantastic. I mean, it's great. But going back to your, you say your highs or your lows, your lows or your highs, I know there's a story in particular, you come back and talk at training, which I really love. You know, when we're in the Colorado region, you were helping out in Colorado and talking about that story. Can you share with the listeners a little bit about your, and I don't want to scare people up because this is an incredible story, but it also helps to, is it a finding moment in a person's life too, as you've talked about. So. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I'll give, I'll give a solid background on this. Just so it paints a good picture. I'll preface it with, just like you said, don't want to scare anyone off because, you know, this is not very likely to happen, but kind of, kind of just, I mean, it happened. It's just goes to show that, you know, anything in life and in business, especially can happen. So you better be prepared for it. But basically, you know, up to this point in the summer, I think it was late July, you know, I had produced probably about 50, something thousand dollars worth of work. I had sold about 70,000. So, you know, I had a nice $20,000 buffer between my sales and my, my production. And, you know, I was doing pretty well on a good tear and I was on good pace to do the things I wanted to do. Right. I was on pace to do a hundred. Yeah. My one dollar front, a hundred thousand dollar business I had, you know, was in good selling mode and, you know, had a good, good amount of sales, had a good crew. And yeah, I was happy. I think that things are going well and, and I was, you know, you, some could say a little complacent even. Okay. I was pretty happy with where I was and I said, okay, now I just got to keep, I don't have to change anything. Just keep doing what I'm doing and I'll get that. So, you know, one day comes I'm, I go to do this, I think it was a $7,000 job with my, with my crew and we get to the job site and the guy comes out and he says, oh, actually sure. You know, we can't do the job anymore. I said, well, why? Oh, my, my wife actually booked another painter. So what do you, what do you mean? You say, oh yeah, I completely forgot to tell you, I don't know, me and my wife, we didn't talk about it. I, I booked with you and she booked with another painter, you know, and we decided just to do with the other painter. You're there to start the job right now. I'm there. Oh yeah. Me and my crew were outside. My guys, they're ready to go. This is Monday. It's the beginning of the week. Yeah. You know, and this was going to be their job for the whole week. So, you know, now this guy's just kicked us off. I don't know what to do for the day. So I have to improvise quick. Luckily, I was able to find another job real quick, just like a quick one day thing that they could do, fold them off while I figure out what the hell's going on. Now, what are we going to move up? I said, okay, it's not the worst thing in the world to resolve some other sales. So, I tap into the rest of my network. I won't go too deep into how it happened, but more or less, I called up, you know, another couple jobs, also big ones, another $6,000 job and another $7,000 job. And both of them tell me, oh, I'm actually sure of, yeah, I've been meaning to call you. We can't do it anymore. So what do you mean? Oh, we actually have to pull out. We don't want to do it. We don't want our house painted. And this is, again, you know, I sold these jobs a while ago and you had all the time in the world to tell me, but they just didn't. So there is, you know, a lot to be said about constant communication with your clients. Yeah. And that was one thing I definitely could have done. I hadn't talked to these people in a while. And now, you know, it's the first time I've talked to them in a couple months, well, and then they kind of dropped a scum on me that, oh, yeah, we actually completely forgot we were even painting the house. And never mind. What size was that job? That was six. That was a $6,000 job. So now we're down, now we're down 13 by noon. Exactly. We're down $13,000 real quick, real quick. Earlier, actually, this is like 10am at this point. And then, what's it called? Yeah. So then I called a $7,000 job right after that. This is my last job I have. And I'm just, I was already thinking to myself, I think there's no way in hell this could happen again. Yeah. Not three in a row. This is a nightmare. And Lord Behold called him and he says to me, yeah, sure, actually I'm painting it with my son. Okay. And, you know, just I was like dead silent. And I remember I was quiet on the phone for like, you know, 10 seconds and he was like, sure of you there. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. Paul, I'm there. Speechless. Yep. Absolutely speechless. I said, you know what, Paul? Okay. It's fine. Hang up the phone. And I just immediately dropped to my knees. I'm in my back. I'm in the backyard of my house. And I just fall to the floor. I just, it was a completely reactive, instinctive reaction, I guess. I didn't have to say, I couldn't even think. I couldn't speak. I can, I know I definitely had a little bit of like a panic attack just laid on the ground and I lost all control. My mind, my body, I just laid there and the grass stared up at the sky to know what to do with myself. Yes, slightly. And I remember my, you know, only funny part about it, my dad coming out, he just sees me laying in the grass. He like pokes up in the door, pokes his head outside, he's like, sure, are we all right? I'm like, no. I don't know. He slowly closes the door again and he just goes back inside and he's like, okay, let me know when you're okay. Anyways, so I'm just devastated. So there I am. I just lost $20,000 of sales in about, you know, no exaggeration about five minutes. Yep. And I, you know, and what ended up having to happen too was my crew started getting a little, a little wonky too, and I had to, I had to cut them off too. So no, I have no crew, no sales. I'm at my, my business was at the definition of a complete dead halt. Yep. And I have another month to go, you know, this is a, what's, what's great and can't hurt you about this business, about, you know, running a painting business within this three, four month span is that you only have three to four months. Yes. If you come to a halt, it can damage you a lot. You're trying to do as much damage as you can in, in a summer. So if you lose out on any time, it's, it's starting to damage you. It just hurts. Yeah. So I was very, very upset because now I know in my head that this hundred thousand number is gone. Yes. And I could not handle that. I was very, very upset. And I thought, okay, if I can't do a hundred, then I shouldn't do anything like this is then I'm a failure. This is, you know, everything I set out to myself, my definition of success that I put to myself was a hundred thousand that anything less than that, I was again, failure. This is, this is just not worth doing. And I should just stop, you know, all the pain I'm going to go through isn't going to be worth, isn't going to be worth it. So I had to make a decision to myself and I had to make a quick one again because of what I just said, I couldn't spend a week like mulling over what to do next. I had to make a decision now. So I remember talking to Aaron Griffin and I, was he your executive and your mentor? So Ian, Ian McCarthy was my, was my executive. Aaron was the other executive out in New England. Yep. And I remember Aaron had called me actually coincidentally, right at the time I'm lying in the grass. I was even hesitant to pick up the phone, but thank God I did. I talked to Aaron. He's like, Oh, sure. What's going on? Yeah. I'm in a little bit of a pickle. I guess you could say, I just lost all my sales. I said, Oh, okay. You know, that's, that's great. You know, that's awesome. I said, the hell's this guy talking about what you mean? He's awesome. It's the worst thing of my life. And he's like, No, sure. This is, this is going to be defining moment for you. You know, and I got, you know, I gave him the whole background and told him everything that's going on and how I'm feeling. And you kind of sat back, reflected and said, this is, I'm serious. This is great because right now you're going to find out what kind of person you are. Are you the guy who's just going to stay laying in the grass or are you going to get the hell up and go attack this thing and fix this? And you know, no matter what, I know you're going to get up out of this thing. And when you do, it's going to be the, the story that you one day tell other people to inspire them. It's the story that you're going to tell employers that they're going to be like, wow, or it's a story. I'm going to tell on a podcast. You never know. So yeah. Yeah. But yeah, so I guess that, that, that phone call with him kind of put things in perspective for me. And he told me, you have really a couple of choices. One is just to stay there, lay in the grass and call quits, you know, you've done good so far, ran a $50,000 business and that can be that. Or you can get the hell up and do something about it. And you know, my choice was pretty clear, got back out of the grass. And you know, obviously I laid there for a solid hour and finally decided to get up. And you know, I kind of thought to myself for a little bit, you know, that day I went out, did some action. I was like, okay, I just got to get through today. And then I can kind of reevaluate and see where I'm at. So I went out and I immediately just started knocking on doors. Yeah. You know, I just went out and I knew I just had to take action. I started knocking on doors, putting on more flyers, things like that, trying to book estimates on the spot. So I can book some work for my guys for the week. That carried me through the end of the day. And I remember going to bed that night and I was just a very, very wild mix of emotions of again, like very sad, but glad that I made it through the day. But also like, you know, this is a set, do I just stop here and call my guys tomorrow, tell them that they're done and call Aaron, call Ian, call Steve, you know, tell them all, you know, thank you so much, but I'm done. Or do I just, you know, swallow my pride and kind of get up and go do something about it. You know, and I think I made it, I don't, I can't really explain what that thought process was or what the subconscious thoughts were, but something in my head clicked that I'm not going to, I refuse to be average at this point. I'm never from this moment on going to be average again. And right now I'm being very average. I'm being below average. The average person in that situation would have laid back down in the grass and said, screw it. I'm done. And I refuse to be that person. You know, I'm going to go out this as relentlessly as possible and I'm not going to stop. And there's no one that is going to work me for these last four weeks and I'm still going to sell a hundred thousand dollars worth of work. Don't know if I'll be able to produce it, but for myself, I'm going to sell a hundred thousand dollars worth of work. And so I started, I went knocking on doors like a madman and just for some background also for people who don't know, uh, this business, obviously August selling in August is not an easy thing to do. May is much easier. May is much easier. The beginning of this thing is much easier time to sell. As you can imagine, people at this point, if they were looking to get their houses painted, they, most of them who have been proactive about it, either have gotten it done or decided we're going to do it next year. Next year. Yeah. Not to say that you can't sell, but it is a much harder pool to pick from. So, uh, you just got to do, you got to work twice as hard and you probably dropped flyers and knocked on doors and, oh yeah, the whole thing, whole thing, and you went out and sold at least another 30 or 40,000. I know that. Yeah. I ended up selling the hundred thousand. Uh, so I sold technically another 50, uh, 50,000 in those four or five weeks, but so yeah, just went massive cold calling. I just didn't stop, you know, and it was easier since I didn't have any work. I didn't have to be on the job site or anything. I hope you're enjoying the podcast today, everyone I have or will be interviewing as alumni of the young entrepreneurs across America program. They at some point in their college career decided to go down this path and change the course of their life. I was so fortunate to be part of their development while they were in college. If you know someone who might have what it takes to go down the entrepreneur path, please visit leadersacrossamerica.com to learn more about this program that has changed so many students' lives. We are currently hiring interns for the 2021 season. Once again, please go to leadersacrossamerica.com to apply and see if this internship is right for you. Now, back to the episode. If you were to look at this, you know, that story is so riveting and I can tell just the emotion coming through this podcast when you talk about you, when your brain goes back to that moment, you went back to lying on the grass again. Just know. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. You're luck son. Here you go. But, you know, you look at that moment and, you know, when you look at is there a moral of the story or something, but you said it was a defining moment that you're not going to be average in anything the rest of your life, you know, and I'm not even sure, you know, as the owner of this company, as I'm hearing you talk, is it even fair putting 18 year olds in this situation, right? Like that's a tough situation, but it's also an incredible situation that 18, 19, 20 year olds have the ability to run a business, yours was losing 20,000 in a day, right? That was a defining moment. But anyone that's an alumni right now listening to this podcast, anyone that's just went through our, our internship for this year, everyone has a defining moment, you know, and as I'm listening to this, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I think when I listen to this, as you said, everyone has that decision to make, but the decision is a choice. And it's not, it's either do you want to continue on and whatever that situation is is a choice, or do you want to just say, you know what, it's over, I'm done. And as you've gone on now, you know, a thousand days later, right, we're talking right from that moment on what you've gone and accomplished in life, you know, from that moment and you decide not to be average and you're anything, you're, you're farthest from the average, right? You're in the 1%ile. So the moral of that story is I see it sure as that no matter how bad it can be, you had mentors around you, you had support around you that said, listen, you want to get up out of that grass, we're going to work with you and we're going to fix this problem. And I would be willing to say in about a week's time, you're probably back on track. Oh yeah, I think, I think you nailed it on that Steve, it's, it's exactly that. It's a decision you have to make where you want to lie on the scale of mediocrity or greatness. You know, it's, it's, it's a very easy choice you have to make and it's not easy action you have to take by no means, but it's an easy choice. Once you make that choice, then, you know, it makes doing those actions a lot, a lot easier. Um, you know, if you keep telling yourself like, eh, you know, it's okay. I don't know if I want to be great or I don't know if, you know, I want kind of okay being average. You're never going to take the steps to be anything but average, you know, because you're always going to have that subconscious thing telling you, why do we have to get up early and do work today when we, when we're fine being average. So I made that decision and it definitely changed my life. That moment right there is what turned me from a boy into a man and put me on, on the right track to doing everything I want to do. That's a great story. And that's why I had you on this, this podcast show, because I think that, you know, as we are entering our, um, our recruiting season and students are going to be looking into our program, listen to the podcast, you know, that this is the one that the student does listen to. You know what? I don't want to say the students going to have to say, I want that experience because it's, that's a deep one. But they have to say, you know, I want this story. I want that experience because, you know, and we're not sure where the story is going to take you yet because you're, you're, you're going your senior year, but whether it takes you into that 10 out of 10 job when you graduate from UMass Amherst or whether it just takes you into your own business and you know who you are, you know that you got it. Like it's not like, I think I'm a hard worker. I think I have it. Like it's different to think and to know. Exactly. I think that's a big thing. It did for me is like after that, I knew that anything that was thrown at me, I was not going to have any trouble tackling it, whether it be schoolwork, obviously schoolwork became the least of my worries at that point. Whether it was, you know, big exams or whatever it is, I wasn't going to have any trouble doing it or other ventures or the second year of doing this, which we'll get into a little bit later. But yeah. And now different ventures I'm doing now, it's, it's just been, you know, nothing has really, has really been able to deter me. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's get into that. Like, obviously you survived the first year, the 80,000 and still made 16, you know, so we had to, we had to qualify that it's still an incredible year, you know, and anyone that runs a business, whether it be 40, 50,000 or 150,000, it's amazing what they accomplished, right? You know, in that accomplishment. Yeah. But you came back a second year and you ran a business again, which we'll talk about and you also mentored some people. So what kind of drew you back in? So I think the basic thing that drew me back in was honestly, one thing was culture. The culture was absolutely contagious. Like I said, I made some of my best friends from this program from that first year. And you know, that was really the only thing I was considering. I, I, there was, I think we drew up the plan for me of, you know, managing a few, a few kids and, you know, managing a few managers and, you know, running my own business again. And this time, you know, my goal would be set out to do a $100,000 business come back. Yeah. So it was really two things. The biggest one was absolutely culture and this, and now anywhere I go, the number one question I ask any employer is, oh, how's the culture? Like, how would you describe the culture? I found a couple of people I've interviewed with kind of blindsided by that question and I can tell how not important the culture is to them. Oh, yeah, we're all, you know, it's a good place. We're all kind. You know, we all like to, you know, have fun and whatever, but like you can just tell what's sincere and what's not. And when I came here to entrepreneurs, it's the, the culture was the number one thing. It's contagious. It's contagious, isn't it? It is. Yes. Very, very infectious. It's challenging at the same time, which is a very hard mix to find in life, something that pushes you. So, or I would say in environment that pushes you so much to be great, while also you are comfortable doing so pushing you out of your comfort zone, comfortably, if that even makes sense. Yep. Well, and you're with so many like-minded people that are so driven is it's like, I'm so fortunate because it's, it's like just having, you know, 10 out of 10 humans in every region, whether it be New England, whether it be Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, I don't want to miss the state here. Now I'm going to get it. They'll call me after the podcast. Say you missed my state. But you know, it's just, you know, New England, obviously Indiana, but it's, you're with so many like-minded people that push you so hard. And then the respect is so strong too, right? Of 18, 20 year olds is doing something that's just quite honestly kind of crazy running your own business, right? But, but 34 years in the making. Exactly. And I'm proud of the culture we have because it's just a, a close culture. And I think the biggest thing outside of the culture was then just my idea in my head of kind of revenge on myself, which is a dark way to look at it, but that's, that's kind of what pushed me. It was, it's what pushed me so hard. I said, okay, well this, you know, I ended up, the year before I ended up selling the 100,000 at the end of it, and it was a huge, huge accomplishment for myself. And like you said, I knew that I could do anything that I wanted to do. And kind of, you know, if I came back from that and was still able to sell 100,000, I wasn't able to produce it just because it was not humane, it wasn't humanely possible. It wasn't enough time, but I said to my, you know, I proved to myself that I could do it. Now my new challenge was, you know, let's, let's do longer. Let's run a hundred thousand dollar business and let's do it the best that anyone, let's do it clean. Let's, let's run the best hundred thousand dollar business, you know, that's ever been ran. That's, that was really my goal to myself. And again, kind of, I viewed it as a getting revenge on myself because I, you know, the first year, sure, did not do everything he had to do to get his goals. So now, you know, I want to go out and really, and really go out and crush it. So - Incredibly strong mindset too, that you have there, right? Your mindset was just locked in for. - Yeah, had to be. - The next 365 days, just locked into what you're going to do after maybe not that long, but as you enter the summer. - Yeah, exactly. - How did your second year, turn out, you're obviously a rookie executive, you had two or three people. What was your overall business? And I know maybe share a little bit of the profit you made too, because it was, it was a fantastic second year. I mean, just. - Yeah, it was, it was great. I, you know, that second year was the best year of my life, just in terms of growth as a human growth as, as a business mind. I ended up running a little over a hundred twenty thousand dollar business and profited about, I'm still shaky on the number. I think it was about forty three thousand, forty four thousand. - As a sophomore. - Yeah. As a sophomore. So here I am nineteen, twenty years old now. - And pretty amazing. - Profited that and, you know, very, very happy with it. And I think that was the biggest thing is I, that was no accident. People, you know, ask me, the biggest thing I always get is, which is funny, because it's not necessarily untrue, but a lot of times people will kind of credit that to, oh, did you just like kind of bid the jobs the wrong way? Did you bid that? - No. - Did you bid them too high? Now this was a very systematic and, you know, I knew this was going to happen before it happened. I was not surprised by it. I'd seen it, you know, I'd kind of been there a hundred times every time I go to sleep. This is what I envisioned was running incredibly high profit business, running it clean efficiently and was not surprised once I got there and once I actually had it. But I guess to touch more in depth about it, you know, I had an absolutely incredible crew. There was nothing really I, I did that was so special other than being able to lead them and manage them properly and just do my part and sell at the end of the day. They get it. They were, you know, I can accredit everything to them. - Right. But you also went out and found the right people that exactly your own culture of your own business, right? The same principle. You must have treated them properly with whatever kind of bonuses or awards or rewards that you gave them. And they stuck with you all year long, you know, and that's something that I'll dive into a little bit later more in depth, but I think that can't be understated as the value of the people. I mean, you know, it's just, just finding the right people to fit within that culture with you. - And second year managers that come back, like you just did, like you've already have all that knowledge that you didn't have as a rookie, but you're here for a rookie to learn the knowledge and you just did the best thing you could with it. And no, a great second year. We were sad to see you leave, you know, but, you know, we get that, you know, you're going to your junior year. We were hoping you stick around, but you wanted to venture off into something different, although I don't think you've really left, because you come to our training every year. Whether they're the entire weekend talking to our new rookies for this last year, and I know right now we're doing interviews and for 2021, and I'm sure you're getting a lot of calls right now from current ones that are vying for a position with us. - Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Getting a lot of calls from New England guys, a couple of people out of New England as well, but I think I've had about seven or eight people call me and asking me, you know, how was that? Cause they know my second year was awesome. So they wanted to see, you know, what made us so great, what wasn't so great. And I'm always, you know, they call me because they know I'm going to be very blunt and unbiased about it. You know, I'll share the good, the bad, and the ugly, but, you know, I think they've all gotten good perspectives and, you know, anyone who's called me and, you know, after that call, I think it's done a lot for their perspective on the whole second year. - Awesome. - But I guess a little bit more on that is the, the whole executive year also, the biggest thing that drew me back in, I'd say, was not only the culture, not only the revenge on myself, but also the opportunity to manage, just take leadership to a whole nother level. - Yeah. - I would say it's leadership from a completely different perspective. There's one thing where you're leading painters and leading people for a paycheck. And then there's leading managers to lead painters and marketers for a paycheck. It's, it's, you're going another whole level of leadership that no 19, 20 year old kid has done. You know, people don't do that. - No. - It's, and it's learning the art of scaling up a business. Like you said, if you, you learn the first year how to run a business, second year, you learn how to scale a business, and that is the big difference. So if you want to be a small business owner or something, you know, and then just, you know, something like that, when you grow up and there's nothing wrong with that, that those are, you know, small businesses are incredible, it's the backbone of our world. But that's what the first year teaches you to do, and it's awesome. It's incredible. But if you want to grow something into, into a massive, you know, you want to build huge business, huge corporation, whatever it may be that you see yourself doing on the line, you want to be this big CEO or something, you have to do this. You have to have experience scaling up. The second year is what makes you into that. And I think that's what's given me that, that picture and I've seen myself in both positions. The first year running it, I viewed myself kind of as like a small business owner, you know, I'm running this branch and this is what it's going to teach me to do. The second year, I felt like a, I felt exactly what it was. I felt like an executive. I felt like a, like a CEO of an organization and you know, you feel like a boss doing it and you get incredible, obviously the work is not to be understated. It's like, it's a lot of work, a lot of time, but all of it is worth it. It's well worth it. But the feeling you get when you're mentoring a new intern, you know, and seeing them succeed and you're also dealing with different personalities and different motivations and it's, it's an incredible learning curve and your second year for sure. Exactly. Leadership at its core, you have to know how to manage and deal with different people. You know, this, this, you know, Bill Belichick doesn't coach every single player the same exact way. Exactly. And it's any good coach, coaches, people based on their strengths, their weaknesses, their personalities, you know, who they are as a human, different ways to coach them. Believe them. Well, it's amazing. I've had many people ask me about how this, this model works. And basically, you know, the model works when you have a 19, 20 year old in their second year or third year overseeing three or $400,000 with a business of other college students teaching and, you know, there's a lot, there's a training program we have, obviously, but at the end of the day, you're, you're, they're inspiring them to go out and be the best they can be, you know, and if they're not blind on the grass and lose some jobs and say, Hey, I've been there, you know, I got this, you know, we got to stand up again. Exactly. And I'm sure Aaron Griffin, you know, you mentioned his name when he was X here on for the year when he was a sophomore, but you don't get that easily, right? He went through, I'm sure trials and tribulations as a, as a sophomore too, when he was at Michigan State University, you know, but no, an incredible career here is serving, you know, you're a junior now, you went and got where do you work now and how'd you get that job? What company is it with? So now it's a pay safe financial advisor is what I'm doing now. So it's been, it's been a lot of fun. I've, I guess how I got that job. So it's actually kind of going back to utilizing my or kind of leveraging my executive experience. This was a job. You know, I saw at the career fair, UMass was walking around at this point. I was a junior in the fall after I was, you know, done the student painters and walking around and see these, these guys, you know, they stay financial and I talked to the guy, you know, the career of financial advisory and I loved how it sounded. And I, you know, I went to give the guy my resume and he says, Oh, you're a junior. We're only looking for graduating seniors. We're only hiring full time. Okay. Well, you know, notice, you know, with all due respect, this is who I am. This is what I've done. I had perfected my kind of 30 second elevated point. So gave him that and he, you know, I saw his eyes slowly start to widen. Yeah. As I told him what I did, say, yeah, you know, I ran a quarter million dollar business in the past three, four months. I oversaw, you know, 40 plus employees that my organization, we, you know, I have painting empire in three, in three different locations in Massachusetts and, you know, XYZ, whatever. And he was just baffled. So then he looks back at my resume, I saw him write something on the top of it, you know, kind of like star it and like put it right in this briefcase and he was like, Hey, maybe we can, we can work something out. Maybe we'll see if there's some kind of summer position, some kind of maybe internship we can do for you. But yeah, we'll be in contact. And you know, there was me while I was surrounded by a bunch of other like seniors who had their resume ready in hand, going to hand it to him and he's putting them all in just the regular stack. They're in their pile. It gets a letter. Exactly. Thank you. But thank you. But we're going to hire Sheriff instead. Yeah. No, but, uh, so then, you know, it was no coincidence that like a day or two later, yeah, I think it was the next day I get a LinkedIn message from the recruiter and I talked to you say, Hey, sure. I loved our conversation. Looked more at your resume. We'll love to hop on a conversation. So we talked. That started off the interview process and again, no surprise that whole interview process was pretty, it was pretty simple, pretty, pretty easy. And I got through that, not that the interview process was easy, but just for me, it felt natural, felt easy. I was not intimidated by it. And I went in with the mindset, this is another thing I guess I'll hit on is gave me the mindset of there's no reason why I don't get this job. There's no way in hell that they, there's just no reason for them to not hire me. Yeah. And that confidence comes from the strength of not only your resume, it's more so your experience and just how you, the confidence you get from doing something like this, especially the second year being an executive is just gives you all the confidence in the world that, you know, anyone, you are the best person that anyone can hire. You are the best. I knew that I was the best quality human that any firm, any business, anyone could hire. And you know, they're not going to find anyone better than me is basically the mindset that I had. And obviously that, it's in the least cocky way possible. Yes. We all know there's a confidence way. It's just a confidence way. Exactly. We all know there's a difference between cocky and just confidence, but you know, I still was obviously very, very thankful for all the opportunities I got. I did a lot of, a lot of interviews was very thankful for everyone that did interview me, but at the end of the day, I knew, you know, if you're not, if you don't accept me, you're just, you're making a mistake and that's more like friendly advice, you know? Yeah. It's just like, um, but anyways, yeah, I went through that whole interview process. It was, it was awesome. And another thing that was huge for me is as an executive, you're doing a lot of interviews too. That's another thing that a lot of kids can't say that experience doing is conducting interviews. Yes. Not only for painters, but for hiring a high level position within a company, hiring branch managers. That's not an easy thing. And you, it's a heavy screening process as anyone who has gone through the process knows, you know, say 10, 12 step interview process or recruiting process. So to go through all those steps and take someone through, you know, A to Z or step one, the 12, it's, it's a very hard process, but you also get an idea of being on the interviewer's side. You also can now see, okay, how does the mind of an interviewer work? Because now I know, I've been that. So what are interviewers looking for? Okay. What would I look for? If someone sat in an interview with me, what would I look for? What are the good candidates that I can pass on? So I want to be that candidate to this person and I treated it that exact way. So that's another invaluable experience you get as an executive. You know, and it's, as you said, it's not cocky. It's just a confidence you have. And, you know, and, you know, we, we talked right, right, right back, sure, when, when you were at their very first training that, hey, it's, it's great to make some income, get some experience, but the story you can tell the end of your rookie year or the end of your second year, if that's, if it's a two year program for you is amazing. And there's no, no doubt you're going to get hired, just a matter of in what position, right? But you're, you're, I mean, so that's a, what's the future for sure? Where are you? I know you're going to your senior year at UMass at this moment in time, we're dealing with a little bit of COVID-19 situations, but where do you see yourself? Where, where is the future for you? So the future, it's a good question. Basically, I, I know where I'm going to be. It's just a matter of how I'm going to get there. It's, I mean, that's a big piece of advice I have for anyone listening to this is if you don't know where you're going to be in the future, you, but yeah, I, I heavily suggest you get a clear image in your head of where you want to be and make it your word. So I know where I'm going to be. I just, now I got to figure out how I'm going to get there. Obviously much easier than done, but it gives you a clear map to where you're going. You just got to figure out the route. But basically where I'm going right now is, is I'm opening my, uh, you know, I'm doing a lot of strength coaching, uh, is the thing I'm doing right now. So I'm coaching strength athletes, uh, another thing I completely forgot to mention at the beginning, but I'm more about sure of is, uh, you know, when I got to school, I wrestled for a year at UMass or a rest of the first semester and you know, I fell out of love with it. I didn't like it anymore. I picked up powerlifting. Okay. Found that. And, you know, went all the way in on it and it's now my absolute passion. You know, that, that is my absolute, you know, whether I kind of, kind of passion right now. So I've been powerlifting for about three years now and, uh, you know, I'm, I'm now coaching strength athletes and things like that. Awesome. Whether in powerlifting and bodybuilding as well, or, you know, football players, lacrosse players, whatever it may be, just right, uh, strength coaching overall. And, uh, so that's the big thing I'm doing right now is I want to also open a gym in the next, uh, three or four years, probably here in mass, don't know exactly what part of mass, but that's in the near future for sure. Um, and again, that's not an if that's, that's just a when and a how and then otherwise I mean, my financial advisory business I'm doing right now, that's a, that's a big thing I love doing. Um, it's very similar. I mean, it's running a business, you know, it's, it's, uh, something I fell in love with two years ago and I definitely haven't fallen out of love with it and I don't see myself falling out of love with it anytime soon. So it's obviously different than painting, but it's still, it's still the same process. It's, it's all the grind work of playing a foundation for a business, marketing, um, the prospecting and then, uh, the execute, you know, obviously the sales and then the execution of those sales and, and working with clients, you know, crystal clear communication and in doing your part as, as a business owner and kind of scaling to that next level also in the longterm. But, uh, you know, I love what I'm doing right now. And basically the future is, you know, it's, it's definitely very heavily powerlifting oriented. I think my, my end game is I want to coach pretty full time. I think that's my biggest passion. I love doing it. Never feels like work. And obviously I think in the next, you know, four years or so, four or five years, I definitely look to capture a couple, uh, at least two or three national championships by then as well on powerlifting. So, Wow. So you definitely have a road map exactly where you want to be. That's, as you said, well, you know, it's, it's a great story. You have sure. But I know, uh, you know, the listeners are going to be, uh, totally inspired and you know, if someone's listening to this podcast though, that's going to college right now, going to university and they're deciding whether or not to reach out to the entrepreneurs and see if this might be for them. Any advice you'd give someone that might be considering this program that's going to reach out to us? It's the best internship for the right people in the worst internship for the wrong people. And you know, I, I, I've heard that from the beginning of this thing and I strongly stand by it. It's just, it's the easiest way to sum this thing up is really the best thing in the world. It was awesome for me. It might not be so great for someone who doesn't really care to be above average. If you are fine with where you are and you're fine with being with the rest of the pack, again, nothing wrong with that, you know, no, that is 90, 95% of the world and you know, that's fine. We need those people. Yeah. But, uh, then the, this is not for you. You're not going to have fun. And, uh, you know, if, if, you know, I want to refrain from saying if something like this scares you, don't do it because if it scares you, then it might be even good for you. But if you really want to grow, this is the only thing that you should be doing. I, I, I, people always ask me and also a lot of kids who have asked me, sure, I'd be doing the second year. I said the same thing. There is no better internship you can be doing just hands down in terms of you want to find a, an, what other internship is going to make you this much money? None. None. Nothing's going to even make you half the money. A lot of most internships people are doing are on paid. First of all, second of all, people don't even, that's if you're doing it for the money. You're not doing this for the money. You're doing this for the experience and the resume booster. What other internship where you're probably just getting, you know, it's a coffee cup internship. You're getting, you're a freshman at like, whatever it is, you're Northwestern mutual type internship or something, you're just getting coffee for, for your manager and kind of watching them type away at the computer. That's not experience. You put that on your resume and every other person has that on their resume ready to go. You're going in that same pile of hundred other resumes that we talked about earlier rather than the guy who's writing, starring your resume and putting it right in his briefcase and reaching out to you a day later. That's the big thing. So, if you want to be that person who's not going to go in the regular pile of resumes, you got to reach out. If you are the person who doesn't really care and is fine going in that pile, I'd say stay away. Yeah. Well, I appreciate that. You may not even know this. I don't know if I've ever told this, but you know, when we do trainings, you know, we even identify at that training who we might want to have come back a second year as an executive who'd be a good leader and a good mentor. Oh, yeah. I remember seeing down with you at the very first payroll and actually then yet even paying to house yet. Matter of fact, Matt Monjet was the only one that had painted that moment in time when I was in Boston. If you remember that moment. I do remember. I was at the front of the room and I remember calling Aaron, the vice president out there when I was on, driving back to the airport. I said, "Okay, sure, I've already identified him as a second year guy and now we just got to make sure he gets second year because I could see your passion and your intensity." I said, "What? There'll be no one better than a guy like Sherv who will be mentoring coach for five other college students in his sophomore year because he's already got it. Whatever that it is, he's got it and I can't explain it, but you had it. So I appreciate you talking about some listening and Sherv, one of the great story, you know, your senior year coming up and I'm excited to have you on a podcast, maybe two or three years from now, and see where your, you know, as a follow up to where your life is because I know it's going to be 10 out of 10 and I think you do too. I appreciate it. No, hands down. And if I were to say anything else just for, you know, anyone else listening to consider this program or who has done this program or, you know, doesn't know if they want to do this or something like that or if anyone who's listening just for pure business advice, it is, you know, the biggest thing you can consider when doing this is who do you want to be, you know, five, 10 years down the line is the biggest thing. And I knew freshman year when I saw Aaron Griffin walk into that room and kind of give me that info session, I had an idea of who I wanted to be five to 10 years from now. So what do I have to do to get there? It's got to be something like this. I got to get some hard experience running a business and, you know, another thing that helped a lot was just kind of different, I would say levels of volume for everything. This is a more micro thing, but say in terms of anything in life, whether it be just regular life or business, you have to play a numbers game with everything. So you have to, you need repetitions of everything. Yep. So, you know, doing a lot of interviews for jobs and getting good at interviews, interviewing a lot of people. I'd say, you know, anyway, one other kind of off topic thing is knowing how to compare different things in your life. So if you don't have a lot of experience, for instance, interviewing people, the first person that you interview is going to be your favorite person in the world. You know, you're going to interview them and you're going to be like, "Oh, this guy is a stunt." But, you know, if you don't know what's warm and what's cold, you know, everything's just going to be watered to you. You're not going to know what guy's good, what guy's bad. So I guess in life and in business, again, make sure you're getting a lot of repetitions. Make sure you are interviewing a lot of people, for instance. Make sure you're doing a lot of either sales presentations, estimates. You don't know what, what customers are good and what customers are bad until you've dealt with a hundred customers. You don't know what potential recruits are going to be good or bad until you've interviewed a hundred people. So I'd say that's just a big thing I want to leave people with is just make sure you're doing your due diligence and kind of practicing your repetitions, whether it be in life or in business. Well, you did yours as a freshman through sophomore year and now junior and now you're a senior. So, you know, what a great story and it's just awesome to hear about your success. And as always, just great to have you a part of our alumni network and I'm just so glad you walked in that room and were a part of Young Entrepreneurs a couple of years ago. So thanks so much and I'm sure you've had a great rest of the day. Thanks so much, Steve. I'm also glad that Aaron Griffin walked through that door. Yes. All right. I'll see you. Have a good day. Take care. Bye. Bye. 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